# entry

guid: 1031455 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: EU Establishment Fumes As "Far Right" Romanian Candidate Closes In On Presidential Win
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: ܌���P�,��:1de38
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">EU Establishment Fumes As "Far Right" Romanian Candidate Closes In On Presidential Win</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>When EU backed officials in Romania fabricated the accusation that right leaning presidential candidate Calin Georgescu was only popular because of a Russian disinformation operation on social media, the most common assumption was that this was purely a political stunt to draw voters away from his campaign.  Instead, the establishment surprised many around the world with Georgescu's arrest and eventual disqualification from the race. </p>

<p>To this day there is still no concrete evidence that Russia had any hand in the candidate's campaign or made any measurable effort to sway the election in his favor.</p>

<p>At bottom, Georgescu was the clear favorite to win exactly because he was a populist, nationalist and wanted to keep Romania out of the Ukraine conflict. This is what the Romanian people want.  However, the qualities that endeared him to the public were also the qualities that made him a target for removal.  The strategy has only resulted in even greater defiance by the voters and given a clear boost to George Simion, the conservative alternative. </p>

<p>Georgescu has thrown his support behind Simion, a self proclaimed fan of MAGA and a staunch opponent of Romanian involvement in Ukraine.  Simion recently crushed the existing government coalition in the do-over elections, causing Romania's Prime Minister <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nationalist-dominates-first-round-romanian-presidential-election">Marcel Ciolacu to resign</a>.  The final election, slated for this Sunday, will finally end the chaos of the uncertain election process.</p>

<p>As critics of the action to stifle the populist movement point out, the government only seems to have made voters more galvanized against the status quo.  It's clear that the progressive multiculturalist seat of power in Europe is fading, and they are willing to use any authoritarian means necessary to "save democracy".  </p>

<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bo_VUSX3X70" width="640" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></p>

<p>The problem is that the more the European Union squeezes their fist around member nations, the more countries end up slipping through their fingers.  Simion's odds of winning the election are high.  High enough, in fact, that the progressive media has unleashed a rancid flood of swampy propaganda attacking the candidate in preparation of his likely victory. </p>

<p>Within the past two days we have seen some incredibly biased and manipulative headlines.  </p>

<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/17/between-a-mathematician-and-a-trump-loving-hooligan-romania-stark-presidential-choice">Guardian says</a>:  <strong>‘Between a mathematician and a Trump-loving hooligan’: Romania’s stark presidential choice</strong></p>

<p>From the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/16/simion-romania-presidential-elections-russia/">Washington Post</a>:  <strong>A Russian-stoked protest movement lifts a MAGA-like populist in Romania</strong></p>

<p>From <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-george-simion-broad-coalition/">Politico</a>:  <strong>Romania’s Simion wants a broad coalition. Good luck with that.</strong></p>

<p>From <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/opinion/romania-election-simion-dan.html">The New York Times</a> (in reference to Simion's possible win):  <strong>Romania Is About to Experience Disaster</strong></p>

<p>From <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/15/simion-romania-president-far-right/">Foreign Policy</a>:  <strong>Romania’s Far Right Is More Extreme Than You Think</strong></p>

<p>This is not journalism, this is agit-prop for the globalist oligarchy.  CNN only referred to Simion as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/16/europe/romania-presidential-election-simion-dan-intl-cmd">"A MAGA Courting Populist"</a>, which is generally true, but in their tiny leftist minds this accusation alone is a kind irredeemable condemnation. </p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/Simion1.jpg?itok=JEP6VEHd" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Simion1.jpg?itok=JEP6VEHd"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="d3dea8df-0226-4148-b8ef-b03a0147ee20" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="333" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Simion1.jpg?itok=JEP6VEHd" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>The reaction from the corporate media in the west reveals how valuable Romania is for the future plans of NATO and the EU.  Sitting directly on Ukraine's southwest border with access to the Black Sea, Romania would be a key strategic position in a future war with Russia should Europe be insane enough to pursue a conflict.  There is also the matter of the European population becoming increasingly disenchanted with the progressive elites in power.  Their open border policies and carbon controls have nearly destroyed most of the union and left it in third world shambles.</p>

<p>A win for populists in Romania could herald even greater wins by other nationalist parties across the continent in the next few years.        </p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e895d4db-372e-46a1-901d-027b94a37537" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="295" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Memorial%20Day%20Beef%204.jpg?itok=LJB4UYNL" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T12:45:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 05/18/2025 - 08:45</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/establishment-seethes-far-right-romanian-candidate-closes-presidential-win


guid: yt:video:yofEOUCLiyk
title: PM Carney meets with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni – May 17, 2025
author: ;cpac
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yofEOUCLiyk
hash: � ]8>�n`���x<�
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{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://www.youtube.com/v/yofEOUCLiyk?version=3","title":"PM Carney meets with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni – May 17, 2025","description":"Prime Minister and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni comment briefly ahead of their bilateral meeting in Rome, Italy. The leaders are meeting while in Rome to attend the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.","type":"application/x-shockwave-flash","height":390,"width":640,"thumbnails":["https://i2.ytimg.com/vi/yofEOUCLiyk/hqdefault.jpg"]}]}


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165827/feux-foret-alexander-protection-infrasctures
title: Incendie au Manitoba : les pompiers en mode protection pour sauver bâtiments et chalets
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165827/feux-foret-alexander-protection-infrasctures
hash: x�[XN�Y�*a!D)�
content:
<p>Selon Mac Kinghorn, maire adjoint et chef des pompiers locaux, l’incendie est « immense et non maîtrisé ».</p>

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://images.radio-canada.ca/q_auto,w_635,h_357/v1/ici-info/16x9/feux-foret-alexander-protection-infrasctures.jpeg","type":"image/jpeg","length":0}]}


guid: 1031465 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Manhunt Underway: 3 Inmates Caught, 7 Still Loose After Brazen New Orleans Jailbreak
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: �����u"�m�P����
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Manhunt Underway: 3 Inmates Caught, 7 Still Loose After Brazen New Orleans Jailbreak</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Late Friday night, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry announced on X that law enforcement had recaptured three of the ten violent inmates who escaped from a New Orleans jail through a hole in the wall behind a toilet.</p>

<p><strong>"3 down, 7 to go, and we ARE NOT slowing down!" Landry said, adding, "LOCK THEM UP!" </strong></p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">3 down 7 to go, and we ARE NOT slowing down!<br><br>
LOCK THEM UP! <a href="https://t.co/h8K5cQRwY1">pic.twitter.com/h8K5cQRwY1</a></p>
— Jeff Landry (@JeffLandry) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffLandry/status/1923576053773074907?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>The brazen jailbreak was caught on video.  </p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Most shocking: The escape wasn’t discovered until a routine headcount around 8:30 a.m., giving the fugitives more than seven hours of freedom before the alarm was raised. <a href="https://t.co/FOaCTMtvEc">https://t.co/FOaCTMtvEc</a></p>
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrianEntin/status/1923549591187710338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>Before the inmates escaped, they left humorous messages on the wall for correctional officers, including "To easy LoL."</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/GrF2gZOWIAAm5tA.png?itok=4cyFadfX" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GrF2gZOWIAAm5tA.png?itok=4cyFadfX"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="bcd35095-a758-46df-a95d-765f18b18808" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="499" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/GrF2gZOWIAAm5tA.png?itok=4cyFadfX" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>According to Sheriff Susan Hutson, the inmates broke out of the jail in Orleans Parish around 0100 local time on Friday. </p>

<p>"We have indication that these detainees received assistance in their escape from individuals inside of our department," Hutson said. She noted that one jail employee saw the great escape through surveillance footage but did not report it. </p>

<p>It wasn't until 0830 local time that jail authorities noticed the missing men after a routine head count, according to the sheriff. That gave the inmates a gap of plus seven hours to flee the area. </p>

<p>The seven inmates still at large are Corey Boyd, Leo Tate, Jermaine Donald, Derrick Groves, Lenton Vanburen, Antoine T. Massey, and Gary C. Price. Those apprehended include Kendall Myles, Robert Moody, and Dkenan Dennis.</p>

<p><strong>Meanwhile, we're not sure if the New Orleans police chief is after the escapees or the Batman...</strong></p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">JUST IN: New Orleans Cpt. Stephanie Minto-Gibson wears bizarre glasses to a press conference to give an update on the 10 inmates who escaped jail.<br><br>
Only one of the inmates has been caught as of this time after the group escaped by removing a toilet from the wall.<br><br>
What a… <a href="https://t.co/CQcOOMyUwN">pic.twitter.com/CQcOOMyUwN</a></p>
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1923523405325963728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>Inside job?</p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?c_id=98&amp;m=category&amp;c=Rancher-Direct%20Clean%20Food" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?c_id=98&amp;m=category&amp;c=Rancher-Direct%20Clean%20Food" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?c_id=98&amp;m=category&amp;c=Rancher-Direct%20Clean%20Food"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="dd73e0b7-f76a-423d-85a6-136cda3d1fe1" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="295" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/memorial%20day%20ebersold.jpg?itok=zAcpFO2j" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T16:15:38+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 12:15</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/manhunt-underway-3-inmates-caught-7-still-loose-after-brazen-new-orleans-jailbreak


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747492910
title: Hamas says new Gaza truce talks under way as Israel expands ground assault
hash: n E ��n�^�� �JC@
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Israel and Hamas confirm indirect talks being held in Qatar as Israel expands ground offensive, killing dozens.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/17/hamas-says-new-gaza-truce-talks-under-way-as-israel-expands-ground-assault?traffic_source=rss


guid: yt:video:sy1genetEg4
title: PM Carney meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome – May 17, 2025
author: ;cpac
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1genetEg4
hash: �c ����d�1�5�}�
attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://www.youtube.com/v/sy1genetEg4?version=3","title":"PM Carney meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome – May 17, 2025","description":"Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comment briefly ahead of their bilateral meeting in Rome, Italy. The leaders are meeting while in Rome to attend the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.","type":"application/x-shockwave-flash","height":390,"width":640,"thumbnails":["https://i4.ytimg.com/vi/sy1genetEg4/hqdefault.jpg"]}]}


guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/war-and-international-politics-018
title: War and International Politics
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/war-and-international-politics-018
hash: ��$��� ї����/
content:
<p><span>I recently published a lengthy article on “War and International Politics” in</span> <em>International Security</em><span>. It was originally the Richard K. Betts inaugural lecture at Columbia University. Although it is a scholarly piece, I intended it to be an easy read for non-scholars. Below is a link for the piece, which allows easy access to a PDF for those who might be interested.</span></p>
<div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container">
<figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa683d88e-eef2-4c2f-9488-08cfd7ac9e93_520x770.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" rel data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img">
<div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa683d88e-eef2-4c2f-9488-08cfd7ac9e93_520x770.jpeg" width="520" height="770" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a683d88e-eef2-4c2f-9488-08cfd7ac9e93_520x770.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":770,"width":520,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"International Security Cover Image for Volume 49, Issue 4","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null}' alt="International Security Cover Image for Volume 49, Issue 4" title="International Security Cover Image for Volume 49, Issue 4" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand">
<div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset">
<div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div>
<div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</a></figure></div>
<p><a href="https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/49/4/7/130810/War-and-International-Politics" rel>https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/49/4/7/130810/War-and-International-Politics</a></p>

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165840/mec-commerce-plein-air-propriete-canadienne
title: MEC repasse sous contrôle canadien après cinq ans de gestion américaine
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165840/mec-commerce-plein-air-propriete-canadienne
hash: &ΖZ_��Clr?h�dih
content:
<p>Ce détaillant spécialisé dans l’équipement de plein air et basé en C.-B. repasse sous contrôle canadien.</p>

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://images.radio-canada.ca/q_auto,w_635,h_357/v1/ici-info/16x9/mec-mountain-equipment-company.jpg","type":"image/jpeg","length":0}]}


guid: 1031472 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: The Ball's In Trump's Court After The Latest Istanbul Talks
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/balls-trumps-court-after-latest-istanbul-talks
hash: F��؆Ko+SÖ�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Ball's In Trump's Court After The Latest Istanbul Talks</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-balls-in-trumps-court-after-the"><em>Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,</em></a></p>

<p><strong>The mixed signals that he sent on Friday suggest that he hasn’t made up his mind about what to do...</strong></p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%286%29_7.jpg?itok=SNEyVu1B" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%286%29_7.jpg?itok=SNEyVu1B"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="157e6f2e-645f-42c3-89d5-a815d2c7ba48" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="375" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%286%29_7.jpg?itok=SNEyVu1B" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>

<p>The first bilateral Russian-Ukrainian talks in over three years were held in Istanbul on Friday after Zelensky agreed, likely under pressure from Trump, to Putin’s proposal from the week prior. They didn’t result in the unconditional 30-day <a href="https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/will-putin-agree-to-a-ceasefire">ceasefire</a> that Ukraine demanded nor did Ukraine agree to withdraw from the entirety of the disputed regions like Russia demanded, but they did agree to a prisoner swap and to hold another round of talks sometime in the future. They therefore weren’t for nothing.</p>

<p><strong>Most importantly, Russia and Ukraine were able to show Trump that they’re interested in peace after he signaled his <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-us-is-toughening-its-negotiating">increasing</a> <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/third-party-mediation-between-russia">impatience</a> with the US’ hitherto unsuccessful mediation between them, which could result in him either “escalating to de-escalate” or simply walking away from the conflict.</strong> Prior to making his fateful choice about the future of American involvement, Trump will likely hold talks with Putin, at the very least over the phone but ideally in person sometime in the coming weeks.</p>

<p>After all, the ball’s now in his court after the Russian and Ukrainian positions have proven to be irreconcilable, so Russia will either inevitably obtain its maximum goals by continuing to rely on military means to that end or the US will double down on support for Ukraine in order to prevent that outcome. The only realistic compromise would be if the US <a href="https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/five-benefits-that-the-us-would-reap-from-coercing-ukraine-into-more-concessions-to-russia">successfully coerces</a> Ukraine into withdrawing from some or all of the disputed regions in exchange for Russia agreeing to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.</p>

<p>The US hasn’t yet attempted that even though it could have tried doing so anytime over the past three months since Trump returned to the White House, however, thus leading to the aforesaid scenario branch. It therefore remains unclear exactly what Trump will do. <strong>On the one hand, he just <a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/617721-medinsky-ukraine-talks-statement/">threatened</a> Russia with “crushing” sanctions, but he also just <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/617750-trump-ukraine-aid-wasted/">complained</a> about the billions that the US “pissed away” in support of Ukraine. It accordingly looks like he himself hasn’t yet decided how to proceed.</strong></p>

<p>“Escalating to de-escalate” would entail enormous financial and strategic costs, the latter with regard to potentially offsetting his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China and even risking World War III in the worst-case scenario. </p>

<p><strong>At the same time, walking away would lead to him owning what could then soon become one of the West’s worst geopolitical defeats.</strong> The middle ground between these extremes could be strictly enforced secondary sanctions against Russia’s energy clients.</p>

<p>To elaborate, the aim would be to pressure China and India into drastically curtailing their imports, the first as a “goodwill gesture” after <strong>Trump’s newly announced “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/12/china-us-agree-pause-trade-war-trump">total reset</a>”</strong> in their ties and the second as a means to signal its worth to the US in the hopes that Trump reconsiders his <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/there-might-be-a-method-to-the-madness">incipient</a> <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/trumps-desired-return-to-bagram-airbase">pivot</a> to Pakistan. Nevertheless, one or both might still refuse to comply or secretly continue to purchase large amounts of Russian energy, thus forcing the US to either turn a blind eye or worsen ties by sanctioning them.</p>

<p><strong>A blend of these scenarios could see Trump threatening Zelensky with a clean break from this conflict if he doesn’t withdraw from Donbass while threatening Putin with strictly enforced secondary sanctions if he doesn’t accept a (unconditional?) 30-day ceasefire in the event that this happens. </strong>Calls could then be made to Xi and Modi to inform them of his plans in the hope that they’ll convince Putin to agree. Such a proposal would be the most pragmatic one from the US’ perspective and could lead to a breakthrough.</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T16:50:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 12:50</span>


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165815/journee-homophobie-transphobie-lgbtq-allie
title: La communauté 2ELGBTQQIA+ lance un appel aux personnes alliées
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165815/journee-homophobie-transphobie-lgbtq-allie
hash: ӻw��>jD M<�J��
content:
<p>Le 17 mai marque la Journée internationale contre l'homophobie et la transphobie, qui en est à sa 23<sup>e</sup> édition.</p>

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guid: https://karlof1.substack.com/p/a-short-yet-important-note
title: A Short yet Important Note
author: ;Karl Sanchez
link: https://karlof1.substack.com/p/a-short-yet-important-note
hash: �"d�Ř $˥U� "=
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46304dbb-074a-4cdc-8e78-4075e5101893_800x528.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46304dbb-074a-4cdc-8e78-4075e5101893_800x528.jpeg" width="800" height="528" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/46304dbb-074a-4cdc-8e78-4075e5101893_800x528.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":528,"width":800,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false,"align":null}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Sputnik today <a href="https://sputnikglobe.com/20250517/kremlin-names-condition-for-putin-zelensky-meeting-1122070504.html">published</a> the following very important words along with others:</p><blockquote><p>Moscow considers the candidacy of Kiev's signatory as the main and fundamental thing when signing documents between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations during the negotiations, Peskov said.</p><p><em>"When signing the documents to be agreed upon by the delegations, the main and principal thing for us is who exactly will sign these documents from the Ukrainian side," Peskov said. </em>[Italics Original]</p></blockquote><p>This legal issue was noted by Putin in his chat with the sailors in Murmansk and emphasized by me on that and other occasions. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyP4Ewh0vg">Marc Sleboda mentioned</a> and I noted elsewhere, the no negotiations edict seems to have been ignored as there’s no record of it formally being annulled. IMO, it remains clear that Russia deems Zelensky illegitimate, which will likely cause there to be no direct talks between him and Putin, plus there must be some other acceptable to Russia legal entity to sign whatever gets produced via negotiations, which takes us back to my writings about the legal issues of making the peace. </p><p>*<br>*<br>*<br><em>Like what you’ve been reading at Karlof1’s Substack? Then please consider subscribing and choosing to make a <strong>monthly/yearly pledge</strong> to enable my efforts in this challenging realm. Thank You!</em></p><p></p><p data-attrs='{"url":"https://karlof1.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe now","action":null,"class":null}' data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton" data-sanitized-class="button-wrapper"><a href="https://karlof1.substack.com/subscribe?" data-sanitized-class="button primary"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p></p><blockquote><p></p></blockquote><p> </p>

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165839/veille-orages-violents-sud-ouest-quebec
title: Veille d’orages violents dans le sud et le centre du Québec, risque de grêle et de tornade
content: <p>En soirée, on pourrait s’attendre à de petits grêlons de deux centimètres de diamètre.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165839/veille-orages-violents-sud-ouest-quebec
hash: 3Rl��B$z�`�4Q �
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guid: 1031468 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Vietnam Q1 Auto Sales Outperform Asian Peers, Rising 24%, Led By Chinese Brands
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: ��f���!�$�{� �a8
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Vietnam Q1 Auto Sales Outperform Asian Peers, Rising 24%, Led By Chinese Brands</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Vietnam led Southeast Asia’s auto sales growth in Q1 2025, with a 24% year-on-year surge, outpacing larger markets thanks to strong economic momentum and rising public investment, according to <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Vietnam-s-Q1-auto-sales-rise-24-outperforming-ASEAN-peers?utm_campaign=GL_asia_daily&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=NA_newsletter&amp;utm_content=article_link&amp;del_type=1&amp;pub_date=20250515123000&amp;seq_num=3&amp;si=79447">Nikkei Asia</a>.</p>

<p>Nikkei Asia data shows total sales across Southeast Asia’s five biggest markets—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam—fell 1.7% to 732,898 vehicles.</p>

<p>In Vietnam, hybrid vehicle sales soared 80% to 2,562 units, driven by new models from Toyota and Suzuki. Commercial vehicles and trucks also saw strong gains, rising 22% and 21% to 15,445 and 13,400 units, respectively, supported by a 19.8% jump in public investment to $4.67 billion.</p>

<p>“We expect Vietnam's passenger car sales, excluding VinFast and some luxury brands, to grow 15% year on year in 2025,” said Thuc Than, an analyst at Vietcap Securities. “Our forecast does not take into account a possible negative outcome of the tariff negotiations,” she added, warning that higher tariffs could pose risks to growth.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.13.31%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=yCKbZRRM" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.13.31%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=yCKbZRRM"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="34d0027d-5f22-42a4-8bf4-604fdf2e2add" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="271" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.13.31%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=yCKbZRRM" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Vietnam’s official auto sales stood at 118,813 vehicles, but including VinFast’s 35,100 units and Hyundai’s 11,464 units, total sales would surpass the Philippines’ 117,074 units.</p>

<p>The Philippines saw solid 7% growth, led by a 13.9% rise in commercial vehicle sales, even as passenger car sales fell 13.7%. EV and hybrid sales accounted for 5.73% of the market.</p>

<p>Thailand’s market shrank 7% to 153,193 vehicles, with ICE passenger car sales down 14% and pickup truck sales down 13%. EV sales, however, grew 19% to 22,737 units, boosted by Chinese brands like BYD, which saw March sales jump nearly threefold.</p>

<p>Nikkei Asia <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Vietnam-s-Q1-auto-sales-rise-24-outperforming-ASEAN-peers?utm_campaign=GL_asia_daily&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=NA_newsletter&amp;utm_content=article_link&amp;del_type=1&amp;pub_date=20250515123000&amp;seq_num=3&amp;si=79447">writes</a> that despite the yearly decline, Thailand’s Q1 sales rose 14% quarter-on-quarter, topping 150,000 units for the first time in a year, aided by price cuts and promotions.</p>

<p>Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s second-largest market, also slowed. Sales fell 7.4% to 188,100 vehicles as backlogs cleared and the market normalized. March sales rose slightly by 2.2%, supported by aggressive marketing campaigns.</p>

<p>Chinese brands are making rapid inroads in Malaysia’s EV market. Proton’s first EV, the e.MAS 7, launched in December, has already received over 5,500 orders, with a second model, the e.MAS 5, expected later this year.</p>

<p><strong>“The Chinese brands are offering very competitive and affordable prices,”</strong> said Periasamy Arumugam of Great Wall Motors. Jerry Chan of Jetour added, “Malaysian customers prefer big cars like SUVs,” noting that Jetour plans to manufacture vehicles locally in Johor to meet demand.</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T17:25:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 13:25</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/vietnam-q1-auto-sales-outperform-asian-peers-rising-24-led-chinese-brands


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305574
title: CNN’s Scott Jennings responds to reports about possible Kentucky Senate run
author: ;Elizabeth Crisp
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5305574-jennings-kentucky-senate-bid-mitch-mcconnell/
hash: O���.��j:7��im
content:
Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor and GOP political pundit, has been speculated as a potential Republican candidate to replace former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, although he has not officially announced a bid.

tags:
#Campaign #News #State Watch #2026 election #CNN #HBO #HBO program #Kentucky #Kentucky Senate race #Nate Morris #Overtime with Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #The Daily Beast

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guid: 1031473 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Doug Casey On DOGE, Deficits, &amp; The Coming Financial Earthquake
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/doug-casey-doge-deficits-coming-financial-earthquake
hash: ��CO^�ᅽ R�=�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Doug Casey On DOGE, Deficits, &amp; The Coming Financial Earthquake</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-doge-deficits-and-the-coming-financial-earthquake/"><em>Via InternationalMan.com,</em></a></p>

<p><strong>International Man:</strong> What’s your perspective on the claims Elon Musk and others made about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the campaign, and how would you assess the actual progress they’ve achieved since then?</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/DOGE-shutterstock_2549930225.jpg?itok=h-Jtb-RG" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/DOGE-shutterstock_2549930225.jpg?itok=h-Jtb-RG"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e332ebb4-8351-460d-9dcf-7a08b74971bd" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="290" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/DOGE-shutterstock_2549930225.jpg?itok=h-Jtb-RG" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>Doug Casey:</strong> <strong>I hate to sound pessimistic, because the idea of DOGE was excellent, but it’s not making much in the way of progress. </strong>Musk first thought he could cut $2 trillion from the budget. I see how he could say that; it’s a very reasonable estimate. But as he discovered the depth of the resistance, he reduced it to $1 trillion. And now it’s $150 billion—and he’s probably not even going to be able to do that.</em></p>

<p><em>Why is it failing? One reason is that Congress has legislated and mandated most of the spending, and the hundreds of agencies that carry it out—and Trump can’t eliminate them. Congress has to abolish these programs and agencies. All DOGE can do is make recommendations.</em></p>

<p><em>It’s true that the USAID building is closed, but apparently, many of its employees and programs have just simply been reassigned to the State Department or other places. They’ve made no progress on getting rid of the Department of Education.</em></p>

<p><em>I’m sure Trump very much wants to see DOGE be successful, but unfortunately its very name is “Government Efficiency,” and I question whether we really want the government to be more efficient.<strong> The only way to solve the problem isn’t by making government more efficient, but by abolishing agencies wholesale—not just trimming some fat.</strong></em></p>

<p><em>Will there be a fundamental change? That’s unlikely because, as I’ve said many times before, Trump has no philosophical center. Nor any understanding of economics, as evidenced by his tariffs scheme, which I think will fail utterly—and may even be the catalyst that sets off the Greater Depression.<strong> He’s flying by the seat of his pants.</strong></em></p>

<p><em>Equally bad—or worse—he appears to want an industrial policy for the US, where he’ll be making investments in all kinds of things to make the US a manufacturing center again. It’s like what Argentina did under the Peronists. He does whatever seems like a good idea at the time…</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>International Man:</strong> With Elon Musk signaling his impending departure from DOGE, how do you foresee the future of DOGE and its initiatives unfolding without his leadership?</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>Doug Casey: As Chairman Mao once said, “The helmsman sets the course that sails the ship.” And if the helmsman jumps ship, it’s questionable whether other crewmen can take over successfully. </strong>Maybe they will. But without the public profile and moral suasion of Musk, I suspect that the people he leaves in charge of this advisory agency will flounder.</em></p>

<p><em>And, remember, DOGE itself has no power. But the Deep State has an immense amount of power, and they’re fighting it tooth and nail—both with go-slow policies and by filing lawsuits everywhere possible to stop it from happening.</em></p>

<p><em>In the long run, just cutting things back can’t possibly work. It’s like pruning a plant. Gardeners prune plants to make them healthier. If you just prune agencies, they’ll grow back even more virulent. The only solution is for scores of them—hundreds of them—to be pulled out by the roots and Agent Orange sown where they grew. That’s not happening.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>For instance, take Ukraine. Zelensky has become a billionaire, as have all his cronies, and the fighting is still going on. Why? Because the US is still sending them money and materiel.</strong></em></p>

<p><em>I’m afraid serious cuts are bluster, not reality. And where can they really cut things? Are they going to take money away from the Veterans Administration or military pensions? No. Certainly not from the military itself—Trump has said they’re going to increase spending from $800 billion to $1 trillion. Are they going to cut back Medicare or Social Security? Abolish Medicaid? They should, but they won’t. These things, along with interest on the national debt, equal about 85% of spending.</em></p>

<p><em>They can’t reduce the interest burden on the federal debt; it will continue growing with more spending and higher interest rates. Which, I suspect, are headed toward the levels we saw in the early 1980s, when the government was paying 20% for its money.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>Musk has said he’s found thousands of egregious cases of waste, fraud, and abuse that should be referred to the Department of Justice. But that’s far, far more than the DOJ can handle. </strong>Where are the headlines about prosecutions for the things Musk has talked about? I’m quite disappointed. I’d like to see hundreds of heads on stakes, but it looks like the bedbugs and cockroaches are just going to hide while the lights are on.</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>International Man:</strong> Do you believe DOGE’s proposed cuts will lead to genuine, permanent reductions in government spending—or will they simply free up funds for Washington to redirect toward areas like defense?</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>Doug Casey: All kinds of obvious things aren’t being touched—like the $50 billion the US gives to foreign governments around the world, a bottomless pit of graft. </strong>That’s not going to change. Certainly not the $4 billion the US gives to Israel every year, or the $4 billion it gives to Egypt every year to bribe it into being Israel’s BFF.</em></p>

<p><em>One thing that will kill any real progress from DOGE is subtle threats from the Deep State in general, and the praetorian agencies in particular. The NSA knows everything about everybody. If any DOGE employee gets too aggressive about breaking rice bowls or imprisoning bigwigs, they’ll be intimidated. These agencies know, or can fabricate, inconvenient things about them.</em></p>

<p><em>Or perform a cover up. Look at the Epstein case. We were supposed to learn what Epstein was up to, and with who. But everything’s being heavily redacted to protect guilty but well-connected people. The elite always close ranks to protect each other.</em></p>

<p><em>It’s all smoke but no fire. These agencies—with all the information they have—can destroy anyone who attacks them. If not now, while Trump is still in office, they’ll certainly seek retribution after he leaves. Our best hope—but it’s a long shot—is that Trump will realize that it’s kill or be killed, and will try to destroy them utterly while he’s still in power. That would be inviting civil war… but he has no real alternative.</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>International Man: </strong>Given that DOGE represents the most significant attempt to reduce government spending in generations, what are the implications if it fails?</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>Doug Casey: The economy is on the ragged edge,</strong> and with the tariffs creating economic chaos the Democrats may be re-elected in 2028. In fact, they may even win the midterms, which would guarantee that all of Trump’s efforts fail.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>If the Democrats regain control of the government, they’ll redouble spending to try to forestall the Greater Depression and kick the can down the road for a few more years.</strong> And they’ll be supported by the American people, who are going to miss all the freebies the government was bribing them with. The average American has become so corrupt that he doesn’t want to have his doggy dish taken away.</em></p>

<p><em>For a while, during the first month of Trump’s presidency, it looked like it was going to once again be morning in America. But we’re finding out that morning only lasts six hours—and we’re already past noon. Things look quite grim.</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>International Man:</strong> As the US debt crisis intensifies, what steps should individuals take to protect their wealth—and what speculative opportunities do you see emerging from this turmoil?</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>Doug Casey: </strong>Even if we avoid a major war, I’m afraid the trend that’s been in motion for many decades is going to stay in motion and continue accelerating until the whole mess collapses under its own weight.</em></p>

<p><strong><em>The US has become a giant multicultural empire revolving around the Washington Beltway. It could go down catastrophically the way Rome did. Or it may just degrade slowly like Spain or England. They still exist, but they’re hollow shells of their previous selves.</em></strong></p>

<p><em>The financial, economic, political, and social problems we’re laboring under are leading to a breakup of the country. So, instead of the US getting bigger with the extremely expensive acquisitions of Greenland, the Panama Canal Zone, and—God forbid—Canada, the US is more likely to get smaller.</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>All you can do is try to insulate yourself.</strong> The way to do that is by diversifying your money safely out of the country and continuing to build significant positions in gold, silver, and Bitcoin. With hopefully some successful speculations along the way.</p>

<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><em>As Doug Casey makes clear, the US is spiraling toward a financial and political reckoning—and few are prepared for what comes next. In times like these, it’s critical to focus on real assets that stand outside the system. That’s why we urge you to see Doug’s latest video dispatch: <a href="https://internationalman.com/help/doug-casey-gold-video-preview/"><strong>The World’s #1 Investment Opportunity</strong></a>. In it, the legendary investor reveals what the mainstream media won’t tell you about gold—and why now may be the most important time in decades to act. <a href="https://internationalman.com/help/doug-casey-gold-video-preview/">Click here to see it now</a>.</em></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T18:00:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 14:00</span>


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304714
title: Delivering missile defense requires leveraging American industry
author: ;Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem; opinion contributors
link: https://thehill.com/opinion/5304714-trump-administration-defense-initiative/
hash: z��q}m 3��glj7�
content:
President Trump's Golden Dome initiative aims to create a comprehensive integrated air and missile defense system for the United States, leveraging proven technologies and partnering with traditional defense actors in the industry to mitigate the odds of a successful nuclear or conventional attack on the U.S. homeland.

tags:
#National Security #Opinion #China #Defense Industrial Base #Golden Dome initiative #Iran #North Korea #President Trump #russia

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{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/AP25132564068676_f17ec5.jpg?w=900","type":"image/jpeg","length":309125}]}


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747503455
title: FA Cup Final 2025: Crystal Palace defeat Man City in major upset
hash: E��Kk��K���W�
tags: #Sport
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Crystal Palace win their first major trophy by beating Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup final at Wembley stadium.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2025/5/17/fa-cup-final-2025-crystal-palace-defeat-man-city-in-major-upset?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305599
title: Leaked audio of Hur interview shines light on Biden’s mental fitness: What to know
author: ;Steff Danielle Thomas
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5305599-joe-biden-robert-hur-audio-leaked-what-to-know/
hash: �q�t��5��%>C��
content:
Former President Biden has found his way back into the spotlight more than 100 days after President Trump reclaimed the White House. Audio obtained by Axios from Biden’s October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur about classified documents found in his private home from his time as vice president was published by the outlet…

tags:
#Administration #Campaign #News #2016 presidential election #2024 presidential campaign #ABC #Afghanistan #autopen #Axios #BBC #Biden administration #Biden Classified Documents #Biden-Hur interview #classified documents #CNN #Democratic losses #democrats #Department of Justice #DOJ #House GOP #Joe Biden mental fitness #NBC #special counsel interview #The Hill #The View #Trump administration

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guid: yt:video:bQTW0VqCV5Q
title: PM Carney meets with Ursula von der Leyen in Rome – May 17, 2025
author: ;cpac
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQTW0VqCV5Q
hash: ���k���Tv�8�0e
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305735
title: Pence: Trump’s Qatar jet is ‘inconsistent with our security’
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: �t�=�P�������
tags: #Administration #Boeing #Middle east #Qatar #Qatari jet #Qatari royal family #Trump administration
content:
Former Vice President Pence said during a recent interview that President Trump accepting a luxury jet from the Qatari government is “inconsistent” with the United States’ “security” and that he should turn down the gift.  “Well, I think first we got to remember who Qatar is. We’ve got a military base there. I have members…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5305735-pence-trumps-qatar-jet-is-inconsistent-with-our-security/

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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747503801
title: At least three killed as Syrian forces raid ISIL hideouts in Aleppo
content: Syrian authorities say three ISIL fighters killed and several others detained in Aleppo raids.
hash: �'���.Ri>������
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/17/at-least-three-killed-as-syrian-forces-raid-isil-hideouts-in-aleppo?traffic_source=rss


guid: 1031479 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: David Stockman On Why America Doesn't Need "Allies"
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-why-america-doesnt-need-allies
hash: 0 �, F��T�뵹�0�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">David Stockman On Why America Doesn't Need "Allies"</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-why-america-doesnt-need-allies/"><em>Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,</em></a></p>

<p><strong>The title is a bit crude and is deliberately mocking in tone. But it has to be because there is a deeply-entrenched, almost sacred presumption embedded in the nation’s foreign policy catechism that “allies”, “alliances” and “coalitions of the willing” are the be-all-and-end-all of enlightened, necessary and effective foreign policy.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/shutterstock_18984153252-1.jpg?itok=c441wX0A" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/shutterstock_18984153252-1.jpg?itok=c441wX0A"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="8b6f3c04-1477-491f-a27b-135dfd9f944f" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="375" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/shutterstock_18984153252-1.jpg?itok=c441wX0A" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>American policy-makers and diplomats perforce should therefore never leave these shores for the wider world without them. This dogma perhaps reached its epitome in Secretary of State James Baker’s “coalition of the willing” during the utterly pointless first Gulf War of 1991 and has plagued us ever since. Unfortunately.</p>

<p>In fact, the truth is more nearly the opposite–so it needs to be stated coarsely, almost defiantly. To wit, allies in today’s world are mostly an albatross, completely irrelevant to the military security of the American homeland and a major source of unnecessary friction and even outright conflict among the nations.</p>

<p>In a word, <strong>America is such an outsized economic and military Hegemon that all the little and mid-sized nation’s it has lined-up in formal and de facto alliances are inherently incentivized to pursue policies that minimize their own defense investments</strong>—even as they are also encouraged to throw diplomatic caution to the winds. That is, Washington’s “alliances” enable the domestic politicians or elected governments of these small allies to be more aggressive or confrontational vis-a-vis the “bad guys” designated by Washington than they surely would be if operating only upon their own steam.</p>

<p>For instance, the former Estonian prime minister between 2021 and 2024, Kaja Kallas, and now foreign affairs chief for the EU has been a loud-mouthed, vitriolic critic of Russia and hardline supporter of sending other people’s money [i.e. yours] to the support of the equally pointless proxy war against Russia on the Ukrainian steppes.</p>

<p>Of course, with a population of just 1.3 million, GDP of barely $40 billion and armed force of 8,000, Estonia amounts to a cipher of an ally in the scheme of things. So it does absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security, even as it has emboldened Kallas to become a loud irritant to the Big Bear of a country next door.</p>

<p><em><strong>Then again, if there were no such thing as NATO and the Article 5 military shield of the US, do you think Kallas would be noisily whooping it up for Zelensky? Would her people have tolerated her posturing as little David waving a sling-shot at the Goliath next door?</strong></em></p>

<p>We dare say the very opposite would have prevailed. Estonia and its leader would have taken care to make nice to their extra large sized neighbor—as small countries have done from times immemorial.</p>

<p>And if making diplomatic nice and conducting mutually beneficial economic commerce wasn’t working for some reason, although it almost always does, they would have been obligated to arm themselves to the hilt. That is, mobilize 10-25% of GDP for defense, if necessary, rather than the pittance of 2.9% of GDP that Estonia actually spends. In turn, that would establish deterrence—the standing up to a potential aggressor the heavy cost in blood and treasure it would be obligated to face in breaching the borders and sovereignty of a smaller neighbor.</p>

<p>And, no, for crying out loud, the 21st century world is not unique when it comes to the relationships between big, small and middle sized nations. What we described above as making nice in diplomacy and economics and making deterrence clear is actually the way the world of nations is supposed to work, and, prior to the rise of the Hegemon on the Potomac, actually usually did.</p>

<p><strong>Most certainly the gods of history have not conferred upon Washington’s politicians and apparatchiks a mandate to befriend and safeguard  from one end of the planet to the other every Little Guy from the heavy breathing of nearby Big Guys.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-1.jpg?itok=W3Oc-Hia" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-1.jpg?itok=W3Oc-Hia"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="d140651f-9418-4529-8a52-276e787f426f" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="326" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/word-image-65508-1.jpg?itok=W3Oc-Hia" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><em>Kaja Kallas on X: “Ukraine’s brave and fierce fight for freedom has been an “inspiration” to the Estonian people. Many have joined the voluntary Defence League.</em></p>

<p><strong>Indeed, in a world not dislocated by the Hegemon on the Potomac no one would think to describe the reckless foolishness of Kiev in militarily attacking and brutalizing the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas after the Maidan Coup of February 2014 as an “inspiration”.</strong> </p>

<p>It was actually stupid beyond belief—something that neighbors not addled by the Hegemon’s military shield or egged on by the CIA, NED, USAID, the State Department and Pentagon would have no problem recognizing and observing.</p>

<p><strong>Indeed that observation applies to the whole passel of little countries that have been admitted to NATO since the turn of the century. </strong> For instance, when it comes to the five  small Balkan countries that do not even share the Black Sea shorelines with Russia, here is the pitiful military capacity and defense heft (measured as % of GDP) that they bring to America’s homeland security.</p>

<p>In order to put this pittance of military manpower in perspective, moreover, we first note by way of comparison the size of police forces in major US cities. While these domestic police men, women and theys may eat too many donuts on the job and thereby fail any combat readiness tests, when it comes to sheer human muscle the city police forces listed here outrank most of what these Balkan “allies” bring to the table.</p>

<p><strong>Size of Police Forces In Major US Cities:</strong></p>

<ul><li>New York City: 36,000.</li>
	<li>Chicago: 13,100.</li>
	<li>Los Angeles: 10,000.</li>
	<li>Philadelphia: 6,500.</li>
</ul><p>This is by way of saying that all of the above cities have bigger forces of men in blue than do most of the small the NATO allies depicted below, where we show their active military manpower and their defense spending as a % of GDP.</p>

<ul><li>Croatia: 14,300/1.8% of GDP.</li>
	<li>North Macedonia: 8,000/1.7% of GDP.</li>
	<li>Slovenia: 7,300/1.5% of GDP.</li>
	<li>Albania: 6,600/1.7% of GDP.</li>
	<li>Montenegro: 2,350/1.6% of GDP.</li>
</ul><p><strong>Clearly, these countries are not shaking in their boots about the Russian Bear.</strong> In the most recent year of red hot proxy war between NATO and Russia on the hapless steppes of the Ukraine, none of these five even bothered to spend 2% of GDP on defense!</p>

<p><strong>Indeed, even the bigger fry positioned cheek-by-jowl with Russia on the Black Sea didn’t evince any greater fear of the Bear.</strong> Romania spends only 2.2% of GDP on defense and its voters just elected a president who wanted to make friendly with Putin—which democratic chosen leader was, of course, ixnayed by Romania’s “allies” in Brussels and Washington.</p>

<p>Likewise, Bulgaria spends but 2.2% on defense, as well. And, understandably, Serbia has not even seen fit to join NATO. Well, not since its capital was bombed to smithereens in 1999 by NATO war planes, owing to its insistence that Kosovo not be severed from its sovereign territory owing to the writ of Bill and Hillary Clinton.</p>

<p>Even then as Russia’s firm ally in the region, Serbia spends about 2.3% of GDP on defense and has about 28,000 active men in uniform in its armed forces. That is, Serbia’s neutral forces total about the same as the combined military might of the five small fry on the Adriatic side of the Balkans.</p>

<p><strong>Moreover, it also turns out that these five wee NATO members actually spend about the same pittance for military capabilities as is hoovered-up by Ukraine-bordering Hungary and Slovakia. </strong>The former spends about 2.0% of GDP on defense while the latter’s military spending is 2.1% of GDP. Yet both governments next door to the  Russian Bear are militantly opposed to the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and successfully get along with Moscow quite well!</p>

<p>In short, none of these countries really seem to fear the Russian Bear or they would be spending double digit percentages of their GDP making themselves so well armed as to make a unappetizing meal for the alleged aggressor in Moscow. To the contrary, they have either joined NATO to get into the Atlantic Club or have simply eschewed the opportunity (Serbia) or gone along for the ride (Hungary and Slovakia).</p>

<p><strong>The point is, extending NATO to the Balkans was a stupid joke perpetrated by Warfare State apparatchiks in Washington and Brussels.</strong> It does absolutely nothing for America’s homeland defense militarily, while enabling Russia’s small next door neighbors to spend a pittance for defense and from time to time squeak-up to the Bear in a provocative manner that they would not dream of doing on the strength of 8,000 lightly armed soldiers of their own.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-2.jpg?itok=d0okGtvg" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-2.jpg?itok=d0okGtvg"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="f078a51d-1673-41af-8053-153d5243d576" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="633" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/word-image-65508-2.jpg?itok=d0okGtvg" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Of course, the same thing is true up north on the Baltic.<strong> The three Baltic republics both experienced and do remember their decades of Soviet occupation. Yet their present day budgetary statements make abundantly clear that they do not really perceive post-communist Russia to be the same existential same threat at all. </strong>That’s why they spend nickels and dimes on make-pretend militaries, even as their politicians like Kallas demagogue about Putin in order to stir up the home voters and incur the favor of the warmongering neocon apparatchiks who dominate the NATO and the EU.</p>

<p>Still, no countries with the wafer-thin military capacities depicted in the numbers below truly fear their Russian neighbor. If they did, with or without NATO, they’d put their budgetary dollars where the unfortunate rhetoric of some of the loud-mouthed politicians lies.</p>

<p><strong>Armed Forces Size and Defense % of GDP:</strong></p>

<ul><li>Lithuania: 14,100/2.8% of GDP.</li>
	<li>Estonia: 7,700/2.9% of GDP.</li>
	<li>Latvia: 6,750/2.4% of GDP.</li>
</ul><p><strong>In short, the Donald’s observations about the state of the world usually amount to a random collection of the true, the false and the foolish. But in the case of all these pipsqueak NATO allies he surely hit the nail on the head.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-3.jpg?itok=IAna-Ag5" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/word-image-65508-3.jpg?itok=IAna-Ag5"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="10f85f78-cb04-4f44-8252-1396db6a78e2" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="381" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/word-image-65508-3.jpg?itok=IAna-Ag5" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><em>Washington’s “Allies” in The Baltics</em></p>

<p><strong>That is to say, all of these allies are far more trouble than they are worth. </strong>The military security of the American homeland can be secured by an invincible strategic nuclear triad based on bombers, land-based ICBMs and its deep sea nuclear subs–none of which require foreign bases or foreign “allies”. That, and a powerful conventional Fortress America defense of its shorelines and air space would more than do the job of maintaining the military security of the American homeland in today’s world.</p>

<p>Neither of these military capabilities are enhanced in the slightest by the pipsqueak allies that have been drafted into NATO since 1999. Nor in today’s world is there any risk that a larger power as economically lame as Russia or Ponzi-based as Red China could attack, conquer and roll-up tens of trillions of GDP, military age manpower and defense production capacities among large numbers of their small fry neighbors.</p>

<p>Indeed, both Russia and China well know that the cost of invasion, conquest and pacification in today’s world would not remotely be worth the candle. That’s perhaps why the answer to the question as to how many countries Red China has conquered in the last four decades is, well,  <strong>zero!</strong></p>

<p>To the contrary, what America’s 750 bases and 160,000 servicemen positioned abroad from Japan to Germany, Italy and the UK actually amount to are dangerous “trip wires”designed to:</p>

<ul><li>Provide an excuse for US defense contractors to sell weapons to the allied nations where US forces are based.</li>
	<li>Create an excuse to meddle in foreign conflicts owing to the fact that American servicemen are in harms’ way.</li>
</ul><p>Suffice it here to note that during the heyday of America’s development as the greatest nation on earth—from the cancellation of the treaty with France in 1797 to the ratification of the NATO Treaty in 1949—America had no alliances, no military treaties and no allies empowered to provoke conflicts with their neighbors on the understanding that Uncle Sam had their backs.</p>

<p><strong>He didn’t and during those 152 years everything worked out for America as well as any nation in history before or since. And absolutely nothing has changed to alter the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson about avoidance of Entangling Alliances.</strong></p>

<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><em>The amount of money the US government spends on foreign aid, wars, the so-called intelligence community, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and ever-growing. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. It could cause the most significant disaster since the 1930s. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video with all the details. <a href="https://internationalman.com/the-most-dangerous-event-of-the-21st-century/">Click here to watch it now.</a></em></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T19:10:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 15:10</span>


title: Des pays arabes veulent plus d’efforts pour « stopper l’effusion de sang » à Gaza
hash: f���sҐ���Ζ �C
guid:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165862/des-pays-arabes-veulent-plus-defforts-pour-stopper-leffusion-de-sang-a-gaza

content:
<p>Depuis le 2 mars, Israël a bloqué toute entrée d'aide humanitaire dans l'enclave palestinienne.</p>

link:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165862/des-pays-arabes-veulent-plus-defforts-pour-stopper-leffusion-de-sang-a-gaza

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165866/carney-zelensky-ukraine-guerre
title: Carney réitère son soutien à l’Ukraine lors de sa rencontre avec Zelensky
content: <p>Le premier ministre canadien a réitéré le soutien du Canada à l’Ukraine.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165866/carney-zelensky-ukraine-guerre
hash: S���_#�lY��
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guid: 1031467 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Nuclear Names Oklo And NuScale Move Forward With SMR Permitting, Plans
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nuclear-names-oklo-and-nuscale-move-forward-smr-permitting-plans
hash: {����;Wh� ���uu
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Nuclear Names Oklo And NuScale Move Forward With SMR Permitting, Plans</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Sam Altman-backed Oklo says it is navigating what CEO Jacob DeWitte calls “good uncertainty” as potential Trump administration executive orders could accelerate Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing, expand military and Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear roles, and boost U.S. nuclear fuel supply chains, according to <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/oklo-trump-nuclear-permitting-reactor-regulatory/748357/?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Issue:%202025-05-16%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:73241%5D&amp;utm_term=Utility%20Dive">UtilityDive</a>.</p>

<p>On Oklo’s Q1 2025 earnings call, DeWitte confirmed the company is engaged in a “pre-application readiness assessment” with the NRC, aiming to smooth its formal license submission for a newly upsized 75-MW reactor design in Q4 2025. The company still targets late 2027 or early 2028 for first power production at its Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site.</p>

<p>DeWitte noted the recent departure of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as Oklo board chair removes a potential conflict of interest should OpenAI become a future power customer. Oklo already holds about 14 GW in nonbinding agreements with data centers and industrial operators.</p>

<p>The White House is weighing four nuclear-related executive orders, including directives to overhaul NRC licensing with an 18-month deadline for new applications, reconsider radiation exposure limits, and authorize military and DOE property for reactor deployments—potentially bypassing standard NRC approvals.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.09.41%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=lfTBIRU3" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.09.41%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=lfTBIRU3"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="5802624e-229e-4e95-a046-e836da483381" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="299" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.09.41%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=lfTBIRU3" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>These efforts aim to boost U.S. nuclear capacity to 400 GW by 2050, up from about 100 GW today. While the NRC is already implementing changes from last year’s ADVANCE Act, further reforms could shorten Oklo’s expected 24- to 30-month licensing timeline.</p>

<p>The UtilityDive <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/oklo-trump-nuclear-permitting-reactor-regulatory/748357/?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Issue:%202025-05-16%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:73241%5D&amp;utm_term=Utility%20Dive">report</a> says that Oklo is also among eight companies eligible for the military’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program, enabling on-base reactor deployments. It’s developing nuclear fuel fabrication facilities capable of reusing spent fuel that would otherwise sit in long-term storage.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, NuScale Power is actively pursuing contracts for its small modular reactor (SMR) technology, targeting a firm customer order by the end of 2025. CEO John Hopkins said the company could deliver an operational power plant by 2030 “if we get closure on a deal here soon.” NuScale is awaiting expected NRC approval in July for its uprated 77-MW design and has 12 modules in production through manufacturing partner Doosan, capable of delivering up to 20 per year.</p>

<p>Hopkins emphasized NuScale’s focus on finalizing real contracts rather than nonbinding agreements, stating, “We’re actually in the process of submitting and negotiating term sheets. We’ve got customers that [want] to … touch steel.” Potential buyers include data center operators, heavy industry, and utilities. CFO Ramsey Hamady added that a signed deal would likely involve multiple parties, including plant operators and tier-one data center or AI developers.</p>

<p>Unlike Oklo’s build-own-operate model, NuScale provides SMR technology and plant services, likening its role to “the chip in the Dell computer.” While NuScale has courted data center customers similar to Oklo, it also promotes its reactors for hydrogen production, desalination, carbon capture, and petrochemicals.</p>

<p>NuScale has about two years of financial runway but expects a committed project to significantly improve its outlook. “We’ll be in a great place if our biggest challenge is keeping up with orders,” Hamady said.</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T19:45:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 15:45</span>


guid: 1031494 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Vince Foster, James McDougal, Seth Rich: Trump Posts Wild 'Clinton Body Count' Clip
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: G=ȁØ�#��}eˇ
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Vince Foster, James McDougal, Seth Rich: Trump Posts Wild 'Clinton Body Count' Clip</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>President Trump raised eyebrows on Saturday - posting a 'Clinton body count' clip to <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114523915772327706">Truth Social</a> that suggests several mysterious deaths over the past few decades are linked to the Clintons.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/hillary%2032_0.JPG?itok=1ZyGLc5M" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hillary%2032_0.JPG?itok=1ZyGLc5M"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="5d45c4de-43f5-48fe-96cb-6057404daf4d" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="279" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/hillary%2032_0.JPG?itok=1ZyGLc5M" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Mentioned in the clip are former Clinton White House Deputy Counsel <strong>Vince Foster</strong>, Clinton associate <strong>James McDougal,</strong> Democratic National Committee staffer <strong>Seth Rich</strong>, and the mysterious death of <strong>JFK Jr.</strong> which paved the way for Hillary Clinton to become a US Senator.</p>

<p>Watch:</p>

<blockquote data-media-max-width="560" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Holy Shit President Trump posted this on his TruthSocial! <a href="https://t.co/xU51iw3tjX">pic.twitter.com/xU51iw3tjX</a></p>
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/1923770579917603022?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>

<p><em>h/t Karli Bonne</em></p>

<p>Of note, Foster was a mentor to Hillary when they worked together at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.  When Bill Clinton was confirmed as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993, Foster took a role as his Deputy White House Counsel. <strong>Six months later, to the day, Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, along the Potomac River, of an apparent "suicide" resulting from a gun shot from a .38 caliber revolver. </strong></p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e895d4db-372e-46a1-901d-027b94a37537" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="295" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Memorial%20Day%20Beef%204.jpg?itok=LJB4UYNL" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>


<p>Interestingly, the "Clinton Body Count" phrase was originally coined by writer Danny Casolaro in the late 1980s.<strong> Casolaro “committed suicide” in 1991, while working on a story supposedly involving an international cabal.</strong></p>

<p>The last time #ClintonBodyCount was trending on X (formerly Twitter) was when Clinton pal Jeffrey Epstein had reportedly attempted suicide (before he was found dead in his cell) while awaiting trial on underage sex-trafficking charges.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">When <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClintonBodyCount?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClintonBodyCount</a> is trending on Twitter as a reaction to the story that Epstein "attempted suicide" you know people are hip to the game. They need him gone at all costs. 😱 <a href="https://t.co/uFKsLk3EFu">pic.twitter.com/uFKsLk3EFu</a></p>
— Jordon 🕊️✨ (@miss_jordon) <a href="https://twitter.com/miss_jordon/status/1154370895881940992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2019</a></blockquote>

<p>It's a big list...</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/D8dQGPMU8AAT0t8_92.jpg?itok=3jP4FDIF" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/D8dQGPMU8AAT0t8_92.jpg?itok=3jP4FDIF"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="20b5f019-70ad-4c07-b0ec-a2beabf6de07" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="751" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/D8dQGPMU8AAT0t8_92.jpg?itok=3jP4FDIF" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T11:20:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 05/18/2025 - 07:20</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/vince-voster-james-mcdougal-seth-rich-trump-posts-wild-clinton-body-count-clip


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165868/chine-brut-asie-tarifs-demande
title: La Chine devient le principal client du pétrole canadien acheminé par Trans Mountain
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165868/chine-brut-asie-tarifs-demande
hash: ��'t��9.�$@���
content:
<p>L’intérêt de la Chine se produit à un moment de tension dans les relations canado-américaines.</p>

attributes:
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305582
title: Trump shows signs of mounting frustration with Supreme Court
author: ;Elizabeth Crisp
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/5305582-trump-frustration-supreme-court-rulings/
hash: ���b��{��1i<8
content:
President Trump has expressed frustration with the Supreme Court after it blocked his administration's efforts to deport migrants with alleged ties to Venezuelan gangs, and has accused the court of being "played" by the Radical Left.

tags:
#Administration #News #Article III Project #John Roberts #MAGA-sphere #migrants #Mike Davis #President Trump #Supreme Court #Truth social #Venezuela gangs

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Trump_SCOTUS_SOTU.jpg?w=900","type":"image/jpeg","length":234487}]}


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165871/fierte-montreal-critiques-lesbo-queer-organismes
title: Fierté Montréal : des organismes communautaires retirent leur appui
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165871/fierte-montreal-critiques-lesbo-queer-organismes
hash: .�&��J���Z���
content:
<p>Des groupes jugent que le festival a des « pratiques empreintes de misogynie » et de « racisme ».</p>

attributes:
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guid: 1354895843
title: Activités culturelles : tour d'horizon de quelques incontournables à mettre à l'agenda!
content: Activités culturelles : tour d'horizon de quelques incontournables à mettre à l'agenda!
hash: O��<$å�����
link:
https://www.gatineau.ca/portail/default.aspx?p=nouvelles_annonces/communiques/communique&amp;id=1579763132

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guid: 1055235662
title: Gatineau remporte un mérite Ovation municipale grâce à son projet Rebâtir demain tous ensemble
content: Gatineau remporte un mérite Ovation municipale grâce à son projet Rebâtir demain tous ensemble
hash: �X)�|��-E�t�
link:
https://www.gatineau.ca/portail/default.aspx?p=nouvelles_annonces/communiques/communique&amp;id=1747443812

attributes:
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guid: yt:video:1kGtEqxXNrU
title: Yemen Taught Trump THIS Brutal Truth – You Won’t Believe It | Scott Ritter and Mohammad Marandi
author: ;Dialogue Works
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGtEqxXNrU
hash: y��k �4�xr����
attributes:
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guid: 1031477 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Trump Plan Seeks To Resettle Up To A Million Palestinians From War-Ravaged Gaza To War-Torn Libya
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: g;X*�{��`�ѩ��A
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Trump Plan Seeks To Resettle Up To A Million Palestinians From War-Ravaged Gaza To War-Torn Libya</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>US officials who spoke to NBC News say that the Trump administration is looking to “<strong>permanently relocate” as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya</strong>.</p>

<p>Washington in return<strong> "would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars"</strong> that have been frozen since the NATO intervention of 2011, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-working-plan-move-1-million-palestinians-libya-rcna207224">according to</a> the claims of the anonymous sources.</p>

<p>"The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former US official said," NBC writes in the fresh report.</p>
<a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/gazabombing.jpg?itok=N18jxFw0" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/gazabombing.jpg?itok=N18jxFw0"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="8d7fd57e-243c-4627-80e2-e1beea8d7cec" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="281" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/gazabombing.jpg?itok=N18jxFw0" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Jabalia, northern Gaza. via Associated Press</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>"No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions," it adds.</p>

<p>And yet this would see Palestinians go from war-ravaged and destroyed Gaza to being in a situation of another failed state, given Libya has experienced its own turmoil for well over a decade. </p>

<p>NATO's 2011 military intervention which led to the overthrow and summary street execution of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi resulted in anything but democracy and stability.</p>

<p>For a time, the country had at least three rival governments and power centers, and currently remains divided into an eastern half and western half. This past week has even seen rival warlords engaged in street gun battles in the capital of Libya, where a UN-backed government holds tenuous control.</p>

<p>NBC <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-working-plan-move-1-million-palestinians-libya-rcna207224">says</a> that this 'Libya option' - which would be premised on the forced displacement of Palestinians would include offering <strong>"financial incentives such as free housing and even a stipend."</strong> Ironically, Gaddafi's Libya before the US-NATO bombings was a relatively secular place with plenty of state subsidized housing and benefits. </p>

<p>But since the NATO war, orchestrated under then President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, radical Islamic militant groups, and <strong>even a local ISIS affiliate</strong>, have caused chaos in many areas, which on some occasions have also brought oil exports to a halt.</p>

<p>Likely most Palestinians themselves would not want to relocate to North Africa, and the long destabilized political situation there of competing warlords would make this 'offer' even less appealing.</p>

<p><em>Post NATO-intervention Libya has remained in an internecine state of civil war:</em></p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">a Libyan who bought into US-NATO-Israeli-Saudi-UAE propaganda and took up arms against Ghaddafi thinking he was actually fighting for freedom, democracy and "true Islam", reflects on what he did after his fall: "If Ghaddafi were alive now, I would fight for him." Syria soon. <a href="https://t.co/zgNhRaesf3">pic.twitter.com/zgNhRaesf3</a></p>
— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) <a href="https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1865538391258865814?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
<p>Soon after entering his second term in office, President Trump began calling for regional Arab nations to take in Palestinians, such as Egypt and Jordan, despite the fact that they already have absorbed millions going back into the 20th century.</p>

<p>For example, in late January Trump described a call with Jordan’s King Abdullah II as follows:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>“I’d like Egypt to take people,”</strong></em> <em>Trump said at the time.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”</strong></em></p>
</blockquote>

<p>But Gaza is one historic issue, which also of course dovetails with religion and ancient grievances, that isn't going to be solved by just handing out cash or free housing.</p>

<p><strong>No simple American taxpayer funded <em>quid pro quo</em> can solve the Gaza crisis</strong>, recent history has demonstrated, also as the Israeli military and political leadership isn't in the mood for swift deal-making.</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T20:55:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 16:55</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/war-ravaged-gaza-war-torn-libya-trump-plan-seeks-resettle-million-palestinians


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305793/
author: ;The Associated Press
content: "It felt like a bomb went off."
hash: \�H���}s�֖����
tags: #News
title:
1 person killed in explosion outside Palm Springs fertility clinic; police say act was ‘intentional’

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/5305793-explosion-at-palm-springs-fertility-clinic-rocks-california-desert-city/

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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304916
title: DNC infighting threatens to throw party into ‘chaos’
author: ;Jared Gans
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5304916-dnc-turmoil-primary-challengers/
hash: %�{^��lagOO<��
tags: #Campaign #State Watch
content:
Infighting at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is threatening to consume Democratic leadership just as the midterms are starting to kick into gear. The tensions come after a DNC panel moved forward this week with the potential ouster of two elected officials, including gun control activist David Hogg. Now officials find themselves in a war…

attributes:
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305803
title: Sunday shows preview: GOP divide derails Trump agenda; Biden’s mental acuity back in spotlight
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: �!��y]bZ�W'-���
content:
House Republicans will reconvene on Sunday evening to find a path to pass President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after encountering a hurdle during a key vote on Friday. Five fiscal hawks, arguing that the legislation insufficiently addressed work requirements for Medicaid and the federal deficit, blocked the measure from making it out of the House…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/5305803-sunday-shows-preview-gop-divides-trump-agenda-biden-acuity/

tags:
#News #Sunday Talk Shows #2024 presidential election #Boeing #Democratic Party #House Republicans #Qatar #Qatar jet #Sunday shows preview #Trump administration

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guid: 1031482 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Mile High Marxist Bernie Sanders Proves There Is No Climate Emergency
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: �:��q[ �dGNN�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Mile High Marxist Bernie Sanders Proves There Is No Climate Emergency</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><em><a href="https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/05/15/mile_high_marxist_bernie_sanders_proves_there_is_no_climate_emergency_1110479.html">Authored by Larry Behrens via RealClearPolitics</a>,</em></p>

<p><strong>Give the devil his due: Senator Bernie Sanders never misses an opportunity to remind Americans about our planet’s supposed peril.</strong> In a <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/bernie-sanders-climate-change-justice-department-lawsuit-rcna97622">2023 MSNBC op-ed</a>, he whined: "<em>The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue. It is a matter of justice, of health, of economics, and of national security</em>." According to Sanders, climate change is a moral and existential threat demanding sweeping government intervention and dramatic changes in personal behavior.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/686865_jpg_92.jpg?itok=zCmnAZf4" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/686865_jpg_92.jpg?itok=zCmnAZf4"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="16a991b1-df86-4175-92a2-1c4000835083" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="363" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/686865_jpg_92.jpg?itok=zCmnAZf4" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><strong>Except, of course, when it comes to how he lives his own life.</strong></p>

<p>Sanders’ recent "<a href="https://berniesanders.com/oligarchy/">Fighting Oligarchy" tour</a> paints a very different picture. While crisscrossing the country decrying the evils of capitalism, <strong>Sanders traveled by—you guessed it—private jet.</strong> According to <a href="https://www.powerthefuture.com/exposed-bernie-sanders-private-jet-problem-new-ptf-analysis-shows-he-emitted-more-co%E2%82%82-on-one-tour-than-an-average-american-in-5-years/">a new analysis</a> from Power The Future, the senator’s 16-stop tour spewed an estimated 62.15 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.</p>

<p><strong>To put in context, that’s more than the average American produces in five years.</strong></p>

<p>In fact, Sanders’ emissions from just one tour equal the annual emissions from 15 gasoline-powered cars. It’s the carbon equivalent to driving a gas-powered SUV 150,000 miles, or more than 6 times around the Earth at the equator. And this from a man who wants to regulate what kind of stove you use in your kitchen.</p>

<p>When questioned about the blatant hypocrisy,<strong> Sanders didn’t offer contrition. <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/bernie-sanders-makes-no-apologies-private-jet-travel-fight-oligarchy-tour">He doubled down</a>. "<em>You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United... while 30,000 people are waiting</em>?" he snapped at Bret Baier.</strong></p>

<p>This isn’t the first time Sanders’ climate preaching has clashed with his jet-setting lifestyle. During the 2020 Democratic primary, his campaign shelled out over <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/bernie-leads-2020-field-in-private-jet-spending/">$1.2 million on private jet travel</a>. Then, as now, the justification was the same: it’s okay when Bernie does it because his cause is righteous.</p>

<p>Let’s call this what it is: Mile High Marxism. Sanders flies high above the rest of us, belching carbon into the atmosphere while demanding working families pay more for energy and drive electric vehicles. He insists there’s a climate emergency but behaves like there’s no emergency at all.</p>

<p><strong>The green movement is filled with elites just like Sanders</strong>—people who use the language of crisis to amass power while living above the consequences of their policies. They want to ban gas cars, restrict domestic energy production, and ration electricity, but they’ll never give up their jets, SUVs, or lakefront mansions. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s about control.</p>

<p>Consider this: if the planet were truly teetering on the edge of climate catastrophe, would the loudest alarmists be the least willing to change their own behavior? If climate change were the existential threat they claim, wouldn’t they at least attempt to lead by example? Instead, we get moral lectures from the tarmac.</p>

<p>In Bernie Sanders’ perfect world,<strong> Americans brace for rising utility bills, submit to EV mandates, and prepare for lifestyle sacrifices in the name of "climate justice</strong>." But <strong>the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore</strong>. Jet fuel for Bernie. Unreliable solar panels for you. We get limits, they get luxury.</p>

<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><em> <a href="https://store.zerohedge.com/iq-astaxanthin-ultimate-antioxidant?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><strong>Try IQ Biologix Astaxanthin</strong></a> - a super potent antioxidant (read more <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/astaxanthin-ultimate-anti-inflammatory-and-anti-aging-nutrient">here</a>).</em></p>
<a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/iq-astaxanthin-ultimate-antioxidant?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/iq-astaxanthin-ultimate-antioxidant?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/iq-astaxanthin-ultimate-antioxidant?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="1fef6523-c0c3-46c3-be42-9c197881e83a" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="261" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/astaxanthin%20slide.png?itok=7YPQXBxd" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Satisfaction guaranteed. Simply ask for a refund...</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>Perhaps the clearest signal of the climate emergency’s last gasps is how those who scream the loudest behave when the cameras are off. Sanders and his ilk want us to panic, comply, and pay up. But their actions—lavish travel, carbon excess, and indulgent living—reveal that even they don’t believe their own doomsday rhetoric.</p>

<p>When Bernie Sanders burns more fuel in one tour than a family does in half a decade, he’s not just undermining his credibility—he’s exposing the entire charade. It’s almost as amusing as a multimillionaire “socialist.”</p>

<p>So, the next time you hear Sanders railing about climate justice, remember this: <strong>the Mile High Marxist says the world is ending, but he’s still flying first class into the apocalypse.</strong> And that tells you everything you need to know.</p>

<p><em>Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for <a href="https://www.powerthefuture.com/">Power The Future</a>. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. </em>You can follow him on X/Twitter <a href="https://x.com/larrybehrens">@larrybehrens</a></p>
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<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T21:30:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 17:30</span>

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guid: 1031495 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: "Very Intense Explosion" Rocks Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Leaving One Dead
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<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">"Very Intense Explosion" Rocks Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Leaving One Dead</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>At least one person is dead and five injured after a car exploded in front of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California.</p>
<a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/HjB_qXjr_92.jpg?itok=tajxTW3M" data-link-option="0" href="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/HjB_qXjr_92.jpg?itok=tajxTW3M"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="fd48128b-3eb3-4178-84b9-aa2061e8c5eb" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="300" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/HjB_qXjr_92.jpg?itok=tajxTW3M" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Photo: Michael Hayes</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>"This was a powerful explosion," a law enforcement source told <em>NBC News</em>, describing a very large debris field and damage to multiple nearby businesses.</p>

<blockquote data-media-max-width="560" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Following President Trump's endorsement of support for couples undergoing IVF, a blast devastated a fertility clinic. Was this explosion intentional?<br><br>
The center, located close to Desert Regional Hospital in Palm Springs, California, suffered significant destruction. <a href="https://t.co/xmZrXZh8AV">pic.twitter.com/xmZrXZh8AV</a></p>
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1923833599901724852?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p><em>Source <a href="https://x.com/_nimasworld">@_Mnimasworld</a></em></p>

<p>The explosion happened less than a mile from downtown Palm Springs, with a device that was either in or near a vehicle parked by American Reproductive Centers, mayor Ron deHarte said. Fortunately the clinic appeared not to be open on Saturday.</p>

<blockquote data-conversation="none" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">A car was on fire, I was driving by and took this. I can’t confirm the cause of the explosion (whether the explosion set the car on fire or vice versa) <a href="https://t.co/0N8WyRLWeD">pic.twitter.com/0N8WyRLWeD</a></p>
— malana (@meowbug) <a href="https://twitter.com/meowbug/status/1923813403795267862?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>Reports of a loud boom and billowing smoke made their way around social media at about 11am local time, with some saying they heard or felt it miles away. <strong>A chunk of flesh could be seen on the street. </strong></p>
<a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/GrK8DG3W8AAmvd-_92a.jpg?itok=q5Kk9fbJ" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GrK8DG3W8AAmvd-_92a.jpg?itok=q5Kk9fbJ"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="57d55f2e-b4a9-4e0a-ac5b-703f398fa591" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="300" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/GrK8DG3W8AAmvd-_92a.jpg?itok=q5Kk9fbJ" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Source <a href="https://x.com/_nimasworld">@_Mnimasworld</a></em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>A website for the clinic lists fertility treatments, such as IVF and egg freezing.</p>

<p>Dr. Maher Abdellah, who operates the clinic, told <a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-explosion-palm-springs-eb8887fbe5877a20a40916aba86554ea"><em>AP</em></a> that the office was damaged, but the IVF lab and stored embryos were not.</p>

<p>"I really have no clue what happened," he said, adding "<strong>Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients</strong>."</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Damn crazy explosion in Palm Springs. Literally right where it happend <a href="https://t.co/c0Hlj9tLYz">pic.twitter.com/c0Hlj9tLYz</a></p>
— NimasWorld (@_nimasworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/_nimasworld/status/1923802422381772857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>Police, firefighters, and the <a href="https://x.com/FBILosAngeles/status/1923839842783244403">FBI</a> were on scene, according to deHarte.</p>

<p><strong>Claudio Chavez, </strong>who works at a nearby upholstery shop, told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/us/palm-springs-explosion.html"><em>NY Times</em></a> "I was just in my shop waiting for clients, and all of a sudden it felt like a big explosion," adding "It took out our window. I just saw a bunch of smoke."</p>

<p>Chavez said he saw people coming out of homes and businesses to see what happened.</p>

<p>"<strong>That was a very intense explosion,</strong>" said another local, Scott Pastorius, who was sitting in his vacation home four blocks from the site when he heard a large boom.</p>

<p>*  *   *</p>
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<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T22:05:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 18:05</span>

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title: ‘Fight back’: Pedro Pascal urges Cannes to resist US political pressure
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Actor calls on filmmakers to 'keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are'.

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title: How War Propaganda Has Fueled American Foreign Policy For A Century
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<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">How War Propaganda Has Fueled American Foreign Policy For A Century</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-war-propaganda-has-fueled-american-foreign-policy-century"><em>Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,</em></a></p>

<p>The<em> New York Times </em>this week <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/business/trump-online-misinformation-grants.html">reports</a> that the Trump administration has canceled many grants that were to fund “research” on “misinformation.” <strong>This is being presented by the media as a dastardly deed that will supposedly allow the spread of misleading or false information through various media channels.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/AdobeStock_560371424.jpeg.jpg?itok=1MEQU9qs" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/AdobeStock_560371424.jpeg.jpg?itok=1MEQU9qs"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="fe8f8781-09b4-4ace-87f5-b04a84aa713d" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="375" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/AdobeStock_560371424.jpeg.jpg?itok=1MEQU9qs" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><strong>Of course, if there were any genuine interest in studying the most egregious efforts to spread misinformation, media outlets like the <em>Times </em>would study <em>themselves</em> and their friends in the regime. </strong>After all, few organizations have been more complicit than the national American media and the US foreign policy establishment when it comes to spreading much of the worst propaganda in American history. I say “worst” because this propaganda has often been used in service to the worst ends: to gin up support for a variety of wars resulting in the deaths of thousands—sometimes even hundreds of thousands—of innocents.</p>

<p>Relatively recent media-regime partnerships in propagandistic misinformation include the “Russiagate” hoax, various efforts to obscure US meddling in Ukraine, and the nearly nonstop drumbeat of “news” stories over the past twenty years designed to push for regime change in various countries from Venezuela to Russia to Libya and to Syria—where the Assad regime, according to US design, was recently replaced by Islamist terrorists. And then, of course, there is the nonstop stream of misinformation designed to prop up the State of Israel and obscure its many war crimes. And let’s not forget the fictional “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq which the US presented to the United Nations as established fact.</p>

<p><strong>Throughout all this, the interventionist “foreign policy blob” in Washington received near universal support from its friends at publications like the <em>Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post.</em></strong></p>

<p>The United States did not invent these tactics. Over the past 100-plus years, however, perhaps no regime was more innovative than the British when it came to inventing “facts” designed to manufacture popular consent for wars and more foreign intervention. The United States has done its best to adopt similar methods, however, and creating invented narratives in service to the regime’s foreign policy goals is now standard operating procedure for the American state as well.</p>

<h2><strong>The Great War: The Turning Point</strong></h2>

<p>Throughout history, most great powers world have long lied to buttress their war efforts, but these efforts greatly increased in magnitude and sophistication during the twentieth century, mostly with the assistance of increasingly centralized organs of mass media.</p>

<p>For an insightful narrative on how this new “propaganda state” developed, we can consult the works of historian Ralph Raico, who suggests that the true turning point came with the First World War when the British regime, with the help of the media, engaged in a propaganda campaign of impressive effectiveness. Specifically, <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf">Raico posits</a> that modern wartime propaganda began with “the Belgian atrocity stories of 1914, which was maybe the first great propaganda success in modern times.”</p>

<p>The stories of which Raico speaks were part of a concerted British campaign to wildly exaggerate German aggression in Belgium and to send the message that the Germans were a barbaric race unlike the civilized French and British people of Europe. It was mostly based on an official British government report known as the Bryce Report. The report made countless unsubstantiated claims about mass rapes, children with their hands cut off, violated nuns, and Canadian soldiers crucified on barn doors. This produced horror and anti-German zealotry around much of the world.</p>

<p>But there was one problem: it was nearly all based on lies. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2024-12/The-World-at-War_Raico_20241206.pdf">writes:</a></p>

<blockquote>
<p>What is the story of the Belgian atrocities? The story of the Belgian atrocities is that they were faked. They were fabricated. They were phony. The pictures were photographed in particular buildings which are known in Paris. Th stage sets were designed by designers for the Parisian opera. The stories were made up out of ... whole cloth and spread by British propaganda as another weapon in the war—especially in the war for the minds of the neutral countries. …[T]his turns a good deal of public opinion against the Germans.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Raico adds one especially ironical note, and quotes historian Thomas Fleming, who <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">according to Raico</a>,</p>

<blockquote>
<p>to his credit, mentions that the real cases of people, including children, with their hands cut off occurred in the Congo beginning in the 1880s, at the behest of the Belgian king Leopold II. Because of their great extent and nearly incredible cruelty, it’s those that deserve to be called “the Belgian atrocities.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Chief among those neutral countries that were targets of British propaganda, of course, was the United States.</p>

<p><strong>The British regime was desperate to have the Americans enter the war on the American side, and the British almost spared no trouble or expense convincing the Americans that the British were fighting against an enemy of untrammeled malice.</strong> The program was very successful. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf">notes that an</a></p>

<blockquote>
<p>ingrained bias of the American political class and social elite was galvanized by British propaganda. On August 5, 1914, the Royal Navy cut the cables linking the United States and Germany. Now news for America had to be funneled through London, where the censors shaped and trimmed reports for the benefit of their government. Eventually, the British propaganda apparatus in the First World War became the greatest the world had seen to that time; later it was a model for the Nazi Propaganda Minster Josef Goebbels. Philip Knightley noted:</p>

<p>British efforts to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side penetrated every phase of American life. . . . It was one of the major propaganda efforts of history, and it was conducted so well and so secretly that little about it emerged until the eve of the Second World War, and the full story is yet to be told.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2><strong>The Americans Adopt British Methods</strong></h2>

<p><strong>Ultimately, the British propaganda effort worked and the United States government enthusiastically entered the war on the side of Britain. This went against what was still a very large portion of the American public’s antiwar preferences, but the British had won the American <em>elites</em> over to their side.</strong></p>

<p>After all, as the British effort mounted, even the Republican party’s leadership began pressuring Woodrow Wilson to take a more hardline anti-German stance. As Raico<a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf"> puts it</a> “Americans, who devoutly wished to avoid war, had no spokesmen within the leadership of either of the major parties.”</p>

<p>Once the US entered the war, the US’s implemented its own propaganda barrage, and now it took on an additional dimension of outright censorship. For this, the media and the nation’s intellectuals were enlisted to push the war message, and, as Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">writes</a>,</p>

<blockquote>
<p>public schools and the universities were turned into conduits for the government line. Postmaster General Albert Burleson censored and prohibited the circulation of newspapers critical of Wilson, the conduct of the war, or the Allies. The nation-wide campaign of repression was spurred on by the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, the U.S. government’s first propaganda agency.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Just one example of the regime’s capture of educational institutions could be found in how <em>The New York Times </em>praised the President of Columbia University for dismissing faculty members who opposed the regime on conscription.</p>

<h2><strong>American Propaganda After the Great War</strong></h2>

<p><strong>The Second World War brought another resurgence in war propaganda, and this time, American cooperation with British forces was virtually guaranteed ahead of time. </strong>By 1939, Roosevelt was comfortable promising King George VI “full support for Britain in case of war,” as Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">puts it</a>.</p>

<p>By 1940, even before the US entered the war, The US government was working hand in glove with the British government to convince Americans of the necessity of US involvement in the war. As Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">notes</a>, the full extent of this collaboration was covered up for decades, although,</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In 1976, the public finally learned the story of William Stephenson, the British agent code named “Intrepid,” sent by Churchill to the United States in 1940. Stephenson set up headquarters in Rockefeller Center, with orders to use any means necessary to bring the United States into the war. With the full knowledge and cooperation of Roosevelt and the collaboration of federal agencies, Stephenson and his 300 or so agents “intercepted mail, tapped wires, cracked safes, kidnapped, . . . rumor mongered” and incessantly smeared their favorite targets, the “isolationists.” Through Stephenson, Churchill was virtually in control of William Donovan’s organization, the embryonic U.S. intelligence service. Churchill even had a hand in the barrage of pro-British, anti-German propaganda that issued from Hollywood in the years before the United States entered the war. Gore Vidal, in <em>Screening History</em>, perceptively notes that starting around 1937, Americans were subjected to one film after another glorifying England and the warrior heroes who built the Empire. As spectators of these productions, Vidal says: “We served neither Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis; we served the Crown.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Vidal was so impressed—in a bad way—by the continued success of British propagandists in this effort that he <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">remarked</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>For those who find disagreeable today’s Zionist propaganda, I can only say that gallant little Israel of today must have learned a great deal from the gallant little Englanders of the 1930s. The English kept up a propaganda barrage that was to permeate our entire culture.... Hollywood was subtly and not so subtly infiltrated by British propagandists.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Raico describes how closely the US and the UK collaborated in these efforts, and how successfully. </strong>By 1941, there was no doubt where the US regime would come down on the war issue. The primary question by then was how much Roosevelt would be able to drum up American hostility against Japan. In this respect, of course, he succeeded quite well.</p>

<p><strong>A general worldview favoring endless international intervention was supplemented and cemented in the American mind for decades afterward by the ultimate purveyors of propaganda: the government schools. </strong>First and foremost was an effort to ensure that executive power was unlimited in international affairs claimed by Roosevelt and his successors. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">writes</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Back in 1948, Charles Beard already noted the dismal ignorance among our people of the principles of our republican government: American education from the universities down to the grade schools is permeated with, if not dominated by, the theory of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs. Coupled with the flagrant neglect of instruction in constitutional government, this propaganda . . . has deeply implanted in the minds of rising generations the doctrine that the power of the president over international relations is, for all practical purposes, illimitable.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The US propaganda apparatus became less focused on British concerns after the war, but was deftly turned toward promoting US regime interests during the Cold War. In his work on the Truman years, Raico notes that by the late 1940s, Truman was also pressing for fresh hostilities, including open warfare, against the new enemy, the Soviet Union. Those who resisted, especially Republicans form the Taft wing of the party, were accused of being Stalin apologists.</p>

<p><strong>In this, Truman, in what had become a well established pattern of American life, was assisted by elite journalists at media outlets.</strong> Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf">notes</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Truman’s campaign could not have succeeded without the enthusiastic cooperation of the American media. Led by the<em> Times</em>, the <em>Herald Tribune</em>, and Henry Luce’s magazines, the press acted as volunteer propagandists for the interventionist agenda, with all its calculated deceptions. (Thee principal exceptions were the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> and the <em>Washington Times–Herald</em>, in the days of Colonel McCormick and Cissy Paterson.) In time, such subservience in foreign affairs became routine for the “fourth estate,” .... Overwhelmed by the propaganda blitz from the administration and the press, a Republican majority in Congress heeded the Secretary of State’s high-minded call to keep foreign policy “above politics” and voted full funding for the Marshall Plan.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Voices in favor of peace were shouted down and banished from public discourse. Historian Steven Ambrose<a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf"> sums up the Truman-media victory</a>:</strong></p>

<blockquote>
<p>When Truman became president he led a nation anxious to return to traditional civil-military relations and the historic American foreign policy of noninvolvement. When he left the White House his legacy was an American presence on every continent of the world and an enormously expanded armament industry. Yet so successfully had he scared hell out of the American people, the only critics to receive any attention in the mass media were those who thought Truman had not gone far enough in standing up to the communists. For all his troubles, Truman had triumphed.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>By the end of the Truman years, the pattern was well established, based largely on the earlier efforts of British propaganda that was developed years earlier. Here were all the elements of manufacturing consent that would be employed during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the arms wars of the 1960s and 1980s, and the new “regime change” wars of the post-Cold War world.</p>

<p>In this, we perhaps find the answer to a question posed by Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf">during one of his lectures</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Isn’t it funny how, with the possible exception of Vietnam, all of America’s wars have been justified and have been right and good? I mean, what are the odds of something like that? A major power’s every war has been good, and the enemy has always been unbelievably horrible?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>He already knew the answer. <strong>It was the state’s propaganda that made it possible for Americans to believe that virtually every new war is some kind of crusade against evil. Thanks to propaganda, the American thinking on foreign policy—which, in an earlier age had been more pragmatic and less moralistic—had taken on its modern tone of quasi-religious righteousness.</strong></p>

<p>Indeed, in this contrast with America prior to the twentieth century, and the concomitant degeneration into an era of total war, we get some hint of just how much a century of relentless propaganda has fashioned the American mind.  Only in examining its history can we hope to fully understand the insidiousness and effectiveness of these methods.</p>

<p><strong>It is necessary to also have knowledge of their origins and this allows us to better understand the transformation that took place in the first third of the twentieth century as the American mind became accustomed to a nonstop and creeping propaganda that is still so present in American foreign policy today.</strong></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T22:40:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 18:40</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/how-war-propaganda-has-fueled-american-foreign-policy-century


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747516536
title: FBI calls explosion near California fertility clinic an ‘act of terrorism’
content: Palm Springs police chief Andy Mills says the blast ‘appears to be an intentional act of violence’.
hash: 7S0>�k�E��oxq�
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/17/one-killed-after-explosion-near-fertility-clinic-in-palm-springs?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885364
title: A 80 anni dalla caduta del nazismo gli ucraini “banderisti” sfilano a Londra
author: ;A A
hash: -��%�T���G��6�rC
tags: #Italiano #Ukraine #United Kingdom
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p><strong><span><span><em>Segue nostro</em></span> <a href="https://t.me/SCF_Italiano" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/SCF_Italiano" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a><a href="https://t.me/SCF_Italiano" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span>.</span></a></span></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Gianandrea GAIANI</em></strong></p>
<p>Ormai occorre rassegnarsi, non c’è più limite alla demenziale deriva propagandistica che dilaga in Europa facendosi beffe della Storia, raccontata come fosse una serie di Netflix, e dei popoli europei che l’hanno vissuta e subita.</p>
<p>Dopo i moniti della Ue ai capi di stato e di governo che oseranno partecipare alla Parata di Mosca per gli 80 anni dalla caduta del nazismo, dopo i diktat del ministero degli Esteri tedesco rivolto alle amministrazioni locali che intendono invitare rappresentanti russi alle celebrazioni che si tengono in diversi lander orientali tedeschi, l’ultima beffa nei confronti della Storia, o se preferite la ciliegina sulla torta dell’anti-Storia, l’ha messa il governo britannico.</p>
<p>Un tempo noto per lo scrupoloso rispetto della Storia e dei nemici affrontati nelle guerre passate, oggi anche il Regno Unito è attraversato dal vento della furia censoria e si piega alla più cieca “cancel culture” in salsa  anti-russa.</p>
<p>Il ministro della Difesa britannico, John Healey, ha reso noto che le forze armate ucraine prenderanno parte alla parata che si tiene oggi a Londra per celebrare l’80° anniversario della vittoria nella Seconda guerra mondiale. La parata per il Victory in Europe coinvolgerà circa mille militari fra Royal Navy, Royal Marines, British Army e Royal Air Force ma  includerà anche soldati ucraini fra quelli che al momento si stanno addestrando nel Regno Unito nell’ambito della Operation Interflex.</p>
<p>Di fronte “al primo conflitto su vasta scala in Europa dalla Seconda guerra mondiale, è appropriato che le forze armate ucraine, che ora combattono in prima linea per la libertà, siano rappresentate all’evento di lunedì“, ha dichiarato Healey.</p>
<p>L’impegno britannico al fianco dell’Ucraina ha molto a che fare con il confronto con la Russia di Putin ma non ha però nulla a che vedere con le celebrazioni per la sconfitta del nazismo. Anche perché, ironicamente,  le truppe ucraine in addestramento nel Regno Unito sono eredi ideologici e storici dei militari dell’UPA, l’esercito nazionalistico ucraino degli anni ‘40 a cui si rifà l’attuale governo ucraino che ha come “padre della Patria” il nazista e razzista Stepan Bandera.</p>
<p>Per intenderci, far sfilare gli eredi dei “banderisti” significa celebrare gli alleati ucraini di Hitler che al Terzo Rech diedero anche diverse migliaia di SS.</p>
<p>In attesa di vedere se qualcuno a Londra storcerà il naso o se il direttore dell’Imperia War Museum rassegnerà le dimissioni per protesta contro questo scempio della Storia, ci resta solo da dare un consiglio non richiesto al governo britannico.</p>
<p>Durante la Seconda guerra mondiale moltissimi ucraini, per lo più delle regioni orientali e meridionali, combatterono contro i nazisti…ma nei ranghi dell’Armata Rossa!  Se Healey vuole davvero invitare soldati ucraini a celebrare la vittoria sul Terzo Reich dovrebbe cercarli tra i loro “eredi”, cioè tra gli oltre 100mila militari ucraini che combattono oggi in Donbass integrati nell’esercito russo.</p>
<p>Comprensibile che il governo di Sua Maestà non possa compiere un gesto del genere ma almeno rinunci a far sfilare gli ucraini invece di dissacrare e rimodellare la Storia reinterpretandola con i criteri oggi.</p>
<p>E’ normale che le alleanze mutino in 80 anni ma fare scempio della Storia ridicolizza i leader di oggi e farà rigirare nelle tombe i 272mila militari e i 93mila civili britannici caduti della Seconda guerra mondiale, per i quali i “banderisti” ucraini erano senza dubbio nazisti.</p>
<p><em>Original article: </em><strong><a href="https://www.analisidifesa.it/2025/05/80-anni-dalla-caduta-del-nazismo-gli-ucraini-banderisti-sfilano-a-londra/">Analisi Difesa</a></strong></p>

link:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/a-80-anni-dalla-caduta-del-nazismo-gli-ucraini-banderisti-sfilano-a-londra/


guid: 1031462 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: "Black Fatigue" Goes Viral: Everyone Including Blacks Is Tired Of Ghetto Behavior
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: ��{��$ w�>�B�w�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">"Black Fatigue" Goes Viral: Everyone Including Blacks Is Tired Of Ghetto Behavior</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The progressive ideal is largely to blame for the monstrous creation that is ghetto culture.  The idea that racial narcissism among blacks should not only be tolerated but celebrated has led to a surge in open animosity for societal rules and standards within the US.  Far more than any other group, the black community makes up the largest share of physical crime according to their percentage of the population. This includes robbery, aggravated assault, and homicides.</p>

<p><strong>For example, black Americans make up only 13% of the population but commit around <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21">52% of all homicides</a> according to FBI statistics.</strong>  The recent case of Karmelo Anthony comes to mind, a black teen who admitted to stabbing a white teen and killing him because the white teen allegedly "pushed him" (which he argues was a threat that made deadly force justifiable). </p>

<p>The concept of "disrespect" as an offense that justifies murder is only one problem.  There is an identifiable trend of theatrical sociopathy within the black community that goes far beyond the norm.  The prevailing theory is that this is predominantly cultural - <strong>Black Americans have the highest rate of single parent households in the country</strong> (<a href="https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb//population/qa01202.asp?qaDate=2023">50% of black homes</a> compared to 20% of white homes in 2023). Most of these households are run by single mothers.  Single mother homes are a notorious indicator of <a href="https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-real-root-causes-violent-crime-the-breakdown-marriage-family-and">future criminality</a> among juveniles.  </p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/blackfatigue1.jpg?itok=6G0qhB5X" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/blackfatigue1.jpg?itok=6G0qhB5X"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="af009302-6faa-4e5a-b1d5-46e3c35d6ab9" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="292" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/blackfatigue1.jpg?itok=6G0qhB5X" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Then there is the problem of<strong> racial victim culture;</strong> the false idea that black Americans are being "oppressed" in the US <strong>by a systemic conspiracy of white patriarchs</strong>.  In reality, white Americans have been exponentially tolerant and have provided special privileges for blacks (affirmative action and DEI), largely because progressive society demands that reparations be made for slavery 150 years ago and segregation 60 years ago.  The form of those reparations has more or less been white guilt and a quiet passiveness in the face of increasing antagonism.   </p>

<p><strong>Leftists claim white people should take it because historically they deserve it.</strong>  Ignore the fact that every culture on Earth had institutional slavery and all the slaves sent to the Americas were purchased from African tribes that enslaved other African tribes. </p>

<p>However, it appears that the black community's precious supply of white guilt has finally run out and people are fed up.  <strong>The term "Black Fatigue" has gone viral this week on social media,</strong> sparking a much needed conversation among not just whites, but also blacks and other minorities.  The catalyst blamed for the trend is the now widely known "Shiloh Hendrix Incident" which has led to public support and an uproar among progressives who demand the woman be prosecuted for dropping an N-bomb. </p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">I don’t think it’s so much “black fatigue” as it is POS fatigue which you can see in various races.<br><br>
For instance, white people are sick of Antifa and radical leftists who coat their entitlement and destruction with pseudo-morality. Hispanic people don’t like border hoppers who… <a href="https://t.co/yaHMKKnlj3">pic.twitter.com/yaHMKKnlj3</a></p>
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBrandonMorse/status/1921976034078884179?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 12, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>Perhaps white Americans finally speaking up instead of remaining silent is what was needed all along.</strong>  The fear has not been so much about black reprisal, but reprisal from the leftist mob, which until recently had weaponized cancel culture to destroy the lives of anyone speaking outside of prescribed leftist opinions.</p>

<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IZfKcIEH29Q" width="640" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></p>

<p>The following clips illustrate Black Fatigue in the most symbolic way possible:  <strong>An arrogant desire to destroy what other groups build, no matter how meaningless and petty the situation might be. </strong> Never helping, never cooperating, never trying to make things better.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Black fatigue<br><br>
Who has it? <a href="https://t.co/x0aoz9AKBN">pic.twitter.com/x0aoz9AKBN</a></p>
— The General (@1776General_) <a href="https://twitter.com/1776General_/status/1923690991741010351?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>And an egotistical need to display power over other groups (especially white people) by sabotaging them even though they have done nothing wrong and want to be left alone. Oversensitive reactions to every perceived slight, creating a psychology of persecution that leads blacks to lash out over everything.  These are habits not limited to individuals, but habits of the culture as a whole.  </p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">This black mother is absolutely terrible as she teaches her baby girl to bully white girls, whom she captions as “baby Karens” in her video. <a href="https://t.co/L5ExtXYZGL">pic.twitter.com/L5ExtXYZGL</a></p>
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1836677582529421327?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 19, 2024</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>Black fatigue is leading to a dangerous place and it's clear that at least some in the community see what is happening and they're trying to mitigate the damage. </strong> Historically speaking, the next stage would be mass anger and retaliation for such behaviors. </p>

<p>Hopefully it won't come to that.  If ghetto culture is abandoned and calmer minds prevail then it's likely most racial strife within the US today will disappear as quickly as it gestated.  But this would require that a large portion of black Americans accept the reality that they are not victims and that they are causing the problem.  How likely is it that this will happen given decades of woke indoctrination that says white people are always the  source of every conflict and trespass?    </p>

<p> </p>

<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><em><strong>Grow your own food with <a href="https://store.zerohedge.com/wise-food-storage-heirloom-seed-vault-39-varieties-4-500-seeds/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo">HEIRLOOM SEEDS</a></strong> (39 varieties - 4,500 seeds) from <a href="https://store.zerohedge.com/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo">ZH Store!</a>  Free shipping in the USA. </em></p>
<a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/wise-food-storage-heirloom-seed-vault-39-varieties-4-500-seeds/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/wise-food-storage-heirloom-seed-vault-39-varieties-4-500-seeds/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/wise-food-storage-heirloom-seed-vault-39-varieties-4-500-seeds/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="a3c7e03a-456d-4667-ac6a-e5d3d39a52e8" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="294" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/seed_vault_1__62543.1725935890.1280.1280a.jpg?itok=hAHZDzrT" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Click pic... buy seeds... take food supply into your own hands...</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a></div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T23:15:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 19:15</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/black-fatigue-goes-viral-everyone-including-blacks-are-tired-ghetto-behavior


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747521160
title: How to achieve a lasting ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine?
content: A Russian drone strike hit Ukraine's Sumy region hours after first direct talks in three years.
hash: ,�$��K�2#ұ� 
tags: #TV Shows
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/inside-story/2025/5/17/how-to-achieve-a-lasting-ceasefire-between-russia-and-ukraine?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305845
title: Maher slams Trump over Qatar jet, Middle East trip: ‘Bromance diplomacy’
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: �-j!�^R7k|���t
content:
Comedian Bill Maher slammed President Trump for accepting a luxury Boeing jet from the Qatari royal family and characterized the president’s foreign trip to the Middle East, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, as “bromance diplomacy.”  “He was in the Middle East this week. A lot of stuff happened. He’s…

link:
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5305845-maher-slams-trump-over-qatar-jet-middle-east-trip-bromance-diplomacy/

tags:
#In The Know #Qatar #Qatar jet #Real Time with Bill Maher #saudi arabia #Trump administration #United Arab Emirates

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/GettyImages-2153895883.jpg?w=900","type":"image/jpeg","length":311466}]}


guid: 1031484 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Los Angeles County Targets Retail Theft With New Warning Program
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/los-angeles-county-targets-retail-theft-new-warning-program
hash: Tm��1[:R�ƜD
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Los Angeles County Targets Retail Theft With New Warning Program</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/los-angeles-county-targets-retail-theft-with-new-warning-program-5859241?utm_source=partner&amp;utm_campaign=ZeroHedge"><em>Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,</em></a></p>

<p><strong>Los Angeles County is launching a new program to warn criminals and deter retail theft, according to District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who says local businesses have lost millions of dollars to theft since January.</strong></p>

<p>Retailers can contact local law enforcement to obtain one of 10,000 yellow warning decals to post at their business and inform the public that thefts will be prosecuted by the regional retail theft task force.</p>

<p>The sticker also has a QR code for the public to use to report any crimes.</p>

<p><strong>According to the National Retail Federation, the Los Angeles area is the <a href="https://297051953189d612da9e-1e2a7931911c2abaf913026fb7c64860.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/Research/Retail%20Theft%20%26%20Violence/NRF_ImpactofRetailTheftViolence_2024.pdf">worst</a> in the nation for organized retail crime.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%287%29_8.jpg?itok=XrHRycCk" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%287%29_8.jpg?itok=XrHRycCk"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="99c04d0f-9b98-4622-b78e-9f46859f5b71" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="333" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/image%20%287%29_8.jpg?itok=XrHRycCk" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>At a press conference on May 14 in front of a 7-Eleven convenience store in West Los Angeles, Hochman <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzCnSgADK2U">said</a> ending the cycle of catch-and-release in recent years that sent serial retail thieves back on the streets to reoffend is a top priority.</p>

<p><em>“Small businesses, stores, and even big-box retailers constitute the lifeline of our communities, and the lifeblood of our communities are under attack,” Hochman said.</em></p>

<p><em>“They’ve had to deal over the last several years with criminals who had the mistaken belief that you can come into a 7-Eleven, for instance, take whatever you want, leave, and nothing would happen.</em></p>

<p><em><strong>“We are here today to explain to them the exact opposite,”</strong> he said. <strong>“You will be held accountable, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”</strong></em></p>

<p>The district attorney <a href="https://da.lacounty.gov/media/news/district-attorney-hochman-announces-aggressive-actions-prevent-and-prosecute-retail-theft">said</a> he intended to use new authority afforded by Proposition 36, passed by state voters last year, to prosecute thieves and repeat offenders.</p>

<p>The proposition—also known as the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” went into effect on Dec. 18, 2024.</p>

<p>The new law increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, and reclassified some misdemeanors as felonies for repeat offenders. The penalties can include sentences of up to three years in jail or prison if the defendant has already been convicted for certain thefts.</p>

<p>Since December, the county has filed over 1,000 Prop. 36 felony theft charges against repeat offenders, according to Hochman.</p>

<p><em><strong>“We are armed with an additional set of laws under Prop. 36,”</strong></em> Hochman said.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%288%29_8.jpg?itok=BcqwQ4_s" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%288%29_8.jpg?itok=BcqwQ4_s"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="3d4edf4e-7d26-48f3-98e1-df7f4eb4e57f" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="501" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/image%20%288%29_8.jpg?itok=BcqwQ4_s" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><em>Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said 10,000 warning decals will be available for local stores beginning May 16, 2025. Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office</em></p>

<p>Before Prop. 36 went into effect, petty thefts under $950 were classified as misdemeanors, and thefts could not be aggregated to meet the felony threshold, creating a “culture of impunity,” Hochman’s office stated.</p>

<p>One of the felony arrests made since the new law took effect was of Corry Summerville, 38, who was allegedly a serial shoplifter at the 7-Eleven featured in the news conference.</p>

<p>Summerville has been charged with 12 felony charges and one count of robbery related to alleged thefts at the convenience store owned by franchisee Jawad Ursani between January and March.</p>

<p>Four employees resigned, allegedly out of fear of continued encounters with Summerville, according to the Los Angeles Police Department Commanding Officer Capt. Richard Gabaldon.</p>

<p>One of the employees was allegedly violently assaulted when he asked Summerville to pay for items.</p>

<p><em><strong>“We commend the victim for ultimately coming forward,” </strong></em>Gabaldon said at the news conference.</p>

<p>Los Angeles Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, who represents the district where the 7-Eleven is located, said her family often frequented the store.</p>

<p><em><strong>“When a store is repeatedly targeted or a theft turns violent, it does more than hurt the business,” </strong></em>Yaroslavsky said at the event. “It makes you wonder if it’s safe to send your kids in. It makes you worry that someone could get caught in the middle. And it makes you feel like no one is in charge.”</p>

<p>The district attorney is also partnering with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute organized retail crime. Investigators are targeting serial shoplifters, smash-and-grab mobs, and large-scale criminal enterprises.</p>

<p><em><strong>“This is a warning to all the criminals out there, if you come to these stores and think you’re going to come here and commit a crime, we’re going to arrest you and present a good case to the D.A., and you will go to jail for that,” </strong></em>said LAPD Capt. Francis Boateng, commanding officer of the department’s commercial crimes division.</p>

<p>Convenience store owner Ursani, who has operated the 7-Eleven featured at the news conference for more than 25 years, said he was grateful for the support from Hochman and the law enforcement communities.</p>

<p>“My store was targeted not once, but twice, by a smash-and-grab of about over 50 teenagers and a repeat [alleged] shoplifter who is now detained and will be held accountable by this D.A.’s office as we speak,” Ursani said. “Each incident costs us in stolen goods, broken equipment, staff morale, and personal safety.”</p>

<p>Ursani said he has had to spend thousands of dollars on protection for the store, instead of spending the money on inventory and community investments.</p>

<p><em><strong>“It’s not just about theft, it’s about fear and instability it brings to everyone who depends on this store and our entire community,”</strong></em> Ursani added.</p>

<p>Prop. 36 has given law enforcement more tools to target operations that harm communities, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Division Chief Joe Mendoza.</p>

<p><em><strong>“While Proposition 36 promotes necessary criminal justice reform, it also allows us to focus resources on serious, organized theft operations that harm our communities,” Mendoza said.</strong></em></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-17T23:50:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 19:50</span>


guid: yt:video:-nZu2HL6ywY
title: Lectures in History: Ronald Reagan &amp; the 1980s Conservative Resurgence
author: ;C-SPAN
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nZu2HL6ywY
hash: ; ���[*kH>��U�
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guid: 68287fb46660b200012889e2
title: French Foreign Minister Wants To Bring Russia To Its Knees
author: ;Rainer Apel
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/french-foreign-minister-wants-to-bring-russia-down-on-its-knees/
hash: "�1�͜���ET:�r�\
tags: #Collapsing Imperial System #Europe #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>In the wake of hints that the European Union wants to escalate its sanctions against Russia, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Western Europe and the U.S. must “go further” and “prepare to brandish devastating sanctions” to “suffocate” the Russian economy “once and for all,” in order to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine conflict.</p>
<p>“Russia has found ways around the blockade imposed by Europe and the United States. Turning off the tap in this way is a way of grabbing Russia by the throat,” he told French broadcaster BFMTV on May 14.</p>


guid: 6828840e6660b20001288a09
title: Meloni Did Not Join the Five Stooges
author: ;Claudio Celani
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/meloni-did-not-join-the-five-stooges/
hash: �qTAn}Ϻ&��6 �
tags: #Collapsing Imperial System #Europe #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did not join the meeting of the five “willing” (Macron, Merz, Zelenskyy, Tusk and Starmer) in Albania, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.it/esteri/2025/05/16/news/vertice_ucraina_russia-19221770/">explaining</a> she did not go, because “Italy is not willing to send troops to Ukraine.”</p>
<p>The Italian pro-government wire ADN-Kronos commented on the meeting of the five stooges in Tirana: “The willing ones, i.e., those countries that are ready to send troops to Ukraine at the end (or at the freezing) of the conflict (Meloni’s Italy is not among them) look like a group of old friends who, at the end of the meal in the pizzeria, make a phone call to the one who did not show up. European leaders, excluded from the negotiations in Türkiye, try to coordinate an answer to Putin, going after Trump on Air Force One … hoping to influence the future of the negotiations or at least to send a joint message.”</p>


guid: 6828849e6660b20001288a14
title: Senegal Prime Minister’s Visit to Burkina Faso Affirms Economic and Security Cooperation
author: ;Dean Andromidas
hash: E)�^|�@��V��E9
tags: #New World Paradigm #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>Senegal has joined a growing host of African nations that have sent high-level delegations to the countries of the Confederation of Sahel States (AES) to further political, economic and security cooperation, in the face of the Western narrative that these states are isolated and on the verge of collapse.</p>
<p>On May 16, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko led a delegation on a 48-hour working visit to Ouagadougou, where he was received by Burkina Faso’s transitional President, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, for high-level talks focused on security challenges and bilateral cooperation.</p>
<p>Traoré had recently returned from an official visit to Russia where he attended the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and Russia, where Russian President Vladimir Putin received him.</p>
<p>During Sonko’s audience with Traoré, Sonko conveyed, and reiterated at a press conference, a strong message of solidarity and support from Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and the Senegalese people to the government and people of Burkina Faso. “We came to deliver a message of unwavering support to President Traoré, his government, and the people of Burkina Faso in their fight against the terrorism that has been imposed upon them,” <a href="https://apanews.net/security-senegal-reaffirms-support-for-burkina-faso/">Sonko declared</a>.</p>
<p>Sonko made his visit at the invitation of Burkina Faso Prime Minister Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo to hold high-level talks, and attend the ceremony to mark the completion of a mausoleum of the late President Thomas Sankara, a national hero, assassinated in 1987.</p>
<p>This is Sonko’s second visit to a member state of the Confederation of Sahel States. Last October visited Mali, and will soon likely make a visit to Niger the third member state.</p>
<p>The three AES member states withdrew from the Economic Cooperation Organization of West African States (ECOWAS) after that organization threatened military action against Niger. That threat has since been withdrawn, as ECOWAS member states reach out to the Confederation. Senegal joins other ECOWAS member states, Ghana, Guinea,and Togo in seeking cooperation with the AES.</p>

link:
https://eir.news/2025/05/news/senegal-pm-visit-to-burkina-faso-affirms-economic-and-security-cooperation/


guid: 682899946660b20001288a85
title: U.S. Supreme Court Stops Use of Alien Enemies Act for Deportation
author: ;Steven Carr
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/us-supreme-court-stops-use-of-alien-enemies-act-for-deportation/
hash: �l��]s>0ݡA�n�*)
tags: #U.S. and Canada #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>On May 16 the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a1007_g2bh.pdf">U.S. Supreme Court ordered</a> the Trump administration to refrain from deporting people under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The Court issued an injunction and sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court.</p>
<p>This is the third time since early April that the U.S. Supreme Court has insisted on upholding due process in cases dealing with deportations. The Supreme Court ruled to maintain the current block against the AEA until it can fully consider the matter. However, three judges in the U.S. district courts in Colorado, New York, and Texas have all already ruled that the Trump administration’s invocation of AEA is unlawful and they have all rejected the administration’s claim that the country is being “invaded.”</p>
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guid: 6828d0b36660b20001288b72
author: ;Mark Bender
hash: c�:9��B� �db?�F�
tags: #New World Paradigm #Africa #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
title:
Trump&amp;#039;s New Africa ‘Commercial Diplomacy’ Policy Dumps IMF&amp;#039;s ‘Macro-Economic Reforms’

content:
<p>Trump’s new Africa policy—announced by Ambassador Troy Fitrell on May 14—must have had many listeners caught between questioning their hearing and cheering with delight as he laid out a “trade-based” program which dumped 50-plus years of imperial treatment of Africans as second-class citizens, fit only for “handouts” from the Mother Country. Gone also is the IMF-directed emphasis on “macro-economic reforms” as a tool of imperial control.</p>
<p>“For too long, we’ve prioritized development assistance over promoting U.S. commercial engagement in Africa,” <a href="https://www.state.gov/remarks-for-launch-of-bureau-of-african-affairs-commercial-diplomacy-strategy/">Fitrell said</a>, speaking from Cote d’Ivoire. “Going forward, we will continue to invest in development—but we will do so through expanded trade and private investment, because it is the private sector—not assistance—that drives economic growth. We have historically emphasized macroeconomic reforms, rather than breaking down barriers and opening doors for American companies on the ground.</p>
<p>“I am here to tell you,” Fitrell said, “This is all changing under the Trump Administration. We no longer see Africa as a continent in need of handouts, but as a capable commercial partner. ‘Trade, not aid,’ a slogan we’ve seen thrown around for years, is now truly our policy for Africa—a shift I know you have long sought and one that I am committed to strengthening. Because assistance involves a donor and a recipient, but commerce is an exchange between equals.”</p>
<p>Fitrell proceeded to lay out a six-step policy he dubbed “commercial diplomacy,” explaining that, going forward, corporate reps would accompany State Dept ambassadors on visits to African countries (they have prioritized 25—half of the continent) and seek ways for U.S. business to invest in Africa. Step three says that “the strategy is to implement key infrastructure projects in [unspecified] priority countries.”</p>
<p>In addressing the elephant in the room—where the money would come from—Fitrell was blunt: the banks were going to have to take greater risks. “Companies need better blended financing options,” he said, “a shorter application process, and better financing terms. Our financing agencies must take greater risks to compete in the global marketplace.”</p>
<p>He may not have meant this to be a declaration of war on the IMF system, but that’s what certain listeners no doubt heard.</p>

link:
https://eir.news/2025/05/news/trumps-new-africa-commercial-diplomacy-policy-dumps-imfs-macro-economic-reforms/


guid: 6828e68c6660b20001288b8f
author: ;Gretchen Small
hash: (I<�<۰����J���
tags: #Collapsing Imperial System #Southwest Asia #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
title:
Will Growing International Spotlight on Israel&amp;#039;s Final Solution for Gaza Lead to Action in Time?

content:
<p>“What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank cannot be ignored—not in Europe, nor anywhere else in the world. Redrawing the map of the Middle East by force will awaken the darkest nightmares of our past,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the 34th Arab League Summit meeting in Baghdad today. “Palestine is bleeding to death before our eyes. In the face of violence and barbarism, only the staunch defense of a world order where justice prevails is possible.”</p>
<p>He proposed to mobilize the United Nations institutions. Sánchez asked the Arab States to support a resolution drafted by Spain and Palestine, which demands that Israel end its humanitarian blockade of Gaza and allow full and unrestricted access to humanitarian assistance. He also announced that Spain will bring a motion before the UN General Assembly, requesting the UN’s International Court of Justice to rule on whether Israel is complying with its obligations under international humanitarian law. Spain recognized Palestine as a state last year, and Sánchez said hopes other nations will do likewise at the June 2-4 UN summit by Saudi Arabia and France.</p>
<p>The day before, Spain, along with six other European nations, had issued a <a href="https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-the-taoiseach/press-releases/joint-statement-on-palestine/">joint statement</a> calling for “immediate action” to stop the mass starvation of Palestinians that is being imposed by Israel. Signed by the government leaders of Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Slovenia and Spain, the statement asserts that their nations “will not be silent before the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza. More than 50,000 men, women, and children have lost their lives. Many more could starve to death in the coming days and weeks unless immediate action is taken.… We must assume the responsibility to stop this devastation.”</p>
<p>Specifically they do not spell out what they will do to ensure that their commitment is carried out. They do, however, address the government of Israel directly, calling upon it “to immediately reverse its current policy, refrain from further military operations and fully lift the blockade, ensuring safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the Gaza strip by international humanitarian actors and according to humanitarian principles. United Nations and humanitarian organizations, including UNRWA, must be supported and granted safe and unimpeded access. Forced displacement or the expulsion of the Palestinian people, by any means, is unacceptable and would constitute a breach of international law,” it warns. “We reject any such plans or attempts at demographic change.”</p>
<p>The seven nations acknowledge the efforts of the United States, Egypt and Qatar in seeking negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of all hostages, which efforts they urge be accelerated.</p>

link:
https://eir.news/2025/05/news/will-growing-international-attention-on-israels-final-starvation-solution-for-gaza-lead-to-action-in-time/


guid: 6828f2516660b20001288bb2
title: Egypt&amp;#039;s President Urges Trump To Secure a Ceasefire in Gaza, Then Lasting Peace
author: ;Gretchen Small
hash: x�N�3 jG��C�
tags: #Strategic War Danger #Southwest Asia #News
content:
<div><img src="https://eir.news/content/images/2025/05/50592702688_738371b338_c.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p>Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, <a href="https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/1234/546396/Egypt/Foreign-Affairs/Palestinian-state-key-to-ME-peace-regardless-of-no.aspx">addressing the Arab League summit in Baghdad today</a>, called on President Donald Trump to “exert all necessary efforts and pressures to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” and then help to bring about a lasting peace in the region, as the United States had done to bring about peace between Egypt and Israel in the 1970s. Were President Trump to achieve a ceasefire, that would pave “the way for a serious political process—in which he [Trump] acts as a mediator and sponsor—that leads to a final settlement achieving lasting peace, akin to the historic role the United States played in achieving peace between Egypt and Israel in the 1970s,” President el-Sisi proposed.</p>
<p>El-Sisi bluntly dismissed, however, any idea that the path to peace lies solely in Arab nations establishing relations with Israel. “Even if Israel succeeds in reaching normalization agreements with all Arab countries, a lasting, just, and comprehensive peace in the Middle East will remain out of reach unless a Palestinian state is established as per international legitimacy resolutions,” he warned.</p>
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attributes:
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guid: 6828fbea6660b20001288bc4
title: Belgium Reverses Nuclear Phase-Out Policy
author: ;Chris Lewis
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/belgium-reverses-nuclear-phase-out-policy/
hash: pdn6�[,���^�h��8
tags: #Science and Technology #Europe #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>The Belgian Parliament reversed a 2003 law for the phase-out of nuclear energy this week by a large majority vote. In 2003, the parliament decided to close both of its nuclear plants and ban the construction of new nuclear capacity. Nuclear reactor Doel-1, one of four reactors at the Doel Nuclear Power Station, originally slated for closure in 2015, was finally shut down in February 2025. Doel-3 was closed in 2022, and Tihange-2, first of the three reactors at the Tihange Nuclear Power Station, closed in 2023.</p>
<p>Tihange-1 and Doel-2 were both slated for closure this year, but since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, concerns over availability of energy prompted the government to reconsider the closure—something already being advocated for by Stand Up for Nuclear and supported by the Belgian Nuclear Forum. On May 15, the legislature voted 102 to 8 to reverse the 2003 law.</p>
<p>“This day will go down in history as a turning point in Belgian energy history,” Energy Minister Mathieu Bihet said. “By approving with a large majority, the law that heralds the return of nuclear energy in our country, the federal parliament leaves behind two decades of blockages and hesitations to pave the way for a realistic and resilient energy model.”</p>
<p>New projects are being discussed.</p>
<p>It is notable that also the Danish parliament, which had voted in 1985 to ban nuclear plants from being built in the country, voted this week by a two-thirds majority to explore the possible use of nuclear energy in order to ensure its energy security. A report on the potential benefits of new nuclear power technologies is expected to be completed in 2026.</p>
<p>Italy is also returning to nuclear power. In early March, the Italian Council of Ministers approved a plan to reverse the anti-nuclear stance solidified by referendums in 1987 and 2011.</p>


guid: 682906d26660b20001288bda
title: Rubio Meets with Vatican Officials
author: ;Megan Dobrodt
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/rubio-meets-with-vatican-officials/
hash: ���x ��[��q�*�h;
tags: #Strategic War Danger #U.S. and Canada #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met today in Rome with Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States. Rubio also met with Papal Envoy for Ukraine Cardinal Matteo Zuppi. On the agenda were the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the situation in the Middle East.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/05/secretary-rubios-meetings-with-holy-see-secretary-of-state-cardinal-pietro-parolinarchbishop-paul-richard-gallagher-and-cardinal-matteo-zuppi/">State Department readout</a> reports “they reaffirmed the strong partnership between the United States and the Holy See and discussed our shared commitment to ending the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East…. Secretary Rubio also met with Cardinal Zuppi to discuss the urgent need to end the Russia-Ukraine war.  The Secretary expressed appreciation for the Vatican’s important humanitarian role, including facilitating prisoner exchanges and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.  He emphasized the importance of continued collaboration under the new leadership of Pope Leo XIV.”</p>
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guid: 6829087e6660b20001288c20
author: ;Gretchen Small
hash: ;5T@y�I�HD!'�,I
tags: #Collapsing Imperial System #U.S. and Canada #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[{"url":"https://eir.news/content/images/2025/05/tulsi.jpg","medium":"image"}]}
title:
Tulsi Gabbard Warns Comey&amp;#039;s Threat Warrants Grave Concern for President Trump&amp;#039;s Life

content:
<div><img src="https://eir.news/content/images/size/w1200/2025/05/tulsi.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p>In a devastating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LHeTeB6gbU">interview May 15</a> with Fox News host Jesse Waters, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard demolished the Establishment media line that former FBI Director James Comey was innocently exercising his right to free speech when he <a href="https://eir.news/2025/05/news/us-secret-service-investigating-former-fbi-director-james-comey/">promoted the “8647” code</a> being used in anti-Trump circles to call for the assassination of President Donald Trump. Gabbard warns that Comey’s action reflects the intention of the Establishment which created his so-called “stature.”</p>
<p>In mob circles, to “86” someone has long meant knocking someone off (eight miles out of town, and six feet under); and Trump is the 47th U.S. President.</p>
<p>For a former head of the FBI, a man who “spent most of his career prosecuting mobsters and gangsters, people who know and execute other humans, who use this exact lingo of `86,’” to claim that while he knew “86” had “a political message,” he had no idea it was associated with “violence” is ridiculous. Comey knew that little over a month ago, an anti-Trump, anti-Musk group was proliferating this “8647” message, “which is a veiled call to murder the sitting President of the United States.”</p>
<p>“The dangerousness of this cannot be overestimated,” she warned. There have been two attempts on the President’s life already. Comey has been celebrated by MSNBC, CNN and the Democratic elite as “the beacon of integrity,” “the law and order guy,” and this is the guy who is issuing a hit on the President? This administration takes this very seriously that “it is guys like Comey and others who call the President the modern-day Nazi, people who are in positions of influence who are saying that President Trump poses an existential threat to our country” who are seeking to remove the man the American people elected to be President—by other means.</p>
<p>Gabbard pointed to a Rutgers study, issued a little over a month ago, which asked respondents what they thought of calls for Trump to be assassinated, and found that over 55% thought murdering the President would be “somewhat justified.” The report described an “assassination culture” beginning to take over the views of the extreme left, she said. This, she pointed out, reflects the effect of what people like Comey are putting out.</p>
<p>Therefore, Comey must be held accountable, just as a man in Georgia who had been issuing threats on her life a month ago has now been indicted and jailed, she said. Asked directly if she thought Comey should be behind bars, her answer was “I do.” People like him have to be held accountable; given the stature which the propaganda media has given him, “I’m very concerned for the President’s life.”</p>

link:
https://eir.news/2025/05/news/tulsi-gabbard-explains-why-comeys-threat-warrants-grave-concern-for-president-trumps-life/


guid: 68290fb16660b20001288c2c
title: Does Comey&amp;#039;s Threat Portend an Assassination in the Works?
author: ;Megan Dobrodt
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/does-comeys-threat-portend-an-assassination-in-the-works/
hash: z9 dC_k���`�*_%
tags: #Daily Lead #U.S. and Canada
content:
<div><img src="https://eir.news/content/images/2025/05/comey_james_7-6-16.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p>On May 15, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for the arrest of James Comey, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LHeTeB6gbU">announcing</a> in an interview with Fox News that the Department of Homeland Security had just launched an investigation into the former FBI Director. Insisting that Comey be held fully accountable under U.S. law for essentially issuing a call to assassinate President Trump, she said that she believes that Comey should be behind bars.</p>
<p>President Trump echoed DNI Gabbard, saying of Comey, “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” he said. “If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant—that meant assassination, and it says it loud and clear.”</p>
<p>Such an investigation of a former FBI Director is unprecedented in recent U.S. history—let alone for calling for the assassination of the President. Comey is also widely reported to have been a guiding force in the “Russiagate” fraud concocted to discredit President Trump during his first term of office.</p>
<p>A few days prior to Gabbard’s response, the <em>New York Times</em> reported that she had taken direct control of the presidential daily briefing out of the hands of the CIA, where it was being produced, and centered it in the Office of the DNI, whose responsibility it is to provide that crucial daily briefing to the President.</p>
<p>What the gravity of Gabbard’s and Trump’s public charges against Comey point to, along with Gabbard’s reorganization of the intelligence structure, is the likelihood that there could well be another live assassination attempt of President Trump in the works, with the complicity of elements of the establishment.</p>
<p>This possibility must be taken with the utmost seriousness; Trump has bucked the British establishment and their desire to continue every war they ever started by moving to end the conflict in Ukraine—without the involvement of Britain. To that end, Trump just announced that he would be speaking with Russia’s President Putin on the phone on Monday, May 19, about stopping the “bloodbath” and moving toward a ceasefire. Trump also deployed Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to help defuse the recent escalation of military tensions between India and Pakistan (though underlying issues have not yet been resolved). He has also refused, so far, to launch a war against Iran, contrary to the insistence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neocons in the U.S., who have been behind Netanyahu every bloody step of the way in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>Whether or not Trump will finally decide to act to stop the horrors unfolding in Gaza remains an uncertainty, as he has still not taken the steps well within his power to put a stop to the genocide.</p>
<p>What the British and their establishment allies are particularly worried about is that Trump, despite his imperfections, will take steps forward on the underlying, decisive issue of reorienting U.S. and the world economy to a productive basis, and in that new system, open up cooperation with nations which Comey et al. deem “enemies”: China and Russia.</p>
<p>This fear could well be behind Moody’s downgrading on Friday evening, May 16, of U.S. sovereign debt. Was this a shot across the bow in the financial markets to get Trump back in line, as the City of London repeatedly promised before the January inauguration?</p>
<p>The stakes are high. What is known to even well-informed observers is probably just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on behind the scenes. Thus the deadly serious gravity of DNI Gabbard’s response to Comey’s threat.</p>
<p>It is essential that not only the “deep state” permanent bureaucracy be dismantled, but more importantly that the underlying policies for which they were established be abolished.</p>
<p>To that end, it is urgent that nations respond to Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s <a href="https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/">call for a new international security and development architecture</a>, a new order in the world that would “eliminate the concept of geopolitics by ending the division of the world into blocs. The security concerns of every sovereign nation must be taken into account.”</p>
<p>Circulate and sign Zepp-LaRouche’s <a href="https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/open_letter_to_pope_leo_xvi">Open Letter to Pope Leo XIV</a>, which urges forward efforts to create “a true peace order in the world, one which eliminates the real causes for war by taking into account the valid security interests of all parties,” and appeals to the Pope to speak out on the “horrendous, satanic genocide going on in Gaza.”</p>

attributes:
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guid: 682912366660b20001288c36
title: U.S. and Russia Set Up a Trump-Putin Dialogue
author: ;David Shavin
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/us-and-russia-set-up-a-trump-putin-dialogue/
hash: ��O���o~�q��8^d
tags: #U.S. and Canada #Russia and Ukraine #Ukraine conflict #News
content:
<div><img src="https://eir.news/content/images/2025/05/54522615667_8a1c0f99b7_c.jpg" data-sanitized-class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div><p>It was arranged today for U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a telephone discussion on Monday morning. Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114523762104941397#:~:text=Donald%20J.%20Trump,BLESS%20US%20ALL">announced today on Truth Social</a>: “I WILL BE SPEAKING, BY TELEPHONE, TO PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN OF RUSSIA ON MONDAY, AT 10:00 A.M. THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE. I WILL THEN BE SPEAKING TO PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY OF UKRAINE AND THEN, WITH PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY, VARIOUS MEMBERS OF NATO. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END. GOD BLESS US ALL!!!”</p>
<p>Trump’s announcement followed a discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. <a href="https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/2018300/">According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry</a>:</p>
<p>“On May 17, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the initiative of the U.S. side. The heads of foreign policy offices shared opinions on the outcomes of the Russian-Ukrainian talks held the previous day in Istanbul.</p>
<p>“Marco Rubio welcomed the agreements reached on the exchange of prisoners of war and the intention of each side to prepare its own proposals outlining the conditions necessary for a ceasefire. He reaffirmed Washington’s readiness to continue supporting efforts towards a negotiated settlement.</p>
<p>“Sergey Lavrov acknowledged the constructive role played by the United States in encouraging Kiev to finally accept President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to resume negotiations in Istanbul. He reiterated Moscow’s willingness to continue working with U.S. colleagues in this context.</p>
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guid: 682916736660b20001288c44
title: The American Conservative Praises Results of Istanbul Meeting
author: ;Bill Jones
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/american-conservative-magazine-praises-results-of-istanbul-meeting/
hash: ��۴ױ�뫒X�4���
tags: #U.S. and Canada #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>An article in the <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-istanbul-talks-were-a-success/"><em>American Conservative</em></a> by Jennifer Kavanaugh and Peter Slezkine makes it one of the few publications to break with the U.S. media in their position on the Ukraine war and the May 16 talks in Istanbul. The authors praised the success of the Istanbul meeting between Ukraine and Russia and urged U.S. President Donald Trump to continue his efforts to bring the two sides together. “Predictions to the contrary, Ukraine and Russia’s first direct talks in three years, held in Istanbul on May 16, went quite well. Most importantly, the two sides agreed to keep talking,” the authors write.</p>
<p>“Washington’s priority now should be to encourage continued talks between the combatants, even as fighting persists. This will require pushing back on Europe’s calls for more pressure on Putin and resisting the temptation to interfere before the two sides are ready to tackle issues that cannot be addressed without American involvement. After all, the most sustainable peace will be one agreed to by Ukraine and Russia together, not one coerced by the United States or Europe.”</p>
<p>They underlined the three major results of the meeting which had been underlined by Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky: “to conduct the largest single POW exchange to date (1,000 personnel on each side); to produce a written version of their vision for peace for discussion at a future session; and to hold initial discussions about a meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”</p>
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guid: 6829259d6660b20001288c5f
author: ;Gretchen Small
hash: �#� �j�$�G�R��
tags: #Strategic War Danger #Southwest Asia #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
title:
IDF Opens Campaign To &amp;#039;Conquer&amp;#039; Gaza; Arab League Urges Action by International Community

content:
<p>The Israel Defense Forces announced late Friday night, May 16, that the first phase of its so-called “Gideon’s Chariots” operation had begun, with intense airstrikes and ground forces moving in across Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised the IDF would move in to fully occupy Gaza as soon as President Trump left the Middle East, and that once in, no one could stop its war. The stated objective is to seize and retain total control of Gaza’s territory, drive its inhabitants into a minuscule ghetto near the Egyptian border, where limited food would be distributed under Israeli military control, until all Palestinians are finally driven out of the Gaza Strip entirely.</p>
<p>By the morning of May 17, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 146 Gazans were known to have been killed in the last day alone. IDF ground troops were reportedly advancing toward Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, deploying heavy artillery fire and airstrikes to cover the advancing troops. Deir al-Balah, according to <em>Times of Israel</em>, was one of the few areas of the Strip which Israeli ground troops had not entered since October 7, 2023. Intensive airstrikes were also reported May 17 in the areas of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Jabalia, in the north.</p>
<p>Inside Israel, leading family members of Israeli hostages exploded at the government for launching the new invasion, and endangering the lives of their loved ones held captive. The outcries during the weekly Saturday night anti-government protests were sharp. Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held hostage in Gaza, denounced Netanyahu as “the angel of death” for her son and the others, with his “political war.”</p>
<p>The Arab League nations issued <a href="https://petra.gov.jo/Include/InnerPage.jsp?ID=71585&amp;lang=en&amp;name=en_news">the final statement of the 34th Arab Summit</a> at the end of their summit today, which calls on “the international community, especially influential countries, to assume their moral and legal responsibilities to pressure for an end to the bloodshed and to facilitate the swift entry of humanitarian aid into all affected areas in Gaza.”</p>
<p>These nations urged “political, financial, and legal support” be provided for the March 4, 2025 Arab-Islamic plan for “the recovery and reconstruction in Gaza within a political process leading to Palestinian independence.…” “Any form of displacement, forced migration, or expulsion of Palestinians from their land” are “grave violations of international law, crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing,” they reminded, condemning “the policies of starvation and scorched earth aimed at forcing Palestinians to leave their land.”</p>

link:
https://eir.news/2025/05/news/idf-begins-campaign-to-conquer-gaza-arab-league-urges-action-by-international-community/


guid: 68292b366660b20001288c6f
title: Israel&amp;#039;s Danny Danon Shrieks UN Official Is ‘Weaponizing’ the Word Genocide
author: ;Mary Jane Freeman
link: https://eir.news/2025/05/news/israels-danny-danon-shrieks-un-official-weaponizes-the-word-genocide/
hash: ;��6m +ap+� �
tags: #Collapsing Imperial System #Southwest Asia #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>The <em>Jerusalem Post</em> of May 16 carries a screaming headline by Reuters: <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-854282#google_vignette">“Danon Accuses UN Aid Chief of Weaponizing the Word ‘Genocide’ against Israel.”</a> Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon is reacting to UN Emergency Relief Coordinator of the Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher’s question to the UN Security Council members on May 14: “Will you act—decisively—to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?” Danon, incredibly, makes the charge against senior UN official Fletcher: “You had the audacity, in your capacity as a senior UN official, to stand before the Security Council and invoke the charge of genocide without evidence, mandate, or restraint.” As Shakespeare proclaimed, “the lady doth protest too much.” Israeli acts of unrelenting bombings, killings, and withholding of all aid are writ large before the world.</p>
<p>Rather than replying to Danon’s letter of reprimand, UN Relief Chief Fletcher issued a <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/un-relief-chief-demands-rapid-safe-unimpeded-aid-delivery-gaza">new statement</a> dated May 16, demanding “rapid, safe, unimpeded aid delivery in Gaza” which details an extensive delivery system the UN has ready to deploy aid. He writes that “those proposing an alternative modality for aid distribution should not waste time, as a plan already exists.” This <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/briefing-note-un-coordinated-plan-resume-humanitarian-aid-deliveries-gaza">document</a> sets it out again, he proclaims. The document asserts: “Critically, 160,000 pallets of UN and humanitarian partner aid (~8,900 trucks-worth) is already positioned and ready to enter Gaza today.” Further death by starvation can be averted.</p>
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guid: 1031481 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: "I Don't Know What To Do!": Borrowers Report Credit-Score Carnage As Student Loans Hit Reports
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: '��u��Y��plS
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">"I Don't Know What To Do!": Borrowers Report Credit-Score Carnage As Student Loans Hit Reports</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/student-loan-delinquencies-surge-hammer-credit-scores-southern-states-hit-hardest">Last week</a> we noted <a href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/HHDC_2025Q1">new report</a> from the New York Federal Reserve, which showed that while Americans' credit card debt is falling, <strong>credit scores are starting to decline due to an uptick in student loan delinquencies. </strong></p>

<p>The NY Fed's Center for Macroeconomic Data's quarterly report reveals that <strong>overall household debt rose by $167 billion</strong> - with credit card debt declining by $29 billion. Yet, the delinquency rate for student loans surged <strong>from below 1%</strong> <strong>to nearly 7.7% </strong>after a pandemic-era pause on student loan payments was lifted in September 2023.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/student%20loan%20score.jpg?itok=dCDEg7f8" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/student%20loan%20score.jpg?itok=dCDEg7f8"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="8b989d4d-370f-4288-931e-e84f833b9018" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="333" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/student%20loan%20score.jpg?itok=dCDEg7f8" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>While the payments were resumed, policymakers extended a one-year ramp-up period that shielded borrowers' missed payments from being reported to credit bureaus. This extension <strong>expired in October 2024, with delinquencies starting to hit the first quarter of 2025. </strong></p>

<p>Needless to say, <strong>it's total carnage </strong>among borrowers, as one can see from Reddit's '<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans">StudentLoans</a>' forum.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>"<strong>My credit score dropped 240+ points. i dont know what to do!!</strong>" <a href="https://archive.is/wip/VNf7U">said</a> one Redditor, who says she can't pay her bills because she doesn't have a job after graduating in 2024.</p>

<p>"<strong>My score was in the high 700s and dropped to about 480</strong>," <a href="https://archive.is/wip/XDn08">said</a> another Redditor, who said they were notified by reporting agency Experian that their credit "took a massive hit."</p>

<p>"<strong>My transunion and equifax scores took a -100 hit </strong>due to my loans "just being recognized this January,"" reported <a href="https://archive.is/wip/DlQsS">another</a> borrower.</p>

<p>"<strong>My credit dropped from a 720 to a 550</strong>," <a href="https://archive.is/wip/IOlEv">said</a> yet another - who reported having "<em><strong>6 total loans</strong></em> from school" that have been "deferred for a while."</p>

<p>"<strong>Credit Got Torched" </strong>reads a Friday <a href="https://archive.is/wip/YsgOU">post</a>. "i am unfortunately 1 of the 9 million people who received delinquency marks on my credit report from the dept of education for student loans, <strong>which decreased my credit score by 118 points</strong>."</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Interestingly, <a href="https://archive.is/wip/K5GpI">several</a> redditors said <strong>their scores tanked from loans taken out in their names that they were <a href="https://archive.is/wip/aqhKI">unaware</a> of - </strong>including the first example, who said "I have 10 student loans overall, 5 sub, 5 unsub, and have never had anything else on my credit or anything, no cards or loans, etc. I did get my identity stolen, but I disputed the loans that were taken out fraudulently, and my score was barely affected at all from it."</p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/tariff-free-steak-bundle-ebersole-cattle-co/?utm_source=zerohedge.com&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=store_promo"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e895d4db-372e-46a1-901d-027b94a37537" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="295" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Memorial%20Day%20Beef%204.jpg?itok=LJB4UYNL" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>


<p>According to the NY Fed report, while over half of the newly delinquent borrowers <strong>already have subprime credit scores, </strong>around 2.4 million borrowers who entered delinquency this year had scores over 620 - which could have allowed them to qualify for auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards, prior to the delinquency being reported. <strong>3.2 million borrowers</strong> whose scores were under 620 (56.6% of the newly delinquent population) saw their scores decline by <strong>an average of 74 points.</strong></p>

<p>Another <strong>2 million borrowers with scores between 620 - 719 </strong>(35.9% of new delinquencies) saw their credit scores fall <strong>by an average of 140 points - </strong>while there were 400,000 borrowers whose scores were above 720 (7.2% of new delinquencies) that saw their scores fall by over 100 points.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/perce2.JPG?itok=I6M5br6M" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/perce2.JPG?itok=I6M5br6M"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="788fd2fb-af04-4ff3-9310-8e708d178e88" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="364" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/perce2.JPG?itok=I6M5br6M" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><strong>Over 1 million borrowers saw drops of at least 150 points. </strong></p>

<blockquote>
<p><em>The report found that seven states have a conditional student loan delinquency rate — which excludes borrowers who don't have a payment due — above 30%, including Mississippi (44.6%), Alabama (34.1%), West Virginia (34%), Kentucky (33.6%), Oklahoma (33.6%), Arkansas (33.5%) and Louisiana (31.8%).</em></p>

<p><em>At the end of the first quarter, over 20 million federal student loan borrowers weren't in repayment and five million had a zero-dollar monthly payment. -<a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/student-loan-delinquencies-surge-sending-credit-scores-plunging-borrowers">Fox News</a></em></p>
</blockquote>

<p>"After a five-year hiatus, student loan delinquency has returned to the pre-pandemic 'normal' with more than 10 percent of balances and roughly six million borrowers either past due or in default," according to the NY Fed report, which noted that the collections process that resumed in May includes the "garnishment of wages, tax returns, and Social Security payments."</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/by%20age.JPG?itok=BZQnzuN_" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/by%20age.JPG?itok=BZQnzuN_"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="8c63f7ab-7b1e-4eb3-9f56-fdecbe13ed7f" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="365" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/by%20age.JPG?itok=BZQnzuN_" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>"Additionally, millions of borrowers face steep declines in their credit standing which will increase borrowing costs or seriously limit their access to credit like mortgages and auto loans."</p>

</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T00:25:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 20:25</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/i-dont-know-what-do-borrowers-report-credit-score-carnage-student-loans-hit


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305939
title: Bondi condemns ‘unforgivable’ violence against California fertility clinic
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: �����\'g(?�Z
tags: #State Watch #California #DOJ #explosion #IVF #Palm Springs
content:
Attorney General Pam Bondi condemned the “unforgivable” violence against a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, Calif., where one person was killed on Saturday. “I have been briefed on the explosion at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California that took place today. Federal agents are on the ground now responding alongside local law enforcement,” Bondi…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5305939-bondi-condemns-unforgivable-violence-against-california-fertility-clinic/

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/AP25126674313485-e1746560642944.jpg?w=900","type":"image/jpeg","length":9631985}]}


guid: 1031480 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Syrian President Skips Arab League Summit In Baghdad After Outcry Over ISIS Background
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: G2�o\��8}����
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Syrian President Skips Arab League Summit In Baghdad After Outcry Over ISIS Background</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syrian-president-skips-arab-league-summit-baghdad-following-opposition"><em>Via Middle East Eye</em></a></p>

<p>A summit of the Arab League began in Baghdad on Saturday, with Syria's president absent following Iraqi outcry. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was the first Arab leader to arrive in Baghdad on Friday, followed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Saturday.</p>

<p>However, a diplomatic source told AFP that <strong>most Gulf leaders would not be attending</strong>. Other figures present in Baghdad on Saturday include United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.</p>
<a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/bghdsummit.jpg?itok=P3aP2Nud" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bghdsummit.jpg?itok=P3aP2Nud"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="abdc56ec-3da0-4e2b-ad33-3344ceba07bc" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="281" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/bghdsummit.jpg?itok=P3aP2Nud" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein (right) walks with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (left) upon his arrival in Baghdad for the 34th Arab League summit on 17 May 2025</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>The summit is expected to discuss the numerous crises afflicting the region, including Israel's ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip.</p>

<p>US President Donald Trump, who has been touring the Gulf states, sparked outrage in the Arab world earlier this year when he declared his country would take control of Gaza and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East".</p>

<p>In response, Arab leaders announced the <strong>development of a post-war plan</strong> at the previous summit in Cairo in March to rebuild the territory.</p>

<p>The Iraqi government has said this month's summit would endorse the plan, which <strong>calls for a $53bn fund to finance Gaza's reconstruction over five years</strong>. Under the proposal, the territory would be administered during a transitional period by a committee of Palestinian technocrats, before the PA regains control.</p>

<p>"We are not just rebuilding Iraq, we are also reshaping the Middle East through a balanced foreign policy, wise leadership, development initiatives, and strategic partnerships," Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani wrote in an opinion piece earlier this month.</p>

<p><strong>Syrian al-Qaeda founder</strong></p>

<p>Iraq is still trying to stabilize after years of violence sparked off by the US-led invasion in 2003 that overthrew long-time ruler Saddam Hussein.</p>

<p>Controversy had swirled around an invitation extended by Sudani to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who came to power after overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in December. Numerous Iraqi politicians had <strong>called for him to be blocked from attending over his past membership in al-Qaeda in Iraq</strong>, a group responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis during the 2000s through often indiscriminate and sectarian attacks.</p>

<p>On Saturday, it was reported that Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, who was <strong>also a member of Syria's al-Qaeda wing alongside Sharaa</strong>, would be attending the summit rather than the president.</p>

<p>Iraqi media reported last month that at least 50 MPs from Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataeb Hezbollah - two Iran-backed armed political factions that provided military support to Assad against Sharaa and other Syrian opposition groups - had <strong>filed criminal complaints in Iraqi courts against the Syrian president</strong>.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/jolanifile1.jpg?itok=9TMXf5pb" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/jolanifile1.jpg?itok=9TMXf5pb"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="1f87ab5f-fc1f-40c1-85ea-e79e87ee4c51" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="333" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/jolanifile1.jpg?itok=9TMXf5pb" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>The Islamic Dawa Party, which held the prime ministership during the bulk of the al-Qaeda insurgency, also warned against inviting Sharaa to Iraq. Though they did not mention the prime minister by name, they said that anyone invited to the Arab League conference <strong>should have a "spotless" legal record, both at home and abroad</strong>.</p>

<p>However, Sudani - like several other Arab leaders - has been keen to normalize ties with Syria following 13 years of civil [proxy war for regime change] war that have destabilized the wider region, including <strong>fueling the rise of the Islamic State group in Iraq</strong>.</p>

<p>The summit also comes shortly after Sharaa met with Trump, who announced the lifting of sanctions imposed on Syria during the Assad era. Still, not everyone has been so open to mending relations with Iraq's western neighbor.</p>

<p>Safaa Rashid, a Baghdad resident who lost three cousins in al-Qaeda blasts in 2005, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraqis-campaign-ban-syria-ahmad-sharaa-qaeda-past" target="_blank">told </a>Middle East Eye last month that he was appalled by Sudani's decision to invite Sharaa.</p>

<p><strong>"[Sharaa] is the face of terrorism,"</strong> he said. "He must be held accountable. I lost three cousins to his group’s violence... How can someone like this be welcomed as if he were an honored guest?"</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T01:00:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 21:00</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/syrian-president-skips-arab-league-summit-baghdad-after-outcry-over-isis-background


guid: 1031458 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Desperate San Francisco Pins Business Hopes On Nintendo Flagship Store
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: j��$L���]��s
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Desperate San Francisco Pins Business Hopes On Nintendo Flagship Store</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Essentially all of America's major cities on the west coast are experiencing a period of steep economic decline.  The reason for the financial squeeze and the exodus of major business chains is obvious - Democrat run cities enforce progressive criminal policies and progressive tax policies.  The two elements combined make it nearly impossible for most companies to function and turn a profit.  Even worse, businesses are finding it difficult to ensure their employees stay safe.</p>

<p>The theft issue is astronomical, even after the California State Government (and city governments) reversed a law which made prosecution of anyone stealing under $950 in goods almost impossible.  Criminal residents took full advantage of the lack of enforcement and gutted numerous retail outlets, forcing them to lock up their stock behind plastic and chains.  The elimination of the law might lesson the incentive to steal, but too many criminals know they are still unlikely to be caught or have their cases pursued by the city. </p>

<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w-29nymZYKI" width="640" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></p>

<p>Denny's, Walgreens, Michael Kors and others have shuttered San Francisco locations. So far in 2025, the San Francisco Police Department has recorded more than 8,100 crime reports, including 530 robberies and over 4,600 instances of larceny theft.</p>

<p>In San Francisco's once bustling Union Square shopping district, some of the largest retailers are running for the hills.  Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Uniqlo, Adidas, American Eagle, J. Crew, Madewell, Aldo, L'Occitane, as well as Psycho Bunny, Sunglass Hut, and Razer have all closed stores in the area or are in the process of leaving. </p>

<p>However, the city is placing hope in the arrival of a brand new Nintendo flagship store in Union Square, which they think will help rejuvenate shopping activity.  The store is one of only two in existence outside of Japan.</p>

<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ab-B5UA-U9w" width="640" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></p>

<p>It probably doesn't need to be spelled out, but the desperation and delusion are palpable here.  The store is a unique item to the US, but not enough to draw in a shopping revival in the already hollow Union Square.  San Francisco's reputation as a tourist destination <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/sf-tourism-rebound-negative-reputation-19364018.php">is undeniably sullied</a>.  A single successful store is also not going to drive other businesses to take a chance in a market they already escaped. </p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/NintendoStore1.jpg?itok=5NFGARAt" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/NintendoStore1.jpg?itok=5NFGARAt"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="82f76d75-93d8-44ce-8c47-785e09efb5aa" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="333" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/NintendoStore1.jpg?itok=5NFGARAt" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Why Nintendo would choose to establish a flagship operation in the area is a mystery, but the city government has recently created a "Downtown Revitalization Program" (including something called the "San Francisco New Deal") which offers a number of financial incentives, grants, low interest loans and rewards for "beautification". Nintendo may have gathered enough taxpayer cash already to pay for their first year of operations. </p>

<p>In other words, no company is going to put down roots in San Francisco unless the local government pays them to do so.</p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T01:35:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 21:35</span>

link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/desperate-san-francisco-pins-business-hopes-nintendo-flagship-store


guid: 1031485 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: NIH Could Be Directed To Study 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nih-could-be-directed-study-trump-derangement-syndrome
hash: 6+/��YD�yЦ��
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">NIH Could Be Directed To Study 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://modernity.news/2025/05/16/nih-could-be-directed-to-study-trump-derangement-syndrome"><em>Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,</em></a></p>

<p><strong>Legislation has been introduced to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the psychological and social roots of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’.</strong></p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/Trump-3_0.jpg?itok=aaLXS1Qb" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Trump-3_0.jpg?itok=aaLXS1Qb"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="5072971a-1649-43d2-9441-d37b40a26493" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="281" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Trump-3_0.jpg?itok=aaLXS1Qb" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson has presented the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) Research Act of 2025, intended to shed light on what has been a serious cultural affliction. </p>

<p>Described as an “intense, irrational hysteria” triggered by the mere mention of President Trump, TDS has become a catch-all for the unhinged reactions of his critics— whether it comes in the form of spittle-flecked blue hair rants, protest effigies, or social media meltdowns.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Trump Derangement Syndrome has led to nationwide violence, including two assassination attempts on <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>.<br><br>
That’s why I introduced the TDS Research Act—we must study the root causes of this toxic state of mind! <a href="https://t.co/J2ZOYl2oEC">https://t.co/J2ZOYl2oEC</a></p>
— Rep. Warren Davidson (@Rep_Davidson) <a href="https://twitter.com/Rep_Davidson/status/1923388625607135617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>Co-sponsored by Alabama Rep. Barry Moore, the research will look to explain why leftists lose their collective minds at the sight of a red hat.</p>

<p>Davidson’s legislation defines TDS as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons” reacting to Trump’s policies, presidency, or very existence, manifesting in “verbal expressions of intense hostility” and even “overt acts of aggression and violence” against his supporters. </p>

<p>The bill points to real-world consequences, citing two assassination attempts on Trump in 2024 as evidence of TDS’s toxic grip. </p>

<p>“This isn’t just about hurt feelings,” Davidson said in a statement, adding “TDS has divided families, fueled nationwide violence, and turned dinner parties into screaming matches.”</p>

<p>“The NIH needs to study this so we can find solutions,” he further urged.</p>

<p>Immediately proving the entire point of the bill, Leftists accused Republicans of weaponizing mental health against supporters of their political opponents.</p>



<p>This isn’t the first time TDS has made legislative waves. In March 2025, five Minnesota Senate Republicans pushed a bill to classify TDS as a mental illness in state law, defining it as “Trump-induced general hysteria” that clouds the ability to distinguish policy disagreements from “psychic pathology.” </p>

<p>That effort, led by Sens. Eric Lucero and others, crashed and burned amid backlash from Democrats, who called it “possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history” and an affront to free speech. </p>

<p>One co-sponsor, Sen. Justin Eichorn, later resigned after a scandal involving charges of soliciting a minor, which didn’t exactly help the bill’s optics.</p>

<p>Davidson’s bill takes a different tack, framing TDS as a public health issue worthy of NIH scrutiny. It calls for reallocating existing NIH funds—no new taxpayer dollars—away from what Davidson calls “ludicrous studies like giving meth to cats” toward something “relevant to everyday Americans.” </p>

<p>The bill tasks the NIH with probing the media’s role in amplifying TDS, analyzing its impact on political polarization, and hunting for “patient zero” of the phenomenon. </p>
<iframe sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin" security="restricted" src="https://modernity.news/2025/04/16/tds-patient-zero-identified/embed/#?secret=WI65NcelFx" width="600" height="500" title="“TDS Patient Zero Identified…” — modernity" data-secret="WI65NcelFx" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" data-sanitized-class="wp-embedded-content" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe>


<p>Within two years, the NIH would report its findings to Congress, potentially shedding light on whether TDS is a genuine psychological condition or just a snarky political jab.</p>

<p>Trump supporters argue the bill is long overdue. They point to extreme anti-Trump rhetoric—comparisons to Hitler, nationwide protests, and the assassination attempts—as evidence that the left has gone haywire.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Literally no matter President Trump says, the left and the media will come out against it.<br><br>
From kids surviving brain cancer to deporting gang members to tariffs — something the left championed for decades.<br><br>
The TDS consumes them so completely that they lose their ability to…</p>
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) <a href="https://twitter.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1922079462965051884?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">The left is beyond repair as it pertains to their TDS condition. There is NOTHING Trump could do that they would ever praise or give him credit for. He could literally fulfill a policy promise proposed by their own party to help the American people and they would still oppose it…</p>
— Mark (@MarkM90388714) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkM90388714/status/1922483310888157261?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
<blockquote data-conversation="none" data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">If DJT promised to drop 500.00 a day into each citizens account the Liberals would have tantrums. All of a sudden it would be "what about the deficit ""what about the unbanked"" what about illegals" NOTHING President Trump does will ever be seen as positive because it's HIM.…</p>
— 🇺🇲🏈BamaEllie🏈🇺🇲 (@Elsinbama) <a href="https://twitter.com/Elsinbama/status/1922607342685671451?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 14, 2025</a></blockquote>
<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is the hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people's judgment. They can't help themselves anymore. They have gone totally batshit crazy! <a href="https://t.co/gW7ejbTRDc">pic.twitter.com/gW7ejbTRDc</a></p>
— Raymond Ng (@rayngls) <a href="https://twitter.com/rayngls/status/1921255753970495561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><em>Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via <a href="https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support">Locals</a> or check out our unique <a href="https://www.modernity.news/shop">merch</a>. Follow us on X <a href="https://x.com/modernitynews">@ModernityNews</a></em>.</p>
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      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T02:10:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 22:10</span>


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305982
title: Iran president calls for continued nuclear negotiations, questions Trump threats
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: � �6$�)��>�^z
tags: #International #Iran #Iran nuclear program #Iran nuclear talks #Middle east #Tehran
content:
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian called for nuclear program negotiations between Tehran and Washington to continue and said that President Trump is sending “contradictory” messages.  “No one but Trump himself believes his words against the Iranian nation; on the one hand, he speaks of peace and stability, and on the other hand, he threatens with the…

link:
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5305982-iran-president-calls-for-continued-nuclear-negotiations-questions-trump-threats/

attributes:
{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/AP25137338860192-1.jpg?w=900","type":"image/jpeg","length":143811}]}


guid: 1031470 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: China Set To Become Top Nuclear Power Source By 2030
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-set-become-top-nuclear-power-source-2030
hash: Rs厂�Ӱ8�� �Y:
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">China Set To Become Top Nuclear Power Source By 2030</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>China has approved plans to build 10 new nuclear reactors for 200 billion yuan ($27.7 billion), positioning it to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest nuclear power producer by 2030, <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-on-track-to-become-top-nuclear-power-generator-by-2030">according to Nikkei Asia.</a></p>

<p>The decision, made at a State Council meeting last month, includes eight Hualong One reactors—developed by state-owned firms based on U.S. and French designs—and two CAP1000 units, based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 model. The reactors will add about 12,000 megawatts of capacity.</p>

<p>Construction will take place along the coast in Shandong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi, with state-owned companies like China National Nuclear Corp., China General Nuclear Power Group, and China Huaneng Group operating the plants.</p>

<p>China paused new nuclear projects after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011 but resumed approvals in 2019, accelerating to around 10 reactors per year since 2022. President Xi Jinping is promoting nuclear power to reduce air pollution, curb oil dependence—China imports about 70% of its crude—and meet climate goals. In 2020, Xi pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2060.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.22.34%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=r6RWwSlO" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.22.34%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=r6RWwSlO"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="2501b5c0-014e-4e73-bb26-770efc57588e" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="300" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Screenshot%202025-05-17%20at%2011.22.34%E2%80%AFAM.jpg?itok=r6RWwSlO" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>Nikkei Asia <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-on-track-to-become-top-nuclear-power-generator-by-2030">writes</a> that by the end of 2024, China had 57 reactors generating 59,760 MW, ranking third globally behind the U.S. and France. Capacity is projected to hit 110,000 MW by 2030, making China the global leader if current trends continue. Nuclear power made up 4.7% of China’s energy mix in 2024, with projections reaching 10% by 2040.</p>

<p>While high construction costs have stalled nuclear projects in the U.S. and Europe, China’s state-owned enterprises continue building efficiently, controlling costs and boosting expertise.</p>

<p>Recall, last week Axios reported that The White House is poised to issue executive orders aimed at accelerating the deployment of nuclear reactors across the United States. The White House actions are expected to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to expedite reactor deployment, potentially circumventing delays from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).</p>

<p>These developments are part of a broader trend toward revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.</p>

<p>The ADVANCE Act of 2024, signed into law in July, aims to streamline the licensing process for advanced nuclear technologies, reduce regulatory costs, and promote the development of next-generation reactors.</p>

<p>Additionally, in a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the Biden administration had formerly expressed intentions to triple the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050, recognizing nuclear energy’s role in achieving carbon-free electricity goals.</p>

<p>The anticipated executive actions reflect a concerted effort to modernize the U.S. energy infrastructure, with nuclear power playing a central role in ensuring energy security and meeting future demands.</p>

<p>As of early 2025, 411 nuclear reactors operated worldwide with a combined 371-gigawatt capacity. Amazon, investing over $1 billion in nuclear projects, is exploring small modular reactors, while Meta and Google are also considering the emerging technology.</p>

<p>As we have continued to report, accelerating power demand growth from AI data centers has sparked a nuclear power revival in the US. For those who missed it, in our note <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/next-ai-trade"><em>"The Next AI Trade</em></a>" from April 2024, more than one year ago, we outlined various investment opportunities for <em>powering up America, </em>most of which have dramatically outperformed the market since then. </p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T02:45:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 22:45</span>


guid: 1031456 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Is Christian Nationalism The Solution To The Frailty Of Liberalism?
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/christian-nationalism-solution-frailty-liberalism
hash: c�ܖ� �ͪ��hٍF�
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Is Christian Nationalism The Solution To The Frailty Of Liberalism?</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://alt-market.us/is-christian-nationalism-the-solution-to-the-frailty-of-liberalism/"><em>Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us</em></a></p>

<p><strong>Conservative movements are often depicted as unyielding and uncompromising; dangerously incapable of adaptation when new ideas come to light. </strong>This image of the political right is rooted in a number of misconceptions. In reality, modern conservatives are often far too compromising – Far too willing to go along to get along. None of us wants to be seen as a dictator.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most important and defining characteristic of conservatives (at least in the US) is a regard for freedom, but ONLY freedom that is tempered by responsibility. When leftists (or libertarians) scrutinize the conservative ideal they usually reach back around 50 years to the days of evangelical censorship – The attempts to shut down the porn industry, temper the gay agenda in media, warn about satanic references in movies and violence in video games.</p>

<p><strong>This was the era of the Christian “busybody” and a lot of people made fun of them for it.</strong> To be clear, they were wrong in some instances, but as our current predicament in the west proves, they were right about many things, too.</p>

<p>The supposed balance to the evangelicals was Liberalism. Most liberals today are certainly not the staunchly individualist and freedom minded people they once were. In fact, the majority of them joined woke activists without question or kept their mouths shut while the far-left pulled a speed run into Orwell’s 1984.</p>

<p>Perhaps in a desperate attempt to save their ideology from losing all relevancy, some liberals slipped over to the center and criticized the woke mob. Most of them didn’t have the balls to jump into the culture war until a few years ago. Those of us in the conservative sphere had already been exposing the existential dangers of post-modernism, futurism and luciferianism for decades.</p>

<p><strong>Centrist liberals say they want to temper the political left’s addiction to Marxism and Communism. As recent events have proven, they are simply not up to the task of controlling their political cousins. </strong>The woke movement spread like a cancer throughout the entire liberal body and they bowed in fealty. The only thing that stopped the rot was the right wing finally taking a stand and going on the offensive.</p>

<p>With conservative principles currently gaining momentum there is a chance that America could actually turn back the clock on mores and social cohesion to a time when traditional values were held in much higher regard. This can only be a good thing in my opinion, but it requires a reconsideration of our concept of personal liberty. Maybe some behavior needs to be reined in? Maybe total unchecked chaos and limitless individualism is a bad thing?</p>

<p><strong>Liberals warn that conservatives are gaining too much power after the success of MAGA in last year’s elections and therefore we must be kept in check. Their argument? The woke left is beaten, but now the world must put a leash on the “woke right”.</strong></p>

<p>The “woke right” label in itself is a rather remedial and silly attempt to divert popular discussion away from traditional values (a development that hasn’t taken place in the US in a long time). Morals, nobility and responsibility might become “cool” again, and liberals simply can’t have that.</p>

<p>They argue that their way (a continued idealization of individualism without taking inherent narcissism, psychopathy and the mentality of mobs into account) is the best way. However, we have seen where liberalism without boundaries ends. <strong>The cult of chaos (wokeness) is simply a natural extension of the liberal ideal. They demand an end to ALL restrictions, even the restrictions of objective truth.</strong></p>

<p>They want total open multicultural expansion, unfettered freedom to interpret biology and morality according to subjective preference, unchecked sexual deviancy, no consequences whatsoever for their actions. Liberals are not as far from this end of the spectrum as they pretend. They don’t like cultural structures and rules either. They don’t like collective limitations (unless they control those limitations). They don’t even believe in evil; they only believe in circumstances.</p>

<p>Conservatives now stand atop the fray of the culture war and many of us are suggesting that, in order to prevent the nightmare of wokeness (or something even worse) from ever happening again, we might need to instill some enduring rules of social conduct. The liberals in turn are freaking out. They especially seem to despise Christian Nationalists who want to bring America back to an era of carefully defined moral order.</p>

<p>A decade ago I might have agreed with this concern, at least in part. I’m not fond of the idea of a theocracy in which the church rules the state. I also agree that most people have a conscience outside of biblical teaching (If we didn’t then humanity would have gone extinct long ago).</p>

<p>That said, Christian Nationalism does not require theocracy, and if you do have a conscience then you should already be in agreement with most Christian fundamentals anyway. Living in a society where Christianity is more widely embraced wouldn’t make any difference for you. It would only be incompatible if a person harbors post-modern delusions that view Christianity as the enemy. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t be living in America anyway. All you have to do is go elsewhere.</p>

<p>I think liberals need to acknowledge that they are a product of a very narrow moment in time and that time is fading. For most of American history Christianity was the preeminent cultural compass. The US was always Christian and nearly all of our leaders were Christian. America has in fact always been a Christian nation and Christian Nationalism was the norm. Christians are still the majority today (62%) despite the endless negative campaign to shut them down.</p>

<p><strong>As recently as the 1990s, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/">over 90% of all Americans</a> identified as Christian.</strong> Things have only changed in the past 30 years, and they have done so dramatically to the negative.</p>

<p>In light of the unfettered horrors of wokism I’m increasingly convinced that Christian doctrine is a necessary firewall designed to filter out otherwise malicious ideological malware. If the progressives (and their liberal counterparts) are not kept in check by someone, then the woke march could repeat by the next generation.</p>

<p><strong>So, what is to be done?</strong></p>

<p>The underlying debate is this – Should one group define western culture above all others and defend it against existential threats. Are Christian Nationalists that group? I would say yes to both questions, because of America’s spiritual history and the fact that there’s no other viable alternative. Do we continue to allow liberals to anoint themselves the arbiters of American culture? Or, do we try something different?</p>

<p>Is this hard-right position also “woke right”? The term “woke right” is often linked back to Kevin DeYoung’s 2022 review of Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism. In his article entitled <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/christian-nationalism-wolfe/">“The Rise of Right-Wing Wokeism”</a> he argues that:</p>

<blockquote>
<p><em>“<b>Besides trafficking in sweeping and unsubstantiated claims about the totalizing control of the Globalist American Empire and the gynocracy, Wolfe’s apocalyptic vision—for all of its vitriol toward the secular elites—borrows liberally from the playbook of the left. </b></em></p>

<p><em><b>He not only redefines the nature of oppression as psychological oppression (making it easier to justify extreme measures and harder to argue things aren’t as bad as they seem), he also rallies the troops (figuratively, but perhaps also literally?) by reminding them they’re victims. “The world is out to get you, and people out there hate you” is not a message that will ultimately help white men or any other group that considers themselves oppressed…” </b></em></p>

<p><em>“<b>…If critical race theory teaches that America has failed, that the existing order is irredeemable, that Western liberalism was a mistake from the beginning, that the current system is rigged against our tribe, and that we ought to make ethnic consciousness more important—it seems to me that Wolfe’s project is the right-wing version of these same impulses.”</b></em></p>
</blockquote>

<p>While DeYoung’s analysis seems to be coming from a sincere place and he does defend Christian culture as an important part of American life, his analysis requires a certain level of ignorance to stay afloat. Liberals and left leaning Christians refuse to consider one important factor:</p>

<p><strong>Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.</strong></p>

<p>The entire premise behind the notion of the “woke right” requires that none of the threats above prove to be real. That there is no globalist conspiracy to destroy the west and Christianity. That the subversion of conservative principles is imagined. That there is no white replacement in the US and Europe. That conservatives are not being oppressed and that tribal organization against our attackers is unwarranted or impractical.</p>

<p>DeYoung (and most liberals) prefer passive Christianity. If Christians had thought like DeYoung in the Middle Ages, the entire west would have been wiped off the face of the Earth by Muslim invaders centuries ago. Instead, they took direct action to save themselves. The issue is not even particularly nationalist in origin, it’s only that nations are the easiest barrier to rally and defend. At bottom, Christians must at times act to prevent their own erasure.</p>

<p><strong>Wokeness is largely about false witness</strong> – Leftists claim they are being oppressed when they are provably not. The political right cannot be woke because the western world and Christianity are indeed under constant attack. This is not debatable.</p>

<p>In Europe today, the war on Christians and conservatives (or populists) is evident and it is undeniably systemic. Europeans have been under siege by engineered mass immigration from the third-world. Most of the migrants come from places (Islamic) that despise Christianity and view personal liberty as an aberration or heresy. The governments of France, Germany, England and Romania are actively imprisoning right leaning political opponents and silencing them online, all in the name of liberal democracy.</p>

<p><strong>In the US, woke zealots and the global elites have used everything from mass censorship to medical tyranny to mob violence to shut down and terrorize the political right.</strong> The Biden Administration made multiple public proclamations declaring conservatives a domestic threat to democracy. We were accused of being insurrectionists. We were painted as terrorists, and all we did was ask questions and demand truthful answers. This isn’t an exaggerated tale of victimhood conjured up for sympathy, it’s just the facts.</p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/saint-michael-archangel.jpg?itok=g5L6N665" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/saint-michael-archangel.jpg?itok=g5L6N665"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="12a94db5-9841-4d4f-a358-d9e5fec405c6" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="233" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/saint-michael-archangel.jpg?itok=g5L6N665" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p>The debate over Christians and conservatives taking direct action instead of waiting around for the next crisis reminds me of a fascinating film directed by Bill Paxton called ‘Frailty’. If you haven’t seen it then I recommend doing so before I spoil it for you here.</p>

<p>In the movie, Bill Paxton plays a father with two sons living a relatively normal life as a devout man with a good heart. One day, he approaches his sons with a terrifying tale: He was visited by an angel from heaven that told him he has been chosen for a mission to destroy evil. The evil, he says, is enacted by demons that take the form of human beings. He claims that God has demanded that he and his sons remove these demons before they do anymore harm.</p>

<p>The youngest son believes his father without question and in full faith. The older son does not and asserts that the man might be going dangerously insane.</p>

<p>What follows is an escalating conflict between father and son as Bill Paxton begins to kill the people he believes are demonic. When he touches them, he says he can see the crimes they’ve committed. The older son refuses to participate in the murders and tries to sabotage Paxton’s efforts. Finally, Paxton accuses his oldest of being a demon as well. The boy eventually kills his father in order to stop the murders.</p>

<p>Plot Twist: Bill Paxton really did receive a vision from God. He really was killing demons, and his eldest son was also a demon the whole time.</p>

<p>Liberals who perpetuate the woke right narrative remind me of the oldest son in Frailty.</p>

<p><strong>They play at being even handed, fighting to keep the scales of power from tipping in either direction. In truth, they are blinded by their own self righteousness and their belief that there is no such thing as evil.</strong> The rest of us see it, but if we try to do something about it these same people obstruct and sabotage and accuse us of “becoming monsters to defeat the monsters”. They allow the sparks of woke chaos to survive.</p>

<p><strong>Should western civilization be allowed to discriminate? </strong>Should we be able to refuse to associate? Should we have the right to be tribal (like everyone else) and deny entry to malicious cultures and ideologies? Is our heritage valid and enduring? Is Christian Nationalism the solution to the woke luciferian agenda? It seems to me that the elites want conservatism dead so badly that it must be a threat to them.</p>

<p><strong>We ARE fighting demons, and a culture without a spiritual consensus is a dying culture. </strong>Christian Nationalism was the natural default of American society for centuries. Many people who are not Christians are still perfectly capable of living and thriving within such a society as long as they don’t try to tear it down. The Overton Window has merely been rigged so far to the left that any return to the old standard sounds like madness; it is in fact the most sane thing we could possibly do to save our country.</p>

<p><em>Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.</em></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T03:20:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 05/17/2025 - 23:20</span>


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165907/navire-brooklyn-pont-blesses
title: Un navire frappe le pont de Brooklyn à New York, faisant plusieurs blessés
content: <p>Le maire de New York a confirmé que l'accident avait fait 19 blessés, dont quatre gravement.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165907/navire-brooklyn-pont-blesses
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5306016
title: Mexican navy vessel slams into Brooklyn Bridge, leaves 2 dead, 19 injured
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: �GM�5�Fe(���A��
tags: #State Watch #Mexican Navy #Mexico #New York #New York City
content:
A large Mexican Navy vessel slammed the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night while sailing through the East River, leaving two dead and injuring 19 others, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.  Adams said during a Saturday night press conference that 19 individuals were injured, including four who were “seriously” injured. They…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5306016-mexican-navy-vessel-slams-into-brooklyn-bridge-injuring-19/

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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305983
title: Carville hits Buttigieg for questioning if Biden should have run for reelection
author: ;Sarah Polus
hash: �{�{�����1#���Q
tags: #News
content:
Democratic strategist James Carville took aim at Pete Buttigieg over comments the former Transportation secretary made casting doubt on whether former President Biden should have run for reelection. When asked by reporters earlier this week if the Democratic Party would be in a better position if Biden hadn’t run for a second term, Buttigieg responded,…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/5305983-carville-hits-buttigieg-for-questioning-if-biden-should-have-run-for-reelection/

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guid: CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19
title: House Calendars, DAILY - House Calendars for May 19, 2025 - 119th Congress, 1st Session
link: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19
hash: \��}m*T�4�D�� H
tags: #Proceedings of Congress and General Congressional Publications
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<h2>Content Files</h2>
 <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19/pdf/CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19.pdf">PDF</a><br>
 
 
 
 
 <h2>Metadata download</h2>
 <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/metadata/pkg/CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19/mods.xml">Descriptive Metadata (MODS)</a><br>
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 <h2>All Content and Metadata files, including granules</h2> <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CCAL-119hcal-2025-05-19.zip">ZIP</a>


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747539952
title: Mexican Navy ship crashes into New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, killing 2 people
hash: I>��D=� úD�IP
tags: #News
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content:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says 19 others were injured in the collision, but the bridge spared major damage.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/mexican-navy-ship-crashes-into-brooklyn-bridge-in-new-york-nineteen-injured?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165911/feu-urgence-penurie-eau-courante
title: Privée d’eau, Puvirnituq déclare l’état d’urgence après un incendie
content: <p>À cause du manque d'eau, les pompiers n'ont pas pu s'attaquer immédiatement aux flammes.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165911/feu-urgence-penurie-eau-courante
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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747546273
title: Romania election: George Simion and Nicusor Dan face off in tense run-off
hash: Xpfv���ʂ�����
tags: #News
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content:
The election result could reshape the direction of the pro-EU and NATO member nation bordering war-torn Ukraine.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/romanians-cast-ballots-in-tense-presidential-run-off?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165590/ouvert-ferme-journee-patriotes-fete-reine
title: Ouvert ou fermé pour la Journée nationale des patriotes et la fête de la Reine?
content: <p>Il est toujours recommandé de vérifier l'horaire des établissements avant de s'y déplacer.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165590/ouvert-ferme-journee-patriotes-fete-reine
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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/quiz/actualite/
title: L'info en questions
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/quiz/actualite/
hash: ��K�O7J\��b(
content:
<p>Qu'avez-vous retenu de l'actualité cette semaine? Testez vos connaissances avec notre jeu-questionnaire!</p>

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title: Le journalisme à « l’ère de la croyance et de la crédulité »
hash: 1����` 0�} �#�
guid:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165910/festival-international-journalisme-carleton-populisme-desinformation

content:
<p>Au Festival international du journalisme de Carleton-sur-Mer, réflexions sur la désinformation.</p>

link:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165910/festival-international-journalisme-carleton-populisme-desinformation

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165896/coco-caricature-liberte-presse
title: Coco : « Il ne faut jamais céder à la censure, sinon c’est la mort du métier »
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165896/coco-caricature-liberte-presse
hash: �n�#̺�����5�
content:
<p>La caricaturiste française, survivante de l'attentat de <em>Charlie Hebdo</em>, est de passage au Québec.</p>

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165746/melanie-joly-budget-fedral
title: Joly sur le budget : « Moi, je pense que les Canadiens ont droit à une mise à jour »
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165746/melanie-joly-budget-fedral
hash: �ec����+�� �ݷ�
content:
<p>En entretien aux <em>Coulisses</em>, Mélanie Joly reste floue quant à la présentation d’informations budgétaires.</p>

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165246/guerre-ukraine-entreprises-kalush-economie
title: L’économie ukrainienne menacée de déséquilibre
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165246/guerre-ukraine-entreprises-kalush-economie
hash: �KT�Sϯ�ByP--H�
content:
<p>La guerre a forcé de nombreuses entreprises de l’est ukrainien à relocaliser leurs activités plus à l’ouest.</p>

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title: Réflexions sur l’état de nos rues commerciales
content: <p>Les artères principales cherchent aujourd'hui un nouvel équilibre. </p>
hash: ��d<��[E�(��0%G_
guid:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/long-format/2165663/reflexions-rues-commerciales-urbanisme-pietons-developpement

link:
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/long-format/2165663/reflexions-rues-commerciales-urbanisme-pietons-developpement

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165560/crise-opioides-surdoses-baisse-alberta
title: L’Alberta aurait-elle trouvé la solution à la crise des surdoses?
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165560/crise-opioides-surdoses-baisse-alberta
hash: ��Ac7R�l��d��F�
content:
<p>L'Alberta se targue d’une baisse des décès par surdose, mais des intervenants critiquent son approche.</p>

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guid: yt:video:qaG71bXXlYY
title: Q&amp;A Podcast: Christopher Cox, &quot;Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn&quot;
author: ;C-SPAN
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaG71bXXlYY
hash: n�w���~���O�
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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747553682
title: Bomb hits California reproductive health clinic which FBI calls ‘terrorism’
hash: >m�`y��|��C7`� �
tags: #Show Types
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content:
Video shows aftermath of an explosion outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California that killed one person.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/5/18/bomb-hits-california-reproductive-health-clinic-which-fbi-calls?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747551190
title: Week in Pictures: From deadly storms in US to forced displacement in Gaza
content: A roundup of some of last week’s events.
hash: +��мnŦ �5�u�Q
tags: #News
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link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/5/18/week-in-pictures-deadly-storms-in-the-us-to-forced-displacement-in-gaza?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747551071
title: Israel begins Gaza ground operation, kills 140 in relentless bombardment
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The Israeli military targets hospitals and homes in the most intense bombardment since the start of war.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/children-among-over-100-palestinians-killed-in-israeli-barrage-across-gaza?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747548399
title: Pro-Palestinian protesters rally around the world to mark ‘Nakba Day’
hash: �w�`g`,�Ae�
tags: #News
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content:
Tens of thousands of people stage mass protests worldwide to mark 77 years of Palestinians dispossession.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/5/18/pro-palestinian-protesters-rally-around-the-world-to-mark-nakba-day?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747558803
title: Mexican Navy sailing ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge in New York
content: Videos show the moment a Mexican Navy training ship crashed into New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.
hash: kKsGE�Ah��sɢ��
tags: #Show Types
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/5/18/mexican-navy-sailing-ship-crashes-into-brooklyn-bridge-in-new-york?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885367
title: La Georgia, sentendosi “tradita”, risponderà al Megobari Act statunitense
author: ;A A
hash: �� |��l�f�٘�wL
tags: #Italiano #Caucasus #European Union #Georgia #Politics
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="code-block code-block-2">
<p><strong><em>La Georgia è di nuovo sotto la pressione degli Stati Uniti, proprio come durante la fallita rivoluzione dei colori alla fine del 2024. </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><span>Join us on </span><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/twitter.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875661"></a><span>, and</span> <a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a><a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wk.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875662"></a>.</strong></p>
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<p><strong><span>Contact us:</span> </strong><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><u><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></u></a></p>
<p>L’attuale Governo di Tblisi, attualmente guidato dal partito “Sogno Georgiano” e da tempo in rotta di collisione con Bruxelles per aver approvato leggi “sovraniste” in tema di valori tradizionali e controllo dei finanziamenti ricevuti dalle ONG straniere che operano nel Paese, aveva riposto molte speranze nell’arrivo di Donald Trump alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti.</p>
<p>Come tanti esponenti politici “vittime” della narrazione a stelle e strisce secondo la quale l’attuale inquilino della Casa Bianca sarebbe un “cavaliere” che lotta contro lo “Stato profondo” U.S.A., anche quelli georgiani pensavano che grazie a Trump la pressione della NATO e della U.E. si sarebbe allentata.</p>
<p>Come già successo in casi analoghi (si vedano le dichiarazioni anti Dodik di Rubio e dell’Ambasciatore statunitense a Sarajevo di cui ho parlato nei precedenti articoli dedicati alla Republika Srpska), le aspettative di un cambiamento nella politica globale degli Stati Uniti d’America vengono ancora una volta completamente disattese.</p>
<p>Nei giorni scorsi è stato infatti portato avanti dal Congresso U.S.A. il Menobari Act, una legge che vuole “contrastare l’influenza del Partito Comunista Cinese, del regime iraniano e della Federazione Russa nella nazione georgiana”.</p>
<p>Tale atto smentisce completamente tutte le dichiarazioni di Trump sul fatto che gli Stati Uniti smetteranno di “esportare la democrazia” come hanno tentato di fare con le precedenti amministrazioni democratiche e repubblicane, in quanto secondo il Congresso U.S.A.:</p>
<p>“(1) il progresso compiuto dal popolo della Georgia nel forgiare una società innovativa e produttiva dopo l’indipendenza del Paese dall’Unione Sovietica dovrebbe essere applaudito;</p>
<p>(2) il consolidamento della democrazia in Georgia è fondamentale per la stabilità regionale e gli interessi nazionali degli Stati Uniti;</p>
<p>(3) negli ultimi anni la Georgia ha assistito a un significativo arretramento democratico, come testimoniato da numerose valutazioni e misure indipendenti;</p>
<p>(4) l’attuale Governo georgiano è sempre più ostile nei confronti della società civile nazionale indipendente e dei suoi principali partner euro-atlantici, mentre stringe sempre più legami con la Federazione Russa, la Repubblica Popolare Cinese e altri regimi autoritari anti-occidentali;</p>
<p>(5) gli Stati Uniti hanno interesse a proteggere e garantire la democrazia in Georgia; e</p>
<p>(6) il Segretario dovrebbe sospendere la Commissione per il partenariato strategico tra Stati Uniti e Georgia, istituita attraverso la Carta sul partenariato strategico tra Stati Uniti e Georgia il 9 gennaio 2009, fino a quando il governo della Georgia non avrà adottato misure per:</p>
<p>(A) rappresentare i desideri democratici dei cittadini della Georgia; e</p>
<p>(B) rispettare il proprio obbligo costituzionale di promuovere il Paese verso l’adesione all’Unione Europea e alla NATO” (1).</p>
<p>Inoltre, il punto 4 del Megobari Act sostiene che debba essere la politica ufficiale degli Stati Uniti “invitare tutti i partiti politici e i membri eletti del Parlamento della Georgia a continuare a lavorare per affrontare il piano di riforma delineato dalla Commissione europea per ripristinare lo status di Paese candidato recentemente concesso alla Georgia attraverso un processo di consultazione inclusivo e trasparente che coinvolga i partiti di opposizione e le organizzazioni della società civile, che il popolo georgiano ha liberamente scelto di perseguire;</p>
<p>rivalutare il suo rapporto con il Governo della Georgia e rivedere tutte le forme di assistenza estera e di sicurezza messe a disposizione del Governo se adotta le misure richieste:</p>
<p>(A) riorientarsi verso il suo programma di adesione all’Unione Europea; e</p>
<p>(B) promuovere politiche o leggi che riflettano i desideri espressi dal popolo georgiano;</p>
<p>sottolineare l’importanza di contribuire agli sforzi internazionali per</p>
<p>(A) combattere l’aggressione russa, anche attraverso sanzioni sul commercio con la Russia e l’attuazione e l’applicazione di sanzioni mondiali contro la Russia; e</p>
<p>(B) ridurre, anziché aumentare, i legami commerciali tra Georgia e Russia;</p>
<p>continuare a sostenere lo sviluppo in corso dei valori democratici in Georgia, tra cui elezioni libere e giuste, libertà di associazione, una magistratura indipendente e responsabile, media indipendenti, trasparenza e responsabilità nel settore pubblico, stato di diritto, contrasto all’influenza maligna e sforzi anticorruzione e imporre rapide conseguenze agli individui che sono direttamente responsabili di guidare o si sono impegnati direttamente e consapevolmente nel guidare azioni politiche che minano significativamente tali standard;</p>
<p>continuare a sostenere il popolo georgiano e le organizzazioni della società civile che riflettono le aspirazioni del popolo georgiano alla democrazia e a un futuro con i popoli d’Europa;</p>
<p>continuare a sostenere il diritto del popolo georgiano a partecipare liberamente a proteste pacifiche, a determinare il proprio futuro e a fare scelte indipendenti e sovrane in materia di politica estera e di sicurezza, anche per quanto riguarda le relazioni della Georgia con altri Paesi e organizzazioni internazionali, senza interferenze, intimidazioni o coercizioni da parte di altri Paesi o di coloro che agiscono per loro conto;</p>
<p>invitare tutti i partiti politici, i membri eletti del Parlamento della Georgia e i funzionari del Ministero degli Affari Interni della Georgia a rispettare le libertà di riunione pacifica, di associazione e di espressione, compresa la stampa, e lo stato di diritto, e a incoraggiare una società civile vivace e inclusiva;</p>
<p>invitare il Governo della Georgia a rilasciare tutte le persone detenute o imprigionate per motivi politici e ad abbandonare tutte le accuse pendenti nei loro confronti;</p>
<p>invitare il Governo della Georgia a indagare a fondo su tutte le accuse emerse dalle recenti elezioni nazionali, svoltesi nell’ottobre 2024, a determinare se le elezioni debbano essere giudicate illegittime e a ritenere responsabili coloro che hanno interferito nelle elezioni; e continuare a far presente al Governo della Georgia che gli Stati Uniti sono impegnati a sostenere e ad approfondire le relazioni bilaterali e a sostenere le aspirazioni euro-atlantiche della Georgia.”</p>
<p>Insomma, una completa sconfessione di tutto quanto fatto finora dal legittimo Governo della Georgia per preservare la propria sovranità e autonomia dalle pressioni esterne.</p>
<p>Il Parlamento georgiano ha quindi rilasciato una dichiarazione ufficiale in risposta alla legge Megobari (“amico” in lingua georgiana) recentemente approvata. Secondo Tblisi, tale atto, ribattezzato con il pretesto dell’amicizia, si basa su presupposti infondati e travisa significativamente la situazione in Georgia. L’obiettivo del Governo georgiano è rispondere con i fatti e riaffermare l’opinione che le misure proposte in base a questa legge contraddicono i principi di un autentico partenariato.</p>
<p>La dichiarazione del Parlamento di Tblisi disapprova tali affermazioni, affermando che “dal 2012 la Georgia ha compiuto significativi progressi democratici, tra cui l’adozione di una nuova costituzione, il rafforzamento dell’indipendenza della magistratura, il pluralismo dei media, la riduzione degli abusi nelle carceri e il miglioramento delle libertà civili. Il Parlamento accusa inoltre lo “Stato profondo” statunitense di aver tentato di minare la sovranità della Georgia, facendo riferimento alle controverse leggi statunitensi sulla trasparenza dei finanziamenti e alle presunte pressioni esercitate sui giudici georgiani” (2).</p>
<p>La dichiarazione insiste sul fatto che l’attuale Governo è quello che ha incorporato l’integrazione dell’UE e della NATO nella Costituzione, ha firmato importanti accordi con Bruxelles e si è assicurato lo status di Paese candidato nel 2023, accusando al contempo la “burocrazia europea” e i doppi standard degli Stati Uniti di averne bloccato i progressi.</p>
<p>Per quanto riguarda le relazioni estere, il Parlamento sostiene che la Georgia intrattiene scambi commerciali minimi con la Russia, applica sanzioni internazionali e ha mostrato un forte sostegno all’Ucraina. Definisce ipocrite le critiche ai legami con Cina e Iran, paragonando i modesti contatti diplomatici della Georgia a impegni occidentali ben più profondi con quei Paesi. In una sezione particolarmente dettagliata, il Parlamento sostiene che la Georgia venga punita per essersi rifiutata di “aprire un secondo fronte” contro la Russia durante la guerra in Ucraina, presumibilmente richiesto da attori occidentali del “Deep State”.</p>
<p>La bozza si conclude con una nota poco collaborativa in cui si afferma che la società georgiana non prende più sul serio il Parlamento europeo e si avverte il Congresso degli Stati Uniti che rischia la stessa sorte se continua su questa strada. Tuttavia, sottolinea la volontà del Paese di collaborare con gli Stati Uniti per ristabilire le relazioni una volta rovesciata l’influenza dello “Stato profondo”.</p>
<p>(1) <em>Megobari Act full text</em>, Hr36, 6 maggio 2025, congress.gov.<br>
(2) Mariam Razmadze, <em>Il Parlamento georgiano critica il MEGOBARI Act degli Stati Uniti definendolo ostile e incolpa lo “Stato profondo”</em>, “Georgia Today”, 14 maggio 2025.</p>
<p></p>

link:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/la-georgia-sentendosi-tradita-rispondera-al-megobari-act-statunitense/


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747560714
title: Gaza’s children are “stronger than adults” but can’t fight hunger
content: Volunteer Afeed Nessouli says that the small joys Gaza’s kids find can't mask the toll of hunger.
hash: /�I��ܖ���U�+<
tags: #Show Types
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/quotable/2025/5/18/gazas-children-are-stronger-than-adults-but-cant-fight-hunger?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747547776
title: Poland votes in tight presidential election
hash: xۿ�K! x>�'G��:�
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Foreign policy under Prime Minister Donald Tusk, LGBTQ rights and abortion have been major issues on the campaign trail.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/poland-votes-in-tight-presidential-election?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885371
title: ReBrain Europe, in what sense?
author: ;A A
link: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/rebrain-europe-in-what-sense/
hash: �wK�i豽�,�W�|��
tags: #Europe #World #Capitalism #Crisis #European Union #Science
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="code-block code-block-2">
<p><strong><em>It is a question of political hierarchy. The tribute that a vassal pays to his lord.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><span>Join us on </span><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/twitter.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875661"></a><span>, and</span> <a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a><a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wk.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875662"></a>.</strong></p>
</div>
<p><strong><span>Contact us:</span> </strong><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><u><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></u></a></p>
<p><strong>No money, no science</strong></p>
<p>The collective West is in such a state of decline that it no longer knows how to disguise its decline. When a serious problem arises, one that requires serious reflection, instead of sitting down at the table and examining their conscience, the wonderful machine of communication marketing immediately kicks into gear. Let’s be honest, the West has made this its strong point, managing to pass off even the most resounding defeats as ‘victories’.</p>
<p>This is happening once again in the field of scientific and military research. In the U.S., the Trump administration <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-u-s-researchers-warn-against-climate-of-fear-threatening-science/">has made further cuts to research</a>, following on from those already made in the past. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/13gmMJOMsoNKC4U-A8rhJrzu_xhgS51PEfNMPG9Q_cmE/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.b3f2t4qlidd">A letter </a>of protest has been presented by around <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administrations-attacks-on-science-in-first-30-days/">1,900 American scientists</a>, denouncing the attack on research, especially in the fields of <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/health-research-could-face-severe-cuts-and-changes-under-trump/">health</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/17/trumps-agenda-is-undermining-american-science">the economy</a>, and national security.</p>
<p>According to the authors, the government is drastically reducing research funding, closing laboratories, laying off scientists, and hindering international collaboration. Leading universities are under political pressure, with the threat of funding cuts if they do not comply with certain ideological directives.</p>
<p>The fundamental principle of science—free and independent research—is now compromised. Censorship and economic threats are causing researchers to modify their studies or avoid “sensitive” topics such as climate change or vaccine safety. Fear has taken hold in academia, where many prefer to remain silent so as not to lose funding or jobs.</p>
<p>If this trend continues, the authors warn, the United States risks losing its global scientific leadership, leaving other countries to lead innovation in medicine, technology, and the environment. The consequences would be dire for public health, the economy, and national security.</p>
<p>The document concludes with a call to stop the attack on science, engage the public, and ask political representatives to take action. Science is a common good, and its survival concerns us all.</p>
<p><strong>Europe offers a helping hand, but lacks the resources</strong></p>
<p>In all this, the European Union seems to have had the brilliant idea of offering itself as a lifeline for American academics.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s right: the EU, which has enormous internal problems, has offered to take in American researchers and academics who will lose their jobs, calling them to European territory as “intelligentsia.”</p>
<p>As if the ReArm Europe initiative to spend €800 billion – which does not exist in European banks – on rearmament to wage war on Russia were not enough, European Parliament politicians have decided to launch an initiative to welcome these ‘intellectual migrants’.</p>
<p>All this might seem interesting, were it not for a few truths that need to be highlighted.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the data, with the caveat that there are no updated reports on the European situation as a whole, only national data and a few incomplete sample initiatives by agencies. We will therefore take Italy as an example, the country where universities were invented.</p>
<p>Since the introduction of the Gelmini Law, the Italian university system has seen a gradual replacement of permanent teaching and research staff with temporary workers. In 2010, full professors, associate professors, and structured researchers (RTI) numbered 57,449, constituting 81% of the academic body. The remaining 19% were 13,109 research fellows.</p>
<p>The Gelmini Law initiated the process of phasing out the role of RTIs, who were replaced by two new types of fixed-term researchers: type A (RTDA) and type B (RTDB). The main difference between the two roles is that RTDBs, once they have obtained national scientific qualification, are guaranteed access to the role of associate professor on a permanent basis.</p>
<p>Since 2010, the gap between permanent and precarious staff has widened: in 2020, full professors, associate professors, and the few remaining RTIs fell to 46,245, or 65% of the total. Research fellows rose to 22% (15,849), RTDA to 7% (5,192) and RTDB to 6% (4,616).</p>
<p>In 2022, Law 79 eliminated the positions of RTDA, RTDB, and research fellows, replacing them with the new Tenure Track Researcher (RTT) and research contract, both significantly more expensive positions. However, the law did not provide for additional funding. This prompted university rectors, concerned about university budgets, and project managers to ask the government for an extension of the previous positions. PNRR funds therefore encouraged the massive hiring of precarious staff, particularly research fellows and RTDA.</p>
<p>The PNRR thus led to a significant increase in the number of RTDA and, even more so, research fellows. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of RTDA grew by 36%, from 6,803 to 9,222, or 8% of research staff. For research fellows, the exceptional increase occurred in 2024, probably in conjunction with the launch of the PRIN 2022/PNRR calls for proposals: the number rose from 15,891 in 2023 to 23,958 in 2024 (+51%). At the end of 2024, research fellows accounted for 27% of total staff.</p>
<p>However, the rapid increase in RTDA and research fellows will be followed by an equally sharp decline to zero by 2027, as both positions have been phased out.</p>
<p>Finally, it should be noted that PNRR resources have also contributed to the extraordinary expansion of doctoral positions, which have risen from around 11,000 in 2019 to over 17,000 in 2023.</p>
<p>So what will happen to the approximately 24,000 research fellows and 9,000 RTDA currently in service? And what will be the fate of the new PhDs? In theory, rectors should hold competitions for recruitment… but, in reality, this has not happened to date, and we are now almost halfway through 2025, with the end of the second academic semester.</p>
<p>So, the question is: is there really a need to import labor from abroad? What positions would they fill? Or what jobs would be created ad hoc, effectively replacing opportunities for domestic candidates?</p>
<p>No, the <a href="https://www.collettiva.it/copertine/lavoro/precariato-universita-jl40u37r" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Italian university</a> system—and with it that of <a href="https://www.csee-etuce.org/en/news/etuce/4609-precarious-employment-threatens-research-and-higher-education" target="_blank" rel="noopener">other EU</a> member countries—<a href="https://www.internazionale.it/reportage/alice-facchini/2025/03/19/precari-universita-italiana" target="_blank" rel="noopener">does not have the real and concrete resources</a> to do so.</p>
<p>A second point to consider is qualitative. Here too, a premise is necessary: the available statistics are based on criteria that are not uniform and not sufficiently objective. Nowadays, especially with online access to education, all the evaluation criteria of the past are being revised. We will therefore base our analysis on <a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports dated</a>.</p>
<p>The best-known <a href="https://www.flcgil.it/rassegna-stampa/nazionale/universita-cosi-l-europa-supera-l-america-tra-le-200-migliori-la-meta-sono-europee.flc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">international university rankings</a> publicly represent this hierarchy. Although these rankings take into account various factors – from reputation to teacher/student ratio to research productivity – they do not assess the actual skills of the students trained at these universities.</p>
<p>However, the OECD, through its annual report <a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Education at a Glance</em></a>, has published test results comparing the skills of graduates from different countries.</p>
<p>These data paint a very different picture of higher education than that suggested by traditional rankings, which are often dominated by U.S. and UK universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL.</p>
<p>The OECD tests measured literacy skills among graduates, revealing that the best results did not come from the U.S. or the UK, but from countries such as Japan and Finland. These rankings, based on objective assessments rather than reputation, highlight a very different national composition from the usual well-known names.</p>
<p>The 10 countries with the most competent graduates according to the OECD:</p>
<ul>
<li>Japan</li>
<li>Finland</li>
<li>Netherlands</li>
<li>Sweden</li>
<li>Australia</li>
<li>Norway</li>
<li>Belgium</li>
<li>New Zealand</li>
<li>England</li>
<li>United States</li>
</ul>
<p>The countries at the top of this ranking rarely appear in the most popular university rankings. Although elite U.S. universities are world-renowned, universities in Norway and Australia seem to produce graduates with superior skills.</p>
<p>In the QS World University Rankings, there are 32 U.S. universities in the top 100, while New Zealand has only one. Yet New Zealand graduates perform better than their U.S. counterparts.</p>
<p>There is also the issue of cost and return on investment in higher education, both for students and for society as a whole. The Dutch university system, for example, with its low tuition fees, performs better than the United States and England, where fees are much higher. Scotland and Wales were not included in the OECD measurement, but Northern Ireland ranks 14th. The report’s data also challenge the idea that a good school system guarantees quality university results.</p>
<p>The OECD analyzes national university systems as a whole, while rankings focus on a small group of institutions of excellence. The U.S. education system is in fact very uneven, which is not reflected in rankings that focus only on the top performers. However, the OECD data reopens a long-standing debate on the priorities of university education: is it better to aim for a high average level for all institutions, or to concentrate resources on a few centers of excellence?</p>
<p>From an economic point of view, it could be argued that ensuring high standards in all universities is more beneficial than a landscape of isolated centers of excellence and low-quality institutions. University rankings can highlight differences between individual universities, but they are not adequate tools for assessing the performance of the entire academic system. The OECD, which already organizes the Pisa tests to compare school results in over 70 countries, has tried to launch something similar for university education, but many American universities have shown little interest, and at the moment there are no rankings based on the quality of students trained on the horizon.</p>
<p>Therefore, based on the data, the U.S. is not ‘the best choice’. And it is not just a question of the H-index of publications: it is a pedagogical issue, a question of method, because the way teaching is done in the United States is very different from the way it is done in Italy, Germany or Croatia, for example.</p>
<p>Thirdly, but not least, it is a problem of power hierarchies. Europe is already a victim of American academic colonialism. Research models, quality and evaluation standards, statistical parameters, and content to be disseminated have been imposed. A veritable myth has been created around U.S. universities, forgetting that when the Alma Mater Studiorum was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 1088, the first university in the world, the elderly cousins of today’s Americans—who, let us remember, have nothing to do with the REAL and legitimate inhabitants of those lands—were still grazing sheep and raising pigs in the English hills. There is a gap in cultural level and development of civilizational models that cannot be ignored.</p>
<p><strong>What political utility?</strong></p>
<p>The question therefore remains: what sense does a ReBrain Europe make in this way? Only a clear political utility emerges, once again linked solely to the interests of the technocratic elites in Strasbourg and Brussels, which has nothing to do with the will of the European peoples.</p>
<p>The benefit is to bow down to the U.S. and its allies in the hope of not losing their favor, patronage, and economic support, because without Daddy Dollar, the EU will be thrown into another financial crisis with no way out.</p>
<p>It is a question of political hierarchy. The tribute that a vassal pays to his lord.</p>
<p>American academics would certainly be more useful to the European Commission in justifying the insane war they want to wage against Russia, but for that we already have our own intellectuals, lined up in the front row to reaffirm European greatness through the strengthening of military infrastructure, the war economy, and the sacrifice of the younger generations on the front lines.</p>
<p>But rest assured that none of the interests of the plutocratic oligarchies will be touched by the bullets.</p>
<p></p>


guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885373
title: Russia, negotiations, a search for a new balance: Will the next table be in Libya?
author: ;A A
hash: ��^�s� _��-Qy�
tags: #Africa #Middle East #World #Khalifa Haftar #Libya #Russia #Turkiye
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="code-block code-block-2">
<p><strong><em>Recent events suggest that the West may soon find itself compelled to reach an agreement with Russia over Libya.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><span>Join us on </span><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/twitter.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875661"></a><span>, and</span> <a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a><a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wk.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875662"></a>.</strong></p>
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<p><strong><span>Contact us:</span> </strong><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><u><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></u></a></p>
<p>The world’s attention has turned to Istanbul with hopes for a ceasefire in the more-than-three-year war between Russia and Ukraine. These developments concern not only Russia and Ukraine, but also Donald Trump—whose second presidential term would bring striking pronouncements on global crises—and the European Union, which is accelerating efforts to militarize in support of Ukraine while continuing its aid to Kyiv.</p>
<p>In this new international landscape, where divisions between the U.S. and the EU are increasingly apparent, Turkey—maintaining relations with all sides—has once again become the focus of attention. But negotiations between the West and Russia are not taking place only on the Ukrainian front. There is another critically important arena involving Russia, the U.S., Europe, and even Turkey: Libya.</p>
<p>Recent events suggest that the West may soon find itself compelled to reach an agreement with Russia over Libya as well. But first, let us briefly recall Libya’s current political situation and balance of power:</p>
<p><strong>The Libyan National Army (LNA) and Khalifa Haftar</strong></p>
<p>The Libyan National Army (LNA) controls most of the country’s eastern oil fields, especially in the Sirte Basin. After Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011, this region remained under Islamist control until January 2020, when Haftar’s forces seized it within hours. Haftar’s main backers include the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and the Wagner Group (now called the “Africa Corps”), as well as Russia, via defense agreements.</p>
<p><strong>The Government of National Unity (GNU)</strong></p>
<p>Based in Tripoli and led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the Government of National Unity (GNU) is recognized internationally. Turkey supports the GNU in its fight against Haftar. Beyond these two main powers, numerous militia groups—sometimes clashing with one another, sometimes siding with one camp—shape Libya’s political dynamics. Islamist and jihadi factions have also exploited security vacuums to establish a presence in the southern and western rural areas.</p>
<p><strong>Libya’s Energy Wealth</strong></p>
<p>Libya possesses about 46.4 billion proven barrels of crude oil—making it Africa’s largest and among the world’s top ten—and roughly 1.4 trillion cubic meters of dry natural gas, which solidifies its role as a key player in the Middle East and North Africa.</p>
<p><strong>Russia and Turkey in Libya</strong></p>
<p>Turkey and Russia have long been both competitors and partners in Libya, each seeking to expand its influence. Their rivalry has, to some extent, prevented full Western domination of the country.</p>
<p>In January 2020, Turkey and Russia co‑hosted ceasefire talks in Moscow between General Haftar and the GNU. Though the talks yielded no lasting deal, they did help calm tensions on the ground. In mid‑2020, both countries agreed, indirectly, to freeze fighting along a de facto front from Sirte to Al‑Jufrah. In short, Turkey and Russia have pursued a policy of “managed competition and balance” in Libya to limit U.S. and EU influence.</p>
<p><strong>Haftar’s visit to Russia</strong></p>
<p>Russia’s position in Libya was highlighted again when Haftar and his sons visited Moscow from May 8–10, 2025, at President Vladimir Putin’s invitation. Their trip sent a message of independent policy to all Western states—especially France and Italy—that profit from Libya’s cheap energy, and it offered fresh clues to Russia’s regional clout.</p>
<p>During the visit, Haftar met with President Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, focusing on security, counterterrorism, and developments in the broader North Africa–Sahel region. His son Khalid Haftar signed a strategic defense cooperation agreement with Deputy Defense Minister Yunus‑Bek Yevkurov—an accord that could pave the way for an expanded presence of Russia’s Africa Corps in Libya.</p>
<p>A recent statement from Russia’s Security Council reaffirmed Moscow’s commitment to Libya’s political settlement process and to supporting international efforts to resolve conflicts and combat terrorism across Africa. Previously, in September 2023, Haftar had met with Putin and then‑Defense Minister Shoigu at the Kremlin.</p>
<p><strong>The West’s narrowing options</strong></p>
<p>As Russia deepens its collaboration with the LNA and its rapprochement with Haftar becomes clearer, the West’s options are increasingly constrained. With the war in Ukraine, Trump’s announced tariffs, and political turmoil within Europe, the U.S. under a maturing, negotiation‑oriented but interest‑driven foreign policy may find itself—and its European allies—seeking détente with Russia not just in Eastern Europe but also in North Africa.</p>
<p>Just as realities on the ground in Ukraine have driven negotiations toward the table, a similar equation is emerging in Libya. With Russia’s on‑the‑ground influence in Libya now undeniable, the West appears to have only two choices: recognize this new balance of power or sit down with Moscow to negotiate a Libya dossier.<br>
</p>

link:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/russia-negotiations-search-for-new-balance-will-next-table-be-in-libya/


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/2165046/popularite-cricket-canada-coupe-monde
title: La montée en flèche du cricket au Canada
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/2165046/popularite-cricket-canada-coupe-monde
hash: Eȋ�u�7�)�<m�4;
content:
<p>Le sport gagne en popularité au pays depuis qu'il a été ajouté au programme olympique de 2028. </p>

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guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165832/foret-bois-regime-zecs-chasseur-domtar
title: Réforme forestière : les zecs, les chasseurs et les pêcheurs dénoncent un manque d’écoute
content: <p>Ils dénoncent notamment l'absence de dialogue social pour élaborer le nouveau modèle.</p>
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2165832/foret-bois-regime-zecs-chasseur-domtar
hash: @���K���U��D��
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{"enclosures":[{"url":"https://images.radio-canada.ca/q_auto,w_635,h_357/v1/ici-premiere/16x9/foresterie-foret-reflexion-quebec-industrie-gouvernement.jpg","type":"image/jpeg","length":0}]}


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304915
title: Democrats want Biden to take responsibility for loss to Trump
author: ;Amie Parnes
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5304915-democrats-demand-biden-admit-defeat/
hash: �C��3�1X�?XL@��
tags: #Campaign #News
content:
Democrats are tired of Joe Biden saying he would have won.  What they want, they say, is for the former president to admit to his part in the party’s 2024 loss to Donald Trump.  Democratic strategists, operatives and donors this week in conversations and text exchanges all reiterated the same thing: They want Biden to…

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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747213150
title: Could AI help elderly people and refugees reconstruct unrecorded pasts?
hash: 1��~� d�� ���
tags: #Features
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
How a studio in Barcelona is using artificial intelligence to create 'synthetic memories' where no visual records exist.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/5/18/could-ai-help-elderly-people-and-refugees-reconstruct-their-unrecorded-pasts?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2134451/tramways-toronto-plus-lents-du-monde
title: Des tramways qui roulent à 10,8 km/h en moyenne
link: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2134451/tramways-toronto-plus-lents-du-monde
hash: �=tw<����`��8o�x
content:
<p>Les tramways de Toronto sont les plus lents parmi 17 réseaux répartis sur 3 continents, selon une étude.</p>

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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747565467
title: “Sufficient law” exists for United Nations to end genocide in Gaza
hash: �������������T
tags: #Show Types
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, urged UN states to use their powers to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/quotable/2025/5/18/aje-onl-qt-noura-erakat-180525?traffic_source=rss


guid: 1031487 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: The Latest Hungarian-Ukrainian Tensions Are Troubling
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/latest-hungarian-ukrainian-tensions-are-troubling
hash: $��@������`�)�5
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">The Latest Hungarian-Ukrainian Tensions Are Troubling</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-latest-hungarian-ukrainian-tensions"><em>Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,</em></a></p>

<p>Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban <a href="https://en.iz.ru/en/1885727/2025-05-13/orban-announced-operation-ukrainian-special-services-against-hungary">revealed</a> after a meeting with the Defense Council that <strong>Ukraine is meddling in the <a href="https://tass.com/world/1941521">ongoing Hungarian referendum</a> over whether to support Ukraine’s EU membership plans</strong>. </p>

<p>He also accused the opposition of unprecedentedly colluding with them. </p>

<p><strong>This coincided with Hungary <a href="https://en.iz.ru/en/1886467/2025-05-15/hungarian-air-defense-forces-shot-down-ukrainian-drone">reportedly downing</a> a Ukrainian drone, which followed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/9/ukraine-accuses-duo-of-running-hungarian-spy-network">tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions</a> after Ukraine accused Hungary of spying on it and Hungary accused Ukraine of pushing hostile propaganda.</strong></p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%287%29_7.jpg?itok=Tus7NFCi" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%287%29_7.jpg?itok=Tus7NFCi"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="50fa141a-15fd-45f6-a277-0498352472f7" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="375" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%287%29_7.jpg?itok=Tus7NFCi" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>

<p><strong>The larger context concerns Hungary’s principled refusal to send arms to Ukraine or allow its territory to be used by others to that end due to its pro-peace policy. </strong>As can be evinced above, it’s also against Ukraine joining the EU, the reason being that Ukraine <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-under-discussed-humanitarian">discriminates against</a> the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia/Transcarpathia. Even though Orban has <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/orbans-insight-into-the-global-systemic">repeatedly explained</a> how the aforesaid policies align with Hungarian national interests, Zelensky and many in the West accuse him of being Putin’s puppet.</p>

<p>This was the tacit pretext upon which Ukraine let a gas deal with Russia lapse at the start of the year <a href="https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/the-political-consequences-of-ukraines-decision-to-cut-off-russian-gas-to-europe">to the detriment</a> of downstream customers like Hungary and Slovakia, the second of which began <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-slovak-prime-minister-has-a-pragmatic">following in Budapest’s geopolitical footsteps</a> after Prime Minister Roberto Fico’s return to power in late 2023. <strong>Ukraine’s move was therefore clearly meant to punish them for their pro-peace policies, </strong>which Ukraine believes undermine European unity towards the conflict and could one day obstruct EU financial aid.</p>

<p><strong>The latest tensions are more troubling than any of the aforesaid since they concern security issues. </strong>Mutual mistrust was boiling for a while as detailed above but it’s now taking on a new dimension. Given their deteriorating ties since 2022, it was to be expected that they’d spy on each other, but few could have expected Ukraine’s innuendo that Hungary might be preparing an invasion and Hungary’s innuendo that Ukraine might try to orchestrate a <a href="https://syncreticstudies.com/2014/12/03/the-color-revolution-model-an-expose-of-the-core-mechanics/">Color Revolution</a>. These claims deserve to be scrutinized.</p>

<p><strong>Ukraine’s build upon smears that Hungary is a Russian proxy and might therefore be ordered to open a “second front” sometime in the future on the pretext of protecting its co-ethnics. </strong>While they’re indeed being discriminated against, the costs of a Hungarian military intervention in their support far outweigh the benefits. Hungary would ostracize itself from the West, open itself up to crippling sanctions and possibly even allied attack, and have to incorporate or forcibly expel Zakarpattia’s Ukrainian population.</p>

<p>Hungary’s claims are more believable since Ukraine already behaves as a Western proxy. Former Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/ukraine-humiliated-western-propagandists">boasted</a> in January 2023 that “We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood.” The <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-presenting-itself-as-a">Wall Street Journal</a> then reported in March 2024 that Ukraine was fighting Russia in Sudan, while last summer, a GUR official <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/ukraines-boast-about-being-behind">claimed credit</a> for a <a href="https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-tuareg-conflict-is-much-more">deadly Tuareg attack</a> on Wagner in Mali. It thus wouldn’t be surprising if Ukraine is helping the West undermine Russian-friendly Orban.</p>

<p><strong>With this insight in mind, Ukraine is much more of a credible threat to Hungary than the inverse.</strong></p>

<p>In fact, Ukraine might exploit the latest tensions as the pretext for ramping up pressure on Hungary, which could in turn prompt more European countries to do the same. </p>

<p>Any legal action against the Hungarian opposition for their collusion with the Ukrainian special services might also lead to serious EU sanctions. <strong>Hungary must therefore brace itself for major meddling ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.</strong></p>
</div>
      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T11:00:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 05/18/2025 - 07:00</span>


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304560
title: Can we save ourselves from the dark side of AI?
author: ;Thomas P. Vartanian; opinion contributor
content: The futures of our children and grandchildren depend on smartly harnessing the power of AI
link: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5304560-ai-future-benefits-harms/
hash: :st��%��ޛ��U#O\
tags: #Opinion #Technology
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5305909
title: McCarthy tears into Republicans over Trump budget bill delay: ‘A real misstep’
author: ;Filip Timotija
hash: 6(Қ;�2�� � ��
tags: #House #House Republican Conference #one big beautiful bill #Trump administration
content:
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tore into House Republicans over sinking a key committee vote that would help advance President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” calling it a “real misstep.”  “The stock market seems like it is moving up. Now, if Congress can start doing the things that President Trump’s doing, it would…

link:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5305909-mccarthy-tears-into-republicans-over-trump-budget-bill-delay-a-real-misstep/

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guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885376
title: Diplomatic chess, Ukraine the pawn
author: ;A A
link: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/diplomatic-chess-ukraine-pawn/
hash: �Xd)�g�1W��L #]
tags: #Editor's Choice #Diplomacy #European Union #Russia #Ukraine #Volodymyr Zelensky
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="code-block code-block-2">
<p><strong><em>In Istanbul, a door was pried open after a soap opera’s worth of chicanery in London, Paris, Berlin and Kiev. Now the question is what Trump can do to address Russia’s concerns.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>By Patrick LAWRENCE</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><span>Join us on </span><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/twitter.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875661"></a><span>, and</span> <a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a><a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wk.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875662"></a>.</strong></p>
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<p><strong><span>Contact us:</span> </strong><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><u><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></u></a></p>
<p>As was universally expected, little came out of Istanbul this week, where Ukrainian and Russian delegations met with the ostensible purpose of exploring a negotiated settlement of the proxy war the U.S. provoked three years ago.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>It is an odd state of affairs when even the people doing the talking did not anticipate anything useful to emerge from their talking.</p>
<p>After less than two hours of negotiation, the two sides agreed only to future talks on subsidiary questions: a prisoner exchange and a 30–day ceasefire — a ceasefire Kiev and its Western backers refused for years but are now desperate to implement.</p>
<p>There was no discussion of an accord to end the war and no final agreements other than one to continue negotiations.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And the encounter was not without its acrimonious moments.</p>
<p>Talks to negotiate more talks are not much but not nothing. The two sides have met for the first time since March 2022, when, a month into the war, they previously convened in Istanbul and negotiated a draft document that would have ended the fighting — this until Boris Johnson, then the British prime minister, arrived to scuttle the accord so as to keep the war going.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<div data-sanitized-id="attachment_80275" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/51992919668_f57a71fc76_b.jpg" alt="" width="783" height="522" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-80275" data-sanitized-class=" wp-image-80275">
<p data-sanitized-id="caption-attachment-80275" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption-text">Johnson and Zelensky in Kiev, April 9, 2022. (Ukraine government)</p>
</div>
<p>There is no feigning surprise or disappointment. It was evident during a week of incessant posturing that the Kiev regime and the European powers that have lately assumed the task of manipulating it, have no desire to begin substantive negotiations with the Russian Federation.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>No, for the British, the French, the Germans, and their client in Kiev, the imperative in the run-up to the Istanbul encounter on Friday was to appear earnestly dedicated to talks across a mahogany table while preventing even nascent progress toward a diplomatic settlement.</p>
<p>In this effort the Europeans have failed, at least for now.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p><strong>Trump Takes Over  </strong></p>
<p>President Donald Trump effectively overruled them when, earlier this week, he responded, positively and vigorously, to President Vladimir Putin’s unexpected offer to open talks. Trump insisted, in all caps as is his wont, that Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, should forget the ceasefire and open negotiations “IMMEDIATELY!”</p>
<p>This appears to have pushed to the margins the British, French, and Germans, who have taken over as Zelensky’s hands-on minders since Trump assumed office in January.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>But I see little chance Friday’s talks will mark the end of their effort to keep the war going and a settlement at bay — even as they pretend to stand for precisely the opposite.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<div data-sanitized-id="attachment_128961" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PutinUkraineTalks.png" alt="" width="878" height="542" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128961" data-sanitized-class=" wp-image-128961">
<p data-sanitized-id="caption-attachment-128961" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption-text"><em> Putin with the Russian negotiation team this week in Moscow ahead of the delegation’s departure for Isantabul. (Kremlin)</em></p>
</div>
<p>U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Friedrich Merz set things in motion last weekend when they flew to Kiev for a hastily arranged summit with Zelensky. On their arrival, the British, French and German leaders grandly issued an ultimatum: Moscow must accept a 30–day ceasefire by Monday, May 12, or the Europeans would impose a punishing set of new sanctions on the Russians.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>So did the curtain rise on a lot of poor theater. As John Whitbeck, the international attorney resident in Paris, remarked on his privately circulated blog, this appeared to be an offer Moscow was bound to refuse in order to convey the impression the Europeans were doing their best for peace — but the Russians remained committed to war.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>The fun began then, too. Putin, in a late-night nearly immediate response<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>from the Kremlin, gave the Starmer–Macron–Merz ultimatum all the attention it merited — none — and wrong-footed the Europeans and Kiev by proposing Kiev and Moscow open negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday.</p>
<p>At this point — the chronology has been well-reported — Zelensky began several days of carrying on. The Russian proposal was mere theater: This was his opener. (See what I mean by fun?) O.K., I agree to talks in Istanbul, but I insist on a summit with Putin himself. Putin ignored this, too — as Zelensky and his sponsors knew he would. There must be a ceasefire first — another idea that Kiev and its sponsors dropped.</p>
<p>It was Trump’s intervention that brought the European follies to an end. After the U.S. president’s statements to the press and on social media, the Ukrainian TV–actor-turned-president finally agreed to send a team of Kiev officials, led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, to meet with a Russian delegation headed by Vladimir Medinsky, a prominent adviser to the Russian president.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>Late Friday afternoon the Russian and Ukrainian delegations both announced that they had agreed to resume talks, but for now only on the ceasefire question. “We are ready to continue contacts,” Medinsky said at a post-session news conference.</p>
<p>There was a little more to this encounter than that. In a report Friday evening <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/16/russia-ukraine-peace-talks-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news/?WT.mc_id=e_DM586861&amp;WT.tsrc=email&amp;etype=Edi_FPM_New&amp;utmsource=email&amp;utm_medium=Edi_FPM_New20250516&amp;utm_campaign=DM586861" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/16/russia-ukraine-peace-talks-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news/?WT.mc_id%3De_DM586861%26WT.tsrc%3Demail%26etype%3DEdi_FPM_New%26utmsource%3Demail%26utm_medium%3DEdi_FPM_New20250516%26utm_campaign%3DDM586861&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1747503545262000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0qy5pC5g3rA6u2V9c2smRi"><em>The Telegraph</em> quoted Medinsky</a> telling the Ukrainians across the U–shaped negotiation table, “We don’t want war, but we’re ready to fight for a year, two, three, however long it takes. We fought Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?”</p>
<p>Medinsky’s reference was to what Russians call the Great Northern War, which Russia waged against the Swedish Empire during the reign of Peter the Great, from 1700 to 1721.</p>
<p>And that is it, a door pried open after a soap opera’s worth of chicanery in London, Paris, Berlin, and Kiev.</p>
<p><b>Remember the Minsk Protocols  </b></p>
<div data-sanitized-id="attachment_89125" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Screen-Shot-2023-01-11-at-10.57.25-AM.png" alt="" width="862" height="558" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-89125" data-sanitized-class=" wp-image-89125">
<p data-sanitized-id="caption-attachment-89125" data-sanitized-class="wp-caption-text"><em>Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the Normandy format talks in Minsk, Belarus, Feb. 12, 2015. (Kremlin)</em></p>
</div>
<p>My take on the week’s events takes me back to the Minsk Protocols, which Moscow negotiated a decade ago with Kiev, Paris and Berlin.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>Signed in September 2014 and February 2015, these committed Ukraine to a new constitution whereby the Russian-speaking provinces in the nation’s east would be granted a considerable degree of autonomy. Kiev and Moscow signed, France and Germany serving as co-signatories backing the former.</p>
<p>Kiev ignored the Minsk accords from Day 1. And, as well-reported at the time, the French and Germans later acknowledged they co-signed only to allow Ukraine time enough to rearm so as to continue attacking the eastern provinces and prepare for the war that eventually broke out three years ago.</p>
<p>This pencil-sketched history is useful to understanding this week’s events and what preceded them. Putin got his fingers burned in Minsk, having personally negotiated the two protocols. I do not know when the Russian president decided the European powers could not be trusted, but he has certainly not trusted them since the Minsk debacle.</p>
<p>Last week’s events proved this a sound judgment. In an improvised game of diplomatic chess, Moscow got the Europeans in check this time, making dexterous use of Kiev as its pawn.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>Post–Istanbul, it appears now that the best chance of a settlement of the Ukraine conflict resides in the prospect of a Trump–Putin summit. This, if it comes to pass, would define the Ukraine crisis — altogether properly — as a subset of Trump’s project to restore relations with Moscow.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>And it would disarm, not to say humiliate the Europeans who have been leading the Continent to continue its support for the Kiev regime and the war.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>A couple of caveats are in order here. One, as earlier suggested, it is not at all clear we have heard the last of the European triumvirate who took center stage for a few days this week. Starmer, Macron and Merz, the last just appointed Germany’s new chancellor, are heavily invested in the Ukraine project and the Russophobia that propels it.</p>
<p>Two, as Putin and other Russian officials have made plain numerous times, and very pointedly this past week, substantive negotiations of a settlement of the Ukraine crisis must begin with mutual recognition of “root causes,” to take the phrase the Kremlin now favors.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>This is why Moscow nominated Istanbul as the venue for these new talks. In the draft Boris Johnson disrupted three years ago, these concerns were addressed. <span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>“We view these talks as a continuation of the peace process in Istanbul, which was unfortunately interrupted by the Ukrainian side three years ago,” Medinsky <a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/617632-medinsky-statement-istanbul-full/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said at a press conference</a> as he set out of Istanbul Thursday. “The aim of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is ultimately to secure lasting peace by addressing the fundamental root causes of the conflict.”</p>
<p>The phrase is too ubiquitous in the Russian discourse to ignore. The question now is whether Donald Trump, in any summit he may have with Vladimir Putin, will be at all equipped to address Russia’s concerns.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>If he does, he will fundamentally alter relations between the Western powers and Russia for the good — a diplomatic triumph. If he does not, he is unlikely to get anything more done than negotiators accomplished in Istanbul this week.</p>
<p><em>Original article: </em><strong><a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2025/05/16/patrick-lawrence-diplomatic-chess-ukraine-the-pawn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Consortium News</a></strong></p>


guid: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/?p=139049
title: Has the leftwing stolen our youths?
author: ;pcr3
link: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/05/18/has-the-leftwing-stolen-our-youths/
hash: ���3\��e�� g�
tags: #Guest Contributions
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>Has the leftwing stolen our youths?</p>
<p>You can see here in this young white American female how successful the anti-American left has been in using its control over US education to brainwash white American students.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>This one takes the side of immigrant-invaders and she thinks it is illegal to detain illegal aliens.</p>
<p>Of course, this could be a Democrat Party anti-Trump propaganda video.</p>
<p>Regardless, so many Americans have had their minds programmed with disinformation that it will be extremely difficult for Trump to Make America Great Again.</p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1923084437023076847">https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1923084437023076847</a><span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747562053
title: Trump’s tariffs are failing, but the old model won’t save us either
content: Trade wars won’t save workers. A new economic order can.
hash: ��>�kP;C߬c���+
tags: #Opinions
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/5/18/trumps-tariffs-are-failing-but-the-old-model-wont-save-us-either?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/?p=139041
author: ;pcr3
hash: ����I"kv�6.Z��
tags: #Articles &amp; Columns #Interview archive #Interviews
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
title:
Is Trump Bringing Netanyahu to Heel and Substituting An American Colonial Empire in Place of Greater Israel?

content:
<p>Is Trump Bringing Netanyahu to Heel and Substituting An American Colonial Empire in Place of Greater Israel?</p>
<p>Paul Craig Roberts</p>
<p>Last Tuesday Nima and I discussed whether Trump can break free from Netanyahu’s grip on America<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/4tun0-L8DJw">https://www.youtube.com/live/4tun0-L8DJw</a> .</p>
<p>Three days later, Professor Michel Chossudovsky sent me his interview by Drago Bosnia that provides a unique point of view into the mystery of what is transpiring in the Middle East<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span><a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-trump-says-goodbye-to-greater-israel/5887309">https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-trump-says-goodbye-to-greater-israel/5887309</a> .</p>
<p>Chossudovsky suggests that President Trump is deep-sixing Greater Israel and replacing it with an American colonial project in which Gaza becomes a US possession or territory.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>The prize is the billions of dollars of gas reserves that run from Egypt’s border with Gaza to northern Syria.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Chossudovsky notes that the US embassy in Iraq and the one under construction in Beirut, Lebanon, are the two largest in the world, far too large for the countries and in fact are management centers for Washington’s colonial empire in the Middle East.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Chossudovsky reports that Trump has said “Good Bye Greater Israel.”<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>The area is now being organized into Washington’s colonial empire.</p>
<p>What Chossudovsky says makes sense and clears up conundrums that Nima and I struggled with. If Chossudovsky is on the money, this is a world changer. I wonder if Russia and China understand this?<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Does Iran?<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Turkey? Saudi Arabia?</p>
<p>Notice that in his White House press conference with Netanyahu Trump and Netanyahu falsify history and  the Gaza story  and praise one another.  But Trump’s praise for Israel is followed by Trump’s declaration that Gaza is to become a US possession — <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-does-donald-trump-want-to-transform-gaza-into-a-u-s-territory/5879488"> https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-does-donald-trump-want-to-transform-gaza-into-a-u-s-territory/5879488 </a>.  Trump’s praise for Israel is the sweetener for Trump’s declaration of the end of Greater Israel and the beginning of Washington’s Middle Eastern colonial empire.</p>
<p>Notice that in the question and answer session with the media following the speeches by Trump and Netanyahu, Netanyahu is asked if he accepts Israel’s loss of Gaza to the US.  He gives it a thumbs up. So it appears that a profit-making US neo-colonial empire, with the profits shared throughout the region, will replace Greater Israel.</p>
<p>It appears that both Washington and Israel consider the Diaspora of the Palestinian people and the termination of the Palestinian state to be a done deal and that the few Arab states that remain accept Trump’s plan.  The only remaining potential obstacle is Muslim Iran.  It would be pointless to consult Libya, Iraq, and Syria as these are no longer functioning states.  Perhaps Turkey is a wild card.  If so, Turkey can be won over by Washington’s betrayal of the Kurds.</p>
<p> </p>

link:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/05/18/is-trump-bringing-netanyahu-to-heel-and-substituting-an-american-colonial-empire-in-place-of-greater-israel/


guid: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/?p=139052
title: The United States of America, as we have known it, Has Been Destroyed by the US Supreme Court
author: ;pcr3
hash: ^����#�P:W�ɸ�
tags: #Articles &amp; Columns
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p>The United States of America, as we have known it, Has Been Destroyed by the US Supreme Court</p>
<p>Paul Craig Roberts</p>
<p>“The Supreme Court has just ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane, who came into our Country illegally, are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process, one that will take, possibly, many years for each person, and one that will allow these people to commit many crimes before they even see the inside of a Courthouse. The result of this decision will let more CRIMINALS pour into our Country, doing great harm to our cherished American public. It will also encourage other criminals to illegally enter our Country, wreaking havoc and bedlam wherever they go. The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do. Sleepy Joe Biden allowed MILLIONS of Criminal Aliens to come into our Country without any “PROCESS” but, in order to get them out of our Country, we have to go through a long and extended PROCESS. In any event, thank you to Justice Alito and Justice Thomas for attempting to protect our Country. This is a bad and dangerous day for America!” — President Trump, Truth Social, May 16, 2025 at 5:59 PM</p>
<p><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114519753109701350">https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114519753109701350</a><span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p>As I predicted, the liberal-left, committed as it is to the establishment of a Sodom &amp; Gomorrah Tower of Babel, used the mindless judiciary to protect “rights” of non-citizens who broke the law by entering the country illegally. The judges defined the preservation of America in terms of defending “rights” for illegals who are not US citizens to use US courts to evade enforcement of US law. No one knows where these American rights of non-Americans came from, but the morons on the Supreme Court are defending them. The Supreme Court’s ruling<em> against America</em> in favor of illegal aliens  reads like the babel of an insane asylum. Which is what the court is.  Instead of standing when judges enter the courtroom, they should be pelted with rotten tomatoes and rotten eggs.  There is no reason to respect them as they do not respect America and its Constitution. Most of them are activists for overthrowing traditional America.</p>
<p>The judiciary has also created a fourth branch of government, the civil service or executive branch employees, who the judiciary has now made independent of presidential control.</p>
<p>So, five months into the presidential<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>term, my prediction has come true that the Democrats, committed as they are to the replacement of white racist Americans with people of color, would use the courts to defeat the will of the people as expressed in the presidential election.</p>
<p>Americans do not realize, despite the over-abundance of evidence, that they have been in a civil war for many years.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>That a civil war was underway became completely and totally clear in 2016 and again in 2020 and again during the Biden regime’s illegal prosecutions of Donald Trump and falsely accused and incarcerated “insurrectionists.”<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>That the US Department of Justice and federal courts could be used to imprison American patriots who protested a stolen presidential election demonstrated for even morons to see that the Democrat liberal-left was committed to overthrowing America.</p>
<p>Parents in every state had the evidence before their noses every day of the school year.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>In place of education, white kids were taught, and still are, that they are racists, along with their parents and grandparents, that they might have been born into the wrong body, that gender is unrelated to biology and determined by self-declaration. Parents who resisted sex change operations for their underage children risked losing them to seizure by Child Protective Services.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Young kids were being sexualized at an early age, taught how to give oral sex and to copulate.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space"> The Democrats heavily into pedophilia are creating receptive children for themselves. </span>Merit was abandoned as a basis for admission to quality schools for the gifted and as the basis for graduation, resulting in the destruction of the educational experience once offered to the gifted, people America certainly needs. Corporations and even the military sidelined hiring and promotion for white heterosexual Americans in order to give illegal preference to DEI. Corporate advertising promoted, and still does, miscegenation. Democrat political jurisdictions permitted Antifa and Black Lives Matter to loot and burn white business areas of cities and refused to prosecute.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Laws were passed that reduced the accountability of people of color for crimes.</p>
<p>For these and many other reasons enough of the insouciant American population saw the light and responded by electing an <i>American </i>as president.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>It only took 7 Supreme Court justices and a sprinkling of Democrat federal district judges to defeat the American people’s uprising.</p>
<p>Americans need to understand that the Supreme Court with its ruling has destroyed America.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>A country that cannot defend its borders and that cannot deport illegal entrants is described in Jean Raspail’s <i>The Camp of the Saints,</i> a description of the fate that awaits white Americans, but Americans cannot stop scrolling their cell phones long enough to read a book that tells their future.</p>
<p>If Americans understood what awaits them, it is possible that they could save themselves if there was a massive violent uprising, but the people are too weak-minded and weak-willed to save themselves even if they could face up to the threat.</p>
<p>With my prediction that Trump’s agenda would be blocked proven true, I am encouraged to offer another prediction.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>The Democrats will steal the mid-term elections.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>The RINO Republicans, media, and judiciary will help them in order to get rid of Trump.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Next, President Trump will be successfully impeached, and he and members of his government and supporters will be prosecuted.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>White heterosexual Americans will be discriminated against in every aspect of life.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>All who protest will face charges.<span data-sanitized-class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>The United States of America is about to disappear.</p>
<p>My backup prediction is that the American Establishment will override the Democrat liberal-left, because the ruling establishment sees Trump as an effective agent for their construction of an American neo-colonial empire consisting of Greenland, Panama, Gaza, and the Middle East (see today’s companion article).  This opens up new avenues of plunder for the ruling elite.  The destruction of American unity that the Democrat liberal-left has achieved plays into the hands of the elite as the absence of unity prevents constraints on their <em>privatization of government</em>.  Now that I think about it, my backup prediction could well be the most likely one.</p>
<p> </p>

link:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/05/18/the-united-states-of-america-as-we-have-known-it-has-been-destroyed-by-the-us-supreme-court/


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747564751
title: Portugal holds its third elections in three years
hash: ~ eJ����wY��r
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Immigration and cost of living crisis on voters' minds as they head to polling booths to elect the next government.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/portugal-holds-its-third-election-in-three-years?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747549424
title: Indian professor arrested over social media post on military operation
hash: ���D��]"C��HC��D
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Ali Khan Mahmudabad from Ashoka University held after complaint filed by a youth leader of the ruling BJP.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/indian-professor-arrested-over-social-media-post-on-military-operation?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304432
title: More moms wish they could stay home — our tax policies should help them
author: ;Patrick Brown; Opinion Contributor
content: A one-size fits all approach flies most of all in the face of what mothers want.
hash: ��,]�GDS�#����9(
tags: #Finance #Opinion
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
link:
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5304432-more-moms-wish-they-could-stay-home-our-tax-policies-should-help-them/


guid: 1031508 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: Two Dead After Mexican Navy Smashes Into Brooklyn Bridge
author: ;Tyler Durden
hash: �At&M ��Dmv�/ ��
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Two Dead After Mexican Navy Smashes Into Brooklyn Bridge</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><em>Update (1102ET): </em>Two people were killed in last night's collision between a Mexican navy ship carrying 277 people on board and the Brooklyn Bridge.</p>
<a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/boat-bridge-2-ht-gmh-250517_1747533937194_hpMain_16x9_jpg_92.jpg?itok=tuXE0ZNl" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/boat-bridge-2-ht-gmh-250517_1747533937194_hpMain_16x9_jpg_92.jpg?itok=tuXE0ZNl"><picture><figure role="group" data-sanitized-class="caption caption-img inline-images image-style-inline-images"><img alt="" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="603959b1-c7dd-40d5-8fd4-3f6202c64282" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="281" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/boat-bridge-2-ht-gmh-250517_1747533937194_hpMain_16x9_jpg_92.jpg?itok=tuXE0ZNl" typeof="foaf:Image" width="500"><figcaption><em>Nelson Slinkard/X</em></figcaption></figure></picture></a>

<p>Mayor Eric Adams confirmed that two out of the 19 injured died. Police believe a "mechanical malfunction" and power cut had caused the collision.</p>

<p>Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was deeply saddened by the loss of the crew members.</p>

<p>The Cuauhtémoc, which measures 297 feet long and 40 feet wide, sailed for the first time in 1982. The ship's masts were 158ft tall, while the Brooklyn Bridge has a 135 foot clearance.</p>

<p>*  *  *</p>

<p><strong><a data-image-external-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/prime-berkshire-pork-ebersole-cattle-co-double-pork-bundle/" data-image-href="https://store.zerohedge.com/prime-berkshire-pork-ebersole-cattle-co-double-pork-bundle/" data-link-option="2" href="https://store.zerohedge.com/prime-berkshire-pork-ebersole-cattle-co-double-pork-bundle/"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="816cf367-42cf-4859-9074-b550037f8ad9" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="295" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/berkshire1.jpg?itok=PYdPGyme" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></strong></p>

<p>Approximately 20 people were injured when a <strong>Mexican navy ship carrying at least 200 people collided with the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night, </strong>snapping its three masts and sending crew members flying through the air - with some left swinging in harnesses for 'at least like 15 minutes' according to an eyewitness.</p>

<p>The vessel, the Cuauhtémoc, is a sail training vessel that was about to leave New York for a goodwill tour to Iceland when the incident occurred. Video showed heavy traffic on the bridge during the collision.</p>

<p>On the scene was 23-year-old Nick Corso, who whipped his phone out to capture the action - telling <em>AP</em> it sounded like a "big twig" had snapped, and that the scene was "pandemonium."</p>

<p>"<strong>I didn’t know what to think, I was like, is this a movie?</strong>" he told the outlet.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">A massive pirate ship just hit the Brooklyn Bridge <a href="https://t.co/eWRvh8Ognn">pic.twitter.com/eWRvh8Ognn</a></p>
— Corso (@Corso52) <a href="https://twitter.com/Corso52/status/1923898855763972396?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2025</a></blockquote>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">The Mexican Navy tall ship Cuauhtémoc sailed into New York Tuesday, with 277 sailors aboard.<br>
This is the same ship that crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge tonight.<br>
More:<a href="https://t.co/nflRPALTTW">pic.twitter.com/nflRPALTTW</a></p>
— Marla Hohner (@marlahohner) <a href="https://twitter.com/marlahohner/status/1923920927156216143?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Just watched the Brooklyn Bridge get smoked live by a boat with a massive Mexican flag <a href="https://t.co/R8eJKwJaJ2">pic.twitter.com/R8eJKwJaJ2</a></p>
— Nelson Slinkard (@TheWillieNelson) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheWillieNelson/status/1923902044051550591?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2025</a></blockquote>

<p>The ship was secured by a tugboat between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges following the collision.</p>

<p>At least 19 people were injured, including four with "serious" injuries, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams - while the Mexican navy puts the count at 22 injured, 19 of whom needed medical treatment.</p>

<blockquote data-sanitized-class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">NEW: Video shows sailors on the masts of the Mexican Navy ship Cuauhtémoc before it hit the Brooklyn bridge. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PuenteDeBrooklyn?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PuenteDeBrooklyn</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Barco?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Barco</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/boat?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#boat</a> <a href="https://t.co/gW5GXBfp1a">pic.twitter.com/gW5GXBfp1a</a></p>
— Noteworthy News (@newsnoteworthy) <a href="https://twitter.com/newsnoteworthy/status/1923928821088108804?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<p>"<strong>We saw someone dangling, and I couldn’t tell if it was just blurry or my eyes</strong>, and we were able to zoom in on our phone and there was someone dangling from the harness from the top <strong>for like at least like 15 minutes before they were able to rescue them</strong>," a bystander, Lily Katz, told <a href="https://apnews.com/article/brooklyn-bridge-collision-mexican-navy-ship-ca335dc85ebfbf981bc38516985461c8"><em>AP</em></a>.</p>

<p>Opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge has a main span of nearly 1,600 feet, supported by two masonry towers. Over 100,000 vehicles and an estimated 32,000 pedestrians use the bridge every day, according to the city's transportation department.</p>

<p> </p>
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      <span rel="schema:author" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><a title="View user profile." href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" lang="" about="https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="" data-sanitized-class="username">Tyler Durden</a></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T18:02:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 05/18/2025 - 14:02</span>

link:
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guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747565700
title: At least 13 reported killed in suicide bomb blast in Somalia’s Mogadishu
content: Suicide bomber targets queue of young recruits registering at a military base in the capital.
hash: �{ ĵ&��\��b�XB
tags: #News
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5306176
title: Vance greets Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City
author: ;Alex Gangitano
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5306176-vice-president-vance-meets-pope-leo/
hash: ��?�B��ʋ�p%�
tags: #Administration #International
content:
Vice President Vance and second lady Usha Vance met Pope Leo XIV while in Vatican City for the pontiff’s inauguration mass on Sunday. Before exiting St. Peter’s Square, the vice president and second lady greeted Leo, a spokesperson for the vice president said. Vice President Vance and the first American pope shook hands and appeared…

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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5304383
title: Trump can’t stop schools from teaching the truth
author: ;A. Scott Bolden; Opinion Contributor
link: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5304383-trump-administration-indoctrination-education/
hash: �y߮g�V�*hz�y'�
tags: #Education #Opinion
content:
The Trump administration is seeking to replace education with indoctrination in America's K-12 public schools.

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guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885378
title: How war propaganda has fueled American foreign policy for a century
author: ;A A
hash: �tR M؉�D4� ��
tags: #Editor's Choice #Fake News #Propaganda #United Kingdom #United States
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<div data-sanitized-class="code-block code-block-2">
<p><strong><em>By Mises WIRE, Ryan MCMAKEN</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><span>Join us on </span><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a><a href="https://t.me/strategic_culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/tlg.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875659"></a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a><a href="https://twitter.com/SCJournalOnline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/twitter.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875661"></a><span>, and</span> <a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VK</a><a href="https://vk.com/strategicculture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img loading="lazy" src="https://strategic-culture.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wk.jpg" alt="" width="25" height="25" data-sanitized-class="alignnone wp-image-875662"></a>.</strong></p>
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<p><strong><span>Contact us:</span> </strong><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><u><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></u></a></p>
<p>The<em> New York Times </em>this week <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/business/trump-online-misinformation-grants.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> that the Trump administration has canceled many grants that were to fund “research” on “misinformation.” This is being presented by the media as a dastardly deed that will supposedly allow the spread of misleading or false information through various media channels.</p>
<p>Of course, if there were any genuine interest in studying the most egregious efforts to spread misinformation, media outlets like the <em>Times </em>would study <em>themselves</em> and their friends in the regime. After all, few organizations have been more complicit than the national American media and the US foreign policy establishment when it comes to spreading much of the worst propaganda in American history. I say “worst” because this propaganda has often been used in service to the worst ends: to gin up support for a variety of wars resulting in the deaths of thousands—sometimes even hundreds of thousands—of innocents.</p>
<p>Relatively recent media-regime partnerships in propagandistic misinformation include the “Russiagate” hoax, various efforts to obscure US meddling in Ukraine, and the nearly nonstop drumbeat of “news” stories over the past twenty years designed to push for regime change in various countries from Venezuela to Russia to Libya and to Syria—where the Assad regime, according to US design, was recently replaced by Islamist terrorists. And then, of course, there is the nonstop stream of misinformation designed to prop up the State of Israel and obscure its many war crimes. And let’s not forget the fictional “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq which the US presented to the United Nations as established fact.</p>
<p>Throughout all this, the interventionist “foreign policy blob” in Washington received near universal support from its friends at publications like the <em>Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post.</em></p>
<p>The United States did not invent these tactics. Over the past 100-plus years, however, perhaps no regime was more innovative than the British when it came to inventing “facts” designed to manufacture popular consent for wars and more foreign intervention. The United States has done its best to adopt similar methods, however, and creating invented narratives in service to the regime’s foreign policy goals is now standard operating procedure for the American state as well.</p>
<p><strong>The Great War: The Turning Point</strong></p>
<p>Throughout history, most great powers world have long lied to buttress their war efforts, but these efforts greatly increased in magnitude and sophistication during the twentieth century, mostly with the assistance of increasingly centralized organs of mass media.</p>
<p>For an insightful narrative on how this new “propaganda state” developed, we can consult the works of historian Ralph Raico, who suggests that the true turning point came with the First World War when the British regime, with the help of the media, engaged in a propaganda campaign of impressive effectiveness. Specifically, <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Raico posits</a> that modern wartime propaganda began with “the Belgian atrocity stories of 1914, which was maybe the first great propaganda success in modern times.”</p>
<p>The stories of which Raico speaks were part of a concerted British campaign to wildly exaggerate German aggression in Belgium and to send the message that the Germans were a barbaric race unlike the civilized French and British people of Europe. It was mostly based on an official British government report known as the Bryce Report. The report made countless unsubstantiated claims about mass rapes, children with their hands cut off, violated nuns, and Canadian soldiers crucified on barn doors. This produced horror and anti-German zealotry around much of the world.</p>
<p>But there was one problem: it was nearly all based on lies. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2024-12/The-World-at-War_Raico_20241206.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes:</a></p>
<blockquote><p>What is the story of the Belgian atrocities? The story of the Belgian atrocities is that they were faked. They were fabricated. They were phony. The pictures were photographed in particular buildings which are known in Paris. Th stage sets were designed by designers for the Parisian opera. The stories were made up out of … whole cloth and spread by British propaganda as another weapon in the war—especially in the war for the minds of the neutral countries. …[T]his turns a good deal of public opinion against the Germans.</p></blockquote>
<p>Raico adds one especially ironical note, and quotes historian Thomas Fleming, who <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to Raico</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>to his credit, mentions that the real cases of people, including children, with their hands cut off occurred in the Congo beginning in the 1880s, at the behest of the Belgian king Leopold II. Because of their great extent and nearly incredible cruelty, it’s those that deserve to be called “the Belgian atrocities.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Chief among those neutral countries that were targets of British propaganda, of course, was the United States.</p>
<p>The British regime was desperate to have the Americans enter the war on the American side, and the British almost spared no trouble or expense convincing the Americans that the British were fighting against an enemy of untrammeled malice. The program was very successful. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notes that an</a></p>
<blockquote><p>ingrained bias of the American political class and social elite was galvanized by British propaganda. On August 5, 1914, the Royal Navy cut the cables linking the United States and Germany. Now news for America had to be funneled through London, where the censors shaped and trimmed reports for the benefit of their government. Eventually, the British propaganda apparatus in the First World War became the greatest the world had seen to that time; later it was a model for the Nazi Propaganda Minster Josef Goebbels. Philip Knightley noted:</p>
<p data-sanitized-class="Indent2">British efforts to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side penetrated every phase of American life. . . . It was one of the major propaganda efforts of history, and it was conducted so well and so secretly that little about it emerged until the eve of the Second World War, and the full story is yet to be told.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4><strong>The Americans Adopt British Methods</strong></h4>
<p>Ultimately, the British propaganda effort worked and the United States government enthusiastically entered the war on the side of Britain. This went against what was still a very large portion of the American public’s antiwar preferences, but the British had won the American <em>elites</em> over to their side.</p>
<p>After all, as the British effort mounted, even the Republican party’s leadership began pressuring Woodrow Wilson to take a more hardline anti-German stance. As Raico<a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> puts it</a> “Americans, who devoutly wished to avoid war, had no spokesmen within the leadership of either of the major parties.”</p>
<p>Once the US entered the war, the US’s implemented its own propaganda barrage, and now it took on an additional dimension of outright censorship. For this, the media and the nation’s intellectuals were enlisted to push the war message, and, as Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>public schools and the universities were turned into conduits for the government line. Postmaster General Albert Burleson censored and prohibited the circulation of newspapers critical of Wilson, the conduct of the war, or the Allies. The nation-wide campaign of repression was spurred on by the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, the U.S. government’s first propaganda agency.</p></blockquote>
<p>Just one example of the regime’s capture of educational institutions could be found in how <em>The New York Times </em>praised the President of Columbia University for dismissing faculty members who opposed the regime on conscription.</p>
<p><strong>American Propaganda After the Great War</strong></p>
<p>The Second World War brought another resurgence in war propaganda, and this time, American cooperation with British forces was virtually guaranteed ahead of time. By 1939, Roosevelt was comfortable promising King George VI “full support for Britain in case of war,” as Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">puts it</a>.</p>
<p>By 1940, even before the US entered the war, The US government was working hand in glove with the British government to convince Americans of the necessity of US involvement in the war. As Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notes</a>, the full extent of this collaboration was covered up for decades, although,</p>
<blockquote><p>In 1976, the public finally learned the story of William Stephenson, the British agent code named “Intrepid,” sent by Churchill to the United States in 1940. Stephenson set up headquarters in Rockefeller Center, with orders to use any means necessary to bring the United States into the war. With the full knowledge and cooperation of Roosevelt and the collaboration of federal agencies, Stephenson and his 300 or so agents “intercepted mail, tapped wires, cracked safes, kidnapped, . . . rumor mongered” and incessantly smeared their favorite targets, the “isolationists.” Through Stephenson, Churchill was virtually in control of William Donovan’s organization, the embryonic U.S. intelligence service. Churchill even had a hand in the barrage of pro-British, anti-German propaganda that issued from Hollywood in the years before the United States entered the war. Gore Vidal, in <em>Screening History</em>, perceptively notes that starting around 1937, Americans were subjected to one film after another glorifying England and the warrior heroes who built the Empire. As spectators of these productions, Vidal says: “We served neither Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis; we served the Crown.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Vidal was so impressed—in a bad way—by the continued success of British propagandists in this effort that he <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remarked</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>For those who find disagreeable today’s Zionist propaganda, I can only say that gallant little Israel of today must have learned a great deal from the gallant little Englanders of the 1930s. The English kept up a propaganda barrage that was to permeate our entire culture…. Hollywood was subtly and not so subtly infiltrated by British propagandists.</p></blockquote>
<p>Raico describes how closely the US and the UK collaborated in these efforts, and how successfully. By 1941, there was no doubt where the US regime would come down on the war issue. The primary question by then was how much Roosevelt would be able to drum up American hostility against Japan. In this respect, of course, he succeeded quite well.</p>
<p>A general worldview favoring endless international intervention was supplemented and cemented in the American mind for decades afterward by the ultimate purveyors of propaganda: the government schools. First and foremost was an effort to ensure that executive power was unlimited in international affairs claimed by Roosevelt and his successors. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Back in 1948, Charles Beard already noted the dismal ignorance among our people of the principles of our republican government: American education from the universities down to the grade schools is permeated with, if not dominated by, the theory of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs. Coupled with the flagrant neglect of instruction in constitutional government, this propaganda . . . has deeply implanted in the minds of rising generations the doctrine that the power of the president over international relations is, for all practical purposes, illimitable.</p></blockquote>
<p>The US propaganda apparatus became less focused on British concerns after the war, but was deftly turned toward promoting US regime interests during the Cold War. In his work on the Truman years, Raico notes that by the late 1940s, Truman was also pressing for fresh hostilities, including open warfare, against the new enemy, the Soviet Union. Those who resisted, especially Republicans form the Taft wing of the party, were accused of being Stalin apologists.</p>
<p>In this, Truman, in what had become a well established pattern of American life, was assisted by elite journalists at media outlets. Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notes</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Truman’s campaign could not have succeeded without the enthusiastic cooperation of the American media. Led by the<em> Times</em>, the <em>Herald Tribune</em>, and Henry Luce’s magazines, the press acted as volunteer propagandists for the interventionist agenda, with all its calculated deceptions. (Thee principal exceptions were the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> and the <em>Washington Times–Herald</em>, in the days of Colonel McCormick and Cissy Paterson.) In time, such subservience in foreign affairs became routine for the “fourth estate,” …. Overwhelmed by the propaganda blitz from the administration and the press, a Republican majority in Congress heeded the Secretary of State’s high-minded call to keep foreign policy “above politics” and voted full funding for the Marshall Plan.</p></blockquote>
<p>Voices in favor of peace were shouted down and banished from public discourse. Historian Steven Ambrose<a href="https://cdn.mises.org/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> sums up the Truman-media victory</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>When Truman became president he led a nation anxious to return to traditional civil-military relations and the historic American foreign policy of noninvolvement. When he left the White House his legacy was an American presence on every continent of the world and an enormously expanded armament industry. Yet so successfully had he scared hell out of the American people, the only critics to receive any attention in the mass media were those who thought Truman had not gone far enough in standing up to the communists. For all his troubles, Truman had triumphed.</p></blockquote>
<p>By the end of the Truman years, the pattern was well established, based largely on the earlier efforts of British propaganda that was developed years earlier. Here were all the elements of manufacturing consent that would be employed during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the arms wars of the 1960s and 1980s, and the new “regime change” wars of the post-Cold War world.</p>
<p>In this, we perhaps find the answer to a question posed by Raico <a href="https://cdn.mises.org/files/2025-03/The%20Struggle%20for%20Liberty.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">during one of his lectures</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Isn’t it funny how, with the possible exception of Vietnam, all of America’s wars have been justified and have been right and good? I mean, what are the odds of something like that? A major power’s every war has been good, and the enemy has always been unbelievably horrible?</p></blockquote>
<p>He already knew the answer. It was the state’s propaganda that made it possible for Americans to believe that virtually every new war is some kind of crusade against evil. Thanks to propaganda, the American thinking on foreign policy—which, in an earlier age had been more pragmatic and less moralistic—had taken on its modern tone of quasi-religious righteousness.</p>
<p>Indeed, in this contrast with America prior to the twentieth century, and the concomitant degeneration into an era of total war, we get some hint of just how much a century of relentless propaganda has fashioned the American mind.  Only in examining its history can we hope to fully understand the insidiousness and effectiveness of these methods. It is necessary to also have knowledge of their origins and this allows us to better understand the transformation that took place in the first third of the twentieth century as the American mind became accustomed to a nonstop and creeping propaganda that is still so present in American foreign policy today.</p>
<p><em>Original article: </em><strong><a href="https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-war-propaganda-has-fueled-american-foreign-policy-century" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mises Institute</a></strong></p>

link:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/how-war-propaganda-has-fueled-american-foreign-policy-for-century/


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747568218
title: Inmates escape New Orleans jail through hole behind toilet
content: Surveillance footage shows the moment 10 prisoners broke out of jail in New Orleans.
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guid: 1031488 at https://www.zerohedge.com
title: US Space Chief Says China, Russia May Escalate Space Conflict
author: ;Tyler Durden
link: https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-space-chief-says-china-russia-may-escalate-space-conflict
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<span property="schema:name" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">US Space Chief Says China, Russia May Escalate Space Conflict</span>

            <div property="schema:text" data-sanitized-class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/us-space-chief-says-china-russia-may-escalate-space-conflict-5858946?utm_source=partner&amp;utm_campaign=ZeroHedge"><em>Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,</em></a></p>

<p>U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said the United States’ potential adversaries Russia and China have demonstrated a “recklessness” and aggressiveness that show how much a space-related conflict could escalate, particularly through actions in the war in Ukraine.</p>

<p><em><strong>“You see a tremendous use of space capabilities on the modern battlefield,” </strong>Saltzman <a href="https://www.politico.com/video/2025/05/15/full-interview-with-gen-b-chance-saltzman-politico-security-summit-1609355">said</a> at the Politico Security Summit on May 15.</em></p>

<p><em>“Denying a country access to their space capabilities does create [a] military advantage.”</em></p>

<p>Common usage includes low-orbit interference, such as radio frequency satellite communications jamming, he said. </p>

<p><a data-image-external-href="" data-image-href="/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%289%29_8.jpg?itok=sewrnzGJ" data-link-option="0" href="https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20%289%29_8.jpg?itok=sewrnzGJ"><picture><img data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="14965ff6-b751-4117-91bd-bcc4307886c5" data-responsive-image-style="inline_images" height="300" width="500" src="https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/image%20%289%29_8.jpg?itok=sewrnzGJ" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" data-sanitized-class="inline-images image-style-inline-images"></picture></a></p>

<p><strong>There is also ground interference of space capabilities, such as the cyberattack on Viasat, disabling internet access for tens of thousands in Ukraine and Europe, which coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.</strong></p>

<p>“To me, that’s how that starts. Unfortunately, that may not be where they end,” Saltzman said.</p>

<p>“The PRC and Russia both have the capabilities to escalate that up to grabbing satellites, pulling them out of operational orbit ... certainly missile technology and anti-satellite kinetic capabilities—it could also extend there.</p>

<p>“It can escalate to a more traditional kind of destructive form of combat.”</p>

<p>Russia has already demonstrated such escalation, he noted.</p>

<p><em><strong>“Months before the invasion of Ukraine, they demonstrated a kinetic kill capability: an anti-satellite missile destroyed a satellite. This is 14 years after the PRC demonstrated the same thing,”</strong> he said.</em></p>

<p><em>“All the hazardous lessons of debris have been learned and talked about—and yet they still chose to destroy a satellite.</em></p>

<p><em>“You could argue that was for messaging purposes. Well, message received: This is a war-fighting domain and you intend to be aggressive and demonstrate that capability, so now we’re going to think about how we’re going to respond.</em></p>

<p><em>“And then this idea of putting a nuclear weapon into orbit. The Russians are demonstrating reckless, aggressive behaviors with regards to how they intend to contest the space domain that will have far-reaching impacts beyond any localized military effect.”</em></p>

<p>When it comes to the Chinese regime, Saltzman said his biggest concern is the speed at which its military implements space capabilities.</p>

<p><em><strong>“The PRC has developed what we tongue-in-cheek call a ‘kill web.’ It’s nothing more than a series of hundreds of satellites that are a sensor network that provide real-time updates targeting quality information of our force,” </strong></em>he said.</p>

<p>That would mean, for example, that in moving forces into the Western Pacific, the soldiers would come under “this umbrella of a very accurate, very long range set of weapons,” or the kill web, “before they’re in a position to do anything in terms of meeting military objectives,” he said.</p>

<p><em><strong>“This is a huge problem,”</strong> he said.</em></p>

<p><em>“The Indo-Pacific is where we see this more acutely.</em></p>

<p><strong><em>“There is no question that space is a critical national security interest.”</em></strong></p>

<p>Space capability is a high priority for the Trump administration. In January, the president issued his “Golden Dome” executive order, calling for a sophisticated anti-missile shield for the United States in which the Space Force would play a key role.</p>

<p>The Defense Intelligence Agency published its “Golden Dome” <a href="https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Documents/News/golden_dome.pdf">report</a> on May 13, which highlights emerging threats and names China and Russia as potential adversaries working on exploiting gaps in U.S. ballistic missile defenses.</p>

<p>Defense Department officials also <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4187381/defense-leaders-discuss-threats-golden-dome-during-budget-talks/">met</a> with U.S. senators to discuss the initiative and budget on May 15.</p>
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<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2025-05-18T12:10:00+00:00" data-sanitized-class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 05/18/2025 - 08:10</span>


guid: https://strategic-culture.su/?post_type=article&amp;p=885381
title: Lula (y la izquierda brasileña) en la encrucijada
author: ;A A
link: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/05/18/lula-la-izquierda-brasilena-en-encrucijada/
hash: ���K�F{oWY�W=�
tags: #Español #Brazil #Coup #Inacio Lula da Silva #Latin America #Regime Change
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
<p><strong><em>El régimen neoliberal —transición de la democracia parlamentaria hacia el fascismo puro y simple— se ha agotado.</em></strong></p>
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<p><span><strong>Escríbenos: </strong></span><a href="mailto:info@strategic-culture.su"><strong>info@strategic-culture.su</strong></a></p>
<p>La situación internacional ha pasado por un drástico cambio cualitativo, en particular desde la elección de Donald Trump en Estados Unidos. El régimen neoliberal —transición de la democracia parlamentaria hacia el fascismo puro y simple— se ha agotado. El capitalismo ya no logra encontrar ninguna vía de escape que le permita un mínimo desarrollo real. La alternativa de la burguesía imperialista, por lo tanto, es el proteccionismo, la industrialización a través del rearme y, finalmente, la guerra mundial. Esta política solo puede implementarse de manera rigurosa y sistemática por la vía fascista. No se trata de una elección, sino del resultado natural del derrumbe del sistema capitalista. En EE.UU. y en importantes países europeos (Italia, Países Bajos, Austria, Hungría, etc.), la extrema derecha ya ha llegado al poder, y en otros (Francia, Alemania, Portugal) es solo cuestión de tiempo.</p>
<p>Está claro que este escenario afecta a Brasil. La burguesía imperialista necesita intensificar la explotación de las semicolonias y, para ello, requiere establecer un control político riguroso sobre ellas. Como escribí en febrero, el ajuste fiscal de finales del año fue la gota que colmó el vaso para toda la burguesía brasileña e internacional. Aquellos sectores que creían tener un control pleno sobre el gobierno de Lula se unieron a los que sabían desde el primer momento que eso no era posible. Se forma así un frente único de las diversas capas de la burguesía por un cambio de régimen en Brasil, por el derrocamiento de Lula y del PT.</p>
<p>La burguesía tiene muchas armas para controlar un gobierno, incluso si este no es su gobierno. Aún durante la campaña electoral, la imposición de alianzas con sectores supuestamente democráticos lleva necesariamente a la incorporación de estos sectores a las estructuras del gobierno electo. La integración de un sector de la izquierda fabricado por entidades imperialistas, que sirven más a estas que a las bases populares. Ya en funciones, la dependencia del Congreso Nacional, al que se le debe entregar buena parte del funcionamiento del gobierno para evitar que deje de operar. El ala de la burguesía representada por la oposición contundente de la extrema derecha. Lógicamente, también los instrumentos económicos tradicionales como la deuda pública, los intereses, el Banco Central “autónomo” (del gobierno, no de los banqueros) y los propios pilares de la economía capitalista.</p>
<p>En este tercer gobierno de Lula, hubo una innovación. En sus primeros días, un sector de la burguesía utilizó al otro el 8 de enero para colocar una bola de hierro en el tobillo del gobierno, obligándolo a cargarla por el resto del mandato, minando sus posibilidades de aplicar una política independiente. Al final, debilitándolo y fortaleciéndose (en todos sus aspectos: legislativo, judicial, policial). La trampa fue tan bien montada que no solo Lula y el PT cayeron en ella, sino toda la izquierda nacional.</p>
<p>Nada de esto fue suficiente para corregir el rumbo del gobierno, desde la perspectiva de la burguesía. La ofensiva que venía gestándose cobró impulso tras la frustración del pequeño paquete de gastos. Esto coincidió con el inicio del segundo y último período del actual mandato, ese en el que las fuerzas políticas se preparan con mayor intensidad para las próximas elecciones. No debemos engañarnos ni por un instante: el escándalo del INSS no trata sobre corrupción o compasión hacia los ancianos. Es solo otra palanca para fortalecer la iniciativa golpista de la burguesía. Nuevamente, comienzan a aparecer encuestas de opinión en las que la popularidad de Lula cae en picada. A través de la propaganda de la oposición, estas encuestas afectan a las bases electorales; por la repercusión en la prensa, afectan sobre todo al residuo de la élite política y económica que aún se identificaba mínimamente con el gobierno, y que ahora se retira gradualmente y a una velocidad creciente, temerosa de quedar excluida del futuro club de los vencedores.</p>
<p>Tal descomposición del gobierno, representada por la salida del PDT y por el sabotaje e inminente desbande de União, Republicanos, PP e incluso PSD y MDB, se ve facilitada por la creciente probabilidad de inviabilidad de una candidatura bolsonarista competitiva. Si se elimina la posibilidad de victoria de la extrema derecha más radical, aquellos que apoyaron puntualmente a Lula en 2022 se liberarán de ese peso en 2026. Pero que no haya ilusiones: la propia Simone Tebet (MDB), ministra de Lula, reveló que será necesario un verdadero ajuste fiscal (no el que hizo Lula) en 2027. Los elogios de Tarcísio de Freitas, en el Banco Safra, a Javier Milei, son sintomáticos: no importa quién sea el candidato de la burguesía y del imperialismo contra Lula, será apoyado para aplicar la misma política exterminadora que el presidente de Argentina viene aplicando en su país, bendecido por el dios mercado. Milei (al igual que Zelensky y Netanyahu) es la prueba de que la preparación del fascismo no es incompatible —por el contrario, corresponde perfectamente— con discursos y propaganda sobre la libertad económica, ya que esa libertad, en todos los países en cuestión, incluido Brasil, es la de la explotación intensiva por parte de las potencias imperialistas en camino hacia el régimen fascista.</p>
<p>Aunque, en la primera vuelta, los partidos de la burguesía compitan entre sí —al fin y al cabo, algunos sectores aún prefieren a un Eduardo Leite que a un Tarcísio— y utilicen a un Ciro Gomes para restar votos a la izquierda, en una segunda vuelta la tendencia será que se unan para derrotar a Lula, tal como lo declaró Kassab.</p>
<p>El presidente de la República parece estar captando el sentido de toda esta trama y da señales de un posible intento de reacción. En el ámbito interno, no está seguro de ceder aún más posiciones al centrão, al tiempo que esboza medidas económicas “populistas” y “electoreras”, según el lenguaje de la prensa golpista. Pero es especialmente en el ámbito externo donde Lula busca apoyo. Su participación en el Día de la Victoria es el gesto de mayor afrenta al imperialismo en toda la historia de la política exterior brasileña. Ni la negativa de Vargas a enviar soldados a Corea para servir de carne de cañón de EE.UU., ni la condecoración ofrecida por Jânio Quadros a Che Guevara, ni la visita de Jango a la China maoísta se comparan con el valiente y excepcional prestigio dado por Lula a Putin, el demonio pintado por Occidente, responsable del mayor enfrentamiento con el imperialismo desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Esta acción de Lula es imperdonable. Si Vargas cayó algunos años después, por obra de “fuerzas ocultas”; si también fueron “fuerzas ocultas” las que llevaron a la renuncia de Jânio Quadros; si esas mismas “fuerzas ocultas” finalmente se revelaron al deponer a Jango; ¿por qué dudaríamos de que el imperialismo quiere derrocar a Lula?</p>
<p>La reacción de la prensa burguesa —la misma que elogia a Milei y viene minando al gobierno, la misma que derribó a todos los presidentes mencionados arriba— ante la “infamia” (en palabras de <em>O Estado de S. Paulo</em>) de Lula habla por sí sola. Esta prensa, y las capas políticas y económicas de la burguesía que representa, está formando un frente único con la extrema derecha —incluida la bolsonarista— en su ofensiva contra el gobierno de Lula. La profundización de la crisis del sistema económico mundial y de la polarización política ha llevado a sectores cada vez mayores de la burguesía a apoyar una solución drástica para las crisis internas de sus respectivos países. En el caso de Brasil, esto pasa por el derrocamiento del gobierno del PT y la ascensión de un gobierno violento y vasallo del capital imperialista. Sin embargo, a medida que la respuesta de la burguesía internacional a la crisis económica neoliberal es la industrialización —aunque sea por la vía armamentista—, esa misma política industrial, paradójicamente, favorecerá la reorganización de los trabajadores y el ascenso de las luchas obreras en los países ricos. La tímida política industrial de Lula ya señala esta tendencia también en Brasil, aunque de forma limitada. Los representantes de la burguesía y del imperialismo en Brasil, sin embargo, ya trabajan para “desacelerar la economía”, pues hay más empleo que en los últimos años y, comparado con el período golpista, la vida de los trabajadores está mejor. El remedio para ese mal, desde el punto de vista de la burguesía (lo que comprueba que ella es un impedimento para el desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas), es una devastación como la que promueve Milei.</p>
<p>Ante este escenario, Lula y el PT, completamente abandonados por la burguesía, tendrán que apoyarse en la clase obrera y en las masas populares para sobrevivir al golpe. Las elecciones de 2026 no se parecerán en nada a las de 2022. Si, en todas las elecciones anteriores, cuando la burguesía vio que Lula podría ganar, se acercó a él y, necesitando su apoyo, Lula y el PT le ofrecieron concesiones, sin la burguesía para apoyarse Lula tendrá que ofrecer concesiones a los trabajadores para garantizar su respaldo. El nivel de las concesiones que ofrezca Lula dependerá de la autoridad que las organizaciones populares tengan ante sus ojos y los de los dirigentes del PT. Autoridad que solo puede existir por el apoyo organizado de las bases trabajadoras. De ahí la necesidad urgente de reorganizar el movimiento obrero, relativamente facilitada por las medidas económicas parciales del actual gobierno.</p>
<p>Para los trabajadores, Lula vuelve a ser un instrumento de lucha. Considerando las condiciones expuestas arriba, la candidatura de Lula sirve a los intereses de la clase obrera, en la medida en que deberá ser, necesariamente, una base de lucha contra la burguesía y el imperialismo. De este modo, será un error imperdonable si las direcciones de los trabajadores cambian esta reorganización orientada hacia la lucha por una alianza electoral con el centrão supuestamente antibolsonarista (STF incluido), porque esa alianza ya demostró que no es verdadera, y ahora los trabajadores están en una posición más ventajosa, objetiva y subjetivamente, dada la experiencia acumulada en los últimos años, a pesar de los errores persistentes. La burguesía, como siempre, intentará capturar este movimiento para impedir que se desarrolle de manera independiente, y las organizaciones obreras y populares no pueden, de ningún modo, volver a caer en ese canto de sirena.</p>
<p>Esta movilización debe comenzar desde ya, porque la crisis política del país se profundiza a un ritmo acelerado. En los próximos meses, la burguesía estará atenta a si la tendencia de movilización popular en torno a la candidatura de Lula puede amenazar con llevarlo a la reelección, ante el deterioro de las condiciones de vida de los trabajadores (con la descomposición del régimen y las reacciones en el sentido de desacelerar la economía, es decir, atacar los derechos y la calidad de vida del pueblo) y el choque creciente del PT con el imperialismo. Si esta tendencia se confirma, la burguesía podría intentar otra salida, desesperada. Si el golpe electoral resulta muy arriesgado y con pocas posibilidades de éxito, la alternativa será un golpe preventivo. De hecho, escándalos artificiales como los del INSS no sirven solo para minar las posibilidades de reelección de Lula, sino también para medir la probabilidad del avance de tales crisis hacia un juicio político (<em>impeachment</em>). Por último, dada esta situación hipotética, de gran probabilidad de victoria de Lula, no se puede descartar la repetición de una táctica utilizada (aunque sin éxito) por el imperialismo en las elecciones pasadas en EE.UU.: el intento de asesinato.</p>
<p>Las organizaciones de los trabajadores deben cerrar filas en un frente único bajo la dirección del proletariado, la única manera de enfrentar de forma contundente, efectiva y victoriosa la guerra que la burguesía y el imperialismo están abriendo contra las masas populares. Este movimiento debe ser totalmente independiente de la burguesía para aprovechar la necesidad que Lula tendrá de aliarse con las masas y arrancar el máximo de concesiones, cosa que el movimiento popular no hizo en 2002, 2006 ni en 2022. Exigiendo la ruptura del PT con sus “aliados” saboteadores, las masas trabajadoras y sus organizaciones deben presentar un programa mínimo de forma clara, comenzando por la reversión de todas las medidas tomadas en el período golpista, pasando por la reestatización de todas las empresas privatizadas por el shock neoliberal de los años 90 y terminando con nuevas medidas, que no solo compensen los daños causados, sino que avancen en la construcción de un verdadero gobierno de los trabajadores del campo y la ciudad, de aquellos que producen todas las riquezas de nuestro país y que anhelan disfrutar de esas riquezas que les son robadas todos los días.</p>
<p></p>


guid: https://gript.ie/?p=330823
title: Free School Meals: Just A Political Giveaway?
author: ;Donal Horgan
link: https://gript.ie/free-school-meals-just-a-political-giveaway/
hash: ҕd�j?�\e@��1�
tags: #Comment Ireland #Featured #free hot meals #nutrition #Schools #universal
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content:
[unable to retrieve full-text content]<p>Or an inspired initiative? </p>
<p>The post <a href="https://gript.ie/free-school-meals-just-a-political-giveaway/">Free School Meals: Just A Political Giveaway?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://gript.ie/">Gript</a>.</p>


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747559251
title: India’s space agency suffers setback as it fails to launch satellite
hash: MEmJ��@�ւw�76�M
tags: #News
attributes: {"enclosures":[]}
content:
Attempt to place satellite into orbit fails after launch vehicle encountered a technical issue, ISRO chief says.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/18/indias-space-agency-suffers-setback-as-it-fails-to-launch-satellite?traffic_source=rss


guid: https://www.aljazeera.com/?t=1747570857
title: Leaders attend Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass, including Zelenskyy and Vance
hash: M��؞�P�X* { ��|
tags: #Show Types
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Pope Leo XIV condemned hatred, prejudice and exploitation of the earth and poor, during his inauguration mass.

link:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/5/18/leaders-attend-pope-leo-xivs-inaugural-mass-including-zelenskyy-and-vanc?traffic_source=rss


guid: yt:video:a5eINKFi47A
title: LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Will the US recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations ?
author: ;Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5eINKFi47A
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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5306169
title: ‘SNL’ roasts Trump’s Middle East trip, Qatari jet gift in season finale
author: ;Elizabeth Crisp
link: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5306169-saturday-night-live-trump-qatar/
hash: A�,��Ԡ�"��A>�
content:
SNL's sketch comedy show parodied President Trump's Middle East trip, highlighting his bromance with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the controversy over the $400 million luxury jet gifted by Qatar, while Trump praised his trip as a major success.

tags:
#Administration #In The Know #News #Federal Aviation Administration #Freddie Krueger #James Austin Johnson #President Trump #Qatar #Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman #SNL #Truth social #United Arab Emirates

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guid: yt:video:6w20hddhuDs
title: LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : &quot;Ungoverned space is a petri dish for terrorists&quot;
author: ;Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w20hddhuDs
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guid: yt:video:WU16E95DgdY
author: ;Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU16E95DgdY
hash: �>��R���k��ѐ�
title:
Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Trump's behavior is &quot;illogical&quot; and will not end the war in Ukraine.

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guid: https://thehill.com/?p=5306199
title: Pence on running for president again: ‘I don’t see that in my future’
author: ;Elizabeth Crisp
link: https://thehill.com/homenews/5306199-pence-thinks-no-gop-presidency-run/
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Former Vice President Mike Pence, who sought the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination, does not expect to attempt a grand political comeback but plans to continue to play a role in conservative policy.

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#Administration #Campaign #News #Advancing American Freedom #Democrat Party #Joe Biden #kristen welker #Marco Rubio #Mike Pence #President Trump #Republican Party #vance

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guid: yt:video:dxObZWd_WvM
title: Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump could make history. Will Netanyahu sabotage Trump?
author: ;Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
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guid: yt:video:q_C9a5BWiTE
title: PM Mark Carney speaks with reporters in Rome, Italy – May 18, 2025
author: ;cpac
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