France's €107 Billion Deficit Shock: The Next Euro Debt Crisis?

   We have discussed several times already about the slow motion suicide of Germany which is destroying its industrial base and the cultural suicide of England.  

   France is another category of its own. 40 years ago it was a country of engineers from Polytechnique and other "Grandes Ecoles". These people built TGV High Speed Trains, Ariane rockets, Nuclear Power Plants and Airbus planes. 

   But at the same time, France was also fundamentally a "socialist" country, with a huge civil servant count (57% of employment) and an interventionist state addicted to deficits. Before the Euro, just like Italy, the country balanced its books by devaluing its currency regularly and generating enough growth thanks to its high productivity, which allowed it to compete. 

   But then the Euro arrived. It destroyed growth and exploded the deficits, so much so that nowadays they are literally incalculable and just computed at the end of each year. Twice, three times the European limit of 3%, who cares? The machine is out of control anyway and eventually the European Central Bank will pay for everything, right?      

   Or maybe not as Greece painfully learned. But France is not Greece and as the second largest "customer" of the ECB (European Central Bank), the country knows that when you owe too much to the bank, you are not prisoner of the bank, the bank becomes prisoner of you and is obliged to extend forever more "credit". 

   Everybody knows that such an arrangement is not stable and eventually unravel. It is just a problem for future generations. And then one day, quite suddenly, the future knocks at the door...  

France's €107 Billion Deficit Shock: The Next Euro Debt Crisis?

by Thomas Kolbe

Tuesday marked another low point for European fiscal stability. France, a cornerstone of the euro system, confirmed once again that it remains a leading candidate and potential trigger for a future euro financial crisis.

According to the French Ministry of Finance, the deficit of the French central government amounted to around €107 billion by the end of June. These are staggering figures – a deficit that is 14.4 percent higher than originally planned by the government.

Source

Unless the government builds a fiscal firewall and no economic miracle occurs, the central government deficit could rise to around six percent this year. Not included are the gaps in the social security system, municipalities and regions, which account for an additional significant share of France’s overall deficit. It is possible that the second-largest economy in the European Union will end the year with an overall government deficit of around eight percent.

All budget plans would therefore become obsolete. Last year, the government was already calculating with a deficit of five percent – a figure that, under the originally defined Maastricht criteria, should have triggered an excessive deficit procedure. However, the euro debt club has long abandoned any fiscal restraints.

The problem lies not only on the revenue side. While government revenues recently increased by around 3.7 percent, expenditures rose by 5.4 percent at the same time. The state is growing faster than the economic base that is supposed to finance it.

Despite tax increases and difficult negotiations over spending cuts, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has failed to slow down his country’s debt spiral even remotely.

French fiscal policy can no longer be taken seriously. Forecasts from Paris now have the half-life of the French prime ministers who have failed in increasingly shorter intervals.

The spectacle France is presenting to the world will have consequences. The debt struggle of the Grande Nation no longer concerns France alone, but the entire euro system and the European Union.

It is becoming increasingly clear that European policy over recent years has contributed to a dramatic loss of economic dynamism and productivity. France is facing political paralysis, a president without popular support and the ongoing disintegration of a society that maintains one of the largest welfare states in the world, with a government spending ratio of 57 percent, in an attempt to cover its social fractures.

Cultural alien migration has a price, and sooner or later that price inevitably becomes visible in fiscal policy.

France is also following the German model and constructing its own state economy through debt in an attempt to overcome a never-ending productivity crisis. It is remarkable that this belief in the healing power of central planning can be found throughout the European Union. Has nobody learned the fundamental lessons of history?

The more capital is redirected from the productive sectors of the economy into the construction of a political economy, the poorer the population becomes. This is how socialism works.

We know this pattern from Germany: The state is effectively consuming itself. The greater the damage caused by an expanding state economy in the productive sectors of society, the higher the tax burden and inflationary pressures will ultimately become.

Following this logic, France has raised several taxes over the past twelve months. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu shifted additional burdens primarily onto companies and higher-income earners.

The special levy on large companies with revenues exceeding one billion euros was extended and is expected to generate around €7.3 billion in additional government revenue. In addition, an extended special tax on high incomes is expected to bring in around €650 million. Further measures complete the tax package. Overall, the additional revenues are intended to reduce the burden on the French budget by around €9 billion.

https://www.reuters.com/business/what-is-frances-2026-budget-2026-02-02/

Yet even this fiscal effort is completely out of proportion to the scale of the budget problem. Tax increases are merely treating the symptoms – they do not solve the structural crisis of the French welfare state.

The problems are similar to those in Germany. There are no serious efforts to resolve the migration crisis, no fundamental reform of social programs and no strategy to create new economic momentum through tax relief for the middle class.

France resembles a slow-motion car crash. Everyone sees the collision coming, yet nobody still has the strength to soften the impact.

What happens if the bond market lowers the thumb on France’s creditworthiness?

The rating agencies have already sent warning signals. Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating from AA− to A+ and pointed to the growing debt burden, political uncertainty and the lack of a sustainable path toward stabilizing public finances.

https://www.reuters.com/world/fitch-abaisse-dun-cran-la-note-de-la-france-2025-09-12/

We are witnessing the first signs of a new euro debt crisis emerging on the horizon. Looking back, we must recognize that politics found it easy for a long time to exploit the fiat credit money system and the ECB, integrated into the political process, in order to maintain the illusion of unlimited political feasibility.

Regardless of where in the EU: Politics continues to uphold the illusion that the welfare system has no limits as long as the flow of credit does not dry up.

Reassured and lulled into a false sense of security, nobody questions the political strategy that led to the economic disaster. Yet these quiet times may soon come to an end as interest rates on bond markets continue to rise.

Fauci’s Pandemic of Vanity

   Fauci like Trump is the kind of people our society selects on its road to hell. People intoxicated with their own self, with no values or moral compass, almost completely unable to differentiate between truth and lies.  

   In the case of Trump, it is even worse since his "ideas" follow the rules of Ron Cohn his former mentor and attorney to never back down, attack, deny everything, never admit fault and always claim victory.  

   This failure of democracy was identified long ago by thinkers such as Menken. Initially, the institutions are strong enough to deal with such people, then "they" learn how to game the system. This is where we are today.  

 by Martin Armstrong

Anthony Fauci’s diary, in his own words, provides ample reason to conclude that this man became intoxicated by attention, obsessed with his public image, and disturbingly comfortable turning a national catastrophe into an Anthony Fauci celebrity show. While you were locked away in your home, glued to the television for answers, waiting by the phone for news of loved ones isolated from society, Fauci was basking in his status as an international celebrity.

On March 10, 2020, Fauci wrote, “For better or worse, I am becoming an international celebrity.” Twelve days later, while Americans were losing jobs and watching their businesses collapse, he recorded that the “press is going wild with me.” He then marveled that doughnuts were being named after him, T-shirts carried his face, songs were being dedicated to him, and celebrities such as Trevor Noah and Steph Curry wanted his time.

By May, the self-admiration had become impossible to miss. Fauci wrote that his fame was “explosive and really unimaginable,” adding that he was “the most famous and talked about person in the country.” Who writes that about himself during a mass-casualty emergency? He carefully documented his television profiles, invitations, celebrity encounters, praise from journalists, and even an invitation to appear on Dancing with the Stars. The country was terrified, children were locked out of schools, elderly people were dying alone, and Fauci was keeping a scrapbook of his own stardom.

His entry about Julia Roberts is particularly revealing. He recalled her exclaiming, “Oh my God. It’s Dr. Fauci,” calling him her personal hero, and expressing her delight at speaking with him. He did not merely record the policy discussion; he preserved every drop of praise. The diary repeatedly reads less like the working notes of a dispassionate scientist and more like the journal of a man thrilled that Hollywood had finally discovered him.

The media devoured the Fauci spectacle because he provided exactly what it wanted: a government official willing to sanctify its preferred narrative while treating dissenters as ignorant or dangerous. He appeared across television networks, newspapers, international publications, and glossy magazines, including a special InStyle digital cover photographed poolside in sunglasses while the country remained under pandemic restrictions. Time placed him among its 100 most influential people, Saturday Night Live had Brad Pitt portray him, documentary filmmakers celebrated him, and journalists treated access to him as though they were interviewing a movie star. The press did not scrutinize Fauci as a powerful federal bureaucrat whose decisions affected hundreds of millions of lives; it built a personality cult around him and then attacked anyone who refused to kneel before “America’s doctor.”

The diary contains even more evidence of how completely Fauci came to view himself as the central figure on Earth. On March 22, 2020, he marveled that there were “many print profiles and features on me” and that the “press is going wild with me.” Days later, he catalogued the doughnuts, T-shirts, songs, celebrity calls, and television appearances created in his honor, while in April he wrote that the press remained “hot and heavy about me” and saved a link to an Atlantic story titled “Why America Is Thirsty for Anthony Fauci.”

By May, Fauci declared that it was not hyperbole to call himself “the most famous and talked about person in the country” and “one of the most recognizable” people in the world. Even at the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2022, he recorded being “completely swamped” by people yelling his name and applauding, adding that he was amazed his recognition had reached “such a height.” This was not a passing observation about unwanted publicity; it was a meticulous, almost compulsive inventory of his own importance, written by a man who seemed unable to encounter a compliment, celebrity, magazine profile, or cheering crowd without preserving it for posterity.

Fauci later insisted that he was “certainly not getting a big head,” which is precisely the sort of sentence people write after devoting page after page to how famous, admired, recognizable, and important they have become. This does not prove a clinical personality disorder, but it displays the traits ordinary people associate with extreme narcissism: grandiosity, hunger for admiration, hypersensitivity to criticism, contempt for opponents, and relentless attention to personal status.

The sickest part of this story is that Fauci’s celebrity required the pandemic to continue dominating public life. Every new restriction, frightening prediction, television interview, and conflict with Trump kept him at the center of the national drama. He became more than a bureaucrat; the media transformed him into an untouchable secular saint, and his diary strongly suggests that he loved every minute of it. Americans were ordered to sacrifice their livelihoods, freedom, education, and family relationships while the man presented as “the science” sat behind closed doors recording just how famous the suffering had made him.

THE END IS HERE!!!

   This may be an overstatement or maybe not. A repeat of 2008 is not possible. Central Banks have learned and would immediately flood the market with liquidities. Of that, we can be certain. 

   But what else can happen? Japan may indeed be the canary in the coal mine. Stuck between the rock of rising rates and the hard place of its huge debt. The country can keep sliding towards irrelevance a little longer but eventually at the end of the road, there is either no money or hyperinflation. (PS: Historically, Governments always chose hyperinflation.) In any case, the interest of the debt becomes impossible to pay. This is not a detail since banks, insurance companies and many people depend on these payments to survive. One way or another, it is the end of a system.

   

    But then there is the note on the desk of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent above. I have in the past participated to many such high level meetings and this note is frightening. It confirms that Scott Bessent is both incompetent and an imbecile. Usually, before such discussions, high level officials are briefed by specialists who explain to them what must be discussed in details, what are the options and what can be expected from the other side. The result is infinitely more complicated than "Buy Japanese Yen"!   

   This note confirms that Scott Bessent understands almost nothing about his job and shouldn't be anywhere close to the position of US Treasury Secretary. 

   Unfortunately, what is true for Scott Bessent must also be true across the board for almost ALL the appointed people in the Trump Administration and if that is the case then God have mercy because necessarily when the issues become complex, these people will be completely unable to decide what is the right strategy and will therefore easily be influenced by whoever has the deepest pocket as we have seen recently. THIS in finance is extremely dangerous and more than anything else is the immediate risk we are facing. It doesn't have a due date but it is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the world economy. 

Via State of the Nation

THE PETRODOLLAR IS DEAD:
Stick a fork in it!

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SOTN Editor’s Note: Something quite huge is happening in the realm where the “Financial Masters of the Universe” have reigned supreme since the Babylonian Banking Cartel first set up shop over 4000 years ago.

It’s been obvious to the initiated since at least the stock market crash of September through October of 2008 that the entire Global Economic & Financial System is in tatters. It’s truly remarkable that the financial engineers and market manipulators have been able to keep the Global Gambling Casino going since then–a long 18 years of artificially propping up the largest Pyramid-Ponzi scheme in world history.

Just as the free-fall collapse of Lehman Brothers was engineered as a perfectly controlled demolition of the GE&FS on Monday, September 15, 2008, the nation of Japan as serving as the trigger for the upcoming free-fall market collapse of 2026.

Japan Is the First Domino in the Sovereign Debt Crisis

Not only that but the DARPA-directed geoterrorists are very busy shaking up that multi-island nation in advance of the BIG ONE—both geological and financial.

STAY AWAY FROM JAPAN

However, the U.S. Treasury simply cannot stay away from Japan in light of the fact that they hold $1.143 trillion in US Treasury securities making it the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. Which is exactly……..

Why the U.S. stepped in after decades to prop up Japan’s yen

But wait, it only gets worse.

Treasuries Get Whacked by Japan’s Big Yen Fix. Bonds Don’t Need More Trouble But Are Finding It

What all this really means, as well explained by the much more comprehensive analysis below, is that Japan has been set up as the “Lehman Brothers” of 2026.

State of the Nation
August 3, 2026

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Op-Ed: Bessent Note at Camp David Proves “The End is Nigh”

Hal Turner

OPINION-EDITORIAL — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday, July 31, exposed a “to-do” list during President Donald Trump’s cabinet ​meeting, indicating he was contemplating U.S. purchases of $5 billion to $10 billion ‌worth of Japanese yen, a Reuters photograph taken during the meeting (Shown above) held at Camp David shows.

The Real Panic Isn’t in the Gulf. It’s on the Balance Sheets.

While the world fixates on whether Trump’s latest “locked and loaded” threat is another bluff, the real story is unfolding not in the Strait of Hormuz but on the foreign exchange markets. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Bessent was photographed with a “To Do” list that read: “Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) 5-10 billion dollars.” You don’t scribble a ten-billion-dollar currency intervention on a notepad for a routine meeting. You do it when the world’s third-largest economy is about to detonate the global bond market.

This is the economic front of the same war you just read about. While the U.S. military has run out of the munitions to sustain an air campaign, the U.S. Treasury is running out of the credibility to sustain a financial one.

The Japan Trap

Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, sitting on over $1.1 trillion in Treasury bonds. It also has an economy that is being ground to dust by the same energy crisis that is choking the rest of the world. The price of LNG—the fuel Japan must import to keep its lights on—is up 77.5% year-on-year. That means Japan’s trade balance is hemorrhaging, and its currency, the yen, has collapsed to a 15-year low against the dollar.

A collapsing yen is a catastrophe for Japan. It makes imported energy even more expensive, crushing domestic consumption and industrial production. But a collapsing yen is also an existential threat to the United States, for one simple reason: Japanese investors, who have borrowed cheap yen for decades to buy higher-yielding American assets, are now facing a margin call of historic proportions. If the yen falls too far, they are forced to sell those U.S. bonds to cover their losses.

If Japan sells U.S. bonds in size, U.S. interest rates spike. If U.S. interest rates spike, the American housing market, stock market, and federal budget all shatter simultaneously. So the United States finds itself in the absurd position of having to prop up the Japanese yen—not out of altruism, but because Japan is holding a gun to the head of the global bond market.

The Euro Is Being Sacrificed

This is where Bessent’s note becomes darkly comic. The U.S. Treasury isn’t buying yen with freshly printed dollars—that would only add inflationary fuel to an already raging fire. Instead, they are selling their reserves of euros to fund the yen purchase. The logic is simple: sacrifice the eurozone’s currency to save the dollar from the consequences of a Japanese bond dump.

This is voodoo economics at the end of an empire. The U.S. is now actively engaged in a currency war against its own allies—dumping European assets to prop up a Japanese financial system that is structurally insolvent under the weight of energy costs it cannot control. It is “Zombie QE,” using whacky, and dangerously unserious macroeconomic tools to bring dead markets on the other side of the world back to life. It is a great depression indicator.

The Next Domino

The European Central Bank has remained silent for now, but it cannot ignore this forever. The U.S. is effectively exporting its financial instability to the eurozone by weakening the euro at a time when Europe is already dealing with a diesel crisis, collapsing industrial production, and gas storage levels that will not make it through winter. If the ECB retaliates—by selling its own dollar reserves to defend the euro—the central bank civil war goes hot, and the entire post-1971 fiat currency system faces a crisis of confidence it cannot survive.

Meanwhile, the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond is creeping toward levels that make Japan’s sovereign debt load mathematically impossible to service. The Bank of Japan is trapped: raise rates to defend the yen and you bankrupt your own government; cut rates and the yen goes into freefall, triggering the bond dump you’re trying to avoid.

What This Means for the Next Few Weeks

The Bessent “leak” is not an isolated event. It is the first visible crack in a dam that is about to break. The U.S. Treasury does not conduct coordinated currency interventions for routine turbulence. They do it when the system is hours or days away from a cascading failure.

Here is what is likely to unfold:

• Continued Yen Intervention: The U.S. and Japan will keep propping up the yen through direct market operations. This will work for days, maybe weeks. It will not solve the underlying problem, which is that Japan cannot afford its energy imports at current exchange rates.
• ECB Retaliation Risk: If the euro weakens too much, the ECB will be forced to respond—either verbally, with its own intervention threats, or directly, by selling dollars. This would turn a managed crisis into an open conflict between central banks.
• The Carry Trade Unwind: Even if the yen stabilizes temporarily, the broader unwind of the yen carry trade will continue. This means further selling pressure on U.S. equities and bonds, and further upside pressure on yields.

 

• A Bond Market Accident: At some point, a large Japanese institution—a pension fund, a bank, an insurer—will be forced to liquidate a significant block of U.S. Treasuries to meet margin calls. When that happens, the bond market will seize up, and the Federal Reserve will be forced to step in as the buyer of last resort, monetizing the debt and officially ending the pretense that the U.S. fiscal position is sustainable.

The Synthesis

The military situation and the financial situation are two fronts of the same war. The U.S. cannot sustain the military campaign because its fuel and munitions are depleted. The U.S. cannot sustain the financial system because its credibility and the patience of its creditors are depleted. Both are manifestations of the same core reality: the post-1971 petrodollar order, which depended on cheap energy and subservient creditor nations, is dissolving.

Trump can bluff his way through another round of “peace talks.” The Treasury can print its way through another round of currency interventions. But neither can manufacture a barrel of sour crude, a cubic meter of natural gas, or the trust of a creditor who has realized the collateral is gone. The war is ending. The financial system is ending. What we are watching now is the final act of both.

Why Are Americans So Bloody Stupid? (Video - 50mn)

    A stunning indictment of America and its lack of critical thinking delivered with a strong, mesmerizing Australian accent. Brilliant and to the point. You do not need to agree with everything to enjoy the video. Well actually, that's the point of developing critical thinking. Isn't it? Where the video is enlightening is in explaining how exactly things ended up the way they are. If you are American, by the end of the video, you will be a little less stupid. OK, that was a joke. The people following a blog like this one probably already do enjoy a fair level of critical thinking. And as we all know the problem is other people and their tribes. Right? Did I miss something? :-)    

 Why Are Americans So Bloody Stupid?

"Trump's Damage To US Diplomacy Could Last A Generation!" by McGlinchey

   The Trump "shit-show" is becoming harder to watch by the day.  

   There is no obvious goal or direction. The only thing that is clear is that Trump is "owned" unlikely by ideology so it must be by money and the results are catastrophic. Is there truly no one left in Washington who can inject some good sense into foreign policy and avoid complete auto-destruction? Apparently not. This is what happen when you dismiss everybody around you who voices a dissonant idea or objection to yours.  

   One positive aspect on YouTube is that lately the videos of Colonel Douglas Macgregor are not censured anymore. So here's a recent one to confirm that someone with a "brain" can still be found in the US, if not in the White House:

Colonel Douglas Macgregor: America and Israel Have Lost Iran War

  

By Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

As the US-Israel war on Iran grinds into its sixth month, it’s clear to all but the most intellectually-dishonest Trump loyalists and war-bent Israel-sympathizers that it’s been a spectacular failure.

A war of aggression that was supposed to precipitate a revolution has instead galvanized popular support of the Iranian government in defiance of the country’s tormentors, who’ve killed thousands of their fellow citizens and destroyed civilian infrastructure. A war that was launched to neutralize Israel’s principal rival seems certain to leave that rival far more geopolitically powerful than before, while driving Americans’ support for Israel to record lows.

Beyond unforgivably throwing away the lives of 18 American service members in an unconstitutional war launched on false pretenses, Trump’s blunder has depleted America’s arsenal and pushed the country more than $100 billion deeper into debt. Meanwhile, the longer Trump delays the inevitable consummation of his defeat, the greater the risk of an economic calamity that engulfs not only the United States but the entire world.

If that latter nightmare can be sidestepped, we’ll likely find that Trump has inflicted his most enduring damage on an intangible yet critical national asset: the ability of American diplomats to productively engage counterparts all over the world. From using negotiations as a ploy for surprise attacks to murdering heads of state and casually reneging on American commitments — including his own — Trump’s damage to US diplomacy will be evident for years. Of course, that’s not to suggest America’s foreign policy reputation was sparkling before Trump’s ascension to power — only that he and his team have managed to drag it down to new depths.

Trump’s collaboration with Israel to launch an unprovoked war on Iran is manifestly among the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the American republic. However, it’s important to appreciate that Trump first set this 2026 disaster in motion eight years ago: In May 2018, — spurred on by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and Trump’s Israel-first donors — Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA.

Also called the “Iran nuclear deal,” the July 2015 JCPOA was the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking negotiations over highly technical provisions, conducted by representatives of not only the United States and Iran but also China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from brutal economic sanctions. Among other things, the JCPOA required Iran to eliminate its medium-enriched uranium, slash its cache of low-enriched uranium by 98%, limit future enrichment to 3.67%, agree to even more external monitoring than it was already submitting to, and render its heavy-water reactor worthless by filling it with concrete.

Catering both to devoted Israel supporters and to Republicans who were eager to assume that a deal negotiated during the Obama administration must have been treasonous, Trump had repeatedly railed against the JCPOA throughout his 2016 campaign, declaring that his “number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” After being named national security advisor in April 2018, Bolton — who had long been pushing for war on Iran — quickly prodded Trump into making good on his promises to tear up the JCPOA, despite the fact that Iran was fully complying with the agreement.

“Trump’s move demonstrates that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its promises,” the Belfer Center’s Martin Malin said at the time. “It will heighten tensions in an already smoldering Middle East while giving fodder to hardliners and nuclear bomb advocates in Iran.”

After Trump’s withdrawal and the reinstatement of waived sanctions, Iran waited a year, but then began straying from its own commitments -- using elevated uranium enrichment as a lever to push for a new agreement and relief from suffocating sanctions.

Having long denied it was developing a nuclear weapon -- a claim repeatedly deemed truthful by the US intelligence community -- Iran returned to the negotiating table during Trump’s second term, once again ready to part with the uranium it had enriched to higher levels. Indeed, less than 48 hours before the United States and Israel attacked on Feb. 28, Iran offered concessions that included dilution of its 60%-enriched uranium, a multi-year pause on new enrichment, subsequent enrichment capped at 20%, and expanded IAEA oversight. UK national security advisor Jonathan Powell was reportedly surprised by the strength of the Iranian offer, seeing it as reason to hope war would be averted. His and others’ hopes were about to be dashed.

There are many facets of the Trump administration’s assault on diplomacy, but none more vulgar than using ongoing negotiations as a means of unleashing a surprise attack on a negotiating partner — an attack that includes the killing of that partner’s head of state.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration did to Iran in February. Having held a third round of talks in Geneva on Feb. 26, the two countries were set for what was described as technical-level discussions the following week. Instead, teaming up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump launched a massive war on Iran. In addition to killing more than 100 elementary-age schoolgirls and many other civilians and military conscripts, the opening attack killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his daughter, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

Rubio further diminished US credibility by attempting to characterize the surprise attack as somehow defensive. “We knew there was going to be Israeli action” which would “precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said. Observers were quick to note that, regardless of Israel’s status as a sovereign state, its dependency on Washington means Trump held de facto veto power over an Israeli strike, which makes the rest of Rubio’s rationale hollow.

Marco Rubio: "We went proactively in a defensive way" pic.twitter.com/i3XMjV0C9e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2026

February wasn’t the first time that insincere Trump administration diplomacy set up Iran for a surprise attack. In June 2025, the administration had completed five rounds of negotiations with Iran and scheduled a sixth for June 15. On June 13, Israel attacked Iran. It was no surprise to Trump, who boasted that Israel informed him in advance. On June 22, Trump joined the 12-Day war via Operation Midnight Hammer, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Beyond their fundamental immorality, these surprise attacks amid negotiations undermine long-term US interests by fostering distrust in everyone who witnessed such blatant American treachery. Following the start of all-out war on Feb 28, Washburn University law professor Ali Khan wrote about the consequences of turning negotiations into a “calculated ruse”:

“The breach of good faith signals worldwide that it is pointless to make any deal with someone who would do the opposite after creating an expectation or reliance for the other party. Iran or any other state would be highly reluctant to trust the Trump administration again in future negotiations.”

Note, one shouldn’t assume the world’s distrust will be so tightly associated with Trump that it will vanish when he leaves office. In Marco Rubio and JD Vance, his administration holds at least two potential successors to the Oval Office, to say nothing of senators, representatives and governors who’ve cheered on Trump’s misconduct and would be prone to emulating it. And don’t think for a moment that Democrats are immune to following unhealthy presidential precedents, whatever their commentary may be when those precedents are set by a Republican.

With his 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, Trump reneged on a deal made by another president, but Trump has repeatedly reneged on his own commitments too.

That’s the case with the June 17, 2026 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran, which Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles. Primarily brokered by Pakistan with help from several Middle Eastern states, the MOU has been described as an agreement to make an agreement. It comprises 14 points setting conditions for an immediate ceasefire and 60 days of negotiations for a lasting peace.

Trump quickly fell short of full compliance. “When you look at what’s happening from the Iranian point of view…the Iranians believe that the United States has not lived up to its part of the bargain,” University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer said in July.

There are several elements where Iran reasonably accused Trump of noncompliance, but we’ll examine three, starting with the most significant one of all. Point 5 covers what has replaced uranium as the core focus of the conflict — Iran’s selective blocking of traffic through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz:

5: “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.….[and] conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz...”

This point was widely understood to mean Iran would lift its blockade but still oversee and direct all traffic. When it exerted control of shipping traffic in March, Iran replaced the pre-war route that went down the center of the strait with one that guides traffic along Iran’s coast. However, after the MOU was signed, the Trump administration started instructing ships to use a different route, which passes through the territorial waters of Oman.

“We violated [the MOU] by setting up a southern corridor,” retired US Army Colonel Daniel Davis declared on his Deep Dive geopolitics podcast. “There’s nothing in the MOU that we signed that authorizes a southern corridor or America to enter into it and decide on our own how that’s going to be done. It’s just not there.” Davis, who returned from Afghanistan and blew the whistle in 2012 on civilian and military officials’ misleading of the public on how that war was progressing, suggested the US move in the strait was a deliberate provocation.

Deliberate or not, it was provocative indeed. After issuing radio warnings to ships attempting to use the southern route, Iran fired disabling shots at them. Trump then restarted his bombing of Iran, which prompted Iranian retaliation against American forces and the countries that host them. The two countries then began a long series of “tit for tat” strikes that continued into this week.

Then there’s Point 10 of the MOU, in which the Trump administration promised to issue sanctions waivers that would allow for unfettered Iranian exports of oil and petroleum. Trump revoked the waivers on July 7, pointing to Iran’s attacks on ships that didn’t submit to Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz… control that, again, the United States seemingly agreed to under Point 5.

Numerically reflecting its high importance to Iran, Point 1 of the MOU required the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts in Lebanon.” It focused not so much on Iran and the United States but more so “their allies” — the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia and the US-allied State of Israel. However, Israel continued its operations, including a level of comprehensive destruction of civilian infrastructure in Southern Lebanon that mirrors what the Israeli Defense Forces did to Gaza. One can make the argument that the United States wasn’t in a position to impose MOU terms on Israel, but if that’s truly the case, Trump shouldn’t have signed an MOU by which he essentially certified that he would.

Doubling down, the Trump administration even took action to legitimize the IDF’s presence in Lebanon. “[The MOU] said we had to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. We made no effort to do that,” said former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman. “In fact, we turned around and Marco Rubio went and…brokered an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel that they will jointly go after Hezbollah. So what is this? At a minimum, it’s not very smart.”

Critically, Trump’s behavior bolsters the credibility of hardliners in the Iranian government who’ve repeatedly argued that the United States cannot be trusted and shouldn’t be negotiated with. Moderates prevailed over skeptical hardliners when Iran opted to sign the JCPOA, again when it twice attempted to seek sanctions relief and avert war via negotiations only to be subjected to surprise attacks, and again with the June 17 signing of the MOU.

“The hardliners said ‘don’t sign it, you can’t trust the Americans’,” Mearsheimer recently told Chris Hedges. “But the moderates prevailed, and then the hardliners proved to be correct, so they’re now in the driver’s seat, as best we can tell…and those hardliners will push forward a tougher deal for Trump to swallow” whenever the next version of an MOU is pursued.

It’s not only adversaries of the US government that have been subjected to Trump’s sudden reversals on terms he himself agreed to. Just ask Saudi Arabia.

On July 22, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz ​bin Salman signed an agreement by which the kingdom would be able to build nuclear reactors and enrich uranium with US technology. Both governments published official announcements, and it was seen as a triumph for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The very next morning, Trump blindsided the Saudis and his own subordinates, using a social media post to retroactively add a huge requirement — there would be no nuclear deal unless Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, which entails recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, and the establishment of official diplomatic relations.

Such a move would run counter to Saudi Arabia’s long-running insistence that recognition of Israel is unthinkable without a firm plan for Palestinian statehood. Further, Trump’s demand for a Saudi embrace of Israel comes at a time when Muslims within the kingdom and throughout the region are outraged by Israel’s destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, making such a move perilous for the Saudi royals. Contrary to the agreement his energy secretary had signed, Trump also suddenly declared there would be no enrichment of nuclear material inside Saudi Arabia.

“You strike a deal, you sign it, you announce it, you brag about it, and within 24 hours you’re changing the terms in a fundamental way,” observed the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi on Deep Dive. “If that’s what you do to Saudi Arabia — a country that the United States has a very close relationship with…on top of that, the Trump family has very close business ties with — then what are you going to do with Iran? What is the shelf life of any American commitment under Trump to the Iranians in any agreement?”

Or to anyone else, for that matter. “We’ve convinced the entire world that we don’t know what we’re doing, and we can’t be trusted, and we don’t keep our word, and we don’t even stay consistent from one day to the next,” former ambassador Freeman recently told Davis. “So how can you deal with us? That’s the question everybody has out there.”

As Alastair Crooke sees it, US diplomacy may never be the same. Summing up the effects of Trump’s multi-front assault on trust in America, the former British intelligence agent, diplomat and founder of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum told Glenn Diesen, “The American ability to negotiate in the old-fashioned diplomatic idea, I think, is gone. I mean, we’re in a new era.”

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How Korean Feminism Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies (Video - 23mn)

   A fascinating preview of the future in Korea where the country has trapped itself between modern educated women and archaic social norms. The Chaebols (conglomerates) benefit from the system while society is imploding.  

   Dr. Jonathan Tam does a good job linking seemingly unrelated trends together to present an unflattering aspect of Korean culture. Can the country find a solution to the conundrum? Japan didn't. It will be difficult. 

How Korean Feminism Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies

Fauci Destroyed Millions of Lives, and Truth-Tellers Are Owed Sincere Apologies

   The Covid saga was by far the best example to date of the Deep State and the international cabal showing its hand publicly. Dr Fauci is safe, not because he did the right things but because he is protected. 

   Would Dr Fauci fall, the "system" would lose its credibility and unravel and this will therefore not let be, whatever was uncovered by Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Junior.  

   All this shows that the people we elect have very limited real power and agency. As Frank Zappa rightfully said: "At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."  

Fauci Destroyed Millions of Lives, and Truth-Tellers Are Owed Sincere Apologies

by Mike Adams

The Case That Demands to Be Made

History will not be kind to Anthony Fauci. It will not remember him as a hero of public health, because history records what the living refuse to admit: Fauci is the face of a mass casualty event.

I believe the pardon Joe Biden handed him is the clearest admission of guilt yet. Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shielding him from COVID-19-related criminal prosecution, backdated to 2014 ^[1]. Innocent men do not need backdated protection; guilty men cannot survive without it.

Ed Dowd described what we all witnessed as “the COVID psyop, the experimental mRNA shots, the mandates that destroyed lives, the injuries, the excess deaths, and the relentless propaganda machine that tried to silence anyone who noticed the bodies piling up” ^[2]. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is testimony. And the fact that no reckoning ever came only proves the operation was deliberate. Those of us who sounded the alarm were treated as enemies of the state, but we were the only ones telling the truth.

Fauci’s Non-Testimony and the Biological Weapon Cover-Up

The cover-up originated with the U.S. Dept. of Defense and then expanded to Wuhan. The Wuhan Cover-Up documents how the first SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence displayed a standout molecular feature that made it seem like this novel virus, spreading like wildfire, seemed deliberately designed to infect human cells ^[3]. I have long reported that the spike protein used in some vaccines is part of a more complex concoction derived from the SARS-CoV-2 bioweapon, which includes prions and elements from HIV, among other coronavirus strains ^[4]. This is not biology by accident; it is the engineering of a depopulation bioweapon.

Project Veritas documents indicate that the work conducted was indeed classified as gain-of-function research, suggesting a discrepancy between Dr. Fauci’s public claims and the reality of his actions ^[5]. So why did the man at the center of this never face a single day of questioning? Because the people who protected him were part of the same apparatus, of course.

The obvious question remains: why did Trump keep people like James Comey and Anthony Fauci in their positions despite their alleged ties to the deep state ^[5]?

The Persecution of Truth-Tellers

I lived this persecution. This is what the system does to anyone who refuses to be silent. The landmark lawsuit exposing U.S. government coercion of Big Social reminds us that free speech isn’t an option if you want to live in an open, creative, advanced, free-thinking society; it’s a necessity ^[6].

Many doctors suffered the same fate. The Fifth Circuit eventually issued a potentially precedent-setting ruling that sides squarely with the First Amendment in a case involving censorship of doctors ^[7], but the government even created a disinformation office and used the FBI to meddle in social media companies to get them to shut down or censor “unapproved” facts and ideas ^[8]. This was a coordinated attack on dissent, and the media was happy to cheer it on.

Accountability, Nuremberg, and the Apology That Is Owed

What happened to us all is a Nuremberg crime against humanity. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s work provides evidence necessary to hold those responsible for this Nuremberg crime against humanity legally accountable ^[9]. Fauci should be made to face the same kind of public accounting that the Nazis faced at Nuremberg. Not vigilante violence, but a trial in the light where every collaborator, funder, and enforcer is forced to testify.

The backdated pardon is not a shield. As attorney Greg Glaser said, “While Biden’s preemptive pardon is likely to shield Fauci from federal prosecution, it does not preclude state prosecution” ^[10]. And the House Oversight Committee invalidated over 4,200 executive actions and pardons signed via autopen under former President Joe Biden, citing a lack of proof that he authorized them ^[11].

Holding the Line and Moving Forward

The truth-tellers who never wavered have earned a credibility that cannot be purchased or faked. Ed Dowd’s numbers are alarming: millions of Americans have been disabled by the COVID jabs ^[12]. Further evidence shows that mRNA vaccines disrupt ovaries, damage the placenta, and suppress sperm motility, with a 40% rise in maternal mortality and a 13-20% drop in live births in Western countries ^[13]. These are not side effects; they are the results of a depopulation agenda.

Until justice arrives, it is our duty to fight for truth, human dignity, health, quality of life, longevity, and happiness ^[5]. I will keep telling the truth because protecting life and exposing the anti-human agenda is my number one commitment.

You can follow my videos and interviews at BrightVideos.com

References

1. 1. Cassie B. Fauci Could Still Face Legal Troubles Despite Biden’s Backdated Pardon. NaturalNews.com. January 23, 2025.
   2. Ed Dowd. The COVID Reckoning That Never Came. Zero Hedge. July 11, 2026.
   3. Wuhan Cover-Up.
   4. Mike Adams. Situation Update. Brighteon.com. October 29, 2021.
   5. Mike Adams. Brighteon Broadcast News. Brighteon.com.
   6. Rob Verkerk. Feature Landmark US Lawsuit Exposes US Government Coercion of Big Social. ANH International. May 2, 2024.
   7. Cassie B. Group of Doctors Whose COVID-19 Criticisms Were Censored Can Move Forward with Case, Appeals Court Rules. NaturalNews.com. June 14, 2024.
   8. J Michael Waller. Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains.
   9. Mike Adams. Brighteon Broadcast News – RFK Jr. Exposes Dark Secrets of U.S. Bioweapons Program. Brighteon.com. December 14, 2023.
   10. News Editors. Florida Hints at Legal Action Against Fauci for Pandemic Response. NaturalNews.com. March 1, 2025.
   11. Kevin Hughes. House Oversight Committee Declares Biden’s Autopen Pardons “Null and Void,” Calls for DOJ Investigation. NaturalNews.com. October 29, 2025.
   12. Mike Adams. Interview with Robert Malone. November 23, 2022.
   13. Mike Adams. Interview with Naomi Wolf. October 24, 2025.
   14. Peter Breggin and Ginger Breggin. COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey.

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