Pepe Escobar: Trump in DIRE Straits as Putin & China’s BRICS MEGA-DEAL ROCKS the ENTIRE World (Video - 29mn)

    The view of Pepe Escobar is beyond frightening and unfortunately based on deep knowledge and acute analysis. Something Washington is now completely devoid of. How will what we can't call anything else but the Trump show proceed? Who knows but expect much fanfare and broken eggs in and outside the US. Amazingly it could even be that in a few months we'll be longing for dear old sleepy Biden. Imagine!

 

TRUMP’S MANIFEST LUNACY: with Richard Wolff (Video - 39mn)

  Well, here it comes: We were expecting a wild Trump, we got a demented one! It certainly makes a contrast with the dull absent minded Biden but could the results be even worse for America? Having Russia and China as enemies was already bad enough. Trampling on weaker, not even unfriendly, countries like Panama and Denmark looks disgraceful but disregarding signed agreement as with Canada and Mexico is pure suicide: Who will want to sign anything at all from now on with America? Trump is simply guarantying a fast acceleration of the building of BRICS and the downfall of the dollar. Is there a strategy of calculated madness behind all this which in reality will lead to more reasonable negotiation positions? Let's hope so against the odds!

 

China’s DeepSeek Bombshell Rocks Trump’s $500B AI Boondoggle

   Very interesting article about AI although it goes into all kinds of directions. If you ignore the pro-Chinese, anti system rhetoric, you're left with some interesting questions marks.

  As a former developer and now heavy used of AI, I remain ambivalent on the subject. As many people, 10 years ago, I expected the future to arrive more slowly but then again with the experience of the last 10 years, in retrospect, this would have changed absolutely nothing. We would not have been one iota better prepared in 2035 than in 2025. That much is certain. 

  Now what? I often discuss this issue with o1 and we agree (OK it basically always agrees with everything although it does it intelligently with much intellectual power and support with relevant examples! :-) that the future of AI is unknowable. It represents a dimensional expansion of the density of information connections from a circle to a sphere and although the result can be projected from 3D to 2D, the new level of complexity cannot be understood or grasped easily.  

  We also agree that this is not an avoidable curse but a fundamental law of the Universe (I call it the complexification of arranging information) being applied to our society. So like it or not this is quasi unavoidable. Are we summoning the demons? Not necessarily. Higher intelligence represents "progress" although of course, if you are an australopithecus you may beg to disagree. Will we regret the move if we are eventually replaced at the top of the food chain? Probably? Maybe but this is unknowable. My expectation is that evolution will explore new aspects of the Universe. Ask a dinosaur about the future of evolution and you would have got a bigger dinosaur still!. Ask a human about the future of mankind and you get the Star Trek "Enterprise", i.e. a bigger dinosaur! The new paradigm of AI will transform once again the direction of evolution with a new dimension of increased density of information which through an accelerated evolutive arm race (the singularity?) will birth a world which complexity we cannot begin to imagine. In this context, fear of a new AI overlord is completely misplaced. If the rise of mankind is an indication of what to expect, from an animal point of view, it depends. You can be a beast, a pet, a cattle, a nuisance, an amusement... All that is 2D. Now imagine the same in 3D!

Guest Post by Mike Whitney

The future of humanity is being decided as we speak. And it is not being decided on a battlefield in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East or the Taiwan Strait, but in the data centers and research facilities where technology experts create “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of Artificial Intelligence.” This is a full-blown, scorched-earth free-for-all that has already racked up a number of casualties though you wouldn’t know it from reading the headlines which typically ignore recent ‘cataclysmic’ developments.

But when President Trump announced the launching of a $500 billion AI infrastructure project (Stargate) on Tuesday just hours after China had released its DeepSeek R1—which “outperforms its rivals in advanced coding, math, and general knowledge capabilities”—it became painfully obvious that the battle for the future ‘is on’ in a big way. And this is not a battle that either side can afford to lose. Here’s how technology expert Adam Button summed it up:

Imagine we’re back in 2017 and the iPhone X was just released. It was selling $999 and Apple was crushing sales and building a wide moat around its ecosystem.

Now imagine, just days later, another company introduced a phone and platform that was equal in every way if not better and the price was just $30.

That’s what unfolded in the AI space today. China’s DeepSeek released an opensource model that works on par with OpenAI’s latest models but costs a tiny fraction to operate. Moreover, you can even download it and run it free (or the cost of your electricity) for yourself.

The product is a huge leap in terms of scaling and efficiency and may upend expectations of how much power and compute will be needed to manage the AI revolution. It also comes just hours before Trump is expected to unveil a $100 billion investment in US datacenters. The model shows there are different ways to train foundational AI models that offer up the same results with much less cost. It also opens up far more applications for AI that would have been too expensive to run previously, which should broaden the applications in the real economy. China’s DeepSeek may have just upended the economics of AI, forex live

Imagine the panic that is spreading across western tech capitals right now. AI was supposed to be the fast-track to absolute societal control and oligarchic rule into the next millennia, but now those pesky Chinese have overturned the applecart leaving western elites with a problem they might not be able to fix. (See—Unchecked AI will lead us to a police state, edri ) They expected that their microchip sanctions would sabotage China’s AI efforts for at least a decade-or-so but, instead, China has come roaring back with a system that has left the tech giants gasping for air.

Of course, China’s eye-popping strides in technological development are nothing new as editor Ron Unz pointed out in a recent article where he noted that “between 2003 and 2007, the US led in 60 of the 64 technologies.” Whereas, as of 2022, “China led in 52 of the 64 technologies.” That’s not a competition; that’s a beat-down in a parking lot. Here’s Unz:

China now leads the world in many of the most important future technologies. The success of its commercial companies in telecommunications (Huawei, Zongxin), EV (BYD, Geely, Great Wall, etc.), battery (CATL, BYD) and Photovoltaics (Tongwei Solar, JA, Aiko, etc.) are directly built on such R&D prowess.

Similarly, the Chinese military’s modernization is built on the massive technological development of the country’s scientific community and its industrial base…. With its lead in science and technology research, China is positioned to outcompete the US in both economic and military arenas in the coming years…. American Pravda: China vs. America, Ron Unz, Unz Review

None of this should come as a surprise, although the timing of DeepSeek’s release (preempting Trump’s Stargate announcement) shows that the Chinese don’t mind throwing a wrench in Washington’s global strategy if it serves their regional interests, which it undoubtedly does. Here’s a bit more background from an article by Benj Edwards at Ars Technica:

On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license, with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI’s o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks….

The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights models—have lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI’s o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. …

The R1 model works differently from typical large language models ….They attempt to simulate a human-like chain of thought as the model works through a solution to the query. This class of what one might call “simulated reasoning” models, or SR models for short, emerged when OpenAI debuted its o1 model family in September 2024. …

DeepSeek reports that R1 outperformed OpenAI’s o1 on several benchmarks and tests, including AIME (a mathematical reasoning test), MATH-500 (a collection of word problems), and SWE-bench Verified (a programming assessment tool)….

TechCrunch reports that three Chinese labs—DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI’s Kimi—have now released models they say match OpenAI’s o1’s capabilities, with DeepSeek first previewing R1 in November. Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download, ars technica

This is a very big deal. The United States intends to dominate the world in this critical technology and yet the upstart Chinese have not only produced a system that is every bit as good as America’s best, but have made it more affordable, more accessible and more transparent. What’s not to like?

 

(Note—OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory. It is made up of the non-profit OpenAI Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation OpenAI Limited Partnership. OpenAI has emerged to be one of the primary leaders of the generative AI era. OpenAI is a privately held company that has open sourced some of its technology, but it has not open sourced most of its technology…. In contrast, DeepSeek AI R1 is open source which means its code is publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Open source software is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production.)

Here’s more from political analyst Arnaud Bertrand in a post on X:

Most people probably don’t realize how bad the news (about) China’s Deepseek is for OpenAI. They’ve come up with a model that matches and even exceeds OpenAI’s latest model o1 on various benchmarks, and they’re charging just 3% of the price. It’s essentially as if someone had released a mobile on par with the iPhone but was selling it for $30 instead of $1000. It’s this dramatic.

What’s more, they’re releasing it open-source so you even have the option – which OpenAI doesn’t offer – of not using their API at all and running the model for “free” yourself.

If you’re an OpenAI customer today you’re obviously going to start asking yourself some questions, like “wait, why exactly should I be paying 30X more?”. This is pretty transformational stuff, it fundamentally challenges the economics of the market….

So basically, it looks like the game has changed. All thanks to a Chinese company that just demonstrated how U.S. tech restrictions can backfire spectacularly – by forcing them to build more efficient solutions that they’re now sharing with the world at 3% of OpenAI’s prices. As the saying goes, sometimes pressure creates diamonds. @RnaudBertrand

Get the picture? Everything the US has done to stymie China’s development—including economic sanctions, chips embargoes, military provocations, political meddling, even arresting a Huawei executive (truly pathetic)—has blown up in their faces. China’s well-educated, highly motivated, technologically adept workforce have produced a model of AI that equals or exceeds the best the West has to offer at a fraction of the cost and with open sourcing that allows users to
modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.

So, which version of AI sounds like a genuine benefit to humankind and which sounds like another scheme for transforming the world into a dystopian police-state controlled by aspiring tyrants and psychopathic control freaks? Here’s more from Bertrand on ‘why China is making AI available so cheap:

….it speaks to a different philosophy/vision on AI: ironically named “OpenAI” is basically about trying to establish a monopoly by establishing a moat with massive amounts of GPU and money. Deepseek is clearly betting on a future where AI becomes a commodity, widely available and affordable to everyone. By pricing so aggressively and releasing their code open-source, they’re not just competing with OpenAI but basically declaring that AI should be like electricity or internet connectivity – a basic utility that powers innovation rather than a premium service controlled by a few players. And in that world, it’s a heck of a lot better to be the first mover who helped make it happen than the legacy player who tried to stop it. @RnaudBertrand

(Creepy Larry Ellison predicts “citizens will be on their best behavior” with an AI police-state surveillance system.)

 

So, it’s basically like everything else in this sick, twisted world where a handful of money-grubbing miscreants muscle their way into a new technology so they can fatten their own bank accounts while planting their bootheel firmly on the neck of humanity. It seems to me that China’s approach is vastly superior in that it’s clearly aimed at providing the benefits of AI to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost. Here are a few random comments on China’s DeepSeek AI that I picked off X that show how excited people are about this groundbreaking version:

The ramifications of this are huge. Every day China does something incredible, totally unlike the stagnation of the EU, talking all day while accomplishing nothing, or the latest evil plan oozing out of DC. This is just brilliant. & inspiring. & it WILL earn them more goodwill @CaptainCrusty66

It’s the china recipe book for success for every industry where western oligopolies have dominated. @bbooker450

AI will become a part of everyday infrastructure like electricity and tap water. DeepSeek is a signficant step towards that, thanks to its cost reduction and open source nature @MrBig2024

We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive – truly open, frontier research that empowers all…. @DrJimFan

This is cool…this isn’t just another open source LLM release. this is o1-level reasoning capabilities that you can run locally, that you can modify and that you can study…
that’s a very different world than the one we were in yesterday. Al, comments line

Price comparison of OpenAI o1 and DeepSeek AI R1: R1 is significantly cheaper across all categories (96–98% savings). Now you know why big organizations don’t want open-source to continue, If humanity is ever going to benefit from AI, it will be from open-source . @ai_for_success

China is overturning mainstream development theory in astonishing ways. China’s GDP per capita is only $12,000. That’s 70% less than the average in high-income countries. And yet they have the largest high-speed rail network in the world. They’ve developed their own commercial aircraft. They are the world leaders in renewable energy technology and electric vehicles. They have advanced medical technology, smartphone technology, microchip production, aerospace engineering… China has a higher life expectancy than the USA, with 80% less income. We were told that this kind of development required very high levels of GDP/cap. But over the past 10 years China has demonstrated that it can be achieved with much more modest levels of output. How do they do it? By using public finance and industrial policy to steer investment and production toward social objectives and national development needs. This allows them to convert aggregate production into development outcomes much more efficiently than other countries, where productive capacity is often wasted on activities that may be highly profitable to capital, or beneficial to the rich, but may not actually advance development. Of course, China still has development gaps that need to be addressed. And we know from some other countries that higher social indicators can be achieved with China’s level of GDP/cap, by focusing more on social policy. But the achievements are undeniable, and development economists are taking stock. @jasonhickel

JULIAN ASSANGE says ‘Artificial intelligence is being used for mass assassinations in Gaza’ …“The majority of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting.” ..It has been revealed that Google provided the Israeli military with AI tools in the early weeks of the genocide.

Unfortunately, the intensity of the competition between the US and China, ignores the inherent risks of Artificial Intelligence and its looming threat to human survival. In a recent analytical piece by the Rand Corporation titled AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, the authors provide a disturbing window into a future in which “AI-enabled machines—of equivalent or greater intelligence and, potentially, highly disruptive capabilities” could pose a threat to our own existence. Keep in mind, the line between our historic reality and science fiction has already been crossed just as the probability that our own creation, AI, is likely “to become an actor, not just a factor” in the existential challenges faced by our species. Here’s a short blurb from this truly unsettling article:

Although technology has often influenced geopolitics, the prospect of AI means that the technology itself could become a geopolitical actor. AI could have motives and objectives that differ considerably from those of governments and private companies. Humans’ inability to comprehend how AI “thinks” and our limited understanding of the second- and third-order effects of our commands or requests of AI are also very troubling. Humans have enough trouble interacting with one another. It remains to be seen how we will manage our relationships with one or more AIs….

We are entering an era of both enlightenment and chaos…

The borderless nature of AI makes it hard to control or regulate. As computing power expands, models are optimized, and open-source frameworks mature, the ability to create highly impactful AI applications will become increasingly diffuse. In such a world, well-intentioned researchers and engineers will use this power to do wonderful things, ill-intentioned individuals will use it to do terrible things, and AIs could do both wonderful and terrible things. The net result is neither an unblemished era of enlightenment nor an unmitigated disaster, but a mix of both. Humanity will learn to muddle through and live with this game-changing technology, just as we have with so many other transformative technologies in the past….

The potential dangers posed by AI are many. At the extreme, they include the threat of human extinction, which could come about by an AI-enabled catastrophe, such as a well-designed virus that spreads easily, evades detection, and destroys our civilization. Less dire, but considerably worrisome, is the threat to democratic governance if AIs gain power over people….

AI cannot be contained through regulation, so the best policy will aim to minimize the harm that AI might do. This will probably be most critical in biosecurity,[3] but harm reduction also includes countering cybersecurity threats, strengthening democratic resilience, and developing emergency response options for a wide variety of threats from state and sub- and non-state actors…..

In light of the likely very widespread proliferation of advanced AI capabilities to private- and public-sector actors and well-resourced individuals, governments should work closely with leading private-sector entities to develop advanced forecasting tools, wargames, and strategic plans for dealing with what experts anticipate will be a wide variety of unexpected AI-enabled catastrophic events. AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, RAND

In other words, humanity should encourage their business and political leaders to exercise sound judgement and prepare for unexpected disasters that could terminate the species.

That is simply not sufficient defense for the challenge we face.

Ben Norton: Trump issues War ULTIMATUM to Putin & This BRICS Bombshell Changes Everything (Video - 1h54)

    And now the view on Trump outrageous statements from China. It is fascinating to discover that beyond the message Trump is very much another side of the Neo-con "party" ruling Washington. His First Presidency was supposed to have been "ruined" by these ideologues  "opposing" every single one of his policies. And what does he do to start his second Presidency? Name Marco Rubio his new Secretary of States! Talk about intentions and message at cross purpose! He also has unfortunately a completely erroneous vision of the real power of the US relative to his opponents in Russia and China. The wake up call may come sooner than people expect and may be far more severe and devastating for the supposed primacy of American power, i.e. the Dollar. Trans generals are on the way out but GI Joe will find the "vibrators" they left in the toilet less than useful to scare the world! Thankfully Elon Musk will take us all to Mars in-between with unlimited "money"! We may soon regret the "dementia" of Joe Biden. It didn't really make much sense but what he said was at least, in a way, less absurd than the megalomaniac and sometimes ignorant (Spain as a BRICS member!) declarations of Trump! 

  Lord have mercy! Although this immediately reminds me of the famous words of Genghis Khan: "If you had not offended the Gods in the first place, they would not have sent someone like me to punish you!"

 

Scott Ritter & Pepe Escobar: Trump SHOCKS the World–Putin, Iran & China BRACE for War (Video - 2h04)

   The discussion with Scott Ritter is interesting but the second part, after the 1h mark, the discussion with Pepe Escobar is simply fascinating. Yes Trump represents a revolution. That much is certain. But then what comes next? Will his grandiloquent posturing give rise to exceptionalism as Trump is promising or to a complete mess in international relations as seems likely? Well, listen up....   

 

Our 101 Trillion Dollar Problem: This Is The Number One Tool The Elite Use To Enslave Us

  OK, no suspense here, we're talking about debt.

  But debt like everything else is a complex "animal". We cannot and should not throw the baby with the dirty bath water. Debt is one of the financial tools which have created the complex society we enjoy. But remember, not so long ago, it was limited to "investment". And that made a lot of sense since investment generates a return which eventually allow you to pay back your debt and in most cases generate a profit. 

  Then in the 1970s everything changed when large scale consumer credit was implemented. And suddenly people started "eating" the future. Why wait when instant gratification was knocking at the door? (We also know that the less intelligent, the less able people are to resist instant gratification. Talk about caressing the "dog" the right way!) And it made sense, sort of, since growth was leveling off following the end of the post war boom, why not borrow the next stage of expansion, knowing that the tab would not be brought to the table before the end of the lunch? But here we are, 50 years later, desert has been served. We may delay the reckoning a little longer by asking to be served a "digestif" and a cigar in the "salon". But soon we'll have to leave this exclusive restaurant of over-consumption and we know our credit card is already maxed out...

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Right now, a tremendous awakening is happening as people all over the world become educated about the tools that the elite use to enslave us to their system.  The number one tool that they use to enslave us is debt.  The financial powers of the world use it to enslave individuals, corporations and governments.  For thousands of years humanity has been taught the proverb that “the borrower is the servant of the lender”, and yet today billions of people around the globe have willingly made themselves servants of the money powers.  You see, when you borrow money from a financial institution, you not only have to pay that money back, but you also have to pay a significant amount of interest.  In fact, often the interest ends up being much more than the principal of the loan.  Thus the borrower ends up devoting a great deal of his or her labor to earning money for the lender.  Yes, there are times when it is necessary to borrow money.  But what we have been doing over the last 30 years goes far beyond “necessary” borrowing.  The fact that the U.S. government is now 36 trillion dollars in debt gets a lot of attention, but the truth is that state and local governments, corporations, and U.S. households have piled up enormous mountains of debt as well.

I want to show you a chart from the Federal Reserve that is hard to believe.

In the mid-90s, the total amount of debt in the system was about 20 trillion dollars, but now we have reached the 101 trillion dollar mark…

The word “insanity” does not even begin to describe what we have been doing to ourselves.

It takes a lot of really hard work to add 80 trillion dollars of debt in just 30 years.

Every time we pile up more debt, there is a winner and there is a loser.

Debt strips you of your freedom and slowly drains you of your wealth.  It puts the fruits of your labor into the pockets of others.

That is true for individuals, and it is true for a nation as a whole.

Getting others enslaved by debt is how the most powerful financial institutions in the world became so dominant.  It is one of the most profitable ways of making money ever invented.

What many people don’t realize is just how much interest they end up paying on some of their debts.

For example, if you go to mortgagecalculator.org, you can calculate the amount of interest that you will pay over the life of your home mortgage.  According to that calculator, someone with a $400,000 mortgage at an interest rate of 6.98% over 30 years will end up paying $556,102.18 in interest before the mortgage is finally paid off.

When those 30 years are over, you will have bought a house for yourself and you will also have bought a house for the bankers.

So what should we do?

We need to stop feeding the monster.

They are getting insanely wealthy by financially enslaving all the rest of us.

Unfortunately, many Americans find themselves deep in debt because the cost of living has been rising faster than our paychecks have.

One of the great joys that men in free societies have long enjoyed is the ability to earn an honest wage for an honest day of work.  In particular, the amazing capitalist engine that powered the U.S. economy for decade after decade greatly rewarded the incredible hard work and industriousness of the American people.  America was known as the land of opportunity, and we built the largest middle class in the history of the world by working incredibly hard.

Unfortunately, things have changed.

Thanks to globalization and extremely rapid advances in technology, the labor of U.S. workers is rapidly losing value.  Automation, robotics and AI have made many jobs obsolete.  In addition, American workers now must compete against workers from all over the world.  Global corporations often find themselves having to choose whether to build a factory in the United States or in the third world.  But in the third world workers often earn less than 10 percent of what American workers earn, corporations are often not required to provide any benefits to those workers, and there are often very few oppressive government regulations to contend with.

How can American workers compete against that?

The truth is that labor is now a global commodity.  It is exceedingly difficult for a worker in the United States to effectively compete with a desperate, half-starving worker in the third world that will work like mad for two dollars an hour.

But this is what we get for letting our politicians push “free trade” down our throats.

Most American workers had no idea that free trade would mean that they would suddenly be competing for jobs against workers in the Philippines and Malaysia.

But this is the cold, hard reality of globalism.

Of course the top executives at the big global corporations are certainly enjoying this new environment, because their salaries have soared.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1.

Now it is 268 to 1.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

That is what globalism is all about.

The elite make out like bandits as they exploit third world labor pools, while the American middle class finds itself slowly being crushed out of existence.

Our system has been designed to funnel nearly all of the rewards to the very top.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans are left wondering why things just don’t ever seem to work out for them.

If you talk to many Americans, they just can’t seem to figure out why they can’t make things work out even though they are working as hard as they can.  Millions of Americans have found themselves taking on second or even third jobs in a desperate attempt to provide for their families.

Sadly, things just keep getting worse with each passing year.

As I have discussed in previous articles, demand at food banks is at an all-time high, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time high, and homelessness in the U.S. is growing at the fastest pace ever recorded.

But there are elitists out there that are still attempting to claim that the U.S. economy is in great shape.

Of course most of us aren’t buying the propaganda anymore, and that is one of the primary reasons why the election turned out the way that it did.

We need to return to an economy where good workers are valued and where hard work is rewarded.

We need to return to an economy where having a large middle class is an important national goal.

We need to return to an economy where we build American businesses, where we hire American workers, and where we buy American products.

But unless the American people wake up, American workers are going to continue to be devalued.

And if you think that things are bad now, just wait until AI starts taking millions of our jobs.

Are we just going to sit back and let American living standards decline to third world standards, or are we going to do something about it?

Perhaps the greatest victims of the economic nightmare that is unfolding right in front of our eyes are our children.

The overall economic numbers are really bad, but when you examine the impact that this economy is having on children things get really horrifying.  Today, 16 percent of U.S. children live in poverty and 14 million U.S. children are on food stamps.

It has been estimated that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18.

We were once the most prosperous nation on the entire planet.

How could we let this happen?

Meanwhile, the rich have gotten even richer.

In 2009, there were 8 million millionaires in the United States.

Now there are 22 million.

If everyone was becoming wealthier, that would be great.  Unfortunately, the poor have been left with an increasingly smaller slice of the pie to divide among themselves.

At this point, the bottom 50 percent of Americans control just 2.5 percent of the wealth.

I have been ranting about all of this for over a decade, and yet conditions have just continued to deteriorate year after year.

We can’t have an economy that works for the top 10 percent but that sucks the life out of the bottom 90 percent.

Our debt-based financial system needs to be fundamentally reformed, and it is time for us to demand action.

Dollar Squeeze Is Causing “Debt Spiral” In U.S. Bond Market, Argues Luke Gromen (Video - 1h20mn)

   A long but interesting video. What Trump is inheriting is not just just an international mess but a domestic economy close to the peak of a money bubble which is about to burst. The damage of a strong dollar could be as bad as those of a weak one. It will all depend on interest rates in the coming months. The picture is complicated as explained but the outcome sooner or later is predictable. 

  After the first two weeks of picking the low hanging fruits, Trump will have to do "something" about the economy and the deficits. The reason no president in the last 50 years has done anything much about it yet, including Trump in 2017 is that the pain would be widespread including for those who voted for him. As a European bureaucrat once said: "We all know what we should do but we do not know how to get reelected after that!"

 

UK/EU VETO on Trump-Putin talks (Video - 27mn)

   It may be just my understanding, but listen carefully between the lines and what you realize is that "if" there is a meeting between Trump and Putin, what will be on the table is not Ukraine, the war is already lost and Trump doesn't really care anyway, but the future of Europe. In other words another Yalta. 

  This may be the reason why all the European leaders are running wild like headless chicken. What would you do? You've put all your eggs in a basket which is about to get crushed. To put it mildly: Europe is going to face very hard times, very soon and cannot do much about it. 

  In particular and ominously, Europe has no army to speak of. Their only hope therefore is to engage themselves deep into the conflict in Ukraine with too little forces so that the US is obliged to come to the rescue. The answer from Trump to such a request would of course be no, although there is one wild card left: The neo-cons in Washington. Can the gambit work? Who knows? But the stakes couldn't be higher. 

 

American Free Speech Vs European Censorship

   Whatever you may think about America and the problems the country is facing as we saw in several recent posts, they pale compared to Europe.

  The continent is just in the process of: Losing a war against what until recently was its main energy supplier, Russia. Starting another economic war against what was its main economic "partner", China. And now on the verge of another multi pronged ideological war against its main strategic partner, the US.

  And all this with an attitude strait out of the late 19th Century. What could go wrong? (beside everything!) 

  The worst by far are wrong headed energy policies which almost guaranty hard days to come (as we discussed yesterday concerning the UK.) Trade is also a problem although less than de-industrialization. As for free speech and free elections, these were the "pride" of a continent defining itself as "the free world". Well, that was then as the article below makes clear. 

  What comes next then? Unfortunately history is not very kind for those who do not or cannot learn from it. I am afraid that a significant downturn of the world economy led by China and amplified by the US will sooner than later have dramatic consequences for Europe. This used to be fine since the "problem" was ahead of us but not quite just in front for years. Unfortunately it looks like in 2025 the future is knocking at the door and the status quo for Europe will not last much longer.  

Authored by Drieu Godefridi via The Gatestone Institute,

• What is important is the solidarity being forged between the major US social media platforms and the incoming US administration in support of real freedom of expression.

• The new US administration will not tolerate levying fines of tens of billions of dollars on major US technology companies by an EU that is drifting towards authoritarianism and is at the same time more dependent than ever on American power.

• It would be in Europe's lasting interest to prepare for the return of free and unfettered expression.

Anyone wishing to gauge the extent of the European Union's regulatory drift will need to read Articles 34 and 35 of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Given their length it is impossible to quote them in full here, so here is an extract:

DSA Article 34, "Risk assessment":

"1. Providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines shall diligently identify, analyse and assess any systemic risks in the Union stemming from the design or functioning of their service and its related systems, including algorithmic systems (...) and shall include the following systemic risks (...) (a) the dissemination of illegal content through their services (which includes 'hate speech'); (b) any actual or foreseeable negative effects for the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular the fundamental rights (...) to non-discrimination; (c) any actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security; (d) any actual or foreseeable negative effects in relation to (...) public health (...) and serious negative consequences to the person's physical and mental well-being (...)."

Article 35, "Mitigation of risks," obliges these platforms to take a whole arsenal of preventive and repressive measures, basically to prevent the sharing of information that displeases the European Commission.

In short, the idea is to force these platforms to pay hordes of patrol officers to relentlessly hunt down opinions that do not please the European Lord. The preventive nature of these measures means that they can be described as censorship in the strict sense. What's more, general censorship, because the terms used by the European legislator - hate, non-discrimination, civic discourse, electoral process, public security, public health, well-being - are so vague that censors with (digital) scissors do cut wherever they please, at the whim of the European Prince.

Meanwhile, in the USA

Elon Musk has never made a secret of his adherence to the American concept of freedom of expression, which is that expression is free regardless of what the law says.

By contrast, according to the European Convention on Human Rights, expression is free with legal exceptions. For a long time, these exceptions were rare, with the result that expression remained almost as free in Europe as in the United States. Over the past 30 years, however these European exceptions to free expression have multiplied — hate, discrimination, racism, Islamophobia, transphobia, and so on — to the extent that European citizens - including those in the UK - are now being arrested, tried and imprisoned for expressing inappropriate ideas on Facebook, X/Twitter and other social media platforms.

But then, you might ask, why can't the two concepts of expression -- free in the USA, censored in Europe -- coexist, each in its own way, on our respective continents?

The problem is that the European Union has an imperialist conception of its regulation. The EU does not regulate Europe; it seems to think it regulates the world. True to the rich German and French legal traditions, the EU sees itself as a kind of legislative model for the planet. Not only is the EU taking the initiative to regulate sectors that were not regulated before, it also seems to expect the rest of the world to follow suit.

Better -- or worse, depending on your point of view -- the EU is backing up its global regulations with sanctions no less global. Apple was recently hit with a landmark $2 billion EU antitrust fine. Breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA) are punishable by penalties calculated as a percentage of revenues -- not profits -- received by the company concerned not just in Europe, but all over the world. In the case of companies such as Meta (Facebook) or X, we are talking about EU fines running into billions of dollars. Since they seem not to be able to innovate -- anyhow, they haven't -- they tax Americans, who have.

All the "major platforms" that the European Union is regulating with imperial superciliousness are in fact American. Therefore, none of these platforms is subject to the august EU. As technology expert Jason Oxman remarks, "the EU [has] become as sterile in innovation as it is fertile in regulation."

This puts the EU and its DSA on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration. With touching naivety, the German media on January 8, 2025, greedily called for DSA sanctions to be applied to X and to Meta (Facebook).

The major news on January 7 was the about-face, at least for now, of Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and his Facebook and Instagram, to the Muskian concept of free speech, pretty much as enshrined in the US Constitution. Whether or not this endorsement is self-serving is irrelevant. What is important is the solidarity being forged between the major US social media platforms and the incoming US administration in support of real freedom of expression.

Consequently, either American free speech will impose itself on Europe, or, less likely -- unless the Europeans show a sudden desire for tyranny -- Europe will impose its conception on American platforms. There can be no coexistence of the two concepts. If the EU had been legislating only for Europe and providing for local sanctions, the two concepts might have coexisted. The hubris of the EU's grandiose vision of global sanctions makes this coexistence unlikely.

The European king has no clothes

A prediction: American free speech will win the day. Europe is weak, and the EU as a bureaucracy is increasingly hated by Europeans, not without reason. Without NATO, Europe would not exist militarily. With no American security guarantees, Europe can prepare for the return of Russian troops to Berlin. Above all, Europe exports more to the US than it imports. In 2022, trade in goods and services between the United States and the European Union totaled an estimated $1.3 trillion. US exports amounted to $592 billion and imports to $723.3 billion, as Trump reminds us of it at every one of his press conferences.

The new US administration will not tolerate levying fines of tens of billions of dollars on major US technology companies by an EU that is drifting towards authoritarianism and is at the same time more dependent than ever on American power. To imagine otherwise, you would have to be as naive as a German bureaucrat.

It would be in Europe's lasting interest to prepare for the return of free and unfettered expression.

Doug Casey on Trump’s Geopolitical Strategy (or Lack Thereof) in Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal

   Long time no see Doug Casey"s no nonsense comments on Trump"s "ideas" concerning Panama, Greenland and Canada. 

  It always brings a lot to the discussion to add a minimum of context to bold assertions and ideas. Here we discover that what's Trump is saying doesn't hold much water and that his policies are more randomly opportunistic than strategic. 

  "The longest path to victory or the noise before defeat?" Here defeat means the crash of the American Empire. In the end, Trump may bring a few sound ideas to the table drown in a flood of nonsensical gestures which instead of slowing down the downfall of the hegemon will accelerate the process. What a way to go: A firework instead of a whimper! But then again: Did we really wanted 4 years of Kamala Harris' technocracy running wild? It reminds me of an old rather difficult choice in old Japan when the two options were boiling and roasting!

Via International Man

International Man: President Trump has openly voiced his interest in having the US government take control of the Panama Canal.

He has even suggested that he wouldn’t rule out using military force to make it happen.

What is going on here?

Doug Casey: Panama, like most countries, is an artificial construct; it’s not part of the cosmic firmament. It came into being when it seceded from Colombia in 1903, midwifed by US intervention. That was a “good” secession, unlike that of the Donbas from the Ukraine in 2014 or the South from the Union in 1861, which everyone knows were “bad” secessions.

The US then bought the Zone (5 miles on either side of the proposed canal) from Panama for $10 million, which was 500,000 ounces of gold. That impresses me as a fair price, considering it was an undeveloped fever-ridden jungle at the time and that gold is worth nearly $1.5 billion today. Another $40 million (2,000,000 ounces) was paid to buy out the previous French developer. In those days the US still—sometimes—dealt with a measure of honor and propriety. Then, another $350 million (17.5 million ounces) was spent to build the canal itself.

It makes sense to think in terms of gold since that was money then. It was the largest US investment in history up to that time. Be that as it may, creating Panama enabled the US to build the canal—to the great advantage of all concerned.

Anyway, the canal now supposedly yields $3 billion (+/- 1,000,000 ounces) of profit on about $5 billion of gross receipts per year. It’s not a giant money machine in today’s context.

Panama has been de facto US territory and the Canal Zone de jure US territory, fair and square, from the get-go. Until Jimmy Carter “sold” the Zone to Panama in 1977 (for a token $1) because he felt it was the right thing to do. I disagree, but everybody’s got an opinion. Since then, the Panamanians have run the canal competently and greatly improved it.

Perhaps we should just forget about the legalisms. Central America has been under the thumb of the US since at least the days of William Walker, who nearly succeeded in singlehandedly conquering most of the region in the 1850’s. USMC Gen. Smedley Butler spent the best part of his career acting as an enforcer when Central American cuadillos got uppity. And, most recently, the US invaded Panama in 1989 to depose long-time CIA stooge Manuel Noriega, killing several thousand Panamanians as collateral damage.

One annoying element of the current kerfuffle is the way Trump keeps saying the Panamanians are “ripping off” the US. I’m unsure how he’s jumped to that conclusion since, thanks to the Jones Act, almost zero US-flagged ships exist to “rip off.” All ships pay the same prices for passage, regardless of nationality, except for US Naval vessels, which pay nothing. Apart from that, Canal fees have risen much less than inflation since Panama took over.

The big question here is to what degree one nation-state can repossess or conquer real estate that may belong to another. Revanchism has been a consistent casus belli throughout history. The Argentines with the Falklands. The Moslems and the Jews with Palestine. The Suez Crisis in 1956 when Egypt took that Canal away from the UK and France.

Should Mexico try to repossess the American Southwest, which the Americans conquered in 1848? Should France try to repossess the Louisiana Purchase because they think it was sold too cheaply? Should Russia take back Alaska for the same reason?

Does the nationality of an asset like the canal make any difference? Or is it important that it’s operated competently and peaceably? It was weak and stupid of Carter to have given the Zone to Panama. But it’s dishonorable and stupid of Trump to threaten a theft.

International Man: Trump has also taken significant steps toward Greenland, a strategically important Arctic territory.

Why is Trump so focused on Greenland?

Doug Casey: Governments love to use the word “strategic.” It’s a magic word. Everything is strategic when they want something.

The island is quite an anomaly, bigger than Alaska and California combined, but with only 47,000 people, 90% of whom are “real” natives. I understand there’s something of a race problem, though, despite the fact the natives are a large majority. The “real” natives apparently have an animus against those of European descent, even if they were born in Greenland. And even though it costs Copenhagen about $10,000 per person per year to maintain the place. It would appear Greenland is a $500 million annual drain on the Danish treasury.

Does Greenland have mineral wealth? Of course. But so does Alaska, with a vastly better climate, vastly more development, 500,000 people, and a cornucopia of all types of minerals. Fun fact: Mineral production is greatly overrated as a source of wealth.

As for “strategic” things, during the Afghanistan war, strategic thinkers thought “we” should take it over because someone said it had $3 trillion of minerals. Similar numbers are pulled out of thin air for Greenland, but they’re meaningless for a dozen different reasons. The theoretical value of minerals in the ground is meaningless. What counts is the cost and possible profitability—or not—of recovering them.

One thing they’re not considering is who now owns Greenland. It’s not the Danish government. My understanding is that the island is owned in common by the natives—not just the vast icefields but even the land under everyone’s house. It’s a very tribal and communal society. Washington is not likely to respect that.

Greenland should declare independence. This might incentivize the natives to deploy their asset in the most economic way. Perhaps becoming an Arctic version of the Caymans or Singapore, buttressed by some theoretically valuable real estate. Becoming part of the US would most likely turn them into welfare recipients, a colder version of Puerto Rico—a lose-lose for both parties.

International Man: Trump has also proposed making Canada the 51st state, even going as far as threatening to use “economic force” to achieve this.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: The Donald has a quirky sense of humor, something I’ve always liked about him. Maybe he’s just letting loose his comic instincts. However, jesting about an Anschluss with other people’s property isn’t a clever negotiating technique. In today’s world, it’s very dangerous. Could it be grounds for removal under the 25th Amendment?

This calls to mind what Thucydides said in his tome on the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians decided to teach the island of Milos a lesson for not actively supporting them against the Spartans. They invaded and destroyed the city, justifying it by saying: “The powerful do what they wish, and the weak suffer what they must.” It’s not a good look or a good model for the US.

But would Canada be better off if it merged with the US?

The cultures of Canada and the US are very similar. The big difference lies in the nature of their governments. Both are poorly run, bankrupt, and far from their founding principles.

That said, it’s arguable Canada would gain tremendously. The country has a per capita GDP of only 2/3rds that of the US, and it’s much more highly taxed and regulated. Merging them would only create an even more dysfunctional and “diverse” US.

The best solution for Canada is to split up, starting with Quebec. It’s not just that the province is culturally French and alien to the rest of the country; it has long been an economic drain. In fact, all the provinces would do better, becoming independent countries. Alberta has made noises in that direction for years. Newfoundland only joined Canada in 1949 to become a large net welfare recipient and the butt of Newfie jokes. They climbed aboard a sinking ship when they should have manned a lifeboat.

The real problem is that Canada is much more left-leaning than the US. If, heaven forbid, Trump somehow merged the two countries, it would only guarantee that leftists would control the US forever after. It would be a disaster for the US.

International Man: The idea of merging the US, Canada, and Mexico was once dismissed as a nefarious globalist scheme to centralize power, erode US sovereignty, and pave the way for a global government.

Trump has rebranded this concept, and many who once opposed it are now cheering it on.

Is globalism wrapped in a MAGA package still globalism?

Doug Casey: Apart from the fact that the world would be better off with many more microstates, not just a few megastates (or MAGAstates), it’s further proof that Trump has no philosophical core, and the US government is “on tilt.” That’s said of an incompetent, out-of-control gambler who keeps doubling his bets in the hope of somehow breaking even. The US is irredeemably bankrupt, controlled by an entrenched and deeply corrupt Deep State which operates for its own benefit, not the country as a whole.

I’m afraid the US is like a star about to go supernova, in collapse after burning its fuel. Or a dinosaur thrashing around in its death throes. It’s become a bankrupt multicultural domestic empire. Contrary to what Trump seems to think, it can’t solve its problems by expanding and taking over more territory.

That will only create more chaos.

International Man: What are the overall investment implications of Trump’s geopolitical strategy?

Doug Casey: We’re in for tough times. But, as always, I like to look at the bright side… namely that Harris and the Jacobins aren’t returning to office next week. On the dark side, Trump is starting to prove himself a megalomaniac. A bull in a China shop. A loose cannon. But, going back to the bright side, maybe this will have the effect of delegitimizing the US government, which is rotten to its core.

The average American has forgotten that his real enemy aren’t some motley foreigners on the other side of the globe—it’s his own government.

If Trump breaks some Deep State rice bowls, that’s great. I wish him, via Elon and Vivek, great success. Although success is a longshot bet. But what if Trump goes megalomaniacally wild and creates international chaos—in addition to what he may do in the Middle East or the Ukraine?

Washing away rotten foundations is both good and necessary. The problem is that a sound replacement foundation doesn’t exist on which to rebuild things because the basics of American society have been washed away as well.

I think we’re looking at potential chaos over the next four years, and then, when the Republicans are kicked out of office, it will get even worse. Truly rabid Democrats will take power as “our democracy” begs for a new father figure or Big Brother to kiss the situation and make it better.

So, as Lenin said, “What is to be done?”

With grossly overpriced stock, bond, and real estate markets, and a fiat currency heading towards its intrinsic value, it makes sense to own gold, silver, other underpriced commodities, and, of course, some speculations in the companies that produce them.