Venezuela Update!

   Not 3 days have passed and already 2026 seems to be at the top of its potential for worrying news on the path to World War III. 

   Trump said that the operation had to wait for the weather to be perfect, and indeed, it was, since yesterday was the deadline for the disclosure of the Epstein papers documenting the entrapment of the US Government by a foreign entity. 

   Beyond the blatant disregard for "international law", but is there such a thing? The most striking aspect of the operation is that it was announced at the very beginning of the Trump administration early last year. It was preceded by the idea of a "friendly" merger offer to Canada to become the 51st state. Rejected. Then a takeover bid for Greenland which was likewise declined by Denmark. In the end, Trump went for the easier target in South America: Venezuela.  

   In fact, the only difference between the Trump administration and its predecessors is the "in your face" total and utter lack of diplomacy. But why bother with niceties when you are convinced that the dollar hegemony and your superior firepower can insulate you from any blow-back? 

   To reflate the US economy, Trump needs a new "frontier" and especially resources. Venezuela has plenty of them, starting with oil in the Orinoco basin. (Around Maracaibo, North Western part of the map below.)

    What's next then?

   A few hours before the attack, Maduro had just met with a Chinese delegation visiting Caracas to increase commercial and military cooperation. This is clearly a slap in China's face as well as a warning for other South American Nations. From now on, the Monroe doctrine will be applied ruthlessly. 

   The real risk is that Trump, the good Las Vegas player he is, will not stop now believing that this is a winning streak. China needs, must in fact put an end to the show, otherwise its growing economic might will end up being a pyrrhic victory just like Japan in the 1980s destroyed by the Plaza Accord of 1985.  

   The next target on the menu list is of course Iran. The fall of the country would corner China, proving to the rest of the world that it is a paper tiger and reversing the integration progress of the BRICS. The problem is that Russia will probably be bogged down in Ukraine for the rest of 2026 and China doesn't yet have the capability to project its power all the way to the Middle East. So how exactly do you stop a bully without starting World War III? Silence will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and negotiation welcomed with treachery. Is this the ominous game where the only winning move is not to play? Hopefully, the combination of AI and Sun Tzu military wisdom will generate an unlikely solution. We probably won't have very long to wait to know the answer. Once again: Welcome to 2026!      

   Here's the comments from Jeffrey Sachs: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhZuTOuwKGA

   Here"s the comments from Douglas Macgregor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfA20zBIUGs

  And here's The Duran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSs8cbPbBlk&t=1s

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts Induce Measurable “Brain Rot”

   As we have discussed several times already, the Internet experience is significantly become worse almost by the day now. YouTube is quickly becoming a junkyard of unwatchable SLOP, Zero Hedge which I used to follow closely thanks to its valuable and counter-cyclical, not to say contrarian, market comments is overwhelmed by mainstream propaganda, not to mention the monstrosities that TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have become with their addictive "reel" systems which measurably "rot" the brain of younger people as described below. 

   To be honest, the Internet never approached even remotely the transparency promised in the early days. Quickly Google realized the power of becoming the gateway and soon after dropped its "Don't be Evil" modus Operandi. But that was only the manipulative aspect of things and was to some extent to be expected. 

   What was less clear, is that no social responsibility whatsoever was to be expected from the main tech and social platform players which would optimize income over any other consideration year after year defeating local, national laws thanks to their international structure and immense financial means.      

   Where do we go from there? I am afraid that just as the last 20 years saw the transformation from citizen to consumer, the next 20 years will see a shift from consumer to slave. A modern, technological version of the old status, but something people 2,000 years ago would have readily recognized as such. 

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts Induce Measurable “Brain Rot”

January 2nd, 2026

Via: Focal Points:

Now, a peer-reviewed paper titled, Demystifying the New Dilemma of Brain Rot in the Digital Era: A Review, confirms that brain rot is real: the digital environment is chemically, cognitively, and psychologically degrading the developing human brain. And the damage is measurable.

The review shows that young people now average 6.5 hours per day online — primarily on algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and endless-scroll feeds engineered for split-second novelty.

Most of the content involves rapid, low-information stimuli: ultrashort videos, memes, reaction clips, and trivial entertainment fragments that provide novelty without cognitive substance.

These platforms deliver rapid bursts of artificially rewarding stimuli, creating a cycle of:

Constant cognitive overstimulation

The brain never enters a “rest” mode or deeper thought state.

Weakening of working memory

Information is consumed too quickly to be consolidated.

Fragmented attention networks

Short-form content trains the mind to expect constant novelty.

Difficulty processing long or complex information

Deep reading and sustained focus become neurologically harder.

Mental fatigue & reduced executive function

Chronic overstimulation taxes the prefrontal cortex — the center of planning, reasoning, and self-regulation.

The study describes this as a shift from healthy, top-down cognitive control to bottom-up, dopamine-seeking impulsivity.

2026 - The end of Zero Hedge?

   A long, long time ago, Internet-wise, in 2009, Zero Hedge started posting non mainstream market comments. This was post-2008 sub-prime crisis when the financial authorities decided to double down, flood the system with liquidity and hope for the best. At the time, most articles were quite critical but of high quality. Later, they expended to diverse subjects with less and less authority, re-posting articles of sometimes dubious origin and in doing so, slowly but surely lost their edge. 

  And here we are now, 15-so years later. Like so many alternative news media, Zero Hedge in order to grow had somehow to find money and consequently compromise. A little at first, then more... 

  I am sure trading desks have changed since I worked there but this looks more like Slop to attract views than genuine stuff... Unfortunately, I am afraid this is what's in store for us almost everywhere from now on. Already and incredibly almost half the videos on YouTube are Slops. Soon it will become impossible to compete for the algorithm without some use of AI.  

  We'll see. For now, let's try to stay edgy while keeping the naughty stuff in the back office. 

  Happy New Year 2026! 
 

The Lifespan Of A Country

    20 years ago already, we were alone announcing the decline of the West which as we explained then would be a process related to cycle and structural "fatigue", not an event. 

   Today, in Europe, it is becoming more and more obvious especially in the control of information but also spectacularly in the control of "wrong-think" that the continent will not reverse direction. The UK is worst. Germany a close second but the distinction is academic. When you lose the plot and nobody believes your narrative anymore, there is simply no alternative but to silence dissidence. 

   The European leaders keep criticizing the "jungle" outside without realizing that there is something deeply rotten in their "garden". Italy has seen no growth whatsoever since the advent of the Euro, just the stabilization of its debt. France has become a paradise for retirees and civil servants with the state representing over 56% of the economy. A world record. The Baltic countries are pushing the alliance towards an open conflict with Russia while the former colonial powers, France and England, are slowly being pushed out of Africa by China.   

   Is there still hope for a old, woke, DEI, LGBTQ+, sick continent? Often, just asking the question is to answer it. The cycle will reverse eventually but we most certainly won't witness it.  

by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

It will be no secret to readers that more and more people are coming to the realization that the economic, political, and social problems in the world are becoming quite pronounced – worse than at any other point in their lifetimes. Increasingly, such people are turning to publications such as this one to find answers as to: (a) where it will all end; and (b) how they can personally avoid (or at least minimize) the damage to themselves, personally.

Publications such as this one do their best to inform people as to how they may positively affect their future; however, in order for people to make informed choices, they must first understand the nature of their situation.

One of the misperceptions that seems to be almost universal is that, although things are bad, there is no particular reason why, if the right people were in charge, the situation could not simply reverse itself and all would be well again.

This is not at all the case.

At the root of the misunderstanding is the common perception that a country’s progress (economically and politically) is rather like a sine wave, endlessly oscillating. Booms and busts come and go with regularity. If it were as simple as this, the goal for all concerned right now would be to remain as liquid as possible and to ride out the current situation until we reach the next upward wave, which surely could take place if the right people are at the helm.

At such times, the heat that revolves around elections becomes considerable, as people take up sides over whether the liberal or conservative candidate “has the answer.”

However, if we step well back from the situation and examine which government philosophy has been the most successful, we would have to admit that, regardless of the outcome of elections, the decline has continued unabated. In fact, nearly all the countries of the First World are now in a more dire condition that at any time in living memory. Whatever is taking place, it is not a repetitive sine wave; and we should not rest our hopes on the possibility that “our guy” will be elected and carry us through to the next upswing.

If we step back further, we note that historically this is not a new condition. The present situation has played itself out over the millennia. Countries come to prominence, flourish for a time, then decay for sometimes long periods before rising again, if ever. Countries, particularly democracies, tend to have a lifespan.

Typically, they follow this pattern:

• From Bondage to Moral Certitude

• From Moral Certitude to Great Courage

• From Great Courage to Liberty

• From Liberty to Abundance

• From Abundance to Selfishness

• From Selfishness to Complacency

• From Complacency to Apathy

• From Apathy to Dependency <--You are here...

• From Dependency to Bondage

The empires of old, such as the Roman Empire and the Athenian Republic, followed this pattern. Rome took roughly 500 years to complete the entire transition (or longer, depending upon interpretations). Later, others, such as Spain, Holland, and the UK took their turns, each taking a bit less time to complete the pattern. The US is the present holder of the title of “Greatest Empire.” It has taken about 250 years to travel from its point of Moral Certitude to its present state of Apathy/Dependency.

The reader can perform his own appraisals of when the US passed through each of the above stages.

He may even wish to add one or two of his own mini-stages, or retitle some stages to his liking. Still, it is likely that he will agree that this pattern has been followed.

What is striking about the pattern is that it is based upon human nature. For the majority of people in any country, there is a brief time (Great Courage to Liberty) when human frustration gives way to dramatic change. This is followed by natural and even predictable periods that often take a generation or two to fully play out, until they morph into the next stage. But they are logical, as they follow a path of human nature.

What is significant is that the pattern remains the same; and it represents the lifetime of a country. Some may take longer than others to travel from one stage to the other, but the pattern remains over the entire transition.

But all the above is academic. To have worth, the recognition of the premise that a country has a lifetime must be related to the present situation.

If we recognize that the present Empire has indeed passed through the various stages and is now in the Apathy/Dependency stage, we would have to consider that the final stage of Bondage is now on the horizon. If we are prepared to take a major step back from our present standpoint to assess both the past and future, we will conclude that no election – in the US or any other country – will reverse the inexorable progress of governments to dominate the electorate. Nor will it reverse the electorate’s slow but steady compliance over generations. This process is as perennial as the grass. Those who seek to dominate will always keep up the pressure for ever-greater control, and the average citizen will always hope for an easier life if he gives in “just one more time” to the powers that be.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is fond of referring of the American government as a “giant predatory bird, with a right wing and a left wing.” This is an excellent analogy that does not only apply to the US. It can be applied to most every “democracy” in the world. Elections serve as useful illusions to provide hope for the populace that they, in some way, contribute to their own destiny. They therefore follow the election process to such a degree that, in those countries where the election scam is most prominent, the candidates actually begin campaigning a year or more before their terms are complete, rather than focus on the running of the country.

No matter which candidate wins, the pattern continues to play itself out.

And so, the question bears asking again. Why, if countries do pass through a natural progression of stages, would anyone hold on to the thin sliver of hope that any election in any country would somehow reverse the entire process, as has never occurred in the past?

The answer, it would seem, is that once this vain hope is given up, all that is left is the acceptance that the final stage of development is on the way. And to accept such a dark inevitability is a prospect that not even a Russian novelist could bear.

There will certainly be those who say, “I choose to be hopeful,” and by doing so will in essence seal their fate. On the other hand, those who do take the difficult decision to stare down the dark road that lies ahead must make a choice – and it is in that choice that the real hope lies.

In the nineteenth century, Europe was in tatters. Old, bloated kingdoms were either falling into decay or being toppled by revolution. Often the leaders of those revolutions were just as sociopathic as many of our modern-day leaders (although less subtle in their methods of control). Back then, the majority of citizens in every country put their heads down and hoped that “maybe it will get better.” However, a few people actually took the courageous step to pull up stakes and sail across the water to a new, more promising country. The stories of success that found their way back to Europe, in time, resulted in a flood of people who made the move. The very ambition that they created within themselves proved to be the foundation of the American transition “from Liberty to Abundance.”

Today, the trickle of people has begun again. As before, many people are quietly exiting Europe, but this time, the US is not the destination. In fact, a flow has also begun from that country.

But there is a difference this time. So far, the waves of “refugees” have not yet filled the ships, although that may yet happen. For now, what is occurring is the quiet exit of those people who still retain some level of wealth and are seeking to both retain that wealth and to gain greater freedom for the future. This, in a sense, is the “golden time,” when the welcome mat is still out in many desirable destinations; when the first to arrive will have the greatest opportunity. Later, if the predictable flood of expatriation occurs, the welcome mats may be withdrawn.

Hollywood Blamed The Fans For Their Failures And Now They Face Collapse

   "Go Woke, Go Broke!" Hollywood has pushed the logic to its natural conclusion and consequently, the studios are facing the wall.  

   Personally, I haven't watched a single Hollywood movie since the pandemic. Prices are high, quality is low. Nonsensical franchises, LGBTQ remakes, I wouldn't watch for free. Apparently, I am not alone. The world is giving up on Hollywood. 

   Indian movies have matured and some Bollywood epics such as "Padmavati" are now worth watching for international audiences. In Africa Nollywood is expending out of Nigeria. China and Japan are slowly increasing their reach. "Kokuho" (National Treasure) released in Japan in 2025 is well worth the time if you are interested in Japan and Kabuki.  

  In Europe, it is the opposite. With the death of Brigitte Bardot last week, it is the "Nouvelle Vague" which marked the renaissance of France in the 1960s which passed away. Since, just as Hollywood, Cinema which was invented there is also dying there from a 1,000 cut woke agony which saw studios doubling down instead of walking back on public rejection.  

  In any case, in 2026, technology will completely transform the movie experience. Virtual actors, virtual sceneries, virtual everything will very soon, first replace expensive and hard to make movies then literally swamp the big screen. The "grey goo" was supposed to describe micro-machines gone rogue and multiplying themselves to infinity. It may, much earlier, describe the cinematographic experience: meaningless stories with no plot and overdone effects stitched together by AI. 

  Imagine a woke movie with LGBTQ actors put together by AI for no-one in particular. Welcome to 2026. It didn't have to end up this way but apparently we left the plot to the wrong movie director!    

Hollywood Blamed The Fans For Their Failures And Now They Face Collapse

In November, the entertainment media was energized by the news of potential studio mergers and a potential jump in content spending by Disney and Paramount.  The possibility of more cash flowing into productions was seen as a light at the end of a long dark tunnel for a film industry crushed by endless box office and TV streaming failures.  Maybe this new funding would revitalize a Hollywood gasping for oxygen?

However, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, the surge in funding was not necessarily going into the pockets of the current crop of filmmakers and TV series showrunners.  Instead, Disney, Paramount and other entertainment conglomerates are shifting cash into sports and foreign content.  

The reasons why media giants are quietly abandoning Hollywood should be obvious.  In early 2025, these same companies took one last gamble on DEI and stood in solidarity with activist producers, directors and writers.  And, the result this year was the same as the last several years:  They lost billions in revenues per project.

The raw box office numbers are ugly, but they don't tell the whole story.  Overall productions costs have skyrocketed by 25% since early 2020 and inflation in ticket prices has hidden the crippling plunge in total ticket sales compared to the same time period.  In other words, Hollywood's profit margins are shrinking while their audience is dwindling.

Their strategy in early 2025 revolved around the idea of attacking the audience (their customer base) as a "toxic fandom" that needs to be shamed and marginalized.  The problem is, in most cases when companies go to war with their customers they inevitably lose.  

More recent examples include Superman director James Gunn's social media rants attacking fans for criticizing the pro-illegal immigration propaganda planted in the comic book film which was intended to relaunch the Warner Bros. DC universe.  The media applauded Gunn's handling of the fandom and claimed that he set a precedent for future films that draw audience backlash.  In reality, Gunn's movie was a box office flop, falling $100 million short of the $700 million in global ticket sales needed for the film to break even.

Gunn's big mouth and far-left propaganda sunk the movie's chances.  Keep in mind, the Superman franchise is about as all-American as you can get; to not draw in a massive US audience requires stunning incompetence. 

   

Then there was the epic failure of Disney's Star Wars series, "The Acolyte".  The streaming series sought to deconstruct the Star Wars mythos by making the Jedi the villains and portrayed the Sith as misunderstood good guys.  The show was saturated with LGBT casting and gay propaganda including the infamous lesbian space witches.  The Acolyte was created by Leslye Headland, former assistant of Harvey Weinstein, and was essentially the last attempt by Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy to force fans to embrace a woke version of the franchise.

To this day, Headland has been raging against "toxic" audiences for rejecting the series and making it one of the most embarrassing projects ever to be released by Disney's streaming service (and there's a long list of disastrous releases from Disney+).  She asserts that her show's dismal reception had nothing to do with bad writing and woke storytelling; rather, it was the fault of "racist and fascist" fans. 

Disney immediately cancelled the show due to rock bottom viewership and it's unlikely Headland will ever touch another Star Wars project again.   

Even "Stranger Things", a Netflix mainstay considered a sure winner, faced audience decline during its final season after planting abrupt and unnecessary LGBT messaging in the series.  The establishment media came to the show's defense, arguing that audiences have become "entitled" and that studios need to stop trying to give customers what they want. 

The truth is, Hollywood has been ignoring audience feedback for years and their concerns have focused more on force-feeding fans a steady diet of woke indoctrination.  This might have been possible for them a few years ago when cash reserves were still strong, but the studios are finally realizing that they can't propagandize the public if no one pays to watch their garbage.

In other words, the leftists in entertainment didn't take into account the possibility that audiences would simply walk away.  They can control every facet of media from TV to advertising to film, but they can't force people to consume their content (at least not in the US).

And this seems to be the new business model for Hollywood going into next year.  2025 was the last hurrah for woke programming in America.  Now, studios are scrambling to cancel a number of politically charged shows and movies in the hopes of finally bringing profits back to their pre-pandemic glory.  Their pending 2026 release lineup, though, is anorexic.  

In the meantime, companies like Netflix are adapting with targeted woke messaging in countries where people can actually be forced to watch.  In Britain, for example, the government is excitedly promoting the Netflix series "Adolescence". The show is set to be featured in UK classrooms as part of an anti-masculinity program to brainwash young men into avoiding conservative content and fearing their own biology. 

It is likely that the industry will try to adapt their productions to markets where audiences have less freedom of choice in the hopes of offsetting their losses in the US, but the fact remains that unless they abandon woke politics completely there is little chance that they will be able to weather another year of failure similar to the ugliness of 2025.

Carl Sagan - Bamboozlement

 

 

 

 

The Beginning Of The End For Europe's Old Security Order

   What is going on in Ukraine is absolutely terrible for Europe which is why the continent cannot contemplate a end to the war. Like it or not, as explained bellow, a new world is being born and "Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion."

by J.Ricardo Martins via journal-neo.su,

Europe’s long-standing security framework is undergoing profound strain, increasingly overshadowed by economic instruments that shape geopolitical influence.

This analysis examines how geoeconomic logics are reshaping Europe’s strategic posture and challenging the foundations of its traditional security order.

1. The Unraveling: How Europe Lost Control of Its Own Security Architecture

The photograph of Steve Witkoff with Vladimir Putin in Moscow is not merely another episode in the long chronicle of American informal diplomacy. It is a symbol of something far more consequential: the definitive erosion of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture that has anchored Europe since 1945. Europe now finds itself a spectator to a negotiation that directly concerns its future but in which it has no meaningful voice.

For decades, European leaders assumed that their security environment was guaranteed through three pillars: American military supremacy, NATO cohesion, and a Russia that could be simultaneously contained and marginalised. The war in Ukraine temporarily sustained this illusion. The European Union interpreted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as validation of the post-1991 Atlantic order, proof that Europe needed more NATO, more American leadership, more defence spending, and more ideological alignment with Washington.

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion

But as the conflict entered its later stages, and as new political dynamics emerged in Washington, a deeper reality became visible: Europe’s vision of security was not aligned with America’s long-term strategic trajectory.

Washington seeks to contain China; Europe seeks to contain Russia. Washington looked to the Indo-Pacific; Europe clung to its Eastern frontier. Washington viewed Russia as a potential co-player in global resource extraction, Arctic development, and strategic balancing; Europe continued to frame Russia as a permanent existential enemy.

The result is a form of strategic misalignment, with Europe still operating inside an architecture that Washington no longer fully believes in.

The American Pivot, the European Panic

Donald Trump’s return to the international stage accelerated this divergence dramatically. Trump’s strategic re-imagination of Russia, as an asset rather than an adversary placed Europe in a state of near-panic. His willingness to undermine NATO commitments, his explicit distrust of European leaders, and his understanding of geopolitics as business diplomacy all contribute to Europe’s strategic anxiety.

Trump’s humiliation of Europe is deliberate. By sending Witkoff, an adviser with no diplomatic obligations, to Moscow repeatedly while ignoring Kyiv, Trump signals that the centre of gravity has moved. The peace process will not be mediated through Brussels, Berlin, or Paris; it will be mediated through a Washington–Moscow axis, bypassing European institutions entirely.

Europe’s refusal to speak with Moscow is interpreted in the Kremlin not as principled resistance but as strategic self-sabotage. And Washington, sensing opportunity, is willing to exploit this fracture.

As many analysts warned—both sympathetic and critical—Europe is discovering too late that its security cannot be maintained through moral rhetoric, sanctions, or rearmament without industrial foundations. Europe wants to contain Russia, but it no longer has the political, military, or economic tools to do so.

2. The Dealmakers: How Trump, Putin, and Business Networks Are Writing Europe Out of Its Own Future

Shadow Diplomacy as the New Geopolitics

Witkoff’s shuttle diplomacy represents a structural shift: diplomacy is no longer the domain of foreign ministries but of political families, corporate intermediaries, and resource-based alliances. This is why Kushner’s presence in Moscow matters profoundly. The December talks were not simply high-level negotiations; they were the emergence of a new system of geopolitical conduct, in which trust between individual power networks outweighs institutional protocols.

The Trump–Putin paradigm is built on three principles: (i) commercial logic over ideological confrontation; (ii) resource extraction as the foundation of geopolitical stability; and (iii) bilateral trust over multilateral institutions.

This is profoundly humiliating for Europe, which traditionally sought legitimacy via multilateralism. For Washington and Moscow, however, Europe’s exclusion is not an oversight but a feature. The old European security architecture depended on Europe’s centrality. The new one does not.

The Economic Heart of the New Architecture

The emerging Washington–Moscow understanding is grounded in four economic pillars:

– Arctic and Northern Sea Route Resource Extraction: Joint participation in Arctic minerals, hydrocarbons, and rare earths is central. The US is far behind Russia in icebreaker capacity and Arctic infrastructure, and cooperation is a pragmatic solution.

– Energy Corridors and Post-War Reconstruction: American investors eye Russian energy as an undervalued frontier market. Simultaneously, reconstruction of Ukraine (potentially funded by frozen Russian assets) creates massive opportunities for US construction and energy firms.

– Reintegrating Russian hydrocarbons into global markets: This is a long-term American objective, both to stabilise global energy prices and to manage China’s growing leverage over Russia.

– Replacing NATO’s military logic with economic interdependence: This is the core of Trump’s thinking: build a Washington–Moscow axis rooted in profitability, thereby reducing the incentive for armed confrontation.

Why Europeans Are Desperate

Because Europe has tied its industrial base to sanctions, decarbonisation, and American military dependency, it is now structurally weaker than both Washington and Moscow in the emerging configuration.

Europe is discovering three painful truths:

– It cannot defend itself without the US. NATO’s European pillars lack ammunition, industrial capacity, and high-end military technology.

– Sanctions have weakened Europe more than Russia. Energy-intensive industries in Germany, Austria, and Italy are relocating to the US. Deindustrialisation is underway in Europe.

– The peace negotiations will not include Europe as a co-author. Europe will receive the final document, but not be invited to shape it.

This is why European strategists are furious: the security architecture that defined the continent is being rewritten over their heads.

3. After Ukraine: What the New European Security Order Might Look Like

Will NATO survive as Europe’s central pillar?

NATO will not disappear. It remains too deeply institutionalised, too symbolically powerful for Europeans, and too useful for Washington’s basing structures and arms exports. But it will be downgraded, transformed from the core of the European security order into a secondary framework, increasingly dependent on: US political will, a fragmented European defence sector, reduced American enthusiasm for European commitments, and a US–Russia modus vivendi that Europe does not control.

Under a Trump presidency, NATO has become a transactional umbrella, not a strategic alliance. Its credibility will depend entirely on the personal relationship between Trump and Putin—and Europe hates this because it strips the continent of agency.

The Impact of the War and the Coming Peace on Europe’s Architectural Future

The conflict in Ukraine revealed Europe’s structural vulnerabilities: lack of ammunition, lack of production capacity, overreliance on sanctions, and strategic incoherence. The peace will reveal something even more uncomfortable: Europe cannot enforce the consequences of the settlement on its own.

If the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. Neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario.

Ukraine, tragically, will be the ultimate pressure point. Its sovereignty will be negotiated by outsiders. Europe knows this but cannot alter it.

Can Europe Hold the Architecture Without the US?

The honest answer is no, not in the short or medium term. Europe lacks nuclear deterrence autonomy, military-industrial depth, cohesive political will, strategic consensus, energy security, technological parity with the US, and the capacity to contain Russia without American leadership.

The idea of European strategic autonomy remains aspirational rhetoric. The EU has military instruments, but not a military. It has ambitions, but not the industrial base to sustain them.

The Asian Century and the Decline of Europe

The more Washington and Moscow converge economically, the more Europe’s global relevance declines. The Russia–China axis strengthens, India emerges as a balancing pole, and the BRICS expand their economic and political weight. Europe becomes a peninsula of a Eurasian supercontinent that it does not control, increasingly marginal to global power centres.

Whether Asia can provide stability depends on the trust networks forming between Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, Riyadh, and Tehran. Europe is not part of those networks.

Conclusion: A Continent in Suspension

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion.

The Moscow meetings are not a negotiation between equals; it is a negotiation between systems of power. Trump and Putin understand one another because they speak the language of transactional geopolitics. Europe speaks the language of norms, laws, and bureaucratic procedures—in a world that is no longer governed by them.

A new European security architecture is being drafted, and it is not being drafted in Brussels. It is being drafted in Washington and Moscow.

Europe must confront a stark question: Can a continent that has lost strategic agency recover it before the next geopolitical cycle closes?

Your Mind Can Bend Time - Here's How

   Well, not exactly but still, time is not what we believe it is. To understand this, we need to start with the Bell theorem which stipulate that my time is different than yours and the two can only be reconciled at the speed of light but not faster. (Except for the spooky action at a distance of quantum entanglement but let's not get into this. It is proven but nobody truly understands why!) 

  And then, worse, far worse, Einstein theory of relativity has consequences. One of these is called the Pole and Barn Paradox. Take a 10m long pole and sent it at close to the speed of light through a barn which is only 5m wide. Well, when you close the two doors, at one instant t, the pole fits within the barn. This of course is well explained by relativity as the pole actually shrinks in size as its speed approaches the speed of light. But there is another way to understand it: The pole has now a 45 degree angle in time which explains why it is now no longer than 5m and therefore fits within the two doors of the barn. In other word; there is no instant t. Only t1 and t2.)

  Understand this paradox and suddenly your concept of "time" will change completely. Time in reality is not a dimension because it is infinitely malleable. In other words, as Einstein proved, time is not absolute but relative, to space but more fundamentally to what happens within this space. 

  So unlike what we have been enticed to believe, time travel is not possible. The future does not exist yet. It depends on events which have not happened yet and which are still uncertain. As for the past, it is worse: There is no past! Only a chain of events in one specific place. When you look at the stars, you see them now as they were when light started its journey. Well, our present and their present cannot be reconciled faster than the speed of light as we explained before, which has a direct consequence. For a star 300 light-year away from us, their present and our present will never be connected faster than in 300 years. The Universe does not understand the concept of an instant t. 

  Time is local, not global. 

by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times

A minute is always a minute, except when it isn’t.

This idea was put to the test in a 2023 Harvard study. Researchers induced minor bruising on participants’ forearms and then had them sit in rooms where the clocks ran at normal speed, half-speed, or double-speed.

Illustration by The Epoch Times/Shutterstock

Crucially, the actual elapsed time was identical across all conditions—28 minutes—but the clocks ticked at different rates.

The results surprised the researchers. Wounds healed faster when people thought more time had passed, and slower when they thought less time had passed. “Personally, I didn’t think it would work,” lead author Peter Aungle told The Epoch Times. “And then it did work!”

A century ago, Albert Einstein demonstrated that time is relative—not fixed. He explained the idea with a simple, humorous example: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are finding that our sense of time is not only inherently subjective but also highly malleable.

We can’t stop the clock, but by understanding how we perceive time, we can make minutes feel longer, heal faster, and even expand our memories.

How the Mind Affects Reality

The Harvard healing experiment is a pivotal piece of evidence that mind and body are not only connected, but may be one and the same. “We weren’t really manipulating time itself. We were manipulating expectations,” Aungle said.

“If they [people] think more time has passed, they expect more healing—and those expectations can shape the body.”

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

Most people think of mind-body effects only in terms of emotion, he added. Yet, “psychology is embedded in everything the body does. I would argue the mind influences every physiological outcome to some degree.”

Expectations are not the only time bender. While believing time has sped up aids healing, high-arousal negative emotions, such as fear, significantly dilate our perception of time, making it feel slower.

In one study, participants watched frightening clips from “The Shining” or “Scream.” Afterward, a blue circle was presented in the center of the computer screen. Participants perceived that the circle lasted longer after watching frightening movies than after watching neutral or sad films.

Sylvie Droit-Volet, the lead researcher of the study, told The Epoch Times that subjective expansion is likely because “fear accelerates the internal clock, making time seem to pass more quickly and prompting action”—the fight or flight response.

Because the internal clock is ticking faster, measuring more units of time per second, the external world appears to move in slow motion. The time dilation allows the brain to process information with higher resolution during life-threatening situations.

Slowing Time

We can also make time feel longer in positive ways, such as by seeking out moments of awe.

A 2012 study published in Psychological Science found that feeling awe, whether from a story or a memory, makes time feel more abundant.

Awe acts as a reset button for the brain. It brings people intensely into the present moment. According to the “extended-now theory,” focusing on the present moment elongates time perception because we are not mentally rushing toward the future. By filling the present with vastness, awe offsets the feeling that time is slipping away, making life feel more satisfying.

The study also found that people who felt awe were less impatient, more willing to help others, and preferred experiences over material products.

We can also slow our perception of time through the practice of savoring.

“Savoring is putting a highlighter pen on our experiences,” psychologist Tamar Chansky told The Epoch Times. Savoring does not require extra duration, but rather a shift in attention.

For the time-starved, Chansky suggested taking “two more bites” of an experience—whether tasting coffee or looking out a window—to engage the brain’s awareness. This simple act creates “invisible, little expanders” within our finite days. It is a way of feeding the spirit without requiring a restructuring of one’s schedule, she said.

“We could rush through a whole day so easily ... and we might feel somewhat or even very productive at the end of the day, but we might not feel good. So finding these little pockets ... helps us to feel that expansion within.”

Chansky’s insight aligns with research findings that training attention, such as through meditation, can change how we perceive time.

Experienced meditators feel time passes more slowly during meditation and in their daily lives than people who do not meditate.

Being in nature also slows our experience of time.

In one study, participants overestimated the duration of a walk by nearly two minutes when it took place in nature, whereas their estimates were accurate for urban walks. Nature exposure increases mindfulness and reduces stress, states that are theoretically linked to a slowing of the internal clock. If you need to “buy” yourself a little time, you can find it in the wild. “Time grows on trees,” the study concluded.

Memories and Time

Why do childhood summers feel endless while adult years appear to fly by? The answer lies in how our brains process novelty. Our brains measure time based on how many new memories are created.

When we encounter unexpected stimuli, our brains process more information, leading to a subjective expansion of that duration. In experiments where a low-probability stimulus—called an oddball—appears in a stream of repetitive standard stimuli, the oddball, or novelty, is consistently judged to last longer.

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

“The more unique, meaningful, or changing experiences we have, the longer the stretch of time feels in memory,” Marc Wittmann, a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany, said. On the other hand, routine compresses time in memory by halting the recording of details it already knows. When neurons fire repeatedly in response to the same stimulus, their response diminishes; they become efficient but record less data.

Therefore, to stretch your subjective life, introduce variation.

“A fulfilled and varied life is a long life,” Wittmann told The Epoch Times. This effect is not about simply filling a schedule with busyness—it is about “deep emotional resonance with the world.” A hundred days of routine collapse into a single memory unit in the brain; a week of travel or new experiences remains distinct and expansive.

Wittmann’s recent research adds a nuance: cognitive capacity also plays a role. As we age, the perception that the last decade flew by is partly due to cognitive decline, which affects our ability to encode complex memories. However, this effect is moderate. People who stay mentally and physically fit and continue to seek novel, emotionally rewarding experiences can subjectively expand their sense of time, regardless of age.

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