Germany’s Silent Shift: From Entrepreneurs To State Dependence Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Germany affords itself a state bureaucracy that functions like an artificial labor market placed upstream of the private sector. The flight of hundreds of thousands into the arms of the state corresponds with the shrinking number of self-employed in the country. And policymakers are actively promoting this trend. Let us begin with a piece of […]

EU Going To War With VPNs In Bid To “Save The Children” Western European governments and EU bureaucrats are advancing tighter regulations on VPNs as part of a broader push for “online age verification” and their ‘Chat Control’ agenda.  Privacy advocates and digital rights groups warn that Europe is drifting towards a surveillance and censorship regime similar to internet restrictions and firewalls used by Russia and China. […]

EU Crime Report: Spanish Rape Reports Surge 322% Over Last Decade, EU Sees 150% Increase Via Remix News, New data released by Eurostat on Wednesday reveals a staggering rise in reported sexual crimes across the European Union, with Spain showing an increase far beyond the continental average. Spain has seen one of the most significant shifts in reporting, according to Spain’s La Razon outlet. In 2024, the country registered […]

Big Shake-Up: Putin Fires Head Of Aerospace Forces After Devastating Ukrainian Drone Attacks There are reports out of Russia of another high level firing within the defense ministry. This time, President Putin has reportedly sacked the head of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, which is the armed services branch responsible for the country’s air defenses. Moscow-based news outlet RBC reports that General Viktor Afzalov has been replaced […]

Germany’s Inflation Scapegoat: Why Hormuz Is A Convenient Cover Story Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Over the weekend, economist Gerrit Heinemann warned in Bild of a drastic increase in food prices in Germany. The scholar from Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences focused his analysis on the massive rise in fertilizer prices. A significant share of these—estimated at roughly one third of global production—is transported through […]

Horrifying “Rape Festival” Sparks Worldwide Outrage Videos circulating on social media out of Nigeria have ignited shock and horror after appearing to show groups of men chasing, stripping and sexually assaulting women in broad daylight during a traditional “fertility” festival in the country’s southern Delta State, according to news.com.au. The incidents unfolded on March 19 during the Alue-Do festival in Ozoro, a triennial […]

Meta Raising $13 Billion SPV For Texas Data Center As Its CDS Hits Record Back in January, just days before the latest private crash swept across markets, we reminded readers that one of the biggest abusers of private credit SPVs was none other than Meta which as of 2025 was “already neck deep in off-balance sheet debt.” We then showed a schematic of its $27.3 billion SPV with private credit ground zero – Blue Owl – titled “Project […]

Trump’s “Project Vault” Plans To Initially Buy Rare Earths From China As we reported in February, the US Export-Import Bank’s proposed rare earth stockpiling initiative would initially source critical minerals from anywhere in the world – including China, an official involved in the project revealed to Bloomberg. The $12 billion Project Vault would later shift to a replenishment model that prioritizes domestic production first, […]

DC Judge ‘Apologizes’ To Alleged Trump Assassin Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, A federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., has come under fire after expressing deep concern – described by multiple outlets as an apology – over the custody conditions of Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25. […]

“Rare Sight”: USAF C-17 Jets Land In Beijing Ahead Of Trump-Xi Summit As the Strait of Hormuz takes center stage Monday morning, Iran is threatening to attack any ship that attempts to transit the critical waterway. This directly challenges President Trump’s plan for the U.S. Navy to “guide” tankers and container ships through the chokepoint. Looking beyond the ongoing Hormuz crisis, the China topic is next: Trump is still expected […]

Iran War Threatens China’s 4.5 Percent Growth Target: Analysts Authored by Jarvis Lim via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), China’s already-strained economy faces mounting pressure as the Iran war threatens to choke export growth and suppress domestic demand, putting its 4.5 percent growth target at risk, experts say. A woman takes a photo of the Lujiazui financial district across the Huangpu River on the Bund promenade in […]

New York Parole Bills Could Free Some Of The State’s Most Notorious Killers Two parole reform bills advancing in New York are triggering intense debate, with supporters calling them long-overdue criminal justice reforms and critics warning they could allow violent offenders to leave prison early, according to the NY Post. One proposal, known as the Elder Parole bill, would allow incarcerated individuals to request parole hearings […]

Elites And Their Contempt Authored by Reverend John F. Naugle via The Brownstone Institute, Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel. Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to “Stay Safe and Stay Home” came […]

Sacked Russian Minister Flees To US Amid Corruption Probe In First Of Ukraine War A Russian minister has become the first known high-ranking official to flee Russia and seek asylum in the United States since the Ukraine war began over four years ago, amid a fraud probe. Denis Butsayev, a senior Russian official recently dismissed from the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, fled to the US to avoid criminal prosecution, […]

Virtue Gone Mad: Manager Punished More Harshly Than The Shoplifter He Stopped Authored by Theodore Dalrymple via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Commentary Nietzsche thought that the decline of the Christian religion in Europe would inevitably lead to a social, cultural, and moral crisis. This was because a traditional morality based upon religious belief could not be upheld once the religious belief itself weakened or was […]

Hormuz Closure ‘Inflicting Enormous Impact’ On Asia: Japan’s PM Takaichi The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is “inflicting enormous impact” on the Asia-Pacific region, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Monday in somewhat dramatic remarks before the press. Takaichi’s words were issued from Canberra, on the occasion of Japan having signed agreements with Australia on critical minerals, energy security, and defense […]

The COVID Playbook Returns: Energy Rationing & The Politics Of Crisis Control Authored by Chris MacIntosh via Doug Casey’s International Man, This recent headline from New Zealand should itself send chills down your spine… “Government reveals details of fuel crisis rationing plan – and who will be prioritized.” Anytime the pointy shoes get to decide who will and who will not get something, you must realise that […]

Japan Says It Counts Three Consecutive Days Of FX Intervention As One Earlier today we joked when, after the third intervention attempt by Japan’s MOF/BOJ, the yen promptly sold off again as Japanese officials continued to sink billions of dollars into what has become bottomless monetary pit (ignoring for a second the lunacy of spending dollars to strengthen your currency while at the same time printing yet), one which gets bigger […]

High-Intensity Beams, Not Whispers: Study Suggests Aliens Would Send Strong Signals Authored by Rupendra Brahambhatt via Interesting Engineering, For more than half a century, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been built on the assumption that if aliens exist and try to communicate, their signals will be faint, scattered, and easy to miss.  An alien doll.James Bat Barrera/Pexels So astronomers have spent decades […]

Treasury Boost Quarterly Borrowing Estimate To $189BN: Full Quarterly Refunding Preview The US Department hiked its estimates for US debt borrowing in the current quarter, citing lower net cash flows. In a statement published today, and ahead of Wednesday’s Quarterly Refunding Announcement, the US Treasury said that it now expects to borrow $189 billion in net debt for the current quarter, up ~$80 billion from the $109 billion it […]

New Member Of Trump’s Iran Negotiating Team Comes From FDD Think Tank Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, Amid stalled peace talks and a US blockade on Iranian ports, the Trump administration has added a new member to its negotiating team who comes from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a notoriously hawkish think tank that has been lobbying for aggressive action against the Islamic Republic for many years. Nick […]

Ceasefire Over? Trump Downplays ‘Mini-War’ After US & Iranians Trade Shots, Missiles Target UAE Summary Trump employs interesting new term: “We’re in, I call it a mini-war.” Fujairah says 3 injured in Iranian attack on Oil Industry Zone, UAE confirms “air defenses are now dealing with a missile threat”, we have gotten reports of explosions in Dubai, which has sent oil higher and Emini futures into the red. UAE […]

As Pump Prices Hit Iran War Highs, Duffy Claims They’ll Fall Immediately After Hormuz Reopens As pump prices for gasoline (and diesel) hit Iran War highs, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday that gasoline prices should begin to decline “immediately” once shipping resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing back against analyst warnings that relief for consumers could take months. Duffy, speaking on […]

Did Bill Maher Just Kill Gavin Newsom’s 2028 Dreams? For a man who fancies himself the future of the Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom had a rough Friday night. The California governor appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, probably expecting the kind of warm exchange that comes with being a friend of the host. What he got instead was a methodical, public undressing from one of liberalism’s most prominent voices — and it proves how […]

All’s Not So Quiet On Any Front Authored by James Howard Kunstler, Project Freedom. Cute move! Notice that it’s not Operation Freedom. That would frame it as a military move. The President is tactically framing this as a humanitarian action. Mr. Trump has advised Congress as of May 1 that hostilities with Iran (Operation Epic Fury) are terminated, at the 60-day limit of the War Powers Resolution. Commercial ships from […]