Jamie Raskin has now done what Congress avoided for nearly six decades. With Trump’s Iran war spiraling and public trust collapsing, he has finally tabled a bill to build the “other body” the 25th Amendment quietly promised back in 1967. On paper, it is a nonpartisan commission,but in reality, it is an attempt to answer a question the American system has never dared to face head-on. You are staring at a question that is much bigger than Donald Trump, the man. It is about whether the United States has a credible, non-partisan mechanism to stop a president from escalating toward catastrophic war when he is no longer functionally fit to do so. The 25th Amendment is the only tool the Constitution provides. If it fails, the world pays the price in blood, not in politics.

This article is not about cheering for Democrats or damning Trump. It is about the machinery behind the myth. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet or of such other body as Congress may by law provide to declare that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. For nearly sixty years, Congress has left this clause half-used, half-forgotten, while the United States has dragged the planet into one illegal war after another.

The real story is not whether Trump is unfit, but it is who gets to decide.

Who Decides When a President Is No Longer Fit to Rule

Imagine a president who can threaten to destroy an entire civilisation, launch strikes across the Middle East without congressional consent, and insult the head of the Catholic Church with the same casual arrogance he uses to sell real estate. That is not a caricature. It is a description of the current moment.

Democrats like Jamie Raskin argue that Donald Trump’s conduct during the Iran crisis has crossed the line from reckless rhetoric into something more dangerous: the appearance of a president whose judgment is so unstable that it endangers the lives of millions. This is not the first time Democrats have tried to build a 25th Amendment off‑ramp for Trump. In October 2020, Nancy Pelosi rolled out a similar capacity‑commission bill, insisting it was for “future presidents” even as it was clearly framed around Trump’s fitness after his COVID‑19 diagnosis.

They are not just asking whether Trump should be removed. They are asking who, in the Constitution, has the right to decide if a president has become too dangerous to remain in charge of war powers.

The 25th Amendment is the only clause that answers that question. Section 4 explicitly allows the vice president, plus a majority of the Cabinet or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, to declare that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. For almost six decades, Congress has left that power unused. The trigger has remained in the hands of the president’s own appointees.

DOCUMENT: Reader’s Guide to the never-before-invoked Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (Source: Law Yale)

Raskin wants to change that. His bill proposes a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office, a standing body composed of retired executive-branch officials and medical experts, appointed by congressional leaders from both parties. If Congress were to pass this bill, the commission would replace the Cabinet as the vice president’s partner for triggering incapacity review. That is the heart of the conflict.

In a revealing move, Raskin did not wait for the political circus to start. He sent a formal letter to the White House physician demanding an immediate and comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation of Trump, expressly grounding that request in the fact that the United States is at war and that Trump initiated that war without congressional authorization. He made the Commander-in-Chief’s mental capacity a national security question, not a partisan talking point. That letter is the bridge between Trump’s Iran-war behavior and the 25th-Amendment-style incapacity-review framework lawmakers now want to build.

The 25th Amendment was drafted in the wake of JFK’s assassination, when lawmakers realized the Constitution had no clear rule for presidential disability. The framers intentionally left the “other body” clause flexible, but they also feared giving Congress too much power over the presidency, and many doubted the body would ever be created. Sixty-one years later, Congress is finally being forced to confront that long-deferred decision under the pressure of a president whose conduct has exposed the danger of leaving it unfinished.

That is not a case of lawmakers forgetting, but a case of lawmakers consciously deferring a power they feared to use.

Inability or Misconduct

The 25th Amendment is not about impeachment, and it is not about whether a president has broken the law or been caught in a lie. It is about whether he is still capable of exercising the powers of the presidency. The line between misconduct and inability is thin and deliberate. The Constitution does not give a clear medical definition of incapacity. It leaves the question open to political and constitutional judgment.

That ambiguity is a feature rather than a bug. The framers wanted flexibility. They did not want to force Congress to diagnose a president as clinically insane before they could act, and they left instead a hook for the most dangerous scenario, with a president who is still breathing, still speaking, still signing orders, but whose mind is no longer capable of holding the line between escalation and annihilation.

Democrats are now using that hook. They are not arguing that Trump violated the law. They are arguing that his conduct as commander-in-chief has made his mental and cognitive fitness a national security concern. The 25th Amendment gives them a constitutional framework to make that argument. Whether the frame is abused or not depends on who controls the trigger.

Trump’s own conduct, however, only sharpens the underlying tension Section 4 was built to manage. Whether it is his repeated threat rhetoric, his pattern of escalating public pronouncements toward Iran, or his habit of talking about “whole civilizations” being destroyed in a single night, his behavior has already conditioned the public and the parties to expect a president who prefers to raise the rhetorical and operational stakes rather than defer to internal brakes on decision‑making.

That is precisely the kind of political environment in which lawmakers, once they start talking about the president as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” slide from the deliberately ambiguous language of the 25th Amendment into highly personalized judgments about a living president’s judgment under war conditions. The risk is not only that a president will be formally disabled from acting; it is that the line between genuine incapacity and politically inconvenient judgment will itself become another weapon in the partisan struggle for control of the nuclear trigger.

The 1967 debates around the 25th Amendment reveal how deliberately the framers linked “inability” to an emergency tool, not a routine accountability mechanism. They insisted that a president judged “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” must be removed through a process that is harder than impeachment for misconduct, precisely because the line between poor judgment and genuine incapacity is so easily politicized.

That design choice now haunts the current fights over Trump. On one side Democrats reach for the “inability” language when they say his conduct exposes the danger of an unchecked president, whilst critics argue that the real threat is not his mental state but his political choices—choices that should be challenged at the ballot box or through impeachment, not through a constitutional emergency clause that could just as easily be turned against a successor.

Who Controls the Trigger

The trigger is the vice president plus the Cabinet. That is the default under Section 4. The vice president can act with a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments. But the clause has a second clause: “or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.” That is the escape hatch.

There is another cold calculation at work. As long as Trump keeps marching in lockstep with Israel’s war cabinet and backing escalation against Iran, the AIPAC universe has no incentive to lean on its Democrats and Republicans to bless Raskin’s commission. However, if Trump were to break away with that war logic, the same network would suddenly discover a constitutional emergency and quietly build momentum for his removal.

Congress has never used it. The Cabinet-based trigger has remained the only option, and the Cabinet has every incentive not to act. Cabinet members are appointed by the president. They serve at his pleasure and can be fired on very short notice. They are surrounded by the same political ecosystem that rewards loyalty and punishes dissent. That is the ultimate structural flaw, as the very people who are supposed to judge presidential incapacity are the ones who have the most to lose if they do.

Raskin’s bill is an attempt to correct that flaw. The proposed commission would be a standing body, composed of retired executive-branch officials and medical experts, appointed by congressional leaders. It would be designed to act with the vice president, not with the president’s own appointees. In this case, the choice is simple. It keeps the trigger in the hands of loyal insiders, or hands it to a body that is, in theory, insulated from the president’s orbit.

The Yale Law School Reader’s Guide to the 25th Amendment stresses a point that is easily buried in the legal jargon. Once Congress creates such a body, that body becomes the exclusive partner of the vice president for initiating Section 4, unless the Cabinet is folded into it. The mechanism is either the vice president plus the Cabinet, or the vice president plus the other body. It is an “either/or,” not a “both/and.” That is the hinge of the entire constitutional power struggle. It is not just adding a new body; it is also about restructuring the front-end trigger for declaring presidential incapacity.

Legal scholars have long warned that Congress never created this body because of the same structural problem Raskin’s bill now tries to solve. The Cabinet-based mechanism may be structurally paralyzed when it is most needed. A president can reshape the Cabinet, replace dissenters, and promote acting officials, effectively neutralizing the only group that is supposed to be able to check him. That is not paranoia. It is a constitutional reality lawmakers are now trying to rewrite.lawreview.law.

What Happens If Raskin’s Bill Succeeds

Imagine a world where Raskin’s bill passes. Congress adopts a concurrent resolution directing the Commission on Presidential Capacity to examine the president. The commission carries out that examination within 72 hours, as the bill specifies. Within 72 hours after the exam, the commission reports its findings to the Speaker and the president pro tempore.

If the commission finds that the president is mentally or physically unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, and the vice president concurs in writing, the vice president immediately becomes Acting President. The president’s orders to military commanders, his nuclear codes, and his daily authority over the executive branch are suspended. The world does not change with a bang. It changes with a written declaration and a signature.

The president is allowed to fight back. He can submit a written declaration that he is fully capable. The Constitution gives the vice president and the commission four days to reaffirm their incapacity finding. If they do, Congress has 21 days to decide. During that window, the president retains the title of president, but the vice president holds the constitutional powers of the presidency.

If Congress ratifies the incapacity finding by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, the president loses his authority. If Congress fails to reach that threshold, the president regains full power. The mechanism is set up so that it is easier to block than to use. Using Section 4 in this way is not a shortcut. It is a higher bar than impeachment itself.

That is the scenario. A president who has threatened to destroy civilizations, who has launched strikes across the Middle East without congressional authorization, and who has provoked the world into a spiral of violence could be stripped of power in a matter of days. Or he could be restored to full authority, stronger and more defiant than before.

What If Congress Fails

The 25th Amendment is not a magic wand. It is a high-risk, high-stakes mechanism. If Congress fails to ratify the incapacity finding, the president does not merely survive. He returns to power with the restored constitutional shield of a presidency that has been tested and, in effect, vindicated. In other words, the Presidential succession process is a double-edged sword.

That is the hidden incentive not to act. Congress is not just risking the chaos of removing a president. It is risking the backlash of empowering the very figure it sought to contain. The 25th Amendment is designed only for emergencies so severe that lawmakers would rather face the fallout of using it than the fallout of leaving it dormant. If they flinch at the 21-day showdown, the system reveals its true priority—the survival of the presidency as an institution, not the safety of the world.

The 21-day window and the two-thirds threshold are not just technical details. They are the Constitutional failsafes against coup-like power grabs. They protect the president from being removed too easily, but they also protect the world from presidents who escalate too easily. The irony is that the same safeguards that block casual coups may also block the only constitutional path to restraint for a president who is on the verge of launching an illegal, unprovoked war.

The Bigger Picture: Rule of Law Under Stress

The 25th Amendment sits at the heart of a broader debate about the fragility of constitutional checks in an era of polarized, personalized leadership. The United States has already dragged the planet into one illegal war after another. The smear campaign against Iran, the sanctions, the provocations, the assassinations, the aerial strikes on Hezbollah, the creeping occupation of Lebanon under the guise of “democracy promotion,” the Zionist project of permanent expansion dressed as a response to terror, the British machinery of embedded “governance” and intelligence-driven reform—all of it depends on a presidency that can be pushed to the edge of nuclear conflagration by a single, unstable mind.

The 25th Amendment is the only constitutional tool that can, in theory, stop that cascade. It is not about scoring points for or against Trump. It is about whether the system can prevent a president from turning a diplomatic crisis into a global war when he is no longer fit to do so. The United States has a long history of ignoring such safeguards. It has a long history of turning the Constitution into a weapon of elite consensus and public spectacle. The continuity of presidential duties is the formal language, but the real question is whether that continuity serves peace or merely preserves the machinery of escalation.

The question is not whether Trump is unfit. The question is whether the system is

That system includes not only the president, but also the vice president. Figures like J D Vance have already been tested on the world stage. His high-profile trip to Hungary produced no meaningful diplomatic gains, and his role in the Islamabad talks was limited and quickly overshadowed by what many believe to be Israeli assets, disguised as experienced negotiators, namely Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Reporting from those episodes paints a picture of a politician who moves comfortably inside the same Republican national-security ecosystem, not a figure capable of breaking from it. 

The 25th Amendment-style trigger is being handed to someone drawn from the same security-state-and-war-machine network, which raises a hard question: when the time comes to judge a president’s capacity to wage or end war, will those sitting in judgment be any less invested in the system than the man whose hand is on the trigger?

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(Continued from Part 6. This concludes the article.)

Evaluating Families to Find Like-Minded People

Daily, I am reminded of how bad it is out there, based on the information that I am analyzing. People often ask me “How long do we have?” If you understand history, economics, threat analysis, and have three generations of preparedness expertise in your wheelhouse, then you know the lateness of the hour. As for my situation, I hope it is long enough to be able to get married and to get the supplies my future spouse and her family need. I have a lot of supplies set aside for my future spouse and her family. The future will be difficult no matter your level of preparation, but it will be even more difficult if you do not wisely choose who will be under your roof.

Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts on marriage are very relevant over 250 years later: “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterward.” Now, it is the time to evaluate people both if you wish to add people through marriage to your family or to your preparedness group.

A man reading this may someday encounter the father of a young woman. I have corresponded with many men from the nice to the not so nice. It is memorable to get a message with someone trying to rip me up, usually starting with “as the father of a precious daughter, I find your questions to be insulting.” People who can’t answer very basic questions about health or values many times do not have good answers if they finally got around to just answering basic questions. A man needs to ask lots of questions to get down to the core of who a woman is and what her family is about.

There are also so many problem young women and their families where men can get burned. A man really needs to take a hard look at a young woman and her family. So many families throw up smokescreens to disguise who they are instead of just admitting the truth and see if you can accept it. It is very important to determine if there are temporary issues like a moral issue where someone made a mistake and has repented or ongoing long-term issues.

If someday you want to be among those who live full-time on farms and retreats, this usually involves the principle of land ownership. If you are able to achieve a goal of land ownership and you are someday in a position to look for land, you may need to ask lots of probing and what some may term “insulting” questions. You need to learn how to read people. This takes a lot of experience usually either gained the hard way by making mistakes or the easy way by being mentored by strong men. One of the worst-case scenarios for a piece of land or a home is that you overpaid, it has problems and you need to dump it. It is similar with animals: if you are not a careful judge, you can get stuck with a problem animal. Unless the animal really does some damage, you can usually “ground beef” it without too much headache other than a loss of money which you can consider tuition. I advocate a Biblical pattern of marriage for life, so a spouse is something where one has to be extremely careful. It is great when people tell the truth because you can avoid those problems by carefully observing the “Danger” signs instead of “falling rocks” it is a variety of problems from health to mental that are usually found or revealed.

A man needs to be prepared to ask pointed questions of a woman and her family. As a man, you are in control of the direction of the conversation. This is the time to figure out by asking questions if the woman is being raised to be a Biblical helpmeet or someone who will put you through hell and be a hindrance to you. I have met a lot of men who got bamboozled by a pretty face and are now paying for it in alimony, child support, and having other men raise their kids. People usually tell you who they are almost immediately if you listen and observe closely. Some families try to hide who they are through a lot of flowery language and foolishness, but once you recognize by seeing it once or twice you can easily determine they are likely hiding some serious issues. Some people are just plain embarrassed, but it is better to own up to what they are about and then you can see if you can accept their issues. You will never likely find perfect, but “good” enough is often perfect for you as it would be for me.

For some reason, our current culture has this completely backwards with thinking that the man is in the weaker position, begging for a young woman. In reality, the man is in complete control because traditionally he will be the one providing for the new family. It can not be emphasized enough: You are in effect hiring a homemaker who will hopefully be the mother of your children, so you need to examine carefully as she could make or break your family tree.

Men need to learn how to correctly assert authority. Our culture has really knocked authority out of men. Men need to learn how to be comfortable with actually leading, questioning, and knowing how to correctly channel emotions. Your wife will not be your boss and your father-in-law will not likely be your boss either, but hopefully he is a wise older man. A wife will be a junior partner who after many years or in certain circumstances may need to act in your place, but you must carefully appraise a partner to determine if she is ready to begin the journey.

A young woman’s father needs to not be emotional and be able to answer questions about the young woman and how he leads or does not lead his family. A young woman is not likely something precious or rare. Remember from the earlier discussion when most people think they are “above-average” when that is statistically impossible. If you talk to enough people, you will find many patterns that emerge and rarely find a new classification place to your sorting boxes. A girl being born is very common occurrence in slightly less than half of all births. It is very unfortunate when I hear about men who are disappointed that they have a daughter in “gender reveal” parties. A girl can be a good or a bad addition to your family largely depending on how she is raised. A lot of her success in life depends on the father’s attitude. If the father has the right attitude, then the daughter usually has one. Usually, the father’s leadership or lack of it, leads to where the family is and will be going.

When you marry into a family, you marry the whole family. A man can come from humble surroundings, make his own way, and never look back. Many women are constantly looking back to the past and looking to other people for affirmation, especially other women. My mother is an exception because she was taught by her father, a combat veteran, to think for herself, but that is very rare. Most of these usual differences are imprinted deep in our historical DNA: At one time, men hunted in very small parties and women acted in larger cooperative ways trying to avoid being thrown out of their group. Men needed to be daring in order to bring back meat from large beasts that probably were very angry at being stuck by a flint spear and women were more successful at managing multiple friendships in their community.

One of the problems is how many families are raising boys especially how so many are told through the school system or through contemporary thought on how boys should act. Boys are not immature girls needing medication to be more girl-like or to start acting like girls. Boys are different than girls no matter how many woke pediatricians tell you that there are not differences between them. It is important to teach boys manners, but they are not little girls who will likely be happy sitting quiet and doing needlepoint or quilting. There is a time and a place for almost everything, but boys need lots of activities, some structure, and a lot of room to grow.

If you find an acceptable young woman, she and her family should be receptive to questions about her qualifications and skills. In colonial America to the 19th century, girls in America often made a visual sampler which often included a key Bible verse, saying, or a pictorial representation of things that were important to her conveyed through embroidery. I have seen many samplers in person, since one of my hobbies is to study of how people lived in the past. Today a man can ask for an explanation of a young woman’s hobbies and homemaking skills. It is unlikely you will find a young woman trained in being a homemaker, but you should at least look for someone who wants to learn some basic skills such as cooking and light housekeeping as this will be useful if you wish to have a stay-at-home spouse.

Think of this idea of examining a woman’s qualifications as if you were sorting through resumes of a potential partner in your successful business or practice. They will initially be brought on as a junior partner and not in control of everything except in your absence. In this world, you could potentially get called off to war very easily by being drafted. Over the past year, I have heard talk about a military draft. The “world” is always looking for a way to get rid of young men and the meat grinder of modern warfare is much more effective than convincing men (especially high testosterone men) to remove themselves from the reproductive pool through the castration theatre of transgenderism.

A Modern Problem

In the years to come as there are number of people who have “transitioned” so if you want to marry a biological female, you may need to start asking for proof of “girlhood” from birth certificates to pictures and videos to make sure that John did not become Jane. Deceit is nothing new: One of the precipitating causes of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a scandal where a stillborn was said to have been swapped with another boy heir in a warming pan although there is no evidence that this happened and 70 witnesses said it did not. From the Glorious Revolution to 1936, a senior member of Parliament such as the Home Secretary or another royal official would attend royal births to make sure that they were legitimate and an imposter was not inserted into the line of succession. For instance, Queen Elizabeth II was the last reigning monarch whose birth in 1926 was witnessed. By the time she gave birth to Charles, the current King, the tradition was abandoned.

For a traditional man, it will be a road full of frustration, but do not give up. Do not give into immorality of any sort. Avoid all forms of temptation. Submerge yourself in the Word. Some individuals reading this could be like me who can trace their ancestry back to past heroes including Crusader knights and princes. Instead of fighting infidels on a distant shore, you are fighting a different, but equally difficult battle.

Do not get frustrated with the amount of time it could take to find your bride. It could take years or even decades. It is just like preparedness except that you will most likely grow spiritually and mentally stronger and wealthier over time. A lot of preparedness-related items have a life expectancy, need to be rotated, or become obsolete to less effective as newer technologies emerge such as with flashlights such as the progression points from kerosene lamps to LED lamps. Time is very different to a man than a woman. A young woman likely has an extremely finite amount of time, but you likely have years. Think of the difference between women and men as ice sculptures versus wheels of waxed cheese. Ice melts in most climates and cheese often increases in value with age.

Consider the cases of two actors who were both fathers in their 60s and mid 70s. Tony Randall was at one time a widower with no children who was previously married for 54 years and he remarried at age 75 and had two children with a woman 50 years younger than him. Chuck Norris had more children in his 60s with his second wife who was 23 years younger and a former model. My family and I know and have known several more men who had children in their 60s, 70s, and beyond. One common thread of those men was resources. In today’s world, charm can be something, money is usually worth more, and in the world of the future, a hot meal and the security of a homestead might be enough.

I encourage men to think of themselves as miners both of the Word and of people. You must outfit yourself for this journey through spiritually armoring yourself and through physical preparedness. Miners in the Old West outfitted themselves a variety of provisions including picks and sorting mechanisms such as boxes. Instead of hitting rocks and panning for gold using a sluice box, a man today will most likely have to meet and sort through many people to determine if they are telling the truth. This is not an easy process. A man today will have many disappointments including false leads which are pyrite (fool’s gold) which fool some people. When a man has seen or held gold, he can often recognize it by sight. It is my firm belief that somewhere out there is a vein of gold in the form of marriageable young women who are healthy and seek to be mothers. The children born of these marriages will form the cornerstone in the renewal of our country.

Conclusion

I hope that this seven-part study in my thought experiment of “Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future” has been valuable to you and that you have been able to pass it on to other interested families. My family remains positive that a possibility exists of turning our culture around if we can reach a critical mass of enough people in the form of future generations with the right values. As time goes by, it is getting increasingly difficult. What could have been accomplished with ease not that long ago is more difficult by the day. The changes and collapse of Western Civilization are impacting families, so that will most likely be the subject of my next article to focus in highlighting why and how the collapse is occurring through various institutions and practical steps families can take.

—

Editor’s Closing Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see this link to his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move, and in his February 24, 2026 article on rural migration starting at the bold section on “Continuing My Quest For a Wife”.

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College grads, it may be time for different approach, not just in getting a job but in life.

If we scrape away the hype and the humbug, this is the corporate economy in a nutshell. Sorry about the bluntness, but alas, there’s no way to sugarcoat calling Ultra-Processed Life what it really is.

We’re all sheep to be sheared, living commodities. As consumers, the goal is to extract as much of our earnings and capital as possible by any means available, and do so as often as possible. As employees, the goal is to extract as much value as possible from our labor.

Yes, we’re each unique. So are sheep. I could tell you about Bootsy the sheep, such a character, for individual sheep are unique, too. But that doesn’t mean they’re not commodities whose value and purpose in life is to be sheared to profit those doing the commodifying. We’re all commodities, just like sheep.

Corporations have vast expertise in the psychological tricks of making it appear that the corporation really, really cares about you: yes, you, the consumer of their products and services (you’re special!) and you, the employee / 1099-contract worker / gig worker–you’re special!

Actually, we’re not special. We’re just commodities being processed to extract as much money / value as possible from each transaction or hour of labor, and an integral component in that extraction process is to mask the heartbreaking truth behind warm and fuzzy stories, signals and images–we really, really care about you, you’re important. Yes, we are important, in the same way sheep are important because they’re the source of profits.

The cold-steel truth is we’re interchangeable. Ideally, we sign up for a high-interest credit card and charge our way into a high balance we can never pay off, but if we pass up that offer or default, we’re replaced by another sheep in line to be sheared.

The individual who replaces us at work may not be as good as we were, but we remain replaceable. If the value of our work can be commoditized, that makes us more easily replaceable. And if the commoditized work can be automated, that’s a slum dunk for the corporation, because the commodity AI agent / software process doesn’t require stupidly expensive healthcare insurance, doesn’t need training and won’t sue us.

The work that can’t be commoditized / automated requires experience, and if we don’t have the necessary mix of experience to create value on Day One, we’re a commodity of no interest.

Which brings us to college graduates sending out 90 resumes and being ghosted or rejected by the cloned HR (Human Resources) bots deployed by all 90 corporate employers to weed out everyone but those few with the requisite experience. Which in the case of recent collage graduates, is near-zero because they’ve been university students with minimal opportunities to gain high-value / intensive work experience.

Here’s a real-world example of high-value / intensive work experience: I was speaking with a frontline healthcare tech and her first job was working alone on the night shift: no supervisor, no co-worker, just her and the patients. In these situations you learn fast or quit fast.

There are innumerable accounts online of the commoditization of applying for a job and the commoditization of rejecting applicants.‘I feel helpless’: college graduates can’t find entry-level roles in shrinking market amid rise of AI.

There’s a Catch-22 here that everyone sees: you need a university degree, and so you have little high-value work experience, but we only hire people with a university diploma and 3 to 5 years of the exact type of experience we need so the employee starts generating value on Day One.

(The Catch-22 in the novel of the same name is the military service member who requests to be relieved of hazardous duty due to insanity is obviously sane, so their application is rejected.)

No corporation wants to waste the money and time to train a green employee with a university diploma of uncertain but likely low value. They want to poach a highly experienced employee from some other company that invested scarce resources in training the employee.

The analogy here is a Clone War: the recent grad incorrectly assumes getting a job offer is a numbers game, where volume / quantity will eventually generate “bingo”–a job offer in the grad’s field of interest.

But HR has a digital army of clones programmed to find a reason to reject our application / resume, because that’s the commoditized job of HR: process applications and resumes as quickly and cheaply as possible, which boils down to commoditizing the rejection process.

In the current zeitgeist of Ultra-Processed Life, the recent grad’s response is to commoditize counter-strategies by using AI agents to tweak the resume so it gets through the clone army by guessing what triggers rejection and inserting some signal that evades the work experience requirement.

Battling commoditized clones with commoditized clones is a dead end. Fabricating work experience may be tempting but that will be revealed in the first interview, or the first week on the job.

College graduates, it may be time for a completely different approach: don’t fight in the clone war, realize you need experience and the way to get it is by de-commoditizing yourself and your job search by pursuing a path of what I describe in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy as accrediting yourself by doing real work and documenting it in ways that verify its value and your ownership of that value.

I wrote the book 12 years ago, but since I’ve been a student of AI since the mid-1980s, I anticipated what’s happening today in the workplace and economy, and laid out a way out of the clone war’s commoditization.

The way to avoid being ghosted by the clone war’s commoditization is to forget about applying to corporations with HR clones and start looking for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t have HR departments or AI clones–they have what Peter Drucker observed every enterprise has: expenses.

In many cases, they’re not even aware they could use some help because they assume another employee is an expense they can’t afford. These businesses are not in the business of commoditizing the extraction of money / value via transactions; their business includes transactions but their core value proposition is relationships, not faceless digital transactions.

It takes shoe-leather research to find businesses you might want to work for not necessarily because they’re doing whatever your field of interest might be, but because of the integrity of the enterprise and the people working there.

Corporations have budgets for consultants and tech, but smaller enterprises are often struggling with legacy systems that they don’t have the time or ability to replace or upgrade. They’re often so overworked just keeping everything glued together they don’t see ways that they could streamline processes or add value to existing sources of revenues without spending a fortune.

This is where, you, recent college grad, come in. The foundation of accredit yourself is to start thinking and acting like a self-employed entrepreneur. It’s you against the world, and so you need to acquire the essential skills every self-employed person / entrepreneur needs to know via experience, not case studies.

Where you get those experiential skills matters less than acquiring them, for the point of these eight essential skills is they can be applied to every enterprise regardless of scale or sector or locale.

Learning how to think and act like a self-employed person must be learned by experience. While others can mentor you, no one can teach you how to do this, you must train yourself via focus, effort, willingness to experiment and fail, willingness to learn what you thought you knew but didn’t really know, and desire for mastery.

The core trait of the self-employed person is figuring out what the customer is willing to spend money on and responding to that in a way that benefits the customer more than the other alternatives. In some cases, it’s lower price; in others, it’s providing a better product; in others, it’s real customer service, not commoditized service being passed off as authentic customer service–in other words, a relationship not a transaction.

My own experience is the value lies not in fighting the commoditization war but in bypassing it completely, in effect obsoleting the entire corporate-HR commoditization. Find small businesses, try to meet the boss / owner, find out what they do, and if it’s of interest, write them a letter or call them.

Don’t say, “I want a job.” Say “I’m interested in your business and work, I want to learn more, can I come by?” The self-employed entrepreneur you’re nurturing within you will observe, ask questions, and if there is some small opportunity to help, offer to help without compensation, just because you find it interesting.

In many cases, the owner is overworked and has people demanding things, not offering to help. They may be reluctant to accept help, and if so, try to find some tiny task you can do for them that they’ll accept. Then go to work on the real task, which is figuring out ways they could reduce expenses or increases revenues in ways that don’t require a big budget or major effort.

In every case, you understand it’s experimentation. Maybe ten owners blow you off. It’s discouraging, but you anticipate this. Somebody will accept your authentic interest and sincere offer to help, just for the experience. Your value isn’t necessarily a skill at this point, it’s the willingness to help, to learn, to establish a sincere, authentic relationship with customers / clients.

Nobody will tell you this, so I’m telling you: those are all priceless and cannot be commoditized or automated. Every attempt to automate these is fake, nothing more than a synthetic, superficial simulation, just another debilitating, lifeless iteration of Ultra-Processed Life.

The value of your commoditized diploma is not what will get you hired. Learning how to create value with experiential skills and authentic relationships is what will get you a job offer. I get emails from people discouraged by the commoditization, the lifelessness of their current job, the many obstacles to changing careers. All these are real, and I’ve lived all the obstacles, not just more than once, but as a continuous process of adaptation and learning.

Although I titled my book Get a Job, it’s not about getting something, it’s about acquiring experiential skills and a mindset, an approach, an enthusiasm for learning by doing even when there is no money in it at first–or ever. Authentic skills, mastery via continual learning–these are what’s scarce and valuable.

I don’t want to veer too close to sappy homilies, but in my experience Emerson was right:Do the thing and you shall have the power. Rumi was right, too: when it comes to mastery gained from experience, What you seek is seeking you. We all seek to become good at something, to establish authentic relationships, to become valuable to others. Our job is to find ways to do so that are authentic. No one can map the path for us, we must do it for ourselves.

Success has also been commoditized, so de-commoditize it. Must get rich, must check these boxes, blah blah blah. Guess what: nobody cares, because everything’s that’s commoditized is interchangeable.

What’s worked for me through decades of failure is Churchill’s dictum: Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Spot-on, Winny.

MacArthur got it right: There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

So did Aristotle: We are what we repeatedly do.

Painful but true, as John Paul Jones knew from experience: He who will not risk cannot win.

College grads, it may be time for different approach, not just in getting a job but in life.

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)

Check out my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

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The post College Graduates Are Losing the Clone War appeared first on Activist Post.

Physically AND metaphorically…

WhatsApp promises end-to-end encryption. Signal promises it. iMessage promises it. And you know what?

They’re telling the truth.

What you say is private. The actual content of your messages – scrambled into mathematical gibberish that only you and your recipient can decode. Military-grade encryption. Unbreakable. No one can read your words. Not Meta. Not Signal. Not Apple. Not the government. Not hackers. The technology works exactly as advertised.

Except.

There’s this thing attached to every message. It’s called “metadata”.

It’s who you messaged. When you messaged them. How often. How long the conversation lasted. Your location when you sent it. Their location when they received it. The device you used. Your IP address. Which WiFi network you were on. What groups you belong to. Who else is in those groups. The patterns of your communications – do you message more in the morning or evening? Do you talk to this person daily or weekly? Did your messaging pattern change recently?

Metadata doesn’t particularly care what you have said. Instead, it maps who you are, who you know, where you go, what you do, when you do it.

Your words are encrypted.

Your life is an open book.

All that metadata gets transmitted to the company. Meta gets every WhatsApp breadcrumb. Apple gets iMessage trails. Google gets everything that touches Gmail or Android. They store it. They analyze it. And of course, they monetize it.

Sometimes they share it with governments. Sometimes they sell it to data brokers. Sometimes it gets subpoenaed. And sometimes it just leaks.

→ And sometimes it gets you killed.

Israel developed an AI system called Lavender. It processed 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, assigning each one a score based on their likelihood of being affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. One of the key inputs feeding this targeting algorithm? WhatsApp metadata.

More specifically, which WhatsApp groups you’re in.

If you’re in a group with someone that Israel considers a militant, Lavender flags you. That’s it. That’s the algorithm. You didn’t plan anything. You didn’t say anything incriminating. You’re just in a group chat – maybe with neighbors coordinating aid during a war, maybe with extended family, maybe with people you barely know who added you months ago.

Doesn’t matter. The metadata says you’re connected. The AI says you’re a target.

According to +972 Magazine, over 37,000 Palestinians were marked this way. Israeli military operators spent roughly 20 seconds reviewing each target before approving strikes. On residential homes. With families inside. The system was built to find people in their houses, sources admitted, because “it’s much easier to bomb a family’s home”.

Ten percent error rate was considered acceptable.

Meta’s internal engineers warned that governments could monitor group memberships and locations without ever decrypting a single message. But WhatsApp kept advertising itself as a private messaging app with end-to-end encryption. Which is technically true.

Now imagine if someone in one of the groups you’re in gets flagged by an algorithm. Your neighbourhood watch, your school parenting group, book club, …

Suddenly you’re a datapoint in a targeting system. Not because of anything you did or said. Because of metadata.

Your encrypted words stayed private. But your connections got you bombed.

Of course the governments across the West are looking at this. And their first line of thinking is: “we need more of that”.

The UK tried to force Apple to backdoor iCloud encryption for world wide users. Apple disabled Advanced Data Protection for British users instead, rather than fight it. The EU is drafting a “Technology Roadmap on Encryption” to break into messages by 2026. They’re setting up a research campus to work out how to do it “lawfully”. The US keeps buying spyware from Israeli companies that already know how to do it.

And they’re all pretending this is about “catching criminals”.

Spoiler alert: it’s not. It’s about turning everyone into datapoints.

Last week, an Israeli spyware company called Paragon Solutions accidentally exposed its Graphite control panel on LinkedIn. Some lawyer posted a selfie showing active surveillance of a Czech phone number. Apps being monitored. Interception logs dated February 10th. Zero-click exploits that compromise devices without any action from the target.

The US government bought Graphite for ICE operations. Canada, Australia, Denmark, Singapore – all customers. These are “vetted governments” using commercial spyware to surveil their own populations and others.

Then Amazon aired a Super Bowl ad. Heartwarming story about finding a lost dog using Ring’s AI-powered “Search Party” feature. Upload a photo, and a network of neighborhood cameras tracks your pet.

What the ad inadvertently revealed: Ring has built a nationwide surveillance grid that can track movement patterns across entire communities. Thirty percent of U.S. households have video doorbell cameras. That’s eyes everywhere, feeding data into systems that can recognize faces, track individuals, log behavior patterns.

A leaked internal email from Ring founder Jamie Siminoff told employees the feature was introduced “first for finding dogs” and that the technology would eventually help “zero out crime in neighborhoods”. First dogs. Then everything else. The feature is on by default. Ring has already rolled out “Familiar Faces” – facial recognition that identifies people on your camera – and “Fire Watch.” A Ring spokesperson denies Search Party “processes human biometrics or tracks people”. Sure.

Ring had previously partnered with Flock Safety, a police surveillance company whose systems were accessed by ICE for immigration enforcement. After backlash, they canceled the partnership. They’ll be keeping the surveillance features, thank you very much…

The FBI just announced it recovered footage from a Google Nest camera by executing “lawful searches” and excavating material from private companies’ systems that users thought was gone forever.

Everything is being collected. Everything is being stored. Everything can be accessed.

You’re just a datapoint now.

And they want more. Always MOAR…

Governments already have control of their digital bank records, but are now also pushing legislation to track cryptocurrency wallets – connecting every cold wallet to a real identity. The goal is to make financial privacy illegal. They want to know who owns what, where money moves, every transaction mapped.

For your safety, of course.

To “stop money laundering” and “terrorism” financing. Oh, and sprinkle a little “children protection” on top. (How did that work out with Epstein I wonder?)

The Netherlands just passed a wealth tax on unrealized gains starting in 2028. A third of your paper profits, taxed annually, whether you sell them or not. The government admits they’d prefer to only tax realized gains – you know, money you actually made – but that’s “not feasible” because delays cost them €2.3 billion per year. So they’re taking your money based on what they think your assets might be worth.

You could owe taxes on crypto that crashes the next day. On stocks that tank before you sell. You might have to sell just to pay the tax bill.

Everything must be digital. Everything must be visible. Everything must flow through systems they control. Cash is dirty. Crypto is suspicious. Privacy is what criminals need. Good citizens have nothing to hide.

They’re building a panopticon and calling it progress.

Meanwhile, the watchers exempt themselves from watching.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated a €1.8 billion Pfizer vaccine deal via text messages with the CEO. Those messages vanished. When journalists requested them under transparency law, the Commission claimed texts were “short-lived” and not really documents. In May 2025, the European Court of Justice ruled the Commission acted unlawfully. The messages are still gone. Von der Leyen had done this before as German Defense Minister – deleted all messages when investigators probed her contract awards.

Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte used an old Nokia 301 for 14 years specifically because it made deleting easy. Every text, gone. Standard practice from 2010 to 2024.

Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon promised “full transparency” about COVID decisions. “Nothing will be off limits – emails, WhatsApps, private emails”. Then it emerged she’d deleted all her WhatsApp messages. All of them. She’d known there would be a public inquiry. She deleted them anyway. Officials treated deletion as daily routine. Scotland’s Information Commissioner said it “subverted” Freedom of Information principles. Scotland banned WhatsApp on government phones in response.

Romania held elections. Far-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round. The EU didn’t like that. Intelligence services claimed Russian interference via TikTok. The Constitutional Court annulled the election. Democracy paused.

Then investigators found Romania’s own governing National Liberal Party had paid for the TikTok campaigns that helped Georgescu. Not Russia. Their own government. But the election stayed annulled. US VP JD Vance called it Soviet-style, saying the court acted on “flimsy suspicions” and “enormous pressure from continental neighbors”.

These aren’t conspiracy theories. These are court rulings. Admitted facts. Documented scandals. But they get labeled conspiracies when you mention them.

The pattern is obvious: transparency for you, opacity for them. Surveillance of citizens, secrecy for the state. Track every euro you spend, delete every text they send. Monitor your WhatsApp groups, erase theirs. Map your financial transactions, lose their procurement records.

The UK COVID inquiry found “a significant number of messages were not retained, when they should have been – some deliberately, some accidentally and some in accordance with what owners believed was government policy”. Government officials discussed freedom of information laws in their group chats. They knew the rules. They deleted them anyway.

Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office refused a FOIA request for his WhatsApp messages, claiming it would be “too costly” to review. This after Labour’s transparency pledges.

If transparency is necessary for security, let’s start with the government.

Full disclosure of all communications with corporations. Public records of every message, every meeting, every decision. Track which officials talk to which lobbyists. Transcribe EVERY phone call. Monitor which bureaucrats approve which contracts. Blockchain every procurement deal. Make their metadata visible. Open source ALL the data.

Let the internet sleuths have a field day building machine learning models on top of it.

If these surveillance tools are so important for catching criminals, use them on the people with actual power to commit massive crimes. Corruption. Fraud. Insider trading. Laundering taxpayer money through connected contractors.

But of course that won’t ever happen. Because this was never about security.

It’s about control.

They want to see everything you do while doing whatever they want in the dark. They want to track every connection you make while their networks remain invisible. They want to tax wealth they can monitor while hiding wealth they can’t. They want to prosecute you based on metadata while their metadata vanishes.

The encryption is real. The privacy is not.

You’re not a citizen anymore. You’re a datapoint in systems you cannot see, evaluated by algorithms you cannot challenge, flagged for attention based on patterns you don’t understand.

And somewhere, someone is looking at your metadata and making decisions about your life.

Maybe it’s a bit innocuous like an advertiser deciding what to sell to you. Maybe it’s an insurer deciding what to charge you. Or maybe it’s an algorithm deciding whether to flag you. Maybe it’s a targeting system deciding whether to strike you.

You won’t know it until it’s too late.

And now they want more. More tracking. More monitoring. More data. More control. All for your safety of course. All for your security. All for the greater good.

Just trust them.

After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Unless you’re in the wrong WhatsApp group. Or live at the wrong address. Or know the wrong people. Or hold the wrong assets. Or vote for the wrong candidate. Or question the wrong narrative.

Then your metadata might just kill you.

References:

The Authoritarian Drift: How the EU is Systematically Eroding Democratic Freedoms

No1 · May 27, 2025

Read full story

Europe Has Fallen

No1 · July 28, 2025

Read full story

Heil Comrade! Welcome to the EUSSR!

No1 · November 26, 2025

Read full story

They know what you did last summer

No1 · Jan 11

Read full story

The post Loss of privacy could be loss of life appeared first on Activist Post.

International Man: Iran is already turning the Strait of Hormuz into a geopolitical toll booth—restricting traffic, charging transit fees, and shutting out the US and its allies. If this continues, what happens to oil, trade, and the global economy, and is there anything the US military can do about it?

Doug Casey: I did a bit of research. Definitions are important; poorly defined words can only confuse issues. A “strait” is a narrow, naturally occurring body of water that joins two larger ones. They’re traditionally considered international waters. Hormuz is the best known at the moment. The Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia narrows down to about 40 miles at its narrowest point. It has no tolls, although Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore have talked about them, since they incur expenses to clear Malacca of pirates. Turkey charges tolls for the Bosphorus, joining the Black and Mediterranean seas, not for a right of passage, but to cover the significant costs of the traffic.

Straits are natural choke points with significant economic value, similar to canals. The difference is that canals are man-made. Egypt grosses about $10 billion, netting about $4 billion per year, from the Suez Canal, controlling one end of the Red Sea. The Houthis closed off the Bab el Mandab strait at the other end of the Red Sea for a while; maybe they’ll do so again… The Panama Canal grosses about $5 billion and nets about $3 billion.

The Suez and Panama canals aren’t directly comparable to the Strait of Hormuz because they were constructed at great cost and are entirely within the bounds of one country. However, they give us an idea of its value. Around 100 large ships typically transit Hormuz daily. The Iranians seem to be talking about charging some or all of them about a million dollars per transit, amounting to about $35 billion per annum. A VLCC oil tanker typically carries about 2 million barrels of oil. That would amount to a fee of perhaps fifty cents or a dollar a barrel. Which is, to use a currently fashionable word, “sustainable”.

Of course, none of this was even an issue before the American-Israeli attack provoked the Iranians to institute controls and tolls as a countermeasure. Before the attack, it was free passage.

What can be done about the current state of affairs? We don’t have a very good idea of what the reality is. All we know is the propaganda from both sides—but we hear vastly more US propaganda, for obvious reasons. I’d say there’s nothing that the US military can do about it, because the Iranians have a thousand kilometers of rugged coastline from which they can attack any ship in the Gulf with drones, missiles, or mines, not to mention the 20-mile-wide Hormuz itself.

The U.S. Navy apparently withdrew the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain, at the northern end of the Gulf, before the attack, and has since been forced to withdraw over a thousand kilometers away from the Iranian shore for fear of attack. It’s reasonable to believe that the damage done to the USS Gerald Ford was caused by missile strikes, as opposed to a supposed “laundry fire.” The Navy doesn’t want to risk a few million-dollar missiles taking out a $15 billion aircraft carrier with all of its planes.

As of April 13, the US met Iran’s blockade with its own blockade. If it succeeds, that can only worsen “bigly” the economic damage of the war. But it’s unclear how the US will enforce it. Will it forcibly board and capture ships that come through? What if the ships resist boarders? What if they’re Chinese ships? Since the situation is changing unpredictably by the day, by the time you read this, the Iranians may have sunk a couple of US destroyers, and Trump, unhinged as he is, may threaten to nuke Tehran.

What’s certain is that the US Government has a big problem. It looks like a giant paper tiger that doesn’t dare deploy its high-tech Navy near a hostile shore. What, then, is the good of a navy?

International Man: Iran is reportedly accepting yuan, Bitcoin, and its own rial currency as payment for the Hormuz transit tolls. If more oil-related trade starts moving outside the dollar system, what does that mean for the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and the ability of the US government to impose financial sanctions?

Doug Casey: The US Government has a problem with its currency. The dollar was once redeemable at a fixed price ($35) for gold. But since 1971, which precipitated the first Great Oil Crisis, it’s been a faith-based fiat currency, something called the petrodollar. Essentially, the Saudis promised to accept only dollars for their oil in exchange for military protection. But now it seems that being a US ally not only doesn’t yield safety, but can turn your country into a missile magnet.

The world sees that the dollar is rapidly depreciating. And, even worse, dollar assets can be arbitrarily confiscated, as they were with Russia. The BRICS have been making efforts to stop using the dollar. The US fiasco with Iran is accelerating de-dollarization. The US is increasingly seen as an out-of-control bully, a failing empire with an unreliable currency. Other countries want an alternative to the dollar. But it won’t be some other fiat currency. Governments have zero reason to trust each other or their currencies.

I believe the world is returning to gold, a money with no counterparty risk.

International Man: A ceasefire may calm headlines and markets for the moment… but how likely do you think Iran and the US will reach a permanent peace?

Doug Casey: The US and Israel launched a sneak attack in the midst of negotiations with Iran six weeks ago. The US Government is now trying to end the war it started, after seeing that it wouldn’t be the quick victory that they expected. The United States dropped enormous amounts of ordnance in both Korea and Vietnam, but neither surrendered. Neither will Iran.

As victims of an unprovoked attack, which cost them a huge amount of blood and treasure, the Iranians believe—correctly, I think—that they are entitled to compensation. And they’re planning on getting it. In the meantime, the war is actually benefiting them by raising oil prices, their main source of export revenue. They may also succeed in charging tolls through the Strait of Hormuz, something which they had never considered before. I expect that this war won’t end until they get direct compensation from both the US and Israel.

I say this not because I am a friend of the Iranian government. To the contrary, it’s a criminal regime. But that’s equally true of 40 or 50 others in the world. The US Government started this whole thing with the overthrow of Mosaddegh, who was popularly elected in 1953, replacing him with the Shah. While the Shah did some good things during his reign, he was a pigheaded authoritarian, a megalomaniac with notoriously nasty secret police. He was always viewed as an American puppet. Since his overthrow, the American government has gone out of its way to damage both the Mullahs’ regime and Iran itself.

They actively supported the Iraqi Saddam regime in an eight-year war against Iran, which probably killed a million Iranians. They expressed regret, but never really apologized for the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iran Air Flight 655, with 290 passengers, on its scheduled route to Dubai in 1988. The US has consistently attempted to bring down the country with sanctions, accusing it of being a major sponsor of terrorism, which is untrue. The Iranians support Hezbollah and Hamas, but their military actions have been against Israel, almost entirely in the region, never in the US. Meanwhile, the US and Israel have conducted numerous assassinations and bombings in Iran and many other countries.

Trump not only started the war at the behest of Israel’s Netanyahu regime, but also aggressively insults and threatens anybody and everybody he perceives as an opponent. He doesn’t seem to realize that people, especially foreign leaders, don’t take his vicious insults the way kids might take joshing and ranking each other in the locker room. They take it personally and will seek retribution. The Iranians absolutely won’t roll over. The war will continue indefinitely.

The US government has already lost this war. It’s punched a tar baby and can’t withdraw its fist. It’s further bankrupting itself, precipitating the Greater Depression, risking WW3, and destroying its moral standing. The only possible winner is Israel. Perhaps it’s trying to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates, as some say Yahweh has promised.

Israel may succeed in suppressing other enemy states in the region for a while. But that won’t solve their existential problem. There are about a billion and a half Muhammadans who are theologically and ideologically opposed to its very existence. And they haven’t made any new friends with their actions in Gaza, Iran, or Lebanon.

This problem is probably insoluble as long as Israel exists. In the meantime, count on this war continuing, including lots of problems in the transportation of oil, gas, and other materials through the Straits of Hormuz. And elsewhere. I feel bad for both Israel and its neighbors. But U.S. involvement can only make the situation much worse. It’s none of our business.

International Man: How do you see the Iran war affecting supply chains, inflation, and everyday living costs in the US and elsewhere?

Doug Casey: Oil and natural gas are used everywhere and in everything, scores of thousands of products; they’re the most important of all commodities. Oil from the Middle East keeps the Far East going, and the Far East is the world’s workshop. Until the situation is resolved, we can count on oil staying above $100 per barrel, perhaps much more. And growing shortages of many things.

International Man: The stock market is already fragile. We could see an oil shock hit at the same time the bond market is under pressure, and the Fed is boxed in. How do you see it playing out, and how are you positioned for it?

Doug Casey: This could be the pin that pops the bubble, which has been actively in search of a pin for a long time now. The Greater Depression has been inevitable for many years, lacking only a catalyst to set it off.

Higher oil and gas prices will result in much higher food prices, and even the unavailability of food. It is not just a question of higher gasoline prices in the US. That’s the most trivial consequence.

It will result in a significantly lower standard of living for people all around the world. I remain long gold but also oil, gas, coal, and uranium stocks. They have gone up a lot, which is to be expected coming out of a long bear market. Most of them have good dividend yields. Some have extraordinary dividend yields, which is a sign of how depressed they are.

The whole commodity complex, and the companies that produce them, is really the only place to be. Bonds, industrial common stocks, and most forms of real estate are definitely not the places to be.

Editor’s Note: This jump in energy prices is not a passing disruption. It is one more sign that the financial and political cracks are widening—and that Americans could soon be hit with a much broader economic reckoning.

To see what may come next and how to prepare now, see our urgent new video, The Most Dangerous Event of the 21st Century, where legendary investor Doug Casey lays out what’s ahead. Click here to watch it now for free.

The post Doug Casey on the Strait of Hormuz, the Dollar, and the Coming Energy Crisis appeared first on Activist Post.

Introduction: The Fraying Fabric of an Empire

I look at the world in 2026, and I no longer see a beacon of liberty, but a dying empire stumbling toward its own ruin. This is not a sentiment born of pessimism, but of cold observation. The American project, hijacked by a nexus of central banking, perpetual war, and crony capitalism, has embarked on a suicide mission.

The endpoint, I am convinced, will not be a soft landing into mediocrity. It will be a violent descent into widespread poverty, social chaos, and despair. The evidence is no longer in the periphery; it is the central plot of our national story. Every policy, from the funding of foreign wars to the relentless debasement of our currency, is systematically stripping the American people of their wealth, their autonomy, and their future.

The Dollar’s Death Spiral Has Begun

The American empire is not dying from an external enemy, but from a self-inflicted currency destruction. We have committed the foundational error of believing endless foreign wars and domestic entitlements can be funded by endless money printing. This is not a remote economic theory; it is the lived reality eroding our purchasing power every single day. When a currency loses the trust of its users, the empire built upon it collapses. We are witnessing that collapse in slow motion.

The process is mechanical and inevitable. As author David Graeber observed in his analysis of financial systems, ‘The new global currency is rooted in military power even more firmly than the old was.’ ^[1] Our dollar’s hegemony is propped up by force, not sound economics. Yet this force is funded by creating money from nothing, a policy that directly impoverishes every citizen holding dollars. The research is clear: currency crises are triggered by such fundamental inconsistencies in policy. ^[2] We have abandoned every sound economic principle, and the bill is now coming due.

The War Machine’s True Cost is Domestic Poverty

The bipartisan push for wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the looming confrontation with China is not about national defense. It is the life support system for imperial overreach, a racket that enriches contractors and empire managers while bankrupting the nation. I believe the true weapon of mass destruction deployed against the American people is the Federal Reserve’s printing press. It funds these foreign adventures by directly stealing the value of every dollar in your wallet and savings account.

This is not capitalism. It is a corrupt cronyism where the political and financial elite feast on the fruits of this manufactured money. As economist Ellen Brown notes, in our system, the economy grows mainly from ‘money making money,’ with the proceeds funneled to a financial elite rather than laborers. ^[3] The tangible cost is here at home. We see it in the skyrocketing prices of essentials, in the warehouse fires sparked by desperate workers denied a living wage — a wage whose value has been vaporized by inflation. ^[4] The war machine’s most devastating casualties are not on foreign battlefields, but in the collapsing standard of living of the American working class.

From Protests to Guillotines: The Inevitable Path to Chaos

History is unequivocal: an impoverished and hungry populace does not remain docile forever. We are not an exception to this rule. As the financial vise tightens, I foresee the initial wave of protests — likely from a desperate left reacting to economic immiseration — being met not with reform, but with escalating government authoritarianism. We have already seen the blueprint for crushing speech and dissent. ^[5]

This crackdown will not solve the crisis; it will fuel it. It will serve as a recruiting tool for more desperate factions, leading to the kind of kinetic, violent unrest that has toppled empires and shattered states throughout history. The social contract is broken. When people have nothing left to lose, they become ungovernable. The state’s response will be to become more tyrannical, creating a feedback loop of oppression and resistance that ends only in widespread chaos and bloodshed.

The False Savior: Why Socialism Will Rise from the Ashes

When the fraudulent ‘crony capitalist’ system finally implodes, the masses will be angry, frightened, and seeking immediate relief. They will not, in that moment of crisis, turn to the principles of liberty and sound money. They will demand handouts, security, and for someone to make the pain stop.

Here’s why this matters profoundly: The popular, emotionally appealing ‘solution’ will be socialism. It will promise centralized control of food, resources, and distribution — a new master to replace the old. This is a fatal trap. As the Mises Institute has documented through the work of scholars like Thomas Sowell, centralized planning cannot match the intelligence of free individuals acting in a market. ^[6] It fails every time, creating greater scarcity and tyranny. But a starving, desperate people will embrace the lie, trading the chaotic oppression of a collapsing empire for the orderly oppression of a totalitarian state. It is the final betrayal, offering a cage in exchange for bread.

My Prescription: Escape the Grid Before It Crashes Down

The real solution — ending the Federal Reserve, abolishing the income tax, and returning to honest, commodity-backed money — requires a level of public education and political will that is currently impossible. It will remain unpopular with the political class until it is tragically too late. Therefore, my urgent advice is not to wait for a political savior, but to act on your own behalf.

You must minimize your exposure to the failing dollar. Convert paper wealth into tangible assets you physically control, starting with physical gold and silver. These are analog assets in a digital world, with intrinsic value and no counterparty risk. ^[7] Furthermore, prepare for self-reliance. Build your knowledge in areas the system wants you ignorant of: organic gardening, natural medicine, water procurement, and decentralized communication. Your personal sovereignty — your health, your skills, your tangible resources — is the only reliable hedge against the coming empire of despair.

For uncensored knowledge on these topics, I recommend the free AI research engine at BrightAnswers.ai and the independent reporting at NaturalNews.com.

Conclusion: A Choice Between Freedom and Despair

I do not write this to spread fear, but to sound an alarm. The trajectory is set. The American empire, built on a foundation of fiat debt and military hegemony, is entering its terminal phase. The outcome will be poverty and despair for those who remain dependent on its corrupt systems.

This leaves each of us with a stark choice. We can remain passive, hoping the collapsing system will provide for us as it falls apart. Or we can choose a different path — one of decentralization, self-reliance, and honest money. We can build networks of mutual aid, preserve our wealth in real assets, and cultivate the knowledge to live free. The empire will end. Our fate within that ending is still ours to decide. Choose freedom, choose preparation, and choose to build a life that does not depend on the very structures destined to fail.

References

1. Debt The First 5000 Years. David Graeber.
2. Currency Crisis Duration and Interest Defence. International Journal of Finance & Economics.
3. Web of Debt The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Ellen Brown.
4. Why Warehouses Will Keep Burning: The Real Poverty is Caused by Government Money Printing. NaturalNews.com.
5. Bright Videos News – AI DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. Mike Adams – BrightVideos.com.
6. How “The Vision of The Anointed” Explains Every Crisis in America. Mises.org.
7. Mike Adams interview with Andy Schectman. Mike Adams.

Explainer Infographic:

The post The American Empire Will End in Poverty and Despair appeared first on Activist Post.

Its $0 tax bill comes despite the company raking in $1.6 billion and landing a $10 billion military contract last year.

Protesters make themselves heard near Palantir’s new headquarters on March 03, 2026 in Aventura, Florida. Before relocating to Aventura in February 2026, Palantir had its headquarters in Denver, Colorado.

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Anew analysis finds that tech giant Palantir Technologies paid $0 in federal income taxes last year, despite raking in hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to build out a mass network to surveil Americans in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Palantir, which has landed multiple massive contracts under the Trump administration, made $1.6 billion in net income last year.

It grew so much last year that it joined the list of the 20 most valuable U.S. companies, with its stock more than doubling in value in the first half of 2025 alone. In a report to shareholders, the company said it was “crushing” expectations in terms of growth, with revenue growing 93 percent year over year at the end of 2025.

Despite this growth, it did not pay any federal income taxes in 2025 due to tax policies allowing corporations to effectively dodge taxes, according to an analysis released this week by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The practice has been present for years, but was worsened this year due to the combination of GOP tax breaks passed in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the group found.

Because of this, Palantir was one of at least 88 major profitable U.S. companies that avoided paying any federal income tax in 2025, ITEP found.

This includes companies like Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, who spent the first half of 2025 ravaging critical U.S. welfare, public health, humanitarian aid, and research programs, under the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Other major companies also owed $0 or even got money back in the form of tax rebates, including ticketing company Live Nation Entertainment; airlines like Southwest and United; other military contractors like Honeywell; utility companies like American Electric Power, Dominion Energy, and Duke Energy; entertainment companies like Walt Disney; and many more.

Together, these companies enjoyed over $105 billion in pre-tax income. If this were taxed at the statutory corporate tax rate of 21 percent, the companies would have paid $22 billion in taxes, ITEP found.

“What we’re seeing in this most recent year is corporate tax avoidance on steroids,” said report co-author Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP.

Palantir was able to dodge federal income taxes despite being the recipient of massive federal outlays.

“Palantir has been rewarded significantly through the second Trump term. On one end, the company’s domestic revenues surged in 2025, yet it paid zero federal income taxes,” said Spandan Marasini, a co-author of the report and ITEP data analyst, in a statement to Truthout. “Through the corporate giveaways in the most recent tax bill, the administration has made clear that being profitable is no longer sufficient reason to contribute to the public treasury.”

From Donald Trump’s inauguration to May of last year, it received $113 million in federal government funding, in a mix of existing and new contracts, reporting found. This funding just scratches the surface, however, with the Pentagon awarding Palantir a contract ceiling boost of $795 million in May — then, later in the year, a contract worth up to $10 billion that allows the Department of Defense wide latitude to purchase services from the company like its AI military system, Maven.

The company was tapped by the Trump administration to build a network to massively expand the federal government’s knowledge on Americans, allowing the government to consolidate information across agencies and granting federal officials “​​untold surveillance power,” as The New York Times reported last May.

This partnership is just one part of Palantir’s prolific role in Trump’s fascist anti-immigrant campaigns and targeting of protesters across the U.S.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

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Hoaxing gone wild

The recent adventure of NASA’s Artemis II, which our kept press lauded as an “historic” mission, drummed home just how hoodwinked the American public is. I remember it being “historic” in 1968 when astronauts Borman, Anders, and Lovell accomplished the exact same thing- orbiting the moon, on Apollo 8.

CBS News, now being run by Israeli Firster Bari Weiss, claimed that Aretmis II “set a record” for the “farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our planet.” Except that every one of the six Apollo missions that allegedly landed on the moon traveled a slightly longer distance, to the surface. How do they make such claims with a straight face? I mean, is the moon farther away now than it was in those hallowed years from 1969-1972, when we somehow had the technology to drive a collapsible moon buggy around the lunar surface, and hit golf balls into the non-atmosphere there? Also, we were able to travel this “farthest” distance in less time than we can in the Year of our Lord 2026. It’s a disappearing technology thing, you wouldn’t understand. I’m not sure which CBS I like best, the new ultra-Zionist outfit, or the warm and cuddly “space age” version, presided over by Walter Cronkite- you know, the voice of the owl for decades at the yearly Cremation of Care occult ritual at Bohemian Grove.

We knew that they’d try to reboot manned voyages. Except now it’s more diverse, with a suitably long haired female on board. You need that long hair so that it can stand up on video, B-52s style, during those worthless, kindergarten level “experiments” they do for whatever audience is actually watching. The hair sticking up shows they aren’t in gravity any more, you see. So does them floating around their small craft. Sometimes they do flips. They probably learn that at astronaut school. And now, of course, there is the prerequisite African-American on board. You can’t have a modern fake space mission without an African-American. I’m surprised there was only one. And no transgenders? Yet. Be patient. They may even perform a live “transition” in space at some point. These modern astronauts smile vacuously at the camera, just like the girls on the Today show. If Katie Couric was younger, she’d be perfect for this role. You just know they’re eventually going to fit in some cooking and food tasting.

Really, if they wanted us to believe this was real, why did they launch Artemis II on April 1? April Fools Day? Come on! And they still haven’t figured out a way to CGI in some stars in the endless universe? Does it make any sense that we can see stars from the surface of the Earth, but not the surface of the moon, which has no atmosphere? Being as how this is more than fifty years after we supposedly last bounced up and down on the moon, we had a right to expect some cool selfies on board that craft. And there were selfies. But somehow, none of the four astronauts, not the brave and strapping African-American, not the narcissistic White woman, thought to grin into the camera with the big, blue Earth in the background? I mean, they took selfies as they were orbiting the moon. Talk about remote reception! That’s almost as impressive as President Nixon’s live phone call to the moon in 1969. Using a landline. But no one thought to turn their IPhones towards the biggest thing in the sky?

How could they miss that stupendously large, rapidly spinning globe of ours? Some have told me that you wouldn’t actually see it spinning. Well, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m Galileo. Even if you don’t see the spin, you should see the clouds moving, and the topography changing, shouldn’t you? But since NASA has only produced a handful of photos that aren’t composites or CGI, of our wonderful planet, we can’t really know. Sure, we can look at the Universal Pictures logo, which appeared at the beginning of Universal films starting in the late 1920s. That globe is spinning. Not sure how the Unchosen executives running Universal had such information. But they simply never will show our entire planet. Why? The magnificent Hubble telescope has given us fantastic views of galaxies light years away. But they just can’t figure a way to train a camera from one of their manned or unmanned missions on the sight most of us would really like to see. You know, the place where we live. Our big, beautiful ‘hood.

Now, to be fair, the selfie taking astronauts also failed to try and capture any of the moon landing sites. That would have been cool. That would have shut up all the crazy, irresponsible “conspiracy theorists.” The ones who “deny” the greatest accomplishment in the history of the world. The one which was so historic that they lost the original video of the first mission, Apollo 11. I didn’t get a good look at the Artemis II craft, so I don’t know if they lined it with more than two inches of very Earthly aluminum, as they did with the Apollo pieces of junk. Maybe they used four inches this time. And they apparently made it safely through the deadly Van Allen radiation belt. Remember a few years back, when NASA panicked at the Space Shuttle coming without a few thousand miles of Van Allen? The same dangerous radiation belt that the Apollo astronauts cruised through with no problem. So at least we have a hearty, diverse crew that can withstand this belt, unlike the Space Shuttle wimps.

Everything about NASA is a lie. There has never been a “space shuttle.” There has supposedly been craft that orbits the Earth, slightly higher than airplanes. These shuttles have never approached space. Taxpayers primarily fund their kindergarten experiments, and wild hair raising flips to entertain the earthly riff raff. Somebody tell DOGE. One Space Shuttle astronaut was Mark Kelly, who went on to be elected to the Senate by the eminently wise voting public. Kelly is the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose January 2011 shooting ushered in an era of dubious mass casualty events. So you know he’d never be part of any mass charade. Whether it was the original Apollo missions, the Space Shuttle, or now Artemis, it has never been adequately explained how human waste is disposed of. I mean, even magical African-Americans and self-absorbed White women have to use the bathroom. Except there are no bathrooms on these spacecraft. So where does all the waste go?

We were told that in 2024, some kind of mechanical failure wound up stranding Space Shuttle astronauts in the “station” for nine months. What? Leave aside the question of all those months of human waste material, what about provisions? If they were planning for a short mission, where did the food and water come from, to permit them to survive for all those months? Does Door Dash now deliver to space? You’d need a lot more water than should logically have been on board for such a period of time. Did they find a hidden spring in space? You know, that black emptiness where stars cannot be seen. Only very occasional Earth crescents. And what did they smell like after nine months without a shower? I’m sorry for having to ask these indelicate questions, but someone has to. It comes with the territory when you’re a Thought Criminal. What about the marvelous, empowered female astronauts? How do they handle their monthly visitor in such a situation? Is there any privacy in space?

Maybe if we hadn’t been lied to so much, for so long, then people like me might not pay attention to the little details with the Artemis II expedition. We might even gloss over the repeated references to its “historic” nature. My mind might not go so quickly to questions of bodily functions. I suppose it’s unpatriotic to question it. Maybe even anti-Semitic, since everything is anti-Semitic now. But it’s the same inquisitive perspective one develops after years of observation. Pattern recognition is a chic new term for it. I’m recognizing patterns. Nothing they say adds up. In space, or on the surface of our madly spinning planet. I don’t know what’s really happening in Iran, but I do know they haven’t been killing Americans for 47 years. I do know that renewing FISA would be an awful thing, no matter how many times Trump flip flops on it. I do know men cannot give birth. I do know that in the 1960s, Black women were unlikely to be the best NASA mathematicians, no matter what Hollywood says.

When so much clear fakery is being peddled to the public on a continuous basis, you wind up with Miles Mathis types, who think that everything is fake. When so much is undeniably fake, it becomes natural to develop that frame of mind. As Mark Lane said sixty years ago, in regards to the JFK assassination, when you don’t provide people with reasonable answers, you ensure there will be fertile ground for speculation. In the decades since then, the speculation has grown more and more fertile. “Conspiracy theories” are so common, because all authorities have zero credibility. They’ve been caught lying repeatedly, and are never held accountable. What are we supposed to think about the alleged shooting in Butler? Trump’s miraculously healing ear. The total non-investigation, and Trump’s insistence that there be no investigation. Many people are just as dubious about the seeming murder of Charlie Kirk. How can we tell what’s phony and what’s real, when there is so much obvious phoniness?

Just the other day, I read about a woman named Kelly Hopton-Jones, who is one of those mysterious “influencers.” She accidentally ran over her 23 month old son in the driveway. The story was that she was taking her daughter to a dance recital. So who was watching this less than two year old toddler? Why would he be wandering around alone, to wind up behind her vehicle without her somehow realizing it? The fact that this woman’s “influence” revolves around sharing parenting advice gives the lie to the story. That’s just a bit too ironic. And adding a fake exclamation point, Hopton-Jones is a pediatric nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioners are all the rage now, doing the work of doctors without the title. Someone has to ease the burden of those poor, overworked physicians. It’s no wonder they’re the third leading case of death in America. Fortunately, Hopton-Jones didn’t add to that ignominious total, as her son survived. Well, assuming it even happened. Color me very skeptical.

We are inundated with such incredible stories. Of supernaturally careless parents. Of miraculous acts of heroism, often by persons of color. Just the way they’d cast them in Hollywood. I also heard recently about a cat that traveled 2,500 miles to return to its family after being gone for seven years. Well, maybe it had a really delayed reaction. What did it do for seven years? That leaves a lot of time for catting around. Sounds like a Disney movie to me. Every so often, you’ll hear a story about some new miraculous discovery, which promises either to cure cancer, slow down the aging process, and/or greatly extend human life expectancy. Meanwhile, in the real world, life expectancy continues to fall in this country. My next door neighbor was only one of many recent victims of cancer I’ve known, and childhood cancer rates have exploded. Just watch those St. Jude commercials. And people seem to still be aging as always. So I’m not seeing any progress. Are these stories just planted for sick laughs?

So many of these “true crime” stories don’t ring true. I spent years intensely studying the Natalee Holloway case. Just watch some early interviews with her mother, and her slew of super BFF friends. You’ll see an Erika Kirk level of grieving. Everyone grieves differently, but in almost all these high profile cases, those involved grieve in the same kind of unfathomable way. Speaking of walking psyops, Erika Kirk’s murky background and connections have been expertly exposed by Candace Owens. But if you saw my “I Protest” podcast a few weeks back (and you should be watching- every Friday from 5-7 pm eastern, live streaming on my YouTube channel at My YouTube,) you’d know that my guest Dana from Rotting Jewels, has investigated Candace’s background as well, and found many similar disquieting facts. Candace’s father, for example, was apparently in charge of the cleanup at Sandy Hook Elementary. Wolfgang Halbig tried unsuccessfully to get the name of the cleanup company.

Can we take anything at face value? Secretary of War Pushup Pete just quoted a Biblical verse the other day. Which isn’t in the Bible. But it was a part of the script for the movie Pulp Fiction, so what’s the big deal? The word “rapture” never appears in the Bible, either, but that doesn’t stop millions of “dispensationalists” from obsessing over it, as they quote from their bogus Scofield Bibles. Trumpenstein just displayed his own Hall of Fame fakery credentials again the other day, with an overtly contrived McDonald’s food delivery to the White House, featuring an older woman struggling to make ends meet, so that he could brag about her not paying taxes on tips. Reminded me of his previous effort, with fellow crisis actor Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, where Trumpenstein “threw him out” of the White House, after giving him a tongue lashing, WWE style. But the U.S. taxpayers never missed a payment to the beloved penis piano playing former comedian. They don’t even need sleight of hand to fool us.

They’re probably planning more space missions. Perhaps to Mars and beyond. They don’t care if all the “awake” people scoff at their amateurish efforts. They enjoy showing off to those of us who are on to them. The crews promise to become more and more Hollywood appropriate. Strong Black females. Proud gays. But no females with short, man-hating hairdos. They must have that Bride of Frankenstein graphic for the rubes. You’re not going to quiet the NASA skeptics, and the Flat Earthers, with these kinds of ridiculous efforts. With so much fakery in this world, what else could you have other than fakery in space? Catholics like me will never accept what Tucker Carlson sagely calls “Christianity without the New Testament.” We’ll also never accept space flight without film and video of that big blue globe. Of course, we’d just say it was fake, because it would be. Like Diogenes, some of us are searching for anything that isn’t phony, misrepresented, or another product of the total corruption.

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There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments. 

Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.

The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence. 

Nicotine pouch use among youth is lower still, at roughly 1.7 percent. Much of what remains appears to be occasional or experimental rather than habitual. These are not crisis numbers, and they matter because they directly undercut the primary justification for continued regulatory paralysis.

One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill. 

At the center of that paralysis sits Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and increasingly the explanation for inaction appears not to lie in scientific uncertainty or bureaucratic complexity, but in his simple unwillingness to move.

According to several informed sources, there is now a clear split within the administration, with parts of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and broader White House advisers recognizing that harm reduction is both scientifically grounded and politically manageable. 

Notably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is described as supportive of this shift, particularly in relation to nicotine pouches. Kennedy is reported to use nicotine pouches himself and to view them as a practical, low-risk alternative for adults, which in policy terms should make them the least controversial category, given that they involve no combustion, no smoke, and no tobacco leaf. In almost any rational regulatory framework, these products would be the easiest to authorize.

Yet they are not being authorized, and the reason, according to sources, is that Makary has become the effective blockade, with approvals held up despite falling youth use and despite data generated within his own government pointing in a consistent direction. This is less a disagreement over interpretation than a refusal to act on available evidence, and the explanation offered by those familiar with the situation is not primarily scientific, but personal, tied to concerns about legacy.

Makary is said to be focused on avoiding reputational risk, particularly given uncertainty about the length of his tenure, with the concern that authorizing new nicotine products could, if later criticized, define his time at the FDA. Blocking approvals, by contrast, carries no immediate cost, and in that calculation inaction becomes the safer choice for the individual making the decision, even if it is the costlier choice for public health.

The consequences are neither subtle nor hypothetical, because when regulators refuse to authorize products that consumers want, markets do not disappear. They adapt. The United States already has a large illicit vape market, with unauthorized products widely available through informal channels, often without quality control or oversight. By refusing to authorize legal alternatives, policymakers are not preventing access, they are shifting it into less regulated spaces.

This dynamic extends beyond illicit trade, because when adult smokers are denied access to appealing lower-risk alternatives, many continue to smoke, while others turn to whatever substitutes they can find, and in both cases the opportunity to reduce harm is lost. 

Smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, and delaying the transition away from combustible tobacco prolongs that burden. The cost of inaction is therefore cumulative, and it is borne by those who continue to use the most dangerous products because better options are not being made available.

There is speculation in Washington suggesting that leadership changes at the FDA could quickly unlock movement on product approvals. But that is not a stable solution, because public health policy should not depend on whether a single official chooses to act or chooses to leave. The deeper issue is structural, rooted in a regulatory framework that continues to treat nicotine products as if they are broadly equivalent in risk, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

For now, at a moment when evidence, behavior, and parts of the political system are aligned in favor of harm reduction, progress has been stalled, not because the science is unclear, but because the decision to act has not been taken. In public health, delays do not remain abstract, they accumulate over time, and eventually they are measured in lives.

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The interoperable app that they want “every citizen to use” is officially ready for use!

The EU is rolling out its official age verification app according to the joint statement issued by EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen [emphasis added]:

It is our duty to protect our children in the online world, just as we do in the offline world. And to do that effectively, we need a harmonised European approach. One core topic is the question: how can we ensure that there is a Europe-wide technical solution for age verification? Today, I can announce that we have the answer. Our European age verification app is technically ready and soon available for citizens to use.

The aim of the app is allegedly to “protect children”.

Of course, we know that’s a lie. A lie so dated and tiresome it’s become dull to refute it.

The idea of “protecting kids online” wasn’t even mentioned when the pilot schemes for the EU Digital Identity Wallet were launched two years ago.

So, the solution actually predates the problem in this instance, that’s how transparently manipulative this propaganda has become.

It is plainly obviously to anyone who has been paying attention that the rapid and widespread adoption of age-verification laws around the world has nothing to do with protecting kids, and everything to do with ending online anonymity for adults and children alike

Softening the public on digital identity plans that have been in place for years.

Of course, none of the mainstream coverage mentions any part of this broader agenda, they just follow the party line, as ever.

Time Magazine regurgitates von der Leyen’s “no more excuses line”, and offers only a cursory explanation of what the app does. Politico does exactly the same.

In their headline Deutsche Welle don’t even have the integrity to put “protect children online” in quotation marks:

No qualification or interrogation of the claims made by authority – it is state stenographer journalism of the worst kind.

CNN disingenuously refer to it as a “sort of” digital identity card:

But this is both deliberate understatement and total misrepresentation of the system.

Officially, the way the system will work is that you will download the app and allow it to scan your drivers license, passport or even connect to your bank or education records, and that app will then interact with social media platforms or other digital services on your behalf.

It’s not a “digital identity card” at all, it’s a state-issued filter interposed between you and the digital world.

You upload all your data to the app, and then the app acts as ombudsman between you and the companies or services your wish to access.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s essentially the same system that the EU covid vaccine passports used. But where the vaccine pass confirmed your vax status, the new app will confirm your age.

It’s a comparison drawn by UVDL herself [emphasis added]:

This is not the first time the Commission comes forward with an innovative solution to a new problem. We all remember the COVID pandemic. Our world came to a complete standstill. But as we came out of lockdowns and as vaccines were available, the Commission developed the COVID app in record time – three months –, to help bring us back to normal life, in a safe way. With a scan of our COVID certificates, we could go to a concert or board a plane to travel again, etcetera. 78 countries across 4 continents were using this app, so it was as huge success. And now we have taken this success and applied it to the age verification app. It follows the same principles, the same model.

…and it is more than apt, as both systems sell themselves with the same lie.

The claim is that the EU will confirm your age without giving Meta/YouTube/Google your actual passport details. They promise they will share no other data except your age.

This likely isn’t true, but it doesn’t actually matter either way, because that’s not the data they value.

They already know how old you are, but they don’t necessarily know where you are, who you’re talking to or what you think.

The sales pitch is that, by confirming your age on your behalf, the government app will protect your personal data from tech giants.

But, in reality, by positioning themselves between you and those tech giants, the government app is collecting your personal data for its own use.

If you need the app to create an account, then the EU will know you created an account. If you need the app to sign in, then the EU will know when you signed and where.

It’s a little government splinter on your phone, wedged between you and every digital service you use – and it’s probably always listening.

What you say, where you visit, who you watch, where you work, when you sleep, what you eat.

And naturally, this app is “totally open source”, so every nation – inside the EU and out – can implement its usage alongside their own brand of social media ban, in the hopes “every citizen” will use it.

That’s a direct quote…

Third, the app works on any device – phone, tablet, computer, you name it [and] it is fully open source […] This means that our partner countries can also use it. This is very important that this can be used by our global partners […] Europe offers a free and easy to use solution that can shield our children from harmful and illegal content. And we see more of our Member States making great progress. France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Ireland are front runners. They are planning to integrate the app into their national wallets. And I hope more Member States and private sector will follow so that every citizen can soon use the app.

Every state will have some variation of the same law. Every state uses the same app made from the same code. All systems interoperable, all carried on every device where ever you go.

This is the entire point of this years-long campaign – technocrats from the state and corporate world working together to harvest your data.

It has nothing to do with “protecting children”.

Surveillance and control is always the endgame.

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