Putting the Ass in Assassination

A few nights ago, there was a third attempt on the life of President Donald Trump. Well, at least that’s what was reported. Even more so than on the first two occasions, there was an unmistakable theatrical aspect to it. Bad theater. Ed Wood style theater. Think Reefer Madness. Think nuclear activated dinosaurs crushing big cities.

There are many reasons to doubt this dubious story. Why did UFC president Dana White describe a gunman in the building as “fucking awesome?” How about that hot Israeli influencer who shared a generous selfie of her protruding breasts at the scene? Well, as we’ve noted at other questionable events, fear is erased when it’s time for a really cool selfie. The lovely young Zionist did offer the observation that there “was, like, no security at all.” Others would say similar things. Odd, isn’t it, that when the most controversial president of modern times decides to finally attend the White House Correspondents Dinner, that security wasn’t ramped up? Why not on orange alert, to rekindle memories of the post-9/11 “terrorism” barometer? As even loyal Fox News reported, “Attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner raised concerns about security at the venue, describing inconsistent screening before the shooting occurred.” A German journalist stated that “there was no security screening.”

Piers Morgan, of all people, called the security “scandalously lax.” When Piers Morgan calls anything associated with an official narrative “scandalously lax,” you know your false flag had really poor production values. We’ve seen a grainy video, which looks like it came from 1989, that shows a very fleet man- allegedly the lone nut would be assassin- dashing past a security guard. So, of course, the security guard points his gun and opens fire. What else could he do? You can’t have someone just running inside like that. Sure, he might have had a bad case of explosive diarrhea, but you can’t take chances. If they’d arm teenage lifeguards, it would solve the vexing problem of kids running around outside the pool. Most reports say the wannabe lone nut was hit twice. Some reports say that he shot a security guard. He must be a really crack shot, because he was moving extremely fast. Well, what would you expect from our first high profile, half Black lone assassin? He’s not going to be some slow ass Hinckley.

Speaking of John Hinckley, President Ronald Reagan was shot just outside this same hotel, 45 years earlier. The cover stories were more sophisticated back then, although admittedly the whole Jodie Foster motive was over the top. If you read my book American Memory Hole, you’ll find some truly explosive information on Hinckley and the future lesbian actress. It’s strange how they portrayed Hinckley’s obsession with her as some kind of pedophilic perversion, when she was actually nineteen at the time of the shooting. Fully legal in every state. At any rate, I’m not giving any spoilers about what I discovered there. You’ll have to read American Memory Hole to find out. Hey, I need to sell books like every other author. But we know that Reagan really was shot. I think. There’s just doubt about the gunman being Hinckley. Recall the original Judy Woodruff report about a gunman firing from above. That was quickly unremembered. Here, at the WHCD event, they concentrated on pure comedy.

Let’s look at Cole Allen, the alleged suspect. What- not a three namer? What kind of an assassin could he be, anyway, with only two names? When we caught a glimpse of the speeding man presumed to be the suspect, he was fully clothed. Then we saw him laying face down on the ground (providing fodder for plenty of Don Lemon and Lindsey Graham jokes). And oh yeah, he was naked. What? A picture taken from another angle showed that his bottom half was covered with what looked like a giant piece of tin foil. Was this an inside “tin foil hat” joke? Did they just happen to have a giant piece of foil for such an occasion? And the angle of the photo we’ve all seen- taken at floor level. What, did the photographer lay on the ground to get the shot? Hopefully, he wasn’t naked, too. Cole Allen was a part time California teacher, we’re told. Who traveled across country to not shoot Trump. He was shown on television in 2017, advertising his wheelchair invention, and also appeared with Usha Vance.

While that differs slightly from both Thomas Crooks, the dead alleged shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, and Ryan Routh, who was supposedly stalking Trump outside a Florida golf course, appearing in Black Rock commercials, it is noteworthy. I don’t know anyone who was ever interviewed on television about his wheelchair accessory. And, of course, Cole Allen had a “manifesto.” Why must they always have manifestos? John Wilkes Booth had a plain old diary. So did Lee Harvey Oswald, although he certainly didn’t write it. So did Sirhan Sirhan. I wonder if Allen referred to the Illuminati, as Sirhan did in his MKULTRA-induced journal? What about that 2023 tweet from Henry Martinez, his only, lone, sole tweet ever, and it consisted of a Pepe image and two words- Cole Allen. Maybe he was a fan of Allen’s wheelchair wizardry. Is this the same Henry Martinez linked to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory? Faked assassinations aren’t any more or less impressive than faked space flights, you know.

What was very noticeable was the demeanor of Trump and his inner circle, shortly after the suspect had been apprehended. They seemed very relaxed, even delighted. Lovely, super pregnant Karoline Leavitt was wearing the stereotypical shit-eating grin, standing next to Psycho Pete Hegseth, who was beaming like he’d just received word that another girls’ school had been blown up in Iran. Melania was smiling the way an older supermodel does, and Trumpenstein himself wasn’t fazed in the least. Didn’t he fall as he was whisked off stage? You know, about 30 seconds after J.D. Vance was? Doesn’t your average almost 80 year old suffer some ill effects from pretty much any fall? He didn’t even look like he was bruised. Maybe they shot him up with a fresh batch of Adrenochrome. For a guy who has supposedly been the victim of three assassination attempts now, he seems shockingly unaffected by it all. Maybe it’s that patented Diet Coke and McDonald’s diet of his. Why are we bothering with vitamins?

Laura Loomer, who Candace Owens says isn’t even really Jewish, and is so mentally disturbed that she can’t legally own a firearm, proclaimed that the shooter was an “Epstein and Israel conspiracy theorist” who’d been inspired by podcasters. And the fixation with the ballroom. Even for Trump, it was strange to say that “every president for 150 years” has been trying to get this ballroom. Yet none of them were able to do it. Only our Giant Orange leader. This presidential desire also curiously went unmentioned for 150 years. As if on cue, all the highest profile MAGA “influencers” popped up on X, tweeting out identical sentiments about “this is why we need the ballroom.” What exactly does a ballroom have to do with a fake assassination attempt? The wording matched precisely, bringing to mind all those memes posted by the same kinds of MAGA influencers, which showed quite clearly that left-wing news anchors are issued the same talking points. Which seems to have happened to MAGA here.

And the grieving widow Erika Kirk was on hand as well. She seems to have one simple go-to move- the dabbing of the eyes to suggest crying. And she didn’t disappoint here. She was filmed walking out, dabbing away, seemingly distraught, and made sure to say loud enough for the microphones to capture it: “I just want to go home!” Okay, we get it- she just lost Charlie like seven months ago. And they didn’t get the guy who actually did it, either, even though she becomes angry if anyone suggests that. And that’s assuming the Kirk assassination wasn’t a hoax, too. Whatever it was, they have lied about every aspect of it. It seems odd that Erika was there, but then it seems odd that J.D. Vance, FBI director Kash Patel and other officials were there. In the past, the WHCD has been a lame production, whereby a state sponsored “comedian” gently roasts the president, as White House reporters get drunk and laugh uproariously. There was no comedian at this one. No roasting. Just a bored looking Trumpenstein.

This traumatic evening served to distract the public from the disastrous, nonsensical war with Iran, as well as Trump’s plummeting approval ratings. Not to mention the poor, utterly forgotten Epstein Files. But instead, the script seems to have called for the big, beautiful ballroom to provide the primary motive. Apparently, a part time teacher in California was so incensed that Trumpenstein wanted to really win bigly with this grand new ballroom, that he was inspired to show up with a shotgun, a .38 automatic pistol, at least three knives, and “all sorts of paraphernalia.” Is it just me, or does that seem like a lot to be carrying without drawing attention? You know, like by the crack security staff? I can’t find any information on how Allen arrived at the hotel. Did he Uber there? Walk down the streets? Were the same law enforcement officials around who failed to notice Thomas Crooks carrying a rifle over his shoulder and his own ladder? And Trump does nothing but praise these guys for doing a great job!

We’re also told that Allen put the shotgun together in some corner of the lobby or something. Witnesses reported seeing it. And again, this didn’t alert any security personnel? Sure, he may have been an amazingly athletic biracial Flash, but putting the gun together was noticed. But not reported, I suppose. And only noticed by mere civilians, as was the case in Butler. Alex Jones tried to maintain that “the evidence shows it was a real event.” He also once said that Saudi Arabia runs Hollywood. What about the guy who kept calmly eating his dinner, in the midst of all that mayhem? Why was a “mentalist” hired for entertainment instead of the traditional comedian? A non-Irish mentalist, naturally. Are there any other kind? What about the Fox News reporter, noting that Karoline Leavitt’s husband had warned her to “stay safe,” and said he seemed “very serious,” as he scanned the room and declared “there are some-” At that point, the reporter’s feed cut off. Move along. Nothing to see here, folks.

The response to the incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner has revealed that a startling number of people, especially on the Left, believe that it was staged. Now, the “Woke” Left has never met an event it thought was staged before. They were the loudest cheerleaders for Alex Jones being prosecuted for questioning anything about Sandy Hook. They still seem to trust the “science,” whether it be the dangerous warp speed vaccine, or NASA’s latest production. But undoubtedly due to their virulent TDS, they instantly turn as skeptical as a “right-wing wacko” when it comes to assassinating Trump. For once, they appear to be right. So the next time we commoners question the legitimacy of a pandemic, or an election, or some mass casualty event, please remember not to screech and demand that we be thrown behind bars. The government can and does fake things, as the Trump assassination attempts prove. No more “everyone grieves differently,” please. No more gun control lectures.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who as HHS secretary was oddly there, was whisked away by Secret Service, as his unprotected actress wife Cheryl Hines fended for herself. FBI director Kash Patel sat there, looking dumbfounded as usual, with those trademark wide-eyed expressions. He didn’t exactly appear to be a proactive FBI director. The vaunted FBI will, of course, take over the investigation, and announce that they have once again arrested the right man. The right lone, unaided man. Trump aide Stephen Miller especially embarrassed himself by being caught on camera using his pregnant wife as a shield. Almost the way that Zionists like Miller claim Palestinians do. But how many Palestinians have the focus to grab their wife’s breast while doing so? Their pregnant wife’s breast. Katie Miller is quite the vocal Zionist herself. I candidly admit that I just have trouble taking anyone named Katie seriously, after Katie Couric.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, sounding more and more like one of us, now that she’s no longer in Congress, asked on Twitter, “Why does every shooter have a manifesto? Most shooter’s manifestos remain classified so they don’t inspire more would be shooters. Why did they release Cole Allen’s manifesto almost immediately?” The questions are endless. How did photographer Andy Harnik remain so calm, snapping pictures during the mayhem, while holding onto his bourbon? That’s like they did it in the old days. Nothing made you drop your whiskey. What about Trump’s post on Social Media, which was time stamped two hours before the WHCD event? In which he talked about the incident. We’ve seen these same time stamp anomalies in many of the other mass casualty events. Which the same leftists wholeheartedly believe were real, and should not be questioned. Unlike the fake and ridiculous Trump assassination attempts. As with everything, Trumpenstein is in a special category.

Two male reporters were caught on a hot mic, scoffing at the security for the WHCD. One of them can be heard laughing at the entrance being guarded by “two random chicks holding the front door open,” then adding that they were “not even trying anymore,” causing the other to laugh. As has been pointed out regarding the lovely widow Erika Kirk, why did she get whisked out of the building when everyone there was under lockdown? And who was in perfect position to capture her crying and exclaiming that she wanted to go home on film? Was the Instagram photo of Cole Allen proudly wearing an IDF shirt really photoshopped? Trumpenstein, the alleged “conspiracy theorist” president, quickly attributed the act to a “lone wolf.” Dana White was one of those who refused to duck down. UFC tough, I guess. Longtime Trump aide and former caddy Dan Scavino actually tried unsuccessfully to start a “USA! USA!” chant. I think “Fight! Fight! Fight!” worked much better.

I don’t necessarily enjoy pointing out how the public keeps being hoodwinked. I’m not going to say everything is fake and ghey, like my astute supporter Timber Wolf, or Candace Owens. But we have to tell the truth, don’t we? Doesn’t it set us free? I know this will fade away, just like Butler. Cole Allen will wind up the answer to a trivia question. The next probably fake event will distract the public. So will the latest developments in our senseless war with Iran. You know a fake landing on the moon would. But no matter how obviously fake it is, more people are still going to believe it than not. I don’t think there’s enough TDS power out there to expose the fraud of the WHCD incident. No hoaxes can ever be admitted, just like no conspiracies on the part of our government can be acknowledged. Random disturbed individuals, in a totally random world, will randomly do bad things. The increased skepticism is refreshing. As JFK reminded us, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The post Another Big, Beautiful Hoax appeared first on Activist Post.

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

On May 5, 2026, the pro-European government of Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan collapsed in a parliamentary no-confidence vote engineered by an unlikely but explosive alliance: the Social Democrats (PSD) and the sovereigntist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR). The motion passed with 281 votes, well above the 233 threshold in Romania’s 464-seat parliament. Ten months after Bolojan took office, the Brussels-backed austerity regime he presided over lies in ruins. For millions of Romanians, this wasn’t just politics. It was payback.

Everyone in Romania knew what happened in November 2024. An obscure independent candidate, Călin Georgescu, surged from nowhere on a platform of national sovereignty, anti-austerity, and skepticism toward endless NATO adventures in Ukraine. He won the first round outright on a wave of grassroots TikTok energy, no lavish campaign, no oligarch money, just raw popular discontent with the neoliberal order. Then the machine kicked in. The Constitutional Court, citing declassified intelligence reports about “Russian interference” via social media algorithms, annulled the entire election. Georgescu was branded a Kremlin puppet, banned from future runs, and hounded with investigations. The rerun produced a safe, pro-EU placeholder government. Romanians called it what it was: a coup d’état.

Romania Strikes Back: How Brussels’ Electoral Coup in Bucharest Just Imploded

Many independent reporters have documented this pattern across the post-Soviet space for years, exposing Western intelligence, EU pressure, and local comprador elites working in tandem to neuter any threat to the transatlantic consensus. In Romania, a frontline NATO state bordering Ukraine, the stakes were deemed existential. Georgescu’s win threatened the pipeline of Romanian bodies and treasure into Washington’s proxy war. It challenged the EU’s fiscal stranglehold that keeps Bucharest locked into endless deficit-reduction theatre while ordinary citizens face poverty. So Brussels and its local enforcers simply deleted the result. “Foreign interference,” they screamed, while ignoring the far more blatant hybrid operations run out of Langley, Brussels, Paris, and the Atlantic Council to prop up compliant regimes.

Fast-forward to June 2025. After weeks of chaos and a rigged do-over, Ilie Bolojan, a pliable liberal technocrat was installed as prime minister at the head of a fragile pro-European coalition. His mandate was to ram through the austerity Brussels demanded to escape the EU’s excessive deficit procedure. Romania’s deficit had ballooned to nearly 8% of GDP, the worst in the Union, thanks to the costs of hosting the war machine, energy shocks, and the same neoliberal policies that have hollowed out the country since 2007. Bolojan delivered tax hikes, spending cuts on education, culture, and social programs, all to unlock the next tranche of EU “recovery” funds that come with more strings attached than a marionette.

The Firewall Breached: AUR’s Triumph and the Humiliating Defeat for EU Overlords

The Romanian people saw the continuity. The same forces that stole Georgescu’s victory were now punishing them with poverty to stay in the good graces of the eurocrats. Polls showed AUR, the party that had backed Georgescu’s sovereigntist vision, surging to 37%, eclipsing the establishment PSD. George Simion, AUR’s leader, spoke for the street, declaring: “This is the end of ten months of taxes, war, and poverty.” The PSD, once the largest party and a nominal member of the governing coalition, walked out in protest over the cuts. Then they did the unthinkable and joined AUR to file the no-confidence motion. No formal post-vote pact, they insisted. Just a shared goal, toppling the EU’s man in Bucharest.

Western media and think-tankers are already clutching pearls about “legitimizing the far right.” Costin Ciobanu, the Aarhus University analyst quoted breathlessly across outlets, warns that the PSD has made AUR a “major political player.” In other words, he questions how a mainstream party can dare cooperate with the unwashed sovereigntists who dare question endless EU fiscal diktats and NATO adventurism. The same guardians of “democracy” who cheered the annulment of a popular election now warn that parliamentary arithmetic is dangerous. The hypocrisy is grotesque.

This is not about left versus right. It is about sovereignty versus subordination. Romania joined the EU in 2007 promising convergence and prosperity. Instead, it got deindustrialization, demographic collapse, and the role of cannon-fodder state on NATO’s eastern flank. Georgescu tapped into that rage. His campaign wasn’t “Russian bots”, it was Romanians rejecting the script written in Brussels and Washington. The TikTok surge was organic, but the real interference was the declassified intelligence dumps, the court intervention, and the quiet pressure from EU officials who made clear that a Georgescu presidency would mean frozen funds and diplomatic isolation.

President Nicușor Dan, the pro-Western figurehead, announced informal consultations with parties to form a new government and insisted Romania will stay “on the pro-Western path” regardless. He was inviting more austerity, more compliance, more warm but the track is washing out. The Romanian leu crashed to a new all-time low against the euro the moment the vote passed, while access to over €10 billion in EU recovery funds before the August deadline now hangs in the balance. The AUR is far from being ostracized, and has proven it can force real change from opposition benches. The party that Western liberals smear as “far-right” is simply articulating what millions feel: Romania first, not Brussels first, something similar to what millions in the US are currently feeling: America first, not Israel first.

The PSD’s move is revealing. Even the old post-communist machine understands that the electorate has shifted. Part of its base has been “siphoned off by the far right,” as analysts sneeringly put it. That siphoning isn’t extremism, it’s class politics. Austerity hits workers and pensioners hardest. Georgescu and Simion spoke to them in language the EU technocrats will never understand. The annulment didn’t kill the movement; instead, it radicalized it, and today’s vote is the first major institutional blowback.

Compare this to how the EU treats its own. France’s Yellow Vests, Germany’s AfD, Italy’s Meloni, Brussels lectures on democracy while rigging rules against any real challenge. Romania’s case is starker because it sats on the front line, while the country was being turned into a logistics hub for the Ukraine war, absorbing refugees, weapons, and inflation while its own deficit exploded. Georgescu dared say what everyone knew, and that this policy serves Washington and Berlin, not Bucharest.

The coup of December 2024 exposed the fraud at the heart of “European values.” An election was stolen in plain sight, justified by vague intelligence about algorithms, tools the West itself weaponizes daily through NGOs, think tanks, and social media giants. Georgescu’s ECHR appeal was dismissed. The message couldn’t have been clearer, and reminded Romanians that sovereignty is conditional on obedience.

Now the pro-EU experiment is crumbling from within. Negotiations for a new government will drag on. The same four parties may try to regroup without Bolojan. But the firewall is breached. AUR is no longer marginal. The narrative that only Brussels-approved liberals can govern has been shattered. Romanians have shown they remember who stole their vote.

This is not the end of EU influence in Bucharest, but it is a humiliating defeat for the regime-change architects. The same forces that engineered the 2024 annulment now face the consequences of their overreach. Austerity without legitimacy breeds revolt, while hybrid warfare against your own electorate breeds resistance.

For the Atlanticist commentariat, this is a “crisis for democracy.” For Romanians who lived through the theft of 2024, it is justice delayed but not denied. The coup d’état failed to stick. The people are taking their country back, one no-confidence vote at a time.

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The post Romania Strikes Back and Humiliates the EU After Their 2024 Electoral Coup appeared first on Activist Post.

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A 22 point manifesto recently published by tech giant Palantir reads like a villainous plot for dystopian domination.

At this point it has become abundantly clear for those paying even the slightest bit of attention that tech giant Palantir is becoming one of the most pervasive entities influencing the growing plutocratic dystopia.

While other giants of the big tech industry such as Amazon, Meta, Google, and even Oracle have indeed spread their tentacles far and wide throughout the upper echelons of government, Palantir, not to be outdone, remains at the forefront of this technocratic takeover.

We have previously reported on the ways in which this company’s founders such as Peter Thiel and Alex karp have effectively dedicated their lives to promoting technocracy, having their autocratic ideologies molded by the far right philosophies of technofascists the likes of Curtis Yarvin. And how the acolytes of this ideology have effectively embedded themselves within the Trump Administration. As well as how MAGA in its entirety has become, likely always was, infused with this ideology.

Previous reports have revealed the numerous ways in which the big tech AI firm has become embedded in the highest reaches of the federal government.

From being tapped by the White House to build a government–wide surveillance database;

To embedding Palantir AI across the entirety of the US Military, with Silicon Valley firms including Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI now even having their own extension in the US Army in the form of Detachment 201.

Palantir’s infection of the US government has also spread into the police state, building the technological infrastructure for the modern day Gestapo as Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations rely heavily on assistance provided by Palantir.

The firms reach has also extended into the Education Department, using data analytics to monitor academic institutions at a time when the administration’s attacks on academia in line with Project 2025 and the authoritarian playbook of the Heritage Foundation — another institution who’s neo-fascist ideology is influencing government policy — seeks to dismantle and reshape American education within the framework of a technocratic vision.

Additionally, Palantir has extended its reach into healthcare, promoting a technocratic agenda that merges artificial intelligence and biotechnology in accordance with the aims of the 4th Industrial Revolution. A development which is particularly alarming considering the overlap of technocracy with the eugenicist ideology of transhumanism and the embrace of transhumanism within the inner circle of the Trump administration.

The tech firm has also in recent days expanded its reach even further, sinking its fangs into the agriculture industry, inking a $300 million contract with the USDA which will see Palantir use its software to assist in the management of US farmland. Which by no coincidence underpins the technocratic agenda of consolidating control over the food supply with centralized agribusiness and genetically edited crops.

It is abundantly clear that the tentacles of this monolithic mega-corporation reach far and wide throughout the halls of power. Indeed, a former Palantir executive turned whistleblower recently confirmed what was already quite apparent — that Palantir has for all intents and purposes taken over the US government, stating matter-of-factly that the corporation, which he refers to as a terrorist organization, has effectively embedded itself in the United States government, merging the American empire, Zionist military infrastructure, surveillance capitalism, and technofascist ideology into a single architecture of control.

For those who at this point still may believe that the usage of terms like “technofascist” are hyperbolic, it is worth reiterating our recent report which revealed very clearly the Neo-Nazi network that was used to spread Peter Thiel’s online influence. As well as our previous reporting exposing the seedy underbelly of self-admitted fascists working behind the scenes to influence global right-wing politics.

It should be no question at this juncture that Palantir represents a veritable Fourth Reich of the modern day, establishing the infrastructure of a technocratic agenda deeply rooted in technofascist ideology.

However, now, you no longer just have to take our word for it. The company itself has seemingly pulled off the mask, if there was any left by this point, and blatantly said the quiet part out loud.

In recent days Palantir has posted to social media a 1000-word manifesto, outlining 22 key points of their vision for the world, a summarization of palantir co-founder Alex Karp’s 2025 book titled The Technological Republic in what some critics have referred to as “the ramblings of a comic book villain”.

In it, the company blatantly calls for the United States to implement universal mandatory military service and the establishment of “hard power” to maintain the US unipolar hegemon on the back of an all-encompassing AI infrastructure.

Insisting on the establishment of a strong Western national identity, the manifesto would also denigrate subcultures in what was clearly a racist dog whistle, condemning inclusivity and diversity in what the post refers to as “hollow pluralism”.

On religion, it insists that the intolerance of religious beliefs within certain circles of the political elite must be resisted. On its surface, a seemingly harmless declaration, however given the infestation of accelerationist Christian nationalist influence throughout the administration and the far right as a whole, and subsequent rabid intolerance for any belief outside of that purview, it can be seen as an endorsement of even more fervent theocratic ideology.

The manifesto also insists on Silicon Valley’s involvement in “combating violent crime” which would see Palantier’s already extensive involvement in mass surveillance, biometric data collection, and pre-crime analytics extend even further.

Perhaps most shocking, yet unsurprising, the manifesto openly insists that civilizations such as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan should be returned to power, lamenting what the company refers to as the “neutering” of post World War II Germany and Japan, referring to the restraint of the Axis powers as an “overcorrection” which “must be undone”.

Such overtly fascist ambitions can’t get any clearer than that.

The entirety of the 22 Point Manifesto reads in full as follows —

Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska

Several people have called out the blatantly authoritarian rhetoric of the Palantir Manifesto. Belgian philosopher of technology and University of Vienna professor Mark Coeckelbergh referred to it as an “example of technofascism”.

Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist and expert on authoritarian tendencies described the manifesto as “one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!”

University of Michigan political scientist Don Moynihan published an analysis of the Palantir manifesto, concluding “on the whole, the manifesto’s vision… is that of a US government and its tech allies as dominant players, unconstrained by accountability.”

Palantir has quickly become the new face of the empire. The backbone of a New World Order and the gravest threat to liberty both domestically and abroad. Populations must rise up against this deeply entrenched technological leviathan and work to rip its insidious influence out by the root.

Republished from The Free Thought Project

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You have probably noticed that gasoline is starting to become extremely expensive. That is really bad news for all of us, because our entire way of life depends on cheap energy. We can’t make stuff without energy. We can’t move stuff without energy. That is why the cost of energy directly affects the cost of everything else. In fact, energy is literally the foundation of our entire economy. If we have cheap energy we will have a high standard of living. If we do not have cheap energy we will not have a high standard of living. It really is that simple.

Prior to the war with Iran, energy prices were quite low, but now everything has changed.

Oil production in the Persian Gulf has dropped by 57 percent from pre-war levels, and hardly any oil and natural gas have been getting through the Strait of Hormuz over the past couple of months.

As a result, energy prices are soaring all over the world.

Here in the United States, the average price of a gallon of gasoline just hit $4.30…

Gasoline prices nationwide surged 27 cents over the past week as oil prices spiked. Drivers paid $4.30 per gallon on average across the U.S. Thursday, compared to $4.03 a week ago.

In late February, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was less than 3 dollars a gallon.

At this point, U.S. consumers are paying $1.32 more per gallon than they did just prior to the war.

If the conflict with Iran is not resolved quickly, things will get a lot worse.

In order to get an idea of where things could be headed, just look at what is going on in California.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in California just reached $6.01…

California gasoline prices hit $6 per gallon on Thursday, a 30% increase since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran in late February.

Drivers in California are paying the most in the nation at $6.01 per gallon on average, according to data from AAA.

A 30 percent increase in two months is crazy.

But this is the reality that we are living in now.

Before the war began, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in California was just $4.64.

This just shows how rapidly conditions can change.

Needless to say, the price of diesel has been going up even faster.

In California, it is up a whopping 47 percent since the beginning of the war…

Diesel, meanwhile, cost about $7.50 per gallon on average in California on Thursday, a 47% increasse since the war broke out on Feb. 28. Diesel is essential for the economy because the fuel is used by trucks and trains to deliver all the goods that consumers buy.

If prices for gasoline and diesel remain at these elevated levels, it will be very painful, but we can survive this.

But what will happen if oil prices continue to skyrocket?

On Thursday, the price of Brent crude actually hit $126 a barrel before falling back…

Oil prices surged to a wartime high Thursday, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, topping $126 a barrel as concerns grew that the Iran war will drag on, tightening global energy supplies.

We are being warned that the price of oil could easily reach 150 dollars a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened quickly.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that is going to happen any time soon.

So I am encouraging everyone to prepare for an extended crisis.

Literally just about everything is going to become more expensive.

And that is really bad news, because a survey that was conducted before the war ever began discovered that more than half of all Americans were struggling to pay their bills on time each month…

A separate survey of 5,000 Americans, conducted by Talker Research for Current in December 2025, adds context to how raw the financial picture looks. In that study, 87% of respondents said the country is in a crisis because of how unaffordable life has become. More than half (52%) said they struggle to pay their bills on time each month, and 50% said they’ve had difficulty affording groceries.

Please read that paragraph again.

That was where we were at prior to the war with Iran.

Needless to say, substantially elevated energy prices will make our affordability crisis a great deal worse.

Of course it isn’t just U.S. consumers that are being affected by this.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning that “the whole of humanity is paying the price” and that we are now facing the “specter of global recession”…

The head of the United Nations warned Thursday of the “specter of global recession” if the U.S.-Iran war doesn’t end soon, imploring both sides to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and “let the global economy breathe again.”

Speaking to journalists in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that despite the “fragile ceasefire” between the U.S. and Iran, the consequences of their ongoing standoff in the Strait of Hormuz “grow dramatically worse with each passing hour.”

“As with every conflict, the whole of humanity is paying the price,” he said. “The pain will be felt for a long time to come.”

I normally do not agree with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about anything.

But in this case, he is right on target.

If the Strait of Hormuz does not reopen soon, there is no way that we are going to avoid a major global economic downturn.

Guterres is also claiming that 45 million people living on this planet could soon fall into “extreme hunger”…

If the constraint on shipping through the strait “drags on through midyear,” he said 32 million people would fall into poverty and 45 million “into extreme hunger,” he said.

According to the UN, the number of people experiencing acute hunger was already at an all-time record high even before the war with Iran started.

Now we are facing the worst fertilizer crisis in history. If you have not read the breakdown that I published about this earlier in the week, please go back and read it now.

There are so few prominent voices that are telling the truth about this.

The spring planting season in the northern hemisphere is going to be a disaster, and six to nine months from now global food shortages are going to hit us like a freight train.

Food prices will rise to shocking levels in wealthy nations, and there will be widespread famines in impoverished nations.

We desperately need the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened immediately, because we really are heading into an unprecedented nightmare.

The post A Flashing Red Warning Signal: In California, Gasoline Is 6 Now Dollars A Gallon And Diesel Is Now 7 Dollars A Gallon appeared first on Activist Post.

How we define “problems” also defines what we “understand” as a “solution,” and if our definition is circular, it’s delusional.

Readers kindly point out I don’t understand either AI or human nature. I readily confess to having an imperfect understanding of AI and human nature, along with everything else.

One thing I do understand is that “understanding” exists within the confines of an implicit milieu that is typically assumed by those embedded in it to be “the way it is,” i.e. objective reality when in fact it is a cultural-conceptual mental construct with boundary conditions those operating inside this construct do not see because they’re confident that their “understanding” is 1) complete and 2) accurate.

Due to the nature of all cultural-conceptual mental constructs, these assumptions are false. To those embedded in a particular cultural-conceptual mental construct, this construct is “reality” in the same way that mice living in Mouse Utopia (a large cage with abundant food and other mice) “understand” this artificial world is “real” and their “understanding” that this is “real” is 1) complete and 2) accurate.

What the readers kindly pointing out my deficiencies of “understanding” aren’t stating is the cultural-conceptual context that they view as “the real world” is actually a mental construct. The current era’s cultural-conceptual context is a remarkably narrow, remarkably distorted “understanding” of human experience based on two implicit mental constructs:

1. Human nature boils down to behavioral constructs: stimulus-response, avoidance of pain, the seeking of pleasure and leisure, which boil down to dopamine cascades, and so on.

2. All problems are ultimately technical / financial problems that can be solved with technology and “money.”

And since AI is a technology that leverages all knowledge and all previous technologies, it is the ultimate technology-can-solve-everything technology. This construct is reassuringly circular: by defining all problems as being solvable by technology, then all we need to do to solve all problems is increase the power and reach of technology. The conclusion is “obvious”: all problems created by technology can be solved by creating more technology.

Once again, this construct is reassuringly circular: since technology solves all problems, problems created by technology can be solved by more technology.

The same can be said of the financial system, a.k.a. “money.” Since “money” can buy everything in the tangible world, it has a special kind of magic which blends perfectly with the magic of technology. And “money” has a magical component, credit, which enables the creation of “money” via the mechanism of using income or assets as the real-world foundation of this new “money.”

Put these constructs together and voila, Nirvana-Utopia comes into sharp focus: robots and AI will solve all our problems and do all the work so we’ll have the limitless leisure to amuse ourselves by staring at screens that unleash dopamine cascades or jet around the world (consuming nearly-free energy) racking up leisure-world experiences, with all this super-abundance funded by “money.”

To those who “understand” everything within a construct whose boundary conditions they don’t see, the possibility that their “understanding” is delusional cannot possibly be true. Isn’t it “obvious’ that humans love leisure and novelty, that “money” is all we need to buy limitless quantities of leisure and novelty via financial transactions enabled by technology, which will also provide all the energy, resources, manufacturing, transport, etc. needed to keep Nirvana-Utopia at our fingertips?

The possibility that the truly critical problems are beyond the reach of technology–or that technology itself is one of the problems–are anathema to the reductionist behavioral-technological mindset, which is trapped in a delusional construct in which there must be a technological / financial solution, so let’s identify it.

In this construct, erecting thousands of giant machines to sequester carbon is the solution to climate change. OK, solved that, next problem. The solution to ground-based traffic congestion is thousands of electric-powered aircraft that will flit around, transporting us here and there, all controlled by the loving grace of infallible AI.

And when all this purposeless, dopamine-exhaustion, transactional Ultra-Processed Life makes you sad, lonely and depressed, here’s a chatbot that is a “friend” and “therapist” combined to “solve” your mental health “problems.” For in this financial-technological cultural-conceptual context, everything can be optimized by technology, for problem-solving is fundamentally a process of optimizing human nature via optimizing technology and “money”: stimulus-response, pain-pleasure, dopamine receptors firing, problem solved.

And when all this purposeless, transactional Ultra-Processed Life makes you ill, AI will conjure up countless new pharmaceuticals you can wolf down as the “solution” to the “problem” of your ill health, neatly avoiding the real problem which is purposeless, transactional Ultra-Processed Life is inherently unhealthy and deranging.

My “understanding” of technology and “money” is a bit different from this conventional techno-financial construct which I view as a modern mythology of Progress). I “understand” technology as the manifestation of humanity as a tool-making species. Tools and “money” (with money understood as a tool with both tangible and imaginary/conceptual value) offer us wide-ranging utility value.

I also “understand” both tools have boundary conditions that define and limit their utility. These tools are not infinite or infinitely malleable; they only function within specific boundaries. Beyond these boundaries, they fail, or fail to provide utility, or they become a “problem” as they consume resources and lead us away from conceptualizing “problems” in ways that enable “solutions” beyond the narrow confines of technology-finance’s boundaries.

Trapped inside the confines of technology-financial “solutions,” we’re caught in a doom-loop of doing more of what’s failed due to our inability to “understand” that we’re blind to the construct we accept as “the way it is” and its boundary conditions.

In the Mouse Utopia construct of finance, the “solution” is to turn everything into a market, unleashing the magic of market forces which solves all problems by turning everything into a commodity orbiting supply, demand and “money.”

One of the boundary conditions of markets is that once everything’s been reduced to a “market,” it can be manipulated to the benefit of those proclaiming a “free market” that they control. The door labeled “free market solves everything” leads to “some are more equal than others” depending on who controls the “money” and supply-demand.

It doesn’t matter what form of “money” is being circulated. what matters is how it’s distributed by the boundary conditions, i.e. the rules governing the initial creation and distribution of the “money”, the taxation rules and the rules enabling control of transactions, supply-demand and what’s visible to all (i.e. transparent) and what’s hidden to maintain advantages invisible to the mice scurrying around Utopia.

Humanity isn’t just a tool-making species; it is also a social species, as our embedded social coding is what enables the knowledge of tool-making to be conserved and distributed.

Our social nature is as complex as our minds, our bodies and the world we inhabit. The narrow, reductionist, behavioral-technological construct that’s taken as “the way it is” views the Universe as a mechanism with inputs, outputs and processes that can be duplicated and controlled once the instructions / coding are revealed.

The boundary conditions of this construct are absurdly narrow. For example, our “understanding” of the human organism is comically reductionist. Sugary cereals are considered “healthy” if they’ve been fortified with a handful of vitamins. Meanwhile, outside this comically narrow “understanding” of food and human health, every real food (for example, garlic) contains hundreds of compounds which interact with hundreds of compounds in other unadulterated foods and the thousands of types of micro-organisms in our digestive tract microbiome.

The constructs of “money” and technology–including AI–are equally reductive and equally blind to their own limited “understanding” of what they claim to understand.

Human life does not distill down to dopamine cascades and behavioral if-then coding. Our hard-wiring has been selected to conserve what is most advantageous to our survival, and these traits are largely social in nature, as our social skills are our primary selective advantage.

We seek connection with others, avenues of self-expression that serve our need to have purpose and meaning through being useful to others and mastering the means of being useful to others. We seek to be part of something larger than ourselves and our attraction to dopamine hits.

The reductive, mechanistic, behavioral-techno-financial optimization mental construct is blind to the boundary conditions that limit the utility-value of this extremely limited model of “how the world works.” This construct replaces complex relationships and their inter-connections with discrete transactions that can then be optimized as if-then constructs. All of human life and experience is distilled down to financial or technologically mediated transactions.

For example, dynamic pricing, where data on each “consumer” is collected and analyzed to identify factors such as income, impulse control, patterns of spending, etc., that enable the AI pricing tool to jack up the price of the item/service anticipating that the “consumer” has both the income/credit and willingness to spend more than “consumers” with less disposable income/credit.

To those whose belief structures align with the behavioral-techno-financial optimization mental construct, this optimization is itself optimal in terms of delivering dopamine-cascade Nirvana-Utopia. Since transacting every material essential of life in a bloodless, relationship-free exchange of “money” increases our leisure time to trigger dopamine cascades by staring at screens, we’re “happy.”

The possibility that the dopamine-cascade Nirvana-Utopia of AI-powered transactional Ultra-Processed Life is a poor match for human nature doesn’t occur to them because that would force an examination of all the boundary conditions limitations of the cultural-conceptual construct they incorrectly assume is “the way it is” when in fact it’s all a cripplingly reductionist mental construct that’s completely untethered from a comprehensive understanding of human nature and our experience of the world around us.

The data showing that this AI-enabled dopamine-cascade Nirvana-Utopia is in reality a living Hell does not compute in their belief structure in this mental construct. If this artificial, synthetic, ultra-processed, transactional, delusional, fake world makes us ill and deranged, the “solution” is more technology and more “money.”

This is the self-liquidating circularity end-game of the entire delusional behavioral-techno-financial optimization mental construct.

The idea that the truly existential problems can’t be solved by “money” or technology doesn’t compute in their mental construct, which is based on their belief in the limitless power of “money” and technology to solve every problem that could possibly exist–a belief that is circular because it has no “understanding” of the boundary conditions of this construct.

To offer up one example of many, the believers in the behavioral-techno-financial optimization mental construct do not “see” moral decay as a causal factor because the moral universe doesn’t exist in their model, just as the complex workings and value of real food, real relationships, real meaning, real purpose, real-world mastery of real-world skills don’t exist except as ultra-processed tokens that can be distilled down to if-then optimizations of transactions.

I “understand” the appeal of this belief structure in the behavioral-techno-financial optimization mental construct of dopamine-cascade Nirvana-Utopia –it’s simplistic and offers the implicit promise of god-like powers to the believers, and who doesn’t want god-like powers, as those are the ultimate ultra-optimized triggers of the dopamine-cascades of self-reinforcing delusion.

Here’s the problem with problems:

If we believe AI will provide a “solution” to the “problem” of moral decay, I submit this is delusion without any self-awareness of its delusional construct or the circularity of that construct. How we define “problems” also defines what we “understand” as a “solution,” and if our definition is circular, it’s delusional: all problems are technological-financial in nature, so “money” and technology can solve all problems.

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The post AI, Money, Human Nature and the Problem with Problems appeared first on Activist Post.

“In Iraq, it took more than three years to reach that high. In Vietnam, it took six years.”

More than 6 in 10 Americans now say President Donald Trump’s war in Iran was a “mistake,” according to a poll out Friday from the Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos.

Within two months, the war—which has inflicted thousands of civilian deaths and caused gas prices to spike worldwide with little tangible gain—has reached levels of unpopularity that previous wars now seen as historic boondoggles took years to reach.

The Post has asked the “mistake” for other major wars. But CNN senior political reporter Aaron Blake explained: “In Iraq, it took more than three years to reach that high. In Vietnam, it took six years.”

Despite a massive protest movement, voters overwhelmingly supported President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, with 81% believing it was the “right thing” in April 2003 and just 16% believing it was a mistake.

But the occupation turned into a long, deadly, and costly disaster, and the administration’s pretexts for the war were revealed to be lies. Public opinion steadily eroded to the point where 64% viewed it as a mistake by January 2007.

Vietnam never had the overwhelming support of Iraq, but 60% of Americans still supported President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to begin direct US military involvement in 1965, while just 24% said it was a mistake.

While the protest movement against the war is as present in Americans’ memories today as the conflict itself, public opinion was still split until 1968 and only reached a high of 61% in May 1971, after more than 50,000 US soldiers had been killed in battle.

Trump’s war in Iran is unique in history in that it never enjoyed even a moment of consensus support. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll just days after the opening salvo of what the Trump administration dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” just 27% said they approved of the strikes, which killed 555 Iranians, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other top Iranian officials.

At this point, 43% of Americans already said they disapproved of the strikes, far eclipsing Iraq and Vietnam. But 30% still said they had not yet made up their minds.

In the coming months, they would. It was revealed that an airstrike on a school, which killed at least 155 people, including 120 children, was a double-tap attack by the United States. Iran retaliated by blocking oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which sent US gas prices hurtling above $4 per gallon. And Trump took on an increasingly erratic and at times outright genocidal posture toward Iran that made any peaceful resolution appear increasingly impossible, even with the current fragile ceasefire.

Friday’s poll shows that while the war still maintains a core base of support—36% of Americans who say it was the right decision, nearly all of them Republicans—it is dwarfed by the 61% who say it was a mistake.

Majorities of respondents across all demographics show that they believe the war has increased the risks of “terrorism against Americans” (61%), “the US economy going into a recession” (60%), and “weakening relationships with US allies.” (56%)

Looking beneath the surface shows an even more worrying sign for Trump: The war has almost no constituency outside of his biggest fans. Self-identified Democrats (91%) overwhelmingly say the war was a mistake. But 71% of independents—many of whom were undecided at the war’s outset—now disapprove too, with just 24% in support.

Even within the GOP, there is a decisive split: 86% of those who self-identify as “MAGA Republicans” are still baying for blood. But “non-MAGA Republicans” have grown uncertain—50% still say war was the right decision, while 49% say it was a mistake.

They were particularly rattled by Trump’s threat last month that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not negotiate a deal to his liking. The threat of genocide was too much even for the majority of Republicans, 53% of whom said they viewed it negatively.

What remains to be seen is whether even Trump’s most faithful backers will turn against the war as it drags on. If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s appearance in Congress on Thursday is any guide, the country may soon find out.

On Thursday, when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) pressed Hegseth about why he has “not sought the support of the American people” and added that “3 out of 5 Americans are against this war today,” he appeared in abject denial about the war’s unpopularity.

“I believe we do have the support of the American people,” he said. “I would remind you and this group that we’re two months in to an effort, and many congressional Democrats want to declare defeat two months in.”

He specifically invoked lengthy past conflicts, repeatedly emphasizing that this one had only lasted “two months,” as if to urge patience with a war Trump had previously said was intended to last only “four to five weeks.”

“Iraq took how many years? Afghanistan took how many years? And they were nebulous missions that people went along with,” he said.

“This is different,” he said of a war that has—depending on the day—been described as one aimed at regime change in Iran, defending protesters, destroying its nuclear program, eliminating its ballistic missile supply, taking its oil, defending Israel, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, among other objectives.

The post 61% of Americans See Trump’s Iran War as ‘Mistake’, Far Outpacing Disapproval of Vietnam and Iraq: Poll appeared first on Activist Post.

While United States President Donald Trump prepares to blockade Iranian ports for many more “months”, the price of oil spikes to its highest since 2022. The price of Brent crude oil rose to $126 on Thursday.

As Fuel Prices Poised to TRIPLE, EU Mulls Rationing Gas Across Bloc Monday

This news comes as US-Iran talks stalled and reports that Trump may extend the blockade of Iranian ports. On Wednesday, according to several media reports, including one from RT, citing White House officials, Trump ordered a plan to prolong the blockade of Iranian ports “for months” in a bid to pressure Tehran to consent to a more favorable peace deal.

Previously, Trump blockaded an already blockaded Strait of Hormuz for the same reason. So far, that has failed and done little more than cause the price of oil to surge.

U.S. Begins Blockade of Strait of Hormuz

Meanwhile, Iran has warned that it is ready to launch “unprecedented military action” to lift the US blockade of its ports. Whether that action is an empty threat or otherwise remains to be seen. So far, Iran appears to be holding all the cards and will not be giving up its nuclear program, a sticking point for the US ruling class.

Earlier, Axios reported that the moves by the Pentagon could include a “short and powerful” wave of strikes on the Islamic Republic’s infrastructure and other targets, the use of ground forces to capture parts of the Strait of Hormuz to unblock shipping, and an operation by special forces to seize Iran’s enriched uranium.

There have been no direct meetings between the Americans and the Iranians since JD Vance failed in Islamabad in mid-April. Vance was unable to secure a peace deal during negotiations. However, he said that the US has also accomplished its goals in Iran. Does that mean war isn’t needed anymore?

Vance Fails In Iran: No Peace Deal

JD Vance Says “We’ve Accomplished Our Objectives” In Iran

So far, the only repurcussions have been absorbed by the Middle East, and the American citizens who need to fuel their vehicles.

The post Trump Is Ready To Blockade Iranian Ports for “Months” As Oil Prices SPIKE To Highest Since 2022 appeared first on Activist Post.

Only then do we realize that by optimizing profit and efficiency, we’ve also optimized systemic failure.

In my essay AI, Money, Human Nature and the Problem with Problems, I refer to boundary conditions but didn’t offer a thorough explanation of the role this concept plays in understanding not just how the world works but more importantly, how things break down.

Boundary conditions define what the system needs to function. The more complex the machine / system, the greater the number of conditions. For example, a car needs a source of power, fuel, tires, control mechanisms, seats, and so on–hundreds of components are required for the car to function optimally.

Some boundary conditions are narrow–there’s little or no wiggle-room in what the system needs to function. Everything has to function perfectly or the system breaks down. We can call these tight systems as there’s very little leeway in what they need to function.

In contrast, loose systems have boundary conditions with leeway: some components can fail or function poorly and the system will degrade–i.e. not operate optimally–but it will still function.

Consider a tire. A tire is a fairly loose system. If the optimal tire pressure is 32 pounds, the tire will still function if pressure falls to 28 or is overinflated to 34 pounds.

Now imagine a tire that fails if pressure exceeds 32.5 pounds or falls below 31.5 pounds. Those are unforgiving, tight boundary conditions with very little wiggle room. If tire pressure declines even slightly, it fails.

Which tire do you want–the one optimized for price/efficiency or the one with looser boundary conditions? Our entire way of life is dominated by systems optimized for price/efficiency, not survivability when the system veers outside its boundary conditions.

If a critical semiconductor chip fails in a modern vehicle, the vehicle breaks down and ceases to function. The chip controlled an essential subsystem, and once the chip failed, the subsystem failed, and the vehicle rolls to a stop: complete breakdown.

Certain characteristics of systems create tight boundary conditions that we don’t see until they break down. During the pandemic in the early 2020s, the supply chain of some semiconductors broke down, and as a result the production of cars and trucks that needed those chips broke down.

Supply chains with single-source suppliers within long dependency chains (this part needs this part which needs this part) have exacting boundary conditions: since the supply chain depends on a single source for a critical part, if that supplier is disrupted, the entire chain breaks down.

Since the economy is optimized to maximize profit, it’s maximized for efficiencies which demand tight boundary conditions and lengthy dependency chains: the system only works if every component works perfectly and every condition is met.

Centralization generates tight boundary conditions. Consider a mega-farm growing a single crop–a mono-crop that the region depends on. This centralized mega-system is optimized to maximize yield of a single crop via optimized subsystems: specific seeds, fertilizers, mechanized equipment, soil sensors, irrigation, harvesting and transport, and at the end, a market price for the crop that covers all the costs and yields a profit.

Financially, this is an optimized system. In the real world, it is a system prone to failure due to its tight boundary conditions. A pest or plague that evades the genetically modified seeds’ defenses can wipe out the crop, a sudden bout of extreme weather at the wrong time can wipe out the harvest, and a drop in the market value of the crop can make it unprofitable to even harvest, so it’s left to rot or plowed under.

Contrast this with a system of 100 independent, decentralized farms. Financially, this system is inefficient and not optimized to maximize profit, so it’s anathema in a financial system that demands optimizing everything to optimize profits. Some of the farms will grow crops with low profit margins or non-optimal yields, and some will be inefficient due to raising a variety of crops instead of one financially optimized crop.

When the pest, plague or price collapse wipes out the mega-farm, the system of 100 farms growing a variety of crops continues to function, albeit at a reduced yield as some farms will suffer lower yields and incomes while many will be unaffected.

When a centralized system / mono-crop fails, everyone depending on that system / mono-crop starves. Once the system veered outside the boundary conditions, it broke down.

Here’s a graphic illustrating tight and loose boundary conditions:

Analog – physical systems tend to be more forgiving than digital-dependent systems. When a bracket on a home appliance breaks, it’s typically possible to substitute a non-optimized part to fix it. In other words, the manufacturer’s bracket is nice to have but not essential, as some other piece of metal can be worked to serve the same function.

When the digital motherboard on the modern appliance fails, there is no replacement except that exact board. Some other mix of semiconductors and circuitry can’t be substituted. The appliance–or vehicle, digital device, etc.–is now a brick. And if that one component is no longer available, the appliance is unrepairable.

In an old analog auto engine, if one of the four cylinders was no longer functioning optimally–the gasket was leaking, valves clogged, etc.–the engine would still function, albeit generating lower horsepower and dirtier exhaust.

The majority of systems we rely on for life’s essentials–water, power, food, transport, banking, healthcare, etc.–are now digitally dependent systems with tight boundary conditions. They work perfectly until some critical component in a dependency chain fails, and then the entire system fails.

There are no replacements or substitutes for what failed, and so the entire system ceases to function. All the features of systems that optimize efficiency and profits tighten boundary conditions. Everything that widens boundary conditions–i.e. everything that increases survivability and flexibility–increases costs and reduces profits and optimization of efficiency: redundancy, warehousing of spare parts, constant training of personnel to deal with unlikely emergencies, etc.

The vulnerabilities of our optimized way of life are hidden until systems veer outside their boundary conditions and break down. We’ve witnessed many such breakdowns as every system is optimized for efficiency and profit by stripping out redundancies, second suppliers, spare parts, analog backups in favor of digital efficiencies, etc.

This is why we’re surprised–and helpless–when they break down. We think they’re robust because they work so well within their boundary conditions, but the narrowness of their boundary conditions makes them extremely sensitive to failures in critical components. This fragility is invisible until the system breaks down.

Only then do we realize that by optimizing profit and efficiency, we’ve also optimized systemic failure. Go ahead and hold control-alt-delete, but the system won’t reboot or repair itself, for it’s been optimized to break down.

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The post Why We’re Helpless When Things Break Down appeared first on Activist Post.

A new report from Bitget and Polymarket reveals that prediction markets are evolving into a $240 billion industry driven by retail users who are trading more frequently on everything from crypto to politics.

What to know:

• Prediction markets are shifting from occasional, event-driven bets to continuous platforms built around frequent, smaller trades by retail users.
• Polymarket’s monthly trading volume has surged from about $1.2 billion in 2025 to more than $20 billion in early 2026, with active wallets more than tripling in six months.
• As crypto-focused users branch into markets tied to real-world events, prediction prices are increasingly used alongside traditional data to track expectations on economics, politics and culture.

Prediction markets are shifting from one-off bets tied to major events into platforms driven by daily user engagement, according to a new report from Bitget Wallet in partnership with Polymarket.

Trading volume on Polymarket reached $25.7 billion in March, but the report points to a deeper change in behavior. Based on activity from 1.29 million wallets in the first quarter, users are returning more often and participating across a wider range of markets, from crypto to sports to politics.

The data suggest growth is being driven by frequency rather than trade size. More than 82% of users traded less than $10,000 during the quarter, a sign the market remains dominated by retail participants. Instead of placing large, infrequent bets, users are engaging in smaller trades more regularly.

“Prediction markets are becoming less about capital and more about consistent, repeated actions,” said Alvin Kan, Bitget Wallet’s chief operating officer. “What we’re seeing is a behavioral shift: The market is scaling with more taps per day, not bigger trades.”

Crypto remains the primary entry point for new users, accounting for nearly 40% of early activity. Its continuous trading and familiar price movements make it a natural starting place. But as users become more active, participation shifts toward markets tied to real-world events.

The report frames this evolution as a structural change. Prediction markets are no longer driven solely by spikes around major occurrences like elections. Instead, they are becoming continuous systems where users return regularly to track and respond to changing probabilities.

“As prediction markets evolve into core financial infrastructure, distribution becomes as important as the underlying market itself,” said Elden Mirzoian, director of growth and partnerships at Polymarket. “We’re seeing a shift from episodic trading to more continuous engagement.”

That shift is also changing how these markets are used. Prices increasingly reflect real-time expectations around macroeconomic trends, politics and culture, and are beginning to appear alongside traditional data sources in media and financial analysis.

Growth has accelerated quickly. Monthly trading volume has climbed from about $1.2 billion in 2025 to more than $20 billion in early 2026, while active wallets have more than tripled in six months. Industry projections cited in the report estimate the market could reach $240 billion in volume this year, with a longer-term path toward $1 trillion.

As participation increases, the focus is moving toward access and usability. Wallets are emerging as key entry points, helping users discover markets and interact with them in real time.

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