Zerohedge

Authored by John Klar via the Brownstone Institute,

A recent essay titled “The Real Purpose of Net Zero” by Jefferey Jaxon posited that Europe’s current war against farmers in the name of preventing climate change is ultimately designed to inflict famine. Jaxon is not speculating on globalist motives; he is warning humanity of a rapidly unfolding reality that is observable in the perverse lies against cows, denigration of European farmers as enemies of the Earth, and calls by the WHO, WEF, and UN for a plant-based diet dependent entirely on GMOs, synthetic fertilizers, and agrichemicals. 

Revelations about the evil doings of the Orwellian-monikered “United States Agency of International Development” (USAID) reveal a roadmap to totalitarian control unwittingly funded by America’s taxpaying proles. USAID’s clandestine machinations have long focused on controlling local and global food supplies as “soft colonization” by multinational chemical, agricultural, and financial corporations. European farmers revolting against climate, wildlife, and animal rights policies are harbingers of this tightening globalist noose.

The roots of the current globalist plan to “save humanity from climate change” link directly to the infamous Kissinger Report, which called to control world food supplies and agriculture as part of a globalist collaboration between nation-states and NGOs to advance US national security interests and “save the world” from human overpopulation using “fertility reduction technologies.” Kissinger’s 1974 Report was created by USAID, the CIA, and various federal agencies, including the USDA.

Fast forward to the 2003 Iraq War, justified using fear-mongering propaganda about weapons of mass destruction and neo-conservative malarky about rescuing the Iraqi people. The US-led occupation of Iraq became a rapacious profiteering smorgasbord for colonizing corporations husbanded by USAID. Iraq is heir to the birthplace of human civilization, made possible by early Mesopotamian agriculture: many of the grains, fruits, and vegetables that now feed the world were developed there. Iraq’s farmers saved back 97% of their seed stocks from their own harvests before the US invasion. Under Paul Bremer, Rule 81 (never fully implemented) sought to institute GMO cropping and patented seed varieties, as Cargill, Monsanto, and other corporations descended upon the war-ravaged nation using American tax dollars and USAID.

That playbook was more quietly implemented during the Ukraine War, once again orchestrated by USAID. Before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, prohibiting GMO technologies and restricting land ownership to Ukrainians. Within months of US intervention, USAID assisted in the dismantling of these protections in the name of “land reforms,” free markets, financial support, improved agricultural efficiency, and rescuing the Ukrainian people. In just two years, over half of Ukraine’s farmland became the property of foreign investors. GMO seeds and drone technology were “donated” by Bayer Corporation, and companies such as GMO seed-seller Syngenta and German chemical manufacturer BASF became the dominant agricultural “stakeholders” in war-torn Ukraine. Russia may withdraw, but Ukraine’s foreign debts, soil degradation, and soft colonization will remain.

The UN, WTO, WHO, and WEF all conspire to peddle a false narrative that cows and peasant farmers are destroying the planet, and that chemical-dependent GMO monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, and patented fake meats and bug burgers must be implemented post haste (by force if necessary) to rescue humanity. The argument that pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (manufactured from natural gas, aka methane) are salvific is patently false. They are, however, highly profitable for chemical companies like Bayer, Dow, and BASF.

Jefferey Jaxon is exactly correct. The Netherlands committed to robust agricultural development following a Nazi embargo that deliberately inflicted mass famine following their collaboration with Allied Forces in Operation Market Garden. France boasts the highest cow population in all of Europe. Ireland’s culture is tightly linked to farming as part of its trauma during the (British-assisted) Irish Potato Famine. The corporate/NGO cabal now uprooting and targeting farmers in these nations and across the EU in the name of staving off climate change and preserving wildlife is a direct outcropping of Kissinger’s grand dystopian scheme launched through USAID in 1974. 

Americans watch European farmer protests from afar, largely oblivious that most all of US agriculture was absorbed by the Big Ag Borg generations ago. Currency control linked to a (political, environmental, and economic) social credit scorecard promises the fruition of Kissinger’s demonic plan: “Control the food, control the people.”

Modern humans suffer a double hubris that blinds them to the contemplation of the truth of Jaxon’s hypothesis: a cultish trust in technology, coupled with an irrational faith in their self-perceived moral superiority to past civilizations (Wendell Berry calls this “historical pride”). Yet, as long as mankind has had the capacity to harm another for personal gain, humans have devised ways to control food for power or profit. Siege warfare generally depended on starving defenders of castle walls into submission. 

Even if globalist food control proposals are well-intentioned, a monolithic, monocultured, industrial-dependent worldwide food system is a lurking humanitarian disaster. Berry observed:

In a highly centralized and industrialized food-supply system there can be no small disaster. Whether it be a production “error” or a corn blight, the disaster is not foreseen until it exists; it is not recognized until it is widespread. 

The current push to dominate global food production using industrial systems is the cornerstone of complete globalist dominion over all of humanity. The “Mark of the Beast” without which no American will buy or sell goods – including guns, bullets, or factory-grown hamburgers and cricket patties – is mere steps away. Mr. Jaxon is correct that these leaders “know these basic historical and current facts,” and that “[f]armers are becoming endangered because of government [climate] policy … and it’s being allowed to happen.” USAID has been actively seeding and watering this dystopia for decades.

Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are as fully cognizant of this fundamental truth as Henry Kissinger was in 1974. USAID has aided all three. Having lost almost all of their small farms over the last century, Americans are well ahead of Europeans in their near-complete dependence on industrial food. 

That’s the plan. 

John Klar is an attorney, farmer, food rights activist, and author from Vermont. John is a staff writer for Liberty Nation News and Door to Freedom. His substack is Small Farm Republic.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The debate over free speech in Germany has taken a new turn following the case of Markus Roscher, a 61-year-old lawyer from Braunschweig, who was fined €3,000 for criticizing the government’s heating law.

Roscher described Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as “malicious failures” in a post on X back in 2021. He was subsequently issued a penalty notice under the controversial Paragraph 188 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalized defamation against individuals engaged in public political life.

Roscher, who has been active on X for over 14 years and is well accustomed to the legal boundaries surrounding political debate, insists that his post was within the bounds of political criticism.

“I actually know myself to be quite well within the red lines,” he told Bild. 

“You have to formulate things pointedly to be heard. The lines of freedom of opinion have slipped with the red-green government (ed. the coalition of Social Democrats and Greens).” 

He further described his hefty fine as a “scandal for freedom of expression.”

Paragraph 188, introduced in April 2021, criminalizes insults against politicians if they significantly hinder their public work. It was initially passed under a coalition government of the CDU and SPD but has been increasingly enforced under the current administration. The law has led to numerous prosecutions against individuals who have criticized government officials online.

In Roscher’s case, the penalty order claimed that his statements portrayed politicians as “corrupt, stupid, and arrogant,” constituting “abusive criticism” that allegedly impeded their political activity. 

Will memes be targeted in Germany next?

“Misinformation” expert hints that restrictions are coming.

“There is no right to be heard on social media…This is the problem of the next few years, especially when it comes to ambiguous or cryptic communication, such as memes.” pic.twitter.com/OY6kUzUsPK

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 16, 2025

Following the charge, authorities also moved to revoke his gun license, citing “unreliability.”

Furthermore, his case was forwarded to the Kassel and Braunschweig Bar Associations, raising concerns that he could face professional sanctions. 

“If I now claim the same or something similar and get another conviction exceeding 90 daily rates, I can lose my license,” Roscher warned.

“Then you get a job ban as a 61-year-old lawyer!”

Roscher believes that his support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has played a pivotal role in his prosecution. He asserts that the penalty order was politically motivated, arguing that he stood little chance in a legal battle, which led him to pay the fine without challenging it in the courts.

The scrutiny of political affiliations within Germany’s public sector was also highlighted by a leaked memo last month revealing that federal police officers who join or actively support the AfD could face disciplinary action, including dismissal. The memo cited a decree by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, explicitly stating that officers suspected of affiliation with the party could see their employment terminated.

The controversy has drawn international attention from U.S. billionaire Elon Musk and most recently from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who labeled Germany’s online speech laws this week as “Orwellian.” Responding to a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with German prosecutors, Vance argued that Germany was effectively “criminalizing speech” and urged Europeans to “reject this lunacy.”

Roscher’s case is part of a broader pattern of speech-related prosecutions in Germany. 

Other recent incidents include a Lower Saxony man, Daniel Kindl, who was fined €1,800 for allegedly insulting Green Party MP Janosch Dahmen in an online post. Kindl’s remark, which dismissed Dahmen’s concerns about an alleged attack on Robert Habeck, was deemed criminal by prosecutors.

Several other individuals have faced legal consequences for online speech. A pensioner was fined €800 for a satirical comment about Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, joking that she had hit her head too many times on a trampoline. Another was arrested for retweeting a meme that called Economy Minister Robert Habeck an “idiot,” classified as a “politically motivated right-wing crime.” A Bavarian woman was fined €6,000 for calling Baerbock a “hollow brat” but was later acquitted after a lengthy legal process. Additionally, a civil engineer was sentenced to 30 days in jail after failing to appeal a fine for calling SPD politician Manuela Schwesig a “storyteller.”

Read more here…

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday condemned the 2050 net-zero emissions pledge as a “sinister goal” and criticized the U.K.’s clean energy policies, according to Reuters.

Former President Joe Biden set the target in 2021, relying on subsidies to boost clean energy and electric vehicles in the fight against climate change.

Wright said, speaking at a London conference: “Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal. The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”

At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event, Wright emphasized his top priority: for the government to “get out of the way” of oil, gas, and coal production.

The Reuters report states that Wright highlighted the Trump administration’s approval of the Commonwealth LNG export terminal in Louisiana—the first since Biden’s pause last year—stating, “We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue.” Wright underscored hydrocarbons’ necessity, adding, “The world simply runs on hydrocarbons, and for most of their uses, we don’t have replacements.”

Criticizing Britain’s net-zero push, he argued it had harmed living standards and merely shifted emissions abroad. “No one’s going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom any more. It’s just been displaced somewhere else,” he said, calling the policy “lunacy” that is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, however, has made clean energy central to his economic strategy, focusing on offshore wind for job creation and growth. Former President Donald Trump also weighed in earlier, urging the U.K. to “open up” North Sea oil and gas and scrap wind farms.

Submitted by Huw Van Steenis,

Europe has a financial plumbing problem. 

Nothing illustrates this better than its securitisation markets. This is such a big issue that a seemingly exotic financial tool has shot up the agenda in Brussels lately.

Securitisation is the process of transforming a bunch of smaller loans or other cash-generating assets into larger, tradable securities. Despite the lingering bad smell from the damage this caused in the global financial crisis, a trio of landmark reports by Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta and Christian Noyer have all recommended European securitisation reforms to unclog the process and help credit flow to new projects. 

The scale of the challenge is huge. Just to take one example securitisation of US data centre debt has totalled $35bn since 2018, according to JPMorgan. The EU has yet to see a single transaction. Similarly, US solar securitisation has raised $23bn since 2018, whereas the EU saw its first and so far only residential solar securitisation in 2024, raising just €230mn. 

If Europe can’t even finance these so-called strategic assets, what hope is there for midsized businesses or a broader array of assets? 

That’s why the Draghi-Letta-Noyer triptych matter more than most European reports, work streams and white papers.

Already there is a sense that something might finally change. Late last year, the EU kick-started a short consultation process on how to make European securitisation great again. The comment letters are now in, and the EU will make recommendations before the summer.   

This is overdue. Almost a decade ago, Simon Potter, formerly the markets head of the New York Federal Reserve and now vice chair of fixed income at Millennium, argued that “too much research before the crisis put too much faith in market efficiency and spent too little time exploring the detailed plumbing of the financial system.” The consultation helps address that. 

However, the letters make clear that the EU probably needs to consider a system-wide response, much like a plumber would bleed every radiator to help warm a house. This won’t be easy, as individual agencies may not view the system-wide issues as their problem. 

Willingness to push through will be litmus test of Europe’s determination to recalibrate regulations for growth — and close the widening gap to the US. But the comment letters do highlight four important valves that could at least be jiggled to get things going. 

Valve 1: Life insurers, the missing EU lender 

Europe has straitjacketed insurers from playing a larger role in financing the real economy via buying senior tranches of securitisations. As Apollo’s comment letter puts it: 

Life insurers are particularly well-suited to finance the E.U.’s strategic, long-dated capital needs, but the European life sector currently holds only 0.33% of investment assets in securitizations vs. ~17% for U.S. life insurers despite similar industry sizes . . . The missing life insurer ‘bid’ dampens the broader E.U. securitisation market, reducing supply and demand at all points in offered securitisation tranches. 

Here’s a great chart from Apollo that highlights the stark difference. 

The absence of European insurers is largely driven by Solvency II capital rules, which impose punitive capital charges on securitisation — even those with investment-grade ratings that carry comparable or lower risks than corporate bonds. 

Addressing this gap is vital. By recalibrating Solvency II to better align capital charges with the true risks of securitisation, European regulators could incentivise insurers to invest in these assets. Doing so would unlock a massive pool of private capital, reduce the cost of financing for businesses and infrastructure projects, and help Europe meet its strategic economic objectives. 

As the Investment Company Institute argued in its submission: 

The current EU prudential framework does not properly reflect these different levels of risk in the securitisation market. In certain circumstances, 10-year duration non-STS bonds, regardless of seniority in the capital structure, have a 100% capital charge. These charges are also considerably higher than those imposed by other regulatory frameworks, placing EU market participants at a competitive disadvantage.  

Valve 2: STS criteria don’t work for many assets 

So what’s this “STS” referenced in the ICI’s comment letter? To revitalise the securitisation market, the EU created the “simple-transparent-standardised” label – STS for short – which came into effect at the start of 2019. 

This was meant to make things simpler, but many comment letters suggest it has inadvertently had the opposite effect. One of the strengths of securitisation is the breadth of stuff that can be financed, but the STS label was seemingly designed primarily for a very narrow set of bank-dominated assets. As BlackRock argued: 

The regulatory standards put in place following the Global Financial Crisis represented a significant prioritisation of risk management, governance and investor protection in securitisation markets. However, the securitisation market believes that while well intended the regulations ended up being overly prescriptive and rather than reviving the market have ended up restricting it. 

The optimal solution would be to streamline the STS categorisation all together via simplifying definitions, broadening STS criteria and ensuring that regulations reflect the economic risks rather than adding unnecessary complexity.  

A simpler option suggested by some of the comment letters would be to just carve out asset classes that are strategically important to long-term economic growth, have a low default rate history, address asymmetry of information, and represent transactions solely between sophisticated parties that already address these risks and inbuilt protections. That way, new assets like data centres and solar projects could be included.

Valve 3: Scale up true sale securitisation 

Another problem is “true sale securitisation.” This process converts illiquid assets into tradable securities and is a proven mechanism for mobilising capital. 

Unlike synthetic securitisation — or Europe’s €2.4tn covered bond market — this enables banks to offload loans completely, freeing up balance sheets to support further lending while connecting investors to a broader range of financing opportunities. 

The EU lags far behind the US in this critical area, with just €440bn in true sale securitisation outstanding, compared with approximately €2.8tn in the US — a 6.5-fold difference. The discrepancy underscores how underutilised this financial tool remains in Europe.

Closing this gap is essential to boosting Europe’s economic vim. With a better securitisation framework, the EU could potentially unlock over €1tn in additional financing, according to Apollo’s estimates. 

The irony is that as banks struggle to issue true sale securitisation in size, they instead end up creating more opaque “synthetic risk transfers”. Moreover, true sales are simpler, have a more direct impact on credit availability in the economy and at the same time reduce interconnected risk to the banking system.

Valve 4: Streamline paperwork and due diligence 

The current due diligence framework for securitisation is too costly and complex, discouraging investment, especially in the secondary market. The EU rule book shouldn’t require investors to verify regulatory compliance already handled by other regulated entities, the International Capital Markets Association argued in its response.  

This is a point European Cooperative Banks make too, arguing that the due diligence requirements are “too complex and involve many overlapping reporting requirements, creating a significant obstacle for the full development of the market” — particularly for smaller businesses. 

The European Fund and Asset Management Association argues the paperwork is also disproportionate and overly proscriptive: 

Many of our members have explained that, for certain types of securitisations such as CLOs and CMBS, the quarterly granular reporting templates mandated under the SECR are not fit for purpose. 

There are naturally a host of other suggested valves that could be adjusted, such as limits on mutual fund ownership, what is considered a liquid asset for a bank, and bank retention rules. 

But the above four seem to be the main ones Europe should focus on, judging by the comment letters. 

Where next? 

So will the Commission accept these recommendations? It’s hard to ignore the fact that Europe has been talking about “capital markets union” for over a decade, but periodic tweaks have failed to grasp the nettle. The comments certainly underscore how frustrated market participants are.

In the most recent review of securitisation in 2022 the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority argued that there was insufficient demand from insurers to merit change. 

However, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, an umbrella trade group, suggested in its latest response that this is simply not true: 

We have had categoric feedback from insurers that there would be material interest in securitisation investments, across the capital structure if it were not for the elevated capital charges associated with securitisation positions vs vanilla credit (on a like-for-like rating basis). 

In fact, over 40 groups or institutions which responded to the Commission’s request for comment argued that the Solvency II rules are an impediment to the market.  

Will something actually change this time? Who knows, but for the first time in a long time there seems to be some guarded optimism. 

At Davos this year, Nicolai Tangen, the head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, went around saying that the restoration of Notre-Dame was Europe’s greatest success story of the past five years — and it happened simply because almost all regulation and rules were negated for the rebuild. “It is unbelievable what Europe can achieve if they are allowed to,” Tangen argued. 

Europe needs a more flexible financial market to finance innovation and growth. Closing the gap to a buoyant and deregulating US won’t be easy.   But unclogging the securitisation market would be a great to start.

Poland is reviving the idea of creating a large military base called “Fort Trump” as European allies walk a diplomatic tightrope with the Trump administration as he pushes for Ukraine peace without their representation.

The country’s President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday revealed that assurances have been communicated from the Trump White House over the future of America’s troop presence in Poland. There are no plans for a US troop reduction along NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ – he was told.

Trump and his top national security officials have been pushing hard for Europe to do more to bolster its own security, instead of relying on Washington dollars and deployments.

Duda addressed this in Tuesday comments as follows: “There are no concerns that the U.S. would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the U.S. would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”

“On the contrary, I hope that thanks to the efforts that President Trump is currently making, the war in Ukraine will end,” he continued, immediately following a meeting in Warsaw with Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“I will say that in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way,” Duda said, praising the longtime friend of his. The two appeared to be close during Trump’s first administration.

Washington initially deployed and bolstered Pentagon forces in Poland following Crimea being annexed by Russia in 2014, which was the result of a popular referendum among the population.

International reports commonly estimate there are some 10,000 American troops in Poland. The Associated Press quoted Duda as expressing hope for an increase in troops, especially if Poland follows through on the prior Fort Trump idea:

Duda said Hegseth told him “that we can rather expect a strengthening of the American presence here. We even talked about the fact that I hope that Fort Trump, which we talked about during the first term of President Donald Trump, will really be established.”

Duda had first spoken publicly on this when he visited the White House in 2018, though the military outpost was never established.

I love how the media has gone full “How dare the US and Russia talk to each other about Ukraine without inviting Kiev?”

…when 8 months ago, the West held a summit in Switzerland where they invited everyone EXCEPT RUSSIA, and acted like they were going to solve the Ukraine war

— Rachel Blevins (@RachBlevins) February 18, 2025

As for more of what Duda thinks of current direct US engagement with Russia, he also struck a cautious tone on this. “We have told both the Secretary of Defense and General Kellogg clearly and distinctly that it is obvious to us that this war cannot end in a victory for Russia,” the Polish leader said.

Authored by Conor Gallagher via nakedcapitalism.com,

Trump’s February 7 executive order “Addressing Egregious Actions Of The Republic Of South Africa” cuts off aid or assistance to the country and “promote[s] the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees.” The stated reasons for the administration’s actions are a new law that, according to White House, will “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation. There are also “aggressive positions” towards the US and its allies, namely Israel, which the administration refers to with regards to South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

More broadly, the executive order states that South Africa is “undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests.”

While the charge of anti-white racism fits neatly with the empire’s new brand of identity politics, and the retribution for the ICC case against Israel is to be expected from any US administration, what of the other “undermining” of US foreign policy and “threats” to the US and its interests?

As the recent news surrounding the Panama Canal, Greenland, and other areas show, the US is doubling its efforts to control global shipping lanes — likely in preparation for a conflict with China — but this has gone unmentioned in connection to the pressure campaign against South Africa. I’ll explore that here after quickly looking at the plight of the Afrikaners.

Serfs Vs. the “Rising Neo-Feudalism of Silicon Valley”?

The new Expropriation Act allows the South African government to expropriate land from private parties, but only if it’s in the public interest and under certain conditions. More from the AP:

[Trump] said South Africa’s government was doing “terrible things” and claimed land was being confiscated from “certain classes.” That’s not true, and even groups in South Africa who are challenging the law say no land has been confiscated. The South African government says private property rights are protected and Trump’s description of the law includes misinformation and “distortions.”

However, the law has prompted concern in South Africa, especially from groups representing parts of the white minority, who say it will target them and their land even though race is not mentioned in the law.

The law is tied to the legacy of the racist apartheid system, and colonialism before that, and is part of South Africa’s efforts over decades to try and find a way to right historic wrongs.

Under apartheid, Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in designated areas for non-whites. Now, whites make up around 7% of South Africa’s population of 62 million but own approximately 70% of the private farming land, and the government says that inequality needs to be addressed.

In reality, the law will likely do little to address it. Here’s TRT World:

In an article titled ‘Land seizure and South Africa’s new expropriation law: scholar weighs up the act’, law professor Zsa-Zsa Temmers Boggenpoel explained that the new law governs the compulsory acquisition of private property by the state for public purposes or in the public interest. It aims to align expropriation procedures with the Constitution and provide clear guidelines on compensation.

She said “expropriation of property is a potential tool to reduce land inequality. This has become a matter of increasing urgency. South Africans have expressed impatience with the slow pace of land reform.”

So far, she said, expropriation has not been used effectively to redistribute land more equitably, as part of land reform. “I am not convinced that the act, in its current form, is the silver bullet to effect large-scale land reform – at least not the type of radical land reform that South Africa urgently needs,” said the law professor.

So the Trump administration’s order will largely punish South Africans with HIV — ostensibly over land reform law that does little land reforming. The US is cutting off aid, which includes about $440 million last year and funds 17 percent of the country’s HIV program, which is the largest in the world, helping many of the 8 million people in the country living with HIV.

South Africa also benefits from preferential access to the US market for its exports under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which the US could use to apply more pressure on the country.

I’m not all that familiar with South Africa’s political scene (hopefully we have some readers who can add some more domestic insight), but the connection to the Silicon Valley crazies is worth a mention here.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) now appears to be under pressure on the expropriations act from its right — both domestically and abroad — as well as on its left where the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) criticize the law for not going far enough.

I’ve seen the EFF described as a “race-centric” program that overlooks the main source of oppression in post apartheid South Africa (capitalism), as well as the following:

🇿🇦 It is the South African Economic Freedom Fighters which should be credited for reintroducing the property question – the fundamental premise of Communist politics – in the 21st century.

Land represents fundamental economic security and dignity, without which a people become… pic.twitter.com/zcLUzlALqL

— Haz Al-Din 🇷🇺 (@InfraHaz) February 16, 2025

According to Al-Din, this pits the EFF against the “rising neo-feudalism of Silicon Valley,” which has a particular interest in South Africa.

Elon Musk lived in the country until he was 17 and has for years bemoaned what he calls the country’s anti-white policies and made unfounded claims of the government encouraging “genocide” against white landowners.

Billionaire venture capitalist and White House  AI and crypto czar David Sacks, left apartheid South Africa when he was five.

Billionaire vampire Peter Thiel spent part of his childhood in South Africa where his father was helping the apartheid regime mine uranium in a secret effort to obtain nuclear weapons. More from the Financial Times:

Southern Africa under apartheid offered an extreme version of some of the main themes of American life today. First, there was tremendous inequality. The mine where Thiel’s father worked was “known for conditions not far removed from indentured servitude”, writes Thiel’s biographer Max Chafkin. “White managers, like the Thiels, had access to a brand-new medical and dental centre in Swakopmund and membership in the company country club.” The mine’s black migrant workers lived in work camps.

To whites of a certain mindset, this inequality wasn’t due to apartheid. They thought it was inscribed in nature. Certain people were equipped to succeed in capitalism, while others weren’t. That was simply the way it was, and it was pointless to try to mess with nature. Two of Thiel’s contemporaries at Stanford in the 1980s recall him telling them that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”.

Good to know what these techno-feudal lords are using as a template for their adopted home in the US. Due to their wealth and positions in/at the head of the US government, they now have an opportunity to atone for the failings of the fathers in South Africa while also helping drive the US rebrand from a “woke” empire to one decidedly not so. There are also wider strategic implications at play.

Shipping Lanes and China

South Africa has long been a supporter of Palestinians. It’s also a country with close ties to Russia due to Moscow’s help in fighting apartheid. And it’s a BRICS founding member. That’s three strikes in Washington. But the increased pressure from Trump can also be viewed in the context of the US’ renewed emphasis on shipping lanes, which has received a plenty of attention in the effort to purchase Greenland to muscle in on Arctic shipping routes and leaning on Panama for more control over its canal.

In South Africa this focus means a lot more attention for a small outpost in the Western Cape called Simon’s Town, which is home to the South African Navy’s largest base. 

Why would Simon’s Town help explain US pressure on South Africa? Here are Dr Frans Cronje, head of the Washington DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom, and Rear Admiral Robert Higgs (Ret), who commanded the Fleet of South Africa from 2008-2010 and served as Chief of Naval Staff from 2011 to 2016 (he was also the first SA Navy officer to attend the US Naval War College), writing at Real Clear World: 

Simonstown’s contemporary importance is best understood as one of three points of a triangle that determines the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

That triangle is formed by drawing a 5,000 mile line northwards from Simonstown to Djibouti on the African east coast where the Bab al-Mandab Strait narrows the gateway into the Red Sea (and the Suez Canal beyond) to just 20 miles. The balance of power around that gateway shifted in 2016 when China was granted a lease on a naval base just more than a decade after the United States had secured a similar lease.

From Djibouti extend the line 8,000 miles eastward to the Solomon Islands off the east coast of Australia. The Japanese, after crippling the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, sought to occupy the islands to isolate Australia and their retaking was a key allied objective in the liberation of South-East Asia. However, in April of 2022, eight decades after the defeat of Japan, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. As the islands lie east of the confines of the two major “island chains” around which John Foster Dulles’ Pacific containment strategy was conceived at the end of the Second World War the Chinese pact is the starkest challenge yet to the idea of the Pacific as “America’s lake”.

Extend the line from the Solomon Islands back to Simonstown to complete the triangle and territory within sees the passage of more than half of all sea-borne global trade with the triangle’s three points determining access to the Red Sea, the South Atlantic, and the Pacific.

A few maps to help illustrate their point:

More from Cronje and Higgs:

Exacerbating American vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific is that at the triangle’s center is the Chagos Islands archipelago which Britain sought to surrender to Mauritius in October 2024. The archipelago contains the island of Diego Garcia which houses a US naval base (leased from Britain). Flying from Diego Garcia nuclear armed American aircraft can reach Australia, the southern and eastern regions of China, the southern points of eastern Europe, and much of the Middle East.

Whilst the British government provided assurances that the US might strike terms to continue operating from Diego Garcia this is not at all assured and the Trump administration has therefore moved swiftly to force a British about-turn. Mauritius is a signatory to an African nuclear weapons ban which may be employed as a pretext to undermine American activities on the island.

The extent to which America achieves a Monroe Doctrine inspired sphere of hegemonic influence in the Western hemisphere will be determined in part by whether backdoors into that envisaged sphere are left unguarded. The vulnerability at the Solomon Islands might be addressed from Guam and Hawaii whereas the Mediterranean presents a hard obstacle to China’s aims of reaching the Atlantic. Diego Garcia might yet be saved. That leaves South Africa’s Simonstown as the key external vulnerability.

Joel Pollak, another South African native close to the Trump administration who is currently a senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News but is considered the frontrunner to become the US Ambassador to South Africa, recently echoed these claims in explaining why Simon’s Town is of such interest to Washington. From Business Tech, a South African business news website:

“The reason Simon’s Town is important globally is the same reason South Africa has been important for hundreds of years,” he told Biznews. He explained that Simon’s Town is situated near the point where the Atlantic and Indian oceans come together.

“It remains important. Although it is a small port, it can be expanded. It is an important naval station in the Indo-Pacific.”

“There is a real concern that South Africa’s closeness to China could lead to it taking over key strategic assets that are important to the local economy,” he said.

Another possibility is that China can take over military installations that are important to maintain peace worldwide. Pollak said the United States wants to create a peaceful global environment which favours economic growth and prosperity.

That’s one way of putting it. Another is that the US is interested in the ability to shut down shipping lanes in a conflict with China. Reuters reported in December of 2023 how oil tankers from the Middle East crossing the Indian Ocean, as well as other shipments headed to China from Africa and Brazil, would “lack protection in a naval theatre dominated by the U.S.” More:

A dozen military attaches and scholars say that vulnerability is now being scrutinised as Western military and academic strategists discreetly game scenarios about how a conflict with China over Taiwan, or elsewhere in East Asia, could evolve or escalate.

In a major war, Chinese oil tankers in the Indian Ocean “would find themselves very vulnerable”, said David Brewster, a security scholar at the Australian National University…Four envoys and eight analysts familiar with discussions in Western and Asian capitals, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said this enduring weakness gives China’s adversaries a ladder of escalatory options, especially in a drawn-out conflict, like Russia’s war on Ukraine. These scenarios range from harassment and interdiction operations against Chinese shipping that could divert Chinese naval vessels to the region, up to a blockade and beyond.

So the strategy is to initiate a conflict between China and Taiwan or a country in East Asia like the Philippines and then attempt to isolate Beijing. It worked so well against Russia, why not give it another go against China with its much larger and more interconnected economy?

It’s also a strategy that Beijing is well aware of and has been preparing for for years through its Belt and Road Initiative. By driving Moscow and Beijing even closer together with Project Ukraine, the US made any attempt at isolating China even more impossible — which is perhaps why we now see the Trump administration trying to dictate peace terms as the loser that include Russia scaling back its ties with Beijing.

It deserves a mention that any US Blob dream of “isolating” Beijing would inevitably mean a collapse of the global economy and a contest of who could withstand the pain longer. China, which is striving for autarky and would, barring future developments, have direct land connections to Russia and Central Asia for minerals, natural resources, and other needs, might not get as hurt as some like to believe. The US, meanwhile, would face product shortages — including in a defense industry reliant on China — and inflation that would make recent years seem quaint by comparison.

Nevertheless, the quest for naval supremacy continues. We can see this at work in other Trump administration actions — from Greenland and Panama to others that have largely flown under the radar, such as pressure on India over the International North-South Transport Corridor and the sudden world-threatening emergence of ISIS in Somalia.

On Feb. 1, President Donald Trump ordered the first airstrike of his presidency, against alleged senior Islamic State commanders in northern Somalia. Soon after Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post was out with a story, “The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions.”

Last year, the US signed a deal with the government of Somalia to construct up to five military bases for the Somali National Army in the name of bolstering the army’s capabilities in the ongoing fight against militant groups. According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Stateraft, the bases are intended for the Danab (“Lightning”) Brigade, a U.S.-sponsored Special Ops Force that was established in 2014.

The US at first funded Danab from the State Department, which contracted with private security firm Bancroft Global. More recently, funding comes from the Pentagon’s proxy war fund called the 127e program, which bypasses congressional oversight by allowing US special operations forces to use foreign military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions. Neat.

What this history and the supposed recent emergence of IS in Somalia tells us is, one, the result of US counterterrorism strategy is that terrorism continues to magically spread like wildfire in spots deemed important to the US, and two, Somalia will be getting more attention from Washington going forward. Samar Al-Bulushi and Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim on the why:

It is a clear indication of the growing geopolitical significance of the Horn of Africa, and comes at a time of mounting concerns (mostly attempts by Yemen’s Houthis to disrupt global shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza) about securing the flow of international commerce via the Red Sea.

Elsewhere, the US is trying to get tough on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a land-and sea-based 7,200-km long network comprising rail, road and water routes that are aimed at reducing costs and travel time for freight transport in a bid to boost trade between Russia, Iran, Central Asia, and India.

Last year, India signed a 10-year deal to develop and operate the port of Chabahar on Iran’s southeastern coast. It did so after assurances from Washington that Chabahar would continue to be exempt from sanctions as it had been since 2018. Well, the non-agreement-capable US has now changed its tune as Trump instructs the State Department to “modify or rescind” the waiver for Chabahar as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran.

We’ll have to wait and see if all these moves are part of Trump’s famous bargaining skills or if they represent a continuation of American efforts at global supremacy. For now, it looks like that although some of the tactics and areas of focus are undergoing a transitional period, the goal remains the same.

Via OneLeggedParrot.com,

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) existed to fan America’s post-World War II brand as the guardian of democracy in the world. It was mostly an info-op euphemistically called soft power. 

The mission meant that it occasionally helped people, because that made America look good. The “AID” moniker was a rhetorical trick, though. USAID handled some of the dirtiest jobs of American hegemony, like union busting, censorship, and election fixing. 

Assassinations were left to the CIA, for the most part. 

Last week, USAID was shut down and everyone except a skeleton staff was laid off. Its employees emerged from the woodwork, quite offended. Shutting down the agency hit a lot of Washingtonians right in their “I’m important and the world needs me!” glass jaws.

If you are a certain kind of mediocrity who has known only the circle of money and influence Washington provides, there are oodles of self-regard when a great and grand wizard at the Department of State confers on you the title Doctor of Thinkology.

“Now go, therefore, and topple the government of Bangladesh!” – is a fair summary of the valedictory. That is not an exaggeration. Soft power did that recently.

Americans are marinated from their infancy in movies, media, and television. The foreign policy establishment occupies the Walter Mitty role in the American empire. Since at least 1948, Washington bureaucrats have been on a hero’s journey built around the conceit that the United States exercises power always and only to save the world. 

Having a steel desk in a stone building with discretionary control over a budget line item made you a Star Trooper wherever the Empire decided to strike back. Then 2016 happened. 

Trump won the presidency on the promise that he would destroy Washington’s permanent bureaucracy – calling it the deep state. Minor state functionaries responded by saying Vladimir Putin was behind him. 

In the clown cuckoo land of Washington, the Star Troopers needed to be fighting a diabolical mastermind with a Russian accent, or it was just not self-affirming. Getting mean-tweeted at by a reality show host with a wild haircut threatened their delusions of grandeur more than losing wars, which they had been doing regularly for 70 years.

The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. A few days later, the secret agent who opened the investigation texted his secret agent lover, “We’ll stop” Trump. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Trump and Putin had to walk into Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige’s. 

And, too, “It’s Putin and we’ll get him,” sounds better whispered over a pillow at the Fairmont Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland than, “people in mesh hats are exercising their democratic prerogative to stop funding our pretend world, and we may want to stay out of this one.”

At one point last week, Mike Benz – who has inhabited X for years as the bugle blowing Gunga Din of USAID’s mendacity – connected nepo baby turned playground mean girl Liz Cheney to USAID. Elon Musk retweeted Benz. 

To which Liz Cheney herself responded: 

Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen.

Uh-huh. After she graduated from college, Liz Cheney’s then Defense Secretary dad got her a job at USAID in Washington, and she thinks she ended the Cold War. 

She went from there to law school and then in 2002 her Vice President dad got her appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she and her dad proceeded to wreak havoc. 

She now adorably thinks that starship lassoing Elon Musk lacks street cred because his daddy never got him a job where he stopped communism.

The fake world where Dick and Liz defend democracy, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige bang to Putin fantasies – the world of the Washington beltway – was hatched in the aftermath of World War II. 

It is an odd mix of propaganda, media, technology, and the storytelling method known as the hero’s journey. 

The info-op was run out of USAID and other federal agencies, and it was meant to convince the world that the United States is a force for good that opposes tyranny wherever it finds it. In some ways, it worked. 

For all anyone knows, Western Europe would have turned Communist if America did not present a “shining city on a hill” alternative. And, okay, fix elections and control information.

Meddling in other countries was only ever meant to win the peace, though. 

When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them. 

Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.

The result: 

• Ukraine is destroyed. 
• The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria. 
• The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.
• Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.
• Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.

Which provides a helpful metaphor. 

Creating a virus to fight that virus is the definition of gain of function research. Similarly, Peter Strzok fabricated Putin in the Trump campaign just so he could fight him. Washington is a gain of function experiment wrapped in hero’s journeys draped in delusions of grandeur. 

Too many in Trump-world think the problem will go away if the institutions are dismantled. 

Get rid of USAID and The Department of Education, and Liz Cheney gets a job at her local Walmart, where she belongs.

It is not an institutional problem, though, so much as thousands of individual pathologies. 

The problem is that Liz Cheney really thinks she is important. 

That is the tumor that needs to be excised.

Removing soft power’s influence on the American psyche is the most delicate surgery of all, because it slices into the sacred beliefs of everyone, including (maybe especially) Republicans. Surgery is only successful when enough people reach the conclusion, “I am being manipulated.” 

This moment was predicted.

In 1978, Soviet dissident in exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the graduating class of Harvard University. He was expected to provide a stemwinder against Communism and at least an implied tribute to America. 

Instead, he issued a criticism of the West, based on the narrative control exercised over people. He called it “fashion” and blamed the media: 

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East, where the press is rigorously unified. One gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment; there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspaper[s] mostly develop stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day….This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era…. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

Soviet Communism has fallen. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia and lived happily under Putin’s rule. His books are required reading in Russian schools. The state paid tribute to him and other Russian writers in the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.

America’s control of human behavior by fashion has not yet collapsed. 

Today the West is facing a “pitiless crowbar of events.” Public policy could not even be formulated for a pandemic without casting every prescription as a political choice, resulting in collective behavior that have less to do with rigorous causal connections than with tribal adherence.

Politics is no longer judged by whether it serves the greater good, but by how dutifully it bows to the information regime. It resembles 14-year-old girls in the schoolyard, requiring mimesis in manner of dress and behavior under threat of bullying. In Solzhenitsyn’s word, fashion.

The availability of information on the internet means the state cannot impose its approved narrative outside of America’s groupthink urban enclaves where status is highly staked to fashion. The only way to control non-status people is to control information itself, with censorship, prosecution, and entire bureaucracies dedicated to curbing “misinformation” – i.e., alternative views that do not agree with the state. 

Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This led him to distinguish between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:

Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.

He expressed “a glimmer of hope” that opposition to the dictatorship of fashion could spring from the place he called “another America.” 

The needless wars will not go away until both Democrats and Republicans realize that some of what emanates from the American empire are soft power seeded lies. The truth is a greater medicine than any change in policy could ever be.

There are 7.3 million single mothers in the U.S., as well as 1.9 million single fathers. Single parents often face the dual challenge of being both the primary breadwinners and caregivers for their families.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, represents the percentage of mothers in the U.S. who are single, by race/ethnicity, in 2023.

The data comes from the Center for American Progress.

21% of All Mothers Are Single

In 2023, single-mother families accounted for 1 in 5 families with children under 18.

• 47% of Black mothers were single mothers.

• 25% of Hispanic mothers were single mothers.

The majority of single mothers are in their 30s or 40s and do not have a college degree. Overall, single mothers face a 28% poverty rate.

Changes in Family Structure Over Time

According to the Center for American Progress, family structures in the U.S. have changed significantly over the past five decades.

• In 1970, 67% of adults (ages 25 to 49) lived with a spouse and at least one child.

• By 2021, that number had dropped to 37%.

Marriage rates have also declined:

• In 1970, 69% of adults were married, compared to 50% in 2021.

• Meanwhile, the percentage of adults who have never been married rose from 17% to 31% over the same period.

If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that shows the distribution of wealth in the United States from 1990 to 2023 by generation.

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

A major agreement has reportedly been reached between the Kurdish SDF and the post-Assad Syrian government, which will reportedly include the full integration of SDF fighters into the national army. The deal also is said to have included the civil leadership in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

Details are still emerging about a lot of exact specifics beyond the SDF integration into the military, which has been sought since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over Syria and ousted the former Assad government. The deal is expected to increase the integration of AANES territory into national government institutions at least to some extent.

It is an open question, however, how much autonomy the Kurds in that territory might retain. Some of the HTS leaders have ruled out the idea of giving any autonomy to the Kurds, and suggested that any role in the national government requires them to first totally disarm and submit.

Integration into the Syrian Army seems well short of that position, and raises the question of how Turkey will respond to the announcement. Turkey has insisted they would invade if the SDF weren’t eliminated, and integration might be short enough of that goal that Turkey close partnership with the HTS could be impacted.

SDF leader Mazloum Abdi has made comments about the potential for a deal just a day prior to these announcements. Abdi said that he was hopeful for the new HTS-led government in Syria, and promised SDF support for national stability and unity.

Turkey isn’t the only potential objector here. The Kurdistan Syria Front (KSF) issued a statement very critical of SDF and the AANES deal, even though its exact terms still aren’t public.

They warned that the deal undermines the legitimate rights of Kurds in Syria, and complained of a “path of compromise” the SDF and their associates have been on since October.

The KSF was particularly critical of the lack of consensus with other Kurdish groups before making the deal, saying that they were undermining the appearance of a unified Kurdish stance in regional and international negotiations.

Welcome to the Syrian Republic

— Rojava Network (@RojavaNetwork) February 18, 2025

It’s also not certain what the US position on this SDF deal is. The US has long supported the SDF, but in recent weeks has talked of withdrawing from Syria. The SDF says they have not been informed about any planned US withdrawal, and the US stance toward the HTS government remains uncertain.

The U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest country by total area, third by land area, and is home to around 340 million people.

But nearly one-third of those people live in just three states: California, Texas, and New York.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, reimagines the usual U.S. map with the states resized based on their populations. Data is from the Census Bureau, as of 2024.

Alaska Isn’t the Largest Anymore

If sized by population, Alaska would be the third-smallest state (fourth if counting D.C.) in the country.

This is a far cry from its top of the rankings as America’s largest state by area (665,284 sq. miles).

Rank	States	State Code	Population (2024)
1	California	CA	39.4M
2	Texas	TX	31.3M
3	Florida	FL	23.4M
4	New York	NY	19.9M
5	Pennsylvania	PA	13.1M
6	Illinois	IL	12.7M
7	Ohio	OH	11.9M
8	Georgia	GA	11.2M
9	North Carolina	NC	11.0M
10	Michigan	MI	10.1M
11	New Jersey	NJ	9.5M
12	Virginia	VA	8.8M
13	Washington	WA	8.0M
14	Arizona	AZ	7.6M
15	Tennessee	TN	7.2M
16	Massachusetts	MA	7.1M
17	Indiana	IN	6.9M
18	Maryland	MD	6.3M
19	Missouri	MO	6.2M
20	Wisconsin	WI	6.0M
21	Colorado	CO	6.0M
22	Minnesota	MN	5.8M
23	South Carolina	SC	5.5M
24	Alabama	AL	5.2M
25	Louisiana	LA	4.6M
26	Kentucky	KY	4.6M
27	Oregon	OR	4.3M
28	Oklahoma	OK	4.1M
29	Connecticut	CT	3.7M
30	Utah	UT	3.5M
31	Nevada	NV	3.3M
32	Iowa	IA	3.2M
33	Arkansas	AR	3.1M
34	Kansas	KS	3.0M
35	Mississippi	MS	2.9M
36	New Mexico	NM	2.1M
37	Nebraska	NE	2.0M
38	Idaho	ID	2.0M
39	West Virginia	WV	1.8M
40	Hawaii	HI	1.4M
41	New Hampshire	NH	1.4M
42	Maine	ME	1.4M
43	Montana	MT	1.1M
44	Rhode Island	RI	1.1M
45	Delaware	DE	1.1M
46	South Dakota	SD	0.9M
47	North Dakota	ND	0.8M
48	Alaska	AK	0.7M
49	District of Columbia	DC	0.7M
50	Vermont	VT	0.6M
51	Wyoming	WY	0.6M
N/A	U.S.	USA	340.1M

Note: Population figures are from July 1st, 2024.

On the other hand, a big gainer from putting people in perspective is Florida which is 22nd by size, but third by population.

The benefit of redrawing the map with population in mind, is that it’s easier to see where people actually live.

Several big states towards the west of the country, (Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana) are actually home to less than four million people collectively. Most of the land is taken up by parks and farmland.

In fact New York City alone has more people (8.5 million) than 38 states.

Land Doesn’t Vote, People Do

This redrawing is also particularly useful in the context of the U.S. specifically.

Rural areas with low populations can sometimes have outsized political influence due to structures like the Electoral College or the Senate.

And when densely populated urban areas often lean one way politically, and sparsely populated rural regions lean another, then the gap between population-based representation and geographic-based influence is even more pronounced.

Not only is Texas the second-most populous state, it’s gaining people from the rest of the country. Check out: Net Migration Between States to see how many moved people to the Lone Star State in 2023.