Zerohedge

Arabica coffee futures have recorded a parabolic rally this year due to tightening supplies from top grower Brazil. However, demand may diminish at these record-high prices, potentially capping further price gains. 

Citi analyst Arkady Gevorkyan told clients that arabica coffee’s three-month price target and 2025 average price target are around $3.30 per pound. He stated that high-end arabica beans – favored by Starbucks and other top brands – “have likely peaked as demand starts to curtail and supplies replenish.” 

Early Wednesday morning, arabica coffee futures in New York peaked around $4.27 a pound after hitting a record $4.295 on Tuesday. Gevorkyan also expects 2025-26 Brazilian arabica supply at 62.6 million bags, down 5 million from the current market year. 

However, late last week, Andrea Illy, chairman of Italian roaster Illycaffè SpA, joined Bloomberg TV for an interview in which he warned that Arabica coffee futures could surge another 20–25% in the coming months.

Illy explained that soaring prices would likely lead to demand destruction as consumers are forced to reduce coffee consumption. He added that the rally in arabica futures—currently on its longest upward streak on record—is primarily driven by supply concerns in Brazil and fears that adverse weather conditions could impact the country’s next Arabica harvest.

Besides bean stocks at exchange-monitored warehouses, Illy warned it’s unclear how much supply is available in some of these top-producing countries. He described the situation: “We are navigating this market blind.”

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The United States is rapidly becoming a “post-industrial” nation.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers left them, but the pace at which America is doing this is absolutely breathtaking.  Nobody can deny that our economy is a complete and utter mess right now, and we only have ourselves to blame.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.  It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  

It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II. In fact, the primary reason why we won World War II is because we simply outproduced our enemies.  

But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America.  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States over the past several decades.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost during that same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces very little.  Do you know what one of our biggest exports is today?  Waste paper.  Yes, trash has literally become one of our top exports as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled, and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children and our grandchildren?

Throughout history, every great nation has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace, how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when our debt bubble finally implodes?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in this country.  Sadly, the truth is that most Americans do not have any idea what is really going on out there.

If you know people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them out of their slumber.

The following are 12 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind…

#1 According to Google AI, our nation has lost almost 70,000 factories since the year 2000…

The United States has lost nearly 70,000 factories since 2000. This is part of a larger decline in the US manufacturing sector that has also resulted in the loss of over 5 million jobs.

#2 In July 1979, 19.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.  Today, only 12.8 million Americans have manufacturing jobs even though our population is much larger than it was in 1979.

#3 According to a survey that was recently conducted by the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. has lot more than it has gained from free trade.

#4 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  At the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, manufacturing represented only 11.5 percent of all U.S. economic output.  Today, manufacturing represents just 10.3 percent of all U.S. economic output.

#5 More than a billion cellphones are sold worldwide each year.  Only a few thousand of them are actually manufactured in the United States.

#6 The size of our trade deficit with China in 2024 was $295,000,000,000.

#7 At this point, China produces approximately 4 times as many vehicles each year than the United States does.

#8 In the early days of the industry, 100 percent of all semiconductors were manufactured in the United States.  Today, that number is down to just 8 percent.

#9 Russia is producing three times as many artillery shells as the U.S. and Europe combined.

#10 The United States spends approximately $3.00 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

#11 Our stores are absolutely overflowing with products that are made in China.  Meanwhile, soybeans are the number one export from the U.S. to China.

#12 More than 36 million Americans are now living in poverty, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time record high, and demand at food banks in the U.S. is at record levels all over the nation.

Are you starting to get the picture?

How many more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many more Americans are going to lose manufacturing jobs before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave this country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities like Gary, Indiana and Youngstown, Ohio are going to become rotting, decaying hellholes before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.  It needs to be treated like one.

Can anyone can out there possibly explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future?

Every month far more money goes out of this country than comes into it, because we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.

As a result, we have to beg the rest of the world to lend us money just so that we can pay our bills.

Our national debt is now up to 36 trillion dollars, and the total amount of debt in our society is now up to 101 trillion dollars.

I have been ranting about all of this for over a decade, but most of the country refuses to listen to those of us that are relentlessly sounding the alarm.

America is in deep, deep trouble folks.

It is time to wake up.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have waged war on the federal bureaucracy by firing thousands of workers across several agencies. On Tuesday, the president signed an executive order to eliminate what he described as “waste and bloat” in the government while imposing strict limits on new hiring. He called it a “critical transformation” of Washington, DC, and framed the move as a necessary step forward for the nation. 

The latest data from the New York Times shows at least 9,000 federal workers, including foreign aid workers, inspectors general, Jan. 6 investigators, and diversity, equity and inclusion workers, have been cut from the government: 

• Targeted for agency dismantling: At least 8,700

• D.E.I. workers: At least 280

• Jan. 6 and Trump investigators: At least 33 

• Government watchdogs: At least 22 

• Other staffers: At least 224

Courts have slowed some of DOGE’s firing efforts, but on an agency level, here’s what NYT has reported so far:

• Upward of 7,000 on leave or fired from USAID

• More than 1,700 halted work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

• 4 fired from FEMA

Trump and Musk have made it clear that USAID will be wound down: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk wrote on X last week. 

As Trump and Musk’s DOGE continue to drain the DC swamp—and begin dismantling the “off-the-books” shadow government (read: here)—internet search trends for “Criminal Defense Lawyer” and “RICO Laws” have erupted in the DC metro area and surrounding counties, including Northern Virginia and Maryland, according to new internet search trends uncovered by Rasmussen Reports head pollster Mark Mitchell. These spikes strongly suggest that federal workers in the area are scrambling to secure legal counsel. 

“Over three times more people in DC are googling “Criminal Defense Lawyer” than anywhere else in the US!” Mitchell wrote on X. 

Over three times more people in DC are googling “Criminal Defense Lawyer” than anywhere else in the US! pic.twitter.com/zwu96JnXIi

— Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@Mark_R_Mitchell) February 12, 2025

The “Criminal Defense Lawyer” search term in the DC metro area has surged.

Magnitude higher (value: 100) today than any time in the past, including Covid. https://t.co/of2du4h1UA pic.twitter.com/Ps4hV4oZeC

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) February 12, 2025

The swamp is lawyering up because “most federal employees maintain statutorily protected rights to appeal firings, layoffs, suspensions, and other adverse actions agencies take against them to Merit Systems Protection Board,” according to the website Government Executive. 

See this. 

Some other DC-area searches worth looking into…

“RICO statutes”
“Penalties for Criminal Conspiracy Against Rights”
“What is the definition of Treason?”
“What are Bivens Actions”
“Is tossing your cellmate’s salad considered Vegan?”

— Noel Cooke (@NoelCooke_) February 12, 2025

So we did!!

DC bureaucrats are growing increasingly anxious that the grift may be coming to an end.

Draining the swamp is long overdue. It’s an actual mandate the American people gave Trump, and now the swamp creatures are lawyering up.

Democrats still fail to read the room as their relevance fades into the abyss, with the Overton Window shifting drastically to the center-right. 

DOGE kicked a roach infested couch and the roaches are now scattering
pic.twitter.com/QcmcR0EARo

— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) February 6, 2025

. . .

Authored by Liz Heflin via Remix News,

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico wrote to U.S. President Donald Trump’s close advisor, Elon Musk, who tasked his DOGE with rooting out corruption and waste in the U.S. government. Fico has asked for clarity on exactly what funds the USAID sent to Slovakia, requesting a face-to-face with the X CEO as the past operation of USAID is “extremely serious for the internal affairs of the Slovak Republic.”

The Slovak prime minister also wants to discuss ways in which the two countries, Slovakia and the United States, can cooperate. As of now, Musk has given no public reply. 

Dear Friends,
The information that the administration of the new US President is preparing to permanently abolish the USAID agency, designated to deliver foreign aid is extremely serious for the internal affairs of the Slovak Republic. I have therefore contacted Mr @elonmusk, the… pic.twitter.com/tSr0dIBdww

— Robert Fico 🇸🇰 (@sd_smer) February 11, 2025

A Greek MEP, Emmanouil Fragkos, of the conservative Greek Solution party, also wants to know what money the U.S. has sent to NGOs in Greece, especially for luxury migrant accommodations. 

Greek MP @e_fragkos is requesting @DOGE and Elon Musk to inform them about US funds to Greek NGOs reserving luxury hotels for illegal migrants.

WooW ! DOGE is truly becoming a global move. pic.twitter.com/OTMky1hFzL

— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) February 12, 2025

While many liberal NGOs and governments were enthusiastic cheerleaders of U.S. funding and intervening in overseas affairs, their tune has definitely changed. However, with the repeated requests for transparency on the level of meddling U.S. entities such as USAID practiced and the desire for countries to root out American corruption in their own spheres, Elon Musk’s DOGE may take on an entirely different — and far wider — scope. And for good reason. 

Patryk Jaki, Vice-president of Poland’s conservative PiS party and leader of the European Conservatives in the European Parliament, is now facing prison for liking a post. 

“I faced three years in prison, now in a special trial in Poland because I simply pushed a like on X platform in the movie which described the real scenes of violence of migrants,“ reads a post on his ordeal from active X contributor Mario Nawfal. 

🇪🇺🇵🇱 PATRYK JAKI: I FACE THREE YEARS IN PRISON FOR JUST LIKING A POST

Leader of the European Conservatives in the European Parliament and Vice-president of the PiS party, Patryk Jaki:

“Lots of us are facing prosecution because we are talking for instance about immigration.… https://t.co/cdVwqeBDqI pic.twitter.com/gzb8wyQbBg

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 11, 2025

How could this be? 

Mike Benz, a security expert who formerly worked in the U.S. State Department, has been a primary source on how the USAID works as an arm of the CIA to enact programs and influence on the ground that would otherwise not be approved by Congress or would be best to fly under the radar as “humanitarian aid.”

This one’s a biggie https://t.co/YkjSkwbSIy

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 11, 2025

‘USAID’s partner and operations arm, NED, has been specifically demanding Donald Tusk’s government in Poland ‘MUST’ find ways to arrest high-ranking members of the PiS party in order to ‘stamp out populism,’” Benz wrote on X yesterday. 

NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, is well known for its “promotion of democracy” all over the world. Its board is full of former and present members of Congress, former ambassadors, and other Beltway insiders. It is also heavily criticized for essentially foreign election interference around the globe, even as far away as India and Bangladesh, as recently profiled by Benz.

As Patryk Jaki faces prison and more and more leaders abroad get wise to the power the U.S. has wielded in their own backyards to drive their desired agenda, we will most likely see increased pressure on Musk and Trump and DOGE to make rooting out corruption and waste a global cause. 

After all, DOGE’s reach will inevitably have to extend as far as that of USAID, NED, and all the other American-led operations that flew under the radar, spending U.S. taxpayer money on interfering in elections in India and stamping out populists in Poland to Sesame Street in Iraq and sex changes in Guatemala.

Read more here…

Chevron Corp. will cut 15% to 20% of its global workforce by next year to trim costs and boost profits. With 46,500 employees at the end of 2023, up to 9,000 jobs could be affected, according to Bloomberg.

The move comes as part of a push to save up to $3 billion by 2026. 

Vice Chairman Mark Nelson commented: “Chevron is taking action to simplify our organizational structure, execute faster and more effectively, and position the company for stronger long-term competitiveness.”

The Bloomberg article says that Chevron has lagged behind Exxon Mobil in production growth over the past three years despite rising commodity prices post-Covid.

However, its stock has rebounded, driven by strong Permian Basin output and the long-delayed Tengiz project in Kazakhstan.

Nelson added: “We do not take these actions lightly and will support our employees through the transition. But responsible leadership requires taking these steps to improve the long-term competitiveness of our company for our people, our shareholders and our communities.”

Recall, Oilprice.com wrote in late 2024 that Chevron reduced the amount of capital expenditure it will allocate for its operations in the Permian Basin this year

The company said it planned to spend between $4.5 billion and $5 billion on production in the Permian, “as production growth is reduced in favor of free cash flow.” Total upstream spending for this year is planned at $13 billion, with the company’s total capex budget set in a range of between $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion.

This would be a decline from 2024’s capex budget of $15.5 billion to $16.5 billion.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The dangerously spiralling mental health crisis in America was on full show Tuesday as the City Council in Worcester Massachusetts voted in favour of becoming a “sanctuary city for the transgender community.”

City officials voted to enshrine a commitment to transgender rights, and not to prevent people seeking so called ‘gender-affirming care.’

The measure will also prevent information on transgender identifying and ‘gender diverse’ individuals being shared with out-of-state agencies.

The vote was brought after Councilor-at-Large Thu Nguyen, a non-binary identifying member of the board, alleged that ‘they’ had been harassed and misgendered by other city officials.

A parade of individuals spoke for hours in public comments about how unsafe they feel since President Trump’s signed an executive order outlining that the federal government recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”

Practically every person who spoke at the hearing appeared and sounded completely unhinged, again underscoring that this is a mental health problem that shouldn’t be normalised.

Take a look at some of the individuals who took the mic. They look like characters from The Simpsons:

There is a dangerously spiralling mental health crisis in America. https://t.co/CmrZD9UOkT

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) February 12, 2025

Everyday Americans seeing this will simply conclude that these people desperately need psychiatric help.

While nine city officials voted in favour of the measure, two voted against, reasoning that the city could lose thousands of dollars in federal funding from the Trump administration. 

“There are no new rights that this resolution gives that don’t already exist. However, there’s a potential for federal dollars to be taken away from the City of Worcester,” said Councilor-at-Large Morris Bergman.

Why do they need sanctuary? Who is persecuting them?

— CLOSE THE BORDER! Mom of 4. (@COPDLiving) February 12, 2025

These people are allowed to participate in their delusions.

Likewise, I am allowed to not participate or ignore their delusions.

A free society, free speech, democratic processes, and common sense will work the rest out.

— TruthyMcTruthface (@Truthburg) February 12, 2025

Reopen the federal mental institutions.

We used to lock these people up, not let them roam the streets threatening violence against us if we don’t play into their delusions.

— JD Clarke 🇺🇸🇬🇧 (@jamesclarkeonX) February 12, 2025

They all look the same. They think they’re “unique” and “different.” No. No your not. You look the same as the weirdos in ATL, or AL, or WA.
Ya’ll all look and act the same. And we don’t agree with it. (That’s why Mr. Trump was elected by a vast majority)

— @tinsav28 (@tinsav28) February 12, 2025

It quickly becomes serious when kids are involved in this.

This was hilarious until the cluster B mom paraded out the 7yo boy with a distress flag on his shirt to ask for queer rights for his birthday, she’ll be transing him by this time next year in their sanctuary city.

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) February 12, 2025

As we highlighted yesterday, mental health experts say they are already seeing a huge increase in patients who are Democrat voters complaining of “despair and burn out” in the wake of President Trump winning the election and taking office for the second time.

Pollster Mark Halperin previously predicted that America will experience the biggest mental health crisis in its history during a second Trump term.

Halperin urged that Trump has been so demonised for years that for tens of millions of Americans, Trump now becoming President again is “so traumatic” that it will become “impossible for even the most mentally healthy person to truly process and incorporate in the daily life.”

“They think that their fellow citizens supporting Trump is a sign of fundamental evil at the heart of their fellow citizens and of the nation,” concluded Halperin.

We’re already seeing Democrats completely losing it, screeching about Elon Musk being a Neo-Nazi and one State Rep. even saying she has sterilised herself as a protest against Trump.

Trump has completely broken them.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Yemen’s Houthis have declared “our hands are on the trigger” ready to resume attacks on Israel and especially Red Sea shipping of the Gaza ceasefire falters.

“Our hands are on the trigger, and we are ready to immediately escalate against the Israeli enemy if it returns to escalation in the Gaza Strip,” said leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi on Tuesday.

The ceasefire is indeed teetering, given Netanyahu’s security cabinet has backed Trump’s ultimatum demanding the return of all remaining Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity or else “let hell break out” and the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza would continue. He gave a noon Saturday deadline.

The ceasefire agreement is still within the first of three phases, and Hamas and Israel have been trading accusations of the other having broken the deal.

The Houthis have since November of 2023 launched over 100 attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, some of which may have struck American warships, though the Pentagon has kept mum on the extent of any potential damage. Several MQ-9 Reaper drones have also been shot down in that time period.

PM Netanyahu following a four-hour security cabinet meeting said he’s ordered troop reinforcements in and around Gaza, and that the country is ready to “return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated” if the Islamist group doesn’t hand over the remaining hostages.

Oil Price has observed this week that traffic has somewhat stabilized since the truce went into effect: “vessel transits through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have remained relatively stable at subdued levels since the Iran-backed Houthis said they would limit attacks on commercial vessels,” it described.

However, given the tense situation and ratcheting rhetoric, “shippers and tanker owners are not in a rush to return to the Red Sea/Suez Canal route despite the partial Houthi ceasefire,” the report said.

The Houthis had pledged to halt the attacks, with the exception of Israeli-owned ships, and this vow has held. Prior to that, drone and missile attacks had come weekly or almost daily. There were also several ballistic missile attacks on Israel, including the Tel Aviv area, over the past months.

The Houthis have warned that they will attack Israel the moment the Gaza ceasefire fails.https://t.co/U8jEqoZRpL

— Oscar Bamuhigire (@OBamuhigire) February 12, 2025

The latest weekly assessment by the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said the monitoring group has seen “no significant changes in traffic volume as the transit numbers remain fairly consistent.”

“Though inactivity could be considered as an improvement in maritime security, JMIC assesses the threat to merchant vessels has not changed and recommends industry remain vigilant,” it added.

Via Remix News,

Millions of Ukrainians have left their country and hundreds of thousands of men are dead and wounded at the front. Now, employers and big capital are already suggesting that the “only solution” is for mass immigration of Third-World migrants. This means that after the war is over, many of the soldiers will come home to a Ukraine that will be rapidly transformed under their feet.

Currently, every 10 Ukrainian women give birth to only 7 children on average, while to maintain the population this number should be at least 22. Without this, Ukraine’s population will continue to decline, and the previously mentioned population level of 40-50 million will become unattainable. 

Vasyl Voskobojnik, president of the Ukrainian Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, says the population decline can no longer be offset by simply increasing the birth rate, and immigration from Third-World countries is the only solution, reports Magyar Nemzet. 

Workforce gaps are a serious issue. There are currently about 29 million people living in Ukraine, give or take 1 million. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, another 200,000 people left the country in 2024, further worsening the labor shortage. At least 8.2 million workers would be needed for the future recovery of the Ukrainian economy. 

🇭🇺🇺🇦 PM Orbán: Europe’s wars lead to fewer White Christian Europeans and more migrants

Hungary’s leader says the war in Ukraine is a demographic disaster, just like WWI and WWII were for Hungary. Now, migrants will be being used to fill the missing gaps. pic.twitter.com/IEwMOcJmxv

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) May 28, 2024

Voskobojnik says the Ukrainian government must develop a migration policy by 2026 that focuses on reducing this shortage.

Even before the war, Ukraine had suffered the most drastic population decline in Europe. Due to high mortality, low birth rates, and emigration, the population was decreasing by hundreds of thousands of people each year. 

After the outbreak of war, millions more fled or were forced across the border by the advancing Russian army. A significant proportion of the working-age men were conscripted into the army, many of whom have now died or been crippled by battlefield injuries. 

According to Voskobojnik, Ukraine can mostly attract labor from countries where the standard of living is even lower than in Ukraine. Many of the working-class Ukrainian men who survive the war may therefore see the labor power they could have wielded after the war evaporate as an influx of even poorer migrants enters the country and drives down wages.

A majority of Ukrainians now want an immediate end to the war, according to Gallup Research.

Hungary is now calling for Europe to respect the will of the people.

“The European pro-war mainstream does not want to see that the people have made a decision They do not want war.” pic.twitter.com/Xf43tqgUbV

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 21, 2024

This means that immigrants may arrive mainly from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, as well as North African and Central Asian countries.

This could lead to further tensions in Ukrainian society, as many of the soldiers return to a society where they have essentially been replaced. In previous wars, soldiers mostly returned home to their families, their daughters, and sons to rebuild. Often, peace brought population booms and more boys, known as the “returning soldier effect,” which would help rebuild the population’s decimated male population.

Following World War II, there was some level of such migration into Germany, mainly through Turkish guest workers. These workers were originally supposed to come to the country, earn money to help rebuild, and then head home. Instead, they have remained in Germany for generations, and by many metrics, remain one of the most poorly integrated migrant groups in Germany, even after generations.

As Remix News previously noted, a report from the Berlin-based Institute for Population and Development “found that immigrants of Turkish origin were the least successful of all immigrant groups in the labor market and they are often jobless, the percentage of housewives is high and many are dependent on welfare… The state of Saarland was found to have the worst record — 45 percent of its Turks had no educational qualification of any kind.”

Unlike Germany following World War II, Ukraine is unlikely to experience a massive baby boom. Many soldiers there returned home to women who remained in the country despite the hardship they faced. In Ukraine, child-bearing women fled the country in tremendous numbers, so it is unclear what these soldiers will be returning to. Furthermore, these men may now be competing with male newcomers from across the Third World, which means the people Ukrainians fought and killed for when they left may not be the people they come home to.

These men may also be coming home to the tensions seen in Western Europe. These new migrants come from vastly different cultures than Ukraine, and unlike Western Europe, Ukrainians are highly ethnocentric and racist, meaning that these newcomers may not be embraced by society, leading to further divisions.

Numerous NGOs and non-profits had complained for years that Ukrainians were racist and unwelcoming to foreigners.

“Although relatively few people of African origin reside in Ukraine, the rate of violence against this group has been extraordinary. African refugees, students, visitors, and the handful of citizens and permanent residents of African origin have lived under constant threat of harassment and violence,” according to Hate Crime Survey from 2008.

Ukraine always featured high numbers of neo-Nazi groups and skinhead football hooligans, and brutal attacks have taken place in Ukraine even before the war. Many of the most elite Ukrainian units, such as Azov, adhere to neo-Nazi belief structures.

For those hoping for a multicultural utopia in Ukraine after the war, some may be hoping that the incredible numbers of the young Ukrainians who fought for units such as Azov never actually come home. In other words, these men were useful for fighting the Russians, but perhaps not so useful for the multicultural society employers and international capital are hoping for after the war.

Although few have voiced their opinion about what immigration will look like in Ukraine after the war, others have also openly called for a massive demographic transformation.

“After the end of the conflict, Ukraine may begin to be populated with Africans and Afghans in order to prevent a demographic catastrophe,” reads an interview in Focus magazine with Vladimir Paniotto, director general of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).

Notably, he said that it will be far harder in Ukraine, where people do not have such an open view of migrants as those in Western Europe.

🇩🇪🚨Germany’s welfare costs are EXPLODING and foreigners are fueling the rise

🚨 Welfare costs, known as “citizen’s money,” have reached a record high of €48.9 billion.

💰 47.3% of welfare recipients are foreigners, a new record high, according to data from the German… pic.twitter.com/mK6Vu2pV8g

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) July 9, 2024

These migrant newcomers will also need adequate housing, wages and a working environment to make them choose Ukraine. However, it is questionable how a country whose economy and state administration are in ruins as a result of war could handle mass immigration from the Third World. Unlike how migration was marketed, many of the migrants who came to Western Europe have ended up draining state coffers through social welfare, education, housing, and integration. In Germany, for instance, foreigners cost the government nearly €50 billion in 2023.

Ukraine also does not have as many resources for integrating migrants as Western states, and as already noted, integration has been far from a success story there. Even groups that have lived there for centuries, such as the Hungarians, are actively discriminated against, even at the government level.

Since Ukraine will mostly be rebuilt using Western funds, it is likely that Americans, Germans, and French people, already hit hard by the costs of mass immigration, will be the ones paying for social welfare and integration for Ukraine’s newly arrived welfare recipients.

As the Russian-Ukrainian war drags on, the chances that Ukrainian refugees and their children, who have been living and working abroad for three years, will not return to economically devastated Ukraine are increasing. 

In short, the Great Replacement on steroids may be coming to Ukraine, and employers and international capital are gearing up for the feeding frenzy after the war. Once again, the biggest losers will be Ukrainians.

Former German finance minister says corruption in Ukraine is ‘rampant,’ and large majority of Ukrainians agree

In Ukraine, high-level corruption ranks second among the main concerns of Ukrainians after the Russian-Ukrainian war.

As Zelensky goes begging for more money from… pic.twitter.com/YHLsJN3BZw

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 3, 2025

Read more here…

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

The Democratic Party is polling about 31 percent approval, a near-historic low.

Despite enjoying a huge lead in fundraising, legacy media favoritism, and incumbency, in the 2024 election, Democrats lost the White House to Donald Trump. Ever since, they have offered nothing new, no novel agenda, no innovative policies—nothing other than screaming that they are loudly against everything and anything that the president is for.

In the past, what did they accomplish by following their prior two impeachments with attempts to de-ballot Trump? Who thought sending an FBI swat team to raid Trump’s home or waging five lawfare civil and criminal suits and issuing 91 felony indictments against him would win over the public?

Was conducting a media barrage of Hitler-Trump invectives, or lowering the bar of demonization that likely led to two assassination attempts of Trump a good way to win an election?

Apparently not, given the Democrats have now lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The Supreme Court is conservative. They have no power to subpoena anyone; they cannot block any nomination. Much of their old administrative state control is eroding. All the main issues—the economy, energy, border security, illegal immigration, crime, DEI/woke, and foreign policy—poll against the Democrats. The more they shouted that biological men must be able to compete as transgendered females in women’s sports, the more that 80% of the public disagreed, women were turned off, and the absurd idea was exploded by Trump.

The power of the administrative state, the legacy network news, print media, and Silicon Valley’s social media and search engines, the billions that poured into the Biden and Harris campaign all went for naught.

The efforts of moderators to warp debates, of network news to edit out unfavorable Harris or Biden comments, of leftists to cancel, deplatform, ostracize, censor, and shadow ban their enemies have failed. More likely to succeed now are numerous lawsuits against leftwing media for chronic defamation and censorship.

Given that collective meltdown, what would a sane Democratic Party do?

If they were stable, then they might renounce political suicide and perhaps return to something akin to the Clinton efforts of 1992 and 1996. Then the once self-destructive Democrats finally gave up on disastrous out-of-touch McGovernism, Carterism, an Dukakism. Instead, they began to embrace legal-only immigration, secure borders, balanced budgets, support for law enforcement, and meritocracy.

The result?

After twelve years in the wilderness (1980-1992), the Democrats regained power for the next 16 of 24 years—only in the second term of Barack Obama to go full radical Jacobin and soon lose it.

The current self-destructive obsessions with DEI/woke racialism, bi-coastal talk-down elitism, boutique transgenderism, and nonstop America Lastism all came to fruition during the Biden years. A shameless conspiracy to use an enfeebled John Biden as a prop to masque an otherwise unpalatable radical, neo-socialist agenda ensured the MAGA counterrevolution.

But instead of postmortem autopsy and introspection, since Election Day, the Democrats have doubled down on their veritable collective self-destruction.

On immigration, after wiping out the border and allowing in 12 million illegal aliens, including more than 500,000 suspected felons, they seem deliberately to be alienating public opinion even further.

So, thousands of leftists swarm and block the freeways of Los Angeles to protest the deportations of criminals. And how exactly?

By enraging middle-class commuters, while burning the flag of the country that they demand must allow them to stay, while chauvinistically waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wish to return?

New Jersey Democratic governor Patrick Murphy idiotically virtue-signaled that he would defy the law, as he bragged that he was harboring an illegal alien living above his garage.

Then, when apprised that such performance-art showboating was a felony, in theory entailing a long prison sentence, the now buffoonish governor changed his narrative that the occupant of his garage was not really illegally living above his garage.

Democratic governors and mayors vie, bragging that they will be foremost in breaking the law by impeding the efforts of the federal immigration services to find and deport illegal aliens—for now, half a million criminals. Other activists are tipping off criminal illegal-alien gang leaders to avoid US government efforts to apprehend such dangerous criminals.

Is that the way to win back the working classes? By ensuring that the felons of M-13, Norteños, Sureños, and Tren de Aragua can flee and put in danger fellow American police officers?

Elon Musk has been appointed by Donald Trump to create a new government agency, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), to find waste, fraud, and abuse in the government spending of taxpayers money.

He and his young team of tech standouts have exposed shocking waste and fraud, but mostly insanity, in the USAID’s $50 billion of foreign aid grants.

Why are Americans paying for overseas drag shows or gay and trans advocacy in culturally imperialist fashion in traditional and conservative societies abroad? Why are we paying eight percent of the budget of the hardcore left-wing BBC? Is that a way back to the White House?

Do Politico, the New York Times, or the Wuhan gain-in-function virology lab and birthplace of COVID-19 really need millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars?

Do Democrats really think the middle class will hate Elon Musk for exposing that their government may well have handed the communist Chinese the necessary cash to birth a manufactured killer virus that took one million American lives?

Is that a winning strategy—to scream in Congress that Musk is a Nazi, a dictator for showing that Biden’s USAID under leftist Samantha Power was a clearing house to enrich and empower well-off leftist organizations that only weakened their own country abroad?

Do we really wish to spend $20 million to bequeath a woke Sesame Street to Middle East television?

Is it smart to gin up hatred of Elon Musk, who revolutionized space travel, the auto industry, and social media?

Is the Democrats’ message something like “We hate Elon Musk and will stop his free internet service to Americans ruined by fires and hurricanes and abandoned by their government?”

Or do Democrats despise Musk for providing free internet to Ukrainians battling for their lives against Russians?

Or is the key strategy to loathe Musk for crafting a risky rescue mission to save the lives of American astronauts virtually abandoned by the incompetent Biden government space program?

For Democratic officials to scream that Musk has no right to ferret out fraud is historically ignorant. He was selected by the president with the same powers that such appointees enjoy that are by statute not required to be approved by the Senate. The DOGE head is as legitimate as the National Security Advisor, who likewise needs no confirmation but also serves at the wishes of an elected president and likewise can do nothing without his approval.

Is Musk’s position in the Trump administration new?

Hardly.

Musk certainly has more legitimate legal authority via his DOGE position than that of FDR’s in-house informal advisors—such as Harry Hopkins—who from within the White House directed much of World War II foreign policy with the Soviets.

Financier Bernard Baruch held no major position for years under Woodrow Wilson and FDR and yet rebooted America’s wartime economy in two wars.

DOGE head Musk is more akin to FDR’s appointed war production board—similar to the likes of the unelected and unconfirmed Henery Ford, Henery Kaiser, and William Knudson, with the caveat that the latter three exercised far more power than does Musk.

During the confirmation hearings on Trump’s cabinet and agency nominations, Democratic senators did not question nominees like Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel so much as scream, interrupt, and insult them on live television.

Rather than ask the nominees questions about their policies and agendas, almost all the interrogatives were ad hominem.

All this came from a party that oversaw the greatest weaponization of our government in modern history while leaving us with two theater wars abroad, a scary and dangerous DEI/woke destruction of meritocracy, hyperinflation, $7 trillion more in debt, 12 million illegal aliens, the erasure of the border, and a vast shortfall in military recruitment.

During the recent Democrat Party convention elections, the voting turned into a virtual DEI tutorial on why the public is repulsed by Democrats.

The Party’s carnival-like elections were overseen by race/gender/orientation censors. In incomprehensible, jargon-filled lectures, they droned on about the correct quotas—trans, non-binary, female, black, Hispanic, Native American—that would override simple democratic voting.

When one looks for sanity among the Democrat Senate and House leaders, there is only madness to be found. Sen. Corey “Spartacus” Booker is back again, now screaming and playacting as if he were Winston Churchill willing to fight Trump-Hitler on the beaches, hills, fields, etc.

Rep. Al Green was wheeled out on spec to bellow and bluster that he was introducing articles of impeachment—is it for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time against Trump?

House Minority Leader Hakim Jefferies boasts he will fight Trump “in the streets”—alongside whom? The despised Antifa? The utterly corrupt and discredited BLM?

I doubt Rep. Jefferies himself will replay the 2020 summer of destruction. More likely he will parrot Kamala Harris’s 2020 bragging of the then ongoing four months of violent protests: “They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day, and they should not.”

Maxine Waters is back, trying to trump her earlier threats to birddog and harass Trump supporters in her usual racialist fashion.

AOC—the supposed future of the Jacobins—drones that Musk is “one of the most unintelligent billionaires” she has met. This putdown comes from the nincompoop who claimed Trump’s low unemployment rate was due only to people holding two jobs.

Does AOC think catching a rocket with a mechanical arm is proof of dumbness, and the rants of Mazie Hirono and Elizabeth Warren display wisdom?

What the Democrats don’t realize is that they staged a French-style cultural, political, and economic revolution and tried to destroy their enemies by weaponizing government and the media—and they have now lost.

This current counter-revolution is a return to centrist normalcy and just beginning. It is deemed wild only by feral Democrats, whose high crimes and misdemeanors, and various conspiracy theories over the years of their madcap rule are now being revealed every day.

Al Gore’s worst nightmare, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Bloomberg TV hosts on Tuesday that coal-fired power plants will remain the backbone of President Trump’s reindustrialization of America. Wright emphasized that coal plants will be restarted to ensure affordable and reliable electricity for decades. 

“What’s been the big issues for this president that he ran on, you know, the economic well-being of Americans and the National Security of our country. And our citizens, so we’ve had 20-plus years of sort of deindustrializing the United States and letting our heavy industry flow overseas. This president is passionate about increasing National Security, and that means we have to have the ability to build heavy steel-intensive and aluminum-intensive material systems in our country again. So this is an attempt, I believe, by our president to incentivize the reindustrialization of America,” Wright told Bloomberg hosts. 

When asked about energy security and coal’s role, Wright responded: “Coal has been essential to the United States’ energy system for over 100 years. It’s been the largest source of global electricity for nearly 100 years, and it will be for decades to come, so we need to be realistic about that – now with coal, are we going to see a renaissance in surging coal production in the US – not likely – but we’re on a path to continually shrink the electricity we generate from coal – that’s made electricity more expensive and our grid less stable. So I think the best we can hope for in the short term is to stop the closure of coal power plants no one has won by that action.” 

He continued: “The goal is just affordable, reliable, secure energy from wherever that comes from obviously, there’s going to be roles in the long run for solar energy. There are places where it makes tons of sense where the natural resources are there and the infrastructure is benefited by adding more solar to the grid, but I will say one thing for sure: we’re not going to go down the road of Germany – you know they spent a half a trillion dollars – they more than doubled their price of electricity – they actually shrunk the total amount of electricity the country produces by about 20% – and their industry is fleeing the country – that’s the path the United States was starting to go down, but that’s the wrong path.”

The coal discussion starts around the four-minute mark… 

The latest data from Bloomberg shows coal accounts for about 20.5% of power generation today. 

“It’s not immediately clear what actions the US could take to help prevent coal-fired power plants from closing,” Bloomberg noted.  

Michelle Bloodworth, president of America’s Power, a trade group representing Core Natural Resources and Peabody Energy, explained that many coal plants have been shuttered over the years because “bad policies have made them uneconomic.” He noted, “Fortunately, President Trump is seeking to change this.” 

The entire global warming NGO machine must be having a meltdown over Wright’s remarks. With USAID funding slashed, one has to wonder—how will they bankroll Greta Thunberg’s marches now?

Trump’s nominee for Energy Secretary Chris Wright dispels the climate propaganda. He is Al Gore’s worst nightmare.pic.twitter.com/DfMP1qhh5v

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 17, 2024

Earlier Wednesday, PJM Interconnection—which coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity and ensures power supplies for 65 million people across all or parts of 13 Eastern and Midwestern US states, as well as Washington, DC, outlined how it will fast-track NatGas power generators to ensure grid stability as “The Next AI Trade” and Powering Up America theme progresses ahead. 

Nation’s Largest Grid To Fast-Track NatGas Power Plants To Fuel Next AI Trade https://t.co/FbdbP9xN6e

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 12, 2025

Our latest commentary on the coal industry: 

• Duke Energy Considers Making Coal Power Great Again Under Trump

• A Coordinated Strategy To Bring American Energy Dominance Back Again!

• Will Trump’s Coal Comments To Davos’ Greenies’ Revive US Miners?

• America’s Electric Grid Is At Risk – And We Need Coal To Save It

Peabody Energy, the top US coal miner, has yet to catch a bid, blowing through three years of support. 

After a decade and a half of the ‘green cult’ forcing the nation to buy Chinese green tech and wind down all fossil fuel power generation, the Russell 3000 Coal Subsector Index trades near decade lows. The question is whether Trump’s pro-grid stability policies reverse these toxic trends. 

The nation needs grid stability before nuclear power is ramped up in the 2030s. The only way for that to occur is through coal and NatGas power generators amid rising power demand from AI data centers, electric vehicles, onshoring, and other electrification trends.