Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 39

Why Australia Refuses to Go to War with China Over Taiwan

FILE PHOTO: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. ©  Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images

By Graham Hryce

The Trump administration has been having a rough few months.

Domestic chaos – fuelled by the use of black clad, masked para-military squads to deport illegal immigrants – has fused with the deepening foreign policy crises resulting from Trump’s support for the doomed right-wing Zelensky and Netanyahu regimes.

And if this were not bad enough, last week Trump escalated his disruption of the global economic order by imposing yet more tariffs on the EU and other countries that are ostensibly American allies.

Add to that the establishment of an “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida and Trump’s recently revealed threat to “bomb the sh*t out of Russia and China,” and it’s no surprise that even Trump’s core MAGA supporters are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with a president who promised them that he would swiftly end the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and restore America’s economic prosperity. They are also up in arms at the White House’s refusal to release Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, suspecting a self-serving cover up.

Prominent Trump supporters are now openly critical, and Trump’s dissatisfaction with inept cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi is clear for all to see. More ominous, perhaps, is the calculated silence of Vice President J.D. Vance in recent times.

Even in Australia there are signs that the American hegemony is beginning to crumble.

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the extraordinary step of refusing to reassure Trump that Australia would assist America militarily if it went to war with China over Taiwan.

Albanese’s reluctant assertion of foreign policy independence was somewhat surprising given that, until now, he has been a keen supporter of Trump’s foreign policy. Albanese remains a committed funder of the Zelensky regime, and Australia has consistently aligned itself with US policy in Gaza.

The Australian leader enthusiastically embraced the AUKUS military agreement with America and the UK, when it was entered into by his predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Morrison, and has echoed – albeit more moderately – the narrative surrounding a perceived China threat.

Albanese’s previous reluctance to assert its foreign policy independence is a consequence of Australia’s longstanding dependence on America – together with Albanese’s pragmatic decision to adopt wholesale the Conservative coalition’s foreign policy framework so as to neutralise foreign policy as a domestic political issue.

This foreign policy capitulation was also designed to mute criticism from the pro-Trump, pro-Israel, anti-China and anti-Russia Murdoch media empire – which incessantly promulgates various rejigged Cold War conspiracy theories demonising China, Russia, and the Palestinian cause.

Albanese, of course, has has not succeeded in placating Murdoch – and it is a measure of his abject weakness as a political leader that he refuses to openly attack the owner of Fox News who peddles the same discredited dogmas in Australia that he does in America. It is Albanese’s most egregious failure as prime minister to have permitted Murdoch to frame the foreign policy public debate – such as it is – in this country.

Why then has Albanese belatedly decided to stand up to Trump?

Primarily because the fundamental irrationality at the heart of the Trumpian agenda has now become glaringly obvious – even to political leaders as maladroit and supine as Albanese.

Trump’s efforts to dismantle the rules-based world order have, paradoxically, only strengthened China, Russia and BRICS. Meanwhile, the American proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza continue to intensify. Nor has Trump’s green lighting of Netanyahu’s recent attacks on Iran destroyed that country’s nuclear capacity.

Trump has shown skepticism about NATO, and his commitment to defending allies like Australia is unclear. The recent inquiry launched by Pete Hegseth into the AUKUS compact may signal intentions to withdraw from the agreement.

The AUKUS deal – which obliges Australia is to pay $360 billion for a few submarines that may or may not be delivered years down the road – is not only economically profligate, but it ties Australia to Trump’s military agenda.

Why would Albanese give a commitment to Trump to provide militarily assistance should America be unwise enough to commence a war with China? Australia has no strategic interest in defending Taiwan, and only the most ideologically deranged of Murdoch journalists could believe that Australia and America could defeat China militarily in a war in Southeast Asia.

Despite advocating for a reduced global footprint, Trump continues to promote the concept of American global leadership. He may still pursue conflict with China, possibly to shift attention from persistent domestic and

China is Australia’s most important trading partner and Trump sought last week’s assurance from Albanese while the prime minister was in China on an important five-day visit. The trip included a meeting with the Chinese president – something, by the way, that Trump has denied Albanese to date.

Trump was well aware of this, and he well knew that, if Albanese had given him the assurance he sought, China would have immediately retaliated by imposing trade sanctions on Australia.

The contrast between Trump’s treatment of Albanese and Xi Jinping’s – at their private lunch last week Xi committed China “unswervingly towards ongoing cooperation and common understanding with Australia” – is stark and telling.

Meanwhile, as the US shifts away from traditional diplomacy, China and Russia have deepened their diplomatic engagements.

Trump’s domestic policy measures also warrant reconsideration by Western political leaders. The scenes of masked ICE officers clashing with protesters in California have drawn comparisons to past episodes of American civil unrest. Many observers were alarmed when Senator Alex Padilla was manhandled by officers for raising questions at a press conference.

Additionally, the administration’s suppression of dissent – including defunding public broadcasting and pressuring media outlets to silence critical voices – raises concerns about media freedom and civil liberties.

The perceived harshness of Trump-era policies contributed to Albanese’s election success. Many Western voters reject combative political behaviour, and Australian voters were similarly put off by Peter Dutton’s emulation of Trump’s combative style.

There are two key takeaways for Western leaders from Trump’s treatment of Albanese, and Albanese’s decision to resist his demands.

First, that the Trump administration is facing deep internal and external challenges, and its foreign policy approach may become increasingly erratic and unilateral. Second, that Trump may prioritize his administration’s objectives even at the expense of partners. Albanese was placed in an extremely difficult diplomatic position this week.

For many mainstream Western leaders, these insights may be more than a little uncomfortable – particularly those who continue to support US foreign policy and seek approval from the administration.

There are also domestic pressures, including media outlets aligned with Trump, that make it difficult to oppose his influence. Unsurprisingly, the Murdoch press criticised Albanese for “neglecting the US alliance” and “putting the region in danger.”

Nevertheless, as the inconsistencies within Trump’s foreign policy become more apparent, political leaders in the West who value sovereignty and economic stability may feel compelled – as Albanese did – to redefine their alliances and pursue a more independent path.

If they fail to do so, they may face a similar fate to Trump’s most obsequious and compliant ally – Vladimir Zelensky.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/621829-american-vassal-defies-master/

Lost Kids: India’s Missing Children Epidemic

Lost Kids

Directed by Nikita Sutyrin (2019)

Film Review

https://en.rtdoc.tv/films/560-lost-kids

This is a film about the nearly 100,000 Indian children lost to child trafficking every year. Because impoverished families are reluctant to seek police help, there are no official statistics. However observers estimate an Indian child goes missing every eight minutes. Police officials try to stem the problem by patrolling trains on the lookout for single men accompanied by children clearly not related to them. In some instances social workers accompany the police to assist children in reuniting with their families.

Traffickers specifically target local “tribal” (indigenous) girls, referred to as “black beauties.” Traffickers often lure them to the cities with promises of work. In some instances, families pressure them to go.

The filmmakers following several families as they put up lost child posters, request access to police surveillance videos and seek help through the help center operated by the Dehli Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

After months of putting up fliers, one of distressed fathers featured miraculous reunites with his son after a Mumbai stranger recognizes his son’s photo. The odds of locating a lost child in a city of 12.5 million people is infinitesimally small.

According to the UN, 40,000 Indian kids go missing every year. The Indian police put the number at 80,000. India has a total of 1.2 million children.

 

Ghislane Maxwell: Epstein’s “Insurance File” Show Obama with Young Boys on Pedophile Island

By Medeea Greere

From behind bars, Ghislaine Maxwell confirms the existence of Epstein’s blackmail vault. Inside it: videos, photos, and documents — including damning evidence tying Barack Obama to underage boys on Epstein’s island. The Deep State is imploding from within.

After years of carefully calculated silence, Ghislaine Maxwell has finally broken, unleashing a flood of information that directly threatens the world’s most protected political dynasty — a reality so toxic that even hardened intelligence veterans are reportedly scrambling to prepare damage-control blueprints.

She confirmed, in no uncertain terms, that Jeffrey Epstein maintained an insurance file — not a conspiracy theory, not a rumor, but a meticulously organized archive of photographic evidence, video footage, handwritten logs, digital records, and notarized documents. All of it crafted not to protect the victims, but to protect himself from justice by turning the most powerful men on earth into blackmailed puppets.

Epstein called this file his “final bullet” — evidence so damning, no prosecutor would dare touch him.Multiple copies of the vault were allegedly distributed to trusted international operatives, hidden in private security firms, and cloud-based military-grade encryption nodes.

[…]

Maxwell states clearly that within the archive there are files implicating Obama directly, with footage showing him in compromising contact with underage males during clandestine visits to the island.

[…]

THE ISLAND WASN’T A PARADISE — IT WAS A BLACKMAIL FACTORY DESIGNED FOR TOTAL CONTROL

Forget everything the mainstream told you about Epstein’s island being a “rich man’s escape” — the place was a militarized psychological operation run with precision and ruthlessness. It was built not just for hedonism, but for recording perversion, storing it, and using it against those who participated.

Every inch of that property was rigged — the bedrooms, the massage rooms, the poolside suites — with hidden high-resolution cameras, infrared sensors, and biometric tracking. No one left without being digitized. No act went unrecorded.

Epstein’s security team included former Mossad and CIA contractors, hired specifically to handle surveillance extraction and encryption.Recordings were catalogued by target value — tiered by political relevance, financial net worth, and future blackmail potential.The most high-profile files — labeled as “Alpha Protocols” — were stored off-island in offshore servers reportedly tied to Swiss financial vaults and Qatari intelligence networks.

This wasn’t a sex ring. It was a blackmail empire, and the guest list was a who’s who of planetary governance..

DEEP STATE COLLAPSE MODE — CENSORSHIP, COORDINATED DENIAL, FULL-PANIC OPERATIONS

The moment Ghislaine Maxwell’s statement leaked, the machine kicked in — not to refute it with facts, but to bury it under the weight of silence, AI-generated noise, and algorithmic censorship.

Every mention of “Obama + Epstein + Island” was throttled. Hashtags were frozen. Video uploads were shadowbanned. Paid media assets were activated to flood the digital space with decoys, discrediting campaigns, and rushed “fact-checks” written by the same clowns who told you Hunter’s laptop was Russian fiction.

Internal memos from Google and Meta have leaked showing direct compliance with federal requests to suppress keywords tied to this bombshell.MSM outlets were given a “blacklist order” — a no-cover zone for anything involving “Obama,” “Epstein,” or “Maxwell Files.”Intelligence agencies have moved to classify parts of the vault under “national security priority”, a classic move to seal elite criminal evidence.

[…]

THE VERDICT THAT MUST COME — TRIBUNALS, EXPOSURE, AND RESTORATION

We are no longer asking for transparency — we are demanding it. The people of the United States, and the world, deserve to know the full extent of the crimes hidden by Epstein’s archive and the true reach of the pedophile elite network that extended into the White House, Hollywood, the UN, and beyond.

Maxwell’s confession is not the end — it is the ignition. From here, the path is clear: declassify the files, subpoena the elites, begin public trials, and never stop until the entire system of rot is disassembled before the eyes of the world.

We demand a global independent tribunal with full authority to investigate Maxwell’s claims and prosecute beyond national borders.All Epstein-related material must be extracted from intelligence vaults and placed into public domain.Any official, media outlet, or institution caught suppressing this truth must face treason-level accountability.

This is no longer about Epstein. It’s about the system that made him possible. And that system is about to fall — because the people have seen too much.

[…]

Via https://amg-news.com/ghislaine-maxwell-breaks-silence-epsteins-insurance-file-shows-barack-obama-with-young-boys-on-pedophile-island-deep-state-panic-mode-activated/

“No Spare Capacity”: Watchdog Warns Largest US Grid Is Maxed Out Amid AI Data Center Buildout

Zero Hedge

America’s largest power grid has issued multiple ‘Maximum Generation‘ and ‘Load Management‘ alerts this summer, as summer heat pushes power demand to the brink with air conditioners running at full blast across the eastern half of the U.S. The deeper issue: there’s not enough baseload capacity to support the explosive growth of power-hungry AI server racks at new data centers.

“There is simply no new capacity to meet new loads,” said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which is the independent watchdog for PJM Interconnection, who Bloomberg quoted. “The solution is to make sure that people who want to build data centers are serious enough about it to bring their own generation.”

New AI data centers are popping up across the PJM Interconnection—the largest U.S. power grid, serving 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Part of PJM’s territory includes Loudoun County, Virginia—known as ‘Data Center Alley‘—which is recognized as one of the world’s largest hubs for data centers.

The problem is that next-generation server racks at AI data centers are now consuming more than twice the power they did just a few years ago. For example, Nvidia’s GB200 AI rack draws 120 kW, compared to 60–80 kW for the earlier HGX models. Multiply that by thousands of racks in large, hyperscale centers, and it’s clear that AI computing is rapidly gobbling up grid capacity while baseload power in the form of fossil fuel power generation has been retired.

On Sunday, we cited the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, which showed that average summer wholesale power prices across the PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE grids are the highest in the nation. These prices now far exceed those in Texas’ ERCOT, the U.S. average, and even the traditionally high-cost West Coast markets. The blame is squarely focused on the Democrats’ initiative to recklessly decarbonize power grids.

Bowring is entirely right about grid limitations in the era of data center buildouts. Take, for example, just how fragile the grid is across the Mid-Atlantic area:

In Maryland:

“Another Reason To Leave”: Top Maryland Power Official Warns Of Regular Rolling Blackouts 

We’ve warned over the last year about the power crisis unfolding across the Mid-Atlantic:

Goldman Says Mid-Atlantic Power Prices “Finally Caught Up To AI Data Center Load Growth Story”   Maryland “Can’t Import Itself Out Of Energy Crisis” Amid Urgent Need To Boost In-State Power Generation

Last month, Pennsylvania boasted about saving Maryland’s power grid from near collapse:

“You’re Welcome”: Pennsylvania Boasts About Saving ‘Green’ Maryland From Near Power Grid Collapse

The result of failed green policies and surging power demand has created a perfect storm that could constrain AI data center buildouts across the region.

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/no-spare-capacity-watchdog-warns-largest-us-grid-maxed-out-amid-data-center-buildout

Amid Calls for Epstein Files, Trump Admin Releases 230,000 MLK Documents

Brett Wilkins

Jul 21, 2025One critic called the move “a desperate attempt to distract from the Trump administration’s decision to block the release of the Epstein files.”As U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans stonewall efforts to keep the full files on deceased financier and convicted child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein under wraps, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Monday released a long-anticipated massive trove of documents related to the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from his family.

“Today, after nearly 60 years of questions surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are releasing 230,000 MLK assassination files, available now at http://archives.gov/mlk,” Gabbard said on the social media site X. “The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of MLK, discussion of potential leads, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, information about James Earl Ray’s former cellmate who stated he discussed with Ray an alleged assassination plot, and more.”

“Thanks to President Donald Trump’s leadership, Executive Order 14176 resulted in three, unprecedented interagency efforts to identify, digitize, declassify, and release files related to the federal government’s investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. King,” Gabbard added.

However, many of the MLK documents remain heavily redacted.

Responding to the MLK files’ publication, the King family said in a statement: “As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief—a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met—an absence our family has endured for over 57 years. We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

The King family reiterated their belief that “someone other than James Earl Ray was the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”

“As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,” their statement said.

As his relatives noted, the FBI infamously surveilled King—America’s most hated man, according to a 1968 Harris poll that showed the civil rights icon with a 75% negative approval rating—under the notorious COINTELPRO program, especially after his civil rights activism evolved into staunch critiques of U.S. militarism during the escalating Vietnam War and capitalism-driven economic inequality.

Then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the wiretapping of King’s phone, with the head agent in charge of COINTELPRO, William Sullivan, warning that “we must mark [King]… as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation.” This, just before King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for helping to lead the struggle against Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.

The FBI systematically bugged King’s home and hotel rooms, mailed an anonymous letter urging him to kill himself, and even sent a tape of what it claimed was King having one of his numerous alleged affairs to his wife. When King criticized the FBI for ignoring the heinous and often murderous crimes of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who were still lynching Black people with alarming regularity and impunity, an infuriated Hoover publicly called him the “most notorious liar” in America.

People from across the political spectrum took to social media to slam the MLK document dump as “a desperate attempt to distract from the Trump administration’s decision to block the release of the Epstein files (despite earlier promises),” as the X account Republicans Against Trump portrayed the move.

Prominent attorney and Democratic strategist Aaron Parnas wrote on the social media site Bluesky, “Whether through releasing the MLK files or trying to prosecute President [Barack] Obama, Donald Trump is flooding the zone with information to distract you from the Epstein files.”

Bernice King—MLK’s granddaughter and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change—wrote on X: “Now, do the Epstein files.”

[…]

Via https://www.commondreams.org/news/mlk-files-epstein

House panel votes to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell over Epstein files

Ghislaine Maxwell, pictured in 2003, was convicted of aiding Epstein’s criminal efforts. Now, Congress wants her to testify amid the fallout over whether or not the DOJ has additional information on powerful people who helped enable Epstein (Getty)

By John Bowden

The House Oversight Committee approved a subpoena for Ghislaine Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, by voice vote on Tuesday.

Lawmakers voted to compel Maxwell’s testimony before the committee as the issue of whether a so-called “client list” of Epstein’s co-conspirators exists continues to consume Washington and much of American political discourse across X, Truth Social and other social platforms.

In the House of Representatives, the investigation provoked a rare moment of unity between some of Donald Trump’s closest supporters in the GOP, some of his strongest critics on the left, and even a Republican representative who has become one of the biggest thorns in the president’s side.

While the committee’s vote to compel Maxwell to testify is clearly significant, a bipartisan cohort of lawmakers is threatening to take it a step further by forcing a vote on a resolution directing the Justice Department to release the entirety of its evidence on the Epstein and Maxwell cases.

Congressional subpoenas carry the weight of a court order, and Maxwell remains incarcerated on a 20-year sentence following her conviction for sex trafficking of a minor and other charges. As Epstein’s lead accomplice, she’s thought to know more about the inner workings of his social circles than anyone besides Epstein himself.

Arrested for similar charges after a prior conviction, Epstein died in 2019 in federal custody. The circumstances of his death are another mysterious angle in the saga, given that it was ruled a suicide and occurred in what was supposed to be tightly controlled federal custody.

The Justice Department released video of an area outside Epstein’s cell earlier this year that contained at least a full minute of missing footage, drawing further speculation.

The alleged ties between a dead pedophile and powerful figures and institutions in American society are now under the microscope as Americans of all political stripes question whether the federal government is engaged in a cover-up to protect them. The relationship between Epstein and President Donald Trump is central to those questions, as the president was a known friend of Epstein for years.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published the contents of a birthday note the paper reported as allegedly authored by Trump for Epstein’s 50th birthday celebration in 2003. The contents of the bawdy alleged note hint at a “secret” shared by the two men.

Trump, in response, denied the authenticity of the note and said the reporting was false. Hours later he filed a $10 million libel suit against the WSJ in Florida federal court.

Epstein’s efforts to cultivate powerful relationships went far beyond Trump, who at the time was a real estate mogul in New York. The billionaire financier held an office at Harvard University and was connected to other U.S. intellectual and political figures, including former President Bill Clinton. Britain’s Prince Andrew was also engulfed in scandal over his own friendship with Epstein.

A top Justice Department official, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, tried to stifle some of the speculation about a supposed Justice Department cover-up on Tuesday. In a tweet, he wrote that the agency would have investigators meet with Maxwell to determine whether she “has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims” of Epstein.

The statement was bizarre on its face; Maxwell, as Epstein’s co-conspirator, obviously would be the prime source of such information and Blanche’s statement implies that such information was not gathered as part of the prosecution leading to her 20-year sentencing in 2022.

A statement from the Justice Department and FBI accelerated the backlash after officials declared that there was no list of Epstein’s co-conspirators and no evidence definitively linking others besides Maxwell to his crimes. On the right, conversations about the issue veered quickly towards accusations of a cover-up involving the president himself.

[…]

Via https://nz.news.yahoo.com/house-panel-votes-subpoena-ghislaine-143440997.html

UNRWA Chief: UN staff and doctors fainting from hunger and exhaustion in Gaza

Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity kitchen in Nuseirat area of central Gaza Strip on July 20, 2025. (Photo by Reuters)

RT

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the  UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), says that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, are collapsing from hunger in Gaza amid Israel’s total aid blockade and aggression.

“Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties: reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering,” the UNRWA commissioner general said in a statement on Tuesday.

“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” Lazzarini added.

He said UNRWA had received dozens of emergency messages from its staff describing grave conditions and exhaustion in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Lazzarini also censured a US-backed aid distribution scheme run by the Israel-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that has been “supplying aid” in the besieged territory since late May.

“The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a license to kill,” Lazzarini stated.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies and largely bypasses a UN-led system.

More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the end of May, Lazzarini noted.

The United Nations, its affiliated agencies and other humanitarian organizations have said on numerous occasions that they cannot confirm any of the GHF’s claims regarding food distribution in Gaza.

Since May 27, 2025, thousands of Palestinians have been killed and wounded by Israeli gunfire as they approached the GHF distribution installations.

In late June 2025, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israeli regime’s forces had received orders to fire on the unarmed aid seekers to “keep them away from food distribution centers.”

The UN and other humanitarian groups have criticized the GHF for politicizing aid distribution, saying it is giving cover for Israel to pursue its aims to depopulate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

In the past 24 hours, 15 people, including four children, have died in Gaza due to starvation and malnutrition.

The US-Israeli genocide, which began in October 2023, has so far killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, leaving over 142,500 others injured.

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/07/22/751660/Palestine-Gaza-UNRWA-Philippe-Lazzarini

 

Why Sanctions on Russia Don’t Work

Dmitry Orlov

So far, the West has imposed on Russia around 30 thousand sanctions. This is twice as many as all the sanctions imposed against other countries on the entire planet. But they didn’t work; and so now Trump is threatening to impose sanctions on Russia’s trading partners. China, India and Turkey would be the ones most affected — or not.

The sanctions imposed so far perhaps slowed the development of the Russian economy somewhat, but not enough to make sanction avoidance worth considering. On the other hand, they certainly boomeranged back on the Europeans, severely hampering industrial activity, producing record-high rates of bankruptcy, virtually killing the chemical and automobile industries, raising unemployment and causing public discontent and political instability.

The sanctions attempted to disconnect Russia from international (dollar and euro-based) payment infrastructure, to disrupt supply chains, and strike at key sectors of the economy. But something clearly went wrong with these plans. Russia’s economy has remained stable and has continued to grow while Russia’s trade relations with the rest of the world (other than the West) have continued to develop. This result may have befuddled the West’s intrepid sanctioneers, but it came as no surprise to careful Russia-watchers.

The reason the 30 thousand sanctions have failed, and the reason the next 30 thousand would fail just the same, is simple: Russia was ready for them. Starting around 2014, when the first sanctions, related to the the events around Crimea, were imposed, Russia has been working steadily to get rid of all the more important vulnerabilities and to achieve a remarkable level of self-sufficiency in all of the key indicators of state sustainability, including the following:

• Energy
• Nuclear energy (separately)
• Natural resources of every kind
• Education
• Fundamental science
• Industry
• Military-industrial complex
• The military
• Agriculture
• Health care

Although much of this basis is provided by Russia’s rich patrimony, including Soviet traditions of excellence in education, science and technology, the impetus for its development, in no small measure, came from the disciplining effect of the 30 thousand sanctions. Of course, Russia’s huge territory, holding a treasure trove of natural resources of every kind, is what made it all possible. No other country in the world has such a basis for self-sufficient development.

• China has severe international dependencies with regard to energy and natural resources.
• The US has many unsolved problems with nuclear energy, natural resources (it has, essentially, no oil left — just condensate from fracked wells) and there are many unanswered questions for its military-industrial complex and industrial base.
• Japan has problems with resources, energy, army, military-industrial complex and agriculture.
• Most other countries are even worse off.

Thus, Russia has the most stable economy on the entire planet and has all of the resources it needs to develop them independently.

Russia’s Achilles’ heel (or so Western sanctionistas like to imagine) is its dependence on revenues from oil and gas exports. They imagine that, deprived of hydrocarbon revenues, Russia would be unable to finance its military. In fact, as Russia’s economy continues to develop, this dependence becomes less and less severe. Currently, a quarter of government revenues comes from hydrocarbon exports. Thus, if hydrocarbon exports were shut down, Russia would lose this revenue and would be forced to raise the flat income tax rate from 13% to 16% — and that certainly wouldn’t be fatal.

But would this ever be necessary? The three largest buyers of Russian oil are China, India and Brazil, and none of them are at all likely to abandon this trade because of Western pressure. If the West imposed sanctions on the buyers of Russian energy, this energy would (on paper) stop being Russian. There is now an entire technology suite for circumventing Western sanctions. The most that happens is a temporary slowdown in trade following the imposition of new sanctions, while new ways of doing business are being worked out.

It turns out that imposing sanctions is the easy part while enforcing them is either difficult or impossible. The difficulty has to do with the inability to track transactions by which products move to and from Russia through third parties, especially if the intermediaries do not use dollars or euros for transacting with Russia. And the impossibility has to do with the West’s dwindling clout in imposing its will on large, powerful countries. China has already demonstrated its ability to fight and win trade wars with the US; India and Brazil are next.

It would make sense that at some point it will dawn on Western officials that anti-Russian sanctions are ineffective and self-defeating, but it is by no means certain that they would then find it in their power to lift these sanctions.

Since these sanctions have been beneficial to Russia in helping it achieve higher levels of self-sufficiency and in prompting it to cultivate fair trade relationships with non-Western partners around the world, wouldn’t Russia be interested in making sure that the sanctions remain in place — perhaps through a series of minor, judiciously chosen anti-Western escalations and provocations with the goal of making the lifting of sanctions politically impossible? It would seem that a new Berlin Wall has been built, except that this time it is the West that has built it.

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/b280f785-6e9f-42cb-b2bf-69557e8724fa

Elon Musk confirms xAI is buying an overseas power plant and shipping the whole thing to the U.S. to power its new data center

By Anton Shilov published 4 July 2025

Elon Musk’s next xAI data centers are expected to house millions of AI chips and consume so much power that Elon Musk has reportedly bought a power plant overseas and intends to ship it to the U.S., according to Dylan Patel from SemiAnalysis, who outlined xAI’s recent progress in a podcast. Interestingly, Musk confirmed the statement in a subsequent tweet.

Elon Musk’s current xAI Colossus AI supercomputer is already one of the world’s most powerful and power-hungry machines on the planet, housing some 200,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs and consuming around an astounding 300 MW of power, and xAI has faced significant headwinds in supplying it with enough power.

The challenges only become more intense as the company moves forward — Musk faces a monumental challenge with powering his next AI data center, one that is predicted to house one million AI GPUs, thus potentially consuming the same amount of power as 1.9 million households. Here’s how the data center could consume that much power, and how Musk plans to deliver it.

Elon Musk’s xAI has assembled vast computing resources and a team of talented researchers to advance the company’s Grok AI models, Patel said. However, even bigger challenges lay ahead.

It is no secret that Elon Musk has already run into trouble powering his existing xAI data center. Currently, the company’s main data center, Colossus, which houses 200,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs, is located near Memphis, Tennessee. To power this machine, xAI installed 35 gas turbines that can produce 420 MW of power, as well as deploying Tesla Megapack systems to smooth out power draw. However, things are going to get much more serious going forward.

Beyond the Colossus buildout, xAI is rapidly acquiring and developing new facilities. The company has purchased a factory in Memphis that is being converted into additional data center space, big enough to power around 125,000 eight-way GPU servers, along with all supporting hardware, including networking, storage, and cooling.

A million Nvidia Blackwell GPUs will consume between 1,000 MW (1 GW) and 1,400 MW (1.4 GW), depending on the accelerator models (B200, GB200, B300, GB300) used and their configuration.

A power plant?

A large-scale solar power plant alone is not viable for a 24/7 compute load of this magnitude, as one would need several gigawatts of panels, plus massive battery storage, which is prohibitively expensive and land-intensive.

The most practical and commonly used option is building multiple natural gas combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants, each capable of producing 0.5 MW – 1,500 MW. This approach is relatively fast to deploy (several years), scalable in phases, and easier to integrate with existing electrical grids. Perhaps, this is what xAI plans to import to the U.S.

Alternatives like nuclear reactors could technically meet the load with fewer units (each can produce around 1,000 MW) with no direct carbon emissions, but nuclear plants take much longer to design, permit, and build (up to 10 years). It is unlikely that Musk has managed to buy a nuclear power plant overseas, with plans to ship it to the U.S.

In practice, any organization attempting a 1.4 – 1.96 Gigawatt deployment — like xAI — will effectively become a major industrial energy buyer. For now, xAI’s Colossus produces power onsite and purchases power from the grid; therefore, it is likely that the company’s next data center will follow suit and combine a dedicated onsite plant with grid interconnections.

Apparently, because acquiring a power plant in the U.S. can take too long, xAI is reportedly buying a plant overseas and shipping it in, something that highlights how AI development now hinges not only on compute hardware and software but also on securing massive energy supplies quickly.

There’s no other way

Without a doubt, a data center housing a million AI accelerators with a dedicated power plant appears to be an extreme measure. However, Patel points out that most leading AI companies are ultimately converging on similar strategies: concentrating enormous compute clusters, hiring top-tier researchers, and training ever-larger AI models. To that end, if xAI plans to stay ahead of the competition, it needs to build even more advanced and power-hungry data centers.

[…]

Via https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-xai-power-plant-overseas-to-power-1-million-gpus

Florida Surgeon General Highlights Covid Vaccine Injuries, Calls on NIH to Act

[image error] Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D. Ph.D., Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., (right) and Dr. Joel Wallskog, M.D. (left). Photo credit: Michael Pierce, D.O.

By James Lyons-Weiler

At a press conference at Florida State University in Tampa, Florida, Florida Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo made an urgent call for the NIH program funding to help Americans injured by Covid-19 vaccines and expressed support for the May federal changes in the HHS’s restrictive Covid-19 vaccine recommendations.

On the Ground in Tampa: What Ladapo Really Said

I was invited to Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s press conference in Tampa on July 17, 2025. In contrast to how some mainstream outlets later portrayed it, the event centered on a call to recognize and research Covid-19 vaccine injuries, rather than a mere anti-vaccine screed. Dr. Ladapo – a physician and Florida’s top health official since 2021 – emphasized the urgent need to support those suffering adverse effects from mRNA Covid-19 shots.

He praised recent federal moves to scale back mRNA vaccine recommendations for certain groups, but went further by asserting that these products “should not be used in any human beings,” given their safety profile. From my front-row perspective, Dr. Ladapo’s tone was measured yet resolute. He recounted how unusual it is, in his experience, to encounter so many post-vaccination issues. “When was the last time that you had a vaccine that literally almost every single person knows someone who had a bad reaction from it?” Ladapo asked pointedly.

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Dr. Ladapo’s Call to Action: Fund Research and Care for the Vaccine-Injured

Rather than simply condemning the vaccines, Dr. Ladapo dedicated much of his speech to advocating for the victims of vaccine injury. He applauded Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s May announcement removing mRNA Covid-19 shots from recommended use in healthy kids and pregnant women – a policy Florida itself adopted earlier.

But crucially, Dr. Ladapo said this must be followed by concrete support for those already harmed. He called on federal agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to expand their research into vaccine injuries and long-term post-vaccine complications.

“Today, I want to call on the federal government, [on] NIH, to expand the work that they are doing in long Covid to genuinely and wholly include vaccine-injured people – specifically, people who have been injured by mRNA Covid-19 vaccines,” Dr. Ladapo urged.

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“We need to study this better,” he insisted, “We need to fund physicians who are caring for these patients clinically and who are doing scientific work in this area.”

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Real-world observation aligns with reports from other doctors now specializing in Covid vaccine injury. This formed the basis of his argument that federal health agencies must take action: the scale of the issue appears unprecedented and thus demands urgent attention. Key points from Dr. Ladapo’s address:

mRNA Vaccine Guidance: He praised the revised federal guidance (announced by RFK, Jr. at HHS) that no longer recommends mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, noting Florida led on this policy years prior.

Dr. Ladapo expressed hope that this would lead to even broader caution. “These products…should not be going into human beings,” he said bluntly.

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Support for Patients and Doctors: Dr. Ladapo emphasized the need to fund physicians and clinics caring for vaccine-injured patients, as well as basic research. In practice, this could mean grant programs for studying treatments (for example, therapies to mitigate spike protein-related pathology) and establishing specialized centers of excellence for post-vaccine injury care.

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Media Spin vs. What Was Actually Said

Despite the substance of Dr. Ladapo’s remarks focusing on research and patient welfare, coverage in many mainstream media outlets largely framed the press conference as Florida doubling down on an “anti-vaccine” stance.

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However, some outlets swiftly countered his statements with commentary from other experts and cast them as dubious. In an NPR-affiliated report, a representative of the American Academy of Pediatrics condemned Ladapo’s message, saying “we are not going to just throw out decades of science and research…just because of one person or a group of people…spreading conspiracy theories about the danger [of vaccines].”

This kind of response, featured prominently in mainstream coverage, suggests that Dr. Ladapo’s concerns were portrayed as fringe or unfounded, rather than as legitimate calls for investigation.

It is important to clarify that Dr. Ladapo did not merely tell Floridians “don’t get vaccinated” and walk off. In fact, much of his briefing was forward-looking: he wants the federal government to acknowledge injuries and help devise solutions.

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The debate over vaccine risk/benefit thus looms in the background. But regardless of where one stands on that issue, the Surgeon General’s appeal for research funding to study those who have been injured is a concrete policy ask – one that, notably, does not undermine vaccination campaigns, but rather seeks to help a minority of patients in need. This distinction was largely muddied by the way mainstream reports filtered his remarks.

Echoes from Dr. Pierre Kory and Frontline Physicians

Dr. Ladapo is not alone in raising these concerns. Other physicians known for treating Covid vaccine injuries have been making similar appeals for recognition and resources. One prominent voice is Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist. Dr. Kory was at the Tampa press conference, and his work directly intersects with Dr. Ladapo’s points. After early advocacy for Covid treatments, Dr. Kory in recent years has focused on patients suffering lingering complications after vaccination. He co-founded a practice in early 2022 dedicated to evaluating and treating vaccine injury syndrome and long Covid.

The volume of patients they’ve seen underscores the prevalence Ladapo alluded to. “Scott [Marsland] and I have now seen well over 900 patients who are chronically ill after receiving the Covid-19 mRNA injections or suffering with Long Haul Covid,” Dr. Kory reported in late 2023, noting roughly 70% of their cases are post-vaccine injury (“Long Vax”) versus 30% Long Covid.

This ratio, he says, has grown in favor of vaccine-injury cases over time as more people seek help. Such figures suggest that thousands of Americans may be experiencing serious post-vaccination health issues, even if exact incidence rates are still unknown. Dr. Kory has publicly echoed Dr. Ladapo’s sentiment that these patients are being overlooked. He has been outspoken about the lack of support from mainstream medical institutions. In one commentary, Dr. Kory shared a chilling report: a neurologist at a respected hospital privately admitted to a vaccine-injured patient that “our whole practice is full of vaccine injuries but we are not allowed to talk about it.”

This underscores a climate in which many doctors observe the phenomenon yet feel constrained from speaking out or coding these cases as vaccine-related. Dr. Kory and others in the medical community who do not deny vaccine injury argue that this culture of silence further harms patients, who are often dismissed or misdiagnosed (frequently written off with “functional” disorders) rather than given proper care. Indeed, Dr. Kory describes many of his patients being gaslighted by physicians before finding his clinic.

In the wake of HHS Secretary RFK, Jr.’s policy changes and Dr. Ladapo’s statements, Dr. Kory has applauded efforts to bring vaccine injuries to light. On social media, he recently praised Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for “killing Big Pharma’s grift” piece by piece – implying that exposing vaccine safety problems and adjusting policy accordingly is a blow to pharmaceutical interests.

While a strongly worded take, it aligns with Dr. Ladapo’s implication that there has been a systematic downplaying of vaccine harms. Both Dr. Ladapo and Dr. Kory assert that acknowledging injuries is not only a matter of scientific honesty but also a step toward remedies. Dr. Kory has called the suffering of vaccine-injured patients “one of the most dispiriting aspects” of the pandemic era for clinicians, noting that many were previously healthy, high-functioning individuals now left disabled.

The resonance between their messages is significant. One, a state public health official, and the other, a private physician and Covid treatment pioneer, are both shining a light on the human toll of adverse vaccine reactions. They converge on a key point: officialdom must not ignore these medical conditions. Whether one views their stance as controversial or prescient, their calls raise questions about how health authorities like the NIH allocate attention and funds. Notably, in the same press conference, Ladapo mentioned, “long Covid” research has received substantial federal funding, and he argues vaccine injuries should be studied under a similar framework.

Dr. Kory and colleagues, for their part, have been compiling case series and publishing treatment guidance for post-vaccine syndrome, but much of this work is happening outside of mainstream research channels.

Greater NIH involvement could lend resources and credibility to understanding these phenomena.

The NIH’s Responsibility and Path Forward

A summary-level takeaway from the Tampa event is a pointed question: What is the responsibility of agencies like the NIH when it comes to vaccine injuries? Dr. Ladapo explicitly placed the onus on the federal health establishment to “genuinely and wholly include” the vaccine-injured in its research programs.

This is a call for inclusion – treating those patients as worthy of study, care, and compassion. For the NIH, this could mean funding dedicated studies on post-vaccination myocarditis, neurological complications, autoimmune reactions, and recovery strategies. It could mean creating registries for those with suspected vaccine injury and following their outcomes, just as long Covid cohorts are tracked. Essentially, Dr. Ladapo is urging the NIH not to leave this subset of patients behind, especially as the federal government has invested billions in vaccine deployment; a fraction of that investment, he argues, should now go toward mitigation and treatment of any unintended effects. From a medical ethics standpoint, many would agree that if even a small minority of people are hurt by a public health intervention, there is an ethical duty to understand and address that.

Vaccine injuries may be statistically rare (exact rates are debated), but they are no less real for those afflicted. Dr. Ladapo’s appeal, backed by voices like Dr. Kory’s, is that public health authorities must actively care for those individuals, not marginalize them. This doesn’t require abandoning vaccination programs for the majority; it requires a parallel effort to make whole those who drew the short straw on the risk curve. In practical terms, that could involve specialized treatment clinics, research into therapies (from immunosuppressants to novel drugs that might neutralize lingering spike protein, for example), and proper acknowledgement of vaccine injury syndromes in medical literature and education.

As of this writing, it remains to be seen how the NIH and federal government will respond. Will they expand long-Covid studies to explicitly incorporate vaccine-adverse events, as Florida’s Surgeon General demands? Early signs are mixed. The Health and Human Services leadership under RFK, Jr. has already signaled a more skeptical stance on mRNA vaccines for low-risk groups, suggesting some openness to evaluating safety signals anew.

However, institutional inertia and fear of fueling vaccine hesitancy have made agencies cautious about prominently investigating harms.

In Tampa, Dr. Joseph Ladapo delivered a message that the mainstream narratives largely sidelined: that caring for the vaccine-injured is now an urgent public health priority. Those of us who were present heard not just criticism of vaccines, but a compassionate plea to help people who “did the right thing” per societal guidance, yet ended up with lasting health issues. “We need to fund physicians…and do scientific work in this area,” he reported, effectively asking the country’s medical establishment to step up. Time will tell if that call is heeded. For now, Ladapo’s stance – controversial as it may be – shines a spotlight on patients who often suffer in the shadows. And as Dr. Pierre Kory and others affirm, shining that spotlight is the first step toward bringing those patients the understanding, treatments, and hopefully recovery that they desperately need. 

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Via https://brownstone.org/articles/florida-surgeon-general-highlights-vaccine-injuries-calls-on-nih-to-act/