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Authored by Bernard Hudson via The American Mind,

The radical racial ideology has infiltrated the Agency…

Under the best of circumstances, it is difficult for any intelligence service to collect, analyze, and produce actionable, predictive data for a nation’s leadership. This task is made considerably harder when lockstep adherence to a fringe political ideology is imposed upon the workforce tasked with carrying out this challenging mission.

Unfortunately, this is the situation the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community are in: to America’s detriment, their leadership enthusiastically imposed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology upon their employees.

To underscore how deeply DEI has metastasized inside the host, in a recent enlightening and publicly available statement, the CIA’s Chief DEI officer said there are three criteria by which an intelligence officer can be promoted at America’s most important foreign intelligence service. Only one of them is related to mission impact.

The others are a rather vague “corporate mindset”—and DEI.

Of the three, adherence to the cant of DEI is the most important; those who do not vocally and unreservedly support it are denied promotions and meaningful assignments. Like rallies held by authoritarian regimes, you do not want to be the first to stop clapping at the approved, serial pronouncements.

It’s ironic that a CIA created to oppose the Soviet Union would embrace the ideological straitjacket that is DEI, an enterprise that uncomfortably mirrors the USSR’s political commissars. Guardians of the party’s orthodoxy, the commissars were coequal with the leadership inside the government agencies where they were assigned, holding considerable sway over who was promoted and who got what assignments. While they were successful for some time in keeping the ruling clique in power, their endless purity tests and unreviewable power helped breed endemic cynicism among the government workers who had to play along to keep their jobs. It accelerated the systemic, institutional incompetence that plagued the Soviet Union to the end of its unlamented run.

Since DEI, the uniquely American take on the USSR’s commissar system, has been imposed on the Intelligence Community, there has been sufficient time to evaluate its impact on its mission, which is the only metric by which any intelligence service’s value should be measured. Using that standard, there are three conclusions we can draw about the effect DEI has had—and none of them are positive.

First, DEI does not fill a gap in the law; it is a quota system masquerading as equal opportunity. It is important to recall that the DEI enterprise has been imposed upon a federal workforce that already operated under long-existing regulations which mandate fair treatment of all employees. The modern U.S. Intelligence Community had successfully built an environment where anyone could succeed, provided they were willing to work hard and make sacrifices, two concepts one almost never hears uttered by DEI’s most vocal proponents.

As it has come to be practiced, one of DEI’s major outputs has been to combine the outside consultant’s mania for numbers with the fervor of heresy-seeking.

At every administrative level, the modern IC seeks to know and document the race, sexual orientation, county of national origin, disability, and age of anyone seeking promotion or a new assignment. This information is apparently formally incorporated into every Human Resources panel, which has determinative power over the vast majority of assignments and promotions. Findings which do not match the vague and ever-changing standards are almost certainly identified as requiring remedy. (Of course, vague and unreviewable standards are the hallmark of how DEI is practiced within the federal government.) The remedy frequently imposed involves adjusting the recommendations of promotion and assignments panels to make them compliant with the current orthodoxy. This means that assignments, promotions, and opportunities will go to individuals less qualified than other candidates in order to serve the alleged greater good.

Second, as it is driven by a core belief that much within institutions is oppressive and unfair, DEI fuels an institutionally distracting grievance culture. Because it seeks to measure personnel outcomes based more on fringe identity politics than on mission impact, it provides a ready-made tool for anyone to challenge a strictly merit-based promotion and assignments system. Anyone who has served at a senior level in the federal government understands (even if they will not publicly speak of it) that there is a wide disparity between the top performers in their workforce and the bottom quintile.

Because DEI prioritizes identity, including self-identity, over mission impact, it has tended to encourage a culture where the least capable workers demand the most of the senior management’s time and attention. Rather than focus on supporting the top performing employees who drive outsized gains in every human institution (including federal agencies), senior managers must constantly navigate an ever-growing number of grievance claims—many of dubious validity and any of which, if mishandled, could harm or derail that senior official’s career.

This creates a peculiar work environment, where the senior-most managers are increasingly evaluated more through the lens of how their less capable and more aggrieved employees view them, rather than by the mission value those senior managers bring to the challenging task of understanding and clandestinely confronting America’s adversaries.

Finally, DEI is a thought-and-sentiment-monitoring mechanism, allowing a fraction of the IC’s non-operational and non-analytical workforce to reach into any level of an organization and assess the personnel and operations of that office against DEI’s blurry and ever-changing goals. Combined with the grievance-seeking culture which is always DEI’s fellow traveler, it creates an informant culture which seeks out alleged non-compliance at every level of an organization with a zeal that would impress the early Soviet Union’s counter-intelligence apparatus.

It is almost certainly less career threatening in the modern CIA to dispute findings related to the plans and intentions of America’s key foreign adversaries than it is to show anything less than full support for the DEI apparatus. No doubt or heresy will go unnoticed or unaddressed. It is not unreasonable to assume that, for senior managers, many types of mission failure would probably be more survivable than being assessed as unsupportive of DEI.

The tragedy is that the CIA, and the broader IC, have incredible capabilities, but none of those are enhanced by the dangerous, fringe orthodoxy that is the modern DEI machine. Abolishing that apparatus will improve the only metric that should matter when evaluating an intelligence service: how well it collects and produces foreign intelligence and how effectively it gives America’s enemies pause.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, tracks the share of U.S. households by annual income bracket from 1967 to 2023.

All annual income is in 2023 dollars, adjusted for inflation, but not for cost of living differences.

Data is sourced from the Census Bureau, published 2024.

Americans Are Making More Money Than Ever Before

Incomes for American households have grown quite a bit in the last six decades.

In 1967, nearly one-third of households made less than $35,000 a year (adjusted to 2023 dollars), and in 2023, that’s fallen to one-fifth.

Here’s the share of households per income bracket for every year since 1967. Categories have been combined from the original source and all figures are rounded. As a result percentages may not sum exactly to 100.

Year	Under $35K	$35K–100K	$100K-200K	Over $200K
1967	31.3	54.4	12.7	1.7
1968	29.7	54.4	14.3	1.6
1969	29.1	52.8	16.2	1.9
1970	29.6	52.3	16.2	2
1971	30.2	51.8	16.1	1.9
1972	29.1	50.4	18.0	2.5
1973	28.6	49.4	19.3	2.7
1974	28.9	50.4	18.3	2.4
1975	30.4	50.1	17.2	2.2
1976	29.7	49.7	18.3	2.4
1977	29.8	48.7	18.9	2.6
1978	28.8	48.3	20.0	3.0
1978	28.8	48.3	20.0	3.0
1979	28.4	48.4	20.1	3.1
1980	29.8	48.0	19.4	2.7
1980	29.8	48.0	19.4	2.7
1980	29.8	48.0	19.4	2.6
1981	30.4	47.9	19.1	2.6
1982	30.6	47.6	18.7	3.1
1983	30.4	47.3	19.2	3.2
1984	29.5	46.6	20.4	3.6
1985	29.0	46.4	20.8	3.8
1985	29.0	46.4	20.8	3.8
1986	28.0	45.5	22.0	4.5
1987	27.8	45.1	22.5	4.7
1988	27.2	45.2	22.6	5.0
1989	26.9	44.7	23.1	5.4
1989	26.9	44.7	23.1	5.4
1990	27.1	45.5	22.4	5.1
1991	28.0	45.1	22.0	4.9
1992	28.8	44.2	22.1	4.9
1993	28.7	44.1	21.8	5.4
1994	28.6	43.7	22.0	5.8
1995	27.4	44.0	22.8	5.8
1996	27.2	43.2	23.4	6.3
1997	26.3	43	23.8	6.9
1998	25.1	42.6	24.7	7.7
1999	24.6	41.6	25.5	8.3
2000	24.2	41.8	25.5	8.6
2001	24.9	41.9	24.9	8.4
2002	25.2	37.1	25.1	8.1
2003	25.7	41.0	24.8	8.4
2004	25.6	41.4	24.6	8.4
2005	25.2	41.5	24.6	8.8
2006	24.6	41.3	24.9	9.2
2007	24.6	40.9	25.3	9.1
2008	25.9	40.7	24.6	8.8
2009	26.1	41.4	24.0	8.8
2010	27.1	40.6	23.7	8.6
2011	27.3	41.4	23.0	8.4
2012	27.4	40.8	23.4	8.4
2013	26.8	39.6	23.6	9.8
2014	26.8	39.8	23.7	9.8
2015	25.3	39.0	25.2	10.5
2016	24.2	39.5	24.9	11.5
2017	23.8	38.7	25.4	12.1
2018	23.0	39.2	25.6	12.3
2019	21.0	38.0	26.5	14.6
2020	21.8	38.1	25.8	14.2
2021	22.7	37.1	25.7	14.4
2022	22.7	38.5	26.0	12.9
2023	21.0	38.1	26.5	14.4

Meanwhile, the other end of the spectrum is seeing growth in the bracket size. In 1967, fewer than 2% of American households made more than $200,000 per year. In 2023, that number had risen to 15%.

Of course, there’s an increase in labor to also be accounted for. Six decades ago, only one-third of all U.S. households had all parents working. By 2009, the situation had reversed.

What This Chart Doesn’t Tell Us

Lastly, looking at incomes is only one half of the story. It doesn’t account for how prices of goods and services have changed relative to growing incomes.

Houses for example cost about 3x the median income in 1967, and in 2022 cost nearly 6x the median income.

However, the vast majority of consumer goods are much cheaper now, relative to incomes, due to how manufacturing has moved out to other parts of the world.

Food is also much cheaper, dropping from 15% of household income in 1967, to around 7% in 2022 – the year when record food inflation had pushed prices up.

Naturally, incomes vary quite a lot across the country. Check out Mapped: Median Income by State in 2024 to see by how much.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

We live in a society where a significant chunk of the population feels painfully alone much of the time.  It is an epidemic that has enormous mental, emotional and spiritual implications, and it is one of the clearest signs that we are a society that is coming apart at the seams.  One of the primary reasons why there is so much loneliness in our society is because the institution of the family is in decline.  Today, the proportion of the population that is single and childless is at an all-time high, and the proportion of the population that is married with children is at an all-time low.  How can anyone possibly claim that we are headed for a bright future when we are facing such alarming societal trends?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 40 percent of Americans report feeling lonely at least some of the time…

The latest version of the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey — a broad gauge of the economic and social issues affecting American households — found some not-so-surprising news: Americans are lonely.

The survey conducted between August 20 and September 16 reported that 1 in 8 people (12.6%) was feeling lonely either “always” or “usually,” including nearly a quarter (23.3%) of the younger population (those aged 18 to 29). Since the Household Pulse Survey at the start of the year, slightly more people are now feeling lonely a lot of the time. 40% of people reported feeling lonely at least sometimes.

Those are very troubling numbers.

But of course others that have studied our epidemic of loneliness have come up with similar numbers.

In fact, a report put out by the U.S. Surgeon General concluded that close to half of the U.S. population experiences feelings of loneliness…

Last year, the US Surgeon General released a worrying report about the deep sense of loneliness that many Americans are experiencing. The report, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” found that approximately 50 percent of adults in the country are feeling lonely, and that people of all ages are spending significantly less time with others.

The findings have profound implications for the health of the country. Being lonely or socially isolated puts people at heightened risk for a number of serious illnesses—the report estimates it to be the health equivalent of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day—including depression, cardiovascular disease, and dementia.

Those that feel lonely on a regular basis are far more likely to develop serious illnesses, and they are far more likely to die early.

So this is a crisis that we should be taking very seriously.

One survey actually discovered that the proportion of men that do not have any close friends has increased “fivefold since 1990”…

Who are the loneliest people in America?

American men were said to be in a “friendship recession,” with a survey finding the number of men without any close friends increased fivefold since 1990.

Have you ever wondered why so many older Americans seem so sad much of the time?

Well, now you know.

People are yearning for human connection, and Google search trends prove this…

So it’s no wonder there’s been a rise in running clubs, knitting groups, pickleball, and more, as people search — quite literally — for ways to meet new people. Google searches for terms like “how to meet people” and “where to make friends” are at or near an all time high.

Somewhere along the way, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

And I believe that it starts with the institution of the family.

In 1940, just 7.7 percent of all U.S. households were one person households, but by 2020 that figure had jumped to 27.6 percent…

Over a quarter (27.6%) of all U.S. occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940, according to recently released 2020 Census data.

The share of people living alone increased every decade from 1940 to 2020 (Figure 1). The largest increase happened between 1970 and 1980, when the share increased from 17.6% to 22.7%.

We were not meant to live alone.

But now more Americans than ever are doing just that.  Just look at this insane chart…

Sadly, this decade that trend has continued.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, right now 29 percent of all U.S. households are one person households…

In 2024, there were 38.5 million one-person households, which was 29% of all U.S. households. In 1974, one-person households represented only 19% of all households.

The reason why there are so many one person households now is because almost half of all U.S. adults are not married…

From nationalsinglesday.us, “Did you know that 46.4% of U.S. adults are single according to the U.S. Census Bureau? That’s 117.6 million unmarried Americans – nearly every other adult aged 18 and over. This includes those who are divorced or widowed as well as those who have never married. National Singles Day is observed each year during Unmarried and Single Americans Week.”

More than ever before, Americans are rejecting traditional norms regarding marriage and family.

In fact, the proportion of the population that is single and childless now exceeds the proportion of the population that is married with children.  A chart that Brad Wilcox just posted absolutely blew me away…

The chart above makes it abundantly clear that we are a dying society.

Our birth rate has been under replacement level for a long time because so many Americans don’t want to get married and don’t want to have children.

Sadly, our entire culture has become anti-marriage, anti-family and anti-children to a very large degree.

If we do not reverse the insidious trends that have corrupted our culture, we have no hope of defeating the epidemic of loneliness that we are currently facing.

Humans are meant to love and to be loved, and that is one of the reasons why the traditional family unit is an absolutely vital societal institution.

*  *  *

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.

Bloomberg’s Emily Chang asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an exclusive interview at their estate in Lake Tahoe about a 4,500-square-foot underground structure – considered by some as a ‘doomsday bunker‘ – at his 1,500-acre ranch in Kauai, Hawaii. 

Chang asked: “You do have a bunker there; is there something you know that we don’t?” 

Zuckerberg’s response was priceless because he denied it was a doomsday bunker, calling it a “little shelter … basement.” 

The billionaire said his whole ranch “got blown out of proportion as if it was some kind of doomsday bunker, which is just not true.” 

In late 2023, Wired revealed that Zuckerberg’s bunker was around 4,500 square feet, equipped with a “blast-resistant door” and enough food for the tech bro and friends to survive an apocalypse. 

So, what does Zuckerberg know about future world events coming down the pipe?

Well, read Free Press Jay Solomon’s latest note, “Is World War III Already Here?”

Not everyone is a billionaire who can afford the luxury of a custom bunker. However, Zillow recently listed an affordable option: a bunker in an old missile silo in Missouri with EMP shielding and one in Kansas for under a million dollars. 

Authored by Joshua Mawhorter via The Mises Institute,

Santa Claus is a magical and benevolent figure who is able to produce and distribute gifts to children every Christmas Eve at no cost to the recipients.

But many economists and people in the general public mistake the political state for Santa Claus for failure to recognize the nature of government and one of the most basic rules of economics – a government has no resources of its own and cannot “give” with one hand what has not first been taken by the other.

In a recent Mises lecture, Joseph Salerno elucidated how politicians, many mainstream economists, and the general public operate according to the fallacious “Santa Claus principle” rather than the economic realities of scarcity, opportunity cost, trade-offs, production preceding consumption, and the nature of intervention. Salerno explains,

The central principle of economics is that the means for improving human well-being—what economists call “goods”—are naturally scarce and must be produced before they can be used to satisfy human wants. The scarcity principle also implies that, once produced, goods cannot be bestowed on one person without depriving some other person or persons of their use. In other words, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The state and its friends reject the scarcity principle and uphold its polar opposite, the Santa Claus principle… (emphasis added)

Government, by its very nature, cannot act as Santa Claus. It does not have a magical source of production and distribution of goods, it can only expropriate the prior production of others. All its actions of “production” are really acts of consumption and rearrangement of resources. Also quoted by Dr. Salerno, Mises and Fredric Bastiat, respectively, express the same principle,

…[at] the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes. This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Lord Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending. As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens…

While government has no power to make people more prosperous by interference with business, it certainly does have the power to make them less satisfied by restriction of production. (emphasis added)

Here the public, on the one side, the state on the other, are considered as two distinct entities, the latter intent upon pouring down on the former…a veritable shower of human felicities [like Christmas gifts]…. The fact is the state does not and cannot have one hand only. It has two hands, one to take and the other to give…. Strictly speaking, the state can take and not give…. [because] its hands… always retain a part, and sometimes the whole, of what they touch. But what has never been seen, what will never be seen and cannot even be conceived, is the state giving the public more than it has taken from it…. (emphasis added)

Dr. Salerno, Mises, and Bastiat all expose the often “unseen” costs of government intervention. The government is not and cannot be Santa Claus. Unlike Santa, governments necessarily must coercively extract scarce resources prior to distributing “gifts” to anyone.

Mises used Santa Claus several times as a way to teach economic realities. Politicians, several economists and economic schools of thought (e.g., especially those in the current vogue MMT school), and the general public need to learn that that state is not and cannot be Santa Claus. Mises said that, “No government, whether democratic or dictatorial, can free itself from the sway of the generally accepted ideology.” Thus, a danger in popular government and democracy is “the [widespread proliferation of] doctrines which aim at substituting the Santa Claus conception of government.”

What is more subtle, however, is that many politicians, economists, and laymen somewhat understand literal scarcity and trade-offs, but most do not understand the complex, painstaking development and importance of a capital structure. Thankfully, one does not have to understand the capital structure to benefit from it, but the presumption of the existence and maintenance of a capital structure can lead a society to assume it as a given and decide on policies of large-scale capital consumption which lead to economic destructionism. Says Mises,

The Santa Claus fables of the welfare school [and others] are characterized by their complete failure to grasp the problems of capital. It is precisely this defect that makes it imperative to deny them the appellation welfare economics with which they describe their doctrines. He who does not take into consideration the scarcity of capital goods available is not an economist, but a fabulist. He does not deal with reality but with a fabulous world of plenty. All the effusions of the contemporary welfare school are, like those of the socialist authors, based on the implicit assumption that there is an abundant supply of capital goods. Then, of course, it seems easy to find a remedy for all ills, to give to everybody “according to his needs” and to make everyone perfectly happy.

Mises sensibly realized that the social philosophies justifying interventionism and believing that the state was Santa Claus terminate in distortions of the price and capital structure, waste, and economic regression. Eventually, by assuming the Grinch was really Santa, Christmas is “stolen.” Mises explains the inevitable conclusion of such philosophies,

An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole doctrine of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off. The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.

The Grinch!

No, the state is not Santa Claus. In fact, the state is more akin to the Grinch!

The Grinch hated the Whos down in Whoville and their yearly exuberant celebration of Christmas, thus he hatched a plan to steal from the Whos everything Santa brought, everything pertaining to Christmas, and even their other possessions. Having a change of heart (by it growing three sizes), the Grinch returned the gifts and possessions to the Whos. He was treated as a hero and benefactor, and even invited to participate in their Christmas celebration. We can assume that the Whos did not really believe that the Grinch had furnished them with gifts by returning stolen goods, but rather honored his penitence.

What lessons are we to learn from the Grinch? That a returner of stolen goods is heroic? What if—being tricked by his return of stolen items—the Whos thought the Grinch was awesome, a generous benefactor of gifts at no cost to them?

They would—like the general public and many so-called economists—be duped into believing that the expropriator who had taken their production and possessions, then returned them, was a magical Santa Claus-figure who could magically distribute gifts. At least the Grinch only did this once, felt remorse, returned everything he had taken, did not do it again, did not attempt to deceive the Whos into thinking that he was an independent, magical gift-giver, and did not morally lecture the Whos into believing that all he did was to their benefit.

On the other hand, the state takes regularly, keeps part of what it takes even as it rearranges and “gives,” allows people to think that government provides these “gifts,” and that this is all for the benefit of the recipients.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, visualizes data from recent Consumer Reports surveys on car brand satisfaction and reliability.

Rivian, BMW, and Tesla were the three most satisfying brands in 2024, but far from the most reliable. In terms of reliability, Japanese brands like Subaru, Lexus, and Toyota came out on top.

Data and Key Takeaway

The underlying data behind these rankings is listed in the tables below.

Satisfaction is represented as the share of owners who would buy another car from the same brand, while reliability is based on Consumer Reports’ proprietary survey data.

Note: several brands were left out due to insufficient data. These are: Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Lucid, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Mitsubishi, Polestar, Porsche, Ram.

A key takeaway from this data is that owner satisfaction isn’t necessarily tied to reliability. For example, both EV brands in this survey (Tesla and Rivian) scored very highly in satisfaction, but poorly in reliability.

On the other hand, brands like Acura and Mazda rank highly in reliability, but lower in satisfaction.

There are limitations to this data, of course. Satisfaction is highly subjective and prone to bias (e.g. Rivian is a new brand that caters to a specific demographic), while reliability is a complex metric that can be difficult to properly gauge.

Rivian satisfies, Volkswagen disappoints

Consumer Reports also highlights which brands satisfy owners within specific areas. Rivian ranked the highest in terms of comfort, usability, and ownership costs (which are typically lower for EVs).

Meanwhile, Volkswagen ranked the lowest in terms of driving experience and usability. Audi, another VW group brand, ranked lowest in terms of cabin storage.

It’s interesting to note that Rivian and Volkswagen have recently joined forces to share EV platform technology.

If you enjoyed this graphic, check out Global Car Production by Country on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Bangladesh’s new US-backed ruling arrangement initiated a graft probe into their country’s Russian-built Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) on the basis that former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her relatives allegedly embezzled $5 billion from this $12.65 billion project financed 90% by Russian loans.

Rosatom immediately denied these accusations and claimed that they’re just a means to discredit Russia’s top investment in Bangladesh. Here’s their full statement as reported by TASS:

“Rosatom is committed to a policy of openness and the principle of combating corruption in all its projects and maintains a transparent procurement system. External audits regularly confirm the openness of the business processes of the project. Rosatom State Corporation is ready to defend its interests and reputation in court. We consider false statements in the media as an attempt to discredit the Rooppur NPP project, which is being implemented to solve the country’s energy supply problems and is aimed at improving the well-being of the people of Bangladesh.”

This analysis from over the summer about how “The West Can’t Compete With Russia’s ‘Nuclear Diplomacy’”, which was written in response to the Financial Times’ attack at the time against the RNPP, explains more in detail how Rosatom empowers its partner countries through preferential terms. The latest graft allegations are therefore indeed meant to discredit this project, but there’s more to them that’ll now be touched upon in this analysis.

The new ruling arrangement in Bangladesh seized power with the US’ support by orchestrating a Color Revolution that briefly turned into a spree of urban terrorism before toppling the government. It’s accordingly indebted to its patron and incapable of making any major decisions without its approval. This latest policy of investigating alleged graft connected to the RNPP is merely a ploy for achieving several objectives simultaneously.

These are discrediting Hasina; discrediting Russia; possibly inflicting serious financial damage upon the aforesaid if the new ruling arrangement refuses to pay back most of Bangladesh’s loan on this pretext; discrediting Rosatom; and thus giving the US an unfair edge in its NPP competition with Russia. This faux investigation is already being exploited by Western media to misportray Russia and its state NPP company as corrupt, which works to the benefit of their American and other Western competitors.

The purpose is to create a false precedent that can then be weaponized to scare other countries away from doing business with Rosatom on the basis that doing so would cast aspersions on that government’s commitment to anti-corruption practices. Those that want to build NPPs will then be pressured to consider more expensive Western contracts with worse terms in order to avoid the negative Western coverage that would accompany choosing Rosatom instead.

Any government that still decides to do business with Rosatom over its Western competitors will then have to brace itself for an intense Western information warfare campaign that’ll be lent false credibility by the involvement of Western-financed “NGOs” within their society. They’ll aim to mislead average folks about the government’s integrity by reminding them of the false RNPP precedent to make people think that their leaders are also plotting to siphon off billions from their publicly financed deal with Russia.

A low level of unrest might follow that could then be scaled appropriately depending on the authorities’ response such as if they resort to forceful measures for restoring control in the event that a riot erupts. That’s not to say that a Color Revolution will immediately follow the clinching of any agreement with Rosatom, but just that whichever governments still decide to do business with them will have their reputations impugned through these means and this could then fuel more unrest at a later date.

Bangladesh’s new ruling arrangement shouldn’t go along with their American patrons’ games since the country truly needs the affordable energy that’ll be generated by the RNPP. Throwing this strategic project’s future in jeopardy as a favor for being placed into power is arguably treasonous since it works against their country’s objective national interests for the sake of advancing a foreign one’s. Hopefully they’ll realize the damage that they’re inflicting on Bangladesh and reconsider this politicized probe.

If the last years have shown us anything, it’s that a lot can change, fast.

While many events cannot be foreseen, can others?

Ipsos asked more than 23,700 people across 33 countries about their predictions for the coming year, with a survey on topics ranging from technology to the environment and world security.

This data is based on one survey alone and although it does not focus on additional knowledge of experts and analysts, it does capture a snapshot of sentiments and standpoints in different countries and regions.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, many people around the globe seem to be in agreement over the likelihood of global temperatures set to rise.

Eight in ten respondents said that next year, we can expect the world to warm further still. This belief was most widespread in Indonesia (91 percent), the Philippines (89 percent) and Malaysia (88 percent).

In a similar vein, more than seven in ten (72 percent) of respondents said they expect to see more extreme weather events in the country that they live in than last year.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Meanwhile, many respondents were doubtful over whether the government in their country would introduce more demanding targets to reduce carbon emissions more quickly, with only 52 percent of respondents saying it was likely authorities would act in such a way.

Respondents in China were the most optimistic about this prospect (84 percent).

Views on whether the conflicts currently raging in the Middle East and Ukraine will come to an end in 2025 were pessimistic. Only around two in ten people thought it would be the case in the Middle East. In Ukraine, closer to three in ten thought the same, but this still marks a four percentage point drop on predictions from the same time one year ago. Just one in three people worldwide thought that people in their country would become more tolerant of one another, marking a fall of two percentage points since last year.

In terms of the online world, nearly two thirds of respondents said that they expect AI will replace jobs in their country in 2025.

At the same time, 43 percent agreed that AI will lead to many new jobs being created in their country. When asked whether respondents thought that many more people will live in virtual worlds next year, 59 percent of respondents agreed it likely would be the case – up from 56 percent in 2022.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

In the weeks before the 2016 Trump Electoral College victory, Trump was polling between 35 and 40 percent.

He would average only about 41 percent approval over his tumultuous four-year tenure.

No one knows what lies ahead over the next four years. But for now, Trump already polls at well over 50 percent approval.

Trump’s inauguration in a few weeks likely will not resemble his 2016 ceremony.

In the 2016-7 transition, Democratic-affiliated interests ran commercials urging electors to become “faithless” and thus illegally reject their states’ popular votes and instead elect the loser, Hillary Clinton.

Massive demonstrations met Trump on Inauguration Day.

In less than four months after assuming the presidency, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate the hoax of Russian collusion.

That wasted 22-month, $40 million investigation found no collusion but did derail the first two Trump years.

What followed the collusion ruse was a consistent effort to undermine the Trump presidency—two subsequent impeachments, the laptop “disinformation” hoax, the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, and news suppression of any mention of the Chinese lab origin of the virus or questioning the closing of schools.

In the Trump administration’s last summer of 2020, 120 days of riot, arson, looting, assault, and murder followed, with the denouement of the January 6 turmoil.

In contrast, during the 2024-2025 transition, Trump has all but assumed the presidency. Over 100 foreign leaders have elbowed each other to be invited to Mar-a-Lago or to phone in their congratulations to the newly elected Trump.

Remember that in 2016 the left screamed “Logan Act” if a Trump transition appointee even talked with foreign officials.

So why is newly elected Trump a veritable cultural hero in 2024 in a fashion unimaginable eight years ago when the media had rendered him a near demon?

One, Trump is now seen as a welcome relief.

A departing and unpopular Joe Biden will leave with about a 36 percent approval rating.

The prior Biden years are now seen as abnormal, if not disastrous.

The left’s cultural revolution championed fringe policies never quite seen before: destroying the border, welcoming in 12 million illegal aliens, nihilist critical race and legal theories, institutionalizing a third sex, and mandating woke/DEI quotas and indoctrination sessions.

Yet Biden had inherited from Trump a secure border, an economy rebounding after the COVID quarantines, 1.23 percent inflation, no wars abroad, and cheap energy.

Four years later, the outgoing Biden administration is widely unpopular. Almost every one of its policies polls below 50 percent.

In response, Trump promises not just to restore his first-term success but to expand it.

Two, Trump personally remains transparent, upbeat, and energetic—eager to meet with anyone, anytime, anywhere, to talk about anything.

His energy offers a sharp contrast with the era of the non-compos-mentis Biden. The change is welcomed by an electorate exhausted by past presidential stumbling, wandering, incoherence, mind freezes, and angry, “get-off-my-grass” aged fragility.

Three, Trump is grudgingly admired, now even by some of his enemies who once sought but failed to destroy him.

He endured two impeachments, five civil and criminal court indictments, incessant lawfare, a 95% negative media, attempts to remove him from states’ ballots, and two assassination attempts.

Yet all these unprecedented hostile efforts to end Trump may only have made him stronger—and more empathetic when seen as a target of increasingly fanatical enemies.

Four, Trump has expanded his MAGA base and permanently branded it as an ecumenical movement that welcomes shared class interests rather than fixates on the tired old tribal racial and ethnic chauvinism.

Trump also brought in disaffected Democrats, independents, and minorities in a way the Democrats could not with the evaporating and bitter Never Trump dead-enders.

Trump’s veritable campaign menagerie of RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Kid Rock made it impossible for the left to demonize MAGA Republicans as right-wing aristocrats, warmongers, or laissez-faire capitalists.

Fifth, the endorsements of the Biden-Harris legacy media, calcified Hollywood endorsers, blowhard university faculties, and tech barons proved overrated.

It was trumped by more popular and dynamic internet influencers, podcasters, bloggers, and maverick entrepreneurs.

Sixth and finally, Trump himself proved more experienced and reflective than in 2016. His team too was more disciplined and street smart, led by savvy chief of staff Susan Wiles.

2024 saw truly pivotal moments of Trump as everyman—posing for a mug shot after being railroaded by a weaponized lawfare indictment, serving McDonald’s drive-through customers, riding in a garbage truck cab, and raising his fist and yelling “fight, fight, fight”—after having his head near blown off by a would-be assassin.

Add all of these once unimaginables up, and the people trusted more—and liked better—the Trump reboot than grouchy Joe Biden or inane, inauthentic Kamala Harris and their shared extremist agendas.

Climate realist Tony Heller took to X to highlight the climate misinformation and disinformation campaigns waged by far-left corporate media on the global public.

Heller referenced a 2007 BBC News article titled “Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’,” which warned readers of the supposed threat that “latest modeling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.”

The BBC article’s baseless claim was designed to instill climate fears across the public to ram through a radical de-growth climate agenda across the Western world. 

Heller then cited NOAA Sea Ice Extent data of the Arctic from Sept. 16, 2012, and Sept. 7, 2024, and found:

“This year’s minimum Arctic sea ice extent was 26% larger than 2012. @BBCNews said the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.” 

This year’s minimum Arctic sea ice extent was 26% larger than 2012. @BBCNews said the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.https://t.co/HphrKQEGqehttps://t.co/0lYsJCyfm2https://t.co/NWyPy8DujC pic.twitter.com/q6uLF0cWyy

— Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) December 26, 2024

2012 NOAA Sea Ice Extent data

2024 NOAA Sea Ice Extent data

“They keep this info out of the news because it doesn’t serve the narrative…,” one X user commented.