The distrust in the dollar is collapsing - The Bretton Whoops

The world didn't wake up one morning and decide to distrust the dollar. It was a process. Gradually, then suddenly, as these things tend to go. It started with Venezuela. In 2019, Caracas asked the Bank of England to return its own gold - 31 tonnes, sitting in a vault in London, belonging to the Venezuelan central bank. The Bank of England said no. The justification was creative: London had decided to recognise a man who had never won an election as Venezuela's "legitimate" president, so it couldn't very well hand $2 billion in gold to the actual government. Problem solved. Maduro was a dictator, everyone agreed he was terrible, and so the consensus was essentially: who cares. Everyone filed it under "rogue state gets what it deserves" and moved on.

'Boots on the ground' would turn Iran into Iraq 'on steroids'

"I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground," Donald Trump told the New York Post this week. Referring to Iran, he added that while he probably doesn't need them, he would deploy ground troops "if necessary." With those words, the administration cracked open a door most American strategists hoped was bolted shut by half a century of hard lessons. Modern American military history is a graveyard of campaigns that began with overwhelming tactical success and ended in strategic failure. Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign, has already delivered what hawks in Washington have wanted for decades: the decapitation of Iran's top leadership. The strikes that killed Ali Khamenei were meant to trigger a rapid collapse of the Islamic Republic. Early evidence points to something messier — and more dangerous.

The spell of 'woke' is broke: Let's keep it that way

Trump's anti-DEI push may mark the start of a deeper reckoning: not just with wokeness, but with the moral and political foundations of the civil rights regime that enabled it. It is too early to know with any precision what the long-term effects of the Trump administration's anti-DEI efforts will be. We might take our bearings on that score by considering the fate of essays written by prominent law professors in the 1950s and 1960s touting this or that discrete step in the unfolding of the civil rights revolution — the latest Supreme Court decision, and so on — as if each were an all-or-nothing earth-shattering decision. What we can now say with certainty is that what the Trump administration has done on the DEI front represents the beginning of a general reorientation of our politics away from wokeness. One need only survey what prominent leaders of the Left are saying about the political price the Democratic Party has paid on that score. What they are saying indicates a large...

U.S. offers India a 30-day waiver for buying Russian oil as Iran war deepens energy supply worries

After slapping 25% "penalty" tariffs on India for buying Russian crude — revoked last month — the U.S. on Thursday issued a 30-day waiver to New Delhi for purchasing crude from Moscow as the Iran war upends global supplies. The West Texas Intermediate oil surged 8.51%, or $6.35, to close at $81.01 per barrel on Thursday in the biggest single day gain since May 2020. Global benchmark Brent rose 4.93%, or $4.01, to settle at $85.41 per barrel. The waiver on purchasing Russian oil will help ease supply worries globally, as India is the world's fourth biggest refiner and and fifth largest exporter of petroleum products. Brent and WTI crude fell over 1% on Friday, and were last trading at $84.42 and $79.92 per barrel, respectively. New Delhi, also the world's third largest oil importer, had been replacing Russian oil purchases with supply from Middle East, experts said, but with the conflict affecting energy supplies from the Gulf countries, it is starting to shore up energy from...

CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say

The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN. The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said. Comment: So in the end, Trump acts no differently than all the previous presidents since Kennedy was assassinated. Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq's Kurdistan region. Several of the groups have released public statements since the beginning of the war hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday that it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones. The CIA support for Iranian Kurdish groups began several months before the war, one of the sources and a senior...

Clinton depositions: Bill pervs out over Epstein memories, Hillary goes berserk, and they both shamelessly lie

Top viral moments from the Clinton depositions The House Oversight Committee dropped more than nine hours of raw video from Bill and Hillary Clinton's closed-door Epstein depositions on Monday, where the pair were questioned over their longstanding relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Here are a few of the most memorable moments: 1. Bill Clinton Smirks While Flipping Through Epstein Photos; The #1 clip on the entire internet: Bill casually thumbs through old pictures with Jeffrey Epstein, nodding and smiling - until his lawyer lunges in and yanks them away.

Supreme Court blocks California restrictions on schools notifying parents about students' transgender status

The Supreme Court on Monday barred California from enforcing state rules that restrict when schools can notify parents about students who come out as transgender and requires teachers to use children's preferred pronouns. The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, allowed a federal judge's ruling in favor of parents who oppose the policy on religious grounds to go into effect. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had put the judge's decision on hold pending further litigation. The court's ruling focused on the parents' claim that their rights under the free exercise clause of the Constitution's First Amendment were violated. The court also said they have valid parental rights claims under the Constitution's 14th Amendment. The court did not grant a similar request made by teachers who object to the policy.

Iran signals 'prolonged war' as US strikes go deeper

Tanker hit by "large explosion" off Kuwait, leaking oil Here are some of the most critical developments unfolding in the US-Iran conflict: A "large explosion" took place on a tanker 30 nautical miles south east off Mubarak Al Kebeer, on the coast of Kuwait. The tanker, which was at anchor in the Khor al-Zubair lightering zone - a critical area for loading Iraqi heavy fuel oil exports - began taking on water following the blast, and is leaking oil into the Gulf, which could have a disastrous environmental impact. Iraqi Kurdistan govt statement: Not a single Iraqi Kurd has crossed the border. This is patently false. The U.S. Senate rejected a War Powers resolution that sought to force President Trump to end or seek congressional approval for military strikes on Iran, allowing the administration to continue operations without the restriction: CBS Iran says it hit US warship with missiles 600km away in Northern Indian Ocean using Ghadr 380 Talayieh missiles (1000+ range, can change...

On the ground in Tehran: Death and destruction inflicted by US-Israeli strikes

Hundreds have been killed as the city is battered by wave after wave of attack, according to RT's bureau chief Hami Hamedi The city of Tehran has been subjected to heavy aerial bombardment by US and Israeli forces, with the strikes targeting multiple government and public sites across the Iranian capital, according to RT's Tehran bureau chief, Hami Hamedi. Hamedi visited a police headquarters on a busy route running through the heart of the city that was bombed on Tuesday. The death toll from the attack remains unclear. Footage from the scene shows the police station heavily damaged, with its upper floors caved in. Rescuers are still digging through the rubble at the site, with heavy machinery deployed to aid them.

Sinkhole swallows municipal cleaning vehicle in northwestern Greece

A sudden road collapse outside a local high school in Ioannina swallowed a city cleaning truck, but authorities report no injuries as the cause of the sinkhole remains under investigation A dramatic incident occurred early Wednesday morning in Ioannina, Greece, when a section of the road outside a high school on Velissariou Street, Ioannina collapsed, swallowing a municipal cleaning vehicle. Local media report that, miraculously, no one was injured in the event. Emergency services arrived quickly to assess the scene and secure the area. The cause of the sinkhole remains unknown, and authorities are investigating potential factors behind the sudden collapse of the roadway. Traffic in the surrounding area has been temporarily disrupted as crews work to ensure public safety. City officials have urged residents to remain cautious and avoid the immediate vicinity until further notice, while engineers examine the structural integrity of nearby roads.

'The threat is a lie': Meet Israel's lone anti-war voice in parliament

Ofer Cassif tells RT the war is driven by personal and political agendas, not real threats. As Israel and the United States press ahead with their sweeping military campaign against Iran, political consensus in Jerusalem appears nearly absolute. In Israel, the war has drawn support across much of the political spectrum. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, long a fierce critic of Netanyahu, has embarked on a series of international interviews defending the campaign. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, another political rival, described the offensive as an effort to weaken "the machinery of oppression" in Iran so that its people might later decide their own future. But inside the 120-seat Knesset, one lawmaker is challenging the official narrative, arguing the war is driven less by security than by political calculation. Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the predominantly Arab Hadash party, has emerged as one of the very few lawmakers openly opposing the war. In an interview with...

America's degraded schools

Many students are chronically absent or have dropped out of school. Nat Malkus, a senior fellow in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, oversees the Return to Learn Tracker, which monitors chronic absenteeism in U.S. schools. His latest report, released in early February, includes data from 39 states and Washington, D.C. He states that after reaching a high of 29 percent in the 2021-22 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate — missing 10 percent or more of school days in an academic year — fell by 2.6 percentage points the following school year and by 2.2 percentage points the following school year. This progress was encouraging, but it stalled last school year, with rates falling by just over one percentage point on average. This leaves the average chronic absenteeism rate for most of the country at 23 percent, roughly 50 percent higher than the pre-pandemic baseline. This chronic absence problem is especially egregious in our large urban areas. In Los...

Desperate Euro-elites refuse to accept their strategic defeat

Four years on, the Special Military Operation (SMO) reads like Russia, slowly but surely, fulfilling its objectives. The key question remains: when and under what terms Russia will end the SMO. It may not be in 2026. Especially because irrationality permeates the Euro-elites of the disjointed, collective West. They are adamant to extract some sort of "victory" out of the jaws of humiliating strategic defeat. Cue to the Petit Roi in Paris and his faceless British sidekick in London aiming to patch up a few nuclear warheads to hand over to Kiev, then to be unleashed by British missiles against targets inside the Russian Federation. That's the result of an SVR (Russian Foreign Intel) investigation. Dimitri Medvedev, the number two of the Russian government, in trademark unplugged mode, noted: "This "is not about the destruction of the NPT and other things in international law. This is a direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a warring country. "Russia will have to use any, including...

Modern warfare sees first drone strike on a commercial data center

We told readers one month ago that, while trillions of dollars are being allocated to the global data center buildout, virtually every Wall Street analyst remains fixated on financing, chip stacks, power, land, water, and other obvious mainstream inputs. However, we identified one overlooked emerging threat they missed: the risk of kamikaze drone attacks. By Sunday morning, that risk was realized, as our note pointed out that Amazon's cloud unit, AWS, experienced degraded service in the United Arab Emirates due to a "localized power issue. Now, a Reuters report provides more color on what exactly happened after an AWS data center in the UAE had to shut down operations, in what appears to be the first known instance of a commercial data center being physically targeted in a conflict.

US House of Representatives resoundingly votes against releasing files on sexual misconduct of members of Congress

The continued fallout from the Epstein Files cover-up has apparently done little to imbue Congress with any sense of shame. The legislative branch continued to show how the upper echelon of the U.S. government is more concerned with protecting sexual predators than providing Americans with a modicum of transparency after the House of Representatives voted to block a resolution that would have forced the release of sexual harassment claims made against lawmakers dating back decades. The resolution brought to a vote by Republican South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace called for the public disclosure of all reports on file with the House Ethics Committee on investigations into members of Congress over allegations of sexual harassment or improper sexual relationships with staff members. The House cunningly maneuvered around advancing the resolution, choosing instead to take the Machiavellian tactic of passing a motion to refer it to the House Ethics Committee in an emphatic 357-65...

GOP voters' lukewarm support for Iran strikes significantly lower than past conflicts

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the resumption of attacks on Iran signals low support for the campaign. A Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday revealed that the joint U.S.-Israeli regime-change strikes are unpopular with most Americans. While Republicans are apparently more supportive of the military campaign than their counterparts, the new poll found that such support is largely conditional and far less than for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. The new polling is consistent with surveys conducted last month, which indicated that Americans were not particularly keen on the prospect of a new series of U.S. military strikes against Iran. For instance, an SSRS/University of Maryland poll, conducted from Feb. 5 to Feb. 9, found that 21% of respondents favored an attack, 49% were opposed, and 30% were unsure. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 28% of respondents supported and 48% opposed the U.S. taking military action in Iran. Despite strong public headwinds, the U.S....

Why cursive handwriting is making a big comeback

Many people of a certain age remember practicing loops and waves, moving our small hands clutching pencils across pages with light blue dotted and solid lines. But in many schools, that elementary school rite of passage went away as kids turned to computers and keyboards. A growing number of states, though, are requiring schools to start teaching cursive writing to students once again. New Jersey and Pennsylvania each enacted legislation in 2026 requiring schools to teach kids to read and write the way their grandparents did. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the legislation on Feb. 11; in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the mandate into law before leaving office in January. According to Education Week, more than half of U.S. states now require or strongly encourage schools to teach students to read and write in cursive - compared with just 14 states just a decade ago. So what's behind this writing renaissance?

Tornado kills 2 in Oklahoma as tornado threat expands and shifts east

A mother and daughter were killed Thursday night in western Oklahoma when their vehicle was struck by a tornado at the start of a two-day outbreak of severe storms that's underway in the Plains and Midwest. The two were traveling near State Highway 60 and 243 road west of Fairview, Oklahoma, when they were hit by the tornado, Major County Sheriff Tony Robinson told CNN. A tornado warning was in effect for part of Major County between 8 and 9 p.m. CT. The storms also blew over a semi-trailer in the county, which is about 80 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, according to a report from the National Weather Service. Thursday night's storms spawned a total of seven tornado reports from the Texas Panhandle to south-central Kansas. Hail the size of golf balls or larger also pelted the region. In Grant County, Oklahoma, a reported tornado downed trees, power lines and damaged structures, according to reports from the weather service.

The $300,000 question nobody in Washington can answer

LNG shipping rates have gone from $40,000 to $300,000 per day — a 650% vertical climb in less than a week — and the men who ordered the strikes that caused this are still strutting around the Oval Office talking about "strength." That is not strength. That is the economics of catastrophe unfolding in real time, and it will reach every kitchen table from Tokyo to Turin before anyone in the beltway finishes reading the intelligence brief they probably won't bother to read anyway. The Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day transit, representing north of 20% of global seaborne oil trade — has effectively ceased to function as a commercial corridor, and what's doing the closing is less about Iranian missiles, and more the insurance market, the invisible hand of capital that everyone in Washington claims to worship suddenly delivering its honest verdict on Operation Epstein Epic Fury. Major commercial operators, oil companies and insurers have...

Israel planned this war on Iran for 40 years. Everything else is a smoke screen

The embers of resistance - in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen - have not been snuffed out. With the attack on Iran, they are being fanned into a fire. It is near impossible to make sense - at least from the justifications on offer - of what US President Donald Trump really hopes to achieve with his and Israel's blatantly illegal war of aggression on Iran. Is it to destroy an Iranian nuclear weapons programme for which there has never been any tangible evidence, and which Trump claimed just a few months ago to have "completely and totally obliterated" in an earlier lawbreaking attack? Or is it intended to force Tehran back to negotiations on its nuclear energy enrichment programme that were brought prematurely to an end when the US launched its unprovoked attack - talks, we should note, that were made necessary because in 2018, during his first term, Trump tore up the original deal with Iran? Or is the war supposed to browbeat Iran into greater flexibility, even though Trump blew...