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Are Mood Disorders Actually Metabolic Diseases Rooted in Insulin Resistance?

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insulin resistance and mental health

Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glance

  • Bipolar disorder and depression affect tens of millions globally, long treated as strictly brain-based illnesses, yet both consistently show high rates of insulin resistance and metabolic disturbances
  • A 2025 Nature Neuroscience study found that pancreatic insulin release and hippocampal activity are linked through a circadian feedback loop. This suggests bipolar mood shifts arise from disrupted metabolism, not brain chemistry alone
  • Earlier research in 2022 showed lithium stabilizes mood partly by restoring insulin signaling, while a clinical trial found metformin improved both insulin sensitivity and psychiatric symptoms in treatment-resistant bipolar depression patients
  • Insulin resistance is extremely widespread, with around 40% of Americans affected, driven by refined sugars, seed oils, stress, sleep loss, and environmental exposures that disrupt the body’s natural energy regulation
  • Supporting insulin sensitivity involves stepwise changes, replacing damaged fats and ultraprocessed foods, introducing gut-friendly carbs and fibers gradually, managing stress, improving sleep, and staying active to stabilize both metabolic and mental health

Bipolar disorder and depression affect millions of people worldwide. Estimates suggest that more than 37 million people live with bipolar disorder,1 and close to 4% of the global population experiences major depression.2 These conditions are almost always described as brain-based, centered on chemical imbalances, circuitry disruptions, or genetic vulnerabilities, and that view has shaped their treatment for decades.3

Another factor that deserves attention is how often these same conditions are accompanied by metabolic disturbances, particularly insulin resistance. The consistent overlap makes it clear that your mental health and your metabolic health are deeply connected, bound together in ways that standard treatment models have rarely recognized.

Researchers have begun to investigate this connection in greater depth.4 Their work suggests that disturbances in insulin signaling are one of the hidden drivers behind the mood instability seen in bipolar disorder and depression, opening a broader understanding of how disrupted energy regulation manifests as both metabolic disease and psychiatric illness.5

What Is the Role of Insulin?

Insulin is one of the body’s most important signaling hormones. Its primary job is to help your cells take in glucose, which is the main fuel that keeps them alive and functioning. Without insulin, glucose stays in your blood instead of moving into your tissues, and your cells are left without the energy they need to work properly.6,7

• Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas — Once released, it travels through your bloodstream and attaches to receptors on the surface of your cells. This connection signals the cells to open specialized channels so glucose can flow inside and fuel the chemical reactions that sustain life. When this process runs smoothly, every organ in your body has access to the energy it requires.

• After a meal, this system springs into action — As blood sugar rises from the carbohydrates you eat, your pancreas quickly senses the change and responds by releasing insulin. The hormone acts almost immediately, moving glucose out of the blood and into your cells, preventing sugar levels from climbing too high. This not only protects you from dangerous spikes in blood sugar but also ensures that your cells have a constant stream of energy to draw upon.

• Insulin plays a stabilizing role in your body’s overall energy — Although insulin’s work happens on a microscopic level, the impact is enormous. From the way your brain processes thoughts to the way your muscles contract during movement, every action depends on insulin’s ability to keep energy flowing.

• Insulin also affects how your body stores and manages that energy — It signals when to store glucose in your liver and muscles as glycogen, a form of backup fuel you can draw on later when you are active or between meals. It influences how much fat is stored, how muscle tissue is preserved, and even how hungry or full you feel.

By integrating these signals, insulin makes sure that your energy needs are met not just in the moment but in the hours and days that follow. Its goal is always the same — to match the supply of fuel with the demands of your cells, so your body and brain function without interruption.

Despite the precision of this system, insulin’s balance can be disrupted. The effect of this breakdown does not stop at your muscles or liver. It extends to your brain, where neurons also depend on insulin to regulate energy use.

How Insulin Signaling Links the Pancreas to Mood Shifts

Research published in Nature Neuroscience examined how pancreatic function may influence mood regulation in bipolar disorder. The researchers began with pancreatic islets derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (adult cells reprogrammed to develop into many different cell types) taken from individuals with bipolar disorder. These cells showed reduced insulin secretion, linked to abnormally high expression of the gene RORβ, already recognized as a genetic risk factor for the condition.8

• Modeling RORβ effects in mice — To test how this genetic change influences behavior, researchers engineered mice with RORβ overexpressed specifically in pancreatic β cells. During the light phase, the animals showed depression-like behaviors, while during the dark phase, which is normally their active period, they exhibited mania-like behaviors. This alternating rhythm mirrored the mood swings of bipolar disorder.

• Suppressed insulin tied to hippocampal hyperactivity — In the light phase, RORβ overexpression suppressed insulin release from pancreatic islets. This was accompanied by increased hippocampal activity. Since the hippocampus regulates mood, memory, and stress responses, the findings revealed that reduced pancreatic insulin coincided with abnormal hyperactivity in mood-related brain circuits.

• Carryover effects into the dark phase — The hippocampal hyperactivity seen during the light phase influenced pancreatic function later in the cycle. By the dark phase, insulin release rebounded to higher-than-normal levels, hippocampal activity dropped, and the mice shifted into mania-like behavior. The study showed how disruptions in one part of the cycle set the stage for opposite changes in the next.

• Discovery of a circadian feedback loop — Researchers identified a feedback circuit connecting pancreatic insulin release with hippocampal neuronal activity. Insulin influenced how the hippocampus functioned, and hippocampal activity fed back to alter pancreatic insulin secretion. This loop was governed by circadian rhythms, meaning that time-of-day changes were central to the observed mood fluctuations.

The findings suggest that the alternating depressive lows and manic highs of bipolar disorder stem from a dysregulated pancreas-hippocampus circuit. Metabolic and mood symptoms represent two sides of the same biological process, linked through circadian feedback.

• Broader relevance to other conditions — Although focused on bipolar disorder, the results also apply to conditions where metabolic dysfunction and mood instability appear together, including major depression and schizophrenia. Because RORβ also regulates circadian timing, the work highlights the therapeutic potential of strategies that align with daily rhythms, such as medication scheduling, light therapy, or dietary timing.

The study reframes bipolar disorder as more than a disorder confined to the brain. By linking a genetic risk factor to disrupted insulin release in the pancreas and to circadian shifts in hippocampal activity, it positions metabolism at the very core of conditions that have long been treated as if they were separate from it.

Earlier Evidence Linking Insulin to Bipolar Disorder

In 2022, researchers began framing bipolar disorder through the lens of metabolism, showing how disrupted insulin signaling might underlie the instability of mood. Two key studies that year pointed to the same conclusion — correcting insulin resistance can restore stability in a condition long defined by treatment resistance.9,10

• A perspective placed insulin resistance at the center of bipolar pathology — A Translational Psychiatry perspective argued that lithium’s therapeutic power could be explained not only by its influence on neurotransmission but also by its ability to restore insulin signaling inside the brain.

Lithium acts on the PI3K/Akt pathway and its downstream target glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK3), which are both central to insulin’s role in regulating neuronal energy use. By modulating these pathways, lithium improves glucose uptake in neurons, ensuring they have the energy needed for stable function. This reframed bipolar disorder as a problem of energy dysregulation, not just neurotransmitter imbalance.11

• A proof-of-concept trial tested the metabolic model in patients — That same year, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Dalhousie University conducted a clinical trial with 45 middle-aged patients suffering from treatment-resistant bipolar depression.

On average, participants had been ill for more than 25 years, failed nearly a dozen psychiatric medications, and lived with unremitting symptoms. They were randomized to receive either metformin, a common insulin-sensitizing drug, or a placebo, while continuing their usual psychiatric care.12

• Metformin improved both insulin sensitivity and psychiatric symptoms — Within weeks, patients receiving metformin began to improve. By 14 weeks, half had regained insulin sensitivity, and this biological change coincided with sharp reductions in depression and anxiety.

Improvements persisted for up to 26 weeks, marking a dramatic turnaround for individuals who had seen little relief in decades.

[…]

Both of these studies showed that bipolar disorder is deeply tied to impaired insulin signaling, whether in neurons unable to efficiently use glucose or in systemic resistance blunting insulin’s effects throughout the body. Correcting these disturbances stabilized mood where traditional psychiatric drugs had failed.

Why Is Insulin Resistance So Alarmingly Common?

In the United States, around 40% of people are insulin-resistant.14 The reason it is so widespread has much to do with the way you eat, live, and interact with your environment.

• The type of sugar you consume plays an important role — When you eat a piece of whole fruit, the natural sugars are packaged with fiber, vitamins, and minerals that slow absorption and ease the demand on your pancreas. But when you drink a soda or eat candy loaded with refined sugar, there are no such buffers.

Glucose floods into your bloodstream, your blood sugar rises rapidly, and your pancreas responds by releasing large amounts of insulin. When this happens repeatedly, day after day, your cells begin to dull their response to insulin, and resistance takes hold.

• The kinds of fats you eat also matter — Seed oils such as soybean and corn oil have become a staple in modern processed foods. These oils are highly unstable, breaking down easily into harmful byproducts, especially when heated.

Over time, these byproducts damage your cells and interfere with how they respond to insulin. They also change the very makeup of your cell membranes, which disrupts the function of insulin receptors and makes it even harder for your cells to use glucose effectively.

• Beyond diet, environmental exposures add to the problem — Certain plastics release chemicals that act as endocrine disruptors, impairing the way your hormones work. Constant exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from electronic devices has also been shown to influence cellular stress responses. These hidden factors layer onto an already heavy metabolic load, making it even more difficult for your body to keep insulin signaling on track.

• Lifestyle patterns further push the balance in the wrong direction — Chronic stress keeps cortisol levels elevated, and cortisol directly reduces your cells’ sensitivity to insulin. Poor sleep disrupts the hormones that regulate hunger and blood sugar, making you more likely to crave sugary or starchy foods while also leaving your body less able to handle them.

Physical inactivity exacerbates these problems. When your muscles are not regularly contracting and using glucose for fuel, the sugar remains in your bloodstream, and your pancreas is forced to release more insulin to try to keep up.

• All of these factors overlap in ways that strain your metabolism — They create an environment where insulin is constantly working harder to move glucose into your cells, while your cells are responding less and less. Over time, the result is a system that can no longer keep up, leaving you vulnerable to a cascade of health problems that begin with impaired energy regulation.

Using HOMA-IR to Spot Insulin Resistance Early

One of the most straightforward ways to gauge how well your body responds to insulin is through a test called HOMA-IR, short for Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance.

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/07/17/insulin-resistance-and-mental-health.aspx

 

Manufacturing the Enemy: Operation Puss in Boots and Israel’s Long History of Arming Its Own Justifications

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Manufacturing the Enemy: Operation Puss in Boots and Israel’s Long History of Arming Its Own Justifications

Cognipresent

July 19, 2026

In July 2026, Haaretz published one of the most extraordinary investigations in the history of Israeli national security journalism. Drawing on interviews with more than thirty senior sources across the political leadership, the defense establishment, and foreign governments, the paper reconstructed the anatomy of “Operation Puss in Boots”—Israel’s failed attempt, executed in early 2026, to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and install a handpicked successor at its head.

The details read like satire. The successor Israel selected was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—the former Iranian president, someone they labeled a Holocaust denier, and the man who spent nearly a decade serving as the global face of eliminationist rhetoric against Israel. The ground force was to be roughly 16,000 Kurdish militiamen armed with weapons captured from Hezbollah, invading a country of 90 million under Israeli air cover. The intellectual inspiration was the collapse of Bashar Assad’s Syria—a comparison Israel’s own intelligence officers found so detached from reality that one likened it to trying to demolish a building with a pen.

And the decision to proceed was made, in the end, by one man. Benjamin Netanyahu never brought the plan to a formal vote in any statutory body. He did not brief the Knesset’s intelligence subcommittee. He overrode the written assessments of Military Intelligence, ignored the withdrawal of his own national security adviser—who dismissed the scheme as “science fiction”—and pressed forward even after his chief of staff demanded a halt three days before H-hour, upon discovering that the entire plan hinged on assassinating Ali Khamenei. The Americans were blunter still: the secretary of state reportedly called the plan “bullshit,” and the CIA director laughed it off as a “farce.”

The war happened anyway. Khamenei was killed. Ahmadinejad’s guards were bombed to free him from house arrest. And then—nothing. The Kurds never crossed the border. The minorities never revolted. The bazaar never rose on cue. The Mossad director quietly stopped attending situation assessments, and the grand design evaporated, leaving behind a decapitated but surviving regime, a victory narrative for Tehran, and a former Mossad chief’s verdict that anyone claiming credit for regime collapse “simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

It would be a mistake to read this episode as an aberration—a one-off fever dream born of post-October 7 hubris. It is better understood as the most ambitious expression yet of a pattern that has defined Israeli strategy for half a century: the cultivation, funding, and empowerment of the most extreme available actors in the region, followed by the invocation of those same actors as the existential threats that justify perpetual military action.

The Pattern: Build the Monster, Then Fight It

Hamas: The Openly Acknowledged Case

The clearest and best-documented instance is Hamas itself. In the late 1970s and 1980s, when the secular-nationalist PLO was Israel’s principal adversary, the Israeli military administration in Gaza took a permissive—at times actively supportive—posture toward the Islamist movement that would become Hamas. In 1979, Israel granted official registration to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Mujama al-Islamiya, the charitable and religious network from which Hamas emerged in 1987. Israeli officials of the era have said so plainly. Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, the Israeli military governor of Gaza in the early 1980s, acknowledged helping finance the Islamist movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the communists. Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official in Gaza, put it more bluntly years later: Hamas, to his great regret, was Israel’s creation.

The logic was divide and rule: an Islamist rival would fracture Palestinian nationalism and discredit the demand for statehood. The logic persisted long after Hamas turned its guns on Israel. In 2019, Netanyahu was reported to have told a meeting of Likud lawmakers that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Hamas—because strengthening Hamas in Gaza while weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank kept the Palestinians divided and made a unified negotiating partner impossible. For years, suitcases of Qatari cash flowed into Gaza with Israeli approval and facilitation. The policy was not a secret; it was a strategy. Hamas’s rule in Gaza served as the standing proof that “there is no partner”—until October 7, 2023, when the monster Israel had helped incubate and then deliberately propped up provided the justification for the most destructive war in the region’s modern history.

The Haaretz investigation itself notes this history in passing, observing that Israeli efforts to weaken the Palestinian Authority helped pave the way for Hamas’s rise as a military force. What it describes next completes the circle: during the Gaza war, Israel armed and backed a new militia under Yasser Abu Shabab—a figure widely reported to have led a criminal gang involved in looting aid convoys—as its chosen instrument against Hamas. He died of wounds from clashes with rival militiamen in December 2025. The instinct, even amid the wreckage of the last proxy experiment, was to reach for another armed extreme.

Lebanon: The Original Template

Before Gaza, there was Lebanon. In 1982, Israel invaded with the explicit aim of installing a client president—Bachir Gemayel, leader of the Phalange, a Maronite militia with a well-documented record of sectarian massacre. Gemayel was elected under Israeli guns and assassinated within weeks; his Phalangist followers, admitted by the IDF into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, carried out one of the most infamous massacres of the twentieth century while Israeli forces ringed the perimeter. Israel then spent eighteen years sustaining the South Lebanon Army, a proxy militia that ran the notorious Khiam prison, before its overnight collapse in 2000. And it was the 1982 invasion itself—undertaken to destroy the PLO—that created the conditions for the birth of Hezbollah, the enemy that would define Israel’s northern front for the next four decades.

The Haaretz sources understood this genealogy perfectly well. Military Intelligence, searching for a single successful precedent of externally installed regime change in the region, came up empty. Lebanon was the cautionary tale they cited first. Netanyahu proceeded anyway.

Syria and the Ideology of Useful Chaos

The investigation reveals something even more telling about the strategic mind at work: Netanyahu’s inspiration for the Iran operation was Abu Mohammad al-Julani—the former al-Qaida affiliate commander whose jihadist coalition toppled Assad and who then rebranded himself as President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The Israeli prime minister watched a designated terrorist organization seize a state and concluded not that this was a danger but that it was a model. If a few thousand jihadists could snowball into a conquering army in Syria, why couldn’t Kurdish militias do the same in Iran?

Reported throughout the Syrian civil war, meanwhile, were Israel’s own quiet accommodations with armed factions along the Golan frontier—medical treatment, supplies, and tacit coordination with rebel groups including hardline Islamist ones—justified as border management, but consistent with the same doctrine: any armed extreme is acceptable, even desirable, so long as it bleeds the designated enemy.

Ahmadinejad: The Pattern Perfected

Which brings us to the most surreal element of the entire affair. For the better part of two decades, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the single most valuable rhetorical asset Israel possessed. His Holocaust denial conferences, his “wipe Israel off the map” sloganeering, his apocalyptic posturing—these were cited in every Israeli speech at the UN, every AIPAC address, every argument for sanctions and every case for preemptive strikes. Ahmadinejad was the face that made the threat legible to Western publics. He was, in the fullest sense, the justifying enemy.

And then, when he became useful in a different way, the Mossad recruited him. The Haaretz investigation describes agents pursuing his recruitment even as the October 7 attacks were unfolding, the Mossad director skipping consultations with the prime minister to manage the relationship personally, and cabinet ministers—forced to sign confidentiality agreements before being told—sitting in stunned silence as they learned that the man who had vowed Israel’s destruction was now Israel’s chosen successor for the Iranian state. One minister asked the obvious question: why bother changing the regime if the alternative is just as bad?

The question answers itself once the pattern is visible. The alternative being “just as bad” is not a bug. An extreme, compromised, or discredited successor is precisely what the doctrine requires, because the point has never been to produce stable, legitimate, independent governance in neighboring states. Stable and legitimate neighbors make demands, build coalitions, and acquire international standing. Fractured, extreme, or client regimes do two things instead: they remain dependent, and they remain frightening. The dependence makes them usable; the frightfulness makes them citable. Either way, the argument for the next war writes itself.

The Engine of Perpetual War

Strip away the operational details and the Haaretz investigation describes a decision-making machine optimized for war and structurally incapable of producing anything else.

Consider the sequence. The Mossad tells the inner cabinet in January 2025 that meaningful influence inside Iran would take about three years to build. Netanyahu compresses it to months. Military Intelligence produces formal written assessments that the plan has little chance of success; its research chief authors an entire document questioning the operation. The national security adviser walks out, calling it fantasy. The chief of staff orders everything stopped three days before launch. The American vice president is skeptical, the secretary of state is contemptuous, the CIA director is amused. Veteran Mossad directors—Dagan, Pardo—had rejected the entire concept as beyond Israel’s capabilities for two decades.

None of it mattered. The Haaretz sources describe senior officers joking privately that the Kurds were headed into a “shooting gallery”—asking when it would open—while saying nothing in the meetings, because no one wanted to stand up to the prime minister. This is how a state goes to war in the twenty-first century: not through deliberation but through momentum, with dissent privatized into gallows humor and responsibility concentrated in a single office. The security cabinet’s broad wartime authorization was stretched to cover an unprecedented covert regime-change operation without a vote. One man decided.

And the incentives that drove that one man are named in the investigation itself: a prime minister emerging from the shame of October 7, presiding over a stalemated war in Gaza, “searching for an achievement that would dwarf the stalemate.” Regime change in Tehran was not the conclusion of an intelligence assessment. It was the answer to a political need. The intelligence was then commissioned, contested, and finally overridden to fit it.

This is the deeper function of the pattern. The cultivated enemies and the fantasized proxies are not incidental to the perpetual-war posture; they are its raw material. Hamas justified the sieges and the wars in Gaza. Hezbollah—itself the offspring of the 1982 invasion—justified the wars in Lebanon. Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric justified two decades of escalation against Iran. And when the moment came to act on the grandest scale, Israel’s plan was not to foster an organic Iranian alternative over the fifteen years its own veterans said such work requires, but to bolt together a coalition of armed minorities and a recycled demagogue in a few months, launch the war before the plan existed, and trust that the bombing would sort out the politics.

[…]

Via https://cognipresent.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/manufacturing-the-enemy-operation-puss-in-boots-and-israels-long-history-of-arming-its-own-justifications/

Trump Moves to Derail 2026 Midterm Election

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By Kurt Nimmo
July 19, 2026

President Trump went on primetime television and told the nation China finagled the 2020 election.

According to the president, the White House reviewed documents allegedly showing that “starting in the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history.”

As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection.

Trump said members of the “fake news” corporate media were paid by the communists to write negative reports on him.

“The Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him,” he continued, referring to himself in the third person.

The president accused Barack Obama of sabotaging the election in favor of his vice president, Joe Biden.

“Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags information, and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information, given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned, it was supposed to be burned.”

In 2025, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard claimed she uncovered a number of “burn bags” that supposedly contained intelligence on election interference.

“We are finding documents literally tucked away in the back of safes in random offices in these bags and in other areas, which again speaks to the intent of those who are trying to hide the truth from the American people,” Gabbard said during a Trump cabinet meeting.

Trump said China, Russia, Iran, and “non-state groups” have the ability to hack US elections.

“As one assessment states, we judge that the United States’ adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.”

The president said the cited intelligence “underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised like it was in the past,” and he directed “the FBI director to ensure that the matter is fully investigated and to work with the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for any crimes.”

As noted in a previous post here, Trump’s State Department is focused on radical leftwing “political terrorism.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and “other U.S. officials painted a dark image of the future if the ‘communists and Marxists’ perpetrating these supposed acts are not defeated,” the Associated Press reported.

Rubio “grouped communists, anarchists, Marxists and anti-capitalists into what he described as a movement driven by hostility toward Western civilization, calling its members ‘enemies of civilization,’” while White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” will lead to the debanking, defunding, and disruption of left-wing “political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Miller demanded “every facet of Republican Party politics and power has to be used right now to go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat these Communists.”

In October, 2024 the Department of Homeland Security warned “domestic violent extremists” pose “the most significant physical threat to government officials, voters, and elections-related personnel and infrastructure, including polling places, ballot drop box locations, voter registration sites, campaign events, political party offices, and vote counting sites.” The DHS included “adversarial nation-states” in the mix.

The DHS was reportedly concerned about the involvement of Iran. They said US officials, including former President Trump, were threatened by Iran. More recently, Israel (known for deception) shared intelligence with the United States that Iran had recently devised a plan to assassinate Trump.

“They want to take out the US leader—me,” Trump said.

“These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”

The cancer, Rubio argued, emanates from left-wing groups working with foreign states. The Secretary of State said Iranian proxy networks are “increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world,” although he did not mention names. Rubio accused Cuba’s Communist leaders of having “helped build the far left” in the United States, once again without offering evidence to support the claim.

Democrat lawmakers wrote to Rubio on July 15 and voiced concerns that the administration is attempting to designate legitimate leftwing political groups as domestic terrorists.

“We strongly urge the Department to return its focus to a serious mission set that is definitionally apolitical, data-driven, and rooted in reality, instead of rubberstamping the political priorities of extremists ​within the Administration whose views and policies put ​U.S. national security—and the American people—at risk,” wrote the lawmakers.

Establishment Democrats, however, are not the target of the Trump administration’s efforts to sway the midterm elections and maintain control of the Senate and House of Representatives. Instead, Trump is targeting democratic socialist candidates, labeling them as “communists” and framing their rise as a significant threat to the country, particularly following a series of left-wing primary victories in New York and other states.

Trump, never a stranger to hyperbole, said social democrats are more dangerous to America than WWI, WW2, Pearl Harbor, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“I think it’s the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson recently warned “the barbarians are inside the gate” and the midterm election “is for all the marbles.” He said, “that same extreme Marxist ideology is being championed in our own backyard by the Democratic Party. We refuse to let mini-communist Mamdani take over the greatest nation in the history of the world,” and added that the Pentagon is requesting an additional $350,000,000,000 to fight “communism on our own shores.”

Ir qill be used to target liberal and democrat socialist Democrats ahead of the election in the hope this will sway the election and allow MAGA to continue its control of Congress. Short of that, the Trump administration has considered declaring a state of emergency to close down the midterms.

In March, the Trump administration contemplated a plan for the president to issue an executive order (EO) declaring a national emergency due to alleged election interference from a foreign government. This move aimed to grant sweeping control over the 2026 midterm elections. Since the start of President Trump’s second term, the administration has been pursuing a multifaceted strategy to nationalize elections, despite lacking the authority to do so.

In fact, President Trump has openly expressed his desire to “take over” elections in several states. The president lacks the authority under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution to cancel or postpone a federal election. Furthermore, federal law restricts military or armed federal involvement at polling places.

In Bush v. Gore, the Court asserted that the authority to establish election rules lies with the legislature, not courts improvising a new scheme post-factum. This case is frequently cited to underscore the broader principle that election authority is structurally constrained and cannot be freely reallocated by executive action. Reynolds v. Sims further reinforces this notion by emphasizing that voting rights and election rules are governed by constitutional equality principles, thereby limiting attempts by government actors to manipulate elections.

Despite the claim Trump has documentary evidence of election interference by China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and non-state actors, he lacks the authority to cancel or postpone an election. Regardless, Trump may attempt to declare a national emergency after a terrorist attack, or fear of one, be it real, or more likely a false flag event.

Trump will continue along rhetorical lines, claiming Democrats are communist, and he will attempt to discredit and obstruct the campaigns of social democrats and other liberal candidates. However, considering a majority of younger voters have indicated they are socialist, any attempt by Trump to derail the momentum of liberal and leftwing politicians by calling them communists will fall largely on deaf ears.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-moves-derail-2026-midterm-election/5933775

US industrial base becoming stronger for wartime production

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155mm M795 artillery projectiles are stored during manufacturing process at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pa., Thursday, April 13, 2023.

155mm artillery projectiles are stored during manufacturing process at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (Matt Rourke/AP)

By Michael Peck

As recent conflicts consume weapons at a ferocious rate, America’s defense industrial base is becoming more prepared to sustain a major war, according to a new report.

“The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, who co-authored the study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis think tank, told Defense News.

However, the study — described as a progress report on reforms to the defense manufacturing and acquisition system — still found numerous problems with ramping up and sustaining wartime production.

For example, “according to several measures — manufacturing lead times, critical munitions and materials stockpiles, and supply chain security — the U.S. industrial base has a long way to go to achieve resilience,” warned the analysis by CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base.

CSIS did find measurable improvements since November 2025, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Hegseth also promised to “inspire American industry to become a wartime industrial base that focuses on speed and volume.”

Most striking is the number of new companies in the defense field.

“Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding competition and innovation to the sector,” CSIS noted. “Munitions contract obligations have risen 330 percent since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers on a historic scale.”

The military is also responding to depleted stockpiles of expensive guided weapons that have been rapidly consumed by the Iran and Ukraine wars.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request for munitions allocated 49% to low-cost munitions — defined as costing less than $600,000 apiece — rising to 70% by 2031.

The U.S. is also strengthening its defense supply chain, such as “multiyear procurement agreements, direct-to-supplier investments, and leaner acquisition pathways,” as well as investing in defense companies such as L3Harris Missile Solutions, according to CSIS.

However, while this signals government commitment to defense production, it “also complicates competitive dynamics within the industry as new entrants and established suppliers alike seek to meet rapidly growing demand for munitions at scale.”

Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, “the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the United States and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.”

Exports of U.S. arms, or cooperative multinational projects such as the F-35 fighter, have also become a pillar of America’s defense industry. Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, have more than tripled, from less than $20 billion in 2015 to more than $80 billion in 2025.

The Trump administration wants to take this further with the “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” launched in February 2026.

“The United States will use foreign purchases and capital to support domestic reindustrialization, expand production capacity, and improve the resilience of the United States defense industrial base,” the White House executive order declared.

Ultimately, the federal government can control defense production through the products it demands, the prices it is willing to pay, and the incentives it offers.

“It’s a monopsony,” McGinn said. “Government sets the market. Government can regulate the market. So, if the government wants different outcomes, it changes how it buys.”

[…]

Via https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/07/13/us-industrial-base-is-becoming-stronger-for-wartime-production-study-finds/

North Korea Aided African Liberation Movements CIA Tried to Suppress

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A painting of a person shaking hands with a group of people AI-generated content may be incorrect.
[Source: medium.com]

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

North Korea’s historic achievements have been airbrushed amidst a relentless CIA-State Department-media demonization campaign lending support to regime-change efforts

North Korea is not a country that most people would invoke favorably in polite company.

A relentless CIA-State Department-led demonization campaign over 70+ years has engrained the public with the perception that North Korea is an oppressive place with a threatening nuclear program ruled by a buffoonish family dictatorship.

Even normally astute political analysts attuned to the government’s use of the media and educational system to “manufacture consent” with the political status quo, have called North Korea “one of the most horrible countries in the world,” with “nothing good to say about it.”

Tycho van der Hoog’s book, Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa (London: Hurst & Co., 2025), shows this latter viewpoint to be wrong-headed and that there are actually many good things to say about North Korea.

Among them is the important contributions made by North Korea to post-colonial African development and to the success of African liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s that the U.S. government and CIA worked to suppress in collaboration with Apartheid South Africa.

[Source: storytel.com]

Van der Hoog notes that North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-DPRK) offered military assistance and training to left-wing liberation movements, often through the so-called frontline states—Zambia and Tanzania—whose progressive governments (led by Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere, respectively) hosted exile revolutionary leaders and military training camps.

Kaunda, who ruled Zambia from its independence in 1964 until 1991, had forged a particularly close relationship with North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung because of a perceived compatibility between his governing philosophy—Zambian humanism—and the North Korean Juche philosophy emphasizing self-reliance and the building of an independent economy free from Western exploitation that provided excellent public services.

In 1982, as a symbol of their friendship, Kaunda belted a rendition of the Zambian liberation song “Tiyende Pamodzi” at Kim Il-Sung’s birthday celebration in Pyongyang.

Kaunda had for years been on the CIA’s hit list and was the target of a failed 1981 CIA-backed coup fomented by South African intermediaries.[1]

Kaunda’s nationalization of Zambia’s copper industry placed him at odds with corporate interests the CIA fronted for who have been able to take over the industry following privatization policies enacted by Kaunda’s right-wing successors (Frederick Chiluba, Hakainde Hichilema).

Kim Il-Sung had similarly alarmed U.S. corporate interests and the CIA by enacting a broad nationalization policy in the late 1940s in tune with the socialist model of governance.[2]

Along with Kaunda, Kim forged intimate personal relations with Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s president from 1964 to 1985, whose Ujamaa philosophy embraced collectivist ideals that had been advanced in the North Korean revolution.

Nyerere, a Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist like Kim, was targeted by the CIA in a regime-change operation around the time of independence that resulted in the severing of connections between Tanzania and Zanzibar and removal of leftist Zanzibar leader Abdulrahman Babu.

In the 1970s, the DPRK stationed six intelligence officers in Tanzania and built a huge embassy in the capital of Dar es Salaam, which had been transformed under Nyerere’s rule into what Agostinho Neto, leader of the leftist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), called “one of the heroic capitals of African resistance to colonial and racist rule.”

In 1983, the DPRK signed a military agreement with the MPLA—which was also supported by Cuba—by which it agreed to finance military training camps 150 kilometers from the capital of Luanda, where 1,000 to 3,000 North Korean advisers were permanently stationed until 1988.

The latter provided training in sniper skills, hit-and-run techniques and combat operations.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the MPLA had led the liberation struggle against Portugal, which attacked the Angolan population with U.S. bombs and napalm.

In April 1961, President John F. Kennedy temporarily cut back on military aid to Portugal—then ruled by fascist António Salazar—but back-tracked out of fear of losing the Azores air bases, a major transportation hub for the U.S. military.[3]

The CIA in the early 1960s began funneling arms to the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), a rightist rival to the MPLA whose leader, Holden Roberto, was the brother-in-law of Congolese dictator Joseph Mobutu, who had been installed in power in a CIA coup.[4]

The CIA subsequently shifted to providing arms, mercenaries, advisers and money to another of MPLA’s rivals, UNITA, which was known as “Apartheid’s Contras” because of their backing from South Africa’s Apartheid regime and involvement in terrorist activities.[5]

Even the State Department characterized UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, who had collaborated with the Portuguese, as a “monster.”[6]

CIA whistleblower John Stockwell wrote in his 1978 book, In Search of Enemies, that the CIA’s close collaboration with the South African intelligence services against the MPLA and other regional liberation movements stemmed from a mutually violent antipathy towards communism.[7]

Gulf Oil, Texaco, Boeing and Arthur D. Little also had major ongoing projects in Angola.[8]

In the 1960s, South Africa had assisted the CIA in suppressing a left-wing revolt in the Congo led by supporters of murdered Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba by developing a mercenary army, which Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah compared to the Ku Klux Klan.[9]

Stockwell described Angola as a Vietnam-type morass orchestrated by Henry Kissinger. North Korea and Cuba were clearly on the right side of history, and the U.S. and South Africa the wrong side.[10]

Further Help During a Time of Need

North Korea was also on the right side of history when it gave military support to FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique), the dominant left-wing revolutionary party in Mozambique which had led the fight against Portuguese colonialism and fought in the 1980s against RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance), a right-wing terrorist organization backed by South Africa, the Reagan administration and CIA.

Kim Il-Sung was close to FRELIMO leader Samora Machel, a Pan-African giant and socialist who died in a suspicious plane crash in 1986 widely thought to be carried out by South Africa.

In the early 1980s, the Mozambican government had accused the CIA of running a spy network out of the U.S. embassy to gather information on Machel and other FRELIMO leaders so they could be assassinated.

The former research head of Mozambique’s Foreign Ministry publicly admitted that the CIA had paid him $300 per month to spy for the U.S., and an Air Force captain, Joao Goncalvez, said he learned the U.S. was planning a coup in Mozambique at that time with the help of South Africa.[11]

In Namibia, the DPRK supported the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in its revolutionary struggle against South African occupation, which lasted from 1915 to 1990.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester A. Crocker, a key proponent of the Reagan administration’s support for South Africa and zealous champion of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, had strong intelligence ties and major investments in South African gold mining companies.[12]

Coveting South African minerals, the Reagan administration and CIA presented SWAPO—like other African liberation movements—as Soviet and Cuban proxies and warned that its empowerment would threaten South Africa’s hold on the strategic Walvis Bay.[13]

While the CIA assisted South African security forces implicated in torture and other atrocities,[14] North Korean Special Forces provided weapons to SWAPO guerrillas and provided training to them in military facilities in Pyongyang where thousands of African freedom fighters went.

SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma was so grateful for North Korean support during Namibia’s liberation struggle that, during a 1986 banquet in Pyongyang in front of Kim Il-Sung, he cited the material assistance of North Korea as the reason why SWAPO was able to “maintain the banner of the struggle higher and inflict casualties on the South African racist troops.”

American diplomatic files indicate that, between April and August 1965, 15 Zimbabwean revolutionaries were trained in the use of explosives, weaponry tactics and intelligence in Pyongyang by North Korean Special Forces.

The Zimbabwean revolutionaries were fighting against the racist Ian Smith-led white settler regime that was supported by South Africa and the U.S., which failed to enforce sanctions it had imposed and backed South African military-terrorist operations. Further, the CIA aided in the recruitment of mercenaries who fought in the South Rhodesian army.[15]

Pyongyang continued to support Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwean African Patriotic Union (ZAPU) forces through the long guerrilla struggle in the 1970s.

ZANU leader Robert Mugabe first visited Pyongyang in 1978 where he requested and was granted further military support, some of it channeled through Mozambique where ZANU fighters were based.

North Korea’s military assistance continued after Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980 under Mugabe’s leadership.

On his second visit to Pyongyang in 1980, Mugabe attended the Sixth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea as a guest of honor. Mugabe thanked Kim Il-Sung and the people of North Korea for their selfless help during the fight against colonialism, saying that “the Workers’ Party of Korea experienced the struggle of the people of Zimbabwe as its own.”

In August 1981, 103 military instructors from North Korea arrived from Zimbabwe to train the 5th Brigade of the Zimbabwean army, which was deployed by Mugabe in Matabeleland to wipe out the rival ZAPU in what is known as the Gukurahundi.

[…]

In the 1980s, the eminent Zambian politician Alexander Grey Zulu lauded North Korea’s government for its “invaluable aid to the oppressed people in South Africa,” and thanked DPRK leaders for “its help during a time of need when North Korea provided a near base to freedom fighters.”

Development Aid

Besides military support, van der Hoog chronicles how North Korea provided extensive development assistance to post-colonial African states that brought significant benefits to the local population.

[…]

The pinnacle of North Korean development aid to Africa occurred in the 1980s, when at least 20 African states benefited.

Among the examples that van der Hoog discusses are a) Lesotho, where North Korea rebuilt a national stadium, ran vegetable farms and helped bolster the country’s maize production and irrigation systems; b) the Seychelles, a country that had led the struggle to demilitarize the Indian Ocean and whose president survived several CIA-South African coup attempts,[16] where North Korea donated thousands of tons of cement for housing projects, tractors for agricultural development and supplied rice at a reduced price; and c) Angola, where North Korea constructed a major dam, ran an irrigation project and aided in the production of cotton.

Similar assistance was provided to Zimbabwe, Guinea, Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania, where the DPRK sent technical advisers who helped construct new parks, gardens and playgrounds for children and to run hydro-power stations, among other things.

Van der Hoog wrote that Julius Nyerere’s home village became a particular “hot-spot” for North Korean agricultural experts and town planners as the DPRK provided Tanzania with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of building materials and set up an agricultural science institute that showcased North Korea’s Juche, or self-reliant agricultural system.

North Korean support for Tanzanian development came at a time of U.S. economic warfare that was designed to undermine support for Nyerere and Tanzania’s socialist experiment.[17]

North Korea As a Developmental Model

[…]

African post-colonial leaders who embraced a socialist philosophy, such as Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere, were trying to build a similar kind of independent economy in their own countries.

North Korea disseminated the writings and speeches of Kim Il-Sung throughout Africa, setting up political education institutes and Juche centers, which promoted the Juche concept in Africa.

The first of the Juche schools was set up in Mali in 1969 and, by the 1980s, more than 30 African countries hosted a Juche school. Among them was Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe opened a Juche school at the University of Zimbabwe in 1981 following his second visit to Pyongyang and, thereafter, made Juche central to his development strategy for Zimbabwe.[18]

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/07/16/north-korea-aided-african-liberation-movements-cia-tried-to-suppress/

 

 

A Delusional Trump Has Another Exciting Week

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By Philip Giraldi
July 14, 2026

There is a good thing about having Donald J Trump as president and that is how during a normal week he will say or do a number of incredibly stupid things that make one want to smile or even laugh outright. Unfortunately, however, the fun stops shortly after that point when one recalls that the outright insanity is not only destroying the White House and much of the District of Columbia. It also means engaging in wars against otherwise non-threatening adversaries that waste trillions in taxpayer dollars while doing terrible damage to the United States and also creating economic and political catastrophes that might well wreck much of the world as is happening with Iran right now.

Last week there occurred a stream of typical fulminations from Trump directed against Iran linked to Israeli sourced “intelligence” that the Persians are planning to assassinate him. Iran had already been on the receiving end of typical Trump “negotiating skills” in the wake of renewal of fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, highlighted by the president’s referral to the Iranian leadership as “scum.” A normal person in a position of power would know when to put on the brakes to try to find a way out of the potentially disastrous conflict, but that is not Trump’s way.

Trump should have ignored the assassination narrative and ought to have stopped right there, recognizing that anything coming out of Israel will automatically be a lie. In this case it would have been a lie intended to unleash shooting war phase two between the US and Iran, which is precisely what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes and dreams for. So how did Donald respond? He thundered how, if he were to be killed by Iran, the result would be devastating for the Persians, though he did not exactly put it that way. For Trump if his “Art of the Deal” nonsense does not succeed it is always necessary to irrationally threaten adversaries with total destruction.

In any event, on Friday Trump wrote on his Truth Social site how

“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME! Orders have already been given, and the US Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran – PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”

Over at the Ron Paul site Kurt Nimmo observes in the message yet another exercise in Trumpean megalomania. He describes how

“Naturally, ME is in caps. Because Donald Trump is, for him and his shrinking legion of MAGA exponents, the alpha and omega, the be-all and end-all of morality and integrity. The very thought that he may be assassinated, after pulling off a mob-like hit on Iran’s Supreme Leader, is malefaction writ large.”

As it is widely accepted that the US military is running out of the preferred weapons to be used against the Iranians Trump might just be blowing smoke, as usual, about the effectiveness of his offensive capability. And, of course, as there always is with Trump, there is the hyperbolic presentation with malapropisms mixed in. He wants to “decimate and destroy all areas of Iran,” ignoring the fact that to do so may be beyond his capabilities when targeting such a large and populous country having its own considerable defensive and offensive infrastructure. Also Trump does not seem to understand the meaning of “decimate,” which he uses frequently in his threats. It derives from the Latin meaning “one in ten” and it originated in the Roman army when a combat unit did not perform effectively in battle. One in ten men would be selected out at random and executed to inspire the rest in future engagements. So is Trump planning on executing his own soldiers if they fail or is he expecting to murder captured Iranians which would be a war crime. So what is it Donald?

Another Trump tale which has just re-surfaced involves the White House, which he is simultaneously gilding and bit-by-bit destroying without any apparent understanding that it is a taxpayer supported government building that is his temporary residence while he is in office. Some refer to it as the “People’s House” and it does not belong to Mr Trump any more than the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace and the ancient cherry trees along the Potomac that are being destroyed to build an unneeded golf course named after America’s most unpopular president! And we won’t even mention the enormous Trump[hal] arch DJT is erecting to block the view from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. And oh, I forgot that Donald Trump has several times mentioned that he should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded for military valor in spite of the fact that he had “bone spurs(?)” so he couldn’t honor his country by serving in the army in 1968 when everyone else like me were graduating from college and getting drafted for Vietnam!

However, let’s get back to the White House. It has been reported that the president has been in the habit of giving guided tours of certain rooms to specially esteemed visitors whom he has wanted to impress. By one account which described the behavior as “deranged,” around a year ago Trump had German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in and took him to what he described as the “Lewinsky Room,” a small office accessible through a door to the right of the Resolution Desk which features in the president’s own office. For those visitors needing elaboration, Trump played the grinning tour guide, explaining that the smaller room was where White House intern Monica Lewinsky would treat President Bill Clinton to oral sex back in the 1990s. Trump would reportedly say to his guests that “I’m told this is where Bill and Monica…”

The Lewinsky room is now configured to sell Donald Trump and MAGA memorabilia, with shelves full of Trump hats and other items that the president presses on his visitors as gifts from the “world’s most powerful man.” There are also boxes of Florsheim dress shoes, which are favorites of Trump, who, in addition to wearing them himself, gave pairs to several of his top Cabinet officials in the spring. They are apparently required to wear them lest they fall out of favor, much as all Trump appointees are expected to follow the leader’s “genius” no matter how bizarre the situation. After Trump had shown off his secret room full of his and MAGA momentos to German Chancellor Merz, it was reported that Trump then said: “Just grab whatever you want.” He then boasted to Merz and the other officials from the German delegation that their wives could one day make lots of money by selling the items for “thousands of dollars.”

On a final note, let us go back to earlier in the week. President Donald J Trump recent political forays also included a trip to a NATO meeting in Ankara Turkey where he managed to alienate close allies by his insistence that the alliance exists to support any war that Washington chooses to start. He seemingly is unaware that NATO is a defensive alliance not intended by its founders to go to war against foreign nations that pose no threat. Trump also made some new incoherent noises about taking over Danish owned Greenland and it is reported that he wants to readjust the border with Canada.

Beyond that, Trump continues to be owned by the State of Israel and its domestic lobby, most particularly by the Jewish billionaires like Miriam Adelson who fund the corruption that he and his his insider trading sons ride on to glory. Trump will do what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants him to do, including renewing the devastating war against Iran, the bombing of which he is already ramping up. And now there have also been unverifiable reports of the US preparing troops to “help” Israel destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon, which will become the next Jewish state conquest after they finish up with Gaza and conclude their expansion up to the Damascus suburbs in Syria. And, inevitably, there are suggestions that using nuclear weapons on Iran and others might well be surfacing in the Israeli and US playbooks! One can only look forward to what might be coming up next!

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/delusional-trump-another-exciting-week/5933265

Overindebted US Loses Investor Confidence as Dollar Weakens

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By Ahmed Adel
July 17, 2026

Foreign investors are shifting large amounts of capital from traditional safe assets, such as United States government bonds, to American tech companies, indicating not only new investment preferences but also a decline in trust in the American financial system. Investors seem less willing to finance the US government’s extensive debt, increasing the dollar’s vulnerability to market swings and external shocks.

Deutsche Bank analysts note that technology companies are performing strongly, mainly due to rapid AI advancements.

These innovations offer significant growth opportunities that traditional government securities cannot. The bank warns that reallocating investments toward these sectors could make the dollar more sensitive to changes in investor sentiment and stock market fluctuations.

Historically, US Treasuries have been a stable foundation for the dollar’s value. However, as interest in American debt decreases, the dollar may face increased volatility amid ongoing geopolitical tensions and evolving global capital flows.

The US has experienced ongoing trade and fiscal deficits for many years and regularly spends more than it generates domestically, relying heavily on imports to cover the shortfall. To cover this shortfall, the country depends significantly on foreign capital inflows. A large portion of this capital has come from buying US Treasury bonds, which are considered among the safest investments globally.

During periods of global uncertainty or financial crises, investors have historically turned to the dollar and US government debt as reliable stores of value. This pattern has strengthened the dollar’s leading role as the world’s main reserve currency. Consequently, much of international trade, commodity pricing, and cross-border transactions have been conducted in dollars, consolidating its exclusive dominance.

Today, the landscape has changed, and investors now see private-sector opportunities—especially in innovative tech firms—as offering better returns and growth prospects. Notable examples are Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Meta Platforms, which have shown strong gains driven by the AI revolution. Their success has attracted capital that could have otherwise been used for government borrowing.

This preference stems from careful evaluations of risk and reward. Government bonds, once favored for their stability and predictable yields, now appear less attractive. High levels of US debt issuance, driven by expansive fiscal policies, have increased supply and potentially diminished their safety. Meanwhile, technology companies are seen as engines of real economic value creation through innovation, productivity gains, and market expansion.

The transition carries important implications as long-term holdings of Treasury bonds tend to provide steady capital inflows that support currency stability over extended periods. Equity investments, especially in high-growth tech sectors, are far more fluid. Investors often sell shares quickly in response to negative news, earnings misses, or broader market corrections, thereby introducing greater short-term volatility in capital flows.

Deutsche Bank analysts warn that the dollar might now be more sensitive to stock market fluctuations. While strong equity gains support the currency via ongoing inflows, a sharp drop in tech stocks or the bursting of an “AI bubble” would lead to rapid capital outflows and put strong downward pressure on the dollar and increase volatility in exchange rates.

Investors are wary of concentrating too much exposure in a single asset, particularly US government debt. For decades, Treasuries were a magnet for global savings because of their perceived minimal risk. Now, market participants are spreading investments across a wider array of opportunities to avoid concentration risk.

Geopolitical uncertainties, such as international conflicts and shifting alliances, have increased the need for risk diversification and diminished interest in US bonds. At the same time, many central banks are increasing their foreign exchange reserves with currencies other than the dollar.

Although these changes are notable, the dollar’s global dominance will not collapse immediately. The currency’s value is becoming more linked to the success of the US tech industry rather than its reliance on government debt. Full-scale de-dollarization remains a gradual process. Alternative assets, such as bonds issued by rapidly developing economies, have yet to achieve the liquidity, stability, and trust needed to displace the dollar on a large scale. However, their appeal, including China’s yuan, is growing over time.

Lessons from past crises, such as the 2008 global financial meltdown and pandemic economic disruptions, prove the importance of prudent diversification. Major investors and large institutions understand that overconcentration can lead to significant losses, so they diversify their capital across geographies and assets. In this context, countries like China have positioned themselves as attractive destinations for international investment.

Evidently, the advancement of technology and AI is transforming not only corporate valuations but also the basis of currency strength. For the US, maintaining investor confidence will be difficult, especially in a multipolar financial landscape that has made it clear that the end of the US dollar’s complete dominance is a matter of when, not if.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/overindebted-us-loses-investor-confidence-dollar-weakens/5933558

AIPAC blacklists dozens of US lawmakers who backed cutting military aid to Israel

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(Photo credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times )

The Cradle

JUL 18, 2026

The punitive move comes as US public opinion of Israel hits historic lows

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) cut off online donations to more than two dozen House Democrats on 17 July, only days after they voted against a $3.3 billion military aid package to Israel.

AIPAC’s donation portal shows “pro-Israel” incumbents with contribution buttons, which were removed for Democrats who backed the amendment, while links stayed active for those who opposed the vote this week.

“AIPAC members are deeply appreciative of their representatives who stand on principle and are disappointed by those who don’t,” AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement.

On 15 July, Republican Representative Thomas Massie introduced the amendment to the National Security and Department of State Appropriations Act (NSDSA) 2027, aiming to cut about $3.3 billion annually in US military aid to Israel.

If approved, the measure would have eliminated Israel’s share of Foreign Military Financing (FMF), the program through which Washington funds foreign governments’ purchases of US weaponry, and would also have prohibited any funds in the fiscal 2027 State Department bill from being used to support Israel.

While the proposed amendment was defeated in a 314-to-104 vote, it marked a significant political shift, with nearly half of House Democrats voting in its favor.

Ties to the pro-Israel lobby have become an ideological litmus test for US voters.

Candidates critical of Israel have seen a sharp rise in support, with progressive challengers in New York defeating pro-Israel incumbents in congressional primaries in late June.

The defeats significantly impacted AIPAC, highlighting campaigns that focus on their opponents’ acceptance of lobby funds and their reluctance to label Israel’s assault on Gaza as genocide.

Accepting AIPAC funds has become “toxic” to a growing number of US voters, who increasingly weigh a candidate’s loyalty to the US against loyalty to a foreign lobby.

The financial pressure campaign runs parallel to broader Israeli efforts to shore up support among US citizens.

A recent investigation by TIME revealed that Israel has been paying President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager around $1.5 million per month to run an influence operation producing pro-Israel content aimed at Gen Z audiences across social media platforms.

The efforts have failed to stop the long-running reputational collapse, as one Pew Research Center poll released in April found 60 percent of US citizens view Israel unfavorably, while an older survey by Gallup showed more US citizens sympathizing with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time in US history.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/aipac-blacklists-dozens-of-us-lawmakers-that-backed-cutting-military-aid-to-no-israel

‘Netanyahu belongs in the Hague’: Mamdani weighing arrest of Israeli PM

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(Photo credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)

The Cradle

JUL 18, 2026

New York City lawyers are reportedly examining whether the mayor can order Netanyahu’s arrest during the UNGA summit

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on 18 July that he is still considering the possible arrest of Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York City for the UN General Assembly in September.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague,” Mamdani said in an interview with the New York Times (NYT) program The Interview.

“He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” Mamdani stressed, adding “and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.”

The New York mayor clarified that he is still unsure whether he has the legal authority to order the New York Police Department, which he oversees, to arrest a foreign leader like Netanyahu.

He added that he is currently in “an active conversation” with the city’s Law Department on the issue. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Last year, during his mayoral campaign, Mamdani told the NYT that he would order the arrest of Netanyahu if he were to travel to the city.

He pledged to uphold the ICC warrant against Netanyahu, who is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Mamdani’s revelations occur during a significant shift in US public opinion against Israel, as the ongoing genocide in Gaza damages decades of US political backing.

June congressional primaries in New York highlighted the shift as progressive candidates openly critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza defeated incumbents backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Several pro-Israel incumbents lost to challengers who campaigned directly against their stance on Gaza and their acceptance of AIPAC money, which voters increasingly see as a black spot and a sign of dual loyalties in Israel’s favor.

Polling from April showed the majority of US citizens now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, with “very unfavorable” sentiment nearly tripling since 2022.

An earlier Gallup poll found that, for the first time in US history, more US citizens sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, with 41 percent backing Palestinians against 36 percent for Israelis.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/netanyahu-belongs-in-the-hague-mamdani-says-weighing-arrest-of-israeli-pm