Published 15 Aug, 2026
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday called on Pyongyang to engage in dialogue to formally end the Korean War, which has remained unresolved for more than 70 years.
The two countries have technically continued to be at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Lee, who became South Korean president last year after his predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached over his attempt to declare martial law, has sought to improve relations with North Korea and its ally China, which had deteriorated under Yoon.
Lee made the proposal in a speech at a ceremony marking the 81st Liberation Day, which commemorates Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.
“Let us put aside our intentions to threaten each other and begin discussions to end the long-running war as the directly involved parties,” Lee said, adding that they could also discuss “effective ways to halt the advancement of the North’s nuclear capabilities.”
Lee said he hoped that the two countries would “sit face-to-face for peaceful coexistence and mutual growth,” and that such talks could provide a forum for discussing ways to curb North Korea’s nuclear development.
North Korea has yet to respond to Lee’s proposal.
In April, President Lee Jae Myung apologized to North Korea over drone incursions into the country. South Korean prosecutors indicted three people – a National Intelligence Service employee, a military officer, and a graduate student – for sending unmanned aerial vehicles into North Korea between September 2025 and January 2026. Seoul had previously denied official involvement in the incursions, saying that they were carried out by civilians.
In March, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described South Korea as the “most hostile state,” vowing to “thoroughly reject and disregard it.” Seoul would “pay the price” for its provocations, he stated.
[…]
Via https://www.rt.com/news/644294-south-korea-proposes-dialogue-to/
RT
16 Aug, 2026
US President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to substantially scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said he was “not happy” that Washington had agreed to take part in the annual exercises, which are due to begin on Monday.
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” he wrote, describing North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful” during his presidency.
Trump said it was too late to cancel the drills outright and had therefore instructed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” them.
The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises were scheduled to run through August 27, with around 18,000 South Korean and roughly 5,000 US troops expected to take part.
Trump also took a swipe at Seoul over its refusal to join Washington’s campaign against Iran.
“I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” he wrote.
During his first presidency, Trump sought to improve ties with North Korea after years of strained relations, meeting Kim three times and scaling back some joint exercises with Seoul. In 2019, he became the first sitting US president to enter North Korea during a meeting with Kim at the Demilitarized Zone.
However, relations deteriorated again after the diplomacy stalled. Under former President Joe Biden, the US expanded military cooperation with South Korea and Japan and stepped up joint exercises and deployments of strategic weapons in the region.
Pyongyang has long described such drills as rehearsals for an invasion and has responded by expanding its own nuclear arsenal, describing it as necessary to deter a US attack.
On Friday, ahead of the latest Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, Pyongyang denounced the drills as a “new level of threat” and vowed to respond with a “new level of deterrent.”
Russia has also backed Pyongyang’s security concerns. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month that Moscow no longer supports calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, arguing that expanded US-led military activity has left North Korea to see no alternative to nuclear weapons for safeguarding its sovereignty.
[…]
Via https://www.rt.com/news/644311-trump-south-korea-scale-back-drill/
By
Audra Lynn Christiansen said she was an Epstein survivor.
A lawsuit filed against the FBI for failing to act in response to multiple reports against late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is digging up some unexpected stories.
In one of them, the late Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner allegedly called the Bureau to report Epstein – already a convicted sex offender – after a ‘Playmate’ model told him that she’d been raped and trafficked by him.
Daily Mail reported:
“Audra Lynn Christiansen, a 2003 Playmate, was living with Hefner at the Playboy Mansion when she turned to him for help, claiming that she had been raped by Epstein and trafficked to his wealthy friends.
She claims that in 2005 she asked Hefner to call the authorities on her behalf due to his celebrity status and connections, hoping that his clout would help her allegations to be taken more seriously.
The allegations are detailed in an amended complaint filed in May in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”
In the lawsuit, Epstein victims accuse the FBI of ‘failing to act’ after receiving multiple reports of his sex crimes starting in 1996.
“Christiansen, now 46, claims that she didn’t hear back from the FBI until October 2020 – fifteen years after Hefner, who died in 2017, had called them.
She reportedly told FBI agents that she’d been introduced to Epstein after her 2003 Playboy shoot was released.”
Epstein was found dead inside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City in August 2019.
[…]
Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/playboys-hugh-hefner-reported-jeffrey-epstein-fbi-after/
14 August 2026
Trump unwilling to back premier’s reelection bid due to poor performance in the polls, Axios reports; PM’s aide reportedly insists to president ‘he’s winning’
US President Donald Trump referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “his own worst enemy” recently, according to sources close to the president, in a blow to Netanyahu’s hopes that the White House will endorse him ahead of his October 27 reelection bid.
Far from an endorsement, however, the remark reported by Axios on Friday appeared to be the latest crack in the relationship between the two strongmen, despite their insistence that they are good friends, and Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last month.
During that visit, Axios reported that Tump questioned Netanyahu about his election prospects, asking how he was faring in opinion polls.
Netanyahu hesitated, an official familiar with the matter told the news outlet, before one of his aides answered for him, saying: “Mr. President, he is winning.”
Most polls, including those conducted by The Times of Israel’s sister site Zman Yisrael, have Netanyahu’s Likud neck-and-neck with or, more recently, falling behind his main challenger, Yashar chair Gadi Eisenkot.
They also show Netanyahu’s coalition bloc falling to around 50 seats in the 120-member Knesset, with Eisenkot appearing better positioned to form a government.
Delving into why Trump hasn’t endorsed Netanyahu ahead of the upcoming election, Axios confirmed that the Israeli premier’s poor performance in the polls is, in part, what has led the president to so far refrain from doing so.
Citing two senior officials, the outlet said that although the US president likes the Israeli prime minister personally, he has also been frustrated with some of his policies and decisions as of late, particularly pertaining to Iran, Lebanon and Gaza.
“Bibi is his own worst enemy,” Trump said about Netanyahu, according to two people who have spoken to the president recently.
Despite Trump’s apparent reluctance to put his weight behind Netanyahu’s reelection bid, the premier’s rivals Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have still expressed concern that he will eventually do so, according to two of the opposition leaders’ aides who spoke to Axios.
Accordingly, the opposition figures have funneled back-channel messages to Trump’s circle urging him to remain neutral, the aides said.
Trump has made a habit of endorsing his allies around the world in their respective leadership bids, and most recently endorsed Colombia’s Abelardo De La Espriella, who took office earlier this month.
Previous US leaders have avoided endorsing specific Israeli candidates.
In June, Trump acknowledged that he would “most likely” endorse Netanyahu, but said he would have to see who he was running against first.
The two leaders have butted heads several times in recent months, with Netanyahu reportedly derided by Trump as “fucking crazy” and having “no fucking judgement,” first over Washington’s push for diplomacy with Iran that left Israel out in the cold, and more recently over Israeli military action in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, Netanyahu announced in a weekly cabinet meeting that Israel had rejected the Board of Peace roadmap for the disarmament of Gaza, and pushed back against claims that he had accepted Trump’s vision for the Strip.
Trump announced last month that there had been a breakthrough in his peace plan for the Strip, in the form of a 15-point proposal for the IDF to withdraw and Hamas to hand over its weapons.
Netanyahu told the cabinet that the IDF would not withdraw without a “genuine disarmament” process.
He also insisted that he knew how to stand up to Trump, both about Gaza and Iran, saying that Israel knows “how to stand our ground even against our very best friends when necessary.”
Despite his claim, IDF soldiers in the Gaza Strip told Channel 12 on Monday that the rules of engagement have changed dramatically since the disarmament roadmap was publicized, suggesting that there are quiet agreements with the board to drastically rein in operations.
[…]
The capitalist empire blames all systemic problems on the individual.
The problem isn’t billionaire megacorporations polluting the planet, it’s that you drive a car.
The problem isn’t that it’s getting harder and harder to afford to live as the ruling class extracts more and more value from labor, it’s that you’re not working hard enough and you’re making bad decisions.
Soaring police brutality isn’t a problem, the problem is that the guy in the current viral police brutality video didn’t obey orders correctly.
Israel’s not an irredeemably racist endeavor dependent on nonstop violence and apartheid, it’s just some naughty settlers and a few bad apples in the IDF.
We don’t live in a highly controlled oligarchy where both parties inflict war, ecocide, injustice and tyranny upon the rest of humanity on behalf of their wealthy donors, the problem is that you haven’t been voting for the correct candidates.
We don’t live under an evil empire that feeds on human blood, it only looks that way because some individuals in charge made some unwise foreign policy decisions at certain points in history.
The blame always lands on the individual, not the system, and you can recognize this as the cynical manipulation that it is because the blame only ever goes one way:
• The individual business executives whose decisions are destroying our ecosystem are never held to account.
• The individual government officials whose depraved foreign policy decisions destroy countless lives are never imprisoned for war crimes.
• The oligarchs who are reaping massive profits expanding the surveillance state and profiteering off war, tyranny and sickness are allowed to keep buying politicians and private islands without suffering any consequences.
Notice how “blame the individual” never applies in these cases. If you want these individuals to be treated like a problem, then you’re a radical. You’re an extremist. You need to be put on a terrorist watch list. You and your friends need to be monitored and infiltrated by federal police. When it comes to those who prop up and profit from the system, blaming the individual is strictly prohibited.
Jailing an impoverished man for periodically shoplifting to survive? That’s fine; he should have behaved himself. Jailing a billionaire for buying elections and poisoning our planet? That’s evil. Shame on you for even thinking that.
Jailing a worker for stealing from her employer? That’s as it should be; thieves should be punished. Jailing a wealthy business owner for stealing wages from thousands of employees? Get outta here, Stalin, that’s a civil case. They can have their paychecks when they’ve won their class action lawsuit.
Under the capitalist empire, we are taught that all we can do is make sure we’re not a part of the giant permanent underclass who must suffer and toil for meager wages while always one mistake away from destitution. It is taken as a given that the underclass must always exist, and that all we can do is make wise decisions as individuals to ensure that we’re not among the unfortunate riff raff our society is built on top of.
It’s like we’ve all been trapped in a crowded room by some psycho who is flooding the room with water, and he’s telling us over the loudspeaker “Now you’d better make sure you climb on top of the others, or you’ll drown!” In that scenario the psycho is clearly the problem, but we’ve been trained to see the individuals who can’t get their heads above water as the problem.
Whenever anyone goes online to complain about how hard it is to keep their bills paid or buy a house under the current system, they are swarmed by capitalism apologists telling them to work harder, spend less, and try to get a better job. Which is a lot like calling the fire department when a crowded building is burning and being told “Well I guess you’d better stay away from the flames then.” No matter how well I as an individual stay away from the flames, there are still people trapped in the burning building who need help. Making the conversation about my actions as an individual is just an excuse to avoid addressing the large-scale nature of the problem.
People consent to this nonsense because we’ve been indoctrinated into it our entire lives. Propaganda isn’t just there to get us to consent to wars, it’s there to get us buying into the entire system.
[…]
(Photo credit: AFP)The Cradle
AUG 16, 2026
UN representatives and activists have been trying to get aid to the besieged Abu Rida and Hassan families for over a week.
Palestinian families in the town of Qusra in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus have remained trapped in their homes for the eighth consecutive day, with UN and Palestinian officials visiting the besieged locals on 16 August.
“UN representatives arrived at homes in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, that had been blocked by settlers over the past week, bringing residents food and water,” sources told Times of Israel on Sunday.
“UN representatives brought a water tanker with them, but security forces did not allow it to remain at the site, which remains a closed military zone.”
Activists have attempted to aid the besieged Palestinians repeatedly in over the past few days.
Palestinian Authority (PA) representatives also visited Qusra, according to a statement released on 16 August by PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa.
“As Qusra enters a second week under a settler-imposed siege, a ministerial delegation, under PM Mustafa’s directives, visited the town to stand with its citizens and assess urgent needs in healthcare, water, electricity, infrastructure and renewable energy,” the statement said.
The settlers were supposed to have been evacuated by occupation forces several days ago from one of the illegal outposts in the area.
However, settlers remain near Qusra and were seen driving ATV vehicles on the town’s outskirts. The Abu Rida and Hassan families are still trapped.
Occupation forces claim they are keeping settlers away from the town, but the residents assert that they remain unable to move.
Troops are now continuing the siege, a member of the Hassan family told Times of Israel.
Yusuf Hassan said “soldiers have prohibited him from leaving his home due to a closed military zone order issued for the area, essentially leaving the siege in place.
He added that he “fears that as soon as [Israeli] troops leave the area, the settlers will return and once again block the home.”
At the same time, Times of Israel reported that it remains “unclear” to “what extent [the settlers] have truly kept away.”
Over the past eight days, settlers have terrorized the residents of Qusra while besieging the two families.
The town’s electricity and water supplies were targeted and cut off by the settlers. The extremists have been attempting to set up new illegal outposts in the area for four months.
Israel has been illegally occupying the West Bank and expanding settlements for decades, but has drastically escalated its longstanding policy of violence and ethnic cleansing under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government.
It is now rapidly moving forward with a de facto annexation of the territory.
These attacks, which have surged 63 percent in the first half of 2026, escalated even further after a resistance operation left two settlers dead in Tel, southwest of Nablus, last month.
The army-backed settler siege of Qusra is part of the massive escalation of violence and terror launched by the colonists in response to the Tel resistance operation.
Since the start of 2025, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly uprooted from West Bank refugee camps by the Israeli military.
Hundreds of homes have been demolished, and illegal settlements are expanding under Israeli government legislation.
[…]
Naval families with loved ones deployed for months on US warships amid the Iran war have reacted with fury to Donald Trump and the defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal of their concerns about the extreme pressures and dire conditions they are enduring.
The Guardian has talked to three naval families who have been following the physical and mental stresses bearing down on their relatives with mounting alarm. The families, with loved ones on board the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli, all spoke anonymously for fear of retribution against their active duty relatives.
They spoke of insufficient nourishment that has led to close relatives losing 20-30lbs in weight since they were sent to the Middle East five months ago, leaving one sailor “emaciated”, according to his mother. They spoke also of low-quality drinking water and scarce mental health counseling and support despite the intense burden of being at sea for months on end without making land.
The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier with more than 5,000 sailors and marines onboard, has been at sea for nearly nine months, having begun its deployment in November. There have been reports of multiple suicide attempts including jumping overboard.
When Trump was asked on Friday whether naval families were worried about conditions on board, he replied: “No, they’re not.” He said that the Lincoln’s deployment, now in its ninth month, was “not nearly long enough”.
Earlier, Hegseth also swatted away families’ concerns, saying that the reality onboard the Lincoln had been “completely misrepresented”.
The sister of a Lincoln crew member in his late 30s said that the remarks made her want to grab Trump and Hegseth and shake them. “I grew up in a United States where you have to be very respectful of the military, as they’re making the ultimate sacrifice and protecting their country, and now you have the commander-in-chief and defense secretary dismissing their experiences and calling them liars. I’m really angry,” she said.
She added: “It’s a feeling of betrayal. These are frustrating, false and careless comments, and they are going to have a lot of consequences for my brother.”
The mother of a sailor on board the Lincoln in his early 20s said: “My son signed up to serve his country. But why isn’t his country serving him? They are not feeding him or supplying clean water, and living conditions are horrible. He didn’t sign up for that.”
The sister of the Lincoln crew member shared text messages she has received in recent days from her brother. In one he said that “the water is so bad that they took out the scuttlebutts”, referring to the drinking containers on the carrier.He also described the mental health services available to struggling sailors that are now stretched thin. “Our deployment resilience counsellor quit months ago. To see the ONLY PSYCHIATRIST is a five-week wait unless you do like three of our shipmates and jump off the ship or take 27 sleeping pills.”
He added that a senior officer from Centcom, the US central command overseeing operations in the Middle East amid the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran, visited the Lincoln for two hours recently. “He made an interesting speech. It was all pretty good news and quite inspiring, until he reminded us that it’s not mental health it’s just health and we can simply exercise our brains to make ourselves happy.”
CNN has reported that among the multiple suicide attempts onboard the Lincoln, a sailor succeeded in going overboard earlier this month and had to be rescued by helicopter.
The Guardian asked Centcom to explain the logistical challenges faced by US warships in theater in the course of the Iran war, but it did not respond.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that another aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, is being sent to replace the Lincoln.
The Lincoln crew member’s sister said she would believe that the anguish was over when it actually happened. “We have heard it said before that they were going to be relieved, but the relief vessel got diverted to Guam.”
She said that in the months of deployment her brother had lost 20lbs. An even more extreme picture was painted by the mother of a sailor on board the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship with 3,500 sailors and marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit onboard.
The Tripoli was redeployed from its base in Sasebo, Japan, on 11 March, and returned to base last month. Over the five months of active deployment, the mother’s son lost more than 30lbs in weight.
The mother, herself a naval veteran with six years service, showed the Guardian photos of her child before and after deployment. Before he had a fleshy round face and muscular arms; after, in a photo in which he is seen holding a placard saying “The wait is over, welcome home daddy,” he is markedly skinny with thin arms and scrawny neck.
“He’s emaciated,” the mother said. “This is so insane – he didn’t deserve this. When I saw that photo I was livid. It should not have gotten this far.”
She sent the Guardian screenshots of communications with her son while he was on active duty. “I need to make up weight,” he said in one. Asked how much weight, he replied: “Quite a bit. I’m not anorexic and my rib cage isn’t showing, but I’ve definitely lost weight. It’s been rough.”
“I’m running very low on energy. I am burnt out,” he said in a separate text.
In a third, he said: “I eat when I can. My coworkers make sure everyone in our unit eats and we all try to share food whenever someone gets more than normal. Keep praying for us. We are doing our best to make sure we protect our country and our families.”
The mother said that her son had been on many deployments with the navy. This was the first time that he had ever indicated a lack of food and other basic supplies. “Something genuinely wrong has happened,” she said.
As warships eventually return to base after historically long deployments in the Middle East, there are growing concerns about long-term consequences of inadequate supplies. Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine Corps veteran and CEO of the advocacy group Vet Voice Foundation, said that there was “longer-term damage to the sailors and marines serving, and their families waiting for them at home”.
She added: “You cannot keep extending deployments, grinding down crews, and gaslighting families without destroying trust in the institution and its leaders.”
The Tripoli mother said she worries about how long it will take for her son to regain weight and strength. She fears his naval command might discipline him should he flunk upcoming fitness tests – which would be a punishment on top of punishment.
“Our military deserve the best of the best,” she said. “They are fighting for our country, and the government has a duty to provide them with the basics. If they’re losing weight, that means you’re starving them.”
[…]
Via https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/navy-families-denounce-trump-hegseth
The National Guard was just the beginning.
One year after President Trump deployed military troops to the nation’s capital, we find ourselves navigating a posse comitatus presidency in which the visual trappings of martial law are the norm, not the exception.
When Trump declared a supposed “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., called in the National Guard, unleashed federal law enforcement throughout the city and temporarily seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department, we warned that the police state had found a new playbook: martial law, one city at a time.
The emergency is long over.
The troops never left.
Now the Pentagon says the National Guard deployment can remain in Washington until January 20, 2029—the final day of Trump’s presidency—unless Trump himself decides to terminate it sooner.
That is not an emergency response.
That is a standing military presence.
The government expects American taxpayers to spend another $1.4 billion maintaining it.
What began in August 2025 as an extraordinary response to a supposedly “extraordinary” crime crisis has become part of the architecture of everyday government.
Thousands of military personnel have remained deployed in the capital. Armed Guard members patrol streets, Metro stations, parks and tourist attractions. They have supported arrest operations. They have responded to medical calls. They have shoveled snow. They have removed trash and weeds and participated in “beautification” projects.
During the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations, their numbers swelled to roughly 5,000.
Now the Trump administration is making plans to build “apartment-style lodging units” for the troopsstationed in DC at a cost of $292 million to the taxpayer.
That is in addition to the $1 billion Trump wants for White House security upgrades, including a new ballroom topped by a proposed “droneport” that he has envisioned as a rooftop staging ground for military trucks, personnel and battlefield weaponry.
The symbolism is hard to miss.
This is how emergency power grabs become entrenched and permanent.
We do not have to speculate about where this leads.
We have already begun to see it.
When Trump federalized California National Guard troops and deployed Marines to Los Angeles during protests against immigration raids in 2025, a federal judge subsequently ruled that the administration had violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using military personnel to carry out civilian law-enforcement functions.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer warned that the administration appeared intent on creating something the Constitution was never meant to tolerate: a national police force with the president effectively serving as its chief.
That description increasingly fits the Trump presidency.
Trump is not merely claiming authority as commander-in-chief over America’s military. He is increasingly behaving as though being commander-in-chief makes him commander-in-chief of the American people.
It is a profound, constitutional difference.
A president governs citizens. A commander commands troops. A police chief directs law enforcement. A king commands subjects.
The danger begins when one man starts behaving as though all four offices belong to him.
Trump has increasingly embraced his own digital version of that authoritarian theater.
Just days ago, he circulated an AI-generated image depicting himself in an elaborate military uniform alongside Generals George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, laden with decorations and medals he never earned for military service he never performed.
It would be tempting to dismiss such images as narcissistic internet trolling.
That would be a mistake.
This is how Trump sees presidential power: as authoritarian power backed by military force.
The National Guard deployment in Washington is the physical embodiment of that worldview.
Armed soldiers are stationed around the monuments. They guard the perimeter of the Reflecting Pool. They patrol the National Mall. They appear at Metro stations, tourist sites and public parks.
Their presence is no longer presented as extraordinary. That is precisely the problem.
A free people should never become accustomed to soldiers policing their streets. Once that sight becomes ordinary, the constitutional barrier separating military power from civilian government has already begun to collapse.
And Washington is the ideal laboratory as a testing ground.
What can be normalized in the capital today can be demanded elsewhere tomorrow.
Indeed, we have already seen repeated attempts to expand the model beyond Washington: federalized National Guard troops in Los Angeles, attempted Guard deployments elsewhere, federal agents sent into cities, immigration enforcement increasingly carried out with military equipment and rhetoric, and presidential threats to “liberate” jurisdictions whose elected leaders resist federal policy.
Not every deployment has survived judicial scrutiny.
That is encouraging, but the real danger is larger than whether any particular deployment is eventually blocked by a court. The danger is that the country is being conditioned to accept the premise behind all of them: that whenever the president declares a city dangerous, disorderly, disobedient or insufficiently cooperative, military force is an appropriate instrument of domestic government.
That premise should frighten conservatives and liberals alike.
This is not fundamentally a question of whether you trust Donald Trump. It is whether you trust anypresident with a standing military force at his disposal for domestic political purposes.
The Constitution was not written on the assumption that good people would always hold power. It was written because power attracts abuse.
Every authority surrendered to Trump becomes an authority available to his successors. Every emergency power normalized now becomes part of the presidential toolbox later. Every constitutional boundary ignored because the “right” president is violating it becomes one less boundary available when the “wrong” president takes office.
This is how republics lose their safeguards: One deployment. One emergency. One executive order. One city. One exception at a time.
As we have warned repeatedly in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that is how constitutional lines disappear—not because someone formally erases them, but because enough people stop noticing when they are crossed.
The Founders feared standing armies because they understood that military power and political liberty exist in constant tension.
The Posse Comitatus Act reflects that same hard-earned wisdom.
Soldiers defend the country. Police enforce the law. Presidents execute the laws within constitutional limits.
Citizens are not troops. Cities are not battlefields. Political opponents are not enemy combatants. And the president is not the American people’s commander-in-chief. He is commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
That distinction may be one of the few things standing between a constitutional republic and a police state presidency.
We had better remember it before the exception becomes the rule—and the troops never go home.
[…]
An 80-year analysis of 72 cocoa products found that 43% exceeded California limits for lead and 35% exceeded limits for cadmium, showing that heavy metal contamination remains common in dark chocolate
The chocolate bar you choose matters because contamination levels varied dramatically between products, meaning two similar-looking bars could expose you to very different amounts of heavy metals
Organic, fair trade, and non-GMO certifications did not reliably identify products with lower contamination levels, and some organic chocolates contained higher cadmium concentrations
Independent testing of more than 469 chocolate products found that over half exceeded California limits for lead, cadmium or both, prompting lawsuits, industry settlements and increased scrutiny of chocolate manufacturing practices
High-quality dark chocolate may still offer health benefits linked to its flavanol content, including associations with improved insulin sensitivity and metabolic health in some studies, making it worthwhile to choose brands that prioritize ingredient transparency and heavy metal testing
Chocolate has a history that stretches back thousands of years. Ancient civilizations prized cacao as both a food and a ceremonial drink, and today dark chocolate is often promoted as a healthier choice because it contains antioxidant compounds called polyphenols. You break off a square or two expecting something close to a guilt-free pleasure, rich, satisfying, and backed by articles praising its benefits. What you probably aren’t expecting is a dose of toxic metal alongside it.
That’s the uncomfortable tension running through research into cocoa products. Lead and cadmium are heavy metals with no useful role in the body, and unlike many dietary concerns that pass through and clear out, they accumulate and linger. Their effects build quietly over years; lead is tied to neurological harm and developmental problems, cadmium to damage in the kidneys, bones, heart, and reproductive system.
Children and pregnant women have the most at stake, since developing brains and bodies are far more sensitive to these exposures.
What makes the problem genuinely hard to navigate is that the usual instincts for picking a “cleaner” bar may not lead where you expect. The certifications and price tags many shoppers trust as a proxy for purity don’t always tell you what’s actually inside, and two bars sitting side by side can differ more than you would ever guess from the wrapper. So, how widespread is heavy metal contamination in dark chocolate, and what did researchers discover when they took a closer look at the products people buy every day?
A study published in Frontiers in Nutrition examined 72 cocoa-containing products sold in the U.S. between 2014 and 2022 to determine how much lead, cadmium, and arsenic consumers were exposed to through dark chocolate and related products.1 The researchers looked at products collected across four different years to identify long-term trends and determine whether contamination was improving or worsening over time.
• The results revealed a surprisingly common problem — Researchers found that 43% of products exceeded California Proposition 65 limits for lead, while 35% exceeded the state’s limits for cadmium. It’s worth knowing these are conservative warning-label thresholds set below federal safety levels; a product exceeding them isn’t automatically dangerous, but the share crossing even a cautious line is striking.
Arsenic was a different story — none of the products exceeded Proposition 65 limits for arsenic. Even though many products remained below regulatory thresholds, the findings showed that contamination was common enough that consumers could not assume a chocolate product was free of concern simply because it was widely available on store shelves.
• The biggest issue was inconsistency between products — Median lead levels were below California limits, but certain products contained much higher concentrations than average. This means the chocolate bar you choose matters. Two products with similar cocoa percentages could expose you to very different amounts of heavy metals.
• The hidden risk comes from repeated exposure — Researchers emphasized that average contamination levels from one serving often remained below federal safety thresholds, especially for lead. However, they also pointed out that exposure doesn’t happen in isolation. If you eat dark chocolate regularly and also consume other foods that contain trace amounts of heavy metals, your total exposure increases.
The researchers specifically noted that combining chocolate with other dietary sources could push some individuals above California’s maximum allowable dose levels.
• The contamination appears to come from more than one source — Cocoa products are naturally prone to accumulating metals because cocoa plants grow in environments where these elements exist in soil. The study also highlighted evidence suggesting that contamination often increases after harvest. Processing, transportation, and manufacturing practices appear to contribute additional exposure.
This distinction matters because it means contamination is not simply a farming issue. Better quality-control measures during production could reduce the problem substantially.
• Organic labels didn’t guarantee lower heavy metal levels — Many consumers assume certifications provide extra protection, yet the study found otherwise. Organic products tended to show higher cadmium, and higher lead by weight, likely because the organic label says nothing about cacao percentage or growing region, the two factors that actually drive cadmium content.
Researchers found that certifications such as organic, fair trade, and non-GMO didn’t reliably reduce contamination levels. At the same time, the study offered one encouraging finding: Heavy metal concentrations generally declined from 2014 to 2022, suggesting that increased testing, improved manufacturing practices, and greater industry awareness are moving the market in a better direction.
The nonprofit consumer advocacy organization As You Sow tested more than 469 chocolate products sold in California for contamination.2 Investigators found that 285 products contained amounts above California’s maximum allowable dose levels for one or more metals. The organization examined hundreds of items available to consumers, revealing that contamination concerns extended across a large portion of the market.
• The issue involved many familiar brands — As You Sow reported contamination findings involving products from major manufacturers and specialty chocolate makers alike. The organization subsequently filed legal notices against more than 20 companies, including Hershey’s, Lindt, Trader Joe’s, Godiva, Mars, Whole Foods, Ghirardelli, and others, alleging that products contained cadmium, lead, or both without adequate consumer warnings.
For shoppers, this reinforced an uncomfortable reality: contamination concerns were not limited to obscure brands or niche products.
• Lawsuits shifted the debate from contamination to transparency — Law firm Weitz & Luxenberg filed a class-action lawsuit against Hershey and Lily’s.3 The legal claims centered on allegations that consumers purchased dark chocolate products without knowing they contained elevated levels of heavy metals.
As attorney James Bilsborrow stated, “If you knew these products contained lead and cadmium, you likely would not have purchased them.” The lawsuits argued that consumers deserved clearer information about what was in the products they were buying.
• Industry leaders responded with a landmark settlement — In 2018, legal pressure and public scrutiny resulted in a first-of-its-kind agreement involving 31 chocolate companies, including major industry players such as Hershey, Mars, Nestlé, and Cargill.4
Under the settlement, participating companies agreed to fund an independent expert committee tasked with investigating contamination sources, identifying practical methods to reduce contamination, and recommending levels that would trigger California warning requirements. This represented one of the largest coordinated industry responses to contamination concerns in the chocolate market.
• European regulators set stricter limits as cocoa content rises — The European Union established maximum cadmium limits for finished chocolate and cocoa products through Regulation (EU) No. 488/2014, with full implementation beginning in 2019.5 Importantly, these limits apply to the chocolate product you buy rather than the raw cocoa beans used to make it.
The regulations also recognize that darker chocolate naturally contains more cocoa solids and therefore tends to contain more cadmium, which is why higher-cacao products are permitted higher cadmium limits than lower-cacao chocolates. The EU continues to fund research, farmer training, and agricultural programs in major cocoa-producing countries to reduce cadmium contamination while maintaining chocolate quality and consumer safety.
The goal is not to fear every piece of chocolate. The real issue is cumulative exposure. Heavy metals build up over time, so the most effective strategy is to lower your overall burden while still enjoying foods that offer benefits. First focus on reducing exposure at the source because that addresses the root cause instead of simply reacting after the fact.
1. Choose high-quality dark chocolate instead of avoiding it altogether — Dark chocolate itself is not the problem. In fact, when it comes from a high-quality source, it may offer meaningful health benefits, according to observational research. In a large observational study, people who ate five or more servings of dark chocolate a week had a 21% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes — an association, not proof of cause.6
Researchers point to cocoa’s flavanols as the likely explanation, since these compounds have been linked elsewhere to support insulin sensitivity, blood vessel function, and lower inflammation. The key is choosing chocolate that may deliver those benefits without unnecessary contamination.
Look for dark chocolate with a lower cacao percentage and simple, recognizable ingredients, since higher-cacao bars tend to carry more cadmium, as noted above. Avoid products that contain vegetable oils, soy lecithin, high-fructose corn syrup, or artificial flavors, and look for Prop 65 certification where available.
Give further preference to companies that openly share heavy metal testing results, emphasize ingredient transparency, and prioritize strict quality-control standards. A high-quality dark chocolate bar may provide the benefits of cocoa’s flavanols while helping you minimize exposure to unwanted contaminants.
2. Avoid assuming organic means lower contamination — Many people spend extra money on organic chocolate believing it offers greater protection. The Frontiers in Nutrition analysis found the opposite for cadmium, with organic products often showing higher levels.7 Rather than relying on a label alone, pay attention to testing data, company quality-control practices, and independent evaluations of finished products.
3. Treat dark chocolate as one source among many — Chocolate is only one contributor to your total heavy metal exposure. Tea, spices, cereals, seafood, and other foods also contain varying amounts. If you enjoy dark chocolate frequently, it would be wise to reduce unnecessary exposure elsewhere. Small reductions across multiple foods add up to a meaningful decrease in your overall burden over time.
4. Favor quality over quantity — If you eat chocolate every day, consider making it an occasional food instead of a staple. The research repeatedly highlighted the importance of cumulative exposure. A small serving a few times a week creates a very different exposure pattern than multiple servings every day. Think of it as a scorecard. Every serving counts toward your long-term total.
5. Support your body’s natural resilience and detoxification — I recommend focusing on whole foods that provide the minerals and nutrients your body needs to function well. Prioritize high-quality protein from ruminant animals, with roughly one-third of your protein coming from collagen-rich sources. Include whole fruits and other nutrient-dense carbohydrate sources that support cellular energy production.
In addition, a small study of healthy adults found that repeated sauna sessions combined with exercise increased measurable excretion of lead and cadmium through sweat, suggesting this approach may serve as an additional route for eliminating some heavy metals.8 Glutathione, your body’s primary internal antioxidant, depends on adequate protein and sulfur-rich foods such as onions and garlic.
Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and kale may help support the Nrf2 pathway, one of the body’s natural systems for regulating antioxidant and detoxification gene activity. Together they may help strengthen your cellular defenses. Your body is constantly exposed to small amounts of environmental contaminants.
The stronger your metabolic health and nutritional status, the better equipped you are to handle those exposures. Building a nutrient-dense diet around whole foods gives you a foundation that supports long-term health while reducing reliance on heavily processed products that often introduce additional unwanted ingredients.
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Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/dark-chocolate-come-heavy-metal-catch/5936639
