UK - Some aspects of life under the current Government might convince you that we are living in some sort of deranged simulation. The official response to the Southport massacre provided an egregious example when the Home Secretary lamented the availability of knives on Amazon. Soon, newspapers were joining in with the “blame Bezos” inanity, casting the perpetrator as the “Amazon Killer”. It later transpired that the company’s age-verification had indeed been bypassed; but only because one of Axel Rudakubana’s parents signed for the package. If the situation weren’t so tragic it would be Dadaist in its absurdity.

UK - On 23 June 2016, almost 17.5 million British people – the largest democratic turnout in the United Kingdom’s history – voted to leave the European Union. In the ‘Brexit battles’ that followed, the reasons why British citizens were moved in such decisive numbers to vote as they did have largely been forgotten. The ‘Remain’ campaign were – and in some respects still are – like the Japanese soldiers at the end of WW2 who wouldn’t come out of the jungle. These pro EU, anti-democracy campaigners did everything in their power to subvert democracy. But if that campaign to override democracy did anything useful, it was to remind us all why we voted to leave the European Union in the first place.

GERMANY - The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has jumped a massive four points and hit 23 percent following the Aschaffenburg attack, which saw yet another foreigner go on a murder spree, this time resulting in the murder of a 2-year-old child and a 41-year-old man. The new poll, from YouGov, shows not only the AfD soaring higher, but also the two main left-liberal parties, the Social Democrats and Greens, dropping by a huge margin. The SPD lost four points to fall to 15 percent while the Greens dropped two points to 13 percent. Notably, following the attack in Aschaffenburg, the Greens actually called to accelerate immigration by liberalizing family reunification laws. They also rejected calls to secure the border.

GERMANY - The German chancellor has doubled down on the country’s historical guilt and denounced the tech billionaire’s endorsement of a rival party. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called US billionaire Elon Musk's backing of a rival party in the country’s upcoming election “disgusting.” The SpaceX and Tesla founder has endorsed the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of next month’s parliamentary vote. Appearing via video link at the party’s rally over the weekend, Musk urged Germans to reject the notion of generational guilt.

GERMANY - As the world remembers Auschwitz, the German far right has pushed back against the country's tradition of Holocaust remembrance, now with backing from US tech billionaire Elon Musk. "I think there's too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that," the ally of US President Donald Trump told an Alternative for Germany (AfD) rally in video discussion at the weekend. "Children should not be guilty for the sins of their great grandparents," he told supporters of the AfD, an anti-immigration party he has strongly supported ahead of February 23rd elections.

USA - Top US Jewish advocate Halie Soifer calls Trump adviser’s address to far-right Germany rally ‘incredibly dangerous’. Elon Musk’s remarks to a German far-right party that Germans should not focus on their country’s Nazi past should prompt “deep concern” about “the security of American Jews” and “of Jews worldwide”, a leading US Jewish advocate has told the Guardian.

USA - The White House also plans to impose duties on pharmaceuticals and steel in a bid to bring production back to the US. US President Donald Trump has said he plans to impose tariffs as high as 100% on imported chips and semiconductors from foreign manufacturers such as Taiwan. He also pledged to place sweeping tariffs on pharmaceuticals and steel in order to compel manufacturers to relocate production to the US. Addressing Republican Party members on Monday, Trump said that his administration will implement the tariffs “in the very near future to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America.” The US president argued that production of computer chips and semiconductors “left us and went to Taiwan, which is about 98% of the chip business, by the way. And we want them to come back, and we don’t want to give them billions of dollars, like this ridiculous program that Biden has,” Trump said.

USA - The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by President Donald Trump and led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, claims it has already cut federal spending by approximately $1 billion per day. DOGE was first proposed during Trump’s presidential campaign last summer and later formalized as a presidential advisory commission. Despite its name, the agency is not a full-fledged federal executive department but a temporary organization focused on reducing government spending. It aims to cut up to $2 trillion in federal expenditure by July 2026. “DOGE is saving the Federal Government approx $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations, all consistent with the President’s Executive Orders,” the agency said, without providing further details.

GREENLAND - Germany’s Chancellor tacitly compared President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while France said it offered its army to Greenland. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had meetings in several European capitals on Tuesday in what has been interpreted as an impromptu tour of allies to build an alliance against the United States, as President Donald Trump has expressed the desire to acquire Greenland from the country. Greenland has been under the jurisdiction of Denmark for centuries, first a colony and now a largely autonomous territory. With Greenland becoming increasingly strategically valuable in the race for the Arctic, in addition to its command of the North Atlantic and vast untapped mineral wealth, there has been growing interest in Washington to acquire the island.

EUROPE - Donald Trump has been warned the US has "everything to lose" in a trade war with the European Union by France's top diplomat. French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot warned thousands of US firms in Europe would be among the "first victims" should Mr Trump impose tariffs on the bloc. He told France's Sud Radio that Brussels would retaliate if the US president were to make such a move. Mr Barrot warned: "The US has everything to lose from entering into a trade war with the European Union." Mr Barrot added: "We are their main trade partner. If it’s true that Americans buy more European products than the opposite, well Americans invest more in Europe than we invest in the US. Why is that? It is because in Europe there are tens of thousands of American businesses manufacturing on our soil."

UK - Closest to midnight and ‘global catastrophe’. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists confirmed the clock is now at 89 seconds to midnight, citing threats from climate change, nuclear weapons and AI. The Doomsday Clock has once again ticked closer to midnight amid threats from climate change, nuclear war, pandemics and artificial intelligence. The clock now reads 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to 12 o’clock, which symbolises a hypothetical global catastrophe.

USA - One of the biggest battles in the last four years has been over parents’ rights. Basically, Democrats don’t think they have any. That’s changing with the Trump Department of Education, which immediately put the kybosh on fallacious claims that removing pornographic LGBTQ+ books from schools is “book banning.” Leftists agree with Lenin, whose precise words are debated, but who said something along the lines of “Give me a child for six years, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

USA - US public health officials received a memo to stop working with the World Health Organization (WHO) immediately, the Associated Press reports. John Nkengasong, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official, sent the memo to agency leadership. Agency employees who work with the WHO must halt their collaborations and “await further guidance,” the outlet noted.

USA - In 1917, famed American journalist H L Mencken concocted a story that has never completely come undone. The fact that everyone so easily believed his hoax amazed even him. A writer at the time for the New York Evening Mail, Mencken wrote a bogus history about the bathtub. Eight and a half years later, he confessed it was all a lie. But by then his “facts” had made it around the globe, and nothing he did or said could retract them, leading Mencken to conclude, “No normal human being wants to hear the truth. It is the passion of a small and aberrant minority… They are hated for telling it while they live, and when they die they are swiftly forgotten. What remains in the world… is a series of long-tested and solidly agreeable lies.”

USA - We live in a society that is literally addicted to consuming media content. Unfortunately, control of that content is dominated by just a handful of ultra-powerful corporations. Back in 1983, the media industry was controlled by a group of about 50 large companies. Today, the media industry is controlled by just 6 gigantic corporations. They own television networks, streaming services, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most of us don’t ever stop to think about who is feeding us the endless hours of news, sports and entertainment that we constantly ingest. But we should. The truth is that each of us is tremendously influenced by the messages that are constantly being poured into our heads. We are addicted to the “programming”, and we just keep coming back for more. The content that they produce for us IS CALLED “PROGRAMMING” FOR A REASON.