Europe Edges Closer to Digital Euro: New Backing from EU Parliament

Europe Edges Closer to Digital Euro: New Backing from EU Parliament

g.calder

On Tuesday, February 10th, the European Parliament moved the digital euro one step closer to reality, backing amendments that support a push by the European Central Bank (ECB) for a central bank digital currency intended to work both online and offline. This does not mean the new currency is in place yet, but it’s another unmistakeable signal that the project is gaining momentum after years of discussion. 

The digital euro remains framed by EU institutions as a strategic and sovereignty project, designed to reduce reliance on non-European payments infrastructure and to ensure that central bank money remains usable in a digitised economy. However, in line with what we’re seeing around the world, any state-backed digital currency promises to expand financial visibility in ways cash cannot. 

On Tuesday, February 10th, European Union lawmakers approved two amendments to an annual report on the ECB. The votes won by a substantial margin, expressing significant backing for an acceleration towards the digital currency initiative. 

One of the amendments emphasised that the digital euro is: 

“essential to strengthen EU monetary sovereignty, reduce fragmentation in retail  payments, and support the integrity and resilience of the single market.” 

The vote passed with 438 in favour and 158 against. 

The core legal instrument being used to implement the digital euro is not this annual report, but the European Commission’s proposal for a regulation “on the establishment of the digital euro,” first published in June 2023 (COM/2023/369), under the ordinary legislative procedure (2023/0212(COD)). This is the proposal that needs to be agreed between Parliament and the Council to finally create the legal basis for a digital euro. 

The European Parliament tracks this publicly via its Legislative Train Schedule, which documents committee work, draft reports, and the broader timeline for adoption. 

First proposed by the ECB, the project has been under consideration for approximately six years in total. The EU executive formally introduced this proposal (see above) in June 2023 and EU member states granted preliminary approval in December.  

The vote on Tuesday 10th February does not create a law, but signals the current stance of EU lawmakers. 

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After meeting Netanyahu, Trump ‘insists’ on negotiating Iran deal

After meeting Netanyahu, Trump ‘insists’ on negotiating Iran deal

JNS and WIN Staff

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss negotiations with Iran was inconclusive and that the United States would continue talking with the Islamic Republic.

“There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated,” Trump wrote.

“If it can, I let the prime minister know that will be a preference,” Trump stated. “If it cannot, we will just have to see what the outcome will be.”

Trump and Netanyahu met at the White House about two and a half hours during the Israeli premier’s seventh visit to the United States since Trump resumed office.

Talks between the United States and Iran, which began in Oman on Friday, were nearly scuttled at the last minute when Iran insisted that the discussions be relocated from their original site in Turkey and be limited to Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. officials have said that the talks will cover a range of Iranian actions, including its brutal suppression of domestic protests.

“I’d rather make a deal that’s going to be a good deal,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “No nuclear weapons. No missiles. No this, no that. All of the different things that you want.”

Trump ordered additional U.S. forces to deploy to the region ahead of the talks, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which the president has described as leading an “armada” that could take part in military strikes against Iran.

He alluded to that threat again in his readout of the meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday.

“Last time Iran decided that they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer,” Trump stated. “That did not work well for them. Hopefully this time they will be more reasonable and responsible.”

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that the two leaders talked about negotiations with Iran, Gaza and regional developments.

“The prime minister emphasized the security needs of the State of Israel in the context of the negotiations,” per the Israeli readout. “The two leaders agreed on continued coordination and the close contact between them.”

Trump said that the two leaders also discussed the “tremendous progress” in Gaza and the wider region.

A range of senior security and political figures also attended the meeting, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Israel’s ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter.

The next big war will be about religion

The next big war will be about religion

Harry Moskoff

The next major conflict in the Middle East will be driven by ideology, not territory. 

Global conflicts have increasingly been shaped less by disputes over land and more by competing belief systems, religious values, and narratives. Current developments in the Middle East, the United States, and Iran suggest that the next major international confrontation may be defined not primarily by land or oil, but by ideology. The global warfare paradigm is changing before our eyes.

The mainstream Western media environment is playing a central role in this paradigm shift. Traditional journalism, once focused on verification and balance, has increasingly been replaced by what many insiders describe as a global opinion market, where narratives often matter more than facts. This environment has had a significant impact on how the Israel/Hamas war, the situation in Iran, and broader Middle Eastern dynamics are portrayed and understood in international forums.

The truth is, I’ve gained much strength from the brave warriors, by the thousands, that are protesting for their rights right now (as you read these words) in Iran. Their fight against evil is in many ways similar to ours here in Israel, and none of us should keep silent. This includes, of course, the many human rights NGOs. I concluded that if you’re silent about Iran, you’re not on our side, and you were never about human rights in the first place. Instead, you’re mostly about the anti-Israel narrative. The anti-Israel narrative is super popular right now, unfortunately, in the world opinion market, so if you protest that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) is doing something wrong by killing protesters in cold blood, you are indirectly saying that all of Iran’s proxies are also doing something wrong. In short, if/when the Iranian regime falls, so will Hamas, and that’s why all the Gaza protestors (and international NGO’s) are silent.

What nobody seems to realize right now, though, is that all of this is leading step by step to the next big war, which will most likely be based on religion. 

That’s right – a war based on ideological beliefs. Current events concur with Jewish Talmudic texts (Tractate Yoma, Midrash and Zohar) which speak about the two great historical empires: Persia (“Paras”) representing Islam, and America (“Edom”), representing Christian theology and the West. It’s clear to me that Iran and the Muslims will be pitted against the United States and the Christians. 

Having said that, regarding a future strike/attack on Iran, US President Trump should take into account that the Ayatollah’s war is not against him or the US government specifically, or even against Netanyahu and his Knesset. Iran’s war is not technically against American interests or even Israel – actually against God Himself. It’s about what Americans believe in. As such, what’s about to take place, sooner or later, will ultimately be a war based on ideological beliefs. The reason is that Americans are (predominantly) Christian, and thereby glorify life and freedom, while (Shi’ite) Islam glorifies complete subjugation and/or death.  

President Trump now has to deal with all this in some way.

 I would add one more thing, i.e., that he should not underestimate his Iranian opponents.  There are several reasons for this, off the top:

• China is actively backing Iran with weaponry and submarines in the Persian Gulf and beefed-up protection, including in the Straits of Hormuz
• Terrorist sleeper cells in the US, unwittingly let in by Obama-era doctrines, and carried forth by the Biden administration. They are just waiting for the green light
• Risks of further assassination attempts

What is clear moving forward, therefore, is that at this late stage in history, ideological/religious polarization is reshaping global warfare as we know it, and the nature of the way it’s being represented. Whether this trajectory leads to downright war or prolonged instability in the Middle East remains uncertain, but the reality is that the underlying forces driving it are already firmly in place. 

AI safety researcher quits with a cryptic warning

AI safety researcher quits with a cryptic warning

RT

A leading artificial intelligence safety researcher, Mrinank Sharma, has resigned from Anthropic with an enigmatic warning about global “interconnected crises,”announcing his plans to become “invisible for a period of time.”

Sharma, an Oxford graduate who led the Claude chatbot maker’s Safeguards Research Team, posted his resignation letter on X Monday, describing a growing personal reckoning with “our situation.”

“The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment,” Sharma wrote to colleagues.

The departure comes amid mounting tensions surrounding the San Francisco-based AI lab, which is simultaneously racing to develop ever more powerful systems while its own executives warn that those same technologies could harm humanity.

It also follows reports of a widening rift between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the military’s desire to deploy AI for autonomous weapons targeting without the safeguards the company has sought to impose.

Sharma’s resignation, which lands days after Anthropic released Opus 4.6 – a more powerful iteration of its flagship Claude tool – hinted at internal friction over safety priorities.

“Throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions,” he wrote. “I’ve seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and throughout broader society too.”

The researcher’s team was established just over a year ago with a mandate to tackle AI security threats including “model misuse and misalignment,” bioterrorism prevention, and “catastrophe prevention.”

Sharma noted with pride his work developing defenses against AI-assisted bioweapons and his “final project on understanding how AI assistants could make us less human or distort our humanity.” Now he intends to move back to the UK to “explore a poetry degree” and “become invisible for a period of time.”

Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, has repeatedly warned of the dangers posed by the very technology his company is commercializing. In a near-20,000-word essay last month, he cautioned that AI systems of “almost unimaginable power” are “imminent”and will “test who we are as a species.”

Amodei warned of “autonomy risks” where AI could “go rogue and overpower humanity,” and suggested the technology could enable “a global totalitarian dictatorship” through AI-powered surveillance and autonomous weapons.

The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Epstein’s Island And The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Brandon Smith

Conspiracy theorists are almost always right. We have been proved right time and time again and we will continue to be right about many things that the corporate media used to call “fringe.” For those out there who are like me; people who have been trying to warn the public about these threats for 20 years or more, I just want to say: We have won a resounding victory. We brought the dark secrets of the elites into the mainstream and there’s nothing that can stop this train now.

However, the fight is far from over and don’t expect anyone to give you any awards or even recognition. It’s the nature of our work, and frankly, the best thing that can happen in the long run is that researchers and analysts like us eventually become obsolete. In the meantime, the infowar to save civilization continues.

One issue I have spearheaded in my career (along with a handful of other liberty writers) is delving into the psychology and ideology of the globalists. I find their existence to be fascinating. Revolting to be sure, but also fascinating.

The theory which I have held for two decades is that the globalists are first and foremost an occult network of organized psychopaths. Meaning, they seek out people with psychopathic traits (latent or otherwise) in order to recruit and grow their numbers. The common assumption in the general public is that psychopaths are supposed to operate in isolation; that they do not work together because they are too self absorbed to organize.

History shows us that this is simply not so.

From the Mafia, to violent drug cartels, to religious cults, to authoritarian governments, we have seen psychopaths congregate together and cooperate in the worst moments of our timeline. They do it for mutual gain, but I believe there is an agenda that goes well beyond that. It’s a far reaching conspiracy which the recent release of the Epstein Files seems to support.

To be clear, I think the information presented so far in the files barely scratches the surface of the evil we are dealing with. I also think it’s important to point out that people being “named” in the Epstein Files is meaningless without context.

We may actually never see indictments of any Epstein Island regulars. As I noted in my article “Governmental Self-Preservation: Why We’ll Never See The Real Epstein List”, published last year, I do think there are many people in the Trump Administration that want to see the Epstein case lead to arrests. However, I also predicted that the revelations within the files could trigger even darker discoveries that might cause total collapse.

The people handling this info are faced with a conundrum: Pursue the light of truth, dump it all on the internet and risk full blown societal chaos, or, drip feed info to the public and try to keep the system from imploding. Forget about aliens from outer space – The disclosure of concrete proof that a luciferian cult of baby eating bankers, CEOs, politicians and bureaucrats controls the planet is the real Black Swan event.

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about the nature of power in modern civilization (post-industrial revolution) without accepting the cold hard reality that most of the key events in our recent history have been manipulated by a hidden consortium of elites. We also can’t have any legitimate debate about how to solve the problem without accepting the fact that “evil” is an undeniable constant.

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