The Earth Is Groaning: Why Escalating Global Birth Pangs Signal the Approaching End of the Age

The Earth Is Groaning: Why Escalating Global Birth Pangs Signal the Approaching End of the Age

Video

Are escalating natural catastrophes signaling a turning point for our planet? We examine the evidence behind global climate instability and environmental shifts. In this documentary, we analyze the alarming increase in frequency and intensity of global natural disasters. From catastrophic tidal events and sudden volcanic eruptions to severe earthquakes, Earth's systems are showing undeniable signs of physical strain. Is our planet reaching a critical ecological tipping point? This video bridges the gap between historical warnings and modern environmental degradation to determine if these extreme weather patterns are isolated incidents or part of an interconnected global trend.

Iran’s Strait of Hormuz trump card is losing strategic value

Iran’s Strait of Hormuz trump card is losing strategic value, expert tells 'Post'

DANIELLE GREYMAN-KENNARD

Though the Islamic Republic of Iran has established a “sophisticated panoply” to protect itself against the possibility of regime change, its trump card, the Strait of Hormuz, is losing its strategic value and will continue to do so, Thomas O’Donnell, an American energy and geopolitics strategist and a Global Fellow of the Wilson Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

With many of the regime’s regional proxies degraded over years of war with Israel and its nuclear ambitions delayed after the 12 Day War in June last year, Tehranonly has its rockets, drones, and ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz left as an insurance policy against attempts to topple the regime, he noted.

These remaining elements will be used to dissuade action while it restores the others, but they are losing the weight they once carried, O’Donnell added.

Though 14 to 15 million barrels of oil traveled through Hormuz per day before the war, he argued that it was very possible to manage without much of that supply.

Saudi Arabia’s East-West Crude Oil Pipeline moves around five million barrels per day for non-domestic use, while the United Arab Emirates moves an average of 1.5 to 1.8m. bpd through its own pipeline, he calculated.

Some 400m. barrels of oil and refined petroleum products were unanimously approved for release by the 32 member nations of the International Energy Agency (IEA), while the US government committed 172 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

None of this even touches on the oil supplied by the Western Hemisphere, where roughly 32% to 40% of the world’s total oil originates.

“There’s more production in other places, but [the disruption of] oil has not been anything like it would have been 20 years ago if they closed the strait,” he said, explaining how the US’s own oil and fracking industries have helped mitigate much of the damage.

“The oil price, it’ll go up and down. The fact that it went over $100 [a barrel], and the next day it was $80, that means that’s geostrategic variability. That’s not fundamental.”

A number of planned pipelines, namely the UAE’s plans to double its oil output through a parallel pipeline and Iraq’s plans for an Iraq-to-Syria pipeline, will also weaken the strategic value of Hormuz as states develop alternative routes.

Reflecting on these developments, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared earlier this month the prediction that the strait “is going to become just another body of water” over the next two years, estimating that 50-70% of the exports passing through the waterway would instead travel through underground pipelines.

Noting that the Iran-backed militias operating in Iraq could still cause some issues with the planned pipeline, he reasoned that this would provide further motivation for Iraq to keep to its September 30 deadline to disarm the groups.

O’Donnell further argued that beyond Hormuz becoming less valuable as a transit point for fuel, Iran’s own ability to defend its claim over the waterway has also diminished, as has its ability to attack neighboring states’ alternative oil routes.

Can Technology Detect Who Bows to the Antichrist?

Can Technology Detect Who Bows to the Antichrist?

BRANDON HOLTHAUS

For generations, students of Bible prophecy have asked a fascinating question about Revelation 13:15.  How could the Antichrist and False Prophet possibly know whether someone, anywhere in the world, actually bowed down and worshiped the image of the Beast--or refused to do so?

Revelation 13,17, and 18 describe an unprecedented system of global political, religious, and economic control. The False Prophet will cause an image of the Antichrist to be constructed and will demand that the world worship it.

Revelation 13:15 says: "He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed."

Notice what the text says. Those who do not worship the image are identified and killed. That raises an obvious practical question. How would the system know? For most of human history, accomplishing something like this on a massive scale would have seemed almost impossible. Not anymore.

Introducing 6G That Can See Through Walls:

An article published by TechNext24 examining the privacy implications of 6G technology describes an emerging capability that should get our attention. Future wireless networks are being developed not simply to transmit information but potentially to sense the physical environment around them. This is known as Integrated Sensing and Communication, or ISAC. Instead of radio waves merely carrying information between devices, the same wireless environment can potentially function somewhat like radar. Signals interact with objects and people, and sophisticated systems analyze changes in those signals.

Researchers describe future 6G networks as potentially capable of performing localization, activity recognition, and even monitoring certain vital signs. In other words, the communications network itself could become a sensing network. And we are not merely talking about recognizing that somebody is in a room. Researchers are already working on systems capable of recognizing human activities through walls.

A 2025 study using MIMO radar tested activity recognition through 24-centimeter brick walls and reported 97.1% classification accuracy in its experimental environment. Researchers at MIT have previously demonstrated radio-frequency systems capable of reconstructing human skeletal positions and recognizing human actions even when people are behind walls or otherwise visually obstructed. Other research has demonstrated through-wall recognition using Wi-Fi signals. Think about what that means. The system doesn't necessarily need to "see" you with a camera in order to determine what your body is doing.

When wireless signals encounter the human body, those signals are altered. Those changes can contain information. Researchers can analyze them to determine things such as whether someone is present, where that person is located, whether the person is moving, what type of activity the person is performing, aspects of body posture, respiration, and potentially heartbeat-related information.

An ETSI report on integrated sensing and communications describes a future 6G scenario in which sensing data includes information about a person's arms and legs, stride frequency and step size, while a device estimates heart rate and respiration. Researchers have also experimentally demonstrated integrated communication-and-sensing systems capable of detecting respiration and heartbeat from reflected wireless signals. A 2026 discussion of ISAC privacy warns that future networks using millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz frequencies could infer location, movement, activities, and physiological information, such as breathing or heart-rate data.

This creates enormous privacy implications. Your walls may eventually provide far less privacy from electronic sensing than people assume. But for students of Bible prophecy, it raises another remarkable possibility.

Now go back to Revelation 13. The issue surrounding the image of the Beast isn't simply identification. It is behavior. The world is commanded to perform an act of worship. Revelation 13:8 says: "All who dwell on the earth will worship him..." Then Revelation 13:15 identifies those who refuse to worship the image and says they will be killed.

For years people have wondered: How could a government actually know whether millions--or potentially billions--of people bowed before an image? The emerging technology gives us at least a conceivable answer. If wireless sensing can distinguish between standing, sitting, walking, falling, and other body positions and movements, then technologically it is no longer difficult to imagine a future system trained specifically to recognize the physical motion associated with kneeling or bowing.

This distinction is important: Current research does not demonstrate an Antichrist "worship detector." But the underlying capability to detect and classify human posture and movement already exists in experimental settings. Through-wall research has demonstrated systems capable of classifying multiple human activities, while broader wireless sensing research is investigating human posture recognition. The technological barrier that once made Revelation 13 seem impossible is disappearing.

But Revelation 13 goes further. The same chapter connects worship of the Beast with another system--the Mark of the Beast. Revelation 13:16-18 says:

He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.

Notice the convergence. Revelation describes a system capable of controlling: Identity. Worship. Commerce. And ultimately life and death. We should not claim that today's biochips, AI, digital IDs, or 6G systems are the mark of the Beast. Scripture does not tell us what technological mechanism the Antichrist will employ. But consider what becomes theoretically possible when these technologies converge.

Imagine a future system in which a person's digital identity is permanently associated with them. The sensing network identifies the individual's location. Artificial intelligence determines what the individual is doing. A digital identity system determines who the individual is. A financial system determines whether the individual can buy or sell. And an authoritarian government determines what happens to those who refuse to comply. Suddenly Revelation 13 doesn't sound technologically impossible. It sounds frighteningly conceivable.

Again, the Bible never says the Antichrist uses 6G, artificial intelligence, radar sensing, or implanted microchips to accomplish this. Those would be possible guesses at technological mechanisms, not biblical claims. But for the first time in history, we can see that technologies capable of producing this level of automated surveillance and enforcement are becoming plausible.

And that end result indicates that something would have to be in place technologically for one man to exercise this kind of control over the world. John described a worldwide ruler, a global religious authority, an image that must be worshiped, a system capable of identifying those who refuse, economic exclusion for those who reject the mark, and ultimately the execution of those who refuse to worship the Beast.

For nearly two thousand years, readers could understand what the passage said while having little idea how such comprehensive surveillance, identification, economic control, and enforcement could actually be achieved on a global scale. There was a gap between the result John described and our understanding of how such a system could function in practice.

Today, technology is filling that gap. Our generation is beginning to see technologies that make such a system conceivable, giving us a possible answer to how the global system John described could function

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UK military sites could become targets – Moscow

UK military sites could become targets – Moscow

RT

British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond could become legitimate targets for Russian strikes if Kiev continues to use UK-supplied weapons for attacks on Russian territory, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

The comments come amid rapidly deteriorating relations between Moscow and London, and a day after Ukrainian forces reportedly used British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles in a strike on Donetsk that wounded at least eight civilians, including two children.

“We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond,” Zakharova said during a press briefing on Thursday.

Those responsible for attacks on Russian civilians will be punished, she added, warning that their “accomplices and instigators” will also face consequences.

Zakharova accused successive British governments of pursuing a long-term objective of inflicting a so-called “strategic defeat” on Russia, and urged “all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities.”

The spokeswoman called on the British government to “immediately, decisively and unequivocally” abandon its aggressive policies that threaten to push the conflict “to a fundamentally new level.”

Earlier this week, Britain approved the transfer of classified technology needed to help Ukraine assemble Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles domestically.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by accusing Britain of “participating in this war on the side of the Kiev regime” and warning that Russian forces are gathering intelligence on sites involved in producing missiles and other military equipment in Ukraine in order to destroy them.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned last week that Moscow has “every right to regard the proudly proclaimed direct involvement of British missile forces in strikes against Russia as participation in the war, with all the consequences that entails.”

Holocaust survivor: 'We never envisaged Australia would become 1930s Europe'

Holocaust survivor: 'We never envisaged Australia would become 1930s Europe'

Itamar Eichner

Holocaust survivor Nina Bassat, a board member of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum Foundation and former president of both the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, testified Wednesday before Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Holocaust survivor Nina Bassat, a board member of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum Foundation and former president of both the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, testified Wednesday before Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

In testimony published in part by The Australian Jewish News, Bassat sharply criticized the conduct of the country’s political leaders since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and warned against the use of the term “genocide” in discussions of the war in Gaza.

She warned that unless Australians could see one another as human beings rather than members of opposing camps, the country would be unable to rebuild the social cohesion it had lost.

For 74 years, she said, Australia had been “a paradigm of multiculturalism,” where people’s backgrounds and religions did not matter and they could simply “get on” with one another.

“But that changed abruptly after October 2023,” she said. “We’ve [Australian society] become very divisive. We’ve put labels on each other. We no longer treat each other as just another human being.”

Bassat was in Israel on October 7, 2023. Two days later, she watched footage of the pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Sydney Opera House and said she struggled to understand how it could take place while Israel was still dealing with the aftermath of the Hamas attack.

“I was shattered, and I couldn’t understand it,” she testified. “I just cannot understand how it could have happened.”

Israel had not yet had time to bury its dead, she said, and was already facing condemnation.

“I couldn’t understand that lack of empathy. I was shattered by the lack of humanity,” Bassat said.

In response to the atmosphere that followed, Bassat joined about 100 other Australian Holocaust survivors in signing an open letter in November 2023 calling on Australians to condemn antisemitism and hatred.

“The atmosphere was so incredibly reminiscent of the rhetoric of Germany in the 1930s,” she said.

Bassat said many in the Jewish community had felt “betrayed” by what she described as the near-total absence of voices from the federal government, state governments and local authorities condemning antisemitism after October 7.

Asked about the idea that silence and inaction are “the best friends of evil,” Bassat agreed and compared it with people who lived near the crematoria during the Holocaust and said nothing.

Rare Lunar Eclipse Tonight

Earth Is About to Hide 96% of the Moon During a Rare Lunar Eclipse That Will Create an Almost Blood Moon

Sarah Jones

Something unusual is about to happen above our heads as the Moon begins a journey through Earth’s shadow. The event will create a striking view in the sky, but timing and location will determine who gets the best spectacle.

This week, a near-total lunar eclipse will be visible across the Americas, Africa, and Europe, as Earth’s shadow blankets nearly the entire Moon. The eclipse will peak at96.3 percent coverage, giving the Moon its characteristic reddish “blood moon” glow.The celestial event will take place on Thursday night and will be visible from a wide region of the planet. Unlike a solar eclipse, this phenomenon can be watched directly without protective equipment, allowing observers to follow the Moon’s transformation with the naked eye.

This eclipse will be the second and final lunar eclipse of 2026, following a total lunar eclipse that occurred in March. It gives sky-watchers another opportunity to observe the interaction between the Sun, Earth and Moon as our planet’s shadow moves across its natural satellite.

NASA reports that the eclipse will be at least partially visible from almost every location in the United States, except for certain areas of Alaska. A visibility map created by the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio shows where the different phases of the eclipse can be seen

The first stage of the eclipse will begin at around 9:23 P.M. EDT on Thursday. The most noticeable phase will start at approximately 10:34 P.M. EDT, when the lunar body begins moving into the umbra, the darkest part of Earth’s shadow. The eclipse will reach its maximum point at around 12:13 A.M. EDT on August 28. At that moment, Earth’s shadow will cover almost the entire lunar surface, producing the near-total eclipse effect visible from the affected regions.

A lunar eclipse happens when Earth moves directly between the Sun and the Moon. The planet blocks direct sunlight from reaching the lunar surface, causing the Moon to pass through different sections of Earth’s shadow.

The exact view will depend on location, since the eclipse unfolds over several hours as the Moon crosses Earth’s shadow. Observers in some regions will be able to watch the complete sequence from start to finish, while others will catch only part of the event, whether the beginning, the peak, or the end, depending on whether the satelitte is above the horizon during that particular phase. Local weather conditions and light pollution will also play a role in how clearly the eclipse can be observed.

The reddish color of a blood moon is caused by the way sunlight travels through Earth’s atmosphere during the eclipse. Although Earth blocks direct sunlight, some light bends around the planet and reaches the Moon.

Blue wavelengths are scattered away more easily, while red wavelengths pass through the atmosphere and continue toward the lunar surface. This filtered light gives the earth’s satelitte its distinctive reddish appearance during the deepest phase of the eclipse.

Scientific American explains that this process is responsible for the “blood moon” effect often associated with lunar eclipses. The nickname refers only to the temporary color change created by the interaction between sunlight, Earth’s atmosphere and the lunar surface.

Turkey Prepares for ‘Crisis, Tension, and War’

Turkey Prepares for ‘Crisis, Tension, and War’ as Ankara Watches Israel-Greece Military Partnership Grow

by Ailin Vilches Arguello

With Israel and Greece moving toward increasingly close military cooperation, Turkey is preparing for scenarios ranging from escalating confrontation to outright war, as Ankara assesses the partnership’s growing strategic implications and its potential to dramatically reshape the balance of power in the region, according to an official Turkish government document.

Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said in a letter to a lawmaker in the country’s parliament dated Aug. 10 that preparations for “possible crisis, tension, and war” in the surrounding region are continuing in close coordination among all relevant state institutions.

The letter was first reported by Nordic Monitor, a news site run by the Stockholm-based Nordic Research and Monitoring Network.

In a striking shift in Ankara’s strategic planning, Güler linked Turkey’s preparations for a potential war to growing concerns over Greece’s expanding military ties with Israel, which Turkish officials are closely watching as a challenge to the country’s security and interests in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.

Even without identifying specific agencies or resources, Güler’s language suggests that the preparations extend beyond the military, with multiple state institutions involved in planning for a potentially broad national response to what Ankara appears to view as an increasingly challenging security environment.

The escalation in Ankara’s rhetoric comes amid growing Turkish concern over Greece’s rapid military modernization, including its acquisition of Israeli weapons and air defense systems.

In recent years, Israel and Greece have significantly expanded their defense cooperation through joint military exercises, training, defense technology, and industrial partnerships, with Turkish officials warning that the deepening ties warrant close scrutiny as Ankara assesses their potential impact on its security and regional interests.

At the same time, Turkey is rapidly expanding its naval capabilities, with 47 warships under construction as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushes to transform the country into a major regional maritime power — a buildup that is drawing close attention from both Israeli and Greek officials.

In his letter, Güler also noted that shifting dynamics in Turkey’s neighborhood could create new opportunities to advance Ankara’s national interests, though he offered no details on what those opportunities might involve.

On Wednesday, Erdoğan said Turkey must remain strong and united in the face of mounting challenges in the region, warning that Ankara would not be swayed from its course by outside provocations.

“When necessary, we can put everything else aside. But when it comes to our homeland and the future of our state and nation, we bow to no one,” the Turkish leader said in a statement. “In this region, we have no choice but to remain strong, united, and standing together.”

“Those who believe they can halt the progress of Turkey and the Turkish nation through provocations and schemes will be disappointed,” he continued. “We will not change our course or be diverted by the provocations of others.”

For Turkey, the growing Greek-Israeli military partnership is transforming the Aegean dispute into part of a much broader regional security realignment, as Israeli weapons, technology, and strategic cooperation become increasingly embedded in Greece’s military posture while the Turkish-Israeli rivalry intensifies from the eastern Mediterranean to Syria.

According to a recent report by Greek media outlet Pro News, Israel may be even considering scenarios in which a potential confrontation with Turkey could spill into the eastern Mediterranean and involve Cyprus. The report alleges that Israel is weighing possible strikes against Turkish military targets in northern Cyprus if Jerusalem determines that Ankara’s military presence on the island poses a threat to the country’s interests.

CBDCs Controlling the Debt Market

CBDCs Controlling the Debt Market

Martin Armstrong

India is preparing to launch its first tokenized corporate bond in September, and this experiment exposes where the digital monetary system is ultimately heading. 

The bonds will be issued by REC, a state-owned power financier, in an offering worth less than 5 billion rupees, or approximately $57 million. The amount is small because this is a pilot program, but the structure is far more important than the size. India’s central bank digital currency will be used to purchase the bonds, which means the government is no longer merely testing digital money for ordinary payments. It is connecting CBDCs directly to the creation, ownership, and settlement of debt.

Reuters reports that investors will require two compatible digital accounts: a wholesale CBDC wallet supplied through a bank and a new electronic securities wallet known as DEMAT 2.0. 

The bonds will not trade through the conventional electronic book-provider system, and subsequent transactions can occur only between participants who possess both approved wallets. The initial investors will be selected, the bonds will have a three-month lock-in period, and a secondary market is expected to be developed by December. This creates a closed financial network in which the currency, security, investor, transaction, and settlement process are all identifiable and controlled within the same digital infrastructure.

The sales pitch will be efficiency, naturally. Tokenized securities can settle almost instantly. The same infrastructure that can settle a bond instantly can restrict who is permitted to buy it, determine where it may be traded, impose holding periods, monitor every transfer, and prevent capital from leaving the approved system. Once currency and securities exist inside compatible government-supervised wallets, compliance no longer depends on investigating a transaction afterward. The rules can be enforced before the transaction is even allowed to occur.

This is how capital controls will emerge in the modern era. There will be no official standing at the airport asking whether you are carrying gold or cash. The restrictions will be embedded inside the currency itself. A transaction can be rejected because the recipient lacks the proper wallet, the security is outside the approved platform, the funds crossed a prohibited jurisdiction, or the investor exceeded a government-imposed limit. Politicians will claim that this prevents fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and financial instability, but every authoritarian financial restriction has always been introduced under the pretense of protecting the public.

India is not yet forcing citizens to purchase government debt with digital rupees, and this pilot should not be misrepresented as though that has already occurred. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that the technical bridge between CBDCs and tokenized securities is being constructed now. Once that bridge exists, extending it from voluntary investment to regulatory compulsion requires only a political decision. The technology does not care whether participation is voluntary or mandatory.

India’s experiment should therefore be viewed as far more than a technological modernization of the bond market. It is a model for merging money and debt into one controlled digital ecosystem. The public will be promised speed and convenience, while government acquires the ability to see, approve, restrict, and eventually direct the movement of capital. CBDCs were never necessary simply to buy coffee more quickly. Their real value to government emerges when the state can connect programmable money to the debt it desperately needs someone to purchase.

The Day Everything Stopped:

The Day Everything Stopped: The Last Counties Worth Owning in America

Madge Waggy

Most people ask the wrong question entirely. They imagine collapse as a cinematic event—fireballs on the horizon, zombies at the perimeter, some dramatic moment when the protagonist grabs a bug-out bag and flees toward salvation. Reality moves slower. It whispers before it screams. Systems fray at the edges long before they snap at the center, and by the time the average person recognizes the pattern, the exits have narrowed to chokepoints.

Geography determines destiny in ways we prefer to ignore during normalcy. Your address right now—those digits you type into delivery apps—represents a complex bet on the continuity of a thousand invisible systems. The water pressure in your pipes assumes functioning pumps. The silence in your refrigerator depends on an uninterrupted flow of electrons from distant generators. The safety of your sleep presumes that thousands of strangers continue showing up to jobs that maintain order.

When those presumptions fail, location ceases to be a lifestyle choice and becomes a survival calculation. Suddenly, proximity to a Costco matters less than distance from the nearest city of fifty thousand souls. The quality of your local restaurant scene becomes laughably irrelevant while the depth of your groundwater table turns existential.

This examination proceeds from a simple premise: societal collapse unfolds as a process, not an event. Understanding that distinction separates viable locations from death traps.

How Systems Actually Die

Catastrophic failure rarely arrives without prelude. Engineers have documented this pattern across infrastructure types—bridges, power grids, supply chains. Small perturbations accumulate. Redundancies erode through budget cuts and deferred maintenance. Then a threshold crosses, and what appeared stable reveals itself as metastable all along.

Consider the empirical markers that precede visible collapse:

• Supply chains develop persistent friction—delays measured in weeks rather than days, stockouts of specific items that never return
• Energy markets exhibit volatility that outpaces historical norms, with price spikes that damage industrial users
• Municipal services grow inconsistent, trash collection slipping, water quality reports becoming unreliable
• Financial instruments that once traded smoothly develop liquidity gaps, buyers disappearing at critical moments

These signals rarely trigger panic individually. Collectively, they represent a system losing coherence. The critical transition occurs not when disruption begins, but when recovery mechanisms fail. Once a society cannot reliably return to baseline after stress, uncertainty becomes the baseline.

Behavioral adaptation follows. Humans require no official announcement to modify their actions. Perception of instability drives preparation, and preparation itself becomes destabilizing. Stockpiling creates shortages. Relocation concentrates pressure. Alternative security arrangements proliferate. Each rational response at the individual level amplifies systemic stress.

The Human Variable: Density as Multiplier

Environmental conditions remain relatively constant during early-stage collapse. Rainfall patterns persist. Soil chemistry changes slowly. Wildlife populations fluctuate seasonally but follow predictable rhythms. What transforms rapidly—and dangerously—is human behavior.

Population density functions as the primary risk amplifier. Urban environments operate as concentration mechanisms, aggregating demand while masking supply vulnerability. A city of one million represents not merely more people than a town of one thousand, but a qualitatively different organizational challenge. The complexity of feeding, hydrating, and pacifying that population requires continuous inputs that cannot pause without catastrophic consequences.

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The CBDC Ban Expires with the Economic Confidence Model in 2030

The CBDC Ban Expires with the Economic Confidence Model in 2030

Martin Armstrong

The United States has become the first nation to prohibit its central bank from creating a central bank digital currency, but Congress quietly placed an expiration date on that protection. The prohibition covers both retail and intermediated CBDCs, yet it expires at the end of 2030. 

That means the door to a programmable government currency will reopen in 2031, precisely as the Economic Confidence Model reaches its major 2030 turning point.

President Trump prohibited federal agencies from pursuing a CBDC through executive order, and Congress has now reinforced that position legislatively. Nevertheless, executive orders can be reversed by the next president, and the statutory ban was deliberately written to disappear. Governments do not normally surrender power permanently. They postpone unpopular policies until the political and economic conditions make them easier to impose.

The timing is remarkable because the Economic Confidence Model has long pointed to 2030 as a profound turning point in the confidence of government. These dates are not predictions that one isolated event must occur on a specific day. They identify concentrations of political, economic, and monetary stress when capital shifts and confidence changes direction. 

The fact that Congress chose the end of 2030 for the expiration of the CBDC ban places this monetary question directly within that critical window.

A CBDC is not merely another electronic payment system. Most money already moves digitally through banks, credit cards, and payment applications. The difference is that a central bank digital currency can create a direct financial relationship between the citizen and the state. 

Depending on its design, government could gain the ability to trace transactions, impose expiration dates on money, restrict purchases, enforce negative interest rates, collect taxes automatically, or prevent funds from being transferred beyond approved limits. Physical cash provides privacy and allows people to transact when banks, governments, or computer systems fail. A programmable CBDC transforms money into a permit controlled by the issuer.

The War Cycle began accelerating in August 2026, with the next major geopolitical pressure building into 2027–2029 and a significant risk of conflict involving China appearing in 2029. This then converges with the Economic Confidence Model’s 2030.05 turning point, approximately January 18, 2030, as the Sovereign Debt Crisis intensifies. 

Congress allowed the CBDC prohibition to expire on December 31, 2030, meaning a new administration could reopen the door to programmable central-bank money beginning January 1, 2031. War increases borrowing, borrowing accelerates the debt crisis, and collapsing confidence encourages governments to impose surveillance, capital controls, and emergency financial restrictions. By the time this protection expires, the world and government as we know them may be radically altered, creating precisely the kind of crisis politicians will use to resurrect a CBDC in the name of national security and monetary stability.

Farmers in America’s Corn Belt Face Worst Crisis in 40 Years

Farmers in America’s Corn Belt Face Worst Crisis in 40 Years, Citing Soaring Input Costs Linked to Iran Conflict

Garrison Vance

Farmers across America's Corn Belt report that they are facing their most severe economic pressure in four decades, according to an Aug. 25 report from the Financial Times (FT).

The crisis is driven by a surge in diesel and fertilizer costs, which the report attributes to geopolitical tensions stemming from the Trump administration's Iran policy. Grain producers are described as being pushed to the brink by these input cost explosions, with many facing potential default on loans and acreage reduction.

The FT report states that diesel and fertilizer costs have risen sharply, with officials and analysts linking the increase to U.S. military actions in Iran. According to the report, diesel prices have increased by more than 40 percent over the past year, while fertilizer costs have doubled in some regions.

One grower quoted in the FT report said input prices have doubled, forcing him to consider whether he can afford to plant his full acreage this season. The report also notes that the war in the Middle East has compromised the Haber-Bosch process, the chemical reaction that turns natural gas into fertilizer, threatening global agriculture. ^[1]

Analysts said the ripple effects of the Iran conflict have been devastating for agricultural inputs, as reported by FT. JPMorgan analyst Nora Szentivanyi warned that the next global food crisis could begin as early as next year, adding to the growing voices on institutional desks warning that food inflation is poised to re-accelerate. ^[2] The sharp swings in oil prices following the latest round of attacks and negotiations over safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that wars do not always reveal themselves first on the battlefield, according to a report by Greg Pence on Antiwar.com. ^[3]

The crisis has led to reduced planting, lower profit margins and increased debt for Corn Belt producers, according to the Financial Times and industry observers. One Iowa farmer said current conditions resemble the farm crisis of the 1980s, per the report.

Willow Tohi of NaturalNews.com reported that a prominent Georgia farmer cut 45% of his leased acreage due to unsustainable input costs and low commodity prices, with economists warning of a severe cost-price squeeze and projected negative profits per acre for major crops like corn and soybeans. ^[4] The 2025 U.S. Department of AgricultureCrop Progress report indicated that only 63% of the U.S. corn crop was rated good or excellent, down 4 percentage points from the previous week because of heat and dryness. ^[5]

Input costs for items such as fertilizer, seed, and machinery remain near record highs, while crop revenues have fallen sharply, according to the report by Willow Tohi. ^[4] The financial strain has led some producers to abandon land entirely. Just 79.2 million acres of corn were harvested in 2022 – a 1.6-million-acre decline, marking the smallest overall harvest in terms of acres since 2008, according to NaturalNews.com. ^[6] Vandana Shiva noted that the category of "yield" fails to measure the real costs and real outputs of farming systems, as the so-called high yielding varieties of the Green Revolution are in fact high-response varieties bred for chemicals. ^[7]

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