“…Last week, water became a focal point in the Iran war, as airstrikes hit desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain. Further east, a slower motion water war was playing out — one that is heightening tensions between two nuclear armed powers.

The Shahpur Kandi Dam project was first conceptualized in the late 1970s. In 1982, former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi laid its foundation stone and set a 1988 deadline for the project. But inter-state conflicts between Punjab, Jammu, and Kashmir stalled construction for decades.

(…)

The framework for sharing the water system was established by the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which allocates the three eastern rivers to India and the three western rivers to Pakistan, giving India exclusive rights to the Ravi.

But, experts point out, the timing of the dam construction may reflect increasingly strained relationships between New Delhi and Islamabad. Last year, following a terrorist attack that killed 26 people, India charged Pakistan-based militant groups for the massacre and put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.

“There’s a case going on about whether the suspension is meaningful or not,” said Hassaan Khan, an assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. “But we’re starting to see that the norm that had been established over 60 years no longer holds.” What happens next is “anybody’s guess,” Khan told RS. “We’re seeing it play out in real time.”…”

~ Full article…

“…Among the most prominent voices warning about private credit risks is JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon has repeatedly cautioned that rapid growth in private lending may conceal weaknesses in underwriting standards.

In reference to recent failures among private-credit-backed companies, Dimon remarked that when one problem surfaces in credit markets, “there are usually more cockroaches.”

(…)

Another outspoken critic is hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital.

Weinstein has spent much of his career analyzing credit markets and trading credit default swaps. In recent months he has warned that stress in private credit funds may represent the early stages of a broader market correction.

According to Weinstein, recent problems at certain funds—including redemption pressures and liquidity restrictions—could be a signal that “the wheels [are] coming off” the sector…”

~ Full article…

“…The U.S. Navy is not yet ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, but it will happen. This is the synopsis provided by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright in an interview with CNBC. The development comes as Iran continues to pummel international shipping in and around the critical channel, which the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vows to keep closed.

“It’ll happen relatively soon, but it can’t happen now,” Wright said, of the planned naval escort mission. “We’re simply not ready. All of our military assets right now are focused on destroying Iran’s offensive capabilities and the manufacturing industry that supplies their offensive capabilities.” Wright added that the Navy should be able to escort tankers through the strait by the end of this month…”

~ Full article…

“…We review the Pentagon Briefing with Secretary Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, on the situation in the war against Iran. Secretary Hegseth noted not to worry about the Strait, but we reviewed their answers about convoying and mines and then reviewed the latest situation report by the Joint Maritime Information Center on the situation…”

~ Video

“…In her home country, she would have faced a lengthy wait.

Not in the US, one of the few countries in which “transplant tourism” is legal.

For the team performing the procedure, it was worth it. The patient not only paid for the procedure, the average cost of which is $1.9 million, out of pocket, but her husband’s charity also made a large contribution to the foundation of the surgeon’s wife.

(…)

The Times analyzed every transplant performed in the US over the past dozen years and found that “patients who traveled from other countries received transplants faster than patients from America and were less likely to die waiting for an organ.”

Or, to put it more bluntly, the combination of foreign wealth (regardless of its source) and the “entrepreneurialism” of American hospitals determines who lives and dies…”

~ Full article…

“…The hit job: In 2020-2021, a coordinated network of UK-based NGOs — funded by the same philanthropies whose pandemic-related financial interests they were protecting — deployed government officials, tech platforms, AI moderation systems, legal threats, and parliamentary privilege to brand twelve named Americans as killers, criminals, and terrorists for questioning official pandemic narratives.

The architecture: Epstein file releases document that the individuals declared off-limits had designed offshore vaccine funds projecting “tens of billions” in returns, brokered Rothschild DOJ settlements through a convicted sex offender, and listed “pandemic” as a standing capital category — all before COVID-19 existed.

The irony: ISD’s May 2020 report — funded by the Gates Foundation and Open Society — declared public discussion of Gates, Soros, and Rothschild pandemic involvement to be “unfounded” far-right extremism. The Epstein federal exhibit record documents that involvement in detail, with specific Bates numbers available for public audit. Meanwhile, Oxfam documented $85 billion in excess corporate pandemic profits as a mainstream policy issue — while CCDH labeled $36 million in independent media revenue as a moral emergency requiring deplatforming. The difference was never about the money. It was about the message.

The arc: The founding architect of CCDH has resigned as the British Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. The Goldman Sachs General Counsel recruited by Epstein to broker the Rothschild DOJ settlement has departed under pressure. CCDH’s CEO faces US visa revocation. YouTube has restored wrongfully removed accounts. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — branded a killer before Parliament — is Secretary of Health and Human Services. The people who were cancelled are still standing. The operation that cancelled them is not…”

~ Full article…

“…When have American military bases been struck as they are being struck in this war? When have Americans had to evacuate so many embassies and consulates as they are doing now? When has the all-powerful U.S. arms industry been so humiliated by seeing such expensive defense systems devastated — the very systems that supposedly protect its clients in the region?

Iran has the potential to generate indelible economic damage to the United States and to the entire global imperialist system. And it is already showing its weapons by closing the Strait of Hormuz and bombing refineries in the Persian Gulf. In a certain sense, the game has turned against imperialism: it seems that control over the world economy is not as tight as once believed. It seems that those who control, in a certain sense, this world economy are not the developed, rich, first-world countries, but rather the “lunatic” and “fanatical” ayatollahs.

The magazine The Economist, the leading mouthpiece of international bankers, revealed the despair of these speculators by featuring on its most recent cover the headline: “A War Without Strategy.” The most powerful people in the world are beginning to panic in the face of Iranian resilience and are already questioning the effectiveness of Trump’s aggression…”

~ Full article…

“…Many experts note that in the current reality, modern neo-colonialism has not only not been eradicated but, regretfully, has begun to actively expand and take on various new forms. In the 21st century, most NATO countries have intensified their efforts to strengthen control over developing countries, including through the establishment of dependence, subordination, or financial obligations to the neo-colonialist countries.

The main purpose of this control is to exert political influence on the leadership of developing countries for the sake of enriching the U.S. and EU countries at the expense of underdeveloped countries, including through the extraction of minerals on preferential terms (oil, gas, rare-earth metals, precious stones), as well as creating barriers (economic, political, financial) that hinder the development of the economies of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It is beneficial for the countries of the Global North that the countries of the Global South remain sources of cheap labor and raw materials, while having limited access to new technologies for the development of their own economies.

(…)

Surprisingly, in addition to Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the neo-colonial aspirations of the United States have spread to European countries, including Ukraine.

With Trump’s arrival in power, the U.S. administration pushed through arms supplies to Ukraine at the expense of European Union taxpayers. Now it is EU citizens who are paying for the expansion of capacity and the superprofits of American arms and military equipment manufacturers.

At the same time, in European countries themselves, starting in 2025, there have been significant negative trends in the reduction of spending on social services and support for the population, as well as an increase in household spending on electricity and heating…”

~ Full article…

“…It landed at a law firm in Reno, Nev., last March, a mundane-looking piece of priority mail that cost $10.10 to ship. But it soon unleashed the sort of multimillion‑dollar havoc usually associated with town-flattening tornadoes. Inside was a document many insisted did not exist: the last will and testament of Tony Hsieh.

The dimpled and charismatic chief executive of Zappos, Hsieh had died in 2020, at the age of 46, from smoke inhalation injuries sustained in a fire. A forensic psychiatrist later concluded that he’d lived the last months of his life in a state of drug-induced psychosis, spending his immense fortune at a manic pace.

Many of his plans were grand to the point of derangement. He dreamed up “Country Zero,” a theme‑park-cum nation state to be built on his ranch in Park City, Utah. It would be a place with its own time zone, filled with hot air balloons and run on a seashell-based barter economy. He believed the project, which never broke ground, would draw billions of people in a matter of months and usher in world peace.

“Once word gets out,” he told underlings, “every sunrise is owned by us.”…”

~ Full article…