Memory Eternal

Harald V of Norway

France: Far left presidential candidate calls for suspension of interest on national debt

CHÂTEAUNEUF-SUR-ISÈRE, France — Jean-Luc Mélenchon has a radical idea to help solve France’s financial challenges: “set fire” to a large chunk of its public debt.

The far-left presidential contender would essentially have the European Central Bank agree to waive interest payments on a massive tranche of French bonds.

Coming from a top presidential hopeful, the proposal has triggered a flurry of criticism from leading economists and politicians, who have denounced it as irresponsible and dangerous for the economic stability of the country and the entire European Union.

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Are there any adults left in this administration?

Trump threatens to change Lake Ontario's name to "Lake America"

Stephen Marche: America Came for Canada. We Said No.

Friday, Aug. 21, may go down in history as Canada’s Liberation Day. It was the day America came for us, and we said no.

The trade negotiations between the United States and Canada had been moving forward in the weeks after President Trump first threatened 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, but just before midnight, Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the American proposal. “Last-minute changes in the U.S.-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal,” Mr. Carney said in a statement. “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.”

It was a decision made, seemingly, on the spur of the moment, but the deep history of this country paved the way for this one, critical gesture — a historic “no.”  

Mr. Trump’s tariffs on some $20 billion of Canadian goods began immediately after his deadline passed. For Canada, the choice came down to either severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudo-democratic fiscal basketcase of a nation, whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity.

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Fr. John Whiteford: In Defense of the Septuagint

Fr. Stephen De Young has repeated made the claim that the Septuagint has no more authority in the Orthodox Church than does the Masoretic Hebrew Text (for example, in his interview with Fr. Thomas Soroka, entitled: "Orthodoxy, the Old Testament, & the Septuagint"). This is simply not the case. Now, Fr. Stephen is obviously an extremely intelligent man, and well educated. I have learned a lot from listening to him, and have often found him to be very insightful. But the idea that the Septuagint has superior authority to the Masoretic Text is not an urban legend -- this has been the consistent teaching of the Church.

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Reconciling Hayek and Mill's Divergent Defenses of Liberty

Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and the great political philosopher John Stuart Mill both reached generally libertarian conclusions. But, as prominent Harvard law Porf. and political theorist Cass Sunstein points out in an excellent recent post, they did so for quite different reasons:

Mill was a romantic about choosers (about you and me, and what we know, and what we are capable of), while Hayek was not a romantic about choosers at all (not close). He was a romantic, or something like that, about undesigned orders and traditions, and a skeptic about planners.

Mill put a bright spotlight on individuals, their knowledge, their potential, and their agency. Hayek put a bright spotlight on markets and traditions, and on government planners and what they cannot know.

In sum, Mill emphasized the merits of individual freedom of choice, which he famously argued would enable each person to exercise control over his or her affairs, and result in valuable "experiments in living." By contrast, Hayek emphasized the defects of government planners, and their lack of knowledge.

As Sunstein notes, these two ideas are not inherently opposed. They can even be mutually reinforcing, in so far as they provide alternative justifications for the same conclusion. But there is a tension, in so far as Hayek also emphasized the value of "spontaneous order" and the traditions it generates, which he viewed as better guides to decision-making than the unaided reason of individuals. This contrasts with Mill's emphasis on individual autonomy and reasoning skills.

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The West Bank’s last Christian village under settler attack

The Israeli settlers always come at sunset, their approach sending the inhabitants of the remote farmsteads into a quiet panic.

They arrive on noisy off-road vehicles, on foot, sometimes on horseback. They throw stones, break windows, set fires and occasionally, residents end up in hospital from their savage beatings, or worse.

In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian town in the West Bank, The Telegraph witnessed an attack in which a local Bedouin family were pinned down for more than an hour last week.

The town, which is close to Ramallah, has been declared a “closed military zone” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after months of settler attacks. The Telegraph previously reported that the settlers had used leaf blowers to fan the flames they had set to intimidate the town’s Christian inhabitants.

Despite this IDF order, attacks continue unabated and the town is increasingly surrounded by illegal outposts built by Israeli settlers.

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Can Presidents Exempt People from US Law?

After the Supreme Court struck down his first order restricting birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, President Trump signed a new order on August 6. At first blush, the new order seems like only a blatant attempt to ignore the Supreme Court. That might be true, but there’s an alternative reading that is more bizarre and potentially frightening: The president might believe he can unilaterally decide whether US law applies to any particular person or groups of people.

The entire order rests on the assertion that presidents can decide who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and, therefore, US law. In a way, this is a far more dangerous claim. For instance, diplomats receive immunity not only from federal but also from state and local prosecution. If the president can suspend the laws—not just the enforcement of them but the laws themselves—the order would not only strip citizenship from many Americans, it would also create a massive new power for presidents to abuse.

The strange new order is already being challenged in court, but we still don’t know how the government will defend it.

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Russia sabotages weapons factories across Europe

Russia has launched a fresh wave of attacks on European armaments factories under the guise of plausible deniability, according to Western intelligence sources.

The Kremlin is recruiting local gang members to sabotage defence manufacturers to test Nato’s resolve.

The attacks appear carefully calculated to fall just short of triggering Article 5, Nato’s mutual defence clause, intelligence officials believe.

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Canada Defies Trump- Will Impose Retaliatory Tariffs

The U.S. imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products early Saturday after last-ditch negotiations failed to resolve the latest strain in already tense relations between the historic allies. Canada's leader said it will retaliate beginning Sept. 8.

In a call with reporters late Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada had declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms that had been agreed to earlier this week. He told Fox News on Saturday that there are "no new planned talks with the Canadians."

"We're moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation," Greer said, adding: "After a year of that retaliation, we've said enough, and so we've taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains. We've been offering to bring the Canadians along on that path, really to cut the tariffs on them, on steel, on tariff autos, even lumber, things that are sensitive for them, and they've always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn't want that."

Canadian Prime Minister said Saturday in Ottawa that "in the coming days, we will release the details of these new tariff measures, which will come into force the Tuesday after Labor Day." The dollar-for-dollar retaliation would target steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics.

He disclosed that Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the United States substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales.

But he said Washington's final demands went too far, saying, "They asked too much and offered too little," Carney said.

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The Right to Worship

Synagogues are becoming recurring targets in America. Just days ago, Kabbalat Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in the heart of New York City were disrupted when a man violently assaulted a congregant and a security guard.  

Last November, at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, congregants were greeted by roughly 200 protesters chanting “Globalize the intifada,” “Death to the IDF” and “We need to make them scared,” forcing synagogue attendees to face a torrent of antisemitic slurs and threats. Then, in May, the harassment returned. This time, demonstrators waved a Hezbollah flag and screamed “rapist” and “pedophile” at Jewish people simply trying to enter the synagogue.  

The fact that American houses of worship require police protection just to let its congregation through the door should alarm every American.   

The pattern goes beyond New York: in Los Angeles, a group of masked antisemitic protesters gathered outside Wilshire Boulevard Temple, shouting “baby killers” and “Zionist pigs” at those seeking to enter. Two protesters eventually were arrested, for battery and destruction of property, after forcing their way inside of the synagogue. 

These are not isolated incidents. They represent a dangerous escalation threatening the fundamental right to worship freely and safely.     

In 2025 alone, ADL documented dozens of protest-related antisemitic incidents and nearly 530 incidents of harassment at synagogues in the United States. While overall antisemitic incidents declined since the year prior, physical assaults reached record levels.

And the crisis extends beyond the Jewish community. An LDS church was besieged and burned to the ground last fall in Michigan, and in May, three people were killed protecting students and worshipers at San Diego’s largest mosque. Houses of worship across the U.S. increasingly are being turned into flashpoints for confrontation rather than havens for reflection and community.  

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Our ancestors were made of iron

HT: Fr. Z

Navy may rename carrier honoring Black war hero after Trump

The US Navy is working to rename an aircraft carrier under construction that was set to honor a Black sailor hailed for his heroic actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor, three sources familiar with internal discussions told CNN.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, the Navy announced that the Ford-class carrier would be called the USS Doris Miller, recognizing an enlisted sailor who helped defend US forces from Japan’s attack.

It’s unclear what the Navy is seeking to change the name of the carrier to, though two of the sources said there have been internal conversations about renaming it to honor Trump. It would be an unprecedented move to name an aircraft carrier after a sitting president.

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Mohamed A. El-Erian on Inflation, the National Debt, and Bond Market Volatility

The interest rates the United States has to pay for the bonds it sells to fund the government have been surging. This was once a niche obsession of financial markets, but it is swiftly evolving into a much broader issue, with implications that extend far beyond the immediate pain of steeper borrowing costs for households. Already, it has prompted the Treasury Department to intervene more forcefully in this key global market.

This is no ordinary bond-market sell-off. It’s being driven by forces unlike those of the recent past. And if it persists, it could mark the beginning of a structural economic shift more enduring and more globally consequential than most previous episodes of market volatility.

The leap in the cost of borrowing has been breathtaking. Rates on newly issued 30-year U.S. bonds, considered one of the world’s safest bets, recently hit 5.3 percent, up from 1.7 percent in 2021. The American government hasn’t had to pay such high rates since 2007, on the eve of the global financial crisis. That means more federal revenue goes to service the debt — nearly 20 percent — leaving less available for, say, defense or health care.

The pain is spreading, especially as corporate borrowers also face a widening credit spread — that is, the extra risk premium they must pay relative to comparatively risk-free government debt. On Main Street, people are struggling to buy homes or refinance because mortgage rates are so high. It’s the same story for auto loans and credit-card balances.

Ask 100 market players why rates are rising, and they would undoubtedly point to the usual suspects: stubborn inflation, ballooning government debt and fiscal deficits and the sting of higher gas and diesel prices tied to the war with Iran.

While these explanations make historical sense, they risk misleading policymakers and investors alike on both the “why” and the “so what” of the current situation.

There are four new and significant issues at play...

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The US national debt now stands at $40 trillion

Government debt has eclipsed $40 trillion, passing yet another staggering benchmark for red ink, according to the Treasury Department.

The total U.S. IOU hit $40.05 trillion as of Tuesday, some four and a half years after topping $30 trillion. Years of escalating budget deficits, pushed higher by stimulus funding during the Covid pandemic, have seen the public share of the debt near 100%.

In the most recent monthly accounting of U.S. finances, Treasury reported a $432.3 billion deficit in July, the highest monthly total since March 2021. The year-to-date shortfall is nearing $1.8 trillion, higher than the same period a year ago.

Ten years ago, the debt level was at $19.4 trillion.

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The Freedom Caucus is having a brutal primary run

The hard-right Freedom Caucus is having a rough primary season.

Candidates with backing from the caucus and its allies flopped in primaries from Florida to Wyoming on Tuesday, adding to a string of recent losses for the group.

In Florida, Catalina Lauf lost in a House GOP primary to replace Freedom Caucus member and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — despite backing from President Donald Trump as well as a late, small ad buy from the Freedom Caucus Fund and millions from other groups supporting her.

Hours later, more than a dozen Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates in the state’s legislature lost to moderates. The group’s chair, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, lost to a moderate in the secretary of state race, as did Freedom Caucus candidates for state superintendent and treasurer.

Those losses followed Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) ouster earlier this month, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) defeat in his run for Attorney General and Rep. Ralph Norman’s third-place primary finish in the race for South Carolina governor — all candidates who the Freedom Caucus Fund, the federal campaign apparatus of the House Freedom Caucus, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost.

The State Freedom Caucus Network, which backed the Wyoming legislative candidates, is not officially affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, but its website says its mission is “building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus” to bring the fiscally conservative principles of the group to statehouses nationwide.

While there have been some wins for Freedom Caucus members this cycle, the combined pattern suggests that the ultra-conservative group’s name and influence is waning with GOP voters, and it comes as the factions of the party battle for relevancy when Trump’s presidency ends.

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Who holds the cards?

If I were writing a book about the U.S. war with Iran, I know exactly what the title would be. It would be President Trump’s social media post of April 5, 2026, directed at the leaders of Iran: “Open the [expletive] Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!”

Wars are a crucible that very often exposes changes in the physics of the world around us — who has power, who doesn’t have power and how power is being wielded. Nothing better captures the new power equation produced by this war than Trump’s unhinged and obscene rant at the Iranian leadership for not bending to his bombs.

This new physics of war is equally present in the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel and the Houthis and everyone else. My summary of this new dynamic is that the small can now act really big, really accurately and really inexpensively. And while the big can also act really small, really accurately, it is far more expensive for them to do that while bearing the burden of vast legacy arms systems.

The net advantage, for the moment, seems to be to the small. That should keep you up at night, when you think how the emerging revolution in artificial intelligence will surely supercharge this trend, enabling the small to act even bigger, mightier and less expensively.

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Trump orders Pentagon to scale back joint exercises with South Korea

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon on Sunday to scale back planned joint military exercises with South Korea, saying it declined to help denuclearize Iran and citing his good relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

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America is Losing its Credibility With Both Friends and Enemies

Last week, a minor geopolitical earthquake shook the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Turkey — two nations that have been openly hostile toward one another for much of the last decade — pledged to go to war in each other’s defense. Along with Pakistan, they signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, declaring, NATO-style, that an attack on one would be treated as an attack on all. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have long had close security ties. But Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been bitter regional rivals, clashing over Qatar, Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and, most explosively, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, which Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to blame directly on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

So what brought them together? President Donald Trump — or rather the two countries’ diminishing faith in him and his word.

The Iran war has been a master class in how to squander credibility. Recall that Saudi Arabia and Qatar both received security commitments from Trump only last year. But Trump’s word is as solid with his counterparts abroad as it was with his bankers in New York. He has repeatedly declared that a deal with Tehran was just days away. By mid-June, one tally counted at least 38 pronouncements that a deal was near or that Iran desperately wanted one. Yet this week an Iranian source told Reuters that negotiations have made “absolutely no progress.” The world has learned to treat his Truth Social announcements as a mix of fact and fiction, like some of the AI-generated videos he posts.

The same pattern is visible in Europe. In May, the Pentagon announced that 5,000 American troops would leave Germany, and Trump suggested more cuts were coming. The Pentagon then scrapped a planned deployment of roughly 4,000 troops to Poland. Days later, Trump announced that an additional 5,000 troops would go to Poland. Sometimes he threatens not to defend Europe against Russia; other times he says he will. Imagine being a European defense minister trying to construct a 10-year military plan around this.

Trump declared this week that the United States had “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet ship-tracking data recorded just 14 vessels transiting in one day recently, compared with more than 130 a day before the war.

This is not simply a matter of presidential style or rhetoric. It goes to the heart of American power.

For eight decades, the U.S. built up something as powerful as aircraft carriers and squadrons of F-35s: credibility. Allies believed American commitments would endure from one administration to the next. Adversaries understood that American threats, while sometimes exaggerated, carried real weight. The system was not perfect. Washington broke promises and made mistakes. But there was a broad presumption that the U.S. was a predictable actor and the president’s words meant something.

Trump treats promises and threats as if he is playing a grand game of bluff. But unpredictability is a very different thing in an alliance than in a real estate negotiation. If allies cannot know whether troops will arrive or leave, whether tariffs will rise or fall, whether an agreement signed today will survive until tomorrow, they do not become more obedient. They become more independent.

Countries are building insurance policies. Denmark chose the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air-defense system rather than the American Patriot. Canada is reconsidering its F-35 purchases. European governments are investing heavily in their own arms industries. South Korea has become the second-largest seller of arms to European NATO countries and is helping supply the Gulf’s air defense with systems cheaper than Patriots. The Dutch central bank has moved critical cloud services to a European provider to reduce dependence on American technology. And now Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are constructing a security architecture of their own.

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California Moves to Reclassify Jews as an Ethic Group - Not Just a Religion

The state of California recognizes nearly 50 racial and ethnic identities for data collection, from American Indian to Samoan. Now it is considering adding one more: Jewish.

A bill that passed a crucial committee vote on Thursday would require state agencies to include an optional box for Jewish ethnicity on all demographic data forms, from college applications to public assistance programs. Its passage would make California the first state to officially treat Jewishness as something more than a religion in this fashion — a shift more significant than it might seem.

Scholars of Jewish identity say that it has long posed challenges to American law and public discourse, because Jews have never fit into contemporary conceptual categories. In fact, the challenges — and misconceptions — go back centuries.

“When Jews received the rights of citizenship in European nation states, Jews were forced to think of themselves as a religion,” said Leora Batnitzky, professor of religion at Princeton University and author of “How Judaism Became a Religion.” “But this was always contested from an internal Jewish point of view.”

Plenty of proudly identified Jews do not attend synagogue or even believe in God — and Jewish tradition considers them to be Jews just the same. Jewish identity, like ethnic identity, is generally passed through parentage. But while outsiders cannot convert to another race or ethnicity, they can convert to Judaism. In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that only 11 percent of American Jews said that “being Jewish is mainly about religion,” with most preferring some combination of religion, ancestry and culture.

For its proponents in California, the bill, S.B. 1387, is an attempt to counter this confusion by making clear that “Jewish” means more than religion. Practically speaking, the bill aims to help the state quantify its Jewish population and to enable better data collection for hate crimes tracking and public health purposes — for example, by determining where to promote genetic screenings for diseases common in Jewish communities, or ensuring that antisemitic attacks are not misclassified on reporting forms.

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Bill Maher: Yes, the DSA are a bunch of commies

US sells 30-year bonds at highest borrowing costs since 2001

The U.S. government on Thursday auctioned $25B in 30-year Treasury bonds (US30Y) at a yield of 5.216%, marking the highest rate for this tenor since 2001.

This quarter-century high underscores investors' growing demand for increased compensation to finance the nation's expanding fiscal deficit.

While the auction met with decent demand, there were clear signs of slight hesitation from buyers. The bid-to-cover ratio slipped to 2.39 from July’s 2.44, tracking below the recent average. Additionally, indirect bidding dropped to 66.9% from a near-record 77.7% in July. The final yield also landed slightly above prevailing pre-auction market levels, indicating that overall demand narrowly lagged expectations.

This comes a day after a 10-year Treasury (US10Y) auction that drew its highest financing costs since 2007.

The broader surge in long-term yields is heavily driven by investor anxiety that rising energy prices, fueled by conflict in the Middle East, will sustain inflation and force the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated.

Meanwhile, 30-year yields (US10Y) dipped by roughly five basis points to 5.21% at press time, as cooling oil prices and tame producer price data prompted traders to scale back expectations for another Fed rate hike this year. Still, that's up from 4.85% at the start of the year.

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