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Donald Jeffries | I Protest |donaldjeffries.substack.com

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 has really brought out the trolls. I don’t know how many of them are paid, but X has been invaded by illogic, as an army of shills attempts lamely to prop up one of their most important lies. It’s the same insidious hivemind mentality that insists we ignore every giant cultural elephant destroying the room.

In September, 1976, as a result of the new Freedom of Information Act, a revealing April 1, 1967 CIA memo was released, titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.” April 1? Was this one of their inside jokes? At any rate, the memo begins by stating “Our concern,” which revolves around the majority of the public disbelieving the ridiculous conclusions of the Warren Commission. Now why would the CIA be “concerned” about people failing to accept the government’s conclusions? A key passage notes: “Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.” Bingo, as my wife might say. This is the crux of the biscuit, and why “conspiracy theorists” are continuously demonized. Thought Criminals like me do indeed seek to “cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.” They whine about allegations that Oswald worked for the Agency. He did. He had a 201 file.

In the section headlined “Action,” the CIA helpfully advises that the subject of the assassination not be brought up. You know, like a young Don Jeffries was doing at every possible public gathering. In a tip of the hat to Operation Mockingbird, the Agency suggests that Conspiracy Deniers “discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation…Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation. To employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose…” We’d have to update the language here. Circa 2026, this would mean employing propaganda assets on late night talk shows, comedians, and social media “influencers” with lots of followers.

The sentiments there are universal, and apply to everything in the same sphere as the assassination. I’m culturally appropriating “Denier” from them. The majority of our fellow human beings are Conspiracy Deniers. This means essentially that they are capable of denying their own senses. As Winston Smith told us in 1984, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” That is exactly what these Conspiracy Deniers are doing every day. Rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears. From denying the racial reality of ghetto culture, and the wildly disproportionate power of the non-Irish, to swallowing every incredibly stupid and impossible theory from single-bullet to trickle-down. From saluting a flag that now stands for foreign misbehavior and a domestic police state, to trudging to the polls, in rain, or sleet, or snow, to vote for the worst people on earth to not represent them. Voting harder. Mistaken at the top of their lungs.

Although the ones we’re saddled with today are especially obtuse and unreasoning, they’ve always comprised most of the public. Orwell again characterized them perfectly with his sheep in Animal Farm. That’s another term we owe Orwell for. The Sheeple. They’re the unwitting, unthinking army of the conspirators. They refused to join the courageous Daniel Shays just after our War for Independence, when he started a rebellion over the mistreatment, and nonpayment of colonial soldiers. They were the ones reporting their neighbors to Lincoln’s goons during the War Between the States, resulting in them being thrown into makeshift prisons, without any due process. They bought all the false flags, from “Remember the Maine” to “Remember Pearl Harbor,” and their voices were always the loudest. They cheered on the Gulf War, in defense of a tiny oligarchy (Kuwait) none of them had even heard of before. They didn’t care that the government killed the Branch Davidians. They were “crazy.”

As you can see by the illustration above, we are still vastly outnumbered. The fact that this source claims only 47 percent of Americans believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy is astounding. It may be just one of their countless lies, but there is at least some truth in it. In the 1970s, polls showed close to 90 percent of people believed in a JFK conspiracy. Only 19 percent believe in chemtrails? Are they refusing to look up at the sky? Only 23 percent think 9/11 was an Inside Job? If these numbers are remotely accurate, then we have an even more monumental task in front of us. With an increasing reliance on the internet, and not the state controlled television networks, for news and information, how can it be possible that so many continue to be Conspiracy Deniers? Just how obvious do the conspiracies have to be? The coverups are purposefully transparent; they want you to know. They enjoy toying with us. And yet, no matter how obvious they make it, the masses absolutely refuse to think.

When DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s little black book of important political persons was revealed, she went on Alex Jones and publicly proclaimed she would never kill herself. And then she was found hanged. The Conspiracy Deniers believed she took her own life. Virginia Giuffre said the same thing. You know, the girl who was ignored by everyone for years, and then suddenly became a martyr for the ones who survived being trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. The Conspiracy Deniers don’t think she was murdered, either. They don’t think anyone connected to anything politically significant has ever been murdered. As the authorities always quickly determine, “no evidence of foul play.” John Hinckley shot Reagan to impress underage nymphet Jodie Foster. Tyler Robinson shot Charlie Kirk because he was a transgender in love. Or was it a “Furry” in love? They really don’t even need the “friendly assets” the CIA talked about in 1967. The Conspiracy Deniers handle things perfectly fine on their own.

Most of you have heard me talk about the overriding narrative that rules us; the conspiracy to deny any significance, any spiritual reason for our existence. A conspiracy against the supernatural. A conspiracy against God. They push randomness relentlessly. We are just a mere speck, on a slightly larger speck, in an endless universe. Black Holes. Quasars. Primordial soup. Lots of empty “scientific” mumbo jumbo, which somehow impresses the Conspiracy Deniers. Just don’t mention miracles. Or morality. Or eternal redemption. Or utter the name Jesus Christ, unless it’s in vain and you’re not a believer. Then it’s really, really cool. But worship Einstein all you want. A half illiterate who never learned to tie his shoes. But a non-Irish icon. Ask a real genius, Nikola Tesla, what he thought of him. The Conspiracy Deniers have no problem with the missing Tesla files, confiscated by Donald Trump’s uncle for the government. Sure, many of them have TDS themselves, but that is irrelevant.

Some “conspiracy theories” are absurd. The Black “community” believes in many of them. They have basically nailed the larger truth that our leaders are at war with us, but they think they’re only at war with Black people. They believe that random “White Supremacists” are kidnapping random Blacks off the streets and lynching them. And that the police are involved in covering this up. Now, the police are usually involved in covering up something, most frequently the actions of their out of control officers. But no one is lynching Blacks. No one is even lynching Thought Criminals, as far as I know. They knock some of us off, every so often, just as a reminder. I also confess to being confused by the Mandela Effect thing. Some Millennials contend that Nelson Mandela actually died before he did, and this somehow has resulted in other “truths” being changed. Like the Berenstain Bears books, for example. I don’t pretend to understand. But then again, I don’t think Mandela was any kind of hero, either.

It’s always been easier to just call names. Debate is difficult, especially when you have no facts on your side. This is the dilemma the average Conspiracy Denier must deal with. So they scoff at us “nut jobs.” Or “wackos.” Or their favorite, “retards.” During the COVID psyop, “dangerous” became a popular term of derision. Lots of people called me that. The more conventionally educated ones will fall back upon appeals to authority. They will invariably mention the “someone would have talked” nonsense. “Do you now how many people would have had to be involved” in faking the moon landing, or covering up 9/11? “You can’t keep a secret in Washington, D.C.” is another chestnut. Actually, D.C. is full of secrets, official and otherwise. Every still classified JFK assassination document attests to that. The redactions on every begrudgingly released file attests to that. All the dead whistleblowers, who were obviously “talking,” attest to that. Someone has always talked, but they’ve been murdered or ignored.

Russia! Russia! Russia! China! China! China! Islam did it! The sheep in Animal Farm chanted “Four legs good, two legs better.” They bleated out the naysayers. The critical thinkers. That’s what our Sheeple do. They chant “USA! USA!” to drown out any discouraging words. Maybe they’ll break into an impromptu version of Proud to be an American or Lift Every Voice and Sing, the so-called Black national anthem, depending upon the crowd. They both serve the same purpose. Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise. Trumpenstein is now promising a $5,000 check to every American if the Republicans win the midterm elections. Only his cult believes he will actually do this. There are Conspiracy Deniers on the Left, and an increasing number on the Right as well. These would be the ones cheering on Trumpenstein’s dismissal of the Epstein Files as a “Democrat hoax.” The files that reveal our illustrious leaders are in fact barbaric cannibals. Try trotting that one out at a party in front of Conspiracy Deniers.

To be a Conspiracy Denier, you have to endure political speeches. All political speeches. And consider that the empty rhetoric about “getting the country moving,” or “making it great” is innocent, standard political boiler plate. Which we should accept with a shrug and a smile. Sure, they never keep their promises. Sure, they never do anything which helps those who actually need help. Sure, they serve AIPAC and other shadowy special interests. Sure, you “can’t vote them out.” And besides, every one either party picks to run is the same. Never independent. Never principled. Always pro-Zionist. And always anti-”conspiracy theories.” Where’s the randomness of at least one honest leader every few decades or so? Because there’s no conspiracy to stop them, right? Wouldn’t the law of averages dictate that once in a while, we’d have someone in power who actually wanted to do good things? But we’ve accepted that, on those rare occasions, they simply eliminate the Huey Longs and John F. Kennedys.

Conspiracy Deniers believe that the Air Force “mistakenly” identified a weather balloon as a “Flying Saucer” at Roswell. They believe the Dallas deputies who found a rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963 both “mistakenly” misidentified it as a German Mauser. They believe the BATF had to launch a massive raid on the Branch Davidians, when they could have confronted leader David Koresh at any time in a local store. They believe all those witnesses- every one who identified Timothy McVeigh- was “mistaken” about him being in the company of “John Doe #2” in Oklahoma City. They believe that it was a coincidence that dictionaries changed the definition of “vaccine” in the wake of the warp speed vax that didn’t prevent “COVID.” They think millions died from this phantom disease, but no one died from the deadly vaccine. They believe JFK, Jr. and all the other dead Kennedys were “reckless.” They believe the people “won” when Nixon resigned.

I often feel like the little boy in the old fairy tale, who is the only one willing to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. We often forget that, like all whistleblowers and truthtellers, he was overruled by the crowd, who continued to ignore that the emperor was naked. Those of us who are trying to awaken the Conspiracy Deniers have to understand that we’re fighting centuries of “normie” conditioning. Especially for the last 100 years or so, we’re competing with intense propaganda the likes of which the world has never seen. Security cameras, which are everywhere, always malfunctioning whenever something important happens. Or allegedly happens, because an increasing number of doubters believe it’s all fake and scripted. Cell phone cameras, which oddly are never deployed during mass shootings, or supposed “anti-Semitic” behavior. You have your “Holocaust Deniers.” Your “COVID Deniers.” Your “Climate Change Deniers.” Your “Election Deniers.”

Well, I can have my Conspiracy Deniers. I don’t care if someone calls me a “conspiracy theorist.” Sticks and stones, and all that. But I have no “theory.” Building 7 isn’t a “theory.” The massive disparity of wealth isn’t a “theory.” No one in the Deep State being prosecuted isn’t a “theory.” The disclosures from the very limited DOGE program weren’t a “theory.” There is massive waste, fraud and abuse in our government. And those who run the government, the business world, and society at large are massively corrupt criminals. We’ve been vindicated, although they won’t admit it. Our friends owe us an apology. Our family members own us an apology. The world owes us an apology. Most humans can’t apologize, however. They’re too proud. In this case, an apology would mean they were wrong to trust those in charge. Wrong to ridicule and sneer at those who tried to enlighten them. To paraphrase the syrupy sentiment from Love Story: slavery means never having to say you’re sorry.

Source: https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/in-the-land-of-the-conspiracy-deniers

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/09/no_author/in-the-land-of-the-conspiracy-deniers/

Original Article: https://tapnewswire.com/2026/09/16/in-the-land-of-the-conspiracy-deniers/

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After the US officially admitted it deployed weapons into outer space earlier this week, Russia and China expressed concerns, calling it a threat to international peace and demanding the immediate stoppage of all such activities.

During a regular press conference on Tuesday, September 15, Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “China opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponize it and turn it into a warzone.”

He further said that “China stands for the peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the US weapons deployment is a threat to international security and puts a question mark on the stability in outer space. 

“Russia has for many years been consistently drawing the attention of the global community to the grave consequences for international security that Washington’s destructive course may lead to,” Zakharova said.  

She said her country seeks “urgent practical measures to prevent arms race in outer space” and reiterated Russia’s push for a “multilateral legally binding instrument banning the deployment of weapons in outer space.” 

Though it has long been a subject of speculation, a couple of US military officials, earlier this week, admitted that its military is operating weapons deployed in outer space.  

The admission was made by US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday during a conference. He said that the US “has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink’s statement was substantiated by US Space Force chief Douglas Schiess, who a day later, on Tuesday, said that in the coming years the US is even planning to increase the number of orbital weapons already used by the members of his military unit.

Urgent need of legal prohibitions

Underlining the threat that the deployment of weapons in outer space poses, several countries, including Russia and China, have been calling for an international treaty to prevent any arms race in outer space for decades now.

The existing instrument, the UN Outer Space Treaty (1967) makes clear that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

It also prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or stationing them in outer space in any other manner,” but it says nothing about the deployment of conventional weapons, despite declaring it should be used for peaceful purposes only.

None of the US military officials spoke about the nature of weapons deployed by the US in outer space.

Though only a handful of countries have the technological capability to explore outer space in any significant way, several countries have used satellites for military and war purposes for decades now.

The US has a dedicated space force which has recently held exercises related to possible military conflicts in space.

The deployment of weapons and claims of exclusivity, apart from increasing possibilities of an arms race between the existing powers in space; the US, Russia, and China, may also make the rest of the world more insecure.

Zakharova said that Russia is planning to submit a proposal for the creation of an international instrument legally prohibiting all weapon deployment in outer space during the upcoming annual UN General Assembly session.

She asked for more countries to join the Russian initiative and co-author the treaty document.

The U.S. military’s top officer on Wednesday talked about how AI is changing the character of warfare and offered two examples to illustrate his points. His comments included new insights into how two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crew members were rescued after being shot down by an Iranian drone near the coast of Oman in June. The recovery effort involved America’s first known use of an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) executing a personnel recovery action as part of a military search and rescue operation.

“Information moves so fast that leader decision times have compressed from weeks down to days down to seconds,” explained Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending. “In the future fight, advantage will go to the side who can see first, who can understand first, decide first, and act first, and along the way, be a learning organization, and no factor is accelerating change as fast as artificial intelligence and advancing cyber capabilities.”

“AI is here now, and it’s already changing the way militaries see, sense, decide, and act across the joint force,” the chairman proclaimed.

The first example Caine used to highlight these changes took place on June 8. After the Apache went down, “U.S. CENTCOM launched a rapid, responsive joint search and rescue effort to recover the crew. That response drew on the totality of the joint force, and ultimately was required to use enabled unmanned vessels to participate in the rescue of downed U.S. service members for the first time ever.”

As we noted in our previous coverage, CENTCOM deployed “a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel,” the command’s spokesman told us at the time.

The ability to pull off that rescue mission “did not appear overnight,” Caine pointed out. “It came from the men and women of Task Force 59, CENTCOM’s forward-leaning unmanned joint maritime unit who spent the last several years testing, integrating, and operationalizing unmanned systems and AI in one of the most demanding and kinetic environments on Earth right now.”

“What helped make this possible was not a bunch of general officers and flag officers,” Caine continued. “What made this possible was a bunch of entrepreneurial sailors and members of the joint force on watch floors, at piers, managing networks of unmanned systems across thousands of miles of water, and using AI to turn massive amounts of data into a crisp, clear, perfect maritime picture that allowed us to go grab those two soldiers in the water.”

The second example Caine shared about the use of AI “points in the other direction, not how quickly we are using these tools, but how quickly these tools are changing the threat.”

In Ukraine, “we see first-person view drones operating in heavily contested EMI [electromagnetic interference] environments. Some now using AI-enabled computer vision to continue to drive towards targets, even when there’s no GPS or the links are cut. That gives small units affordable precision and shows how quickly software and autonomy are changing what is possible at the tactical edge, and the results are stark.”

The use of AI to enable lower-end drone warfare is a topic TWZ has been among the first to point out.

“In certain locations on the front line of troops right now, the life expectancy of a new Russian recruit arriving on the front lines is as little as 20 to 30 minutes,” Caine added. “Think about that. This is what happens when low-cost precision is fielded fast, adapted quickly, and scaled across the battlefield.”

“The price of lethal exchange is decreasing day over day,” the chairman noted. “One wonders what the future of close air support looks like, but I am comforted by the fact that each and every one of you are in this room thinking about that. Taken together, these examples from the Straits of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine show how quickly technology is changing the character of war, and this means our joint force needs to do two things at one time.”

“[W]e need to prepare the joint force to win in this kind of conflict,” the general stated. “We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum, and tracked in real time, and we have to transition the joint force to be prepared to fight and win our future war by generating and delivering lethality at scale with an agile, optimized, high-low mix of combat capabilities to give the young members of the 2.8-million member all volunteer joint force the tools that they need before they need them.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com 

The post Apache Crew Rescue Highlights Need For AI In Combat Says Joint Chiefs Chairman appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force has been taking a new look at the feasibility of restarting production of the C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane as part of its still-evolving next-generation airlift plans. The service also continues to explore a wide range of next-generation aerial refueling concepts, including new stealthy and/or uncrewed tankers, but a firm vision for the way forward there has yet to emerge.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel Tulley, head of Air Mobility Command (AMC), shared new details about future airlift and aerial refueling efforts, with TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

On the airlift side, the Air Force’s stated plan to date is to replace both the C-17A and C-5M Galaxy with a single Next-Generation Airlift (NGAL) platform, starting in the mid-2040s. Separately, the service is pursuing what could be a family of future aerial refueling capabilities under what is now called the Advanced Tanker Systems (ATS) program. Very broadly speaking, ATS presents a path toward what might come after the retirement of the aging KC-135 tanker fleet, though those aircraft are still expected to keep flying for years to come. The Air Force is also moving to further expand its fleet of newer KC-46A tankers in the interim, but persistent technical and other issues with that design continue to present hurdles.

At the roundtable today, Lt. Gen. Tulley was asked explicitly about restarting C-17 production. The manufacturer of those aircraft, Boeing, shuttered that line in 2015. The company also just marked the 35th anniversary of the design’s first flight yesterday.

“Heck yeah, but with a caveat, right?” Tulley said in response. “So we were just asking this question over the course of last week, and it’s in the context of next-generation airlift. So we are about to embark on the Analysis of Alternatives to replace the C-17 and replace the C-5. All options are on the table.”

“There’s always the option to service life extend the C-17, but the [production restart] question came up,” he continued. “I’ve heard this my entire career. Once we terminate an assembly line, can we ever bring it back? Does somebody store all the machinery and the dies and whatnot, and can you bring that out? So we’re asking that question.”

“But then whatever that answer is from the vendors, what will be the price tag associated with that?” he added. “You have to ask yourself, okay, is rebuilding a C-17 even if you make improvements – and there’s a loose analogy with the C-130J, [a] much more modern, capable variant of the C-130E [author’s note: the C-130J evolved more directly from the C-130H variant] I first learned to fly – if you do that with the C-17, is that the best move? Or are there new technologies that we can incorporate into it so that it can defend itself, so that it’s connected, it’s networked, it does all the things that maybe the current C-17 doesn’t do?”

“We’re looking into it as part of the Analysis of Alternatives. I’m hopeful that we’ll get to answer that question.”

In June, the House Armed Services Committee also directed the U.S. Air Force to prepare a formal briefing on the matter of new C-17 production in a report accompanying a draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2027.

The RAND Corporation did conduct a detailed, independent analysis more than a decade ago that assessed the costs and complexities that could come from Boeing building more C-17As, as well as other variants and derivatives of the design. RAND’s conclusion was that any of the courses of action would require billions of dollars of new investment and entail risks, as you can read more about in more detail here.

Foreign participation in a new C-17 production run could help at least defray costs. Australia, Canada, India, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom all currently fly Globemaster IIIs. The Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) initiative, a multinational arrangement with several European members, as well as the United States, also operates three of these aircraft.

Boeing told TWZ directly in June that unnamed C-17 operators had been reaching out about the prospect of restarting the production line, and that the company was “encouraged” by those discussions.

As Lt. Gen. Tulley stressed, there are significant questions about whether buying new-production C-17s, even with substantial improvements, is not only feasible, but a good use of resources. The Air Force’s Globemaster III fleet today continues to prove itself to be critical to the U.S. military’s ability to project power globally, and is in very high demand right now, especially amid the ongoing conflict with Iran.

The Air Force’s desire to replace both the C-17 and C-5, which are very different aircraft in form and function, could still easily lead the service down a different route. Boeing is not the only one looking at future NGAL opportunities. Another company, Radia, has been very actively pitching a clean-sheet design that is physically bigger than either the C-17 and the C-5, and that is geared toward greater operational flexibility, at the Air Force. Radia is targeting a first flight of its aircraft, called Windrunner, by the end of the decade, but it is still in a very aspirational stage at present.

Many questions also still remain about how the Air Force will ultimately proceed on the next-generation aerial refueling front.

“So thinking beyond the current KC-46 buy and the program extension, whatever that next tanker looks like, our Advanced Tanker System, it’s got to be connected. It’s got to be able to defend itself,” Lt. Gen. Tulley said at the roundtable. “But it begs the question: does it need to be manned? Could it be optionally manned? Could it be autonomous? Or is there a family of solutions maybe that would answer that question? So I do not believe that it has to be manned.”

The AMC head was responding to a specific question about how autonomy could play into the Air Force’s future aerial refueling plans, which included a reference ot the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone. The Navy just announced its first low-rate initial production contract for MQ-25s on Monday.

“I think you’re seeing that with the MQ-25 and the Navy’s work, but then, how do we, the U.S. Air Force, bring that to bear in scope, scale, and range?” Tulley continued. “An optionally manned or an unmanned tanker, at range, the ranges we need to operate at, it’s a very large aircraft. And we’re not yet to where we’re employing fully autonomous large aircraft, but the technology, I would say, is there and rapidly getting there if it’s not.”

The MQ-25 is another Boeing product, and that company has shown a rendering of a larger, land-based derivative in the past. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has also put forward several advanced tanker concepts in the past, including stealthy and potentially uncrewed designs.

“We will be going after how to make the tanker survive,” William Bailey, the Air Force official currently performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, had also told TWZ and other outlets at a separate roundtable at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference yesterday. Bailey was responding to a direct question about whether the service was moving away from the idea of a stealthy tanker as part of the ATS plan.

“So, lots of work around what do we do in the future for our tankers, and we spent a pretty dedicated effort to go through and look at what do we think those design solutions could look like,” Bailey also said. “We looked internally. We went out to industry, had those guys come back with their thoughts on how to provide a more survivable aircraft.”

“The stuff that was coming in for me might have been an incremental improvement, but [it was] not clear that that represented the next step, the next phase,” he added. “What you’ll see is we’ll take our efforts, and we’ll look at, hey, if the real question is tanker access, then let’s not constrain ourselves to just the aircraft itself and trying to make a stealthy tanker. We need a tanker to have access, so we’ll talk about all those systems that it would take to protect that tanker.”

Bailey said the question of operational “access” applied to next-generation discussions, as well.

As is the case with the Air Force’s airlift fleets, the service tankers are in high demand due to the conflict with Iran and other current operational requirements. Stress on the existing tanker force, compounded by the ever-advancing age of the KC-135s, has been a steadily growing point of concern for years now. U.S. military officials have long been drawing attention to the limits of available aerial refueling capacity to meet even routine peacetime demands. The Air Force, as well as the U.S. Navy, have also expanded their use of contractor-owned and operated tankers to perform certain non-combat aerial refueling missions to help ease this strain.

In the meantime, the Air Force is still pursuing upgrades for its existing airlift and tanker fleets, with heavy focus on increased network connectivity and improved self-protection capabilities.

Greater connectivity “can be a game changer, and it has been a game changer in Operation Epic Fury [against Iran],” Lt. Gen. Tulley said at today’s roundtable. “The ability for air crews to communicate, to coordinate tanker orbits and rendezvous, to pass threat information, to save lives and save aircraft has been everything we expected it to be and more.”

“We have MAF NEXUS that we’re pursuing. The goal is to have this on all mobility aircraft, whether they’re future-built and it’s incorporated, or it’s an add-on capability to existing aircraft,” he continued. “It brings edge compute, the ability to then employ AI [artificial intelligence] and much more computing core power forward on the aircraft, and it does network with the rest of the joint force and the Air Force’s battle management system.”

When it comes to new options for protecting existing tankers, “nothing’s off the table,” the AMC boss added. “Whether it’s [in the] electromagnetic spectrum, whether it’s kinetic self-defense, a layered approach, we’re looking at everything to come up with what might be the best system. But it’s got to be a system that we can afford, and it’s got to be one that we can put on all the aircraft we have and the ones we’re about to build.”

Using Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) or other types of drones to help provide localized defense for airlifters and tankers could be another option. The Air Force has already experimented with this, at least to a degree.

The Air Force is otherwise still clearly continuing to shape its future airlift and aerial fueling visions. As part of that work, the service is now at least considering the possibility of rebooting C-17 production.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Assessing Feasibility Of Restarting C-17 Production As Part Of Its Future Airlift Vision appeared first on TWZ.

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The post Bill Gates Calls for ‘Global Government’ and New World Order to ‘Save Humanity’ From AI appeared first on The People's Voice.

Senior U.S. Air Force leaders in Europe say NATO allies are increasingly looking to participate in the development and employment of collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs), even as several of those same countries pursue their own indigenous fighter and drone programs. American commanders say they are looking forward to CCAs expanding the alliance’s overall capacity, and are already pushing for such systems to work together from the outset.

Speaking yesterday at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending, Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, U.S. Air Forces Africa, and NATO’s Allied Air Command, and Chief Master Sgt. Joshua J. Wiener, USAFE-AFAFRICA’s command chief, discussed how the command is preparing for an eventual European role in the U.S. Air Force’s planned fleet of hundreds of CCAs.

The issue is particularly significant for USAFE, which operates a fraction of the fighter force it maintained in Europe during the Cold War, even as many of its NATO allies contend with shrinking fleets of crewed combat aircraft. This comes against a backdrop of deepening tensions with Russia and the emergence of new kinds of threats. Autonomous aircraft that can augment crewed fighters could provide the alliance with additional combat mass without requiring a corresponding increase in the number of crewed aircraft and personnel permanently based in Europe.

“I’m excited about what CCAs have in store for the Air Force,” Hinds said, pointing to recent comments from the Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, including the aim of having at least 500 CCAs in service by 2032.

He added that European interest in these kinds of platforms is already growing.

“I think you’re going to see a lot more interest from other nations inside Europe about what is America doing with CCAs and how they can join this party, if you will,” Hinds said.

Germany is “heavily involved,” he said, while Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands are also showing interest.

In the case of Germany, we have previously explored how that country is looking to procure CCAs by 2029. Sweden, too, recently unveiled a concept for a high-end, stealthy CCA-type drone, while the Dutch are looking to become more closely alligned with U.S. Air Force CCA efforts.

USAFE is currently using two broad operational scenarios to explain to allies how CCAs could fit into NATO’s force structure.

The first is defensive. A CCA could operate as part of an integrated air and missile defense network, potentially engaging one-way attack drones or cruise missiles without the need for expensive crewed fighters.

The second is offensive. In that scenario, autonomous aircraft could help suppress or destroy integrated air defense systems and potentially attack fielded forces during an effort to repel a hostile incursion into NATO territory.

Allies are interested in both missions, Hinds said, and want the ability to incorporate CCAs into their own force designs. Interestingly, only yesterday, Anduril shared photos of its YFQ-44A Fury configured with air-to-ground weapons, underscoring the fact that the CCA could take on an air-to-ground role in the future in addition to its current air-to-air focus.

That kind of interest has already prompted work at the NATO level. Hinds pointed to a study by the Joint Air Power Competence Center, the alliance’s airpower think tank based in Kalkar, Germany, examining how NATO members could employ CCAs in a modular fashion, including issues such as sustainment, training, and exercises.

“It was a pretty long paper, but the nations wanted it,” Hinds said.

Initial experimentation is expected to take place in the United States, but European experimentation could follow, including by Sweden and potentially other NATO members.

At the same time, European countries are not simply waiting for an American CCA to arrive.

The United Kingdom has launched its own Storm Fighter CCA program. Germany is pursuing a separate loyal-wingman effort, while the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan are meanwhile jointly embarked on the Global Combat Air Program, or GCAP, which is intended to produce the Tempest next-generation crewed fighter and associated uncrewed systems.

The proliferation of national programs raises an obvious question: How does NATO prevent a growing fleet of autonomous aircraft from becoming a collection of incompatible national systems?

Hinds said the answer starts with commonality.

“The first and foremost thing is we want to strive for commonality,” he said. “Commonality means we don’t even have to worry about interoperability.”

Where common equipment is not possible, however, USAFE wants interoperability built into national systems from the beginning.

“Interoperability by design” is the preferred approach, Hinds said, with NATO data standards and other requirements incorporated before a system enters service rather than retrofitted later.

The good news for USAFE is that NATO already has extensive experience establishing common standards for interoperability, covering everything from tactics and procedures to communications, datalinks, weapons employment, and other technologies. That existing framework gives the alliance a foundation for integrating increasingly diverse national systems without requiring every member to field identical equipment.

Hinds did warn that some countries have previously acquired equipment that was not compatible with NATO systems, leaving them with the choice of paying to modify their own equipment or forcing the alliance to adapt its systems around it.

That problem becomes particularly important as autonomous aircraft are connected to increasingly complex sensor and weapons networks. Even more important is the requirement for a baseline command-and-control network for CCAs themselves, allowing different platforms to manage them seamlessly.

The ability to share and control CCAs across a complex battlespace is already emerging as both a major opportunity and a significant integration challenge. The U.S. Air Force and Navy, for example, have made clear that their respective CCAs are being developed with the ability to be controlled seamlessly across services, pointing toward a future in which autonomous aircraft need not remain tied to the service or platform that launched them.

Hinds described a potential kill chain in which an F-35 detects a target, passes the information to another node in the network, and a ground-based system operated by another NATO country ultimately launches the weapon.

In such an architecture, the aircraft, sensor, command-and-control network, and weapon do not necessarily have to belong to the same country.

As an example, Dutch F-35s, operating in Europe, have used a data-exchange system to transmit targeting coordinates to Israeli-made PULS (Precise and Universal Launch System) rocket artillery. The system, developed by Lockheed Martin is known as Keystone, and you can read more about it here.

USAFE is making “significant advances” in areas including cross-servicing, cross-loading, and cross-flying allied aircraft, Hinds said, all of which are intended to make multinational operations more seamless.

The same philosophy applies to weapons.

“We want to have all the fires, right? Whether it’s U.S. built or built inside European nations,” Hinds said.

That could prove increasingly important as European countries expand domestic production of missiles, drones, and other weapons alongside their aircraft programs.

The growth of GCAP and other European defense programs comes amid broader debate over how much Europe should depend on U.S. military equipment.

But Hinds rejected the idea that allies developing indigenous aircraft and autonomous systems necessarily signals a move away from American equipment.

“No, I don’t,” he said when asked whether allies were moving away from U.S. systems.

Instead, Hinds characterized the trend as an expansion of the transatlantic defense-industrial base.

Sweden was one example he cited. The country, which recently joined NATO, continues to produce new military equipment, including Gripen fighters, while those aircraft are already being operated by NATO members.

Swedish Gripens are currently leased to Hungary, and other countries are considering the aircraft, Hinds said.

The broader trend toward co-manufacturing and co-production is also something he welcomed.

“I’m seeing a lot of discussions about co-manufacturing and co-production, and I welcome those discussions as well,” Hinds said.

That approach could become increasingly important as NATO tries to expand its available combat power without relying exclusively on additional U.S.-built platforms.

For USAFE, the objective is to ensure that whatever aircraft NATO countries develop or purchase can plug into a common architecture, sharing data, receiving targeting information, drawing on common logistics networks, and contributing weapons effects across national boundaries.

For a U.S. Air Force command that has spent decades trying to cover Europe with far fewer fighters than it once had, hundreds of autonomous wingmen, whether American-built or allied, could provide a significant way to generate additional combat mass.

Senior U.S. Air Force officials are now working to ensure that the networking, weapons integration, logistics, and command-and-control architecture will be in place once those aircraft start to come online.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post How The USAF Is Preparing For European Allies To Join The Collaborative Combat Aircraft Club appeared first on TWZ.

The price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $4.37 on Wednesday, up more than a dollar from a year ago. In California, drivers are paying $6.04. In San Francisco, $5.93. Diesel—the fuel that moves [...]

The post Netanyahu Tells Americans Hit By Gas Prices To ‘Bike or Walk’, Framing It As ‘Support for Israel’ appeared first on The People's Voice.

A little over a month into his term, far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella continues to advance a security agenda that often conflicts with certain rights historically won by Colombians.

This time, De la Espriella has signed a decree allowing police access to university campuses. In several Latin American countries, the prohibition of police access to universities has been established through student struggle to prevent abuses by authorities against student movements.

Thus, universities have historically become places where students seek refuge from repression, arrest, and regroup during times of intense social mobilization.

This was evident during the 2021 protests, known as the “National Strike,” in which students, workers, left-wing political parties, young people, and others took to the streets to protest against the right-wing government of Iván Duque. The mobilization, which lasted several months, was considered a true “social upheaval,” and many experts have seen in it the consolidation of a democratic alternative (the government of Gustavo Petro) to decades and decades of right-wing rule.

During these protests, universities became hubs of popular mobilization, driven primarily by the youngest members of society. On university campuses, protesters were able to regroup, defend themselves against police repression, and coordinate new demonstrations – among other things – always protected by the fact that police are barred from entering university grounds.

De la Espriella calls popular protests “terrorism”

Clearly, De la Espriella seeks to nip this possibility in the bud – that is, to prevent universities from once again becoming coordination centers for the protests. Many have speculated that the president is signing this decree precisely because he knows that his radical neoliberal agenda could spark major protests, and in this way, he hopes to proactively undermine the protest movement.

Read more: One month of De la Espriella’s administration in Colombia

Whether or not this is De la Espriella’s primary intention, only time will tell. What is certain is that the president views university autonomy as an obstacle to the implementation of his security agenda, which also includes curtailing the ability of informal opposition political groups to participate in public life.

“Under no circumstances will I allow public universities to continue to be sanctuaries of violence. I respect and guarantee peaceful protest, but I will not allow universities to continue to be used as sanctuaries of vandalism and crime,” said De la Espriella on X.

Furthermore, true to his combative rhetoric, he compared social protests to terrorism – a common trope in the historical discourse of the Colombian right: “University autonomy is not a blank check for impunity: I have issued precise instructions for a national protocol of action that allows us to distinguish between the legitimate exercise of protest and acts of violence, flagrant offenses, danger, or extraordinary disturbances of public order that require intervention by the authorities. The university is for knowledge and ideas, not to serve as a refuge for violence and terrorism.”

A violation of the Constitution

However, the opposition has viewed this decision as a serious attack on university autonomy. Ana Erazo, a member of the House of Representatives from Valle del Cauca, wrote: “It is an ATTACK ON UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY and a direct threat to the young people at the country’s public universities. With this, Mr. Abelardo de la Espriella is beginning to reveal what could become a BRUTAL RETALIATION against the student movement, against its ability to organize and mobilize, and against thousands of young people who historically have not supported his political agenda.”

Some universities have joined in this criticism. One of them is the National Pedagogical University, whose academic council stated that in the past, “the serious consequences of resolving conflicts within public universities through militarization have been demonstrated on repeated occasions.” Furthermore, the council stated that university autonomy is one of the pillars of Colombian democracy, along with freedom of thought and research, among other things. Losing autonomy means jeopardizing these values of the republic, it stated.

For his part, former presidential candidate Iván Cepeda said that De la Espriella’s measure contradicts Article 69 of the Constitution, which guarantees university autonomy. Regarding the announcement, Cepeda also said: “Such an announcement is not only an affront to university autonomy. It also demonstrates, once again, the authoritarian and despotic nature of De la Espriella, who seeks to stigmatize, persecute, and violate the rights of Colombian youth and the university community. Colombia has not forgotten the victims of police abuse during the National Strike, nor the history of security forces intervening on university campuses, resulting in student deaths. Young people cannot once again be persecuted or treated as an internal enemy and an enemy of the state.”

The FBI isn’t the only interested party searching for Mary Carole McDonnell, the 74-year-old producer behind TV series like I Married a Murderer. There are the former employees who allege millions in unpaid wages, and the two sons who claim their mother forged their signatures on bank documents. There’s an entrepreneur in the United Arab Emirates who accuses her of “mind games,” and the former bank vice-president turned true-crime podcaster who’d like to make a documentary about McDonnell. Cheyenne Roundtree goes deep on the woman who, nearly a decade ago, walked into a California bank with a pecan pie and left with a $15 million loan before vanishing.

The story has all the makings of a viral documentary replete with breathless details, similar to the ones McDonnell’s company produced. Her backstory is littered with half-truths and deceptions, including a lie that her mentally disabled younger sister was murdered after being kidnapped. Questions remain on how she was able to pull off such a brazen heist. And it has sparked an ongoing hunt among the FBI, banking institutions, a true-crime podcaster, and television producers to see who can unravel McDonnell’s tangled history, track her down in a foreign land, recoup the financial losses she caused, and perhaps bring the unbelievable tale to screens.  

On August 27, registered nurses, patients, and community allies rallied and stopped traffic in cities around the US to demand that hospitals and elected officials cut all ties with artificial intelligence giant Palantir. In this episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of registered nurses—Kelli Brennan (Portland, Maine), Lee Barker (Kansas City, Missouri), and Kiera Arbour (Chicago, Illinois)—about National Nurses United’s “Purge Palantir!” campaign, and about the disturbing creep of Big Tech and Big Brother into a US healthcare system that is already in crisis.

Additional links/info:

• National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram
• National Nurses United: “Nurses hold nationwide civil disobedience actions to demand ‘Palantir Out!’”
• Sheera Frenkel & Aaron Krolik, The New York Times, “Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans”
• Aisha Down & Robert Booth, The Guardian, “Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

DavidIcke.com | Gareth Icke

John and Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | Rutherford.org

“What if the rights and principles guaranteed in the Constitution have been so distorted in the past 200 years as to be unrecognizable by the Founders? What if the government was the reason we don’t have a Constitution anymore? What if freedom’s greatest hour of danger is now?”—Andrew P. Napolitano

What’s the point in celebrating the Constitution one day a year if we permit the government to violate it the other 364?

September 17 marks the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, a document designed not merely to establish a government but to restrain it.

Yet restraint is in increasingly short supply.

Across the political spectrum, Americans continue to tolerate abuses of power so long as those abuses are carried out by the “right” people, against the “wrong” people, or in the name of some emergency deemed too important to question.

That is how constitutional government dies.

Not all at once. Not with the Constitution formally abolished or the Bill of Rights ripped from the National Archives.

It dies by degrees: through executive power that expands while congressional authority withers; emergency powers that never quite disappear; wars waged with little regard for constitutional restraints; surveillance systems capable of tracking whole populations; federal agents empowered to operate with ever less accountability; military forces normalized on American streets; and courts that too often allow questions of standing, immunity and procedure to determine whether unconstitutional conduct will ever be confronted on its merits.

Every such precedent makes the next abuse easier. Every exception becomes a justification. Every temporary power becomes harder to claw back.

And every time Americans excuse an unconstitutional act because they approve of the person wielding the power, they help dismantle another guardrail meant to protect them when someone they distrust eventually takes control.

That is the danger we face.

The Constitution was never intended to depend upon the goodwill of those in power.

Quite the opposite.

Those who drafted the Constitution understood that power corrupts, that governments inevitably seek more authority, and that liberty survives only when power is divided, constrained, challenged and made answerable to the people.

The Constitution creates friction intentionally.

It makes government stop and obtain a warrant. It makes prosecutors prove their case. It makes presidents answer to Congress. It makes the military subordinate to civilian government. It protects unpopular speech precisely when those in power most want it silenced. It recognizes that there are places government simply has no legitimate authority to go.

Yet one by one, those restraints have been weakened, bypassed or treated as antiquated obstacles to efficient government.

Consider how quickly the extraordinary becomes ordinary.

Troops deployed to the nation’s capital in response to a supposed crime emergency remain long after the so-called emergency has passed, with the Pentagon preparing for the National Guard presence to continuethrough the end of President Trump’s term.

Sweeping surveillance technologies enable police to identify and track people based not on individualized suspicion but merely on where their cell phones happened to be at a particular time.

Federal immigration agents have been given unprecedented resources and authority while allegations mount of excessive force, unlawful arrests, surveillance, intimidation and constitutional violations.

Presidents increasingly invoke emergencies, national security and expansive interpretations of executive authority to do what once would have required meaningful congressional participation.

Meanwhile, the constitutional mechanisms intended to restrain government often operate too slowly—or not at all.

By the time the courts decide whether the government overstepped its authority, the deed may already be done, the troops already deployed, the people already detained, the data already collected, the building already demolished, the war already underway.

That is government unchained.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: the government did not accomplish this alone.

The power of the police state depends upon a populace willing to tolerate it.

Remember: when it comes to the staggering loss of civil liberties, the Constitution hasn’t changed. Rather, it is the American people who have changed.

Too many Americans have come to view constitutional restraints not as protections against tyranny but as inconveniences that stand in the way of getting what they want.

If a president they support circumvents Congress, they call it leadership. If a president they oppose does the same thing, they call it tyranny.

If government censorship silences their opponents, they cheer. If the machinery turns against them, they suddenly rediscover the First Amendment.

If federal agents abuse people they regard as dangerous, criminal or undesirable, constitutional niceties seem unnecessary. If they become the target, they demand due process.

This is how freedom becomes partisan. It is also how freedom dies.

The Constitution is neutral when it comes to politics.

It does not recognize Republican rights and Democratic rights, conservative freedoms and liberal freedoms, rights for citizens we approve of and lesser protections for those we fear or dislike.

The Fourth Amendment does not ask how you voted before protecting you against unreasonable searches. The First Amendment does not require that your speech be popular. Due process does not exist only for sympathetic defendants. Religious freedom does not belong exclusively to Christians, Jews, Muslims or any other favored faith. And the separation of powers was not written merely to restrain presidents from the opposing political party.

These safeguards exist because power cannot be trusted.

The greatest threat to constitutional government may not be that Americans have stopped believing in rights. It is that too many now believe rights should depend on whose rights are at stake.

That lesson should have been reinforced over the past 25 years.

In the name of national security after 9/11, Americans accepted sweeping surveillance powers, secret watchlists, militarized policing and an expanding government infrastructure capable of tracking and monitoring ordinary people.

What began as extraordinary powers aimed at terrorism became part of the machinery of everyday government.

In fact, technology has made it possible for government to exercise powers of surveillance and control that the architects of the Constitution could never have imagined.

Yet there are also reminders that constitutional resistance still matters.

This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that police conduct a Fourth Amendment “search” when they obtain historical cell phone location data through a geofence warrant—a significant check on a form of digital dragnet surveillance capable of turning anyone carrying a smartphone into a government suspect.

A federal appeals court also upheld restrictions on immigration raids at certain houses of worship after religious communities demonstrated that the threat of enforcement was driving worshippers away and disrupting religious practice.

Most recently, a 7-2 Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s attempt to restrict mail-in ballots in advance of the 2026 midterm elections.

These victories matter.

They remind us that constitutional government is not entirely lost.

They also remind us of something even more important: rights have meaning only when somebody is willing to assert them. They survive when a homeowner refuses an unlawful search, when a citizen records police misconduct, when a congregation challenges government interference, when a parent questions what information a school is collecting about a child, or when a community forces officials to justify their actions in public.

You have no rights unless you exercise them. And you cannot exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

That should concern us because civic ignorance has become a national epidemic.

Too many Americans cannot identify the basic protections contained in the Bill of Rights, explain the separation of powers, or understand why the Founders deliberately made it difficult for any one branch of government to act without checks and balances.

According to the 2026 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center, over a third of U.S. adults (35%) cannot name all three branches of the governmentand under half can name four of the five rights protected by the First Amendment. Of the five First Amendment rights, only freedom of speech is identified by more than half of survey respondents.

That ignorance has consequences.

A people who do not understand why government power must be limited will eventually surrender those limits whenever fear, anger, convenience or political loyalty makes them seem burdensome.

Thomas Jefferson understood the danger: a nation cannot expect to be both ignorant and free.

Those who gave us the Constitution understood something else as well: liberty cannot be preserved by politicians alone.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution begins with three powerful words: “We the People.”

The government exists at the behest of the citizenry, not the other way around.

That means “We the People” have responsibilities that extend far beyond showing up at the polls every few years.

Voting is not enough.

Freedom requires participation. It requires knowing your rights and exercising them. It requires speaking out even when it is unpopular to do so.

It requires demanding warrants, challenging government surveillance, recording police activity where the law allows, serving on juries, attending local government meetings, questioning officials, filing public records requests, supporting constitutional challenges, teaching children their rights, and refusing to let political loyalty override constitutional principle.

It means insisting that Congress act like a separate branch of government rather than a presidential cheering section. It means demanding that courts provide meaningful constitutional remedies while there is still something left to remedy.

It means refusing to allow emergency powers to become ordinary powers. And it means opposing unconstitutional government power even when that power is wielded by politicians we support.

None of this is easy.

Representative government is hard work.

It requires a citizenry willing to stay informed, resist manipulation, question authority, and accept that constitutional limits may sometimes prevent government from easily doing things we might want it to do.

That inconvenience is the point.

The Constitution was designed to make tyranny difficult. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our job is to make sure it stays that way.

So get outraged. Get informed. Get involved.

Get down to your local city council and school board. Get your objections down on paper. Get your representatives to pay attention. Get your children to know their rights. Get your local police to honor the Constitution. Get your media to act as watchdogs for the people rather than lapdogs for those in power.

Most of all, stop waiting for someone else to save the republic.

The courts cannot do it alone. Congress will not do it for us. No president, political party or election will permanently safeguard freedoms that the people themselves are unwilling to defend.

The Constitution is not self-executing.

Its words have power only when “We the People” breathe life into them.

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights.

If not, you will lose them.

The Constitution can’t protect you if you don’t protect it.

Source: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_constitution_cant_protect_you_if_you_dont_protect_it

Image: Source [Edited using ChatGTP]

Original Article: https://davidicke.com/2026/09/16/the-constitution-cant-protect-you-if-you-dont-protect-it/

The left’s capacity to build knowledge, organization, and struggle was a central theme at this year’s ManiFiesta, introduced during a discussion of Peter Mertens’ new book, “The Last Days of the Old Normal“. In the context of Europe’s ongoing armament, these questions are crucial not only for progressive movements in core countries but also for those building alternatives in Central and Eastern Europe.

The festival featured several sessions examining developments in Central and Eastern Europe, including an intervention by Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko on the class character of the Ukraine war. Another session – “East of the former wall: the AfD, the industrial crisis, and the war economy” – brought together Markéta Juřicová of the Czech party Levice, Orsolya Haboczki from the Hungarian progressive movement Szikra, German Bundestag representative Cem Ince from Die Linke, and Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga from the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). 

They discussed how the growth of the far right in core EU countries is interacting with events eastwards – and what lessons Western left movements can learn from their Eastern counterparts.

Read more: ‘Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country,’ says sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko

As Juřicová and Haboczki pointed out, while movements in the West are worried about the popularity of parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD), many nations in Central and Eastern Europe already have experience with far-right participation – even leadership – in government. More than 15 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule in Hungary, Haboczki noted, offers an important lesson on far-right governments’ economic agendas and tactics. As the Orbán administration used identity issues to capture opposition parties’ attention, it channeled resources into the hands of the local bourgeoisie and served transnational capital by securing huge state subsidies, she said. 

Right-wing parties in Eastern Europe also look to their international peers for inspiration. In the Czech Republic, Juřicová said, the far right “loves” the AfD, picking and choosing many of the same topics the German group campaigns on. The discussion signaled this is particularly important to recognize as the growth of extreme right parties is fueled largely by popular dissatisfaction with mainstream parties’ programs. 

Read more: Far-right victory in German state elections shocks the center

Ince emphasized this was the case in Germany, where a large share of AfD votes came from those believing the party would bring upheaval compared to the status quo, marked by massive job losses and cuts to welfare. But while European progressives recognize this, they still struggle to incorporate it into their programs, recent experiences show. Instead, many of them ponder attempts to prevent the far right from seizing institutional power by providing support to establishment parties, failing to shape a concrete alternative to both the mainstream and the extreme right.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the work of progressive parties is further complicated by the need to rebuild credibility after decades of vilification of socialism and austerity measures implemented by liberal options, Haboczki added. 

Read more: “We cannot eat grenades once the grains no longer grow:” European peace movements organize against militarization

While recognizing workers’ material concerns in Central and East Europe is imperative for building local alternatives, the panel showed, it will also be necessary to build region-wide partnership to challenge topics dominating the narrative in Germany, Belgium, and other core countries.

Militarization stands out among these topics, Botenga and Ince outlined in their interventions, though its implementation might differ by sub-region. Botenga added that German industry stands to gain the most from European armament, yet these gains will not trickle down to the working class – meaning the left in the region can find in anti-militarism a common cause to rally around. 

Ince echoed these observations by emphasizing that, even as their profit lines stand to gain from billions of euros directed towards rearmament, German companies continue to shift significant parts of their operations to countries including Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic – making most of eroded workplace protections and labor rights. This shows that the left across Europe must work together to protect workers’ interests everywhere, building a joint struggle for peace and civilian industry, he indicated.