Monday, December 15, 2025

Spider-like robots are literally walking across China's deserts planting trees with every step.


this is realy a beginning but also the low hanging fruit. understand that every square foot of desert on earth requires intelligent augmentation.  At least the chines are getting a runnig start.  And as solar farms have shown us we can assively harness shade from solar cells to assist us.

Ample energy, shade inducing robust biology and integrated animal husbandry can produce a full on blanket of quality soils.  While employing Chinas entire population.

The same for india ,all the middle East and the Sahara and half the USA.  space enough for well over 10,000,000,000 folks.

understand folks will mostly live in tower satacks using an acre of land usuzally integrated with ample undergroung refugia as well all of which husbands a thousand acres.  along with multilayered greenhouses.  it is all there and inputs can be minimal

Spider-like robots are literally walking across China's deserts planting trees with every step.

Powered entirely by the sun, these AI-driven machines are doing something no human army could achieve at this scale. They're turning one of Earth's harshest landscapes green again, one sapling at a time.

This is what happens when cutting-edge technology meets climate action.



These ecological warriors are rewriting the rules of desert restoration.

Each robot uses ground-sensing technology to identify ideal planting locations, measuring moisture levels and sand composition before deploying seeds with protective capsules. The AI systems allow them to adapt in real-time, adjusting planting depth and spacing based on terrain conditions that change with every gust of wind.

In Inner Mongolia and other vulnerable regions, desertification has been advancing at an alarming rate, swallowing farmland and threatening communities. Traditional reforestation efforts require massive human resources and often yield low survival rates in extreme conditions. These robots flip that equation completely. They can work through sandstorms, extreme heat, and terrain too dangerous for human teams, all while running on clean solar energy with zero emissions.

The swarm intelligence is perhaps the most fascinating aspect. Multiple robots communicate wirelessly, sharing data about soil conditions, coverage patterns, and successful planting zones. They coordinate like a digital ecosystem, ensuring no area is over-planted or missed entirely. Early pilot programs have shown survival rates exceeding 80% for saplings planted by these machines, compared to 40-50% with conventional methods.

China's goal is ambitious but achievable with this technology. The Green Great Wall initiative aims to plant nearly 90 billion trees across 4,500 kilometers by 2050. With these solar-powered planters scaling up production, what once seemed impossible is becoming reality. Every step these robots take is a step toward reversing decades of environmental damage.

📌Sources and References:
South China Morning Post coverage of desert reforestation robots, Chinese Academy of Sciences environmental technology reports, Green Great Wall Project documentation, IEEE Spectrum robotics innovation features.

✓Read and learn more:













✓Peer-Reviewed Scientific Publication:



📌 "Note: The image is AI-generated and intended for illustrative purposes only. It is not to scale."




Nasa's wise scientist finally 'finds the Star of Bethlehem'





to start with, this observation in time and pace is impossible to impeach and certainly may have been a natural comet and something which  scholars really paid attention to then.  you als0 do not make this up.  so locating a related reference in chinese records fully conforms and 5 BC is truly close enough to the necessary time line which then makes Yesua around 36 years of age.  It also intercepts the last two years of Herod the Greats rule as well.

even if the nativity itself is a write in which by the way is highly plausible. these were the known external dates and facts to which such a story could be attached.  understand that the central recorded fact regarding Yesua was his ministry.

Now let us recall #I/ATLAS and Cloud cosmology.  Understand a socalled comet shifting it mass and rolling in from deep space  at a significant percentage of light speed and then setting up to put on a visible display from the corect direction.  imagine 3I/ATLAS doing just this.

My take home is that this can be intentional


The Kinship of Producers



and our ultimate engaged producers are mothers.  The persistent effort to produce effectively useless individuals is just stupid and even dangerous.  everyone needs to be raised inside a productive engaged culture.

The wastage needs to dissapear.

and we need to stop selling the illusion of the idle rich, if they ever truly existed.  An active mind is never idle ,and even stupid demand validation through routime and effort.

The Kinship of Producers


https://freemansperspective.com/the-kinship-of-producers/

There is a kinship between productive humans; one that spreads all across this planet. It may be invisible to power and hierarchy, but we productive people recognize it.


When we drive into a new town, we know, almost by instinct, that we can trust the hard-working carpenter further than someone permanently on the dole. It’s possible that the guy on the dole is a saint, but the hardworking man shares our specific ethics, and we are tuned to them. And even if this carpenter is a negative exception, we’ll be able to tell soon enough.



I’ve felt this kinship on multiple continents and among people of many flavors; not just on construction sites, but in truck stops, offices, grocery stores and trains. Productive people carry a specific ethic, and it’s consistent not only over distance, but over time. If you were somehow dropped into ancient Rome, the people you’d want to join wouldn’t be the senators or the people in the bread lines, but the people who built and maintained the aqueducts.




Ethics Born of Work

The ethics I’m referring to are those which are spawned by work… by productive, dedicated, creative work. And yes, even sweeping a floor becomes creative if you take it seriously. A shop floor is complex, and complexity must be overcome with creativity.




Work requires things of us; things like continuous cooperation, holding in mind what others are doing, and working toward a shared, final goal. It requires us to make a long chain of decisions, by ourselves and without stopping our work flow. In this way it’s a lot like team sports.




From the practice of production spring the virtues of persistence, dedication, reliability and endurance. We learn to do things that are hard, because they need to be done, and because there’s no one but us to make sure they get done.




We learn responsibility, because if we fail to do the hard things, dozens or hundreds of people will be in trouble. We also learn about earned self-pride. When we work hard, long and effectively, we learn that we are beneficial and necessary beings in the world. Legitimately.




Here, in brief, are the values of producers:




We believe that everyone should be treated fairly, including a certain level of respect and politeness.

We believe in voluntary interactions; that coercion is wrong.

We believe that people should keep their agreements.

We believe in cooperation and good faith.

We believe that everyone should be able to do what they want, so long as they don’t intrude on others.

We accept that life can be hard, and we work through it as best we can.

We believe that good decisions must include concern for the long term.

Establishing this as a good list is easy, and the proof is this: These are things we complain about when others fail to uphold them. We wouldn’t complain if we didn’t hold them as values.




So…

What I’d like all productive people to realize is this: We have every right to live our way; to express our will in the world. And more critically, we shouldn’t sacrifice our ethics to people and systems who claim to be higher and more important. Consider this, please:




Any system that can’t survive within our ethics (something that corner stores, nurses and contractors do every day) is a system that has passed its time and should be left behind.




Our ethics are good and we’re the people who make the world work. We need to believe this.

Saudi Arabia Didn't Learn Anything From China's 'Ghost Cities'



ah yes, just who will live there?  What are these folks thinking.?  and where are the folks?

did the deathly secret of china's popupation collapse remain known only to several admin types/

and all sorts of top guns built on the basis of false information.

This may well be the price paid for secrecy.  and just what were the saudis thinking/


Saudi Arabia Didn't Learn Anything From China's 'Ghost Cities'


Monday, Dec 08, 2025 - 04:15 PM



You can’t build a castle on sand, and you can’t build a city on assumptions. Saudi Arabia unveiled The Line in January 2021 as a perfect, linear utopia stretching 170 kilometers across the desert. Three years later, the castle is already sinking.


When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced The Line on January 10, 2021, he promised a radical reimagining of urban life. “We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one.”


Tucked into the upper corner of the kingdom’s Tabuk province, the city would run like a ruler through the Neom region, housing nine million people, the population of Austria, within just 34 square kilometers, all powered by renewable energy. It imagines a world where every need sits within a five-minute walk, yet one can cross the entire city in twenty minutes. But even in a country wealthy enough to seed rain clouds and bankroll vast infrastructure, reality is colliding with ambition. The city that promised to “deliver new wonders for the world” is struggling to deliver its own foundation.

By 2030, only 2.4 kilometers of the 170-kilometer project will be completed, with the rest delayed as the government prioritizes energy infrastructure and scrambles for funding. The project’s leadership has been reshuffled, with the head of the sovereign wealth fund, The Public Investment Fund, now steering the effort amid deepening financial uncertainty. This is unsurprising. The Line was imagined as an engineering object, an architectural marvel, rather than a city that must grow from real human demand. The economic foundation beneath that vision is equally unstable. Saudi Arabia’s fiscal fortunes depend on oil, a commodity that swung from over $110 a barrel in 2012 to $42 in 2020 and now hovers near $70. The financial bedrock for this trillion-dollar city is, like the desert beneath it, shifting.

As urban planner and George Mason scholar Alain Bertaud reminds us, cities are foremost labor markets, not works of art. “Planning,” he argues, “is based on the illusion that a city is a complex building that needs to be designed in advance by competent professionals.”

While the glossy Neom videos present a pristine, drone-filled future, they do so without answering the most basic question: who will live here? There is no target population beyond the slogan of “nine million,” no industries identified, no international firms committed to office space. The Line sells a vision of technological abundance while omitting the people needed to make a city function. Additionally, the BBC reports that construction has already displaced local communities, some labeled as rebels, and that Saudi authorities justified lethal force against those resisting eviction. The Line lacks the basics, let alone the advanced futurism it advertises: no jobs lined up, no residents committed, and human rights violations overshadowing its image.

For years, Saudi Arabia has attracted foreign workers with the promise of zero income tax and a reputation for safety. But these incentives, however appealing, are not in and of themselves a foundation for long-term economic growth. As Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu argues, it is institutions, not tax perks or security guarantees, that sustain prosperity. On this front, Saudi Arabia functions less like an open society and more like a modern caste system, granting its citizens far broader rights and protections than the millions of residents, roughly 40 percent of the population, who live and work there. Citizens benefit from public goods such as public schools, where non-Saudis are capped at just 15 percent of enrollment, as well as welfare programs universally free for nationals. Foreigners, by contrast, are routed into private institutions and face sharply limited paths to citizenship waiting 10 years to apply, and even then nothing is guaranteed. This is a separation not only of services, but of ideas and talents. Even the labor market reflects this hierarchy.

Saudization quotas ensure that nationals are favored for desirable jobs: in many sectors, at least 30 percent of employees must be Saudi, and entire professions are reserved exclusively for citizens. A system built on quotas and exclusion cannot produce genuine meritocracy; talent competes at a disadvantage when citizenship, not ability, is the deciding factor. But the clearest institutional divide is not economic, it is political. Freedom of speech, the most fundamental inclusive right, remains unavailable to citizens and residents alike. The fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi underlines the risks of dissent in a system built not on participation, but on silence.

History has shown that governments cannot simply erect structures and call them cities. In China alone, dozens of newly built towns stand largely empty. Anticipating rapid growth, the country produced more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the United States did during the entire twentieth century. One showcase city in China’s interior was designed to house more than one million people, but “currently houses less than 100,000, and it is still less than halfway toward the district’s goal of housing 300,000 people by 2020.” Government planning and reality rarely align.

Yet China’s ghost cities illustrate only the surface of the problem. The deeper issue lies in what a city fundamentally is.

Aristotle taught that a city requires three things: a functioning politeia, citizens capable of ruling and being ruled; autarkeia, an economic base that allows people to sustain themselves; and koinōnia, a shared conception of the good life that binds people into a community. The Line satisfies none of these conditions. Its residents will not form a politeia, because most will be non-citizens without political rights. It lacks autarkeia, with no industries, no labor market, and no economic ecosystem. Furthermore it cannot produce koinōnia, a communal life, in a system where people remain transient workers rather than members of a civic community. The Line attempts to design a polis without the very ingredients Aristotle believed made a city possible.

Aristotle reminds us that “the city exists by nature,” and that “man is by nature a political animal.” A city, polis, he taught, may come into being for the sake of living, but it endures for the sake of living well. Yet there can be no such good life in The Line without a community capable of shaping its own future, deliberating, dissenting, and holding its leaders accountable.

Cities grow from freedom, choice, and bottom-up demand, not from architectural decree. Saudi Arabia confronts an irony of its own making. A nation whose modern borders were once drawn from afar now seeks to draw a perfect line of its own. Yet it overlooks the oldest lesson in the desert: drawing lines is easy; living within them is not. Steel and glass can build walls, but they cannot build a city where the foundations of civic life are forbidden to take root.

Saturday, December 13, 2025

US Unveils First Autonomous Microwave Weapon Robot to Defeat Drone Swarms in Seconds




This is getting microwave tech down to combat scale and can counter drones.  not lasers which demand shipboard energy.

we are describing an anidrone umbrella over a wide front allowing infantry and even armor to move forward.  drones will still be low and slow and effective there.

It will sheild assets from destruction. 


US Unveils First Autonomous Microwave Weapon Robot to Defeat Drone Swarms in Seconds


The U.S. defense sector has introduced a major breakthrough in counter-drone warfare: Leonidas Autonomous Robotic (Leonidas AR), the world’s first high-pulse microwave–armed robot. Developed by Epirus and General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), the system blends cutting-edge electromagnetic weaponry with an AI-enhanced unmanned ground vehicle to neutralize drone swarms instantly and without kinetic fire.

A New Class of Counter-Drone Capability

• Leonidas AR integrates Epirus’ Leonidas high-power microwave (HPM) system onto GDLS’s 10-ton TRX tracked robotic vehicle.

• The HPM weapon emits bursts of weaponized electromagnetic interference capable of disabling the electronics of multiple drones simultaneously.

• Software-defined controls allow operators to adjust frequency bands, avoid friendly systems, and remotely update capabilities.

• The system offers one-to-many engagement, making it far more efficient than interceptor-based air defense systems.

Next-Generation Robotic Mobility

• The TRX platform is hybrid-electric, autonomous, and built for all-terrain operations, with a 300-mile range and 45-mph top speed.

• Its 360-degree sensing, advanced computing stack, and remote-operation modes allow deployment in high-risk, GPS-contested, or EW-dense environments.

• A wheeled variant is under development to expand future Army mobility options.

Strategic Shift in Defense Innovation

• Leaders at Epirus and GDLS describe Leonidas AR as a model for the future: pairing “neo-prime” agility from emerging tech companies with the scale and sustainment of traditional primes.

• The platform follows the earlier Leonidas Stryker integration, extending the Army’s non-kinetic counter-UAS ecosystem into autonomous systems.

• Companies highlight the electromagnetic spectrum as the “Sixth Domain,” signaling that dominance in EM warfare will shape the outcome of future conflicts.

Why This Matters

Leonidas AR represents a decisive shift toward scalable, non-kinetic air defense—an answer to the exponential growth of drone swarms on modern battlefields. By merging AI-driven mobility with high-pulse microwave firepower, the U.S. is fielding a system capable of neutralizing massed unmanned threats at unprecedented speed and precision. It reflects a broader strategic alignment: combining industry disruptors with established primes to accelerate the Army’s transformation and secure electromagnetic superiority.

Glyphosate “Safety” Study Ghostwritten by Monsanto Retracted After 25 Years of Deception





and just like that roundup is a dangerous fraud.  Yet this movie ran as safe from 1965 unti today or a full sixty years.  The truth is that thosands died from exposure.  mostly farmers of course.

I am hardly amused and do wonder if we have a properly safe protocol for its use.  We also need one for DDT other than outright banning.

most pesticides are bdangerous because they are applied best as aerosols which is way to easy to breathe.  We do have the air can systems that need to be improved into open masks along with shedding overalls that allows clothed showers.


Glyphosate “Safety” Study Ghostwritten by Monsanto Retracted After 25 Years of Deception



https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/glyphosate-safety-study-ghostwritten-by-monsanto-retracted-after-25-years-of-deception/

In a long-overdue move, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted the landmark 2000 glyphosate “safety” review by Williams, Kroes, and Munro — a paper Monsanto and global regulators have relied on for decades to assert that Roundup poses no carcinogenic risk to humans.

Crucially, the Editor-in-Chief confirms that Monsanto employees likely secretly wrote substantial portions of the paper, despite never being listed as authors or acknowledged — a revelation uncovered through U.S. litigation.

The retraction states that the article’s integrity has collapsed entirely, citing undisclosed corporate authorship, omitted carcinogenicity data, financial conflicts of interest, and a complete failure by the surviving author to respond to the journal’s investigation.





THE RETRACTION

1. Based almost entirely on Monsanto’s unpublished studies
The review’s “no cancer risk” conclusion relied solely on Monsanto-generated data. Even worse, the authors ignored multiple long-term mouse and rat carcinogenicity studies that already existed at the time — including multi-year toxicity studies showing tumor signals. None were incorporated.

2. Evidence of ghostwriting by Monsanto
Litigation records revealed that Monsanto employees secretly co-wrote portions of the paper, despite never being listed as authors or acknowledged. This alone violates the most basic principles of scientific integrity.

3. Undisclosed financial ties
The authors appear to have received direct compensation from Monsanto for producing the paper — again undisclosed, again violating journal standards.

4. Misrepresentation of authorship and contributions
By hiding Monsanto’s role, the paper created the illusion of independent scientific evaluation — even as corporate employees shaped the conclusions.

5. Regulatory capture revealed
This paper heavily influenced global risk assessments — including U.S. EPA, WHO/FAO, and Health Canada evaluations — setting the tone for “glyphosate is safe” messaging for more than two decades.


While I am strongly opposed to politically motivated retractions and scientific censorship, this retraction was unquestionably warranted. The integrity failures were not ideological — they were structural, factual, and undeniable.

And the independent evidence that has emerged since 2000 only underscores how dangerous that original “all clear” truly was.

A recent controlled animal study demonstrated that glyphosate and Roundup can induce rare, aggressive, and fatal cancers across multiple organs — even at doses considered “safe” by U.S. and EU regulatory thresholds. These findings directly contradict the original review’s core conclusions.

What lies beneath Greenland could change what we know about rising seas


This is actually interesting and suggests that we needed to do a lot of work on the ice rock interface which is obviously not stable at all as one would assume.

understand that i would love to see a usable concept for the creation of the Athabaska tarsands.  An unstable contact zone would provide channeling of oil.  Which all surely came from much deeper stratas.

Well worth the research.  We need a hundred cores in Greenland.

What lies beneath Greenland could change what we know about rising seas



GPS antenna monitoring bedrock motion in SW Greenland - Photo credit: K. Kjeldsen (GEUS).

Summary:A new study reveals significant temperature variations beneath Greenland, reshaping our understanding of its tectonic history.

These underground heat patterns influence how the ice sheet interacts with the bedrock, which is important for predicting future sea level rise in the context of climate change.



A new study led by researchers at the University of Ottawa provides a series of highly detailed 3-D models of the Earth’s temperature beneath Greenland and northeastern Canada, providing insights into the region’s geological history and the response of the ice sheet to past and future climate change.



Hidden heat beneath Greenland

The research was conducted at the University of Ottawa in collaboration with scientists from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The study used multiple satellite and land-based data sets and involved running hundreds of thousands of simulations on high-performance computing resources, including those at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.

“Our new regional temperature models reveal significant lateral variations in the Earth's thermal structure beneath Greenland, which provide important information on the island’s passage over the Iceland hotspot,” explains uOttawa’s PhD graduate Parviz Ajourlou, the study’s first author. “These variations help us better interpret Greenland's tectonic history and the influence of this history on the geophysical properties of the underlying rocks.”

Glenn Milne, Chair and Full Professor within the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at uOttawa and the principal investigator, emphasizes the implications: “This research advances our understanding of the Earth’s internal structure beneath Greenland. Temperature variations directly influence the interaction between the ice sheet and the bedrock, which must be quantified to interpret observations of land motion and gravity changes. These observations tell us how the ice sheet is responding to recent climate warming.”






Modeling the future of sea levels

The innovative approach involved processing multiple geophysical data sets such as seismic velocities, gravity anomalies, and heat flow to develop a comprehensive 3D temperature model. The findings not only clarify Greenland’s geologic past and the current state of the ice sheet but also improve the ability of scientists to simulate future changes of the ice sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise.

“This work is a good illustration of how our knowledge of the solid Earth enhances our ability to understand the climate system,” says Ajourlou. “By improving how we model ice-earth interactions, we can better forecast future sea level rise and plan accordingly.”


Possible Human Artifact Found in Coal


This provides important data points that i have not seen,  Aluminium means that manufacture must date from  123900 BP or the date of the Pleistocene bonconformity which by the by is slowly been winkled out of the geological record.

we also have castings that plausibly occured during the end of the Bronze Age in 1159 BC when the Atlantean world collapsed.  If ypou are producing aluminium, you are less likely to be using bronze..

Way more important is the known occurance of any measurable carbon 14.  If it exists at all, the coal is within 100,000 years and the stratigraphy is wrong.  what this means is that all shallow coal beds need to be tested for carbon 14.  most likely all were buried during the Pleistocene Nonconformity, also known as the great global flood.

Even if the flood only included a global inundation ,this is ample to bury most everything to say nothing about the massive scour that took place.  

my conjecture is that it is plausible that mapping global coal held carbon 14 can define the global damage so produced.  This is important.


Possible Human Artifact Found in Coal



WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2013


A resident of Vladivostok, which is sandwiched between China, North Korea, and the Sea of Japan, was adding ordinary coal to a fire when he noticed a shiny metal object peeking through a piece of the friable black rock.1 The portion that protruded looked suspiciously manmade, so he investigated by enlisting the help of nearby scientists.

The Vladivostok resident, Dmitry, found embedded in his coal a shiny metal bar with teeth, like those of a bar or plate gear built to mesh with the teeth of a wheeled gear.


The Pennsylvanian coal came from the Chernogorodskiy mines from the Khakasis region north of Mongolia.2 According to international Russian news source Komsomolskaya Pravda, biologist Valery Brier helped analyze the odd-shaped object. X-ray diffraction revealed that it was mostly aluminum with about two to four percent magnesium. This unique alloy is not generally produced today. And Brier noted that refined aluminum implies high technology.3

An object like this that's embedded in supposedly ancient coal is so difficult to explain from the long-ages perspective that some speculate ancient intelligent aliens left it on earth in some bygone era. This desperate suggestion presumes that the coal's age assignment is true. One might as well say that the reptiles from which dinosaurs supposedly evolved, whose remains occur in some rare Pennsylvanian outcrops, were smart enough to smelt and cast metals.

However, there are plenty of documented, though not widely known, reasons why the methods used to date ancient earth materials are faulty.4 In fact, when "300 million year old" coal is examined for carbon, it routinely returns measurable radioactive carbon-14, which would have disappeared by radioactive decay in under 90,000 years.5

Also, the Bible's historical information documents a world that is only thousands of years old. In this context, deeply buried coal deposits were produced by the historical Flood of Noah.6 The people who were alive back then could have provided coal-embedded artifacts. Apparently, this one from Russia is not the first.

In the 1940s, a boy in West Virginia found a bronze bell encased in coal that he was shoveling into his home's furnace. Like the aluminum gear, this metal was a unique brassy alloy.7 A similar anecdote alleged that the late Frank Kanard, who had his written testimony notarized, extracted an iron cup with opposing pour spouts from a large lump of Pennsylvanian coal in 1918 while fueling his furnace in Oklahoma. Like with the Russian coal, most secular scientists consider Pennsylvanian rocks to be about 300 million years old.

Maybe some ancient coal melded around a piece of modern machinery from Khakasis. Maybe an old explorer dropped an even older bronze bell down a well for miners to later extract from the mountains of West Virginia. And it is perhaps conceivable that coal somehow enveloped a more recently manufactured iron cup. These and other apparent human artifacts embedded in coal need more investigation.

And such investigations should include the possibility that these artifacts were produced by people who lived at the same time that vast forests were catastrophically buried to become coal. Scripture states that expert metal workers lived among the pre-Flood peoples, for example.8 In any case, the Bible certainly makes more sense of these odd artifacts than stories of aliens. Future research may show that biblical history even makes more sense than stories of lately-added artifacts to deeply-buried coal seams.

Friday, December 12, 2025

Large Bank's Total Exposure to Commercial Real Estate (Updated with 2025-Q3 Data)




In fairness, the quality of commercial finance paper was degraded by the Pandemic and is likely still degraded.  why banks are ordering their troops back to the office. Yet by now it has sorted itself out and surplus space has recycled.

A n  AAA commercial property is as good as the best government bond.  It is also thirty year paper.  Recall thirty years ago was 1995.  A lot of water flows under that bridge and urban change improves areas.  The ocean of expanding appraisal values floats even turkeys.

And all major commercial buildings are built to easily last a century and realistically today for several centuries.  We are really that good.


Large Bank's Total Exposure to Commercial Real Estate (Updated with 2025-Q3 Data)


Rebel C.

CEO, Krahenbuhl Global Consulting LLC


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/large-banks-total-exposure-commercial-real-estate-updated-rebel-cole-ba2fe/


December 2, 2025


Large Banks with CRE Exposures > 300% of Total Equity Capital

Many astute commentators about the banking industry have been warning about future losses on commercial mortgages as about $1 trillion originated prior to the 2022-2023 run-up in rates mature during the next 12 months and must be refinanced at much higher rates.

I have calculated the total CRE exposure (CRE nonfarm-nonresidential and multifamily mortgages, CRE construction loans, CRE loans not secured by real estate, and unused CRE commitments) as a percentage of total equity to serve as a broad measure of bank exposure to commercial real estate. A variation of this ratio is used by banking regulators to assess CRE exposures; any ratio over 300% is viewed as excessive exposure to CRE. Data are as of Sep. 30, 2025 (Q3).

Below is a list of the total CRE exposure of the 52 banks with greater than $10B in assets where their exposure exceeds 300% of total equity capital. (52 out of 154 large banks, out of 4,435 banks of any size.) Twenty have exposures greater than 400% and four have exposures greater than 500%.

Most prominent (by asset size) are #6 Flagstar Bank, #25 Valley National Bank, #26 Zion Bancorp, #29 Synovus Bank, #33 Columbia Bank (formerly Umpqua Bank), #44 Comerica Bank, #48 East West Bank, and #49 Old National Bank--each of which has more than $50B in total assets.

Flagstar has $92B in assets, $7.9B in CRE mortgages, $30.7B multifamily, $1.6B in CRE construction loans, and $0.7B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $41.4B, but has only $8.6B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 481%of total equity (down from 499% of total equity as of Q2).

Zion has $89B in assets, $16.6B in CRE mortgages, $3.0B in multifamily, $2.2B in CRE construction loans, and $3.5B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $25.8B, but has only $6.9B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 376% of total equity. Down from 389% in Q2.

East West Bank has $79B in assets, $15.8B in CRE mortgages, $4.4B multifamily, $0.7B in CRE construction loans, and $1.6B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $21.2B, but has only $6.6B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 308% of total equity. Down from 317% in Q2.

Comerica has $77B in assets, $11.6B in CRE mortgages, $3.2B multifamily, $2.9B in CRE construction loans, and $3.4B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $21.2B, but has only $6.6B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 309% of total equity. Down from 312% in Q2.

Old National Bank has $71B in assets, $13.7B in CRE mortgages, $5.9B in multifamily, $2.6B in CRE construction loans, and $2.4B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $24.6B, but has only $8.1B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 318% of total equity. Up from 312% in Q2.

Columbia Bank (formerly Umpqua) has $67B in assets, $14.9B in CRE mortgages, $10.6B in multifamily, $2.2B in CRE construction loans, and $1.0B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $30.4B, but has only $8.1B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 358% of total equity. Down from 359% in Q2.

Valley NB has $63B in assets, $17.8B in CRE mortgages, $8.4B in multifamily, $2.2B in CRE construction loans, and $1.5B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $29.9B, but has only $8.1B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 377% of total equity. Up from 373% in Q2.

Synovus has $60B in assets, $14.0B in CRE mortgages, $3.8B in multifamily, $1.7B in CRE construction loans, and $1.8B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $21.4B, but has only $5.8B in total equity. Total CRE exposure is 371% of total equity. Down from 381% in Q2.

SouthState Bank ($66B in assets) saw its exposure fall below 300% to only 297%. It has $21.1B in CRE mortgages, $2.8B in multifamily, $2.0B in CRE construction loans, and $2.5B in unused CRE commitments, for a total CRE exposure of $28.5B, but has only $9.6B in total equity. Total CRE exposure was 302% in Q2

Among banks of any size:

- 1,607 have total CRE exposures greater than 300%, down from 1,697 in Q2 and 1,713 in Q1.

- 866 have exposures greater than 400%, down from 958 in Q2 and 988 in Q1.

- 368 have exposures greater than 500%, down from 426 in Q2 and 449 in Q1.

- 120 have exposures greater than 600%, down from 178 in Q2 and 281 in Q1.

For comparison, the aggregate industry total CRE exposure is 134% of total equity ($3.48 trillion vs. $2.59 trillion). Down from 135% as of Q2 2025.

These statistics are based upon my calculations using publicly available Call Report data downloaded from the FFIEC's Central Data Repository as of Nov. 15, 2025.

Most of these lists will be available for download at FAU's Banking Initiative Website: https://lnkd.in/eA8hsQuu

General Flynn: Strategic Assessment Of Marxist-Style Color Revolution Targeting America


This pretty well spells it out.  It is the cancer of Marxism, but just why do we blame dumb ass Karl Marx for any of it?

Essentially in any society a so called cadre can drum up a body of folks naive or otherwise but definately outside the centers of apparent power and teach them to agitate.  all chasing the dream of personal success through such agitation.

It is all still external to the exercise of real power, not least because if such power is attained ,the useful idiots are quickly sidelined.

since the scam has become deeply institutionalized it must be rubbed out ,starting with academia.  It also must be completely defunded.  We do not need paid rioters.  amusing how the Unions have been left out.


General Flynn: Strategic Assessment Of Marxist-Style Color Revolution Targeting America

Saturday, Dec 06, 2025 - 03:40 PM



https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/general-flynn-strategic-assessment-marxist-style-color-revolution-targeting-america

The American people have just taken their first full breath after surviving an attempt to smother the Republic through a Marxist-inspired cultural campaign carried out largely through the administrative state, media, academia, and politicized elements of the national security bureaucracy. Most citizens did not fully perceive it while it was happening. Many in the intelligence community either passively accepted it or actively furthered it. The architects of this project are not finished, but their effort has been damaged and delayed. It is only by the grace of God that the country has endured to this point.


The American version of the cultural revolution is distinct from the Maoist model that ravaged China in the twentieth century. It did not coalesce around a single charismatic revolutionary figure. Instead, it spread along the arteries of bureaucracy, higher education, corporate structures, and activist networks. The long march through the institutions, as described by Antonio Gramsci, became the operational template. Rather than Red Guards filling the streets under the orders of an identifiable supreme leader, the United States experienced a coordinated convergence of agencies, NGOs, foundations, media outlets, and activist fronts, all advancing the same ideological project under different labels.


Because federal agencies differ widely in size, mission, culture, and internal resistance, this revolution unfolded unevenly. It never achieved total dominance in a single decisive stroke. Instead, it advanced by fragmentary gains and suffered fragmentary defeats. Wherever the ideological project captured an HR department, a training pipeline, a public school system, or a central media platform, it encountered resistance in state governments, independent media, individual courts, and networks of citizens who refused to comply. This piecemeal quality of implementation slowed the collapse and gave the American people time to see what was happening and respond.

Even as these battles played out in public, darker currents moved beneath the surface. We now assess that thousands of religious and conservative federal employees were quietly identified and referred to a little-known federal entity, the Pre-Trial Services Agency. Accounts and initial documentation indicate that this agency may have been used to catalog individuals solely on the basis of ideology and religious conviction, under the pretext of January 6, and vaccine-related non-compliance. The intention appears to have been not only administrative removal but also potential criminalization. This matter demands immediate, transparent investigation by any future administration that claims to be serious about the rule of law.

To understand the broader context, it is necessary to define what we mean by the concept of the welfare state. We are not merely describing traditional social programs. We refer instead to a constellation of fully funded professional activist groups that present themselves as separate causes but in reality form a single revolutionary bloc. Over the last decade, organizations under the banners of antifascism, racial justice, radical feminism, abortion on demand, certain LGBTQ plus factions, environmental extremism, and gun control advocacy have shown remarkable cohesion. They share donors, staff, narrative frameworks, and street-level tactics. Their membership overlaps. Their messaging is synchronized. They rapidly support one another's campaigns and protests.

These groups present themselves as grassroots movements. In reality, they function much more like a professionalized revolutionary caste. Their core is composed not of ordinary citizens but of trained activists who treat agitation as a full-time occupation. They are funded through a mix of private foundations, wealthy donors, and, in some cases, federal and state resources. They serve as the street and digital arm of a broader ideological project whose goal is not reform but transformation. They are bound together by a worldview that is explicitly revolutionary and implicitly Marxist, even if many of their foot soldiers do not use that language.

Within this structure, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plays a central role. DEI is not a harmless corporate fad. It is a cultural and psychological weapon system. In practice, DEI training and enforcement operate as a mechanism for behavioral conditioning, using guilt, struggle sessions, and the constant threat of social or professional punishment to bring individuals into line. The language of microaggressions, privilege, and systemic bias functions as a soft form of ideological policing. It compels people to monitor their speech, second-guess their instincts, and submit to an ever-expanding set of forbidden words and mandatory rituals.

This is not inclusion. It is coerced conformity disguised as virtue. The outcomes within institutions are fear, silence, and self-censorship. People learn quickly that specific questions cannot be asked, certain facts cannot be stated, and certain perspectives cannot be acknowledged without risking their careers. This is not an accidental side effect. It is the point. If you can compel people to lie about obvious realities in public, you own them. DEI is therefore best understood as a domestic application of political reeducation, aligned with Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches to cultural change.

Red washing is the term we use for the systematic erasure of material that exposes Marxism's history, tactics, and consequences. When civics and traditional American history are removed from curricula and replaced with grievance narratives, the ground is prepared for a new ideology. When the record of socialist atrocities is buried or dismissed, whole generations lose the ability to recognize patterns that their grandparents would have seen immediately. This did not happen accidentally. Higher education, media, and entertainment became primary targets for this rewriting of memory.

By 2020, the United States had been subjected to decades of this cultural reshaping. The country entered that year already weakened and divided. The combined impact of a global pandemic, a Chinese Communist Party information campaign, and unprecedented civil unrest brought the country to a state of exhaustion. Law enforcement was undermanned and demoralized. The medical system was stretched to the limit. Schools at every level were shuttered or reduced to screens. The basic functions that distinguish a first-world nation were placed under siege.

These conditions were ideal for revolutionary actors who understood the Bolshevik concept of the spark. In Mao's China, youth brigades became instruments of chaos once police authority had been stripped and traditional structures weakened. In the United States, policies calling for the defunding and delegitimizing of police, combined with political protection for rioters, produced something similar in spirit. The rolling riots of 2020 were not a spontaneous eruption. They were a conditioning phase, designed to hollow out public confidence, normalize political violence from the left, and set the emotional stage for a more targeted crisis.


That crisis came on January 6. Here, the doctrine of moderated violence is essential to understand. This tactic seeks to provoke an adversary into a desperate or unwise act that can then be weaponized to justify a crackdown. For a year, Americans watched their cities burn and were told it was mostly peaceful. Then, in a single day, a protest on Capitol grounds was framed as an insurrection, an existential threat to "democracy," and the moral foundation for a years-long campaign of arrests, surveillance, and persecution. The left's riots stopped instantly. The narrative flipped overnight. That abrupt shift reveals design, not coincidence.

January 6 was the planned inflection point that allowed the bureaucratic and activist alliance to declare open season on conservative and religious Americans. It became the lens through which all dissent could be labeled dangerous and disloyal. The people who entered the Capitol that day, many of them peaceful and bewildered, became the pretext for a broader project aimed at remaking the national security apparatus from within.

What came next moved beyond street-level activism or cultural capture. It entered the bloodstream of the national security state. The aftermath of January 6, the collapse of Afghanistan, and the federal vaccine mandates combined into an unprecedented attempt to remake the federal workforce through coercion, intimidation, and ideological purification. Inside the CIA and across the national security apparatus, the internal revolution reached its apex and then began to fracture under its own contradictions.

Societal collapse is never a singular event. It is a process.

* * *

The search term "color revolution" has been catapulted into the mainstream. Google Search Trends shows the term has soared to the highest levels since the Marxist BLM rioters began burning city blocks across Democratic-run metro areas in 2020.


Last month, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told Alex Jones that the Trump administration must address the nation about what he called a sinister regime-change plot, one operating through billionaire-funded NGOs.


Breaking! General Flynn Calls On President Trump To Immediately Address The Nation Concerning The Color Revolution Being Fomented By The Seditious 6 And The CIA As He Lays Out The String Of Illegal Investigations And Law-fare That The Leftist Have Engaged In Since DJT's Historic… pic.twitter.com/HYeXQwCNim— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) November 26, 2025

"People need to understand that if this operation succeeds, things will move quickly - Trump would be removed from the scene almost immediately. Elite defection isn't an early warning sign of an overthrow; it's the final stage before one," DataRepublican recently warned, adding, "This is why the 'Seditious Six' must face the most severe penalties the law allows."

To sum up, for the first time, the American people are beginning to learn about the regime-change efforts that Democrats and their billionaire-funded NGO network have been pursuing over the past decade. It amounts to nothing but a color revolution. Time for reforms, especially across the nonprofit world.

The Key To Understanding The Cult Of Globalism’s War On The West




The proto communists all have ongoing intent and will promise anything to advance.  worse, they have learned nothing except that others have succeeded in grabing power.

Understand most large pools of money are government created and managed as well.  folks with independent pools of cash are drawn to folks grabbing at power outside of government.

We so need the Rule of Twelve.

The Key To Understanding The Cult Of Globalism’s War On The West


December 6, 2025 

By Brandon Smith

http://alt-market.us/the-key-to-understanding-the-cult-of-globalisms-war-on-the-west/

The culture war in the western world is currently hitting a crescendo. At first the media said it was all “conspiracy theory” being amplified by a “fringe minority” of radical right wingers. Then, they admitted the conflict was real but claimed that conservatives were monsters trying to “dismantle democracy”. Today, the culture war has become the dominant issue of our age with the debate echoing through the halls of the White House.

Leftists hoped they could make it all go away by dismissing it. They hoped they could continue with their ideological takeover at their leisure. They failed. The rebellion in the US is a product of decades of effort by liberty advocates and it is finally bearing fruit.

However, I think many Americans and some Europeans are discovering that movements like progressive wokism (essentially Cultural Marxism) are much more than a mere reaction to the return of conservatives to the cultural space. The fight that’s happening in front of the curtain is only a dim reflection of the fight that’s going on behind the curtain.

Almost every facet of leftist political and social activism is bankrolled by some of the wealthiest organizations and individuals on the planet. In fact, I would argue that without the billions of dollars in global funding provided by NGOs, government entities and corporations, the political left as we know it would not exist and the world would be much quieter.

A prime example is anti-ICE organizations: These groups have access to extensive cash reserves to finance call networks, they pay for hundreds or even thousand of protesters and agitators, they pay for legal representation and bail to get their activist agents out of jail, and they often obtain inside information on ICE operations before those operations occur.

These groups function less like homegrown civil rights efforts and more like clandestine government agencies. And, if you check the tax backgrounds of all of them you will find, without fail, that they’re propped up by NGOs like the Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, global corporations like Vangaurd and Blackrock, and government bureaucracies like USAID (before it was shut down).

Nothing about these movements is natural, they are purely astroturf. It might look like chaos, but every time you see leftist mobs on the news trying to interfere with ICE arrests and deportations, what you are watching is a highly organized machine flush with globalist cash working to undermine US sovereignty.

The mass immigration of third worlders is coordinated by globalists. The protests against deportations are funded by globalists. The politicians that promote open border policies and enable the invasion of the west are closely associated with prominent globalists. The war on the west is a globalist war; radical activists are mindless soldiers and paid mercenaries. They are not the source of the conflict; they shield the source.

Unfortunately there are too many conservative commentators out there that REFUSE to accept the reality that the actions of the political left are coordinated by a deeper conspiracy. I don’t know why they deny the existence of this cabal, I can only surmise that the idea of an top-down conspiracy to bring about the downfall of western culture is too frightening for them to ponder.

There is also the problem of motive. There’s plenty of conservatives and patriots with a vague notion of why the globalists do the things they do. Evil exists, that’s not up for debate. But beyond the underlying mental factors of psychopathy and delusions of godhood, the issue of relativism is ever present. It is a globalist obsession.

Globalism is rooted in cultural relativism, moral relativism, legal relativism, even biological relativism. Western culture is basically the antithesis of relativism, and thus, it must be destroyed in order for globalism to thrive. Everything else is just a tactic, a strategy to destroy the west while taking none of the blame.

Only the west codifies the idea of inherent liberties into its legal framework. Only the west (specifically the US) places individual citizen rights as equal to or greater than the policies of government. Only the west values free thought over uniformity. Only the west (largely the US) preaches the necessity of popular revolt in the wake of collectivist tyranny.

The problem is, most of the world has no concept of these ideals. They have spent their lives acclimating to cultures where “rights” are also relative – Relative to the whims of socialist and authoritarian regimes.

It therefore makes perfect sense for globalists to fund the importation of millions of foreigners, mostly from the third world, into the west. These are people whose minds are already enslaved by a lifetime of submission to collectivism and oligarchy. The migrants go along with the plan because the incentives are too enticing. Their masters are aiming them at the west and saying:

“Go and pillage, take what you can! We will let you plunder these wealthy places as long as you do as we say after the coffers are looted and the blood in the streets is dry in the sun…”

In other words, the globalists are giving the oppressed third worlders a steam valve, an opportunity to “chimp out” and act on their worst impulses. It is a sad but pervasive observation that the majority of enslaved minds HATE the existence of free people, even if those people live on the other side of the planet.

This doesn’t only apply to hostile migrants, it also applies to the progressives that live next door to us. Look at what happened during the pandemic. Look at how they act when faced with facts that contradict their political beliefs. They snap, they crash out, they go insane. The spit and froth and rage like animals. They revile us and nothing would make them happier than to see us dead. All because we don’t blindly embrace their doctrine.

Wokeness, along with multiculturalism, is a globalist construct adapted as a new world religion and all of its tenets are designed as an attack on western values. We respect meritocracy, so they create DEI and equity. We promote personal responsibility, so they promote narcissism and self worship. We revere free markets, so they enable expanding socialism. We respect biological science and the biblical definitions of man and woman, so they create gender fluid ideology. We respect moral objectivity and the reality of good and evil, so they conjure up the philosophy of moral relativism as a license for ubridled degeneracy.

To be sure, there are other cultures that do not embrace wokeness, but they don’t present a legitimate threat to globalism. They don’t have a legacy of free thought, they have no interest in rebellion and they are mostly disarmed so they wouldn’t be able to fight back if they wanted to.

Wokeness was specifically tailored as a weapon against the west; a weapon that targets our belief in liberty and attempts to use it against us. For if an individual has a right to choose their own path, how far does this right extend? Do individuals have the rights and the freedom to congregate into mobs and systematically burn the west down? Liberals would say “yes”, and if anyone tries to stop them those people are tyrants.

Are we tyrants if we fight back? Are we fascists if we defend out culture and borders from erasure? Are we hypocrites if we ignore the sovereignty of people whose only goal is to eliminate our sovereignty?

My counter-argument to this philosophy is that leftists and globalist have no right to socially engineer the west. They only have the right to leave the west and start their own systems somewhere else. If they hate the west so much, why don’t they relocate instead of staying here, or inviting in millions of immigrants that also have no respect for our heritage?

Because this is not a civic disagreement between citizens with a mutual love of country – This is a war between mortal enemies who share nothing in common. They don’t want to live peacefully in another place where they can experiment with socialism to their heart’s content. They want to conquer and subjugate. Globalism must be global. If any competing systems are allowed to exist they will act as proof that the relativist method is an inferior method.

The key to understanding the globalist war on the west is first to recognize that a conspiracy of “elites” is a hard, irrefutable fact. Second, we must accept that war has been declared on us and this war is one of total conquest. We are not allowed to live separately and peacefully, our very existence is seen as a threat to the establishment. Third, globalists view western culture as antithetical to their future aims. Globalism cannot prevail as long as western ideals exist.

Finally, as noted, most of the world is against us whether they know it or not. Even old allies in Europe are becoming enemies. Import masses of third worlders into America and they don’t become American, America becomes the third world. Import millions of socialists into the US and the US becomes increasingly socialist. This is very simple to understand, but leftists (and some libertarians) refuse to acknowledge the truth.

Not all cultures are equal. Some are better than others. It’s fascinating how liberals continue to pretend as if different nations and cultures don’t produce tribes that are contrary to each other. We are not the same and natural coexistence is a myth. Coexistence of such groups is created through intimidation, extortion and force. The liberal Utopian ideal of multiculturalism requires oppressive centralization and tyranny.

Globalism is the mechanism by which total and eternal oligarchy is achieved. They use open borders, mass immigration, woke cultism, economic crisis, international conflagration, engineered pandemics, anything you can think of and more to tear their enemies down. We are their enemy. We didn’t choose this fight, they did, and they will continue changing strategies until they find one that works (or until we end their little experiment).