Zerohedge

'There Is Nothing To Celebrate': Gaza's Christians Mark Somber Christmas Amid Fragile Truce Via Middle East Eye Youssef Tarazi, a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, says the giant Christmas tree that once stood as a symbol of communal celebration will not be lit this year. For a third consecutive year, Gaza's Christian community says they will be observing Christmas without public celebrations, as Israel's alleged repeated ceasefire violations and restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the enclave continue to cast a shadow over the holiday. "Churches have suspended all celebrations outside their walls because of the conditions Gaza is going through," Tarazi, 31, told Middle East Eye. "We are marking the birth of Jesus Christ through prayer inside the church only, but our joy remains incomplete". Palestinian Orthodox Christians will observe Christmas on January 7 according to the pre-Gregorian calendar, while Catholics are celebrating on Dec. 25. Before the war, churches across Gaza transformed their courtyards into gathering spaces, decorated streets with festive lights and hosted carols that brought families together.  Muslims often joined Christian neighbors to mark the occasion, including the annual lighting of a large Christmas tree in Gaza City. "This year, we cannot celebrate while we are still grieving for those killed, including during attacks on churches," Tarazi said. "Nothing feels the same anymore. Many members of our community will not be with us this Christmas". George Anton, the director of operations at the Latin patriarchate in Gaza and head of its emergency committee, echoed those sentiments. "We cannot celebrate while Christians and Muslims alike are mourning devastating losses caused by the war," Anton told MEE. "For us, the war has not ended". Anton said churches are limiting observances to prayers and a nativity scene inside church buildings. "In the past, we decorated our homes. Now, many homes are gone. We decorated the streets. Even the streets are gone," he said. "There is nothing to celebrate". Since October 2023, Gaza's Christian homes, schools and churches have been damaged or destroyed during Israeli military operations. Three historic churches - Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Holy Family Church and the Gaza Baptist Church - have suffered severe damage. Anton said at least 53 Christians have been killed directly or indirectly during the war, with many others injured. "Some were killed in air strikes, while others died because we could not reach hospitals or provide medicine, especially elderly people with chronic illnesses," he said. Determined to stay This Christmas comes amid what church leaders describe as the smallest Christian population Gaza has seen in decades. More than 400 Christians have left Gaza during the war, fearing for their lives after relatives and friends were killed. Today, an estimated 220 Christian families - around 580 people - remain in the strip. "Those of us who remain are determined to stay," Anton said, while acknowledging that worsening humanitarian conditions may force more families to leave in search of medical care and stability. For the last two years, Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus Christ, has not been able to properly celebrate Christmas. Due to the war in Gaza, there has not been a tree in the village square, and the Christmas market has not been open.https://t.co/KVVHKLfgbr — Crux (@Crux) December 22, 2025 Around 70 percent of Gaza's Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, with the remainder Latin Catholics. "The situation affects everyone - Christians and Muslims alike," Anton said. "We are part of this society, and what happens to Gaza happens to us". On October 20 2023, less than two weeks into the war, Israeli strikes hit the Church of Saint Porphyrius complex, killing at least 16 people who had sought refuge there. The church is one of the oldest in the world, built on a site used for Christian worship since the fifth century. In another attack on 17 July, Israeli fire struck Gaza's only Catholic church, killing two women and injuring several others, including the parish priest. "All Palestinians, including the Christian community, are still living with the consequences of the war," Anton said. "We are grieving, frustrated and unstable. We cannot celebrate as if nothing has happened". Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 13:30

FBI Raided Secret Service Agent's Home In Charity Tax Fraud Probe Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics, The FBI recently raided the home of a Secret Service agent on Vice President JD Vance’s detail in an alleged tax and wire fraud case involving millions of dollars in donations and grants. In the alleged scheme, the agent accepted donations to a charity that purports to help inner-city youth and victims of domestic violence but didn’t provide the services it reported to the IRS, according to several knowledgeable sources in the Secret Service community. The raid, which took place on or around Dec. 8, was the culmination of more than a year of work by a joint FBI-IRS investigation that the Secret Service joined in recent months, the sources said. Federal investigators have interviewed more than a dozen Secret Service agents, some of whom contributed to the nonprofit at the center of the probe, which is run by an agent on Vance’s detail. The Secret Service has placed the agent on unpaid administrative leave and suspended his security clearance, signs that the agency considers the potential crimes and misconduct extremely serious, even though the individual has not been arrested, according to sources familiar with the matter. RealClearPolitics has reached out to the USSS and has been told a statement is forthcoming. The alleged fraud could further bruise the Secret Service, which is facing retention problems as it struggles to regain its once elite reputation after two Trump assassination attempts last year. In addition to potential criminal prosecution, the Secret Service agent could face internal insider threat allegations for demonstrating poor judgment and possible criminal intent. “This is bigger than the 2012 prostitution scandal because agents are trained to investigate tax and bank wire fraud – anyone involved knew what they were doing was illegal,” one source remarked. In 2012, more than a dozen Secret Service agents and other personnel were placed on administrative leave, and several were eventually fired after their superiors discovered they had hired prostitutes during a trip to Colombia to prepare for then-President Obama’s visit to the Summit of the Americas. The agent whose home was raided is listed as the founder and chairman of the charity’s board of directors on tax documents filed with the IRS. The charity in question purports to provide laptops to young inner-city youth in its “Laptops for Hope Program” – at least some of which are laptops donated by the Secret Service because they are beyond their warranties, according to knowledgeable sources. Investigators, however, are looking into whether laptops discovered in the basement of the agent’s home were ever donated to the youth or whether there were plans to do so.   In tax documents, the charity states that its mission is to provide “emergency assistance to survivors of domestic violence, financial literacy, preventing childhood obesity, & [stet] supporting families affected by HIV/AIDS in VA, MD, DC, & GA.” The alleged tax and wire fraud schemes could implicate numerous Secret Service agents and employees, some of whom allegedly donated to the charity and then received part of their donation back in a payment. Investigators are looking into whether the donations allowed the Secret Service agents to file deductions and write off numerous work-related expenses, the sources said. The charity has been operating since 2022, receiving $351,329 in contributions and grants in its first year while paying just $23,000 in salaries, tax documents show. In 2023, contributions and grants shot up to $806,409, and the nonprofit paid its officers a total of $154,590. Those numbers increased to $979,053 in contributions and grants in 2024, the latest tax document available. That year, the charity reported paying $267,221 in salaries.   Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 12:00

Intensifying Shortage: This Is What A Run On The London Silver Market Looks Like Authored by David Jensen via Substack, Dutch trading specialist Karel Mercx posted the following commentary where the opposite (multiply by -1) of the silver swap rate minus US interest rates can be used as a proxy for the implied silver lease rate to determine physical shortage in the London silver market.: “The 1-year silver swap minus the US interest rate is now –7.18%. That distortion explains why the silver rally is not over. Only at the red line do supply and demand normalize.” A further six days ago Mercx posted the following commentary: “ The 1-year silver swap minus the US interest rate is now almost –7%! That distortion is the key reason the silver rally is not over. That spread should be positive, since silver needed in one year comes with storage, insurance, and financing costs. Extra explanation. The silver swap rate is a crucial part of the global precious-metals trade. It exists because major players such as banks, producers, industrial users, and investors constantly exchange silver for dollars without physically moving metal from vault to vault. This mechanism keeps the London physical market tightly connected to the New York financial market. But that system is now under strain. Physical silver today is almost 7% more expensive than silver for delivery one year from now. Swaps were designed to avoid shipping metal around the world, yet today silver is being moved because buyers are demanding delivery. Holding physical silver isn’t easy or cheap. A $1 million position weighs several hundred kilograms, spread across dozens of heavy bars that require vault space, insurance, and security… …That question is now being priced in. As long as the 1-year silver swap minus US rates remains below the red line, silver’s upside pressure continues. No one knows where supply and demand will reconnect. … ” I’ve added a trend arrow to the chart that Mercx posted: Figure 1 - One Year Silver Swaps Minus One Year One Year US Interest Rates at Dec 23, 2025; source: Karel Mercx x.com Note that the distance from the red line normalization is increasing as the London silver shortage intensifies. The London silver market is devolving, not stabilizing. [ZH: the spread between SHFE and COMEX silver futures is extreme to say the least - incentivizing the flow from London to Shanghai]... This is what a run on the London ‘physical’ silver market looks like where holders of unallocated promissory notes for silver ownership and delivery, at the margins, start to demand physical metal delivery. The enormous leverage of London paper (vapor) claims vs physical silver available for delivery gives the potential for a very quick unwind of London. Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 10:30

Stunner: DOJ Finds A Million More Epstein Documents - Will Take 'Weeks' To Review In a stunning development, the embattled Department of Justice chose Christmas Eve to announce it had discovered more than a million more documents with potential links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Already in violation of a legislatively-mandated Dec 19 deadline to release all such files -- and facing demands for an audit of its handling of the process -- the DOJ says the enormous new tranche of documents will require "weeks" of additional work before they can be posted.   “We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the DOJ said. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks. The Department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files.” The DOJ said the documents come from the Southern District of New York and the FBI.  Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who's been the Capitol Hill's leading voice on Epstein-file declassification, indicated the staggering volume of newly-acknowledged documents gives new reason to question the lack of additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell: Today the DOJ claims the Epstein-Maxwell file exceeds 1.7 million documents. And they still expect you to believe this involves only two guilty people. — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 25, 2025 Employing more pointed rhetoric, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the Trump administration is "openly engaged in a cover-up protecting Epstein's co-conspirators and the powerful men who abused women and girls."  Also on Christmas Eve -- and before the million-document "discovery" was announced -- a group of 12 senators sent a letter to DOJ Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume demanding an audit of the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files. Beyond pointing to the failure to meet the Dec. 19 deadline, the senators said the huge number of redactions in the released documents have raised "serious questions as to whether the Department is properly applying the limited exceptions for redaction that are permitted under the Act. Any withholding or redaction beyond those specified circumstances is against the law." Eleven of the 12 signatories were Democrats, with Alaska's Lisa Murkowski the only Republican.  On Sunday, Massie and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said they were in discussions with other members of Congress about potentially holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt -- over the DOJ's failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act enacted in November. "We only need the House for inherent contempt," Khanna said on Meet the Press, "and we're building a bipartisan coalition, and it would fine Pam Bondi for every day that she's not releasing these documents."  Khanna also decried the volume of redactions in the files that have been released. "The redactions were excessive. And even Harvard Law professors who have looked at that have said, you can't redact internal communications, you can't redact workforce product, and the courts are going to find that these were excessive."  Are these the "narrowly tailored" and "segregable" redactions that the drafters of the "Epstein Files Transparency Act" had in mind? pic.twitter.com/z22j7GEcYt — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 20, 2025 Transparency advocates have been exasperated by the amount of content that's been redacted -- with hundreds and hundreds of pages completely blacked out. However, raising additional questions about the DOJ's competence, some of the department's black ink turned out to be see-through, as internet sleuths discovered some of the redacted Epstein files can be read by simply cutting and pasting blacked-out passages into a new document. While they first bloomed on social media, the easily-erasable DOJ redactions have been subsequently reported by The Guardian and New York Times.  ‼️🇺🇸: I can CONFIRM that the Epstein copy/paste hack does INDEED show redacted text from the DOJ Epstein Transparency Act Files That said, We should do everything we can to not publish Epstein Survivors names. I will be doing batch unredactioms tomorrow for us to go through. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/v6o929WcO5 — Diligent Denizen 🇺🇸 (@DiligentDenizen) December 24, 2025 It's not clear how many documents have been incompetently redacted. While no bombshells have yet been uncovered, the un-redactions may be damning in a different kind of way, as they might demonstrate DOJ is failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act's mandate for maximum disclosure, with redactions only allowed for a narrow set of exceptional circumstances. For example, one of the documents that's been cleansed of black-outs and posted to social media is an exhibit from a civil suit against two executors of Epstein's estate -- Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn. Two of the redacted passages read:   “Between September 2015 and June 2019, Indyke signed (FAC) for over $400,000 made payable to young female models and actresses, including a former Russian model who received over $380,000 through monthly payments of $8,333 made over a period of more than three and a half years until the middle of 2019.”  ... “Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse, conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct."   It's not clear why these entire passages would be redacted. Even if there were reasons to hide Indyke's name, it's far from clear why the other allegations would be hidden from the public.   While ZeroHedge readers may differ with Khanna on a long list of issues, he raised some important questions on Meet the Press:  "I guess the question the American people have even to me, is, is the system so corrupt, is the system so corrupt that Thomas Massie and you defy the odds, pass a bill through a discharge petition, get the Senate, get the president to sign it, and still, these rich and powerful people are being protected. Who has this kind of hold on our government? What are they hiding? Why are they not releasing this?"  On a lighter note, news that the DOJ is suddenly aware of more than a million additional Epstein documents gave social media users grist for some dark humor:  We thank you for this holiday entertainment pic.twitter.com/heikBwJqR5 — Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) December 24, 2025 The Epstein files redactions. pic.twitter.com/t8fT74SK1J — Roddy 🇨🇦 (@RodKahx) December 23, 2025 Justice Dept. Says It Has Found Over a Million More Epstein Documents pic.twitter.com/ZPo2U8cgor — Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) December 24, 2025 Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 09:20

"And May All Your Christmases Be [Woke]": Liberal Pundits Come For Santa And Other Holiday Traditions Authored by Jonathan Turley, “And may all your Christmases be [woke].” As Santa prepares for his harrowing journey around the world, he is being closely pursued by liberal commentators protesting his race, gender, and capitalist leanings. The perpetually outraged have finally come for Christmas. One columnist at Slate called for Santa to be replaced by a penguin due to his race. Aisha Harris admitted that she was being a bit cheeky in pushing the penguin substitute but sought to express “my real concern that America continues to promote the harmful idea of whiteness-as-default.” Back to Santa. The British Brighton and Hove Museums have been the focus of this debate over the reposting of an earlier column by the museum’s Joint Head of Culture Change, Simone LaCorbinière, who explained that the traditional Christmas simply will not do with a Santa who is “too white, male” and a colonizer of elves. I suppose that when you use public dollars to hire someone who will serve as “Joint Head of Culture Change,” it was only a matter of time before they came for Christmas. After all, the idea is that the British culture must generally change, right? In a 2023 column titled Decolonising Father Christmas, LaCorbinière warns that Santa is “too white, male” and the traditional story “presents Santa as the ultimate authority of all societies. This asks us to accept colonial assumptions of cultural superiority. It doesn’t recognise the complex realities colonised people face.” She expresses horror at the fact that Santa is “an old white man [who] supervise[s] the elves’ work.” We can put aside that Santa was identified in “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823) as a  “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf.” LaCorbinière portrays him as a heartless white capitalist living off the labor of a captive elf workforce. She calls for “Santa to work in the factory alongside the elves.” Changes must be made, according to the museum, to decolonize Christmas and break away from holiday images that are “white, male and non-disabled”: “This perpetuates the harmful ‘colonial gaze’. Non-Western cultures are ‘othered’. It says that the coloniser has the power to judge all people. And it ignores many communities’ histories and traditions. Telling the story like this teaches new generations that the coloniser knows best.” Santa is not alone. In the meantime, NPR noted White Christmas has racist undertones, while Joy Reid has declared Jingle Bells to be a racist song. Even “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a “bigoted” story fed to the populace to reinforce capitalist and racist values. Professor James Deaville warned recently that “while some viewers see the ending as affirming community, the film also keeps George partly ignorant of how the forces of inequity are actually operating in his largely white community.” They are the self-flagellants of the holidays, moving through Christmas markets (which are also fascist traditions) with Gregorian chants of guilt.   Here are some enlightened carolers seen recently spreading “Tidings of Great Joy [Reid]” for the holiday: Clearly there are many liberals who still enjoy the holidays without the need for self-affirming declarations of outrage or disgust.  However, for some on the left, there is little joy in Christmas without identity politics and white guilt. So the more the merrier and, as Tiny Tim declared, “God bless us, every one!” Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 08:10

Tense UN Meeting Sees Russia, China Blast US 'Cowboy Behavior' Against Venezuela A Tuesday UN Security Council session quickly grew tense and members squared off over what's happening off the coast of Venezuela, scene of apparent preparations for some kind of US military action. Russia and China issued common condemnation of Washington, blasting a campaign of intimidation against Caracas which goes against the principles of the United Nations, and is based on "cowboy behavior". via Reuters The emergency session of the UNSC was formally requested by Venezuela and immediately backed by China and Russia. Additionally the Chinese side complained that the US is currently "infringing upon other countries' sovereignty, security, and legitimate rights and interests, seriously violate the UN Charter and international law, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean." Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro initially submitted a formal appeal to all 193 UN member states and Caribbean leaders, calling out the US "escalation of extremely serious aggression" and urging the UN to act. The the American side wasn't having it, with US Ambassador Mike Waltz responding by saying, "The United States will do everything in its power to protect our hemisphere, our borders, and the American people." "Maduro's ability to ‌sell Venezuela's oil enables his fraudulent claim to power and ‍his narco-terrorist ‍activities," Waltz said before the 15-member council. "The people of Venezuela, ⁠frankly, ‌deserve better." The US administration's rhetoric has grown increasingly in favor of admitting the end goal is regime change, also connected with Trump's earlier declaration of "total and complete blockade" of sanctioned oil vessels sailing to and from Venezuela.  The American President has insisted that Maduro is using oil money to finance "drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping" and so it would be "smart" for him to step down. 🇻🇪🇺🇸 FROM ROBOT DANCE TO OIL CRACKDOWN: MADURO’S SHOW MEETS U.S. PRESSURE Maduro just had a dance-off with a humanoid robot at a tech fair in Venezuela. Yep, the president of a country where many people still can’t afford basic food is out here vibing with a machine. It… pic.twitter.com/eVrIrUaeFU — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 24, 2025 American military assets, including special forces, are at the moment in a 'holding pattern' awaiting potential orders from the Commander-in-Chief, in a build-up which has been happening for a long time. Tyler Durden Thu, 12/25/2025 - 07:35

If Jesus Were Born Today, Would He Survive The American Police State? Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute, “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”—Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist Every Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of a child born into oppression—an occupied land, a climate of political fear, and a government quick to crush anything that threatened its authority. Two thousand years later, the parallels are unmistakable. If Jesus were born in modern America, under a government obsessed with surveillance, crackdowns on undocumented immigrants, religious nationalism, and absolute obedience to a head-of-state rather than the rule of law, would he survive long enough to preach about love, forgiveness and salvation? Would his message of peace, mercy, and resistance to empire be branded as extremism? As familiar as the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger might be, it is also a cautionary tale for our age. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land. Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later? What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them? A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing. Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State. The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do? What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age? Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality. Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds. Their lives make clear that the question “What would Jesus do?” is never abstract. It is always political, always dangerous, and always costly. Even now, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.” Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love. After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. Jesus was not born into comfort or security. He was born poor, without shelter, in an occupied land ruled by force and fear, under the watchful eye of a government obsessed with control, compliance, and the elimination of perceived threats. His parents were politically powerless. His birthplace was makeshift. His earliest days were shaped by fear of state violence. Herod’s response to the news of the Messiah’s birth was not humility or reflection, but paranoia. Threatened by the mere possibility of a rival authority, Herod turned to brute force. The lesson is timeless: this is how tyranny operates. Unchecked power, when gripped by insecurity, will always seek to eliminate dissent rather than allow its own corruption to be confronted. Modern governments, including our own, cloaked in the language of security and “law and order,” behave no differently. Any challenge to centralized power is treated as a threat to be neutralized. In such an environment, speaking truth to power is dangerous. Challenging imperial authority invites retaliation. From the moment of his birth, Jesus represented a threat—not because he wielded violence or political power, but because his life and message exposed the moral bankruptcy of empire and offered an alternative rooted in justice, mercy, and truth. When Jesus grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say—things that would change how we view people, things that challenged everything empire stood for. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings. When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be. Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state? Consider the following if you will. Had Jesus been born in the era of the American police state, his parents would not have traveled to Bethlehem for a census. Instead, they would have been entered into a vast web of government databases—flagged, categorized, scored, and assessed by algorithms they could neither see nor challenge. What passes for a census today is no longer a simple headcount, but rather part of a data-harvesting regime that feeds artificial intelligence systems, predictive policing programs, immigration enforcement, and national security watchlists. Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed. Had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and their newborn child might have been swept up in an early-morning ICE raid, detained without meaningful due process, processed through a profit-driven, private prison, and deported in the dead of night to a detention camp in a third-world country. From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little—if anything—about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses. Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone. Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us. From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations. Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.” While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies. Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled. Jesus’ teachings—his refusal to pledge allegiance to empire, his warnings about wealth and power, his insistence that obedience to God sometimes requires resistance to unjust authority—would almost certainly be interpreted today as signs of ideological extremism. In an age when dissent is increasingly framed as a threat to public order, Jesus would not need to commit violence to be labeled dangerous. His words alone would suffice. Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery. Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored. Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Had Jesus spoken publicly about his forty days in the wilderness, his visions, or his confrontations with evil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and subjected to an involuntary psychiatric hold—detained not for what he had done, but for what authorities feared he might do. Increasingly, expressions of distress, spiritual conviction, or nonconformity are pathologized and treated as grounds for confinement, especially when paired with homelessness or poverty. Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books. Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later. Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error. Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square. Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs. Indeed, whether Jesus had been born in his own time or in ours, the outcome would likely be the same. A government that demands obedience over conscience, order over mercy, and power over truth will always view a figure like Jesus as a threat. The uncomfortable truth is that a nation willing to surveil, detain, and silence Jesus today is a nation far removed from the Gospel it claims to honor. Christmas, then, is not merely a celebration of the Christ child’s birth. It is a recognition of all that follows it: what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it. That contradiction forces a reckoning. The work of peace, justice, and compassion does not begin in the manger and end with a holiday, but demands courage long after the carols fade. This reality stands in stark contrast to the brand of Christianity increasingly embraced and promoted by the government and its enforcers. A faith fused with nationalism, militarism, and obedience to authority bears little resemblance to the teachings of Christ. What makes this moment especially dangerous is that this distortion of Christianity is no longer marginal—it is increasingly mainstream. In too many cases, the modern church has not merely failed to challenge the machinery of empire—it has baptized it. When religious leaders bless endless wars, celebrate militarism, and portray violence as divinely sanctioned, they invert the Gospel itself. Yet Jesus did not preach dominance, conquest, or submission to empire. He stood with the poor, the imprisoned, and the outcast—and he paid for it with his life. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we must decide, once again, whether we will march in lockstep with the machinery of a military empire—or with the child born under its shadow who dared to resist it. Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 22:45

Largest Acquisition In Nvidia History: Jensen Pays $20BN For AI Chip Startup In Bid For Google's TPU Tech Just before the market close on Friday, Nvidia unveiled its largest ever acquisition (which however was structured as a licensing deal to avoid anti-trust concerns) when it agreed to buy Groq - pardon license all of Grok's assets and acquire its entire executive team - a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash. In reality what the deal is really about is Grok's TPU expertise, and specifically the knowledge inside CEO Jonathan Ross' head, who helped launch Google's TPU, the search giant's custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuit.  Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer of Groq  The news was first reported by CNBC, citing Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup’s latest financing round in September. Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly (that part is true: the deal likely came together in the days following the recent dramatic ascent of Google's Gemini and TPU architecture, not to mention stock price, as explained below). Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of about $6.9 billion in September. Investors in the round included Blackrock and Neuberger Berman, as well as Samsung, Cisco, Altimeter and 1789 Capital (where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner). Groq said at the time it would use the funds to expand its data center capacity. Instead, the participating funds are about to 3x their money in 3 months, an unprecedented venture return, thanks to Nvidia's massive cash hoard. Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday that it’s “entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq’s inference technology,” without disclosing a price. Clearly, however, this is much more than just a licensing agreement since Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross along with Sunny Madra, the company’s president, and other senior leaders “will join Nvidia to help advance and scale the licensed technology,” the post said. As Bloomberg explains, sharing a slightly different perspective on how the deal is structured or rather wants to be structured, the world’s largest publicly traded company paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and will integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the startup’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq will continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, existing finance chief Simon Edwards as CEO, it said Wednesday in a post on its website, which of course it will only pretend to be for regulatory and anti-trust reasons: Nvidia will have stripped all the good stuff, i.e., the TPU IP. It’s data center business, which offers outsourced computing, will continue, the company said in the post.  Davis told CNBC that Nvidia is getting all of Groq’s assets, though its nascent Groq cloud business is not part of the transaction. Groq said “GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption.” The deal represents by far Nvidia’s largest purchase ever. The chipmaker’s biggest acquisition to date came in 2019, when it bought Israeli chip designer Mellanox for close to $7 billion. At the end of October, Nvidia had $60.6 billion in cash and short-term investments, up from $13.3 billion in early 2023.  In an email to employees that was obtained by CNBC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the agreement will expand Nvidia’s capabilities. “We plan to integrate Groq’s low-latency processors into the NVIDIA AI factory architecture, extending the platform to serve an even broader range of AI inference and real-time workloads,” Huang wrote, revealing the deal rationale.  Groq has been targeting revenue of $500 million this year amid booming demand for AI accelerator chips used in speeding up the process for large language models to complete inference-related tasks. The company was not pursuing a sale when it was approached by Nvidia, Davis said. While it is unclear what is the actual LTM revenue, the acquisition represents a 40x multiple of its "targeted" sales... so do the math.  So what is the reason for the deal? Well, as we explained in "The Google TPU: The Chip Made For The AI Inference Era", in recent months Nvidia and its GPU architecture has lost momentum to Google and its TPU, which as noted above, is the "chip made for the inference era." And so, instead of developing its own Tensor architecture, Nvidia decided to just buy it. Or rather, it pretends not to buy it as regulators may just kill the deal, which instead was structured as an asset-purchase/licensing deal.  And the punchline: Groq was founded in 2016 by a group of former engineers, including CEO Ross. Ross is a former Google chip executive who helped start that company’s Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, the search giant’s custom chip that’s being used by some companies as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units. As part of the deal, he and other top executives will join Nvidia “to help advance and scale the licensed technology,” Groq said in the statement.  In its initial filing with the SEC, announcing a $10.3 million fundraising in late 2016, Groq listed as principals Ross and Douglas Wightman, an entrepreneur and former engineer at the Google X “moonshot factory.” Wightman left Groq in 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile.  Huang added that, “While we are adding talented employees to our ranks and licensing Groq’s IP, we are not acquiring Groq as a company.” Narrator: you are. Nvidia has ramped up its investments in chip startups and the broader ecosystem as its cash pile has mounted. The company has backed AI and energy infrastructure company Crusoe, AI model developer Cohere, and boosted its investment in CoreWeave as the AI-centric cloud provider was getting ready to go public this year. In September, Nvidia said it intended to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, with the startup committed to deploying at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia products. The companies have yet to announce a formal deal. That same month, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion in Intel as part of a partnership. Nvidia has been making investments in companies across the AI infrastructure ecosystem and is trying to keep a large lead in the market for inference — running models once they have been developed. The company’s leadership has already pledged billions to a wide variety of projects that it believes will further the overall AI industry. Nvidia agreed to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI and has even bought a stake in erstwhile nemesis Intel Corp. By incorporating a new type of design into what it sells, Nvidia is showing willingness to be flexible and add novel capabilities. That approach is likely aimed at keeping its biggest customers and new adopters focused on its technology at a time when in-house efforts from Google, Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. are gaining momentum as the industry rushes to install as much computing capacity as quickly as it can. With today's purchase, pardon, "licensing deal", Nvidia has formally lobbed its response to Google's recent ascent with its Ironwood TPU and Gemini AI, which saw a dramatic divergence in the Google vs Nvidia ecosystems (chart below).  The question now is will Google issue its own "code red" and pull every string in its power to kill the deal, or will it respond even more forcefully. One thing is certain: if Nvidia has now successfully caught up to Google and its TPU technology, the alligator jaws of the Google vs OpenAI/Nvidia chart are about to slam shut. Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 21:09

Trump Admin Bans Anti-Free Speech EU Globalists From Entering US America finally draws a line in the sand against foreign meddlers... Modernity.news Steve Watson details below that the Trump administration has slapped visa bans on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other ‘anti-disinformation’ activists, accusing them of coercing American social media companies to censor viewpoints they dislike. The move signals a zero-tolerance policy toward extraterritorial censorship, especially after the EU’s recent assaults on Elon Musk’s X. Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid it out clearly: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.” For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Today, @StateDept will take steps to… — Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) December 23, 2025 Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Sarah B. Rogers stated “These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.” Today, the United States issued SANCTIONS reinforcing the "red line" I invoked on @GBNEWS. Namely: extraterritorial censorship of Americans. Today's sanctions target the censorship-NGO ecosystem.? https://t.co/kaefDo11uh — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 The list includes Thierry Breton, who notoriously threatened Elon Musk over hosting a 2024 interview with Donald Trump on X. Others barred are Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), who worked with Democrats like Amy Klobuchar to “kiII Musk’s Twitter”; Joan Donovan, founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute; Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public; and Jim Davey, co-founder of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. WE’VE SANCTIONED: Thierry Breton, a mastermind of the Digital Services Act. In August 2024, while serving as European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Digital Services, he published a letter using the DSA to threaten @elonmusk ahead of his livestream interview with President… — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 WE'VE SANCTIONED: Clare Melford. She leads Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a UK-based organization that monitors websites for “hate speech” and “disinformation”. If you question Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you're engaging in “hate speech” according to… pic.twitter.com/5F3fU4hf4R — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 WE’VE SANCTIONED: Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid, who flags disfavored speech throughout Europe under the Digital Services Act. In addition to her running an official “trusted flagger” body under the DSA, she serves on Germany’s Advisory Council of the Digital Services… — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 Our targets are foreign, but you'll notice that some collaborated with U.S. bureaucrats on Murthy-style speech suppression. Don't worry: we're pursuing transparency, truth, and reconciliation at the @StateDept, too. — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 As @SecRubio has noted, today's list is illustrative not exhaustive. We stand "ready and willing to expand" it.https://t.co/eS65g6i8OP — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) December 23, 2025 This retaliation comes amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the EU. As we previously detailed, Brussels hit X with a $140 million fine under the Digital Services Act for refusing to comply with their censorship demands, marking a blatant attack on free expression. Musk fired back fiercely, declaring the “EU commissars are responsible for the murder of Europe” and calling to “Dissolve the EU and return power to the people.” He highlighted X’s surge in popularity across Europe despite the fine, noting it became the top news app in every EU country. The broader feud intensified when EU Council President Antonio Costa warned Trump to “keep his hands off Europe” amid the free speech crackdown. Costa condemned U.S. “interference” in European affairs, ignoring the bloc’s own slide into authoritarian control over online content. Trump himself has blasted Europe’s direction, urging citizens to confront unchecked migration and over-regulation that’s “endangering the continent as we know it.” In interviews, he stressed, “Europe has to be very careful… We want to keep Europe Europe,” and called the EU’s fine on X “nasty” and unjust. Breton, who left the European Commission in 2024, has slammed the ban as a “witch hunt,” comparing the situation to the US McCarthy era when officials were chased out of government for alleged ties to communism. “To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is,” he declared on X. Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back? ? As a reminder: 90% of the European Parliament — our democratically elected body — and all 27 Member States unanimously voted the DSA ?? To our American friends: “Censorship isn’t where you think it is.” — Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) December 23, 2025 France also condemned the visa ban on Breton, but the Trump team remains unmoved. This action underscores America’s commitment to protecting its tech giants from foreign regulatory harassment, prioritizing sovereignty and open discourse over globalist dictates. As Brussels doubles down on surveillance tools like the DSA and proposed Chat Control laws, which threaten privacy by scanning private messages, the U.S. pushback exposes the hypocrisy of EU elites preaching democracy while building an Orwellian framework. With Trump in charge, expect more defense of freedoms against such overreach. This ban on Breton and his allies is a clear message: Attempts to censor U.S. platforms from abroad will face consequences. The era of tolerating globalist bullying is over. [ZH: To all of this we have one simple response: ] Hey Imran, f**k you! Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 20:12

Watch: Pro-Natalist's Head Explodes After Lefty Journo Denies Basic Science A hilarious clip is currently going viral in which far-left journalist Paola Ramos (daughter of Trump foe and Univision reporter Jorge Ramos) attempts a "gotcha" during an interview with Simone and Malcolm Collins - Silicon Valley investors-turned Pennsylvania pronatalists, who the left, of course, has been trying to cancel.  In her attempt to paint the Collins's as white supremacists whose "practices and preachings recall the dark era of eugenics," Ramos says "You've said things like black women are biologically different than white women."  To which Malcolm replies; "Yes, they have different fertility windows, they have a higher rate of fertility complications-"  "But there's no scientific evidence to prove that a black woman and a white woman are genetically different," Ramos (who apparently missed this Stanford study) shoots back... which sends Malcolm over the edge: "What are you TALKING about?" he replies. "Like, literally, there are genes that code for their skin color." Ramos then lies, saying "This is government data. This is the National Institute of Health. This is the American Medical Association. There is no scientific evidence to prove that..."  Watch the entire exchange here:  This must be the dumbest journalist of all time. @paoramos tries to convince two Trump supporters that there is no scientific evidence that proves different ethnicities have different genetics, even citing the NIH as source. This is a patently false statement that only the… pic.twitter.com/lYgN1XEchZ — Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) December 23, 2025 Ramos doubled down on social media, writing:  The pronatalist movement, a movement that encourages people to have more babies is once again gaining momentum in the far right. Remember, Trump said he wants to be the “president of fertility.” Malcolm and Simone Collins, who are big Trump supporters, are two of the main leaders of this movement, which includes people like Elon Musk as well as individuals that believe in the Great Replacement Theory or religious leaders. It’s a big, complex and growing movement, particularly now that it has political allies. For the Collins, who want to have 12 children, the mass production of genetically selected humans is part of the key to “saving civilization.” They use it to screen for cancer ( runs in the family) as well as IQ . Although they vehemently deny being white supremacists, some of their practices and their preachings recall the dark era of eugenics. Meanwhile, the Science...  Both the National Institute of Health and the American Medical Association have published or hosted studies, articles and policy statements that acknowledge genetic differences between human populations. NIH:  Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies The Quagmire of Race, Genetic Ancestry, and Health Disparities All of Us Research Program Study on Race, Ethnicity, and Genetic Ancestry AMA: Race, Genomics, and Health Care Racial Essentialism in Medical Education What both organizations have done is issue statements 'clarifying' that "race [is] a socially constructed category different from ethnicity, genetic ancestry, or biology." Then there's this one published in Nature in 2021: African Americans and European Americans Exhibit Distinct Gene Expression Profiles African American expression signatures, superimposed on single cell-RNA reference data, reveal increased number or activity of esophageal glandular cells and lung ACE2-positive basal keratinocytes. Our findings establish basal prognostic signatures that can be used to refine approaches to minimize risk of severe infection and improve precision treatment of COVID-19 for African Americans. Oh... So, more semantic games from the same people that insist a mentally ill man is actually a woman if he says so. pic.twitter.com/CCtdcQ1LLv — Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 (@jeremykauffman) December 23, 2025 Tyler Durden Wed, 12/24/2025 - 19:00