Top 10 Global and U.S. News Developments

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 28, 2026

Global developments this week reflected continued instability in international trade, renewed military positioning in the Indo-Pacific, and growing concern over long-term economic resilience across multiple regions. Several developments moved beyond routine diplomatic friction and into areas with potentially lasting strategic consequences.

International developments appear first, followed by key domestic developments inside the United States.

International Developments

China Conducts Expanded Military Activity Near Taiwan

China increased air and naval operations near Taiwan this week, including large-scale patrols and coordinated exercises involving aircraft and maritime assets. Regional governments continue monitoring the situation closely as tensions surrounding Taiwan remain one of the most significant flashpoints in the Indo-Pacific.

Philippine Maritime Operations Continue in the West Philippine Sea

Philippine Coast Guard and maritime authorities continued patrol and resupply activity in contested areas of the West Philippine Sea. Chinese vessels maintained their sustained coercive maritime presence near disputed features as part of the long-running jurisdictional contest under international law.

Global Shipping Industry Faces Continued Security Pressure

Commercial shipping firms continue adjusting routes, insurance rates, and operational planning due to ongoing geopolitical instability in major maritime transit corridors. Shipping costs remain above historical norms, affecting supply chains and consumer pricing worldwide.

Ukraine Conflict Continues Attritional Phase

Fighting in Ukraine continued this week with both Russian and Ukrainian forces targeting infrastructure, logistics, and energy systems. Military analysts increasingly describe the conflict as an industrial and endurance-based war heavily dependent on manufacturing and supply capacity.

Energy Markets React to Ongoing Supply Uncertainty

Global energy markets remain sensitive to geopolitical disruptions and production concerns. Analysts warn that continued instability in key producing and shipping regions could sustain inflationary pressure across both developed and developing economies.

United States Developments

Congressional Debate Intensifies Over Federal Spending

Debates in Washington intensified this week regarding federal spending priorities, budget deficits, and long-term debt management. Fiscal policy remains a major point of political division heading deeper into the election cycle.

Federal Reserve Maintains Cautious Monetary Position

The Federal Reserve continued signaling caution regarding future interest rate decisions. Policymakers remain focused on balancing inflation control with economic stability as consumer costs remain elevated in several sectors.

Trade and Tariff Policy Remain Under Review

U.S. trade policy continues evolving following recent legal and political disputes surrounding executive tariff authority. Policymakers remain divided over balancing domestic manufacturing interests with broader economic and diplomatic concerns.

Immigration and Border Policy Continue Dominating Domestic Politics

Immigration enforcement, asylum processing, and border management remain among the most politically divisive issues inside the United States. Federal and state governments continue debating funding, enforcement authority, and operational coordination.

Artificial Intelligence and Technology Regulation Draw Increased Attention

Discussions regarding artificial intelligence, automation, and digital platform regulation continue expanding in Washington and internationally. Policymakers increasingly view AI governance as both an economic and national security issue.

Analysis

This week’s developments reinforced the growing overlap between economic competition, military positioning, and technological influence. Trade policy, maritime security, industrial production, and artificial intelligence are increasingly interconnected within broader geopolitical competition.

For readers in the Philippines and across the Indo-Pacific region, the continued strategic importance of shipping lanes, infrastructure resilience, and regional stability remains directly relevant to long-term economic and security planning.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

Editor’s Note: This week’s briefing is unfortunately running late because I am currently dealing with a significant health issue that has slowed production somewhat. Other than that, operations remain stable, and WPS News will continue keeping information flowing.

Reuters. (2026). Global geopolitical, shipping, and economic reporting.
Associated Press. (2026). U.S. political and economic developments.
Various international monitoring agencies. (2026). Maritime and regional data.

#ArtificialIntelligence #globalNews #IndoPacific #UnitedStatesPolitics #WestPhilippineSea #WPSNews

AI Music Lawsuits Are Real. The Panic About “Losing Your Songs” Is Not.

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 27, 2026

There are active lawsuits involving artificial intelligence and music creation. That part is true. What is not true is the growing online claim that ordinary people using AI tools are about to “lose all rights” to their songs or have their music confiscated by courts or corporations.

That interpretation dramatically oversimplifies what the current legal fights are actually about.

The lawsuits currently moving through U.S. courts are primarily aimed at AI companies themselves, not individual creators. Major music publishers and record labels have accused several AI firms of training their systems on copyrighted material without authorization. The central legal question is whether the use of copyrighted songs, recordings, or lyrics during AI training qualifies as “fair use” under copyright law.

In other words, the courts are largely examining how the machines were trained, not whether a person using AI assistance can make music.

That distinction matters.

The Core Legal Dispute

Most current AI music lawsuits focus on three major questions:

1. Training Data

Did AI companies train their systems on copyrighted music catalogs without permission?

This is the largest and most aggressive area of litigation at the moment.

2. Derivative Outputs

Are AI-generated songs reproducing copyrighted material too closely?

Courts may eventually draw boundaries regarding how similar an output can be before it becomes infringement.

3. Copyright Eligibility

Can AI-assisted works receive copyright protection, and if so, under what conditions?

This third issue is where much of the public confusion originates.

Human Involvement Still Matters

Current U.S. copyright guidance generally indicates that purely machine-generated material may not qualify for full copyright protection if there is insufficient human creative involvement.

However, that does not mean all AI-assisted music automatically loses protection.

Human direction remains extremely important.

If a person:

• writes or revises lyrics,
• structures songs,
• selects arrangements,
• edits outputs,
• curates performances,
• guides musical style,
• sequences albums,
• or meaningfully shapes the final work,

then the argument for human authorship becomes substantially stronger.

That is very different from simply typing a one-sentence prompt and uploading the first automated result.

The practical reality is that many musicians using AI tools today function more like producers, arrangers, editors, directors, or collaborators using software assistance. Courts and regulators are still working through where those boundaries should be drawn.

The Industry Is Already Moving Toward Licensing

Despite public rhetoric, the music industry itself appears to be shifting toward a licensing and monetization model rather than attempting to eliminate AI entirely.

That transition follows a familiar historical pattern:

• first panic,
• then lawsuits,
• then licensing,
• then commercialization.

The same industry that fought digital music distribution in the Napster era eventually helped build the streaming economy that followed.

AI music may ultimately follow a similar path.

What Independent Creators Should Actually Watch

For independent artists, the larger risks are probably not government seizure of songs or mass copyright stripping.

The more realistic concerns include:

• platform policy changes,
• monetization restrictions,
• AI disclosure requirements,
• content-identification disputes,
• changing distributor rules,
• and future licensing frameworks.

Those are operational and business risks, not necessarily existential ones.

Documentation May Become Important

Creators using AI-assisted workflows would be wise to preserve evidence of their own creative involvement.

That can include:

• lyric drafts,
• revision histories,
• prompts,
• editing decisions,
• sequencing notes,
• production choices,
• and timestamps.

The stronger the documented human role, the stronger the argument for human authorship.

At present, the law surrounding AI-generated media remains unsettled and incomplete. Courts, regulators, artists, and technology companies are all still defining the boundaries in real time.

But the current lawsuits do not amount to a blanket legal declaration that ordinary people are “losing their rights” to AI-assisted music.

That claim goes far beyond what the courts are actually debating.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

Reuters. (2026, March 24). U.S. music publishers suing Anthropic make their case against AI fair use. Reuters.

The Guardian. (2026, May 21). Spotify and Universal Music agree deal to let subscribers create AI remixes. The Guardian.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2025). Copyright and artificial intelligence guidance. U.S. Government Publishing Office.

Norton Rose Fulbright. (2026). AI in litigation series: An update on AI copyright cases in 2026. Norton Rose Fulbright.

#AIMusic #ArtificialIntelligence #copyrightLaw #musicIndustry #Suno #Udio #WPSNews

Going to Press: Shipping Delays and Damaged Orders on Lulu

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 26, 2026

One of the most common frustrations reported by Lulu users has little to do with writing and everything to do with the point where a book becomes a physical object. That is where timing starts to matter. Authors are no longer thinking about chapters or cover files. They are thinking about proofs, deliveries, launch dates, replacement copies, and whether the book will arrive in one piece. At that stage, even a small delay can become a real problem.

Lulu’s own help materials make clear that shipping and post-order problems are a regular enough part of the process that the company has standard procedures for damaged books, defective books, incorrectly packaged items, and missing or misdirected orders. Lulu says customers must report damaged, defective, or incorrectly packaged items within 30 days of the shipment date to receive a replacement copy. The company also states that, because print-on-demand books are manufactured to order, it does not generally accept returns for physical products. That means the margin for error is narrow once an order is placed.

That matters because shipping trouble is not just an inconvenience in publishing. It can disrupt the entire last stage of a project. If an author is ordering proofs before approving a release, a delayed shipment can push back publication. If books are being sent to readers, reviewers, or event sites, damaged copies or slow delivery can make the author look unreliable even when the underlying problem is with the vendor or carrier. Print-on-demand promises convenience, but convenience does not mean much when the timing slips at the exact moment the book is supposed to leave the screen and enter the real world.

Lulu also places practical responsibility on the customer when something goes wrong. Its order help materials say users should provide the order number when opening a support request and that digital images with the first complaint can speed resolution. That may be sensible from the company’s point of view, but it also means the burden falls quickly on the customer to document defects, preserve evidence, and navigate the support process correctly. For authors already dealing with deadlines, this turns a simple order into an extra layer of administrative work.

The larger issue is predictability. A publishing platform does not have to be perfect to be useful, but it does need to be dependable. Lulu still has customers who report good results, including positive reviews about print quality, straightforward ordering, and acceptable delivery times. That should be acknowledged. The platform is not failing every customer or every shipment. But public reviews are mixed, and the very existence of detailed support pathways for damaged goods, order lookup problems, and replacement claims shows that these are not hypothetical edge cases. They are recurring enough to be built into the system.

Authors considering Lulu should take a hard-headed approach to this part of the process. If a deadline matters, build in extra time. If a proof is important, order it earlier than you think you need to. If books must arrive for an event, a launch, or a library submission, do not assume everything will move cleanly on the first attempt. Print-on-demand is supposed to reduce risk, but the shipping side of the model can simply move the risk downstream, where it becomes a deadline problem instead of an inventory problem.

That is the practical warning here. Lulu can still be useful for print-on-demand work, but authors should not mistake availability for reliability. When a platform’s own support pages have to devote this much attention to damaged items, shipment disputes, and replacement procedures, that is a sign worth taking seriously. If you use Lulu, the smartest move is not blind confidence. It is planning for friction before the friction shows up.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

#damagedBooks #indiePublishing #LuluCom #printOnDemand #selfPublishing #shippingDelays #WPSNews

The Roar at Indianapolis

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 24, 2026 — 23:05 PHST

Every Memorial Day, my mother and I went to the cemetery.

That part of the ritual never changed. Flowers, driving across Chicago, searching for graves, trying to remember where flat markers disappeared beneath the grass. My mother took the day seriously. She believed the dead should be visited, and because of that belief, I spent much of my childhood walking cemetery rows beside her.

My father usually was not there.

For years, I thought that absence meant less than it really did. I understand it differently now.

My father’s Memorial Day ritual was the Indianapolis 500.

The Race

For Americans of my father’s generation, the Indianapolis 500 was not merely another sporting event. It was part machine worship, part engineering spectacle, part national ritual. It belonged to an industrial America that still believed speed, machinery, and technical skill represented progress itself.

This was before endless sports channels, before internet streaming, before every race on earth became permanently available on demand. Indianapolis stood alone in the American imagination in a way younger generations may have trouble understanding now.

There was one race.

This was the race.

My father liked Le Mans and Formula One well enough, but those always felt foreign to him. Indianapolis was American. Loud, dangerous, mechanical, Midwestern, and unapologetically industrial.

He did not care much for NASCAR. Too Southern for his tastes. My father had Southern roots he spent much of his life trying to outgrow. Indianapolis felt different to him. Cleaner somehow. More technical. More Northern. More modern.

Closed-Circuit America

People forget how differently major events once worked in the United States.

Today, nearly everything arrives instantly through phones and television screens. But for years, the Indianapolis 500 existed partly through delayed broadcasts and closed-circuit screenings. Fans would gather in theaters, auditoriums, and special venues to watch races transmitted from Indianapolis itself.

Whenever he could afford it, my father went to those screenings somewhere in Chicago. I say “somewhere” because the locations changed over the years and I was too young to remember the details clearly.

He usually went alone.

Partly because of the expense.

Partly because, I suspect now, it gave him several uninterrupted hours away from work, responsibility, family obligations, and ordinary life.

I understand that better now than I did when I was young.

Memorial Day Before the Monday Holiday

People also forget that Memorial Day itself once worked differently.

Before the Uniform Monday Holiday Act shifted several American holidays to Mondays during the early 1970s, Memorial Day was observed on May 30 itself regardless of the day of the week (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2025).

The Indianapolis 500 traditionally aligned closely with Memorial Day culture. Blue laws and older social norms complicated Sunday racing for many years, and the race schedule evolved alongside broader changes in American society, television economics, labor schedules, travel patterns, and commercial broadcasting priorities.

Eventually, Indianapolis moved toward the modern Sunday-before-Memorial-Day structure Americans know today.

That change sounds minor until you think about what it represented culturally.

America itself was changing from a country organized around fixed civic rituals into a country increasingly organized around television scheduling, long weekends, and consumer travel.

The race changed because the country changed.

My Father’s Holiday

While my mother and I walked cemeteries, my father listened to engines.

That sounds colder written down than it actually was.

He was not ignoring the dead. He was participating in his own version of American memory. The Indianapolis 500 belonged deeply to the generation that fought the Second World War and built postwar industrial America afterward. The race carried with it ideas about machinery, progress, engineering, danger, courage, and national confidence.

For several hours each Memorial Day, my father disappeared into that world.

In his own way, he was a good man.

I understand him more sympathetically now than I once did. Age does that sometimes. You eventually realize your parents were not symbols or permanent authority figures. They were simply people trying to survive their own lives while carrying histories you only partially understood as a child.

The Roar in the Distance

I sometimes think Memorial Day in our family existed as two parallel rituals happening at the same time.

My mother and I searched for the dead among cemetery rows.

My father sat somewhere listening to the roar from Indianapolis.

One ritual centered on stillness. The other centered on motion.

One dealt directly with memory. The other dealt with escape, machinery, and the surviving mythology of mid-century America.

Looking back now, I think all three of us were participating in Memorial Day in our own way.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

ESPN Front Row. (2016). ABC’s first Indianapolis 500 broadcast in 1965. https://www.espnfrontrow.com

Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (2025). History of the Indianapolis 500. https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com

U.S. Office of Personnel Management. (2025). Federal holidays and the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. https://www.opm.gov

Photo by Adriaan Greyling on Pexels.com

#AmericanCulture #autoRacingHistory #ChicagoHistory #familyRitual #Indianapolis500 #MemorialDay #WPSNews

The Tree by My Parents’ Graves

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 24, 2026 — 23:05 PHST

Every Memorial Day, my mother and I went to the cemetery.

Not occasionally. Not when it was convenient. Not when somebody remembered at the last minute. We went every year. It was simply what we did. By the time I was old enough to understand what was happening, the ritual already existed. Memorial Day meant flowers, driving across Chicago, walking through rows of graves, and stopping to remember people I never really knew well enough to remember on my own.

We visited her parents. We visited her aunts and uncles. Uncle Louis. Eventually Aunt Augusta too. The dead slowly accumulated over the years the way they do in most families if enough time passes.

My sisters usually were not there. My father usually was not there either. This was mostly something my mother and I did together. Looking back now, I understand it was less about obligation than continuity. She was making sure the dead remained visible to somebody.

The Problem with Flat Headstones

I have never liked flat headstones.

Cemeteries prefer them because they make lawn maintenance easier. The grass can be cut evenly. The grounds look orderly. Maintenance becomes efficient. Administratively, flat markers solve problems.

Humanly, they create others.

Flat stones disappear.

Grass grows over them. Dirt settles into the engraving. Leaves collect across the surface. Time presses them downward visually until they stop standing out from the landscape around them. Eventually, unless someone already knows exactly where to look, the dead become difficult to find.

I could never reliably find Uncle Louis’ grave.

That bothered me even when I was young. It still bothers me now.

My parents both have flat markers too. I dislike that immensely. A flat marker slowly turns memory into geography homework. You begin searching for landmarks instead of names.

In my parents’ case, there is now a tree growing nearby. It was only a sapling when they died. Now it is large enough to serve as the real marker. I locate my parents less by the stone than by the tree beside it.

The tree grew while they were gone.

What Memorial Day Actually Was

People often describe Memorial Day in patriotic terms. Flags. Veterans. Military sacrifice. National remembrance.

For my mother and me, it was quieter than that.

It was walking.

It was looking for names.

It was making sure people who once existed still occupied physical space in the world.

The older I get, the more I suspect many family rituals operate exactly this way. They are not merely traditions. They are systems for resisting disappearance.

The dead vanish physically first. Later they begin disappearing socially. Eventually they disappear historically as well unless somebody keeps repeating the names.

Memorial Day, in our family, was one method of repeating the names.

The Dead Should Remain Findable

One of the things that unsettles me most about modern memorial culture is how efficiently it sometimes hides the dead in the name of convenience.

A cemetery optimized entirely around maintenance eventually starts resembling a park where names accidentally happened instead of a place of remembrance.

That strikes me as backward.

The point of a grave marker is not landscaping efficiency. The point is visibility.

A grave should remain findable.

A person should not visually disappear because maintaining visible markers requires slightly more work from groundskeepers. That is what weed whackers are for.

Perhaps this sounds overly emotional to some people. Maybe it is. But I have spent enough years walking cemeteries to know the difference between remembering someone and merely storing them.

Those are not the same thing.

What I Remember Most

Oddly enough, I do not remember every conversation my mother and I had during those cemetery visits. Memory rarely works that cleanly after enough decades pass.

I remember movement more than dialogue.

Walking across grass. Looking down at names. Trying to locate flat stones hidden beneath overgrowth. Holding flowers. Listening to traffic somewhere beyond the cemetery walls. Chicago heat beginning to arrive by late May.

Mostly, I remember the fact that we went.

Every year.

Without fail.

That consistency mattered more than I understood at the time.

The Tree

The tree beside my parents’ graves may eventually become the thing I remember most clearly.

Not because it was planted as a memorial. It was not. It simply happened to grow there while time moved forward.

The tree became a witness.

It marked the passing years while the people beneath it remained still.

In a strange way, it now performs the job the flat stones were supposed to do.

It tells me where they are.

And perhaps that is ultimately what Memorial Day always was for my mother: making certain the dead did not become impossible to find.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

National Cemetery Administration. (2025). Memorial Day history and traditions. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. https://www.cem.va.gov

Sloane, D. C. (1991). The last great necessity: Cemeteries in American history. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Tarlow, S. (2000). Landscapes of memory: The nineteenth-century garden cemetery. European Journal of Archaeology, 3(2), 217–239.

#cemeteries #ChicagoHistory #familyRitual #grief #MemorialDay #remembrance #WPSNews

Every Country Has Its Memorial Day

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 24, 2026 — 21:05 PHST

The United States will observe Memorial Day on May 25, 2026. Across America, flags will be raised, cemeteries will receive visitors, and old photographs will briefly return to kitchen tables and social media timelines. Some families will remember fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and friends who never came home from war. Others will simply enjoy the long weekend without thinking much about how the holiday began.

But Memorial Day is not uniquely American.

Almost every country eventually creates a day for its honored dead. The names are different. The flags are different. The uniforms change. The language changes. The cemeteries look different from one continent to another. Yet the pattern repeats itself throughout history with almost mechanical regularity. Nations send young people into war. Many do not return. Time passes. The survivors grow old. The arguments that began the conflict fade into textbooks and political speeches. Eventually, only the names remain.

From the Philippines, Memorial Day carries a different atmosphere than it does inside the United States itself. The Pacific still remembers the Second World War in ways that parts of America sometimes no longer visibly do. Across Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands, the war never fully became abstract history. It remains tied to geography, family stories, old ruins, shipwrecks, and cemeteries spread across islands that once became battlefields for empires.

Memorial Days Around the World

In the United States, Memorial Day emerged after the American Civil War and gradually evolved into a national day honoring military personnel who died in service (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2025). In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations, remembrance traditions center around Remembrance Day on November 11, tied to the end of the First World War. Australia and New Zealand observe ANZAC Day every April 25, remembering soldiers who fought at Gallipoli during World War I and later conflicts (Australian War Memorial, 2025).

France maintains extensive memorial traditions connected to both world wars. Germany developed a more restrained remembrance culture after the catastrophe of Nazism and the Second World War, often emphasizing mourning, responsibility, and the warning of “never again” rather than military celebration (Federal Agency for Civic Education, 2024).

The Philippines carries its own layered history of remembrance. Filipino and American forces fought together during the Second World War against Imperial Japan. The islands became one of the war’s major battlegrounds. Entire cities were destroyed. Civilian casualties were enormous. Even today, the remains of the war occasionally reappear physically through wreckage, unexploded ordnance, abandoned fortifications, and old memorial sites spread across the archipelago.

Every nation remembers differently because every nation experienced war differently.

What Happens After the War Ends

Most wars eventually become difficult for later generations to emotionally understand.

The soldiers who fought them age and disappear. Political slogans lose their force. Borders change. Governments change. Entire ideologies collapse. What once felt immediate and existential becomes archival material stored in libraries, museums, family attics, and digital databases.

This creates an uncomfortable reality surrounding memorial holidays throughout the world. The people being honored often died for causes, strategies, alliances, or geopolitical disputes that later generations barely understand. Some wars are still viewed as necessary. Others remain controversial decades later. Yet memorial traditions usually continue regardless of changing political interpretations.

That may be because Memorial Day is ultimately less about governments than about absence.

A missing chair at a family table. A folded flag in a closet. A name engraved in stone. A photograph slowly fading at the edges.

The political reasons for wars may continue to be debated for generations. The dead themselves usually do not get to explain what they believed they were sacrificing for.

The Pacific Still Remembers

Living in the Philippines changes how an American sees military history.

The Pacific theater of World War II was vast beyond modern comprehension. Millions died across thousands of miles of ocean and islands. Entire communities were pulled into the machinery of global conflict. Leyte itself remains historically connected to one of the largest naval battles in human history during the liberation of the Philippines in 1944 (Britannica, 2025).

Even now, there are places across the Pacific where the war still feels physically close beneath the surface. Old airfields remain visible. Memorials stand quietly beside modern roads. Elderly residents still carry family memories connected to occupation, liberation, hunger, bombings, and displacement.

History never completely leaves places where large numbers of people died violently.

It settles into the landscape.

The Archivist’s Problem

One of the uncomfortable truths about memorial observances is that memory itself eventually becomes fragile.

Most people who died in twentieth-century wars are no longer remembered personally outside their own families. In another generation, many of those family memories will disappear as well. Records survive longer than people do. Archives survive longer than conversations. Eventually, history depends almost entirely upon preservation.

That is part of the reason archives matter.

Without archives, the dead disappear twice: first physically, then historically.

Memorial holidays serve as temporary interruptions in that process. For a brief moment each year, societies pause and attempt to remember people who were gradually being absorbed into the past.

After the Flags Are Folded

The modern world often treats holidays as commercial events. Memorial Day sales, travel weekends, and entertainment campaigns now dominate much of the public atmosphere surrounding the American holiday. Similar commercialization exists elsewhere around the world as well.

Yet beneath all of that noise, something older still survives.

At cemeteries across many nations this month and throughout the year, visitors will continue placing flowers beside graves. Old veterans will continue attending ceremonies in shrinking numbers. Families will continue telling stories that younger generations only partially understand. Somewhere, someone will unfold an old letter or look at a faded photograph and remember a person the rest of the world has forgotten.

Eventually, nearly every war becomes history. Then memory. Then silence.

But for at least one day, many nations still stop long enough to remember the honored dead who gave up everything they had, whether or not later generations fully understand why.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

Australian War Memorial. (2025). ANZAC Day. https://www.awm.gov.au

Britannica. (2025). Battle of Leyte Gulf. https://www.britannica.com

Federal Agency for Civic Education. (2024). German remembrance culture after World War II. https://www.bpb.de

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2025). History of Memorial Day. https://www.va.gov

#internationalRemembrance #MemorialDay #PhilippinesHistory #veterans #warMemorials #WorldWarIIPacific #WPSNews

The Quiet Work of Remembering

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 24, 2026 — 10:05 PHST

One of the stranger things about living outside the United States is that American holidays sometimes sneak up on you unexpectedly.

This year, Memorial Day announced itself to me through a YouTube advertisement for a furniture sale.

That felt appropriate somehow.

Modern America often treats Memorial Day as the unofficial beginning of summer. Mattress sales. Appliance discounts. Car dealership promotions. Barbecue weekends. Travel traffic. Most of the original religious and cultural meanings surrounding remembrance of the dead have faded into the background.

Yet for much of my childhood, Memorial Day meant cemeteries.

Every year my mother and I visited the graves of family members across Chicago. We did not usually bring flowers. Flowers were expensive, and my parents were never wealthy. My mother worked two jobs much of the time to keep our family functioning. Money went toward survival first.

As a child, I never fully understood why we went.

As an adult Catholic, I understand now that I misunderstood the entire purpose of the ritual.

The Purpose Was Never Decoration

Many people today treat cemetery visits as symbolic gestures or public displays of remembrance. Flowers become visible proof that someone cared enough to stop by.

Catholic tradition approaches graves differently.

The point is not primarily to leave something behind for the living to admire. The point is prayer.

In Catholic theology, many souls undergo purification after death before entering heaven completely. This state, traditionally called purgatory, is not viewed as eternal damnation but as a process of spiritual cleansing and preparation (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994).

The living pray for the dead because the dead are still understood as spiritually connected to the living.

That was what my mother was doing all those years.

Not decorating graves. Not performing grief publicly. Not maintaining appearances.

She was praying for the dead.

The Book Protestants Removed

The scriptural foundation for prayers for the dead comes primarily from the Second Book of Maccabees, specifically 2 Maccabees 12:46:

“Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”

That passage appears in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but not in most Protestant versions of scripture. During the Reformation, Protestant traditions removed several books from the Old Testament canon, including 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, and Baruch. Catholics refer to these as the Deuterocanonical books.

This difference matters because it shaped how Christians understood death itself.

Without Maccabees, prayers for the dead become much harder to justify theologically. With it, cemetery visits become part of an ongoing spiritual relationship between the living and the dead.

The Dead Remain Part of the Family

I did not understand any of this as a child walking cemetery rows beside my mother.

I thought we were visiting places.

She believed we were helping people.

That is a very different thing.

Catholicism often treats death less as total separation and more as transition. The dead remain spiritually connected to the living through prayer, memory, and intercession. A cemetery therefore becomes something more than a storage field for bodies. It becomes a place where obligations of love continue beyond death.

Seen through that lens, flowers become optional.

Prayer is the important thing.

What Gets Forgotten

Modern secular culture often struggles to understand older religious rituals because it interprets them psychologically instead of spiritually.

People assume cemetery visits exist mainly to comfort the living.

Historically, Catholics often understood the visits differently. The prayers were intended to aid the dead themselves.

That distinction changes the entire emotional meaning of Memorial Day.

My mother was not merely remembering her parents, relatives, and family members. She believed she still owed them something.

Looking back now, I think that belief gave those cemetery visits their seriousness and consistency. Even when money was tight. Even when life was exhausting. Even when nobody else in the family came along.

The Quiet Work of Remembering

As I get older, I increasingly believe one of the great hidden fears of human life is disappearance.

Not merely death. Disappearance.

To be forgotten. To become unreachable. To vanish beneath overgrown grass and flat stones nobody can locate anymore.

Perhaps that is why Catholic prayers for the dead still resonate so deeply with me now.

They reject the idea that the dead simply become irrelevant.

The prayers say instead: you are still part of us, and we are still responsible for you.

That is what my mother was trying to teach me all those Memorial Days, even if I only finally understood it decades later.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

Catechism of the Catholic Church. (1994). Part one: The profession of faith. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. (1966). 2 Maccabees 12:46.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. (2025). Purgatory and prayers for the dead. https://www.usccb.org

#Catholicism #cemeteryRituals #familyRemembrance #MemorialDay #prayersForTheDead #purgatory #WPSNews

Top 10 Global and U.S. News Developments

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 20, 2026

Global developments this week reflected a sharper shift in geopolitical positioning than earlier in the month, particularly involving China, Ukraine, energy transit, and trade negotiations. Several stories moved beyond background noise and into potential long-term strategic consequences.

International developments appear first, followed by key domestic developments inside the United States.

International Developments

Xi Warns of “Clashes and Even Conflicts” Over Taiwan

Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly warned that tensions over Taiwan could lead to “clashes and even conflicts” with the United States during high-level discussions with President Donald Trump in Beijing. The statement represents one of the sharper public warnings issued by Beijing in recent months regarding Taiwan and regional military posture.

Trump-Xi Summit Produces Limited Breakthroughs

Meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping produced broad statements about cooperation but few concrete agreements. Trade, Taiwan, aircraft sales, and Iran were discussed, but Chinese officials later described several agreements as only “preliminary.”

Ukraine Conflict Escalates Following Major Kyiv Attack

Russia launched one of the deadliest strikes on Kyiv in recent months, reportedly killing at least 24 people, including children. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by stating Ukraine was fully justified in striking Russian energy and military infrastructure in retaliation.

Global Ammunition Production Becomes Strategic Concern

Military analysts increasingly warn that ammunition production capacity—not simply troop strength—may determine the long-term trajectory of the Ukraine war. NATO governments continue reassessing industrial readiness and weapons stockpiles.

China Expands Economic Outreach to Africa

China announced tariff reductions or eliminations on imports from most African countries through 2028. The move is widely viewed as part of Beijing’s broader strategy to deepen economic influence across the Global South while counterbalancing U.S. trade pressure.

United States Developments

U.S.-China Tariff Truce Temporarily Reduces Trade Pressure

The United States and China reached a temporary tariff reduction agreement aimed at easing trade tensions. U.S. tariffs on some Chinese goods reportedly dropped to 30%, while China reduced some tariffs on U.S. products to 10%.

Federal Reserve Leadership Debate Intensifies

Debate continues over the future direction and independence of the Federal Reserve following the confirmation battle surrounding new leadership appointments. Critics warn that political pressure on the Fed could influence monetary policy credibility.

Congress Continues Divisions Over Foreign Policy Priorities

Washington remains divided over long-term commitments in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Middle East. Questions regarding military spending, force posture, and alliance obligations continue dominating foreign policy discussions.

Immigration and Border Policy Remain Politically Central

Immigration enforcement and border management remain major domestic political issues. Federal and state governments continue debating resource allocation, asylum processing, and enforcement authority.

Economic Outlook Remains Uneven Despite Stable Employment

Economic indicators continue presenting a mixed picture. Employment levels remain relatively stable, but inflation concerns, housing costs, and consumer debt continue pressuring household finances across the United States.

Analysis

This week’s developments showed a noticeable hardening of geopolitical positioning, particularly between the United States, China, and Russia. Taiwan, Ukraine, and global shipping security increasingly appear connected within a broader strategic competition involving military production, energy access, and trade leverage.

Meanwhile, economic competition is evolving alongside military rivalry. China’s outreach to Africa, shifting tariff negotiations, and continued pressure in the Indo-Pacific all reflect a longer-term struggle over influence and economic alignment.

For readers in the Philippines and the wider Indo-Pacific region, these developments remain directly tied to regional security, maritime stability, and long-term economic planning.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

Reuters. (2026). U.S.-China trade and diplomatic developments.
The Guardian. (2026). Ukraine, Taiwan, and international political coverage.
Associated Press. (2026). Global economic and geopolitical reporting.

#china #globalNews #taiwan #UkraineWar #UnitedStatesPolitics #WPSNews

You Got What You Asked For

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 20, 2026 — 7:20 p.m. PHST

There was a moment when a simple idea spread:

Information should be free.

It was part of the language of movements. Part of the language of Occupy. Part of the belief that knowledge should not be locked behind institutions, paywalls, or gatekeepers.

Fair enough.

You got what you asked for.

More than 5,000 essays.
Years of work.
Patterns documented.
Systems analyzed.
Available to anyone with an internet connection.

Free.

What “Free” Actually Means

Free does not mean effortless.

Free does not mean costless.

Free does not mean that no one had to build it.

Every piece in this archive required:

• time
• thought
• structure
• revision
• maintenance

Every piece had to be written. Stored. Organized. Preserved.

Free to access does not mean free to produce.

That distinction matters.

The Part That Was Skipped

It is easy to say “information should be free.”

It is harder to ask:

• Who creates it?
• Who maintains it?
• Who ensures it is still there tomorrow?

Because once those questions are asked, the answer is unavoidable:

Someone is doing the work.

The Work Is Here

This is not theoretical.

This archive exists.

It is not an idea. It is not a proposal.

It is a working system of long-form documentation built over more than a decade.

And it is available, right now, without charge.

That was the goal.

That was the promise.

What Was Never Solved

What was never clearly addressed was sustainability.

Not access.

Not distribution.

Sustainability.

If knowledge is to remain free to access, then it must still be supported in some way.

Otherwise, it disappears.

Not because it lacked value, but because it lacked support.

A Simple Reality

You cannot have:

• free access
• long-term continuity
• independent production

without some form of support behind it.

That is not ideology.

That is logistics.

No Abstraction

This is no longer a theoretical conversation.

The work is here.

It is accessible.

It is being maintained.

The only remaining question is simple:

Now what?

The Ask

If you believe in free knowledge, then this is where that belief meets reality.

The work exists.

If it has value to you, support it.

If it doesn’t, don’t.

But the idea that knowledge can be free without cost to anyone was never sustainable.

You got what you asked for.

The question is whether you intend to keep it.

If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

WPS News archives are available through Amazon for long-term preservation and library distribution.

#digitalEconomy #freeKnowledge #IndependentJournalism #informationAccess #intellectualLabor #OccupyWallStreet #sustainability #WPSNews

To the Chinese Embassy: The Arbitration Is Over

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 17, 2026

The Chinese government continues to assert that the region internationally recognized as the West Philippine Sea belongs to China under the so-called “Nine-Dash Line.” That position was reviewed by an international court of arbitration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China participated in the broader UNCLOS framework and was fully aware of the process. The ruling did not go China’s way.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled clearly that China’s sweeping historical claims inside the Nine-Dash Line had no legal basis under international law. The ruling also affirmed that features claimed by China in the Spratly Islands did not generate the maritime entitlements Beijing claimed they did. The ruling was not vague. It was not partial. It was direct.

China rejected the ruling politically, but rejection does not erase the ruling itself.

That is the current and continuing state of affairs in the West Philippine Sea.

The Philippines does not have the military power to force China out of disputed waters. China clearly has the ability to place ships, coast guard cutters, maritime militia vessels, and naval forces throughout the region. But physical presence and legal standing are not the same thing. A larger navy does not automatically create lawful ownership.

The tragedy here is that there remains a path available that could benefit both countries.

The West Philippine Sea contains fisheries, shipping lanes, and potentially enormous energy resources. China remains heavily dependent on imported energy resources flowing through vulnerable maritime routes from the Middle East and elsewhere. The Philippines remains energy-hungry and economically constrained by high costs and uneven infrastructure development. Cooperation between neighbors could create stability, investment, and shared prosperity for both sides.

Instead, the region operates under constant tension.

Filipino fishermen operate under pressure inside waters internationally recognized as part of the Philippine exclusive economic zone. Coast guard standoffs continue. Gray-zone operations continue. The normalization of pressure continues. Every new confrontation further damages regional trust.

And that is the central problem now: trust.

Trust is not created through declarations. It is not created through state media messaging. It is not created through larger fleets. Trust is built through predictable behavior over time.

Right now, China has a trust deficit throughout much of the region.

That deficit did not appear overnight. It emerged from years of maritime confrontations, coercive patrols, militarized artificial islands, aggressive maneuvering, and the repeated dismissal of international legal rulings when they proved politically inconvenient.

China still has the option to pursue a different path.

A cooperative China that works with its neighbors under mutually recognized legal frameworks could become one of the dominant economic engines of the 21st century. A China that chooses intimidation as a permanent regional operating model will continue generating balancing coalitions against itself throughout Asia and the Pacific.

The Philippines is not going away. Neither is China.

At some point, both countries will either learn to build stable working relationships based on law and negotiated cooperation, or they will remain trapped inside an endless cycle of maritime confrontation that benefits nobody except defense contractors and nationalist politicians.

The arbitration ruling already exists. The legal argument is settled internationally whether Beijing likes the outcome or not.

The remaining question is whether China wishes to remain feared, or become trusted.

If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

References

Permanent Court of Arbitration. (2016). The South China Sea Arbitration Award (Philippines v. China). https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/7/

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. (1982). UNCLOS treaty text. United Nations. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf

Reuters. (2026, May 15). Japan considers missile exports to the Philippines, NHK reports. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-considering-missile-exports-philippines-nhk-reports-2026-05-14/

#china #maritimeLaw #Philippines #SouthChinaSea #UNCLOS #WestPhilippineSea #WPSNews