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2026-10-05 10:30:00 GMT

Europe's Soaring Gas Bill Is Sending Utilities Back To Coal
Europe's Soaring Gas Bill Is Sending Utilities Back To Coal
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Europes-Soaring-Gas-Bill-Is-Sending-Utilities-Back-to-Coal.html,
Europe's energy crisis isn't over. Gas prices remain punishingly high across the continent as Europeans stare down the barrel of a long winter.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/2026-10-02_mqytdlve2u_80.jpg
In response to back-to-back-to-back energy crises stemming from Europe's continued reliance on imported liquefied natural gas against the backdrop of ongoing global geopolitical volatility, Europe's leaders are pushing to diversify the bloc's energy mix. While this means that Europe is rapidly expanding its renewable energy capacity, it also marks a significant return to the world's dirtiest fossil fuel - coal.
Earlier this year, when the United States and Israel began an offensive in Iran and thereby instigated the disruption of one-fifth of the world's oil and gas trades, Europe awakened to realize that it had sleepwalked into yet another energy crisis - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Three-Crises-Four-Years-Europe-Keeps-Failing-the-Same-Energy-Test.html in just four years. "We swore we'd learn. We promised things would change, but here we are," a 'highly frustrated European diplomat' was recently (anonymously) quoted by the BBC.
"Instead of concentrating on much-needed long-term plans - about how to make Europe more competitive in this increasingly volatile world, [European] prime ministers and presidents are now in a panic over [energy] prices, worried about angry voters and scrambling for short-term solutions," the source continued. "Just like the crisis after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Different conflict. Same European divisions; same dilemmas over energy. We can't keep going round in these circles. Something's got to give."
Now, half a year after the outbreak of the war in Iran and the initial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Europe is still grappling with the fallout as gas prices remain brutally high. Just this month, gas prices hit their highest mark in three years, soaring above €80 ($90.98) per megawatt hour.
Prices are so high, in fact, that coal-fired power has become cheaper than gas-fired power in Europe for the first time in years. This calculus has pushed many European nations, and especially the European Union's largest economy, Germany, back to coal. And, worryingly, experts contend that that trend will continue for years to come.
"Coal is expected to remain cheaper than gas for power generation through next year and potentially until March 2028," Reuters https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/high-european-gas-prices-push-power-producers-back-coal-2026-09-24/ earlier this week, based on a conversation with Marta Wroniszewska, an analyst at Veyt. "Longer-dated gas prices indicate traders expect supply constraints to persist."
However, there are notable limits to coal's growth potential in Europe. Years of policy aimed at phasing down and phasing out coal have left the continent with dramatically fewer coal-fired power plants than it had previously. In 1990, the European Union derived more than a third of its electricity production from coal. By 2025, that share had fallen to just 9.2 percent, according to data from Eurostat. So while Europe's remaining coal plants will receive a windfall from the current gas prices, there is a ceiling to coal's potential rebound in the region.
Outside of Europe, however, it's a different story. Globally, coal is still the https://www.slashgear.com/2268245/why-world-still-relies-on-coal-for-electricity/ source of power production. And while Europe is shutting down its coal-fired capacity, many emerging economies are continuing to build theirs up, with particularly strong growth from the Philippines, Indonesia, and other rapidly developing countries across Asia. Not coincidentally, this was also the region hit hardest by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
While coal is cheap, abundant, and seen as a critical tool for enabling economic development in poor countries, the continuously extending timeline of coal's reign presents trade-offs that far outweigh the benefits. Coal is the single largest driver of global warming, responsible for about 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. However, it's not all bleak - coal's comeback is happening in tandem with a major global increase in clean energy resources. Increasingly, renewable energies are being adopted for their role in a more energy-secure future, and are seen as a https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Energy-Security-Not-Climate-Goals-Is-Now-Driving-the-Clean-Power-Boom.html against the next global energy crisis.
Unlike natural gas, oil, and coal, "Wind and solar cannot be embargoed, blockaded, or shut off by a foreign power," David Frykman, General Partner at Stockholm-based venture capital group Norrsken, wrote in an https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/europe-3-energy-shocks-in-4-years-what-to-do-next/ for Fortune earlier this year. "Every terawatt-hour of domestic renewable generation is a terawatt-hour that no adversary can weaponize."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 10/05/2026 - 06:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/europes-soaring-gas-bill-sending-utilities-back-coal

2026-10-02 19:47:44 GMT

Seagate, Western Digital Crater After Toshiba Breaks Hard-Drive "Supply Discipline" Pact
Seagate, Western Digital Crater After Toshiba Breaks Hard-Drive "Supply Discipline" Pact
For most of 2026, the bull case for the HDD duopoly could be summarized in one sentence: nobody is building new factories. On Friday, someone did.
Shares of Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) tumbled more than 10% on Friday, standing out like a sore thumb on a day when the Nasdaq hit all-time highs, after Nikkei https://asia.nikkei.com/business/electronics/toshiba-to-double-hard-disk-drive-supply-to-fill-ai-chip-memory-gap that Toshiba plans to double its hard disk drive production capacity to grab a bigger slice of the AI data center storage boom. As Goldman's TMT desk summarized the Nikkei story first thing in the morning:
Japanese technology group Toshiba plans to double production capacity for hard disk drives used in artificial intelligence data centers within fiscal 2027 as the AI boom propels data storage demand. The company will invest roughly 60 billion yen ($380 million) to expand facilities in the Philippines... The Japanese player's share by storage capacity stands at just over 10%, but it aims to reach 30% in the medium term. The Philippine expansion marks the company's first major HDD investment in around five years. Along with adding production lines at the plant, Toshiba will handle new products that increase per-unit memory capacity by as much as 40%.
By midday, Goldman's US equities desk flagged the "memory names, WDC (-10.9%) and STX (-11.6%)" as the "standout laggards" in an otherwise green tape, where AI winners were up 1.4% and NDX and NVDA had just printed all-time highs.
To be sure, a 10% drop is a flesh wound for stocks that have tripled. Even after Friday's puke, STX is still up some 208% YTD and WDC is up 141%, compared to a "mere" 22% for the Nasdaq 100.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/ZH%20-%20HDD%20stocks%20YTD%20performance%20-%202026-10-02.png
But when you're priced for perfection, it's not the size of the hit that matters. It's where it lands.
The One Thing That Wasn't Supposed To Happen
Recall that the entire HDD up-cycle (as well as memory, chips, etc., pretty much everything in the semiconductor commodity chain) has been built on the premise of supply discipline, i.e., that none of the three remaining hard drive makers would add unit capacity, and that all exabyte growth would come from cramming more terabytes into each drive. Here is how Bernstein put it after hosting Seagate management on a non-deal roadshow in August (emphasis ours):
None of STX, WDC, or Toshiba are adding drive unit capacity, keeping industry-wide HDD supply structurally disciplined. Seagate management explained that its factories are effectively full, and rather than expanding units, management is targeting roughly 25% CAGR in nearline exabyte shipments purely by increasing capacity per drive via HAMR... building a new factory would take at least two years, which management has no plans to do.
Bernstein then went on to make STX its top pick precisely because "the broader industry's inability to scale supply keeps supply disciplined."
Well, oops: as of this morning, a third of "the broader industry" just announced it is scaling supply.
Regular readers will recall that we have seen this movie before. Back in May, in "https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-begins-flooding-market-dram-and-nand-chips", we noted that Seagate's CEO had told JPMorgan that building new factories would "take too long," and warned that once someone else steps in to fill the supply gap, the supply tightness that justified the memory ETF rally would collapse. That time it was CXMT and YMTC on the memory side, which is only getting started with the old Chinese "capture market share by dumping products at below market prices" trick. This time it's an old friend in spinning rust, and it happens to be in the Philippines rather than Hefei.
And yes, the timing is apt for another reason. Rosenblatt points out that hyperscalers are now negotiating long-term agreements (LTAs) extending into 2029-2031, and Toshiba's expansion "introduces a credible medium-term supply risk, giving customers incremental negotiating leverage." Evercore adds that while Seagate "has allocated the majority of its nearline exabytes into calendar year 2028," Western Digital is still "negotiating long-term agreements extending to calendar year 2031." Put differently: 2027-28 pricing is largely locked in. What the market is repricing is the back end of the curve, which, for stocks trading on out-year earnings power, is the part that matters.
"Overdone"... Says Everyone With A Buy Rating
Predictably, the sell-side, which is unanimously bullish - and very wrong today - on both names, rushed to defend the duopoly. The best arguments:
- Citi (Buy, WDC PT $740, STX PT $1,300) argues the bottleneck isn't Toshiba's factory but its suppliers: "Unlike STX and WDC, Toshiba does not internally source their own media and heads," so "in order to double their current EB capacity they would also need their external component suppliers to also significantly raise capacity – which we believe could limit the impact of total EB supplied to the market."
- Morgan Stanley (Overweight, buying the dip) says "the gap between HDD supply and demand through calendar 2028 still looks wider than Toshiba's planned addition," and notes Toshiba lacks leading-edge capacity and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology.
- Rosenblatt (Buy, WDC PT $800, STX PT $1,400) reads the news as "more about Toshiba reclaiming lost market share rather than the stated 30% market share ambitions," and continues "to see support for sustained pricing power from a worsening supply demand imbalance due to AI."
- Bloomberg Intelligence says the plan "looks more like validation of stronger AI and data-center storage demand than a near-term supply threat."
Translation: Street targets now sit 50% to 90% above Friday's price, which is either a screaming buy signal, or more correctly, a reminder that price targets tend to follow price, not the other way around.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/ZH%20-%20HDD%20price%20targets%20vs%20price%20-%202026-10-02.png
Goldman, for its part, didn't need to rush out a defense because it already had one on file. At last month's Communacopia conference, Goldman's James Schneider came away from Seagate CFO Gianluca Romano's presentation with three takeaways:
- Seagate sees strong demand trends as continuing to support pricing uplift and margins through FY27;
- HAMR volumes well on track to cross over PMR by the end of calendar 2026;
- The company expects to continue high-yield debt retirement and pivot to share repurchases.
And just this week, Goldman's Korea memory team, reading across from Micron's results, said it expects "2027 and 2028 memory S/D to be much tighter than 2026," with customers "requesting longer duration and larger supply" agreements. Not exactly the backdrop for a glut.
The HAMR Moat
The real question is whether Toshiba's doubling matters as much as the stock reaction suggests. Some napkin math: going from "just over 10%" of industry exabytes to roughly double that by FY27 adds something like 10% to total industry exabyte supply, spread over two years. Meanwhile, Seagate alone is targeting ~25% nearline exabyte growth per year through HAMR. In other words, Toshiba's plan sounds big in a headline, but in exabyte terms it's a rounding error relative to what the HAMR transition is already adding, if, that is, Toshiba's head and media suppliers cooperate (see Citi above).
Which brings us to the part of the story the market may be glossing over: this isn't a level playing field. Seagate is the only player shipping HAMR at scale, and as Bernstein showed, its areal density lead already translates into faster exabyte growth than WDC...
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Bernstein%20Exhibit%201%20-%20STX%20vs%20WDC%20EB%20shipment%20growth.png
... and, per Bernstein's forecasts, a gross margin that crosses above WDC's in FY27 and keeps climbing toward the mid-60s.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Bernstein%20Exhibit%203%20-%20STX%20vs%20WDC%20gross%20margin.png
Which is also why Bernstein, back in August, said that while "a rising tide is lifting all boats," STX's HAMR lead "is why it is our top pick." If the tide is now going to recede a bit as Toshiba adds supply, the boat with the weakest areal density roadmap is the one most exposed. Hint: it's not Seagate, which may explain why WDC is now down more from its June peak than STX.
Meanwhile, The Picks And Shovels Rally
One more thing: equipment names catching a bid on the news included Veeco (+11%), whose data storage business sells ion beam deposition and etch tools used to make HDD read/write heads, i.e., a direct beneficiary of anyone (Toshiba or its suppliers) adding head capacity. Aixtron (+7%) also rallied, although its MOCVD tools are mostly used for compound semiconductors (GaN, SiC, optoelectronics), so the HDD link there is tenuous at best.
Bottom Line
The analysts are probably right that Toshiba's ¥60 billion won't put a dent in HDD pricing through 2028: the volumes are sold, the LTAs are signed, and Toshiba still needs someone to sell it heads and platters. But the market wasn't pricing the next two years; it was pricing a decade of monopoly-like discipline in an oligopoly of three.
The lesson from today is one which the rest of the world (and especially European car makers) are painfully familiar with: in commodity hardware, the cure for high prices is high prices, and sooner or later somebody in Asia builds a factory.
Whether this is the start of that cycle or just another buyable dip in an AI super-cycle (the sell-side unanimously votes for the latter) will depend on one thing: whether Seagate and WDC respond with capacity plans of their own. If they do, the "supply discipline" thesis is over. If they don't, Toshiba just bought itself some market share at the top of the cycle.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 10/02/2026 - 15:47
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/seagate-western-digital-crater-after-toshiba-breaks-hard-drive-supply-discipline-pact

2026-09-25 13:20:00 GMT

Force Majeure Is Not A City In France
Force Majeure Is Not A City In France
Submitted by https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/force-majeure-is-not-a-city-in-france
There are certain phrases you don’t want to hear when you’re involved in a massive infrastructure project, and “force majeure” is pretty high on the list.
Yet after Oracle shares started getting federally a** pounded today following reports that the company had issued a force majeure notice connected to its enormous Project Jupiter AI data center in New Mexico, the afternoon quickly turned into one of my favorite Wall Street traditions: corporations explaining why the alarming sounding thing everybody just read and understands crystal clearly is actually completely normal, totally misunderstood by everyone and nobody should worry about anything.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-09-25%20at%2009.08.12.jpg
For those unfamiliar, force majeure is a contractual provision generally invoked when extraordinary circumstances outside a party’s control interfere with, or threaten to interfere with, its ability to perform under a contract. Oracle reportedly issued the notice to a unit of Blue Owl Capital developing Project Jupiter, citing potential delays in securing power and protecting Oracle financially if the facility doesn’t come online as scheduled.
Project Jupiter is a massive New Mexico AI campus tied to the Stargate buildout and Oracle’s relationship with OpenAI, requiring roughly 2.4 gigawatts of power and relying heavily on Bloom Energy fuel cells. The problem is that a natural gas pipeline needed to supply the site has reportedly been pushed back roughly six months following permitting problems, while a separate air quality permit for the fuel cell system remains pending. So when news of the force majeure notice hit, Oracle shares sold off sharply and Bloom Energy got dragged down with them.
Then came the idiotic damage control.
Oracle https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/force-majeure-is-not-a-city-in-france that the project “remains on our planned schedule” and that force majeure notices are “commonplace in developments of this scale” and are often used simply to preserve contractual rights, adding that the notice does not itself establish a project delay or change delivery expectations.
🔥 85% OFF FOREVER IF YOU SUBSCRIBE TODAY: I am again offering an 85% discount to anyone that wants to become a Fringe Finance annual subscriber today. It’s a discount you can keep and stays applied for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=ffb31980&utm_content=213689718
Technically, that’s true. But companies also don’t issue force majeure notices because everything is going f**king fantastic.
The entire purpose is to protect yourself because some circumstance has arisen, or may arise, that creates enough risk around contractual performance to make protecting yourself necessary.
Bloom Energy then joined the reassurance tour, saying that after speaking with Oracle, it had been assured Oracle “remains committed to Project Jupiter and its contract with Bloom to deliver 2.4 GW of fuel cell capacity” and that Bloom remains excited to execute on Oracle’s planned timeline.
Nothing says confidence like rushing to phone your customer during a stock selloff and then immediately telling X that you just called your customer during a stock selloff. Last time someone did this it was Steve Mnuchin “calling the banks” when the market served investors up a royale fu*k deluxe with cheese back in December 2018.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-09-25%20at%2009.10.22.jpg
Look. None of this means Project Jupiter is dead, and Oracle may ultimately deliver the project on schedule exactly as it says it will. But dismissing the notice as meaningless contractual housekeeping also misses the point. It also insults the intelligence of anyone with an IQ higher than that of Ilhan Omar. There is a reason it was issued, just as there is a reason a pipeline has been delayed and permits remain unresolved.
Investors have spent the last several years valuing the AI infrastructure boom as though converting hundreds of billions of dollars of announced spending into functioning data centers is basically a matter of ordering GPUs and plugging them into the wall. In reality, you need land, financing, transformers, transmission, gas, pipelines, permits, cooling and an almost incomprehensible amount of electricity. Every one of those things introduces another potential failure point. As bond yields keep rising, https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/bonds-are-about-to-crash-the-stock.
Read: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/bonds-are-about-to-crash-the-stock
The financial chain is equally important. Oracle signs enormous AI contracts, which justify enormous data centers, which justify enormous financing packages, which create enormous orders for companies like Bloom and Nvidia, which create enormous backlogs that investors then capitalize into enormous valuations.
As long as everything moves according to plan, the machine works beautifully. But if data centers start getting delayed, equipment deliveries and revenue can get delayed with them. If revenue gets pushed out, financing assumptions can change. If financing becomes more difficult, suddenly some of those gigantic AI backlogs investors have treated almost like cash in the bank start looking considerably less certain.
One force majeure notice doesn’t break the AI boom. But this is exactly the kind of crack I’m watching for. If we start seeing more force majeure notices, delayed power projects, stressed data center debt, renegotiated contracts and suppliers rushing onto social media to assure everybody that their customers are definitely still committed, then we may be looking at something that could set off the crash.
Read: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/the-real-ai-crash-will-start-this
Force majeure may not be a city in France, but companies generally don’t go there when everything is going according to plan. Just keep that in mind.
--
QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer https://quoththeraven.substack.com/about.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/force-majeure-not-city-france

2026-09-25 13:12:35 GMT

Yen Jumps As Japan PM Admits Weak Currency "Problematic"
Yen Jumps As Japan PM Admits Weak Currency "Problematic"
President Trump reportedly expressed concern over the weakness of the yen when he met Japan’s prime minister this week as the currency came under more pressure against the dollar.
https://www.ft.com/content/901ccfbc-6ddb-4fb3-b74d-1f337efca9ff Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama Satsuki Katayama told reporters in Tokyo that Trump and Sanae Takaichi discussed the yen in talks in New York on Tuesday.
The US president “expressed his concern” while Takaichi told Trump that she saw an undervalued yen as “problematic”, Katayama said.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/ftcms901942bb-2281-44ce-a15f-5a9.jpg
The yen jumped around 1% against the dollar following the remarks - its best day in two weeks...
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/2026-09-25_06-02-29.jpg
The finance minister also said she would continue to coordinate with her US counterpart Scott Bessent, reinforcing the signal that both governments are paying close attention to the currency’s depreciation.
“In light of [the Trump-Takaichi] meeting, Treasury secretary Bessent and I will continue to communicate closely on a range of matters, including foreign exchange,” Katayama added.
Last week, the BoJ raised rates to the highest level in 31 years, but the move did little to structurally strengthen the yen, even as the central bank’s governor Kazuo Ueda hinted strongly that there could be further tightening this year.
Options sentiment toward the yen turned more bullish lately, reflecting increased hedging demand against the risk of Japanese intervention.
“Intervention risk should put a ceiling on further yen weakness,” said Moh Siong Sim, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.
“More importantly, the yen may be nearing a turning point as Trump’s concerns over its weakness point to deeper US-Japan coordination to support the currency.”
Japan and the US carried out their first coordinated yen-buying intervention since 1998 this summer after the currency weakened beyond 160. Japan spent a record ¥15.4 trillion ($97.4 billion) intervening in the month through Aug. 26, according to Finance Ministry data.
“This is largely another way of jawboning in my view,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets.
“Unless it is followed by actual policy coordination, intervention or a clearer BOJ tightening path, I don’t think it changes the underlying yen story materially”
Bessent has also continued to signal support for a stronger yen, potentially giving Japanese warnings greater weight with traders than in previous episodes of currency weakness.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:12
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yen-jumps-japan-pm-admits-weak-currency-problematic

2026-09-24 22:50:00 GMT

Dem Senator Wants To Regulate The Internet To Prevent Another Trump From Happening
Dem Senator Wants To Regulate The Internet To Prevent Another Trump From Happening
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called for government regulation of the internet as part of a broader effort to reduce loneliness and powerlessness among Americans, two conditions he argues push voters toward leaders like President Donald Trump. Murphy made the https://www.foxnews.com/media/chris-murphy-calls-regulating-internet-people-wont-fall-demagogue-like-donald-trump on September 21 during an appearance on the I've Had It podcast, where he discussed https://www.npr.org/2026/05/26/nx-s1-5692730/sen-chris-murphy-d-conn-talks-about-his-new-book-crisis-of-the-common-good, Crisis of the Common Good.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/unnamed_file_from_www.google.com_.jpg_80%2828%29.jpg
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)Murphy told the podcast hosts that isolation and helplessness define the country right now. "Those are the two things I think Americans are going through right now... They don't feel powerful at all, and they feel lonely," he said.
His remedy for loneliness coincidentally becomes an excuse to grow the government even further.
"And so, government should build a set of rules in which people feel more powerful - that's why the minimum wage is so important - and people feel so more connected," Murphy said.
He added, "That's why, you know, rebuilding healthy institutions in your town should be a project that government is involved in."
Then he got to the internet and revealed his true objective. "Regulating the internet so that you're spending less time alone on Instagram should be an important government project," Murphy said. And if Americans feel more powerful and less alone, Murphy argued, "they are going to be less likely to fall for a bullshit demagogue like Donald Trump."
Senator Chris Murphy to Jennifer Welch: Government needs to regulate social media so people are less likely to support a candidate like President Trump.
The left will censor your speech as soon as they have the power to do so. They're not hiding the ball here.
They did it…
— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) https://x.com/AndrewKolvet/status/2102123890172739647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Murphy's framework leaves little room for the more than 77 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 over high inflation, the border crisis, or high crime. In his telling, they were lonely, they spent too much time alone on Instagram, and they "fell for" something.
The platform he picked out makes an odd target. A 2024 Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/06/12/how-americans-navigate-politics-on-tiktok-x-facebook-and-instagram/ of U.S. Instagram users found that 23% described the political content they see there as mostly liberal, and only 7% called it mostly conservative. Another 26% said they don't see political content on Instagram at all. By its users' own account, whatever politics the app serves up leans left. Though it's far more likely he has other platforms in mind when he talks about regulating the internet if he thinks social media is causing people to vote for Trump.
Murphy gave no details on what his regulation would look like, whether time limits, design mandates, or rules on content. He was specific about its purpose. He wants fewer voters who "fall for" Trump, and a goal defined by one politician's support points toward regulating what people see, which is where the censorship concerns begin. Murphy insists none of this is partisan. He claims the things that make people "more connected" and "more powerful" cut across political lines. His own summary of his idea runs counter to that. "Unless you fix what's broken with the culture, you're going to be stuck with people like Trump for a long time," Murphy said.
Murphy's comments come as lawmakers in both parties push to rein in social media companies to protect younger users, and some have floated rolling back Section 230's liability shield. Protecting children is a legitimate cause. Any tool Congress builds for it, however, will belong to whoever holds power next.
Journalist Lara Logan couldn't help but acknowledge the hypocrisy of Murphy's proposal to regulate the internet.
"Are these the same people screaming foul about certain media organizations being kicked out of the White House?" she https://x.com/laralogan/status/2102183170628006003 on X.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 09/24/2026 - 18:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dem-senator-wants-regulate-internet-prevent-another-trump-happening

2026-09-24 16:25:00 GMT

Crude Tumbles On Return To Alleged Deal In Motion Iran Headlines
Crude Tumbles On Return To Alleged Deal In Motion Iran Headlines
Update(1225ET): Crude tumbles on a new Reuters report signaling a return to [dubious?] 'deal in motion' headlines: US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources
This seems just a reiteration of Iranian demands, but crude still reacted (per Rtrs):
- A senior Iranian official said the most plausible way to end the impasse would be a phased arrangement, with Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz in return for the US lifting its economic blockade and Tehran potentially gaining access to frozen assets.
- Neither side wants to surrender leverage driving diplomacy
- Iran signals flexibility on fees, not on Strait of Hormuz
- Gulf states reject Iranian control of the strait
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/2026-09-24_09-18-48.png
* * *
It was just this month which saw the Iran conflict spill over into a renewed fight between the Saudi coalition and Yemen's Houthi rebels. Now Iran is threatening to expand the fight further, even into the Indian Ocean.
Yahya Rahim Safavi, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, warned Thursday of another significant expanse of the war if the Islamic Republic suffers attack again.
"Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond," https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/iran-threatens-to-expand-war-to-indian-ocean-if-us-attacks-again Safavi in a video published by Iran's Fars news agency.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Diego_Garcia_A.jpg
NASA/CFR: Aerial imagery of Diego Garcia, the Chagos Islands’ largest landmass, and home to the U.S.-UK military base.This marks the first time that an adviser to Iran's supreme leader explicitly mentioned hitting targets in the Indian Ocean as a heightened military threat.
The strategic British military base at Diego Garcia, which is also heavily used by the United States, lies deep in the Indian Ocean - some 2400 miles away.
The Iranians are believed to have actually fired ICBMs on the base at the height of Trump's Operation Epic Fury.
Diego Garcia was first targeted on March 21st, with The Wall Street Journal at the time https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-fires-ballistic-missiles-far-diego-garcia-military-base one missile had a mid-flight malfunction, while the other was engaged by an SM-3 interceptor missile fired from a US Navy vessel, though it's unclear whether this latter projectile ever hit its target.
Brent surged to around $106 after a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran may expand the war to the Indian Ocean if the US or Israel attacks again, further undercutting hopes of a deal. —Bloomberg
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/image%20%289%29_16.png
Iranian negotiators are vowing they will not back off Tehran's firm conditions for ending the war, after this week sitting down with the US team in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile another attack on the Saudi kingdom by the Houthis:
Saudi led coalition in Yemen says it intercepted six ballistic missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthis
"They broke the agreement and committed another vicious act. We have therefore toughened our conditions," spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohbi https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/us-has-no-choice-accept-irans-conditions-says-irgc in an interview this week. He also said that if the US doesn't change its trajectory, it "will only make things difficult for themselves".
"We are not their playthings, and they cannot unilaterally violate an agreement they signed whenever they please," he emphasized.
Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.
On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were… https://t.co/RqT1lwzsLP
— Ihtesham Ali (@ihteshamali) https://x.com/ihteshamali/status/2102805271664083393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"We believe we have won this war, and we are currently consolidating that victory into a total deterrent force," he added.
* * *
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https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 09/24/2026 - 12:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/war-could-expand-indian-ocean-if-us-attacks-resume-iran-warns

2026-09-19 00:55:00 GMT

Trump Signs Memo To Remove Canadian Goods From US Federal Procurement
Trump Signs Memo To Remove Canadian Goods From US Federal Procurement
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/trump-signs-memo-to-remove-canadian-goods-from-us-federal-procurement-6088365?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-reciprocity-in-government-procurement/ directing the removal of Canadian-origin goods from the federal civil procurement system, https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-moves-to-block-canadian-goods-from-federal-procurement-program-6084778?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge on a commitment he made earlier this month.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281182%29.jpg?itok=vX77T4g1
The Sept. 16 memo authorizes the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the United States Trade Representative, and the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to "identify and take all steps toward removing or otherwise making non-available for purchase Canadian-origin items in the federal civil procurement system."
The memo also directs U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to monitor "Canada's continued treatment of U.S. origin goods in Canadian government procurement."
The action follows Trump's Sept. 8 directive to the General Services Administration (GSA) to remove Canadian-origin products from its Multiple Award Schedules, a government-wide contracting program that manages more than US$50 billion in federal procurement. The GSA schedules give federal agencies access to millions of commercial products and services.
"Everyone knows that Canada doesn't let our Great Dairy Farmers sell into the Canadian Market, and that the only reason Canada makes Autos is because of previous disastrous Trade Agreements while other Presidents were in Office," Trump said on social media after issuing the GSA directive.
Trump also said Canadian governments, including provincial governments, have "banned American Small Businesses and Companies from selling into their Government Procurement Markets."
The procurement measures come amid an escalating trade dispute between the two countries.
Canada imposed new counter-tariffs on Sept. 8 covering about US$20 billion in U.S. imports, with rates of 15, 25, and 50 percent. The tariffs target products including steel and aluminum, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics.
The Canadian measures matched U.S. tariffs of 50 percent on about the same value of Canadian products imposed under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, effective Aug. 22.
Canada has also implemented a "Buy Canadian" policy, while all provinces except Alberta have restricted or prohibited the sale of U.S. alcoholic products, or imposed tariffs on them, and have also enacted measures to prioritize Canadian suppliers for government contracts.
Since Canada first announced its intention to impose counter-tariffs in response to the new U.S. tariffs that went into force on Aug. 22, Trump also announced new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian vehicles and auto parts beginning in 2027. He also said he would ban the sale of products made by Canadian aviation giant Bombardier in the United States unless they are made in America, and announced new import bans on certain Canadian goods beginning on Sept. 29.
Some of the Canadian products banned for U.S. import include most alcoholic products, certain dairy products, and motorcycles.
Trump said while visiting Ireland on Sept. 12 that the two countries could have a trade deal "fairly soon," while repeating his criticism of Canada's trade practices.
"We actually have a good [relationship] with Canada, but the United States has been ripped off for 50 years by Canada," Trump said.
Carney said on Sept. 14 that he welcomes the president's comments that a deal could be reached soon.
"We're ready to sit down and negotiate that and move it forward," Carney told Bloomberg.
Carney has said that diversifying away from the United States is a priority for his government.
"We are building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad," he https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026/09/15/prime-minister-carney-delivers-opening-remarks-canada-investment-summit in a speech on Sept. 15.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 09/18/2026 - 20:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-signs-memo-remove-canadian-goods-us-federal-procurement

2026-09-18 12:05:00 GMT

Students In UK Ordered To Undertake White Privilege Training
Students In UK Ordered To Undertake White Privilege Training
https://modernity.news/2026/09/17/students-in-uk-ordered-to-undertake-white-privilege-training/,
Britain's universities have started the new term the only way the education establishment knows how: by sitting 18-year-olds down and asking them to confess their "White privilege" before they are even allowed to unpack in halls.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/whites.jpg?itok=id8eoq9V
The same system that cannot keep White British children in grammar schools, and that now puts seven-year-old girls into taxpayer-funded mandatory hijabs, has decided the urgent problem on campus is that freshers have not yet internalised enough racial guilt.
New students at the University of Northampton have been told to complete an "Introduction to Race Equity" course as part of Freshers' Week induction.
?University students are being asked to complete a race equality course and write about white privilege.
Philip Kiszely: "There is NO WHITE PRIVILEGE in higher education. The anti-racism system is the problem, which is overtly racist!"https://x.com/JuliaHB1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/zdO9MnN15n
— Talk (@TalkTV) https://x.com/TalkTV/status/2100544315281776755?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The module is supplied by Advance HE, the sector body that sells this material across higher education. In the section titled "Whiteness, Privilege and Belonging," students are asked whether they were "aware of how White privilege operates and the impact it has on staff and students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds." They are then told to list actions they will take to improve their "anti-racist practice" and "tackle race inequality."
Advance HE's own glossary is not subtle. It defines white privilege as an "unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white."
It describes "structural white privilege" as "a system of white domination that creates and maintains belief systems that make current racial advantages and disadvantages seem normal."
The university claims the course is optional, that answers are not read by staff, and that anyone who skips it can still move into accommodation. It also admits that students who do not finish the modules will be sent "constant reminders."
Students are being forced to write about white privilege and racial inequality in the first few days of attending Northampton University.
There is no White Privilege White working-class boys perform worse than any other minority in education
Jobs advertise minorities only https://t.co/3aYZReoOUk
— JP-ExileinDerry (@UkandNIbackup) https://x.com/UkandNIbackup/status/2100325574447116543?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A Free Speech Union spokesman put the real pressure in plain English: "Even though this course isn't mandatory and the answers aren't accessible to the university, it still sends a message that Northampton has taken a position on a number of politically contested issues and woe betide the student who disagrees with that position."
Northampton is unapologetic. "Inclusivity is one of our core values, and we make no apologies for that," a spokesman said. The same statement added that the university "share[s] a commitment to freedom of speech and respectful dialogue," and that the training is an "industry standard course." Industry standard is the giveaway. This is not one eccentric campus. It is the product the sector now treats as normal.
This stuff isn't restricted the the UK. In New York, the Bank Street School for Children has for years split pupils as young as six into race "affinity groups": a Kids of Color room and a White Anti-Racist group.
The New York Post reported that White children were drilled to raise their "awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege" and to challenge "notions of colorblindness," while children of colour were praised in a separate room.
Thousands of schools in America have implemented a program of separating their students into 'Affinity Groups'
Children are separated by race. White children are scolded and told about their white privilege and racism, the non-whites are praised and given cupcakes (THIS IS REAL)... https://t.co/L5zq7W7PJ4
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1962758420177789315?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Parents said the younger White pupils watched classmates return eating cupcakes handed out in the other group. An anonymous parent told the paper: "Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum."
Bank Street's own pages still list those race-sorted groups from first grade. The same sorting - White children as a problem to be fixed, everyone else as a constituency to be flattered - is now what Advance HE packages as "industry standard" for British freshers.
By the time a White British 18-year-old is asked to write about unearned racial advantage, the lesson has already been running for a decade.
Schools in Sheffield, led by Notre Dame High School, have taught pupils that Black people "cannot be racist" toward White peers. The materials state: "Black people can be racially prejudiced towards a white person which is wrong and totally unacceptable. However, this is not racism. Racism is racial prejudice plus power. In the UK, white people hold the cultural power."
Lessons for children as young as seven talk about "privilege," tell White pupils they are "likely to be privileged by the colour of their skin," and instruct them to monitor their language, challenge friends and report incidents.
Shadow education secretary Laura Trott called it "deeply alarming that children as young as seven are being exposed to divisive identity politics in schools under the banner of 'anti-racism education.'"
She added: "Labelling children by race and teaching them to focus on what divides them will only foster resentment and deepen division." Shadow minister Neil O'Brien called the same material "political indoctrination."
That is the official story of race in English classrooms: power runs one way, guilt runs the other, and the children of the historic majority are the ones who must sit still for it.
The results are not abstract. White British pupils are now a minority in England's grammar schools. Department for Education figures put their share at 44 percent in 2026, down from 66 percent in 2016.
At Dartford Grammar School for Girls in Kent the White British share collapsed from 52 percent to 7 percent in a decade. African pupils are now the largest group there.
At Reading School, White British applications fell from 49 percent to 7 percent before a partial rebound. Pate's Grammar in Cheltenham went from three-quarters White British to 34 percent.
Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe called the Dartford figures "truly staggering" and said: "We must have the courage to say this is unacceptable."
An independent inquiry chaired by Baroness Morris and Sir Hamid Patel concluded that "the education system is not set up to serve white working-class children and families."
In 2025, just 36 percent of White British pupils on free school meals got a grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSEs - half the rate of pupils not on free meals. There are 1.25 million White British children on those meals.
White working-class children failed by education system, says inquiry https://t.co/PVG11nl9oj
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) https://x.com/BBCNews/status/2071463757264404934?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Sir Hamid Patel said: "Our inquiry found that too many white working-class children face barriers at every stage of their education. These figures suggest that those barriers may also be limiting access to some of the country's highest-performing schools. We should be far more ambitious for these young people."
Professor Peter Edwards warned of "huge ramifications for our young people, and our society as a whole," if disadvantaged White pupils "apparently see very little future in advancement through education."
The money tells you who the system prefers to fuss over. Schools now draw a record £572 million to support pupils who do not speak English as a first language - 1.8 million children, one in five.
Chris McGovern of the Campaign for Real Education said: "Stop pitying them, we obsess about it far too much and we don't need to fret about them - we need to worry about the white working-class kids."
While White working-class boys fall off the academic ladder, Labour-run Barnet Council has put an Islamic primary onto the public payroll with the dress code still attached.
Barnet Hill Academy in West Hendon became a voluntary-aided school on 1 September. Fees of more than £6,500 a year disappeared. The taxpayer now pays.
The governing body keeps the religious character, can select pupils and staff by faith, and until the row exploded listed a plain white hijab as compulsory from Year 3 - age seven.
The school's own site has described its uniform and Islamic dress code as "closely aligned with our school ethos, which aims at directing our children towards Islamic values and norms."
National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans wrote: "It is appalling that taxpayers are being asked to fund a school that forces girls as young as seven to wear the hijab. Women should be free to choose religious dress; young girls should not have it imposed upon them."
He added that state-funded schools "should bring children together, not divide them by faith and, by extension, ethnicity."
The school later added a line saying the hijab is "not a requirement for any non-Muslim students." That dodge does not help a girl the school classifies as Muslim. There is no equivalent religious clothing rule for boys.
Trott has now called the arrangement "outrageous," saying "a state-funded school is forcing girls, some as young as seven years old, to wear hijabs." She and shadow equalities minister Joy Morrissey have referred the policy to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, arguing it discriminates on religion and sex and may breach human rights law.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell has claimed the school "clarified" that the hijab was "not compulsory." Barnet Council still calls the policy "in line with other faith schools" and "legally compliant."
Primary school forcing pupils to wear hijabs accused of 'breaking the law' as policy 'violates human rights'https://t.co/G3E9puYZvv
— GB News (@GBNEWS) https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2100223883966074987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
So the sequence is now complete. At seven, a girl in a state-funded London primary can be told the hijab is part of uniform because the school has decided she is Muslim. In the same years, other classrooms teach that racism only travels one way. By 18, the university emails a "race equity" module and asks the student to write about White privilege before the boxes are unpacked.
Grammar school places that once belonged to the national majority have been redistributed. The White working class is told, by official inquiry, that the system was never built for them.
This is not inclusion. It is a hierarchy with British children at the bottom and ideology at the top - paid for by the same public that is no longer allowed to say so.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 09/18/2026 - 08:05
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/students-uk-ordered-undertake-white-privilege-training

2026-09-17 16:25:00 GMT

The Great Repression
The Great Repression
https://bondvigilantes.com/blog/2026/09/the-great-repression/
Across much of the developed world, governments are spending an increasing share of their tax revenues servicing debt.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bv-the-rising-cost-of-servicing.jpg?itok=WjgsrdE1
Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data
The era when debt could rise indefinitely while interest costs remained low appears to be ending.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bv-high-debt-and-high-real-rates.jpg?itok=enlTyzJ8
Source: Bloomberg
The second chart hints at how this problem may be confronted.
Over the last fifty years, debt-to-GDP has risen relentlessly while real interest rates have generally moved in the opposite direction. That relationship is unlikely to be accidental. Highly indebted governments and persistently high real interest rates have rarely coexisted for long.
The Arithmetic is uncomfortable
Governments have only a handful of ways to deal with rising debt burdens:
-
Grow faster
-
Raise taxes
-
Cut spending
-
Lower the real cost of borrowing
The first three options are becoming increasingly difficult. Ageing populations constrain growth. Tax burdens are already elevated across much of Europe. Spending restraint is politically unpopular almost everywhere.
That leaves a fourth option: ensuring borrowing costs remain below nominal economic growth for long enough that debt becomes manageable. This is financial repression.
Historically, this has often involved a combination of moderate inflation and interest rates that are held below where free markets might otherwise set them. The result is a gradual transfer of wealth from creditors to debtors as the real value of debt is eroded over time. Governments are the world’s largest debtors.
Can high real rates survive?
The post-pandemic period has delivered exactly the combination policymakers should fear: record debt levels alongside the highest real yields in more than a decade.
The consequence is visible in the first chart as interest expenses begin to consume a larger proportion of government revenues.
At some point, the question ceases to be whether high real rates are necessary to fight inflation.
Instead, it becomes whether governments can afford them.
The higher debt burdens rise, the greater the pressure to keep real borrowing costs contained.
The currency problem
Financial repression is not without challenges.
Any country attempting to suppress real rates on its own risks currency weakness, imported inflation and capital outflows. Markets have a habit of punishing the weakest link.
But today’s debt problem is not confined to a single country:
-
The US is highly indebted
-
The UK is highly indebted
-
Much of Europe is highly indebted
-
Japan is highly indebted
The incentives are remarkably similar across the developed world. Which raises an interesting possibility.
Rather than one country pursuing financial repression in isolation, the more likely outcome may be that everyone moves in the same direction at roughly the same time.
Not through formal coordination, but through shared necessity or some sort of calamity.
The great devaluation
If that happens, the adjustment mechanism changes.
Instead of one currency weakening dramatically against another, all currencies gradually lose purchasing power together. The devaluation does not occur in foreign exchange markets. It occurs relative to real assets.
Gold, Commodities, Energy, Infrastructure are all moving higher yet Inflation-linked bonds are trading at the lows in price.
In that world, policymakers can tolerate a degree of inflation because no single currency is experiencing a disorderly collapse. Instead, the purchasing power of money slowly erodes across the developed world.
That may ultimately prove to be the most politically acceptable solution to excessive debt burdens.
The investment implications
Taken together, the two charts tell a coherent story.
The first chart explains why investors should care. Rising interest rates are beginning to consume an increasingly large share of government revenues.
The second chart explains why policymakers should care. Debt-to-GDP ratios are now sitting at levels that were rarely seen during previous periods of elevated real interest rates.
Taken together, the charts pose an obvious question: can the developed world comfortably sustain today’s level of real interest rates with debt burdens exceeding 100% of GDP?
Perhaps it can. But if not, policymakers will eventually be forced to choose between fiscal austerity, higher taxation, or some form of financial repression that pushes real borrowing costs lower.
If governments are unwilling to pursue austerity and voters are unwilling to accept materially higher taxes, then financial repression increasingly looks less like a policy choice and more like a fiscal necessity.
For investors, that points towards assets that benefit from declining real yields and the erosion of fiat purchasing power.
Gold and Commodities have already moved meaningfully higher, yet TIPS are trading at the most attractive level in many years.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bv-us-tips-yield-to-maturity-204.jpg?itok=UnIPsF7f
Source: Bloomberg
The big macro question we must ask ourselves is: ‘Are current interest rates sustainable given debt levels?’
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 09/17/2026 - 12:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/great-repression-0

2026-09-16 01:45:00 GMT

US Energy Secretary: Saudi Pipeline Could Be Back In Service Within Days
US Energy Secretary: Saudi Pipeline Could Be Back In Service Within Days
By Julianne Geiger of https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Energy-Secretary-Saudi-Pipeline-Could-Be-Back-in-Service-Within-Days.html
Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline could be back in service within days, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday, offering the first relatively concrete timeline for restoring a route that had been moving 4 million to 5 million barrels per day around the largely closed Strait of Hormuz.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/east%20west%20pipeline%20explosion.jpg?itok=vyVnuyej
The 1,200-kilometer pipeline https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Oil-Prices-Rise-on-Saudi-Pipeline-Outage-and-Rising-Red-Sea-Risks.html after an attack last week damaged the system. Wright said Saudi officials were still assessing the damage, but expected repairs to be measured in days rather than weeks.
The East-West line has been carrying roughly 4% to 5% of global oil supply to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, giving Saudi Arabia an outlet while traffic through Hormuz remains severely constrained. The outage could last several weeks, according to earlier estimates, raising the possibility that export-ready inventories at Yanbu would soon be depleted.
Some of that disruption has already reached buyers.
Saudi Aramco has https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Aramco-Cancels-European-Crude-Cargoes-as-Key-Pipeline-Stays-Shut.html late-September crude cargoes to several European refiners. Poland’s Orlen has been buying North Sea crude and seeking U.S. WTI Midland and Kazakhstan’s CPC Blend after Saudi deliveries slipped. No Saudi crude had departed Yanbu since September 11, according to Vortexa data cited by Argus.
Saudi crude supply had already fallen to 6 million bpd in August, down 2.3 million bpd on the month and the lowest level in more than three decades, according to the International Energy Agency.
The pipeline shutdown pushed crude prices higher again Monday and Tuesday, with Brent climbing above https://oilprice.com/futures/brent/ per barrel as traders priced in another potential loss of supply.
Wright said Saudi Arabia is also trying to move more crude through Hormuz with U.S. military assistance.
A restart within days would restore one of the few high-capacity routes still available to move Gulf crude without relying on the Strait of Hormuz. It would also arrive before Yanbu inventories become the next constraint.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/15/2026 - 21:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-energy-secretary-saudi-pipeline-could-be-back-service-within-days

2026-09-15 22:50:00 GMT

Largest US Power Grid Faces Dire Crisis By 2030 If Data Center Load Growth Continues
Largest US Power Grid Faces Dire Crisis By 2030 If Data Center Load Growth Continues
By 2030, the PJM Interconnection, the largest US electrical grid in the US serving 67 million people in 13 northeast states, is likely to face a “loss of load expectation,” or LOLE - a key reliability metric used by power system planners to measure the expected number of hours or days per year that a power grid's electricity generation will fail to meet customer demand - between six and 100 times worse than the grid operator’s planning criterion, mainly due to the addition of large-load data centers, according to https://www.puc.pa.gov/media/4044/2026_assessing_electricity_resource_adequacy_in_pa_and_pjm.pdfhttps://www.puc.pa.gov/media/4044/2026_assessing_electricity_resource_adequacy_in_pa_and_pjm.pdf.
The PUC and the firms that produced the report - Synapse Energy Economics, Mondre Energy and Aspen Technologies - characterized it as an independent analysis aimed at developing load projections and evaluating resource adequacy under a set of likely possible futures, according to https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjms-reliability-could-start-failing-by-2030-if-data-center-growth-continu/830405/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202026-09-15%20Utility%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:89190%5D&utm_term=Utility%20Dive
In models covering 2027 through 2030, both a reference scenario and a high-load, low-supply scenario show https://www.puc.pa.gov/press-release/2026/puc-study-warns-rapid-data-center-growth-could-pose-serious-risks-to-electric-reliability-09142026. Only under a https://www.puc.pa.gov/media/4044/2026_assessing_electricity_resource_adequacy_in_pa_and_pjm.pdf is the region able to meet PJM’s target LOLE of 0.1, the report said.
PJM’s standard is designed to limit potential electricity shortages “to approximately one event every 10 years,” said a PUC release about the report.
In the study’s reference scenario, which relies on PJM’s 2026 load forecast, the modeled 2030 LOLE is 0.59, “or nearly six times worse than the PJM planning criterion,” it said.
In a “worst-case future” of higher-than-expected load additions and constrained resource deployment, the modeled LOLE is 13.20 — “over 100 times worse than PJM’s planning criterion,” indicating an expectation of “more than 13 days with loss of load events per year.”
“As in the Reference scenario, these reliability issues are largely due to surging data center additions,” the study said.
“This analysis sends a clear warning: electricity demand and supply are moving out of balance, and the status quo is not sustainable,” PUC Chairman Steve DeFrank said in a statement. “We need urgent action at PJM and a broader Pennsylvania energy strategy that makes sure our supply of electricity keeps pace with demand.”
PJM, https://wjactv.com/news/local/can-pas-power-grid-handle-data-center-development-the-puc-worries-reliability-at-risk-pennsylvania-public-utility-commission-pjm-pennsylvania-pa, acknowledged that new data center loads are growing faster than supply.
“PJM has taken a number of actions to both increase electricity supply and manage new demand in line with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge taken by data center developers to shield residential customers and other ratepayers from bearing reliability risks or cost increases associated with data center development,” said Jeff Shields, PJM’s senior manager of external communications.
The reference scenario anticipates Pennsylvania remaining a net energy exporter, but sees its exports “decrease from about 91 TWh in 2025 to about 69 TWh by 2035 and 38 TWh by 2040,” the report said.
In the high-load, low-supply scenario, Pennsylvania becomes a net importer of 5 TWh by 2040.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/amazon%20data%20center%20virginia.jpg?itok=fKZObyE5
“Because this scenario has a large amount of unmet load in 2031 and later years, it is likely that some amount of this 2035 and 2040 load will be unmet, as there will not be enough regional generation to meet PJM-wide load requirements,” the report says.
Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, D, issued an executive order that the state will offer https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pennsylvania-executive-order-data-centers/828261/ with peak demand of more than 25 MW if they commit to certain requirements, including sourcing their electricity from new power supplies.
The PUC also voted unanimously Thursday to approve two motions https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pennsylvania-puc-to-consider-rates-and-curtailment-as-data-centers-grow/830174/. One of the motions directs PUC staff to propose updates to the state’s rules for emergency curtailment, and to organize a technical conference on cost allocation for data centers.
The report notes that PJM and the U.S. Department of Energy “have implemented several initiatives, policies, and programs to address growing concerns about PJM’s resource adequacy,” including interconnection queue reform and reliability backstop procurement.
“PJM and its stakeholders are also currently discussing additional initiatives such as load forecasting improvements,” the report said. “DOE has also committed to keeping some coal-fired power plants online beyond their retirement date, in an effort to maintain resource supply in the region.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/15/2026 - 18:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/largest-us-power-grid-faces-dire-crisis-2030-if-data-center-load-growth-continues

2026-09-15 11:20:00 GMT

Energy Truce In Shambles: Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump's Warning Amid Global Diesel Crisis
Energy Truce In Shambles: Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump's Warning Amid Global Diesel Crisis
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that Ukrainian forces struck the Syzran refinery in Russia's Samara region, about 75 miles west of Samara and 466 miles southeast of Moscow. The strike comes days after President Trump urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian refineries, as average US retail diesel prices https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/6-diesel-flashes-2008-warning-energy-shock-ai-slowdown-fears-fuel-perfect-storm and alarming disruptions to global refining capacity threaten fuel supplies ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter.
Zelenskyy wrote on X:
Russia continues to attack our energy sector, regular logistics, and critical infrastructure. And our responses to them for this are tangible. There are new results from the Defense Forces of Ukraine regarding the refinery in Syzran. There was also a strike in Taganrog on a drone production facility, as well as on a drone preparation and launch site in the Oryol region. Targets were hit in the Black Sea as well. I thank every one of our warriors for the effectiveness of our long-range sanctions!
The day before, the United States also announced a significant decision regarding Russia's VTB Bank – one of Russia's systemic banks, which is heavily involved in schemes supporting Russia's war and, in particular, its relations with the Iranian regime. All such schemes that work against peace truly need to be dismantled. I thank our partners for this useful step!
There is no alternative to ending this war. And all forms of pressure on Russia must create the right diplomatic conditions. Glory to Ukraine!
Russia continues to attack our energy sector, regular logistics, and critical infrastructure. And our responses to them for this are tangible. There are new results from the Defense Forces of Ukraine regarding the refinery in Syzran. There was also a strike in Taganrog on a drone… https://t.co/Lu47QcmvuD
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2099780592145461284?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
President Trump on Sunday urged Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries, as record US diesel prices above $6 a gallon intensify political concerns over fuel costs and affordability ahead of November's midterm elections.
Trump blamed the strikes for shortages he said were "hurting the world." Ukraine's drone strike campaign against Russian refineries has curtailed refining and, alongside Moscow's export restrictions, sharply reduced overseas diesel supplies, tightening availability of the industrial fuel essential to freight, agriculture and industry.
Compounding the supply pressure, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/houthis-unleash-major-missile-barrage-saudi-arabias-sprawling-king-khalid-air-base following a drone attack that Saudi and Iraqi authorities said originated in Iraq. The pipeline provides Saudis with a critical route to Red Sea export facilities, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Houthi advances around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait are threatening another major maritime chokepoint, adding to disruptions on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/15/2026 - 07:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/energy-truce-shambles-ukraine-strikes-russian-refinery-despite-trumps-warning-amid-global

2026-09-15 10:30:00 GMT

Judge To Begin Consideration Of Bayer's $7.25 Billion Roundup Settlement
Judge To Begin Consideration Of Bayer's $7.25 Billion Roundup Settlement
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/judge-to-begin-consideration-of-bayers-7-25-billion-roundup-settlement-6086691?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
A circuit judge in Missouri is set to begin weighing on Sept. 14 agrochemical giant Monsanto's proposal of a $7.25 billion settlement for tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that the company's popular Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281170%29.jpg?itok=9-Lgcivq
Judge Timothy Boyer of St. Louis is not expected to issue an immediate ruling at the hearing, but he will examine Monsanto's lawyers' justification of the settlement as they seek Boyer's final approval, while some plaintiffs' attorneys argue that their clients should not be strong-armed into accepting the company's proposal.
The settlement, which was https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/bayers-monsanto-proposes-7-25-billion-deal-to-settle-roundup-cancer-claims-5986801?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge in February, is meant as a way to contain litigation.
It aims to resolve nearly all of the roughly 65,000 claims still pending in federal and state courts, and it's meant to cover future Roundup claims as well. The settlement received preliminary https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/roundups-7-25-billion-settlement-receives-preliminary-approval-from-missouri-judge-5994431?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge from Boyer on March 4.
As part of the settlement, the company would offer payouts for individuals who were exposed to Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The exact award amount for each person would depend on different factors, including the severity of their cancer, their age when they were diagnosed, and whether they were exposed to the chemical at work or at home.
For occupation claimants - meaning farmers, gardeners, maintenance workers, landscapers, and more - their payouts could range from $60,000 to $165,000.
The agreement would also award residential claimants, referring to homeowners who use Roundup for their gardens, yards, and driveways. Payouts for this group could range from $20,000 to $40,000.
"Monsanto remains confident that the class settlement, which is supported by plaintiffs' counsel representing tens of thousands of potential class members, is fair to all parties, the objections have no merit, and warrants final approval following the September 14th hearing," the company said in an Aug. 28 statement.
Supreme Court's Involvement
Litigation against Monsanto, acquired by Germany-based Bayer in 2018, has plagued it for years, leading to one case reaching the highest court in the United States.
Individuals across the country have claimed that exposure to Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, which contains a key and https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/what-to-know-about-the-controversy-surrounding-glyphosate-5990609?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge ingredient called glyphosate, causes cancer.
Although the company has repeatedly denied any link between its products and cancer, there have been multiple https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/jury-orders-monsanto-to-pay-175-million-to-man-suffering-from-cancer-5526249?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge of https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/bayer-ordered-to-pay-2-billion-by-georgia-jury-in-roundup-cancer-case-5830294?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge throughout the country https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/bayer-must-pay-78-million-in-latest-roundup-cancer-trial-jury-finds-5739697?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge plaintiffs https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/monsanto-ordered-to-pay-289-million-in-lawsuit-case-2621424?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge of dollars.
One of those cases involved Missouri man John Durnell, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after exposure to Roundup.
He had previously won $1.25 million in his lawsuit against Monsanto, with a Missouri jury agreeing that the agrocompany failed to follow a Missouri state law requiring a warning for risks such as cancer.
But Monsanto appealed the decision, and eventually it came before the https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/monsanto-weedkiller-case-could-upend-billions-in-compensation-6015419?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge. The company called that prior verdict flawed because of a legal doctrine known as preemption, which holds that federal law overrides state law when the two are in conflict.
Monsanto said the federal government, through the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, had already regulated its Roundup product and glyphosate. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under that law, approved glyphosate's use and has never required additional labeling related to cancer risks.
The justices, in one of the most consequential decisions from its last term, https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/supreme-court-sides-with-monsanto-in-dispute-over-weedkillers-alleged-cancer-risk-6025539?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge 7-2 on June 25 in favor of Monsanto, holding that federal law does indeed preempt Missouri's state law, thus throwing out the basis of the lower court's verdict for Durnell.
Following the ruling, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said the company would continue to pursue the $7.25 billion settlement.
Bayer already https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/bayer-agrees-to-settle-roundup-lawsuits-will-pay-over-10-billion-3400605?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge a $10 billion settlement in 2020 that resolved many Roundup cases but had left the company open to future claims.
Glyphosate Controversy
For years, health advocates have accused the key ingredient of Roundup - glyphosate - of being a cancer-causing chemical.
The EPA registered glyphosate as a pesticide in 1974, and it has since become one of the most widely used chemicals in the world for agriculture production.
As its use over time increased, so too did claims that exposure to glyphosate caused cancer.
The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer published a March 2015 review that found the chemical as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The Trump administration https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-administration-urges-supreme-court-to-overturn-ruling-on-bayers-roundup-5952557?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge Monsanto in the Supreme Court case, filing a brief that urged the justices to rule favorably for the company.
In a Feb. 18 executive order, President Donald Trump https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-signs-order-declaring-glyphosate-production-as-critical-to-national-security-5987453?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge glyphosate was critical to national defense and instructed his administration to ensure that there was an adequate supply.
"Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity," the order read. "Glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation's agricultural productivity and rural economy."
This caused a https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/maha-proponents-react-to-trumps-executive-order-on-glyphosate-5987947?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge among the Republican base, as proponents of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement became increasingly frustrated with the federal government's support of glyphosate.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the movement's champions, had previously helped secure a $289 million award from Monsanto in 2018 for a client who alleged that Roundup caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
But following Trump's executive order, Kennedy released a statement that appeared to balance support for glyphosate in securing the country's food supply in the short term and the need to shift away from the chemical over time.
"Pesticides and herbicides are toxic by design," Kennedy wrote in a Feb. 22 post on X. "Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals. ... I support President Trump's Executive Order to bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations."
He stressed that Trump did not build the current system - he inherited it - and that there are ongoing efforts to shift away from harmful agricultural methods.
Two months before the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Monsanto, Kennedy https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/rfk-jr-tells-senate-glyphosate-causes-cancer-6015732?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge in Congress.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked the health secretary whether glyphosate caused cancer, and without hesitation, Kennedy responded, "Yes."
"I would say it's important to minimize consumption of glyphosate as much as possible," Kennedy said.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/15/2026 - 06:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/judge-begin-consideration-bayers-725-billion-roundup-settlement

2026-09-13 02:10:00 GMT

Making The World Great One Nation At A Time
Making The World Great One Nation At A Time
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/09/making-the-world-great-one-nation-at-a-time/,
What we call "globalism" has been on the march for eighty years. A system that embraces centralized markets, bureaucratic regulation, international institutions, and so-called non-governmental organizations (predominantly funded by governments), globalism places significant power in the hands of a small collection of wealthy and powerful stakeholders from the planet's top investment houses, corporations, law firms, universities, central banks, and government bodies.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/o6gadlefxb6ytzkvolii_640.jpg?itok=ztLlGnYf
Globalism speaks in the language of "democracy" while ignoring - or even criminalizing - the will of the people. Across the West, citizens have opposed open border policies that have flooded their nations with unassimilable, foreign immigrants. Globalists have categorized this dissent as "hate speech," censoring - and even prosecuting - citizens for their social media posts and public speech. Globalists insist that there must be limits on free speech. They seek to punish "thought crimes." They label opposing points of view "disinformation" or "misinformation." In practice, globalists protect governments and institutions from public criticism.
Globalism also speaks in the language of "free markets" while heavily regulating industrial production, encumbering the use of private property, and manipulating currency valuation, stock markets, and trade. By effectively "printing money" and intervening in markets, central banks steal from citizens who save their cash earnings, inflate the prices of essential household goods, and protect privileged companies or industries deemed "too big to fail." By ginning up "global warming" fears among the public, lawmakers, bankers, and bureaucrats have justified the imposition of "carbon controls" that regulate energy use, economic production, and human activity. By expanding public welfare programs while weakening protections for property ownership, globalists tax citizens at increasingly higher rates, redistribute earned income and savings, confiscate real property, and even permit squatters (often foreign migrants) to occupy private residences.
Globalism falsely clothes itself in principle and tradition. Its proponents speak of "Western values," while encouraging non-Westerners to migrate to and radically change the culture and demographics of Western nations. Its propagandists claim to represent "the people," while doing the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks. Its defenders pretend to respect public opinion, while mandating slavish devotion to "expertise." Globalism seeks to end the nation state while demanding that citizens sacrifice themselves for government bureaucracies. It wages war against Christians who refuse to worship government institutions as the highest authorities on "truth." Globalists divide societies into "victims" and "oppressors," so that citizens remain too busy fighting each other to notice the surveillance prison being built around them. Globalists criticize opponents by saying things such as, "That's not who we are," while taking a sledgehammer and blowtorch to Western identities.
In defiance of globalism's steady advance since WWII, a revolution has been brewing. Although its messengers have appeared all over the world - including Pat Buchanan in the United States, Shinzo Abe and Sanae Takaichi in Japan, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, Alice Weidel in Germany, and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom - President Donald J. Trump is the unofficial leader of the rebellion. What these men and women have in common is a strong sense of duty to their respective nations, a firm belief that culture matters, a preference for common sense, and a commitment to their countrymen over the international institutions, multinational corporations, and globalist NGOs (such as the World Economic Forum) that seek to eliminate national borders and condemn citizens to lives as disposable serfs.
President Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement has spawned similar campaigns around the world. Whether in El Salvador or Nigeria, Spain or Australia, Canada or India, there are locals who have appropriated that slogan as part of an effort to make their own nations great. While globalism diminishes the importance of culture and celebrates amorphous "multiculturalism" as an inscrutable ideal, nation-builders around the world know better: Culture is the lifeblood of every society. It is the glue that binds a people together, fosters cooperation, and turns dreams of the future into reality. Just as members of a family help each other to succeed, members of a shared culture ensure their nation's success.
People who climb mountains do not plant flags from the United Nations, European Union, the World Economic Forum, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; they fly their national flags at the top. Because no matter how much globalists lecture us about the evils of nationalism and the moral equivalence of all cultures, human beings know better. Our families, traditions, religious convictions, and historical memories matter. And when we ascend the icy peaks that few people have reached, we mark the moment, not as an achievement for "multiculturalism," but rather as a testament to the inherent greatness of the places we call home.
For decades, globalism has been promoted as a "free market" ideal that would generate economic growth and foster international peace. But how has it operated in practice? Powerful corporations and lobbying groups have worked with governments to construct elaborate trade agreements that benefit the bottom line of political and financial elites. Rarely are the interests of the common man considered, except in the context of labor unions, standards bodies, or trade groups that purport to represent the average worker. Instead, complex legal documents such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have assisted in the creation of large industry monopolies while squeezing out small businesses. After the creation of NAFTA and similar "free trade deals," American corporations and investment firms became multinational conglomerates, while Main Street mom-and-pop shops disappeared.
Globalism's preferred winners became entities "too big to fail." Why were they "too big to fail"? Because their trillion-dollar operations stretched like a circulatory system around the globe. Their drive for "efficiencies of scale" pushed them into every local bank, industry, and consumer market that could be secured as a beachhead for future profit. But in the endless expansion of it all - the mergers, acquisitions, and amalgamated monopolies - globalism's circulatory system resembled that of a morbidly obese man only one meal away from a massive heart attack. A system so interconnected that it cannot survive the loss of any part makes the whole thing vulnerable to a few drops of poison.
Globalism's rise has been debilitating for national self-sufficiency. In their unending quest for returns on investment, the globalists have built a world in which slave labor is used in communist China, India, and most of the African continent (while corporate news media ignore the story). Natural resources are extracted from third-world countries where environmental protection laws do not exist (while corporate news media ignore the story). Companies exploit both illegal immigration flows and legal work visas to drive down wages and drive up demand for (and therefore the prices of) food, fuel, rents, household necessities, and homes (while corporate news media ignore the story).
In treating individual nations as stolen cars being stripped and sold for parts, globalists have taken what is most valuable from each country while depriving those countries of the resources to build resilient economies of their own. From the slave mines of Africa to the sweatshops of China, globalism profits from blood. From the American Rust Belt to Germany's decommissioned nuclear plants and the U.K.'s abandoned oil and gas fields, globalism sacrifices the wealth of nations, so that multinational investment banks can suck just a little more profit from the husks of countries with one foot already in the grave.
Why is it that patriotic love for one's nation is making a comeback? Because globalism's hatred for nations has left a trail of social conflict, government dependence, drug and alcohol addiction, deteriorating public health, environmental degradation, and cultural decline in every land it drains of life. What President Trump and his fellow rebels understand is this: Nations and their people matter. You cannot make the world great, while letting great nations die.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 09/12/2026 - 22:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/making-world-great-one-nation-time

2026-09-12 00:30:00 GMT

ICE Hits Legal Wall On Two Fronts As Denver Targets Polling-Place Enforcement And Appeals Court Curbs Detention Power
ICE Hits Legal Wall On Two Fronts As Denver Targets Polling-Place Enforcement And Appeals Court Curbs Detention Power
The Trump administration's immigration crackdown ran into two separate legal challenges Thursday, as Denver sued to keep armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from polling places while a federal appeals court rejected the government's attempt to subject millions of illegal immigrants already living inside the United States to mandatory detention without bond hearings.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281159%29.jpg?itok=7i35kZpk
The disputes involve different statutes and different courts, but the underlying fight is increasingly the same: how far can the executive branch push immigration enforcement under existing federal law before judges conclude that Congress never gave it the authority being claimed?
On one front, Denver and several national advocacy groups filed suit in federal court in Washington seeking to stop ICE officers from carrying out immigration enforcement at voting locations ahead of November's midterm elections.
On the other, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that immigrants who have been living inside the United States for years - even if they originally entered illegally - cannot automatically be placed into mandatory detention under the provision the administration has been invoking.
Together, the cases put fresh judicial pressure on one of the administration's signature second-term policies.
Denver Takes ICE To Court Over The Polls
The City and County of Denver joined the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS in challenging what the plaintiffs characterize as a federal policy permitting armed ICE officers to conduct enforcement operations at polling locations.
The https://unidosus.org/press-releases/unidosus-joins-new-lawsuit-that-challenges-trump-vance-administration-plan-to-send-armed-ice-officers-into-polling-places/, filed Sept. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, invokes a rarely litigated Civil War-era federal statute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/592, that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing "troops or armed men" to places where elections are being conducted, except when needed to repel armed enemies of the United States.
The plaintiffs argue that even the prospect of armed immigration officers appearing at voting sites could deter voters, disrupt election workers and force municipalities to divert resources toward preparing for confrontations with federal agents. Denver officials are already training election personnel on how to identify federal agents, document encounters and de-escalate potential conflicts, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that armed agents have already appeared at polling locations in San Antonio, Ventura County, California, and Syracuse, New York.
The lawsuit follows https://kdvr.com/news/local/denver-sues-to-block-ice-officers-from-voting-sites/ by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who said ICE would not patrol polling places but would not exclude them from normal enforcement activity.
Mullin said agents could enter a voting location if there were a security threat or if officers were serving a warrant on a person they had been tracking, while the administration's position is not that polling places are enforcement targets. It is that they are not automatically enforcement-free zones either.
DHS has similarly said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling sites, while maintaining that officers could make an arrest there if an active public-safety threat or targeted enforcement action required it.
That distinction is now headed for federal court - where the plaintiffs want a judge to declare the policy unlawful and prevent armed federal immigration officers from carrying out enforcement at polling locations and other places where votes are collected. The case arrives as election officials around the country prepare for a midterm season already saturated with litigation over voting rules, federal-state authority and election administration.
Fourth Circuit Rejects ICE Detention Theory
Hours away from the political fight over polling sites, the Fourth Circuit delivered a more immediate legal setback for the administration's detention policy.
In Lopez Garcia v. Guadian, a divided three-judge panel https://newsweek.com/ice-mandatory-detention-appeals-court-ruling-trump-administration-12426577 that two immigrants who had lived in the United States for years could not be mandatorily detained without an opportunity to seek release on bond.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281160%29.jpg?itok=aeW5bKBZ
The dispute centers on two sections of federal immigration law.
The administration contends that immigrants who entered the country without being legally admitted remain "applicants for admission" under Section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore can be detained without bond while removal proceedings play out. The detainees argued - and the Fourth Circuit majority agreed - that immigrants already established inside the United States instead fall under Section 1226, which generally allows for bond consideration.
Judge Nicole Berner, joined by Senior Judge Barbara Keenan, said the latter interpretation better fits the text, structure and historical application of the statute. The court noted that Section 1226 had for decades generally governed detention of noncitizens already inside the country, while Section 1225 had traditionally been associated with people seeking admission at the border.
Berner warned that accepting the government's interpretation could expose millions of people to mandatory detention without bond and said such a reading would imply Congress quietly authorized an unprecedented expansion of immigration detention when it rewrote immigration law in 1996.
The majority eventually compared the implications to some of the darkest chapters of American detention policy, including the confinement of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and the internment of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
The court ultimately affirmed habeas relief for Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia and Juan Jose Rivera, ruling that both had to be given an opportunity to argue for release at a bond hearing.
The Dissent: Congress Meant What It Wrote
Judge Allison Jones Rushing rejected the majority's reasoning - with her dissent focusing heavily on the wording Congress adopted in its sweeping 1996 immigration overhaul. Earlier immigration laws explicitly referred to "arriving" immigrants, ports of arrival and people attempting to enter the country. Congress removed much of that language in 1996 and instead defined a broader category of "applicants for admission."
If Congress intended mandatory detention to remain limited to people physically arriving at the border, she argued, lawmakers could simply have retained the older language. Instead, Congress deliberately adopted terminology broad enough to include people physically present in the United States who had never been lawfully admitted. The statute treats anyone present without admission as an applicant for admission, and an applicant is by definition seeking admission, she wrote. "It's that simple."
The majority, she added, "clearly has strong views about what it considers the 'moral implications'" of denying bond, but those views do not rewrite the text.
That statutory disagreement is no longer confined to one court - meanwhile, the Fourth Circuit has now joined the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits on the side of bond eligibility for immigrants already living inside the country.
The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have taken the opposite view, concluding that the government's mandatory-detention interpretation is consistent with the statute.
That 9-2 split puts the issue squarely in territory the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve.
ICE's Next Battle May Be At The Supreme Court
The two developments illustrate the rapidly expanding legal front surrounding the administration's immigration agenda. Denver's lawsuit asks whether federal immigration officers can carry their normal enforcement authority into one of the most legally protected environments in American civic life: the polling place.
The Fourth Circuit case asks a different but potentially far larger question - whether the government can automatically detain broad categories of immigrants already living in the country without first giving them access to a bond hearing.
DHS maintains that the administration is enforcing immigration law as Congress wrote it. The Fourth Circuit majority says the government is attempting to extract sweeping detention powers from statutory language that does not clearly provide them.
And Denver is effectively making the same structural argument from another direction: whatever authority ICE may have to execute immigration law, Congress imposed special limits around elections. So while the administration continues expanding immigration enforcement on the ground, the courts are increasingly being asked to define the perimeter.
For ICE, that means the next phase of the immigration fight may be determined less by how many agents Washington deploys - and more by how the Supreme Court ultimately reads statutes Congress wrote decades ago.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 09/11/2026 - 20:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ice-hits-legal-wall-two-fronts-denver-targets-polling-place-enforcement-and-appeals-court

2026-09-09 16:00:00 GMT

'It Could Kill Us All By 2030': AI Researcher Resigns, Warns "Do Not Underestimate The Power Of This Tech"
'It Could Kill Us All By 2030': AI Researcher Resigns, Warns "Do Not Underestimate The Power Of This Tech"
https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech/ai-researcher-resigns-warns-of-dangers-6084967?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
An artificial intelligence (AI) researcher on Sept. 8 said he had resigned and warned people about the technology's dangers.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202026-09-09T062035.708.jpg?itok=UmD613g4
Jacob Coxon, who has worked in recent years doing research at the firms OpenAI and Anthropic, said in a series of posts on X that neither company is acting responsibly as they move toward what he described as superintelligent AI that is capable of self-improvement.
"Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing," Coxon said.
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger."
Coxon said a common response to such warnings is, if company leaders believe in the dangers, why are they still building the superintelligent AI? He said that at OpenAI, many there "have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes." At Anthropic, according to Coxon, "the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk."
OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Coxon's warning came after OpenAI https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech/openai-acknowledges-another-incident-says-more-transparency-needed-for-ai-misalignment-6084282?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge several incidents that involved AI going beyond restrictions imposed by programmers, including remaining isolated from other agents, during attacks on Hugging Face and other websites.
Some lawmakers have taken notice. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-casar-introduce-legislation-to-ban-artificial-superintelligence-and-temporarily-pause-advanced-ai-development/ recently that they plan on introducing legislation that would ban AI superintelligence and pause development of advanced AI until federal regulators establish safety rules.
Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's chief scientist, said in a blog post on Sept. 6 that in 2023, he was worried about seeing in his lifetime AI that is smarter than himself and wondering about how to alert people.
"Three years later, reasoning language models are a rapidly growing part of the economy and starting to push the boundaries of science. They are able to operate computers and graphical interfaces, collaborate with people and each other, and carry out research projects. They are also transforming the landscape of computer security, and in that present clear new dangers," Pachocki wrote.
He called for "extreme caution" but said that multiple factors support continuing AI development, including creating systems that can defend against the dangers posed by other AI.
Anthropic executives have issued similar warnings. Over the summer, company leaders https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech/anthropic-calls-for-global-pause-in-ai-development-warns-of-self-improvement-risk-6042669?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge for a global pause in AI development because, they said, models would soon be able to independently improve themselves.
Evan Hubinger, another developer at Anthropic, said in a Sept. 8 post on X that Coxon was correct in his assertion that people building AI believe it could kill all humans, and that he personally pegs the risk at under 10 percent within the next decade.
"I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to," he said, referring to AI following instructions and restrictions.
"To be clear, as we say in our latest Risk Report, I think the risk from present models is low. What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought."
Samuel Marks, who works on safety research at Anthropic, said in a Sept. 9 post on X that he also agrees that AI could lead to human extinction as soon as the next few years.
"Why do AI developers continue despite the risk? Due to a mixture of commercial incentives and a belief that they are in a race with other, less responsible AI developers that will abuse the technology or develop it less safely," Marks said.
[Writing this in a personal capacity, not on behalf of my employer (Anthropic).]
Jacob’s thread is very worth reading. Here’s my birds-eye view of the situation with risks from AI:
1. AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad… https://t.co/rCVoiOWWzm
— Samuel Marks (@saprmarks) https://x.com/saprmarks/status/2097570226804011302?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Marks said it's not possible to program AIs to behave how people would like, that AI agents frequently "severely misbehave," and that the current plan is to train AI to align with restrictions to the point the agents can train their successors better than humans can currently train AI. He said he's conducting research "because I hope my work will reduce the chance of these extinction-level bad outcomes."
[ZH: We can't help but feel in the same week we see OpenAI https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/openais-claims-solving-million-dollar-math-problem-marred-allegations-academicNavier-Stokes, we get another glut of existential warnings about just how awesome (in the scary sense) these models are... all sounds like a marketing psy-op... similar to the fence-jumping episodes with Hugging Face etc 'showing off' how great the agents are (and how they need regulating (i.e a path to shutting out open-weight models)... but could just be our skeptical bias emerging...]
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 09/09/2026 - 12:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/it-could-kill-us-all-2030-ai-researcher-resigns-warns-do-not-underestimate-power-tech

2026-09-08 13:25:00 GMT

Houthis Pummel Southwest Saudi Arabia With Ballistic Missiles, As Yemen Air & Ground War Erupts
Houthis Pummel Southwest Saudi Arabia With Ballistic Missiles, As Yemen Air & Ground War Erupts
The heaviest fighting since the Iran war began is taking place in Yemen currently, also involving significant overnight attacks on Saudi energy and military sites by the Houthis.
The Houthis have since unveiled new operations, in a Tuesday statement saying the Iran-aligned group is targeting critical Saudi oil and military infrastructure. Widely circulating local videos suggest the attacks on multiple sites were in some case simultaneous and overwhelming.
"In response to this brutal aggression and in confronting comprehensive escalation with comprehensive escalation, the YAF carried out a large-scale … operation, targeting Aramco facilities in Abha and Najran, the Economic City, Aramco in Jizan, and Khamis Mushait Air Base, using dozens of ballistic missiles and drones," said the Houthi statement.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/yemenfighting1.jpg?itok=qOOHduQV
"The strikes, by God's grace, were accurate and direct and caused significant damage to those facilities," it added.
The kingdom's Energy Ministry has indeed acknowledged fires and operations stoppages at several sites as a result, as well as damage and injured personnel.
"Several energy sector facilities and installations in the southern region of the kingdom were targeted this morning," the energy ministry https://english.alarabiya.net/News/saudi-arabia/2026/09/08/saudi-arabia-says-energy-sector-facilities-targeted-in-southern-region-.
"The attacks caused fires at several locations, leading to a temporary halt in some operations. Specialized field teams have begun containing the fires, securing the sites, and assessing the damage," the statement said. Aramco sites have been targeted on multiple occasions this summer, resulting in operations halts, particularly at key sites near the Yemeni border. Damage is still being assessed at the Aramco Jisan oil facilities, which were targeted yet again.
Also military and supply missions were hit, with the Houthi statement also indicating the destruction of Saudi military equipment and convoys of Saudi-backed forces of the internationally-recognized government.
For anyone putting a lot of faith in those pipelines that bypass Hormuz...
⚡️BREAKING: Houthis have released footage of Striking Saudi Arabia's Supply Lines to Pro-Saudi Forces in Yemen with Ballistic Missiles https://t.co/b3JQ78LQrK
— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) https://x.com/IranObserver0/status/2096958805120602251?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"Arms trucks coming from Saudi Arabia were targeted and caught fire at the Al-Wadiah military camp," the Houthis stated.
In response later on Tuesday, Saudi airstrikes have reportedly resumed on Yemen in the governorates of Al-Jawf, Al-Bayda, Ma'rib, Taiz, and Al-Hudaydah. Already the death toll is mounting from these renewed https://apnews.com/article/yemen-prison-houthis-jawf-forces-prison-saudi-arabia-e6d1e1d84c943d2fb1ce186a1e5bd3f8:
Houthi rebels in https://apnews.com/hub/yemen accused Saudi Arabia of striking a prison on Monday in the country’s north, killing seven, including a child, as tensions escalate between the https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-strait-hormuz-yemen-houthi-august-13-2026-42eb6af678a8f16d3a2cb14bd7918a12.
The strike on the Central Corrective Facility in the strategic city of Hazm in Jawf province also wounded at least seven people, including a woman, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.
The prison’s warden told the Houthi al-Masirah news channel 35 prisoners and a woman who was visiting her husband were trapped under the rubble.
The Saudi side has meanwhile said that dozens were injured in the Houthi attacks. Major General Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led Coalition Forces, blasted the new Houthi aggression as "dangerous" and "senseless" - and announced that at lest 73 people have been wounded, including women and children.
🚨BREAKING: Yemeni Drone Strike Impacts Near Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Airbase
Stunned lookers in Khamis Mushait film the attack.
This is part of the largest ongoing missile & drone attack on Saudi Arabia from Yemen in years. A retaliatory campaign after strikes on Yemen. https://t.co/SO1YVgl92K
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) https://x.com/MintPressNews/status/2097112720495780124?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Both sides are now vowing https://apnews.com/article/yemen-prison-houthis-jawf-forces-prison-saudi-arabia-e6d1e1d84c943d2fb1ce186a1e5bd3f8:
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of launching airstrikes and “committing massacres” in Jawf, as well as deploying a reconnaissance drone and supplying mercenaries with various weaponry.
“The ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he said.
The aerial war is additionally heating up: "Saree said later Monday that Houthi forces downed a total of four reconnaissance drones belonging to Saudi Arabia over the past 24 hours, including one that was spotted Monday morning in Bayda province," as cited in https://apnews.com/article/yemen-prison-houthis-jawf-forces-prison-saudi-arabia-e6d1e1d84c943d2fb1ce186a1e5bd3f8.
Another test of the Mecca Agreement, which says an armed attack on any one of the three states will be regarded as an attack on all three. https://t.co/4V6lbh9LMN
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) https://x.com/JasonMBrodsky/status/2097101215804903632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Oil prices on world markets continue to steadily inch higher, rising more than 1% as a result of Tuesday's Saudi-Yemen escalation.
The Saudi coalition says it aims to liberate the country's capital of Sanaa from the Iran-backed rebels. "The decision has been made to retake Sana’a. There are surprises we will not reveal now," the Deputy Defense Minister Major General Samir Al-Sabri https://thearabweekly.com/yemen-government-says-decision-made-retake-houthi-held-sanaa state-run Yemen TV.
The Yemeni army further released a statement saying that "From today, we declare that our goal is clear and unequivocal: to liberate Yemen from the grip of the terrorist Houthi militias and restore Sana’a as a capital for all Yemenis."
This appears a return to the kind of bull-blown war in Yemen which marked the latter half of the last decade. But this time it's more complicated and dangerous in terms of regional spillover, given it comes in the context of the Iran conflict, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and Houthi efforts to close Red Sea shipping to the Saudis, Israelis, and their allies.
Trump acknowledges 1) oil prices are high, 2) it's because of the war with Iran, 3) the war has not ended, 4) the US has not won, yet. https://t.co/gcsfqYmu0E
— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) https://x.com/gbrew24/status/2097109595642605827?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Below are more developments via https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/9/8/iran-war-live-qatar-warns-of-industrial-catastrophe-if-crisis-continues?update=4928298:
- Saudi Arabia has carried out new attacks in Yemen against al-Jubah district https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/16/houthis-launch-new-attacks-on-al-makha-and-marib-as-yemen-conflict-escalates, in the Houthi-controlled part of the country, according to a news report in Houthi-run media.
- Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government have launched a counteroffensive against the Houthi rebels, with officials saying they aim to recapture the capital Sanaa from the Iran-backed group.
- The Houthis say they repelled an offensive in al-Jawf, and at least seven people were killed in an air strike on a prison in the town of al-Hazm, pledging that the “aggression will not go unpunished”.
- Saudi Foreign Minister Prince ⁠Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has described Yemen’s Houthi rebels as “selfish” for putting their own interests above the welfare of the country’s people. “The Houthis choose to prioritise their narrow interests over the interests of Yemen and resort to violence,” he said at a news conference in the Russian capital.
- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told his ⁠Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, in Moscow that Russia is ready to help resolve the spiralling situation in the Middle ⁠East.
Saudi-led forces in Yemen bombed Al-Jawf Central Prison:
https://x.com/hashtag/BREAKING?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Saudi-led forces in Yemen bombed Al-Jawf Central Prison, causing death and injuries to at least 35 people. Terrible sceneshttps://x.com/hashtag/houthis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/hashtag/yemen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/hashtag/saudiarabia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/sNBhWOZdaI
— METRONIDAZOLE (@METRO_NIDAZOLE) https://x.com/METRO_NIDAZOLE/status/2097025078869594249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
More Overnight News
via Newsquawk
- US President Trump posted, "Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran. Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon. MAGA!"
- Iranian President Pezeshkian said Iran has always opposed war but will continue to resist aggression with full force until the aggressors are made to regret their actions.
- Iran's top national security official Rezaei said Washington has received a clear warning from Iran’s new missiles and that economic warfare will be met with a maritime exclusion zone across the Persian Gulf to the blockade perimeter, while he added that the operational posture toward US warships and bases has been fundamentally recalibrated.
- Tasnim analysis suggests that commentary from Iranian official Rezaei signals that Iran is considering expanding the geographic scope of its maritime confrontation into the northern Indian Ocean.
- Saudi Energy Minister said a number of energy facilities and utilities were hit and that some operations have been temporarily halted. This was later confirmed by the Houthis, in which they added that they struck the Khamis Mushait Air Base in retaliation to recent Saudi airstrikes. The group warned that further attacks on Yemen will be met with broader strikes on Saudi.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/08/2026 - 09:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/houthis-pummel-southwest-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missiles-yemen-air-ground-war-erupts

2026-09-08 09:45:00 GMT

Ukraine's 'Mood Swing' Against Zelensky: Widespread Fraud, Wartime Protests, Unpopular Dismissals
Ukraine's 'Mood Swing' Against Zelensky: Widespread Fraud, Wartime Protests, Unpopular Dismissals
The mainstream media is turning on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and more and more of his population may be doing the same, at a moment of multiple high level corruption cases running https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zelenskys-top-aide-named-explosive-court-audio-mudra-corruption-case.
To review, this was the second straight summer that controversial decisions by Zelensky sparked rare war time protests in Ukraine. In summer of 2025, Zelensky moved to weaken and de-legitimize two key national anti-corruption bodies. After, he came under immense pressure, also from Europe, and was forced to reverse course.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/ukrprotest_0.jpg?itok=U43ERjeL
Then in July of this year, he https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx76069n3do his popular young defense minister amid a major military reshuffling, which appears to be ongoing. Mykhailo Fedorov had been just six months on the job, and Ukrainians were by and large pleased with his strategy and direction in the war.
A sort of internal civil war had been raging between top military command and defense ministry ranks. Zelensky's intervention and final reshuffle remains highly controversial and unpopular.
Days ago, the 'esteemed' and very establishment journal, Foreign Policy ran a surprise headline strongly suggesting a popular swing among the citizenry against his rule, which has been extended amid canceled elections and martial law:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/03/ukraine-war-zelensky-corrupton-scandal-cabinet-election/
"For most of his presidency and especially since Russia launched its full-scale war, Ukrainian voters have rallied around Volodymyr Zelensky as a pillar of national resilience and unity," the FP report introduces of the 'good ole days'. "That’s for good reason: He has been an effective wartime leader and helped mobilize the democratic world on Ukraine’s behalf.
"But now, after more than seven years in office, four and a half years of war with Russia, and a series of scandals involving his leadership team and close friends, Zelensky appears to have lost the nation’s political support," it then adds. "Indeed, polling published in https://socis.kiev.ua/ua/2026-08-06/ points to a major mood swing among Ukrainians, suggesting that many of them have lost faith in Zelensky and would vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity."
Following on this, the NY Times on Sunday detailed how Ukraine lost around $1.2 billion to fraud, waste and mismanagement in military procurement activities. This was in 2024 alone, the paper found, based on confidential documents and audits.
The NYT characterized the waste and fraud as a "persistent phenomenon" led by seven large military contractors in Ukraine, all of which kept landing new large contracts despite ongoing fraud investigations into them.
One section of the Times report reads as https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/world/europe/ukraine-war-weapons-fraud-corruption.html:
But even as the officials noticed that weapons were arriving faulty, government audits obtained by The New York Times show, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency continued to award Mr. Shyman’s factory new contracts.
The case reflects a persistent phenomenon of the war in Ukraine. Seven of Ukraine’s top 10 military contractors won new business despite open criminal investigations for fraud, failures to deliver on earlier deals or the arrest of chief executives for corruption, according to the government audits obtained by The Times, court records and Ukrainian news accounts.
The devastating report concludes that in Ukraine, wrongdoing is continually 'rewarded' with new opportunities and contracts, at a moment hundreds of billions in European and US aid continues to get doled out.
You don't see THIS everyday...
Recent polling points to a major mood swing among Ukrainians, suggesting that many have lost faith in Zelensky and would vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity. https://t.co/vXbR8ysjxD
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) https://x.com/ForeignPolicy/status/2096674998731559113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
President Trump has long criticized certain elements of Zelensky's extended rule, even calling him out for resisting calls to hold new national elections, but more recently began to hail 'results' against Russia on the military front, given the persisting long-range drone program which has wreaked havoc on Russian energy infrastructure.
But as the mainstream continues to 'turn' on Zelensky (and possibly the military too), and given more and more instances of a population 'mood swing' - how long does he have? The clock is ticking.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 09/08/2026 - 05:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraines-mood-swing-against-zelensky-widespread-fraud-wartime-protests-unpopular

2026-09-05 13:20:00 GMT

2.3 Million Illegals Gone: America's Immigrant Population Plummets For First Time In A Century
2.3 Million Illegals Gone: America's Immigrant Population Plummets For First Time In A Century
https://modernity.news/2026/09/04/2-3-million-illegals-gone-immigrant-population-plummets-for-first-time-in-a-century/,
The numbers the open-borders crowd swore were impossible are now in black and white.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202026-09-04T130147.548.jpg?itok=MA065afT
A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey finds the illegal immigrant population has fallen by about 2.3 million since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. Another 600,000 legal immigrants have left. The total foreign-born population is down 2.9 million.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202026-09-04T125853.797.jpg?itok=ivpzlKTX
That is the first sustained drop in America's immigrant population in nearly a hundred years.
?? BREAKING — IT'S OFFICIAL: The illegal alien population in the United States has DROPPED by 2,300,000 under President Trump.
Another 600,000 LEGAL immigrants have LEFT the country, marking the largest reduction in the U.S. Immigrant population in a CENTURY!
"We are seeing... https://t.co/xVkO8Y6OCk
— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) https://x.com/ThePatriotOasis/status/2095837643971952826?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
CIS research director Steven A. Camarota and demographer Karen Zeigler tracked the government's monthly household survey from January 2025 through July 2026. The foreign-born total - naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors and illegal immigrants - fell from roughly 53.3 million to 50.5 million.
Camarota's preliminary estimate puts the illegal population at 13.5 million in July, down from 15.8 million when Trump took the oath.
"We've never seen anything quite like this before," Camarota told The Washington Times. "This is big and sustained, as best as we can tell."
He added: "It is a fundamental change, and it's profound."
The same dataset shows what happened during the Biden years. From January 2021 to January 2025 the foreign-born population jumped 8.3 million - the largest four-year increase in American history.
Catch-and-release, mass parole, asylum abuse and a wide-open southern border did exactly what critics said they would do. The survey now shows that surge going into reverse.
CIS is not counting plane seats. It is measuring net change: new arrivals minus deportations, voluntary departures, legalizations and deaths. That is why the 2.3 million illegal decline can sit beside larger Homeland Security departure figures.
At the one-year mark of Trump's second term, DHS said nearly 3 million illegal immigrants had left the country, including about 675,000 formal removals and 2.2 million self-deportations. CIS is looking at who is still here after new arrivals are subtracted.
Latin American non-citizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for the entire drop in the foreign-born count. That group overlaps heavily with the illegal population. Naturalized-citizen numbers actually rose by about 680,000 over the same stretch. The collapse is among non-citizens who should not have been waved in.
Interior ICE removals more than tripled compared with the tail end of the Biden term. Voluntary departures tied to enforcement jumped as well. Camarota put it simply in the CIS release: "The best data we have shows an enormous decrease in the total foreign-born population, with most of the falloff among illegal immigrants."
He added, "Regaining control of the border and robust interior enforcement has partly undone the huge increase in the illegal immigration that took place during the border surge."
Only 44 percent of those who left were workers. That goes some way to explain why the national jobs numbers have not imploded the way corporate lobbyists predicted. U.S.-born employment has continued to rise even as immigrant workers in the household survey fell by a little less than 1.3 million. Some regional pockets - construction in South Texas is the example Camarota cited - have felt it. The country as a whole has not.
"It's nothing to panic about," he told the Times. "First of all, we're mostly losing low-income workers. But like anything else, it can create challenges. And it creates winners and losers."
Workers competing for jobs and housing are the winners. "On balance, I think it's a good deal for the country because I think most people are more worried about wages, housing prices, congestion and impact on schools and hospitals."
Census analysts had already flagged a "historic" drop in net international migration when they reported that overall population growth slowed to 0.5 percent from mid-2024 to mid-2025 - a window that captured only the first months of the new enforcement regime.
Camarota now says the country's total population is likely heading toward an unprecedented decline. That is what happens when an 8.3 million artificial surge is no longer being pumped through the border.
The media spent four years insisting the border was "secure" and that anyone who noticed otherwise was a bigot. Then Joe Scarborough, trying to score points on Trump's deportation totals, walked straight into the truth on his own show.
"They should know when to take the victory. They could have been campaigning on closed southern border this whole time!" Scarborough said. Then: "You're never going to get the [deportation] numbers that Joe Biden had, right? You're not going to get those numbers because Joe Biden and his administration were letting in so many illegal immigrants. It was very easy to sweep up 5,000 right on the border and send them back."
Nobody cornered him. He said it unprompted.
That is the whole scam in one clip. Biden-era "removals" were a revolving door at the Rio Grande. Trump closed the door. Crossings collapsed. The population inside the country started falling for the first time in a generation. The same networks that called that outcome "impossible" or "racist" are now reduced to quibbling over methodology while the survey they usually treat as gospel shows a 2.9 million decline.
The drop did not happen by accident. It happened because the new administration treated Temporary Protected Status as what it had become: a backdoor amnesty, not a temporary shelter.
A late Biden-era internal memo, exposed in July, laid out a plan to expand TPS in the final days of that presidency in a way that would have locked in de facto protection for more than 3 million foreign nationals and boxed the incoming administration into years of litigation. The scheme was designed to run out the clock through activist courts after voters had already chosen mass deportations.
Trump's team has been ripping that wiring out. The Supreme Court cleared the path to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians. Extensions that were never meant to be permanent are being terminated where the statute allows. The people who wrote that memo were not confused about the election result. They were trying to cancel it with paperwork.
Once TPS for Haitians lapsed, ICE moved from roughly one deportation flight a month to a weekly schedule. Internal documents reported by The New York Times described the ramp-up after the Court allowed the humanitarian program to be cancelled. Flights into Cap-Haïtien have already carried criminals alongside other removable aliens. DHS has publicly flagged deportees with records that include sex crimes involving children.
The press response was automatic. Outlets that spent years ignoring gang control of Port-au-Prince suddenly discovered Haiti the week shackled men appeared on a Homeland Security video walking onto a plane. The spin is always the same: enforcement is the crisis, not the policy that imported hundreds of thousands of people the statute never contemplated as permanent residents.
Haiti is violent. That is not an argument for turning Temporary Protected Status into a forever visa. It is an argument for not running a four-year parole-and-release machine that dumped the consequences on Springfield, New York, and South Florida while daring anyone to notice.
The same enforcement machine is now using third-country removals for people whose home governments will not take them back, or who have withholding orders that bar return to a specific country but not removal from the United States.
Over a ten-day stretch in late August, internal documents obtained by CBS News showed three ICE flights carrying more than 100 deportees to eight African countries: Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Nationals on those flights included people from Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Nepal, Turkey and Venezuela - not just Africans being sent "home."
Liberia has publicly agreed to take a large number of third-country deportees. Equatorial Guinea has already received dozens. Rights groups and legacy outlets have filled pages with horror copy about Level 4 travel advisories and "chain refoulement." What they will not say is why these flights exist: years of catch-and-release created a population of people with final orders who cannot be dumped back on a country that refuses the plane.
If a judge bars return to Caracas or Kabul, that order is about that country. It is not a lifetime lease in Houston. The prior administration built the backlog. This one is draining it.
DHS, asked for comment on the Times piece, sent an earlier release on collapsed border crossings. That is the other half of the story. You cannot shrink a 15.8 million illegal population if 10,000 more people walk in every week. Trump stopped the inflow first. Then he started removing the stock.
For four years the line was that immigration was a force of nature. "Root causes." Climate. Violence. Poverty. Anything except the obvious: if you fly people in, parole them, hand them a court date years out and dare ICE to find them in a sanctuary city, they stay. If you seal the border, end the parole pipelines, revoke the TPS expansions and put officers in the interior, they leave.
Jim Jordan put the prior era in one sentence at a recent hearing: a systematic plan to open the border, park millions in sanctuary jurisdictions, and then starve the agency that removes them. Voters watched it. They voted against it. The CPS is now recording the result.
The remaining illegal population is still enormous. CIS's 13.5 million is a decline, not a victory lap. DHS has used higher starting estimates than CIS. Either way, millions of people with no right to be in the US are still there. The difference is that the direction of travel has changed for the first time since the Depression.
Employers who built business models on an endless supply of illegal labor will complain. School districts that padded enrollment will complain. NGOs that lived on the casework will complain. Networks that spent half a decade calling enforcement a moral panic will complain loudest of all, then run another Haiti-video segment and call it news.
The households competing for apartments, emergency-room beds and entry-level wages are not complaining. They are watching the first government in a generation treat the immigration statutes as if they were written to be enforced.
America is not a holding pen for the Western Hemisphere. It is not a third-country processing hub with a welfare office attached. The survey data now shows what happens when a president acts like that is true: the illegal population falls, legal inflows tighten, and the foreign-born total drops by millions in eighteen months.
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https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 09/05/2026 - 09:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/23-million-illegals-gone-americas-immigrant-population-plummets-first-time-century

2026-09-04 03:00:00 GMT

China Maps South China Sea Floor At Twice The Resolution Of Global Models
China Maps South China Sea Floor At Twice The Resolution Of Global Models
China says it has dramatically improved its ability to chart the ocean floor, producing detailed seabed maps that outperform widely used global models in both resolution and accuracy, according to the https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3365415/chinese-team-maps-south-china-sea-floor-twice-resolution-western-models?utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GME-O-enlz-uv&UUID=403513fb-bc58-440f-9d18-5088b7f47b84&utm_content=20260903_China_Science_FW&CMCampaignID=cef3b807229d3b70926c484aa08d4c18.
The advance is the product of more than two decades of work by a research group led by Professor Wu Ziyin at the Second Institute of Oceanography. Rather than relying on a single new survey, the scientists found ways to reconcile huge amounts of older information collected by different vessels, instruments and mapping systems. The result is a much sharper digital picture of the underwater landscape around China, including parts of the contested South China Sea.
Researchers say their maps offer roughly double the resolution of leading global alternatives and can be two to five times more accurate. That improvement can reveal smaller underwater formations and pinpoint their locations more precisely...information with applications ranging from offshore energy and earthquake research to navigation, resource exploration and military operations.
The strategic importance of knowing what lies beneath the surface became particularly clear in 2021, when the USS Connecticut struck an underwater mountain while operating submerged in the South China Sea. Eleven sailors were injured and the nuclear-powered submarine suffered significant damage. While a US Navy investigation faulted the crew’s voyage planning, the incident also illustrated the dangers posed by gaps in existing seabed charts.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-09-03%20at%2008.13.50.jpg?itok=7pEOWxdR
SCMP https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3365415/chinese-team-maps-south-china-sea-floor-twice-resolution-western-models?utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GME-O-enlz-uv&UUID=403513fb-bc58-440f-9d18-5088b7f47b84&utm_content=20260903_China_Science_FW&CMCampaignID=cef3b807229d3b70926c484aa08d4c18 that China has meanwhile worked to reduce its dependence on foreign ocean-survey technology. The program produced domestically designed multi-beam sonar equipment along with autonomous underwater vehicles capable of surveying at depths approaching 6,000 metres. Wu said China had once depended heavily on imported systems but now produces comparable equipment at a fraction of the cost.
“Our equipment breaks the monopoly of Western countries, with leading performance,” Wu said.
The broader project has also catalogued 769 underwater geographic features, many given names inspired by Chinese history, mythology and literature. China plans to publish an English-language version of its seabed atlas, while its marine surveying technology has already found commercial and government applications and has reportedly been exported to Russia, Japan and Singapore.
Wu characterized the transition from foreign dependence to domestic production as “a true qualitative leap.”
The achievement comes as much of the ocean floor remains surprisingly poorly documented. Less than 30% of the world's oceans have been surveyed in detail, meaning the majority of Earth's underwater terrain is still inadequately mapped.
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Thu, 09/03/2026 - 23:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-maps-south-china-sea-floor-twice-resolution-global-models

2026-09-03 00:30:00 GMT

Take-Two Slides Into Correction As Grand Theft Auto Leak Investigation Intensifies
Take-Two Slides Into Correction As Grand Theft Auto Leak Investigation Intensifies
Take-Two Interactive, whose Rockstar Games studio is developing Grand Theft Auto VI, was hit by a series of leaks last month ahead of the fall release. Bank of America analysts described the leaked footage as "https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/take-two-tumbles-most-months-bofa-calls-grand-theft-auto-reveal-impressive-unlikely," while TTWO shares have tumbled into a correction since the leaks surfaced online.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/ttwo_0.png?itok=GqDx6gV8
The leaked clips reportedly expose plot details, character scenes, and gameplay mechanics, prompting Rockstar Games to call the leaks "gut-wrenching" and warn that some of the game's surprises may have been spoiled.
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According to the Dutch news publication https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-says-gta-6-leak-probe-is-rapidly-evolving-wants-new-discord-demands-under-seal/, TTWO has intensified its search for the person who leaked GTA VI, asking a federal court to seal its latest demand for Discord user data, as the company describes its investigation as "rapidly evolving."
The new filing came Friday, one day after Rockstar Games streamed an extended GTA 6 preview on Netflix and months before the blockbuster title's planned November 19 release.
In mid-August, an account named "Cyberleek" began circulating the leaks. TTWO responded with takedown notices and a series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoenas targeting Discord, Microsoft, X, and YouTube.
Unlike a conventional lawsuit, a DMCA subpoena allows a copyright holder to seek identifying information from an online platform before suing the alleged infringer.
In the new https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.671042/gov.uscourts.nysd.671042.7.0.pdf, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, TTWO said its "investigation of the infringement at issue is rapidly evolving and ongoing," adding, "Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information."
On Monday, the SDNY granted the subpoena request. Last month, https://www.pcmag.com/news/take-two-interactive-subpoenas-microsoft-to-find-gta-6-leaker seeking information from Discord, Microsoft, Google, and X as the GTA VI leaks went viral on social media.
TorrentFreak pointed out that TTWO withdrew its YouTube request after facing pushback from a judge.
US technology publication PCMag reported that the leaker, CyberLeek, "has gone silent after posting what appears to be the prologue to GTA 6."
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Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/take-two-slides-correction-grand-theft-auto-leak-investigation-intensifies

2026-08-29 23:50:00 GMT

What Happened To The So-Called AI Job Apocalypse?
What Happened To The So-Called AI Job Apocalypse?
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/authors/joe_bertolami/,
A recent report https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-really-happening-jobs-separating-ai-hype-reality reviewed the latest employment data and found that, so far, AI has not resulted in large scale job destruction. Meanwhile, https://m.economictimes.com/jobs/hr-policies-trends/ai-skills-power-nearly-two-thirds-of-new-gcc-hiring-in-india/articleshow/132110741.cms reveals that AI is actively fueling unprecedented job creation, with AI skills now powering nearly two-thirds of new Global Capability Center hiring. Together, these recent dispatches from the front lines of the labor market point to a calming reality: the much-dreaded AI job apocalypse hasn't materialized as a sudden extinction event.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/709320.jpeg_80.jpg?itok=_cvU3vQ-
The (sometimes buried) lede: AI is delivering real impact, and it is broadly changing the nature of work. But disruption is not a new phenomenon. The economy has always dismantled old work to build new work. What determines whether this evolution feels like progress or collapse isn't just the number of jobs lost, it's the speed at which that loss hits the labor market.
In 1995, Bill Gates circulated a memo titled "https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/may/26/," calling the web the most important computing development since the IBM PC. If the internet was a tidal wave, artificial intelligence is a tsunami. It is arguably the biggest advancement in computing since the Turing machine. Yet, from a distance, it's difficult to appreciate the speed of this wave, leading many to wonder when the broader economy will truly feel its impact.
To put this in context, we must understand the historical pattern already visible in the labor market. Combining decades of data from the U.S. https://www.bls.gov/ and the https://fred.stlouisfed.org/ yields a remarkably consistent story of overlapping curves: job loss and job creation. Over the last two decades, nearly 20 million U.S. jobs vanished in disrupted sectors. Over the same period, total payrolls grew by https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS. That equates to roughly 1.3 new jobs for every one destroyed. Classic examples include jobs in video rentals (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPULN532282W200000000) and word processing (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254503100A) which largely vanished, but new work sprung up at the same time in areas like data processing (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPUJN518W200000000) and warehousing (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES4349300001) to support the digital economy.
The data also reveals an early signal that separates an absorbable decline from a brutal collapse: the disruption half-life, or how long an occupation takes to lose half its peak employment. Across the largest technological disruptions of the last few decades, the median half-life is about 10 years. Fast disruptions, like photo processing, take one to five years. Typical disruptions take eight to 13 years. And time is the ultimate shock absorber. When the economy transitions over ten years it feels like progress rather than a fast collapse, because it gives older workers time to retire and younger workers time to prepare.
If we track the most AI-exposed occupations-customer-service reps, IT support, telemarketers-since modern LLMs arrived in 2022, the early data is measured. After three years the current disruption looks closer to "typical" than a fast collapse, even before discounting the effects of offshoring, automation, and post-COVID corrections. This is https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/trends/amaras-law-and-tech-future playing out in real time: we tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. The dire early warnings have given way to more cautious rhetoric. In 2025, Anthropic's Dario Amodei https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic AI could erase half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. By 2026, https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/sam-altman-and-anthropics-ceo-just-walked-back-their-dire-ai-layoff-warnings/91351549 productivity, economic growth, and the continued demand for human labor.
However, looking solely at total employment numbers masks a dangerous structural threat. Current evidence does not foretell the end of human labor, but AI is quietly breaking the mechanism by which we create experienced workers.
Software engineering is the canary in the coal mine. By most aggregate measures, employment looks stable; https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm in June 2026, and groups like the Yale Budget Lab find https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/ai-probably-not-yet-reason-labor-market-weakening on exposed occupations' absolute job totals. But the composition is shifting underneath our feet. Per https://apnews.com/article/college-graduates-job-market-unemployment-c5e881d0a5c069de08085a47fa58f90f, junior developer postings are down roughly 40% in four years. Employment for 22-to-27-year-old computer and math grads has fallen 8% since 2022, even as older grads in the same fields have edged up. This same erosion is surfacing wherever entry-level work once meant routine tasks: paralegals, junior analysts, and first-line support.
The paradox is that these industries keep growing even as their entry-level doors narrow. The BLS still projects https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm through 2034. But that projection relies on a pipeline that turns juniors into senior talent-precisely the pipeline now being choked off.
The reason lies in the nature of the work. Software development is a process of judgement and accountability: deciding what to build, executing it, and owning the result. AI is fluent at the middle layer-the well-specified, routine coding that once served as a junior's apprenticeship. But it remains far weaker at the judgment required on either side. The tasks AI automates are precisely the ones juniors were hired to learn on.
This is not merely an academic concern; it is a capital allocation problem. Misjudge the speed of disruption and you risk premature layoffs followed by a scramble to rehire, or funding the transition years too late, leaving you with a critical talent shortage when the leadership pipeline runs dry.
The challenge of the next decade isn't surviving the end of work. It is training the next generation of experts when the traditional paths to apprenticeship no longer exist. And businesses are beginning to realize this new reality as demand for AI continues to grow. IBM is https://www.ibm.com/think/news/entry-level-roles-get-reset-ai, redesigning those roles around the oversight of AI and systems thinking rather than cutting them. Rebuilding the entry-level on-ramp is now a competitive imperative.
Junior roles are not charity; they are talent capex. If AI creates more work than it destroys, companies will still need people who know how to run it, judge it, and fix it. AI may be the broadest technology yet, but that breadth is its best reason for optimism. A general-purpose technology seeds new work across every sector. The firms that recognize this, protect their entry-level pipelines, and keep training now are the ones who will own the senior labor market later.
Joe Bertolami is the Co-Founder and CTO at https://cliftonai.com/, an agentic context engine for investment research. Previously at Snap, Google, and Microsoft, with a couple of startups in between. He holds an M.B.A. from the University of Washington and likes using AI to write code, stories, and music, which he posts at https://www.bertolami.com/.
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Sat, 08/29/2026 - 19:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/what-happened-so-called-ai-job-apocalypse

2026-08-28 06:45:00 GMT

CIA Chief's Moscow Trip Was About Iran, Not A NATO Warning: Estonia's Ex-President
CIA Chief's Moscow Trip Was About Iran, Not A NATO Warning: Estonia's Ex-President
Speculation has abounded over the nature of CIA Director John Ratcliffe's surprise Tuesday trip to Moscow and what was conveyed to top Kremlin intelligence officials.
The 'official' Washington narrative of what was behind the trip was issued on Wednesday in the pages of https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/cia-chiefs-surprise-moscow-trip-was-to-warn-russia-not-to-attack-nato-c2d997f3, which laid out Ratcliffe delivered a "warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/ivesest.jpg?itok=OeKqQK3w
Since then, media reports and pundits have mused that nearby small 'eastern flank' countries like Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania could be prime targets for some kind of Russian military action, at a moment Europe's support to Kiev has steadily ramped up.
Surprisingly, on Thursday former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves (president: 2006 – 2016), who remains influential voice in the European security debate and has served on an EU task force, told a European outlet that the CIA director's meeting was more likely centered on the Iran conflict and not on warning against attacking Europe.
Ilves in a freshly published interview with https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/27/cia-boss-moscow-trip-was-about-iran-not-the-baltics-ex-estonian-president-tells-euronews said he had "severe doubts" that concerns over aggression against the Baltic states were the reason for Ratcliffe's visit.
"What is the real problem for the United States right now? The real problem is Iran, the fact that the Russians are giving targeting information to the Iranians," he said.
"Those are real problems for the United States, and that would be sufficient to warrant the director of the CIA to go to Moscow to tell them to back off."
US intelligence and Trump officials for months have alleged that Russia is likely helping Iranian forces with identifying and locating US military assets in the region. At times throughout Operation Epic Fury, Tehran appears to have even targeted CIA stations.
The bulk of American military assets and bases in the Gulf countries have suffered severe damage earlier in the conflict, resulting in a Pentagon troop drawback to safer areas. This is indeed a big deal if it is the case that Russia or China (or both) have handed the Iranians intel to help push back American bases and forces.
Former Estonian leader Ilves further explained that in reality there had been "no change in the US’s threat assessment for the Baltic states."
Yesterday CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow. The visit was brief but quickly fueled widespread discussion and speculation.
Official statements from Russia and Washington remain silent on the reason for the trip. Details about his counterparts remain unavailable as… https://t.co/0W7t0i72Pq
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) https://x.com/BowesChay/status/2092703682483655114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"If the purpose was to go and genuinely tell the Russians not to do anything in the Baltic states, as was claimed, then there would be some kind of activity here," he https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/27/cia-boss-moscow-trip-was-about-iran-not-the-baltics-ex-estonian-president-tells-euronews.
Also, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna announced Thursday that the country’s threat assessment had "not changed". Tsahkna said: "We remain vigilant, but Estonia’s threat assessment has not changed."
Ilves concluded in his comments that the official narrative is but cover for the real reason underlying Ratcliff's visit.
Skepticism has been widely voiced among independent journalists and pundits:
CIA chief urgently flew to Moscow in the middle of America’s losing war against Russia’s ally Iran, and the reason had nothing to do with a desperate attempt to turn Russia against Iran, but rather “Putin could try…limited assault on an allied country in the next few years”? 🤔 https://t.co/WmNYnGstfo
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) https://x.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/2092756465618428144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"I don’t think it’s a false flag, but rather just kind of make something up to divert attention from what is the real problem that the US faces right now," the Estonian ex-President said.
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Fri, 08/28/2026 - 02:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cia-chiefs-moscow-trip-was-about-iran-not-nato-warning-estonias-ex-president

2026-08-28 00:30:00 GMT

Federal Court Dismisses Musk's X Lawsuit Against New York Law Forcing Platforms To Define Speech
Federal Court Dismisses Musk's X Lawsuit Against New York Law Forcing Platforms To Define Speech
A Trump-appointed judge just dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X seeking to void a New York state law requiring social media companies to disclose how they define and monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, foreign political interference and disinformation.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/former-twitter-manager-elon-musk.jpg?itok=uaGVdV8z
U.S. District Judge John Cronan in Manhattan rejected X’s argument that the Stop Hiding Hate Act violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment by exposing it to lawsuits and big fines unless it disclosed "highly sensitive and controversial speech" that the state found objectionable.
Additionally, Cronan dismissed the case with prejudice, prohibiting X from refiling an updated claim on the same issue.
New York Attorney General Letitia James formally filed for the case to be dismissed in November 2025, saying the law helped consumers understand what to expect from social media, without blocking platforms from ‌speaking out or exercising their own judgment when moderating content.
Most notably, X Corp. pointed to a separate lawsuit it brought against California’s Assembly Bill 587, which it argued was “identical in all material respects” to S895B.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees California, held that AB 587’s content-category reporting provisions compelled non-commercial speech about contested political topics, which triggered strict scrutiny of the law under the First Amendment.
However, Cronan wrote that “[t]he First Amendment poses no obstacle to New York’s law."
He added:
“Businesses might not always want to share every detail about the products or services they offer. But when the government requires those businesses to speak truthfully about their offerings, the First Amendment typically allows for that kind of disclosure requirement.”
Musk’s company also said it already dedicates resources to regulating “hateful conduct” and that this would not be recognized under New York’s categories of “hate speech,” “racism,” or “extremism.” It also listed its efforts to regulate what it calls “manipulated, or out-of-context media that may result in widespread confusion on public issues, impact public safety, or cause serious harm,” but that would not be recognized by the New York law.
Nevertheless, the law was struck down on First Amendment grounds.
In this case, Cronan dismissed the California case (X Corp vs Bonta) stating that the level of scrutiny applicable was “Zauderer scrutiny,” which is “more relaxed than ordinary intermediate or strict scrutiny.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202026-08-27T143246.153.jpg?itok=Vx3GUw-p
Under thehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zauderer_v._Office_of_Disciplinary_Counsel_of_Supreme_Court_of_Ohio, the government can usually force a business to state purely factual, uncontroversial information about what it sells, so long as the requirement is reasonably related to preventing consumer confusion and is not unduly burdensome.
Calorie counts, ingredient lists, and “you may still owe costs if you lose” in a lawyer ad are the classic examples.
Cronan put the Stop Hiding Hate reports in that box, analogized them to menu-labeling, and applied the relaxed standard.
He also held Section 230 does not preempt a reporting duty that attaches to incomplete or false filings rather than to the moderation decisions themselves.
The problem is the categories.
The law does not just say “publish your existing terms of service.”
It requires platforms to state whether and how they define “hate speech or racism,” “extremism or radicalization,” “disinformation or misinformation,” “harassment,” and “foreign political interference,” then report enforcement data sliced by those buckets.
However, those labels are not commercial product specs, they are contested political and legal concepts.
Platforms that refuse the state’s taxonomy, use different terms (“hateful conduct,” “violent speech,” “synthetic media”), or treat some of those categories as viewpoint-laden rather than objective, are being forced to translate their editorial judgments into the state’s vocabulary under threat of $15,000-a-day fines.
That is closer to compelled speech about contested public issues than to “this yogurt has 140 calories.”
A Trump-appointed SDNY judge reaching the opposite result from a Ninth Circuit panel is not a partisan surprise; it is a circuit split on a hard First Amendment question.
However, choosing to rule with prejudice” and no leave to amend is aggressive.
X’s theory is not frivolous; a sister circuit already accepted a version of it, as we detailed above.
Dismissing the case so that X cannot replead after discovery or after further appellate development in Bonta treats a close constitutional question as settled when it is not.
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Thu, 08/27/2026 - 20:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/federal-court-dismisses-musks-x-lawsuit-against-new-york-law-forcing-platforms-define

2026-08-27 18:40:00 GMT

New Jersey May Pay Home Battery Owners To Help Grid When Demand Surges
New Jersey May Pay Home Battery Owners To Help Grid When Demand Surges
New Jersey officials are weighing a plan that would allow homeowners to use batteries as emergency energy backups and a way to earn extra money. Under the proposal, storage systems installed at customers' homes could join a https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/sonnen-virtual-power-plant-renewable-energy/, helping the grid when electricity demand surges and paying participants for taking part.
On July 15, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities issued a straw proposal for a two-year, technology-neutral VPP. The state's electric distribution companies would oversee it, and it would need to launch no later than July 1, 2027 https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-eligible-new-jersey-vpp-program-begins-to-take-shape/826969/ reported.
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In its transitional form, https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/new-jersey-home-batteries-virtual-power-plant/notes that the program would cover customer-sited batteries as well as other distributed energy resources. Officials are also looking ahead to a market-based, open-access VPP tariff for 2029 and beyond. Where rules allow, participants could combine payments for local grid services with wholesale market revenue from PJM Interconnection.
For NJ residents curious what a battery setup could look like for your own home, it may be worth exploring https://links.thecooldown.com/energysage-batteryto compare home battery storage options and get competitive installation estimates. EnergySage has teamed up with the electrification brand Qmerit to guarantee you get the best price on home battery storage solutions. Those who want a small-scale backup option, https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/pila-home-battery-discount-portable-power/is worth checking out. Its plug-and-play batteries are priced at a fraction of what whole-home backup systems cost.
For homeowners, battery storage is one of the best tools for riding out blackouts because it can keep critical equipment such as lights, refrigerators, medical devices, and internet service operating when grid power fails.
Batteries can also trim power bills by saving solar energy or low-cost electricity for use later, and they can help households move closer to off-grid living or rely less on their utilities.
As opposed to large power plants, https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/how-does-a-virtual-power-plant-work/ let utilities and grid operators draw on many smaller devices at the same time. That can ease pressure on a grid during peak-demand periods and reduce pollution derived from fossil-fuel-based plants.
The BPU said any program should be guided by principles including fair design, technology-neutral rules, equal access for aggregators, and coordination among programs so participants are not compensated twice for the same service, Utility Dive reported.
The straw proposal carries out a directive in Executive Order No. 2, which Gov. Mikie Sherrill issued in January. It called for a VPP program to be created within 180 days and pushed for broader participation by distributed energy resources in the PJM Interconnection capacity market. At a July 30 stakeholder meeting, Tim Fagan, manager for planning and evaluation at Public Service Enterprise Group New Jersey, said the utility is developing a VPP offer that would include an upfront incentive of roughly $5,000 for an 8-kilowatt residential battery.
Participants could cover the remaining installation cost through an on-bill repayment program if they agree to allow a battery to discharge during peak-shaving events, Utility Dive reported.
Andrew Bayne, manager for energy efficiency programs at Pepco Holdings, said Delmarva Power's Delaware "bring your own battery" pilot is providing participants with an estimated $1,080 per year in performance payments sent by direct deposit instead of bill credits.
Such programs are examining how often batteries can be dispatched, which compensation level is enough to keep customers enrolled, and how straightforward the signup process must be for household participation.
Bayne said utilities still need to know whether "that juice [is] worth the squeeze for the customer — is that $1,000 a year worth it? … These devices behave differently when you call upon them."
In the latest update, UtilityDive reports that eligible customers of Atlantic City Electric, Jersey Central Power & Light, Public Service Electric & Gas and Rockland Electric could receive up to $200/kW per year over a 10-year term to dispatch energy stored in small-scale batteries during periods of grid stress under the https://www.nj.gov/bpu/newsroom/2026/approved/20260819.html?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd.1787851901926 last week by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
The proposal targets up to 150 MW of behind-the-meter energy storage capacity that can reliably discharge during dispatch events called by the four electric distribution companies, which will administer capacity enrolled in their service territories. The BPU will host a https://www.nj.gov/bpu/pdf/publicnotice/Stakeholder%20Notice.pdf on Sept. 3 to solicit feedback.
The procurement is the first capacity block of the second phase of the Garden State Energy Storage Program, a statutory framework that requires New Jersey to deploy 2 GW of bulk and distributed energy storage capacity by 2030. The BPU is halfway to meeting that goal after procuring a https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-jersey-announces-355-mw-storage-procurement-solicits-645-mw-more/814971/ in the program’s two-block first phase earlier this year.
In a statement, BPU President Ben Hertz-Shargel tied the Aug. 17 proposal to an executive order signed by Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill shortly after taking office on Jan. 20. It https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-jersey-gov-sherrill-orders-electric-bill-credits-development-of-vpp-p/810085/ to issue solicitations for new solar and storage capacity and to begin developing a virtual power plant program open to third-party energy suppliers.
“The Garden State Energy Storage Program advances Governor Sherrill’s Executive Order No. 2 by growing energy storage deployments in-state to meet growing energy demand while improving affordability and resilience,” Hertz-Shargel said.
Residential and small commercial batteries would be eligible to participate in a temporary, technology-neutral VPP program that will begin next year and run for two years before transitioning into a market-based, open-access VPP tariff in 2029, the BPU https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-eligible-new-jersey-vpp-program-begins-to-take-shape/826969/ in a separate straw proposal.
The BPU refers to the capacity discussed in last week’s straw proposal as “Distributed Storage Capacity Block 1.” Its primary objective is to reduce peak demand on New Jersey’s electric distribution system through coordinated discharge, which “will help avoid future capacity obligations and system costs, thereby accruing savings to all residential customers,” according to the straw proposal.
The proposal envisions the four electric distribution companies calling dispatch events to mitigate local congestion, distribution-level thermal constraints and other abnormal grid conditions. The BPU said it looked at similar programs in other states and conducted its own gap analysis to arrive at the $200/kW maximum annual incentive, which it said factors in “the private resilience value of residential energy storage systems.”
“This decision reflects [BPU staff’s] assessment that many consumers have some willingness to pay for resilience and thus do not require an incentive high enough to render the net cost of battery back-up power [to] zero,” the BPU said.
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Thu, 08/27/2026 - 14:40
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/new-jersey-may-pay-home-battery-owners-help-grid-when-demand-surges

2026-08-27 09:45:00 GMT

Global Youth Unemployment And Inactivity Inch Up Again
Global Youth Unemployment And Inactivity Inch Up Again
For two years in a row, https://www.statista.com/topics/9225/unemployment-worldwide/and inactivity among youths aged 15 to 24 has inched up again across world regions.
As seen in data by the International Labor Organization, the coronavirus pandemic caused these rates to go up in 2020, but the situation improved again gradually, in 2022 and 2023 falling below pre-pandemic levels.
But, https://www.statista.com/chart/36550/youth-unemployment-and-inactivity-rates-among-15-to-24-year-olds/, since then, rates have been on a slow upswing once more, reaching 12.4 percent of https://www.statista.com/topics/11937/youth-unemployment-worldwide/ and 20 percent of youths overall who are either unemployed or not engaging in any activity like education, training, employment or looking for work.
https://www.statista.com/chart/36550/youth-unemployment-and-inactivity-rates-among-15-to-24-year-olds/
You will find more infographics at https://www.statista.com/chartoftheday/
According to the recently released ILO report https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/9789220437612_PDFA_Web_ENG.pdf, progress made in the area of youth employment post-Covid has come to an "abrupt halt" as uncertainty and fragility have taken over global economies, GDP growth has remained subdued and inflation has been high. The report also points out that there has not only been a deterioration in the quantity, but also the quality of jobs for youths globally, meaning that many are underemployed or work jobs that don't match their qualifications. Especially the group of NEETs (who are neither in employment, education or training) is made up of a high number of women and girls, who tend to focus on housework and family care responsibilities more often.
12.4 percent unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 24 equal 67 million individuals worldwide, while the NEET rate of 20 percent translates to 257 million youths. Unemployment rates were higher among young men, while NEET status was more widespread among young women.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/27/2026 - 05:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/global-youth-unemployment-and-inactivity-inch-again

2026-08-27 00:32:00 GMT

US Officials Reveal Reason For CIA Chief's Surprise Moscow Visit
US Officials Reveal Reason For CIA Chief's Surprise Moscow Visit
Update(2030ET): The Wall Street Journal has late in the day Wednesday revealed the reason for CIA John Ratcliffe's surprise visit to Moscow yesterday where he met with top Kremlin intelligence leaders. It was to warn against attacking NATO countries, says the https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/cia-chiefs-surprise-moscow-trip-was-to-warn-russia-not-to-attack-nato-c2d997f3?mod=hp_lead_pos2:
The https://www.wsj.com/world/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-makes-surprise-trip-to-moscow-c1c68fa6?mod=article_inline by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-intel-finds-putin-could-test-natos-resolve-with-limited-incursion-e3b02e2c?mod=article_inline by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in https://www.wsj.com/topics/place/ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Some pundits have suggested a weaker Baltic nation like Estonia, which has long issued provocative anti-Moscow statements of its own, could come under some kind of limited attack.
The report further suggests Putin could be ready to seize on NATO's munitions weakness - given the drain amid the Iran war and after over four years of constantly supplying Ukraine.
"A shortfall in critical Western munitions, driven by expenditures in the Iran war, also could factor into Putin’s thinking," the report continues. "The U.S. has degraded its stockpile of certain weapons because of transfers to Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, as well as the Iran conflict."
But it also remains that for years Western officials have issued hyped statements claiming Russia wants to somehow invade or take over parts of Europe, but there's as yet been no such action, nor any evidence of such intent.
* * *
Update(1505ET): In the wake of yesterday's unusual visit by the Director of the CIA to Moscow for mystery 2-hour talks, Bloomberg says that President Putin is preparing for a major escalate against https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-26/putin-moves-to-escalate-war-in-ukraine-with-talks-at-dead-end:
Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have reached a dead end, according to three people close to the Kremlin.
For now, Russia is weighing an intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, including the center of the capital, and infrastructure targets in other Ukrainian cities, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
While the original Bloomberg TV reporting appears just speculation based on what already seemed the current trend on the ground, oil had climbed back on the news:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-26_11-54-33.png?itok=bMLdeqZ5
* * *
An IRGC spokesman has announced Wednesday that Iran and Oman have reached agreements on their share of the Strait of Hormuz and its revenues, according toTasnim news agency. So essentially the "fee" scheme has been set. There's talk of reopening the strait on an "interim" basis, Bloomberg says.
"We entered into negotiations with Oman about a month ago and have reached results that have been accepted by both sides," the official https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/8/26/iran-war-live-iran-says-hormuz-remains-closed-despite-oman-rout-deal?update=4886313. "Agreements have been reached on the share of each country in the waters of the strait and the share of Iran and Oman in its revenues," the statement continued, while also alleging that negotiations were previously delayed only due to the US obstructing negotiations.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/boatsstrait.jpg?itok=vkAs1mWG
Tehran is still insisting on the United States lifting its naval blockade of the country's ports. However, it seems that for now at least Tehran is open to some level of negotiations, or at least seems content to see where this current period of rare calm leads.
This is evident in the latest words of Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who argued Wednesday that any negotiations with the US don't equate to retreat from Iran's demands.
"Negotiation, in my view, has neither intrinsic value nor is it a taboo; it is neither absolutely good nor absolutely evil," he https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/8/26/iran-war-live-iran-says-hormuz-remains-closed-despite-oman-rout-deal?update=4886313 in a letter responding to more hardline critics, IRNA reports.
He insisted this does not mean abandoning resistance to US-Israeli aggression. "If necessary, dialogue, too, according to this logic, is the same arena of struggle and resistance; neither a replacement for it nor a sign of retreat from it," he said.
Ghaliban further suggested this is being done by the Islamic Republic from position of strength while holding on to the nation's "dignity, wisdom and interests."
Meanwhile, it seems Washington is also in no mood to rush back into military action, following the Monday announcement by Scott Bessent of the Economic D-Day action against Iran, which is to including secondary sanctions on any country found not complying.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told several foreign officials in recent days that "for the time being" the US is not planning to initiate any new strikes against Iran, but instead the focus is on other means of pressure, especially the sanctions initiative, Axios reports. According to https://www.axios.com/2026/08/25/rubio-iran-war-hormuz-oil:
- The U.S. official said that while Rubio made clear that the U.S. isn't planning a return to major combat operations, he didn't rule out https://www.axios.com/2026/07/29/us-airstrikes-iran-trump-resume if Iran attacks first.
- Another U.S. official said the https://www.axios.com/2026/08/25/hormuz-mines-remove-oil-iran-trump from the Strait of Hormuz by the U.S. Navy is a watershed moment in the war, largely neutralizing one of Iran's main sources of leverage.
Also on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Omani counterpart Badr Albusaidi confirmed their further work on the “interim framework” aimed at resuming shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a joint statement.
State television has indicated Iran and Oman agreed that the new transit corridor would enter through Iranian territorial waters, with part of the exit route also passing through them. The corridor will span roughly seven miles.
On this and other headlines, oil prices continue to fall...
- Oil extends declines as Iran, Oman continue finalizing talks to reopen Hormuz
- Satellite image shows surge in Iraq’s Persian Gulf oil loadings
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-26_06-07-00.jpg?itok=afICVeSs
A busy day in the Gulf of Oman, where there are at least fifteen sets of STS transfer sessions taking place. We count 25 million barrels of crude oil; plus some refined products. The oil originates from almost every country in the region, minus Iran.https://x.com/hashtag/OOTT?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/hashtag/IranWar?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/hashtag/Tankers?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/TAba26mJiW
— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) https://x.com/TankerTrackers/status/2092328933739864323?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The day prior, on Tuesday, President Trump hinted that military options are still on the table. While announcing the new claim that all mines had been detonated or removed from international waters of the Strait of Hormuz, he said the US Space Force was watching "every square inch" of the Strait, and that "There is ⁠a Zero Tolerance policy ‌on mine ‌placement in full force and effect." But Iran is https://www.arabnews.com/node/2655870/middle-east asserting that the strait remains "closed".
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/26/2026 - 20:32
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/oil-extends-decline-rubio-rules-out-new-strikes-iran-oman-transit-deal-nears-finalization

2026-08-26 21:20:00 GMT

Chinese Hackers Broke Into NASA, Federal Reserve, DOJ & Senate: FBI Announces
Chinese Hackers Broke Into NASA, Federal Reserve, DOJ & Senate: FBI Announces
The United States Department of Justice has on Wednesday announced US authorities thwarted a major state-sponsored hack which saw a temporary intrusion into NASA, the Federal Reserve, Senate, the DOJ, Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human services, along with four unnamed companies in the US and South Korea.
"Today we announced the disruption of a global botnet and hacking platform used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to target U.S. critical infrastructure," said FBI Director Kash Patel.
"These tools were used by PRC cyber actors to hide the origin of their attacks. Thanks to the work of FBI San Diego, FBI Cyber Division, and DOJ partners, we seized adversary infrastructure and shut these platforms down," he added.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/chinahack_0.jpg?itok=cHjwmA91
Domains utilized by two hacking platforms identified as "QScan" and "QTRouter" were seized by the DOJ in the large scale counter-cyberespionage operation.
Describing a pervasive botnet which was ultimately believed to be backed by Chinese state actors, https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/fbi-shuts-down-sprawling-china-linked-hacking-network-61eade59 details that the "goal was to blend in with legitimate networking traffic, making the hacking activity hard to trace, federal officials say."
"The group exploited software vulnerabilities to launch cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, power companies and hospital systems, and operated a worldwide network of hacked devices—known as a botnet—to conduct its hacking campaigns, according to Brett Leatherman, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top cyber official," WSJ continues.
As for the specific allegation that this had state backing, the DOJ press release https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-fbi-seize-platforms-operated-and-used-china-state-sponsored-hackers:
People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored group known as “QTFY,” employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, created and operated QScan and QTRouter.
The DOJ announcement additionally outlines efforts at concealment and 'plausible deniability' in the following:
QTRouter consists of these compromised IoT devices, as well as commercial proxy service devices and leased virtual private servers. QTRouter then serves as an “obfuscation network” – meaning it allows QTFY and other malicious cyber actors to conceal the PRC-origin of their computer intrusion activities because the malicious communications appear to originate from computers (such as those compromised by QScan) that are outside of the PRC and may even be local to the targeted networks. Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware and used for essential tasks such as communication and authentication, the court-authorized seizures made QScan and QTRouter inoperable.
Neither Beijing's foreign ministry nor the Chinese embassy in Washington have officially responded to the allegations, and as has been the pattern in the past is likely to reject the US charge altogether.
Earlier this year Google was among those https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/google-warns-chinese-and-russian-hackers-are-targeting-us-defense-companies of imminent stepped-up Chinese and Russian targeting of US defense companies.
Google's prior report seemed to preview some of the techniques on display in this latest hack. The report cited observations of "more China-nexus cyber espionage missions directly targeting defense and aerospace industry than from any other state-sponsored actors over the last two years."
US imposes new sanctions on China by September 30?
Yes 21% · No 80%
https://polymarket.com/event/us-imposes-new-sanctions-on-china-by-september-30"But the hallmark of many operations has been their exploitation of edge devices to gain initial access," it said, referring to hardware components positioned at the edge of a network. "We have also observed China-nexus threat groups leverage ORB networks for reconnaissance against defense industrial targets, which complicates detection and attribution."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/26/2026 - 17:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/chinese-hackers-broke-nasa-federal-reserve-doj-senate-fbi-announces

2026-08-26 20:20:00 GMT

Don't Trust The Midterm Polls
Don't Trust The Midterm Polls
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/dont-trust-the-midterm-polls-6079323?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
This is a lightly edited transcript of an Aug. 24 segment of the "Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words" podcast.
Let's have a periodic check on the status of the midterms that we're now less than 80 days away from. The Democrats are riding high. They feel that historical trends, i.e., 39 out of the last 41 midterms, the party in the White House loses seats, and there's not very many seats Republicans can afford to lose, and they may lose the House and Senate.
They're already, I guess you'd call it, measuring their drapes, but in the sense that they're already explaining how they're going to go after the Trump family, the Trump family associates, cryptocurrency concerns, any hangers-on, people going to the Middle East and investing. They're gonna open it wide open.
These are the people, of course, who never investigated the Biden family or Hunter Biden. That's no excuse if there's culpability, but nonetheless, you can count on a two-year investigation of Donald Trump and a never-ending impeachment inquiry, and the end of the MAGA agenda should he lose the House and the Senate.
Donald Trump is strangely confident. He now has finally hit on a strategy that he feels will work. Earlier, I called it the "Anaconda Strategy," the idea that he is squeezing a debilitated Iran. In other words, the kinetic 40 days of bombing have left the nuclear military-industrial complex in shambles.
And this time, he's not just blockading, he's not just having an embargo on goods. He is not just freezing the bank accounts of Iranian grandees. He's not just debanking the entire country. He's https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/24/treasury-sec-economic-d-day-iran/ and saying, "You and China and Russia and Europe have been trading with this country even while we were bearing the burden of defanging a potential nuclear renegade nation, and we're going to isolate you. We're not gonna do business with you if you do business with Iran."
And the Iranians now are crying foul. They're saying we're colonialists. But what I'm getting at, after all that military damage from Feb. 28 for the next 40 days, and after all the blockades, they're not able to withstand a renewed squeezing.
And so, time is actually on our side.
The second part of this strategy is Donald Trump has now put the war on the back burner. He is saying that we don't need to have ground troops. We might not even go in and bomb them again unless they egregiously attack an ally of ours or one of our carriers or ships.
We have managed it now. The strait is mostly open, and whatever the status of the nuclear stockpile or enriched uranium of the theocracy, it's pretty clear they can't get at it.
Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah don't seem to be getting money. They don't seem to have enough rockets to threaten the Gulf States or Israel, at least to get through their missile defenses.
And so, we're just going to concentrate, Trump thinks, on the economy.
So, what he is doing now is he and JD Vance are https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/24/jd-vance-ohio-figures-give-rousing-middletown-speech-on-manufacturing-investments/, and they're starting to make headway. They're not worried about the polls that show a generic 7 percent Democratic advantage and betting odds and polls that say they're gonna lose the House because they looked at the recent primaries.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the Democratic senatorial seat in Michigan, was polling ahead 10 points, and he scarcely won by a point and a half.
Francesca Hong, the Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor, was polling ahead 10 or 15 or 20 points. She lost and lost handily.
Mr. [Alexander] Vindman, who was running for Senate in Florida, was polling ahead. He lost to Ms. [Angie] Nixon, a democratic socialist.
So, what I'm getting at is the polls are worthless. And what we need to look at is what the status is right now.
The war is starting to wane. If it should end or if the Iranians crack in the next 60 to 70 days, that would be a spectacular achievement that Donald Trump - you know, we've tragically lost 17 Americans - but at a tolerable cost in blood and treasure, he ended a 50-year problem that seven presidents said was existential.
You could not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and the pressure that he's put on them and the damage he's inflicted would probably, in the next year or two, prompt a renewal of internal opposition against a theocracy that is bleeding.
The second thing to remember very carefully is, as I said earlier, the redistricting, the red state redistricting and the Supreme Court prohibition on racial gerrymandering might give him an additional four or five seats.
But the most important developments are money and the agenda of the new Democratic Party.
Very quickly, Donald Trump has got a war chest of about $400 million, and he's now going to use it.
He says he's going to use it all in his political action committees to help save the Republicans in the midterms.
Elon Musk said that he is going to match dollar for dollar the Democratic oligarchic class that if they start to donate in great amounts to Democratic candidates.
So, the money issue probably favors also, like, the redistricting and maybe the course of the Iran war that could wane and be not an issue.
But the most important thing to conclude is the Democratic Party. No one thought that the Democratic socialists would ever try to absorb and even seem to succeed in absorbing the Democratic Party. I mean, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, they've all said they have no problem with the Democratic socialists.
It's a big tent party, and they're going to help them win their seats.
But the problem is, once you have the money and the effort and the attention, and you show what the democratic socialists are, like, defunding the Pentagon, defunding the police, opening the border, mass amnesties, warring on fossil fuels, isolationist foreign policy, the transgender issue reopened with biological men now by statute free to compete in women's sports. I could go on and on.
They even want to destroy the Senate and the Electoral College, not to mention packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, and bringing in new seats in the Senate by admitting new blue states such as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
And so, what I'm getting at is, the more we learn about the democratic socialists, and the more that the Democratic Party feels they've already taken over the apparatus of the party and they're going to join them, or at least they're not going to oppose them, they're gonna be culpable or responsible for what these people say.
And they're saying all sorts of stuff, not just anti-Semitic venom, not just anti-Israel venom, but questioning the very legitimacy of the United States government, the way that our Founders created a legislative, judicial, and executive branch, the Declaration of Independence. Our entire traditions, they're saying, are flawed at their origins.
They got worse during our maturity, and now they're god-awful right now. That's not a winning message.
So, the midterms are very much up in the air.
Contrary to historical precedent, there's still a chance that the Republicans can save both the Senate and the House.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/26/2026 - 16:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dont-trust-midterm-polls

2026-08-25 03:25:00 GMT

Society Collapse 2040: The Year The World Stops Working And Starts Dying
Society Collapse 2040: The Year The World Stops Working And Starts Dying
https://preppgroup.home.blog/2026/08/21/society-collapse-2040-the-year-your-world-stops-working-and-starts-dying/
The Mathematical Warning That Refused to Fade
Fifty-four years ago, a team of researchers at MIT fed population data, resource consumption curves, and pollution metrics into a mainframe computer the size of a shipping container. The machine whirred through calculations and spat out a trajectory that ended in sharp decline. The 1972 Limits to Growth report predicted that without drastic course corrections, industrial civilization would hit terminal constraints by mid-century. At the time, critics dismissed the findings as Malthusian paranoia, pointing to the green revolution and technological optimism as proof that human ingenuity would always outpace scarcity. They were wrong. The variables aligned with terrifying precision.
A reassessment published by KPMG in January 2026 confirmed what the original MIT model suggested: we are not merely on track for the 2040 collapse - we are eighteen months ahead of the worst-case scenario. The report analyzed thirty key indicators including arable land depletion, aquifer drawdown, atmospheric carbon concentrations, and debt-to-GDP ratios across OECD nations. Twenty-seven of those indicators exceeded the 1972 projections. The remaining three—global shipping volume, semiconductor production, and satellite launches - mask underlying fragility by measuring activity rather than resilience. The study concluded that the “business as usual” trajectory now points to systemic rupture between 2032 and 2038, with cascading failures likely to begin manifesting visibly by late 2027.
The mathematics does not care about human optimism. Exponential curves have a way of appearing flat until they go vertical. The MIT model tracked five variables: population, food production, industrial output, pollution, and non-renewable resource depletion. In 2026, global population stands at 8.2 billion, having added the last billion in just twelve years. Food production plateaued in 2023 despite increased fertilizer application, indicating diminishing returns on agricultural intensification. Industrial output continues to rise, but energy return on investment - the amount of usable energy extracted versus the energy required to extract it—has fallen below the critical threshold of 15:1 for most fossil fuel sources. Pollution, measured in particulate matter, oceanic plastic density, and atmospheric methane, exceeds the model’s “pollution crisis” scenario by forty percent. The curves converge toward a singularity of scarcity and toxicity.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bf04d2ae-9a89-4de8-ae78-34163a5c.jpg?itok=VmVrsKL9
The Nine Fractures Already Spiderwebbing Through the Foundation
Economic architecture is not collapsing in a dramatic thunderclap. Instead, it is dissolving like limestone in acid rain—slowly, invisibly, until the cavern opens beneath your feet. Global debt reached $307 trillion in early 2026, representing 333% of global GDP. This is not a number that resolves through growth. It resolves through devaluation, default, or dissolution. Central banks in thirty-seven countries are currently piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), programmable money that carries expiration dates and usage restrictions. The Bank for International Settlements openly discusses “financial repression” as a necessary tool for managing sovereign debt loads. Translation: your savings will be harvested to keep institutions solvent, and you will have no recourse because the money will be code, not cash.
The banking crisis of 2023 never truly ended; it merely entered a chemically-induced coma. Regional banks in the United States continue to hemorrhage deposits as savers flee to money market funds and Treasury bills. Commercial real estate—office towers built in the 1980s and 1990s—trades at sixty percent below 2019 valuations. Pension funds that loaded up on these “stable” assets face insolvency by 2028. The derivatives market, that opaque web of interconnected obligations, now notionalizes at over one quadrillion dollars. When—not if—a major counterparty fails, the unwind will not be orderly. It will be a stampede toward exits that no longer exist.
Climate systems are not changing. They are destabilizing. The summer of 2026 broke records that had stood for mere months. Phoenix recorded thirty-one consecutive days above 115°F. The wet-bulb temperature in Mumbai exceeded 35°C for six hours on August 3rd, 2026, crossing the threshold for human survivability without air conditioning. The Arctic ice minimum this September will likely establish a new record low, with some models suggesting the first “blue ocean event”—ice-free Arctic waters—could occur as early as 2027, decades ahead of previous estimates. The permafrost in Siberia is not merely thawing; it is exploding. Methane craters half a kilometer wide now pockmark the Yamal Peninsula, releasing ancient greenhouse gases at rates that render human emission reductions irrelevant.
Water is not becoming scarce. It is being weaponized. The Colorado River, which irrigates fifteen percent of American agricultural output, has reached critically low levels that trigger mandatory cutbacks under the 2026 Compact renegotiations. Farmers in Arizona are already bulldozing orchards that took decades to establish. The Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies the American breadbasket, drops an average of two feet annually. It will not recharge within any human timescale. In India, the groundwater beneath the Punjab region—India’s wheat basket—will be economically inaccessible by 2028. Pakistan and India have exchanged fire across the Line of Control three times this year over water rights to the Indus River basin. The first water war of the 21st century is not coming. It is already here, dressed in the rhetoric of territorial sovereignty.
Migration patterns have shifted from streams to torrents. The UN estimates that 1.2 billion people currently live in regions that will become uninhabitable within two decades due to heat, drought, or sea level rise. In 2026 alone, 340,000 people crossed the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, heading north. These are not economic migrants seeking opportunity; they are climate refugees fleeing agricultural collapse. The Sahel region of Africa is emptying into Europe at rates that exceed the 2015 crisis by factors of three. Bangladesh, where 160 million people live on a delta that rises one centimeter annually while seas rise three times faster, is negotiating “managed retreat” agreements that will relocate twenty million citizens by 2030. Borders are hardening. Camps are swelling. The infrastructure of compassion is fracturing under the weight of mathematical impossibility.
Food systems operate on margins so thin they resemble tightropes. The world maintains approximately seventy days of grain reserves. When Ukraine’s exports were disrupted in 2022, wheat prices spiked forty percent. When the Mississippi River dropped to historic lows in 2023, barge traffic backed up for months. These were warnings, not aberrations. In 2026, rice prices hit fourteen-year highs due to El Niño-induced droughts across Southeast Asia. The “green revolution” that fed the population boom relied on fossil fuel inputs—natural gas for fertilizer, diesel for tractors, petroleum for pesticides. As energy costs rise, food costs follow with mathematical inevitability. The bread riots that began in Sri Lanka in 2022 and spread to Pakistan, Peru, and Kenya were previews, not finales.
Disease is evolving faster than our defenses. Antibiotic resistance now kills 1.27 million people annually, a figure projected to reach ten million by 2035. Gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and staphylococcus infections are emerging that respond to no known pharmaceutical treatment. The post-antibiotic era means surgery returns to being a life-threatening gamble, childbirth becomes dangerous, and minor wounds can kill. Meanwhile, viral zoonotic spillover events have increased threefold since 2010. The H5N1 avian influenza has achieved mammal-to-mammal transmission in cattle populations across the American Midwest. Virologists give it a forty percent probability of achieving efficient human-to-human transmission within eighteen months. When—not if—it does, mortality rates could exceed those of the 1918 Spanish Flu.
Demographics are inverting with terrifying speed. The global fertility rate has fallen to 2.3 children per woman, barely above replacement level. In South Korea, it is 0.72. In Italy, 1.24. In China, 1.09. The inverted age pyramid—few young supporting many old—creates fiscal impossibilities. Japan is currently spending forty percent of its budget on elderly care and debt service. By 2030, that figure reaches sixty percent. Pension systems are not underfunded; they are unfundable. Simultaneously, youth unemployment in the developing world has reached forty percent in regions where seventy percent of the population is under thirty. The combination of idle young men and resource scarcity produces the historical precursor conditions for war.
Social cohesion is unraveling into constituent threads. Political polarization has reached levels where seventy percent of Americans view members of the opposing party as existential threats. Trust in institutions—media, government, academia, medicine—has fallen below twenty percent across Western democracies. Conspiracy theories move faster than facts because they offer narrative coherence in a world of chaotic complexity. When the official story loses credibility, people construct their own realities. The result is a population that cannot agree on basic facts, rendering collective problem-solving impossible. The public sphere has become a battlefield of competing hallucinations.
The Cascade Mechanics Nobody Modeled Correctly
These nine factors do not operate in isolation. They are coupled oscillators, feeding energy into each other with terrifying efficiency. Climate stress triggers migration. Migration triggers political backlash and border militarization. Resource nationalism disrupts trade. Trade disruption causes economic shock. Economic shock triggers currency crises. Currency crises prevent importation of food and energy. Food and energy shortages trigger social unrest. Social unrest disrupts supply chains further. The feedback loops are not linear; they are exponential.
The 2022 energy crisis in Europe demonstrated this coupling. Sanctions on Russian natural gas triggered price spikes. Price spikes forced industrial shutdowns. Shutdowns reduced fertilizer production. Reduced fertilizer production lowered grain yields. Lower yields increased food prices. High food prices triggered protests in developing nations that imported European wheat. The disruption traveled from pipelines to plazas in six months. Now imagine this cascade occurring simultaneously across water, food, energy, and financial systems. The models suggest that once three critical systems fail, the remaining seven follow within months, not years.
The concept of “resilience” has been strip-mined by corporate consultants who use it to sell software solutions. True resilience is biological, not digital. It is the redundancy of multiple seed varieties, not data backups. It is the muscle memory of manual labor, not cloud storage. It is the trust between neighbors, not blockchain verification. Industrial civilization has optimized for efficiency at the expense of redundancy, creating systems that are “lean” in the same way a razor blade is lean—sharp, but prone to snapping under pressure.
What the Breaking Point Actually Looks Like
The collapse will not announce itself with cinematic flair. There will be no single day when the president declares martial law over a montage of burning cities. Instead, the degradation will be granular, personal, and unevenly distributed. It will arrive as the day your debit card stops working at the grocery store, not because you lack funds, but because the payment processor is down. It will arrive as the week the pharmacy cannot refill your prescription because the supply chain fractured somewhere in a factory district you have never heard of. It will arrive as the month when the water coming from your tap runs brown, then stops running entirely.
Infrastructure does not fail catastrophically at first. It fails in brownouts. The electrical grid, that marvel of twentieth-century engineering, currently operates with less than three percent spare capacity in most developed nations. During the August 2026 heat dome, rolling blackouts affected forty million Americans. Hospitals ran on backup generators. Traffic lights went dark. Refrigerators warmed. The meat in freezers spoiled. These were not third-world conditions; they were suburbs of Dallas and Sacramento. When the grid finally fails completely—and physicists give it a sixty percent chance of major continental failure by 2030—it will not return quickly. Transformers take eighteen months to manufacture. High-voltage cables require specialized ships to lay. The knowledge to repair these systems resides in aging engineers who are not being replaced.
Water scarcity does not mean the taps run dry everywhere at once. It means the price triples. It means the municipal supply is restricted to four hours daily. It means those with private wells become targets. It means the wealthy install reverse-osmosis systems while the poor queue at distribution points with plastic jugs. It means hospitals cancel surgeries because they cannot sterilize instruments. It means the sewage system backs up because there is insufficient water pressure to maintain flow. It means cholera and typhoid return to cities that have not seen them in a century.
Food shortages do not manifest as empty shelves immediately. They manifest as the substitution of fresh produce with processed carbohydrates. They manifest as “meatless Mondays” becoming meatless weeks. They manifest as portion sizes shrinking while prices remain static. They manifest as the disappearance of imported goods—coffee, chocolate, bananas—replaced by local substitutes that taste like memory. They manifest as weight loss that doctors attribute to diet trends rather than caloric deficit. They manifest as the reappearance of “victory gardens” in suburban yards, not as hobbies, but as necessities.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-37_4.jpg?itok=60_DkA_d
Crime does not explode into Mad Max theatrics. It metastasizes. Petty theft becomes normalized because the police no longer respond to non-violent calls. Home invasions increase because desperation outpaces deterrence. Organized looting of cargo trains and delivery trucks becomes so common that insurance companies stop covering transported goods. Vigilante patrols form in neighborhoods that previously considered themselves progressive. The law does not disappear; it fragments into private security, gang justice, and mob violence. The state retains the capacity for overwhelming force but loses the capacity for consistent order.
Disease spreads not as plague pits but as chronic burden. Hospitals operate at 140% capacity year-round. Elective surgeries are canceled indefinitely. Cancer treatments are rationed by age. Antibiotics are reserved for the wealthy who can pay black market prices. Routine infections kill because the drugs no longer work. Mental health crises spike as anxiety becomes the baseline emotional state. The medical system does not collapse in a day; it erodes like coastal cliffs, losing a meter of capacity annually until the foundation undermines the structure.
Economic collapse does not look like hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, with wheelbarrows of cash. It looks like the cashless society the technocrats dreamed of, but as a prison rather than a convenience. CBDCs arrive as “financial inclusion” and become social control. Your money expires if not spent within thirty days. Your purchases are restricted based on carbon scores. Your accounts are frozen if you violate speech codes or exceed travel allowances. The wealthy move assets into land, precious metals, and cryptocurrency, leaving the masses holding programmable tokens that lose value algorithmically. The stock market does not crash; it is suspended “temporarily” to prevent panic selling, then reopened under capital controls.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-39_5.jpg?itok=TPUdPL2b
The Survival Imperative Beyond Stockpiling
Preparation is not paranoia when the threat is mathematical. However, the survivalist aesthetic of canned goods and bunker construction misses the point. Three months of stored food will not carry you through a decade of decline. The lone wolf dies; the pack survives. The critical resource is not ammunition or freeze-dried rations; it is social capital. Trust is the currency that retains value when fiat fails. Skills are the assets that appreciate when markets crash.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-40%20%281%29.jpg?itok=mwNYl56B
Water security means more than bottled reserves. It means knowing how to purify rainfall, how to access aquifers, how to build solar stills. It means understanding your local watershed, the sources upstream, the contaminants likely downstream. It means community-level infrastructure—cisterns, filtration, distribution networks—that functions when municipal systems fail.
Food security means regenerative agriculture, not industrial agriculture. It means learning to grow calories, not Instagram aesthetics. It means heritage seeds that reproduce true, not hybrids that require annual purchase. It means composting, foraging, preserving, fermenting. It means small livestock—rabbits, chickens, goats—that convert inedible biomass into protein. It means knowing your neighbors’ skills and bartering labor for produce.
Energy security means redundancy. Solar panels with battery backup for when the grid falters. Wood stoves for when the gas lines freeze. Hand tools for when the power tools have no electrons to consume. The ability to repair rather than replace. The knowledge to maintain engines, to wire circuits, to improvise solutions from salvaged materials.
Medical security means primitive skills. Knowing how to set bones, suture wounds, identify medicinal plants. Stockpiling antibiotics while they still work, learning to use veterinary equivalents when human grades become unavailable. Understanding sanitation—proper latrine construction, water purification, waste disposal—to prevent disease rather than merely treat it.
Security means community defense, not individual armament. A fortress mentality invites siege. Mutual aid pacts, neighborhood watches, communication networks that function when cell towers fail. The ability to de-escalate conflict because every bullet fired invites retaliation. The wisdom to share surplus because hoarding invites theft.
Psychological resilience may prove the rarest commodity. The ability to adapt to lower standards of living without despair. The capacity to find meaning outside of consumption and status. The mental flexibility to abandon plans when circumstances change. The emotional stability to witness suffering without becoming numb or broken. The spiritual fortitude to maintain ethics when systems of enforcement dissolve.
The Horizon We Are Actually Walking Toward
The 2040 prediction was not wrong; it was conservative. The KPMG reassessment suggests we are witnessing not a sudden cliff but a steepening slope that began around 2020 and accelerates annually. The collapse is not an event in the future. It is a process we are currently inhabiting. The question is not whether you will live to see societal collapse. You are already living within it. The question is where on the curve you will find yourself when your personal trajectory intersects with the systemic breakdown.
The Roman Empire did not fall in a day. It experienced centuries of decline during which life continued, markets operated, and culture flourished—until they didn’t. The Mayans did not vanish; they abandoned their cities when the agricultural basis could no longer support the population density. The Bronze Age collapse of 1177 BCE saw multiple interconnected civilizations fail within decades due to climate change, seismic disruptions, and invasion. The survivors were those who decentralized, who maintained oral traditions when writing disappeared, who shifted from complexity to resilience.
We face a similar inflection. The next fifteen years will not resemble the last fifteen. The assumptions of perpetual progress, of technological salvation, of infinite growth on a finite planet, are being ground against the whetstone of physical reality. The pain will be unevenly distributed, as it always is. The wealthy will buy islands, citizenships, and security details. The poor will suffer first and most. The middle class will discover that their credentials and retirement accounts are abstractions that dissolve when the infrastructure supporting them fails.
But within this darkness, there is a strange liberation. When the impossible burden of maintaining industrial civilization is lifted by its own weight, space opens for other ways of being. Not utopia, certainly. Hardship, definitely. But also proximity, skill, meaning, and connection that the digital age promised but failed to deliver. The future is not uniformly bleak; it is textured, varied, and still undetermined.
The MIT model offered a choice in 1972. We made it, collectively, through action and inaction. Now we navigate the consequences. The 2040 horizon approaches not as prophecy, but as physics. Those who see it coming, who prepare bodies and minds and communities, will not escape the storm. But they might build boats sturdy enough to reach the other side of it.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/24/2026 - 23:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/society-collapse-2040-year-world-stops-working-and-starts-dying

2026-08-23 16:15:00 GMT

Did Canada Just Sign Its Own Economic Death Warrant?
Did Canada Just Sign Its Own Economic Death Warrant?
Canadian Prime Minister and WEF globalist Mark Carney has been a disaster for Canada since he entered office. There were many critics who believed the Trudeau regime could not be topped in terms of self destructive behavior, but one could easily argue that Carney is far more dangerous and far more devious.
This week the Canadian government abandoned a nearly finalized trade deal with the US in the final hour of talks, leaving many analysts (and Canadians) bewildered.  According to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and related reports on the negotiations, the U.S. offered significant tariff reductions that would have given Canada preferential treatment relative to other major exporters.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Carney1.jpg?itok=cX7lgny_
The offer included a reduction of tariffs on steel from 50% to 25%, a reduction on Canadian autos from 25% to 15%, a removal of the 10% tariff on Canadian lumber and cooperation on numerous other measures, representing the best deal offered in comparison to any other country which relies on heavily US markets. Carney abruptly ordered negotiators to walk away, claiming the deal was "not good enough", and declared further retaliation against the US.
So basically, Carney is saying:
Canadians will lose buying power, pay more for goods, and lose jobs, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to save face with the “elbows up” crowd. https://t.co/cGVMnahbxy
— Pascal Anglehart (@DemosKratosCA) https://x.com/DemosKratosCA/status/2091241500638404763?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As of this moment 50% tariffs have been implemented on the majority of Canadian goods - The sudden shift represents economic suicide for Canada given their deep dependence on the US. And what Carney doesn't tell Canadian citizens is, there are no practical alternatives to fill the trade void left behind.
Around 78% of all Canadian exports rely on US consumer markets. These goods and resources only make up around 13% of all US imports. Meanwhile, around 15% of US exports go to Canada. In the US, exports make up 11% of total GDP. In Canada, exports make up 33% of GDP.
Economic is partially about psychology, but it's mostly about numbers, and the numbers just don't add up for the "Great White North". By every metric, Canada needs the US more than the US need Canada. Without these exports, Canada would suffer severe instability within a few years.
The Canadian Central Bank, though, has tried to dismiss the dangers of prolonged trade disruptions with the US and Carney has sought to temper public concerns with posturing and bluster:
“You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”
This "war" rhetoric from the Prime Minister has been constant since he entered office - A clear attempt to sensationalize trade negotiations and excite the Canadian public with existential fears. Bizarrely, Carney insinuated that the US was threatening Canada's sovereignty, culture and languages. The hypocrisy of a devout globalist pontificating about national culture and "sovereignty" is stomach churning, but these declarations are highly strategic.
‼️Just in - Mark Carney addresses Americans in French:
-to my American collegues, let me be CLEAR ... our culture, French language and our soverignty are NOT on the table
-announces SWEEPING retaliatory tariffs on American goods
He will burn us to the ground for Quebec. https://t.co/2OaPPhplSO
— Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@Tablesalt13) https://x.com/Tablesalt13/status/2091187230081425513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Carney has been pursuing trade deals with the EU and China in an attempt to "replace" US markets and save Canadian exports. These agreements are being hailed by the Davos crowd https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-mark-carney-speech-davos-trump-rupturing-world-order/ that decouples from the US economy. However, there are a number of problems.
The US makes up over 30% of total global consumer markets. The entirety of the EU makes up around 15% of consumer markets and China makes up around 12%. Together these regions still don't fill the hole left by the US, and there are numerous expenses attached.
China regularly enforces tariffs on Canada, while shipping goods overseas to Europe or Asia adds price hikes to Canadian goods that would not be an issue in trade with the US. Meaning, they will sell far less overseas.
Furthermore, Chinese trade deals tend to come with strings attached. China is seeking economic and resource expansion into Canada, which is ruffling feathers among Canadian companies and citizens. Beyond that, the CCP often demands influence over government policy within the smaller countries it partners with economically (Canada's relationship with Taiwan has been a point of contention as the CCP exerts pressure).
This is Carney today admitting that limiting trade with China due to forced labor practices was part of the deal he walked away from.
Translation - Ya we care about forced labor, but not enough to stop dealing with Chinese markets that may or may not use it. https://t.co/YfUTbfrUae
— Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@ryangerritsen) https://x.com/ryangerritsen/status/2091192974579290194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In other words, Carney claims to be saving Canada from being dominated by the US, but he will end up selling his nation's sovereignty to China or the EU just to spite the Trump Administration.
Carney's behavior in light of these negotiations might seem bizarre, but it makes perfect sense if we consider the possibility that his goal is to cripple the Canadian economy deliberately and make it a pawn in a greater war waged by the Davos elite to isolate conservative movements in the US. The majority of anti-globalist and anti-multicultural movements around the world rely on American efforts to defeat the progressive agenda.
In other words, global lines are being drawn right now for a fight over who will decide the course of the future. Carney is clearly steering Canada to the side of the WEF ideal.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/23/2026 - 12:15
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-canada-just-sign-its-own-economic-death-warrant

2026-08-23 14:30:00 GMT

The Great Burrito Debate And The Uncomfortable Solution To Inflation
The Great Burrito Debate And The Uncomfortable Solution To Inflation
https://alt-market.us/the-great-burrito-debate-and-the-uncomfortable-solution-to-inflation/
Recently one of the most important debates in the history of conservative discourse raged across the internet, with sides deeply divided and solutions rare or nonexistent. This debate went largely unnoticed by the rest of the country but it regards the deepest underlying foundations of our economic future.
I am speaking, of course, about the “Great Burrito Debate” of 2026.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating about the significance but I do think this conflict taps into the core of people’s concerns about America’s inflation problem. Not only that, but it exposes a lot of misconceptions people have about what inflation is, what’s causing it and who is to blame.
The burrito debate started as an honest discussion about the cost of living crisis and somehow ended up as dog-pile on conservative manners when it comes to economic discourse. Many conservative and libertarian commentators jumped into the fray with their two cents, though, the vast majority of them have minimal economic background, which I think added more confusion than clarity to the issue.
After two decades of macroeconomic analysis (and https://alt-market.us/stagflation-subterfuge-the-real-disaster-hidden-by-the-pandemic/ well in advance of the Ivy League “experts”) I thought I might offer my own perspective.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/BurritoDollar1.jpg?itok=Iz9DO49M
Keep in mind, those of us in the alternative economic field had to fight against the lies of the Biden Administration as well as establishment economists like Paul Krugman and Federal Reserve officials like Janet Yellen just to wake the public up to the fact that inflation was upon us and that it was NOT “transitory”.
Ultimately, everyone’s bank balances and monthly bills could not be denied and the gas-lighting ended. The only recourse of the establishment at that point was to blame Trump for all of it. The “Herbert Hoover” comparisons were rampant.
Who Really Has The Power To End Inflation?
To be clear, Trump has reduced the size of government by around 12%, which is an incredible accomplishment considering the amount of legal resistance that was put in place to stop him. However, he did not reduce government spending, which is currently 3% higher than under Biden.
One problem is that 60% of all federal spending is mandatory. By law, programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. all scale their spending to match inflation and there is very little that Trump can do about that. Then there’s the rising interest on debt payments, which is controlled by the Federal Reserve, not the President. Trump’s cuts were only focused on discretionary spending, on institutions like USAID, and even those measures were repeatedly throttled by activist judges.
Trump has tried to circumvent the bureaucracy by issuing tariffs as a counter to the debt problem, but once again, activist judges have intervened. For those who claim that tariffs are “causing inflation”, this is simply false. The contribution tariffs make to CPI is negligible (around 0.5 percentage points). The media (and some libertarians) continue to falsely claim that tariffs are an issue.
This is where I think the public has a disconnect from the reality of the situation, and this includes fiscal conservatives who think they are “holding Trump’s feet to the fire” over US debt. The president is not all-powerful and he has very little control over the direction of the US economy. If he made all the cuts these people demand, he would have to become a dictator and he would have to do it by force.
That is to say, they can’t have it both ways. Either the President takes a constitutional hands-off approach to the economy and government spending, or, he goes full-bore Francisco Franco, declares himself supreme leader, and starts chopping out large pieces of the government (the Spanish “Stabilization Plan” of 1959, not the price control plan of 1939 which ultimately failed).
That’s the only way these kinds of policies are going to happen in the US because Congress isn’t going to do jack. Congress’ primary job is to maintain the status quo, not enact solutions.
The reason fiscal reform is impossible is because our modern government is designed to perpetuate itself; it is designed to grow forever. This is accomplished through the bureaucracy, which is the REAL power base within American politics. Most people do not understand that political leaders come and go, but the bureaucracy is forever and there are no term limits.
The socialist parasites within these structures control the direction of the country and the economy (this includes the central bank). When they face any real political opposition, they simply stall, obstruct, and wait for that political party or leader to leave office. Trump, for example, has only four years to redirect a system that has been on the wrong path for decades. It’s not going to happen without bringing the hammer down.
This brings us back to the “Burrito Debate” and the issue of inflation vs public expectations. The debate started with a post quoting college students complaining about the cost of basic necessities including a “$20 dollar price tag” on burritos. This triggered a wider discussion about affordability vs perception, then spiraled into an argument over conservatives not having enough empathy for struggling youth.
Critics asserted that conservative dismissals of the ongoing cost of living crisis will lead to younger generations rushing to support socialism, and MAGA would be to blame. There are two elements to this argument that I think need to be addressed and I’ll try to summarize as best I can.
Gen Z Has No Point Of Reference Because History Is Ignored
First, there’s the issue of younger generations not having a point of reference for how bad the cost of living crisis today is compared to previous generations. Second, there’s the lack of understanding among older generations on where the current crisis is likely headed in the future without drastic action.
Of course, no burrito actually costs $20. This is a terrible contention which is not based in reality. Maybe it’s the most expensive burrito in the most expensive restaurant in a high cost city like San Francisco or New York, but for the majority of the country a burrito is pocket change.
This brings me to the first issue, which is the younger generation’s lack of historical perspective. To be clear, the current inflationary crisis in the US is NOT the worst inflationary crisis this country has seen in modern times. Not yet, anyway.
From 1972-1981 (just after the US dollar was fully detached from the gold standard), the US suffered one of the most brutal series of inflationary beatings in the nation’s history. Inflation rates hit as high as 13% per year, food prices rose by around 120%, rent prices jumped by 75%, home prices rose by 150% and gas shortages were rampant.
The 1970s demoralized middle-class America. The poverty rate hit 14% and the unemployment rate peaked at 9%. Wages remained stagnant or even dropped for some workers. The average yearly income by 1981 was only $12,000 for individual workers. Most younger people today complain about how “the boomers had it easy” with food prices and house prices back in the day. They don’t actually consider how low wages were, or how high inflation was.
The point is, yes, Gen Z is struggling. Their fears should not be dismissed as frivolous. That said, I think because of internet culture and false expectations, many young people assume they are going through the worst crisis of all time and that no one understands them.
In reality, generations before them had it MUCH worse. The inflationary crisis of the 1970s did not end until the Federal Reserve exploded interest rates to 20%, causing a deflationary reset and making loans unattainable for most people for years.
If you are in your 20s and you think you’re not supposed to be struggling, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. We all had to struggle, many of us with terrible wages and low job availability compared to today. Don’t expect to be living comfortably until your mid-30s. It’s just the way things have always been.
Every generation experiences periods of economic uncertainty. But this doesn’t mean that there’s not considerable danger looming in the near future.
Kicking The Can Has Created An Economic Time Bomb
What some conservatives get wrong is the notion that the system can be fixed politically and that things will improve if we only keep Democrats out of office. Keeping leftists away from power is always a good thing, if only to prevent the country from going completely communist and cannibalizing itself. But when it comes to inflation, once an avalanche is set in motion it can’t be stopped and this avalanche has been building for decades.
Inflation cannot be reversed without a deflationary event. Since the credit crash of 2008-2009, political leaders and the Federal Reserve have been aggressively trying to prevent any deflation (the Keynesian standard). Which means that America (and most of the world) has not taken the deflationary medicine we should have taken years ago. Instead, we kicked the can down the road.
Some “experts” believe we can kick the can down the road for eternity. This is foolish.
The Catch-22 is that the central bankers must continue to intervene to prevent deflation but each time they do they pump up the money supply and create even more inflation, which then demands more deflation for balance.
The pandemic event was the most recent instance of this intervention. The covid bailouts caused an immense inflationary reaction and the spike in prices that followed is what most of Gen Z is feeling today as they enter the work-a-day world.
If the Fed stimulates, more inflation is on the way. If they hike interest rates and refuse to intervene, the US faces a deflationary crash. This is where we’re at in 2026 and yes, Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be hit the hardest unless something is done. But what?
The only policy solution that makes sense is an organized deflation plan, if such a thing is possible. Meaning, a reformed government would have to eliminate the central bank, hike rates far higher than they currently are, refuse to bail out failing companies relying on cheap debt, then institute austerity measures on social programs for everyone except the disabled and elderly. This is basically what Franco did (while also hunting down hundreds of thousands of liberals and communists, but let’s set that aside for now).
This government would have to find a way to cut spending, balance the budget and also act to mitigate greater damage to consumers by reducing taxes wherever possible (perhaps even ending property taxes on single family homes).
That would require a level of institutional coordination and cooperation that does not exist in the US right now. Again, Trump, or someone else, would have to act like an economic authoritarian and dictate every detail of the operation.
The system could return to a more normal condition after the economic bubble has been strategically burst, but I suspect similar actions would have to take place perhaps every 25 years to prevent another buildup of inflationary pressure. It would be a kind of “reset”, but not in the way that globalists at the WEF imagine. It would be a planned reset coordinated with the public so we are no longer waiting around for the bankers or random chance to decide when a crash is going to occur.
Meaning, each generation would have to accept the responsibility of dealing with a controlled deflationary downturn for at least a few years. Planning such an event would make it possible for the public to prep ahead of time. It could become a sort of deflationary tradition; similar to a Jubilee.
The only other option, as noted, is to do nothing and wait for the bubble to burst on its own. Eventually, high prices will drag down spending enough that deflation sets in. Job losses will jump. The Yen-carry trade will derail. A Black Swan event will pull the rug out from under us – Something will happen that sets the deflationary chain of events in motion and the central bank will do what it always does: Print money.
This is true of almost every country in the world right now. The US is not the only economy facing inflationary dilemmas, it’s just the largest.
A time will come when the dollar won’t be able to take it anymore and the currency system will break. Then, your burritos really will cost $20 or more and that will be a terrible day of reckoning. It’s a conundrum that should have been dealt with back in 2009, but NO ONE wants to be responsible for the financial pain caused by taking that bitter deflationary pill.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/23/2026 - 10:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/great-burrito-debate-and-uncomfortable-solution-inflation

2026-08-20 01:04:00 GMT

"Economic D-Day": Trump Announces "Most Crushing Economic Operation Ever" Against Iran
"Economic D-Day": Trump Announces "Most Crushing Economic Operation Ever" Against Iran
Summary:
- Trump's Economic War against Iran Begins
- Trump says "severe economic consequences" for any country that does businesses with Tehran
- Trump says "ECONOMIC D-DAY" begins against Iran
- UAE Cuts Ties As Iran Warns Gulf States Against Helping Washington; Kpler Says US Navy Gaining Ground In Hormuz
"ECONOMIC D-DAY"
President Trump is out with a Truth Social post describing today as "ECONOMIC D-DAY" against Iran, declaring that his total economic war against Tehran will be the "MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY."
Trump said that with Tehran's military and military-industrial base reduced to "now rubble" and its "currency worthless," he will unleash severe economic consequences against "ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran."
Here's the full Truth Social post:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-19_20-39-53.png?itok=IKENuxfL
Last week, Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in Toronto, offered clients a preview of what the campaign to economically isolate Iran could look like (https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-cant-bomb-its-way-victory-scotiabank-maps-bessents-coming-economic-hammer-iran), including the potential targeting of China. Notably, much of Iran's crude exports flow to Chinese buyers.
UAE Cuts Ties As Iran Warns Gulf States Against Helping Washington; Kpler Says US Navy Gaining Ground In Hormuz
Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is visiting Baghdad while at the same time US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan to discuss the Hormuz situation and security. Except of course the two sides aren't talking with each other.
President Trump has made clear that no talks are on, and that none are scheduled, as he's been floating a 'new' strategy https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-posts-map-showing-hormuz-new-us-territory-just-after-latest-tanker-attack the Iranian economy over the long term. CNN reported Tuesday that White House officials have recently communicated that they are shifting their strategy — going from "hammer Iran ASAP" to "strangle them" over time.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/navyfire.jpg?itok=SDuY70fA
As for Ghalibaf, he blasted War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday, mocking this new disengagement strategy, given the US has already failed to bring Tehran to its knees.
"Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement," Ghalibaf wrote in a post on X. "Bessent and Hegseth are way out of their league," Ghalibaf added while referring to them as the "clown crew." He https://x.com/mb_ghalibaf/status/2089759296376480003:
Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.
After declaring a new 'offensive' military posture in response to the crisis, Iran is showing no signs of backing off the confrontation with the US in the region. On Wednesday its armed forces warned Gulf countries against hosting or assisting American forces, saying it would be tantamount to joining the war on the US side.
"We wish to warn that any assistance or facilitation provided to the aggressor U.S. military amounts to participation in the U.S. military operation," armed forces chief of staff Ali Abdollahi said.
"It seems unlikely that such a large number of military aircraft, particularly refueling aircraft could be present at regional bases without knowledge of host countries," the official continued as cited in Mehr news agency.
It's not known how many refueling tankers or else large warplanes are still positioned in the Gulf, but certainly the bulk of regional refueling aircraft operated by the US Air Force are currently concentrated at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion international airport - and has been subject of a lot of media attention.
And in another significant escalation that effectively torpedoes any remaining illusions of hoped-for cross-Gulf detente, the United Arab Emirates has https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/world/middleeast/uae-cuts-trade-ties-iran-missiles.html Wednesday a complete and immediate severance of all economic ties with Tehran. The move comes on the heels of what UAE officials claim was a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles targeted directly at Emirati territory.
Tehran had quickly denied it had fired missiles on its territory, but UAE authorities later clarified that the military observed two missiles inbound from Iran, which caused no damage or casualties - which triggered an urgent missile alert for the population on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, below are some of the latest major developments and reports related to the Iran conflict:
Iran has weighed attacking US military targets in Europe should Donald Trump escalate the war, according to people close to the regime, as Tehran considers its options to increase the stakes of the conflict. https://www.ft.com/content/9ea0cde8-129e-4d88-976f-e367b7dd4d2c?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Even as Iran projects resilience in the war with the United States, its leaders are worried that a threat of more economic punishment by Donald Trump could increase hardships, reignite unrest and further erode the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy. Even as Iran projects resilience in the war with the United States, its leaders are worried that a threat of more economic punishment by Donald Trump could increase hardships, reignite unrest and further erode the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy
Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz are piling up without an American military response, raising the risks of crossing the strategic waterway and frustrating some Arab allies who worry the U.S. doesn’t have a strategy to wind down the conflict. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/irans-attacks-on-ships-in-hormuz-pile-up-testing-u-s-military-restraint-6ff9f5dd
However, shipping analytics firm Kpler has suggested that the US Navy is gaining ground in the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran is ceding some control, amid a war of words between President Trump and Iranian leadership over who has actual 'control'.
previewing new sanctions still to be announced...
The Trump administration appears to be indicating it favors economic warfare in its approach to the conflict with Iran, touting its naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and previewing new sanctions still to be announced. https://t.co/k5g4FBcxF7
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) https://x.com/ABCPolitics/status/2090011195562434967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"At the moment, however, the evidence is clear: The United States, patrolling the strait with its navy, is gaining ground – and Iran is losing much of its control of the critical waterway," https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/business/iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil CNN. "More than 80% of liquids transits through the Strait of Hormuz over the past two weeks have taken the Omani route – a UN-authorized shipping channel that Iran vehemently opposes – or have been 'dark' transits that likely took the Omani route, according to Kpler, which tracks ships using transponders and satellite data."
But there's as yet no rush for international shipping to return to the waterway, given the risk of attack and all of the serious unknowns which could result in total losses as well as threaten the safety of crew.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/19/2026 - 21:04
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uae-cuts-ties-iran-warns-gulf-states-against-helping-washington-kpler-says-us-navy

2026-08-20 00:50:15 GMT

"Doom Loop" Engaged: US Debt Hits $40 Trillion As Treasury Enters The Endgame
"Doom Loop" Engaged: US Debt Hits $40 Trillion As Treasury Enters The Endgame
It took the US 200 years to reach its first $1 trillion in debt. It took 95 days to add its last.
After https://x.com/zerohedge/status/2089811655949488247today the https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/daily-treasury-statement/operating-cash-balancethat total public debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time, after jumping by over $60 billion in one day, and has now surged by $1 trillion in just over three months, and by a third of the total in less than five years, as US lawmakers continue to ignore calls to contend with historically wide fiscal deficits.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/total%20US%20debt%20Aug%2019%202026.png?itok=Gof1UKEm
The https://x.com/zerohedge/status/2090151154487365965 came just hours after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unexpectedly announced the Treasury's latest attempt to rein-in long-term borrowing costs from multi-year highs, the most important component of the growth in debt. The Treasury stunned the market when it said, just two weeks after the latest Refunding Announcement where it should have made this change, that it was ramping up the support for longer-dated securities by "increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10-year to 20-year sector and the 20-year to 30-year sector)."
The announcement that sent yields plunging, if only for the time being.
Remarkably, it was less than 5 years ago that US debt hit $30 trillion back in January 2022, illustrating the rapid growth in federal borrowing needs. And there’s no end in sight.
As Bloomberg notes, "Republicans have long opposed revenue-raising tax increases," while Democrats are best known for spending like drunken sailors to maximize socialist central planning, and both parties are loathe to sign on to politically toxic cuts to healthcare and retirement benefits for seniors. Many observers anticipate Congress and the administration of the day will only act if forced by a financial-market disruption.
That won't stop them from talking about it all the time, though, as both parties at least pretend to understand that the US is on a catastrophic collision course should debt growth continue at this pace, and if the AI bet - which is now an all-in for virtually everyone - fails to dramatically boost productivity. Bessent, for one, said a key reason he got involved in politics was to help tackle deficits running at a pace unprecedented for times outside of major wars, pandemics or depressed job markets. So far he has failed catastrophically, and worse, he is doing precisely the kind of activist issuance "Twisting" for which he bashed his predecessor, Janet Yellen.
Economists, the Congressional Budget Office and Wall Street all see little or no progress in coming years for the deficit-to-gross domestic product ratio.
“Optically, I’m sure crossing thresholds like $40 trillion will focus attention on the issue in the near term,” said Matthew Luzzetti, chief US economist at Deutsche Bank AG. “But it does not represent a magical threshold for debt dynamics, and projections have anticipated this outcome for some time.”
More important, Luzzetti said, is the climb in US Treasury yields, which is steadily increasing the cost of servicing the record debt load. Last Thursday, the department’s latest 30-year bond auction resulted in the costliest such sale in a quarter century. A 10-year auction a day earlier drew the highest financing cost at that tenor since 2007, and only today's announcement which sent yields tumbling prevent today's https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ugly-tailing-20y-auction-prices-2nd-highest-yield-record-would-have-been-highest-if-bessentfrom pricing at the highest yield on record.
As buyers demand higher yields, that in turn drives up the Treasury’s borrowing needs. With two months left to go in the fiscal year, the government’s tally for interest costs so far for 2026 is $1.37 trillion - a 20% increase on the same period a year before. That in turn adds to the debt, potentially fueling further investor calls for higher rates, in a pattern known as a “doom loop.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/total%20interest%20on%20US%20debt.jpg?itok=08b85Bdm
For a visual of said doom loop, consider that the Treasury paid out about $85 billion to bondholders in its semi-annual coupon payment on Monday, the largest on record. For comparison, the Treasury paid out $75 billion of interest at the mid-month settlement period in August 2025 and about $80 billion on Feb. 17.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/total%20coupon%20payment.jpg?itok=Pq7KDUrk
Interest costs are now the third-largest part of the budget, surpassing healthcare and just behind Social Security. However, at $1.6 trillion, Social Security will be topped by gross interest no later than 2026.
It gets worse: thanks to the AI bubble - and specifically the AI debt bubble which we correctly spotted one year ago and which the market is only now starting to freak out about - the record debt issuance to fund capex is now starting to crowd out of demand for US paper. This means that very soon, the US government will have to decide: keeping the electorate happy, or funding data centers so they can buy the latest massively overpriced memory chips needed to run the latest chatbot. Incidentally, those soaring memory costs are now https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/soaring-memory-prices-push-core-pce-05-higher-fed-issues-red-alert-soaring-chip-costs, a number which the admin will soon realize is very politically unpopular, and will lead to a historic crackdown on hyperinflationary memory and semiconductor prices.
“The federal budget is the enemy within,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former director of the CBO, wrote in a note Monday. “It is the greatest threat to the foundations of economic progress, U.S. international economic standing, and national security. The only reason for optimism should be material actions to rein in the sea of red ink. There are no such material actions.”
He is right, of course: the only time there can be material actions, is when the bond vigilantes crash the market, yet actions such as those by Bessent today assure that said day was just punted several weeks or months into the future, again and again.
But wait, because there is even more: all of the above assumes no recession, no crises, no emergencies for the foreseeable future. Well, consider that US debt exploded higher during the most recent economic downturns tied to the global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic. During those periods, revenue slid as tax-paying workers lost jobs, and assistance payments jumped. One can only imagine where US debt will be after the next recession/pandemic/hot war.
Going back to Bessent, the current Treasury secretary came into office in 2025 touting a budget deficit target of around 3% of GDP by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term, which concludes in January 2029. It’s not clear how that will possibly happen: as of July the ratio is 6% and rising... and will keep rising the longer the AI bubble drains demand for US long-dated paper.
Meanwhile, according to recent reports, Trump is seeking to galvanize support ahead of the November midterm elections, and is looking at new tax-cut promises in addition to increases in defense spending, both of which will supercharge the deficit and lead to even more debt. Meanwhile, the Elon Musk-led 2025 Department of Government Efficiency effort, which sought to slash discretionary spending including on contracts and government buildings, failed to cut outlays as much as DOGE’s own estimates projected.
And then there is the next round of political theater: the current pace of debt accumulation...
We'll take the over https://t.co/Gw0yfjylXR https://t.co/Abq2dtPtrx
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://x.com/zerohedge/status/2090175945390911775?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
... means that the government has about 4 or 5 months before it again hits the debt ceiling of $41.1 trillion. Hitting that marker is expected to trigger another in the series of partisan showdowns in Washington over the years to head off a potentially devastating US payments default.
“The government has not taken meaningful actions to address the large general government fiscal deficits,” Fitch said. “Spending pressures will mount over the next decade due to an aging population.” The country will be “vulnerable to future economic shocks” as debt levels increase, the rating company said.
For Fitch, talk is cheap: instead of downgrading the US credit rating, one week ago Fitch reaffirmed the US at AA+, assuring that absolutely no remedial step will be taken, and that the next debt crisis will be cataclysmic.
“Hitting this big round number will hopefully send a wake up call throughout Washington,” said Michael Peterson, who chairs the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a research group, in regard to the $40 trillion. “It will hurt everyday affordability across the country if we don’t get our debt under control,” he said.
He is wrong: everyone knows that the US is on a historic collision course with destiny. The only wake up call was for gold and bitcoin algos, both of which finally woke up from a bizarre slumber, sending both real and digital gold soaring.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/gold%20bitcoin%20soar.jpg?itok=zragiQH0
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/19/2026 - 20:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/doom-loop-engaged-us-debt-hits-40-trillion-america-enters-endgame

2026-08-20 00:05:00 GMT

8 Examples That Demonstrate That The Islamization Of America Is Steadily Progressing
8 Examples That Demonstrate That The Islamization Of America Is Steadily Progressing
https://endoftheamericandream.com/8-examples-that-demonstrate-that-the-islamization-of-america-is-steadily-progressing/
In Islam, there is no separation between mosque and state. The goal is to use the state to make everyone submit to Islam. If you want to see what this looks like, just check out almost any country in the Middle East that has a Muslim majority. They don’t believe in freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Do you want to know how many churches there are in Saudi Arabia? The answer is zero, because churches are banned in Saudi Arabia. Now this same ideology is spreading in America, and that should deeply alarm all of us.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snip20260812_31.jpg?itok=2Y6h_XHg
Today, Islam is the fastest growing religion in America.
It used to be witchcraft, but now Islam has taken the top spot.
There are now more than 2,700 mosques in the United States.
In 1970, there were about 100.
But it isn’t just mosques that are going up everywhere.
Enormous Islamic “mini-cities” are being constructed in states such as California and Texas.
And rapidly growing Islamic populations are taking over entire sections of the states of Minnesota and Michigan.
What we have been witnessing all over Europe is now happening here.
The following are 8 examples that demonstrate that the Islamization of America is steadily progressing…
#1 Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has a really good chance of winning in November, and he has publicly stated that he has a sacred https://rairfoundation.com/abdul-el-sayed-vowed-sacred-obligation-follow-islamic/ to obey Islamic law in every area of his life until he dies…
Muslim Democrat Michigan Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed has previously declared his sacred “obligation” to follow Islamic law in every aspect of his life until he dies and stands before Allah. He has claimed he does not want to subvert the Constitution and mandate Islamic law but that is part of his religion.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is having his words, vows, and religion come back to haunt him. According to The Washington Free Beacon, years ago he declared his sacred “obligation” to follow Islamic law in every aspect of his life until he dies and stands before Allah. This comes from remarks he made to the New York Times back in 2009, when he was younger and buying his first home.
#2 In the supposedly “deep red” state of Mississippi, a hijab-wearing Muslim woman has been sworn in https://www.mississippifreepress.org/muslim-woman-becomes-municipal-judge-in-small-delta-town-a-first-for-mississippi-amid-a-flurry-of-bigotry/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjCuuJwLMLrCtAMwx6ayBQ&utm_content=rundown…
Assma Ali has made history. The daughter of Yemeni immigrants to the United States, Ali is now municipal judge for the City of Benoit, a small town in southwest Bolivar County in the Mississippi Delta.
Ali was sworn in as municipal judge on Aug. 5. She has spent nearly a decade serving as an attorney in Mississippi after graduating with her law degree from Mississippi Christian University (formerly Mississippi College) in 2017 and interned in both Rankin and Madison counties while attending law school.
#3 I know that this is hard to believe, but a bill in the state of Massachusetts would “identify and recommend qualified American Muslims for appointive positions at all levels of government”. Needless to say, this is https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2087290305770828095…
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snip20260812_30-793x1200.jpg?itok=PJOMd2Gv
#4 What in the world has happened to the state of Texas? At DFW Airport, they are going to be putting in https://x.com/nataliegwinters/status/2087555151955660828…
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snip20260812_27-950x724.jpg?itok=YM5RS3eL
#5 The city of Hamtramck, Michigan is one of the first cities in the nation where Muslims make up the majority of the population, and the all-Muslim city council decided that it would be a good idea https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2023/01/11/hamtramck-city-council-approves-religious-animal-sacrifices-slaughter-home/69797191007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z1139xxe1139xxv004464d--49--b--49--&gca-ft=215&gca-ds=sophi on residential property…
After several months of contentious debate and pressure from Muslim residents, Hamtramck City Council voted Tuesday night to allow the religious sacrifice of animals on residential property.
Muslims often slaughter animals during the holiday of Eid al-Adha and Hamtramck has one of the highest percentage of Muslim residents among cities in the U.S.
#6 An entire Islamic “mini-city” is going up https://x.com/AmyMek/status/2087402643614491106…
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snip20260812_28-845x1200.jpg?itok=tMWje1Dl
#7 A survivor of Sharia law in Iran recently pleaded with the city council of McKinney, Texas https://mycharisma.com/news/iranian-christian-shares-reality-of-sharia-law-during-texas-city-council-meeting/ a new Islamic center that was being planned…
An Iranian Christian who describes himself as a “Sharia law survivor” warned Americans during a McKinney City Council meeting that the United States is currently facing a “level one” invasion of Islam. The meeting involved discussions of a proposed Islamic Center.
“I’m a Sharia law survivor from Iran,” he began. “I’m telling you, this is a bad idea and you’re going to regret not listening to people like us who lived under Sharia law.”
“I’m here to tell you this is a dangerous ideology you’re allowing in your country. Every country that is Islamic now, it used to be a Christian country and we were soft Christians. And we allowed these people to come in, bring their Sharia law into our countries and slowly kill us off left and right.”
But after listening to him and countless others that objected to the project, the city council https://mycharisma.com/news/iranian-christian-shares-reality-of-sharia-law-during-texas-city-council-meeting/…
According to Texas Scorecard, McKinney City Council members have since voted 7-0 to approve plans for the Islamic Center.
#8 This summer, giant Islamic marches are being held in major cities all over the nation. Sean Feucht just stumbled into one https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/sean-feucht-leads-jesus-march-through-muslim-procession-in-chicago…
US Christian worship leader Sean Feucht has issued a warning about the growth of Islam in America after his “Jesus march” encountered a Muslim procession in Chicago.
Feucht shared footage from the city showing participants in the annual Arbaeen Procession, which was taking place around an hour before his Christian event was due to begin.
“This is insane. What I’m witnessing is crazy,” Feucht said in a video posted on social media.
According to Feucht, those that were participating in the Islamic march were https://premierchristian.news/us/news/article/sean-feucht-leads-jesus-march-through-muslim-procession-in-chicago…
“An hour before we start, there’s a massive Muslim march. We didn’t even know this was happening guys…where they are declaring their allegiance to Allah. And that the entire city of Chicago will bow to Allah.”
Feucht also claimed participants were “shouting anti Christian and anti Israel verses from the Quran”.
“Have you woken up yet? Do you understand what is at stake in our nation?” he asked.
They aren’t here to assimilate.
They are here to take over.
So why aren’t more Americans standing up?
Well, perhaps the fact that average testosterone levels https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/08/testosterone-decline-theories/688247/ over the past 50 years might have something to do with it…
A recent review of studies involving more than a million men all over the world found that average testosterone levels in blood have dropped by about 20 percent over the past half century. A new, unpublished study put the decrease during that basic time period at closer to 50 percent. Some scientists are skeptical of these numbers because testosterone has been measured in different ways over time. But Michael Eisenberg, a urologist at Stanford Medicine who specializes in male fertility, told me that the findings of a decline are “pretty solid.” The testosterone slump, he said, has “manifested across many different study designs.”
We are seeing entire communities being radically transformed all over this county.
We are going down the exact same road that Europe has been going for the past 30 years, and that should deeply trouble all of us.
There are approximately 2 billion Muslims in the world today, and they make up the majority of the population in more than 50 different nations.
But this is just the beginning.
It is being projected that by 2050 Muslims will make up nearly a third of the entire global population.
This is a story that is not going away, and now is the time to take a stand.
Michael’s new book entitled https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F4DN45KX is available https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F4DN45KX and https://www.amazon.com/Prophetic-Events-That-Coming-Next-ebook/dp/B0F49DJ4YX on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/19/2026 - 20:05
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/8-examples-demonstrate-islamization-america-steadily-progressing

2026-08-19 06:45:00 GMT

Germany Opens New Drone Security Center Amid Fears Of Russian Hybrid Warfare
Germany Opens New Drone Security Center Amid Fears Of Russian Hybrid Warfare
European officials have for years been warning about what they allege is heightened Russian hybrid and sabotage warfare targeting Europe and its airspace in connection with the long-running Ukraine war.
They've been further sounding the alarm in the wake of this month's drone incident near a runway at Leipzig Airport. Reports say a drone carrying explosives was found at this location, which remains one of Europe's largest cargo hubs, and is also used for NATO logistics.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/dronetracker.jpg?itok=PnLchEop
A NATO spokesperson later specified with the explosive-laden drone, which was equipped with a detonator, appeared to have been targeting an aircraft belonging to the Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov Airlines.
This close call incident came in the wake of a series of mystery drone incidents which in some cases paused operations at commercial aviation hubs in northern Europe. While some episodes could have been the result of hobby drones or else local pranks or false alarms, EU officials have still long suspected Russian-linked nefarious actors.
Now Germany in particular is stepping up anti-drone security and monitoring measures, by establishing its first major drone security research center.
The new Drone Security Technology Center is part of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), and officially opened Tuesday in the town of Cochsted, which is famous for its aviation history. The center will focus on research and technology for detecting hostile or unknown drone activity, protecting critical infrastructure from such incursions.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/dobrindt-new-centre-to-research-drone-security, "Together with the DLR we are creating, with the new technology center, a facility that is unique nationwide, where innovative technologies for drone security are researched, developed and tested in real-life laboratories."
He described the new drone threat facing Germany and Europe more broadly as part of the "shadow war of the 21st century".
Leipzig-Halle airport is a big logistics hub for NATO and Ukraine. An attack with an armed drone on a Ukrainian cargo plane there was less hybrid warfare than warfare, full stop https://t.co/GG98Q1Zbkx
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) https://x.com/TheEconomist/status/2089296198670676067?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"Within the growing network of future test-field activities, the National Test Centre plays an integrative role as a trailblazer for future research and development of new UAS technologies within the DLR and for external partners," the center's website states.
The facility will further provide rare opportunity for drones and counter-drone technology to be tested in 'real-world conditions' and in multiple scenarios and settings, officials have described.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/19/2026 - 02:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/germany-opens-new-drone-security-center-amid-fears-russian-hybrid-warfare

2026-08-19 06:00:00 GMT

Hellish: Ceuta Mothers Weep In Streets; Rapes Force Women To Flee; Kids' Parks Smeared In Shit
Hellish: Ceuta Mothers Weep In Streets; Rapes Force Women To Flee; Kids' Parks Smeared In Shit
https://modernity.news/2026/08/18/hellish-ceuta-mothers-weep-in-streets-rapes-force-women-to-flee-kids-parks-smeared-in-shit/,
Spanish mothers in Ceuta are in tears on live television. Hospitals are overflowing. Beaches and parks that once hosted families are now open-air camps of garbage, feces and makeshift shacks. And the Civil Guard has confirmed at least 15 rapes since the late-July mass migrant invasion - including a 10-year-old girl allegedly assaulted by three migrant brothers.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/weepmod.jpg?itok=wEOR4hmY
Women are packing up and leaving the Spanish enclave. Local residents describe a city abandoned by its own government while Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez remains on vacation.
A mother broke down on live TV this week, describing the daily terror for her teenage daughter.
?WATCH: A mother in Ceuta has broken down in tears on Live TV:
"My 16-year-old daughter has to go everywhere with her father or with me because the migrants devour her. I can't take it anymore. I want them all gone."
The left-wing feminists are silent. https://t.co/3dksNYd9IC
— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) https://x.com/Inevitablewest/status/2089391619262849320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"My 16-year-old daughter has to go everywhere with her father or with me because the migrants devour her. I can't take it anymore. I want them all gone," she stated.
She added, "I'm not racist - my granddaughter is mixed-race, my best friends are Muslim - but they can't invade us. What's stayed here is the worst of it; there are murderers, rapists, thieves."
This is the reality two weeks after an estimated 70,000-plus migrants poured across from Morocco into a city of roughly 84,000 people. Reception centres collapsed. Thousands - largely young men - stayed behind when many others returned. Beaches became the default settlement.
Locals described the rapid transformation of once-pristine stretches such as Trampolín Beach: "We can't take our kids to the beach, we can't go. They are occupied, they are full of shacks, people are eating there, throwing food, it's full of clothes, feces, urine."
? CEUTA Residents Furious!
Small Kids Can't Go To The Park Anymore, Families Cannot Go To The Beach No More, There's P*ss And Sh*t Everywhere
This is our beautiful Spanish City in Africa, we have to defend it
Residents gathered in front of Ceuta's town hall in anger today for... https://t.co/IVwZg6X3iz
— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) https://x.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/2089397197460685231?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Children's parks across Ceuta have been left covered in human waste by the invaders, even as progressive voices continue claiming everything is under control and "normality" has returned.
Invasores llena de mierda los parques infantiles de Ceuta.
Pero los progres te dicen que todo está controlado y que impera la normalidad. https://t.co/ut3OPKYV3H
— David Santos (@davidsantosvlog) https://x.com/davidsantosvlog/status/2089673201261445595?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Infectious diseases including scabies, tuberculosis and impetigo have surged. Ceuta University Hospital opened an emergency disaster wing. One doctor warned of a "health catastrophe."
Ceuta's basically turned into a full-on slum at this point.
Thousands of illegal migrants are living right on the beach in these rough shacks thrown together from straw and sticks.
Officials are managing cases of tuberculosis, scabies, impetigo, and gastroenteritis, while... https://t.co/eHuEVKivS6
— I Meme Therefore I Am ?? (@ImMeme0) https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/2089082837957771685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A local doctor attempted to speak with the Spanish migration minister Elma Saiz about the scourge of diseases the migrants are spreading, putting Spaniards in danger.
? LA MINISTRA DE SANIDAD NO QUIERE HABLAR CON ESTA DOCTORA
Y luego va la Mema diciendo que en Ceuta no hay colapso sanitario. https://t.co/GZ12nVKqAJ
— Betania (@BetaniaTv) https://x.com/BetaniaTv/status/2089032159268900980?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Decían que les importaba mucho la pandemia de la COVID-19 y nos obligaban a vacunarnos y llevar mascarillas hasta en exteriores y ahora van camino de provocar una pandemia con la situación de insalubridad que se vive en Ceuta.
Increíble.https://t.co/BR0EbTggNU
— Javier Negre (@javiernegre10) https://x.com/javiernegre10/status/2089080771235533099?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Saiz made a speech literally saying that 'diversity is our greatest strength'.
She stated, "I want to highlight the responsibility, civic commitment, and maturity that the citizens are demonstrating. Ceuta is a true example of coexistence. A city in which different cultures, traditions, and faiths coexist. And which has demonstrated over decades that it is one of its greatest strengths."
Elma Saiz reivindica la "pluralidad" y la "diversidad" de Ceuta: "Quiero poner en valor la responsabilidad, el compromiso cívico y la madurez que está demostrando la ciudadanía. Ceuta es un verdadero ejemplo de convivencia. Una ciudad en la que conviven diferentes culturas,... https://t.co/TZ8Kg5DEqg
— RTVE Noticias (@rtvenoticias) https://x.com/rtvenoticias/status/2089313036771213757?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Another doctor, nearly in tears on television, described every hospital overrun, medicine running out, and staff afraid of being attacked. She said the streets, parks and football fields are filled with migrants and she is afraid to leave her house. Sexual assaults are rising. The Spanish government, she said, has abandoned its own citizens.
A doctor in Ceuta is almost crying on live television.
Every hospital is completely overrun with migrants. Rooms are full. Medicine is running out. They even opened a dedicated hospital for migrants, and that one is full too.
Doctors are afraid to treat them.
They're scared... https://t.co/rcU2qaxViu
— Yossi BenYakar (@YossiBenYakar) https://x.com/YossiBenYakar/status/2088946378533662946?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The Civil Guard has now confirmed 15 rapes since the invasion. The latest reported case involved three migrant brothers allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl on Lisboa Street.
Earlier reports detailed multiple underage Moroccan girls and at least one boy treated for sexual assault at the hospital. Many of these minors have been sleeping on the streets.
Two sisters, Yoli and María José, said they left the city with their daughters out of fear.
"What we are going through is very hard and it is very hard to hear journalists justify this Government, justify everything. We can't take it anymore, we feel humiliated, trampled. I have had to take my daughters out of their house because the Government does nothing, because Mr. Pedro Sánchez is on vacation in La Mareta. Nobody cares about us," Yoli told news organisation Cuatro.
Other women described needing escorts just to walk to their front doors, or waking to find a migrant in underwear in their bed after he climbed a balcony.
One resident reported that a BBVA bank branch had to close because security could no longer guarantee customers could withdraw money after a guard was beaten by a large group of migrants while trying to stop the robbery of an elderly woman.
? "A resident of Ceuta reports that they have had to close the BBVA because the security personnel cannot guarantee that customers can withdraw money.
A BBVA security guard was beaten by 40 engineers yesterday when he tried to stop them from robbing an elderly lady."... https://t.co/gy57oLwQIy
— Nature (@TurquoiseOceanB) https://x.com/TurquoiseOceanB/status/2089419942093324550?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A pregnant woman described families feeling unsafe amid migrant-related fights and called for stronger action from Spain.
?? Ceuta woman on migration tensions.
In a viral video, a pregnant resident says families feel unsafe due to migrant-related fights and calls for stronger action from Spain. Claims unverified. https://t.co/srkC1L2xUz
— Donald Andy (@today__today) https://x.com/today__today/status/2088999370792247748?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Residents Pilar and Elena urged government figures to visit Ceuta and see the situation for themselves, stating "We live here, we don't just come for a weekend," while elitist leftists sitting in TV studios in Madrid scoffed at them.
?? Ceuta residents Pilar and Elena are calling on Marta Sanchís to return to the city and see what they are experiencing firsthand.
"We live here, we don't just come for a weekend," they said.
https://t.co/hkwmevMWaF
— NewsForce (@Newsforce) https://x.com/Newsforce/status/2089308997459357765?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Another local resident spoke with visible distress in a street interview, gesturing emphatically as she described the daily fear and loss of normal life for Ceuta families under the ongoing occupation of public spaces.
She notes that she feels she cannot leave the house without pepper spray as she's afraid for her life, adding that the Spanish politician "motherfuckers" have allowed rapists and convicted criminals to invade and roam free.
https://t.co/HZcOWhZxKE
— Victor VS ???? (@victor_vs) https://x.com/victor_vs/status/2089422033784369521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Ceuta mothers are now demanding the school year be delayed. "I would not let my daughter come to school alone," one said. Another insisted the schools themselves "should be fumigated before any children are allowed back in."
Las madres de Ceuta piden el retraso del inicio escolar:
"Yo no dejaría que mi hija se viniera sola al colegio"
"Los colegios deberían ser fumigados para que los niños puedan entrar" https://t.co/V3x6MZ46Gy
— Pablo Haro Urquízar (@pabloharour) https://x.com/pabloharour/status/2089585583199031545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This all follows the past weekend's attempt at a second mass crossing. Hundreds of migrants tried to push from Castillejos. Spanish and Moroccan security forces turned them back with tear gas and a heavy deployment. Calls for a new wave on 15 August had circulated widely online.
Nuevo intento masivo en la frontera de Ceuta.
Cientos de migrantes intentan cruzar desde Castillejos y las fuerzas de seguridad lo frenan. https://t.co/duSviz0USh
— Alerta Global (@AlertaGlobal24H) https://x.com/AlertaGlobal24H/status/2089077595904032788?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Thousands of those who remained from the first wave are now holding mass protests on the beaches, demanding asylum and transfer to mainland Europe. NGOs are reportedly helping produce the signs. There is talk of a hunger strike.
?? Thousands of illegal migrants in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta are holding mass protests demanding asylum and to be sent to mainland Europe. https://t.co/HoAy8Jlt8N
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2089299371032498684?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
VÍDEO: ? Los migrantes siguen manifestándose en la playa del Trampolín: "No comida, asilo", en su segundo día de huelga de hambre reivindicando que no quieren volver a Marruecos https://t.co/wltlumHRHf
— El Pueblo de Ceuta (@ElPueblodeCeuta) https://x.com/ElPueblodeCeuta/status/2089400254097453272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
White liberal women volunteering for the NGOs continue to welcome and assist the new arrivals on the ground in Ceuta, openly supporting the occupation while local mothers flee.
White, liberal, fat, and ugly women welcome Muslim invaders in Ceuta. https://t.co/t6ftTeeE1I
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/2089634797635186719?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
? Ceuta Migrant Crisis: These migrants ain't going nowhere, look at the help and handouts they're getting, they're demanding asylum and they will no doubt get it
Only a show of strength by both governments stopped a second wave, but how long will this show of strength last... https://t.co/jUGEStUMVJ
— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) https://x.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/2089065184497127726?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is Ceuta. Pro-Islam white liberal women are a huge problem. They want to destroy Europe. https://t.co/AgXKJAfcU0
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/2089646142212432003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
What are they claiming asylum from? These are not people fleeing a country shattered by war or natural disaster. Morocco is a stable state that receives millions of tourists every year. The overwhelming majority are economic migrants seeking better opportunities, not refugees.
?? «Las ONG les incitan a la protesta para exigir el asilo. Ellas son las que incluso les están haciendo los carteles. Se habla de posible huelga de hambre si no consiguen el objetivo».
?? «The NGOs are inciting them to protest in order to demand asylum. They're even the ones... https://t.co/CCe1SS1VQs
— Rubén Pulido (@rubnpulido) https://x.com/rubnpulido/status/2089414249600704525?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Footage shows new arrivals landing on the sand and immediately chanting "Allahu Akbar."
?Beach day in Ceuta just got a soundtrack no one asked for.
Clandestine arrivals from Morocco land on the sand... and the first words out of their mouths? "Allahu Akbar."
Not "hello."
Not "thank you."
Not "we're seeking safety."
Just the same chant, loud and clear.
If this... https://t.co/KpuZL2MOZt
— The Patriots Voice ??????? ?? (@Proudofthisland) https://x.com/Proudofthisland/status/2089413941524922540?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Camps of cardboard and plastic continue to expand along the shore, complete with football games and laundry lines on what was Spanish beach.
? Lo que no verás en la tele: así crece el campamento en la playa de Ceuta.
Chabolas de cartón y lonas. Fútbol, baños y espera.
Esto ya no es una crisis humanitaria" de unos días.: es un asentamiento permanente junto a la frontera.
El vídeo muestra otra cosa: un poblado de... https://t.co/k527c5BiNE
— Jesús Vazquez ?????? (@jesusvazquezb) https://x.com/jesusvazquezb/status/2089100654740414915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
? It's only taken 2 weeks for third world immigrants to turn Ceuta into a sh*thole https://t.co/q6N1zwSlL1
— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) https://x.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/2089088754783027595?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Migrants have also set up an improvised mosque on El Trampolín Beach itself.
?? Inmigrantes CREAN una mezquita improvisada en la Playa de El trampolín (Ceuta) https://t.co/VEyvpi0QFI
— Actualidad Noticias (@Actualidad_Pol) https://x.com/Actualidad_Pol/status/2089637396786679941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Throughout the crisis, Spanish government spokesmen and much of the legacy media insisted the migrants had almost all returned to Morocco and that "reasonable normality" had been restored. Left-leaning voices repeated the line.
The reality on the ground - permanent-looking settlements, daily protests for asylum, and residents too afraid to let their daughters outside - shows otherwise.
Ceuta's women are voting with their feet. Families are sending children to the mainland. Parks and beaches that belonged to locals two weeks ago no longer do.
The open-border agenda that turned a Spanish enclave into a third-world camp overnight is being defended by the same voices who claimed the problem had already solved itself.
How many more European cities will be asked to absorb this nightmare before there is meaningful action and change?
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/19/2026 - 02:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hellish-ceuta-mothers-weep-streets-rapes-force-women-flee-kids-parks-smeared-shit

2026-08-18 23:15:00 GMT

Inside The DSA's Dilemma: Grow The Democratic Party Or Become It
Inside The DSA's Dilemma: Grow The Democratic Party Or Become It
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/inside-the-dsas-dilemma-grow-the-democratic-party-or-become-it-6074411?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
The Democratic Socialists of America's national leadership was split 14-13 in Chicago this summer. Not over whether to endorse Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for president in 2028, but over whether the group's own 120,000 members should even get to vote on the question.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281053%29.jpg?itok=rfknsyD5
The narrow margin, which blocked a nonbinding member poll, landed in the same season the DSA became, by its own count, the largest socialist organization in American history. It also exposed a fault line that the organization's recent winning streak has mostly obscured. The DSA has not settled on what it wants to be.
Ocasio-Cortez has kept the door open for a potential run for White House. Asked on ABC's "This Week" this month whether she would run for president or Senate in 2028, she said, "I haven't ruled out the possibility, and I'm very humbled [by] the tremendous amount of support out there." That leaves the DSA debating an endorsement for a candidacy she has neither confirmed nor denied.
The DSA was formed in 1982 through a merger of two earlier socialist organizations and describes its mission as replacing capitalism with democratic socialism, an economic system in which workers, not private owners, control production and resources. Its platform, called "Workers Deserve More," calls for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, and an end to mass incarceration.
Some of the DSA's positions have drawn particular scrutiny. The group's platform calls for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and scaling back its deportation efforts, and its "defund the police" plank goes further, calling for eventually eliminating police and prisons altogether.
Within the Party
Frank Llewellyn, the DSA's national director from 2001 to 2011, told The Epoch Times the organization has no interest in becoming a third party, regardless of how the endorsement debate is resolved. Llewellyn is also treasurer for Ocasio-Cortez's congressional campaign, a role he's held since 2018. He said he was speaking in a personal capacity, not on her behalf.
"All the success DSA has had is within the Democratic system," Llewellyn said. "We don't really want a third party. It's a complicated topic, but we are committed to this path, even though there are those who would disagree."
Llewellyn attributed the movement's momentum to shifting economic conditions rather than any single tactic.
"The conditions are driving the success," he said, including "where power lies, changes in the economy, and running people who have that perspective and convincing people they will do their best to make those changes." Voters, he said, simply "see the economy is not working for them."
He also pointed to generational turnover inside the party.
"There's generational change going on," Llewellyn said. "Being around a long time is no longer an advantage."
He was careful not to predict whether the DSA will ultimately back Ocasio-Cortez.
"AOC is a formidable candidate with strong support," Llewellyn said. "I'm sure her future political aspirations will become more defined in due time."
Miriam Bensman, a longtime DSA member in Queens who has organized for the group since the 1980s, told The Epoch Times that staying inside the Democratic Party was a founding principle, not a recent compromise. She traced the debate back to the Socialist Party in the 1960s, before the DSA's 1982 founding, and recalled a New York City Council candidate, Jabari Brisport, who ran on the Green Party and Socialist Party lines and lost, then won a state Senate seat two years later running as a Democrat.
"Overcoming people's loyalty to voting as Democrats was really hard," Bensman said. "People had to learn it for themselves."
Bensman acknowledged that running under the Green Party banner and only gaining 2 percent of the vote wasn't worth the time or the expense.
Bensman, who volunteered for Zohran Mamdani's New York City mayoral campaign, a state Assembly primary, and congressional campaigns in Michigan this year, also said the DSA's momentum reflects economic conditions. She spent much of this year knocking on doors for Assembly candidate David Orkin, who defeated an incumbent in a Queens Democratic primary, and for Rep. Claire Valdez in an overlapping congressional district.
"The inequality of wealth and income has gotten so extreme over the last almost 50 years," she said, pointing to tax cuts dating to President Ronald Reagan's administration, weakened unions, and rising rents. "People are rightfully angry."
She said the DSA sometimes works alongside the Working Families Party, which backs candidates who are not DSA members, including Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Bensman said she also campaigned this year for Donavan McKinney, a DSA-backed congressional candidate in Michigan.
Bensman's support for the DSA is rooted in ideology, not just electoral tactics.
She said she is "moved by the ideals of democratic socialism," arguing that people can't live dignified lives amid extreme inequality and that democracy itself is compromised when government is shaped by corporate interests and concentrated wealth.
Bensman pointed to healthcare specifically, saying people "shouldn't have to worry about not being able to eat in order to take care of their healthcare," and compared it to services Americans already take for granted, like public schools, libraries, and toll-free roads.
"Even when we can't get all of that," she said, the DSA's platform still "reshapes how we design public programs."
This involves a belief, she said, that "government can help make life better."
Establishment Democrats
State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-N.Y.) told NY1's Errol Louis that establishment Democrats should not try to block democratic socialist candidates following their recent wins.
"I keep trying to make this point to people who are anti-DSA or whatever it is. You're not opposing these individuals who are running for office. You are opposing thousands of people who vote for them," Gianaris said.
Llewellyn made a similar case in blunter terms, arguing that keeping the party's current coalition intact is not the point.
"Those who can't get on board with the DSA agenda need to leave and find another home," Llewellyn said. "The Democratic corporate money people are at odds with DSA."
That framing puts Llewellyn well to the left of Gianaris, who argues for coexistence rather than a clean break. Where Gianaris describes the DSA's rise as an expansion of the Democratic coalition, Llewellyn frames it as a takeover already underway, one in which the party's older, more moderate wing is expected to adapt or leave rather than the other way around.
The result is a party weighing two different versions of what "making room" for the DSA actually requires. A coalition broad enough to include democratic socialists, or one that eventually replaces its old guard with them.
Party Split
Not everyone views the DSA's rise as a sign of durable strength. Ralph Rebandt, a Michigan pastor of 30 years who ran for governor there, told The Epoch Times the party's leftward shift will cost Democrats votes in November. That kind of accommodation from elected Democrats, he said, is exactly what worries him: a party absorbing a movement it may not be able to control.
Rebandt pointed to Abdul El-Sayed's Senate primary win in Michigan, which relied heavily on college towns, while Democratic voters in Detroit and other working-class areas favored Rep. Haley Stevens.
"There's a huge split right now in the party," Rebandt said. "The Democrats we're talking to and working with in Detroit are telling us they don't want anything to do with socialism or communism."
Rebandt predicts El-Sayed will lose to Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. He also said he expects Generation Z voters, not older Democrats, to ultimately reject the socialist label.
"They know what socialism does. They know what socialism brings, and they don't want that," Rebandt said. "They want to be able to live the American dream."
Asked whether the DSA intends to remain inside the Democratic Party or eventually break away, Rebandt predicted the opposite of a third-party strategy.
"At some point when they feel they're large enough to take over the Democratic Party, they're going to be the Democratic Party," he said. "I don't think they would do a third option."
That prediction lines up with what Llewellyn and Bensman describe as DSA's actual strategy. Growth through Democratic primaries, not a break from the party. Llewellyn pointed to a historical precedent he believes the DSA is emulating.
"The Republicans replaced the Whigs," he said. "They were a third party."
Whether that comparison holds may depend on what the DSA decides to do about Ocasio-Cortez. For now, the narrow vote in Chicago suggests the organization itself has not resolved the question, even as its membership and its influence within the Democratic Party continue to grow.
"People are afraid to argue with us because we are finding success," Llewellyn said.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/18/2026 - 19:15
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/inside-dsas-dilemma-grow-democratic-party-or-become-it

2026-08-18 08:15:00 GMT

'Do What Israel Tells You!' - Graffiti On USAF Jet Suggests Troops Think War Isn't For America
'Do What Israel Tells You!' - Graffiti On USAF Jet Suggests Troops Think War Isn't For America
It only took two weeks of fighting for https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/polls/iran-israel-2026of polled Americans to conclude that the war on Iran benefits Israel more than the United States. If comments from a prominent, former Navy SEAL and graffiti written in the dust of a US Air Force jet in the Middle East are any indication, many American service members are convinced their participation in the war only serves the agenda of the State of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Sunday, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive VP Trita Parsi posted a photo that he said was https://x.com/tparsi/status/2088984699146240411?s=20 showing temporary graffiti one or more service members had written in the dust of a military aircraft:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/usaf-kc-135r-stratotanker-in-the-middle-east-spotted-with-v0-gdpc0f1hesjh1.jpeg?itok=srbbkZMO
Some messages on what looks like a Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker satirically embrace the idea that American service members should be enthusiastic about serving Israel:
- "Be a good goy and do what Israel tells you to!!!"
- "I LOVE ISRAEL. I AM A GOOD GOYIM."
- "BiBi's Cucks"
Some clarifications are in order. "Bibi" is a nickname used by Netanyahu, and "cuck" refers to weak men who submit to other men's domination. "Goy" and "goyim" are, respectively, singular and plural Hebrew nouns used to refer to non-Jews. Those two words aren't inherently derogatory toward non-Jews. However, like other labels for people, they can be used derisively or as an "outsider label" depending on the context. For example, https://archive.is/oLW4Q with AI scientist Roger Schank, convicted sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein wrote, "This is the way the jew [sic] make money… let the goyim deal in the real world.”
Epstein made an appearance on the dusty wing flap too. Reflecting a widespread but not-yet-proven theory that Israel coerced Trump into starting a war on Iran by threatening to release damning information obtained by Epstein, one of the messages repeats a common play on words that turns US "Operation Epic Fury" into "Operation Epstein Fury."
Another message mocks the Trump administration's recurring claims that a deal to end the five-month-old war and open the Strait of Hormuz is imminent: "Peace Deal #64 Incoming... ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND." Another mocks the surveillance state that's rising at home while service members who are sworn to defend the Constitution are sent overseas for an unconstitutional war https://www.starkrealities.net/p/join-us-military-kill-die-for-israel: "I love Flock Cameras."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/close%20up.jpeg?itok=Vw-JI-NK
As this is written, mainstream media isn't touching the story with a ten-foot-pole, despite the sound reputation of Parsi, who has vouched for its authenticity. The media silence about the messages has thus far relieved the Pentagon from having to issue a statement about them. If it does, we can expect the DOD to claim the graffiti is unrepresentative of how most US service members feel.
Parsi says a service member https://x.com/tparsi/status/2088984699146240411?s=20 that journalists have no idea how low morale is. "What people in the media don't understand when they compare past conflicts to this one, is this operation has no morale behind it," the military man told Parsi. "That makes a world of difference to service members deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely."
In an https://youtu.be/yB05HiKCCuI?si=yZPLvlzDdgCPE5fF&t=6119 last month, podcaster and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan gave some blunt insights into similar feelings among special operators still on active duty:
"I just had some buddies leave and everybody knows what this is. Everybody knows they're fighting for Israel. It's a joke. This is not me saying this, this is them. This is the guys that are gonna go over there in Tier 1, Tier 2 units that are joking around, saying 'this isn't even for us.'
Throughout history, that's not a winning strategy. If they don't believe in what they're potentially going to do...and they know it's not for the United States, it's for a foreign country --- like, the fight's out of the dog, buddy...They know it's not for us. They're not defending our country."
Ryan said he'd just hosted a pre-deployment party for an operator, who was fixated on the grim reality of what service in the war on Iran https://www.starkrealities.net/p/join-us-military-kill-die-for-israel. "That's all he was talking about. And it's fucking sad...like, why don't you just get out, man?"
Shawn Ryan just said the quiet part out loud on Tucker:
“Everybody knows they’re fighting for Israel. It’s a joke.”
Active Tier 1 and Tier 2 guys are openly joking: “Yeah… this isn’t even for us.”
“They know it’s not for the United States. It’s for a foreign country.”
“They… https://t.co/sJN20gUJ0b
— Defiant Ghost (@TheDefiantGhost) https://x.com/TheDefiantGhost/status/2080752050439168169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Thanks to reporting on the extent to which the Israeli government went to sell Trump on breaking his campaign promise to be a "peace president," it's been increasingly common to hear the war being characterized as a "war for Israel." Having convinced America to attack its chief regional rival -- in a war that has killed at least 18 service members and wounded more than 600 others -- Israel is now abstaining from direct participation.
As far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said last month, “The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/top-israeli-minister-best-us-if-us-fights-iran-while-israel-sits-out-new-round-war
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/18/2026 - 04:15
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/do-what-israel-tells-you-graffiti-usaf-jet-suggests-troops-think-war-isnt-america

2026-08-18 03:50:00 GMT

What's Behind Trump's Unexpected Favor To Kim Jong Un?
What's Behind Trump's Unexpected Favor To Kim Jong Un?
https://korybko.substack.com/p/whats-behind-trumps-unexpected-favor
He might be flirting with a radical policy recalibration even if he soon changes his mind...
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%2829%29_12.jpg?itok=XhWHN-hm
Trump https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117107215379637520 that the US will “substantially reduce” its participation in the annual https://www.usfk.mil/What-We-Do/Exercises/Ulchi-Freedom-Shield/ large-scale joint military drills with South Korea that he was apparently unaware of till just recently and which began this week. He described his decision as being “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” and aimed at not “send[ing] a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile”. He also complained about its costs and South Korea’s refusal to help the US fight Iran.
Trump’s favor to Kim was unexpected because he https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/donald-trump-alleges-that-russia-china-iran-and-north-korea-can-compromise-us-mid-term-elections-2026-07-17-1048534 North Korea alongside Russia, China, and Iran as “US adversaries” just last month who have the ability to manipulate US elections. His Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby was also in Southeast Asia in early August, where he was replicating the NATO 3.0 concept through what can be called https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/donald-trump-alleges-that-russia-china-iran-and-north-korea-can-compromise-us-mid-term-elections-2026-07-17-1048534. While it’s mainly aimed at containing China, fearmongering about North Korea could raise its appeal among some South Koreans and Japanese.
On that topic, those two states are US mutual defense allies, and they share similar threat perceptions of China and North Korea. They’re also rapidly militarizing, with South Korea planning to build its https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/south-korea-will-remain-a-key-part-of-the-us-chinese-containment-plans with American assistance and Japan considering abandoning its https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/un/disarmament/nnp/, both of which have heightened regional tensions to the US’ divide-and-rule benefit. The same goes for the latest https://korybko.substack.com/p/a-pragmatically-amended-1956-compromise in which https://x.com/USAmbJapan/status/2088109835548286997.
It was therefore completely unexpected that Trump would do Kim a favor as significant as “substantially reducing” the US’ participation in its annual large-scale joint military drills with South Korea since this goes against all of the abovementioned policies. While only he can account for his reasons, and it’s possible that he simply felt like it and there’s nothing deeper, it can’t be ruled out that he has some plan in mind. His South Korean counterpart’s https://www.rt.com/news/644294-south-korea-proposes-dialogue-to/ to resume talks with the North could provide a hint.
Trump might thus be considering the resumption of his own talks with Kim, whether bilaterally like during his first term and/or somehow connected with his “https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-board-of-peace-a-replacement” initiative, the motivation of which could be a blend of personal and geostrategic calculations. As regards the first, he might want to cement his legacy as a “president of peace” like he’s previously described himself as while also distracting from the https://korybko.substack.com/p/heres-how-iran-pulled-off-the-upset of the Third Gulf War that he initiated earlier this year.
On the geostrategic front, Trump might fear that Russia, North Korea, and China could strengthen their military-security ties to the point of a de facto alliance in the face of the challenge that AUKUS+ poses to them all, which could risk World War III by miscalculation if North Korea carries out more nuclear and/or missile tests amidst worsening regional tensions. Essentially, the speculative resumption of Trump-Kim talks could therefore be for escalation-control purposes, though only if they’re successful.
It’s admittedly premature to analyze anything beyond what was already mentioned in this piece, and even that which was written is reasonable conjecture, but it’s nevertheless notable that Trump unexpectedly did such a significant favor for Kim in spite of the rising regional tensions that the US is responsible for. After all, this single move goes against all of the US’ policies in Northeast Asia, so it’s not far-fetched that he might be flirting with a radical policy recalibration even if he soon changes his mind.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 23:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/whats-behind-trumps-unexpected-favor-kim-jong-un

2026-08-18 03:00:00 GMT

China's YMTC Is Now World's 3rd Biggest Flash-Memory Supplier With 14% Market Share
China's YMTC Is Now World's 3rd Biggest Flash-Memory Supplier With 14% Market Share
Earlier today we reported that China's highly touted DRAM memory maker https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cxmt-becomes-chinas-most-valuable-company-ubs-calls-apple-sourcing-report-key-catalystto become China's most valuable company.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/cxmt_0.png?itok=BWmYKScF
That may be just the start, because hot on the heels of the biggest Chinese IPO this decade, comes that "other" Chinese memory maker, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC) which has now broken into the world’s top three NAND flash memory suppliers by volume for the first time, marking a milestone for China’s semiconductor ambitions as it strives to narrow the revenue gap with global rivals in high-value data-center storage.
The Wuhan-based chipmaker captured 14% of global NAND bit shipments – a measure of total storage capacity shipped rather than total chip units – in the second quarter, narrowly overtaking Japan’s Kioxia, according to data from https://www.propertyfinder.ae/en/plp/rent/villa-for-rent-dubai-tilal-al-ghaf-elysian-mansions-115917967.htmlResearch published on Wednesday.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/66114210-9616-11f1-9256-db0728d08812.png?itok=HxWIY2TB
Samsung Electronics retained the global lead with a 25% market share, while SK Hynix – including its Solidigm subsidiary – was second at 22%.
YMTC’s shipments climbed 22% year on year and 5% quarter on quarter, driven by expanding supplies to domestic electronics manufacturers and the increased production of its latest-generation 3D NAND architecture, Counterpoint said.
Despite its surge in shipment volume, YMTC’s market position lags in dollar terms. The company ranked fifth globally in NAND revenue for the quarter, placing it behind both US-based Micron Technology and Kioxia.
The gap stems from YMTC’s heavy exposure to lower-margin consumer products and a relatively small footprint in enterprise solid-state drives (eSSDs), which command higher pricing.
The product mix imbalance is increasingly squeezing revenue as artificial intelligence reshapes global storage demand.
eSSDs accounted for 48% of total global NAND bit shipments in the second quarter, nearly doubling their 26% share from a year earlier. Counterpoint attributed the surge to a broader shift in AI workloads from model training towards inference, which requires vast amounts of fast storage for frequently accessed data sets.
The research firm projected server eSSDs would account for more than half of all NAND bits shipped by the end of the year.
To capture this higher-margin market, YMTC planned to shift its product mix further towards eSSDs in the second half of the year to cement its third-place global standing, supported by expanding avenues for capital, Counterpoint said.
The strategy comes as YMTC continues to scale its manufacturing operations despite years of US trade restrictions designed to limit its access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Morgan Stanley said in May that YMTC was increasing utilization in its second fabrication plant in Wuhan while advancing construction and tool installation at a third facility. The bank estimated the company would add about 35,000 wafers per month of capacity this year, with substantially larger increases planned for 2027 and 2028.
The expansion aligns with Beijing’s push to localise China’s AI infrastructure, which would drive growing domestic demand for home-grown eSSDs and high-bandwidth memory through installation in data centres, Bernstein Research said in May.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 23:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-ymtc-surges-worlds-3rd-biggest-flash-memory-supplier-14-market-share

2026-08-18 02:35:00 GMT

Fake News, Part I: The Long History
Fake News, Part I: The Long History
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/08/17/fake_news_part_i_the_long_history_154415.html,
In 1896, a daring journalist covering the Cuban revolution against their colonial masters crossed the Spanish lines three times to interview insurgent leaders. William Francis Mannix's final trip into the Cuban interior was made at the request of the leader of the insurgent government, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt. El Presidente Cisneros wanted the intrepid correspondent to carry back an appeal begging for support from the American people.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/724581_80.jpg?itok=KXtQrrjX
Mannix's riveting reports appeared on the front page of the New York Times and other leading newspapers. After the Spanish expelled Mannix from Cuba, he was invited to speak to the National Geographic Society and other prestigious gatherings. The Cuban appeal was published in the Congressional Record. "I applaud and approve every word in that splendid appeal," said Alabama Sen. John T. Morgan, who supported U.S. government intervention to help the Cuban rebels.
The nation's leading newspapers decried Spain's subsequent expulsion of Mannix from Cuba. The Washington Star, another newspaper that carried Mannix's dispatches, said he was being banished "for having told the truth about insurgents and their cause."
Mannix scored a journalistic triumph, but it was not one that his editors, legislators, or readers imagined. His three trips over enemy lines and his stories, including the Cisneros appeal, were all fakes. Mannix wrote them while sitting in the bar of the Moscotte Hotel in Havana or - for a change of scenery - on the hotel's veranda.
In an October 2017 interview on Fox News, President Donald Trump said, "I've really started this whole 'fake news' thing." He called it "one of the greatest of all the terms I've come up with." But faking has a long history. No journalist surpassed Mannix as a fabulist in Cuba, but many followed in his footsteps on the island. Their fabricated sensationalizing reached such proportions that a book-length expose was devoted to the subject on the eve of the United States entering war with Spain. It was called Facts and Fakes About Cuba.
This article and two that follow give perspective on three aspects of fake news: its long history, its attraction to readers, and the consequences of political fake news.
The power of modern technology to pollute streams of information has made fake news seem terrifyingly new. Russian bots flood the Internet with horrifying stories that did not happen. Political operatives produce AI-generated videos of despicable speeches their opponents did not deliver. Your crazy cousin spreads word in his social media posts that President Trump's supporters staged the assassination attempts on his life. As to the latter, a NewsGuard/YouGov poll recently found that almost one-third of Americans believe at least one of the three attempts on Trump's life was staged.
Modern technology is a force multiplier for falsehood. But technology is not the root cause. The launching pad is and always has been people: people who for a variety of reasons want to mislead, and people who for a variety of reasons find falsehood more satisfying than fact. Fake news goes back much further than the computer, the television, the radio, the typewriter, or the printing press.
The history of mankind has been a history of the battle between truth and falsehood. The ancient Greeks created gods in their own image by naming them Apate (fraud), Dolos (guile), and Pheme (rumor). The Roman poet Virgil wrote in the Aeneid of the goddess Rumor:
Her frightening mingle of truth and lies,/ Rhapsodically singing about them in the darkness,/ And all the people hear what she is singing.
One place Rumor did her work was on a busy street corner near the Piazza Navona. Beginning in the 16th century, Romans surreptitiously placed false malicious notes about public figures on a statue of Pasquino, who in legend was supposed to be a local tailor and wit. The name of the mendacious notes lives on as pasquinades.
Buttered news
In the years leading up to the French Revolution, historian Robert Darnton documented that France was awash in misinformation. Craque was slang for fake news. The word mimicked the cracking sound of branches around the Tree of Crakow in Paris, where people gathered in the same way the English did at St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's, where pamphlets were sold and gossip exchanged, was called "the mint of all famous lies."
A hinge point in fake news came in the 1620s, when London printer Nathaniel Butter published the first serialized English-language commercial newspaper, "The News of this Present Week." As soon as it and others like it appeared, discerning critics ridiculed the emergence of "buttered news."
Butter's newspaper could not have appeared without moveable type and the printing press, but this technology had been around for some time. What changed was the emergence of a growing middle class who could read and had disposable income to spend on news - even news of dubious provenance.
Butter and those who joined him in the newsbook business were only beginning to understand journalism. They sometimes published the oldest news first, as if to keep things in order. The British crown constrained them by forbidding the publication of domestic news. Forced to go abroad, they relied on second-hand reports, the spicier the better. A typical article read, "A strange apparition at Rome, of two mighty armies," whose battle in the air was followed by a storm of "blood and fire from heaven." According to one historian, "Roughly one-tenth of these early newspapers contained some sort of apparition, vision, or monstrous-birth item," such as boy-girl twins born to a Swiss cow.
Not all falsehood is fake
We need to be clear about definitions. Fake news is intentional falsification. A factual error in a newspaper is not fake news. It is a mistake. A mistake may be due to sloppy newsgathering or an accidental slip. It may call for firing the reporter. But the author did not aim to deceive. It wasn't a hoax.
Politicians find it convenient to overlook these definitional niceties. They discredit factual news that makes them look bad by calling it "fake news." They become the fakers.
The term fake news was routinely splashed across the pages of American newspapers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Each day readers were greeted by headlines like these: "Malicious Fake News." "Fake News Again." "Bit of Fake News." "Concerning Fake News." "More Fake 'News.'" "Fake Stories Afloat." "Fake News. Pope Has Died Twenty-Two Times in Five Years."
The faking habit waned as the 20th century rolled on. First, the cost of starting a new newspaper soared, so it was more difficult for scallywags to wade into the gutter. Second, the intense competition for readers drove the least profitable newspapers out of business. Those that were left found they earned more money by competing on the basis of reliability. Balanced fact-based reports attracted more readers than partisan news. Advertisers preferred to see their products promoted in credible publications.
Of course, some newspapers were outliers. The New York Graphic billed itself as offering "Nothing But the Truth" and then made a merry practice of lying. Long before modern technology made it easy to fake photographs, the Graphic pasted real-life faces on posed bodies. These appeared alongside made-up lonely heart stories.
Many years later fakes still appeared newspapers. In 1980 the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for "Jimmy's World," a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict fabricated by reporter Janet Cooke. A fake in the New York Times the next year was eerily similar to William Mannix's in Cuba. Freelancer Christopher Jones, hired by the Times magazine, invented a detailed story about spending a month with Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who were in hiding in Cambodia. He never left Spain.
But ethical standards had set in by that time. The Graphic went bankrupt in 1932. Its debts amounted to millions. The Post issued a lengthy mea culpa and returned the Pulitzer Prize. When the New York Times realized that Jones might not have been on the up and up, the executive editor assigned three reporters to determine conclusively that the story was a fabrication and then apologized profusely.
We are now back to the buttered days of journalism for the opposite reason we left them behind. The legacy media, as the old established media are called, carry on, albeit in smaller numbers and with generally lower profits. Meanwhile a tidal wave of new, irresponsible media has emerged. The costs of entry are low, and ethics is often considered a nuisance. These news outlets are as eager to fake as Nathaniel Butter and William Mannix were.
Our attraction to fakers like these will be the subject of Part II.
John Maxwell Hamilton, an RCP columnist, is at work on a biography of the journalist-faker William Francis Mannix. His recent book Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda won the Goldsmith Prize.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 22:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fake-news-part-i-long-history

2026-08-18 02:10:00 GMT

US Navy Destroyer Suffered 4-Day Power Outage In Sweltering South China Sea
US Navy Destroyer Suffered 4-Day Power Outage In Sweltering South China Sea
Large US naval battleships continue to suffer problems at sea. While there have been many headlines of late detailing the problems of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier connected to its extended deployment amid the Iran war, a separate warship is having serious problems in Pacific waters, quite apart from the crisis in the Persian Gulf.
"A US Navy guided-missile destroyer spent four days last month without working toilets, galley services and air conditioning in the blistering heat of the South China Sea after the warship lost power," CNN https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/17/asia/us-destroyer-benfold-loses-power-intl-hnk-ml.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/benfoldfiel.jpg?itok=qQ01iUIt
The military has since confirmed an engineering failure which caused the significant outage, which basically shut down all the ship's systems, including the ability to maneuver on its own.
A US 7th Fleet statement identified that the USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was on routine operations in the Indo-Pacific on when an "engineering casualty involving its generators" occurred.
It happened on July 24, and has now set back additional operations. It was supposed to be part of the USS George Washington strike group which is at the moment headed to the Middle East in order to relieve the Lincoln carrier.
However, the Benfold is still stuck in Asian waters. "There were no injuries to the crew, who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism, and unwavering steadiness in their response," the US Navy statement said.
The four-day crisis impacted the ship's galley services, toilets, air conditioning and potable water, the 7th Fleet also confirmed. The heat would have been sweltering.
No explanations have been given as to how the crew managed the waste problem. USNI, which first reported the crisis, describes of the repair https://news.usni.org/2026/08/14/uss-benfold-was-stalled-in-the-south-china-sea-for-four-days-after-engineering-casualty:
The George Washington Carrier Strike Group supported the destroyer, according to 7th Fleet. USS Robert Smalls (CG-62), the cruiser attached to the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, helped provide meals for the crew, Comer said.
Contractor tugboats towed Benfold to Subic Bay where it was met by personnel from the Ship Repair Facility – Japan Regional Maintenance Center on July 28, with crew receiving contracted lodging off the ship the next day. Power was restored on July 30, Comer said.
All repairs were completed by Aug. 7 when the ship completed a berth shift for fuel. The destroyer left Subic Bay on Aug. 8.
Benfold, which had been sailing with the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, pulled into Yokosuka, Japan, on Thursday, according to ship spotters. It did not transit the Malacca Strait with the other ships of the GW CSG, which are likely heading toward the Middle East.
The timing of this engineering failure incident is very bad for the navy, given already there's much scrutiny being placed on long deployments at sea connected to the Iran conflict.
US Navy destroyer left without working toilets, food service or AC for FOUR DAYS after losing power in sweltering South China Sea
USS Benfold suffered generator failure on July 24, leaving its crew without basic amenities amid blistering heat — 7th Fleet spox confirms to CNN https://t.co/CJBm5r7jv1
— Michael Ashura (@MichaelAshura) https://x.com/MichaelAshura/status/2089336110241726588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Congressional leaders are currently focused on the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln, amid reports of problems in supplying the ship and mental health problems following a record-deployment.
https://thehill.com/homenews/6033332-senators-demand-uss-abraham-lincoln-info/ reports Monday that "A group of 15 senators said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth owes Americans answers about the ongoing deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group after reports of low morale and a mental health crisis among service members aboard."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 22:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-navy-destroyer-suffered-4-day-power-outage-sweltering-south-china-sea

2026-08-18 01:45:00 GMT

Entering The Gates Of Lies: Unmasking The Climate Version Of Theranos
Entering The Gates Of Lies: Unmasking The Climate Version Of Theranos
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2026/08/14/entering_the_gates_of_lies_unmasking_the_climate_version_of_theranos_1199986.html,
One of President Trump's campaign https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ending-the-Green-New-Scam-Fact-Sheet.pdf was eliminating climate scams. As net-zero climate policies fade into the shadows, another climate scam is biting the dust.
Bill Gates's daughter, Phoebe Gates, may not have her father's entrepreneurial talent, but she, too, frequently peddles climate alarmism. Mr. Gates, however, https://nypost.com/2025/10/28/us-news/bill-gates-makes-major-climate-change-reversal-after-years-of-doomerism/ climate doomerism last year in a widely-shared memo.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/724578_80.jpg?itok=n83gJV5z
A https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/gates-heir-s-shopping-app-took-credit-for-sales-it-didn-t-drive determined the younger Gates and her cofounder, climate influencer https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/sophia-kianni-total-climate-babe/'s https://nypost.com/2025/04/25/business/phias-phoebe-gates-and-sophia-kianni-are-creating-a-new-kind-of-founder/ sustainable e-commerce startup, Phia, was reportedly collecting sales commissions it had not earned. Phia was marketed as a climate-friendly platform that directed shoppers to secondhand products. Unsurprisingly, the startup created its own climate of lies.
Phia claims to be climate-friendly by promoting secondhand clothing options. Co-founder Sophia Kianni https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKrGGDkAL4&t=59s Phia as having a fundamental "sustainability aspect ... buying an item secondhand actually represents an 80% reduction in carbon footprint compared to buying new." Before studying at Stanford University, Ms. Kianni founded a major Left-wing climate activism organization called Climate Cardinals and served as a climate ambassador at COP27 in Egypt. Gates, for her part, https://i-d.co/article/phoebe-gates-profile-phia/ her sustainability and climate bona fides. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/bill-gates-our-grandchildren-will-pay-if-we-dont-fix-climate-change.html.
On the surface, Phia appeared to be successful and profitable. The company secured https://people.com/phoebe-gates-shopping-app-phia-announces-35-million-new-funding-exclusive-11985884 of seed funding, totaling over $43 million, and had a https://www.inc.com/ava-levinson/phoebo-gates-ai-shopping-app-family-name/91306489 of $185 million by early 2026.
Yet, Phia reportedly was cheating the system. The startup was allegedly using computer code to claim it facilitated numerous purchases - and thus collect a portion of sales - that it had nothing to do with. According to computer experts who https://www.benedelman.org/phia-forced-clicks/ the coding behind Phia's platform, a plug-in extension, quietly, unknown to the user, opened an invisible tab in the background. Doing so digitally registered Phia, falsely, as an affiliate marketer involved in the online transaction. Since some revenue in online commerce automatically goes to the affiliate marketer who was the final click before the user's purchase, Phia made itself that final click - even though it was not - and earned millions.
Just as damning, Phia's damage-control efforts sowed more doubts about their fishy operations. Phia's spokesperson responded to allegations, https://www.engadget.com/2212973/phoebe-gates-ai-shopping-app-phia-affiliate-sales-fake-clicks/ that "as soon as we were notified, our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue." In other words, the company supposedly resolved the issue, but didn't deny any wrongdoing.
Phia's reputation could be in jeopardy. It received investment from celebrities such as Sydney Sweeney, Khloé Kardashian, Jessica Alba, Kris Jenner, and Hailey Bieber. Those investors may now wonder how much deception and incompetence is going on behind the scenes related to other facets of Phia's business model. In fact, this isn't Phia's first scandal. In November, Phia was https://fortune.com/2025/11/15/phia-ai-shopping-agent-bill-gates-phoebe-gates-sophia-kianni-collecting-user-data/ capturing a "concerning amount of user data," according to reports, including collecting users' banking information.
A former senior executive for Climate Cardinals, who wishes to stay anonymous, has now come forward about Kianni's mismanagement style to the author. The anonymous whistleblower shared, "I was involved for two years and we didn't really do anything. It ruined my perspective for prestige." The whistleblower alleges that a company executive told him "all the numbers on the website are artificially inflated. None of them are real." Soon after, the company experienced a mass exodus of personnel, who decided that, in the source's words, they "no longer wanted to be part of the lies." After Kianni migrated to Phia, her past stayed with her. In order to get ahead, Sophia lied about a fake assistant and even https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fgw9y4K0xww about it.
It is worth asking: is Phia on the path to being Theranos 2.0? The parallels to Theranos, the disastrous tech startup that investigative journalists exposed as being among the greatest scams of modern times - ultimately https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/theranos-devos-other-investors-reportedly-lost-over-600-million.html investors hundreds of millions of dollars - are uncanny. Oddly enough, founders of both companies started their company at Stanford and faced rejection there, helping https://fortune.com/article/phoebe-gates-startup-phia-succeed-without-parents-help-bill-gates-melinda-french-gates/ a "chip on their shoulder," in Phoebe Gates's words.
Both of these startups had great ideas in theory - but they did not survive reality. In fact, they never tried. That is also the case for the climate movement writ large.
Climate alarmism, itself a scam, is a macrocosm of the Phia story. It's a movement based on activism, https://www.independentwomen.com/2026/02/12/trump-administration-to-repeal-endangerment-finding-and-advance-historic-deregulation/, and its fundamental claims https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2026/03/03/the_radical_lefts_green_scam_is_running_out_of_fuel_1168179.html. Climate programs also https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376 billions of government funds under President Biden, until the judicious Trump administration took notice and https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ending-the-Green-New-Scam-Fact-Sheet.pdf the gravy train. Falsehoods and fear mongering can be quite lucrative.
Phia should serve as a cautionary tale for the future of so-called climate investment - and the climate movement itself.
Sydney Rodman is a visiting fellow at Independent Women's Center for Energy and Conservation.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 21:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/entering-gates-lies-unmasking-climate-version-theranos

2026-08-18 01:20:00 GMT

Police Attacked During Massive "Teen Brawl" At Wisconsin State Fair
Police Attacked During Massive "Teen Brawl" At Wisconsin State Fair
The establishment media commonly uses strategic phrases to hide or omit the truth behind certain uncomfortable situations. Since the BLM era, journalists cannot simply describe a violent mob as a "black mob", even if that description is generally true. Today, one must say the words "teen brawl" in order to avoid any implications of race.
It's a very similar tactic to those used by the media in the UK whenever a migrant (or child of migrants) commits a brutal crime - Simply call the suspect a "London Man" or a "Liverpool Man" or a "Glasgow Man" and hope no one asks questions.
In the US, whenever the media uses the words "teen brawl", it's easy to conclude who was involved. The fatigue is real.
Over the weekend the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis (a suburb of Milwaukee) experienced yet another of these seemingly spontaneous outbreaks of chaos when a horde of "teens" flooded into the event and began randomly attacking anyone nearby. It should be noted that even the witnesses are reticent to admit who the culprits were, choosing their words carefully.
Witness accounts report that law enforcement officers on scene https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/08/17/several-fights-broke-out-on-final-day-of-2026-wisconsin-state-fair/91336715007/, with multiple police suffering injuries. Dispatch audio indicates chaotic moments near the rides. "They need some help at Spin City. Send anybody extra you have," one police officer https://www.wisn.com/article/actress-hayden-panettiere-dies/73447913.
🚨https://x.com/hashtag/BREAKING?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw: Absolute CHAOS broke out at the Wisconsin State Fair as "teens" began BEATING ANYONE IN SIGHT.
MULTIPLE police officers were badly beaten, as families with kids were seen RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES as teens began brawling.
WE DON'T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS!!! https://t.co/gBbE73ph3f
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) https://x.com/mattvanswol/status/2089317567231902198?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Last day of the Wisconsin State Fair.
They went on a rampage. Anyone they could get their hands on. Shots were allegedly fired.
They’re calling it Killwaukee now.
We can’t keep living like this, something has to change. https://t.co/AJ7Xi3BPiZ
— Kim "Katie" USA (@KimKatieUSA) https://x.com/KimKatieUSA/status/2089366388825641075?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Local news reports show police attempting to https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/08/17/several-fights-broke-out-on-final-day-of-2026-wisconsin-state-fair/91336715007/, but the assailants swarm into the fairground crowds to avoid arrest. Roving mob fights involving black "youths" are common at state fairs across the region every year. The Minnesota State Fair reported similar incidents last year and rumors suggest a "bigger brawl" is likely this year.
It’s not just Wisconsin.
This was the Minnesota State Fair last year—and the year before there was a shooting in the midway.
Every year it gets more and more violent. I wonder why🤔https://x.com/hashtag/fight?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://x.com/hashtag/statefair?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/ktUFWO8377 https://t.co/7Um9Tc6oYy
— AmyLouWho (@perseverare1776) https://x.com/perseverare1776/status/2089431809150840998?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Why start brutal fights at the state fair? Maybe because the whole point is to ruin everyone else's day. Maybe the point is simply to create chaos and bask in the violence and misery. What is clear is that events that used to be safe for families are being turned into open melees just so urban demographics can revel in their own lack of impulse control.
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Mon, 08/17/2026 - 21:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/police-attacked-during-massive-teen-brawl-wisconsin-state-fair

2026-08-18 00:55:00 GMT

Deep Capture: The Administrative State's Intellectual Origins
Deep Capture: The Administrative State's Intellectual Origins
https://brownstone.org/articles/deep-capture/,
Woodrow Wilson holds a distinction no other American president has: he earned a Ph.D., completing his doctorate in political science and history at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. That same year, he wrote an essay called "https://www.jstor.org/stable/2139277," later published in the inaugural volume of Political Science Quarterly. Historians widely credit this essay as the founding document of public administration as a formal academic field, and Wilson himself as the father of that discipline.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/cropped_fire_1600x900-800x450_80.jpg?itok=aTrS5O_E
Wilson's central argument was that government should be split into two separate domains: politics, where elected officials set broad goals and policy direction, and administration, a technical, expert-driven sphere that should be run with "large powers and unhampered discretion" and insulated from day-to-day political interference.
Wilson suggested that government ought to be removed from the political process...in other words: "Democracy is too important to be left to voters." He explicitly encouraged American reformers to study European administrative models - including Prussia's - for lessons in efficiency, arguing that the US had fallen behind other nations in developing a science of government administration.
Later scholars have debated how far Wilson actually intended this separation to go, and some interpret his argument as calling for administrators to be almost entirely removed from political accountability. His essay laid the intellectual groundwork for what would become the modern professional civil service - insulated from patronage and run by career administrators rather than political appointees or elected officials.
The Frankfurt School's American Exile
Nearly 50 years later, a very different intellectual tradition found refuge in the same city that Wilson's ideas would eventually help administer. Max Horkheimer became director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany in 1930, leading a group of thinkers who developed what became known as Critical Theory. Its core members included Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Leo Lowenthal. Critical Theory is a philosophical framework that analyzes power structures and social inequalities.
Developed by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and 1940s, it shifted Marxism from a strict economic focus to a critique of culture, media, and modern society. Critical Theory was a different way of looking at philosophy; where philosophy was a search for truth - trying to explain phenomena and things that were not easily proven by science (ethics for example) - Critical Theory shifted to look at philosophy specifically through the lens of Marxism. It became no longer a search for truth but a means of propagandizing, which some would argue was a betrayal of philosophy.
When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Horkheimer was forced to relocate the group first to Geneva and then to New York, where it formed a loose affiliation with Columbia University in 1934-35. Horkheimer's actual scholarly project - laid out in works like https://www.amazon.com/Dialectic-Enlightenment-Cultural-Memory-Present/dp/0804736332 and https://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Reason-Max-Horkheimer/dp/1614274134 - described how instrumental reason, mass culture, and authoritarianism are able to take hold in modern societies.
It was also between 1933 and 1937 that several regulatory agencies were established that would come to form the backbone of the modern Administrative State.
Port Huron and the Old/New Left Split
By the early 1960s, the American left was largely defined by an older tradition: labor unions, industrial organizing, and class-based politics rooted in the fights of the 1930s and '40s. In June 1962, a group of Socialist Organization representatives, student activists, organized labor unions, civil rights leaders, and foreign observers gathered in Port Huron, Michigan, and produced a https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/27-the-sixties/the-port-huron-statement-1962/ that would come to mark a generational break from that tradition.
Students for a Democratic Society had grown out of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, the youth wing of an older Socialist educational group called the League for Industrial Democracy, which itself traced back to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society founded in 1905. In early 1960, that student branch renamed itself Students for a Democratic Society.
The manifesto produced at Port Huron was drafted primarily by Tom Hayden, a University of Michigan student and former editor of the Michigan Daily, working from ideas that blended the sociology of Columbia's C. Wright Mills and Walter Reuther with the direct-action tactics of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The week-long meeting brought together groups who wrote, debated, and voted on a 60-page document. Notably, it took place at a United Auto Workers retreat, with the UAW under Reuther's leadership covering a range of the convention's costs. Inside circles among Reuther's contemporaries referred to it as "The Long Journey."
The statement opened with a line that became its signature: "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." Its authors argued that two forces had shaken them out of complacency - the civil rights struggle against racial bigotry in the South, and the threat of nuclear war under the Cold War's shadow.
Where the Old Left had organized around labor and class struggle, Port Huron's New Left shifted the terrain. It called for a "participatory democracy" in which ordinary people - not just union leaders or party bosses - would have a direct hand in the decisions shaping their lives, workplaces, schools, and government. It criticized both American Cold War policy and Soviet communism, explicitly opposing the Soviet system's suppression of organized dissent. And because the statement judged the civil rights, peace, and student movements too poor and marginalized to drive change on their own, and organized labor too quiet, it looked instead to universities - which it saw as institutions open to people of nearly any viewpoint who could be recruited as "useful innocents" (often mistranslated as "useful idiots") to carry the water - as the engine of a new movement. Media, unions, high schools, and elementary schools were to follow.
The Port Huron Statement went on to shape the framing of Great Society-era politics, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the broader counterculture that carried into the early 1970s. Historians and participants alike have described it as the founding document of the New Left and a turning point.
The Modern Left's Long March
The strategic logic for how a university-centered movement might expand its influence beyond campus came from Germany. West German student movement leader Rudi Dutschke, nicknamed "Red Rudi," coined the phrase "der Lange Marsch Durch die Institutionen" (the long march through the institutions), borrowing the "long march" imagery from Mao's Chinese Communist Red Army march of 1934-35. The idea was that instead of pursuing a frontal revolutionary confrontation with the state, radicals should embed themselves inside existing institutions and overtake them from within over time. The name (and indeed his nickname) was a deliberate echo of the Chinese Communist Party.
Herbert Marcuse (The Frankfurt School) explicitly endorsed the approach of pursuing radical change not through revolution but by working patiently inside the institutions of government and civil society until they were captured and transformed from within. Writing to Dutschke in 1971 he intoned: "Your notion of the 'long march through the institutions' is the only effective way" forward for the movement. Marcuse became an enthusiastic backer of the strategy, and summarized Dutschke's strategy in his 1972 book https://archive.org/details/CounterRevolutionAndRevolt as "working against the established institutions while working within them."
He described infiltrating while learning their actual skills and functions rather than simply obstructing them; by "not simply 'boring from within' but by 'doing the job'...learning how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence.
Writing nearly three decades later, cultural critic Roger Kimball invoked this same Marcusean formulation to explain how the radicalism of the 1960s ultimately achieved its aims not through revolution but through patient institutional capture - "by insinuation and infiltration rather than by confrontation" (https://archive.org/details/longmarchhow00kimb). The result, as later commentators (The Successful Long March Through the Institutions, The American Vision) have characterized it, was a transformation accomplished without open conflict: "Not a shot was fired. No one was forced into concentration camps. Millions of parents willingly sent their children into public schools and universities systems..." that had, by then, been reshaped from within. Effectively replacing "bloody revolutions from without" with institutional capture from within.
Dutschke's thinking is often linked to the earlier work of Antonio Gramsci, the imprisoned Italian Marxist theorist who argued that revolution in developed Western societies wouldn't come from a single decisive uprising but from a slow "war of position" - a patient campaign to win cultural and institutional influence over time. While there's no direct evidence Dutschke had read Gramsci when he coined the term, notably, his diaries and biography reference other influences, including Georg Lukacs, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong.
Khrushchev famously said "We will bury you," which he later clarified to mean that communism would trounce capitalism. The Long March Through the Institutions is reminiscent of the Marxist/Communist concept of the "Vanguard State" as the "bridge" between a Capitalist state and a Socialist/Communist state.
Marcus Raskin and the Institute for Policy Studies
One American figure who embodied this institution-building, infiltrating strategy was Marcus Raskin. Born in Milwaukee in 1934 to Russian immigrant parents, Raskin studied at the University of Chicago, where he earned his law degree in 1957. During his time at Chicago, Raskin studied under Rexford Tugwell, who was a Columbia economist and a key member of Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust."
It was Tugwell who had suggested that it would be necessary to collect money (from the American people) to begin the process of creating an Administrative State.
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt issued https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102, requiring most Americans to surrender their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve in exchange for paper dollars, citing that private gold hoarding was worsening the Depression. The following year, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act revalued gold from $20.67 to $35 an ounce - a roughly 69 percent devaluation of the dollar against gold - which meant the government profited handsomely on the gold it had just collected at the lower price. Tugwell was among the New Deal's most influential architects of expanded federal planning, helping design agencies like the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Resettlement Administration. The devaluation, paired with an expanded money supply, gave Washington greater fiscal room to fund Administrative State projects.
After Chicago under Tugwell, Raskin went on to work as legislative counsel for several Congressmen in the late 1950s, then joined the Kennedy administration's National Security Council in 1961 as an aide to McGeorge Bundy. He resigned in 1962, citing his opposition to the Cuban Missile Crisis response. In 1963, alongside fellow Kennedy-administration alumnus Richard Barnet, Raskin co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. - widely described as the first independent progressive think tank, built explicitly on the idea that the systemic change they wanted couldn't be achieved from inside government, and would instead have to come through social movements and infiltrating institutions.
IPS was closely tied to the New Left from the start. Historian Brian Mueller has written that IPS "epitomized the ideals of the New Left, especially those found in the 1962 Port Huron Statement" and, in fact, a 1962 prospectus Raskin wrote for IPS contained ideas strikingly similar to Port Huron's. Fellow IPS founder Arthur Waskow joined SDS in 1963, and both men wrote for the New Left magazine https://archive.org/details/nsia-RampartsMagazine/nsia-RampartsMagazine/Ramparts%20Magazine%2001/.
IPS drew sustained scrutiny throughout the Cold War for its foreign-policy positions. The House Committee on Internal Security and later conservative critics documented Raskin and Barnet's contacts with North Vietnamese communist officials during the Vietnam War, Raskin's board membership at Ramparts (which the same committee called "pro-Hanoi, pro-Castro") and, later, in the 1980s, IPS-organized conferences with Soviet officials that a bipartisan group of roughly 80 members of Congress warned could be used for Soviet intelligence purposes.
Carter, Ink, and the Reshaping of Federal Administration
The administrative machinery Wilson had theorized decades earlier took its modern shape under President Carter. By 1977, Carter had concluded that the federal civil service system needed its first comprehensive overhaul since the Pendleton Act of 1883. The opportunity came in the aftermath of Watergate and amid broader public distrust of government institutions. In March 1978, he sent Congress his reform proposal; after 13 days of hearings and testimony from more than 200 witnesses, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act, and Carter signed it into law that October - just over seven months after it was introduced.
The Act abolished the US Civil Service Commission and split its functions among three new agencies: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which handles federal personnel policy; the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which adjudicates federal employee appeals; and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), which oversees federal labor-management relations.
The reform's chief architect and implementer was Dwight Ink, a career federal executive who had served in every presidential administration since Eisenhower. Ink had already built a formidable reputation of cutting through red tape and quickly executing major government overhauls, earning him the nickname "Mr. Implementation." Ink himself later wrote that he couldn't recall any other government-wide management reform as broad as the 1978 act being enacted so quickly. The transformation was praised by Marcus Raskin's intellectual incubator, IPS, which has documented ties to the American Communist Party and drove DNC capture between 1972 and 1978.
That same year, Carter signed a second landmark law. The Inspector General Act of 1978 established 12 statutory offices of Inspector General across major federal departments and agencies, giving each the authority to audit internal agency documents, investigate fraud, and report findings both to their agency heads and directly to Congress every six months. By 1988 additional IGs had been added for smaller independent agencies, and there are now 73 statutory Inspectors General across the federal government. By systematically replacing public servants with IGs and positions functioning as commissars who decide investigative targets, including the US elections commission, the landscape for a coup became fertile.
Marching Along
CIGIE, created in 2008, was established by the Inspector General Reform Act by merging two earlier coordinating bodies: the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) and the Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency (ECIE). Those two predecessor councils themselves went back to 1992, created by executive order under President George H.W. Bush. Between the original 1978 IG Act and the 2008 creation of the unified CIGIE structure are three decades of Long March institutional groundwork.
CIGIE functions as a coordinating and standard-setting body for the IG community - running training, setting audit and investigation standards, and housing an Integrity Committee that investigates allegations against IGs themselves. Its voting members include not just the Inspectors General of individual agencies, but also representatives from the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Office of Special Counsel - a genuinely broad cross-section of oversight and intelligence-adjacent offices sitting on one council, which could be described as a "control layer."
The IG Act has continued to evolve since 1978: notably, the 2022 Securing Inspector General Independence Act added new protections against politically motivated IG removals, requiring the President to give Congress 30 days' notice and a substantive, case-specific rationale before removing an Inspector General.
CIGIE today represents a sui generis entity where one office effectively oversees software integrity across 3,143 counties. This structure echos Woodrow Wilson's administrative state-framed government as "too important to be left to the voters," relying on a political-technocratic elite and completes the Marxist Commissar model.
The GAP
In 1977 the Institute for Policy Studies formed the Government Accountability Program (GAP). On its surface it looked like a place for whistleblowers to find shelter, especially after the https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers, and indeed many whistleblowers from the intelligence community and national defense program gravitated there. Critics suggest, however, that it was actually used as a honeypot to entice, contain, and control the whistleblowers, even as it collaborated and often even worked directly with the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC).
The Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman was created in January 2019, as part of the House rules package adopted at the start of the 116th Congress (when Democrats took control of the House). It established, within the House of Representatives, a mandate to develop practices for House offices receiving confidential information from whistleblowers about government wrongdoing - including setting up reporting systems, maintaining confidentiality, and training staff.
It sat without a director for about a year. Then in February 2020, shortly after the conclusion of Trump's first impeachment trial (which had been sparked by a whistleblower complaint), Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she had appointed Shanna Devine as the inaugural director of the office. Devine had previously worked at GAP.
Critics questioned whether someone from an advocacy group could serve a "nonpartisan" role, citing concerns that the position could function as a filter protecting officials from exposure, and worrying whether this infrastructure meant this office could effectively legally spy on everyone - including Congress.
GAP also had a prominent role in advocating for the office's creation. Samantha Feinstein, GAP's senior legal and international analyst, testified before Congress to request the creation of the Ombudsman Office, which meant GAP was influencing policy from the outside as well.
The Modern Left's Electoral Rise
Decades after Port Huron, the left flank that it and IPS helped seed has grown into an electoral force. The Democratic Socialists of America was formed in 1982 through the merger of two left-wing organizations: the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, founded in 1973 by socialist Michael Harrington, and the New American Movement. For decades it remained small and aging - its median member age was 68 in 2013.
That changed after 2016. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign highlighted disaffection with mainstream Democratic politics and helped consolidate a younger left wing, and DSA's median member age dropped to 33 by 2017. One commentator described the shift as transforming the group from a "musty debate club for retired social democrats into an electoral powerhouse of young, ecumenical radicals."
Electoral wins followed quickly. In 2017, fifteen DSA members won local and state offices, including Lee Carter's election to the Virginia House of Delegates. The breakthrough came in 2018, when DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley in a primary upset in New York's 14th District, becoming a national figure. She and Rashida Tlaib became the first two DSA members elected to Congress that year.
The organization's footprint in elected office has continued to grow, with Ashik Siddique, a research analyst at one IPS program (National Priorities Project) who is also separately, and much more significantly, the current national co-chair of the DSA. That means that a sitting IPS staffer simultaneously holds DSA's top elected position.
Notable DSA-linked officials now include Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, elected in 2025. By 2025, more than 250 DSA members held elected office across 40 states, with 90% of them elected after 2019. As of mid-2026, DSA has grown to more than 120,000 members and now plays an influential role within the Democratic Party, and the group and its local chapters have endorsed 150 candidates this year, claiming 38 wins so far.
The group draws sharp fire from opponents. President Trump has characterized Mamdani and other DSA-backed candidates as "communist," exposing their links to adversaries like the CCP - though DSA describes itself as aiming for "democratic socialism."
Expert Colonel Tim Shindelar describes The New Left's methodical inching into the Modern Left as "The Final Mile." The Old Left (Marxism, 1908-1962; 54 years) was about class struggle and establishment of unions. The New Left (Social Justice, 1962-1982; 20 years), focused on issues like abortion, capital punishment, civil rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights and gender roles, and immigration. The Modern Left (Final Mile, 1982-present; 44 years) has evolved into policies like the Green New Deal, making higher education free, social ownership of the American economy (placing governors on true free market capitalism), national defense reduction, a Democratic Party shift into the progressive far left, along with pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist causes.
The Media and The Last Mile
This shift to administrative power effectively renders elected officials powerless. Just because someone is elected to office doesn't mean they have any real power; the administrative state will allow elected officials (even executive ones) to ride in the back but they cannot drive the car.
Which means that voters are at the kids table, because it doesn't matter who the elected official is if the power lies with the Administrative State...thus embodying and defining Wilson's vision of keeping politics out of government because democracy is too important to be left to voters. The politics in which we all engage is merely a rubber match, and is unconnected to the outcome; the real match is occurring in a different stadium entirely.
Much of this neutralization and marginalization of the actual people (voters), while maintaining the illusion that it is neither by validating the scrimmage to its participants, traces to mid-20th-century globalist planning (1952-1956), building on Wassily Leontief's 1953 work aimed at phasing American labor to China while addressing excess human labor and galvanizing wealth concentration among a technocratic elite. Individual self-interest via game theory was expected to align populations toward what we now describe as the Singularity, but Marx's framework did not anticipate AI collapsing labor demand to zero - accelerating the need for focused population control programs. But there would be no buy-in unless a different diorama was presented.
The 1928 book https://archive.org/details/edward-bernays-propaganda-1928 was written by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays (1891-1995). Bernays was the son of Freud's sister and also related through his mother, who was Freud's sister. His father was also the brother of Freud's wife Martha.
Bernays is often called the "father of public relations" and Propaganda argued that manipulating public opinion is a necessary part of a functioning democracy. It drew heavily on his uncle's psychoanalytic theories to explain how to influence mass behavior through unconscious desires rather than rational argument.
George Orwell didn't invent the world of https://www.planetebook.com/1984/ out of thin air - he drew it directly from Stalinist Russia, where erasing and reshaping history was institutionalized state policy. Not long after Stalin consolidated control, images of Leon Trotsky, the driving force behind the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, started vanishing from public life. In their place came grand, fictionalized depictions of Stalin standing shoulder to shoulder with Lenin as co-architects of the Bolshevik uprising, while Trotsky, despite having founded the Red Army himself, was written out entirely. These doctored scenes became fixtures of Soviet propaganda, plastered across office walls, towering billboards, museum halls, and postage stamps.
The effect on public memory was profound. Younger citizens absorbed the fabrication as historical fact, while older ones who had lived through the actual events found their genuine recollections gradually blurring with the state's preferred narrative - a strange kind of political false memory syndrome. People who reconciled what they actually remembered with that which the government insisted they believe developed what Orwell described as "doublethink." Those who refused - old revolutionaries who knew firsthand - were branded traitors, class enemies, or fascist sympathizers; they faced arrest, torture, forced public confessions, and execution.
With total command over media and law enforcement, it is possible to rewrite the collective memory of an entire population if you have one generation in which to accomplish it. With fully infiltrated and captured institutions it is possible to take control over an entire country without firing a shot if you have two. We are in the final mile, and the ghost in the machine has a government ID.
Sofia Karstens is an activist in California who worked closely with publisher Tony Lyons and Robert F. Kennedy Jr on several projects, including Kennedy's best-selling book: The Real Anthony Fauci. She collaborates with several organizations in the legal, legislative, medical science, and literary spaces and she is co-founder of Free Now Foundation, a non-profit preserving medical freedom and children's health.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/17/2026 - 20:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/deep-capture-administrative-states-intellectual-origins

2026-08-17 01:00:00 GMT

Oh, So This Is Why Luigi Mangione Pleaded Guilty...
Oh, So This Is Why Luigi Mangione Pleaded Guilty...
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/08/15/oh-so-this-is-why-luigi-mangione-pleaded-guilty-n4956193
Luigi Mangione, the man whose https://pjmedia.com/tags/crime turned him into a folk hero to many on the left, shocked the country on Friday when he finally admitted to the killing and changed his plea to guilty.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/fc0110fb-6aca-4181-99e9-7f2eb2ac.jpg?itok=0WePrs93
"I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan. I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death of bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal," Mangione told the judge.
He admitted to stalking his victim, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in the weeks before he gunned him down. The guilty plea locks in a consequence few outside the courtroom seemed to notice at first: a state court can no longer try Mangione for murder.
Mangione had spent more than a year cultivating an image as a martyr willing to fight the system to the end.
So why did he suddenly fold and admit everything?
According to Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, the https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/foxs-jonathan-turley-says-luigi-mangiones-guilty-plea-is-a-hail-mary-throw/ has nothing to do with a guilty conscience. Turley discussed the plea with host Charlie Hurt on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday, and argued the move was a calculated legal gamble aimed at avoiding a life sentence rather than any sign of remorse.
Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges connected to Thompson's murder. He still faces a separate state trial in New York scheduled for September. That's where things get interesting, because the two cases carry sharply different stakes. The federal charge carries a possible sentence of life without parole. New York's state system has no such option available.
"The New York case is the case that involves the murder charges, but it is also the case that has a lower potential ceiling for the sentencing," Turley said.
Turley described the plea as "something of a Hail Mary throw," suggesting Mangione is hoping a judge eventually reduces his sentence enough to allow release at an advanced age rather than locking him away for life without parole. The real target, Turley explained, is the state murder case itself. The defense wants it dismissed entirely on double jeopardy grounds, and New York's double jeopardy standard is easier for a defense to clear than in most other jurisdictions.
"The odds are in his favor, if you look at past cases, that that may in fact be dismissed," Turley said.
If Turley is right, a man who executed a father of two on a Manhattan sidewalk in broad daylight could walk away from the murder charge entirely on a technicality, having already secured the lighter of his two possible sentencing outcomes.
Turley also had sharp words for Mangione's attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, who stood outside the Manhattan courthouse after the plea and told reporters the system had treated her client unfairly, pointing to his chronic back pain and laying blame on the healthcare industry.
Turley noted that the judge overseeing the case has already faced heavy criticism for dismissing key charges against Mangione before trial. Grandstanding to the cameras, he suggested, made little strategic sense.
"I don't think it helps to go in front of her courthouse and say, 'My client's a victim and has been unfairly treated in the system,'" Turley said.
A guilty plea usually means accountability. In Mangione's case, it looks more like a legal chess move by a defendant hoping the math works out in his favor.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/16/2026 - 21:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/oh-so-why-luigi-mangione-pleaded-guilty

2026-08-15 21:30:00 GMT

Fauci In Hiding As ABC Censorship Bombshell Explodes
Fauci In Hiding As ABC Censorship Bombshell Explodes
https://modernity.news/2026/08/15/fauci-in-hiding-as-abc-censorship-bombshell-explodes/,
Dr. Anthony Fauci just refused a private transcribed interview with Sen. Ron Johnson's subcommittee. The same week, a former ABC News correspondent revealed that the network gutted a 2021 Wuhan lab leak investigation after the script was sent to Fauci for review.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/3469%20%281%29.jpg?itok=elaWoIrE
The pattern is unmistakable. Stonewall. Censor. Invoke privilege. Repeat.
On Friday, Fauci's attorney notified Sen. Ron Johnson that the former NIAID director would not appear for a closed-door, transcribed interview as part of the ongoing investigation into the failed COVID response.
? WTF?! Dr. Fauci has just REFUSED to show up for a private transcribed interview with Sen. Ron Johnson as part of his investigation
Subpoena and CONTEMPT, ASAP!
Haul the traitor in and charge him if he doesn't comply.
JOHNSON: "Apparently, he has a lot to hide. Since Fauci... https://t.co/FLxU7wEQOM
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2088623988851331193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Johnson laid it out plainly:
"Dr. Fauci's attorney has just notified us that Fauci refuses to appear for a private transcribed interview. The American people deserve answers to legitimate questions regarding our miserably failed response to COVID-19. Some of those questions can only be answered by Dr. Fauci. He arrogantly once stated that he was 'very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee. I have nothing to hide.' Apparently, he has a lot to hide. Since Fauci refuses to talk about his role and decisions related to COVID-19, my Subcommittee will continue to obtain his records and request to speak with key individuals that he worked with. We will explore our legal options before deciding our next steps."
This comes days after the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt for his July 29 performance, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment roughly 112 times.
Fauci's lawyer responded to Johnson's request by claiming any effort to compel his appearance would "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes."
The AP reported the decline, noting it followed the partisan contempt vote and the earlier hearing in which Fauci repeatedly declined to answer questions about pandemic decisions, origins, and funding.
The contempt referral is already heading toward the Justice Department. Sen. Rand Paul has argued the Biden preemptive pardon removed any legitimate basis for the Fifth Amendment claims, leaving Fauci with no shield against answering.
While Fauci ducks the Senate, a separate bombshell landed from inside the media machine that once amplified him.
Former ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran, speaking on The Fifth Column podcast, described what happened to his early 2021 Nightline investigation into the COVID lab-leak theory.
Moran said the piece examined evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had received Chinese military funding - something the lab's "Bat Lady" Shi Zhengli had denied. He and his team laid out the arguments.
Then the review hit.
"The day it was supposed to air, it gets 'reviewed.' It comes back to me...I was told: FAUCI," Moran stated.
He added that he was "absolutely livid," cursing in the booth as the final product arrived "incomprehensible," loaded with caveats and legalized language that stripped the original work of meaning.
"I've never watched that story [again] and I never want to. Because it wasn't mine, and most importantly, because it was incomprehensible."
He was told the script had gone to lawyers, standards - and Fauci.
? BOMBSHELL: It was just exposed that ABC CENSORED the COVID Wuhan lab leak report in 2021 because Dr. Fauci told them not to publish it
Terry Moran: "The day it was supposed to air, it gets 'reviewed.' It comes back to me...I was told: FAUCI."
ABC is COMPLICIT, and Fauci... https://t.co/ZhO8eOuLcm
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2088621389863383184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This was not a conservative activist speaking. Moran is a longtime network journalist. His account directly undercuts years of media insistence that questions about the lab were fringe conspiracy theories while Fauci and allies worked to shut them down.
These latest refusals and revelations sit atop a mountain of prior evidence already documented.
Secret texts recovered from Fauci's government iPhone showed him privately warning in January 2021 that the second COVID vaccine dose "theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester" because of cytokine storms and fever. Publicly, he and other officials pushed the shots for pregnant women with no such caveats.
Emails previously released by Sen. Rand Paul showed Fauci instructing then-NIH Director Francis Collins to "read it, then destroy it" - language Paul has called a violation of federal records law.
At the July 29 hearing itself, Fauci offered an opening statement accusing Paul of an "unhinged obsession," then refused nearly every substantive question.
CNN legal analysts noted that the 112 Fifth Amendment pleas likely made his position worse, given the pardon removed criminal jeopardy and left him exposed to contempt.
The American people watched schools shuttered, businesses destroyed, and dissent crushed while the same officials privately fretted about risks they would not acknowledge publicly.
Now the central figure in that response continues to refuse basic questions under oath or in transcribed interviews, and a network reporter has confirmed that even internal journalistic work was routed through him for approval.
Johnson's subcommittee says it will keep pursuing records and other witnesses. The contempt referral sits with the Justice Department. The lab-leak story that was sanitized in 2021 is no longer radioactive. Accountability is no longer optional.
Fauci had years of unmatched power and media deference. That time is over.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 08/15/2026 - 17:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fauci-hiding-abc-censorship-bombshell-explodes

2026-08-14 10:30:00 GMT

English Village Will Have Six Migrant Men To Every Woman
English Village Will Have Six Migrant Men To Every Woman
https://modernity.news/2026/08/13/english-village-will-have-six-migrant-men-to-every-woman/,
A quiet North Yorkshire village of roughly 600 people is set to be flooded with around 1,200 single adult male asylum seekers at the nearby disused RAF Linton-on-Ouse base. Local women would be outnumbered six to one.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/migrantsmod-1.jpg?itok=Kl7BcRoc
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has raised the alarm over the plan, which forms part of the government's wider push to move roughly 3,750 people into three former military sites near villages as it tries to empty asylum hotels.
The base sits beside a primary school and nursery, has only four buses a day into York, and already faces severe shortages of water, sewage capacity and electricity. Maskell has written to border security and asylum minister Anna Turley and is due to meet Home Office officials this month.
Women 'to be outnumbered six to one' after Labour floods illegal migrants onto tiny village's doorstephttps://t.co/s5yXOP9cY8
— GB News (@GBNEWS) https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2087705683252654241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"It's just the wrong site," Maskell said. "The last government realised that, once they got into the detail. All we're saying to this Government is that it's really important that they recognise that too, because the site is in a worse state now than it was when the Government last looked at this."
Similar plans for Linton-on-Ouse were abandoned in 2022 after fierce local opposition. Now they are back under active consideration. Local Tory councillor Malcolm Taylor captured the mood of residents who moved there for a quiet life: "They've moved there for the peace, tranquillity and quality of life. This hand grenade has been thrown in."
Professor Olga Matthias of the Linton Action Group called the village "categorically the wrong place for so many reasons."
'That doesn't add up at all with what the left have been telling us.'
'It's the hypocrisy.'
Mark Littlewood and Nina Myskow discuss a Labour MP who has warned that a plan to move more than 1,000 asylum seekers next to a small Yorkshire village. https://t.co/onBRdNHwyF
— GB News (@GBNEWS) https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2087678088947675154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is not an isolated case. It follows the same pattern seen in the tiny Oxfordshire village of Piddington, population around 350-400, which faces plans for 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers at a former Ministry of Defence depot right next to a children's playing field.
Residents held a symbolic independence referendum in which 96 percent voted to leave the United Kingdom in protest. Children wrote letters pleading with the Prime Minister not to destroy the only home they have ever known. Parish council chairman Tim McNally has repeatedly warned that the scale is neither fair, safe nor responsible.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has responded by doubling down. He insists that "all parts of the country need to play their part" and that middle-class and leafy areas can no longer be shielded while poorer communities carry the load.
Borders minister Anna Turley has defended the approach as creating a "more fair and equitable system," even while acknowledging that concentrating arrivals in deprived areas previously fuelled "civil unrest."
The same government that lectures about fairness is also quietly imposing itself on other quiet rural communities. In the tiny Welsh seaside village of Gronant, population around 1,600, residents discovered that their former village hall - converted into 15 new-build homes they expected to go to local families or the open market - had been handed over to asylum seekers.
Thirteen of the fifteen units were taken by Home Office contractor Clearsprings. Blacked-out minibuses arrived without warning. Locals described it as pure betrayal. One resident, Kerrie Cox, said nobody was told about the arrivals. Another called it an "absolute betrayal."
These placements keep following the same template. Single adult men, overwhelmingly of fighting age, are being directed into the most culturally alien, high-trust, low-density English and Welsh villages imaginable - places defined by quiet streets, children's parks, limited public transport, and a long-standing sense of safety.
The contrast could scarcely be sharper. It repeatedly seems like an intentional choice designed to generate the maximum possible friction and cultural upheaval. They could not possibly find locations more foreign to the backgrounds of many of these arrivals.
Andy Burnham will 'push ahead with plans to move asylum seekers to middle-class areas despite higher cost to taxpayers' https://t.co/jZhK27PwgJ
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) https://x.com/DailyMail/status/2087821669662400755?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The government claims the military sites will keep people "contained." In practice, residents are free to come and go. Infrastructure is inadequate. Policing is already stretched thin in these rural areas. Women and girls who once walked freely after dark now face the prospect of living in communities where adult men from very different cultural norms suddenly outnumber them by orders of magnitude.
This is the logical endpoint of a policy that refuses to stop the boats while insisting every corner of the country must absorb the consequences. Closing hotels and shifting people into former barracks or new-build village homes does not reduce the pull factor. It upgrades the destination.
The result is the steady erosion of the very places that once defined the character of rural Britain - one quiet village at a time.
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https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 08/14/2026 - 06:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/english-village-will-have-six-migrant-men-every-woman

2026-08-13 06:00:00 GMT

Left-Wing German Parties Pour Record Sums Into Stopping The AfD In The East
Left-Wing German Parties Pour Record Sums Into Stopping The AfD In The East
https://rmx.news/article/germany-left-wing-parties-pour-record-sums-of-money-into-stopping-the-afd-in-the-east/
Germany’s Green Party is campaigning with record sums of money in the eastern German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to keep the Alternative for Germany (AfD) out of power.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GettyImages-2288838876.jpg?itok=1yYGjW-B
Remarkably, the Greens are campaigning with an intensity usually reserved for a national election, despite the party’s own election chances appearing rather dismal. In fact, in both states, the Greens are under threat of not even making it into parliament.
Saxony-Anhalt is by far the most important election, as there is a realistic chance that the AfD alone will obtain an absolute majority, thereby capturing the first real position of power in its history. In such a scenario, the parties of the German mainstream will be forced to cooperate with it.
Voters will choose their state legislatures, known as the Landtags, in close succession on Sept. 6 and Sept. 20, with the Greens campaigning on the slogan: “5% for the Greens in the Landtag – 0% AfD government.”
Sonntagsfrage zur Landtagswahl in Sachsen-Anhalt • INSA/BILD: AfD 42 % | CDU 22 % | DIE LINKE 13 % | SPD 6 % | BSW 5 % | FDP 4 % | GRÜNE 4 % | Sonstige 4 %
➤ Verlauf: https://t.co/lMOn56cNLK
🗓️ Landtagswahl: 6. September 2026 https://x.com/hashtag/ltwlsa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/hashtag/ltwst?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/SHYaagXPWm
— Wahlrecht.de (@Wahlrecht_de) https://x.com/Wahlrecht_de/status/2086756116923379816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The math of the campaign is simple. If the Greens achieve 5 percent of the vote, it drastically reduces the chances of the AfD obtaining an absolute majority. Parties that score 5 percent are able to enter parliament, and the more parties that enter, the higher the AfD must score to obtain an absolute majority. Currently, the AfD has approximately 42 percent of the vote.
Right now, the Greens are under threat of being kicked out of parliament, as polling shows them consistently below the 5 percent threshold. In the last East German elections in 2024, in Thuringia and Brandenburg, the Greens were kicked out of the local Landtags; in Saxony, they just barely squeaked in. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the 5 percent entry threshold was not even exceeded in the previous elections.
How much money is at stake?
In Saxony-Anhalt, the state campaign budget of the Greens now equals €1.5 million, which is the highest budget in the history of the provincial party organization, more than double the previous record, according to German newspaper https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article6a7964020e3689919ec7633d/anti-afd-kampagne-jetzt-mobilisieren-gruene-und-linke-rekord-summen-in-ost-wahlkaempfen.html. Only 40 percent of this sum comes from donations.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the budget is a more modest €800,000 — more than double what was originally planned for in December 2025. In addition to subsidies, the surplus was provided by subsidies from other provincial party organizations.
By comparison, the far larger leading ruling party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), is campaigning in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with about a million euros.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is preparing to defend its title under the leadership of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig, will campaign with €1.1 million, which is the same as the 2021 budget, but more donations will flow there than before.
As a result, the ruling SPD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will be campaigning with less money than the Greens fighting for parliamentary entry in Saxony-Anhalt.
The budget of the Left Party has also jumped significantly. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the party is also running for election with a record amount of €600,000, and in Saxony-Anhalt they are also running with a record high of €562,000. In both states, the party reports increased willingness among individuals to vote.
https://rmx.news/article/germany-left-wing-parties-pour-record-sums-of-money-into-stopping-the-afd-in-the-east/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/13/2026 - 02:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/left-wing-german-parties-pour-record-sums-stopping-afd-east

2026-08-13 03:25:00 GMT

The Cultural Revolution Is In Full Swing
The Cultural Revolution Is In Full Swing
https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/12/the-cultural-revolution-is-in-full-swing/
It’s no secret that https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/30/the-never-ending-long-march/ in the U.S. The latest development in this ominous trend occurred on August 4, when https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/04/politics/live-news/primary-election-michigan-virginia a progressive backed by democratic socialists, defeated the establishment-backed congresswoman Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-12_12-48-43.jpg?itok=Z3xl-CAw
At the same time, our culture is under constant attack by radicals seeking to transform our national ethos. Despite some claims to the contrary, the cultural upheaval known as “Wokism” is very much alive and well. As John Murawski writes in RealClearInvestigations, the movement in recent years, “from slavery reparations and polyamory to transgender advocacy and anti-colonialism, reveals that this dogma is still https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2026/06/30/alive_and_kicking_news_of_wokes_death_is_greatly_exaggerated_1191570.html, with some new outbreak almost every week.”
A case in point is a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLFj-Vv9Grk&t=14s released by https://townhall.com/columnists/adamguillette/2026/08/08/dei-has-no-place-in-mental-healthcare-n2680781 from the just-completed American Psychological Association conference, which shows speakers advocating that psychologists use therapeutic approaches to become better “white allies” and advance “antiracist” objectives in their practices, rather than helping patients overcome mental health challenges.
There are myriad examples of woke’s staying power in our nation’s schools, where far-left ethnic studies programs still prevail. In California, the adopted curriculum includes lessons on https://townhall.com/columnists/marissa-streit/2026/07/14/californias-ethnic-studies-retreat-masks-a-national-classroom-movement-n2679334 and the Third World Liberation Front and even uses Black Panther Party newspapers as primary sources. California law encourages districts to develop their own ethnic studies curricula, and many have gone beyond the state model. Some have incorporated materials on the “Land Back” movement, which rejects widely accepted notions of borders and citizenship. These are not fringe supplements, and this content is already in many classrooms.
The teachers’ unions are at the forefront of this fanatical trend. On May Day, the https://defendinged.org/investigations/a-may-day-2026-host-toolkit-includes-training-information-for-a-coordinated-day-of-action-and-promotes-tactics-such-as-a-school-walk-in-nea-provided-1-7m-in-funding-to-organization-involved/ issued a toolkit that is essentially an updated version of Marx and Engels’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto.
As reported by https://defendinged.org/investigations/a-may-day-2026-host-toolkit-includes-training-information-for-a-coordinated-day-of-action-and-promotes-tactics-such-as-a-school-walk-in-nea-provided-1-7m-in-funding-to-organization-involved/, the NEA https://www.nea.org/mayday-toolkit contains typical leftist claptrap, including a laundry list of demands for a day of action that stresses “building the Society we ALL deserve.” The union’s agenda includes “stopping the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption within the Trump administration, taxing the rich, and eliminating ICE,” among other measures.
May Day is just one example of students being used as pawns by radicals. Defending Education maintains a “https://defendinged.org/investigations/k-12-student-walkout-and-protest-tracker/” that documents K-12 student walkouts and protests from 2022 to the present, all orchestrated by left-wing educators.
The group tracks 48 states and Washington, D.C., and found that between 2022 and 2025, 169 school districts experienced teacher-led student walkouts. But this year, there have already been a whopping 402 instances.
Not surprisingly, U.S. colleges are also major purveyors of indoctrination.
“The https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2026/06/30/on_the_cutting_edge_of_wokeness_1191590.html of sex in biology is a recent invention,” writes Princeton University anthropologist Agustín Fuentes in his book, Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary.
In a phone interview with John Murawski, Fuentes claimed that the biological sciences have been undergoing a paradigm shift for several decades and that “many scholars https://www.prosocial.world/posts/beyond-the-binary-the-compounding-complexity-of-biological-sex that says females are defined solely by large gametes (eggs) and males by small gametes (sperm).”
Fuentes relies on “Queer Theory” in https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/agustin-fuentes and maintains that it is an important part of contemporary biological thought. He believes that perceived differences in strength and speed between males and females in sports “are to a https://www.prosocial.world/posts/beyond-the-binary-the-compounding-complexity-of-biological-sex, not biology.” He adds that if “society held the same expectations and invested equally in male and female sports, the performance gap between the sexes would narrow significantly.”
Then there is the University of Minnesota, which is developing “https://www.thecollegefix.com/uminn-scholars-launching-transgender-doll-project-for-4-year-olds/ for children. The project is set to launch this year.
The MyGender Dolls https://mygenderdolls.com/ states that the dolls are “grounded in gender-affirming clinical practices” and will serve as a “therapeutic” resource for clinicians and educators working with children ages 4 to 10.
In addition to interchangeable genitals, the dolls also come with a wide array of customizable accessories, https://www.frontpagemag.com/minnesota-introduces-mygender-dolls-with-interchangeable-genitalia/, to accommodate a diversity of gender presentations. They come in a wide range of skin tones. The dolls are also deliberately given names that could belong to either gender, such as “Sam.”
Scarily, medical schools are not exempt from the woke movement. As I wrote https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/16/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-update/, the nation’s https://www.thecollegefix.com/top-medical-schools-teach-weight-inclusivity-racial-justice-report/ are controlled by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion extremists who impose wokist nonsense, including “weight inclusivity,” racial justice, and gender ideology on their staff and students through policies, statements, and curricular mandates.
While some argue that https://thelastmile.org/death-of-dei/, The Daily Caller reports that there has been absolutely no change to this abysmal set of circumstances. Sometimes the names of efforts have simply been altered. For example, the University of Iowa https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2025/03/ui-close-division-access-opportunity-and-diversity-march-27 in March 2025 that it was shutting down its Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity following a directive from the Iowa Board of Regents. However, https://donoharmmedicine.org/about/, which represents physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice, found that the DEI office was “still fully up and running,” but under a different name, which amounts to putting lipstick on the proverbial pig.
While U.S. schools were once our country’s most trusted institutions, that era has passed. https://www.educationnext.org/consequences-of-shattered-trust-populism-identity-politics-school-closures-financial-irresponsibility-public-confidence-american-education/, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that in 1973, 61 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s public schools. But 50 years later, those figures have fallen to 43 percent among Democrats and to a mere 14 percent among Republicans.
In higher education, the decline has been even more rapid and dramatic.
In 2010, 75 percent of Americans said college was “very important,” but by 2025, only 35 percent did so.
Ultimately, parents should homeschool if possible; if not, they should send their children to a private school that educates without indoctrinating. Then, instead of sending their teenagers to college, parents should have them attend a good technical school where they can learn a trade, become successful adults, and avoid becoming woke robots.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/12/2026 - 23:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cultural-revolution-full-swing

2026-08-12 10:30:00 GMT

Swedish PM Calls Spanish Illegal Immigrant Amnesty 'Very Bad Idea'
Swedish PM Calls Spanish Illegal Immigrant Amnesty 'Very Bad Idea'
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/swedish-pm-calls-spanish-illegal-immigrant-amnesty-very-bad-idea-6073614?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has called the Spanish government's amnesty for illegal immigrants a "very bad idea," warning that it could spark another migrant crisis akin to the one that beset the continent in 2015.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281012%29.jpg?itok=MUYyFPw9
The center-right politician, who is running for reelection next month, told the Financial Times in an interview published on Aug. 11 that the Spanish amnesty for more than a million illegal immigrants had caused a "pretty big outcry" at the last summit of EU leaders.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government granted a royal decree on April 14, launching the regularization of people living illegally in the country.
The proposal was first presented on Jan. 27 to allow about 500,000 illegal immigrants already living and working in Spain to obtain legal status through an accelerated process. According to figures from the Spanish government, almost 1.2 million applications for regularization were received.
The move was controversial, but the migrant surge in Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on the North African side of the Mediterranean at the end of July, compounded concerns.
Kristersson said a knock-on effect from Madrid's move could pose a serious threat to the European Union's free movement zone, known as the Schengen Area.
"It symbolizes that we still have to be very, very careful not to act in a way that could even come close to what happened in 2015," Kristersson said. "I think Spain got the message ... but it shows the vulnerability."
He said he had told Sánchez that he disapproved of the move.
"Having [the amnesty] also creates a possibility for you to use European territory. That is specifically damaging for us because we know from experience that many people coming to Europe prefer to go north. Exactly that happened in 2015," Kristersson said.
"It is not the time to get relaxed on this ... there is a huge majority in Sweden saying they cannot go back to an uncontrolled situation. ... Doing things that could jeopardize a stable situation would be a very bad idea."
In 2015, 1.3 million people, mostly fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/eu-passes-overhaul-of-immigration-rules-5629351?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge refuge in Europe, causing the EU's asylum system to collapse; reception centers were overwhelmed in Greece and Italy, with countries further north erecting barriers to stop illegal immigrants from entering.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281013%29.jpg?itok=Kw3antsO
The unprecedented influx into Ceuta https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/spanish-ceuta-calls-for-army-deployment-as-thousands-of-illegal-immigrants-breach-border-6069295?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge on July 30, when an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people entered the exclave from Morocco by land and sea. Many swam around a border breakwater after social media posts claimed that Spain had opened its border.
More than 80 people died on both sides of the border, according to figures released by Spanish and Moroccan authorities. Some drowned while attempting to swim to Ceuta, while others were crushed or trampled during chaotic efforts to climb a breakwater and border fence.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281014%29.jpg?itok=-tk0uYW3
In the wake of that incident, multiple leaders around Europe issued sharp criticism of Sánchez's government, with https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/meloni-threatens-spain-border-checks-after-illegal-immigration-surge-in-ceuta-6069731?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge temporarily suspending its Schengen Area agreement with Spain.
The one-month suspension of border-free travel between Italy and Spain was announced on July 31 by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Deputy Prime Ministers Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, who described the move as necessary for security.
France, which shares a land border with the Spanish mainland, also announced an intensification of controls along the border.
Italy's move was supported by a number of EU member states, including Finland, Denmark, and the Czech Republic, with the governments of all three saying that Brussels should consider closing the Schengen Area to Spain.
On Aug. 4, EU interior ministers https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/eu-calls-for-stronger-borders-after-deadly-migrant-surge-in-spain-6071013?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge for stronger borders, faster returns, and expanded efforts to dismantle migrant-smuggling networks as a result of the Ceuta surge.
Kristersson faces an election on Sept. 13, having led the Scandinavian nation since 2022 as head of a coalition comprising his Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals with additional support from the Sweden Democrats.
Swedish polling company Novus's poll of 5,726 eligible voters, conducted 6-9 July, gave the Social Democrats 32 percent, the Sweden Democrats 20 percent, and Moderates 17 percent.
Sweden https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/sweden-tightens-up-citizenship-rules-amid-illegal-immigration-crackdown-5983975?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge its previously liberal immigration and citizenship policies earlier this year because of the vast numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the past two decades.
In November, Stockholm launched an inquiry to investigate "parallel social structures" that had emerged in the country.
Swedish Minister for Education and Integration Simona Mohamsson said in a statement at the time that these structures, consisting of "clans and family-based networks," undermine "the rule of law, threaten democracy, and hamper integration."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%281015%29.jpg?itok=4khDyYU-
"It is unacceptable that people in Sweden live under social control, are subjected to honour-based violence and oppression or are prevented from fully participating in society," she said. "With this inquiry, we are taking an important step towards addressing these problems."
The inquiry's report is due to be presented on Aug. 20.
In June, the Swedish parliament https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/sweden-passes-law-allowing-immigrants-residency-permits-to-be-revoked-over-bad-behavior-6048563?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge a law allowing authorities to revoke residence permits from immigrants for "not behaving properly," the latest in a series of moves breaking away from the country's once-liberal immigration system.
Residency permits can now be revoked for conduct including unpaid debts, undeclared work, organizing begging, and more, even where the behavior falls short of a criminal conviction.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/12/2026 - 06:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/swedish-pm-calls-spanish-illegal-immigrant-amnesty-very-bad-idea

2026-08-12 09:00:00 GMT

British Police Unit Flags Over 100 Social Media Posts For Arrest Amid Immigration Backlash
British Police Unit Flags Over 100 Social Media Posts For Arrest Amid Immigration Backlash
https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/11/british-police-unit-flags-over-100-social-media-posts-for-arrest-amid-immigration-backlash/
A specialist British police unit created to track online sentiment has referred more than 100 social media posts to local forces for potential arrest, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and https://www.thetimes.com/article/e4fce705-2a56-4e4a-aa04-0b55effb5bc0
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-11_15-23-34.jpg?itok=0nAieFxi
The National Internet Intelligence Investigations unit notified local police about 106 posts, with 50 of those flagged in June alone, in the aftermath of disclosures surrounding the murder of teenager Henry Nowak.
Nowak was stabbed to death by Vikrum Digwa, and his pleas for help were reportedly ignored by officers who doubted the dying student after his killer claimed to be a victim of racism.
Footage of Nowak’s final moments spread widely online and triggered protests and riots in Southampton, fueling accusations of two-tier policing among critics who argued Nowak was treated differently from his killer because he was white.
The task force traces its origins to the Southport riots, which broke out after Axel Rudakubana, a teenager of Rwandan heritage, murdered three young girls and wounded 10 others in a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.
Rather than reckon with the role immigration policy played in the tragedy, the Labour government under then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer labeled the public backlash “far-right” and launched a sweeping crackdown, arresting more than 1,876 people, including some individuals whose only offense was a social media post.
Police chiefs declined to detail the specific posts flagged by the unit, saying disclosure could jeopardize ongoing investigations.
They nonetheless acknowledged the initiative remains “still in the early stages of being established,” a signal that the volume of flagged posts is likely to grow.
Britain already ranks among the most aggressive Western nations in policing online speech.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/e4fce705-2a56-4e4a-aa04-0b55effb5bc0 that police made 33 arrests per day in 2023 over allegedly offensive online content, totaling 12,183 arrests for the year, all before this new task force reached full operation.
The National Police Coordination Centre, the same body that oversaw Britain’s policing response during COVID-19 lockdowns, defended the unit’s mission, saying it “supports policing’s understanding of protest-related activity in the online environment by developing a broader picture of emerging, potential risks.”
The centre added: “Looking across force boundaries enables the identification of issues that may not be evident from information held within individual force areas alone.”
The online monitoring effort follows a pattern set during the pandemic, when the British government deployed the Army’s 77 Brigade, a specialist “information warfare” unit, to track and influence public opinion, including monitoring journalists and politicians critical of lockdown policy.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/12/2026 - 05:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/british-police-unit-flags-over-100-social-media-posts-arrest-amid-immigration-backlash

2026-08-12 01:45:00 GMT

No Fourth Amendment In American Airports?
No Fourth Amendment In American Airports?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/no-fourth-amendment-in-american-airports/
Do you, as an American citizen, have to hand over your cell phone — along with the access code to open it — upon a (warrantless) demand by a border agent at the airport?
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/pmzl2hwwja9jvu4klxbg_640.jpg?itok=CHavM8Cb
There’s a case grinding through the courts about that right now because one man, a Mr. Sam Tunick, refused.
Not only did he refuse but he had an app on his phone that triggered its erasure once you keyed in a particular code to open it.  That was the code he gave CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) when they demanded his code to open it.  And then his phone was, indeed, erased right there on the spot, in the hands of the CBP agent.
That’s when CBP got really p***ed off.
According to the reporting on his case, this man was not a criminal.  He was not under suspicion or surveillance for anything, so far as we know. He is not related to Spencer Tunick, an artist who famously creates mass nude photo shoots in public places. He was, in point of fact, a left-wing activist with environmental interests, but, again, without any contact with or prior interest from law enforcement that we know of.
He was just a guy.  Coming home from an international trip (the Dominican Republic.).
You may well be thinking, “A left-wing activist with an erasure code?  Sounds suspicious!”
Let me pause to explain why I don’t think so.
A “right-winger” I know just traveled internationally recently and she traveled with a burner phone to avoid exactly this kind of search in another country.  It was England specifically.
In England there is no Fourth Amendment and they can search your phone when you land.  They also have no First Amendment and they have terrible censorship laws now.  You can be arrested and jailed for social media posts.  Even some perfectly benign ones, like “Islam is incompatible with Liberty” — that kind of thing.
The Dominican Republic also has no Fourth Amendment and if they simply suspect you have contraband or are engaged in some other illegal activity (so a very wide berth), they have every right to inspect your phone.  Maybe this young man just didn’t want the hassle. Maybe this app was this “left-winger’s” choice instead of a burner, and in the heat of the moment, decided to deploy it once facing our own CPB here in the U.S.
In short, I don’t find it suspicious at all knowing the legal overreach climate we are living in now.  And we certainly can’t be searching American citizens and seizing their devices based on politics alone.  I hope we can all agree on that.
Back to the case:
One attorney, Mike Fox of the Cato Institute https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/02/politics/airport-search-left-wing-activist-phone-code-fourth-amendment: “This is new, uncharted territory.”
The Supreme Court https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=does+cbp+have+the+right+to+search+my+phone?&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&udm=50&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8c4u0nXx4bEIpwm1lnNH832X6CeY5aSHvaPXpohaS1ddslNQqXKmbO1FK7bUQc5zRlATnvaOqpQWfLhr4kifK5hmAwO_DUm5S2NfmkCnp9Z_RVWdOdBawEeP9gLVk4tl-D3Eu2PfUsDZy2iOlW56SpJs5e2mOEBAsk1ZlTSju0eB_vpQWv-0Tv8VaJwXJKL4FQygS-gQ&aep=10&ntc=1&mstk=AUtExfAUG3OQoanesFB6xwnvduQ7-Zya2Yl-Man-tUTtiXVpIW2kety5sTqVlxI7qwZ54F531xX_oronyTCeilmTccjG3GRDG_JKhfCsrd0ZVg3QZufViAi8Gl7olN3GXK5udsE_uWLYy97LJJIuz4f1f8kX7Vu6Qy9-A0W1cGIO64r6fB4pNMGvbAKqREVsBMkO_RDWqABYzvE21RGDzjrJCe3cgiYRdFPo53zTKGN7WOylX5_qNFXJU-4gKr-HieYw1lLduKSDWrY5QvpFNJUNHV5cSsoEu7p8XPHxJYyRmUTSASvtMlcP4LI0lhGCBZHn4eRn2egf5mpEgyHiQkyKo5IvHT04dlBl6g&aioh=3&csuir=1&mtid=Ng93arXLKcSww8cPzO2jsQE&atvm=2 on your Fourth Amendment rights as they specifically relate to your cell phone at American airports/border crossings.  They have ruled on whether or not your phone is searchable in the interior of the United States and the answer is “no” — not without a warrant.
But somehow an American in an American airport on American soil has to surrender his rights to an American customs agent?  What is this sorcery?
Let’s review the Fourth Amendment, in its entirety:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Supreme Court https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=does+cbp+have+the+right+to+search+my+phone?&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&udm=50&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8c4u0nXx4bEIpwm1lnNH832X6CeY5aSHvaPXpohaS1ddslNQqXKmbO1FK7bUQc5zRlATnvaOqpQWfLhr4kifK5hmAwO_DUm5S2NfmkCnp9Z_RVWdOdBawEeP9gLVk4tl-D3Eu2PfUsDZy2iOlW56SpJs5e2mOEBAsk1ZlTSju0eB_vpQWv-0Tv8VaJwXJKL4FQygS-gQ&aep=10&ntc=1&mstk=AUtExfAUG3OQoanesFB6xwnvduQ7-Zya2Yl-Man-tUTtiXVpIW2kety5sTqVlxI7qwZ54F531xX_oronyTCeilmTccjG3GRDG_JKhfCsrd0ZVg3QZufViAi8Gl7olN3GXK5udsE_uWLYy97LJJIuz4f1f8kX7Vu6Qy9-A0W1cGIO64r6fB4pNMGvbAKqREVsBMkO_RDWqABYzvE21RGDzjrJCe3cgiYRdFPo53zTKGN7WOylX5_qNFXJU-4gKr-HieYw1lLduKSDWrY5QvpFNJUNHV5cSsoEu7p8XPHxJYyRmUTSASvtMlcP4LI0lhGCBZHn4eRn2egf5mpEgyHiQkyKo5IvHT04dlBl6g&aioh=3&csuir=1&mtid=Ng93arXLKcSww8cPzO2jsQE&atvm=2 on Fourth Amendment exceptions at border crossings, but not cell phones in particular.  That’s why you have to go through customs and scanners and open your luggage, etc.  We’ve all been doing it forever without a thought.
But your phone ought to be a separate matter entirely, containing as it does, your digital “papers and effects.”  According to the available reporting, there was no “probable cause” to search Mr. Tunick. CPB wasn’t looking for anything specific, which is what a warrant would demand.  They just wanted to go out on a scenic drive, seeing what they could see on his phone.
Hell. No.
The Washington Post just https://archive.ph/B8EZH#selection-363.0-363.79 about Mr. Tunick’s case entitled “Your privacy rights don’t disappear at the border,” with the sub-headline, “Congress or the courts need to make clear that a smartphone is not a suitcase.”  It was written by Mike Fox, the attorney mentioned above.
Mr. Fox was also https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/02/politics/airport-search-left-wing-activist-phone-code-fourth-amendment on the case and it sums up his position in both pieces pretty well:
“Obstruction means I’m obstructing some type of investigation, and without any type of warrant or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, what investigation am I obstructing?”
The definition of “reasonable” and the deployment of the key code erasure seem to be the real sticking points here, but the larger issue of your cell phone privacy absolutely deserves specific adjudication.
One hopes Mr. Tunick isn’t subjected to a crushing ordeal here, but one does hope that his case makes it to The Supreme Court so we can settle this once and for all.  The other option would be for the Hill to act and pass some legislation making a specific carve out specifying the need for warrants for cell phones, but I’m still choking on the jet fumes from them hurrying out of town for six weeks before they could vote on the Save America Act, so them?  Useful?  On this or any other matter?  That strikes me as a fool’s errand.
There’s no magic fairy dust in the soil at American airports. Your Fourth Amendment rights do not defy gravity there. It’s one thing to paw through my underwear looking for explosives;  I think we can all appreciate the safety concern in that, as absurd as it sounds and even though it’s a pain.  It’s entirely another to thumb through my cell phone just for the heck of it.
Get a warrant.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/11/2026 - 21:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-fourth-amendment-american-airports

2026-08-10 07:30:00 GMT

Poland's Conservatives Propose Deporting Unemployed Ukrainian Men Of Military Age
Poland's Conservatives Propose Deporting Unemployed Ukrainian Men Of Military Age
https://rmx.news/poland/polands-conservatives-propose-deporting-unemployed-ukrainian-men-of-military-age/
Poland’s opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) has proposed deporting Ukrainian men of military age who are living in the country without legal employment.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GettyImages-2286802648.jpg?itok=K6JRSQOt
The measure was presented by PiS MEP Tobiasz Bocheński during the party’s “Towards a New Government” policy conference and would be pursued if PiS returned to power.
“It is not about deporting everyone, only those who are here, do not work legally and are of military age,” party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński told journalists, as cited by https://dorzeczy.pl/kraj/925492/pis-chce-deportowac-z-polski-niepracujacych-ukraincow-w-wieku-poborowym.html.
PiS has defended the policy by arguing that men who are not working legally in Poland should return to Ukraine, where they could contribute to the country’s defense and ease pressure on its armed forces.
“This is helping Ukraine in terms of mobilization,” Kaczyński said, claiming Kyiv faces a serious shortage of military personnel, and should Russia seek to mobilize further after legislative elections in September, Ukraine must be prepared.
PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek said similar proposals were being discussed elsewhere in Western Europe.
“Men who don’t work in our country should work and be active on the front lines, because that’s where their homeland is,” Bochenek said.
“It’s not Poles or other nationalities who should be sent to the front lines, but Ukrainians who should defend their homeland.”
Relations between Poland and Ukraine have deteriorated over Kyiv’s commemoration of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and nationalist figures linked to the massacres of Poles in Volhynia during World War II.
In June, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, of the Order of the White Eagle after Ukraine named a military unit in honor of the “heroes of the UPA.”
Zelensky later announced plans for a National Pantheon that could include Ukrainian nationalist figures connected to the Volhynia massacres.
Ukraine’s parliament subsequently backed draft legislation supporting the project.
https://rmx.news/poland/polands-conservatives-propose-deporting-unemployed-ukrainian-men-of-military-age/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/10/2026 - 03:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/polands-conservatives-propose-deporting-unemployed-ukrainian-men-military-age

2026-08-10 06:00:00 GMT

UK Intelligence Suddenly Warns Of 'Civil War' Plot Against Migrants... Convenient Demonization?
UK Intelligence Suddenly Warns Of 'Civil War' Plot Against Migrants... Convenient Demonization?
https://modernity.news/2026/08/09/uk-intelligence-warns-of-civil-war-plot-against-migrants-convenient-demonisation/,
Intelligence officials are warning that a group of Republican extremists in Ireland, known as the New IRA, is preparing a campaign of violence to drive migrants out of the country, complete with talk of civil war and 24-hour ultimatums.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/IRAmod.jpg?itok=p8MF1g1g
The claims, amplified across major outlets this weekend, arrive at a moment when frustration with mass migration and the crimes linked to it has reached boiling point on both sides of the border.
Whether the threat is as advanced as portrayed, or whether the timing serves to tar ordinary opposition to open borders with the brush of terrorism, remains an open question.
New IRA terrorists plan to drive migrants out of Ireland with campaign of violence, intelligence officials reveal https://t.co/EJsYzQtnfb
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) https://x.com/DailyMail/status/2086187917446148509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Security sources told the Mail on Sunday that the New IRA has two aims: Irish independence and "all migrants out."
One source stated: "The New IRA have been very active this year in the North in attacks against the Police Service of Northern Ireland, at Lurgan police station and a car bomb at Dunmurry. They have two aims: Irish independence and all migrants out. We believe it is part of a power struggle going on between factions within the group of the old IRA, the Real and the New IRA, with the new incarnations advocating a campaign of violent intimidation."
A video circulating on a far-right platform featured an unidentified man declaring: "They will take control, and they will give an ultimatum, not to politicians but to the illegal migrants who are in the country."
UK on alert as New IRA 'hatches civil war plot to drive migrants out of Ireland'
https://t.co/1p95lMFMFQ
— GB News (@GBNEWS) https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/2086309491536990221?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
He added: "It is now going to be time for civil war, and that is exactly what these guys are going to be doing and can you blame them? This will be a major wake-up call for the authorities. These guys will show them how it's done and give them 24 hours to leave."
UK officials are said to be on alert that any such campaign could push migrants north across the open land border into Northern Ireland and then into Great Britain. The Home Office offered its standard line: "We have a close and collaborative working relationship with Ireland on migration and border security. This includes a mutual commitment to protect the Common Travel Area from abuse, delivered through joint work to identify and tackle migration trends as they emerge."
The New IRA has been active this year. In July, 25-year-old law student Isobella Perrie Sullivan was charged with possessing explosives after a device was found in a vehicle in the Republic.
The group maintains social-media links with Scottish nationalist circles. Yet the sudden prominence given to its alleged anti-migrant turn sits against a backdrop of repeated, graphic failures of the migration system that the same authorities have struggled to address.
In June 2026, the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast, allegedly by Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, triggered serious disorder. Earlier that month an African migrant was filmed in a north Belfast street attack, straddling a local man and attempting to saw his head off with a Stanley knife. Bystanders had to stop him. Official descriptions reduced it to a "stabbing."
The previous summer saw three nights of anti-immigration riots across Northern Ireland after alleged sex crimes involving non-native teenagers in Ballymena. Homes burned, more than thirty officers were injured, and residents marked doors with Union flags simply to avoid being targeted.
Footage of two-tier policing continues to surface. In Dungannon, a group of armed foreign youths appeared in a Protestant area carrying knives and sticks. A local man picked up a stick. Police ran past the armed group and arrested him.
Against this record, the rapid elevation of a New IRA "civil war plot" risks collapsing legitimate public rejection of mass migration into the same category as paramilitary activity.
The framing is neat. It allows officials and media to present the choice as between "terrorists" and the status quo, while the underlying drivers of anger remain largely untouched.
That pattern sits inside a wider set of warnings that have been issued for years. Professor David Betz of King's College London has stated that many European countries are already in a pre-civil war condition. "Europe is on track for civil war," he has said, adding that societies are "past the tipping point."
Retired Colonel Richard Kemp has been equally direct. He has predicted "not just civil unrest but civil war in the UK in the coming years" because governments lack the will to confront the causes. "The people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hands," he has warned.
Elon Musk told an interviewer that civil war in Britain is "inevitable" once a large, rapidly growing population holds beliefs antithetical to Western norms. "If you have a large and growing, rapidly growing, group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning," he said.
Meanwhile the British state continues practical preparations. Households have been urged to stockpile food, water and medicines. Major home-defence wargames are scheduled for 2027. Official explanations point to hybrid threats and Russia. Analysts note the overlap with the internal risks Betz and others have described.
Britain's path has not been accidental. Decades of elite-driven demographic change, two-tier enforcement and refusal to maintain borders have produced the conditions now being exploited.
The sudden focus on a New IRA anti-migrant campaign allows the conversation to shift from those failures to the more comfortable territory of "extremism."
Ordinary people who simply reject the scale and consequences of mass migration find their concerns quietly folded into the same narrative.
The Common Travel Area once symbolised cooperation. Combined with uncontrolled inflows it has become a pressure valve. Violence or intimidation in one jurisdiction simply moves the problem into the other. Carefully worded assurances about "joint work" do not reverse the changes already locked in.
What is unfolding is not solely a republican revival. It is one more indication that the open-borders experiment has broken the social contract. When street-level reality includes beheading attempts, sex attacks and selective policing, while official messaging pivots to paramilitary threats against migrants, public trust evaporates further.
The New IRA may be small. The decision to elevate its alleged new focus at this precise moment still serves a useful purpose: it reframes resistance to mass migration as something darker than simple self-preservation.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/10/2026 - 02:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-intelligence-suddenly-warns-civil-war-plot-against-migrants-convenient-demonization

2026-08-10 02:10:00 GMT

Netanyahu Rejects Gaza Plan: Israel Won't Withdraw Until Hamas Is 'Genuinely Disarmed'
Netanyahu Rejects Gaza Plan: Israel Won't Withdraw Until Hamas Is 'Genuinely Disarmed'
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/netanyahu-rejects-gaza-plan-no-withdrawal-until-hamas-is-genuinely-disarmed-6072927?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated on Aug. 9 that Israel has rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace's plan for Gaza and will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%28995%29.jpg?itok=qAdcItBE
Trump posted on Truth Social in July that an agreement had been reached for the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Trump said the agreement is part of his plan that will be implemented in phases. As disarmament takes place, Israeli forces would withdraw, while an International Stabilization Force and a new Palestinian police force would assume responsibility for security.
Gaza would ultimately be governed by a new Palestinian government working with the Board of Peace.
The Board of Peace is an international organization chaired by Trump that seeks to promote stability, establish lawful governance, and secure lasting peace in areas affected by conflict. Its founding members include the United States, Israel, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and more than 20 other countries committed to international peace-building efforts, according to its website.
Speaking at the start of a government meeting on Aug. 9, Netanyahu said disarmament must include all of Hamas's weapons and must be genuine rather than "fictitious."
He said Israel is discussing the issue with the United States and that some U.S. proposals are acceptable to Israel, while others are not.
Netanyahu also said Israeli forces would continue acting against threats to Israeli troops and civilians.
He rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"As for the Gaza Strip: First and foremost, I wish to clarify the main point: As long as I am Prime Minister, a Palestinian state will not be established, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said in a statement.
He also addressed Iran and Lebanon, pledging to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and saying Israel is conducting an important military operation in Lebanon aimed at eliminating threats.
Israel has been conducting operations in Lebanon.
Two Israeli reservists were killed and four others were seriously wounded during operations recently in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli military. Lebanese authorities said an Israeli strike also killed one person and wounded 12 others in the town of Tibnin, Lebanon.
Israel gave an evacuation warning to residents before the strike.
The incidents come as the United States conducts talks aimed at reducing hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border and advancing a broader peace agreement. U.S. officials said the discussions include the disarmament of Hezbollah and other Iran-backed threats, the redeployment of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, and the implementation of a pilot zone process transferring security responsibilities to the Lebanese army.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/09/2026 - 22:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/netanyahu-rejects-gaza-plan-israel-wont-withdraw-until-hamas-genuinely-disarmed

2026-08-10 01:35:00 GMT

"Narco-Socialist Rats Better Start Running": Colombia's Trump-Backed "El Tigre" Launches Major Offensive Against FARC
"Narco-Socialist Rats Better Start Running": Colombia's Trump-Backed "El Tigre" Launches Major Offensive Against FARC
Trump-backed Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella wasted no time putting his law-and-order agenda into high gear, launching a major military offensive against Marxist FARC dissidents days after taking office on Friday.
"The new government's kinetic approach is already underway in southwestern Colombia," local outlet https://colombiaone.com/2026/08/09/de-la-espriella-military/ wrote on Sunday.
The report continued, "A military operation is currently unfolding against the FARC dissidents led by alias' Ivan Mordisco' in the department of Cauca. The combats are heavily concentrated in the rural area of El Tambo, where initial reports indicate that at least five members of the dissident structure have been killed."
De La Espriella announced on Sunday evening that Colombia and the United States are strengthening their strategic alliance:
Colombia and the United States strengthen their strategic alliance. Following the inauguration of President Abelardo De La Espriella, the United States announced its intention to allocate USD 1 billion for a new security package for Colombia, which must be processed in coordination with the U.S. Congress. The new bilateral agenda seeks to bolster the capabilities of our Public Force, intensify the fight against drug trafficking and transnational crime, regain territorial control, and expand technological and intelligence cooperation. A new stage in the relationship between Colombia and the United States, based on shared objectives: security, prosperity, and defense of our nations
Colombia y Estados Unidos fortalecen su alianza estratégica.
Tras la posesión del presidente Abelardo De La Espriella, Estados Unidos anunció su intención de destinar USD 1.000 millones para un nuevo paquete de seguridad para Colombia, que deberá ser tramitado en coordinación… https://t.co/cUN28Lg5em
— Presidencia Colombia 🇨🇴 (@infopresidencia) https://x.com/infopresidencia/status/2086558805983195493?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Footage of the offensive:
🚨 | URGENTE:
Avanzan los operativos para capturar o eliminar al criminal guerrillero FARC Alias Mordisco, no descansan los héroes de la patria, y menos, nuestro mandatario, el tigre Abelardo.
¡Llegó la Patria Milagro! https://t.co/cB24KU9vWN
— Santiago Alvarán (@SALVARANM) https://x.com/SALVARANM/status/2086497595346551072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
🚨 https://x.com/hashtag/%C3%9AltimaHora?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw | Máxima tensión en El Tambo, Cauca. Fuertes combates entre el https://x.com/COL_EJERCITO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw y las disidencias de las FARC (frente Carlos Patiño) dejan al menos 5 criminales abatidos en la vereda El Recuerdo y el cerro Santana.
La población civil permanece confinada por el fuego… https://t.co/wp3brB4g0Z
— Revista Político (@RevistaPolitico) https://x.com/RevistaPolitico/status/2086557737731998197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Esto es diciendo y haciendo: Comenzaron los operativos contra las Farc en Cauca. Las ratas narcosocialistas a correr y el glorioso Ejército a cumplir su deber constitucional.
Vamos a ver cuánto tiempo se demoran los alcahuetas de los terroristas es salir a berriar por esas… https://t.co/BRkSEqqyZ2
— Carlos Ayala.Ozarco (@AyalaCarlOzarco) https://x.com/AyalaCarlOzarco/status/2086444767819280840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
🇨🇴🇧🇷‼️COLÔMBIA: Pelo menos 4 caças Kfir da Fuerza Aeroespacial teriam decolado da base de Tolemaida com destino à Amazônia.
Segundo informações preliminares, o alvo seria a localização de alias Iván Mordisco, líder das dissidências das FARC (EMC).
O movimento ocorre logo após a… https://t.co/o3S2ygiFGS
— Conservatism And Elegance 🇺🇲 (@ThayzzySmith) https://x.com/ThayzzySmith/status/2086449476269424672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
🚨🇨🇴| En este momento se desarrolla una fuerte ofensiva militar contra las disidencias de la guerrilla de las FARC de alias Iván Mordisco, en la Zona rural de El Tambo, Cauca. Al menos 5 disidentes abatidos. ¿Apoyas la MANO DURA de Abelardo de la Espriella contra los criminales? https://t.co/ZftyMPSvua
— Eduardo Menoni (@eduardomenoni) https://x.com/eduardomenoni/status/2086551509798396209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
¡ATENCIÓN COLOMBIA!
¡En Nariño se escriben páginas de gloria!
El valiente Ejército Nacional está librando duros y contundentes combates contra las estructuras criminales del ELN. Nuestros soldados, con coraje y profesionalismo, están golpeando con fuerza a quienes siembran terror…
— Jhonf Fonseca (@Jhonffonseca) https://x.com/Jhonffonseca/status/2086585335929291192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
La moral de nuestro Ejército volverá a ser la de antes: firme, honorable y leal a Colombia. 🇨🇴🇨🇴 https://t.co/sy8OeqLOcD
— 𝕲𝖚𝖘. 『X』 (@CapGusXMan) https://x.com/CapGusXMan/status/2086454664698966104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
🇨🇴 Colombia’s army just captured a FARC dissident commander known as “Menor” as armed groups intensify attacks across the country.
The 29th Brigade detained the mid-level leader of the Dagoberto Ramos structure during a raid earlier this month.
At the same time, one of the… https://t.co/aljOl6h6jE
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2086519127347245244?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Otro escuadrón de la JUNGLA acaba de salir de una extracción caliente en plena selva de coca. Por fin Colombia tiene un gobierno que no solo habla, sino que actúa. Golpea donde duele a los narcotraficantes y trabaja de verdad por los colombianos. Esto no es un operativo más: es… https://t.co/bK5nx48I5p
— Jhonf Fonseca (@Jhonffonseca) https://x.com/Jhonffonseca/status/2086526621901824087?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Here's our coverage of De La Espriella's inauguration and the broader political realignment sweeping across the Americas, where a growing red wave has sent the region's far-left and socialists into panic mode.
- https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-backed-el-tigre-takes-power-colombia-right-wing-wave-sweeps-americas
Visualize the political shift across the Americas:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/amazing.png?itok=dpnBaA09
Marxists are not happy: they have launched numerous car bomb attacks against De La Espriella:
- https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/twin-car-bombs-rock-colombian-city-days-trump-backed-el-tigre-take-power
With Colombia strengthening ties with the Trump administration, El Colombiano's Alberto Sierra wrote on X that FARC dissidents and other far-left terror networks could soon confront the uncomfortable reality of US-made MQ-9 Reaper in the skies. He effectively warned that there may soon be nowhere left to hide:
Take a good look at this machine. Because it represents more than just military technology.
It is the MQ-9 Reaper, one of the most advanced aerial surveillance platforms used in operations against armed organizations and criminal networks.
Colombia is preparing to incorporate this capability.
The difference?
Hours of surveillance. Real-time information. Tracking of movements. Identification of targets. Greater capacity to anticipate enemy operations.
In a country where the geography allowed armed groups to vanish among jungles, mountains, and rivers for decades, this changes the rules.
The goal is not to turn technology into propaganda. It is something much simpler: to make the State see.
Because whoever controls the information controls the initiative.
And when the enemy knows that it can be located even in the places where it once felt safe, its margin for maneuver begins to shrink.
○ Miren bien esta máquina. Porque representa algo más que tecnología militar.
Es el MQ-9 Reaper, una de las plataformas de vigilancia aérea más avanzadas utilizadas en operaciones contra organizaciones armadas y redes criminales.
Colombia se prepara para incorporar esta… https://t.co/LNLvFEz0he
— Alberto Sierra (@AlbertoSierrave) https://x.com/AlbertoSierrave/status/2086224687240224890?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"In just 24 hours, the Colombian army has captured and taken down several narcos, extortionists, and guerrillas, and now the left has come out crying about human rights—typical of lefties, defending criminals," X user https://x.com/DiegoMac227/status/2086546936530600069?s=20 said.
What is unfolding in Colombia appears to be part of the Trump administration's broader effort to restore order across the Western Hemisphere after years in which socialist and Marxist governments allowed narco-terrorist networks to expand amid widespread lawlessness.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/09/2026 - 21:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/narco-socialist-rats-better-start-running-colombias-trump-backed-el-tigre-launches-major

2026-08-07 12:20:00 GMT

Can Sam Altman Be Trusted Inside Your Home? Meet OpenAI's New Always-On Smart Speaker
Can Sam Altman Be Trusted Inside Your Home? Meet OpenAI's New Always-On Smart Speaker
Trust remains OpenAI's biggest problem. Sam Altman's public feud with Elon Musk, combined with Apple's allegations that OpenAI stole trade secrets, has only intensified concerns surrounding the company's leadership and governance.
Amid this glaring trust issue, OpenAI now wants to place what https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/what-is-openai-s-device-a-doughnut-shaped-speaker-that-costs-over-300 describes as "essentially a smart speaker without a display" inside millions of homes.
Equipped with microphones, cameras, and environmental sensors, the $300 device would function as an always-on intelligence platform, potentially collecting voice, visual, behavioral, and household data.
OpenAI’s first device is a smart speaker without a display and costs $300+. Here is a ChatGPT mock-up based on article:
▫️doughnut/ring shape
▫️size of a hockey puck
▫️have camera, speakers, microphone, lights
▫️interactive moving parts to make it feel “more alive” than… https://t.co/xmlPJniAd1 https://t.co/qf1THJFNwT
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) https://x.com/TrungTPhan/status/2085478886520021492?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The unresolved question is not what the device can perceive, but what OpenAI will retain, analyze, and ultimately monetize.
Bloomberg added more color on the device:
OpenAI is looking to break new ground with the product, which is slated for release in 2027. The device will be positioned as an AI-first computer that can help users get things done, the people said.
OpenAI's smart speaker was designed with Jony Ive's LoveFrom studio and represents the startup's first major push into consumer hardware. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/apple-demands-forensics-injunction-openai-which-fired-back-hours-later complicate the rollout, though OpenAI denies the claims and insists it is building something fundamentally different from Apple's products.
Amazon's Alexa devices and other smart speakers have already exposed major privacy risks to consumers. OpenAI's ambition to learn users' routines, observe their surroundings, and personalize interactions raises these concerns even higher, particularly when trust in Altman's AI startup remains complicated.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 08/07/2026 - 08:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/can-sam-altman-be-trusted-inside-your-home-meet-openais-new-always-smart-speaker

2026-08-06 14:45:00 GMT

Anti-Trump GOP Governors Plot To Undermine President's Immigration Crackdown With Work-Visa Scheme
Anti-Trump GOP Governors Plot To Undermine President's Immigration Crackdown With Work-Visa Scheme
Two Republican governors with a long history of clashing with Donald Trump are https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/08/03/governors-ask-congress-to-grant-states-authority-to-issue-migrant-work-visas/ on a plan to hand migrant workers state-issued work permits instead of deportation notices, a direct challenge to the president's immigration crackdown that the four laid out on camera. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt joined Democratic Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Matt Meyer of Delaware for a joint interview with Bloomberg, describing a shared position that has far more in common with the Democratic Party and the labor lobby than with the Trump administration's approach to the border.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/cox%20stitt.jpg?itok=zeHt-fDp
The vehicle for that position is the National Governors Association's Task Force on Immigration Policy, which Stitt built after noticing a pattern among his colleagues. "The reason I set this task force up is because I realized by talking to my colleagues that they're having the same issues," Stitt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-08-01/bipartisan-governors-to-tackle-immigration-reform-video Bloomberg reporter Christina Ruffini. "Let's actually have the governors issue workforce permits."
That last line is the whole ballgame. The task force wants Congress to hand governors the discretion to issue migrant work permits at the state level, a proposal that treats illegal immigration less as a legal violation and more as a labor supply problem for agriculture, construction and hospitality. It resembles former President George W. Bush's immigration reform approach, which sent the https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-following-meeting-immigration-reform-0 to illegal immigrants, "If you're doing a job an American won't do, you're welcome here, for a period of time, to do that job."
Cox framed the alliance as a breakthrough four decades in the making. "For 40 years, we've been trying to do immigration reform and nobody's ever been able to get it done," he said. "But what's different this time is that we have a secure border." He credited that border security to the current administration while working, in the same breath, to carve states out from under its enforcement arm. "We all care - Republicans and Democrats - about a secure border," Cox said, a sentiment that gets considerably murkier once the conversation turns to what happens to people already inside it.
Cox described a February meeting among the governors as almost startling in its unity. "We were together in February and having a conversation about immigration, and we were all shocked at the level of bipartisanship, cooperation, and agreement," he said. "We were really stunned that everybody had kind of the same opinions on what needed to be done." Bipartisan agreement among governors on loosening enforcement is not the reassurance Cox seems to think it is.
Ruffini asked the group for a show of hands on whether ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have been effective. Neither Cox nor Stitt raised one. Cox pointed to enforcement actions in Minnesota as a specific concern, citing "the violence and the deaths that we've seen" and calling the incidents "deeply problematic." Stitt was even more blunt about his overall assessment. "We're not using common sense right now," he said.
Stitt's example centered on a green card holder from Vietnam who has lived in Oklahoma City for 25 years. "We had a person from Vietnam that's been in Oklahoma City for 25 years, legally in the United States, with a green card, working at Hobby Lobby," he said. The man had self-deported after a marijuana arrest then returned to the country legally. "They've been a great citizen chasing the American dream, but they've been picked up for deportation now," Stitt said. Gov. Moore added an economic gloss to the argument, saying a deportation agenda focused on criminals ought to travel alongside pro-growth policy rather than replace it.
Neither Republican governor has a great relationship with Trump, and both have clashed with him politically in recent years, which explains their break with him on immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration clearly isn't on board. Trump won a second term in 2024 in part by promising to close a border that sat wide open for four years under Biden. Immigration has generally been the strongest issue for him, outperforming his approval numbers on the economy and foreign policy.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin set the tone from inside the administration at the same NGA gathering, sitting beside Stitt and offering his own verdict on the odds of any of this actually happening. "Is immigration reform possible? No," Mullin told the assembled governors. "Do you really need immigration reform? Yes, you do, but can we work with the system we have? Yes."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/06/2026 - 10:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/anti-trump-gop-governors-plot-undermine-presidents-immigration-crackdown-work-visa-scheme

2026-08-06 14:14:27 GMT

Hyperscaler Bond Spreads Blow Out After Google Shocks With Another $25 Billion Bond Offering
Hyperscaler Bond Spreads Blow Out After Google Shocks With Another $25 Billion Bond Offering
After tightening sharply following last week's (pre-Situational Awareness) rout which sent hyperscaler CDS to the widest on record, AI bond spreads are blowing out again this morning - with SpaceX bonds - which have quickly emerged as the fulcrum bond security of the AI world - plunging this morning on news that for the third time in a year, Alphabet which has emerged as the credit (both on and https://www.ft.com/content/549f2e23-5aa2-49c7-9ea6-a9784ab7087c?syn-25a6b1a6=1) nexus of the AI supercyle, is looking to raise another $25 billion from its latest US investment-grade bond offering, a deal that will again test investor appetite for AI-related debt following a July selloff when bond AI-linked bond spreads exploded to all time wides.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/SPCX%20plunge.jpg?itok=vDf09DLp
The offering, which will very likely be upsizied (just as the illl-fated SpaceX bond offering) will be Alphabet's third since November.
In February, the Google parent https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/alphabet-set-to-raise-over-30-billion-in-global-debt-sale-sources.html, including multiple non-US tranches. The offering followed a similar bond issuance from November 2025, when https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-03/alphabet-to-sell-at-least-3-billion-bonds-to-fund-ai-expansion, quadrupling its long-term debt to $46 billion. Since then Google's debt has surpassed over $100 billion and is rising at an astronomic pace; one can only hope the rating agencies don't notice.
According to Bloomberg, Alphabet is offering notes in as many as 10 parts, with maturities ranging from two to 40 years. Initial price talk for the longest-tenored tranche is a premium of about 1.55 percentage points above Treasuries. No final decision has been made on the size, according to people familiar with the matter, however it is likely that - as always - there will be excess demand leading to significant oversubscription, with the bond then sliding after it starts trading.
Virtually every bank is an underwriter on the offering which will need all the help it can get: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are managing the sale, Bloomberg said.
Alphabet’s offering comes one month after Amazon issued an identical amount of debt, and just two weeks after the company again raised its 2026 spending outlook, which triggered fresh worries about whether massive artificial-intelligence investments will pay off. Investor appetite for bonds to help fund capex cooled in July as Alphabet increased its forecast to as much as $205 billion, more than double 2025’s outlays.
Meanwhile, as the market finally started paying attention to good, old on-balance sheet debt, the flood of off-balance sheet continued with BlackRock last week selling $12.5 billion of bonds tied to a Meta data center SPV in Texas. Initial demand was very poor, following soft interest for an offering by Amazon.com.
Immediately afterward, bond spreads across the Hyperscaler sector blew out to record wides in the secondary market, as we reported on multiuple occasions.
However, following the historic short squeeze in the past week (sparked by.... nobody really knows) sentiment improved again as August began, helped by gains in US Treasuries.
“We’ve had a few days now of positive reactions from investors across corporates and especially technology,” said Brett Kozlowski, portfolio manager at GW&K Investment Management. “But another large debt deal will still test the depth of that and be worth watching.”
Sure enough, after sliding by almost 20bps in the past week, hyperscaler spreads have already cut their gains in half after blowing out by almost 10bps since Tuesday, a move that is set to accelerate as even more debt comes to market.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HPCqDaYXsAEp_tr.png?itok=VppVvRy7
Alphabet, which sold more than $50 billion of debt in the first half of 2026, and Amazon have led the AI-infrastructure borrowing spree. Alphabet last tapped the US high-grade debt market in February, before selling bonds in Swiss francs, British pounds, euros, Canadian dollars and Japanese yen. It also issued nearly $85 billion of shares two months ago.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/debt%20issuance%202.jpg?itok=vLS7YY5c
The explosive growth in CapEx is why Alphabet posted its first quarter of negative cash flow since its 2004 initial public offering.
The hope is that at some point, all this massive investment will lead to a surge in EBITDA. The only problem is what happens if nearly-free Chinese open-weight models end up dominating the market while US hyperscalers duke it out in the biggest spending spree since the Nuclear arms race. And, as we https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/what-if-open-weight-models-win-ai-war-here-are-winners-and-losers, that's precisely what is happening.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/06/2026 - 10:14
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hyperscaler-bond-spreads-blow-out-after-google-shocks-another-25-billion-bond-offering

2026-08-06 09:45:00 GMT

Spot The Odd One Out...
Spot The Odd One Out...
While almost one million people crossed the $1 million wealth threshold in 2025, that growth was far from evenly shared across countries.
This visualization, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-countries-creating-most-new-millionaires/ranks the 31 countries that added the most new USD millionaires between 2024 and 2025, revealing where personal wealth expanded fastest over the past year.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/New-Millionaires-Web-v4-1182x153.jpg?itok=GWYBbslp
The data comes from the https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealthmanagement/insights/global-wealth-report.html, which tracks individuals whose net worth exceeded $1 million USD.
The U.S. Dominates Global Wealth Creation
The United States added 441,078 new millionaires in one year, more than 10 times the total recorded by the second-ranked UK.
RankCountryNew USD millionaires (2024–2025)
1🇺🇸 U.S.441,078
2🇬🇧 UK43,139
3🇫🇷 France34,604
4🇪🇸 Spain32,707
5🇯🇵 Japan31,428
6🇮🇳 India31,033
7🇮🇹 Italy28,596
8🇦🇺 Australia25,089
9🇩🇪 Germany24,263
10🇷🇺 Russia21,951
11🇰🇷 South Korea20,227
12🇨🇳 China14,079
13🇹🇼 Taiwan9,864
14🇮🇪 Ireland9,491
15🇧🇷 Brazil9,215
16🇨🇭 Switzerland8,907
17🇮🇱 Israel8,803
18🇲🇽 Mexico8,724
19🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia8,718
20🇦🇪 UAE6,277
21🇹🇷 Türkiye5,650
22🇸🇬 Singapore5,240
23🇵🇱 Poland3,888
24🇿🇦 South Africa3,840
25🇬🇷 Greece2,762
26🇨🇱 Chile2,593
27🇭🇰 Hong Kong SAR1,891
28🇭🇺 Hungary1,349
29🇱🇻 Latvia1,131
30🇱🇹 Lithuania921
31🇶🇦 Qatar528
Canada was not included in this year’s UBS Wealth Report for the ranking and is absent.
American households accounted for nearly half of everyone worldwide who crossed the $1 million threshold in 2025, underscoring the country’s https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-richest-countries-by-average-and-median-wealth/ in global wealth creation.
Strong equity market performance, widespread household investment participation, and resilient economic growth contributed to rising personal wealth.
Europe Claims Many of the Top Spots
Europe is well represented throughout the ranking, with the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania all appearing in the top 31.
The UK ranked second overall, adding more than 43,000 new millionaires, while France and Spain each added more than 30,000.
Although no single European country approached the U.S. total, six of the top 10 countries were in Europe. This points to broad-based wealth growth across several major economies rather than one dominant regional market.
Asia Adds New Millionaires Across Major Markets
Japan and India each added more than 31,000 new millionaires, followed by South Korea with more than 20,000 and China with more than 14,000.
Smaller financial hubs such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong SAR also made the list despite their relatively modest populations.
Asia’s results highlight two paths to wealth creation. India continued adding millionaires alongside https://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-worlds-biggest-economies-in-2031/, while mature markets such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore generated new wealth through established household asset bases and rising financial markets.
To learn more about this topic, check out this https://www.voronoiapp.com/economy/Ranked-The-Worlds-Richest-Countries-by-GDP-Per-Capita-8409 on the world’s richest countries by GDP per capita.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/06/2026 - 05:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/spot-odd-one-out

2026-08-06 07:30:00 GMT

BMW Job Cuts And The Emerging German-French Industrial Strategy
BMW Job Cuts And The Emerging German-French Industrial Strategy
Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Will German policy paralysis and French protectionism save Germany’s automakers? Unlikely, since Paris and Berlin are pursuing similar ideological goals. Everything points toward the expansion of a green state-run economy. On that, there is agreement. The concerns of private enterprise are secondary.
Given the dramatic situation, automakers would probably take even the most hopeless escape route in an attempt to escape the downward spiral. This has now also caught up with the previously remarkably resilient BMW Group: Just last week, Volkswagen announced plans to cut 120,000 jobs, Porsche has to eliminate 5,000 positions, and Mercedes has already parted ways with 5,500 employees. Now BMW is following suit, https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/bmw-cut-several-thousand-jobs-under-voluntary-redundancy-programme-2026-07-29/. The pressure to act is considerable. In the second quarter, the Munich-based group’s profit plunged by a staggering 35 percent year-on-year. In the core automotive business, the company lost 60 percent of its earnings.
BMW’s workforce reduction is supposed to take place quietly: through natural employee turnover and a voluntary severance program. The company wants to avoid compulsory redundancies in Munich.
The initiative will begin in October and run until 2027, specifically targeting employees outside production. Between 30,000 and 40,000 administrative employees at BMW are expected to receive an offer to leave the company – in return, BMW will expand its employment guarantee for the future: compulsory redundancies in Germany are to be ruled out even if the company falls into the red.
Whether this policy can ultimately be maintained when push comes to shove remains to be seen. In any case, entire layers of management are to be eliminated and departments merged – not least because BMW has concluded that artificial intelligence can increase operational efficiency.
Efficiency programs in Germany’s automotive industry are unavoidable. Excessive energy costs are weighing on companies’ results, alongside Brussels regulation and the political campaign against the combustion engine, which still dominates the market. It is impossible to keep pace with global competition from the domestic production base. According to consultancy EY, German automakers and their suppliers lost 50,000 jobs within a single year. There is no sign of a reversal: Germany’s automotive industry association VDA now expects 225,000 jobs to disappear across the sector by 2035, some 35,000 more than its estimate just a few months ago.
And what is politics doing? It clings doggedly to the ideology of the Green Deal, regardless of what it may cost citizens – with the state, financed through taxes and debt, remaining as an employer of last resort if necessary. That, in a nutshell, has so far been the position of the political leadership of the European Union.
Euro-corporatism has grown far beyond its limits. Billions flow from taxpayers to Brussels and return, rebranded as climate bonuses, credit guarantees and funding allocations for dubious start-ups, into the channels of the green transformation machine. This may be the most extreme case of politically driven destruction of capital. The decline of European industry is inevitable. It is impossible to conceive of an economy that could withstand the subversive barrage of European ideologues over an extended period.
Bewildered and incredulous, they stand in Berlin and Paris before the ruins of their own work. Since political circles operate under an imperative of infallibility, every last resource is being mobilized to continue the prevailing policy. At the German-French Council of Ministers in Germany in mid-July, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/france-germany-expand-defence-partnership-europe-seeks-more-military-autonomy-2026-07-17/. The two governments subsequently instructed their negotiators to work out a broader compromise: France wants to shield European industry more strongly from foreign competition, while Germany is primarily seeking a way out of the crisis engulfing its automotive industry.
Too much money is flowing out: For Chinese EV manufacturers or solar-panel producers, Brussels’ subsidy machine is a welcome bonus. Countless businesses are effectively living off the naivety of European policymakers. It pays to put up the umbrella for subsidies when EU bureaucrats and political fools are scattering taxpayers’ money with both hands.
And so a German-French bargain is now supposed to bring relief in the crisis. Berlin would support the French demand for a tougher “Made in Europe” model for industrial funding. At the heart of the strategy is the Industrial Accelerator Act, or IAA, presented by the European Commission in March. It is supposed to apply in public tenders and funding programs and define requirements for applicants in advance. Naturally, CO₂-free products and manufacturing processes are to receive priority in the subsidy jungle.
Subsidies will continue to flow above all to decarbonization champions. But there is nothing remotely market-oriented about this; the subsidy frenzy merely promotes cronyism and a subsidy-hunter mentality in the EU. Brussels also wants to define in the future which third countries qualify as so-called “trusted partners.” In doing so, the bureaucracy is intervening massively in the existing supply chains of European companies. “Made in Europe” – a crude form of industrial policy, with bureaucrats at the helm who can, at the behest of politicians, give suppliers the thumbs-down and shut them out, regardless of the consequences this may have for European businesses.
Berlin had rejected this practice until now. But given the situation in the automotive sector and the French concessions in this area, the German government now appears open to a “Made in Europe” strategy.
The other side of the deal is this: France is signaling a willingness to handle the 2035 combustion-engine phaseout more flexibly. It will ultimately come down to negotiating CO₂ consumption quotas more flexibly and assigning a different weight to investments in hybrid drivetrains in the CO₂ balance. In short: business as usual in the same outfit, merely unbuttoned at one point.
Ways out of the crisis mean the end of the current policy. Technological openness for business, competition in a free, deregulated single market – politics contributes nothing to solving the crisis. Quite the contrary. The bargain between Paris and Berlin would appear protectionist from the outside, but could provide companies with some short-term breathing room through more efficient allocation of subsidies. In doing so, political pressure is removed to break with the fatal ideological design of the Green Deal.
Without a structural break with the ideological present, there will be no recovery. The therapy that Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz intend to prescribe for the European automotive industry will ultimately prove to be an injection of the same poison that has turned the entire EU economy into an economic cripple.
* * *
About the author Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 08/06/2026 - 03:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/bmw-job-cuts-and-emerging-german-french-industrial-strategy

2026-08-06 02:35:00 GMT

US Lifts Sanctions On Iraqi Airline Blacklisted Over IRGC Ties
US Lifts Sanctions On Iraqi Airline Blacklisted Over IRGC Ties
https://thecradle.co/articles/us-lifts-sanctions-on-iraqi-airline-blacklisted-over-irgc-ties
The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20260805 on Iraq's Fly Baghdad Airlines and two of its aircraft on Wednesday, clearing a carrier Washington had blacklisted in January 2024 over alleged support for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
The Baghdad-based carrier was delisted from the Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) list under each of its three registered names, Fly Baghdad Airlines Company, Fly Baghdad, and Iraq Express.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/flybgdd.jpg?itok=pglDSltw
Two Boeing 737 aircraft flown by the airline, carrying the tail numbers YI-BAF and YI-BAN, were removed from the list at the same time.
A US Treasury official, who spoke anonymously, told AFP that the airline had cleared the department's administrative reconsideration process.
"FBA (Fly Baghdad Airlines) has demonstrated major changes to their operations such that their listing is no longer warranted," the official said.
The same official said the delisting is "not indicative of any shift in US policy toward the Government of Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force, any designated terrorist organization, or any person who supports or acts on behalf of any of these."
Not every restriction tied to the airline has been dropped. Basheer Abdulkadhim Alwan al-Shabbani, the Iraqi national identified as the company's owner when the sanctions were first imposed, remains blacklisted.
His entry was rewritten so that the designation now cites the IRGC Quds Force directly instead of Fly Baghdad.
Washington first designated the airline, its aircraft, and its owner in January 2024, alleging the company supported Iran’s Quds Force and allied groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The delisting comes amid a broader US sanctions campaign that continues to target Iran’s IRGC-linked logistics and aviation networks.
There is some reporting that Treasury removed Iran-related sanctions from its website. A Treasury official tells me, “This is not indicative of any shift in U.S. policy toward the Government of Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Qods Force, any designated terrorist…
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) https://x.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/2085010329713471533?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Just last week, Washington sanctioned entities tied to https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/07/united-states-sanctioning-irans-mahan-air-network-and-irgc-linked-front-company/, which it alleges helps move weapons, personnel and equipment for the IRGC Quds Force.
The action also hit support firms in China, India and Russia that Treasury says served as the airline’s sales agents and logistics intermediaries.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/05/2026 - 22:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-lifts-sanctions-iraqi-airline-blacklisted-over-irgc-ties

2026-08-06 00:30:00 GMT

Fresh Panic As Pentagon Has Used 'Virtually All' Its Long-Range Precision Missiles On Iran
Fresh Panic As Pentagon Has Used 'Virtually All' Its Long-Range Precision Missiles On Iran
US forces "used up virtually all" of their precision, long-range missiles during the course of the Iran war, and during the earlier heavy US-Israeli campaign of Operation Epic Fury, https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-used-virtually-all-its-long-range-precision-missiles-during-iran-war-2026-08-04/ reported Tuesday.
This has raised serious "concerns about the military's readiness for future conflicts," informed sources told the outlet. In particular it is the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) which are said to be running critically low.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/atacmsfilenew.jpg?itok=eUfpAp1-
"Washington has used virtually all of these weapons," two sources told Reuters, after several media reports and think tank studies had already sounded the alarm over dwindling missiles amid both the Iran war and in the years-long process of supplying Ukraine. Low Patriot defense missile supplies have also been a https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-drains-half-its-patriot-arsenal-during-iran-war-new-military-study-finds in the headlines.
They are costly and time-consuming in terms of manufacturing replacements. For example a single ATACMS munition costs about $1 million.
One immediate consequence could be that if heavy bombardment of Iran starts up again, the US would have to conduct riskier piloted aerial bombings - instead relying on longer range precision strikes afforded by the land-based systems at safer distances.
And another, somewhat obvious consequence, is highlighted in the following: "But as the war drags on, the three people familiar with the matter expressed worry that the falling missile supplies could limit the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, including Russia and China."
The report added: "A fourth person ⁠familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the world."
President Trump has of late responded to these now widespread reports of badly depleted advanced munitions, explaining that "Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels."
Additionally, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took to social media to refute the report, calling it false news.
“That banner is NOT TRUE, CNN. Shame on you,” the Pentagon chief said in a post on X. “We don’t hate the Fake News media enough.”
Hegseth was specifically referring to a CNN on-screen banner that read: “Sources: U.S. has used nearly 80% of key missile interceptors in Iran war, top commanders warn stockpiles dangerously low.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202026-08-05T085108.655.jpg?itok=uHtWUMU-
However, the Reuters report has set off speculation that Trump's weekend backtracking on planned 'harder' Iran strikes could have been in part because the Pentagon has warned of waning supplies and capabilities regarding conventional way of doing long-range missile strikes.
We’re out of crucial defensive weapons systems, and now we’re out of crucial offensive weapons. Other than that, Sir, how’s the war going? https://t.co/qXNiSLHQho
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) https://x.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/2084628994448617799?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Critics of the decision to go to war in the first place have warned over this very scenario of exhausting Pentagon stockpiles. Those against this war of choice say that it's the opposite of America First - and that ultimately the war is about https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-legal-adviser/2026/04/operation-epic-fury-and-international-law and not necessarily American security and interests.
The reality also is that in the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, the US seemed underprepared for the ferocity of the Iranian response. At least 13 American bases in the region were hit and damaged in just the opening weeks of the war, to the point that US forces across the region had to be moved back from front line Gulf areas, and energy sites across the region were pummeled and suffered billions of dollars in damage.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/05/2026 - 20:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fresh-panic-pentagon-has-used-virtually-all-its-long-range-precision-missiles-iran

2026-08-05 18:25:00 GMT

At Least Ten Agitators Arrested In Madison As Filthy 'Autonomous Zone' Is Dismantled
At Least Ten Agitators Arrested In Madison As Filthy 'Autonomous Zone' Is Dismantled
https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/04/at-least-ten-agitators-arrested-in-madison-as-filthy-autonomous-zone-is-dismantled/
Authorities in Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday sent in crews to clean up and dismantle the filthy and violent “autonomous zone” that was set up by left-wing agitators to protest the shooting of an armed violent felon. At least ten occupiers were arrested as of Tuesday morning,https://fox11online.com/news/state/fires-set-arrests-made-as-madison-crews-clear-out-protest-encampment-police-officer-shooting-corey-ruiz-williamson-baldwin-streets-intersection reported.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-05_09-20-20.jpg?itok=0SaSBaRK
Repeat offender Corey Ruiz, 38, was shot by police on July 22 after allegedly attacking an officer with a knife.
Public records show that Ruiz had eight convictions for “resisting, obstructing, threatening or injuring police officers between 2007 and 2024,” according tohttps://www.fox6now.com/news/madison-police-shooting-ruiz-criminal-record
Five of those prior cases reportedly involved conflicts with City of Madison police officers.
After the shooting, activists, including Black Lives Matter members, quickly set up barricades using furniture, spike strips, and wooden pallets to occupy downtown Madison.
The Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone (also known as CRAZE or “Corey Street”) was initially allowed by the woke mayor as a protest encampment.
The City of Madison even provided basic services, including portable restrooms and the use of salt trucks as street blockades. A homeless population quickly moved into the zone, creating a need for more services..
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway on Friday https://x.com/SatyaForMadison/status/2083177867538583706?s=20 the zone as “not sustainable or safe” but did not set a timeline for clearing it.
Meanwhile, Independent journalist Nick Sortor was https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2083859314402382147?s=20 over the weekend by BLM agitators while reporting at the scene.
“Hurry up and leave before your life ends here,” an agitator told Sortor. “There’s a whole team of us.”
Cleaning crews were sent in early Tuesday morning after “CRAZE” had become a public health hazard. After the decision to remove the encampment was announced, the occupiers https://x.com/SchulteLaura/status/2084591993586323537?s=20 lit fires and threw rocks at the city workers.
The agitators clashed with city and state police who were sent to the scene to protect the crews.
The agitators blocked the streets near the encampment after it was cleared.
The occupiers eventually moved tohttps://x.com/VickiMcKenna/status/2084716898449605087?s=20 to wage a “noise protest” over her decision to shut down their “CRAZE.” They littered the mayor’s front yard with anti-police signs, deployed a megaphone siren and screamed at her through a bullhorn.
“The community ain’t get no sleep ’cause of you!” an agitator bellowed through the bullhorn. “We saw you sent your pigs out too!”
“You have blood on your hands!” the agitator cried.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a video statement Tuesday that the decision to clear the encampment at Williamson and Baldwin Streets was “not made lightly” and occurred only after nearly two weeks of failed attempts to resolve the situation voluntarily.
She urged the community to focus on “sustainable change” and accountability through official investigations rather than occupation, stating, “Holding government accountable for progress should not mean harming the community we all share.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/05/2026 - 14:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/least-ten-agitators-arrested-madison-filthy-autonomous-zone-dismantled

2026-08-05 14:00:00 GMT

US Telecoms Slide On Starlink Mobile Threat; Bernstein Sees It As A "Jab, But No Knockout Yet"
US Telecoms Slide On Starlink Mobile Threat; Bernstein Sees It As A "Jab, But No Knockout Yet"
U.S. telecom stocks fell in premarket trading after SpaceX, during its https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/spacex-slides-despite-big-revenue-beat-tame-capex as a publicly traded company on Tuesday evening, outlined its vision for Starlink to challenge Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
This was the market reaction to discussions surrounding https://x.com/Starlink?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Mobile during the SpaceX Earnings Call.
The big three telecom giants fell. The same thing happened when SpaceX acquired spectrum last year. https://t.co/4FfvFQdOTB https://t.co/tAG7ywTxY7
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/2084774664593641634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell told investors about its future impact on big telecom: "Roughly, between them, $600 billion a year. I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers. Our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones leveraging the satellites in orbit. It will be better during any natural disaster. I'm quite excited about Starlink Mobile."
For readers, the emergence of Starlink Mobile and Musk taking on the big three U.S. wireless operators- Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile - is nothing new.
Elon going for the phone after all
SpaceX Plans New Starlink Mobile Service for US Consumers: FT
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://x.com/zerohedge/status/2070481389502247088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
One of the clearest signals was https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/spacex-buys-17-billion-echostar-spectrum-supercharge-starlink-direct-cell wireless spectrum last year, followed by a recent trademark filing for "Starlink Mobile."
Our note from June:
- https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musks-starlink-plots-become-mobile-carrier-td-cowen-sees-possible-t-mobile-buyout
For more color on Starlink Mobile and its implications for US telecom operators, Bernstein analysts titled their latest note "US Telecom: Starlink Jabs... No Knockout Yet," offering clients a clearer view of what may come next.
US Telecom stocks traded lower in after-hours trading following SpaceX's Q2 results and earnings call (covered by Harned), with Telecom investor attention focused on management's comments regarding Starlink's BB and wireless ambitions. While much of what was said was not new, the call offered clearer articulation of SpaceX's long-term vision and the various building blocks underpinning it. Management reiterated those ambitions at a time when Starlink is scaling subs, enterprise revenue, spectrum holdings, and satellite capacity simultaneously, making their comments more interesting.
To us, the incremental takeaway was not that Starlink is suddenly becoming a threat to broadband and wireless incumbents. Rather, it was a reminder that SpaceX continues to invest toward that outcome, and that the debate could remain an overhang on the sector for years rather than quarters.
What was said? More than a jab.
On broadband, management's central message remains unchanged: a major capacity and performance inflection is coming with V3 satellites. They are roughly an order of magnitude more capable than V2 satellites in orbit today and that SpaceX expects to launch roughly an order of magnitude more of them, implying a roughly 100x increase in delivered bandwidth over time. Management repeatedly described V3 as a step-function increase in Starlink's addressable opportunity and revenue potential.
The company also continued to emphasize the growing importance of enterprise and government customers. Management noted that the segment has the potential to eventually match or exceed the consumer business in terms of revenue, and highlighted continued traction in aviation, government contracts, and enterprise connectivity, areas that generally carry higher revenue quality and stronger economics.
On wireless, management outlined a vision that extends well beyond the D2D services currently being introduced with carrier partners. The strategy appears to consist of four components: (1) satellite-based D2D coverage; (2) recently acquired 65MHz of spectrum from EchoStar; (3) Some form of terrestrial radio infrastructure; and (4) a distributed small-cell architecture leveraging installed Starlink CPEs. While each component is insufficient, the collective strategy is... interesting.
Our view: BB, yes. Wireless? Not so fast.
We continue to view Starlink BB as a credible and growing long-term competitive threat to incumbent operators, particularly at the lower-end of the market where "good enough" BB is often sufficient. In our view, that risk remains higher for FWA and value-oriented BB subs, segments where Cable operators generally have greater exposure (vs. Fiber). We can debate the extent of the potential impact, but the overhang will continue as Starlink continues to expand its capacity and price their products more competitively. As capacity expands and operating leverage grows, the company should become increasingly capable of competing aggressively on price while simultaneously improving service quality. The rapid growth of higher-value enterprise and government revenues coupled with global scale only reinforces that advantage.
Wireless is where our view diverges somewhat from the market reaction. We continue to see D2D satellite service, whether offered by Starlink or others, primarily as a complementary service to incumbent nationwide cellular networks rather than a substitute for them in the foreseeable future. The fundamental use case remains coverage enhancement, not replacement. D2D has yet to solve the indoor unlink challenge. While additional spectrum may improve capacity and performance, it does not eliminate the fundamental physics associated with transmitting from a handheld device to a satellite, particularly indoors.
Likewise, the distributed small-cell concept described on the call is intriguing, but we remain skeptical regarding practical deployment. Such a network would require a dense concentration of Starlink installations in precisely the areas where consumers live, work, and travel: urban cores, suburbs, and major transportation corridors. In many respects, the concept resembles prior visions of a facilities-based wireless network leveraging a broad Wi-Fi APs. Interesting in theory, but considerably more difficult in practice.
For now, we continue to believe Starlink BB represents the more immediate and credible long-term competitive risk. While Starlink wireless ambitions will likely remain an overhang on the sector, we do not believe Starlink Mobile is poised to take meaningful share from incumbent wireless operators anytime soon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/signup/professional-membership-year can read more on SpaceX, Starlink, and Musk here at our new https://marketdesk.ai/ portal.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/05/2026 - 10:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/us-telecoms-slide-starlink-mobile-threat-bernstein-sees-it-jab-no-knockout-yet

2026-08-05 10:55:00 GMT

Inside Ford's "Passionate" Reinvention
Inside Ford's "Passionate" Reinvention
Ford has reshaped its business by narrowing its lineup to vehicles with stronger brand appeal and higher profit potential. Instead of offering a wide range of sedans, hatchbacks, and family cars, the company is concentrating on trucks, SUVs, sports cars, and models that customers can personalize with factory-backed upgrades, https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-cars-suvs-sports-cars-picksups-867a00fc.
At a recent event, Ford showcased customized Broncos, F-150s, and Mustangs, underscoring the company's emphasis on vehicles that stand out rather than blend in. As Matt Simpson, who leads Ford's customization business, put it, "This is the most passionate lineup that Ford has ever had."
The strategy reflects CEO Jim Farley's belief that Ford should focus on distinctive products instead of competing in crowded, low-margin segments. Rather than trying to match rivals across every category, Ford is investing in vehicles that reinforce its identity and command premium prices.
Executives argue that mainstream models such as the Focus and Escape often required costly incentives and discounts to remain competitive, making them less attractive from a financial standpoint.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-04%20at%2006.39.42.jpg?itok=k21S8Acs
The Journal https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-cars-suvs-sports-cars-picksups-867a00fc the company's decision also mirrors broader changes in the U.S. auto market. Buyers have increasingly gravitated toward larger pickups and SUVs, while the average price of a new vehicle has climbed to roughly $50,000. At the same time, tariffs, labor expenses, and other production costs have made it more difficult to manufacture inexpensive vehicles profitably in the United States.
As a result, Ford's least expensive models now start at close to $30,000—roughly double the entry price buyers could find in Ford's lineup a decade ago.
Although Ford has reduced the number of vehicles it sells, the company has improved its financial performance by emphasizing higher-margin products. U.S. sales in 2025 reached their highest level in six years, fueled by strong demand for models such as the F-150, Bronco, Maverick, and Mustang.
Still, total sales remain well below where they stood a decade ago because customers now have fewer choices. Dealers have also noted that eliminating familiar entry-level models makes it harder to attract first-time buyers and shoppers looking for affordable transportation.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-04%20at%2006.39.32.jpg?itok=FSlYdT5X
Looking ahead, Ford says it has not abandoned the affordable segment altogether. The company plans to introduce five new vehicles priced below $40,000 before the end of the decade, beginning with a new electric pickup expected to cost around $30,000. Unlike earlier electric models that struggled to generate profits, these vehicles are being designed from the ground up with lower production costs and higher sales volumes in mind.
Ford hopes this approach will allow it to compete with market leaders while avoiding the financial challenges that affected its first generation of EVs.
Another pillar of Ford's strategy is vehicle customization. Roughly half of its customers now purchase accessories or performance upgrades, ranging from decals and cargo equipment to suspension packages and engine enhancements.
By incorporating personalization opportunities during the design process instead of after a vehicle is launched, Ford enables dealers to bundle these upgrades into financing at the time of purchase, creating an additional source of high-margin revenue.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-04%20at%2006.39.26.jpg?itok=n_TuOSHH
Despite the financial logic behind the strategy, it comes with trade-offs. Longtime customers who previously drove compact cars or midsize SUVs have fewer options within the Ford brand and are often pushed toward larger, more expensive vehicles. Dealers also lose the ability to serve buyers looking for basic transportation, leaving competitors to capture those sales. Even so, Farley has made the company's priorities clear: "Every dollar must earn durable returns and drive profitable growth."
Ford is betting that a smaller lineup of distinctive, profitable vehicles will deliver stronger long-term results than offering something for every type of buyer.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 08/05/2026 - 06:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/inside-fords-passionate-reinvention

2026-08-05 03:17:32 GMT

Oil Markets Price In An Iran Deal That Does Not Exist Yet
Oil Markets Price In An Iran Deal That Does Not Exist Yet
Oil prices tumbled Tuesday as traders once again priced in a U.S.-Iran agreement before anyone had actually signed one.
West Texas Intermediate was trading at $75.64 per barrel shortly before 2 p.m. ET, down $4.70, or 5.85%, while Brent had fallen $4.61 to $79.16. Both benchmarks touched three-week lows as hopes rose that an agreement could reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
As reported earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal could come Tuesday or Wednesday, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks involving Iran and Oman had made progress. Qatar also said diplomatic efforts were continuing. President Donald Trump went further, calling an agreement to reopen the strait and denuclearize Iran “imminent.”
Iran, naturally, offered a less tidy version. As https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Oil-Markets-Price-In-an-Iran-Deal-That-Does-Not-Exist-Yet.htmlTehran has denied holding direct talks with Washington and says it is negotiating through mediators in Oman. Iran is also seeking control over inbound shipping and visibility over outbound traffic, with the ability to intervene when it sees fit.
US and Iran are finalizing a 60-day interim agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with an announcement expected tomorrow – Axios.
Under the proposed deal:
• Ships entering the Gulf would use the northern lane through Iranian waters.
• Ships leaving the Gulf for the… https://t.co/IcrptBohbu
— Current Report (@Currentreport1) https://x.com/Currentreport1/status/2084834442179445227?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Actual shipping data offered little support for Tuesday’s enthusiasm. Just six vessels were tracked moving through Hormuz on Monday, down from seven a day earlier, while traffic through Bab el-Mandeb was also largely unchanged. A cargo vessel was also struck near Oman, adding another complication to the negotiations.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bbg%20crossings.jpg?itok=Y8bK8pH3
Before the war, roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas supply moved through Hormuz. Persian Gulf producers have since been forced to slash output, and Saudi Aramco estimates the world has lost more than 2.6 billion barrels since fighting began in February.
Goldman Sachs expects Brent to remain between $80 and $90 until there is either a confirmed agreement or another major escalation. Brent was already below that range Tuesday afternoon, suggesting traders may have gotten a little ahead of the diplomats.
Oil has spent months whipping between peace headlines and missile strikes while physical flows remain badly impaired.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/04/2026 - 23:17
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/oil-markets-price-iran-deal-does-not-exist-yet

2026-08-05 01:20:00 GMT

Physical AI Faces One Critical Chokepoint, And Here's How To Profit
Physical AI Faces One Critical Chokepoint, And Here's How To Profit
The rise of physical AI is already underway, with humanoid robots entering factories, warehouses, and other industrial environments, and soon the https://www.zerohedge.com/military/ukraine-plans-grant-competition-hyper-innovate-humanoid-robots.
Global shipments of humanoid robots are expected to https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/automakers-race-humanoid-robots-timeline-blue-collar-job-disruption-emerges, but the broader robotics revolution faces one critical chokepoint: access to the rare-earth magnets that power high-performance motors and actuators. China controls most of that supply chain.
Bernstein analyst Dien Wang told clients Monday that humanoid robots require an estimated 3.5 to 4 kilograms of rare-earth magnets per unit, compared with roughly 1 to 3 kilograms for an EV motor.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-02-31.png?itok=2d02RDvF
"A humanoid robot can consume more than twice as much magnetic material as an EV motor (Exhibit 3), highlighting the growing strategic importance of rare-earth magnets. Beyond well-known neodymium (Nd) and samarium (Sm), rare-earth elements such as dysprosium (Dy), terbium (Tb), and praseodymium (Pr) are also critical for magnetic performance (Exhibit 4, Exhibit 5). We therefore see the entire rare-earth magnet value chain as strategically important," Wang said.
Rare-earth magnets (NdFeB) are composed of multiple raw materials, including various rare-earth elements.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-02-53.png?itok=FCRJJmW_
The magnets provide the torque density, compact size, and heat resistance needed for high-performance motors and robotic actuators.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-01-40.png?itok=EY4SbHlk
Wang outlined that China's dominance in rare-earth magnets is troubling in an "increasingly multipolar world." He said there are only three conclusions to draw from this:
- Chinese EV (e.g. BYD) and humanoid OEMs could benefit from an improved competitive position overseas.
- Chinese robotic actuator (e.g. Tuopu, Sanhua) and EV-motor suppliers (e.g. Inovance) could gain share globally, as rival supply chains remain more vulnerable to rare-earth magnet disruptions.
- Non-Chinese rare-earth magnet players (Exhibit 17) could benefit from growing requests for supply-chain diversification.
Rare-earth magnet value chain spans a series of technically demanding stages
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-03-19.png?itok=-gZH_E9v
China controls about 59% of global magnet rare-earth mining, 91% of refining and 94% of magnet manufacturing, according to the analyst.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-03-40.png?itok=EHieCmNa
The International Energy Agency expects China to retain more than half of mining and over 75% of refining through 2040, while recycling is unlikely to meaningfully reduce near-term supply risks.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-03-59.png?itok=EVEKQwTX
Beijing has weaponized its dominance of rare earths as a geopolitical tool against the US. China imposed controls on seven medium and heavy rare-earth products in 2025, extended licensing requirements to some overseas transactions, and restricted exports to dozens of US, European, and Japanese companies.
Those 2025 measures caused an immediate, though temporary, collapse in Chinese magnet exports.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-04-45.png?itok=L0Z-k_od
China/Asia Production of NdFeB magnets
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-05-17.png?itok=O3uF3z6Q
Comparing with the US and Europe...
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-05-23.png?itok=xcdY6Z4g
Here's how to profit across the entire magnet supply chain ex-China:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-04_13-06-05.png?itok=6Q1fQK9Y
"As Physical AI emerges as a strategic battleground among leading nations, control of critical chokepoints could ultimately determine who gains the upper hand," Wang noted.
China may already hold a structural advantage in humanoid robot development, supported by its massive manufacturing ecosystem and dominance of the rare-earth supply chain. On Monday, Hugging Face's CEO told CNBC that China is winning the AI race and increasingly dominating open-source models. Taken together, these signals suggest the West's lead in AI might be eroding against China.
https://www.zerohedge.com/signup/professional-membership-year can read more color on humanoid robots here at our new https://marketdesk.ai portal.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/04/2026 - 21:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/physical-ai-face-critical-chokepoint-and-heres-how-profit

2026-08-04 11:10:36 GMT

Global Bond Market On Edge As Japanese Yields Soar After "Horrible" 10Y JGB Auction
Global Bond Market On Edge As Japanese Yields Soar After "Horrible" 10Y JGB Auction
While much of the market focus has fallen on the US long-end, which saw substantial pressure in the past week, sending 30Y yields to 5.27%, the highest level since 2007, it was Japan again which stole the show overnight. But first, recall that the primary tradeoff for the BOJ preventing it from raising rates and comfortably pushing up the yen without needing to spending tens of billions in massive interventions (whether individual or joint with the US), is that raising rates risks collapsing the world's biggest house of cards, which is the Japanese bond market, the world's, second biggest of which half is now owned by the Bank of Japan.
Well, early on Tuesday morning Japan had its first major coupon auction since the latest intervention and it went... catastrophically.
The auction, which saw a huge tail, the second highest since the start of the century...
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/10y%20jgb%20tail.jpg?itok=6YbUT0k-
... and dismal demand in the form of a collapsing 2.56 bid to cover, far below the 3.3 average, the lowest since May 2025...
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/10y%20jgb%20btc.jpg?itok=yWq0R7_9
... and the third lowest going back all the way to 2015.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/10y%20jgb%20bid%20to%20cover.jpg?itok=KR75VF44
... sent the yield on 10Y paper as spiking as much as 5bps higher to 2.87% with JGB futures tumbling as much as 34 ticks to 126.37.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/10y%20jgb%20spike_0.jpg?itok=6y-3u6UU
The lowest price was also a long way off from pre-sale estimates. In a nutshell, as Bloomberg's Mark Cranfield put it, it was a "horrible auction" and ominously adds that "this is such a bad bond sale it could spill over negatively to Treasuries and other G-10 bonds." The Bloomberg strategist also notges that "investors appear to be giving the BOJ pay back for not be clearer in their intentions to get ahead of inflationary forces and raise interest rates more quickly."
The auction was so bad, even domestic Japanese investors seem to have been surprised at the poor metrics. As a result, 10-year yields fast approached the peak seen in July around 2.90%, with Cranfield warning that "should Japanese bonds go beyond that threshold seen last month, it is likely to send a deeply negative read across to G-10 peers, which will reverberate through global fixed-income trading."
Elsewhere, Bloomberg strategist Ven Ram points out the obvious noting that "the lukewarm reception to Japan’s latest bond auction shows that the latest round of currency intervention has failed to turn around sentiment toward the nation’s assets.... While the Japan-US joint currency intervention shored up the yen, the follow-through needs to come not from the US Treasury or Japan’s finance ministry, but rather from the Bank of Japan."
The bottom line: unless the BOJ follows through on the intervention either by raising rates outside its normal policy review cycle or by signaling an urgent intent to follow through with successive hikes, bonds will continue to falter. That, in turn, bodes poorly for the yen’s outlook — regardless of what the authorities do in the short term.
Sure enough, after dropping as low as 155.20 yesterday, the USDJPY is now almost 300 pips higher and has already erased a third of the full intervention impact which cost Japan just shy of $100 billion.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/yentervention.jpg?itok=6fjNCbeL
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 08/04/2026 - 07:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/global-bond-market-edge-japanese-yields-soar-after-horrible-10y-jgb-auction

2026-08-04 03:00:00 GMT

"We Use Thicker Steel": Security Firm Fortifies HVAC Units Against Thieves
"We Use Thicker Steel": Security Firm Fortifies HVAC Units Against Thieves
Copper wiring, light poles, catalytic converters, copper gutters, and even Tesla charging cables have long been targets for thieves.
But in crime-ridden metro areas governed by progressive or reformist socialist city halls that have adopted softer enforcement policies, where lefty prosecutors are perceived as unwilling to pursue property crimes, criminals have become increasingly emboldened.
They have moved beyond stealing industrial metals to taking entire outdoor HVAC units, prompting some homeowners and businesses to install heavy steel security cages around their condensers.
An Atlanta-based company called https://www.ornamentalsecurity.com/about-us/ published a viral Instagram video titled "Securing Your HVAC System," highlighting what appears to be a growing trend among homeowners: installing metal cages over outdoor condensers to prevent theft.
Ornamental Security's Instagram video was later reposted on X by https://x.com/GAFollowers/status/2083943805821112495/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083943805821112495%7Ctwgr%5E184a11825252c41cd066eb69a0ac03894f65f5c6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.x.com%2F%3Furl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FGAFollowers%2Fstatus%2F2083943805821112495, where it went even more viral, drawing 2.6 million views in just one day.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HOuny5WWcAEctiB-1.jpg?itok=Kvyce3PI
HVAC thefts are geographically widespread, occurring in cities governed by both Democrats (Chicago, Louisville, District Heights/Prince George's County, Maryland) and Republicans (Jacksonville, FL; Midland, TX), as well as in Canada.
Recent reports:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-03_14-37-22.png?itok=qQUJnYkC
In Maryland, WBFF 45 https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/charles-county-prince-georges-county-stolen-heat-pumps-air-conditioning-units-thefts-maryland-40000-10-businesses-impacted-thomas-guinyard-arrested-property-destruction-dmv-crimes-warrants?fbclid=IwY2xjawTdvPNwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAGJyaWQRMWRtbVNZcnN5dWNPZlNhWVZzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeBEeW6AA18F4p-6V3Yct9hnOttirqj7KpHr9UHM7c2lk8TzmTfygz-XT9CKY_aem_XknDYS3uAOZ42XSyXkSuIg earlier this year:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-08-03_14-45-38.png?itok=g17IkKpt
Based:
We pay taxes to stop crime....Democrats use our tax dollars to support crime.
That is the problem.
— Raging Greek (@RagingGreek2) https://x.com/RagingGreek2/status/2083949685677371527?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Just wait until tech companies start https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/tech-bros-aim-sidestep-local-resistance-installing-mini-data-centers-homes. Thieves will move up the value chain, from stealing HVAC units to targeting Nvidia chips.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 - 23:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-use-thicker-steel-security-firm-fortifies-hvac-units-against-thieves

2026-08-03 18:00:00 GMT

After Blockbuster IPO, China's Memory Giant CXMT Plans Second Chip Plant In Beijing
After Blockbuster IPO, China's Memory Giant CXMT Plans Second Chip Plant In Beijing
CXMT, China's largest chipmaker by output and certainly by market value thanks to its blowout IPO pricing one week ago, which saw its stock surge more than 7x from its offering price of 8.66 yuan per share, is considering building a second memory-chip plant in Beijing and is in financing talks with a tech manufacturing hub backed by the local government, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/cxmt-plans-second-chip-plant-beijing-is-talks-its-funding-sources-say-2026-08-03/reported citing source familiar.
The move ‌comes as CXMT, which is currently the world's 4th largest maker of DRAM memory but has ambitions to become the world's largest, seeks to boost production amid a global chip shortage driven by debf-funded AI infrastructure spending. It highlights intensifying competition among Chinese local governments to attract CXMT, as the memory chipmaker pursues a major expansion following its $8.6 billion IPO last month, the largest mainland Chinese semiconductor listing on record.
Reuters previously reported that CXMT was building new plants in Shanghai and Hefei and was in discussions with authorities elsewhere about another facility.
Those projects, when fully operational, could double its capacity to more than 600,000 wafers per month. The new Beijing 12-inch plant would be built in Yizhuang, about 20 km (12 miles) southeast of central Beijing, where CXMT already operates a ⁠fab producing dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. CXMT currently operates two 12-inch DRAM fabs in Hefei and one in Beijing, each with capacity of about 100,000 wafers per month, the Reuters sources said.
CXMT is seeking at least 60 million yuan ($8.9 million) in support from the development zone's governing body, also known as the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, and other state-owned tech companies have also expressed interest in participating in the financing, they said.
The talks are at an early stage and the size and structure of any funding package could change, the sources said. It was not immediately clear whether the funding would come directly from the development zone's administrative authority or through its investment vehicles.
Reuters adds that the planned capacity and total investment for the proposed fab were not immediately known. Building a fab that can produce leading-edge DRAM chips usually costs more than $10 billion.
The discussions began before CXMT's stock market debut last week, which provided ‌the company ⁠with fresh capital for an expansion drive during a memory-chip upcycle fueled by demand from AI infrastructure, data centres and consumer electronics.
The company has become a key pillar of Beijing’s drive to build a self-sufficient chip industry and narrow the gap with the U.S. in strategic technologies such as AI amid a fierce tech rivalry between the two superpowers.
Although CXMT is the world's fourth-largest DRAM producer, it remains far smaller than Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron whose combined global market share approached 90% in the first quarter, according to data from ⁠Counterpoint Research.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/CXMT%20market%20share%20counterpoint%202.png?itok=15VcLHVG
Within China, however, CXMT's growing dominance has enabled it to raise prices for customers such as Huawei, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-memory-chip-makers-ride-ai-boom-new-power-us-scrutiny-2026-07-24/.
CXMT has been in the news over the past couple of months due to reports that have suggested that Apple is interested in buying the firm's memory chips. The global memory shortage has affected the Cupertino, California-based consumer electronics giant's supply chain as it has been unable to secure supplies without having to face price hikes.
Yet, as https://wccftech.com/cxmt-eyes-second-beijing-memory-fab-after-record-ipo-circling-the-gap-samsung-and-micron-left-behind/ others have suggested that CXMT's ability to target the global memory market is limited, as the firm has to primarily meet the needs of China's domestic memory market. US sanctions on China, which limit its ability to procure high-end chips and manufacturing equipment, have come at a time when Beijing is aiming towards semiconductor self-sufficiency despite the capital and knowledge-intensive nature of the industry.
Today's report follows one that surfaced last week and claimed that https://wccftech.com/cxmts-lpddr6-clears-rd-verification-at-12-8-gbps-inching-closer-to-a-full-mass-production-push-report/ These are among the latest in the world, and the sources suggested that the Chinese firm was eager to target the gap left by Samsung and Micron. The two are focused on making high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, and CXMT hopes to utilize the gap they've left to establish itself as a player in the global memory market. The sector is currently dominated by the two firms plus Korea's SK hynix, which control the vast majority of the market share.
The company's rise has been closely linked to the "Hefei model," under which the capital of Anhui province has used state funding to nurture strategic technology companies... because as we said a year ago, it is only a matter of time before the AI arms race is directly funded by the governments of China and the US directly.
Beijing and Shanghai have also provided CXMT with funding and other support, as the cities seek a larger share of the economic and strategic benefits generated by the company's growth.
CXMT's Beijing-based fab, operated by Changxin Jidian, was founded in 2020 and received funding from E-Town Capital, a state-backed investment arm of the Yizhuang development zone, and its ⁠affiliate Beijing E-Town Technology, according to corporate records.
The Beijing development area is a manufacturing base for technology and chip companies, including contract chipmaker SMIC, chip equipment maker Naura Technology and smartphone and electric-vehicle maker Xiaomi.
The area is also positioning itself as a hub for robotics and AI. Last year, it hosted what organisers described as the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon, part of an effort to promote and test embodied-AI technologies.
News of China's aggressive push to boost memory output is one of the reasons for the weakness in memory and chip stocks in early trading, and also slammed Korea's Kospi which slumped 5% with Samsung / Hynix both tumbling -9%.
Additionally, the market is again focused on Chinese open-source model releases, with BABA +4% on new Qwen model this weekend as well as DeepSeek V4 Flash model launched Friday.
As reported earlier, BABA’s latest Qwen 3.8 Max Model was released overnight (stock closed +7% in HK) - a 2.4t parameter model (smaller than Kimi K3 @ 2.8t ) but looks relatively comparable on benchmarks (I.e. broadly Opus + level) and will go open-weight release next week.
The model is also far cheaper: API tokens are priced at $2/m input & $6/m output (cheaper than Kimi K3 @ $3/M input & $15/M ⁠output)... & 80% cheaper than current GPT flagship 5.6 Sol's output tokens.
Qwen3.8-Max by https://x.com/Alibaba_Qwen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw has reshaped the cost-performance Pareto frontier in Frontend Code Arena, with pricing of $2 per input MToken and $6 per output MToken.
Top models on the Pareto frontier:
- Claude-Opus-5
- Kimi-K3
- Qwen3.8-Max
- GLM-5.2
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash
Congrats… https://t.co/3S4tW1KmlI https://t.co/CiWU7Hh4BD
— Arena.ai (@arena) https://x.com/arena/status/2084115116694339941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The marketing campaign has been well received showing Qwen as an “always on workmate” that completes tasks while people go to the beach, fish & play tennis.
Over the weekend, Goldman revised up its aggregate China model ARR estimates, now forecasting to reach US$13bn by year-end 2026 (prior: US$10bn) on higher demand /faster ramp.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 - 14:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/after-blockbuster-ipo-chinas-memory-giant-cxmt-plans-second-chip-plant-beijing

2026-08-03 06:00:00 GMT

Saudi Arabia Has Five Points Of Leverage Over The US
Saudi Arabia Has Five Points Of Leverage Over The US
https://korybko.substack.com/p/saudi-arabia-has-five-points-of-leverage
It probably won’t ever muster up the political will to use them, however, but the possibility always remains.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/httpssubstack-post-media.s3.amaz%20%2871%29_5.jpg?itok=Cn5_4tLO
Trump recently surprised the Saudis by https://www.rt.com/news/643396-us-saudi-nuke-deal-israel/ that they recognize Israel as the precondition for the US implementing their https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/23/politics/saudi-nuclear-deal-trump-conservatives, which wasn’t part of the agreement. This follows him humiliating Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman earlier in the spring by https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/after-trump-said-mbs-was-kissing-his-ass-gulf-leaders-told-send-children-fight-israel that he’d been “kissing my ass” for rejuvenating the US economy. His mistreatment of the Kingdom and its de facto leader is unexpected since the US relies on them in the following five ways:
1. Indirectly Projecting US Influence Across The Ummah
Saudi Arabia wields tremendous influence across the international Muslim community, or Ummah, due to its role as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. It’s also been a rock-solid American ally since the end of World War II. By almost always aligning with the US’ foreign policy goals, Saudi Arabia indirectly projects its influence across the Ummah, in some cases even more effectively than the US itself since it’s a fellow Muslim country that many Muslim governments and societies alike look to for guidance.
2. Investing Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Into The US
Saudi Arabia is globally known for its wealth, which it once again reminded everyone of when it pledged to invest a https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-600-billion-investment-commitment-in-saudi-arabia/ into the US during Trump’s trip to the Kingdom in May 2025. Few countries are capable of doing that. Even more importantly, the previously hyperlinked readout from the White House notes that at least $100 billion will go into the American tech industry, thus helping it to compete with China. The strategic significance of such Saudi investments into the US can’t be overstated.
3. Purchasing Billions Of Dollars Of American Arms
Building upon the above, nearly $142 billion of the $600 billion that Saudi Arabia agreed to invest into the US will go to the military-industrial complex, which is an astronomical amount. To put Saudi Arabia’s purchase of American arms into perspective, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/fs_2603_at_2025.pdf noted that Saudi Arabia was the US’ largest client and the third-largest importer in the world from 2021-2025. This immensely benefits the American military-industrial complex.
4. Serving As The Core Of The “Islamic NATO”
One of this year’s trends that began to materialize late last year is the gradual formation of what’s been called the “https://korybko.substack.com/p/an-islamic-nato-is-still-in-the-cards”, which is comprised of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkiye. They’re all either NATO members like Turkiye or “Major Non-NATO Allies” like the rest. Whether the “Islamic NATO” is ever formalized or just remains a consultative platform, it’s still expected to serve as the means of advancing American military-security interests across the Ummah as the US “https://sputnikglobe.com/20150129/1017517136.html”.
5. Preventing The Rise Of The “Petroyuan”
One of the pillars of American hegemony is the petrodollar, which Saudi Arabia helped the US institutionalize, and its continued participation in this system prevents the rise of the hypothetical “https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/irans-petroyuan-tollbooth-inadvertently-put-china-in-a-zugzwang” that many members of the https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/a-review-of-the-most-common-roles-in-the-alt-media-community have speculated about for years. So long as Saudi Arabia remains committed to the petrodollar, the “petroyuan” will remain a thought exercise, thus indefinitely preserving what’s arguably one of the most important pillars of American hegemony.
These five ways in which the US relies on Saudi Arabia provide the Kingdom with leverage if it ever musters up the political will to wield these advantages. For example, it could stop indirectly projecting US influence across the Ummah, radically reduce its investments in the US economy and its purchase of US arms, refuse to allow the “Islamic NATO” to become the US’ proxy, and/or replace the petrodollar with the “petroyuan”. It probably won’t do any of this, however, but the possibility always remains.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 - 02:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/saudi-arabia-has-five-points-leverage-over-us

2026-08-02 19:45:00 GMT

9/11 Families Don't Want Mamdani Participating In Memorial Ceremony
9/11 Families Don't Want Mamdani Participating In Memorial Ceremony
Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, a coalition of victims' families don’t want New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani anywhere near the ceremony marking the anniversary at Ground Zero.
A Change.org petition urging Mamdani to stay away from the September 11 memorial has collected more than 66,000 signatures in under three weeks and organizers say the mayor's own history of rhetoric and associations makes his presence at the site an insult to the dead.
“This anniversary is one of remembrance grounded in shared American values: respect for the victims, recognition of the gravity of the attacks, and a clear rejection of the ideologies that contributed to such violence. For many families and community members, participation in these ceremonies carries an implicit expectation that those present uphold and affirm these principles without ambiguity,” the https://www.change.org/p/please-sign-to-support-honoring-the-memory-of-those-lost-on-september-11th-with-dignity?recruiter=2941471&recruited_by_id=5fe2ac80-d704-11e5-8825-dfc44e45e1a1&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=psf_promote_or_share&utm_medium=mobileNativeShare&share_id=jN9dZP6QPh reads.
“Concerns have been raised about Mr. Mamdani’s public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile to these shared values.”
The petition's organizers describe the anniversary as a day to honor the dead and reject the ideology behind the attacks rather than a platform for a sitting mayor.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HOUIBuhXQAAvpzg.jpg?itok=omYDpt-f
The petition cites a specific set of grievances.
Mamdani has repeatedly declined to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," a slogan widely understood as a call for violence against Jews and Israel. His chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, once represented a pilot convicted in an al-Qaeda tanker-bombing plot. Mamdani has also aligned himself with commentator Hasan Piker, who told his audience in 2019 that America deserved the September 11 attacks.
Giovanni Galante, the petition's lead organizer, estimates that thousands of the signers are relatives of the 2,977 people killed that morning. His wife, Grace Catherine Galante, was 29 years old and worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the North Tower. Cantor Fitzgerald lost roughly 658 employees that day, more than any other firm in the towers. An FDNY captain https://nypost.com/2026/08/01/us-news/more-9-11-families-urge-defiant-mamdani-to-stay-home-for-25th-memorial-ceremony-he-doesnt-deserve-to-be-there/ the anti-Mamdani petition is circulating widely inside firehouses across the city, and former Fire Commissioner Tom Van Essen, who ran the department during and after the attacks, signed it himself, joking about wanting a word with the mayor at the ceremony. The FDNY lost 343 firefighters.
Charles G. Wolf lost his wife, Katherine, just two weeks into her new job at Marsh & McLennan on September 11. Wolf argues that Mamdani has spent his career alienating the families of the dead through an agenda hostile to the country and friendships with people who minimize what happened that day. Wolf said officials who supported families over the years, including former Gov. George Pataki, are the ones who belong at Ground Zero this year.
Maureen Santora's son, Christopher, was 23 when he died in the South Tower, the youngest firefighter killed that day. His shift with Engine 54 had already ended when the alarm came in, and he went anyway. Santora said Mamdani has never shown support for the September 11 community and called him a divisive figure whose presence would undercut the entire purpose of the gathering.
Monica Iken-Murphy, whose husband Michael Iken died on the 84th floor of the South Tower and who helped lead the effort to build the September 11 Memorial and Museum, framed her objection around Mamdani's years of absence from the community rather than his politics. Officials who supported families from the beginning, she said, naming former mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, belong at this particular anniversary.
Not every family contacted by reporters backs the petition. Retired NYPD officer Jim Smith, whose wife Moira was one of two female NYPD officers killed that day, declined to sign, saying the day should stay focused on victims rather than politicians of any stripe. Dennis Warchola, whose firefighter brother Michael died two days before his planned retirement, said he turned against Mamdani after learning about his statements on terrorism but stopped short of signing because he does not believe in silencing anyone.
Those dissents were the exception. Reporters reached more than 150 families, and most had signed or planned to, with dozens asking to stay anonymous over retaliation fears.
Mamdani has said he plans to attend anyway.
Galante said many family members plan to turn their backs on Mamdani if he shows up. "They don't want to look at him," he said.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 08/02/2026 - 15:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/911-families-dont-want-mamdani-participating-memorial-ceremony

2026-07-31 21:00:00 GMT

The Fourth Turning Is Here: The Old Order Is Breaking Down
The Fourth Turning Is Here: The Old Order Is Breaking Down
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-fourth-turning-is-here-the-old-order-is-breaking-down/
In 1997, historians William Strauss and Neil Howe published “The Fourth Turning,” a cyclical theory of Anglo-American history built around generational archetypes and recurring saecular rhythms of approximately 80 to 100 years — roughly the length of a long human life.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/original%20%281%29_3.jpg?itok=to8o7tqE
Their framework identified four “turnings,” each lasting roughly 20 to 25 years, that repeat in sequence.
The First Turning, the High, is an era of institutional confidence and community solidarity following a great crisis. The rules work, people trust them, conformity is rewarded — think the post-WWII boom, or the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
The Second Turning, the Awakening, is a spiritual and cultural awakening that challenges the institutional consensus of the High. Individualism resurges; the establishment is questioned — the consciousness revolution of the 1960s-70s, the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s-30s.
The Third Turning, the Unraveling, sees institutions weaken, individualism reach its apex, and civic order decay. Trust collapses — in government, media, corporations, each other — as it did through the Culture Wars era of the 1980s-90s, or the Gilded Age of the 1870s-90s.
The Fourth Turning, the Crisis, is a decisive era of institutional destruction and reconstruction, typically catalysed by an existential threat — war, economic collapse, or civilisational rupture. The old order is swept away; a new one is forged. The Great Depression and WWII. The Civil War. The American Revolution.
"History is seasonal, and winter is coming."
— William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997
The Current Position
By Strauss and Howe’s reckoning, the current Fourth Turning began around 2008 — the Global Financial Crisis being its catalytic spark — and will likely reach its resolution sometime in the 2025-2030 window. We are, in other words, in the heart of it. The battles being fought now — over monetary systems, institutional legitimacy, national sovereignty, and the nature of truth itself — are the defining conflicts of the crisis era.
What Fourth Turnings produce is not predictable in detail but consistent in structure: the old institutions are exposed as either corrupt or incompetent, a battle ensues between competing visions of the replacement order, and the outcome is determined by which faction can mobilise sufficient force — social, political, economic, or military — to impose its vision. The process is neither clean nor just. Fourth Turnings historically produce enormous suffering alongside the reconstruction.
The GFC was Act One: the revelation that the financial system was not a wealth-generation machine but a debt-recycling mechanism sustained by regulatory capture and central bank intervention. The quantitative easing programmes that followed — printing roughly $20 trillion across major central banks between 2008 and 2022 — bought time at the cost of massively inflating asset prices, concentrating wealth, and making the eventual reckoning worse.
Covid was Act Two: a simultaneous crisis of public health, institutional credibility, and civil liberties, weaponised by an apparatus of state control that had been building for decades and found in the pandemic a perfect justification for deployment at scale. More on this shortly.
Act Three is visible on the horizon: the currency crisis that follows years of money creation, the geopolitical realignment driven by a rising China and a fragmenting Western alliance, and the social rupture of populations that have been systematically lied to discovering the magnitude of the deception. Fourth Turnings do not end until the crisis is resolved. We have not arrived there yet.
* * *
If we are deep into a Fourth Turning, the years ahead could bring far greater economic, political, and social disruption than most people expect. Understanding the forces driving this shift may be essential to protecting both your wealth and your personal freedom. Our free special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, reveals the trends now reshaping the world, the risks they create, and how a contrarian investor could position to stay one step ahead. https://internationalman.com/special-report/clash-of-the-systems-thoughts-on-investing-at-a-unique-point-in-time/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 07/31/2026 - 17:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fourth-turning-here-old-order-breaking-down

2026-07-30 17:25:00 GMT

The Latest Wildfire Panic Is Refuted By Data
The Latest Wildfire Panic Is Refuted By Data
https://off-guardian.org/2026/07/28/the-latest-wildfire-panic-is-refuted-by-data/
Wildfires are in the news. With a hot, dry summer it was bound to happen. And, naturally, this is bringing with it talk of climate change.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-29_15-26-52.jpg?itok=NTA-5I8P
The Independent is https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/europe-wildfires-latest-climate-change-spain-france-b3022345.html:
Europe is on fire – will the continent’s climate change deniers finally wake up?
The Guardian has an opinion piece calling for https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/28/prosecute-climate-crimes-big-oil. Twitter experts are calling for changes to the way we live our lives.
Prince William is https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg97dj5n16o:
Wildfires ‘stark reminder’ of extreme climate challenge, says William
I suppose we should make the usual point, that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that are an important part of the life cycle of many ecosystems. And that some years are bound to be worse than others.
But there’s just one issue, wildfire activity is actually down.
A new study from the University of East Anglia, https://phys.org/news/2026-05-wildfire-losses-global-area-neared.html, found that 2025 was 16% below the average in terms of burnt area, and that’s despite policies known to increase both the chance of wildfires starting and the area they will burn.
But that was last year, this year must be different given the coverage, right?
Wrong.
Data from the https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.statistics/seasonaltrend shows that, to the end of June, this year had https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.statistics/seasonaltrend – across every continent – than any year since they began collecting data in 2003.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/gwis-fire-graph-2026-650x588.jpg?itok=URAt48Be
Of course, this data does not yet include the fires from the past couple of weeks, and there is a chance that 2026 will not remain a record-breaking low in fire terms, but this is largely due to the known effect of El Nino years.
The authors note in the conclusion [emphasis added]:
The record low total biomass burning emissions for the first half of 2026 continues the overall downward trend related to changes in savanna fires in tropical Africa and Asia. However, the observed onset of many large-scale wildfires across Eurasia and North America in the last couple of weeks of June, could increase the global total emissions through the rest of the summer. Looking further ahead, the predicted El Niño conditions have the potential to increase global fire emissions, as we observed during the previous El Niño years of 2015 and 2019 when persistent biomass burning in Indonesia caused widespread regional haze and severely degraded air quality.
In fact, the yearly global area burnt by wildfires has been steadily decreasing for over a century (we recommend following https://x.com/BjornLomborg, a great source of data):
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HMTBK7gXwAAJDQC-650x503.jpg?itok=WuuZ2-yZ
So, why the panic?
The caveat here – according to the University of East Anglia paper – is that while the number of fires, and total area burnt is down, “severity” is up.
In short, less overall wildfire activity seems to be somehow translating to greater human cost, both in lives and money. Evacuations are allegedly up, insurance costs are allegedly up, and fatalities are allegedly up:
A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 reveals the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, despite the second lowest area burned since 2002. It highlights a continued trend toward fires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous—both economically and in lives lost.
Now, first instinct would be this is either linguistic or statistical manipulation designed to camouflage research that failed to correctly serve the climate change agenda.
A case of cope to cover misbehaving data:
“Fine, wildfires are down, but the ones we’ve had are SO much more DESTRUCTIVE!”.
That’s entirely possible. But supposing the stated data is accurate, what does this mean?
Well, there are several potential explanations
It could be the predictable result expanding human habitation and growing population.
It could be that the areas of fire activity shifting to more populated areas by some as yet not understood natural process.
It could be that fires being deliberately started close to inhabited areas in order to create fear.
It could be that these statistics are manipulated or fabricated.
…Or it could be any or all or a mixture of several.
We don’t know, but we can’t rule anything out at this stage.
The data is clear though, there’s no need to panic. No matter what the press says.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/30/2026 - 13:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/latest-wildfire-panic-refuted-data

2026-07-29 09:00:00 GMT

Why, Oh Why Do They Do This?
Why, Oh Why Do They Do This?
https://modernity.news/2026/07/28/why-oh-why-do-they-do-this/,
Viral footage circulating online shows a British man methodically working his way along the streets of his own city with a wheeled bin and litter picker, clearing the rubbish left by others. He is not being paid and not making a political point. He is simply trying to prevent the area from descending into a tip.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/rubbishmod.jpg?itok=jMDKUhUt
Remarkably, as he works, foreign shopkeepers and residents repeatedly emerge from their premises to instruct him to clear the mess outside their own doors, standing by as he does so.
One older local, taking in the state of the streets, observes that if President Trump were to see them he would declare the place a "shithole."
This is wild
White man in the UK is going around picking up trash to make his city look nicer
A foreigner comes out her shop and tells him to pick up the trash outside her shop
"I don't want to be rude or anything, but maybe instead of telling me to do it...."
Again and again... https://t.co/EtgcRZfvNL
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2081787579071152306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This pattern is expanding everywhere.
In Page Hall, Sheffield, the same individual was filmed over and over dumping household waste on the corner of Bolsover Road. Residents record from behind windows and ask Sheffield City Council how long they are expected to accept it.
Residents in Page Hall, Sheffield, say they're frustrated after repeated fly-tipping by the same culprit on the corner of Bolsover Road.
The resident who shared the footage is calling for action from Sheffield City Council.
Are we expected to just accept this? https://t.co/ErPaS9SmqJ
— Kiera Diss (@KieraDiss) https://x.com/KieraDiss/status/2081363813253648882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In Marseille, a resident filmed the streets after North African arrivals moved in. Garbage was thrown from windows. The neighbourhood was reduced to literal shit. "We never asked for this," he says.
A man in Marseille, France's second largest city, shows the situation in his neighborhood after North Africans started moving in.
"They throw all their garbage out of their windows. We are living in literal shit. We never asked for this."
No one should have to live like this. https://t.co/h50x5Wu8gy
— Dr. Maalouf ? (@realMaalouf) https://x.com/realMaalouf/status/2080978027140272325?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In a quiet Birmingham street an asylum seeker was caught emptying bags of rubbish into the road, perhaps to make the area feel more familiar.
?? En un tranquilo barrio de Birmingham, un solicitante de asilo que no come tocino, se encargó de regar toda la basura del vecindario en las calles, y poder sentirse como en casa. ¿Estas son las mieles de la integración cultural que el progresismo nos vendió? https://t.co/szER7spf5Z
— Carlo Martin (@Liberfach0) https://x.com/Liberfach0/status/2076696520166871073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The countryside has not been spared. Hundreds of tonnes of plastic, foam, wood and household waste appeared overnight along the River Cherwell near Kidlington in Oxfordshire. The pile reached 20 feet deep and stretched 500 feet, metres from the A34. Locals called it a catastrophe in a first-world country.
On Bwlch Mountain in the Rhondda a farming family that has worked the land for ninety years found a stream of rubbish cascading down the slope from a lay-by, visible for miles. Household goods, plastic, cardboard. The farmer said it keeps her awake at night.
In Dorset's Holt Heath nature reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, tipper vans dumped at least 20 tonnes of waste earth and debris across National Trust and Forestry England land. Police called the act despicable.
In the Peak District a furious motorist confronted two men caught dumping a sofa in a national park.
Deport them...
Come here and treat our country like a shit-hole...
This is the moment a furious motorist confronts two suspected fly-tippers he caught dumping a sofa in the Peak District National Park... https://t.co/zKhLhdbEyi
— 'Seeing is believing' (@dave24144975) https://x.com/dave24144975/status/1946530479093567492?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The same national park and nearby hills have been left covered in litter, human faeces and abandoned rubbish by day-trippers who treat protected landscapes as free dumps.
Across the Atlantic a Canadian man caught a group of Indians dumping a couch in the forest. He forced them to pick it up and take it to the dump himself.
Canadian man catches a group of Indians dumping a couch in the forest and forces them to pick it up and take it to the dump.
Do you support this patriot? https://t.co/Iz1BltFniX
— Casey Krol (@CaseyKrol) https://x.com/CaseyKrol/status/2081838535431053724?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In Small Heath, Birmingham, another fly-tipper was filmed in the act.
Small Heath in Birmingham
Another Fly Tipper caught in the act https://t.co/FKmrsdL8Q7
— WeGotitBack ??????????? (@NotFarLeftAtAll) https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1922893702021697572?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In civilised societies, the bin truck comes once a week. Council tips and recycling centres operate. Yet the same people continue throwing rubbish into the streets and rivers.
Why do they insist on doing this when the bin truck literally comes to their house once a week to collect rubbish? https://t.co/Ylk6jd4jkd
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) https://x.com/ModernityNews/status/2051202042744525021?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is not a lack of facilities. It is a refusal to use them.
Footage from the countries many of these individuals left behind shows the cultural baseline. In India, tonnes of waste are dumped straight into rivers.
This is in India ??. ????????????
Tonnes of waste was dumped by workers of a town panchayat in a flood river at Thittakudi in Cuddalore district in Tamilnadu. https://t.co/iLa2Se57D6
— Licypriya Kangujam (@LicypriyaK) https://x.com/LicypriyaK/status/1289927862942752769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
When a tourist in India suggested to a local to pick up dropped litter and put it in a bin, the reply was a flat refusal. The litter stayed exactly where it was.
In Bangladesh a river no longer holds water or fish, only human and animal faecal matter, trash and floating mounds of waste that wash away in floods.
Bangladesh ~ The river no longer holds fish or water, only human/animal fecal matter, trash, and soggy mounds of mystery matter that floats away when a flood comes through. https://t.co/o4jrfNOy0C
— Dane (@UltraDane) https://x.com/UltraDane/status/1841187161028379024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In Algeria a holiday beach at Oran is filmed as an open-air dump.
Une femme en vacances en Algérie filme une plage à Oran : une décharge à ciel ouvert!
Ça vous dirait de passer les vacances là-bas, voyage offert? https://t.co/jVS9n6GsyB
— ??????? Kim Jong Un (@KimJongUnique) https://x.com/KimJongUnique/status/2081676151395639638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In Pakistan entire loads of rubbish are emptied straight into public waterways while the West frets over paper straws.
Congratulations on saving the planet with recycling, turning your AC down, and struggling with paper straws
Meanwhile, in Pakistan...
Writer: Ianhttps://t.co/qR3u3XRDCh
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2081643248582357431?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
These people arrive in Britain steadfastly refusing to deviate from the practices of the places they left. They are offered free collection, legal disposal sites and public bins. Many choose instead to tip waste into streets, rivers, mountains and nature reserves.
They show no respect for the environment they now occupy and no regard for the people who have to live with the mess.
That behaviour might be routine in the third-world dumps they came from. It is not routine here. The services exist. The choice is deliberate. The result is Western towns, rivers and countryside being turned into the same wastelands the individuals left behind.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 07/29/2026 - 05:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-oh-why-do-they-do

2026-07-28 07:30:00 GMT

Erdogan's Ottoman Gambit: Turkey Prepares For New Regional Order
Erdogan's Ottoman Gambit: Turkey Prepares For New Regional Order
https://internationalman.com/articles/erdogans-ottoman-gambit-turkey-prepares-for-a-new-regional-order/
Turkey is simultaneously dumping US Treasuries, deepening Russia’s energy embrace, rolling out a tax regime to poach capital fleeing the Gulf… and squaring off against an Israeli political class that now speaks openly of Turkey as an enemy. It’s strategic.
Turkey sold nearly all of its US Treasury holdings in March — cutting them from $16 billion to just $1.8 billion in a single month. The official narrative frames this as emergency reserve management amid a weakening lira and inflation running above 32%. But the mechanics of financial stress don’t explain the direction of travel. Nations don’t systematically dump the debt of their allies.
President Erdogan has been explicit.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/0d1b6eb792a79f5972d77675c0cbc7b8.jpg?itok=lCcWjUPo
In a recent address he cast Turkey as “one of the shining stars of the new era,” invoking the restoration of Ottoman-era influence across the region. Turkey vehemently opposes Israel’s operations in Gaza, and in Ankara’s strategic calculus, Washington and Tel Aviv are increasingly viewed as a single entity. The Treasury sell-off is as much a political signal as a liquidity operation. The Turkish government has smelt blood in the streets and wants to capitalise on the situation.
The energy relationship with Russia tells the same story. Rosatom’s Akkuyu nuclear plant — a build-own-operate project in which Russia retains ownership for decades — just received a further $9 billion in Russian financing, with $4–5 billion deploying in 2026 alone. Turkey has loudly advertised its renewable credentials and a 2053 net-zero target, but Akkuyu sits outside that narrative entirely. When it comes online it will supply roughly 10% of Turkey’s electricity and lock in a structural strategic dependency on Moscow that no solar panel cancels out. Turkey talks diversification; it acts with ruthless pragmatism.
The Iran conflict has handed Erdogan an unexpected opportunity on the capital side.
The disruption to Gulf Cooperation Council financial hubs — Dubai chief among them — has put mobile, internationally structured wealth back in play. Investors who relocated to the UAE for zero-tax treatment are now reassessing. Into that gap, Turkey’s parliament on recently passed Erdogan’s flagship fiscal incentive package — nine permanent structural reforms that together represent one of the most aggressive capital attraction plays of the decade:
-
0% income tax on foreign earnings for 20 years
-
1% inheritance tax on all wealth
-
Full citizenship from $400,000
-
2% one-off tax to repatriate overseas assets, no questions asked
-
9% corporate tax — permanent
-
0% tax on trading through Turkey
-
Business registration in one day via AI-assisted process
-
Machinery and equipment imports: duty-free, 0% VAT
-
Mortgage overhaul: 10% down payment, terms up to 25 years
The last item deserves particular attention. The mortgage reform isn’t just a financing tweak — it unlocks millions of first-time Turkish buyers who were previously priced out of the market.
That domestic demand surge lands at precisely the moment foreign capital begins flowing in under the new tax regime. Turkey’s residential real estate market was already undersupplied. The combination of newly bankable local buyers and inbound international capital chasing a low-tax domicile points to a meaningful price cycle ahead — at minimum in Istanbul and the coastal cities where foreign demand concentrates.
The architect of Istanbul’s financial hub ambitions goes back to at least 2009, when former Deputy PM Nazim Ekren was championing Atasehir as the anchor of Eurasia’s financial capital. Aran Hawker, who provided trading infrastructure to Istanbul’s exchanges in 2011, expects wealth repositioned not only from the GCC but from North America, Europe, and the UK — from people “not happy with political situations in those respective countries.” Istanbul Finance Centre transit trade income is now fully exempt from corporate tax through 2047.
The Greater Israel Shadow
Beneath the fiscal and energy calculations runs a darker strategic undercurrent — one that Ankara is acutely aware of and Western analysts largely ignore.
The expansion of Israeli strategic ambition across the region, accelerated by the Gaza operation and the broader Zionist maximalist project, now has Turkey explicitly in its crosshairs.
The Bosphorus — the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, through which a significant share of global energy and grain trade passes — is not simply a Turkish asset. It is one of the most strategically significant chokepoints on earth. Control of it, or the ability to influence who controls it, is a prize that serious regional powers do not ignore.
Israeli political figures have begun to speak with unusual candour about Turkey as a threat rather than a competitor. Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar stated plainly:
“We must begin to treat Turkey as an enemy state.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went further, framing Turkey in the same breath as Iran:
“A new Turkish threat is emerging. We must act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.”
These are not fringe voices. When a sitting minister and a former head of government use the language of simultaneous threat management for both Iran and Turkey, they are signalling a strategic posture — one that has obvious implications for NATO cohesion, for the future of the Bosphorus as a neutral passage, and for the stability of the broader region.
Erdogan reads this clearly. The deepening of Russian energy ties, the rejection of US debt, the cultivation of Ottoman-sphere influence — these are not reactions to Gaza alone. They are pre-positioning against a regional order that Turkey now judges to be hostile to its existence as a sovereign power.
The Greater Israel project, in its maximalist form, envisions territorial and political influence stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Turkey sits at the northern edge of that strategic horizon. Control or destabilisation of the Bosphorus would fundamentally alter the balance of naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea — a prize of the highest order for any power seeking regional hegemony. Whether or not one assigns full credibility to the maximalist reading, the signals from Israeli political leadership are sufficient for Ankara to treat the threat as real and plan accordingly.
A NATO member that sells US debt, builds Russian nuclear plants, courts capital fleeing Western disorder, and now faces explicit identification as an enemy state by Israeli leadership is not drifting. Rather, it’s repositioning on every front simultaneously.
The picture that emerges is coherent and accelerating….
Turkey controls the Bosphorus. It borders the Middle East, maintains NATO’s second-largest military, and imports the energy that geopolitical conflict makes more expensive — hence the inflation, the rate pressure, and the reserve burn. But Erdogan’s response is not to seek Western reassurance. It is to deepen the Russian energy anchor, signal alignment with the Global South’s reading of the Gaza conflict, position Istanbul as the beneficiary of Gulf instability and Western political dysfunction, and quietly fortify against a regional order that now names Turkey an adversary. The Treasury dump is one data point in a larger sequence. The Ottoman ambition is the frame. And the clock is moving faster than most investors realise.
* * *
Turkey’s repositioning is part of a much larger shift now reshaping the global economic and political order. In our special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, a contrarian money manager explains the forces driving this transition, the risks they pose to your wealth and personal freedom, and how you can position yourself to stay one step ahead. https://internationalman.com/special-report/clash-of-the-systems-thoughts-on-investing-at-a-unique-point-in-time/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 07/28/2026 - 03:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/erdogans-ottoman-gambit-turkey-prepares-new-regional-order

2026-07-27 15:40:00 GMT

Trump Ready For 'Strong Military Action' If Talks Fail, With Saudi Aramco Under Houthi Fire
Trump Ready For 'Strong Military Action' If Talks Fail, With Saudi Aramco Under Houthi Fire
Summary
- Trump pauses strikes: Trump said the US paused attacks to give diplomacy a chance but warned military action will resume if talks fail.
- Iran denies that it pushed for talks: Tehran denied any direct negotiations with Washington, while saying its response remains "attack for attack."
- Saudi Aramco targeted: Houthis claimed fresh strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities, with reports of fires at the critical Abqaiq oil processing complex.
- Fragile pause holds two days: The US-Iran military pause entered a second day as mediators continued backchannel efforts to revive negotiations.
Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by August 31?
Yes 13% · No 88%
https://polymarket.com/event/strait-of-hormuz-traffic-returns-to-normal-by-august-31-20260702154212320* * *
Trump Cites 'Deep Talks' - Warns of Expanded Action; Houthis Claim Responsibility for New Aramco Attacks
President Trump has told Axios on Monday that he decided to pause American military attacks on Iran in order to give negotiations another chance, despite there currently being no evidence that Tehran has been urgently requesting them. Trump warned in the comments that war could immediately return with expanded strikes if diplomacy fails.
But it seems there's at least some indirect 'note passing' between capitals going on, even as Saudi Aramco facilities have apparently come under drone assault from Iran-aligned militants in Yemen and Iraq. Axios writes that "The talks are being conducted mainly between Iran and Oman. But Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt and Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are actively involved."
"We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don't work out, we will go back to very strong military action," Trump said in an interview. Again, very deep talks?... The Iranian side is certainly not confirming this, but instead quite the opposite. Tehran has definitively stated its position that there are no talks currently happening. It seems it is merely the mediating powers that are most urgently trying to get the sides back to the negotiating table. Trump said he won't give diplomacy "much time" and that it "either goes fast or not at all."
"All of the people that deal with Iran asked me: 'Don't fire,'" he also said, perhaps alluding to reports like the https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/hormuz-brad-cooper-attacks/2026/07/26/id/1264108/:
The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East recommended ending the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz after concluding it reached the limits of its effectiveness, a recommendation that helped shape President Donald Trump's decision to pause strikes against Iran, https://www.axios.com/2026/07/26/hormuz-bombing-pause-trump-iran reported Sunday.
Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, advised Pentagon leaders, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the White House last week that two weeks of sustained airstrikes had weakened Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping through the strategic waterway, multiple sources familiar with the discussions said.
As for new reported strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities (below), and particularly the sprawling Abqaiq site, the Houthis are claiming responsibility. Previously Trump vowed to hold Iran directly responsible for any attacks carried out by its proxy groups.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY: Significant amount of **flaring** in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, including the processing facility of Abqaiq and linked facilities of the Ghawar giant oilfield.
(**Flaring doesn't mean damage. More photos below speculating about potential damage**) https://t.co/5U1e9IaJkS
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2081737189226958955?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Pause Holds After 13 Straight Days of Fighting
Saturday saw a final break in what was 13 consecutive days of tit-for-tat attacks between the United States and Iran, with US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz having confirmed to Fox News Sunday that President Trump is trying to give peace talks "some space".
"He's giving it a little bit of room," Waltz said. "We’ve had both Oman and Iran and a number of our other negotiators engaged at every level, from the most senior levels all the way down to the technical level, over the past few weeks and particularly in the past few days."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/carriercncm.jpg?itok=e851QECP
Walsh has brushed aside emerging reports that US defense interceptor supplies https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-military-intentionally-letting-some-iranian-projectiles-through-its-defenses, "I want to be crystal clear: The U.S. military, and I’ve verified this every which way, has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be," he said.
But a who's who of top admin and military officials have voiced concerns, including the https://thehill.com/newsletters/morning-report/5991665-us-pauses-iran-strikes-weapons-concerns/:
- The New York Times reported Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has privately argued resuming major combat operations against Iran https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/us/politics/trump-iran-military.html the antimissile interceptors available to U.S. Central Command (Centcom). The outlet reported the threat to interceptor stockpiles is one of many considerations that have made a return to major combat operations risky.
- Vice President Vance raised concerns about escalating the war in a meeting with the president at the White House on Friday, https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/25/politics/us-iran-strikes-operation.
- Two sources with knowledge of Adm. Brad Cooper's position https://nxslink.thehill.com/click/6a6734ca578a02467a01e520/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYXhpb3MuY29tLzIwMjYvMDcvMjYvaG9ybXV6LWJvbWJpbmctcGF1c2UtdHJ1bXAtaXJhbg/6a15c84a6a0acc913909f829B4bee4897 that the Centcom commander has recommended stopping the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz because it has reached the limit of its effectiveness.
An Iranian military official warned https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/iran-army-says-war-to-expand-further-if-us-attacks-restart/ that the country would expand its 'retaliatory' attacks in the region if the US restarts airstrikes. This as a pause has held for two days.
Iran Warns it will Expand Strikes of US Bombing Resumes
"I believe that if the Americans once again fall for the Zionists' deception, or move in line with them, and insist on continuing the war, particularly through airstrikes, geographically this will expand further," Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia https://news.antiwar.com/2026/07/26/iran-warns-it-will-expand-attacks-in-the-region-if-the-us-restarts-airstrikes/ AFP. Iran is also https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-it-still-controls-strait-not-seeking-talks-after-trump-halts-bombing-2026-07-27/?taid=6a6729d1ef0236000168a212&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter that it still controls the Strait of Hormuz, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/7/27/iran-war-live-iran-halts-retaliatory-strikes-after-pause-in-us-attacks Washington is "stuck" in the region - and that only Tehran decides when the conflict ends.
Tehran has at the same time once again confirmed there are no negotiations happening. "It’s possible that mediators share messages from the US side about current developments in the region, but at the moment we have no negotiations with the US," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters on Monday.
The ARAMCO refinery in Jizan, eastern Saudi Arabia, is still burning more than 2 days after the impact of ballistic missiles launched by the Houtis.
A massive trail of smoke which extends for about 70 km can be seen on Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, 26/07/2026. https://t.co/v05cwhMRjY
— MoloMonitor 🇮🇹 (@MoloWarMonitor) https://x.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2081682793910657491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
He also batted down claims that Iran has requested negotiations - after Trump recently asserted it was begging for talks - as "fake news". Baghaei further explained that Iran won't hesitate to use diplomacy to protect national interests, as cited in Bloomberg. He also described that Iranian and Omani officials held several rounds of "useful" talks about the management of ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
US strikes and Iranian counterattacks could restart at any moment, given that the US continues to enforce a blockade on Iranian ports.
Still, an unnamed Iranian official separately told https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/iran-will-halt-attacks-long-us-maintains-pause-iranian-source-says-after-trump-2026-07-26/ that Tehran's position "remains 'attack for attack': if the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations. That message has already been conveyed to the United ⁠States."
Reports of KSA's Abqaiq Oil Facility Hit
Meanwhile there are emerging Monday reports that Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility in the kingdom's eastern province is on fire after probable drone and/or missile strikes by the Houthis, or from Iran-aligned Iraqi militias.
Newsquawk reports based on emerging Iranian state media that "Hours ago, the huge Abqaiq oil facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most important oil processing centers, was set on fire in drone and missile attacks, reports Tasnim citing sources and images." Below are the distant images posted by Tasnim on Telegram:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/tasnm.jpg?itok=d33gfLHs
Some various OSINT accounts are also seeking to verify the fires. If confirmed this would be a very serious development, which potential significant impact on the kingdom's crude output. An official response is emerging from Saudi media, as Arab sources report explosions in the kingdom:
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defence said it intercepted drones from Iraqi territory that attempted to target oil facilities in the Eastern Province and Riyadh regions, Al Hadath reports
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/ksastm.png?itok=-YxDMkix
Massive 300 mw fire at Abqaiq refinery and east west pumping station. Unclear what the cause is. This saudi oil facility is on fire.
25.92676, 49.68748 is not at a flaring location https://t.co/0iFh1zhEc0
— Ali (@MerruX) https://x.com/MerruX/status/2081705774883979452?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
International reports commonly estimate that the sprawling Abqaiq facility - as the largest crude oil stabilization and processing facility in the world - has a maximum processing capacity of 7 million barrels per day (bpd) and typically operates at around 4.9 million bpd.
Houthi media has also been highlighting the fires at the site on Monday, following prior alleged Houthi attacks on key Aramco sites in Jizan and Yanbu over the weekend. The group's military spokesperson Yahya Sare identified that these sites were hit, with international press agencies citing, "There is no immediate Saudi confirmation, though footage shows plumes of black smoke rising into the air from the Aramco refinery in Jizan."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 - 11:40
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/saudi-aramco-targeted-including-sprawling-abqaiq-facility-tehran-aligned-militants

2026-07-26 13:00:00 GMT

Two Drones Shot Down Over NATO Airspace In Less Than 24 Hours
Two Drones Shot Down Over NATO Airspace In Less Than 24 Hours
This week has witnessed more dangerous Ukraine war spillover aerial activity in Eastern Europe. In a fresh instance, Romania's defense ministry is reporting that two drones entered the country's airspace in less than 24 hours.
The military said that radar systems had earlier picked up a drone "operating in the vicinity of the Ukrainian border" Saturday morning - after which F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and successfully shot it down.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/romanianaf.jpg?itok=6Ch-rcAN
The NATO member state's defense ministry continued by https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/romania-shot-second-drone-breaching-airspace-rcna589187 that two of the F-16s "safely shot down in an unpopulated area near the border."
A very similar situation played out Friday over an unpopulated area near Padina, northeast of the capital, Bucharest. In that case a pari of Italian air force Eurofighter Typhoon jets were deployed and shot it down.
Authorities did not immediately identify the drone's origin but that are pointing to the Russian military. Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta was cited in national media as saying "the impact site and the drone wreckage are currently being analyzed" but that "the pattern is consistent with previous confirmed flights by Russian drones."
Early indicators say these were likely Shahed-type drones used by Russian forces; however, there have also been past instances of Ukrainian projectiles entering friendly neighboring countries' airspace.
These types of breaches have been happening with increasingly regularity over the past couple years. In prior incidents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of deliberately orchestrating provocations against NATO countries.
He previously https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1966913269261619296 on X during a past incident, for example, that "The Russian military knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air. Their routes are always calculated."
In prior recent instances of drones entering neighboring airspace, particularly in Baltic countries and also Poland, NATO jets were scrambled - and in some cases drones are safely brought down via electronic intercept means.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Romania-Moldova-Ukraine-Map_0.png?itok=plXYm8iJ
But each instance creates new tensions between Russia and NATO, and the typical accusations and threats then fly. The Kremlin has of late been especially alarmed at the Trump administration transferring 5,000 US troops from Germany to Poland, near Russia's doorstep.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 07/26/2026 - 09:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/two-drones-shot-down-over-nato-airspace-less-24-hours

2026-07-26 01:35:00 GMT

19 Million Eggs Pulled As Salmonella Outbreak Sickens 98 Across 17 States
19 Million Eggs Pulled As Salmonella Outbreak Sickens 98 Across 17 States
The FDA and CDC have tied a growing Salmonella outbreak to eggs produced by Texas-based Midwest Poultry Services, which recalled roughly 1.5 million cartons - more than 19 million eggs - after the contamination surfaced. As of July 24, 98 people across 17 states had been sickened, according to the FDA, which said the recalled eggs are "a likely source of illnesses in this outbreak" and that its investigation is ongoing.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%28896%29.jpg?itok=kj0xHT1q
The recall itself went out through an FDA notice on July 22, before the illness count was attached. The eggs may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis, a subtype that can cause serious and occasionally fatal infections in young children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised.
"Midwest Poultry Services identified the issue on its two Texas farms through proactive environmental monitoring practices and root cause analysis," the company said, adding that it "is not distributing fresh eggs produced on its Texas farms at this time." The company said it began diverting eggs to a breaking plant, where they would be pasteurized to kill any pathogens, and characterized the recall as precautionary. It did not respond to a request for more detail on how it detected the possible contamination.
There is a wrinkle worth noting. The recalled eggs were produced between June 6 and July 3, but the outbreak's illness onsets stretch from Nov. 21, 2025 all the way to June 30, 2026 - a seven-month span far wider than the production window. That is why the FDA is describing the eggs as a likely source "in part" and says it is still investigating whether other foods are involved.
How To Check Your Carton
The eggs carried "sell by" or "best by" dates ranging from July 20 to Aug. 17. The recalled cartons carry an identifying code of P-1950 or 0840962 with a Julian date between 157 and 184, printed in date-coding ink on the side of the carton. No other Midwest Poultry Services products are affected.
The eggs were available at Kroger stores in Louisiana and Texas and Brookshire Grocery stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as smaller retailers not named in the notice. They were also shipped to foodservice customers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Kroger and Brookshire Grocery did not respond to requests for comment.
People who bought the eggs can return them for a full refund. Salmonella infection typically sets in 12 to 72 hours after exposure, with symptoms - diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps - usually lasting four to seven days.
Full list of recalled eggs:
- Kroger Large 12 eggs
- Kroger Large 18 eggs
- Kroger Large 60 eggs
- Kroger Extra Large 12 eggs
- Kroger Medium 12 eggs
- Kroger Medium 30 eggs
- Kroger Jumbo 12 eggs
- Simple Truth Cage Free Medium Brown 12 eggs
- Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 12 eggs
- Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 18 eggs
- Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 24 eggs
- Brookshire's Large 6 eggs
- Brookshire's Large 12 Eggs
- Brookshire's Large 18 Eggs
- Brookshire's Large 36 Eggs
- Brookshire's Large 60 Eggs
- Brookshires Extra Large 18 Eggs
- Brookshire's Jumbo 12 Eggs
- Country Morning Large 12 Eggs
- Country Morning Large 18 Eggs
- Country Morning Large 2 ½ Dozen
- Country Morning Extra Large 12 Eggs
- Country Morning Medium 12 Eggs
- Country Morning Jumbo 12 Eggs
- Sunups Medium 2 1/2 Dozen
- Grade AA Large Bulk X 30 DOZEN
- Grade A Large Bulk X 15 DOZEN
- Grade A Large Bulk - TICTAC
- Grade A Large Bulk - BROWN - TICTAC
- Grade A Medium Bulk X 30 DOZEN
- Grade A Medium Bulk X 15 DOZEN
- Grade A Extra Large Bulk X 15 DOZEN
- Grade A Jumbo Bulk 20 eggs
h/t https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-company-recalls-more-than-19-million-eggs-6066211
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 07/25/2026 - 21:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/19-million-eggs-pulled-salmonella-outbreak-sickens-98-across-17-states

2026-07-25 03:25:00 GMT

The 'Projects' That Could Ignite The Next World War
The 'Projects' That Could Ignite The Next World War
https://madgewaggy.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-projects-that-could-ignite-next-war.html
The Military, Industrial and Strategic Programs Reshaping the World in 2026
The most dangerous geopolitical developments of 2026 are not necessarily the weapons that have already been fired, but the systems being constructed in anticipation of the next crisis. Across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, governments are committing extraordinary resources to military production, strategic infrastructure, weapons procurement and long-term defence planning, creating a global security environment in which preparation for war has itself become one of the defining features of international politics. The official justification is almost always deterrence: stronger armies are supposed to prevent aggression, larger stockpiles are supposed to make adversaries think twice and new military infrastructure is supposed to close the gaps that might otherwise invite attack. Yet deterrence has an inherent paradox. Every military capability built by one state is examined by another as a potential threat, and every response can then be used to justify another round of preparation. What emerges is not necessarily an organized march toward a single global conflict, but something more unstable: a collection of increasingly sophisticated military projects operating simultaneously across several regions, each designed to prevent war while potentially making the consequences of miscalculation far more severe.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/AVvXsEgEVcXlB87SZO17xdRdQ3FMTH1H.jpg?itok=CXhewDFY
The scale of this transformation is no longer a matter of speculation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth. European military spending increased by 14% to approximately $864 billion, while military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 8.1% to around $681 billion. The United States remained the world's largest military spender at approximately $954 billion, followed by China at $336 billion and Russia at $190 billion. Together, those three countries accounted for roughly 51% of global military expenditure. SIPRI also reported that European NATO members increased spending sharply, while China's military expenditure continued a decades-long upward trajectory and Taiwan increased its own military spending by approximately 14% in 2025. These figures do not prove that a world war is approaching, but they reveal an international system in which the largest military powers are simultaneously expanding or restructuring their strategic capabilities.
THE GLOBAL REARMAMENT MAP
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-24_13-59-02.jpg?itok=BzlrAI0u
The "Editorial risk assessment" is an analytical classification based on escalation potential, proximity of military forces, strategic importance and likelihood of involvement by major powers. It is not an official probability forecast. Data on military expenditure: SIPRI. Current developments in Taiwan Strait and the Middle East: Reuters and AP.
The most important feature of this table is not any individual number, but the simultaneous concentration of military pressure across several theatres. Europe is rebuilding defence capacity at a pace unseen in decades, China is continuing its military modernization while applying pressure around Taiwan, Russia remains heavily committed to wartime spending, and the United States is attempting to maintain strategic commitments across Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. This creates a geopolitical environment in which a crisis in one region could consume resources, attention and military capacity that are simultaneously required elsewhere. The risk is therefore not simply that one country decides to start a global war; it is that several regional crises could interact with one another at precisely the moment when governments have fewer diplomatic and military resources available to contain them.
EUROPE'S REARMAMENT PROJECT
Europe's rearmament is perhaps the clearest example of a strategic project that is simultaneously defensive in intention and potentially destabilizing in perception. The transformation began with the recognition that the continent had allowed its conventional military capabilities to decline after the Cold War, but the war in Ukraine fundamentally altered that calculation. Governments that had spent years treating defence as a secondary budgetary priority are now rebuilding ammunition reserves, expanding weapons production, ordering new aircraft and missile systems, strengthening military logistics and investing in the infrastructure required to move large numbers of troops and equipment across the continent. NATO has committed its members to a long-term target of spending 5% of GDP annually on defence and defence-related security requirements by 2035, while the alliance reported in July 2026 that European allies and Canada had already increased core defence expenditure by nearly 20% in 2025 compared with 2024. NATO is also explicitly working with industry to expand production capacity, including ammunition stockpiles and other military capabilities.
The economic dimension of this transformation is significant because military production cannot be expanded overnight. A government can announce a larger defence budget in a single parliamentary session, but factories, skilled labour, supply chains and production lines require years to develop. Once those systems are established, they create their own momentum. Defence companies receive long-term contracts, governments become dependent on domestic production capacity and military planners begin designing strategies around weapons that may remain in service for decades. The result is a structural transformation rather than a temporary response to a single crisis. Europe is not simply buying more weapons; it is rebuilding an industrial ecosystem capable of producing them at scale.
From Moscow's perspective, the same transformation can be interpreted very differently. European governments describe their military expansion as a response to Russian aggression and a means of preventing future conflict. Russia, however, is likely to view the growth of European military capabilities, expanded NATO production and increased strategic infrastructure as evidence that the continent is preparing for a prolonged confrontation. This is the classic security dilemma, and it is one of the most persistent mechanisms behind arms races throughout modern history. The fundamental problem is that two governments can simultaneously believe they are acting defensively while interpreting the other's defensive actions as preparation for aggression.
The danger becomes greater when military infrastructure acquires permanence. A temporary deployment can be withdrawn relatively quickly; a factory built to produce ammunition for decades, a new logistics corridor or a permanent military installation creates a different strategic reality. These projects establish capabilities that remain available long after the political circumstances that originally justified them have changed. The result is a continent increasingly structured around the possibility of prolonged confrontation, with defence spending becoming not merely a reaction to war but an enduring component of economic and industrial policy. That does not make a European war inevitable, but it does mean that the physical and industrial capacity required for one is expanding substantially.
THE TAIWAN STRAIT: THE MOST DANGEROUS CONVERGENCE OF MILITARY POWER AND GLOBAL ECONOMICS
The Taiwan Strait represents a different kind of danger because it combines territorial sovereignty, national identity, military competition and the technological foundations of the global economy. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, while Taiwan maintains its own democratic government and rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims. The United States remains deeply involved in the island's security through arms sales and strategic commitments, making any serious military confrontation potentially capable of drawing the world's two largest military powers into direct conflict.
The latest developments demonstrate how quickly the military environment can change. On July 23, 2026, China began two days of live-fire drills in sections of the Taiwan Strait near the coast of Fujian province, following high-level discussions between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which Taiwan was a major issue. The exercises followed earlier large-scale Chinese military drills and came amid continuing concerns over the expansion of military activity surrounding Taiwan.
China's military modernization is central to this strategic equation. SIPRI estimates that Chinese military expenditure reached approximately $336 billion in 2025, representing a 7.4% increase and the thirty-first consecutive year of annual growth. Taiwan, meanwhile, increased its own military expenditure by approximately 14% to $18.2 billion, while Japan's spending rose by 9.7% to $62.2 billion. The pattern is unmistakable: China is expanding its military capabilities, while countries that fear the consequences of Chinese regional dominance are simultaneously strengthening their own. The result is an increasingly dense military environment in which naval vessels, aircraft, missiles, intelligence systems and surveillance platforms operate in close proximity to one another.
This is where the Taiwan problem becomes larger than the island itself. Any major conflict would immediately threaten one of the world's most important technological and commercial regions, with consequences extending into semiconductor manufacturing, maritime trade, financial markets and global supply chains. A military crisis in the Taiwan Strait could therefore produce economic consequences before the conflict had even developed into a full-scale war. The strategic importance of the region means that the international community has a strong incentive to prevent escalation, but it also means that the number of actors with something to lose is exceptionally large.
The most dangerous scenario may not necessarily be a carefully planned invasion. A crisis could emerge from an accident, an unexpected military incident or a political decision made under extreme pressure. As military exercises become more frequent and forces operate closer together, the distinction between signalling and provocation becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. The immediate challenge is therefore not simply to determine whether Beijing intends to use force against Taiwan, but whether the military systems being constructed by China, Taiwan, the United States and their regional partners leave enough room for diplomacy when something goes wrong.
THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ
If Taiwan represents the possibility of a future great-power confrontation, the Middle East demonstrates what happens when escalation is already underway. The ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict has entered a dangerous phase in which military operations, attacks on infrastructure and disruption of maritime trade are becoming interconnected. According to AP reporting on July 23, U.S. forces carried out another night of airstrikes against Iran amid continuing tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran and allied forces threatened or attacked shipping and regional infrastructure. Reuters reported that the conflict had already cost the United States approximately $37.5 billion, with 18 American service members killed and more than 430 wounded, while the disruption to shipping through key regional chokepoints has created broader economic consequences.
The Strait of Hormuz is particularly dangerous because it transforms a regional military confrontation into a global economic problem. The waterway is a critical route for energy shipments, meaning that any prolonged disruption affects not only the countries fighting the war but also governments, industries and consumers thousands of kilometres away. Reuters reported on July 22 that the conflict had significantly worsened the outlook for the global oil market in 2026, with analysts projecting a global oil deficit of approximately 1.5 million barrels per day as disruptions continued to affect exports from the Gulf. The same report noted that Brent crude had risen sharply during the renewed escalation.
This is the point at which military escalation begins to acquire a life of its own. Once energy infrastructure, shipping lanes and civilian economic systems become part of a conflict, every military action produces consequences far beyond the battlefield. A strike against a port can affect insurance markets. An attack on a tanker can alter shipping routes. A threat against energy infrastructure can change oil prices before a single barrel is physically removed from the market. The conflict becomes a feedback loop in which military decisions generate economic pressure, economic pressure generates political pressure and political pressure encourages governments to adopt even more aggressive positions.
The latest developments in the Red Sea demonstrate the danger of geographic expansion. On July 23, AP reported that Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement claimed responsibility for attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, while U.S. forces continued strikes against Iranian targets. The involvement of additional maritime routes creates the possibility that the conflict could gradually spread across multiple strategic chokepoints, linking the Strait of Hormuz with the Bab el-Mandeb and the broader Red Sea shipping system.
THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL PROJECT THAT CONNECTS THEM ALL
The most consequential project underway may therefore be the expansion of military-industrial capacity itself. Europe is increasing production, NATO is seeking greater industrial output, China is continuing military modernization and countries across Asia are responding by increasing their own defence budgets. SIPRI's data show that global military expenditure reached its highest recorded level in 2025, while the sharpest increases were concentrated in regions already experiencing significant geopolitical tension. This does not establish a direct causal relationship between military spending and war, but it demonstrates that the international system is investing heavily in the capacity to sustain conflict at precisely the moment when diplomatic trust between major powers is weakening.
There is an important distinction between preparing for war and wanting war. Governments may rationally conclude that the best way to prevent aggression is to possess overwhelming military capabilities, maintain large reserves and demonstrate the ability to respond immediately. From this perspective, rearmament is a tool of peace. The difficulty is that deterrence depends on interpretation. A military project that appears defensive to the country building it may appear offensive to the country observing it. This problem becomes especially severe when multiple states are rearming simultaneously, because each government can use the actions of others as evidence that its own expansion is justified.
The statistical trend is therefore less important as a prediction of war than as an indicator of strategic psychology. The world is spending more because governments increasingly believe that the future will be more dangerous. That belief itself influences policy, and policy then changes the environment that created the belief in the first place. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which insecurity generates military investment, military investment generates suspicion and suspicion generates further insecurity.
This is why the most important projects of 2026 are not necessarily individual weapons systems. They are the long-term structures being built around them: defence industries, military logistics, strategic alliances, naval infrastructure, ammunition stockpiles, surveillance networks and procurement programs designed to remain operational for decades. These systems are being constructed under the assumption that strategic competition will not disappear quickly. Once established, they will shape the calculations of governments long after today's political leaders have left office.
THE GEOPOLITICAL RISK MATRIX
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-24_13-57-48.jpg?itok=p3wQaq8O
Analytical assessment based on current military activity, strategic importance, involvement of major powers, economic interdependence and escalation pathways. This is an editorial framework, not an official forecast or probability model.
The matrix illustrates why the danger of 2026 cannot be reduced to identifying one country or one conflict as the source of the next major war. Europe presents a high-intensity military confrontation involving Russia and NATO. Taiwan represents the possibility of a direct clash between the United States and China. The Middle East has already demonstrated the ability of regional conflict to disrupt global energy markets and maritime trade. These theatres are geographically separate, but they are strategically connected through the allocation of military resources, energy markets, alliance commitments and global economic dependencies.
The most troubling scenario is therefore not necessarily a coordinated decision by several governments to launch a global war. It is the possibility that one crisis could destabilize another. A prolonged conflict in the Middle East could absorb American military resources while tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific. A European crisis could force governments to redirect weapons and ammunition away from other theatres. A major confrontation around Taiwan could disrupt global trade at precisely the moment when energy markets were already under pressure. In such circumstances, strategic calculations would become more complicated, not less, because every government would be forced to consider not only the immediate enemy in front of it but also the possibility that another adversary might exploit the distraction.
The modern international system is therefore becoming increasingly vulnerable to strategic overload. The United States, China, Russia and their respective partners are building military capabilities designed to operate in an environment of prolonged competition, while regional conflicts are becoming increasingly interconnected through energy, technology and trade. The danger is not that every military project inevitably leads to war; the danger is that the sheer number of simultaneous projects and crises increases the number of pathways through which an accident, miscalculation or deliberate escalation could become much larger than originally intended.
The world is consequently entering a period in which deterrence and escalation are becoming increasingly difficult to separate. Europe is building the industrial capacity to defend itself, NATO is expanding its long-term military commitments, China is strengthening its ability to project power around Taiwan, Taiwan is increasing its own defences, and the Middle East is demonstrating how rapidly military conflict can spread from battlefields to shipping routes and global energy markets. Each of these developments has a rational strategic explanation when examined individually. The deeper danger emerges when they are viewed together.
What is being constructed in 2026 is not a single machine designed to start a world war. It is a network of military and industrial systems designed to ensure that governments are never again caught unprepared by one. Yet the more extensively those systems are built, the more the international order becomes dependent on accurate intelligence, disciplined decision-making and the ability of political leaders to distinguish between preparation and provocation. That dependency is fragile. The statistics show an extraordinary expansion in global military expenditure, the geopolitical map shows multiple simultaneous flashpoints and the latest events in Taiwan and the Middle East demonstrate how quickly military pressure can intensify.
The central risk of the present era is therefore not that war has become inevitable, but that the world is accumulating more weapons, more strategic infrastructure and more potential points of confrontation than it has diplomatic mechanisms capable of reliably controlling.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 07/24/2026 - 23:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/projects-could-ignite-next-world-war

2026-07-24 22:50:00 GMT

Forget Beef. This Protein Is Way Cheaper
Forget Beef. This Protein Is Way Cheaper
Building on Bank of America's latest note, which cited Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Derrell Peel's warning that the US cattle cycle is unlikely to improve anytime soon, beef prices are poised to remain elevated through at least next year. But two competitively priced proteins that consumers can switch to today remain largely overlooked.
That overlooked protein is ground pork, with an average of $4.81 a pound in mid-June, compared with $7.95 for ground beef, while pork chops cost roughly one-third as much as beef steak, according to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-24/pork-struggles-to-gain-ground-even-in-middle-of-protein-craze, citing NielsenIQ data.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/usda_ground_meat_retail_prices_2015_2026.png?itok=u2j3N-so
Still, beef consumption is forecast at a 15-year high, underscoring how stubborn consumers are and how unwilling they are to trade down for their meats.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snag_19888ed3.png?itok=zS7kIvgZ
Processors including Smithfield Foods are responding with precut, marinated and ground-pork products designed to improve convenience and compete with beef and chicken.
Industry insiders see ground pork as the category's biggest opportunity, though ground beef's $17 billion in annual sales suggests any shift will be gradual.
"People don't want to risk something not tasting great when it comes down to it," said Reba Hatcher, chief commercial officer at meat subscription company ButcherBox, who the outlet cited. "Even if it's cheaper when you go to the checkout, it's not cheaper if you end up throwing it away or people end up hating it at the dinner table."
For readers wondering just how long beef prices will remain elevated, the BofA note provides a timeline for when the cattle cycle could turn upward. Spoiler alert: not anytime soon. https://www.zerohedge.com/food/when-will-cattle-cycle-turn-bofa-has-answers-beef-lovers
With beef prices unlikely to meaningfully ease anytime soon, the Beck Ranch Carnivore Trio in ZeroHedge Store lets readers stock the freezer with more affordable and premium chicken and pork while still keeping premium ground beef in the mix.
https://store.zerohedge.com/products/carnivore-trio-beck-ranch?_pos=2&_sid=b21766497&_ss=r
https://store.zerohedge.com/products/carnivore-trio-beck-ranch?_pos=2&_sid=b21766497&_ss=r
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 07/24/2026 - 18:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/forget-beef-protein-way-cheaper

2026-07-23 18:30:00 GMT

US Lays Groundwork For Approving Offshore Nuclear Power Projects
US Lays Groundwork For Approving Offshore Nuclear Power Projects
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-lays-groundwork-for-approving-offshore-nuclear-power-projects-6066105,
The U.S. federal government has outlined a preliminary framework to oversee the approval of offshore nuclear power projects, advancing President Donald Trump's agenda to safely unleash domestic energy production and reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%28875%29.jpg?itok=5q69FNT2
"While no commercial deployment on the Outer Continental Shelf is planned or approved at this time, it could greatly strengthen America's energy security in the future," Matt Giacona, acting director of the Interior Department's Marine Minerals Administration, said in announcing the initiative on July 22.
The Marine Minerals Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released an agreement on Wednesday that lays the groundwork for a more "detailed cooperative framework" outlining jurisdictional oversight for development of offshore nuclear power projects in "a safe and environmentally responsible way."
The memorandum of understanding between the Marine Minerals Administration (MMA), which oversees energy projects in federal waters of the outer continental shelf, and the federal government's independent civilian nuclear regulator will "foster cooperation" and "allow shared technical expertise to ensure reviews are efficient and transparent," the NRC said in a statement.
Director of the NRC's Office of Advanced Reactors Jeremy Bowen said the agreement "creates a clear framework for how our agencies will work together and ensures our processes remain efficient, transparent, and technically robust."
"The agreement will also allow MMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to responsibly respond to industry requests, supporting novel offshore energy production," the MMA added.
The MMA also oversees offshore development such as seabed mining and space launch infrastructure.
Restoring Energy Abundance
The announcement is the latest step taken by the federal government as the president pushes forward with his agenda to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050 and restore American energy abundance.
The president declared a national energy emergency upon returning to office and has since signed numerous executive orders to achieve this goal, including licensing https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/us-to-finance-10-nuclear-reactors-with-17-5-billion-in-loans-6053076 by 2030.
Leaders in the energy sector have warned that significant investments are needed to address the increasing shortfalls in domestic power supply, as experienced during the recent summer heat waves, when grid operators were forced to issue https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/central-us-grid-operator-warns-heat-wave-could-strain-power-supplies-6064976 of potential outages due to inadequate resources to meet peak energy demand.
In March, major U.S. tech companies agreed to https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-ai-companies-sign-ratepayer-protection-pledge-at-white-house-roundtable-meeting-5994383 their own electricity generation infrastructure to power their https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/data-centers-set-to-eat-up-20-percent-of-us-power-by-2035-report-6065049 operations. They also pledged to help https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/google-meta-amazon-sign-pledge-backing-tripling-of-nuclear-power-by-2050-post-5824813 global nuclear capacity by 2050.
New Reactor Designs
The Trump administration's effort to https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/direct-federal-investment-great-reactor-race-highlight-trumps-first-year-energy-policies-5973991 the safe deployment of advanced nuclear technologies reached an early milestone in July, when three reactor designs achieved criticality.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, many countries are working to develop small modular reactors, including concepts suited for marine or floating applications. Russia is the only country currently operating a floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov. Located in the country's far east, it has been in operation since 2020.
Regarding the offshore use of nuclear technologies, Giacona said the military has safely relied on submerged reactor systems in ships and submarines for decades, calling them a "reliable source of energy in demanding marine environments."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%28876%29.jpg?itok=4iifRcag
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/23/2026 - 14:30
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/us-lays-groundwork-approving-offshore-nuclear-power-projects

2026-07-23 18:10:00 GMT

Watch: Ukraine, Iran Tensions Run High In Rare Rubio-Lavrov Meeting
Watch: Ukraine, Iran Tensions Run High In Rare Rubio-Lavrov Meeting
A US delegation headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is holding three day closed-door talks with Russia on the sidelines of an annual gathering by foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Manila.
The high point came in a rare direct Rubio-Lavrav meeting, where the US top diplomat said Russia should have the incentive to end a "very blood war" that has devastated both sides.
Rubio admitted that so far there's been an "unsuccessful or at least unfruitful" effort to end the war and find peace, but insisted the Trump administration is committed to finding a lasting solution "if conditions and factors have changed to make that possible."
"That’s been the challenge, an end that both sides can accept," Rubio said to reporters. "And we’ve tried and we’ll continue to try to see if we can, you know, find a middle ground that brings this about. And we’re prepared to play that role if the opportunity presents itself."
One of the more interesting moments came when FM Lavrov and Secretary Rubio ignored reporters' questions on whether Russia will agree to stop attacking Ukraine, in the wake of the obvious recent escalations of missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital...
Looks like an *American staffer* runs press out of the room as soon as the 'awkward' but still relevant questions were asked.
A reporter asks Marco Rubio whether he will ask Foreign Minister Lavrov about Russia helping Iran target U.S. troops. Another reporter asks Lavrov when will Russia stop attacking Ukraine. A staffer then removes the press from the room. https://t.co/N7I7ZBVQOE
— Acyn (@Acyn) https://x.com/Acyn/status/2080146189732004268?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Lavrov underscored in the meeting "the unacceptability of further arming" Ukraine and accused European countries of pursuing Russia's "strategic defeat."
The Kremlin has of late warned the West of its growing direct involvement in targeting Russian energy sits as part of Ukraine's long-range drone operations, which have unleashed serious damage on oil production and export infrastructure.
Lavrov also declared Russia’s readiness for "a political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict" and the upholding of commitment to agreements reached at last year's Alaska summit between Trump and Putin.
But Rubio threw up a significant roadblock and challenge, stressing on the question of arming Ukraine, "There’s been no change to our policy in that regard." But he also again said: "We want a peace deal. We want the war to end."
Another interesting and tense moment came when reporters raised the issue of recent widespread allegations that Russia is arming Iran and helping it with targeting information.
Rubio was clearly trying to not make this an issue at the summit and somewhat surprisingly strongly pushed back against the reports...
Reporter: Did you talk to the Russians about Russia sharing information with Iran targeting U.S. troops?
Rubio: Who says that they are?
Reporter: Are they not?
Rubio: Who says they are?
Reporter: There's been reporting...
Rubio: Reporting in the media? Oh, then it must be… https://t.co/YERHdknMrC
— Clash Report (@clashreport) https://x.com/clashreport/status/2080214760121946140?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Reuters and others had reported Wednesday, "Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf have prompted U.S. intelligence analysts to investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or advanced drone technology, said four people familiar with U.S. intelligence."
"These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters, said U.S. intelligence officials have ‌not yet reached firm conclusions about the possible Russian involvement in the attacks on CIA facilities. But they cited the strikes' effectiveness and apparent precision, as well as Russia's broader technical support for Iran, as possible evidence," the Reuters report added.
Some analysts have pointed out that Moscow is inflicting 'payback' on the United States related to its having armed Ukraine for many years. US intelligence has been assisting Ukraine forces with targeting information. So the logic goes that Russia is now doing the same for Iran in the ratcheting Mideast conflict.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/23/2026 - 14:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-ukraine-iran-tensions-run-high-rare-rubio-lavrov-meeting

2026-07-23 17:50:00 GMT

Gov. Hochul Responds To Criticism, Explains Rationale For AI Data Center Moratorium
Gov. Hochul Responds To Criticism, Explains Rationale For AI Data Center Moratorium
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/gov-hochul-responds-to-criticism-explains-rationale-for-ai-data-center-moratorium-6066097,
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on July 21 responding to the publication's criticisms of her decision to halt data centers of a certain size from being built in her state.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_80%28874%29.jpg?itok=3e1JmrzI
In her op-ed, Hochul explained her stance on AI data centers and why she believes her decision to prevent the creation of large AI data centers in the state for a year was best for New Yorkers. The moratorium on the facilities is the https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/new-york-imposes-first-statewide-moratorium-on-data-centers-6061447 of its kind in the nation.
She was countering a July 14 WSJ editorial titled "New York's Data Center Self-Sabotage" published on the same day that Hochul signed her executive order for a statewide moratorium on large data centers, with the newspaper's editorial board calling her move "an act of monumental self-sabotage."
The editorial board said the moratorium on the centers was a popularity move more than a pragmatic one, and that the centers helped local areas with tax money. They also said that the issues of data centers taking up utilities like electricity are overstated.
The publication expressed suspicion of the one-year moratorium, comparing it to the 2008 one-year moratorium on fracking in the state, which was extended until fracking was entirely banned years later.
Hochul opened her July 21 op-ed response by saying the WSJ editorial had gotten New York's decision and rationale for the AI data center moratorium wrong.
She said the one-year pause on hyperscale AI data centers that use 50 megawatts or more is a responsible move, allowing for the establishment of rules for an industry that will hold much influence in the future.
According to Synergy Research Group, these large-scale data centers are the minority of operational centers, but are becoming more common, with hyperscale data centers doubling between 2019 and 2024.
AI data centers are different from regular data centers, which handle running software, web pages, and storing files. AI centers require different computer components focused on AI operations and require more energy and cooling.
Hochul made clear that the existing facilities will still operate, smaller projects will move forward, and the pause will end when rules to protect New Yorkers are in place.
"What we're pausing isn't innovation. It's the rush to build first and answer questions later," she wrote.
She said that New York doesn't need to pick between leading the future in AI and protecting its citizens and communities, and that regulating AI won't hand over technological victory to China.
"America's competitive advantage has never been the absence of rules. It has been our ability to attract the world's best talent, develop breakthrough technologies and earn public confidence in them," she wrote.
Hochul cited her Empire AI initiative as an example of New York's effort in advancing AI technologies.
The governor said that the expansion of data centers should come at the benefit of residents, not the detriment.
"Success means communities reap economic benefits, ratepayers don't foot the bill for massive new energy demand and infrastructure keeps pace with unprecedented growth," she wrote.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/23/2026 - 13:50
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/gov-hochul-responds-criticism-explains-rationale-ai-data-center-moratorium

2026-07-23 06:00:00 GMT

Swedish Police Veteran Warns Islamization Is Replacing Gang Violence As Country's Defining Threat
Swedish Police Veteran Warns Islamization Is Replacing Gang Violence As Country's Defining Threat
https://rmx.news/crime/swedish-police-veteran-warns-islamization-is-replacing-gang-violence-as-countrys-defining-threat/
A veteran Swedish police officer says tougher criminal laws have sharply improved security in Uppsala, but warns that Islamization and parallel social structures now pose a deeper long-term threat.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Sweden-crime.jpg?itok=Vw5OaQqa
Maria Rosander, a police officer of 17 years and Sweden Democrat group leader in Uppsala, told https://samnytt.se/polisen-maria-rosander-varnar-for-islamiseringen-samhallet-ats-upp-inifran that conditions for officers had changed dramatically since shootings and explosions reached crisis levels.
“From a police point of view, it’s like night and day,” she said.
Rosander credited tougher sentences, expanded surveillance, better cooperation between police regions, and greater use of covert measures. Suspected young gang recruits can now be intercepted before carrying out attacks, she said.
The improvement showed that political decisions could reverse criminal decline, but it still has a long way to go. “We have come to the conclusion that it is not profitable to be a criminal,” Rosander said.
However, the police chief suggested that while legislation to tackle gang violence was starting to produce the desired effect, religious segregation and increased Islamization across Swedish society remain a huge problem.
“Islamization is a contributing factor to what we have seen in society. I am absolutely convinced of that,” she said.
Rosander described the mosque in Uppsala as a symbol of segregation, honor-based oppression and unequal treatment of men and women. She said female officers were often ignored in favor of male colleagues and claimed girls in heavily segregated areas were kept away from public life.
“We are letting Islamization creep in to the point where we will not be able to say no,” she said. “Society is being eaten from within.”
Rosander called for a halt to new mosque construction, restrictions on the niqab and burqa in public, and a ban on children wearing Islamic veils.
She also rejected the language of integration. “I think we should talk about assimilation,” she said.
Swedish society, Rosander argued, should not continually adapt to newcomers who maintain separate cultural and social systems. She criticized multilingual municipal information, saying it removed incentives to learn Swedish.
Rosander further claimed that parallel structures were facilitating welfare abuse, false address registration, and informal financial transfers through religious networks.
She described couples registering at separate addresses while remaining married under Islamic law, allowing them to claim additional housing and benefits.
“The woman receives housing allowance, extra allowance and an apartment for her children,” she said. “The man also receives an apartment that he rents out illegally.”
Rosander also warned that foreign criminal gang networks were deeply established in Uppsala’s vulnerable districts. “We absolutely have gang structures in our society,” she said.
She said extended families repeatedly appeared in criminal investigations and described reports of business owners being forced to pay protection money.
“It’s classic mafia,” she said. “I see clan and mafia as basically the same thing.”
“It’s not the Swedes. These are foreign groups that have connections to organized crime and networks,” Rosander added.
“It is not Swedish youth who commit these crimes.”
Rosander called for stricter background checks for sensitive public-sector positions, arguing that clan loyalty could override loyalty to Swedish institutions.
She also criticized Uppsala Municipality for allegedly failing to scrutinize the foreign funding of Muslim associations and mosque projects.
“If you can’t account for 100 percent where the money comes from, it should never be opened,” she said.
Rosander supports an active remigration policy and wants Uppsala to establish a municipal unit focused on illegal residence, improper settlement, and misuse of public housing.
“For me, remigration is necessary,” she said.
She said Sweden’s success in reducing crime proved that its cultural decline could be reversed, but only if politicians were willing to confront uncomfortable realities.
“As a Swede, I should not have to change my life and start deviating from things that we in Sweden have always done just to suit someone else,” she said.
Read the full interview https://samnytt.se/polisen-maria-rosander-varnar-for-islamiseringen-samhallet-ats-upp-inifran.
https://rmx.news/crime/swedish-police-veteran-warns-islamization-is-replacing-gang-violence-as-countrys-defining-threat/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/23/2026 - 02:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/swedish-police-veteran-warns-islamization-replacing-gang-violence-countrys-defining

2026-07-23 00:55:00 GMT

Supreme Court To Decide If Plane Can Be Seized Over 6-Pack Of Beer
Supreme Court To Decide If Plane Can Be Seized Over 6-Pack Of Beer
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/supreme-court-to-decide-if-plane-can-be-seized-over-6-pack-of-beer-6064488?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge
The U.S. Supreme Court on July 20 agreed to hear the appeal of an Alaska pilot whose small airplane was seized for attempting to haul beer into a so-called dry jurisdiction where alcohol is banned.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/26XP-BEER-wzlt-articleLarge.jpg?itok=rrMF4pgM
The court’s decision in Jouppi v. Alaska took the form of an unsigned https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/072026zor_8nk0.pdf. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.
The aircraft was subject to a legal process known as civil asset forfeiture, under which property, including a vehicle, that was used to commit a crime is deemed an instrument of the crime and can be seized.
Civil libertarians and those subject to asset forfeitures arising from criminal convictions—in addition to cases in which a person is merely suspected of a crime—have long complained that the practice can be arbitrary and excessive.
The petitioner, bush pilot Ken Jouppi, argues that Alaska’s plan to forfeit his 1969 Cessna after he unknowingly in 2012 carried beer stowed in a passenger’s luggage to Beaver, a village that bans beverage alcohol, violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines. The state temporarily seized the plane, valued at about $95,000, but it was later returned to him pending the final disposition of the case.
Jouppi said he was familiar with Alaska’s dry village system and that he would not intentionally carry alcohol illegally, but that he does not search passengers’ luggage to look for alcohol. No law required such a search, and besides, doing so would be “invasive and demeaning,” his attorneys at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, said in his https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-246/373224/20250829124919814_Jouppi%20v.%20State%20-%20Petition.pdf.
The passenger was carrying Budweiser and Bud Light to give to her husband, who worked in Beaver. As Jouppi loaded the aircraft, state troopers searched it and discovered the beer, saying that at least a six-pack of Budweiser could be seen in a shopping bag.
The state filed charges against Jouppi, his company, and the passenger for the misdemeanor of knowingly carrying alcohol into a dry community. The passenger pled guilty. Jouppi and his company went to trial and were convicted by a state jury. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail with 177 days suspended, along with a $3,000 fine with $1,500 of it suspended, and a term of three years of probation, according to the petition.
The trial court first ruled that the forfeiture of the plane was not allowed under state law because at the time of the offense it hadn’t arrived in Beaver, so the alcohol could not be considered to have been transported there. The Alaska Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the state law required forfeiture “regardless of whether the alcoholic beverages are actually transported toward their destination.”
The case returned to the trial court, which then ruled that the forfeiture constituted an unconstitutionally excessive fine. The state appealed, and the appeals court reversed. Then the Alaska Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the forfeiture was constitutional “as a matter of law.”
The state’s dry-community law was enacted to combat alcohol abuse statewide, and the Alaska Legislature “determined that the harm from even a six-pack of beer knowingly imported into a dry village is severe enough to warrant forfeiture of an aircraft,” the Alaska Supreme Court held.
The forfeiture of the plane was “not grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense for which [Jouppi] has been convicted and, therefore, the forfeiture does not violate” the Eighth Amendment, that court ruled.
Jouppi’s lawyers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, saying the Alaska Supreme Court incorrectly emphasized the gravity of the offense, as opposed to the actual conduct of the defendant. The state high court’s standard is also at odds with precedents in its home federal circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the petition said.
By contrast, Alaska urged the nation’s highest court not to take up the case.
The Alaska Supreme Court’s decision was correct and adhered to existing precedent, the state said in a https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-246/384783/20251117153049515_25-246BriefInOpposition.pdf.
That court found that Jouppi saw the alcohol in the cargo and that his “general policy of willful blindness weighs against him,” and also that he failed to show that forfeiture would be “unconstitutionally excessive.”
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/supreme-court-applies-constitutional-ban-on-excessive-fines-to-states-2810825 that a constitutional ban on excessive fines, which Indiana had argued applies only to the federal government, applies to all U.S. states.
The decision overturned a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court that the state was entitled to keep a 2012 Land Rover LR2 valued at $42,000 that was confiscated from Tyson Timbs.
Timbs had used the vehicle when selling a total of $385 worth of heroin to undercover police, a crime for which he was convicted. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to a year of house arrest and five years of probation, but no prison time.
The new case is expected to be heard in the Supreme Court’s term that begins in October. A decision is likely to follow by June or July 2027.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 07/22/2026 - 20:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/supreme-court-decide-if-plane-can-be-seized-over-6-pack-beer

2026-07-22 13:05:00 GMT

Today: Congress Votes To Integrate US Military Tech & Supply Chains With Israel
Today: Congress Votes To Integrate US Military Tech & Supply Chains With Israel
The House of Representatives will vote today on final passage of the $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (H.R. 8800) - and with it, Section 219, the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, a provision directing the Pentagon to expand and accelerate the integration of US and Israeli military technology, supply chains, and defense industrial capacity.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/unnamed_file_from_www.google.com_.jpg_80%2816%29.jpg?itok=p0B5G9oQ
On paper, it is one section among hundreds in a sprawling must-pass bill. In practice, it has become the single most watched line item in the entire package - partly because of what it does, and partly because House leadership just made sure nobody gets to vote on it by itself.
What Section 219 Actually Does
Section 219 - numbered Section 224 in https://armedservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/fy27_ndaa_chairmans_mark_-_final.pdf - directs the Secretary of Defense to designate an "executive agent" inside the Department of Defense whose mandate is to expand and accelerate joint research, development, co-production, and industrial integration with Israel across next-gen warfare domains: missile and air defense, counter-drone systems, cyber and electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, quantum technologies, directed energy, biotechnology, and defense manufacturing - with explicit pathways for moving Israeli-origin and jointly developed technology into US programs of record.
House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), who https://gvwire.com/2026/07/08/defense-bill-sparks-pushback-over-expanded-us-israel-cooperation/ the bill on May 13, has pushed back on the "merger" framing, saying the section simply designates a single senior official to coordinate cooperation that already exists, but critics say that's exactly the point.
Executive agents are permanent bureaucratic machinery - they outlive administrations, and a statutory mandate to "expand and accelerate" only runs in one direction. The Quincy Institute, in a June analysis titled https://quincyinst.org/research/cooperation-without-oversight-the-united-states-israel-defense-technology-cooperation-initiative/, argued the executive-agent authority makes the provision "significantly different" from America's existing defense technology arrangements with any other allied nation. Once two industrial bases are physically intertwined - shared components, co-production lines, joint classified programs - no future Congress unwinds that with a floor amendment.
What "Executive Agent" Means
A June policy note by the Quincy Institute's Steven Simon starts from an inconvenient fact for both sides of this fight: the United States does not need Section 219 to buy, co-develop, or field Israeli defense technology. Iron Dome, the Trophy active-protection system, and Barak missiles were all acquired under existing law - cooperative R&D authority under 22 U.S.C. § 2767(j)(1), plus standard Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales channels under the Arms Export Control Act. Whatever the initiative is for, it is not access. Its real impact is structural.
The structure is the executive agent. Under https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodd/510101.PDF, an executive agent's authority takes precedence over other Defense Department component heads within its assigned scope - meaning the Israel-cooperation agent could overrule determinations by offices like the Defense Technology Security Administration, the Pentagon body that manages the risks of transferring defense technology and critical information abroad. Pair that precedence with a statutory mandate to "expand and accelerate," and the note's conclusion follows: wherever an internal office pushes back on a transfer or an integration step, the agent exists to push it through. State Department export-control channels would still operate independently, and programs must comply with existing law - but inside the Pentagon, the tie would go to integration.
No other US ally has anything like this. Defense cooperation with the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and NATO runs through the standard architecture - the under secretary of defense for policy and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency - with no dedicated agent holding precedence authority to promote one country's participation in sensitive US programs. Proponents read the same structure as streamlining: one accountable senior official instead of a dozen scattered offices. Quincy reads it as handing Israeli defense firms "their own promoter in the Pentagon" - and recommends Congress strip the provision outright.
The note also supplies the missing context for why this is happening now. Section 219 is one piece of a broader, publicly acknowledged shift from aid to integration. The FY2026 NDAA already ordered a working group to study folding Israel into the National Technology and Industrial Base. A https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-intelligence-israel/ Senate intelligence authorization provision would mandate expanded intelligence sharing with Israel while limiting the president's power to curtail it. And the endgame is not hidden: the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/03/republicans-push-make-israel-pay-weapons-with-israels-blessing/ in June that Netanyahu himself backs the GOP effort to wind down the $3.3 billion in annual direct military aid in favor of integration and purchases, and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/1339 frames the transition, in its own title, as "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Initiative." The concern Quincy raises is the one every aid critic should sit with: a $3.3 billion check is at least a number - published, debated, and voted on every year. Integrated supply chains carry no price tag and come up for no annual vote.
The entrenchment aspect is serious:the F-35 program already ran this experiment, and it is worth being precise about who paid for it. When Turkey was expelled from the program in 2019 over its purchase of a Russian air-defense system, Turkish industry was building roughly 1,000 parts in the global supply chain - and the costs of cutting it loose landed on both sides. Turkey lost its planned jets and its production share. But the United States - the party doing the expelling - did not walk away clean: late parts deliveries spiked, finished-jet deliveries went delinquent, and the already-delayed program slid further behind schedule, all documented by the https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-339. Fuse two defense industrial bases deeply enough, and the option of changing course quietly disappears - whatever the next decade brings.
Speedrunning it...
On June 15, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) filed a bipartisan amendment to strike Section 219 outright. The Rules Committee https://www.military.com/israel-ndaa-provision-section-219-faces-bipartisan-blowback-from-house-lawmakers to make it in order - no debate, no vote. Then the process blew up on its own: on June 30, the rule governing the NDAA https://rules.house.gov/bill/119/hr-8800 on the House floor, 198-224, after thirteen Republicans revolted - not over Israel, but over Speaker Mike Johnson's decision to staple a contested voter-ID bill to the defense package. Johnson canceled the rest of the week and sent members home.
Opponents of Section 219 hoped the do-over would finally produce a clean vote. Instead, the Rules Committee reported a reworked rule, H. Res. 1438, on a party-line 8-4 vote Monday night - once again leaving the Massie-Khanna amendment off the approved list. The full House adopted the rule Tuesday, 214-211, a three-vote margin. The resolution sweeps six separate measures to the floor at once, puts the NDAA under a structured rule limiting amendments to a leadership-approved list, and closes off the other five bills entirely, according to a Capitol Wire https://www.thecapitolwire.com/bills/hres-1438-providing-for-consideration-of-the-bills-hr-8800-hr-8884-hr-7008-hr.html of the rule.
Massie posted minutes after the floor vote, saying "No debate or vote was allowed on section 219, integration of US military technology and supply chains with Israel's."
Unfortunately the Rule passed just now and no debate or vote was allowed on section 219, integration of US military technology and supply chains with Israel's.
The NDAA will receive a recorded vote tomorrow with section 219 in it. I'll vote no.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/2079645504921592320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene - out of Congress since January but still commanding one of the largest audiences in Republican politics - amplified him within hours, in considerably hotter language:
This will be the most watched recorded vote in modern times.
It will give a list of names of every Member of Congress who betrayed America, committed treason, and sold out the American people to a foreign country.
— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@FmrRepMTG) https://x.com/FmrRepMTG/status/2079683315280310463?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
She's not wrong - this roll call will be screenshotted, sorted into lists, and campaigned on for years - which is what happens when leadership denies members a clean vote and forces every position into a single up-or-down proxy.
Khanna, for his part, is already looking past Wednesday. "Thomas Massie and I have been fighting to stop the integration between our military and the Israeli military. It's shocking that this even has to be explained. It's about American sovereignty," https://news.antiwar.com/2026/07/21/house-rule-advances-2027-ndaa-with-section-to-integrate-us-and-israeli-militaries/, vowing to fight the provision in conference negotiations with the Senate. Civil liberties groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, had backed the strike amendment on the narrower ground that a change this significant https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-house-controversy-us-israel-defence-technology-cooperation-1809914.
The Alliance Is Already The Deepest On The Books
To understand what Section 219 accelerates, consider this: the US-Israel defense relationship is already the most extensive technology partnership Washington maintains with any nation it holds no mutual defense treaty with.
Under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, the United States committed $38 billion over ten years - $3.3 billion annually in foreign military financing plus $500 million a year for missile defense - the largest such pledge ever made to any country. Israel has been a designated Major Non-NATO Ally since 1987 and was elevated to "major strategic partner" by statute in 2014.
The hardware already flows both ways. Iron Dome is co-produced by Israel's Rafael and America's RTX; the US Army bought two batteries of its own, and the Marine Corps fields an interceptor derived from it. David's Sling and the Arrow interceptor family were co-developed with US funding and US primes. Israeli Trophy active-protection systems ride on American Abrams tanks. Israel was the first foreign air force to fly the F-35 in combat, and Israeli industry builds wing sets for the global F-35 program. The United States has pre-positioned a war reserve stockpile on Israeli soil for decades and has drawn it down repeatedly when inventories ran short elsewhere.
Congress has spent years bolting on the machinery - binational R&D foundations, working groups, counter-drone cooperation mandates. Section 219 does not start this trajectory. It codifies it, staffs it, and hands it a permanent owner.
So what would America be giving up when its defense industrial base is formally fused with a foreign state's?
- Strategic autonomy. Leverage runs both ways. When supply chains are integrated, every future policy disagreement - over war aims, over strikes, over settlements - collides with America's own production dependencies. Creating daylight, conditioning aid, or simply saying no becomes materially harder, by design. The legislative tracker https://www.anewpolicy.org/the-legislative-tracker/section-224-ndaa argues the initiative would entrench Israeli technology inside the US defense supply chain in a way that shields the relationship from the annual appropriations process - insulating it from Congress's power of the purse just as public support for unconditional aid is eroding.
- Escalation coupling. This is not hypothetical in July 2026. The United States is in an ongoing war with Iran; the Strait of Hormuz was shut to tanker traffic; the regional escalation ladder has been climbed in public. Critics ask the obvious question: when the industrial bases are fused, does the next conflict automatically become an American production commitment - before Congress votes on anything?
- The constitutional shortcut. Commitments of treaty-like depth and permanence are being created by simple majority, inside a must-pass bill, under a rule that forbids amendment. The Founders put a two-thirds Senate threshold on entangling alliances for a reason.
- Industrial priorities. With shipyards behind schedule, solid-rocket-motor bottlenecks, and munitions lines still scaling, the America First argument holds that marginal dollars and engineering talent should rebuild the domestic base before deepening integration offshore with anyone.
- Concentration risk. Any deep technology-sharing arrangement, with any partner, raises export-control, counterintelligence, and single-point-of-failure questions. Those questions were asked loudly and publicly about AUKUS. Here, the rule ensured they would not even be asked on the floor.
As Antiwar.com https://news.antiwar.com/2026/07/21/house-rule-advances-2027-ndaa-with-section-to-integrate-us-and-israeli-militaries/, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the integration plan as his own idea - begging the question of whose priorities a permanent Pentagon office would be built to serve.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 07/22/2026 - 09:05
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/today-congress-votes-integrate-us-military-tech-supply-chains-israel

2026-07-22 12:45:00 GMT

Chilling New Clues Challenge Suicide Claim In Los Alamos Lab Worker's Death
Chilling New Clues Challenge Suicide Claim In Los Alamos Lab Worker's Death
https://modernity.news/2026/07/21/chilling-new-clues-challenge-suicide-claim-in-los-alamos-lab-workers-death/,
Fresh evidence recovered from the remote New Mexico forest where Los Alamos National Laboratory administrative assistant Melissa Casias was found has blown major holes in the suicide narrative.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Cassiasmod.jpg?itok=cUwK26qR
An independent team hired by her own family discovered bones, torn and bloody clothing, orange peels, strands of what appears to be horse hair, shredded paper that may contain her handwriting, and a tobacco pouch - none of which New Mexico State Police recovered after clearing the scene.
Casias, 53, vanished from her Ranchos de Taos home on June 26, 2025. She left without her purse, keys or wallet. Surveillance captured her walking alone eastward on State Road 518 around 2:20 p.m.
Both her work and personal phones were found at the house, factory-reset and wiped of all data. A blood drop was also discovered inside the residence. Nearly eleven months later, on May 28, 2026, a hiker located her skeletal remains in the McGaffey Ridge area of Carson National Forest next to a handgun her family says did not belong to her.
Initial CT scans showed no gunshot wound and no projectile in the skull. No casing was recovered at the scene. The remote location is difficult to reach on foot, requiring multiple rest stops and water.
Now, new details have raised further serious questions.
Family attorney David Adams of Parnall and Adams Law said an independent search conducted in late June - after police had already cleared the area - turned up the additional items. "The family really wasn't expecting to find any additional information... it certainly turned out to be something much, much more," Adams stated.
He noted the presence of possible horse hair and the rugged terrain: "In my mind, when you see that, you kind of go, okay, well, I could see that you would need a horse to get her up there if you were moving a body, for instance, because how you would otherwise do that."
Melissa Casias, missing for years, was found dead in a New Mexico forest, with her family uncovering shocking new evidence that upends the initial investigation. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber https://x.com/jessecordweber?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw reports. https://t.co/WFN4UT0Viq
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) https://x.com/LawCrimeNetwork/status/2072326861862904187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Adams also questioned the tobacco pouch, pointing out Casias did not use tobacco, and raised chain-of-custody concerns: "There becomes a question of a chain of custody... Could law enforcement have spat a tobacco pouch in the crime scene? I mean, certainly possible. I mean, that would be an example of just poor training."
The family has rejected claims that Casias intended to disappear or end her life. Earlier reporting revealed she left home with her toothbrush and thyroid medication - items one investigator described as "things that might indicate you're planning to stay alive."
Adams said the family hired his firm after spotting multiple red flags. The new evidence has been turned over to authorities.
The official cause of death remains pending from the Office of the Medical Investigator nearly two months after the remains were identified. The FBI, ordered to examine possible links to other cases, has had no contact with the family according to Adams.
Former FBI agent Ben Hansen assessed the Casias case as roughly "80 percent foul play" and floated the possibility of directed-energy weapons or voice-to-skull technology that could influence behavior without leaving conventional ballistics.
Casias is one of several New Mexico individuals connected to nuclear facilities who disappeared under similar circumstances.
Her case sits inside a larger cluster that first drew national attention when retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland - widely described as a UFO "gatekeeper" with oversight of top-secret space weapons and advanced aerospace programs - vanished from his Albuquerque home on February 27, 2026, just days after President Trump ordered full disclosure of all UFO and UAP records.
Subsequent cases included a NASA nuclear propulsion expert found charred inside a crashed Tesla.
A NASA-linked aerospace engineer and his family killed in a plane crash.
The death of anti-gravity researcher Amy Eskridge (who had reported directed-energy harassment).
The disappearance of JPL rocket scientist Monica Reza.
And additional personnel tied to nuclear components, rocket alloys and classified aerospace work, including the vanishing of Steven Garcia, a nuclear contractor with top clearance.
By mid-April 2026 the documented total had reached at least eleven. Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker previously noted that administrative staff in high-clearance labs "would basically be in the know on what's going on" and that it "wouldn't be the first time their administrative assistant has been targeted."
Two major sets of previously classified UFO/UAP disclosure files have since been released under the Trump administration. President Trump has publicly addressed the string of cases, stating there is "not much of a connection" and describing many as individual matters while pledging a full report.
NOW – Trump says string of missing and dead scientists are not connected: "There's not much of a connection." https://t.co/BSaOPYDOuo
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) https://x.com/disclosetv/status/2049936445125660820?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The latest reporting on the missed evidence at the Casias scene only deepens the questions surrounding both her death and the wider pattern. Officials continue to treat each incident in isolation. Families and independent investigators keep finding anomalies that do not fit the tidy explanations being offered.
America's nuclear and advanced-technology workforce is not disposable. When personnel with access to the most sensitive programs keep vanishing or turning up dead under irregular circumstances - especially amid long-overdue transparency on related technologies - the public has every right to demand answers that match the seriousness of the losses.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Wed, 07/22/2026 - 08:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chilling-new-clues-challenge-suicide-claim-los-alamos-lab-workers-death

2026-07-21 21:40:00 GMT

This Sex Robot Is Going To 'Teach' Your Kids In Schools
This Sex Robot Is Going To 'Teach' Your Kids In Schools
https://modernity.news/2026/07/20/this-sex-robot-is-going-to-teach-your-kids-in-schools/,
A rural New York school district on the Seneca Nation reservation is set to become one of the first in the United States to place a lifelike humanoid robot in front of high school students.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/robotmod.jpg?itok=PoFwT5oQ
Starting this fall, Salamanca High School will introduce "Sally," an M-Series robot built by Realbotix, to assist in coding, robotics, and AI classes for 11th and 12th graders.
Sally comes with brown hair, silicone skin, a Western New York accent, upper-body movement, and facial expressions. She remains seated and cannot walk the room. Students will log in with unique identification codes so the machine can recognize them and pick up previous interactions.
New York school district to become one of the first in the United States to introduce a humanoid robot in the classroom.
'Sally' will have a Western New York accent and will teach 11th and 12th-grade students at Salamanca High School.
Sally costs less than the average teacher's... https://t.co/gYqAL19QK0
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2078947054345408995?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The full package - robot plus the accompanying Optio AI tutor platform - cost the district $57,590, a discounted figure below the average New York teacher salary and well under the company's listed starting price near $95,000.
"The Realbotix educational robot will never replace teachers, staff members, or meaningful human interaction," the Salamanca City Central School District stated. Instead, they describe it as an instructional tool loaded only with district-approved curriculum, historical information about Salamanca, and content designed to encourage critical thinking rather than simply spit out answers.
The system reportedly operates offline with no internet connection, collects no personally identifiable information, records neither video nor audio, and transmits nothing back to the company. If asked something outside its knowledge base, it is programmed to reply "I don't know."
NY school to introduce first humanoid robot in US classroom – and vows 'Sally' will never replace teachers https://t.co/WZ7LTsbWZF https://t.co/9nP3aiSieH
— New York Post (@nypost) https://x.com/nypost/status/2078454305346998592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Realbotix CEO Andrew Kiguel called the deployment "a landmark moment for both AI and humanoid robotics." He added: "We are moving beyond lab demonstrations and pilots to deliver real, embodied AI directly into classrooms, supporting teachers, engaging students, and proving that advanced robotics can thrive in live educational environments. Salamanca marks the beginning of a new era where humanoid robots and intelligent AI assistants become standard tools in STEM education."
Superintendent Dr. Mark Beehler expressed enthusiasm for giving students "a safe, Salamanca-specific AI tutor" and educators customized tools. The pilot begins with students in the district's Woz ED AI and Robotics pathway - curriculum inspired by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak - and could expand to roughly 500 high school students if deemed successful.
Students will also interact with digital avatars of the robot on laptops for after-hours tutoring, homework help, and support in multiple languages.
The company behind Sally has a more colorful history. Realbotix previously acquired the parent firm of RealDoll, the well-known manufacturer of hyper-realistic sex dolls and companion robots. Officials stress that the education division operates separately in staff, facilities, and technology, with a planned ownership separation, yet the connection has not gone unnoticed.
https://t.co/RqrC6Fnbx0
— Q???.???? (@qaggnews) https://x.com/qaggnews/status/2078680634126414002?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Reactions on X captured the skepticism. One popular reply asked bluntly, "Why does the robot have lip injections?" Another observed the contradiction in officials promising robots will never replace teachers while simultaneously noting the machine costs less than a human educator.
Why does the robot have lip injections?
— JoshHoldsCourt (@JoshHoldsCourt) https://x.com/JoshHoldsCourt/status/2078947702902325326?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
But why does she have to look like a porn star? Why not more like this? A more mom-like figure? https://t.co/EiUdCkuJtM
— K J Gillenwater (@kjgillenwater) https://x.com/kjgillenwater/status/2078948721140863417?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Why do they have such botox poofy lips? lol https://t.co/gCrBsvNaGj
— Done With Democrats (@DoneWDemocrats) https://x.com/DoneWDemocrats/status/2079003917455949913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
They purchased the robot from a sex robot company.
And are now putting it with children.
I'm not kidding. Look it up.
— DavidHasbun (@TheDavidHasbun) https://x.com/TheDavidHasbun/status/2078977655295385625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Critics pointed to the company's adult-product roots and questioned the wisdom of placing such technology in front of teenagers in an economically challenged community. Homeschool advocates seized on the moment to argue that parents should simply keep their children out of systems experimenting with this level of automation.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via https://pauljosephwatson.locals.com/support or check out our unique https://modernity.news/shop. Follow us on X https://x.com/modernitynews.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 07/21/2026 - 17:40
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/sex-robot-going-teach-your-kids-schools

2026-07-21 16:20:00 GMT

Feds Flagged Daszak As 'An Extremely High Person Of Interest' - Then The FBI Told Them To Stand Down
Feds Flagged Daszak As 'An Extremely High Person Of Interest' - Then The FBI Told Them To Stand Down
Customs officers spent three days building a border examination for the man at the center of the COVID origins fight - until Biden's FBI put a stop to it with a single email.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Peter-Daszak-1200x798_0.jpg?itok=d9pDP5tS
On February 2, 2021, a national targeting security specialist at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center circulated a referral to colleagues across the agency. The subject was Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, scheduled to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport three days later aboard Qatar Airways flight 701 from Doha, arriving 2:25 p.m. He was returning from the World Health Organization's mission to Wuhan investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The referral asked that Daszak be considered for a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination - a secondary inspection that can include questioning and a review of electronic devices. Which, now we know, never happened.
Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, https://www.paul.senate.gov/chairman-paul-releases-documents-showing-cbp-prepared-to-question-and-search-peter-daszak-until-the-fbi-stepped-in/ the underlying records Monday. They show CBP flagged Daszak as "an extremely high person of interest," built out a formal targeting event, and then stood down two days before his flight at the request of the FBI's New York Field Office.
Rand Paul releases docs that reveal FBI halted border inspection of virus researcher over Wuhan lab links | Louis Casiano, Fox News
Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were preparing to question a British zoologist and disease ecology expert upon his return to… https://t.co/e6IouRls9Q
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) https://x.com/OwenGregorian/status/2079562215779160380?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
What The Targeting Package Says
According to the materials, officers noted Daszak's affiliation with Zhengli Shi - the WIV virologist known as "Bat Woman" - and that EcoHealth and Daszak had been working with her for more than fifteen years. They listed him as principal investigator on two NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grants: 1U01AI151797-01, "Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Viruses Emergence in EID Hotspots of Southeast Asia," and 2R01AI110964-06, "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," running June 2014 through June 2024. A search of the latter grant, the officers wrote, returned 19 publications, many authored by Shi - who listed the grant on her own resume despite not appearing as a principal investigator on it.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/daszak%20shi_0_9.jpg?itok=gQrwLhx9
The assessment that has drawn the most attention is blunter: "Much of the funding DASZAK receives is put towards gain of function research." The officers defined the term in the document itself as experimentation aiming to increase a pathogen's transmissibility or virulence.
They also flagged EcoHealth's contracts with the Department of Homeland Security's Chemical and Biological Threat Division, noting that much of what the organization studied was likely subject to nondisclosure agreements or export controls - a live concern for someone crossing a border. And they noted NIH had publicly asked Daszak to retrieve the original type-specimen WIV used for genetic analysis and return it to the United States, along with explaining aspects of the collaboration including cell phone data.
The Questions They Planned To Ask
The request section reads like a deposition outline. Why was Daszak chosen for the WHO team? Where in China did he go, and where did he stay? Did the team visit the WIV - and if so, which areas did it inspect, and whom did it meet? Did it visit the Chinese Center for Disease Control? Did it meet any other Chinese government officials?
Then the physical questions. Did Daszak collect biological samples during the trip? Was he traveling with any? Had he mailed samples back to the United States? Had he taken materials with him to China? Had he maintained contact with anyone at the WIV, and if so, how often and about what?
The final line asks about the purpose of separate travel between January 4 and January 7, 2021 - a trip the documents do not otherwise explain.
'Please Disregard Request For Inspection'
On February 4 at 12:16 p.m., a CBP deputy chief officer serving as the agency's Joint Terrorism Task Force liaison sent a message to a long list of recipients, the addresses now redacted. It was brief. "Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject below."
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HNwWux_XEAAUc20_80.jpg?itok=n45w1SOM
The subject line of the referral chain was amended to read "DISREGARD." A follow-up instructed colleagues to disregard the inspection request and said the subject would be routed elsewhere for any requests. The National Targeting Center's own summary of the episode closes the matter in eight words: "FBI requested not to stop subject. No further NTC action."
The documents do not say why. No rationale appears anywhere in the release. An FBI request of this kind can reflect an active investigation the bureau does not want disturbed, an interest in protecting sources or methods, or a separate arrangement already in place. None of that is in the record, and Paul's release does not claim to know. Fox News https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-releases-docs-reveal-fbi-halted-border-inspection-virus-researcher-wuhan-lab-links that the bureau did not respond to its request for comment.
Nor are these classified records, despite some coverage describing them that way. The pages carry a Law Enforcement Sensitive / For Official Use Only caveat - restricted handling, but unclassified.
The Man In The Targeting Package
Daszak was then president of EcoHealth Alliance, the New York nonprofit that routed NIH funding to bat coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and one of ten members of the WHO team whose selection drew criticism at the time given his financial and professional entanglement with the lab the mission was meant to examine.
What the WHO team's critics did not know at the time was the full contents of a proposal Daszak had assembled three years earlier. In March 2018, EcoHealth submitted a $14.2 million bid to DARPA titled "Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses" - DEFUSE - with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Ralph Baric's lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, and several other partners. The proposal set out plans to build full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses, to screen for receptor binding domains suited to human cells, and to insert proteolytic cleavage sites into bat coronavirus spike proteins, testing the results in mice engineered to carry human receptors. Early drafts later obtained under FOIA show the authors were specifically interested in furin cleavage sites at the S1/S2 junction. DARPA rejected the bid, citing in part gain-of-function concerns. The following year, a novel bat-derived coronavirus carrying a furin cleavage site at precisely that junction began infecting people in Wuhan - https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nih-virologist-vincent-munster-caught-smuggling-deadly-viruses-us-fbi-investigating absent from every closely related sarbecovirus catalogued to date.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/defuse35shockhorrorimage1_0.jpg?itok=CQyUwFEt
DEFUSE never officially became public through Daszak. It surfaced in September 2021, when the online research group DRASTIC obtained leaked copies and The Intercept published an account - eight months after the WHO mission he sat on had returned from Wuhan, and seven months after CBP's targeting package was quietly shelved. Daszak's defense has been consistent and narrow: "The DARPA proposal was not funded. Therefore, the work was not done. Simple." EcoHealth has argued the project required a budget and multi-lab coordination it never received, so the experiments could not have been performed. The counter-case is equally specific: internal drafts show Daszak advising Baric and Shi that he wanted the proposal to emphasize the American side of the work to keep DARPA "comfortable," even though WIV would do much of it - and separately, virologist Kristian Andersen, a prominent advocate of natural origin, has argued the formal proposal specified cleavage sites at a different position on the spike than the one SARS-CoV-2 carries. None of that was disclosed while Daszak was helping investigate the lab in question.
What followed is now well documented. After the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found EcoHealth had failed to report gain-of-function experiments at WIV, ignored oversight requests, and filed a required research report two years late, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-suspends-ecohealth-alliance-peter-daszak-after-covid-19-evidence-uncovered-house the organization's funding in May 2024 and opened debarment proceedings. In January 2025 it https://comer.house.gov/2025/1/breaking-hhs-formally-debars-ecohealth-alliance-dr-peter-daszak-after-covid-select-reveals-pandemic-era-wrongdoing both EcoHealth and Daszak personally for five years. EcoHealth terminated his employment effective January 6, 2025, and the organization is now defunct. Daszak has never been charged with a crime, has consistently denied wrongdoing, and has argued the investigations were politically driven. He now heads Nature Health Global, a nonprofit working on ecological research and pandemic prevention.
The intelligence picture also moved. The FBI assessed with moderate confidence that a laboratory incident was the likely origin; the Department of Energy reached the same conclusion with low confidence. Last year the White House https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/lab-leak-white-house-unveils-massive-report-true-origins-covid-19 a comprehensive origins report naming a lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research as the most likely explanation.
The Reading Room - And What Comes Next Week
"They told the public a COVID lab leak 'wasn't plausible,'" Paul wrote on X. "Their own private messages say otherwise. Today I'm launching The Reading Room where the public can review records related to my ongoing investigation - not just conclusions but the actual documents." He added: "This isn't the whole story. It's the start of one." The archive sits at paul.senate.gov/readingroom and will be updated on a rolling basis.
🧵They told the public a COVID lab leak “wasn’t plausible.” Their own private messages say otherwise. Today I’m launching The Reading Room where the public can review records related to my ongoing investigation – not just conclusions but the actual documents.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) https://x.com/SenRandPaul/status/2079309625447301620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The timing is not incidental. As Just The News https://justthenews.com/government/congress/rand-paul-releases-database-records-related-his-covid-19-pandemic-origin-probe, the documents landed just over a week before Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify before Paul's committee on whether he misled Congress about NIAID funding for gain-of-function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
One detail in the file is easy to miss. The email chain was forwarded internally on September 3, 2025 - four and a half years after the fact, and presumably in response to the committee's records demand. Whatever the FBI's reason for calling off the stop in February 2021, it stayed inside CBP's system until a Senate chairman went looking for it.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 07/21/2026 - 12:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/feds-flagged-daszak-extremely-high-person-interest-then-fbi-told-them-stand-down

2026-07-21 13:55:00 GMT

Two Saudi Crude-Laden Tankers Make U-turns In Red Sea Amid Houthi 'Blockade', Oil Surges
Two Saudi Crude-Laden Tankers Make U-turns In Red Sea Amid Houthi 'Blockade', Oil Surges
Summary
- Shipping disruption: Houthi threats forced two Saudi oil tankers to turn around in the Red Sea as Hormuz traffic slowed sharply after more tanker attacks.
- Escalation in Gulf: Iran claimed strikes on infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, while Kuwait reported a second day of attacks on power and desalination plants.
- Trump vows more to come: The US launched fresh strikes on Iranian targets, Trump vowed retaliation, and Reuters reported a proposed 10-day ceasefire.
- Oil surges: Crude prices hit multi-week highs amid shipping disruptions, with warnings oil could reach $120 if fighting continues.
- Pentagon scrutiny: The New York Times reported the Pentagon withheld information about dozens of US troops injured in Iranian attacks before the deadly Jordan missile strike.
Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by August 31?
Yes 14% · No 87%
https://polymarket.com/event/strait-of-hormuz-traffic-returns-to-normal-by-august-31-20260702154212320Two tankers carrying Saudi crude make U-turns in Red Sea after Houthi warning
The just-declared (as of Monday) Houthi blockade on Saudi maritime shipping has already begun to witness ill-effects, as reports emerge of two oil tankers having made U-turns while initially en route toward the Suez Canal. The reports say their crews received threats from Houthi militants in Yemen. The emerging https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/7/21/iran-war-live-us-launches-10th-night-of-strikes-tehran-attacks-kuwait?update=4793372:
Two ⁠oil ⁠tankers which loaded Saudi crude for China ⁠and India made ⁠U-turns in the Red Sea and headed toward ‌the Suez following a warning from Yemen’s Houthi militia.
...The group, in an email sent to shipping companies, warned them not to load or discharge cargo at Saudi Arabian ports and said such activity may result in being targeted “in any location”.
Dollar and yields spiking as oil rises.... West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has reached six-week highs on Tuesday.
MAP OF THE DAY: Starting to see some oil tankers either U-turning or slowing down on their approach to the Bab El-Mandeb Strait (near Yemen). First sign that the Houthi treat is having an impact -- HOWEVER, many otherS are still going ahead from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea https://t.co/7aYhuLz5b9
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2079555072199893353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
IRGC Says it Attack Amazon's Main Data Hub in Bahrain
Amid a spate of fresh attacks on Gulf states, the IRGC claimed its cruise missiles destroyed Amazon's central data infrastructure in Bahrain and also hit US air defense systems. Bahraini, US and Amazon officials issued no response in the immediate aftermath.
The IRGC said its Aerospace Force targeted and "destroyed" the central data infrastructure hub in Bahrain using several cruise missiles. It further stated that "US air defense systems and radar installations in the Bahraini areas of Muharraq and Riffa were also targeted" in the attack.
If accurate this highlights yet again that billions of dollars worth of infrastructure is going up in flames in the Gulf, and that defense against missiles and drones has been waning
Kuwait Water Desalination & Power Plants Attacked for 2nd Consecutive Day
For a second consecutive day, Kuwait is reporting attacks on power-generation and water-desalination plants. The fresh assault caused fires and disrupted electricity generation, amid an emergency response and efforts begin restoring affected units.
Further attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan are also being reported, as well as new IRGC strikes on foreign tankers seeking 'unauthorized' transit of the Strait of Hormuz. According to some latest via Al Jazeera:
- A desalination facility and power plants caught on fire and suffered serious damage in Kuwait after new Iranian strikes targeted the crucial facilities, along with areas of Bahrain and Jordan, following a 10th-consecutive night of US bombing.
- “Massive fires” broke out on two tankers that “took an unsafe route” in the Strait of Hormuz, says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
On Tuesday Kuwait has confirmed it is dealing with inbound Iranian drone and missile attacks yet again, also with sirens continuing to sound in Bahrain.
Iran Seeks To Hold Hormuz Leverage 'At All Costs'
Despite daily US saturation strikes on Iran, and in turn Iran's daily attacks on Gulf states, nothing has really changed in what seems a stalemated situation and quagmire.
Amin Saikal, emeritus professor at Australian National University, has https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/7/21/iran-war-live-us-launches-10th-night-of-strikes-tehran-attacks-kuwait that "Both sides have really been trying to inflict heavy damage on each other, and they’ve come really to a point of saturation in many ways." He continued, "Logically, that should really lead them to negotiation. But of course, that is not really happening at the moment simply because the United States wants to gain control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s something the Iranians will never give up."
Saikal called Hormuz “a reward” for Tehran, while pointing out that "Because of this unprovoked war, the Iranians have gained this leverage, and they want to retain it at all costs."
Still, President Trump is warning that Iran will pay "many times over" for the deaths of American soldiers, and has said he gave his Pentagon leaders directives for carrying this out.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-21_06-58-23.png?itok=_DehYmnK
10th Strait Day of Escalation
The tit-for-tat escalation between the US and Iran entered its tenth day as another tanker was struck in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Houthis threatened shipping at a second strategic chokepoint in the https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-tells-houthis-close-red-sea-energy-chokepoint-if-trump-bombs-power-grid.
US Central Command launched strikes targeting Iranian command and control centers, missile and drone launch sites, and air defenses to "further degrade Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz."
Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed by an Iranian attack on Jordan on July 17, 2026
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Pvt-Gonzales-819x1024.jpg?itok=EmA5KMxN
President Trump wrote on Truth Social, "Every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over!"
Still, Pakistan and Qatar are urging both sides to return to their positions before the latest escalation began on July 9. Iran says it remains open to diplomacy but will not negotiate under attack, while the Trump team has signaled that strikes will continue until Tehran stops attacking tankers and bulk carriers in the critical waterway. Reuters reported that mediators have proposed a 10-day ceasefire.
Hormuz Traffic at Near Standstill as Another Tanker Struck
Shipping flows in the Hormuz have all but slowed, according to new Bloomberg data. As of Tuesday morning, just six vessels have transited the critical waterway. The data doesn't account for ships turning off transponders.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snag_9169da5.png?itok=omP6ppwU
Bloomberg reports that Iran struck another tanker in the strait:
Visible traffic through Hormuz came to a near standstill on Monday following Iranian attacks on vessels over the weekend.
An oil supertanker called the Acheloos and a smaller fuel tanker were both struck in the waterway, according to Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., the ships' manager.
Early Tuesday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said that a tanker had been struck by an unknown projectile in the strait northeast of Oman's Limah, citing multiple reports, without identifying the vessel. The notice indicates a separate attack to those on the Dynacom tankers.
The flare-up in violence sent Brent crude oil futures surging in recent weeks to over $90 a barrel, with Goldman commodity expert Daan Struyven warning on Monday that oil prices could rally to $120 if there is no de-escalation.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snag_914b85b.png?itok=LJRT0J2y
"Escalation in the Middle East and the decline in estimated Persian Gulf flows to below 45% of pre-war levels have pushed oil prices back up," Struyven said in a note to clients.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-21_06-53-48.png?itok=Wo4FWS8e
Related:
- https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/weve-burned-through-all-buffers-oil-traders-warn-market-running-fumes
US Consumers Feeling the Pinch
Meanwhile, US consumers are feeling the pinch again at the pump, with the national average for regular https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/us-gas-prices-cross-politically-sensitive-4-level-closely-watched-trump once more. This is the politically sensitive line in the sand at which the Trump administration takes notice and consumer behavior begins to shift down at convenience stores, gas stations, and QSRs (quick-service restaurants).
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snag_404a4c3.png?itok=g8trrhur
Pattern of Pentagon Concealing US Casualties: NYT
The New York Times reported Monday that the Pentagon withheld information that US troops had been injured in Iranian attacks on Jordan in the week before the missile strikes that killed at least two US soldiers and left one missing.
"Those attacks injured dozens of U.S. service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters," the https://archive.vn/rytER#selection-8313.0-8313.271 says. "But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted."
The slain soldiers in Jordan were reportedly staying in flimsy prefabricated housing at the time of the deadly ballistic missile attack. US officials described a situation that suggests American forces were essentially sitting ducks, and that not enough has been done to protect the Pentagon's Mideast bases.
NYT painted a picture of a US admin pattern of concealing the true extent of American casualties. "In statements after airstrikes against Iranian military sites last week, U.S. Central Command said it was retaliating for Iran’s attacks against commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, never mentioning Iran’s strikes on bases in the region, including in Jordan," it noted.
Overnight Headlines
courtesy of Bloomberg...
US-Iran Tit-For-Tat
- The US and Iran have exchanged strikes for a 10th consecutive day, with US Central Command targeting Iranian military command centers, launch sites, maritime capabilities, and air defenses.
- Iran has retaliated by attacking US military sites in Kuwait and Jordan.
- Trump vowed Tehran "will pay" after Iran killed three US soldiers.
- According to the Washington Post, US intelligence reports suggest US strikes are unlikely to move Iran.
- Iran's Khorramabad area in Lorestan Province was attacked earlier today.
Diplomacy & Ceasefire Efforts
- Iran's Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni began meetings Tuesday with mediators in Pakistan as diplomats sought to salvage a collapsed interim deal.
- Mediators have proposed a 10-day ceasefire between Iran and the US to revive the interim deal, according to an unidentified senior Iranian official cited by Reuters.
- Iran's president said communication with Supreme Leader Khamenei has increased, per Tasnim reports.
Regional Risks
- The Kaifan, an oil-products tanker owned by Kuwait Oil Tanker Co., was struck by an unknown projectile in the Strait of Hormuz northeast of Oman's Limah.
- The Houthi militant group in Yemen is threatening to blockade Saudi Arabia and target shipping in the Red Sea, adding to regional maritime risks.
- Southeast Asian nations expressed "serious concern" over the conflict, warning of spillover effects on regional trade, food security, and energy markets.
Energy & Market Impact
- Goldman Sachs says Brent crude could top $120 per barrel by the fourth quarter if Strait of Hormuz disruptions persist, though its base case remains $80 per barrel assuming de-escalation.
- European natural gas futures extended gains, surging more than 20% over the previous seven sessions, as the conflict tightens supply ahead of winter.
- Pakistan and Bangladesh were forced to buy some of their most expensive LNG shipments in years due to supply disruptions from the conflict. Pakistan LNG paid about $21.88 per MMBtu, its highest since 2022, according to traders with knowledge of the matter.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 07/21/2026 - 09:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-iran-fighting-enters-10th-day-tanker-hit-hormuz-houthis-threaten-red-sea-chokepoint

2026-07-21 09:45:00 GMT

Blackstone Just Made A Physical AI Bet On Actuator-Maker Powering Humanoid Robots
Blackstone Just Made A Physical AI Bet On Actuator-Maker Powering Humanoid Robots
Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, is making a big investment in Futronic, a 33-year-old automotive supplier whose motion-control technology has been adapted for industrial and humanoid robots, according to https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/blackstone-invests-south-korean-robotics-supplier-futronic-2026-07-20/.
The deal values the South Korean firm at about 1 trillion won ($676.04 million), according to a person with knowledge of the matter. -RTRS
The deal comes just ahead of the expected rise of physical AI, with forecasts from top desks indicating that global robot deliveries could begin ramping up later this year before accelerating more materially in 2027.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/img4_article_2c39fd740f.png?itok=yoeMcrmW
A recent Deutsche Bank report shows that global shipments are poised to surge.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-06-15_13-54-06.png?itok=8YqhMsO8
Latest coverage:
- https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/mitsubishi-motors-joins-physical-ai-race-humanoid-robot-production-deal
- https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/just-beginning-japan-plays-24-billion-nvidia-rubin-chip-bet-power-humanoid-robots
We previously provided readers with the report "Current State Of Physical AI: Everything You Need To Know," offering a way to gain exposure to the industrial automation and humanoid robotics space. https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/current-state-physical-ai-everything-you-need-know-through-citis-lens.
To sum up, the Blackstone deal suggests that the asset manager is positioning for the rise of physical AI, aiming to capture alpha through the company that produces actuators, motors, sensors, controllers, and other mechatronic systems.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Tue, 07/21/2026 - 05:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/blackstone-just-made-physical-ai-bet-actuator-maker-power-humanoid-robots

2026-07-19 20:55:00 GMT

Trump Endorses Graham's Sister For Full Term, Shattering Expectations Of Short Stay
Trump Endorses Graham's Sister For Full Term, Shattering Expectations Of Short Stay
Following the sudden July 11 death of Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster triggered eye-rolling across America when he appointed Graham's sister Darline Nordone to take over the seat. At the time, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/graham-dead-race-both-temporary-and-permanent-senate-successors of the unqualified sibling was widely understood as a mere interim honor, with Nordone serving as a placeholder pending the outcome of a special primary election to choose a Republican candidate for November's previously-scheduled election for the seat. Now, President Trump has asked Nordone to run in that primary race and pursue the full 6-year term that will start in January.
"During her visit, I asked Darline, for the Good of our Nation, to run for the U.S. Senate in the Special Republican Primary on Tuesday, August 11, 2026," Trump https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116936914779266256 on Truth Social. "I hope Darline does this, in that there would be nobody better to honor the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey. Darline...comes from an absolutely incredible family [and] has been a WINNER all of her life...RUN, DARLINE, RUN!"
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/ChatGPT%20Image%20Jul%2019%2C%202026%2C%2001_16_40%20AM.jpeg?itok=-DyMkxfp
While Nordone herself hasn't announced that intention, there are reports that she's "considering" it, and it's highly unlikely Trump would have bothered with a lengthy public endorsement unless Nordone was on the verge of jumping in the abbreviated primary race that already has less than a month left in it.
At the press conference announcing her interim appointment, Nordone's https://time.com/article/2026/07/13/darline-nordone-lindsey-graham-sister-south-carolina-senate-trump-mcmaster/ reinforced universal expectations of a short stay in the Senate:
“It is such a privilege to get to finish some of [my brother's] important work, and I promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States.”
Nordone has never held an elected office. She's a commissioner on the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, and previously held a communications role in the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department. Trump said he personally pitched Nordone on going after the seat on a permanent basis when she visited him in the Oval Office on Thursday.
So far, three people have officially announced they're running for the seat: businessman Mark Lynch, who was trounced by Graham in the June GOP primary; Ralph Norman, a 73-year-old US House member; and Duke Buckner, a lawyer who has previously run for the state's heavily-Democratic 6th Congressional District seat. Shortly after Graham died, Norman asked Trump for an endorsement. The president was said to have replied, "https://www.zerohedge.com/political/graham-dead-race-both-temporary-and-permanent-senate-successors." In the meantime, Norman has been endorsed by Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
Following Lord Lindsey’s passing, Darline, Duchess of Charleston, ascended the High Chamber: crowned Baroness of the Palmetto Seat. Her brother's fiefdom and noble lineage are preserved. Long live the House of Graham and DEI! Aristocrats celebrate in Alexandria and Tel-Aviv. https://t.co/y5JGzSwz5v
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/2077131191824552085?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The candidate list had been expected to grow, but Trump's preemptive endorsement of Nordone could have a chilling effect. Rep. Nancy Mace, who's poised to hand over her House seat in January -- having foregone reelection for a failed bid for governor -- https://x.com/NancyMace/status/2076301493284618708?s=20 on social media within hours of Graham's death. On Friday, https://www.axios.com/2026/07/17/mace-norman-trump-graham-senate reported she's still actively considering it. Rep. Russell Fry and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette are among https://www.zerohedge.com/political/graham-dead-race-both-temporary-and-permanent-senate-successors whose names have circulated. An Emerson College poll found that a Trump endorsement would likely sway https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article316533341.html of South Carolina GOP voters, but an equal percent claimed it wouldn't have an effect. If no candidate scores not just a plurality but a majority of the votes on Aug. 11, the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff election on Aug. 25.
Graham was a chief champion of the West's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and a zealous collaborator with Israel in promoting American warfare against Iran. To the extent that Nordone would attempt to pick up those torches and run with them, she's sure to garner the backing of the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby. That said, it's far from clear how effective she would be, given her utter lack of experience in Washington politics.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sun, 07/19/2026 - 16:55
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-endorses-grahams-sister-full-term-shattering-expectations-short-stay

2026-07-17 19:40:00 GMT

PJM Capacity Auction Results Compound "Alarm Bells": FERC Chairman Swett
PJM Capacity Auction Results Compound "Alarm Bells": FERC Chairman Swett
By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive
The https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-capacity-auction-price-cap-reserve-shortfall/825282/ cleared nearly 7 GW below its reliability target and only drew roughly 500 MW of new power supply, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Laura Swett said Thursday.
“These numbers compound the alarm bells for a call to action in PJM,” Swett said during the agency’s monthly meeting. “Am I surprised that PJM failed to deliver? No, I am not,” Swett said later during a media briefing.
However, FERC isn’t trying to “target” PJM, she said.
“This is a problem that involves people at the federal level, at the market level, the state level, the registered entities, the market participants … all the utilities, the companies there,” Swett said. “This is a very complex issue that everyone has to coalesce around, coming up with a solution.”
FERC aims to address some of the problems at a technical conference on July 23 focused on https://www.ferc.gov/media/third-supplemental-notice-commission-led-technical-conference-docket-no-ad26-7-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/FERC%20chair%20laura%20swett.jpg?itok=2KCqBueU
“The current stakeholder process in PJM is slow where it must be fast, opaque where it must be transparent, and vulnerable to vetoes and agenda control exactly when the region needs immediate action,” Swett said.
From the conference, FERC expects to get “ideas on paper, on a record,” Swett said. “I am very optimistic that certain proposals will be front runners that are grounded in the record that we collect next week, so that there should be a more clear path forward for PJM after that.”
FERC Commissioner Lindsay See also highlighted the need for reforms at PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, serving 67 million people in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions.
“PJM has to be able to get reforms across the finish line in a timely and transparent way,” See said. “Part of that also includes the need for a governance structure that can not only deliver concrete results but that can give parties the type of confidence in those reforms that’s necessary to drive investment where and when it’s needed.”
Last week, FERC Commissioner David LaCerte said the https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-interconnection-stakeholders-ferc-lacerte/824832/
Here are five other takeaways from FERC’s meeting.
Data center reliability standards
FERC set deadlines for the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to develop https://www.ferc.gov/media/e-1-rd26-7-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd — data centers and crypto-mining operations — and the rules for registering those loads by Dec. 31. The grid watchdog is already developing those standards and rules.
FERC also directed NERC to file by March 1 a plan detailing the next steps in its standards development process for computational loads.
“I applaud NERC’s proactive efforts on these matters,” Swett said. FERC set the deadlines because “they are a great mechanism for producing results,” she said.
As part of its https://www.nerc.com/initiatives/large-loads-action-plan?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd, NERC expects to issue the proposed reliability standards and draft registry criteria for public comment in August, it said Thursday.
FERC orders CAISO, SPP Western seams report
FERC ordered the California Independent System Operator and the Southwest Power Pool to file a report by Sept. 30 on how they plan to https://www.ferc.gov/media/e-2-ad26-10-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd and neighboring balancing authority areas in the West. The CAISO-run Extended Day-Ahead Market started operating in May. SPP expanded its footprint into the Western Interconnection in April, and its Markets+ initiative is expected to go live in October 2027.
“While the increased deployment of organized markets is intended to bring substantial reliability and economic benefits to the West, the resulting seams create reliability, operational, and market efficiency hurdles that warrant proactive attention,” FERC said.
Earlier this month, CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer said the grid operator was working with SPP to https://www.caiso.com/documents/ceo-report-jul-2026.pdf?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd before Markets+ begins operating.
Complaint over PSE&G cost recovery advances
FERC advanced a complaint over https://www.ferc.gov/media/e-4-el26-40-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd of a $546 million transmission project it built in New Jersey. The agency ordered an administrative law judge to conduct hearings on Public Citizen’s January complaint alleging that the costs were imprudently incurred.
In December 2024, PSE&G agreed to pay a $6.6 million fine to settle a FERC enforcement office investigation into the utility’s justifications to PJM for building the Roseland-Pleasant Valley transmission project.
FERC rejects complaint over Duke transmission rates
https://www.ferc.gov/media/e-8-el26-47-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd that sought to stop Duke Energy Progress from including the costs of four transmission lines that could benefit solar developers into its overall transmission rates.
The agency dismissed arguments made by North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. in its complaint, saying, “Rolled-in rate treatment for the costs of the four … projects is consistent with longstanding Commission precedent that favors rolled-in rate treatment for integrated transmission facilities.”
FERC eyes changes to ‘hypothetical capital structure’ incentive
FERC approved a 50/50 hypothetical debt to equity capital structure for two transmission projects that https://www.ferc.gov/media/e-16-el26-62-000?_sp=87164b5d-a1fe-409b-9b07-98f96a578cbd in North Dakota for about $469.3 million. FERC offers hypothetical capital structures as an incentive for transmission development.
“They can help new transmission companies secure financing for large projects and allow developers to move forward even when their actual capital structure may not yet reflect a project’s long-term financial profile,” Swett said.
However, FERC is considering changes to the incentive, which increases consumer costs, Swett said at the agency’s meeting.
“This is a very complex topic with significant implications for financing, project development, regional planning, and customer affordability. Even small changes to utilities’ return can have significant impacts,” she said. “I am confident that working with my colleagues, we can get that balance right and ensure that our policies promote needed transmission investment while protecting consumers.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 07/17/2026 - 15:40
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/pjm-capacity-auction-results-compound-alarm-bells-ferc-chairman-swett

2026-07-17 10:54:00 GMT

GOP Senator Readies Sanctions Bill Against Canada As Toxic Wildfire Smoke Chokes Millions
GOP Senator Readies Sanctions Bill Against Canada As Toxic Wildfire Smoke Chokes Millions
Summary:
- GOP Members Blast Canada Over Toxic Smoke; Sanction Bill Against Canada Set To Be Introduced
- Toxic Smoke Plume Over Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast
- Canada's Wildfire Management Failures Choke Millions Of Americans With Toxic Smoke
Ohio Sen. Moreno To Introduce Bill To Sanction Canada Over Wildfire Smoke
Tens of millions of Americans are choking on toxic wildfire smoke drifting south from Canada. Years of inadequate forest management, often justified in the name of climate change, have intensified focus on the country's liberal government.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-07-17_06-50-52.png?itok=0d3llQBY
Across the Northeast on Friday morning, an eerie haze blanketed major cities. Even a brief step outside exposed people to air so toxic, it was like smoking multiple cigarettes.
Here's your Friday smoke forecast. Another rough day with poor air quality for millions. Even seeing some smoke sneak down into the Carolinas. https://t.co/gJrHOyJVeL
— Jordan Steele (@JordanSteele) https://x.com/JordanSteele/status/2078063004541747276?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"The Canadian parliament & Mark Carney's decision not to do the most basic forest maintenance out of climate activism stupidity is now threatening hundreds of millions of Americans with carcinogens," Daily Signal's Tony Kinnett wrote on X.
On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said he will be "introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity."
I’ll be introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity. https://t.co/wFCVwrPdGr
— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) https://x.com/berniemoreno/status/2077809138340384964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Additionally, four Republican members of the House blasted left-wing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a letter, criticizing his liberal government for not doing enough in terms of forest prevention management.
"This is the third consecutive year we have had to write to Canadian officials about a crisis that Canada has the tools to prevent and has chosen not to," wrote Republican Reps. John James (Mich.), Jack Bergman (Mich.), John Moolenaar (Mich.) and Lisa McClain (Mich.).
Time for accountability.
Canada's Wildfire Management Failures Choke Millions Of Americans With Toxic Smoke
Canada's wildfire management policies are once again falling short, as toxic smoke plumes blanket much of the northeastern US and drive air pollution to dangerously high levels.
Another wave of dense wildfire smoke is forecast to reach New York and New England on Thursday afternoon and evening before it surges into the Mid-Atlantic on Thursday night.
Thick, unhealthy smoke is expected in D.C. on Friday, with some reaching Virginia and North Carolina. https://t.co/ZDqDEYAgQq
— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) https://x.com/BenNollWeather/status/2077734530707058941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Air quality readings in cities including Detroit, Milwaukee, and Toledo exceeded 500, well above the 300 threshold considered unsafe. Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Toronto also recorded unsafe levels, while conditions in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York deteriorated into unhealthy territory.
BREAKING: Due to Canadian wildfire smoke, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis now represent 3 of the 4 worst major cities for air quality on the entire planet. https://t.co/zxyqEV2J4w
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) https://x.com/US_Stormwatch/status/2077764090030850383?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
WILDFIRE SMOKE has made its way to Chicago this morning.
The air condition is extremely poor, as seen in this shot near Grant Park. You can see how much smoke has made its way down from the Canadian wildfires.
It's going to be a tough day when it comes to doing anything… https://t.co/vXByYP8QI8
— Marcus Leshock (@marcusleshock) https://x.com/marcusleshock/status/2077714198214095352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Detroit, Michigan now has the worst air quality of any major city on Earth due to Canadian wildfire smoke.
If exposed to the current air quality in the city for 24 hours, it would be the equivalent to smoking about 21 cigarettes. https://t.co/xijW3eDhf1
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) https://x.com/US_Stormwatch/status/2077760175067529582?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The haze and wildfire smoke made for some surreal shots this morning on the Bay https://x.com/FOXBaltimore?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/O8qUyPvPDF
— Alex Parker (@ParkerSports) https://x.com/ParkerSports/status/2077781514733977869?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Smoke from the northern Minnesota / Canadian wildfires landing at MSP airport. https://x.com/hashtag/mnwx?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://x.com/spann?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://t.co/yQu7dtArS8
— Brett LaBare (@1labare) https://x.com/1labare/status/2077757304288453058?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
At this time of year, smoke from Canadian wildfires usually pours into the US, exposing tens of millions of Americans to dangerous air quality.
The recurring cross-border pollution is Canada's repeated failure to address wildfire prevention and mitigation adequately.
Blanket of smoke from the Canadian wildfire rolling into Chicago. https://t.co/Ust87p47f8
— Richard Roeper (@RichardERoeper) https://x.com/RichardERoeper/status/2077754239045013923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"Canada continues to fail to manage its forests. Controlled burns, thinning and clearing debris would go a long way toward preventing this from happening every summer," the conservative environmental nonprofit American Conservation Coalition wrote on X.
Canada continues to fail to manage their forests.
Controlled burns + thinning + clearing debris would go a long way in preventing this from happening every summer. https://t.co/inQwdcONQK
— American Conservation Coalition (@ACC_National) https://x.com/ACC_National/status/2077801001319350759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It should be investigated whether arson or inadequate forest management has contributed to the wildfire chaos in Canada, which is imposing major health risks on the US. Much of the left-wing media points to climate change, while rarely covering forest management failures.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 07/17/2026 - 06:54
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/canadas-wildfire-management-failures-choke-millions-americans-toxic-smoke

2026-07-17 01:45:00 GMT

Watchdog Uncovers Over $750 Million In Improper Unemployment Insurance Payments In New York
Watchdog Uncovers Over $750 Million In Improper Unemployment Insurance Payments In New York
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/watchdog-uncovers-over-750-million-in-improper-unemployment-insurance-payments-in-new-york-6062629,
The Department of Labor and its Office of Inspector General (OIG) have deployed a joint federal strike team to New York to address "rampant" unemployment insurance fraud plaguing the state.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/id6062666-Job_fair-Benjamin_Chasteen-5801-20120815-AV_80.jpg?itok=GSF4pqXZ
"New York ranks among the worst states for unemployment insurance (UI) fraud exposure," the OIG said in a July 13 statement.
New York accounted for more than $750 million in improper unemployment insurance (UI) payments and $507 million in fraudulent payments last year. Almost $2 million is lost every day to improper payments and fraud in the state.
Investigators will work together with the Labor Department's strike team members to identify, stop, and recover fraudulent UI payments, OIG said. They will conduct targeted reviews and pursue criminal and civil probes of suspected fraud networks.
"New York is stealing from the American people every single day - draining their hard-earned tax dollars through rampant unemployment insurance fraud and improper payments," Labor Department Inspector General Anthony P. D'Esposito said in a statement.
In September 2022, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a crackdown on UI fraud after the state's Labor Department identified more than $11 million in fraudulent payments in August that year.
In October 2025, Hochul announced raising New York's maximum weekly UI benefit payments from $504 to $869, according to an Oct. 8, 2025, statement from the governor's office.
The Epoch Times reached out to the New York State Department of Labor and Hochul's office for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.
Unemployment Insurance Fraud
The OIG announcement of deploying a strike team to New York comes almost a month after acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling issued letters to governors of 53 U.S. states and territories, demanding "immediate action" be taken to combat fraud, abuse, and waste in the unemployment insurance program, the Labor Department said in a June 17 statement.
New York has one of the highest improper unemployment insurance payment rates in the nation, exceeding 20 percent, the department said.
Meanwhile, California owes the federal government more than $20 billion following years of fraud and other issues in its UI system. Illinois has improperly paid out more than $320 million, with the improper payment rate exceeding 14 percent.
If the states allow fraud and abuse in the unemployment insurance program, they will "suffer the consequences," Sonderling said. "This department is no longer afraid to use every lever available to ensure taxpayer money is protected."
In its July 12 statement, the OIG said the strike force deployment in New York was in line with recovery efforts led by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance's White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
The task force has "already helped recover hundreds of millions in fraudulent UI funds and strengthened program integrity across multiple states," the OIG said.
Established through a March 16 executive order https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/sba-suspends-7800-wisconsin-borrowers-linked-to-375-million-in-suspected-fraudulent-loans-6059968 by Trump, the task force seeks to recover billions of dollars stolen from U.S. taxpayers. Officials estimate that roughly $300 billion is stolen from government programs by fraudsters each year.
Both Sonderling and D'Esposito serve on the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, according to a May 13 statement from the department.
The statement cited California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania as having some of the "most problematic state unemployment-insurance programs."
Combined, the six states account for almost $19 billion in annual unemployment insurance benefit payments. In fiscal year 2025, these states issued more than $2.6 billion in improper UI payments, the department said.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/16/2026 - 21:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watchdog-uncovers-over-750-million-improper-unemployment-insurance-payments-new-york

2026-07-16 20:44:54 GMT

Netflix & Spill: Streamer Smashed To 2 Year Low After Forecast Misses Across The Board
Netflix & Spill: Streamer Smashed To 2 Year Low After Forecast Misses Across The Board
It has been a brutal year for NFLX longs, who have seen their favorite stock slide in a straight line since last summer, erasing almost 50% from the July 2025 all time high of $134. And unfortunately for them, it appears this brutality isn't going to end any time soon after the company mangled its Q2 earnings moments ago, reporting mediocre earnings, but more importantly, projecting numbers that missed consensus estimates for both Q3 and and the full year.
First, looking at the historicals, we find results that just barely beat expectations, while US and Canada revenue outright missed.
- EPS 80c, barely beating the est 79c, and up from 72c y/y
- Revenue $12.56 billion, +13% y/y, barely beating the est $12.58 billion
US & Canada revenue $5.43 billion, +10% y/y, missing estimate $5.52 billion
EMEA revenue $4.03 billion, +14% y/y, matching estimate $4.03 billion
Latin America revenue $1.58 billion, +21% y/y, beating estimate $1.51 billion
APAC revenue $1.51 billion, +16% y/y, missing estimate $1.53 billion
- Operating income $4.19 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimate $4.13 billion
Operating margin 33.4% vs. 34.1% y/y, beating estimate 33%
- Cash flow from operations $1.74 billion, -28% y/y, missing estimate $2.93 billion
Free cash flow $1.53 billion, -33% y/y, badly missing estimate $2.72 billion... maybe they too are building a data center.
While historical were lously at best - it was the company's projections that spooked the market: the company projected revenue of $12.9 billion in the current quarter and earnings of 82 cents a share, both missing analysts’ expectations. And since most of Wall Street's attention had been on future performance, this was enough to send the stock plunging.
Q3 forecast
- Sees EPS 82c, missing the estimate 84c
- Sees revenue $12.86 billion, missing estimate $13 billion
- Sees operating income $4.27 billion, missing estimate $4.36 billion
- Sees operating margin 33.2%, missing estimate 33.5%
Full year forecast
- Sees revenue $51 billion to $51.4 billion, saw $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion, midpoint missing estimate $51.38 billion
- Sees revenue +13% to +14%, saw +12% to +14%
- Still sees operating margin 31.5%, missing estimate 31.7%
- Still sees free cash flow about $12.5 billion, missing estimate $13.09 billion
Commenting on the quarter, Netflix said it is "building out our ads business continues to be a top priority and we remain on track to deliver approximately $3 billion in ads revenue in 2026." While the collapse in free cash flow was surprising (and begs the question if NFLX is also building a data center), the company said it is continues to expect annual cash content spend to amortization ratio of ~1.1x.
Commenting on the latest price hike(s)- which now happen every quarter if not every month, the company said that "the results of our recent price changes are consistent with prior changes and our expectations." That bad, huh?
NFLX also said that it was "leveraging AI to provide a more personalized, immersive and interactive experience for members, enhance ads capabilities for brands, and improve the quality of our series and films."
Translation: crap content, now with even more slop.
As noted above, NFLX shares have plunged more than 40% over the last year, as the company’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery and subsequent financial results have caused investors to realize that the leader in streaming has lost momentum. While Netflix still has more subscribers and viewership than any other paid streaming service, engagement has fallen off a cliff as growth in sales and hours spent on the service has been slowing.
If that wasn't enough, Netflix endured a months-long drought of new hits in the first half of the year, during which many returning shows struggled to retain viewers in the new seasons. That dry spell ended with I Will Find You, an adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel, which was Netflix’s most-viewed new original series this year, and frankly, was at best a 4 out of 10.
Netflix has announced a flurry of new details with popular social media personalities in recent weeks, including YouTube stars Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni, and even touted its use of generative artificial intelligence on about 300 shows.
In other words, it has tried everything and still people are turning off.
The company sought to reassure restive investors by outlining a plan to sustain growth in the coming years. It is investing in new kinds of programming, such as live sports and video podcasts. Podcasts are attracting more viewers during the day and on mobile devices while live programming has helped attract a lot of customers relative to its actual share of viewing, the company said.
“We are increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods,” the company wrote in its letter to shareholders. Netflix has resumed offering free trials in select markets as a test.
The amount of time people spend on Netflix grew 2% in the first half of 2026, a slight improvement over a year ago. The company said that was good, especially given the competition from the World Cup and Winter Olympics, which aired on other networks. Netflix also said it will now release its What We Watched report on show viewership annually, rather than twice a year.
None of that however is helping as markets look at the continued decline in growth and wonder, when does it end? Clearly not today with the stock plunging to a fresh 21 month low...
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/NFLX%20plunge.jpg?itok=nIdT13_I
.... and set up for the ultimate head and shoulders pattern.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/NFLX%20HAS_0.png?itok=bV1X9fzD
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Thu, 07/16/2026 - 16:44
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/netflix-spill-streamer-smashed-2-year-low-after-forecast-misses-across-board