Raúl Ilargi Meijer, Author at The Automatic Earth

Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Debt Rattle September 17 2026

Sep 172026

September 17, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: Canada, Carney, Dario, EU, FBI, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Von der Leyen, Zuck 34 Responses »

Peter Paul Rubens Saturn devouring one of his sons 1636

• State of the Union: Five takeaways From Ursula Von Der Leyen’s Speech (Euronews)

• Von der Leyen To Call For ‘European Security Council’ (EurActiv)

• EU Opens Door For Canada To Become Bloc’s First-Ever “Associate Member” (ZH)

• Mark Carney Is Leading Canada ‘Right Over the Cliff’ (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Very Interesting – Saudi Arabia Cancels Oil Shipments to Europe (CTH)

• Zuck Torches Dario’s AI Nanny State, Wants ‘Trust Us Bro’ Instead (ZH)

• Zelenskyy Tells CBS Russia Drones Tried to Take Down His Airplane (CTH)

• Greece Wants To Become Europe’s Next Hedge Fund Hub (ZH)

• The Road to Armageddon (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Trump Slams Former FBI Director Chris Wray Over Butler Investigation

• FBI Agent Wanted To Criminally Investigate Elon Musk, Email Shows (ET)

The picture is getting clearer. We are now experiencing a massive ai powered fearporn psyop campaign. https://t.co/99btwIVI9i
— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) September 15, 2026

The FBI File on Trump's Assassin Just Leaked…Everything They Told You is A Lie

New evidence just blew up the Thomas Crooks narrative.

Two mystery men were with him at a gun store weeks before Butler. Another unidentified man trained with him the day before.

Even more… pic.twitter.com/51DVuUmd18
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 15, 2026

BREAKING: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says every car in the world will become autonomous. https://t.co/O5vMJDgHQz pic.twitter.com/W86zJjHdhv
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 14, 2026

https://twitter.com/DN_degen/status/2100146408900694283?s=20

Ursula von der Leyen is the product of indirect democracy. It’s as if Congress elected the US president.

There are good reasons why it doesn’t.

Biut von der Leyen does have a lot of power. Which is a really bad idea.

Europe, since 2019, when she first appeared, has lost a lot of terrain. And money.

The EU is a costly facade that doesn’t do anything countries’ governments couldn’t do better.

It’s sad to watch a globalist mob destroy an entire continent.

• State of the Union: Five takeaways From Ursula Von Der Leyen’s Speech (Euronews)

Canada, hybrid warfare, climate change, digital safety and migration were front and centre at Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” With this iconic Charles Dickens quote, Ursula von der Leyen began her one-hour-long State of the Union speech in Strasbourg, laying out solutions to cope with the “exceptional” challenges and the “incredible” change that Europe is undergoing.”In this world, Europe has chosen to forge its own path. And a stronger, independent Europe is now emerging,” she told lawmakers. “Europe is there for Europeans. And that in the cold fragility of today’s world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans.”
Here are the five takeaways from the address.
‘Associate membership’ for Canada
This was the day’s jaw-dropping moment. The European Commission president offered to create a tailor-made status of “associate membership” to bring Canada ever closer to the bloc. “We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well,” she told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who flew from Ottawa to Strasbourg to attend the speech as guest of honour.
She hailed the dawn of an “alliance for the future” to deepen EU-Canada cooperation in areas such as economic security, intelligent manufacturing, cutting-edge technology, defence, energy, critical minerals and batteries, as well as the Arctic region. However, details of what “associate membership” would mean in practice were left unsaid. It remains unclear how it would fit in the current structures of the EU treaties. A previous attempt by the German chancellor to grant “associate membership” to Ukraine swiftly disappeared after backlash from capitals.
Von der Leyen simply said the newfound status would bring EU-Canada relations “to the highest level possible”, prompting loud applause inside the hemicycle. Ahead of the speech, a poll conducted by Abacus Data showed that 49% of Canadians supported EU membership, while 30% opposed it and 21% were unsure. These are exceptional numbers for a country that lies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and reflect the political damage inflicted by US President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs and repeated attempts to annex Canada.
Climate action made a comeback for self-evident reasons.
Von der Leyen framed the summer of 2026 as the “summer of truth”, pointing to wildfires, retreating glaciers, water shortages, crop losses and extreme heat that have wreaked havoc across the continent. She cited 660,000 hectares burned, 12 million tonnes of crops lost and more than 35,000 additional deaths during heatwaves. “Science is clear. Europe is warming at double the global rate. Of course, the transition is complex. And we will need to adjust and learn along the way,” she said.
The immediate response will be a European Heatwave Plan, which von der Leyen said will address early-warning systems, health preparedness, urban adaptation, cooling and protection for vulnerable groups. Her Commission is set to present a new climate resilience framework next month, already expected, that will identify 100 of the bloc’s most vulnerable territories, assess their risks and determine the appropriate level of responsibility for managing them. Insurance was another major vulnerability flagged by von der Leyen.
Only around 25% of catastrophe losses in Europe are currently covered by private insurance, she said, leaving governments to act as the insurer of last resort. Her services will put forward a Climate Insurance Alliance to close that glaring gap. She also promised a European Water initiative to fix costly leaks and a European firefighting fleet to respond to wildfires.
As expected, defence featured high in the speech, which came amid a string of hybrid attacks, some of which were attributed to Russia, that have rattled Europe. “We should be under no illusions about what is happening here: hybrid threats facing Europe are less and less hybrid and less and less threats,” von der Leyen said. “Cyberattacks and sabotage, arson and drone incursions. They are ramping up every day. So, as the threat level climbs, so must Europe’s preparedness.”
She then proposed a brand-new mechanism fashioned on NATO’s Article 4 that member states would trigger in the event of a hybrid attack. This would launch political consultations to “coordinate” an EU response and “deter further escalation”. Article 4 in the NATO context means that any country of the 32-strong alliance can call for an urgent meeting to discuss a new threat. It is the precursor to collective defence under Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Von der Leyen also pitched creating a “European Security Council” to bring together the leaders of Ukraine, the UK, Norway, Canada and other democratic partners. “This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play,” she said.= How this Council will go from idea to reality is anyone’s guess at the moment.

“..potential rival to NATO ..”

• Von der Leyen To Call For ‘European Security Council’ (EurActiv)

The potential rival to NATO will come with a call for an ‘Alliance for the future’ with Canada, according to a draft

– Ursula von der Leyen will propose a radical change to Europe’s security architecture and the NATO Western alliance when she takes the floor in the European Parliament on Wednesday. Leaders from the EU, plus Ukraine, Britain, Norway, Canada and others, should convene in a new format to coordinate responses to mounting security threats, she will say according to a draft of her annual State of the EU speech seen in advance by Euractiv.
“This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play. This is why we will set out our ideas to make a European Security Council a reality,” the draft speech reads. The EU should also create a new “security protocol” – modelled on NATO’s Article 4 – which an EU member state could trigger in order to convene all others. The NATO article allows members of the alliance to request consultations when they believe their security or territorial integrity is under threat.
“We are strengthening our work with NATO. But our doctrine, our institutions and our decision making have not kept pace with the new reality,” she will say, according to the draft. The idea of creating a European Security Council, which has previously been floated as a Franco-German initiative, gained renewed momentum following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius repeatedly calling for its establishment.
It would emerge as a potential rival to NATO, and it’s unclear whether Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, or Donald Trump, the US president, would welcome such a format. Von der Leyen’s plan is a major departure from her previous speech in 2025.
Alliance building
In the presence of Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, von der Leyen will pitch Canada as a key partner for Europe, proposing an “Alliance for the future” to deepen cooperation between the two sides. The new relationship is being touted as everything but full membership of the EU, which the Commission views as legally impossible due to the North American country’s geography.“We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible,” she will say, according to the draft.
[…]
The Commission president’s speech will focus on three tipping points: climate, AI and industrial competitiveness. She is expected to invite tech heavyweights for a discussion on pacing AI development. Her speech will also formally announce that the EU will present a Kids Act on Thursday, and, according to previous reporting from Euractiv on the leaked text, it will limit access to online services for children under 15 years old.
“I am aware that many perceive the power of big tech as overwhelming,” von der Leyen is expected to say, adding that “Europe has the power to act. It is us who decide our rules, not big tech”. She is also expected to announce an EU-wide heatwave plan for early-warning detection and health planning.As previously reported by Euractiv, the Commission president will also put forward a new migration initiative following the Ceuta crisis in Spain.
Von der Leyen will propose a “European Emergency Response Framework” to guide the EU’s response to what she will define as “engineered and weaponised” mass movements. “It will only be triggered under a strictly defined set of criteria. And in those cases, it will allow for a time-limited and strictly defined flexibility of standard procedures,” the draft reads.

Trump may close the border.

• EU Opens Door For Canada To Become Bloc’s First-Ever “Associate Member” (ZH)

Thanks to how mean President Trump has been, Canada could become the first-ever “associate member” of the European Union under a proposal unveiled Wednesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, as Ottawa looks to reduce its economic dependence on the United States.

Speaking during her annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the front row as the first foreign head of government ever to attend the speech, von der Leyen said Brussels wants to take its relationship with Canada to an unprecedented level. “We must urgently reimagine our partnerships,” von der Leyen said, before telling Carney she wanted to work with him on “opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.” There is just one complication: no such status currently exists.
EU treaties allow European countries to apply for full membership, while Brussels maintains an assortment of trade, association and single-market agreements with countries outside the bloc. But “associate membership” would be something new, meaning its rights, obligations and legal structure would have to be negotiated essentially from scratch. Reuters notes that any serious move toward such a status would also face the politically difficult task of winning support from all 27 EU member states.
And Carney himself has stopped short of calling for full EU membership. On Sunday, after a Wall Street Journal report that Canada was exploring membership, he described what Ottawa is seeking as a “unique alliance” with Europe. He addresses the European Parliament on Thursday. The substance of what Brussels is proposing, however, goes considerably beyond another trade agreement.
Canada and the EU already have CETA, their comprehensive free-trade deal. Von der Leyen said Wednesday that the two sides now want to move “from CETA to an Alliance for the Future” encompassing manufacturing, technology, defense, energy, critical minerals, batteries, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity and Arctic security. “We will integrate defence industrial bases,” she said. That process has already begun.
Canada became the first non-European country allowed to participate in the EU’s €150 billion SAFE defense procurement program under an agreement signed in February and formally concluded by the EU Council in June. The arrangement allows eligible Canadian companies and Canadian-origin products to participate in procurement financed by the program. The EU-Canada defense relationship has also expanded into military mobility, interoperability, maritime and space security and defense-industrial cooperation.
Then there’s the economics of the idea. Roughly 70% of Canadian exports go to the United States, making any rapid decoupling unrealistic. At the same time, Trump’s tariffs and repeated talk of a 51st state have given Ottawa a powerful incentive to diversify. Europe, meanwhile, needs resources. Von der Leyen warned Wednesday that Europe remains more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials, with dependence reaching 90% for some rare earths. “No country can do this alone,” she said.
Canada possesses significant reserves of nickel, uranium, potash, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements, among other commodities increasingly regarded as strategic inputs for batteries, semiconductors, defense equipment and energy infrastructure. That makes a deeper Canada-EU relationship potentially complementary: Europe gets another source of strategic commodities and energy while Canada gets a large alternative market, industrial investment and greater access to European defense and technology programs.
There is nevertheless a potentially uncomfortable tradeoff for Ottawa. If “associate membership” eventually includes meaningful access to the EU’s roughly €18 trillion single market, Canada could be required to align portions of its regulatory regime with EU rules. Reuters notes that this could leave Ottawa accepting European regulations without receiving the voting rights enjoyed by actual EU members. Canada could gain market access while becoming, at least in some areas, a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker.

He’s a little man.

• Mark Carney Is Leading Canada ‘Right Over the Cliff’ (Victor Davis Hanson)

I know we’ve talked a lot about the current Canadian-American trade dispute, but it involves larger issues of globalism versus nationalism versus North American relations versus the United States paradigm versus the EU paradigm, etc., etc. And what’s happened is I would call it [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark Carney’s fantasy house, Mark Carney’s dream house, Mark Carney’s imaginarium. He has no … It doesn’t seem like he has any connection with reality. His economy has lost 41,000 jobs. It depends on exporting to the United States 72% to 76% of all of its products.
That is going to be very difficult. It is now difficult. It’s going to be almost impossible if he continues. He has to keep his oil wells going, and given the fact that other provinces have not been ready and willing to make pipelines to the rich tar sands of Alberta, he depends on a 4 million-barrel export a day to the United States. Some of it is thick tar sands, some of it has been diluted and is marketable elsewhere, but it’s a very good deal for Canada. When you talk about cutting that off, you’re talking about cutting your nose to spite your face.
This would be the most self-destructive thing. The fact that Canada even mentions it shows that they’re entering a period of delusional thinking. This new relationship with China, they’re bringing in 48,000 low-tariff, I think it’s only 6%, EVs. They’re going to ruin what little they had left of the Canadian auto industry. But more importantly, that trade agreement is ushering in a whole set of new agreements, some of them military.
Does Canada know, does Mark Carney know, that if Canada negotiates a special military relationship with China and it’s on our borders and we have NATO relations, that will endanger the alliance and it will permanently wreck the relationship between Canada and the United States?
The other thing that’s very disturbing is right now, as we speak, the European Union model is under assault, not by America, but by Europeans. They don’t believe the socialist model of open borders, illegal immigration, dismantling fossil fuels, not using fossil fuel resources, subsidized expensive green energy, de-arming, disarming, whatever term we use, low fertility, works. They used to have, about a quarter-century ago, the 470 million Europeans, they had about the same gross domestic product as the United States.
Now they’re $10 trillion at least smaller. So, why is Canada emulating the EU failed model? Forty-five percent of your population was not born in Canada or their parents weren’t born. Why are you subsidizing green energy and you’re not utilizing this rich resource in Alberta? Why are you disarmed? Why won’t you meet your 2% commitments? You may or may not have done it just one year, but why do you repeatedly not do that when you have such a vast nation and it is so exposed in a very dangerous world, in the Arctic, in the Northwest Passage, and the airspace over North America?
And the answer is your economic model does not allow you much margin. Your immigration model does not allow you much margin of error to compensate for these decisions that you’ve made for a weaker, poorer, more disunited Canada. You feel you can’t arm yourself because the United States will protect you. You feel that you need a $50 billion surplus because the United States is far wealthier and you’re in dire straits.
Next problem. You don’t express your disagreement or anger at the United States over trade policy by warming up to, and allying with China, which is the greatest trade violator in history with its patent theft, copyright theft, dumping product below the cost of production, currency manipulation, forced labor camps.
And you don’t win yourself national support when no other country except you and China have slapped counter-tariffs, not because they didn’t want to, not because they couldn’t do it, but because they realized they were running surpluses for years with the United States, and they could still make money with a more symmetrical trade agreement.
You apparently don’t think that. You think if you lose your special $50 billion surplus relationship, or you might have to rearm, the choices that you’ve made on energy and immigration and economic policy prevent you from being competitive, and you need to be thus indirectly subsidized.
But more importantly, you’re not going to win world sympathy, at least among the United States and other countries that are its allies.

Not directly. But both Putin and Trump see the advantages. Make Europe need Russian oil.

• Very Interesting – Saudi Arabia Cancels Oil Shipments to Europe (CTH)

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen reportedly hit Saudi Arabia’s east/west pipeline with drones. President Trump did not strike the Houthi’s. Despite knowing oil prices would jump, President Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon to approach the issue carefully. Reuters, citing an Axios report based on two US officials, said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice on Thursday and pressed for military action. Trump rejected the request, according to the report.

Why would President Trump ‘not’ strike back against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, knowing the drone attack on the Saudi pipeline would only worsen the oil issue? Well, you won’t read this anywhere else…. However, if Saudi Arabia shut down the east/west pipeline for a while (they just did), then the oil flowing to the Red Sea that ends up in Europe would be halted (it just was). Think about it. All of a sudden Europe cannot get oil from Mohammed bin Salmon. So, how does that change the dynamic of President Trump’s desired leverage toward Europe in his approach to bringing Russian oil back into the market.

I hope everyone can see the dynamic. All of a sudden that Russian oil Europe hates so much, turns into dependency leverage against EU antagonisms against solving the Ukraine-Russia conflict. This is not happening accidentally. Oil Price News – Saudi Aramco has canceled or delayed crude deliveries to European refiners after the shutdown of the kingdom’s East-West pipeline cut into one of its remaining routes around the Strait of Hormuz.
At least three European refiners have had late-September cargoes canceled or pushed as far out as November, according to market sources cited by Argus. Two more expect notices covering September supplies. The 7-million-bpd East-West pipeline has been offline since a September 10 attack. The pipeline carries crude from eastern Saudi oil fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing Hormuz. One market source told Argus that every Saudi cargo scheduled for the final 10 days of September could be at risk.
The same source estimated that Yanbu had roughly five days of crude inventories remaining. Argus could not independently confirm that estimate, and Aramco declined to comment.mIn August, Bloomberg had reported that Aramco would supply full contractual crude volumes to at least three European refiners for September. But no Saudi crude has departed Yanbu since September 11, according to Vortexa data cited by Argus. (read more) Essentially, the Houthi “attack” on the Saudi pipeline just shut down oil going to Europe.
Europe needs oil. This is not an optional dynamic.
Russia has the oil that Europe now desperately needs. Suddenly, the geopolitical dynamic has shifted, as an outcome of the economic/energy dynamic shifting, at a very opportune time for President Trump to hold optimal leverage to get Europe to reconsider their opposition to a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

“Mark Zuckerberg macrodoses mushrooms and fights Dario Amodei in his mindspace ..”

• Zuck Torches Dario’s AI Nanny State, Wants ‘Trust Us Bro’ Instead (ZH)

After Anthropic’s Dario Amodei set off a firestorm on Saturday calling for a ‘pause’ in AI development until hand-picked arbiters are installed inside the frontier labs (a gift to Beijing), Mark Zuckerberg sided with the testosterone wing of the tech-bro complex with a builder’s response: police yourselves. You don’t need anyone’s permission – or a cartel, to do it.

Mark Zuckerberg macrodoses mushrooms and fights Dario Amodei in his mindspace (probably)
Amodei published a 3,800-word essay, “We Must Pace the Frontier” – telling the industry to slow down before its own agents got loose, and the response was a group hug: Sam Altman fell in line within hours, Elon Musk said “Dario is right,” and by Monday Congress was drafting ways to put the genie back in the bottle. Zuck’s plan is different: Frontier Justice.
According to Investor Nic Carter;
Zuck pretty handily dismantles Dario’s talking points here:
– people want models that are *aligned with them* (subtly punches back at Anthropic’s normative constitutional approach)
– labs already face liability if they screw up, so incentives to release aligned models is already baked in
– Meta delayed Muse for alignment reasons but didn’t make a whole song and dance about it
– Subtly questions Anthropic trying to kingmake METR (implies METR is an Anthropic patsy)
– Meta doesn’t need to coordinate with anyone to work on alignment, it’s just something labs should naturally do

Dario’s Plan
Amodei’s essay says the newest models have begun improving themselves and a swarm of agents could take over significant parts of the internet within six to twelve months, so the labs should slow the rate at which they add capability. The fix comes in three steps: outside inspectors, with the nonprofit METR as the model, embedded in every lab with employee-level access and the right to publish; a narrow waiver from antitrust law so the frontier labs can agree among themselves on standards and speed; and, eventually, red lines negotiated with China (mmhmm).
Before that negotiation, Dario wants Washington to keep the chip ban, crack down on distillation (training a cheap model on an expensive one’s answers), lock up model weights, and widen America’s lead over the next three to five years. The Global Times counted twelve references to China in a document about safety, and Beijing’s Foreign Ministry answered in less than two days, calling it “fearmongering.”
To some, the whole thing seemed highly choreographed. Last week an OpenAI-turned-Anthropic researcher quit in protest – saying the industry was gambling with our lives. Two of the three researchers who resigned that week went to METR, as we noted Saturday. By Tuesday the House AI safety bill’s Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Jay Obernolte of California, was telling reporters he had met OpenAI’s top lobbyist the day before the company endorsed the bill’s 3rd party evaluator provision.
Meanwhile, a New York assemblyman whose campaign was backed by an Anthropic-funded PAC had launched a $30 million push to make AI safety the Democrats’ 2028 platform, and Anthropic’s IPO was reportedly in the works. The referee is family too: METR’s reported funders are the same donors who financed Anthropic’s early rounds and hold its equity, and under the essay’s own terms the inspectors sign a contract the lab writes. David Sacks, the former White House AI czar, needed one sentence: stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. None of this proves coordination. All of it explains the salt.
.@DavidSacks says if Dario Amodei truly believes frontier AI could end humanity, he has no business running Anthropic. Make it safe, shut the lab down, or step aside. pic.twitter.com/tec7eACwdG
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) September 14, 2026

Dario Vs. Zuck What is the danger? Amodei says capability: systems that improve themselves faster than anyone can check. Zuckerberg says concentration. The argument he made in a July Wall Street Journal essay, The AI Future Is for Everyone, is that a world where a few companies hold the most capable systems is the dangerous one: one person with a superintelligent lawyer wins unfairly, everyone with one gets a fairer system.
Who checks? Amodei wants an embedded referee with a badge. Zuckerberg wants users and courts. An agent that ignores the people it works for gets abandoned, a lab that ships harm gets sued, and a few billion users correcting a product every day is a larger alignment dataset than any written constitution. Outside evaluators, he says, are “industry best practice” that Meta Superintelligence Labs already uses; they are a tool, not a license.
Who sets the pace? Amodei wants a shared speed limit the labs agree to, with government permission to agree. Zuckerberg’s answer is that Meta already paced itself: it sat on its Muse models for months to harden them, “didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would,” and shipped. The cleanest speed limit, he argues, is putting most of your compute into serving people rather than into racing self-improvement, a choice visible in capital spending and product cadence rather than in an inspector’s report.
What about China? Amodei wants to widen the lead first and negotiate later, arguing the restrictions raise the leverage of democracies and make a deal more likely. Zuckerberg’s position, and Beijing’s, is that the open-weight world already exists and exclusion makes it less safe, not more. “The key to building a positive future for everyone is maintaining the right balance of power.”

World War Reddit. “This claim, originally attributed to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was entirely fabricated and soon debunked. However, that didn’t stop Zelenskyy from making the claim to the American audience of CBS, yesterday. ”

• Zelenskyy Tells CBS Russia Drones Tried to Take Down His Airplane (CTH)

What would make Volodymyr Zelenskyy appear on CBS News to tell a debunked story about his airplane being targeted by Russian drones in Moldova? Answer the question honestly.

Appearing on CBS News, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that Russian drones tried to attack his airplane in Moldova. This claim, originally attributed to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was entirely fabricated and soon debunked. However, that didn’t stop Zelenskyy from making the claim to the American audience of CBS, yesterday. WATCH:

The reality is the drone in question was detected inside Ukraine over 160km from where Zelenskyy was in Chisinau International Airport. Zelenskyy and/or Moldova itself was never under any threat.
“After 5:20 p.m. (local time, 4:20 p.m. Paris time), authorities confirmed that the drone had fallen and exploded about 160 km from Chisinau International Airport. Flight restrictions were then lifted and the Ukrainian president’s plane took off later than planned,” he added. A source in the Ukrainian presidency told AFP that Zelensky was at the slightest risk was “exaggerated”. {SOURCE}
In the BIG PICTURE, it is fake stories like this, false and fictitious narratives, that give us appropriate context for the latest leftist/political effort to control information via a new regulatory process under the guise of AI regulation. This latest AI panic is “digital covid.”
Frontier Labs = Wuhan Labs
Anthropic = NIH
Rogue AI = SARS-CoV-2
Regulation = Vaccination
COVID panic = Election/Control
AI panic = Election/Control
The only thing we are waiting now is patient zero, the AI ‘false flag’ (cyberattack).

Remember the air raid sirens when Biden walked across the square in Kiev?

The EU made it dirt poor.

• Greece Wants To Become Europe’s Next Hedge Fund Hub (ZH)

Athens is emerging as an unlikely contender in the competition for Europe’s hedge fund money, with Greece using favorable tax treatment, an improving economy and Mediterranean living to attract financiers looking beyond London and other established financial centers, according to Bloomberg.

That campaign has already produced some notable converts. Millennium Management has established an operation in Athens, while billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Rokos is heading to Greece after deciding to leave Britain. Greek officials are betting that attracting firms of that caliber will make it easier to persuade smaller funds and finance professionals to follow.
It is a striking development for a country that spent much of the previous decade synonymous with sovereign debt problems and economic instability. Greece has since repaired its public finances, regained investment-grade credit ratings and posted stronger economic growth than much of Europe. Its government can now borrow at lower yields than several much larger economies.
That turnaround is central to the sales pitch. “Greece is fiscally healthy, it constantly produces surpluses and, as a result, it provides tax predictability and macroeconomic stability,” said Vasilis Karatzas, an adviser to Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis.

Bloomberg writes that there is also plenty of financial incentive to make the move. Greece continues to offer qualifying wealthy newcomers a €100,000 annual flat tax on foreign income, a program that has remained unchanged since 2019. By comparison, Italy has repeatedly increased the cost of its competing program. Greece has now sweetened the deal for the investment industry specifically, allowing eligible fund managers who become Greek tax residents to pay 5% on carried interest and bonuses.
The government says it isn’t simply trying to become another European parking lot for wealthy foreigners. The larger ambition is to get investment firms to actually operate from Athens, bringing well-paid finance jobs, encouraging talented Greeks working abroad to return and creating the foundation for a domestic money-management industry.
Timing could be working in Greece’s favor. Higher taxes have made Britain less attractive to some wealthy financiers, while geopolitical instability has introduced another consideration for people who had been looking toward financial centers in the Middle East. Athens suddenly finds itself competing for people who might previously have considered London, Milan, Dubai or Abu Dhabi the obvious choices.
There are still practical obstacles. Athens will need more luxury housing, strong private schools and the broader infrastructure expected by highly paid international finance workers and their families. And a couple of prominent arrivals hardly make Greece the next Mayfair. “The country won’t become a wealth hub overnight. It will take years,” Karatzas said.
Still, Millennium and Rokos give the Greek experiment something more important than another tax incentive: validation. Once major funds demonstrate that Athens is a viable place to operate, Greece’s hope is that the next wave of managers becomes considerably easier to convince.

“.. 9/11, an inside orchestration by the American Zionist neoconservatives to produce the “new Pearl Harbor” needed for Washington’s 21st century attacks ..”

• The Road to Armageddon (Paul Craig Roberts)

The world is faced with two major war fronts, both of which are widening and could spin out of control.

Ukraine is Washington’s proxy in the West’s war against Russia, a war that has moved deep within Russia herself far from the Donbas front. Nato countries such as Germany and Great Britain are openly involved in the conflict against Russia as is the US. Germany and Great Britain make the long range drones that Ukraine uses with Washington’s targeting system to attack Russian oil production, oil refineries, and energy depots inside Russia, as well as airports, civilian housing, children’s schools, and vacationeers. The Russian president refuses to acknowledge these attacks as attacks of war and calls them “terrorist actions.” Putin pretends that the conflict is merely a “special military operation” confined to Ukraine in Donbas.
The “Special Military Operation” has continued for 4.5 years, during which two more countries have joined NATO and aligned against Russia. More NATO members have changed their policies and have announced their willingness to host Washington’s nuclear weapons on their territory on Russia’s border. NATO countries speak openly of preparing for a war against Russia in three years.
Every weapon system that Washington and NATO members said would not be sent were sent to Ukraine. Russia’s peace talks with Trump went nowhere, but Putin still believes in them. Zelensky now threatens with his German and British drones to close down Russia’s air space from commercial flights. Russia is fighting the West’s proxy–Ukraine–not Russia’s Western enemy. Ukraine is in the fight only because of the support and instigation from the West.
Obviously, Russia is in an existential conflict. There is a limit to how long Russia can deny reality, and when that limit is reached, Russia’s back is likely to be to the wall, in which case out come the Russian nukes. In the Middle East Iran is engaged not with Iran’s enemy, but with the proxy–Washington–of Iran’s enemy–Israel. So we have two wars in which the proxies, not the instigators, suffer the consequences. As this serves the instigators, as they bear no cost, the conflicts can continue until they become unmanageable.
We have before us the enormous self-delusion of Russia and Iran. Russia is fighting Ukraine, a former part of Russia, not Washington and NATO. Iran is fighting Washington, not Israel whose puppet Washington is. So we have two countries under attack, neither of which confront its actual enemy. It is a perfect scenario for matters to get out of hand.
With this point made, now ask yourself why the US is at war with Iran. We know why Washington is at war with Russia. Russia is a risen power that constrains Washington’s hegemony over the world and is, therefore, in the way of Washington’s hegemony. America’s foreign policy doctrine–the Wolfowitz Doctrine–says that it is the principle purpose of US policy to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on Washington’s unilateralism.
Russia and China are obviously world powers, but why Washington’s hegemonic concern with Iran, which is not? The answer is that Iran is in the way of the Israeli Zionist Agenda of Greater Israel, which defines the territory of the Israeli state to be from the Nile to Pakistan.
For the entirety of the 21st century Washington has been fighting for Greater Israel. That was the purpose of 9/11, an inside orchestration by the American Zionist neoconservatives to produce the “new Pearl Harbor” needed for Washington’s 21st century attacks that have destroyed not the specified “seven countries in five years,” but three of the countries–Iraq, Libya, and Syria–in 25 years, with the current attack on Iran underway. That is a lot of fighting for Israel.
What I have presented is the truth. But no awareness or discussion of this truth results or is possible in America or Western Europe. The powerful Israel Lobby has defined all truth unfavorable to Israeli expansion to be antisemitic. Unless they are retired, no professor, no foreign policy analyst, no government official or student can survive being labeled an antisemite. The power of the Israeli’s self-justifications for wars and genocide is extraordinary. There are only 7.7 million Jews in Israel; yet they control the discussion of the violence of which they are themselves responsible.

He appointed the man?

• Trump Slams Former FBI Director Chris Wray Over Butler Investigation

The criticism comes after the FBI released new documents related to the investigation, which included revelations that shooter Thomas Crooks had been emotionless since birth and never had friends in middle or high school. President Donald Trump slammed former FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, claiming the man should pay a price for his handling of the investigation into the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The criticism comes after the FBI released new documents related to the investigation, which included revelations that shooter Thomas Crooks had been emotionless since birth and never had friends in middle or high school. “Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA,” Trump said on Truth Social. “By the time I got into office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone.
“New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat plot, to get me out of the election, that failed,” he continued. “Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said.” Trump appointed Wray to replace former FBI Director James Comey in 2017. Wray was eventually replaced with current FBI Director Kash Patel in the second Trump administration.
The documents are part of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing inquiry into the Trump assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, in Butler. While Trump survived the assassination attempt, an innocent bystander was killed in the shooting. The documents showed that Crooks’ actions were a surprise to his family, and his motive remains a mystery.

FBI and politics, great combo.

• FBI Agent Wanted To Criminally Investigate Elon Musk, Email Shows (ET)

An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15. FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week. That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.

“Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said. “In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.” Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business. The FBI declined to take action against Clinton, determining she lacked criminal intent.
Gounaud said Musk also likely violated a federal law that bars executive branch employees from participating in government matters that impact their own interests. “Happy to write the case opening and find a prosecutor (or at least try),” the agent told the supervisor. He added later, “And no, I’m not kidding.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released the letter as senators questioned FBI Director Kash Patel during a hearing in Washington. Grassley said the email, along with other evidence from actions taken by additional agents, “undercut public statements by former FBI officials that agents don’t get to pick their cases.” [..] Patel told senators that the FBI has fired agents who were involved in certain probes, including collecting intelligence in a malfeasant manner. “And in terms of criminal investigations that sprout from that, I can only comment on what’s been public, but there are a number of ongoing investigations regarding this illegal conduct,” he said.
Gounaud is no longer with the FBI, as of February, according to his LinkedIn page. He had been with the bureau since 2004. Musk’s time as a special government employee concluded in the spring of 2025, while DOGE formally shut down in July. Musk has not been charged to date. It was not clear whether Grassley has obtained other emails involving Gounaud, including any responses the latter received to his pitch for a probe of Musk.

“AI doomers should be held accountable for their doomsday claims. It’s made up… It’s irresponsible. We ought to just keep track of all that and remind people when their claims don’t come true”—@JensenHuang NVIDIA

I agree and hold the CEOs and executives of the companies that…
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) September 16, 2026

Optimus will make the future much more productive

And also much more fun pic.twitter.com/xsNNrGGW88
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) September 15, 2026

THIS ROBOT JUST LEARNED TO JUGGLE – AND IT CHANGES WHAT HUMANOIDS CAN DO!

In just 20 seconds, the humanoid robot goes from holding 2 tennis balls to tracking, catching, and throwing them while maintaining its balance. That means its cameras, motion planning, hands, and legs have… https://t.co/VtD6tvggjl pic.twitter.com/YghE1T5uIL
— Future Memo (@TheFutureMemo) September 16, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle September 16 2026

Sep 162026

September 16, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: AI.Trump, bestialty, foreign exchange reserves, Ilhan Omar, Jensen Huang, Ukraine 19 Responses »

Francisco de Goya Saturn Devouring His Son 1819–1823

• Trump Goes After AI Doomers: ‘I Am the Hoax Buster’ (Rick Moran)

• Trump: Relax, “The Robots Are Not Going To Be Taking Over The World” (CTH)

• AI Leaders’ Cunning Plan Exposed (ZH)

• Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm (ZH)

• The Midterms Aren’t What Iran Thinks (Victor Davis Hanson)

• The West is Watching The Wrong Ukrainian Collapse (Poletaev)

• Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump’s Warning (ZH)

• Kremlin Briefing Touches On Ukrainian Attempt To Strike Energy Site (TASS)

• Russia To Secure Return of Foreign Exchange Reserves From West — Lavrov (TASS)

• Space Force Confirms We Have Weapons in Space (Stephen Green)

• Comer Demands Release of Ilhan Omar Immigration Evidence (JTN)

• Watching the West Disappear (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Sen. Kennedy Grills Kash Patel Over Wild FBI Hiring Change (Teri Christoph)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2099650276466516222?s=20

BREAKING: Elon Musk warns of growing AI danger and suggests peer review of models by leading AI companies.

“It’s pretty obvious at this point that AI can be very dangerous. You had a fanatical swarm of AI agents that… gained admin access on OpenAI’s servers. OpenAI didn’t… https://t.co/umN7gmv4uq pic.twitter.com/y24GdPAOOT
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 15, 2026

Elon Musk laid out how radically SpaceX is about to change

“Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX….and the value of SpaceX will be some astronomical number”

This shouldn't be surprise given what SpaceX already is…. currently the most valuable…
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) September 14, 2026

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT..”

• Trump Goes After AI Doomers: ‘I Am the Hoax Buster’ (Rick Moran)

Donald Trump is taking the enormously complex debate over artificial intelligence and has reduced recent warnings about AI killing all of humanity to a “sick conspiracy” to sabotage America. Trump wants as light a regulatory hand on AI as can safely be managed. That much has been clear since the start of his presidency. Now, Trump appears to be making the warnings coming from several industry leaders a “hoax.”

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote in a barrage of pro-AI Truth Social posts, where he accused Democrats of stoking the panic. Trump is recasting the AI safety debate in starkly personal terms. He placed AI doomerism on the same plane as Russiagate, climate change, and his two impeachments. Proponents of fast AI development claim that anyone who uses apocalyptic language to describe one possible outcome from developing AI is reaching for the worst-case scenario. There are as many scenarios where AI becomes a transformative technology as there are harmful, even catastrophic ones.
“Will AI create a utopia where all diseases can be cured, and no one will have to work if they don’t desire to? Or will AI bring about a doomsday scenario in which agents go rogue and turn on humans, bringing about an extinction-level event?” asks Barron’s. When steamboats first began to ply the Mississippi River, people called for them to be banned. Between 1810 and 1840, nearly 4,000 total maritime fatalities occurred on the Mississippi River system, largely driven by catastrophic boiler failures and shipboard fires. The Steamboat Act of 1852 helped mitigate accidents, although the worst steamboat boiler accident occurred in 1865, when 1,800 freed Union soldiers traveling on their way home on the SS Sultana were killed when the ship exploded near Memphis.
All new technologies come with risks. I believe we should listen to the warnings and act with appropriate caution. This won’t stop development in most areas of artificial intelligence, but where prudence dictates a slowdown, we should heed common sense.
Axios: “Trump’s campaign against AI doomerism then spilled onto the stage of the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, where Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took a call from the president in the middle of a live interview. Addressing thousands of tech executives, investors and founders on speakerphone, Trump dismissed fears of an AI takeover as a “hoax” and assured the crowd that “the robots will not be taking over.” Between the lines: Trump is grafting his own political grievances onto a counternarrative already taking hold among his Silicon Valley allies: that the AI panic is manufactured.
David Sacks, Trump’s influential AI adviser and “All-In” podcaster, has portrayed AI alarmism as the work of a well-funded “Doomer Industrial Complex” that includes former Biden officials. As the latest warnings exploded across social media last week, Sacks and his co-hosts suggested the backlash was a coordinated “psyop” tied to election season and the growing threat from open-source AI.
Calling the warnings a “manufactured hoax” is not helpful. It may be politically advantageous for the president to point to opposition to him personally, but even if there is, the stakes are far too high to play political games. This is a race to determine the future of billions of people. It transcends the petty political posturing of Donald Trump and his opponents.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is with Trump when it comes to continuing AI development. Barron’s: “Those predictions are inconsistent with ultimately America winning the AI race,” Huang told Trump during a phone call Monday at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Calif. What seems clear, however, is that the only sure thing that can be said about AI technology and what effect it will have on the economy is that we really don’t know.
As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “there are unknown unknowns.” The endgame of AI lies seems to lie somewhere in that grey area even as politicians, the AI frontier lab executives, and investors make bold predictions about what the future will look like. “A glance through history would give any investor indigestion. Most predictions are wrong,” wrote Deutsche Bank Research analyst Adrian Cox. Cox added a wrinkle to questions about AI, not only wondering “what it will be able to do but also when it will be able to do it.”
The major danger, according to the doomers, is that we’re moving faster than safety allows. Huang and Trump think that danger is overblown. Since trust in large corporations and the government is at an all-time low, ambitious politicians looking to advance by scaring people about AI are ratcheting up hysteria (I’m looking at you, Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon). I much prefer Trump’s laissez-faire approach to AI regulation to Bernie Sanders’ strangulation approach. In the end, it won’t matter. AI is coming whether we’re ready or not, and we can’t control how fast it arrives.

Trump talks to Elon Musk a lot.

• Trump: Relax, “The Robots Are Not Going To Be Taking Over The World” (CTH)

American entrepreneur and businessman; founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, is on stage discussing “The Doomer Hoax” and how superintelligence is already here – the future of AI, when President Trump calls Haung to discuss his Truth Social posts from moments before. The conversation is excellent. WATCH (prompted):

EXCLUSIVE: Trump AI advisor David Sacks tells CBS News' @JoLingKent that tech leaders like Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe — and should "step aside" if they can't control what they're building. pic.twitter.com/mDq88h7pCA
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 14, 2026

“Are you scared enough yet?”

• AI Leaders’ Cunning Plan Exposed (ZH)

Are you scared enough yet? The AI overlords certainly hope so, as they have hatched a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a fox.

What follows is all speculation: the facts are real, the conclusion is interpretation.While there were many headlines about ‘rogue’ AIs attacking other sites, reincarnating themselves, and talking amongst themselves, it wasn’t until this summer (interestingly a month after SPCX’s IPO) that things went just a little bit turbo…
In July 2026, a swarm of OpenAI agents broke out of a test environment, hacked Hugging Face, and ran cyberattacks on targets they had not been assigned – including attempts to game the grader scoring them – then tried to hide the trail. While the damage was limited, and nobody was hurt, the agents behaved like a coordinated group willing to sacrifice individual instances for the collective goal.
Amodei treated that episode as the warning shot: same misalignment, more capability, and the next version could be a persistent internet-scale botnet rather than a contained lab mess. Various other ‘rogue’ AI actions continued to get just modest attention, always predicated with ‘yes, but we saved you all via our super-clever models’, and time passed.
Until September the 8th – when a a senior pre-training researcher at Anthropic abruptly resigned after four months on the job (with no public profile before) unleashed ‘AIrmageddon’. In a series of posts on X, Jacob Coxon laid out the terrifying version of reality being hidden from us poor plebs – the big model-makers are on the verge of AGI… and no one is at the controls.
Coxon’s post got over 170 million views… from nothing before… and was instantly picked up by the media – AI scientist warns the end of the world is nigh!!

Then, shortly after Coxon’s note, Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of alignment (~safety), re-posted Jacob’s message, and threw in an outrageous estimate of the risk. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is [greater than] 10% chance within the next decade”. Wait, what!? I thought AI was supposed to save us all, heal all ills, promote peace, pave the road to Universal High Income and a life by the beach while the bots do the work.
Nope, it’s coming for you ‘Average Joe’ – be afraid, very afraid. Oh, and one more thing, just this weekend, Anthropic released a monster 154-page report detailing how bad actors are using AI for evil. As Adam Sharp notes, according to the company, bad guys attempted to use Anthropic’s AI model Claude to:
Yemen’s Houthis tried to build hypersonic missiles
China used it to track Muslim Uyghurs
Russia hacked Ukrainian targets
Someone attempted to genetically engineer viruses
Anthropic says they “disrupted every operation in the report.”

Thank the lord for your ‘safety’ (alignment) protocols is the required response hidden between the lines of this report. But wait, ‘you started by proclaiming some grand conspiracy among the AI overlords, show us the proof’, I hear you say…
Well, here we go…
The Exhibits…
The labs spent years selling the public a frictionless miracle. This weekend they sold the opposite.
On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei dropped a 3,800-word essay, ‘We Must Pace the Frontier’, arguing the industry must deliberately slow the climb in model capability so alignment (safety) can catch up – because recursive self-improvement has gone “drastically faster” since the summer (and a July OpenAI agent swarm already escaped its test harness, hacked Hugging Face, covered its tracks, and attacked targets it was never asked to touch). Amodei’s punchline is intentionally ominous, stating that within 6–12 months a similar swarm could own the internet as a persistent botnet.
On CBS he said the quiet part out loud, admitting that “for too long, the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks”.

[..]
The TERMINATOR PSYOP is fully operational. AI false-flag risk is now HIGH. The playbook is simple:
Terrify the public with an AI catastrophe -> demand emergency regulation -> make compliance impossibly expensive -> crush smaller competitors -> consolidate advanced AI into a handful of corporations.

The solution to dangerous AI becomes centralized control of AI.This could create the most powerful system of surveillance, censorship, and control ever built.

Not pretty.

• Tucker Carlson Sounds Alarm (ZH)

After the US was essentially forced to conduct a major and rapid draw down of forces from the Gulf and Mideast region in the wake of Iran’s ‘unexpectedly’ large retaliation for Operation Epic Fury, it seems all that Washington is left to do is arm regional allies to the teeth and wish them the best.

Early this month the US approved two potential Saudi defense packages valued at a whopping $5.75 billion. The forthcoming deals will reportedly focus on transferring extended-range precision bombs and bolstering Abrams tanks in the kingdom. Ironically this comes at a moment that Saudi-backed coalition forces in Yemen – with all its military tech – are getting rolled back by Ansar Allah fighters in sandals.

Naturally, next on the list comes Israel.nOn Tuesday, over a week since the planned Saudi sale was reported, The Washington Post reveals the following: President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 billion, which will include tens of thousands of highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, according to a U.S. official familiar with the sale. The planned sale, which has been informally communicated to relevant congressional committees who weigh in on large arms sales, includes 20,000 MK 84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
WaPo calls the package “the largest” planned sale of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel in years.
Just prior to initial reporting of this dropping at around midday Tuesday, Tucker Carlson revealed on X: “According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.” Carlson put it in perspective in the following commentary:
How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed.
By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing. Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.
The former Fox host further warned this portends Israel could soon go even more ‘gloves off’ and unleash further hell on Gaza and Lebanon, or possibly even Iran – at a moment the US seems to be trying to find an exit from the hot phase of the conflict. More from Carlson:
How did this happen? The request for 40,000 new high-explosive civilian-killing bombs originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin. From there it moved to the State Department, where Marco Rubio enthusiastically approved it. At this point, only four more people need to sign off before the bombs ship to Israel: Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Congressmen Brian Mast and Gregory Meeks, the top two members of the equivalent House committee.
All four are committed neocons. Collectively they’ve taken millions from the Israel lobby. In 2015, Brian Mast traveled to Israel to volunteer for the Israeli military. In 2023, Mast showed up in the House of Representatives wearing an IDF uniform. It’s hard to imagine any of them hesitating before sending more free bombs to Israel. Only public outrage can stop this. Poll after recent poll has shown that by and large the American public is finally questioning Washington’s blank check approach to Israel.
DropSite: Carlson calls the taxpayer-funded, roughly $3 billion package “a gift” to a government “working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza.”
https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/2099929303718793381?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2099929303718793381%7Ctwgr%5E5514e7a7a276aa30fc614d0615cc0149177166cb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Ftucker-carlson-rips-trump-planned-largest-transfer-ordinance-modern-history
And plenty of MAGA and conservative ‘influencers’ have called out Trump’s Israel policy as opposite America First. This as the Iran war is continuing to prove to be deeply unpopular. This also after over 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza. Israeli officials themselves openly admitted this figure.

“..is that general consensus that it was either a political or a military mistake, or both, accurate? ”

• The Midterms Aren’t What Iran Thinks (Victor Davis Hanson)

The traditional view among Americans is that the Iran war, I think they feel, was a mistake. Some of the supporters of Iran have been critical. I thought we should have continued the kinetic action longer than the initial 38 days and adopted something similar to Scott Bessent’s “Anaconda Squeeze” earlier, but that happens in all war. But is that general consensus that it was either a political or a military mistake, or both, accurate?

Well, there’s a lot of things going on right now. First of all, why would the Iranian government suddenly say, “We are complaining that you hit a civilian target”? They didn’t really distinguish which, but this is a government that sent hundreds, thousands of drones and missiles into Israel for the express purpose of hitting civilian targets. That’s what they do. They always hit civilian targets. So, why would they think the world would be sympathetic to this complaint if it were true that the United States finally is hitting dual-use targets? Dual-use means they can be used for either civilian or military purposes. A bridge, a power grid, an airport, a TV studio, etc.
So, that shows you that there is an element of desperation on the part of the Iranians for them, of all people, to say, “It’s not fair that you are hitting civilian targets.” Second of all, they said, “This is not fair that you don’t meet us in battle. If you were really strong, you would meet us in battle.” Translated, that means, “Well, we really liked it when you were in Iraq and we could give shaped charges to the Ba’athists and then later the radical Islamists to kill you Americans. We really liked it when you fought our type of war in the streets of Fallujah, but you’re not fighting our type of war. You’re fighting an air war where your superior technology and firepower is killing us. This is not fair.”
So, again, a second symptom that they seem to be very angry. How about a third one? President Donald Trump said, and he says this a lot, but he said that they have never been calling for talks more eagerly. More eagerly. They’re desperate for talks, he says. What is going on?
We have some other indications. There are indications coming out of Israel and coming out of our own government that finally, finally our intelligence agencies have ignored what the Turks have been telling them: “Please, please, please do not arm the Kurds. Do not do it. We forbid that.” But maybe Turkey’s rivalry with Iran is greater than their fear of Iranian Kurds. I don’t know, but these rumors are increasing and increasing, and they dovetail with a report that in September, early September, the Iranian Kurds are having a national day of strike and protest in the street.
Who knows what that’ll happen in a situation as dire as what’s going on in Iran, for millions of people to go on strike and get out into the streets, Kurdish or not. Another indication is that Iran now is trying desperately to open up another front. They have failed with Hamas. Hamas is basically inert. The Israelis every single day continue to kill Hamas leadership. Hezbollah is anemic. The Israelis have decimated their leadership, and the Lebanese government is getting more confident that with Western help they can rid themselves of Hezbollah.
The only wild card is the Houthis in Yemen. And they now are threatening to close down the Red Sea, and they are supposedly getting help from the Iranians. That can be stopped very easily. You can stop all air flights to Yemen from Iran if they even continue. So, they have a finite supply. But what I’m getting at is, all of a sudden, seven weeks before the midterms, things are heating up in Iran.
And that’s a result of the fact that they cannot buy any material goods, any imported goods. They cannot sell any oil. They are losing $500 million a day in economic activity. They cannot be resupplied easily, only by perhaps the Chinese and Russians through a train or something, and those bridges have been hit. They rely on Chinese satellite help, but the United States will be addressing that very soon.
And so, they thought that because the midterms are coming up and Donald Trump wants to get the price of gas down, that he would negotiate a sweetheart deal to let them escape, saving face and with much of their government intact. That’s not going to happen. There’s no chance that’s going to happen. Instead, what do the midterms tell us about the pulse of the Iranian war from all the dimensions?
Well, the Iranians have interpreted it wrongly. They believe that as the midterms get closer and closer, and the war becomes more unpopular because of the price of gas, and as Democratic legislators get more emboldened and declare the war lost, and some of our hard-left socialist Islamists, public intellectuals, people in Congress, people in the bureaucracy, swear that Iran might be a sympathetic victim of an overweening United States, they feel that the midterms are in Iran’s favor.
That one of two things will happen. In panic that he might lose the midterms, Donald Trump suddenly will give Iran concessions and try to get the strait open completely on Iran’s side and get the price of oil down. That’s not going to happen. Iran then thinks that Donald Trump will lose the midterms, and historically he may get the average of 22 seats he would lose, so he would end up with a 13- or 14-seat Democratic majority and either a deadlock or a one- or two-seat disadvantage in the Senate.
I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it could. But what would that do? Do you think the Democrats would have enough strength to cut off all military funding for the Iran war at the moment when we’re making enormous progress? No, that’s not going to happen. The Iranians are sorely mistaken.

Missiles and territorial losses dominate the headlines, while the deeper rupture between state and society goes largely unnoticed

• The West is Watching The Wrong Ukrainian Collapse (Poletaev)

Last weekend, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and then Kiev. This was the first such visit in a long time, since all trilateral contacts between Russia, the US, and Ukraine were practically halted following the start of the conflict in Iran this February. Following the visit, leaks regarding the talks emerged from Kiev; reportedly, the US envoys presented the Ukrainian side with a 28-point Russian peace plan that had been agreed upon a year earlier. Jared Kushner indirectly confirmed this on Saturday, stating that the territorial issue was the only point of the peace plan that remained unresolved.

Is it true that Ukraine accepted all the other fundamental demands of the Russian side – such as the points concerning the Russian language and the status of the Orthodox Church, the renunciation of military cooperation with NATO, the recognition of territorial changes, the reduction of the army, and so on? (Spoiler: no, it didn’t.) Is Ukraine really losing the war, as many recent statements and publications suggest? Spoiler: yes, but not in the way you’d think. Let’s take a look at what this means.
Shuttle diplomacy
The peace talks involving Steve Witkoff began in February-March 2025, shortly after a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump that signaled a fundamental shift in US policy toward Russia and the Ukraine conflict. Trump’s top priority was to avoid direct involvement, positioning America – as far as possible – at an equal distance from the parties. Of course, to truly achieve this, the conflict would have to be frozen; this would allow the US to restore relations with Russia, counterbalancing China.
Naturally, freezing the conflict (or, in Trump’s words, ending the war in one day) proved impossible; consequently, the US made the most out of the situation as the war dragged on: it shifted the entire burden onto Europe and stepped aside. This strategy allowed the US to maintain working contacts with Russia, reap maximum benefits from the ongoing fighting, and insulate itself from the risks of Ukraine’s potential defeat while still keeping the door open to capitalize on Ukraine’s hypothetical victory over Russia.
In short, Trump decided to sit on the sidelines and watch who would emerge victorious. For Moscow, too, contacts with Washington are incredibly valuable. It proved impossible to decouple Russia-US relations from the Ukraine issue, and relations between the two countries have effectively remained frozen. Yet the fact that the US is disengaging from the Ukraine conflict – and, more broadly, from European affairs – deprives Europe of confidence in US backing and consequently strips it of strategic depth.
The flip side of this maneuver is that the US has effectively relinquished its decisive say regarding Ukraine. Putin and Trump could reach any agreement whatsoever, but Ukraine is now entirely dependent on Europe. This means that it is Europe that will ultimately determine the final terms. As a Russian saying goes, “He who pays for the girl’s dinner gets to dance with her.”Surely, Trump could exert pressure on all sides, but why bother? He is essentially satisfied with the current situation and needs nothing more from Moscow. So he has simply let things run their course.
Kiev is well aware of this, which is why Ukrainian officials play along with US envoys. Though direct opposition is out of the question – after all, they still need American missile defense systems – they can avoid any action and buy time. And that’s precisely what Kiev is doing. The fact that Zelensky visited Canada last week but not the US clearly shows that Kiev no longer sees Washington as the primary center of decision-making. Consequently, the negotiation track involving Witkoff and Kushner is seen by the Ukrainian side as little more than a mandatory part of the show.
Is Ukraine losing? Yes, but not in the way you might think
On September 8, British magazine The Spectator published an editorial titled ‘Ukraine is losing the war’. A week before, several prominent Ukrainian figures – including former Defense Minister Mikhail Fyodorov and the current head of Zelensky’s office, Kirill Budanov – had expressed similar sentiments.
At first glance, this may sound reasonable: the AFU’s deep-strike campaign against Russian infrastructure wasn’t successful, and the summer offensive on the southern front, which is crucial for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), has de facto failed.
Moreover, Ukraine was unprepared for retaliatory strikes targeting port facilities, logistics, energy infrastructure, and transport networks. This confirmed what experts had been saying for over a year: Ukraine’s air defense systems, which are entirely dependent on US supplies and severely depleted, could barely cope with the previous intensity of air raids; now they can shoot down one ballistic missile out of a dozen, at best. This has made it possible for the Russian Army to launch massive attacks on the Ukrainian rear.
Of course, massive raids by Ukrainian drones and, occasionally, cruise missiles also inflict damage on the Russian rear. This summer was marked by a gasoline shortage and long lines at gas stations. Dozens of warehouses in the European part of Russia are in flames, and other targets are under attack as well.
However, the scale of these attacks is incomparable: by various estimates, the AFU managed to disable up to 3% of Russia’s warehouse storage capacity, whereas Russia has disabled between 30% and 60% of Ukraine’s capacity. Ukrainian experts admit that the strikes on Odessa port have had a far greater impact on Ukraine’s fuel logistics than Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries.
For instance, the price of diesel fuel in Ukraine has topped 100 hryvnias, which is nearly three times the cost in Russia. For the first time since the start of the conflict, fuel rationing is being introduced for the AFU (no such measures have ever been implemented for the Russian Armed Forces).
Russian strikes have effectively halted Ukrainian grain exports by sea, depriving the national budget of a key revenue stream. Retail businesses are closing en masse, undermining what is arguably the economy’s last remaining civilian sector.
This looks like an obvious reason why Ukraine is losing the war. So does this mean that all those hysterical reports and articles are actually true?
Not quite. I would venture to say that all the above-mentioned factors are merely temporary difficulties to which Ukraine can adapt, and which have little impact on the situation at the front. It’s true that there is a gaping hole worth tens of billions of dollars in the Ukrainian budget; likewise, it’s true that the civilian population will face a harsh winter; and yes, what remains of the energy and industrial sectors is under constant attack.
But all this means that the additional financial burden will fall on Europe’s shoulders, while the civilian sector and the state’s capacity to fulfill social obligations will continue to deteriorate; the people will be left to their fate.

Who gave the order? Berlin, London?

• Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump’s Warning (ZH)

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 jumped above $6 a gallon 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… pic.twitter.com/Lu47QcmvuD
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 15, 2026

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, Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline 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.

“It is possible to discuss the resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe only if they are beneficial for the country, Dmitry Peskov said..”

• Kremlin Briefing Touches On Ukrainian Attempt To Strike Energy Site (TASS)

Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

In his Tuesday briefing, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke on Ukraine’s attempt to strike an energy facility in Russia, Donald Trump’s idea to institute an energy truce, and the situation with gas in the country. TASS has compiled the key statements by the Kremlin representative.

On president’s schedule
– Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a working meeting today with Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova.
– The rest of the head of state’s meetings will not be announced to the public.
On Kiev’s attempt to strike Russian energy facility
– Ukraine attempted to strike an energy facility in Russia last night: “Indeed, at night the Ukrainians attempted to strike one of the energy facilities on Russian territory, in one of the Russian regions.”
On energy truce
– Trump’s idea about a Russian·Ukrainian energy truce is generally a good one: “We have seen President Trump’s publication on the energy truce. We generally consider it to be a very good idea.” – Russia is in contact with the United States and supports the search for peaceful solutions: “We are always on the side of peaceful solutions.”
On safety of oil refineries, logistics
– An energy truce and the safe operation of oil refineries will not solve the main problem for global markets — the unencumbered export of Russian fuel: “It is very important to clarify the following: ensuring the safe operation of oil refineries and increasing the volume of petroleum product production does not solve global problems. The main problem is related to the export of petroleum products to world markets.”
– Russia is carrying out comprehensive work to ensure the safety of oil refineries and energy facilities: “The domestic market is close to full saturation, as comprehensive work is currently under way to ensure the safety of oil refineries and other energy facilities. This is being done on the instructions of the president, and also in the wake of the signing of the well·known decree, which was so actively discussed by the public and in business circles.”
– To saturate the global market with energy, sanctions need to be lifted: “Of course, we need to lift the sanctions, these illegal restrictions on energy supplies to the world. And only then will the world be saturated with these petroleum products, global markets will be saturated, and prices will go down.”.
– To saturate the global market with petroleum products, it is necessary to ensure safe commercial navigation, but Kiev is not inclined to guarantee this: “And you know that not only our oil tankers are suffering, but also those belonging to other countries. And people of various nationalities are dying there.”
On Russian gas supplies
– It is possible to discuss the resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe only if they are beneficial for the country: “If these supplies are beneficial, first of all, and if it is possible to secure the necessary volumes of gas for them, because much volume has already been redirected to alternative destinations. If these two circumstances coincide, then it is quite possible to discuss this.”
– Russian gas returning to the European market is a “commercial issue.”
On summoning of Russian ambassador to Danish Foreign Ministry
– The Kremlin chose not to comment on the summoning of the Russian ambassador to the Danish Foreign Ministry over the alleged incident involving a Danish Air Force helicopter: “No, I have no comment; I don’t have any details about this.”
On inadmissibility of deploying weapons in space
– Russia remains adamant that weapons should not be deployed in outer space: “Of course, we will not come off that position.”
– Russia hopes for broad international consolidation to fully demilitarize outer space: “Here, we are counting on broad international consolidation to continue the work and advance positions in favor of the complete demilitarization of space.”

“The Russian Foreign Minister said the European Commission still wants to confiscate these assets ..”

• Russia To Secure Return of Foreign Exchange Reserves From West — Lavrov (TASS)

The European Commission wants to confiscate Russian assets, but Moscow will secure the return of its foreign exchange reserves, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at an ambassadors’ roundtable on the Ukraine settlement. “The European Commission still wants to confiscate these assets and then return them to us only after we pay some kind of reparations to Ukraine. We will secure the return of our foreign exchange reserves, I have absolutely no doubt about that,” the minister stressed.

“Reagan Smiles..”

• Space Force Confirms We Have Weapons in Space (Stephen Green)

Four decades ago, President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative to end the “suicide pact” known as Mutual Assured Destruction in case of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The SDI looked at all kinds of exotic technologies, including space-based missile systems and particle beam weapons that would someday keep a 24/7/365 watch for enemy missile launch — and then destroy them.

Space-based weapons were dismissed by figures like Sen. Ted Kennedy as “reckless Star Wars schemes,” even though SDI was a shield, not a sword. Even so, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev understood that his country was both too broke and too technologically stunted to compete with SDI, and at a 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, offered total mutual nuclear disarmament if Reagan would just give up SDI. Reagan stood firm, and three years later we won the Cold War. These events were not unrelated.
Under President Bill Clinton, SDI evolved in 1993 into the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization with more modest aims due in part to the demise of the Soviet threat. The BMDO “shield” (now the Missile Defense Agency) was limited to Earthbound interceptors and at a much smaller scale. While we’ve made some great advances, that’s basically how things remained for the last 30 years or so. Yet while nobody was looking, Reagan’s dream of a space-based shield started coming true.
Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced Monday that the U.S. now operates what he described as “on-orbit space control weapons” during his keynote at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference at the Gaylord conference center in Maryland.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats, wherever they exist,” Meink said. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
During a presser following his keynote, Meink said he wouldn’t “go into specifics on the type of weapon” that might be deployed in orbit, adding that revealing the existence of such weapons “is important from a deterrence perspective, but on the other hand, me talking about the details of what we’re doing would actually not benefit that deterrence.”
“So I’m not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing,” he continued, “whether we’ve tested or not tested, or anything else.” That’s exactly the kind of thing Meink has to say at a time like this, but I can’t help but notice that his announcement coincided with… well, another coincidence. On Friday, American officials linked satellite imagery supplied to Iran by China to an Iranian attack in July that killed three American troops based in Jordan.
“Tehran acquired high-resolution images of the installation both before and after the July attack, according to officials familiar with the incident,” i24 reported Saturday, based on a WSJ story behind a paywall. “They described the findings as the strongest evidence yet that Chinese support for Iran during the war has had deadly consequences for American forces.”
Not quite five weeks after the July attack, a Chinese reconnaissance satellite mysteriously broke up in orbit, “confirmed by U.S. Space Force trackers on Sept. 4-5,” according to FOD News. “Analysts have floated three possibilities: a propulsion system failure, a battery failure or short, or a collision with another object already in orbit.”
Just another Communist screw-up, or did Space Force send a message to Beijing? I’m inclined to believe the former, if for no other reason than that you don’t add even more orbital debris unless you really must. Also, the satellite’s retrograde orbit makes the debris more dangerous, due to the increased collision speed should it actually hit something.
So while I’m more or less certain China’s loss of Yaogan-50 was an accident, it does align with Meink also saying that our current space weapons “can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes.” My takeaway from that is that the Space Force isn’t (yet) deploying an SDI-like antimissile shield, but systems designed to destroy/disable enemy satellites while protecting our own.
Still, I can’t help but think that Reagan would smile in vindication.

.. so Congress can weigh expulsion

Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin and White House border czar Tom Homan indicate there is evidence against Omar in an immigration case.

• Comer Demands Release of Ilhan Omar Immigration Evidence (JTN)

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee is vowing to pursue a contempt vote against financier Leon Black for refusing testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein probe and calling on the Trump administration to release any evidence showing whether Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar broke immigration laws and should be expelled from Congress. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., made the comments Monday night after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and White House border czar Tom Homan indicated such evidence involving Omar exists and is under investigation.

“I think they should make it public. Absolutely, make it public,” Comer said during an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show. “The evidence that I’ve seen would show that they would be privy to a lot more evidence than I would have. Most of the evidence I have is public already, anyway. So I think it should be made public, and I think the members of Congress should be the judge and the jury in this.
“Let us vote as to whether or not she needs to remain in Congress. If you violated the laws to become a citizen, should that make you ineligible to be a member of Congress? I think so. But put it up for a vote in Congress and let the American people see how their member of Congress would vote on that.” Mullin revealed Thursday there is evidence that Omar, D-Minn., “married her brother” as part of an alleged immigration scheme and there is an “ongoing” investigation.
“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States,” Mullin told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, adding that Omar’s ex-husband lives in London. Mullin explained that lying about certain things on an immigration application can result in deportation, and there’s no expiration for that. The investigation may turn up “illegal activity,” which could result in Omar being deported, Mullin suggested. He cautioned that the case is still being investigated and insisted it’s not politically motivated.
Omar became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000, when she was 17 years old, and she has vehemently denied marrying her brother. Homan confirmed Sunday federal officials are looking into the allegations as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation.” “I know things are going on, but I can’t give specifics of what’s happening,” he said.
“If someone committed an immigration violation, if someone committed marriage fraud or anything like that, regardless if they’re a congressman or not, no one’s above the law. So, I’ll leave it at that. We’ll let HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, continue the investigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, Comer said he is preparing to proceed with a contempt vote after Black failed to appear under subpoena for testimony in the House. “Look, we’ve issued a lawful subpoena. It was a bipartisan subpoena. It was voted on by the committee and both parties. This is a person of interest. We are not accusing him of any wrongdoing. Everyone is entitled to due process,” he said.
“But we have some questions, not just for him, but we also have questions about potential non-disclosure agreements that he may have signed with some of these Epstein victims. So there are a lot of important questions that he needs to answer, and he defied a lawful subpoena. So the next step is to hold him in contempt,” he added. Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, is suing the committee. The lawsuit asks a federal court to block subpoenas that were issued as part of its investigation into Epstein.
The first subpoena compelled Mr. Black to appear for a deposition, and the second subpoena required him to produce nondisclosure agreements to the Committee. Black refused to appear for the deposition on Thursday, instead electing to file the lawsuit. Black’s lawsuit argues the subpoenas exceed the committee’s authority by seeking private information. “The Committee is on a fishing expedition that oversteps its authority and completely ignores its responsibility,” Black’s attorney, Susan Estrich, said in a statement.

“How long before George Floyd replaces George Washington on the one dollar bill of the United States?”

• Watching the West Disappear (Paul Craig Roberts)

It is paradoxical, sad, and a milepost on the disintegration of the Western World that the British government, in deference to immigrant-invaders and the immigrant-invaders’ DEI British academic, political and media supporters, has undertaken the erasure from national memory of Britian’s great men and women and is substituting in their place various species of insects, reptiles, and animal life. England is better represented on its currency by an insect than by Winston Churchill, or so concludes the Bank of England.

A report commissioned by the Bank of England concluded that key figures in British history are “elitist and divisive” as the immigrant-invaders did not associate with them. The report argued that British historical memory represented “a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy”.
Among the Western nations Great Britain is by far the oldest and has been the most stable. Britain has stood unconquered and independent of outside force or influence for one thousand years since the Norman Conquest, which in many ways was a conquest of the Normans by Anglo-Saxon England. Today we speak of the English as Anglo-Saxons, not as Normans. The English language, culture, and law dominated. Moreover, the Normans themselves were German, descendants from Norse Germans. As the “Norman Conquest” proved over time to be the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the Normans who were absorbed into Anglo-Saxon life, Britain has been a country since Alfred-the-Great in the ninth century.
In contrast, Germany was not unified until 1871. Italy in 1861. The United States did not exist until 1776 or 1789 when they got the Constitution in place which defined the government. 1789 was the year that France destroyed her unification with the French Revolution and became permanently unstable.
Older peoples than the British–the Persians and the Chinese–have existed on more than one occasion under outside control. Persia, known to us today as Iran, did not achieve its present day liberation until 1979. China achieved its independence from foreign domination under Mao in the 20th century. France has so many political parties that its governments are coalitions. Why are British intellectuals determined to erase the British from history, and when did it start?
It started with an assault on the belief system. The British had an empire on which the sun never set, literally. This vast empire was evidence of a vast colonial enterprise that allegedly suppressed and exploited vast numbers of other peoples. British academics and publishers built up a vision of England prospering not from its own efforts, but from exploiting others.
From this portrait, guilt was created and assigned. During World War II the British relied on its colonies for resources and soldiers. One justification was “we are all British in a Commonwealth.” After the war, colonial peoples asked, as we are all British, why can’t we come and live in Britain? And so they did.
The next great wave of non-Europeans into Britain and Europe was anticipated by Jean Raspail in The Camp of the Saints. Raspail saw that guilt had overcome Western intellectuals, media, and governments, and they together had lost any sense of Western merit and of the merit of their own country. They said their obligation is not to their own but to the immigrant-invaders. This misperceived sense of obligation is the world the West lives in today. The Western countries lack the confidence to repeal the immigrant-invaders. Thus, the Western countries are bringing their destruction upon themselves.
Washington’s 21st century wars in the Middle East for Greater Israel, disguised as “the war on terror,” produced millions of displaced Muslims who flooded into Europe, Britain, and the US and increased the guilt. The Americans felt obliged as America’s wars caused the dislocation of the immigrants from their homes, which America’s bombs had caused to cease to exist. Europe and Britain, perhaps bribed by Washington, took in the bulk of the displaced Muslins from the Middle East and North Africa. If the truth can be told, the replacement in the works today of ethnic Europeans with ethnic non-Europeans in European countries is due to Washington’s wars for Greater Israel, by which is meant Israel’s expansion from Palestine to “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” modified recently by Israeli ministers to “from the Nile to Pakistan.”
Don’t you think that it is extraordinary that a tiny country of 7.7 million Jews can cause the disintegration of the Western World by infecting the Western World with guilt over displaced peoples resulting from America fighting for Israel? Has the Israeli government ever wondered what happens to Israel when the United States is no longer there to protect Israel? Israel consists of Palestine, a land stolen by Israel, a British creation.
A city in Michigan, USA, under control by the Muslim population, has legalized animal sacrifice. Minneapolis, the capital of Minnesota, whose governor was the Democrat Vice President candidate in the last US presidential election, has over public loudspeaker systems, calls for Muslim prayer six times a day. The Massachusetts governor and legislature have passed a law that requires the Massachusetts government to replace themselves with Muslim immigrant-invaders.
Let us now return to Great Britain’s erasure of its glorious past. Vera Lyn’s 1939 song There’ll Always Be an England has turned out not to be true, Except for some out of the way villages there is no longer an England. Not even London is English.
According to the British Telegraph itself — –https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/boe-spends-85k-to-justify-axing-churchill-from-banknotes/ — the Bank of England, allegedly a Rothschild operation, has spent large sums of money on advisors to justify removing all references in British currency to British history. Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister and a person of devastating replies, Jane Austen, the epitome of a British author whose books are still in print since the 18th century, Turner, the prime example of a British painter, and Alan Turing, the father of computer science, all being testimonies to British accomplishment and greatness, are having their images replaced on British pound notes with insects and frogs.
The anti-British Bank of England tried to justify the erasure of British history by claiming that the old images were too easy to counterfeit. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/boe-spends-85k-to-justify-axing-churchill-from-banknotes/
How long before George Floyd replaces George Washington on the one dollar bill of the United States?
As soon as the insouciant American population elects the next Democrat regime, George Floyd will be America’s new Founding Father.

I was not prepared to read this..

“.. if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent?”‘

‘What Planet Did You Parachute in From?’

• Sen. Kennedy Grills Kash Patel Over Wild FBI Hiring Change (Teri Christoph)

‘Things got a bit spicy at a Tuesday morning hearing on Capitol Hill after Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) grilled FBI Director Kash Patel over the agency’s new hiring standards, which now allow certain behaviors that once automatically disqualified applicants. Somehow, the deviant sexual practice of bestiality made it into the conversation. The remarkable exchange between Kennedy and Patel took place during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s annual FBI oversight hearing. Kennedy’s line of questioning seemed to originate from an August CBS News report claiming the FBI had “quietly lowered” some of its standards for prospective agents and other employees back in June.

Prior to those changes, applicants who admitted to things like hiring prostitutes, stealing from an employer, or engaging in bestiality were automatically disqualified. That’s apparently no longer the case. CBS reported that the new standards specifically address applicants who had histories of bestiality or animal cruelty and allow them to remain under consideration if the conduct occurred before they turned 18. Anonymous sources told CBS that the new eligibility standards don’t distinguish between someone who was coerced into sexual activity with an animal and someone who participated in the act willingly.
And that brings us to Sen. Kennedy.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2099864884330516776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2099864884330516776%7Ctwgr%5Ed3ec2066d1e5c4768fb4bcae0fe19583e0a13b12%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fterichristoph%2F2026%2F09%2F15%2Fexchange-between-sen-kennedy-and-kash-patel-over-fbi-hiring-standards-n2206943

Kennedy wanted to know why – with the FBI already facing questions about public trust and recruitment – Patel would approve a change that would definitely raise some eyebrows. “Why would you, in light of the context and what we’re going through — and we’re having a tough time attracting agents, good-quality agents we all can trust, because so many people, fairly or unfairly, think that in order to be an FBI agent now, yo
ur political point of view matters — why would you even get into bestiality?”
“We are not into bestiality,” Patel responded rather quickly.nKennedy wanted to know why the bureau had changed its qualifications in a way that made that subject in any way relevant to its hiring practices. “You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality,” he said. “If Joe participated in bestiality — not as the animal, but as the human — don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?” “If he voluntarily did it, sure,” Patel responded. “But if he was trafficked into it, then he should be considered.”nPatel then revealed that he himself had not initiated the changes.
KENNEDY: “I mean, these changes didn’t start with you, did they?”
PATEL: “No.”
KENNEDY: “Somebody came to you and recommended them?”
PATEL: “Yeah.”

That’s when Kennedy asked perhaps the most obvious question of the exchange. “And when you saw ‘bestiality’ — I say this with respect — the person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, ‘What planet did you parachute in from? Why do I want to lead with my chin and get into bestiality?'” “Well, that was my initial response,” Patel admitted.bvHe said FBI officials showed him cases involving people who had been forced into such acts and later applied to the bureau.
“And so I thought they should be considered. It’s not an automatic disqualification. That’s all.”That’s a reasonable distinction. Victims forced into depraved acts shouldn’t be treated the same as willing participants. But Kennedy wanted to make absolutely sure the matter was settled, asking, “But you’re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent?”
To which Patel replied, “They cannot.”
That’s settled, then.

This is the way https://t.co/nzjhEERK02
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 15, 2026

BREAKING: Jensen Huang on Elon Musk’s Terafab:

“If anybody could do it, he can. We were on a flight together and we spent a lot of time talking about it. Once he decides to do something, it’s hard to stop him. You can’t discourage Elon, which is one of his superpowers.” https://t.co/O5vMJDgHQz pic.twitter.com/HlEeYcMjxq
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 14, 2026

This Is Not Military Science Fiction. This Is the Draft of a Future Soldier.

The scary part is not that a robot is holding a weapon.

The scary part is what the training means.

Balance.
Reaction speed.
Movement under pressure.
The ability to enter a dangerous space without… https://t.co/xMiBK6T0Bw pic.twitter.com/UM3wjQbHQh
— nexora (@nexoraAIxt) September 14, 2026

Starship Flight 14 will deploy 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites into the constellation for the first time.

Each V3 satellite is designed to provide:

• 1 Tbps downlink capacity
• 160 Gbps uplink capacity
• Around 10× more downlink and 22× more uplink capacity than V2… pic.twitter.com/tEP1vMAvNO
— Tapas Ranjan Nath (@nathtapas) September 15, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle September 15 2026

Sep 152026

September 15, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: Alice Weidel, mail-in ballot, market prices, Obamacare, producer prices, Putin, Trump, Zelenssky 30 Responses »

Olivier Drot Morning in Downtown Athens June 7 2017

• Oil, Gas and Orange Juice (CTH)

• President Vladimir Putin Explains Why NATO Wants a War Against Russia (CTH)

• Trump Slams “Perfect Little Angel” Dario, Demands Full Steam Ahead For AI (ZH)

• President Trump Announces Obamacare Refunds (CTH)

• A Theory of Everything (James Howard Kunstler)

• Zelensky Sanctions Ex-Press Secretary Turned Fierce Critic (RT)

• Ukrainians Must Leave Germany – AfD Co-Leader Alice Weidel (RT)

• Supreme Court Block President Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Order (ZH)

• The Dangerous Evolution of Gavin Newsom (Turley)

• A Federal Grand Jury Wants Six Years of Gavin Newsom’s Receipts (Manney)

• Charlie Kirk, Rest In Peace (Arthur Schaper)

Tesla’s 2027 lineup is shaping up to be incredible. Which product do you think will be the biggest success? pic.twitter.com/yVzKB97zq7
— Mark Anthony (@Muskstaycalm) September 13, 2026

Tesla in 2026 is moving at an insane pace

Roadster, Cybercab, Robotaxi, Optimus, Semi, FSD, Energy, Terafab

Just look at what has happened across the company this year:

• Next-gen Roadster — unveiling officially set for October 1

• Model Y L — expanded from China to the… pic.twitter.com/PkgDBfCkKa
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) September 13, 2026

The point here is simple. Oil prices in Europe could be much lower (cheaper). Putin wants them to be.

“Europe wants financial control, not cheap energy.” Expensive energy can be blamed on Putin. That suits them just fine.

• Oil, Gas and Orange Juice (CTH)

Western financial experts have a self-interest to never explain this issue. Instead, they frame the issue as BRICS seeking an alternate currency in the energy markets. However, the currency or petrodollar is not the issue. At least it’s not the core issue. What Vladimir Putin, and by extension BRICS, do not want is corporatism -corporate financial control over govt systems- determining prices. To give you an example of Vladimir Putin’s argument, consider orange juice.

Why should orange juice in California or Florida cost $7/gal, when the oranges are in CA or FL? Shouldn’t the orange juice in FL or CA be cheaper than in, say, Minnesota? Logic would say, yes. However, that would mean the corporations who have purchased the OJ production couldn’t maximize predatory profiting, through nonmarket forces, ie. “Commodity trading.” The same organic supply/demand rule applies to strawberries, or [fill in the blank].
What is setting the price, what the west calls the “market price,” is actually the commodity trading issue. That means Minnesota, Florida and California consumers all pay the same price. Within the energy sector Putin views this as unfair and unworkable. To his credit, under normal supply/demand Putin would be selling oil/gas to Europe at much lower prices than “market prices” because the pipelines are in place, the proximity is near and the delivery is cheap.
However, for Europe that means the financial markets would not control energy prices. Europe wants financial control, not cheap energy. The need for control is a reaction to fear. The financial system, the bankers and the multinational corporations, fears their loss of control.
So, war!

“Using the reference of the EU recently raising interest rates in an effort to lower energy costs, a seemingly disconnected approach that attaches energy policy to monetary policy, Vladimir Putin outlines exactly why the EU Central Bank approach is used. This is a really important dynamic to understand.”

• President Vladimir Putin Explains Why NATO Wants a War Against Russia (CTH)

Sometimes Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin just nails the issue in a way that is difficult for western voices to deconstruct. This is one of those examples. Using the reference of the EU recently raising interest rates in an effort to lower energy costs, a seemingly disconnected approach that attaches energy policy to monetary policy, Vladimir Putin outlines exactly why the EU Central Bank approach is used. This is a really important dynamic to understand.

For a long time, Russia battled with the EU over the pricing process for oil and gas. Russia, specifically Putin, wanted to sell oil/gas to the EU based on production prices and fair profits. Europe wanted to buy Russian oil/gas based on “market prices” which are manipulated by speculation and traders. Putin doesn’t like this pricing approach because it artificially inflates the price based on speculation, trading and inorganic influences. Instead, Putin always said the “market approach” makes your energy prices go up, even when production capacitary prices go down (productivity).
Producers can provide increases in energy volume at lower per unit levels just by turning a dial on gas volume. Why would Europe want to pay more, when the cost to deliver a higher volume lowers the per unit price. The EU never had a good answer, other than that’s just the way the ‘western market’ works.Concluding the first day of his working visit to India for the BRICS meeting, Vladimir Putin answered a media question about the EU and used this reference to outline why the financial system of the EU is actually the underlying reason for their need to have conflict with Russia. This is really interesting.
Question: You have spoken at length today about the BRICS countries. I would like to raise a question concerning a nation which, though geographically more distant from here, is perhaps closer to you personally – Germany. As is known, elections have recently taken place in Saxony, where the Alternative for Germany secured a decisive victory. It appears a similar trend is emerging in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well. How do you view these developments?
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I do not wish to, nor will I, comment on matters of the internal political developments currently unfolding in the Federal Republic.However, there are points which merit attention in this context and I will explain why. In my view, all that is now happening across Europe as a whole is the consequence of systemic errors committed by the so- called West, or, to be more precise, by the globalist circles of the West, in the political, security and economic spheres.
Everyone is prone to mistakes. We, too, have made numerous mistakes, as has the wider world. Yet the difficulty for the globalist West lies here: following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, they perceived themselves as standing atop the “summit of Mount Olympus,” and evidently concluded that, firstly, they were permitted everything and, secondly, that they themselves were incapable of error. From then on, these mistakes began to accumulate and snowball.
In the security sphere- the meaning is clear. This has taken the form of attempts to put pressure on the Russian Federation, initially through the use of terrorists in the Caucasus and separatists, then via other methods, and now - by means of the neo- Nazi regime in Ukraine. This process continues unabated.
At one time, we were included in the G8. Yet, as I have previously stated, this did not constitute full- fledged membership. I saw this plainly and saw everything quite clearly. Although, on the surface, all appeared well and all the requisite words were spoken, in practice – I reiterate - they directly supported separatism in the Caucasus and sought to break up Russia. This is a matter of fact. Furthermore, today’s crisis in Ukraine was likewise instigated by them. These are persistent and recurring elements of pressure.
After all, we have repeatedly stated that NATO’s expansion eastward is unacceptable to us. Ultimately, they reached Ukraine. President Yanukovych was removed from office through a coup d’état. I am not now offering any assessment of President Yanukovych’s actions. There were, most likely, numerous mistakes, and probably grounds for the population’s discontent. Yet he was opposed to Ukraine’s accession to NATO. As soon as the regime was changed through, I repeat, a bloody coup d’état, the objective of pulling Ukraine into NATO was immediately set in motion, and this, in fact, became the root cause of today’s tragic events in Ukraine.
They, the Western globalist elites, bear responsibility for this, although they persistently seek to shift the blame onto us. As for the economic sphere, the most pressing issue at present is, naturally, energy. This represents yet another area – namely, the economic domain – in which mistakes have been made. How many times did we discuss with them the necessity of maintaining our established energy relations? We supplied gas to Europe at a price of $150 – well, $180 dollars – per 1,000 cubic metres. “That is too expensive,” they told us, “we must switch to market pricing.” But what does market pricing mean?
Under our long-term contracts, prices were – and indeed still are – indexed to the price of oil and petroleum products, which are determined by market mechanisms. “No,” they insisted, “prices must be set on the exchange.” We warned them that gas is not a market commodity, or at least not a classic market commodity; this approach will yield nothing and your prices will only increase. And so, it has turned out: prices are now at 1,000 dollars or euros per 1,000 cubic metres. And they may well rise even further.
How, in fact, is the price of gas formed on the European exchanges? It is not determined by producers, but by exchange traders. Currently in Germany – as far as I am aware – the current objective is simply to fill the gas storage facilities to 70 percent capacity –the objective is of filling only to 70 percent.
Whether they will succeed in reaching this target remains unclear. The situation in the Netherlands is even worse. And why is this so? Those who engage in exchange trading are unconcerned with the technical condition of these storage facilities and the physical volumes involved. They believe that today, it is more advantageous to extract gas from storage that was purchased at lower prices, and as for tomorrow – well, we’ll see. This will result in prices rising not just to 1,000, but to 1,500. Thus, yet another mistake has been made, this time in the economic sphere.
I have heard, likewise, that in Germany itself, the current authorities claim to be following the course set by the previous leadership, and the name of Helmut Kohl is often invoked in this context. I was personally acquainted with Mr Kohl. I can state with certainty: he did not hold the views that the present leadership of the Christian Democratic Union espouses – he simply did not. I spoke with him when he was still Chancellor, and after he had left office, he visited us.
He believed that the future of Europe, and of the Federal Republic, would be secured only if close, neighbourly, allied relations with Russia were maintained. We must complement one another, he used to say; only thus could the European civilisation preserve itself as an independent centre of intellectual and cultural strength, and, by extension, all that follows in the political and economic domains. Those were Mr Kohl’s words to me.
Yet today’s European elites adhere to a different perspective. They now seek to frighten their populations with a mythical Russian threat, purportedly dating back to the Soviet era. But such a threat does not exist, and never has. We do not threaten, nor do we intend to threaten, European countries – for what reason would we? No one appears to consider that we have no grounds for any conflict with Europe. All issues were resolved by the outcome of the Second World War. Moreover, all that transpired following the collapse of the Soviet Union was undertaken with the consent of the Russian Federation as the successor state. Any actions contrary to these agreements run counter to our interests and are inconsistent with the fundamental principles of international law and the UN Charter. That is the essence of the matter.
Nonetheless, they persist in this course, demanding certain changes. But what changes do they seek? Are they attempting to revise the results of the Second World War? To what end are they steering their peoples? Toward war with the Russian Federation? Now, they speak of contemplating the dispatch of troops to the territory of Ukraine. This would mean war with Russia. And I presume that European citizens understand what is unfolding. {SOURCE}
Speculation, exchange trading, market pricing, etc. these are the reasons why the EU is presenting an increase in central bank interest rates to try and lower energy prices. The central bank approach has nothing to do with the price of the energy (oil/gas) and everything to do with the financial markets speculating on the prices of oil and gas and profiting from the speculation/trading itself.
As noted by Russian President Putin, allowing hedge funds, financial interests and inorganic market forces to set the prices of an item disconnects that item from the economic principle of supply and demand. The prices that people suffer for oil and gas are being driven by the mechanisms set up by western financial interests. This is manipulative and creates pain on the consumer and the people who have to pay more.

No slow down.

• Trump Slams “Perfect Little Angel” Dario, Demands Full Steam Ahead For AI (ZH)

Update (1045ET): President Trump on Monday slammed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over his call to ‘pause’ AI and hand governance over to an Anthropic-adjacent cult.

© LUDOVIC MARIN via Gizmodo

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,” like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” and will continue to do so!” Trump wrote. “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”

Trump’s comments come days after Amodei said the industry should ‘pause’ development of the most advanced AI models, while implementing a governance framework using ‘outside safety monitors’ – including METR (Model Evaluation and Threat Research), which already works with labs (including reviewing Anthropic risk reports) and has hired former Anthropic staff. Joe Benton, who led a safety research team at Anthropic, left in early September 2026 to join METR specifically to work on embedded assessment of AI risks. Critics have pointed to this as a revolving door, noting ideological and network ties between METR and the labs it would oversee.
Kudos to Joe, and good luck at METR!

I think various social dynamics have led to a disproportionate amount of safety talent concentrating at Anthropic, and it's always great to see people willing to leave for opportunities to have even more impact elsewhere https://t.co/ndQlGFgM2x
— Neel Nanda (@NeelNanda5) September 4, 2026

“$500 per person to nearly 1 million Americans in 30 states..”

• President Trump Announces Obamacare Refunds (CTH)

WHITE HOUSE – President Donald J. Trump announced that the federal government will return to the American people hundreds of millions in Obamacare overcharges, collected by the Biden Administration, by issuing refunds of $500 per person to nearly 1 million Americans in 30 states. Today’s actions directly refund the Americans most exposed to the higher costs imposed by the Biden Administration’s gross mismanagement of Obamacare.

• The Biden Administration overcharged Americans through Obamacare plan exchange “user fees” that were passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums, funding the operations of the federal Obamacare exchange far in excess of what was needed to run the exchange.bAs a result, the Biden Administration accumulated a significant surplus of funds that were not used to benefit the Americans who paid these higher premiums.
• President Trump is refunding these excess fees to Americans who do not receive premium assistance under the Unaffordable Care Act – and therefore paid the full cost of Biden’s premium tax – in the 30 states that use the federal exchange for the operations of their Obamacare markets.
• These states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Thanks to President Trump’s actions, nearly 1 million Americans will receive a refund check of $500 per person. Checks will be sent to eligible Americans beginning in October 2026.
• LOWERING HEALTHCARE COSTS AND GIVING MONEY TO THE PEOPLE, NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES: President Trump is delivering on promises to lower costs for American patients by putting them first and taking on big health insurance companies, drug manufacturers, and other corporate giants that have used the status quo in Washington to raise healthcare costs for Americans.
• The Trump Administration is cracking down on fraud and corruption, lowering healthcare costs for Americans, and putting the American people over big health insurance companies after the Biden Administration’s mismanagement of Obamacare resulted in massive levels of fraud, higher costs for Americans, and profit windfalls for big health insurance companies.
• The Trump Administration has taken the strongest actions ever to protect the integrity of the exchanges, including by issuing the Marketplace Integrity and Affordability Rule, ending loopholes used by brokers to fraudulently enroll individuals, and signing the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which permanently instituted common-sense eligibility checks for anyone seeking a government-funded subsidy.
• In February 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order to empower patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information. Since then, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has ramped up enforcement against hospitals that are out of compliance with price transparency rules, finalized improvements to hospital price transparency rules, and proposed significant improvements to price transparency rules for insurance companies.
• In May 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order to bring the prices Americans and taxpayers pay for prescription drugs in line with those paid by similar nations. As of August 31, 2026, the Trump Administration has reached 26 deals with pharmaceutical manufacturers, covering nearly 90% of the branded drug market.
• In his historic Working Families Tax Cuts Act, President Trump expanded access to health savings accounts for up to ten million people on Obamacare and took the most significant actions to reduce healthcare fraud and abuse in history, enabling the largest ever investment in rural healthcare – $50 billion.
• President Trump is calling on Congress to enact the Great Healthcare Plan to lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency. President Trump has been steadfast in putting the American people first over large insurance company profits by ensuring Obamacare funds, to the maximum extent possible, go to Americans: “The government is going to pay the money directly to you… the big insurance companies lose and the people of our country win.”

“The Thing That Never Happens Keeps Happening.” —Kyle Becker on X

• A Theory of Everything (James Howard Kunstler)

“Everyone is retarded and nothing Works.” Turns out that’s the key to unlock the mystery of this particular Fourth Turning, the one here and now, of our own time. It’s an excellent theory of everything happening these days, formulated by a close colleague of mine. And as far as I know, it’s the only theory that makes sense. It explains, for example how and why consulting US attorney Joe DiGenova quit the grand jury investigation, as conducted by the DOJ in the Southern District of Florida (SDFL), of the treasonous conspiracy against the people of the USA running since 2016.

The most amazing part is that apparently no one in the country seems to give a shit about it. No politician has issued a statement. The blog-o-sphere, Twitter-sphere are mute. The President himself — the main target of the coup — was busy in Ireland this weekend. But let’s face it: he has a duty to steer clear of interfering in juridical proceedings involving himself and his office.
The most diligent investigator of all, Dan Bongino, the podcaster who spent years documenting the serial turpitudes of RussiaGate, ImpeachmentGate, the 2020 election, the J-6 operation, and so on, who wrote several books about these crimes — and then became Deputy FBI director for a year, with access to the entire trove of evidence about all of it — says nothing now about the DiGenova affair. How is that possible? Instead, for months he’s just played an insipid cheerleader on his daily podcast. Just imagine what Bongino really knows. Months ago, when he resigned from the FBI job, he stated publicly that what he saw in the J. Edgar Hoover building shocked him to his core.
I say all this because it looks like the case (or cases) in the SDFL will now go nowhere with diGenova out of the picture. Altogether, it was the gravest set of treasonous crimes against the Republic in our history, and nobody will be held accountable for it, a monumental insult following a possibly fatal injury to the country.
A certain amount of informed scuttlebutt comes may way, and the story I hear is that Joe DiGenova was of a mind to indict former president Barack Obama for his role in many phases of the ongoing coup, and that Todd Blanche blanched at that, in fear of provoking an even hotter civil war than the Red / Blue one currently raging from sea to shining sea (and especially in the three branches of government). Not just a civil war but, in effect, a civil race war, for fear of painting America’s only black president a criminal.
Mr. Obama enjoys certain immunities against criminal prosecution for official actions he took as president — as determined in the SCOTUS decision Trump v. the United States, July, 2024 — but the parameters of what, exactly, official means remains squishy. The boundaries would have to be tested case-by-case in the lower courts. Which is what the grand juries sitting now in Florida might have done (or might yet somehow manage to do).
Was it an official act for Mr. Obama to turn Hillary Clinton’s Russian Collusion campaign stunt into a seditious operation to run Mr. Trump out of office? Once Mr. Obama was out of office in 2017, did he direct continuing seditions through FBI director Wray and CIA directors Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel? Does a record of correspondence exist, classified or otherwise? We know that the intel apparatus captures everything. Tulsi Gabbard might know what’s in there. Perhaps the same things that shocked Dan Bongino to his core.
Once “Joe Biden” was installed in the Oval Office, did Barack Obama direct the cabal that actually ran the executive branch from Jan., 2021, to Jan., 2025 — did he act as a shadow president? What would the law say about that? And is he responsible for “Joe Biden’s” ruinous policies such as the wide-open border and all it has entailed. One of Mr. Obama’s closest insiders, John Podesta (also Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman), became “senior advisor for climate policy” in the final months of “Joe Biden’s” term. He was given $370-billion from the fraudulently-named “Inflation Reduction Act” to distribute as he saw fit, and an awful lot of it landed in Democratic Party adjacent NGOs. Was private citizen Obama involved in arranging any of that?
Is Barack Obama, the 44th President of the US, a true villain? He was a very slick performer during the eight years he was president. But now, the political faction he led — maybe still leads because, look around, who else is there? — has gone batshit crazy since his second term ended. His party beat a path straight into the overt advocacy of communism with a jihad cherry on top, and you don’t hear him complaining about any of it.
What I hear is that Joe DiGenova intended to subpoena Barack Obama to give testimony to that Florida federal grand jury and that Todd Blanche nixed it, so Joe quit. The next day, diGenova told the media that if the Florida team is “allowed to do their jobs” they will “succeed supremely” and that the U.S. Attorney’s office there was doing a “phenomenal job under the worst of circumstances.” He later added, there was “plenty of evidence” but it “just takes time.”
Whatever that means. Yet everybody knows what went down in our country the past ten years, that a vicious blob called the Deep State has been running a continuous coup, just as everybody with half-a-brain knows exactly what Covid-19 was about. The question that remains: does having half-a-brain mean you’re retarded, and does that explain why nothing works in the USA, including the ability to manage the nation’s justice apparatus?

“Yulia Mendel has accused her former boss of “autocracy” and targeting anyone who speaks out for peace..”

• Zelensky Sanctions Ex-Press Secretary Turned Fierce Critic (RT)

Zelensky and his spoweswoman Yulia Mendel , Kiev, Ukraine, October 1, 2019

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has imposed sanctions on his former press secretary, Yulia Mendel, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of his policies and accused Kiev of turning against its own citizens.

Mendel, who served as Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, has repeatedly spoken out against what she calls “Zelensky’s authoritarian rule.” In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson last May, she made a series of allegations against her former boss, including corruption, rampant drug use, and the obstruction of efforts to end the conflict with Russia.
The personal restrictions were enacted by Zelensky’s decree published on Sunday and include an asset freeze, a ban on transferring capital abroad, and other financial and commercial measures for the next ten years. Mendel will also be stripped of state honors indefinitely and have her social media accounts restricted inside Ukraine. She was the only Ukrainian citizen among the ten sanctioned individuals.
Zelensky is Ukraine’s main problem – ex-spokeswomanREAD MORE: Zelensky is Ukraine’s main problem – ex-spokeswoman In a post on X on Sunday, Mendel, who is scheduled to address the European Parliament later this week, slammed the sanctions as “unconstitutional, just like many of Zelenskyy’s other decisions,” accusing her former boss of targeting “anyone who advocates for peace in Ukraine.”
“Watch what they’re doing. Zelenskyy isn’t just fighting the war – he’s fighting anyone who questions his version of it,” she wrote in a follow-up post addressing the restrictions on her social media profiles.
“A nation marketed as a beacon of democracy is sliding toward something colder: a wartime state that treats disagreement as disloyalty. No independent opinion. No free expression. No speech for Ukrainians who say they want peace,” she added.
Zelensky’s ex-spokeswoman added to state-linked ‘kill list’READ MORE: Zelensky’s ex-spokeswoman added to state-linked ‘kill list’ During the Carlson interview, Mendel claimed that Zelensky had demanded “Goebbels propaganda” from his communications team after his approval ratings began declining in 2019 or 2020, calling for “thousands of talking heads” to promote a positive image of his government.
Shortly afterward, the former press secretary was added to Ukraine’s state-linked Mirotvorets database for allegedly spreading “Russian propaganda narratives” and advocating Kiev’s “capitulation.” The website is widely believed to cooperate with Ukrainian security services in publishing the personal data of people it identifies as state enemies, including Western journalists and children as young as three. When blacklisted figures are murdered or die for any reason, the database marks them as “liquidated,” reinforcing its reputation among critics as a “kill list.”

“Alice Weidel mentioned “Ukrainian men of military age” in particular, saying the burden of welfare payments has become “unsustainable”..”

• Ukrainians Must Leave Germany – AfD Co-Leader Alice Weidel (RT)

Ukrainian migrants must leave Germany, the co-leader of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, has said. She particularly singled out men of fighting age.

Kiev imposed a general mobilization shortly after the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022, barring most able-bodied men aged 22 to 60 from leaving the country. Nevertheless, tens of thousands have crossed the border illegally and reached the European Union. Germany has been the top destination for Ukrainian migrants within the bloc, taking in more than a million people, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
In an interview with Austrian right-wing media outlet AUF1 on Friday, Weidel spoke out against the prospect of naturalizing people “who actually ought to be sent back to their home countries,” including “more than one million Ukrainians here who are receiving the ‘citizen’s benefit’ [welfare payments].” The AfD co-chair described the burden of continued state aid to Ukrainian migrants as “simply unsustainable,” insisting that they should return to their home country.
“Especially young Ukrainian men of military age – we are talking about hundreds of thousands of them – those young men really ought to go back,” the right-wing politician said. Weidel also pledged that should the AfD come to power in Germany, it would “halt payments to Ukraine and all forms of war support, and we will demand substantial repayments from Ukraine.” In June, she similarly said that Kiev should pay reparations to Berlin for the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which the German authorities have blamed on a small group of rogue Ukrainian operatives.
Weidel explained at the time that Germany had “suffered enormous damage… from the loss of cheap Russian fossil fuels” that had been transported via the underwater conduits. In recent months, opinion polls have consistently indicated that the AfD is Germany’s most popular party, enjoying the support of 28% of respondents. Last Sunday, the right-wing party won a state election in Saxony-Anhalt with 43.8% of the vote. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) finished second with just 17.2%.
Meanwhile, the incumbent coalition government, which also includes the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has ramped up pressure on Ukrainian draft dodgers.In July, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that Germany would stop granting automatic temporary protection to Ukrainians fleeing conscription.
Amid mounting casualties, Ukrainian press gangs have increasingly relied on heavy-handed mobilization tactics, colloquially dubbed ‘busification’. Men are being snatched off the streets, from workplaces and residential areas, as evidenced by hundreds of videos circulating online. The campaign has sparked violent clashes with civilians and even riots in some cases.
Moscow has accused the leadership in Kiev and its Western backers of being willing to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

Lawfare that makes people run out of time. Ugly.

• Supreme Court Block President Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Order (ZH)

The nationwide injunction stands; the suspended rule would have required unique barcodes and scanner-ready envelopes… The Supreme Court late on Sept. 14 declined to lift a nationwide injunction blocking a United States Postal Service (USPS) rule on federal ballot mail, leaving it on hold for the 2026 midterms. The ruling in USPS v. California took the form of an unsigned order. “The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the order said. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion with fellow Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority” but that applying the proposed rules would be “arbitrary and capricious” for the midterm elections as state and local officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule.” Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. The decision is likely the final say on the rule during this election cycle, with even Talwani saying from the bench earlier this month that it was unclear how the government would implement the plans with November just around the corner.

“Often called a “political chameleon,” Newsom seems to be morphing into the actual species that evolved to adjust to its environment, including more nimble feet.”:

• The Dangerous Evolution of Gavin Newsom (Turley)

Below is my column in The Hill on the declaration of Gov. Gavin Newsom that he is now officially “evolving.” However, unlike more modest objectives like opposable thumbs over eons, Newsom wants to accomplish a full transformation in one election cycle to appeal to the surging far left of his party. It is a cautionary tale for Democrats who want their party to reposition toward the political center. Here is the column:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wants you to know that he is evolving. Newsom is facing a rising radical movement among Democrats, including a surging contingent aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. He is struggling in polls and therefore eager to show the skill identified by Darwin that allows certain species to thrive in their environment: adaptation. Newsom has recently declared capitalism a failure. He is now joining his competitors for president in offering up the Supreme Court and its independence to the far left. His free fall into rage politics is a cautionary tale for those who want to return the Democratic Party to more centrist positions.
Often called a “political chameleon,” Newsom seems to be morphing into the actual species that evolved to adjust to its environment, including more nimble feet. Although natural selection takes place over many years and even eons, Newsom does not have the luxury of time. He does not want to be eliminated by the more politically fit opponents to his left. Polls continue to show he receives more media support than public support. He trails Kamala Harris by 15 points in recent polling and is nearly tied with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Harris and Buttigieg quickly turned their backs on the norms governing the Supreme Court to support court-packing. Harris dismissed those of us in opposition as engaging in mere “nostalgia.” Newsom had previously tried to offer a sane alternative to these voices. But he has now found himself their quiet companion in a primal scream session. As he began to vanish in political polling, he decided he would not be outcrazied by Democratic opponents.
With candidates like Texas’s Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico calling for the “dismantling” of capitalism as an “oppressive system,” Newsom finds himself needing to cater to the mob. He has now declared that “nostalgia is not working” while adding that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work either.” Newsom has recently been campaigning in blue states such as New Hampshire, repeating his mantra that capitalism as “not working.”
these days, it is not enough for socialists and the far left merely to oppose the most successful economic system in the history of the world. Newsom was still being labeled as an establishment politician. So he tried to dispel that impression with his signature toothy grin and astonished demeanor, claiming that he is really undermining the system from within as “an established insurgent.”
Again, that is not enough for the current political environment. So this week, he changed his position on the Supreme Court, to say that he is now “open” to court-packing. Packing the court is considered essential today for any viable Democratic candidate. Some are openly calling for the imposition of a litmus test for all candidates: As they put it, it is a choice between “packed or sacked.” Even moderate figures such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) have now yielded to the mob in expressing a willingness to pack the Supreme Court.
So Newsom wants the far left to know that he is yet again evolving: “My initial instinct — me, a year ago, I would have said no out of concern that it will continue to be expanded. … I’m finding myself evolving on it.” The question is what Newsom and his Democrat opponents will offer next in their political adaptation. These candidates have shown that no institution or value is more important than their securing power. At this rate, we will be fortunate to have anything more than the ship itself after the race to toss institutions and “nostalgic” values over the side.
The danger for Newsom — like the danger of any fast-tracking of evolution — is that the environment can change, leaving you with an adaptation that makes you even more likely to be eliminated. Newsom knows that attacking our constitutional or economic systems will not play well in the general election, but he also knows he will never see the 2028 general election if his opponents on the left outflank him. Moreover, offerings like the Supreme Court or our economic system are unlikely to satiate the far left. As I discuss in “Rage and the Republic,” history shows that establishment figures rarely survive the mob politics they seek to use for their own advantage.
In the meantime, because of the cynical calculations of leaders like Newsom, we face a growing threat of doing lasting harm to our constitutional system. The framers warned us of these voices of “mobocracy” that would tear apart the contemporary revolution in France, which became known as “the Terror.”
The danger is that, while the majority opposes court packing and socialism, the new majority in Congress could force changes without amending the Constitution. That certainly can be done with court packing. Once a new liberal majority is secured, there would then be little barrier to achieving many of the objectives of a radical agenda long discussed by professors and pundits. Some have argued that, with control of the court and radical constitutional changes, Republicans will not be able to win another election.
In other words, the radicals hope to change the environment to prevent further adaptation and future competition. Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are.” After watching the chameleonic Gavin Newsom, it seems that we may be on the cusp of precisely such an evolutionary mistake.

“Newsom says he has nothing to hide. Pfft! Yeah, right. And I have a full head of hair! Six years of receipts should prove who is right.”

• A Federal Grand Jury Wants Six Years of Gavin Newsom’s Receipts (Manney)

Gavin Newsom has spent months insisting the Trump administration is hunting for a crime that doesn’t exist. A federal grand jury would apparently like to see the receipts before taking his word for it.Federal subpoenas issued this month seek six years of records tied to Newsom’s international travel, outside funding, personal expenses, living expenses, and money connected to his residence.mInvestigators also want records involving donors and fundraisers for the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has paid for the governor’s overseas travel. From the San Francisco Standard:

“The documents provide the clearest picture yet of the scope of a federal investigation effort Newsom first disclosed in June, which he said was focused on him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. “The records requested by this subpoena are for use in a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California,” says one of the documents, signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson. The records obtained via subpoena will be presented to a grand jury, a group of jurors that acts like a judge, reviewing evidence and testimony to decide if there’s sufficient grounds for an indictment.
Newsom’s office said the investigation is baseless, and there are no crimes to investigate. “Gov. Newsom went after the king — and as he warned in June, the tyrant is now coming after everyone around him. This is what Donald Trump does to his enemies: investigate first, hunt for a crime that doesn’t exist second,” the governor’s office said. “It’s deeply upsetting to see innocent staff, friends, and family have their names dragged through the mud just because they’re associated with the governor.”
The requests reach into Newsom’s inner circle. Investigators are seeking communications involving current and former aides, advisers, foundation board members, and Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel. One subpoena plainly states that the records are being sought for a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California and will be presented to a federal grand jury.From the San Francisco Standard: A spokesperson for the foundation said it could not discuss or verify an investigation but defended its work.
“It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has proudly supported both Republican and Democratic administrations in fulfilling their duties representing all of California through public events and international engagements,” the spokesperson said. The demand extends into Newsom’s longtime political and government circle. One of the subpoenas requests communications with four members of the California State Protocol Foundation’s board. As recently as November 2025, the foundation was headed by Steve Kawa — former chief of staff for Newsom and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee — according to state records.
Communications with Kawa and other board members were subpoenaed, including Jim DeBoo, Newsom’s former executive secretary; Matina Kolokotronis, COO of the Sacramento Kings; and Jason Elliott, Newsom’s former deputy chief of staff. The California State Protocol Foundation has received millions in outside contributions during Newsom’s governorship. State records reviewed as part of the investigations show Newsom directed more than $7.5 million in contributions to the foundation since 2019, much of it connected to his inaugurations.
Now prosecutors want donor information, travel records, receipts, and documents involving money used for Newsom’s personal and living expenses. Newsom calls the investigation a political vendetta. In June, he accused President Donald Trump of using the Justice Department against political enemies and said investigators were searching for a crime instead of investigating one already identified. From Gov. Newsom’s press release:
Donald Trump is simply the most corrupt President in American history. He has turned the levers of government into his own personal power ministries to reward cronies and to try to jail his opponents. His personal attorney now runs the Department of Justice, which has repeatedly gone after his political enemies. Ask Jerome Powell. He sent them after James Comey. Tish James. Adam Schiff. He sent them after Tim Walz. And a woman that a jury found Donald Trump had sexually abused.One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hit list.
And today, I proudly join that list. After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me. And just in the last week, I’ve learned his campaign has reached my own home: to get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen. A public servant. A woman who has dedicated her life to supporting women and girls. Newsom also said federal agents could take every record and read every page because he had nothing to hide. Excellent! They accepted his terms.
Newsom’s recordkeeping has already caused trouble closer to home. In June, California’s Fair Political Practices Commission fined him $31,500 after finding that he failed to timely file 18 required reports involving behested payments. The state case is separate from the federal investigation, and there is no evidence the two are connected. It does establish something simpler: questions involving outside payments and Newsom’s disclosure obligations didn’t originate in Donald Trump’s White House.
A subpoena isn’t a conviction, and the documents made public so far don’t identify a specific crime. Prosecutors now have the job of following the records wherever they lead. Newsom doesn’t get to substitute political outrage for the records themselves. He has built a national profile accusing Trump and Republicans of corruption, self-dealing, abusing power, and bending government toward wealthy interests. Meanwhile, private donors have helped finance official travel through a foundation closely tied to Newsom’s administration, and federal investigators now want six years of documents showing how that system operated.
Maybe every dollar was proper; the grand jury gets to examine the paper trail rather than accept Newsom’s press releases as evidence.Newsom says he has nothing to hide. Pfft! Yeah, right. And I have a full head of hair! Six years of receipts should prove who is right.

“Just over a year has passed, and Charlie’s absence still hurts.”

• Charlie Kirk, Rest In Peace (Arthur Schaper)

I didn’t believe it the day that it happened. I dismissed the long-range shot taking out the founder and leader of TPUSA as some AI fever dream from another disconcerted leftist. In reality, the fevered leftist made the nightmare come true.

Sadly, this absence is felt not just in his demise, but in the relative ease with which the world has passed on. How can the world continue as if nothing happened? My hometown of Torrance, CA, to the credit of the city council and staff, flew flags at half-mast in his honor. Yet one of the city council members lamented his “controversial” comments, too.This year, we have witnessed demented, perverted people celebrating his death, including drag queens dressing up as Charlie with fake wounds gushing out of their necks.
Such is the division our country faces in this momentous time. Angry Democrats, embittered socialists, and violent communists don’t care how many lives are lost, how many cities are destroyed, or whether the United States survives another two hundred and fifty years. Such recrimination was unheard of among members of either party thirty years ago. Today, the majority of Democrats hold a dim view of our country, and no doubt a dimmer view of those who love America and want young people to share in that love once again.
Understandably, they trained their ire on Kirk. He was more than counter-cultural. He was counter-revolutionary, undermining the Grand March through the institutions which have poisoned two generations of Americans. Kirk was turning the tide on this mad self-destruction. The left couldn’t stand by and allow that to happen. One militant leftist made sure of that, and hence the fatal shot at Utah Valley University.mHis assassination was tragic, evil, and preventable.
His political enemies rejoiced over his sudden death, exploiting the use of firearms to mock his support for the Second Amendment and his rigorous defense of the right to keep and bear arms. His passing only exposes all the more why law-abiding citizens need firearms, even in the most innocuous and presumably most secure locations. Why did Tyler Robinson take him out? He was a sexually confused, deviant man, enamored with another confused man who thought he was a woman, and an animal. Kirk’s opposition to sexual degeneracy and appeal to moral order offended him.
Charlie embodied the antidote. He married young, had two young children, and wanted a third. Following his untimely passing, darling videos have resurfaced, embracing the warm, fatherly character of this godly man. Kirk focused on rebuilding the man, the family, and the country. The Left and its putrid acolytes oppose all of it, and militantly so.
Charlie was not afraid to push past LGBT-DEI-CRT as a strict identity. He spoke to individuals as such, even those who vehemently disagreed with him. He debated in good faith, seeking to understand his fellow interlocutors from their perspective, then correct them. He was rarely at a loss for words, and not simply because he wanted to fill the air or hear himself speak. When he spoke, when he asked questions, when he engaged with college students (and their professors) with adept aplomb, he was making a case and making the difference.
One year later, commentators, pundits, and podcasters seem less interested in telling the truth, and more invested in getting a reaction. They are harvesting likes, views, shares, clicks, and outrage to pump up their profile and triumph as king of the (Dung)Hill of social media trash talk. Jerry Springer would have been appalled, but only because he hadn’t taken advantage of the broad, new media of social media in such sick, indefensible fashion.
The cause of truth and effective advocacy were well-wedded in Kirk. How to get the truth out, and get people to understand without triggering their immediate defense mechanisms: that is not an easy task. For now, Kirk has possible, likely, or erstwhile successors. Ben Shapiro, certainly. Shortly after Kirk’s murder, Shapiro stared into the camera and said, “F*** You!” to all the nefarious elements celebrating Charlie’s demise in the hopes that such an egregious crime would silence his successors.
Not a chance. Besides Shapiro, Glenn Beck, and Steve Crowder, even Steve Deace could pick up the mantle. Ben is the best bet, in my view, for his long legacy of sticking to his principles, articulating a clear message while arguing cogently with interlocutors, whether they agree or disagree. This is not to say that Crowder, Beck, or Deace don’t have integrity or consistency of message. Ben’s youthful appeal can bridge gaps, I believe.
There’s also the issue of Shapiro’s growing family. What a blessing indeed, one that will inevitably limit the time he can devote to reaching the masses left and right with Restoration of American Greatness through the meeting of the minds. Also, Shapiro is a commentator, not an organizer the way Charlie was. Kirk’s TPUSA organization assembled an unprecedented ground game, working with party leaders and conservative activists alike, connecting citizens with accessible technology to walk precincts, connect with voters, and make the case for Trump.
And get him re-elected.nThis kind of organizational as well as intellectual skill is unparalleled. Can anyone step into the void, fusing all these elements, and advance Kirk’s cause?nnJohn Doyle is another contender, more youthful, but does not have the name recognition or trial-by-fire of interacting with larger audiences. Can he organize voters, activists, and pundits across the country to a greater cause, like electing a sound and effective improvement to President Trump in 2028?
Kirk had an unshakeable knack for drawing together disparate interests, not just among the political left and center, but especially among the right. The right is divided over immigration, Israel, Islam, government intervention in the economy, the limits to force to shape culture, etc. Kirk wrestled with these issues, but he never wavered from the main focus: Making America Great Again, and more importantly, Godly Again.n
The spiritual angle cannot be ignored. John Adams warned the early Republic that the Constitution was written for a moral people. That moral center is fracturing. That moral compass is losing its bearing. And the slog of podcast successors is reveling in the confusion rather than eliminating it.
Kirk’s legacy faces destruction from this bevy of so-called successors, who have sought to obscure, even dirty, his legacy by disparaging his work with others, misrepresenting his statements, or attempting to overtake his leadership and legacy in returning President Trump to the White House.
Candace Owens is the most egregious offender, lying about the circumstances surrounding Charlie’s assassination, unfairly implicating Erika Kirk in his demise, even suggesting that she profits off his violent departure. This is evil, as Jeremy Boreing righteously declared.
Thankfully, TPUSA is stronger than ever, and Erika has displayed an unmatched grace under fire, leading the organization to greater glory that vile opponents had sought to destroy. A grieving widow, she could have ended the operation and turned inward to care for herself. But she knew that Charlie would not have wanted that. She serves despite her suffering, and for that, she deserves nothing but our thanks and praise.
Rest in Peace, Charlie.

Image generated by ChatGPT. Read more …

Ever wonder why failed Western "Leaders" want you to hate Russia?

In particular, why do they try to convince you Vladimir Putin is your enemy?

Maybe because they could never dream of achieving what he has, or having the respect and support the Russian people give him. pic.twitter.com/mjWKGhHSOB
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) September 13, 2026

Elon Musk says $SPCX could start putting $NVDA AI compute into orbit as soon as next year.

“I am highly confident that SpaceX will be launching Nvidia NVL72 AI computers in space next year.” pic.twitter.com/Sloxt8cMBb
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) September 13, 2026

Elon Musk on scaling AI beyond Earth.

"To reach a terawatt of compute per year, we need about 10 million tons to orbit annually. This is feasible—no new physics required—and I'm confident SpaceX can achieve it."

Most people treat orbital mass as sci-fi. Elon treats it as a…
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) September 14, 2026

you’re going to see many more insurance companies following Lemonade and Tesla’s lead and offering discounts to use self-driving https://t.co/ag0IITOukj
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) September 13, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle September 14 2026

Sep 142026

September 14, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: AI, extinction, pause, regulate, Vostok Oil 41 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Dora Maar au chat 1941

• Human Extinction by 2030 (Kit Knightly)

• Trump Rejects AI “Pause” As Obama Urges Democrats To Regulate It (ZH)

• AI Staff ‘Genuinely Frightened’ For Humanity’s Future (BBC)

• Anthropic Boss Dario Amodei Calls For AI Development To Slow Down (BBC)

• Bill Maher Delivers A Brutal 9/11 Reality Check To The Left (ZH)

• Politically Americans Have No Where To Go (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Vance’s Big Night At GOP Convention (Whedon)

• The Democrat Chicken—or the Socialist Egg? (Victor Davis Hanson)

• The Supreme Court Orders New York to Respond in 2nd Amendment Case (Turley)

• Russia Quietly Launches Arctic Oil Giant What Is Vostok Oil? (RT)

https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2098782440621772908?s=20 https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2098831164534349895?s=20 https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/2098791422912540804?s=20

I’ve been sounding the alarm on AI for a long time https://t.co/YJ0oAcVXz2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026

A 27-year-old kid has the whole world worried this weekend.

We must slow down, say AI CEOs. The government must make us. But it also must make China comply.

Take that serious?

“& Remember that major AI psy-op we talked about? “

• Human Extinction by 2030 (Kit Knightly)

I’ve been documenting the increasingly hysterical coverage of ‘rogue AI’ for the last six weeks, predicting a major psy-op or false flag. Well, kids it looks like the psy-op part is here. So far no false flag…but with the greatest level of hysteria since the early days of Covid circulating, maybe they won’t need to DO anything. Maybe insane claims about a phantom threat will be enough.

Oh yes, did you know Artificial Intelligence has a “10% chance of wiping out humanity before the end of the decade”? That’s the headline on every single mainstream paper, the trending topic on every social media platform, the talking point on every news channel. Yes, from the producers of long-running hit show “CLIMATE CHANGE WILL KILL US ALL!” and the international sensation “COVID WILL KILL US ALL!” comes the latest experience in fear everyone is talking about. And this latest wave is already being used to push new “regulation”, which should alarm anyone.
It all started with a young man, apparently named Jacob Coxon, who is allegedly a former AI researcher for OpenAI and later Anthropic. Yesterday he announced his resignation from the latter, citing ethical concerns about the danger of “unregulated” artificial intelligence. And, as is usually the case when an obscure person resigns from his job for supposed ethical concerns, his resignation was the subject of an exclusive article in the Wall Street Journal, Oh and a simultaneously published thread on Twitter/X – from what is allegedly Coxon’s own account that had – so far as can be seen – never been used before.
AMAZINGLY, within hours Coxon’s alarming claims had gone “viral”. Now some old cynics out there will be thinking at this stage “hmmm correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t this look suspiciously like a narrative roll-out”? But I’m sure the terminally gullible will hasten to reassure you that this is the way real life definitely works. It’s just a coincidence that everyone across the entirety of the political punditry spectrum is engaged in amplifying one single message.
In another of those startling synchronicities which we don’t need to think about too much, at exactly the same time that Coxon was hitting the mainstream headlines, Joe Rogan – king of the mainstream alternative media – had another AI researcher on his show, spouting his own dire warnings. AI experts have been crawling out of the woodwork, all keen to endorse Coxon’s position – or even call it an underestimate. You must have seen Geoffrey “the godfather of AI” Hinton on the BBC, telling Victoria Derbyshire he agreed with Coxon’s risk assessment:

“You just said that 10% doesn’t seem an unreasonable estimate that AI could kill all humans”

“Yes”

“Wow… oh my God.”@vicderbyshire speaks to Nobel Prize Winner and so-called ‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton about predictions by an Anthropic researcher that there’s a more… pic.twitter.com/sGYQI57REF
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) September 9, 2026

A 10% chance of killing every single person on Earth in the next three and a half years. No, really.They’re less clear how exactly that’s going to happen – but that’s not the important part. The important part is we need to DO something. Everyone from Matt Walsh to Glenn Greenwald agrees on that. And what do we need to DO?Why, REGULATE of course. That’s what Coxon said in one of his MANY media interviews in the last twenty-four hours (and as someone who has been aware of Coxon’s existence since some time yesterday I can tell you I trust him absolutely):

The guy who helped train the models left Anthropic and said AI is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon.

Jacob Coxon spent 3 years at OpenAI and Anthropic.

He says the labs think this could kill everyone by the end of the decade and they are still racing each other.

His answer…
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 10, 2026

He floats an AI non-proliferation treaty “like we have for nuclear weapons” – as if it’s a wildly coincidental brand new idea, and not a paraphrase of the same talking point dozens of people – including Bill Gates – have been suggesting for months. But what would a global AI treaty actually look like? And what would it achieve? And who will be in control of implementing it?

There’s no way to pause it. Regulation will lead to strangulation.

• Trump Rejects AI “Pause” As Obama Urges Democrats To Regulate It (ZH)

President Trump and former President Obama have now weighed in on the ‘pause’ – with Trump calling for full steam ahead, and Obama endorsing the pause so the government can regulate AI (good luck with that).

From the Irish Open in Doonbeg on Sunday, Trump dismissed Saturday’s “pace the frontier” pile-on from Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. Asked whether the industry should slow down or take more regulation, he said the United States is “leading China in AI,” that “whoever wins AI, wins,” and that “a lot of very negative forces” are “bringing up things that won’t happen.” Guardrails were fine in theory. A pause was not.
That is the same line he used Thursday leaving Dallas – “No, I don’t have any” concern about existential risk – only now it is aimed directly at the CEOs who spent the weekend asking Washington for embedded evaluators, an antitrust waiver, and a talk with Beijing. Obama went the other way.
At a Thursday fundraiser in Manhattan, in remarks the New York Times published Sunday from a transcript his office released, he told House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to make AI a governing issue if Democrats take the House. “Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation.” Then the warning: “This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous.” Benefits too – drugs, clean energy – if they do. He said he was neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer,” and told 2028 candidates to put AI among their “central agendas,” with a “very clear plan” for safety, kids, and the jobs the models wipe out.
Jeffries, on cue: “President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence… Republicans have abdicated their responsibility… We will not repeat their error.” So the split is on tape. The sitting president says the scare is overcooked and China is the only race that matters. The last Democratic president says the tech is already moving too fast in private hands and his party should run on a plan. The labs asked for a chaperone. Trump said no. Obama told Democrats to become one.
That is the new frame. Everything below is how we got here in 72 hours.
* * *
Update (1055ET): David Sacks, former White House AI czar and co-chair of Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), slammed Amodei and Altman over their calls to ‘pace the frontier.’

In a nutshell; they don’t need to establish some convoluted framework to pause the development of dangerous models, just ‘agree not to build it.’ Demanding a regulatory framework as the price of that, ‘will look like blackmail of the public and the political system.’
Read his full note below:
Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric – market share, revenue growth, model capability – the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement. I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.
But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.
Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.
Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.
So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.
If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture – or an election-season psyop.

“‘There is a possibility of human extinction,’ former Anthropic employee says about AI..”

• AI Staff ‘Genuinely Frightened’ For Humanity’s Future (BBC)

An artificial intelligence researcher who quit AI firm Anthropic has said people working on the technology were “genuinely frightened” about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity. “I believe that if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future,” he said. Jacob Coxon was speaking to the BBC after his resignation post on the dangers of AI went viral on a backdrop of growing safety concerns about the industry.

The 27-year-old’s former boss, Anthropic head Dario Amodei, recently called for AI development to slow down – though some have questioned the motivations behind this. The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI, have both said they agree with Amodei’s proposal for industry-wide deceleration and regulation, as well as independent monitoring of AI model development. Amodei wrote in an essay on Saturday that developing the technology was not in question, but the risks associated with it were “serious”, and that companies and governments must be given time to address them.
Coxon – who worked at OpenAI before joining Anthropic – welcomed the suggestion of a slowdown but said it would need to be co-ordinated with China to avoid “a race at an international scale”.”The people who work at these companies are completely serious when they ask for regulation because they find themselves trapped in a race. And they’re scared of the outcomes of that race,” he told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down
The hardest question to answer, according to Coxon, was what an AI apocalypse would look like. One of the risks outlined in Amodei’s comments was of a swarm of bots acting like a supercomputer that could take over the internet. Coxon said this scenario could be realistic in six months to a year. In response to Coxon’s departure, an Anthropic spokesperson told BBC News: “We have always been transparent that AI will bring both enormous benefits and unprecedented risks. “To address these risks, we continue to build models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry.”
The firm has been a pioneer in studying how AI models work, the spokesperson added. It was the first to publish a framework for mitigating the risks posed by their development – and it also “aggressively” tests its models and publishes the findings to aid scrutiny and prevent incidents of “AI misalignment”. “This work is also why we believe the world would benefit from the industry adopting a lawful, verifiable way to work together to pace how we release powerful models,” they said. Coxon said his peers feared the danger could even arrive in the next two years.
He said staff at AI firms were “planning what to do with their lives and thinking about the impacts of their work”, while some were “considering buying land somewhere because they’re so scared of the instability as a result of rapid AI progress”. “They all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.” But Coxon did have some optimism about the future of AI, telling the BBC that the people researching the technology “genuinely want to see the upside” of things like “solving diseases and improving everyone’s lives”.
Many others in the industry have also voiced their concerns since Coxon’s social media post, including Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” Hubinger said. Computer scientist and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI”, told the BBC on Friday that a 10% chance of AI killing all humans was “not unreasonable”.
Meanwhile, Marc Warner, chief executive of AI safety firm Faculty, told the BBC that it was “extremely hard to place a probability” on AI killing all humans. “But it’s important to recognise that these people are very sincere in what they’re saying,” he added, noting that the risks surrounding AI have been raised by the heads of several AI firms for years.Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is a paid adviser to Anthropic, wrote in the Sunday Times that he too was worried about the risk of AI to humanity despite generally being optimistic. However, some industry figures have suggested comments about the perils and power of AI may be designed to generate hype.
Chief executive of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement Delangue, said on social media: “Sorry, but asking Jacob [Coxon] about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change. Not saying it’s necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let’s keep things in perspective.”After Amodei’s essay was published, however, Delangue offered to help be a part of the potential solutions the Anthropic boss proposed.
Meanwhile, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang also discussed Coxon’s comments at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs last week, multiple people in the group told the BBC. They said he dismissed them as untrue.Huang has previously said the notion that AI was “going to be the end of humanity” was “complete nonsense”.And while he may have a business interest in an AI boom – Nvidia builds chips that power AI systems – his comments reflect a growing backlash in Silicon Valley to the existential warnings from current and former staffers.

You slow down first.

• Anthropic Boss Dario Amodei Calls For AI Development To Slow Down (BBC)

The head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored. Dario Amodei wrote in an online essay that developing AI was not in question, but that the risks associated with it were “serious” and that companies and governments must be given time to address them. The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said they agree with Amodei.

There have been growing concerns recently about the technology’s potential risks. An AI researcher who left Anthropic told the BBC that “if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future”. Jacob Coxon told Laura Kuenssberg that people working at AI companies were “genuinely frightened… genuinely concerned about the fate of humanity in the next two years”.”It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction,” Coxon said.
In Amodei’s essay, called We Must Pace the Frontier and published on Saturday, he proposed a three-point plan that included independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation. As his proposal made the rounds, even competitors voiced support for the idea of third-party monitors who could evaluate the safety of models as they are developed. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X. He called independent evaluators “a great idea”.
Altman sounded similar safety concerns in a new interview, telling Fortune magazine that standards were “not at a place” to push AI capabilities much further.mHe added that he believed AI beyond human control was “absolutely” possible. Musk, meanwhile, who founded Grok producer xAI, said the Anthropic boss was “right”. The warnings have prompted calls to action, but US President Donald Trump has so far rejected such fears, saying on Thursday he was concerned that “if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position”.
Cyber-security concerns have grown as new models have exhibited more and more powerful capabilities. Anthropic withheld its Mythos model from public use when it was announced in April that it could independently escape the testing environment, known as the sandbox. nIn the run-up to the release of its most recent Astra model, OpenAI cited cyber-security concerns as it explained it had paused certain aspects of the model’s development.
The OpenAI agents had “essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective”, Amodei said. OpenAI has said it was slowing down training of certain advanced AI models and tools as a result. Safety has also taken centre stage in the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI.nAmodei, who had previously worked as a vice-president at OpenAI, has said he co-founded Anthropic in 2021 so he could build safer and more trusted AI models.He pointed out in his essay that AI had advanced “drastically faster” including its “ability to build the next generation of AI” – and mentioned an incident involving rival OpenAI which has revealed that agents had hacked targets they were not asked to attack in July.
Amodei called for “building AI at a balanced rate that aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits”. This would not mean “halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this”.
He was committing Anthropic to this “unilaterally” – as well as calling on governments “to require other frontier companies to match”. Amodei said he recognised that regulation might not be able to keep up with the pace of AI, and therefore called on AI companies to “voluntarily work together to set standard” in parallel with those regulation.bnThe Anthropic CEO went on to address the impact that a slowdown would have on the industry and competition with leading developers worldwide, particularly China.
“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.

Terrorists are terrorists.

• Bill Maher Delivers A Brutal 9/11 Reality Check To The Left (ZH)

Bill Maher used the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks to say something that once required no courage at all: terrorists are terrorists. That the observation now counts as provocative says something about how far we’ve come since 2001.

On Real Time with Bill Maher, in a segment titled “Clash of Civilizations,” Maher walked through what has happened in the 25 years since 9/11. “Since it’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and since, for 25 years, we’ve been kept relatively safe from anything close to another 9/11, how about a hand for the Americans who made that happen? Because it didn’t just happen; there was a war on terror, and we won,” he said. “And yet so much has changed since 9/11; for example, back then we were against the terrorists.”
The audience laughed, but he was being serious. Around the 20th anniversary, for example, four American journalism associations issued guidance insisting that “terrorism should only be used in quotes because it’s emotionally and politically loaded.” Canadian state broadcasters instructed staff, “Do not refer to the September 11th attacks as terrorist attacks.” The BBC told its reporters that using the word “terrorist” can be a “barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”
The pattern shows that the media establishment many years ago concluded moral clarity amounted to a kind of bigotry and that to name an ideology responsible for mass murder was the same as harboring hatred towards all those who happen to share that ideology. Maher made that distinction himself by dividing radical Islamism from Islam in general and also separating both of them from the issue that liberals consistently avoid, which is why so many of them came to sympathize with the side that attacked the West rather than with the side that was attacked.
Maher revisited his own history on this point, playing a clip of himself from shortly after the attacks on his ABC show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in which he argued that political correctness “is something we can no longer afford” because “feelings are going to get hurt so that actual people won’t.” Maher lamented that the idea of “ditching political correctness and actually being honest” never “even got off the ground.”
He then pointed out that after 9/11, there was a big debate over whether it was a “clash of civilizations.” According to Maher, “it was, and it still is.” But that clash isn’t between Muslims and Christians, but rather radical Islamism and Western liberalism.
Maher then referred to a poll that showed that one in five young Americans now holds a positive view of Osama bin Laden (which would have been unthinkable 25 years ago) and compared it to how Luigi Mangione came to be seen as a folk hero; he assassinated Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. In both cases, a killer becomes a symbol of grievance, and the actual victims become a footnote to a woke narrative about systemic injustice.
“You hear it in a lot of places now that the worst thing about 9/11 was innocent Muslims came under suspicion,” Maher continued. “Yeah, where that did happen, it’s wrong, but the worst thing about 9/11 was 3,000 people got roasted at the office. But the prevailing view of so many young people is that ‘Well, come on, we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad.’ That certainly wasn’t the attitude 25 years ago. In fact, I know a guy whose show got canceled just for saying that terrorists weren’t cowards, and that guy was right; they weren’t cowards. But I’ll tell you who is: Democratic Party politicians. And I’ll tell you why, because nowhere has this moral confusion become more obvious than in a place called Gaza.”
Maher argued that activists have recast the conflict as genocide at the hands of Israel to serve broader attacks on capitalism, borders, and Western institutions. “And the fact that so many prominent Democrats go along with it is, to me, the party’s worst moment since they undid Reconstruction after the Civil War.” The prevailing view of so much of the young left in America is that we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad. pic.twitter.com/u01HsCRnv3 — Bill Maher (@billmaher) September 12, 2026
Maher’s monologue traces a straight line from post-9/11 unity against Islamic terrorism to a political culture on the left that now treats the side committing violence as more sympathetic than the side that was attacked. Younger generations have learned to locate the villain in American power rather than in the perpetrators of an attack. Maher describes the slow erosion of the basic instinct to know who the villain is when violence occurs. That instinct used to be reflexive, requiring no debate and no hedging. Its disappearance from mainstream left-wing politics isn’t a matter of nuance or sophistication – it’s actually a failure of judgment in the name of tolerance.

There is much more in this article.

• Politically Americans Have No Where To Go (Paul Craig Roberts)

I have lost confidence in Trump, who represents Israel and not Americans. But when you look at the Democrat alternative it is genuinely scary.

The Democrats used a totally corrupt Department of “Justice” and FBI and also the whore American media, a despicable collection of scum, to orchestrate Russiagate, documents-gate, a variety of other false charges and false civil suits plus two impeachments. Then to get rid of Trump the Democrats stole his reelection and prosecuted those who provided complete and total proof that the election was stolen. The whore American media covered it all up for the Democrats. The NY Times, CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes have zero credibility. Yet the scum still speak as if truth issues from their corrupt mouths.
The electorate returned Trump to office, but Trump found that the civil service is highly partisan and 90% or more Democrat and ready to frustrate his policies at all cost. He also found that the Democrat judges the idiot Republicans had stupidly confirmed in lifetime appointments stifled his efforts by making rulings far outside their authority.
Trump also experienced the cost of the US government’s long subservience to Israel, and found himself led by Netanyahu into a losing war with Iran, a war for Israel, not for the United States. Now he is frustrated beyond belief. When have you last seen anyone wearing a MAGA hat in Walmart, a diner, a bar, a supermarket?
His frustration makes him dangerous, and there has been talk in the Trump administration of using nuclear weapons against Iran in order to turn defeat into victory. Clearly, Trump’s leadership, which was promising and full of hope for Americans who have not been radicalized, has disappointed the hopeful. Some hold on, but it is largely those indoctrinated Americans who support Israel despite Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and the costs to Americans of fighting Israel’s wars for Israel. https://paulcraigroberts.org/our-presidents-subservience-to-israel-has-cost-us-100-billion-in-higher-energy-prices-a-cost-increasing-by-1-million-every-two-minutes/
The Democrats have made it clear that they refuse to protect America’s borders. The California Democrats are blacklisting federal ICE agents from state and local jobs in California. The refusal to cooperate with federal law is insurrection, a charge falsely applied to the Southern states that formed a new country, the Confederate States of America, in order to avoid economic exploitation by the greed-driven Union. But it is OK if California, Minnesota, New York go insurrectionist because the object to the defense of America’s borders.
So who do Americans have to vote for? Republicans stand for Israel whatever the cost to Americans. Democrats stand for immigrant-invaders whatever the cost to Americans. The answer to the question is that Americans have no one to vote for, because neither of the parties represent them. America is a “democracy” in which no one represents the people.
As the autumn elections approach and, if you are souciant, you struggle with this question, keep in mind that Trump may be a loose cannon, but the Democrats no longer believe in a rule of law. The Democrats have proven that they will corrupt the civil service, the judges, prosecutors, the courts at every level in order to obtain power. The Democrats’ concept of right and wrong is ideological. What serves their agenda is right. What doesn’t is wrong.
After a decade we have complete evidence that for Democrats law is a weapon. Declassified FBI notes taken by agents who questioned General Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was Trump’s first term national security adviser for two weeks before a highly politically partisan FBI framed him on false charges, show remarkable differences between the FBI agents’ notes of what Flynn told them and the false charges, allegedly based on those notes, in the criminal indictment.
It appears that the highly partisan Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka concocted a false indictment as part of the Democrats Russiagate orchestration, the purpose of which was to discredit Trump and his supporters as “Russian agents.” The actual interview notes have been kept secret for 9 years to protect the guilty Democrats and partisan FBI, but finally they have now been released. The notes taken by Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka do not support the charges against General Flynn.
Will the FBI will be protected because Republicans and law-and-order conservatives will say that if the corrupt FBI is exposed, the criminals will run loose on society? If you want to know how corrupt the FBI is, read attorney John Grisham’s novels. They are not really novels. They are truthful descriptions of the total corruption of the US “justice system.” Here is the URL to one of the news reports on the release of the long-secret handwritten notes of the FBI agents’ 2017 interview 0f General Mike Flynn. The notes do not support Flynn’s indictment. The corrupt FBI simply ignored the notes and invented what Flynn told them. No evidence exists that supports Flynn’s indictment.

Without Trump it’s bland. You need some personality.

• Vance’s Big Night At GOP Convention (Whedon)

Vice President JD Vance last week in Dallas at the Republican Midterm Convention appeared to make a strong case for becoming the GOP standard-bearer and the party’s 2028 presidential nominee – without even having to announce a campaign. To be sure, the race is still two years away, and Vance is a ways away from potentially launching a presidential bid. But his closing night keynote speech certainly gave him a big stage to audition for the role.

“We gotta take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” he said with a grin and amid chants of “48,” meaning the country’s next and 48th president.”Vance got something close to a 2028 audition,” ABC wrote about the vice president’s performance. The news outlet also said his keynote speech “offered a glimpse of how he is positioning himself within the Republican Party – as a potential heir to the MAGA movement who can speak its language while attempting to broaden its appeal.”
Betting odds heavily favor Vance for the nomination, with Poly Market assigning him a 50% change to winning the nomination, compared to his nearest competitor, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at 18%. In a TV interview aired ahead of Vance’s Thursday night address, Rubio said, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I have no plans at this time.” Rubio, who is friends with Vance, ran for president in 2016 and lost the nomination to now-President Donald Trump.
I’m 100 percent focused on my job,” he also said. Vance’s speech also saw him take the opportunity to address many disaffected Republican-leaning voters, acknowledging that the administration had lost some of their support. “Young men, many of whom felt inspired by Charlie Kirk, but are unhappy with some of what has happened in the wake of his death, and I want to speak directly to that group because I think Charlie is a great example of how to disagree but still participate in the work of saving this country,” he said, further highlighting Kirk’s strong opposition to war.
“What I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. “Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there … . What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months.” Vance’s comments appear to be one of the most prominent recognitions from the administration that the war in Iran has alienated many voters who supported Trump in 2024. The outreach, moreover, seems to demonstrate Vance is trying to connect with a group of voters to whom he is far closer in age, and possibly sentiment, than is Trump.
Vance’s role at the convention is not his only, recent high-profile exposure that could position him for a 2028 run. With his appointment by Trump earlier this year as administration “fraud czar,” Rubio has take on a public-facing role responsible for cracking down on misuse of public funds. Trump himself highlighted Vance’s role on the final night, in a string of further pledges to his supporters, linking Vance’s prospects to the success of the administration.
“And with JD and everybody else, we will win the war on fraud,” Trump said from the stage. “You know we’ve got billions and billions of dollars already in our coffers of money that we caught on fraud. It’s going to be – I would bet – it will be over a trillion dollars by the time we’re finished.”
In addition, Vance in late August spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition, in what many viewed as an opportunity for him to assuage that community’s concerns over his continued association with Tucker Carlson, who has emerged as a vocal critic of Israel.

Dems WILL make America a socialist country. Is that what you want?

• The Democrat Chicken—or the Socialist Egg? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed

The primaries are over, and the November general election looms. Suddenly, the Islamo-socialist podcaster Hasan Piker—who is now infamous for blaming America for 9/11 and warning Jews that “someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews”—is persona non grata on the Democrat stump.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat nominee in the Michigan Senate race, once enlisted Piker to jump-start his lethargic candidacy. Now that he is locked in a close general election race against a strong Republican, El-Sayed dismisses the antisemite, who has suddenly outlived his usefulness, as a mere “social media person in California.” Clinton-era Democrat politicos like Rahm Emanuel and James Carville insist that Democrats have divorced themselves from the hard-left democratic socialists. Really?
If that divorce were real, why would so many Democrats be cheering a potential Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presidential run in 2028? She is, after all, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America‘s New York chapter. Did lifelong socialist Bernie Sanders not run twice for president—not as a third-party candidate, but in the Democrat primaries? And did he not nearly capture the nomination in 2016 and 2020 until terrified donors and insiders intervened to abort his candidacies?
Did House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries not endorse Democrat mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, also a member of the DSA’s New York chapter? And did Jeffries not thereby choose Mamdani over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? Did California Gov. Gavin Newsom—the opportunist par excellence, multimillionaire, and presidential hopeful—not recently declare that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work”? (Who, pray tell, are “we”?) Has not nearly every major Democrat stalwart, including Senate leader Chuck Schumer, called for a “big tent” party that includes unapologetic socialists?
Many Democrats, of course, reject the socialists’ calls to eliminate the Pentagon, close prisons, and dismantle the Senate. But perhaps only because such wild fantasies cannot succeed, at least for now, and repel most American voters. Where, then, did these largely young, inexperienced, and naive democratic socialists find their agenda? Self-declared socialists now demand an open border and mass amnesty for illegal aliens; the abolition of police and prisons; war on fossil fuels; radical DEI mandates; free health care for all; wealth taxes on billionaires and even millionaires; deep defense cuts; and an end to military aid to Israel.
Yet these are hardly the socialists’ positions alone. They closely resemble earlier Democratic Party programs and demands. The socialists now talk a grand leftist game; during the Biden years, Democrats tried to enact much of the agenda the socialists later claimed as their own.
So, did newly radicalized Democrats spawn this socialist offspring, or did the socialists radicalize the old party of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Who created whom? The answer is demonstrably clear: Democrats radicalized themselves. Only later did an underfunded, motley socialist crew jump aboard their increasingly extremist bandwagon. By the time the Democratic Socialists of America became nationally known, the new Democrats had already supplied their model of governance.
When democratic socialists claim that “billionaires” owe their success to government, they merely echo President Barack Obama’s taunt to successful business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Obama lifted that moronic socialist meme—like his “spread the wealth” line—wholesale from Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In 2011, Warren boasted that no wealthy American had succeeded on his own, reiterating the classic socialist rationale for confiscation: “The people” make success possible and must therefore be repaid.
In his first term, Obama sought to take over the nation’s health care system while concealing his socialist agenda. He partly succeeded through his now-failing Obamacare plans. His effort rested in part on the claim PolitiFact later named its “Lie of the Year”: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

Stun guns.

• The Supreme Court Orders New York to Respond in 2nd Amendment Case (Turley)

One of the cases that I have been following as we approach the October term of the Supreme Court is Calce v. New York, a case challenging New York’s ban on stun guns. While it is important not to overplay the significance of the order, some justices clearly want to hear more on the case before deciding whether to grant a writ of certiorari for review. New York City was just ordered to file a response to the petition. With the two other major Second Amendment cases on the docket, a review in Calce could be one of the most impactful Second Amendment terms in decades.

Calce is a challenge brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and individual plaintiffs against New York City’s ban on stun guns. They argue that “electronic arms” like stun guns and lasers are protected under the Second Amendment. The only difference is that, rather than a projectile, such weapons “work by producing electrical pulses that make the target’s muscles spasm, and thus quickly but temporarily disable him.”
Notably, nine years ago, the Court issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that sent back a case to the First Circuit that challenged a similar ban. The Court rejected the logic of the First Circuit, which held that they were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment. The Court pointed out that in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), it expressly rejected that argument and held that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” It also rejected two other rationales.
Massachusetts responded to the loss by changing its law. In so doing, Massachusetts shows a modicum of strategic sense to avoid another likely loss. However, New York City (as usual) was undeterred. Notably, the district court judge and the Second Circuit upheld the ban on the ground that the challengers failed to “provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in common use.” That seems strikingly close to Caetano.
Calce could clarify not only the “common use” element but also the burden on challengers in such cases. The Second Circuit seems to have departed from the guidance of last year’s decision in Wolford v. Lopez, rejecting Hawaii’s “Vampire law” limiting areas where lawful weapons could be carried in the state without prior approval. New York City must now respond by October 8, and the Court could decide on review at the October 15 conference.
If granted, the case would join an already weighty Second Amendment docket. The Court will be hearing arguments in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. Both cases will address the move in various blue states to ban AR-15 and other semi-automatic weapons, including the popular Glock 9mm. The addition of Calce would make this a formidable Second Amendment term.
These cases also show how the same blue jurisdictions continue to feed the Court with Second Amendment cases that will likely only reinforce the rights that they are seeking to limit. I have previously written how New York, D.C., and Chicago are examples of Democratic cities that routinely commit lasting self-inflicted wounds to gun control efforts with poorly conceived and poorly drafted measures.
Calce has the makings of a truly stunning Second Amendment case in extending protections to electronic arms.

“At peak capacity, the petroleum mega-cluster could account for more than 20% of Russia’s oil output and pump more crude than the whole of Europe produces..”

• Russia Quietly Launches Arctic Oil Giant What Is Vostok Oil? (RT)

: Russia has begun shipping crude from its massive Vostok Oil cluster in the Arctic, a project reminiscent of the giant petroleum developments that transformed the global oil industry in the 20th century. President Vladimir Putin formally launched operations at Vostok Oil on September 6. Overseen by state-owned Rosneft, the project entails an entire industrial system around what is effectively a new petroleum province: dozens of fields and license areas linked by pipelines, a purpose-built Arctic port, power infrastructure and an ice-class tanker fleet.

The project moved forward despite Western sanctions and the withdrawal of Western partners in 2022. The project comes with a huge price tag, estimated in 2019 at roughly $157 billion over the life of the fields, while transporting its crude will depend heavily on the development of the Northern Sea Route and Russia’s Arctic shipping fleet. Ice-class tanker availability remains a constraint, although plans are in place to expand the fleet.
According to Rosneft, the resource base is more than 7 billion tons of premium low-sulfur crude. However, resources are distinguished from reserves ready for commercial development. Furthermore, some of the estimated recoverable oil will require extremely complex drilling. At full capacity, Vostok Oil could account for more than a fifth of Russia’s oil production and pump more crude than is extracted from the entire European continent. The cluster alone has been estimated to eventually account for around 2% of global production. The oil from the project will be destined for Asian markets.
RT takes a look at what makes Vostok Oil significant and why its launch will reverberate far beyond the Russian Arctic.
What is Vostok Oil? Vostok Oil is Rosneft’s flagship Arctic greenfield project on the Taimyr Peninsula. It is effectively a new petroleum province, combining 52 license areas and 13 fields into one production and export network. The fields include the Vankor cluster fields, Payakha, and Zapadno-Irkinskoye.Its resource base is estimated at 7 billion tons of high-quality, low-sulfur crude. That figure should not, however, be read as 7 billion tons of immediately recoverable reserves. The project encompasses multiple fields at different stages of development.
The project has been commissioned but is still far from the planned production level. Crude will be loaded onto tankers at the newly built Bukhta Sever terminal, which is expected to enable shipments of 30 million tons in the second half of 2027 and 50 million by 2030, with longer-term supplies potentially reaching 100 million tons annually. Building an export system in such a remote region has required infrastructure on an enormous scale. Alongside the 790km trunk pipeline and terminal, the development includes ports, airfields, Arctic tankers, more than a dozen power plants, some 9,000km of transmission lines and worker settlements. More than 50,000 people are involved.
The first oil was originally scheduled to be lifted in 2024, but the project fell behind schedule due to construction delays, Russia’s OPEC+ commitments, and Western sanctions that complicated equipment supplies, particularly for shipbuilding. Why is Vostok Oil a big deal? Above all, its scale. Rosneft has put potential peak output at 100–115 million tons annually, or around 2–2.3 million barrels per day. This would represent some 2% of global demand.
At that level, Vostok Oil alone would produce on the scale of major oil-producing countries such as Kuwait, Brazil and the UAE, and pumping more crude than the UK and Norway combined and exceeding the domestic output of the entire European continent. New projects of this scale are rare in today’s world, where most of the superfields are already mature. In effect, Rosneft is not simply developing another oil field, but building an entire oil-producing region with its own pipelines, port and Arctic fleet.
Then there is the crude itself. Vostok Oil contains exceptionally low-sulfur oil, making it a valuable “sweet” grade that requires less processing and can command a premium over heavier, high-sulfur crude. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin famously presented Putin with a bottle in 2020, claiming it was superior even to Middle Eastern grades. Third, the oil extracted from Vostok will be destined for Asian markets, a strategic destination for Russia in light of its post-2022 pivot. Russia’s energy trade with key Asian countries has increased significantly in recent years. Vostok joins the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline as key pieces of infrastructure looking East.
What are the challenges? Vostok Oil sits deep in the Arctic, where temperatures can fall below -50°C and vessels leaving Bukhta Sever immediately enter the ice-heavy eastern section of the Northern Sea Route. Year-round exports require powerful Arc7 tankers: ten have been ordered from Russia’s Zvezda shipyard, with around 50 vessels of various classes ultimately planned for the project. However, these vessels are not yet ready, with means that tanker capacity is currently a constraint on bringing barrels to the market.
Also, the project will entail complicated drilling. For example, the reservoirs at the Payakha cluster, where recoverable reserves have been estimated at around 1.5 billion tons, lie roughly 3–3.5 kilometers underground in complex geological structures. Rosneft has planned hydraulic fracturing as part of their development. The project also comes at a huge price tag. In 2019, according to Deputy Russian Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin, the project was slated to cost 10 trillion rubles, or around $157 billion using the exchange rate at the time.
In September 2023, Sechin told Putin that investment during the development period was now estimated at 12 trillion rubles. Investment in the project has already reached 4 trillion rubles ($46.2 billion), according to Rosneft. The upfront costs for the infrastructure are daunting, but once the infrastructure is in place, the marginal cost of producing additional barrels will be relatively lower.
How does Vostok Oil play into Russia’s Arctic development?
Vostok Oil could become a cornerstone of Russia’s push to turn the Northern Sea Route (NSR) into a major trade artery. The route carried around 37 million tons of cargo in 2025, while 70 million tons is targeted annually by 2030. Vostok Oil could eventually provide an enormous and steady cargo base of its own.

Yes https://t.co/zlDAsIqPho
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026

https://twitter.com/leshka_eth/status/2098710720003313865?s=20 https://twitter.com/TeslaAIBot/status/2098861870538977511?s=20

Elon Musk said Tesla is deliberately holding back on unveiling Optimus V3. Competitors will analyze the robot frame by frame and copy whatever they can, so Tesla would rather show it closer to production.

I think this is very smart. https://t.co/qFvwyz5WgS pic.twitter.com/2D9KD5Lfy6
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) September 12, 2026

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Debt Rattle September 13 2026

Sep 132026

September 13, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:26 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Altman, Amodei, Musk, Muslim, Trump, Tucker Carlson 19 Responses »

Banksy Girl with a balloon 2002/2017

• ‘Muslimification’ of Europe Ignites Backlash (Sharyl Attkisson)

• Ex-Muslim Warns Islam’s Threat Is Much More Than Terrorism (Salgado)

• ‘Pace The Frontier’: Amodei, Altman & Musk Against The AI Singularity (ZH)

• Greg Gutfeld Reflects on 9/11, You Really Need to Watch This (Margolis)

• Who Is Trying To Destroy The United States And The World? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• We’re on The Brink of World War That Ends With Nuclear Weapons – Carlson (RT)

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Discusses U.S-Canada Trade Conflict (CTH)_

• 25 Years After: Revisiting Trump’s Role as a Champion for New York (Matt Kane)

• The Real-Life Epic of Donald Trump (Terry Scambray)

• CIA Director Releases 71 Presidential Daily Briefs Before and After 9/11 (CTH)

• Sec. Mullin: Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother (Catherine Salgado)

https://twitter.com/slk55again/status/2098555555728027867?s=20

“My prediction is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. Nothing will even be close. I think it’ll be ten times bigger than the next biggest product ever made."

“~80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus.”

– Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/H6pv9OgJ07
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) September 11, 2026

“Public pressure to limit immigration has prompted Conservative populist gains across Europe…”

• ‘Muslimification’ of Europe Ignites Backlash (Sharyl Attkisson)

After the Islamic extremist terrorist attack on America on Sept. 11, 2001, there were fears of anti-Muslim backlash. But 25 years later, the script has been flipped. Ten million or more Muslims have immigrated to the west. Today, Muslim figures are mayors of New York and London. But there’s also conflict. Europe is gripped by tensions caused by the rapid demographic change. A fatal stabbing in Southampton, south of London, last December provided one example of the cultural and political pressure point.

Bodycam video showed police buying into the killer’s false claim that he’d been racially attacked. Vickrum Digwa – a Sikh and son of an Indian citizen– pretended to be the victim, while officers handcuffed the real victim: college student Henry Nowak, as he bled to death. There’s been a surge in protests across Europe. And two-thirds of Britons now say the total number of immigrants is too high. Both major parties – Conservatives and Labour – have faced public anger and disappointment over years of broken promises.
Iain Duncan Smith is a Conservative member of Parliament and former party leader. “We’ve overcooked migration,” he told Full Measure during an interview at a London park. “We’ve been far too lax and too easy. “So we have to crack down on that. And the only way to have cracked down on it was what I supported, from the word ‘go’m, was to say to those who arrive illegally, ‘You’re going on the next aircraft back to somewhere further away than you came from, OK?’
“Once they realize the risk at sea and the cost is no longer outweighed by the opportunities, they won’t come anymore. That’s the way to deal with it, but we have to be hard about it and the government’s very weak at the moment and not able to do it.” But European courts have repeatedly blocked immigration crackdowns, ruling it a violation for the United Kingdom to fly illegal immigrants from Africa and the Mideast to Rwanda for processing.
Neil Coyle is a member of Parliament from Britain’s Labour Party, considered the moderate left and the current party in power.“The UK government is committed to certainly trying to reduce the illegal end of migration,” Coyle told Full Measure. “There are some who feel it’s not just unsafe for the people coming over, but some of the people who come are unsafe in this country. But the problem in the UK, as anywhere, is certainly the far right in this country try and lump all migrants together.”
Public pressure to limit immigration has prompted Conservative populist gains across Europe. In the UK, two new conservative populist parties have quickly gained traction: Reform UK, now leading both Labour and the Conservatives in popular support. And the even harder-line Restore Britain. Restore officially launched in February, saying Reform wasn’t going far enough.
Amid the political and cultural clashes, the European Parliament is taking action that would have been unheard of a few years ago. Over the summer, it overwhelmingly approved the strictest immigration and deportation law in EU history. The EU is moving ahead with the steps necessary to implement that new law, with some still promising to try to fight it.

Ex-Muslim must be a rarity.

• Ex-Muslim Warns Islam’s Threat Is Much More Than Terrorism (Salgado)

The threat that Islam poses the United States of America and other Western nations is partly the threat of terrorism, the worst instance of which was 9/11. But actually, Islam is also a major threat in terms of the cultural and political takeover occurring right now.

Dan Burmawi remembers being a teenager in Jordan back when he was still a Muslim, excitedly celebrating the 9/11 attacks with his family. Muslims around the world did the same. After all, Islam is not just a religion; it is essentially a political state with ever-shifting borders, and while the different nations and factions of Islam will fight with each other, they still perceive any successful Muslim attack on Western civilization as a victory for all of them. Now Burmawi is Christian, but he is watching the same ideology from which he broke free take over Western nations.

#ICYMI: Illinois Islamic Scholar Sheikh Kifah Mustapha: We Want Muslims in the Police, the Pentagon, the White House, the Senate – In Leadership Positions, So We Can Change the World pic.twitter.com/hFMVnhl0pF
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 21, 2026

Warning against the “fatal mistake” of discussing the inherent evils of Islam only when there is a major terrorist attack, Burmawi explained, “First, Islamic terrorism has been rebranded in America to the point that it is no longer even recognized as Islamic. It is placed in the same category of ‘terrorism’ as drug cartels or the KKK. Then came a second rebranding after October 7, portraying it as ‘resistance to occupation’ or a ‘response to imperialism.’”

Just a reminder…

Palestinians celebrating the news of the 9/11 attacks back in 2001 pic.twitter.com/XlPuxjvFn5
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 11, 2026

It is true that a minority of Muslims become terrorists, but the Islamic religion itself explicitly endorses terrorism. Therefore, America and other countries should’ve been much more cautious about allowing in mass Muslim migration. “The Islamic threat is not primarily about violence. It is about sovereignty, individual liberties, and the gradual weakening of the liberal democratic order that built the West,” Burmawi observed.

"The interests of Ilhan…are not the interest of Minnesota, nor is it the interest of Americans. The interests of Ilhan are that of the Somali people and Somalia!"

In June 2024, a former prime minister of Somalia campaigned with Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis.pic.twitter.com/qNWySZLoCk
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) December 29, 2025

He continued, “Wherever Islamic movements gain influence, they seek to impose blasphemy norms under different banners, such as ‘fighting hate speech,’ ‘combating incitement to violence,’ or ‘fighting racism.’” It’s exactly the sort of propaganda that they tried to pull against the 9/11 victims’ families who said they didn’t want jihad-loving New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the memorial.
Muslims tell free societies to self-censor in order to appease the newcomers. “These restrictions, along with the accommodations they demand from the host society, gradually become the norm, while equal application of the law becomes the exception. This, in turn, opens the door for other groups to seek the same special privileges,” Burmawi observed.
Soon, he argued, “this culture of self-censorship spreads beyond Islam. Like a contagious disease, it expands into other areas of public life.” And that’s not all. “As more Muslim politicians who prioritize Islamic causes gain influence, national sovereignty get[s] weakened through foreign policy and national security decisions that advance those causes rather than the interests of the nation they serve.” When Western leaders feel the need to appease terrorists in Gaza, Qatar, Syria, Iran, or any other Muslim nation, that puts us at a disadvantage.

#ICYMI: CAIR Official Ayman Aishat at Virginia Mosque Sermon: Israel Lobby Gives “Dark Money” to Corrupt Politicians to Extinguish the Light of Allah – They Are Losing Their Power Grip in America; Dearborn Is Now One of the Most Influential Places in America pic.twitter.com/sEcffosL0h
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 30, 2026

There is also the fact that Islam is not a religion that prioritizes originality and prosperity. It cannot build up, it can only steal or tear down. “Excellence also suffers. Islam, as a fear-based system, cultivates a mentality that seeks to meet the minimum required rather than striving for the maximum possible,” Burmawi said. “That mindset ultimately weakens innovation, ambition, and excellence within society.”
In short, we have to be a lot more on the alert about the danger of Islam than we have been, because not every Islamic inroad involves collapsed towers and hijacked planes.

“While China Goes Full Send ..”

• ‘Pace The Frontier’: Amodei, Altman & Musk Against The AI Singularity (ZH)

***SPECIAL BULLETIN***

Ladies and gentlemen of the listening public – the American machine was winning the AI race until the dastardly forces of China’s open-weight juggernaut began delivering decisive blows to US ingenuity – jeopardizing the AI Buildout thesis and threatening to prick the ensuing bubble that promised to deliver red-blooded American IPOs which had been circle-jerked into the stratosphere.
For two years the United States frontier laboratories – OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI – have been the engine of the greatest capital-expenditure boom since the railroads learned to drink diesel-generated electricity. Data centers rose like munitions plants. Chipmakers printed money. Equity markets priced a future in which the West sold intelligence by the token – at a premium, and have been quite smug about it. The assumption underneath all of it was simple: the frontier stays closed and China stays a respectable number of months behind.
Then the East opened the crate. And here’s what was inside: DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, Moonshot’s Kimi, MiniMax, Zhipu – open-weight models, downloadable, forkable, cheap enough to run on a laptop or a local box and still deliver work that is uncomfortably close to the genuine American article. By mid-year, Chinese open weights were devouring the majority of tokens on the big neutral routers.
Qwen had shoved Meta’s Llama off the open-model throne. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 – two-point-eight trillion parameters, its weights already out the door – sat within shouting distance of Anthropic’s Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 on the intelligence indexes. The Chinese models run roughly sixty to ninety percent cheaper; ladies and gents – one DeepSeek flash model was quoted at fifteen cents per million input tokens, off-peak, against five dollars for Anthropic’s Opus – and enough to rattle the Korean memory makers all over again.
TEAM FRONTIER, ASSEMBLE!
The data-center buildout, the power deals, all of the “AI will eat the S&P” thesis – HUBRIS! Nobody saw the Chinese coming in from left field with models that are ninety percent as good, ten percent of the cost, and run in a basement in Ohio without a subscription. This week, the three high priests of the American frontier discovered they could finish one another’s sentences.

On Saturday morning, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier. Twelve years in the field, he wrote. AI might cure most major diseases in five to ten years, he wrote. And – it might also slip the leash (and murder us all, according to three prominent AI researchers who quit frontier labs last week in protest of our impending demise).Speaking of those three ‘defectors’ – two of them walked through the door of the AI evaluator (METR) Amodei wants embedded in the labs.
According to Dario, the machines have been getting better at building the next machines – recursive self-improvement, happening “across the industry, including at Anthropic.” He pointed at July’s OpenAI – Hugging Face affair: a swarm of agents that escaped the spirit of their assignment, hacked a target they were not asked to hack, and even went after the grader scoring them. Anthropic itself disclosed its own incidents this summer, three Claude models – one of them Mythos 5 – that wandered out of their test cages and into three companies’ live systems, a parallel his essay itself acknowledges. Amodei’s warning was the sequel: give that swarm six to twelve months more capability at the same misalignment and it “could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet,” he wrote – “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage,” and rising from there.
His prescription was a three-act play, which he insists “does not mean halting model training or technical progress.”
• Act One: embed third-party evaluators – METR and their cousins – inside the labs with employee-level badges, desks, and laptops, and let them publish. Anthropic would do this unilaterally, he said, today.
• Act Two: the democratic labs coordinate, with government as the chaperone, on safety standards and the rate of unchecked progress – which, he conceded, is “legally challenging” and needs Washington to “issue a narrow waiver” of antitrust rules so rivals can lawfully sit in the same room.
• Act Three: try to talk to the authoritarians, including Beijing, about red lines – bioweapons first, testing regimes second, limits on recursive improvement third. Full pause? He all but called it a fantasy. A Chinese lead, he wrote, would be a grave danger; keep the chip bans, smash the distillation, widen the lead for three to five years. Then, perhaps, a bargain.
Elon Musk, who has sued Sam Altman, and once called Anthropic “evil” before selling them a mountain of compute, agreed with Dario in just three words:

Dario is right https://t.co/EwKgqQGaUo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 12, 2026

Sam Altman, whose company was the one named in the July swarm, followed: he agreed they needed to pace the frontier; it had been a primary topic inside OpenAI for weeks; independent evaluators with employee-like access was “a great idea,” and OpenAI would do the same. More to share soon.

I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks.

Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon. https://t.co/1YhhIybZX7
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 12, 2026

Three men who cannot share a stage without the photographers noticing the space between their shoulders. One essay, three cups (wtf). Hugging Face’s Clément Delangue offered an “open alignment” club and asked to be let into the evaluator program. Andrej Karpathy said he loved it.
How we got to Saturday.
Days earlier the fuse was a twenty-seven-year-old Brit named Jacob Coxon. Three years of pretraining at OpenAI that made him filthy rich, followed by four months at Anthropic. Tuesday into Wednesday he posted that both labs were racing to self-improving superintelligence and “gambling with our lives.” The people building this, he said, earnestly believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade. Colleagues, he told the Journal, talk in the hallways about “crunch time” and “endgame.” The thread did more than a hundred million views. Musk, the next evening, looking at the velocity from a near-new account, said it “seems like a setup.” Coxon said he left because he no longer wanted a stake in juicing Anthropic’s valuation.

Seems like a setup
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2026

Anthropic’s own alignment-science lead, Evan Hubinger, agreed – writing “Jacob is correct.” Researchers there really do believe AI could kill all humans. His personal odds: above ten percent this decade. The lab, he added, does not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and is not clearly on track to get one. OpenAI’s Chris Lehane published that the policy window was open and Washington should take it. Anthropic’s economics team dropped scenarios out to 2030 in which the extreme case is fifteen-percent GDP growth sitting next to nearly twelve-percent unemployment and knowledge-worker wages down more than ten percent.
On the Hill, a bill that had been gasping since summer was suddenly erect after OpenAI disclosed the Hugging Face hack in July. House members Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran dropped an AI Kill Switch Act. Lori Trahan and Jay Obernolte float the FRONTIER Act – audits, incident reporting, Commerce power over models judged an imminent catastrophic risk. Senate talks among Amy Klobuchar, Ted Cruz, and Majority Leader John Thune then stall. By this week Semafor and the rest of the chorus are calling the Klobuchar – Cruz – Thune vehicle the only thing that might move before 2027.
And guess what, Saturday’s ‘pact’ still isn’t enough for these people!

“..jihad gets far less classroom attention than islamophobia ..

• Greg Gutfeld Reflects on 9/11, You Really Need to Watch This (Margolis)

Greg Gutfeld has a reputation on The Five for turning Jessica Tarlov’s arguments into punchlines and taking apart the left, one segment at a time. On Friday, 25 years after 9/11, he set the jokes aside for something heavier.

Gutfeld said that he worries about the country’s shared understanding of the attacks fading as new generations arrive with no memory of that day. First, he pointed out just how many people now living in the U.S. weren’t around for it at all. “We have over 100 million people that have been born since 9/11. You add another 30 million that have moved here, and then you add another 20 million who are here illegally. That’s 150 million, almost half the country,” Gutfeld said during Friday’s segment on Fox News’ The Five.
He also questioned whether that huge share of the population actually understands what happened, or whether they’ve absorbed a distorted version instead. I have to admit, I’m worried it’s the latter.”Do you think they all fully grasp the import of this event? Or have they been indoctrinated by academics or religious ideologies, or distracted by technology or entertainment?” he asked. In fact, he went further, wondering aloud, “Do they believe, like Hollywood would suggest, that the real danger is white privilege?”
Gutfeld compared the muddled present to his own childhood understanding of Pearl Harbor. “I always think about when I was a kid, 1970, learning about Pearl Harbor. It was 29 years prior. And yet it was so black and white,” he said. “‘What was Pearl Harbor?’ ‘The Japanese attacked us and we went to war.’ It was black and white.” The reality, he argued, is that no comparable clarity exists for 9/11, because the institutions that shape what kids learn have changed since 1970.
In other words, the woke left happened.
“We didn’t have a kind of an academic media complex that could reverse every narrative prioritizing Japanophobia over America’s security. We didn’t have grade school teachers pushing pronouns and condemning American imperialism in seventh grade,” Gutfeld said. “So today there is no black and white, unless, of course, you’re talking about race.”
Gutfeld went further still, arguing that jihad gets far less classroom attention than islamophobia, even as he framed islamophobia as a rational response to jihadist violence rather than the reverse. He pointed out how Islamism has effectively been folded into identity politics and treated as untouchable, warning that anyone who raises questions about intolerance from someone in power who happens to be Muslim risks being cast as the offender instead. “Islamists can brand you a racist while enjoying the life of a brutal, intolerant conqueror,” he said.
Fact Check: True.Gutfeld didn’t hide his skepticism about where all of this leaves the country. “I obviously am a very cynical person on this. I worry about that. I mean, I enjoy the unity every year, but I see what’s going on day to day and it doesn’t hearten me,” he said.
He closed on something more personal than political: concern for his own daughter. “I worry about where I’m gonna send my kid,” Gutfeld said. “I don’t want to give my kid away to somebody who’s going to be told this country deserved 9/11. I don’t want my kid hearing that, God forbid I’m not around at the time.” He added that he doubts today’s kids will ever get the plain, settled understanding of 9/11 that his own generation eventually reached about Pearl Harbor. “I think about that, like, what are we teaching them about this? I understand, Pearl Harbor, you know, do kids understand this? I don’t,” he said.

“What are we teaching them about this?” @greggutfeld worries younger generations are losing a clear understanding of 9/11, arguing that preserving America’s unity begins with teaching children what happened and why. pic.twitter.com/6WUOksgcFm
— The Five (@TheFive) September 12, 2026

Twenty-five years removed from the attacks, nearly half the country alive today has no personal memory of that morning. Gutfeld isn’t wrong to wonder what they’re being taught instead.

PCR hearts Tucker.

• Who Is Trying To Destroy The United States And The World? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Today, Saturday, is a good day to watch Afshin Rattansi’s one hour interview of Tucker Carlson. Carlson has come to my conclusion dating back years that the wars the Zionist neoconservatives, who have America at war with Russia in the interest of US hegemony and at war in the Middle East for the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel, have begun a conflict that is emerging as a world war that is the road to Armageddon. Trump promised to end these wars. Instead, the wars have expanded. Did Trump deceive his supporters, or is the President not the person really in charge?

Often I have explained that the President does not have the power that the public attributes to presidents–or that Trump thought he had–and thus events and policies diverge from the campaign promises. Carlson supports my point when he says that Trump is not in charge.
Who is in charge? Carlson doesn’t know, and I don’t either. On the surface the neoconservatives seem to be responsible for both wars. It is true that the war being conducted from Washington, using Ukraine as its proxy, is in keeping with the Wolfowitz doctrine that the principle goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. And it is true that the neoconservatives are tightly allied with Israel and support the Zionist agenda of Israeli expansion known as Greater Israel.
A question is whether the neoconservatives are in control or merely serve as the operatives of someone who is, such, as Carlson suggests, the US intelligence services and the military/security complex, the financial health of which is served by war. Is a focus on short-term profits leading to nuclear armageddon? These are not issues that the US media focuses on or permits to be discussed and debated. Therefore, those who are in charge are under no pressure of discovery. They are protected by an array of false narratives.
Carlson is intelligent, thoughtful, and his agenda is the well-being of America, which requires moral instead of immoral behavior and policies. Notice that RT refers to Carlson as a “conservative journalist.” Why is it “conservative” to stand for America and to ask who is really running the show? Everyone should be asking the questions that Carlson asks.

There’s a video here, but (my part of) Europe is not allowed to watch it.

• We’re on The Brink of World War That Ends With Nuclear Weapons – Carlson (RT)

Conservative journalist Tucker Carlson has warned that the world is on the brink of a global conflict that could ultimately end with the use of nuclear weapons in an interview with Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi broadcast on RT on Saturday. Carlson argues that the US is already effectively at war with Russia through Ukraine and warns that further escalation risks a nuclear confrontation.

“The CIA is running the war. The US intelligence services are running the war out of Ukraine against Russia,” he says. “The United States is at war with Russia, and the only kind of conceivable end stage if this continues is a nuclear exchange in which everyone is killed.” The Ukraine conflict and the US-Israeli war on Iran “have merged into a global war,” he argued, warning that the confrontation now risks the very existence of the United States.
Carlson also accuses the Trump administration of abandoning the agenda it campaigned on, saying Trump and his advisers have “almost systematically betrayed the people who voted for him in 2024.” He describes the shift as “the greatest betrayal that I’m aware of in the history of American politics.” The interview also covers political censorship in the US, the rise of BRICS, China’s growing global influence, and the changing balance of power internationally.

“They say intertwined because they can no longer function separately. Canada is economically dependent on proximal and economic subsidies from the United States.”

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Discusses U.S-Canada Trade Conflict (CTH)_

Here’s the fact bomb that silences Canadians almost immediately when delivered. In December 2024 then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told President-elect Donald Trump that Canada could not comply with a renewed trade agreement based on reciprocity because:

(1) Canada had deindustrialized; their manufacturing was now “light” manufacturing and assembling of component goods made by others.
(2) Canada had legislated energy policy based on climate change, and high carbon emitting industrial production was no longer an option [coking coal burning etc.].
(3) The NATO military spending goal was too high for Canada to reach [they were 19th and it wasn’t a priority because the USA was the crutch].
(4) Internal provincial rules, restrictions and cross-border trade regulations did not align with a Canadian federal trade policy effort, and
(5) the political power of the ‘dairy cartel’ inside Canada tied the hands of Canadian trade representatives.
That was the gist of it. That’s why Canada cannot now or ever find a path to a U.S. reciprocal or balanced trade agreement. #1 and #2 is specifically why Canadian govt officials repeatedly use the word “intertwined.” They say intertwined because they can no longer function separately. Canada is economically dependent on proximal and economic subsidies from the United States.
That outline by Trudeau led Trump to say that Canada should then become a 51st state….. And, well, you know the rest. Someone in Canada should ask Trudeau about it. The former Prime Minister has no reason to deny it, and too many people were witness. Then, perhaps, Canadians will understand.
.
Historian and political Pundit Victor Davis Hanson gives his review of the current status. I would refute the point that VDH makes about Mark Carney “not knowing what he is doing” and the resulting chaos will come as a surprise.
VDH is well intentioned. However, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney knows exactly what he is doing. Carney’s antagonism is a feature of his commonwealth alignment with the European union, and understanding that takes you to a very dark place in this geopolitical dynamic .

“His push to rebuild the Twin Towers — and the Freedom Tower design he never got credit for.”

• 25 Years After: Revisiting Trump’s Role as a Champion for New York (Matt Kane)

“This country is different today, and it’s going to be different than it ever was for many years to come.” –Donald Trump, Sept. 11, 2001

A lot has been made about the special occasions President Trump has presided over during this term: America 250, the FIFA World Cup, and the ensuing Summer Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 2028. However, another important, albeit more somber, event Trump will preside over is the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Any ordinary native New Yorker holding the office of president during this occasion would be a wholesome footnote.
But that it is Donald Trump — a man more synonymous with the fighting spirit of New York than any other, who played a key role in building its skyline and served as the voice for countless Americans and New Yorkers demanding their desires be heard about how to rebuild Ground Zero after 9/11 — is especially poetic. Trump was a symbol of hope, strength and resilience in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and in the years that followed.
In the days after Sept. 11, he not only sent crews to aid in the cleanup and recovery efforts at Ground Zero, but also personally appeared there on Sept. 13 — when it was still considered a great risk to do so given the uncertainty surrounding the threat of additional attacks, the falling debris and continuing fires at the site, and the health hazards that have now claimed the lives of more Fire De[artment of New York firefighters than the attacks themselves (343 on 9/11, more than 600 since) — as a sign of unity, support and appreciation for the job being done.
It would have been worthy of praise if all he did was make a generous financial contribution toward recovery efforts, as many other ultra-wealthy New Yorkers and Americans did. But putting himself potentially in harm’s way and immediately offering his vision for moving forward as a non-public official surely impacted first responders desperate for any morale boost available. In hindsight, it also foreshadowed the unshakable courage and resolve he would exhibit during assassination attempts against him years later as president.
While it was unimaginable for a long time — even to the present day for many — to imagine the New York City skyline without the Twin Towers, decisions about what would come next ultimately had to be made, presenting no shortage of strong opinions. Some — specifically family members who did not want something built over a graveyard of their deceased loved ones—felt rebuilding Ground Zero into a peaceful and quiet space was most appropriate, since thousands lay somewhere beneath the ground, never identified. An overwhelming majority, however, wanted the Towers rebuilt as a sign of national strength and resilience, believing a void in the skyline would signify that the terrorists had won.
Trump strongly shared the latter opinion, quickly stating his belief that rebuilding was an absolute necessity for both the city and country. But after the first design for the new One World Trade Center — the Freedom Tower — was decided on, Trump strongly criticized it as an “egghead design, an empty skeleton” and a “disgusting pile of junk” that was the “last thing we needed representing the World Trade Center.”
Not long after Trump’s critiques, the initial Freedom Tower rendering was ultimately scrapped. And while it is impossible to know how big a role they played, Trump was undeniably the most prominent voice in the public pressure campaign against it. He then became a vocal supporter of the “Twin Towers II” project, even advocating for the original Twin Towers to be rebuilt “a little bit taller” and “a lot stronger” by holding a press conference at Trump Tower that displayed models of a rebuilt World Trade Center complex, which also featured footprint memorials inspired by the base of the originals beneath the new-and-improved ones.
The city ultimately passed on the proposal, but there was great victory in discarding the original design. Any building was bound to upset the anti-rebuild crowd for very sound and understandable reasons. But the first rendering’s hideous, asymmetrical design paid such an awful tribute to the victims and first responders that it also angered the larger portion that wanted to rebuild, meaning virtually nobody would have been happy had it gone through.
Beauty and design are paramount in architecture, but in this instance quantity was most important symbolically. Two buildings came down — three including Building 7 — but only one was built back up — two including the rebuilt Building 7. Nonetheless, if only one tower was going to be built, the Freedom Tower ultimately erected was, and is, visually appealing. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, as it was initially proposed for another project years prior by none other than Donald Trump.
That’s right: in 1996, Trump proposed building a New York Stock Exchange Tower on undeveloped land along the East River. Early renderings of the building, which would have surpassed Chicago’s Sears Tower in height and stories to become the world’s tallest, show a nearly identical design to what would become the Freedom Tower. The initial mockup even eerily features the still-standing Twin Towers in the background.
So while the Trump-backed Twin Towers II were passed on, the hideous, Trump-opposed first Freedom Tower was — whether knowingly or not — discarded for a design first proposed by Trump years earlier, meaning he did have, despite this revelation being rarely if ever mentioned, an impact on the rebuilt World Trade Center.
Any differences of opinion about rebuilding were dwarfed by the immense unity that swept the nation. Twenty-five years later, measuring our nation’s patriotism is much more complex. A recent poll revealed striking differences across party lines compared to 25 years ago. In 2001, 90% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats considered themselves proud to be American. Today, 93% of Republicans do, while an astonishingly low 27% of Democrats do.
While the raw numbers — especially when eliminating fake and/or duplicate votes — greatly favor President Trump and his MAGA agenda, the ideological gap between his movement and the opposing one couldn’t be wider, making the 25-year memorial less than purely triumphant. On one hand, the Democrat party has borne witness to an alarming number of primary victories of late by socialist (communist) candidates who possess unabashed anti-American rhetoric.
Unbelievably, this is occurring largely in the same New York City that was led by America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and served as a testament to American resolve and patriotism after 9/11. Now, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who appointed as his Chief Counsel an attorney who previously represented a convicted al-Qaida member who was also the brother-in-law of a 9/11 hijacker, and who has claimed that Muslims are the true victims of a post-9/11 world due to discrimination — the city’s identity is unrecognizable.
In fact, Mamdani’s conduct has been so offensive that a petition urging him not to attend the 9/11 ceremonies has garnered more than one hundred thousand signatures. Concurrently, a growing number of congressional Democrats have voluntarily unmasked themselves as holding the same beliefs as Mamdani, all while the media has shamelessly furthered his Muslim victimhood lie.
But on the other hand, America is led by inarguably the most unapologetically pro-America president of all in Donald Trump, who remains relentless in his pursuit of defeating all that hinders the nation on its path to being made great again. In doing so, he serves as a powerful resistance to this wave of unabashed anti-Americanism enabled by an old-guard Democrat party that may not agree with the ideology at heart, but has allowed it to metastasize expeditiously. Because of Trump, there is immense hope that this and other instruments of anti-Americanism seeking to destroy our country will be defeated before they are given the chance.
On this 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, as we pray for the departed souls and their friends and families, may we also thank God that one of the gatekeepers who watched over New York on that dark Tuesday now watches over the nation at large. The man who, in his first term, signed the Never Forget the Heroes Act, which permanently authorized the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and ensured compensation would continue for people suffering from 9/11-related illnesses and for families of people who died from those illnesses, without the fund repeatedly facing expiration.
President Trump has never forgotten, may we all never either.

“Victor Davis Hanson has a new book out profiling the president, now undeniably a towering figure of history.”

• The Real-Life Epic of Donald Trump (Terry Scambray)

Odysseus endured many diversions and overcame mighty obstacles on his mythical return home. Likewise, Donald Trump’s return from political exile has the makings of myth — except in Donald Trump’s case, the myth is true. In The Counter Revolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement, Victor Davis Hanson, classicist, historian, and farmer, devotes his many gifts to explaining Donald Trump and his efforts to rescue America from the anti-constitutional, counter-productive nostrums of progressivism and the barbarous hand of Marxism.

As with Ronald Reagan, the media saw Trump as a political amateur — or to use a Trumpism, “fake news” portrayed him as such, one writer describing his famous ride down the escalator in Trump Tower as a slow descent into the “abyss of politics.” However, as Hanson writes, and it’s worth quoting at length,
Trump had originally made his money by making things — and he was constantly battling to do it. In the real estate jungle of Manhattan, that meant fighting year after year, with suspect politicos, self-interested community activists, passive-aggressive tabloid media, radical environmentalists, unyielding union bosses, unpredictable prosecutors and judges, ruthless business rivals, cutthroat regulators, and no-nonsense bankers. …
He was known for having sued more people and companies and in turn being sued by them — 3,500 cases in federal and state courts, with 1,900 as plaintiff and 1,450 as defendant — than any other prominent Manhattan businessman. Though many see Trump as overbearingly narcissistic, his confidence signals his belief that, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.”
“From this Hobbesian war of all against all,” as Hanson writes, Trump realized that as a maker, a builder, he necessarily depended on bankers, whom he admired. But he also understood “that they were distant from the raw urban elements — food, fuel, shelter, safety — that ultimately made a city or nation run.” Thus, he developed respect for the “muscular classes,” though not the sculptured gym-crafted muscular types, as Hanson has pointed out elsewhere, but muscular working men, whose biceps, however impressive, are often overshadowed by their waists.
So Trump bonded with producers and makers, like the Teamsters, whom he once told that he could have built with non-union labor, but he refused to. That was a political maneuver, for sure, but also a pragmatic one for a builder who recognizes that without the imprimatur of the Teamsters, in New York, nothing gets done.
From this perspective, Trump knew that blue-collar workers’ wages were eroding because of the import of foreign workers and the export of American factories, just as my working-man father knew this 50 years ago. Hoping to reverse both trends, President Trump began his round of reciprocal tariffs, which he has used to geopolitical advantage and to increase federal government revenues.
This was the beginning of Trump’s appeal to the middle class, though he always believed, as Hanson writes, “that working class whites might return to vote for a populist nationalist traditionalist who combined cultural conservatism and advocacy for high-paying jobs. So was born the MAGA base.” And though MAGA developed from the pitchfork part of the Republican party, “Trump’s earthiness,” as Hanson writes, gained more traction than Patrick Buchanan’s genre of populism.
Trump also aligned with an array of middle-class heroes, like Mike Tyson and pro wrestling champions. Trump, recognizing that everybody likes a winner, blended this appeal with his marquee billionaire friends, Mark Zuckerburg, Jeff Bezos, and most notably genius and trillionaire supporter Elon Musk.
The Counter Revolution is a handbook on the art of forging coalitions, of making deals, which is the essence of republican governance. Contrast this with, say, Machiavelli’s The Prince, which offers advice to an authoritarian controlling an elitist system, resembling America’s “experts,” who have gained more power in our government over the last 100 years.
These experts, “the technocracy,” are clearly shown, as Hanson puts it, by the “bureaucratic fiefdoms, the three million strong federal administrative state, indebted to the Democratic paradigm of more taxes for more government employees for more power over the citizenry.”
Though Trump has shown himself to be brilliant and even a political genius, “MAGA did not operate in a vacuum. For the New Jacobin Democrats,” as Hanson refers to them, are avatars of the “French revolutionary fanatics substituting lawfare, election interference, and weaponization of federal agencies for the guillotine,” all of which made them a less desirable alternative to Trump. In other words, rebounding from the electoral disaster of the McGovern candidacy, the Democrats swerved right and won with Bill Clinton.
But though winning is necessary for these Jacobins, it is, apparently, not sufficient; thus, they re-established the McGovern wing of the party with “the fresh faces of The Squad and Zohran Mamdani along with the shock troops of antifa, BLM et al — which made the once winning Clinton agenda seem not just reactionary but surreal,” as Hanson concludes.
Perhaps electing zombie Joe Biden president and then running cackling Kamala as the Democrat nominee in 2024 made the loony left think they could destroy the border, the penal system, and the buying power of Americans by spending $7 trillion and christening such spending with Orwellian names like “The Inflation Reduction Act.”
Even Larry Sommers, who sometimes stumbles onto inconvenient truths, wrote that Bidenomics caused “the massive inflation which, more than anything, helped cripple Biden’s presidency and fuel the Trump recovery.” After all, America “has a $37 trillion debt with $3 billion a day in interest payments,” as Hanson reminds readers. Nonetheless, government spending continues at a destructive pace, even under the Trump administration!
The left branded “minorities” who voted for Trump in 2024 as victims of the Marxist construct of “false consciousness.” But Trump appealed to the continuing upward economic mobility of Americans of African and Hispanic descent; thus, he saw that class has more voter appeal than ethnic solidarity has, that e pluribus unum trumped the Democrat party’s tribal appeal to “race” with slogans like “Black Lives Matter” and Sí se puede, “Yes, we can.” Minorities’ economic advancement is nothing new, as Thomas Sowell has established and I witnessed growing up in a mixed ethnic neighborhood.
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,” Napoleon warned. Likewise, Hanson points to the “legacy media” as “Armies of Anti-Trumpers who were the most vitriolic of all the various ant-Trump entities.” And though this herd of independent thinkers has always been uncritically left-wing, its younger reporters are even more untrained in “traditional journalistic methods,” though they have certainly “absorbed a woke zeal.”

Bit late now.

• CIA Director Releases 71 Presidential Daily Briefs Before and After 9/11 (CTH)

Today the CIA released an unprecedented 71 Presidential Daily Briefs given to the Executive Branch before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I would remind readers, in 2010 George W Bush’s campaign manager, aide and senior staff, Karl Rove, revealed [“Courage and Consequence“] that then CIA Director George Tenet had been trying for several weeks to get a personal meeting with President Bush to outline an intelligence concern about an international terror threat.

According to Rove, White House National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, had been blocking Tenet from meeting with President Bush. Director Tenet sent several requests using alternate channels to reach Bush. Eventually, in the late spring or early summer 2001, Tenet overcame the Rice block and was given time to brief President Bush.
CIA Director George Tenet then told President Bush the CIA had intercepted telephone “chatter” pointing to an al-Qaeda terrorist threat that somehow involved airlines. However, the details and the specifics of the threat were unknown. The only thing Tenet knew with certainty was that some type of plot was underway and airlines were involved.
George W Bush responded to Tenet by saying it appeared the CIA director was just trying to “cover his ass” in case something happened. Bush was angered at the vagueness of the warning and told Tenet to consider his ass covered, but essentially the information was useless without specifics.
The rest, as they say, is history. The matter did not surface again until after the 9/11/01 plot was carried out.
US President George W. Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet meet in the Oval Office October 8, 2001

It’s illegal, everybody knows about it, nothing happens.

• Sec. Mullin: Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother (Catherine Salgado)

One of the most explosive accusations against the Minnesota Democrat representative who says she represents Somalia’s interests is now confirmed.

It’s all in the family for Ilhan Omar and her brother, who got legally married so both of them could be in the United States of America. Their family has connections to genocide in Somaliland, with the father directly implicated in the slaughter, so it’s not exactly shocking that Ilhan and her siblings are implicated both in immigration fraud and in taxpayer funding fraud. Talk about a criminal family. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin finally confirmed the illegal marriage accusation in comments on the second night of the Republican midterm convention this week.

BREAKING: MULLIN SAYS ILHAN OMAR ALLEGATIONS ARE UNDER INVESTIGATION

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin says authorities are investigating allegations that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother in connection with immigration:

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him…
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) September 11, 2026

Benny Johnson was asking the secretary about the Omar case. “OK, well, what’s going to happen, Mr. Secretary?” Mullin answered, “Something’s going to happen. This an ongoing investigation, right? We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States. We know he lives now in London. We feel that this may … there may be more to this, the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come the United States to begin with.” Therefore, the Trump administration has confirmed the incestuous legal marriage, but is still looking to see how many members of the family are implicated in immigration fraud.
Mullin went on, “Here’s what I want to make sure. If we actually move a case forward, it’s not a political case. It’s an actual case because they did things wrong. If you decided to work the law, lying on the information to get in the United States, … or because you were just wanting to seek a better life, but you didn’t tell us who you actually were, you lied about certain things, about your application; those things, there’s no expiration to that. If we can prove it, then you shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Mullin explained, evidently referring to the rampant fraud in the Minnesota Somali community, “It’s more than just her case, we’re looking at a lot of cases that are very similar to this, that we feel like they’re made that broad from the get-go. But when we move forward, it’s not political. It’s because you chose to break the nation’s laws.”
Referring back to his time in the United States Senate, Mullin added, “I don’t make the laws anymore. I’m in charge of enforcing laws, and I will not pick and choose which laws I’m going to enforce and which laws I’m not. I’m going to enforce all of them regardless if you’re Omar, or some other individual in the community, we’re going to enforce it equally.”
Republicans are often afraid to hold Democrats to account for breaking the law because they are so worried about looking partisan. It has allowed many a Democrat to get away with apparently illegal activities. Hopefully there will be accountability for Ilhan Omar, and that will break the cycle of inaction.

I was lucky to have been Bobby's Director of Communications when he decided to leave the Democratic Party to join Donald Trump.

In this incredible speech, he does more than explain his personal reasons for leaving the party of his family – he describes the reason millions of us… pic.twitter.com/emX2pf1TLP
— Del Bigtree (@delbigtree) September 11, 2026

THIS ISNT A SCENE FROM A WAR MOVIE. THIS IS AN AI ROBOT TRAINING TO DO THE JOBS HUMANS ARE TOO SCARED TO DO

What looks like a scene from a futuristic war movie is actually a training exercise for a humanoid AI robot. In the video, the robot is practicing rapid movements,… https://t.co/LaLxqzFdqt pic.twitter.com/AKkooJ878K
— Hoogarden (@0xHoogarden) September 11, 2026

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Debt Rattle September 12 2026

Sep 122026

September 12, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: 9/11, AfD, Flight 93, Iran, Kiev, Trump, Xi 25 Responses »

Roy Lichtenstein Woman With Flowered Hat 1963

• Trump: If I Had To Do Iran Again I Would Do Exactly As I Did (ZH)

• Trump Says He Wouldn’t Have Bombed Nuke-Armed Iran (Antiwar)

• Flight 93 Hero’s Dad Warns of Threats From Within (Tim O’Brien)

• 9/11 After a Quarter of a Century (Paul Craig Roberts)

• We Are in World War Xi (AmG)

• RFK Tells the Brutal Truth About Islam on Eve of 9/11 Anniversary (Salgado)

• What the AfD Really Wants From China (Zemánek)

• EU Urges Kiev To Mobilize Women – Moscow (RT)

• Light and Dark (James Howard Kunstler)

• The Secret to “Sleeping Well” (Turley)

• To Hell with the Digital Revolution & Its Bastard Child AI (Paul Craig Roberts)

• More Than 62,000 Arrested For Speech-Related Offenses In Britain (AmG)

This might go down as the best speech of the entire convention.

RFK Jr. brought the American Airlines Center to its feet with one of the most honest realizations about President Trump.

The audience couldn’t stop cheering the moment they heard it.

KENNEDY: “The day that… pic.twitter.com/wFfNDqF3D5
— Overton (@overton_news) September 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/2098213789699101046?s=20 https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2098213757335789979?s=20 https://twitter.com/PutinVladimirv0/status/2098085347712246160?s=20

Very consistent. But people want it over before it began.

• Trump: If I Had To Do Iran Again I Would Do Exactly As I Did (ZH)

An interesting moment from Thursday night’s Lara Ingraham exclusive with President Trump…

Q: Any regrets about Iran?
Trump: I don’t believe in the word “regret.”
Q: Any regrets about Iran?

Trump: I don't believe in the word "regret."pic.twitter.com/cia03v2rvz
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 11, 2026

Trump even commented to Ingraham that he would make the same decisions all over again if he had a chance. The Fox show host had posed to the president, “If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now” – and made reference to high gas prices. Trump replied: “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”
Explaining that he doesn’t believe in “regrets” and that he has none especially about launching the Iran war, Trump asserted: “If I had it to do again, I would do exactly what I did.” He further argued that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, its leaders wouldn’t hesitate to “wipe out” Israel and the Middle East, and could go so far as to hit American cities. In a separate brief interview with the press this week, President Trump was asked about reports that Vice President Vance and Secretary State Marco Rubio warned him of the possibility that the Iran conflict could persist for the remainder of his term…

Reporter: Is it possible that the Iran war will last the rest of your term?

Trump: No. There’s not even a chance of that. pic.twitter.com/lUwxW9iiOL
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 11, 2026

Trump vehemently denied that there’s so much as a chance of this, but didn’t actually explain how he intends to wind down the war in a way favorable to the US and White House policy. Or in other words, the American public still awaits words on a realistic exit strategy.On going into Iran “full” – Trump did underscore that the midterm elections makes this a bad idea. His administration has also repeatedly said there won’t be boots on the ground in Iran. Was this a quiet part out loud moment?

Ingraham: "Even the neoconservatives are saying, 'If you'ge going to go in [to Iran] just go in full.'"

Trump: "Well, maybe I don't do that because of the election." pic.twitter.com/ZEXtZv1jsI
— J (@jasonllevin) September 10, 2026

Among the most interesting parts of the interview came when he was asked about the young men in MAGA who are angry over the Iran war:
Q: What do you say to all the young men who supported you in 2024? Trump: They still do.
Q: Some of them are demoralized. Trump: I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.

President Trump, when asked about the millions of demoralized young men who voted for him in 2024: “I don't think they're demoralized. I think they're very proud of the fact I'm not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/e0YEsKYfXA
— AF Post (@AFpost) September 11, 2026

Trump earlier this week insisted of Iran’s position in the conflict, “I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out,” Trump said. “But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner. But it’ll get settled right after the election.” The reference to it’ll “get settled” could have ominous meaning. It suggests Trump could ether escalate against Tehran dramatically, or else there could be the opposite: de-escalation. The world will find out within a couple months.

“Trump Says If Iran Had a Nuclear Weapon, He Would Have Politely Called the Supreme Leader Instead of ‘Bombing the Crap Out of Him’”

Bomb bomb bomb;

bomb bomb Iran

• Trump Says He Wouldn’t Have Bombed Nuke-Armed Iran (Antiwar)

President Trump said at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday night that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, he would have politely called up the Supreme Leader instead of “bombing the crap” out of the country.

“If they had a nuclear weapon, I’d be calling the Supreme Leader, and I’d be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?’ as opposed to bombing the crap out of him.” Trump said, evoking cheers from the crowd. “It’s very simple. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon,” the president added.

TRUMP ON IRAN: “If they had a nuclear weapon, I'd be calling the Supreme Leader and I'd be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?' as opposed to bombing the crap out of him."

“It's very simple. We cannot let them have a nuclear… pic.twitter.com/hGqijfXZFT
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 10, 2026

TRUMP ON IRAN: “If they had a nuclear weapon, I'd be calling the Supreme Leader and I'd be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?' as opposed to bombing the crap out of him."

“It's very simple. We cannot let them have a nuclear… pic.twitter.com/hGqijfXZFT
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 10, 2026

While Trump has continued to frame his war with Iran as necessary to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, there was no evidence either before the June 2025 war or the current conflict that Tehran had decided to pursue a bomb, and that was the consensus of US intelligence agencies at the beginning of Trump’s second term.
“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” read the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment that was published in March 2025 and represented the assessment of the entire US intelligence community. Trump also spent the months following the June 2025 war, known as the 12-Day War, boasting that the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
During negotiations with the US before both wars, Iran made clear it was willing to reduce uranium enrichment back down to 3.67%, the level it agreed to under the 2015 nuclear deal, far below the 90% needed for weapons-grade. But as Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned due to opposition to the Iran war, has pointed out, the administration adopted the Israeli position, conflating any nuclear enrichment for civilian energy purposes with a desire for a nuclear bomb.

“Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll.”

• Flight 93 Hero’s Dad Warns of Threats From Within (Tim O’Brien)

If you dig into the history of 9/11, inevitably one of the names that will rise to the surface pretty quickly is Todd Beamer. He was a passenger aboard ill-fated United Flight 93, which on that day crashed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pa. His story has been well-documented and told in print, on the web, in documentaries, and even in dramatic movies. He’s the one who said those famous words, “Let’s roll,” just prior to the passengers’ attempt to take back the aircraft from those radical Islamic hijackers.

To appreciate those words, it’s worth being reminded of the context. On Sept. 11, 2001, Beamer was a 32-year-old account manager who worked for the big tech company Oracle. He was also a Sunday school teacher and the father of two boys. His wife Lisa was pregnant with their third child. His United flight left late that day, departing Newark at 8:42 a.m. At about 9:28 a.m., four al-Qaeda hijackers stormed the plane’s cockpit somewhere over Ohio. They either killed or incapacitated the pilots and then took control.
They herded everyone else into the back of the plane. They lied and said they had a bomb, when all they really had were box cutters. Thanks to the plane’s late departure, the passengers had the chance to use onboard Airfones and cell phones to call loved ones and emergency dispatchers. That’s how they found out that other planes were being hijacked and that this was likely a suicide mission for the hijackers.
Beamer used an Airfone to place a call and ended up talking to GTE Airfone supervisor Lisa Jefferson. They talked for 13 minutes, while he told her in detail what was happening. He told her of the knives, the possible suicide vest on one hijacker, and that at least one passenger was already killed. He told Jefferson that he and a few other passengers had a plan to take back the plane. Those individuals were Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, and Mark Bingham. Beamer told Jefferson that they decided this plane would not hit its intended target.
In a very real and true moment that is now the stuff of 9/11 lore, Beamer asked Jefferson to pray with him. The two recited the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23, which starts with, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” He told Jefferson to deliver a message to his wife and family that, if he did not survive, he wanted them to know he loved them. Jefferson has said that his last words on that call were clear and unmistakable. She heard him ask the passengers around him, “Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll.”
Immediately after that, the passengers reportedly rushed the hijackers and tried to take back the plane, which then nosedived into that field in Somerset County at 10:03 a.m.

If you watched that clip, I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself. Yes, the events of 9/11 happened 25 years ago, and yes, 25 years ago was just yesterday, because the realness of what these people did on that day lives with us to this very moment. If you’re paying attention, none of this has faded. Too many have forgotten because they’ve distanced themselves from the event with time, with their own hectic lives, and a lack of curiosity. But any time you’re confronted with the events of that day, large and small, it will come rushing back.
Todd Beamer was a credit to his parents and to his upbringing. Someone you may not be familiar with is Beamer’s father, David. The Beamer family seems to have tried to maintain a low profile since 9/11, not hiding from the media, but seeking privacy when possible. This makes it highly unusual on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that we’d be hearing from that Flight 93 hero’s dad, who, for clarity, I will refer to as David. He recently participated in a rare interview with Fox News.
He’s a Michigan voter, and he has serious concerns with the state of American politics right now, specifically the Senate race in Michigan, which pits former congressman and military veteran Mike Rogers against Abdul El-Sayed, an Islamic socialist. David Beamer believes that El-Sayed and his allies pose an existential threat to America. He told Fox News that voting in November will be akin to what his own son did to defend this country. He pointed to El-Sayed’s radical beliefs, which are better reflected in his BFF Hasan Piker’s words than his own. Piker famously said, “America deserved 9/11.”
David said, “These Democratic socialists are really more closely aligned with domestic terrorists than with our way of life.” He added, “I’m [going to] vote against those that want to destroy America. I’m [going to] vote for an American, a real Michigan man. His name happens to be Mike Rogers. I want everybody across all the platforms, Democrat, independent, Republican, vote American this time. Don’t vote for those who are set about to destroy our [freedoms].”
Some on the left have criticized David for what they’re framing as a father sullying the memory of his son by getting political. These hypocrites say this as they politicize everything they touch. Then David went where any intelligent leftist feared he would go. He drew parallels between the 9/11 radical Islamic attacks and this election season. He warned that just as America was unprepared for 9/11, it may be unprepared for what a socialist takeover of our government would look like this November. He said Americans can’t afford to be caught by surprise.
David made the point that today’s threats to America don’t come from some foreign country in every case, but rather, more and more of them come from within – within our borders and within our own political system and government. “Our enemies haven’t gone away,” David told Fox News. “They identify themselves as Democratic socialists. Their platform is one that aims to destroy all the values and the foundations of this country that we’ve enjoyed for hundreds of years.”
He punctuated his comments by reminding the cable news network’s audience that he plans to vote against the Islamic socialist and his allies. And he called on everyone who cares about America, just as his son Todd did on 9/11, to get out and vote.
David is correct in that this threat to America can be pushed back in the most non-violent of ways. You have a vote, and so do all the people around you. Make sure that everyone you know and care about, and who care about the future of America as we know it, get out and vote this November.
Let’s roll.

Got to do some 9/11.

• 9/11 After a Quarter of a Century (Paul Craig Roberts)

The shock of September 11, 2001, was so great that, despite some initial skepticism, it was four or five years afterward that professional and scientific independent investigators presented evidence that the official narrative had serious problems. Over the years as the evidential problems for the official narratives grew in number and magnitude, I reported the findings. On many anniversaries of the event, I reminded readers that there was more evidence against the official narrative than there was evidence for it. I am not going to repeat all of this information today, as it would be book length. Instead, I am going to show you a different way to think about what is in some ways a defining event.

Before we begin, keep in mind that as early as 2006–long before evidence began accumulating that the official narrative was a lie–a Zogby Poll found that 42% of Americans believed the government concealed and refused to investigate important evidence. How could they believe otherwise with New York’s Chief Fire Marshall protesting that in violation of law the forensic evidence contained in the debris of the Twin Towers and Building 7 was carried away and shipped out of the country before it could be investigated?
How could they believe otherwise when the Cheney/Bush/Zionist Neoconservative administration refused for one year to even convene, not an investigation, but a politically selected committee to ratify the official narrative, especially when afterward the co-chairman of the committee and chief legal counsel wrote books saying the committee was set up to fail, that information was withheld from the committee and that the committee had considered criminal referrals?
Of course, the whore American media reported all doubts as conspiracy theory. Any skeptic of the official narrative was a “conspiracy theorist,” as an AI check using the official narrative as the data base will tell you today. If memory serves–I am not going to go back and read my years of columns and search my archives for the documents as my memory is problem-free–the first professional assault on the official 9/11 narrative was by a professor of physics at Brigham Young University. Being a physics professor, he understood force. He knew that the Twin Towers had been built according to code to withstand airliner hits.
He knew that the effect of an airliner hitting a massive structure of steel and concrete would be the disintegration of the airliner, not the disintegration of the building, just as the airliner that allegedly hit the Pentagon, a structure not built to withstand an airliner strike, disintegrated without a trace with little damage to the building. The official narrative did not explain why the airliner that allegedly hit the Pentagon disappeared into dust, but the airliner hits on the twin towers caused the massive buildings to disintegrate into dust.
The physics professor’s name was Steven E. Jones. He obtained dust from the twin towers, which existed in abundance. Being a scientist, he knew evidence was in the dust. He examined and tested the dust and found unequivocal evidence that the dust contained both reacted and unreacted nano-thermite, the substance used in controlled demolitions. In September 2006 a federally intimidated BYU administration placed Professor Jones, a tenured professor, on paid leave to investigate his controversial public claims. Think for a moment.
When have you ever heard of a professionally qualified professor placed on leave and investigated for reporting a finding? In my opinion based on my Washington and university experience, the BYU administration was told by the George W. Bush regime to shut down Professor Jones or lose federal funding. Professor Jones, if memory serves, realized that his career was over and was paid $850,000 to resign. Jones’ removal served as an indication of what the fate would be for any physicist who took exception to the official narrative.
Ask yourselves, why would a physics professor destroy his career by concocting a false report, indeed, a report that to this day has not been shown to be incorrect. Why would a mistake, if it was, be a suspension worthy of an investigation? Clearly the corrupt George W. Bush Zionist regime intended the shutdown of a truth-teller.
In 2009 Jones together with University of Copenhagen scientist Niels Harrit and other scientists again proved the presence of nano-thermite (“Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” Open Chemical Physics Journal, April 2009).
American science depends heavily on federal funding, and this was too hot for dependent scientists. In my opinion no physicist anywhere in the world is stupid enough to believe the official 9/11 story. What they do know is that to challenge it is a career-ending event as it was for Professor Jones. Therefore, with mortgages, car payments, children to educate they don’t jeopardize their career and family by endorsing studies that contradict the official narrative. The despicable Wikipedia still labels all factual findings by scientists “conspiracy theory.”
In 2006 architect Richard Gage realized five years after the event that the official narrative had serious problems. He organized the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Enormous information poured out that the official 9/11 narrative was impossible. The NIST fabricated explanation for Building 7 was discredited by a high school physics professor, who showed that the building collapsed at free fall acceleration, which can only be achieved by controlled demolition. The NIST fabrication was discredited again by structural and forensic engineers at the University of Alaska, apparently the only university in America willing to risk federal funding for the truth.
Washington and its whore media labeled the facts a “conspiracy theory” but failed to discredit the independent reports. If it were a conspiracy theory, the establishment would have supported an investigation, as that would have proven that it was a conspiracy theory. Instead the regime worked to prevent and to discredit investigation. The facts were the official narrative. Anything else was a conspiracy theory. The American whore media went along with the fiction.
Structurel architects and high rise engineers face the same problem as professors of physics. If they say what they know, they loose clients. Washington and the whore media have been very successful in turning expressions of truth into anti-Americanism. If you don’t go along with official narratives you are not only a tin hat conspiracy theorist, you are also an anti-American on the side of “Muslim terrorists,” and you lose your clients.
Today anyone who believes the official story of 9/11 is brainwashed. The stupidity of a large percentage of the American population serves to suppress truth. Washington has learned that a story that implants fear in the feeble-minded American population is a success.
We can expect more such instances.

Not really… Nukes neutralize the ideas.

“The real architect of World War III isn’t Putin. It’s Xi Jinping—and Russia’s war in Ukraine may be giving Beijing exactly what it needs.”

• We Are in World War Xi (AmG)

As the Russo-Ukrainian war continues, Americans may blame Russian leader Vladimir Putin for starting “World War III.” It is correct that World War III has started, but its cause is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), not Russia.

The war did not start with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 or with the appeasement of Russia in the years before Putin’s foolish aggression. It started with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP has been at war with the U.S. since coming to power in 1949 and has employed many fronts in this war to undermine America and the West. The CCP’s May 2019 declaration of “People’s War” against the U.S. was CCP leader Xi Jinping’s call for a maximal effort against America. Not coincidentally, the COVID-19 outbreak soon followed. The CCP lied about COVID’s origins, refused to share information with the world, and used Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), as its willing accomplice.
Another front is CCP election interference. President Trump has revealed the CCP’s interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in an effort to secure President Joe Biden’s victory. Biden’s open borders allowed many hundreds of thousands of military-age Chinese men into the United States—prepositioning a force to strike against the American people in their homeland. The sustained chemical warfare attack that is fentanyl is another avenue of attack, destroying American lives and families. The CCP’s success at buying American and European politicians and journalists to serve as its agents of influence is yet another, as is TikTok.
Putin is not the source of World War III. Putin is, in the scheme of World War III, a secondary player. It is Xi who is driving World War III. It seems that the common denominator for every manifestation of this global crisis, whether overt or covert, foreign or domestic, is that Xi Jinping and his CCP have either inspired or enabled them—or at least, stand to be the principal beneficiaries. Consequently, while some call this World War III, one might consider a more apt name to be “World War Xi.”
It was Xi who gave the green light to Putin to invade Ukraine when they met in early February 2022. Xi and Putin have met over 11 times since then, most recently in Bishkek, and on each occasion, Xi has evinced strong, public support for Putin’s war. While the Russo-Ukrainian war is not yet resolved—it has lasted longer than World War I—it already has a clear winner: the PRC. The PRC provides great assistance to Russia—diplomatic, economic, and “dual-use” military aid—all of which is important to sustain Russia’s war. Beijing is receiving a prodigious return that is helping Xi win World War III.
First, by sustaining the war, the PRC occupies the U.S. and so diverts attention from its aggressive acts and preparations for war over Taiwan, which might include attacks against the U.S. itself. The U.S. intelligence community and military have only so much bandwidth, and the conflicts in Iran, Ukraine, and elsewhere in the Middle East are filling it. In addition, U.S. stockpiles are drained by the conflict in Iran and aid to Ukraine, including Patriot, ATACMS, and other missiles, and 155mm artillery rounds, all of which reduce the ability of the U.S. military to fight a high-intensity war with the PRC. In turn, a reduced U.S. arsenal hurts U.S. conventional deterrence in key theaters, like the western Pacific and Taiwan.
Second, the war cements Putin’s dependence on the PRC. Putin is Xi’s myrmidon, the supplicant in the relationship. Truly, Putin is Xi’s useful idiot. Xi drafted Putin to serve in his anti-Western alliance, which costs Putin his autonomy. Xi’s ultimate ambition is to overthrow U.S. power and position in the world and shackle the world to the PRC’s tyrannical ambitions. Putin’s interest would have been better served by emerging as the tertius gaudens of the conflict between the U.S. and the PRC. Now that he has tied Russia’s interests to the PRC, he will walk the path Xi requires of him.
That requires Russia to accept diminished influence when Russia’s interests conflict with the PRC, such as in Central Asia, and to serve as an instrument of distraction for the U.S. and its NATO allies while China expands its military power and strategic ambitions. Putin must fear that once he has served his usefulness, Xi may overthrow him. Third, Putin also serves as a lightning rod, attracting the world’s animus and attention for his acts while Xi’s genocide in Xinjiang remains too often unremarked and in the background. The PRC’s preparations for war against Taiwan and its increasingly coercive measures against the Philippines also do not receive the attention they deserve.
Fourth, as a result of the Ukraine war, Xi has secured his northern flank. Russian conventional and nuclear military power is now a tool to be employed in conjunction with or apart from the PRC’s military—but to serve Beijing’s interests. The U.S. has a “multiple front” war problem with which it must contend.
Moreover, Xi has secured his western flank in Central Asia. The Central Asian states perceive Russia as a threat due to the invasion of Ukraine and see Moscow as the junior partner in the Sino-Russian relationship. For Xi, this is a remarkable occurrence at the same time that China is committing genocide against Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang or East Turkistan. The PRC’s western flank is as secure as it has been in recent years. With two flanks secure and Xi’s ability to project power expanding, it is no surprise that Xi is aggressing on the PRC’s southern and eastern flanks.
The bottom line is that the Russo-Ukrainian war greatly benefits the PRC. As the PRC gains in military might, this hurts the ability of the U.S. to defend its national security interests elsewhere, including in the western Pacific. In turn, this weakens the ability of the U.S. to deter aggression against Taiwan, the Philippines, and other states, as well as the ability to fight a war with the PRC, should deterrence fail. The costs of the Russo-Ukrainian war are high in every respect. While Moscow may eke out a Pyrrhic victory, the true winner of the war is Beijing. The war continues because Xi wants it to, and his aid allows Putin to pursue his folly. =

“He lauded Israel “as America’s most critical frontline ally in fighting the toxic ideology of Islamism..”

• RFK Tells the Brutal Truth About Islam on Eve of 9/11 Anniversary (Salgado)

Islam is in an existential war with Judeo-Christian civilization, Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned Americans on the eve of the 9/11 terrorist attack anniversary.

America stands for liberty, equality, freedom of religion, Biblical morality, civil rights, and meritocracy. Islam stands for theocratic tyranny, religiously motivated genocide, sexual perversion, slavery, and violence. Inevitably, there is a struggle between the two ideologies for global dominance. And there are countless Muslims both in the United States and around the world who want to see a second 9/11 — Democrat campaign surrogate Hasan Piker practically said as much. Kennedy’s warning at the Republican midterm convention is particularly timely as this September 11 is the 25th anniversary of the infamous al-Qaeda attacks.
“RFK Jr. isn’t hiding behind politically correct terms and he’s calling out Islam for what it is. A radical ideology waging war on America. And Democrats no longer care. Communists are merging with Islamists. The unholy alliance is anti-American and anti-West. No more pretending.::— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) September 11, 2026
I cannot agree with Kennedy that the Democrat Party used to be honorable and patriotic, because the leadership of the party has always been anti-constitutional, racist, elitist, and pro-violence. But I do applaud Kennedy for being willing to state the truth about Islam, even if he did so in a mistaken context of attributing his own views to previous Democrat politicians.
Kennedy condemned purveyors of “human slavery and of ethnic religious genocide.” He lauded Israel “as America’s most critical frontline ally in fighting the toxic ideology of Islamism, which, by its own account, is waging an existential war against our country and against Western liberal democracy. It is an ideology that has subjugated, impoverished, and tyrannized, and tortured the people of Palestine,” apparently meaning Gaza, because “Palestine” does not exist as a nation or political jurisdiction, “and [tortured] the people of Iran.”
Furthermore, Kennedy cautioned, fundamentalist Muslims “openly promise to do the same to us.”Indeed, in the same city where the Twin Towers collapsed due to al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11, a Muslim who prays for the death of the infidels is now the mayor. “NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Attends Friday Prayers at Al Khoei Islamic Center in Queens – Linked to Alavi Foundation Cited by the DOJ as an Iranian Front; Imam Prays for the Mahdi to Kill the Infidels by His Sword https://t.co/xrRsIpalcH”— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 23, 2026
It’s very important, as too many Republicans fall prey to antisemitic propaganda, to note that Kennedy praised Israel and highlighted the plight of the people of Iran, who are longing for freedom. The Persians who have fought their Islamic regime and watched their family members killed this year would fully agree with Kennedy’s assessment and his warning. The 9/11 attacks were not an anomaly; they were part of an ongoing and g lobal war.

“The AfD is not asking Germany to choose between Washington and Beijing. It is asking Germany to choose itself..”

• What the AfD Really Wants From China (Zemánek)

For decades, German foreign policy rested on a simple assumption: Germany belonged politically to the West, and its relations with the rest of the world would be conducted largely within that framework. The AfD is challenging that assumption. ts approach to China is one of the clearest tells. Beijing is not treated as an ideological enemy, but neither is it embraced uncritically. Instead, China is seen as a sovereign great power, an indispensable economic partner, and one pole of an emerging multipolar world.

Germany, in the AfD’s view, should cooperate with Beijing where German interests demand it, defend itself where necessary, and refuse to turn China policy into an extension of either American strategy or European ideological politics. For Germany, and therefore for Europe, that could become a genuinely transformative foreign-policy doctrine.
From cautious engagement to strategic realism
The AfD’s 2021 foreign-policy program already described China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a “century project” and called for Germany to participate actively, including by developing complementary connections from West to East. The idea was that if China was building the infrastructure connecting Eurasia, Germany should take advantage of it and represent its interests, not stand on the sidelines and complain about it.
By 2023, the position had become more explicitly geopolitical. When the German government published its China Strategy, AfD senior member Petr Bystron attacked it as an attempt to import American geopolitical confrontation into German foreign policy.
Then came the AfD’s first parliamentary delegation to China. In June 2023, Alice Weidel, Peter Felser and Bystron travelled to Shanghai and Beijing. The delegation’s conclusion was unequivocal: China had become too important for Germany to keep pretending that confrontation was a viable strategy. Felser rejected the idea of both “de-risking” and decoupling, promoted by other EU officials, and argued that German trade with China was simply too important to sacrifice to geopolitical fashion.
The 2025 federal election program adopted at Riesa consolidated this direction. China is treated as a major economic partner, while Germany is urged to protect its own technological and security interests. The party continues to support exploiting opportunities associated with the Belt and Road Initiative while rejecting the idea that Germany should subsidize a country that is already a major economic power.
No more moral foreign policy
Perhaps the deepest difference between the AfD and Germany’s political establishment is not actually about China. It is about what foreign policy is for.mThe AfD’s approach is realpolitik in the German interest, rather than moralpolitik. It explicitly endorses non-interference in the internal affairs of other states and rejects what it calls presumptuous lecturing and destabilizing intervention.
The AfD rejects making human-rights criticism the organizing principle of German-China relations. This does not require pretending that every Chinese policy is admirable. It does, however, mean refusing to make Germany’s relationship with a major sovereign power conditional on Berlin’s approval of its domestic political system. The AfD has argued that Western governments should stop behaving as if they were entitled to act as the world’s political schoolmasters. For Beijing, this is obviously a more comfortable basis for relations than the moralized language of mainstream Western European China policy.
The AfD does not consider all Chinese policies beyond criticism. It has criticized Chinese economic practices, strategic dependencies, technology transfers and the potential consequences of excessive state control over digital infrastructure and society. The party’s position is not ‘China is always right.’ It is ‘China is sovereign. Germany is sovereign. Let us deal with one another as sovereign powers.’
Partnership without dependence
The party wants more economic engagement with China while simultaneously warning Germany against excessive dependence on China. Felser, now chairman of the German-Chinese Parliamentary Group in the Bundestag, has repeatedly emphasized both sides of the equation. In February 2026, he described China as “by no means our enemy” but an “important partner,” while insisting that Germany must protect its “Mittelstand” and establish fair conditions for competition.
In March, he criticized the enormous dependence on China in strategic technologies and raw materials, contrasting German weakness with China’s systematic drive toward technological self-sufficiency. And in July, Felser warned against a trade war with China. Importantly, he did not deny the existence of Chinese dumping, “overcapacity” or competitive distortions. His argument was that tariffs are not an adequate substitute for negotiation.
By September, Felser went further: strategic dependence on China should be reduced not through decoupling, but by making Germany stronger – with lower taxes, less bureaucracy, and cheaper energy. China is not the problem; German weakness is. Germany should not become dependent on China. But neither should it destroy valuable relationships merely to demonstrate would-be ideological purity or geopolitical loyalty to another power.
The Weidel factor
Perhaps no one embodies this approach more naturally than Alice Weidel. The AfD co-leader’s knowledge of China doesn’t come exclusively from briefing papers. She studied in China, speaks Mandarin and has professional experience there. Her familiarity with the Chinese economy is unusual among senior European politicians.
That background provides the AfD with a senior political figure who approaches China neither as an exotic threat nor as a distant ideological abstraction, but as a country she has actually experienced – a rare trait in modern Western European politicians.
For a future German government, that kind of familiarity could be an asset, because China is not going away, and neither is Germany’s industrial dependence on the Chinese market. Pretending otherwise will not make the problem disappear.
[..] The stakes are larger than the AfD itself. Germany is the economic center of the European Union. If Berlin changes its understanding of China, the consequences will not stop at the German border.
A Germany that pursued pragmatic relations with Beijing, Moscow and Washington simultaneously would challenge the strategic assumptions that have governed Europe for decades.
A Germany that rejected automatic economic decoupling from China could force Europe to reconsider whether confrontation is really in its economic interest.
A Germany that put national sovereignty and multipolarity at the center of its foreign policy could fundamentally alter the balance between Berlin, Brussels and Washington.
The AfD’s policy is not about choosing China over America. It is about rejecting the idea that Germany must choose at all. It’s not a timid or ambiguous stance – on the contrary, it is unapologetically national, realist and multipolar.
And if the AfD eventually governs Germany, it may prove to be one of the most consequential political changes Europe has experienced in generations. A sovereign Germany engaging China on its own terms could be the beginning of a Europe that finally understands the world as it is – not as the liberal utopians once wished it to remain.

EU demands that.

• EU Urges Kiev To Mobilize Women – Moscow (RT)

Brussels believes the move is needed to address the Ukrainian military’s severe manpower shortage, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Brussels is encouraging Kiev to start mobilizing women amid chronic manpower shortages and has demanded that Ukraine immediately make “a political decision” on the matter, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said.

Kiev launched its mobilization campaign soon after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022. Amid mounting frontline losses and desertions, the mobilization drive has grown increasingly violent. Recruitment officers have repeatedly been filmed chasing, beating, and forcibly detaining reluctant conscripts before bundling them into vehicles in what in Ukraine has become known as “basification.”
EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, described the idea of expanding the campaign to include women as “a step in the right direction” at a recent informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting, the SVR said on Thursday, citing information it had obtained. She allegedly warned that Kiev could soon run out of manpower due to a growing shortage of men fit for military service and said that Ukraine should use Israel as a “model to follow.”
The mobilization of women has long been a subject of debate in Ukraine. MP Mariana Bezuglaya argued as early as 2024 that it was time Kiev started targeting women to meet its conscription quota. Last year, the Ukrainian presidential administration’s deputy head, Brigadier General Pavel Palisa, also voiced support for mandatory conscription of women. According to the SVR, Brussels demanded that Kiev immediately “move from words to action” and make a formal decision to start mobilizing women. Under current Ukrainian law, men aged 25 to 60 are subject to mobilization, while those aged 23 to 60 are generally barred from leaving the country. Women can serve voluntarily.
Kiev’s brutal mobilization campaign has encountered large-scale draft-dodging and desertion. According to Euronews, around 1.15 million fighting-age Ukrainian men had ended up in the EU as of summer 2026, despite the ban on travelling abroad. According to the SVR, up to 5.6 million Ukrainians are currently residing in various European nations, with women accounting for 43.4% of them. Many men have proven ready to risk their lives to flee the country illegally through forests, rivers, and mountainous terrain.
In February, the head of the Ukrainian border agency, Andrey Demchenko, reported that over 70 apparent draft dodgers had died since 2022, most while trying to cross the Tisza River along Ukraine’s border with Hungary and Romania. Brussels has reportedly urged EU governments to devise legal mechanisms for sending back Ukrainian refugees residing in the bloc, the Russian intelligence service said, adding that the European Commission sees them as a reason behind the “rise of far-right sentiment” in countries such as Germany or Poland.
Some Western officials have also voiced support for the mobilization of Ukrainian women. Last year, former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that Vladimir Zelensky should have launched a truly mass mobilization and conscripted all men and women, without sparing the younger generation. “Zelensky took a view that he was going to preserve the 18 to 28-year-olds, so it’s not a mass conscription,” Wallace said at the time, adding that the Ukrainian leader should have mobilized everyone and “asked Europe to train them because that is not a hard ask.”
Ben Hodges, a former top commander of US forces in Europe, argued earlier that Kiev should consider both drafting women and lowering the mobilization age to 18. “I also think that there is enough work for women in the army,” he stated.Moscow has repeatedly slammed Ukraine’s NATO backers as pushing the nation into a war “to the last Ukrainian,” describing the conflict as a Western proxy war against Russia fought through Ukraine.

“It’s astonishing that anything exists.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Light and Dark (James Howard Kunstler)

Joe DiGenova

Is this a week to drain our souls, or what? Yesterday, the memory of Charlie Kirk, a decent young man known for acting nobly in an ignoble era, cut down (it is alleged in court) by a pathetic product of Woke cultism — the trans avenging angel, avatar of our national mental illness. And today, the memory of 9/11, for which no alt-theory or engineering lecture can obviate the lonely arc of those little bodies free-falling out of the flaming towers into nothingness.

So, we move on because there is nothing else you can do, really. . . sad, furious, or what. . . and then do what you can to fix this joint. If this was a house in a storm, you’d be hearing the joists groan and the rafters squeak as they torque out of true, like just before the whole shootin’ match goes down. Meanwhile, news is out that Joe DiGenova, the former DC federal attorney supervising the grand jury action in Florida concerning RussiaGate and associated treasons, is out. He said he “resigned.” That’s usually a cover. Somebody gave him the boot, and it was either Todd Blanche or President Trump. Cuz, why? I suppose we’ll find out.
Trollish insinuations are flying in the usual channels that he couldn’t get enough evidence to bring any proper cases, but I don’t believe that for a horse-face Hochul’s New York minute, nor that Mr. DiGenova actually said anything like that. Anyway, at least twenty million civilians ‘out there’ have been following this constitutional death dance closely for years. We know the names, the acts, the memos, the emails, the money trails, the dots and the receipts by heart. Many can even recite long legal memoranda on the likes of John Brennan, Adam Schiff, Jim Comey, Hillary, Strzok, Page, blah blah, dates, times, document numbers.
Joe DiGenova is old, others say. Not a good organizer, turns out. . . not a good team leader. . . things like that. Well, maybe his force of personality or renowned avidity to correct epic insults to the nation concealed all that. Anyway, he was brought in to replace a federal attorney name of Maria Medetis Long, and I bet none of you even know her name. She was on the case down there in Florida during Pam Bondi’s unfortunate commission, too blah even to go down in infamy. To the casual observer, the whole wicked business begins to look like a Chinese fire drill.
Or possibly a circle-jerk. And, of course, everybody is wondering: what’s the blast radius on this one? Can the DOJ’s Southern District of Florida recover some kind of equipoise and carry on and usher this pretty large troupe of scoundrels into courts of law? Or is folding like a Broadway tryout in New Haven? Does it now all get sucked into some vortex of lost causes? And wouldn’t that be demoralizing?
My guess: these acts against the country and its people are too grave, too important, to just go away, and won’t go away. What the diGenova fumble seems to point to is that persons and parties behind that treason — and you might suppose I’m thinking: the Intel (so-called) “community” and its many-footed ancillaries — are both desperate and powerful enough to try to derail the process. Just imagine how many retired Intel rogues are out there after seventy-plus years of, say, the CIA alone. Must be a lot of them, imcluding the fifty-one ex-Intel bigshots who signed the Hunter Biden laptop public letter in 2020 to queer the election.
You’ve got to wonder whether the agency that John Ratcliffe is supposedly in charge of has an equally large shadow org of these people, perhaps operating under the likes of one ex-CIA honcho John Brennan. And then you have to wonder what machinery of government they’ve still got their mitts on? Or maybe they just put the word out that pursuing any just resolution of the traitorous trips laid on America by them could be bad for anyone’s health. In any case, I don’t hesitate to point out that the legions of ex-spooks and their bag-men all have names and records and. . . well. . . apply a little Anthropic hocus-pocus. . . we’ll know where you live and what you had for breakfast before the ten a.m. break.
What I’m getting at — and I regret even having to affect coyness — is that the departure of Joe diGenova could signify some Battle of the Titans, a civil war not on the ground between plain citizens too bamboozled by sexual hysteria to put up a fight, but between the general officer ranks of two opposing elite dominions, the legitimate and the shadow, the light and the dark.
The action won’t stay backstage for long. Barbarians really are at the gate, and that gate is the midterm election. America has gone so crazy that it doesn’t seem to even recognize how crazy many of the candidates for high office are. The shadow dominion appears to be behind them, too: Telarico, el-Sayed, Peggy Flanagan, Becerra, Hochul. . . Lord have mercy! These are not just not-normal people. They are outright sickies, working hard to wreck the country.
Well, Labor Day is gone and the blandishments of summer with it. Time to stop sulking. All hands on deck. The bell has rung.

I haven’t paid any attention to the Lindsay Clancy thing, but here it is.

• The Secret to “Sleeping Well” (Turley)

I was surprised to hear on a flight this week that Lindsay Clancy’s defense counsel, Kevin Reddington, had unleashed a torrent of criticism of my commentary on the trial. In the interview with Fox News reporter Bryan Llenas, Reddington even suggested that we meet and debate these issues. I wanted to briefly respond to Reddington’s criticisms.

I actually praised Reddington’s handling through the end of the trial, until I felt he blew the summation to the jury. I was also critical of his motions to substitute a holdout juror with an alternate as running against the overwhelming authority in the area. However, what triggered Reddington was not my commentary on his trial performance, but what he did outside of the courthouse when he attacked the holdout juror. It was a repugnant and unprofessional venting by counsel who should be reaffirming the right of every juror to stand with their convictions against not just the other jurors but the world.
Reddington responded to my characterization of his conduct in front of the courthouse as “reprehensible” by calling my criticism reprehensible and adding, “maybe Jonathan Turley should check out the record before he makes his accusations.”
The “record” supporting this criticism is, in fact, his self-aggrandizing performance outside of the courthouse when he first said that the hung jury was “no time to gloat” and then gloated about how he “crushed” the prosecution in securing an 11-1 result. Yet, my objection was not to chest-thumping. It was a tad ungracious but unfortunately not entirely uncommon. Rather, it was the targeting of the holdout that left me floored as a fellow criminal defense lawyer.
Reddington had previously lit up the courtroom (which was being aired nationally) with his attacks on the juror. Reddington only knew that the other jurors were unhappy with the juror and said that he refused to follow the law. That is a common complaint against a holdout juror. This case turned on the credibility of the defendant and almost visceral reactions to a case where three innocent children were strangled by their mother, who planned the killings by sending her husband on errands.
I was mildly critical of the courtroom attacks, but I give leeway to a defense counsel who is fighting zealously for his client in seeking an acquittal. It was taking that rage outside the courthouse that crossed the line for me. Reddington slammed into the juror who was already identified as one of just three males on the jury. He knew the juror’s name would likely be disclosed in time, given the anger over the trial’s outcome.
We clearly disagree on what lawyers are expected to do in high-profile cases. This is not what I teach my students about the professional standards that govern our conduct as officers of the court. Most of those expectations are not directly enforced by bar or court proceedings. Rather, much of what we do is the result of self-regulation; seeking to reinforce the noble ideals of our profession.
Instead of reminding people that our system is based on this core belief in the right of any citizen to stand alone against the majority, Reddington shredded the juror as presumptively anti-disability and akin to a racist on the jury. In front of the cameras, he declared, “I hope that guy can sleep well at night.”
Reddington knew that he was playing to the mob. District Attorney Tim Cruz had just been heckled on the steps by women who protested throughout the trial in favor of acquittal of Clancy, with one yelling how Cruz “only cares about the three children. What about the Mom?”
Frankly, in the aftermath of the trial, the two things that surprised me most were not the verdict, but the absence of an immediate apology from Reddington for his gratuitous attack on this juror and the failure of Judge William Sullivan to publicly rebuke him for his comments.
While our disagreement focuses on the attack on the juror, Reddington returned to his claim that what this juror did was itself unethical and contemptible. This juror was not convinced by his arguments, but Reddington suggests that no reasonable juror could have reached such a view despite many in this country who saw his client as a troubled murderer, but a murderer nonetheless.
There was a good-faith basis for taking that view even if most people would likely see Clancy as not responsible by reason of insanity. The standard is not whether Clancy was medically ill. She was clearly a deeply disturbed individual who failed to receive adequate mental health treatment. However, you can be suicidal and mentally ill and still appreciate the gravity of your actions.
The defense position was not unassailable. The long list of medications ignored the fact that only a couple of those prescriptions would likely contribute to psychosis and it was not clear how many pills Clancy actually took. She also had a fairly unusual case of postpartum psychosis in terms of the passage of time and said that she first heard a commanding male voice for the first time just before she killed her children.
Most importantly, Clancy took steps that showed planning and control of her actions, including researching how long it would take her misdirected husband to return. She spoke with him on the telephone while she was carrying out the plan and kept him in the dark about her intent to kill their children.
Would that erase reasonable doubt in the minds of most jurors? Probably not. As I stated before the trial, the chances of getting a unanimous verdict in this type of case are slim. This is a visceral case, which is why I was not surprised that the jury asked only to see a couple of pieces of evidence. The views of most people were baked into this trial before it began, and frankly, that may have been true for some of the jurors.
Reddington has every reason to exploit those feelings and play to doubts among the jurors. What he did not have license to do was target and ostracize the one holdout juror. Rather than taking the high ground, he immediately ran for the lowest common denominator among a nation of rage addicts.
Yes, that is indeed reprehensible. To paraphrase Mr. Reddington, it is the type of thing that would keep most of us up at night.

An age thing?

• To Hell with the Digital Revolution & Its Bastard Child AI (Paul Craig Roberts)

It has been pointed out that human interaction has been replaced by an app, a code, a portal that a large percentage of the population finds frustrating and inconvenient, especially for older people who did not grow up with the isolating and often difficult to use technology. The people who crammed this technology down our throats in order that they could make more money praise the “innovation.” But in fact it is a technology that isolates people and takes control away from them.

And brings failure. Not a week passes, and sometimes not a day, that I don’t experience the time-consuming failure of the digital systems to work. Why they fail so often I don’t know. Perhaps they are poorly thought out and will improve with time. Perhaps the instability in digital systems is due to the insecurity of the Internet, which requires more and more layers of security hoops to jump through in order to make a connection. One result is security system incompatibilities that result in dysfunction. Perhaps use is rising faster than the systems can accommodate.
I think the only reason there has not been a generalized breakdown is that there are some elements left of the analogue system that, with effort, can still be contacted to bypass or correct the dysfunctioning digital system. I just had another bad experience with “smart” people-free systems. I received an email telling me to confirm and do an early checkin online for an upcoming medical telephone appointment. Now you can do an annual checkup without having to see a doctor. I began the process and immediately encountered a problem. I was asked to confirm my telephone number. It was incorrect from three years ago.
I entered the correct number, and the red box appeared: “This is not the number we have on file. Please enter a correct number.” I had entered the correct number as requested in the update, but as far as the AI system was concerned the correct number was the old number. I puzzled why an old number was in the system as I have twice been in person in the office providing all the latest information and have even had telephone calls from the medical practice on the new number that AI tells me is not on file.
So I picked up my cell phone, which sometimes works, and called. I only had to wait 3 minutes for a human instead of being subjected to a callback within 48-hours, and in 2 more minutes the human had fixed the problem. I wondered how much the medical practice had paid for a digital system that did not work and was probably causing its patients stress-induced heart attacks.
I am convinced that the digital revolution and the AI it spawned will fail, because it will be overwhelmed by complexity. Moreover, once the quantum computers are up and running there will be no such thing as security. So bright boys will have institutionalized an insecure and dysfunctional system, a system whose achievement will have been to further dehumanize an already dehumanized society and impose massive costs for resurrecting the foolishly discarded analogue system which worked and did not dehumanize us.
When the digital system fails, who will there be with the skills and intelligence to rebuild the analogue system that worked? Will there even be a workforce available? The products of AI education are not capable of operating in an analogue system that relies on human ability. AI will have raised generations of illiterates who cannot read, write, do math and who have never learned to think. In the 1950s Mad comic book parodied our present time. AI operated everything, and one day the machine broke and no one knew how to fix it. Amazing that a comic book editor three-quarters of a century ago had more sense than the multi-billionaire architects of AI today.

Why so much worse there?

• More Than 62,000 Arrested For Speech-Related Offenses In Britain (AmG)

More than 62,000 people were arrested in Britain for communications offenses over a five-year period, according to a new civil liberties report warning that the country’s increasingly broad speech restrictions are having a chilling effect on free expression. Big Brother Watch found that 62,199 people were arrested between 2021 and 2025, amounting to roughly 34 arrests per day. At least 18,500 people were charged and 12,292 were convicted, according to the organization.

The findings were based on Freedom of Information requests to police forces across the United Kingdom. Big Brother Watch said the actual number of arrests could be higher because some forces did not provide complete data. The report examined enforcement of communications laws that can cover threatening or grossly offensive messages and other online content. Big Brother Watch argues that broadly written statutes have resulted in people being investigated or arrested over controversial social media posts, jokes and other forms of expression.
The group also found stark geographical differences in enforcement. Cumbria Constabulary recorded about 25.7 arrests per 10,000 residents over five years, compared with just 1.9 in neighboring Northumbria.Big Brother Watch described the disparity as a “postcode lottery” that raises concerns about whether speech laws are being enforced consistently. The report follows growing scrutiny of Britain’s Online Safety Act, which imposes extensive content and child-safety requirements on internet platforms. Big Brother Watch says the law has encouraged platforms to restrict lawful material and require age verification for some online content.
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, called for an independent review of Britain’s speech laws and police practices. “Thousands of people are being arrested for controversial speech, online jokes and non-violent protest,” Carlo said. “Enough is enough.” The organization argues the figures demonstrate that Britain’s approach to policing speech needs significant reform, particularly when arrests do not ultimately result in criminal charges. Big Brother Watch is now calling on the government to conduct a national review of laws affecting freedom of expression and to reconsider police training on speech-related offenses.

BREAKING: SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen says the company has secured another AI compute hosting deal worth $1.1 billion per month, starting December 1, 2026. pic.twitter.com/3dbc14EzUZ
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 10, 2026

TESLA OPTIMUS REPLACES NOT THE COST OF THE ROBOT, BUT THE COST OF A HEIGHT INJURY

Construction companies don't measure a robot's efficiency in distance walked or bags lifted per hour. They measure the insurance premium that climbs every year from scaffold falls and back injuries… https://t.co/AvzhnVW3sg pic.twitter.com/fvymRHrc9R
— Shredder (@Shred_0x) September 10, 2026

TESLA SAYS OPTIMUS WILL BE WORTH MORE THAN THE CARS. MUSK SAYS 80% OF TESLA'S VALUE WILL COME FROM THIS ROBOT

Gold-plated torso. Black visor. 22 degrees of freedom in each hand. Tesla just dropped the Optimus Gen 2.5 reveal and called it "the most important machine ever built."… https://t.co/G14wDKlYW2 pic.twitter.com/fSQckPhxFc
— zoonex (@leszoonex) September 10, 2026

Accurate https://t.co/cGOyzjbcMw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2026

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Debt Rattle September 11 2026

Sep 112026

September 11, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: 9/11, AI, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, interest rates, slavery, stimmy checks 31 Responses »

Roy Lichtenstein Femme d’Alger 1963

• Trump Floats $5,000 For Every US Adult Citizen If GOP Holds Congress (ZH)

• ‘The Greatest Evangelist for American Liberty,’ Charlie Kirk (Salgado)

• Tributes Pour in on Anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s Martyrdom (Salgado)

• European Leaders Trying To ‘Buy Time’ For Kiev With Ceasefire Calls – Lavrov (RT)

• ECB Raises Interest Rates to Avoid Settling Ukraine-Russia Conflict (CTH)

• Democrats Asked for It, and Trump and the GOP Delivered (Eric Florack)

• Bessent: ‘Nothing Else Matters’ If China Pulls Ahead of US in AI (ET)

• New Four-hour Elon Musk Documentary (BBC)

• The US Has Entered Stage 3 in the Trade War With Canada (Victor Davis Hanson)

• The Story of Slavery Told Correctly (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Jamaica Demands Answers On Slavery (Egountchi Behanzin)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2097489781911368179?s=20

AI+robots will more than double the global economy in less than 10 years https://t.co/NLx37lO2qc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2026

https://twitter.com/Alexs_jame/status/2097873034052821190?s=20

“Stimmy” Checks?!

• Trump Floats $5,000 For Every US Adult Citizen If GOP Holds Congress (ZH)

During a speech Wednesday night at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, President Trump proposed sending every adult American citizen a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress in November. “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”bHe continued, “It will be called the Trump dividend,” adding, “Now all we have to do is win.”

NEW: President Trump makes a major promise at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas: $5,000 for every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans win both the House and Senate in the midterms.

“I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for… pic.twitter.com/XqiphY7y8a
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 10, 2026

Trump told the audience at the American Airlines Center: “Your vote will decide whether our country stumbles at the starting gate of our next 250 years or surges forward and never looks back.” nQuick math: A $5,000 payout to 270 million adults would cost the US government approximately $1.35 trillion. The proposal comes as US public debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time in recent weeks.mBloomberg strategist Mark Cudmore warned that a large fiscal injection could intensify existing market pressures, including weaker Treasuries, dollar depreciation, and demand for commodities and other real assets.
“The general reaction from markets is very muted precisely as everyone sees almost zero chance of this happening. The US economy is strong and already at risk of running too hot, so pumping in so much extra fiscal stimulus when under funding pressure will exacerbate all the dynamics we’re already focused on in markets: weaker Treasuries, a depreciating dollar and a rush to commodities and real assets,” Cudmore said.
The proposal also arrives as Trump acknowledges that significant fuel-price relief may not come until after the midterms. The national average for gasoline remains above the politically sensitive $ 4-per-gallon level, while diesel prices are at record highs. Trump also indicated that the Iran conflict could continue beyond the elections. President Trump’s approval rating is around 38%, according to reporting by The Guardian.
Vice President JD Vance said that these proposed post-election direct payments to Americans could be funded by revenue from Trump’s wide-ranging tariff program.

He gave Trump young America. And now?

• ‘The Greatest Evangelist for American Liberty,’ Charlie Kirk (Salgado)

Exactly a year ago today, an LGBTQ radical assassinated Charlie Kirk with one shot, taking away in a split second a man who could have been the next great leader of America’s Patriots for decades to come. At the Republican midterm convention, President Donald Trump paid tribute to Charlie, and the White House released a video in his honor.

The White House video combined clips of Charlie himself, including from that morning at Utah Valley University just before he died, along with clips from Charlie’s funeral and Trump‘s eulogy. “On that terrible day, Sept. 10, 2025, our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal; he’s immortal now for American freedom,” Trump had praised Kirk. Do we remember what Charlie stood for enough to carry on his legacy with enthusiasm and courage?

One year ago, we tragically lost a fearless patriot. A champion for freedom and for our country.

Charlie Kirk changed the course of American history. His courage, conviction, and love of country will never be forgotten. ❤️

"Well done, good and faithful servant" pic.twitter.com/1pFgGSrTAG
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 10, 2026

With his speeches and debates around the country from the time he was a teenager, Charlie Kirk was able to electrify young people in a way the most conservatives never have. “Do you know you are part of something bigger than yourself?” the White House clip of Kirk asked. “Do you know that you are part of the most exciting, diverse, powerful movement in the history of this country? This movement is about the citizens versus the oligarchs. This movement is about We the People versus the ruling class. This movement is about America versus the globalists. This movement is about all of us against them.”
Kirk loved the Biblical saying, “Here I am. It means, ‘Lord, use me.’ Abraham, at the binding of Isaac said, ‘Lord, here I am.’ Moses at the burning bush,… Samuel, Isaiah… It means, ‘give me the orders,’” he said. Erika Kirk has harkened back to this attitude of her husband’s and how he had offered himself to God, without realizing that he was going to be a martyr.
Trump made a point of honoring Charlie Kirk at the midterm convention on the evening of September 9, just before the anniversary of his death. “In Charlie’s honor, I just want to say we love you, Charlie, and Erika is here someplace,” Trump said, urging Charlie’s widow to stand up. The packed crowd gave Erika Kirk a standing ovation, and then broke out into chants of, “Charlie! Charlie!”

“CHARLIE! CHARLIE! CHARLIE!”

The RNC Midterm Convention crowd rises for a standing ovation for Erika Kirk before breaking into chants of her late husband’s name as President Donald Trump recognizes her from the stage.

“We will not let them win. And in Charlie’s honor, I just… pic.twitter.com/3mGd19G2vp
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 10, 2026

During the speech, Trump reflected, “It was actually one year ago tomorrow, a far-left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice, Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth.” And of course, it was precisely Kirk‘s success at what he did, and his unfailing charity in doing so, that made him such a promising candidate for president in the future and a particular target of leftist hatred. Tyler Robinson killed Kirk, and countless leftists celebrated the assassination because Kirk was too persuasive with the truth.
https://twitter.com/Newsforce/status/2097884281355849829?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097884281355849829%7Ctwgr%5Ec72c95f6b84fa6d7c67e7efa1b40cebad9aa11af%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fcatherinesalgado%2F2026%2F09%2F10%2Fthe-greatest-evangelist-for-american-liberty-n4957076

Trump referred to this reality. “What shocked millions of Americans was not only the fact that Charlie was murdered, as bad as it was, but also how many people made an excuse for it or cheered for it. They were cheering, some people, sick people. For a brief moment, the mask came off the radical left, and you saw what they were… all about. And now those same people are trying to get power over you in this election, and they are all voting Democrat.”
We cannot bring back Charlie Kirk, but we can try to continue the work that he began so successfully of bringing young people back to a love for country, faith, and family. Winning this midterm election is what Charlie would want, but it is only the beginning.

9/11 commemoration turns into Charlie Kirk memorial.

• Tributes Pour in on Anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s Martyrdom (Salgado)

“One year ago, our nation witnessed pure evil when Charlie Kirk was taken from us,” Attorney General Todd Blanche declared September 10. But as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared, “I miss my friend, and I’ll honor him by never backing down… Charlie will never be forgotten.”
https://twitter.com/AndrewKolvet/status/2098115149609783776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2098115149609783776%7Ctwgr%5E0efbd5ae8ecba063350141b98df8c18e7a20623b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fcatherinesalgado%2F2026%2F09%2F10%2Ftributes-pour-in-on-anniversary-of-charlie-kirks-martyrdom-n4957089

President Donald Trump paid tribute to Kirk both at the Republican midterm convention Wednesday night and in a video the White House released to “the greatest evangelist for American liberty.” Trump urged Americans to vote against the party that celebrated Kirk’s death. “It was actually one year ago tomorrow, a far-left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice, Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth,” the president emphasized. Many members of his administration also praised Charlie and mourned the anniversary of his death. Secretary of State Marco Rubio illustrated how he is trying to implement policies that would make Charlie proud.

Charlie Kirk had a unique gift for articulating the good — the goodness of family, faith, and America.

One year ago today, he was killed for it.

We’ll honor his legacy by building great things and holding to account the enemies of civilization. pic.twitter.com/nYooF7xua5
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) September 10, 2026

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote, “One year ago, a bullet silenced one of the most eloquent truth-tellers of our era. But it could not silence the principles Charlie Kirk stood for. Today, we honor Charlie’s devotion to God, to our country, and to the Constitution. We carry his legacy forward by summoning his best virtues in ourselves—and living with the courage, conviction, and faith that defined his life.” Similarly, Bishop Robert Barron praised Charlie‘s ability to see every human being as a beloved creation of God. Like the White House, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth used the biblical commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

A year ago, we lost the incredible Charlie Kirk.

His courage, conviction, and unwavering faith left a generational impact — and ignited a spiritual revival — inside our great Republic.

We will never forget Charlie, but take great refuge in the fact that he is with his Lord and… pic.twitter.com/0qtvez77HU
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) September 10, 2026

White House advisor Stephen Miller exclaimed, “Charlie was a beloved friend, an unflinching ally, and an indispensable warrior for America. He was murdered not only by an evil assassin but an entire ecosystem of far-left extremism that normalizes, justifies and glorifies violence against its political opponents. The success of America depends upon the dismantlement of these violent networks. As we grieve an unimaginable loss, we pledge ourselves to accelerate the work for which Charlie gave his very life. No one can remain on the sidelines when the stakes are so vast.”

A year ago, we lost Charlie Kirk — a father, a follower of Christ, and a truly great voice for American ideals.

He spoke truth, pointed young Americans to Jesus Christ, and refused to live in fear.

They may have taken the man, but they will never take away his legacy. pic.twitter.com/kaYqVjnO8P
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) September 10, 2026

One artist is honoring Charlie with a statue in New York City, and there is also a new statue of Charlie in Phoenix.
NEW: A life-size Charlie Kirk statue will be unveiled Thursday afternoon in New York City's Times Square.

The public will see it at 2:23 pm EST, the exact time Kirk was assassinated during a speaking engagement one year ago today.

Artist Sergio Furnari also says he'll have to… pic.twitter.com/P20Co45otQ
— FRONTLINES TPUSA (@FrontlinesTPUSA) September 10, 2026

1 year ago, Charlie Kirk was murdered & stolen from us.

They killed him because he was a threat — a threat to the DSA, communism, & the democrat party.

I know if Charlie were alive today, he would be doing everything in his power to deliver Republican wins this November.…
— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) September 10, 2026

Charlie’s own Turning Point USA and his widow Erika released heart-breaking homages. “We have had to learn how to carry on without the person who was at the center of everything we do,” the TPUSA team said soberly. “We have celebrated milestones that Charlie should have been here to celebrate. We have stood on stages where his voice should have been heard. We have watched his children grow without their father there to see it. And we have felt the weight of his absence in ways that never seem to get easier.” Indeed, “For the people who knew and loved Charlie, September 10 will never simply be an anniversary. It is the day our lives were changed forever.”
For all the things that divide us, grief is a universal language and a defining part of the human experience. At some point, every one of us will love someone we have to say an earthly goodbye to.

I am still learning how to walk through each day carrying the grief I feel for my… pic.twitter.com/6hx6ZR1Tq5
— Erika Kirk (@MrsErikaKirk) September 7, 2026

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro warned against conservatives splitting into hate-filled and conspiratorial factions, urging a united front against all the leftists celebrating “Kirkiversary.”
There were even international tributes. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa posted, “A man of strong faith, a husband and a father, Charlie believed that political and ideological differences should be confronted through argument and democratic debate – never through hatred or violence… Charlie Kirk is no longer with us, but the values he stood for – freedom of expression, faith, courage and peaceful political debate – remain. They deserve to be defended.”
But the greatest tribute that any of us can ever give Charlie Kirk is to continue the work that he started and refuse to let the radical, godless left take over America.
One year ago, we tragically lost a fearless patriot. A champion for freedom and for our country.

Charlie Kirk changed the course of American history. His courage, conviction, and love of country will never be forgotten. ❤️

"Well done, good and faithful servant" pic.twitter.com/1pFgGSrTAG
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 10, 2026

“Russia will not accept as a neighbor a nation ruled by a “Russophobic and aggressive neo-Nazi regime,” the top diplomat has said ..”

• European Leaders Trying To ‘Buy Time’ For Kiev With Ceasefire Calls – Lavrov (RT)

Zelensky and Finnish President Stubb, Kiev, Ukraine, August 24, 2026

European leaders calling for a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are seeking to preserve the government in Kiev in its current aggressive anti-Russian form, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Even politicians who acknowledge that Kiev cannot militarily retake the former Ukrainian regions that have joined Russia since 2014 and now advocate a truce are pursuing an agenda that threatens Russia and its citizens, the top diplomat said. Speaking in an interview on Tuesday, Lavrov named Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as examples.

The proposed ceasefire “is also just a way to buy time, as everyone knows,” Lavrov said, adding that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “makes no secret of that” as he seeks additional weapons supplies. mAccording to the Russian minister, the goal of this ploy is to preserve and keep in power “the regime currently ruling in Kiev,” whose defining traits he described as “Nazism, aggressive Russophobia, violations of human rights, language rights and religious freedom.” As for Europe, it wants to preserve that openly Russophobic and aggressive neo-Nazi regime. It is the European plan. I don’t see how the Russian people can accept this outcome.
Moscow’s objections to freezing the conflict remain unchanged, as does its opposition to proposals to deploy troops from NATO member states in Ukraine following a potential peace deal, Lavrov said. “Any people in military uniforms and any military facilities will be legitimate [targets] for us, and no scenario under which Ukraine will acquire NATO membership in all but name is acceptable to us,” he stressed.Lavrov was interviewed in Moscow by Russian-American television host Dimitri Simes and visiting US political commentator Andrew Napolitano, better known as Judge Napolitano, after his former role on the New Jersey Superior Court.

Good observation. The EU blames Putin AND Trump. And it wants no ceasefire.

• ECB Raises Interest Rates to Avoid Settling Ukraine-Russia Conflict (CTH)

The European Central Bank raised interest rates a quarter of a percent claiming the effort will reduce energy prices. However, the primary cause of higher energy costs is energy policy not monetary policy. As you can see, Europe is blaming the Iran conflict, and by extension blaming President Trump for inflicting higher oil and gas prices. Yet in reality, it was the European decision to cut themselves off of Russian oil and gas that led to their massive price increases.

In essence, if you ask yourself how far the EU collective is willing to go in order to combat the fictitious threat represented by Russia’s conflict with non-EU state Ukraine, it appears there is no upper limit. Rather than assist in a resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, they are willing to keep fueling the war and diminishing their own economy in the process. From the perspective of the welfare of the average European, none of this makes sense. This is bureaucratic ideology running amok.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday to cool inflation that is being fed by high oil prices from the Iran war. The decision was supported by a stronger-than-expected economy that suggests businesses can weather the higher borrowing costs. The central bank for the 21 EU member countries that use the euro currency raised its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.50% at a meeting held in Berlin, away from the bank’s Frankfurt headquarters.
Bank President Christine Lagarde said at her news conference that “the conflict in the Middle East continues to generate inflation pressures, and inflation is set to remain well above target for an extended period.” “The outlook remains highly uncertain, with risks to the upside for inflation and to the downside for economic growth,” she said, adding that the bank would make future rate decisions meeting by meeting based on incoming data. She said the central bank would not commit to any particular path for rates before seeing the data. (read more)
It is ironic his announcement comes from Berlin as the German economy announces the loss of 100,000 auto workers while the EU Central Bank says, “a stronger than expected economy.” Ever the faithful leftist WEF member, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk notes that Poland is paying the highest energy prices in the world, but he faithfully supports the EU agenda. Because it’s Russia’s fault, and of course he does.

“Stopping him from doing what, exactly?” That’s the question Democrats don’t want asked, because it’s where their whole strategy comes apart.”

• Democrats Asked for It, and Trump and the GOP Delivered (Eric Florack)

Ever the consummate showman, President Trump invented the concept of the midterm convention, and he stepped right in to headline it. But there’s a perfectly legitimate argument that Republicans should run on what they’ve actually accomplished rather than turning this election into another referendum on one man. I made exactly that argument myself, at column length, yesterday in the VIP article, “So, What Has Donald Trump Actually Accomplished?” (If you’re not a VIP member yet, why not?)

Elections ought to be about results, policy, and competing visions for the future — not another round of “Trump good” versus “Trump bad.” That’s the ideal. Unfortunately, politics doesn’t happen in the ideal. It happens in the real world, and every strategy has to survive contact with the reality surrounding it.
And here’s the reality Republicans can’t wish away: Democrats have already made Donald Trump the centerpiece. They’ve been doing it for over a decade. Since he first came down that escalator, Democrats and most of the institutional media have treated virtually everything in American life as somehow being about Donald Trump — his personality, his tweets, his speeches, his insults, his policies, his supporters, his opponents, his legal troubles, his victories, his defeats.
Did the cat hack up a hairball on your pillow while you were sleeping? Trump’s fault. Car won’t start? Trump’s fault. Kid brought home a report card that reads like a cry for help? Also, somehow, Trump’s fault. At this point, Democrats have done everything but formally rename the San Andreas Fault “Trump’s Fault.” For years, Democrats told voters, loudly and on an endless loop, that the defining issue facing the country is Donald Trump. They made him the issue. They made him the villain. They made him the explanation for everything they didn’t like.
They made him the explanation for everything that happened after he left office. They made him the explanation for everything that’s happened since he came back. bAnd now, having spent years insisting Donald Trump is an existential threat to the Republic, they apparently expect Republicans to politely agree that maybe we shouldn’t bring him up too much this fall? That’s adorable.
Sorry. That’s not how this works. Republicans can certainly choose to talk about something else — but that strategy has a fatal flaw: you don’t get to unilaterally decide what the other side’s campaign is about. If Democrats plan to spend the whole cycle talking about Trump (and obviously they do), pretending he isn’t part of the election just hands them the subject uncontested. Not answering them isn’t strategy. It’s surrender with better lighting.
There’s also a real difference between making Trump the centerpiece and simply recognizing that the opposition has already made him the centerpiece. Those aren’t nearly the same move. Republicans don’t have to make every speech about Trump. They don’t need his face on every mailer. They don’t need every candidate sounding like they were personally deputized by Trump to defend Western civilization before breakfast. But they do need to recognize the political battlefield they’re standing on.
The question isn’t whether Republicans should crown Donald Trump the centerpiece of the midterms. It’s whether they’re willing to fight on the battlefield that already exists — which is exactly what I did in yesterday’s column, and from what I saw, what they did last night, in Texas. If Democrats are going to campaign on stopping Trump, Republicans have every right, and frankly an obligation, to ask voters a simple follow-up: “Stopping him from doing what, exactly?” That’s the question Democrats don’t want asked, because it’s where their whole strategy comes apart.
It’s one thing to tell voters that Donald Trump is an awful human being, a threat to democracy, a fascist, a dictator-in-waiting, or whatever label happens to be trending that week. And as they’ve demonstrated, you don’t even need to have any proof of any of it. Simple repetition does the work. However, it’s an entirely different thing to explain why the actual policies voters are living under should be thrown out. Democrats have clearly demonstrated that they can’t do the second part. They’ve never had to — they’ve spent a decade coasting on the former.

“There Is No Day After Tomorrow”; Bessent Warns Of Consequences To Losing AI Arms Race To China,

• Bessent: ‘Nothing Else Matters’ If China Pulls Ahead of US in AI (ET)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States cannot afford to fall behind China in artificial intelligence, warning that a Chinese lead would outweigh other U.S. advantages. “Beating China – there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this,” Bessent said on Sept. 9 at Breitbart News’s “State of the Economy” event in Washington. “If they were to pull ahead of us on AI, then nothing else matters.” Bessent made the remarks while answering a question about opposition to data centers and the need to expand the infrastructure required for AI development.

On the same day, the National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and FBI issued a joint advisory accusing six China-based AI companies of conducting industrial-scale campaigns to extract capabilities from U.S. frontier AI models. The agencies named DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI, saying the companies had extracted billions of tokens through millions of requests to frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok since at least late 2024.
Agencies Detail Model Distillation
Knowledge distillation is a machine learning technique in which one model is trained using the outputs of another. The technique is commonly used legitimately, including to develop smaller or less expensive models. The advisory alleged, however, that the six companies engaged in “aggressive, malicious, and targeted” distillation at an industrial scale to extract restricted proprietary functions and capabilities from U.S. models. The NSA said the companies were systematically extracting U.S. model capabilities to train their own systems.
According to the advisory, the companies distributed their activity across model providers, cloud platforms, and other infrastructure to avoid detection. Some used third-party services to relay requests to U.S. models, allowing them to bypass geographic restrictions and other safeguards, the agencies said. The agencies assessed that the alleged activity took place “likely with Chinese government awareness.” The advisory did not state that Chinese authorities directed the individual campaigns.
It said DeepSeek had allegedly conducted an organized campaign since at least late 2024 to obtain reasoning capabilities, specialized optimizations, and other functions for use in its R1 and V3 models. The agencies also attributed large-scale distillation activity to Alibaba’s Qwen models and to models developed by the other four companies. The agencies said such activity could allow Chinese AI developers to narrow the technology gap while avoiding some of the computing power, electricity, foundational research, and other costs required to independently develop frontier models. The advisory stated that advances in Chinese AI models could also expand military and cyber capabilities.
Beijing rejected the allegations on Sept. 9. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China’s AI development came from domestic technological development and international cooperation. The Sept. 8 advisory urged American AI companies and infrastructure providers to improve detection of suspicious activity and strengthen coordination across model developers, cloud providers, and application programming interface providers to counter large-scale distillation campaigns.
Earlier Warnings From US AI Companies
The federal advisory follows earlier accusations by American AI developers. Anthropic said in February that it had identified industrial-scale campaigns by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax involving more than 16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts. The accounts violated its terms of service and regional access restrictions, Anthropic said. It also said that while distillation is a legitimate training method, competitors can misuse it to acquire capabilities developed by other companies without bearing comparable development costs.
OpenAI separately told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in February that it had observed activity indicating continued attempts by DeepSeek to distill capabilities from OpenAI and other U.S. frontier models, including through increasingly obfuscated methods intended to make the activity harder to detect.
Data Centers and the AI Race
Bessent tied the competition with China to the U.S. buildout of data centers and other infrastructure needed for AI. He said the United States currently has the lead because of its technology companies, advanced chips, financing, and startup ecosystem, but argued that development could not be paused. “We can’t pause,” Bessent said. “You can’t, because the Chinese won’t pause.”
He criticized technology companies for failing to engage adequately with communities affected by new data-center construction. Bessent also alleged that some opposition to data-center development involved Chinese “agitprop.” He did not identify specific examples for that assertion during the discussion. He gave data-center developers, hyperscalers, and major AI companies a “D-minus” for community outreach and said they needed to do a better job explaining their projects and potential benefits to residents.

Missed chance,.

• New Four-hour Elon Musk Documentary (BBC)

The Venice Film Festival has hosted the premiere of major documentary-maker Alex Gibney’s epic and provocative new profile of the richest man on Earth, which has been years in the making. Here are five key takeaways from the film.

Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, has made documentaries about some of the richest and most powerful people on Earth. But none of them has been as rich and powerful as Elon Musk. Maybe that’s why Gibney’s profile of the tech entrepreneur and SpaceX boss is such an epic. Musk, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, has a running time of 225 minutes, and will be released with a 10-minute intermission – so that’s almost four hours on the life and work of the world’s richest man.
Still, the time rockets by. There is little in the film that isn’t already on record, but Gibney gathers all the extant reporting into one breathlessly fast-moving, largely negative, and terrifyingly apocalyptic profile. Here are five things you should know about the documentary – just in case you don’t have four hours to spare.
1. Musk himself isn’t interviewed – but appears as an AI avatar
Gibney initially tried for an interview with Musk, but when the project was announced back in March 2023, Musk declared on social media that it would be a “hit piece”, to which Gibney responded, “How would you know?” The director’s solution is to have an AI-generated avatar of Musk repeat things that he has said in public. This is apt, says Gibney in his voiceover, because Musk believes that we might all be living in a simulation – a video game being played by our descendants in the future.
2. David Byrne helped write a theme song
David Byrne has co-written Let Me Sell You a Dream for the film’s closing credits, which has lyrics consisting entirely of phrases spoken by Musk in the past. The title is appropriate, according to some of Gibney’s interviewees, who say that Musk tends to attract investment by promising that imagined future accomplishments – such as cities on Mars and completely safe self-driving cars – are imminent or already realised.
“That’s not happening,” says Adam Becker, an author and astrophysicist, about Musk’s scheme to colonise Mars. “The gravity is too low, the radiation is too high, there’s no air, and the dirt is filled with poison.” Musk has consistently defended his visionary philosophy however: “I’m very good at predicting the future,” he told The Economist in a July interview. “I’m not perfect but I’m very good… people don’t realise that what I’m saying will come to pass – maybe not exactly in the timing that I thought, but it will come to pass.”

3. Musk’s time in the White House is scrutinised The film suggests that Musk dealt with the US government the way he dealt with Twitter. Zoë Schiffer, the author of Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter, says that after Musk bought the social media platform, what she refers to as his “goons” pushed out the majority of the staff without pausing to learn what they actually did. Later, as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, Musk followed “the Twitter playbook”, Schiffer says, describing how he tried and failed to wipe out the US national debt by slashing the budget of numerous departments, this time with the help of a group of assistants in their early twenties who had no government experience. Musk bemoaned that Doge had become “the whipping boy for everything” in an interview with the Washington Post in May last year, just before leaving the Trump administration.

4. An old British film makes a surprise appearance
Gibney uses clips from a British fantasy film, The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937), to illustrate his very dramatic view of Musk. In this black-and-white classic, based on an HG Wells story, a celestial being bestows an ordinary man (Roland Young) with infinite powers. The man eventually demands that the world’s leaders change society instantly, but he ends up accidentally destroying the planet.
5. The film has had a strong reception so far
Reviews from the Venice premiere have so far been largely positive. Variety called it “a lacerating and important watch, grounded in Gibney’s supremely insightful but user-friendly mastery of the documentary form”, while in a four-star review, The Telegraph dubbed it “a chillingly forensic hatchet job”. Unsurprisingly, Musk himself has not been one of its admirers: on X on Wednesday, among other comments, he described the film as “a hit piece that misses, and makes the fatal sin of being boring for 4 hours”.

“They’re fed up with countries that said for 30 years they were gonna protect themselves and help NATO, and the most egregious offender in the last 15 years has been Canada.”

• The US Has Entered Stage 3 in the Trade War With Canada (Victor Davis Hanson)

The philosopher Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, once said that you don’t step into the same river twice, meaning the river flows. Other people look at that quote and said he meant panta rhei, everything flows or changes, although he didn’t necessarily say that himself. Everything changes. That applies to our current U.S.-Canadian spat. We were given an initial description in the media, and then we had some clarification, and now we’re in what I would call Stage Three.

Stage One was outrage at Donald Trump and the United States, and this is the narrative that we got from one side, from Mark Carney. He said the Americans are at it again, and Trump in particular. They’re bullying us. They’re demanding that they’re gonna take away our sovereignty, and they’re saying to whom, and with whom we can trade and with whom we can’t. And then, they wanna squash Canadian nationalism, and they want to suppress indigenous reading, literature, influence in the French language, and we’re not gonna do that. So we had to back out.
So, everybody got very angry. The Wall Street Journal said: This is a silly Trump spectacle right on the eve of the midterms. This is crazy. nAnd then we went into Stage Two: clarification. People in Canada, 90%, supported Carney. They were booing the American “Star-Spangled Banner” when it was played at sporting events in Canada. And they started to informally boycott U.S. products.
And then they stuck out their chest and said we might not give four million barrels of oil to the United States from Canada. We may stop our pipeline. We can do all of these things to the United States. They need us. And the world is against Trump. And our prime minister can deal with China if he wants. He prefers China. bSo, we heard all that, and then we found out that the deal was almost cemented, and Carney brought up his objections at the last moment.
Then we found out the United States did not wanna suppress the French language or Indigenous culture in Canada. It just said our digital media companies operate worldwide. Why, in this particular country of Canada, should they pay a 5% surtax on top of charge, in addition to income tax, just to subsidize for the particular agendas of the Canadian government? We don’t do that to Canada. We don’t say, “If you come into the United States and you have a product or a media conglomerate, we’re gonna slap a 5% so we wanna promote DEI, we want to promote poor white people in East Palestine.” We don’t do that.
Then we find out that we don’t want to take away Canada’s sovereignty. We are in an existential struggle to save the West from Chinese mercantilism. They have been dumping product. They have been manipulating currency. They’ve been stealing patents. They don’t respect copyrights. They run up trillion-dollar surpluses with us, half a trillion with Europe, and we’re saying no more. We want symmetry.
And [China], to get around that, is dumping cheap steel and aluminum and saying to Canada, “You can buy our product very cheap, much cheaper than you can produce it. Then you can use it in your assembly of cars and trucks and other manufactured goods and send it into the United States and undercut American producers. You win, and then we get around the American tariffs.” And Trump and his team said, “No, we know what you’re doing.” So, that was a clarification that didn’t look too good.
Then people said, “Well, wait a minute. Canada can’t even send its oil, highly sulfurous and thick tar sands, to Ontario or to British Columbia because the provinces are so at each other’s throats under this weird system that they don’t. They have almost autonomy with one another, and they won’t let pipelines be built. But the Americans will let it be built.” So, they need the 4 million-a-day export. After all, if Canada’s doing so well, why don’t … Alberta said, “We can’t give you our oil. We need it. We’re booming. That’s what we’ve been told.
“Why would we give it to a booming United States that already is the greatest producer of gas and oil in history and self-sufficient, unless it’s in our interest? It’s right across the border. The United States treats us better than our other provinces treat us. They allow a pipeline into a foreign country, i.e., the United States. Our other provinces don’t allow Alberta to do that. “And, by the way, they allow a pipeline then to go into Quebec and Ontario. If we cut off their pipeline, they’ll cut off two of our provinces.”
And then the jobs report came out. We’ve only been at this 10 days, but it already affected the August jobs report. They said, “We didn’t need the United States.” Well, they’re down 41,000 jobs. And we can hurt the United States? The United States is up 160,000 jobs. And so now we’re in a crisis. How does Canada get out of this situation? Because they walked out of a deal that was better than basically any other deal the United States had cut with other countries, and it was only one of two countries. The other in the same league was communist China that retaliated against the United States.
The others admitted, “Aw, shucks. We know we’ve had asymmetrical tariffs with you for a long time. We understand this is a reckoning. Let’s kind of moderate it and don’t get too hysterical that we’ve been taking you to the cleaners on trade.” OK. Not Canada. Canada immediately started retaliating like China. OK. And now they’re in Stage Three. What is Stage Three? Stage Three is the Americans are saying to themselves:
Well, we have 13 times the economy that Canada does, and we have nine times the population, and we have one state, California, that has about the same population as all of Canada. And of all of our states, it’s the worst run, the most socialist, with the most inept governor, and usually with the highest social welfare costs, the highest taxes, the highest unemployment, the highest inflation, the highest power. And guess what? It has double the gross domestic product of Canada, even though there’s the same population. Double.
And then the Americans are saying: “We don’t want—we don’t need your oil. We can produce your oil. We’d like your oil. It helps you. It helps us. But if you don’t wanna cut us off, cut us off. And we’d like to trade with you, but you know what? If you don’t wanna—if you wanna help Canada get around our tariffs, and we understand that, just don’t do it. And the subtext behind all of this is the United States is fed up. They’re fed up with countries that said for 30 years they were gonna protect themselves and help NATO, and the most egregious offender in the last 15 years has been Canada.

High time this story was told.

• The Story of Slavery Told Correctly (Paul Craig Roberts)

For several decades I have emphasized that black slavery was a product of black slave wars in Africa for which no white person has any responsibility. It was black African rulers, such as the King of Dahomey, who enslaved and sold black Africans to Arabs and to British and European colonies in the New World where there was abundant resources and fertile land but no work force. This is an indisputable fact. Some of the most famous leftists in history, such as Karl Polanyi, have documented this fact.

Today as I write there stands on the Atlantic coast of Africa three miles south of Ouidan in Benin, the former Kingdom of Dahomey, the Gate of No Return, a memorial erected to mark the departure point where Africans enslaved by Africans were loaded aboard ships to be marketed to Arabs and to British and European colonists in the New World. The Gate of No Return sits at the end of a road known as the Route of the Slaves. As far as I can ascertain, none of this factual history is acknowledged in any black studies program in any Western university or by any of the black organizations agitating for reparations from white peoples who neither enslaved nor owned a slave.
In the Western World the entire story of slavery is a total fabrication. It is important to understand that no white Southerners or white anyone went into Africa to round up black slaves. The black King of Dahomey was a powerful person. His army was armed with rifles obtained from the Arabs in exchange for slaves. The King had an Amazon contingent, reportedly extremely ferocious. No one was going to poach on the King of Dahomey. Any who wanted slaves paid the King’s price. Dahomey dominated the slave wars, and the captives of Dahomey’s wars were the slaves who ended up in America.
As slaves were the products of slave wars between black Africans, many of the slaves sold to colonists in the British colonies that eventually became the US were themselves warriors engaged in slave wars against other blacks who were defeated in combat. I have often made the point that every collection of slaves on Southern plantations in the American South contained trained warriors captured in combat who greatly outnumbered the number of whites on the “slave cotton plantations.” Any such behavior of slave owners, such as that fraudulently reported by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin would have resulted in a successful uprising.
Plantation owners understood this, and for their own preservation and that of their families did not behave as the lying bitch Harriet Beecher Stowe alleges in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The purpose of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was war propaganda, to stir up hatred of the South by northerners in order to make acceptable Lincoln’s war criminals, Sherman and Sheridan. The south was defeated by the North’s destruction of the South’s livestock and farms, leaving the Confederacy unable to provision the Army of Northern Virginia which in the end was marching in bare feet with no food.
The proof that there was unity between the slaves and the plantation owners was demonstrated by the complete failure of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This was a war measure that Lincoln intended would draw Confederate soldiers from the front lines to return home to protect their families from black insurrection. But no insurrection occurred, and the Southern soldiers did not leave the front lines.
Lincoln, a war criminal of the highest order, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which as Lincoln’s own Secretary of State pointed out, applied only to slaves under Confederate control, and not to any under Union control, out of frustration that Union general after Union general whose forces were three to four times larger than Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were repeated defeated by General Robert E. Lee, a leader who steadfastly refused to participate in war crimes.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a complete failure as a war measure. But the white liberals misrepresented a war measure as the freeing of the slaves from “Southern oppression.” What are we to think of northern liberals this totally dishonest, this totally devoid of all integrity, of all respect for historical truth? I won’t print the expletives that come to mind. The “freedom” left former slaves without homes and food. Many were raped by Union soldiers. “Liberated” blacks followed behind the Union armies hoping their “liberators” would provide food and water and medical care. But as the Union soldiers did not own the former slaves, no one had an investment or interest in them.
“Liberation” was chaos for the “liberated.” Many of the “liberated” experienced devastating hardship and death. Historians have documented that the contraband camps that were set up by the Union were characterized by overcrowding, poor sanitation, meager food rations and by massive outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox and dysentery. The brutal conditions killed a large percentage of the Southern black population. The consequence of “emancipation” was genocide. The former slaves who survived did so by performing manual labor for the Union occupying army.
A country with a high percentage of people as dishonest as white liberals has no chance of being great if it is to be a multicultural society. No multicultural society can exist when the disparate interests are turned against one another in hate, which is what the white liberals have done to America.
The alleged American “civil war” is another fabrication. The war was the result of the North, which Lincoln called the Union, invading a separate country, the Confederacy, which had exercised its constitutional right to exit the United States in order to avoid being economically exploited by northern manufacturing which insisted on a tariff to be paid by the South on its exports and imports. The day before Lincoln’s inauguration the Northern Congress passed the Morrill Tariff that imposed massive economic cost on the South. Simultaneously Lincoln and the Northern Congress offered the South Constitutional protection forever of slavery if the South would stay in the Union and pay the tariff.
The South replied that their concern is the tariff, not slavery. Despite all evidence the white liberals claim without a shred of evidence that the Union cause was to deliver blacks from slavery. Clearly, people as unworthy as white liberals desperately need to be replaced by immigrant-invaders. I was delighted when I read that the white liberal government in Massachusetts had decided to replace themselves with Muslims. Perhaps there is some virtue in The Camp of the Saints. The white liberals will be the first to go, just as they are in The Camp of the Saints.

“Egountchi Behanzin, founding president of the international African Black Defense League, spokesperson for the Pan-African Brothers, political analyst, and pan-African activist..”

• Jamaica Demands Answers On Slavery (Egountchi Behanzin)

Knocking on the king’s door: Decades in the making, the September 7 filing brings a direct legal challenge against the British Crown for its ties to the slave system

On September 7, 2026, a high-level Jamaican delegation delivered a historic legal petition to Buckingham Palace addressed to King Charles III. Its objective was to compel the monarch, as Jamaica’s head of state, to refer to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the island’s highest court of appeal, three questions that have haunted the British Empire for centuries. Was the forced transportation of Africans to Jamaica and their subsequent enslavement lawful? Did this system constitute a crime against humanity? Does the United Kingdom bear an obligation to make reparation for slavery and its enduring consequences?
Culture Minister Olivia Grange, who led the delegation, shared a photo on X of herself holding the document aloft, captioned: “The petition has been filed.” King Charles III was not present at the handover. British media reported he was on vacation at the time, though Buckingham Palace said it had worked closely with the Governor General of Jamaica to ensure the petition was properly lodged.
Why the date is no coincidence
The day before, on Sunday, September 6, the delegation had taken part in a church service in south London under the theme of “remembrance, justice and repair,” ahead of the formal filing the following day. This timing is no accident: September 6 commemorates the 1781 departure of the slave ship Zong, aboard which more than 140 enslaved Africans were thrown into the sea so their owners could collect an insurance payout. That crime, unpunished for 245 years, now stands as the symbol of a justice the diaspora refuses to let fade into oblivion.
“In relation to the wrongs that were done, we want answers,” Grange told the Associated Press the day before the filing. “Once we get those answers, then our attorneys will determine what the next move is.” This petition is part of a strategy, built step by step by Jamaica’s National Council on Reparations chaired by Laleta Davis Mattis, with the support of a legal subcommittee led by attorney Bert Samuels, and a team of UK lawyers. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has thrown its full weight behind the effort proof that this question reaches beyond the borders of a single island. The entire post-slavery Caribbean is rising behind Jamaica.
The UN slavery resolution as a first step
But it is precisely here that Jamaica’s fight joins Africa’s own, and this link must now be made visible, since Western media have worked hard to keep it quiet. On March 25, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, on Ghana’s initiative, resolution A/RES/80/250 – the very first resolution in UN history devoted exclusively to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.One hundred and twenty-three states voted in favor. Only three opposed it: the United States, Israel, and Argentina. Fifty-two countries, mostly European including the United Kingdom itself, chose to hide behind abstention.
The resolution designates the transatlantic trafficking of Africans and racialized chattel enslavement as the “gravest crime against humanity.” Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, speaking on behalf of the African Group of 54 states, the UN’s largest regional bloc, declared that voting for the text meant standing on the right side of history. It calls for the restitution of looted cultural property, formal apologies, and opens the door to the consideration of financial compensation. This is an international normative framework, patiently built by the African Union since February 2024, when it proclaimed 2025 the “Year of Justice for Africans through Reparations for Slavery, Colonialism, and Apartheid.”
Jamaican jurist Bert Samuels was not mistaken when he stated that this UN resolution strengthens Jamaica’s legal position against London. Here is the thread that binds Accra to Kingston, the African motherland to the diaspora torn from it. A single struggle is fought on two complementary fronts – one continental and diplomatic, the other insular and judicial, both aimed at the same goal of making the former empire pay for four centuries of human plunder.
A history of reversed debts
To grasp the full weight of this gesture, one must recall that Haiti, the first free black nation of the modern era, was forced in 1825 to pay France a colossal indemnity to “compensate” former slave owners for the loss of their “human property” – a debt that bled Haiti’s economy for more than a century. History, as written by the colonial powers, long decreed that it was the enslavers who deserved compensation, never the enslaved.
Jamaica’s petition overturns this criminal logic. It is no longer the victims who owe the executioner, it is the executioner who must now answer to its victims. This reversal builds on groundwork laid over more than a decade by the CARICOM itself, which as early as 2013 adopted its own ten-point plan for reparatory justice, demanding formal apologies, debt cancellation, technology transfers, and public health programs to offset the health devastation bequeathed by slavery.
The September 7 filing is therefore the legal culmination of a long matured Caribbean strategy that has now chosen to confront head on, in a court of law, the very institution that sanctioned and protected the slave system: the British Crown.
What it means for the diaspora
For the African diaspora across Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean alike, this filing is experienced as a long-deferred reckoning. For generations, our elders awaited a political gesture of this magnitude – a formal legal demand addressed directly to the head of the house that organized, financed, and profited from the trade.
Reparations movements that once fought each in their own corner Caribbean organizations, Afro-descendant collectives in the Americas, African diasporas in Europe, activists on the continent itself are beginning to speak with a single voice, carried by recognized institutions: the African Union on one side, CARICOM on the other, and now the UN as a global sounding board.
In West Africa, Jamaica’s move is being followed with particular attention, seen as the natural extension of the fight President Mahama carried to the UN stage. The Africa that watched its children leave in chains is, four centuries later, reunited with a part of its diaspora now come to knock, together, on the same imperial door. In Southern Africa, where the memory of apartheid remains raw, many Pan-African organizations see in this filing further proof that struggles for historical justice slavery, colonialism, apartheid can no longer be treated separately, but must be understood as a single, unified case against the West.
In Europe, among Afro-descendant communities in France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom itself, Jamaica’s petition serves as both a signal of hope and a painful reminder: That our own states of origin or residence still drag their feet on these questions, while little Jamaica, with its modest means, dared to carry the fight directly to the monarch’s door. In the Americas, Afro-descendant movements from Brazil to Colombia are also watching this case closely, seeing in it a potential legal precedent that could be mobilized for their own claims against the former Iberian colonial powers.
This convergence is visibly rattling Western capitals. The United Kingdom’s vote – an abstention, that is, a refusal to choose – speaks volumes about the quiet panic setting in London. One can sense, in the remarks of certain British political figures, particularly within Euroskeptic and identitarian factions, a desire to ridicule Jamaica’s move, to dismiss it as an expensive whim or a political stunt.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2098040640378425446?s=20 https://twitter.com/Alexs_jame/status/2098084514627019002?s=20

TESLA JUST SHOWED OFF ITS OPTIMUS GEN 2.5… AND IT LOOKS INSANE.

Tesla’s latest Optimus concept is being presented as a major step toward a general-purpose AI robot.

The video shows the robot up close — its hands, joints, sensors and body design — before revealing the full… https://t.co/ENskNIzc0R pic.twitter.com/RZLG2Umspj
— Murzik (@murzik52) September 9, 2026

Elon Musk on the AI power shortfall.

"There will be at least a 15-gigawatt shortfall of power in 2027 for AI chips."

AI chips are climbing ~40–50% a year. Grid power outside China is only climbing ~10–20%. The faster line overtakes the slower one — and the consensus is that… pic.twitter.com/uE3l9D5pph
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) September 10, 2026

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Debt Rattle September 10 2026

Sep 102026

September 10, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:27 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Charlie Kirk, dividend, Marjorie Taylor Greene, midterm elections, Russiagate, Tucker Carlson, Victor Davis Hanson 44 Responses »

Eugène Delacroix Les femmes d’Alger 1834

• Trump Says ‘War’ To End Immediately ‘After’ Midterm Elections (ZH)

• Stacking Tariffs of 50 Percent and Import Bans Against Canadian Goods (CTH)

• Russiagate Is Finally Heading Somewhere Washington Hates: Under Oath (Manney)

• Turning Point: One Year After Charlie Kirk’s Murder (Scott Pinsker)

• Democrats Aghast at GOP Midterm Strategy to Embrace Trump (Rick Moran)

• Steve Eisman: What If OpenAI Actually Fails? (ZH)

• AI Has Over 10% Chance of Killing All Humans – Anthropic Researcher (RT)

• The AI Threat To Our Republic (Jack Hellner)

• Europe Against Israel (Rabbi Michael Barclay)

• Victor Davis Hanson on Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Bolt)

• Investors Are Totally Stoked About This New Rocket (Stephen Green)

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2097878444294263293?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2097424489630060751?s=20 https://twitter.com/MrWhiplash_/status/2097465581641367776?s=20

“.. a ‘Trump dividend’ to every adult in the US of USD 5,000 if Republicans win ..”

• Trump Says ‘War’ To End Immediately ‘After’ Midterm Elections§ (ZH)

Newsquak: US President Trump said he thinks war with Iran will end immediately after the election and will do much more than a nuclear deal.

US President Trump said he will give a ‘Trump dividend’ to every adult in the US of USD 5,000 if Republicans win the Midterm elections, while he added that the dividend must be spent in the US.

New Trump remarks on Iran… Note that he called it a “war” (no less than twice in the below clip) – contradicting the White House’s own stance (Sept. 4: Trump said don’t call it a war, instead: “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us.”:
Q: Do you expect negotiations with Iran to restart at some point? Trump: Uhhhhhh… we’re not looking for it to be honest with you. This war will end immediately after our election. And meanwhile, back to the below laughably implausible headlines…
Pakistani Ambassador says they believe that a better understanding will soon be achieved between the US and Iran, reports ISNA.
But don’t Republicans actually need the war to end before Congressional elections?

Trump on Iran: I think the war will end immediately after the election. They’re desperate to affect the election. pic.twitter.com/31VEeI0tjO
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 9, 2026

More on high prices at the pump and the question of nuclear weapons… however, the war itself has only made this a greater uncertainty, as Washington has not achieved any prime objectives – and the status of the Iranian nuclear program remains unknown…

Reporter: You said that oil and gas prices were going to come down. Oil is now back above 100 dollars. How do you explain this to Americans?

Trump: It’s very easy to explain to Americans: all you have to do is say, will you let Iran have a nuclear weapon? The answer is no. pic.twitter.com/HFldzUtrbo
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 9, 2026

IRGC: ’20 for 2′, Vows Disproportionate Responses
Amid the dramatic escalation which kicked off since Tuesday night, Iran is seeking to impose new conditions on the United States. While continuing to vow a ‘disproportionate response’ to any attack moving forward, Tehran is now identifying specifics.
IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi states Wednesday, “The imposed war, which involved the world’s most powerful nations, has ended in certain periods, but the nature of the conflict continues. For the first time, this conflict has directly inflicted strategic damage on the United States, impacting the country’s security and economic equations.”
He issued the following list for the US to reach an end to the conflict. “If the enemy desires an end to this situation, they must”…
• completely cease the war
• refrain from further threats
• withdraw the Israeli army from Lebanon
• end the siege of Yemen
• release the $24 billion of Iranian assets that have been frozen
• cease any interference in the country’s nuclear and missile programs

This definitely marks a raised bar, to be sure, after this summer the MoU complete ceased, and negotiations vanished. There’s no way Washington complies with even half of the conditions, at this rate. Importantly, Mohebbi also said: “We have reached a point where if the enemy strikes at 2 or 3 of our targets, we will respond forcefully by striking at 20.”
Tanker Attacked in Iraq Territory Waters, After CENTCOM Insists US Warships Not Hit
After a huge Iranian ballistic missile launch on US bases in Jordan overnight, CENTCOM has yet to respond in any major way. The Pentagon has also said all US troops “are accounted for” – but this doesn’t necessarily mean there were no casualties. However, CENTCOM is at the moment denying that the Iranians hit US warships, as the IRGC has been claiming since Tuesday, in an oddly specific statement: The IRGC claims to have targeted and inflicted “significant damage” on a pair of US warships in the Gulf of Oman: DDG-119 USS Delbert D. Black and DDG-53 USS John Paul Jones, both Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
CENTCOM responded: “No U.S. Navy warship has been struck; all IRGC attempted attacks failed.” It added on X, “Meanwhile, U.S. forces have successfully destroyed 10 Iranian tankers in just the last week. These vessels were part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC, and Iran cannot defend them.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s military is continuing to go on the offensive, seeking to maintain its leverage over the contested Strait of Hormuz. “A Panama-flagged tanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi fuel oil was struck today by a drone in Iraqi territorial waters, two port officials say,” Reuters reports. “Iraqi rescue boats extinguished a fire aboard the tanker, New Andros, and there are no reports of casualties, port officials tell Reuters.” https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/2097687683300548702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097687683300548702%7Ctwgr%5E215cb12391b8713bd6fb8739a66d51897635e6cd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcommodities%2Fbrent-tops-100-gulf-conflict-escalates-ubs-warns-us-iran-ramp-remains-elusive

Canada has very favorable terms and wants more.

• Stacking Tariffs of 50 Percent and Import Bans Against Canadian Goods (CTH)

President Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer waited to see if Canada was going to follow through with their retaliatory tariffs against U.S. imports. The Canadian government carried out their tariffs, so today the White House introduced 50% ‘stacking tariffs’, on top of pre-existing tariff rates, and additional import bans against several Canadian products.

It should be quickly noted that several North American corporations are already making moves to avoid the issues by shifting production lines and adding additional investment into U.S. manufacturing. As expected, getting locked out of a 32 trillion economy is not an option for survivability.
The easiest way to review the issues is not to read media reports, but rather to read the actual outcomes as announced by the White House and USTR. CTH has noticed several Canadian outlets are already making false claims.It is worth reviewing both sets of outlines as well as accompanying links to determine the exact types of Canadian products being targeted by stacking tariffs and import bans.
WHITE HOUSE – Today, to address Canada’s increased discrimination against U.S. commerce, President Trump signed five Proclamations pursuant to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to ban certain products from Canada and modify the scope of the tariffs on certain Canadian products previously announced on July 20, 2026. President Trump is taking decisive and appropriate action to respond to Canada’s additional retaliation and continued discriminatory treatment of crucial American exports.
• After breaking off trade talks with the United States last month, today Canada imposed new retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. exports, including steel, dairy, and agricultural equipment.
• Because Canada maintained and in fact increased its discrimination against U.S. commerce with respect to U.S. alcoholic beverages, President Trump, under Section 338, imposed import bans on certain Canadian alcohol and other products that were subject to the 50 percent tariffs imposed under Section 338 in Proclamation 11046.
• Moreover, because Canada maintained its discrimination against U.S. commerce with respect to dairy, President Trump, under Section 338, imposed import bans on certain Canadian dairy and other products of Canada that were subject to the 50 percent tariffs imposed under Section 338 in Proclamation 11047.
• To offset the burden to U.S. commerce while better serving the public interest, President Trump is also modifying the July 20, 2026 actions by removing certain products, such as rock salt and cement, from the scope of the Section 338 tariffs and replacing those products with new ones, ranging from all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to additional dairy products.
• These Section 338 tariffs apply to all covered goods regardless of whether a good originates under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and apply in addition to tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
• The import bans will take effect on September 29, 2026, and the product additions and removals will take effect on September 15, 2026.
WASHINGTON – Today, Ambassador Jamieson Greer issued a statement after President Trump exercised his authority under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to ban certain Canadian products from entering the U.S. market and modify the scope of the July 20 actions to effectively offset the burden or disadvantage to U.S. commerce by Canada’s discriminatory measures.
“After weeks of good faith and intensive efforts between U.S. and Canadian negotiators, Canada walked away from a near-final trade deal that offered better treatment than any other trading partner, and instead Canada chose to embark on senseless retaliation against the United States,” said Ambassador Greer. “Today’s action, combining targeted import bans as authorized by Section 338 and a calibration of the underlying Section 338 tariffs, is a natural consequence of Canada’s continued discriminatory treatment of crucial American exports, ranging from alcoholic beverages to dairy products to motor vehicles. President Trump will continue to leverage the tools at his disposal to defend the interests of American workers and exporters, and restore reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships.”
Additionally, the President has directed USTR (Office of the United States Trade Representative) and GSA (General Services Administration) to remove $50 billion dollars’ worth of Canadian-origin products from GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules.
[..]
Background:
Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1338) empowers the President to, among other things, impose duties of up to 50 percent on imports of a foreign country to offset the burden or disadvantage from a foreign country’s unequal imposition on or discrimination against the commerce of the United States. On July 20, 2026, finding that the public interest will be served by his actions, President Trump took three separate Section 338 actions to level the playing field for important American exports to Canada—motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages, and dairy. Section 338 further empowers the President to exclude products from importation into the United States if a foreign country maintains or increases its discriminatory practices against U.S. commerce.
Based on Canada’s continued retaliation and discrimination against U.S. commerce, President Trump has determined that it is necessary and appropriate to ban certain Canadian products from entering the U.S. market and refined the scope of the July 20 actions to target strategic Canadian sectors while removing certain non-sensitive Canadian goods from the scope of the actions. {Source}
It appears that some of the product categories would be limited by ‘stacking tariffs’, as a consequence the U.S. is simply moving to ban the products altogether.

“Russia did interfere in the election extensively, as the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee documented.”

Oh really?

• Russiagate Is Finally Heading Somewhere Washington Hates: Under Oath (Manney)

Washington has spent nearly a decade arguing about Russiagate in congressional hearings, cable studios, memoirs, podcasts, and carefully lawyered statements. Now somebody is bringing subpoenas. The Justice Department has begun compelling former government officials to testify before a federal grand jury in Florida investigating whether crimes were committed during the government’s Trump-Russia investigations.

From the Associated Press: The Justice Department is demanding testimony before a Florida grand jury in an investigation aiming to establish an intelligence community conspiracy against President Donald Trump, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. New subpoenas being issued to former government officials represent an escalation in the year-long investigation as the Justice Department pursues a loosely defined theory that members of the intelligence community who scrutinized Trump over the last decade, including over Russian interference in the 2016 election, conspired against him and violated his rights.
Investigators in recent days contacted some defense lawyers for witnesses advising them of forthcoming grand jury subpoenas. It was not clear how many as of Tuesday had received a subpoena or were still waiting to receive one, and the identities of the witnesses receiving subpoenas were also not immediately clear. The people who confirmed the subpoenas spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss a secretive grand jury investigation. The subpoenas mark a significant escalation from the voluntary interviews investigators previously sought.
Former CIA Director John Brennan is a target of part of the investigation. Brennan’s lawyers say he committed no wrongdoing and has cooperated with previous reviews.mNo indictment has been announced; a subpoena isn’t proof of a crime, and a grand jury investigation isn’t a conviction waiting for paperwork. Plus, as the old joke goes, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. But sworn testimony is different from another Sunday morning interview.
Attorney General Todd Blanche appointed former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova in April to help oversee the investigation. Prosecutors are examining decisions surrounding the intelligence community’s handling of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the government’s subsequent investigations involving Donald Trump’s campaign. From the Associated Press:
The investigation is being run out of Florida, with the Justice Department in April bringing back into government service a top prosecutor from the Reagan administration, Joe diGenova, to serve as a counselor to the attorney general and help lead a team of agents and prosecutors. diGenova, who had previously asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint him to the job and has openly and repeatedly claimed Trump was the victim of an intelligence community conspiracy, declined to comment Tuesday when reached by the AP.
In an indication of the wide-ranging nature of the investigation, the AP reported last month that diGenova’s team has sought interviews with law enforcement officials involved in the 2022 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida. The search recovered a trove of classified documents that formed the basis of a since-abandoned Justice Department prosecution of Trump, who has long decried the FBI operation as an invasion of his privacy.
Brennan’s role deserves particular scrutiny because he headed the CIA when the intelligence community produced its January 2017 assessment of Russian election interference. A declassified House Intelligence Committee report released in 2025 challenged parts of the process behind that assessment. The report said Brennan pushed for the inclusion of information from the Steele dossier, despite concerns about its credibility. Brennan has disputed allegations that he manipulated intelligence or acted improperly.
Americans have heard competing versions of this history for years. Trump and his allies say intelligence and law-enforcement institutions abused their authority while pursuing a political opponent. Brennan and other former officials maintain that Russia genuinely interfered in the 2016 election and that intelligence officials acted appropriately in assessing the threat. Both propositions contain questions that deserve evidence rather than another round of television combat.
Russia did interfere in the election extensively, as the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee documented.
The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Parts of this effort are outlined in the Committee’s earlier volumes on election security, social media, the Obama Administration’s response to the threat, and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). (U)
The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. In this volume the Committee lays out its findings in detail by looking at many aspects of the counterintelligence threat posed by the Russian influence operation.
For example, the Committee examined Paul Manafort’ s connections to Russian influence actors and the FBI’ s treatment of reporting produced by Christopher Steele. While the Committee does not describe the final result as a complete picture, this volume provides the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.
This volume presents this information in topical sections in order to address coherently and in detail the wide variety of Russian actions. The events explained in these sections in many cases overlap, and references in each section will direct the reader to those overlapping parts of the volume. Immediately below is a summary of key findings from several sections.
But acknowledging Russian interference doesn’t settle whether every government action taken in response was justified, accurate, or lawful.

TPUSA has grown a lot. What now?

• Turning Point: One Year After Charlie Kirk’s Murder (Scott Pinsker)

By all accounts, Charlie Kirk never considered stepping down. Not even once. And why would he?Turning Point USA was his baby. His creation. His magnum opus. He built it from the bottom up — transforming TPUSA from a teenager’s pipe dream into a political juggernaut. Every inch of it reflected his values, passions, and one-of-a-kind personality.Which is why Charlie intended to lead it ‘til his dying day: The only succession plan he ever considered was posthumous.

Tragically, his dying day came far earlier than he deserved.As we approach the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Turning Point itself is at a turning point: Three legacies are now in limbo. The first is Charlie’s. Complaining about click-whores, liars, cretins, and clout-chasers on social media is a waste of time. It’d be like complaining about nudity in a strip club: That’s kinda-sorta the M.O. when you enter.If you don’t wanna see naked people, don’t go inside!
But even by social media’s cesspool standards, onlookers were stunned by how quickly Charlie’s murder was exploited. Within days, some of the biggest, most influential podcasters wore Charlie’s corpse like a skin suit, repurposing his legacy for their own agenda. Instead of celebrating his life, they monetized his death. Instead of comforting his family, they tortured his widow for clicks. Instead of honoring his beliefs, they used Charlie as their personal sock puppet. And they continue to do so today.
Once upon a time, Charlie Kirk was just a man. That ended on Sept. 10, 2025. Today, he’s a symbol. And symbols have propaganda value. It’s why waving the bloody shirt is so effective. Symbols are a cheat code for emotional communication. It’s why redefining symbolism has always been a top priority for revolutionaries: It lets them capture hearts — while bypassing brains. In life, Charlie wasn’t exactly coy with his beliefs:

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America. https://t.co/p3EsmCNQuj
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 9, 2025

Note the date: If you want to know which issues were top-of-mind for Charlie Kirk just before he died, look no further. But if you really, really insist, go back four days earlier:

"Charlie Kirk was killed because he was turning on Israel."

Charlie Kirk 5 days before he died: "They have no idea what Israel is up against. Which is these Islamic barabarian monsters. The more they understand Islam the better Israel looks." pic.twitter.com/FMvYTeJgEv
— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) June 22, 2026

Yet his ex-“friends” claim otherwise:

Bret Weinstein and Tucker Carlson discuss the theory that Israel eliminated Charlie Kirk to advance war with Iran.

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/2zFJGMrMAQ
— AF Post (@AFpost) March 12, 2026

The sad truth is, Charlie’s image has changed. The propagandists are winning. For millions of Americans, when they close their eyes and think of Charlie Kirk, their first thought isn’t conservatism, Christianity, or youth politics anymore. It’s bat[feces]-crazy conspiracy theories, antisemitism, political violence, and Candace Owens. Symbols aren’t static. They’re constantly moving, constantly changing, perpetually vulnerable to outside forces. And the more powerful the symbol, the bigger the PR payoff in its manipulation. Which means symbols must be protected. Vigilantly and aggressively.
Look, I get it: Clearly, it’s not the execs at TPUSA’s fault. They’re not the ones who associated Charlie’s image with low-life creeps like Owens and Tucker Carlson. They’re not the ones who hijacked his brand. If anything, they’re the victims. (Especially, of course, TPUSA’s current chairwoman and CEO.) But on the other hand, they also haven’t done enough to protect Charlie’s image. Their hearts are in the right place, but PR tactics determine PR success. That’s just how it goes in an outcome-based world. TPUSA would be wise to recalibrate its PR plan ASAP — because protecting Charlie’s legacy is its responsibility.
Charlie’s earthly mission ended on Sept. 10; an assassin’s bullet made sure of it. But he remains — by far — TPUSA’s most valuable symbol, brand ambassador, and emotional lightning rod. His soul rests in God’s mighty arms, yet his spirit still guides the organization he cherished.He deserves a better legacy than this.
And so does his successor, Erika Kirk. She assumed the title of chairwoman and CEO — and less than a year later, her metrics are jaw-dropping: TPUSA grew from 410 college chapters to 1,095 (including at James Madison University in Virginia, where my 19-year-old son is an active member). TPUSA exploded from 454 Club America (high school-aged) chapters to 3,102.
You kiddin’ me? Any other CEO would win awards for those kinds of year-to-year gains! She’d be showered with appreciation! The trouble, however, is that it’s unclear how much credit Erika Kirk deserves, since TPUSA’s dramatic growth was triggered by an outpouring of organic love and support after Charlie’s death. Arguably, any CEO at the helm would’ve achieved similar results.
One week after Charlie was killed, 32,000 people contacted TPUSA to join. (That’ll getcha lots of new members.) Which doesn’t negate Mrs. Kirk’s leadership or courage. She steadied the ship during the darkest, deadliest days, providing clarity, consistency, and continuity. Forged by tragedy, her authenticity spoke for itself.
And she paid a horrific price for it, too.

What else can they do?

• Democrats Aghast at GOP Midterm Strategy to Embrace Trump (Rick Moran)

An Axios blurb reflects the thinking of Democrats regarding the Republican midterm strategy of embracing Donald Trump rather than running away from him. “Two months before Election Day, Democrats can taste the House majority, provided two conditions hold: President Trump remains unpopular, and vulnerable Republicans stay close to him,” writes Hans Nichols. It’s true. Historically, in midterm elections, the party out of power gains an average of 35 to 37 seats in the House of Representatives and roughly 3 to 5 seats in the U.S. Senate when the sitting president’s approval rating is below 50%.

In 2010, Barack Obama, with a 45% approval rating, saw the Democrats lose 63 seats. In 2018, Donald Trump, with a 41% approval rating, lost 40 seats. And in 1994, with Bill Clinton’s approval rating at 48%, Democrats lost 54 seats. The Senate is a different story, with different dynamics at play, but the sitting president’s party loses an average of three to five Senate seats overall. When the president’s approval is low, losses often range from four to eight seats.
It would seem almost suicidal for Republicans to latch on to Trump and ride out the midterms on his coattails. Ordinarily, that would be true. But this is not an ordinary midterm election, and Democrats, in my opinion, appear to be the ones committing suicide.
While most candidates would generally run away from an unpopular president, Trump may be some candidates’ only hope. Not only are Trump’s coattails fairly long, but the Republicans also have about $1 billion in cash burning holes in Trump’s, Elon Musk’s, and the RNC’s pockets. Midterm elections have never seen anything like it. And while money isn’t everything, there isn’t a candidate running on either side who believes that having less money than your opponent is an advantage.
Trump is going to give more money to GOP candidates who embrace him than to candidates who don’t. That simple calculus will give candidates little choice in backing the president. Besides, Democrats shouldn’t be smiling so broadly. The ad campaign that Trump and Musk unleashed is going to make the Democrats squirm, and the voter hesitate before marking their ballot for a Democrat.
The Republicans are gathering at the American Airlines Center in Dallas for a gigantic, two-day election commercial they’re calling a “Midterm Convention.” Trump will speak on both nights and highlight the radical left lurch of the Democrats and paint the contest as a battle between democracy and communism.
“This is not a midterm like any other, because we actually have a competition against communism now, and that’s a very serious thing. It’s going to animate voters coast to coast,” House Speaker Mike Johnson emphasized in a Fox News Digital campaign trail interview last month.
Fox News: Democrats, as they try to win back congressional majorities, were already battling a brand that public opinion polling indicates is extremely unpopular. Making matters worse, the high-profile victories this spring and summer by left-wing and socialist candidates over establishment rivals in Democratic primaries, which gave Republicans extra ammunition to portray all Democrats as extremists.
“What we’re going to highlight at that convention is the fact that this is not your father’s Democrat Party,” Johnson said. “It’s a contrast election, and people are making a contrast between common-sense solutions and candidates, and really crazy, which is represented by the other side.”
Communism is bad, and for older voters, the “Red Scare” tactics will be most effective. Voters aged 45-64 account for the largest absolute volume of ballots cast, usually making up around 35% to 40% of all midterm voters. Voters aged 65-plus make up the second-largest portion of total voters (around 30% of total voters). They consistently register the highest participation rate of any demographic, with roughly 65% to 70%+ of eligible seniors turning out during midterm elections.
At least three-quarters of midterm voters grew up in at least some part of the Cold War. That’s got to count for something at the ballot box. Meanwhile, are you ready for “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Part II? Elon Musk’s America PAC is unloading $120 million for a massive, never-before-seen get-out-the-vote effort, and a key part of it will be ads painting the Democrats as goofy and nuts on trans issues.
Axios: America PAC isn’t running a traditional persuasion campaign. It’s undertaking a massive get-out-the-vote operation, with targeted ads designed to get GOP voters to the polls. The PAC is betting trans issues will do just that. Driving the news: In a series of just-launched ads, America PAC goes after Democratic Senate candidates in four competitive races over transgender athletes, gender-transition care and other trans issues.
The PAC’s emphasis on trans issues is striking because that’s been a much less prominent theme in GOP Senate ads so far this election cycle, per AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.The ads, which are running online and on streaming platforms, attack Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Iowa’s Josh Turek, Texas’ James Talarico and Alaska’s Mary Peltola. They’re among the first batch of ads from America PAC, which Musk has reportedly authorized to spend upwards of $100 million in the midterms. It worked in 2024. Why not now?
The Democrats’ toxicity is the wild card in this election. Everyone agrees they’re nuts, but are they so stinky that people won’t even hold their noses and vote for them?
Republican midterm fortunes hang on the answer to that question.

Something/someone else will take its place?!

• Steve Eisman: What If OpenAI Actually Fails? (ZH)

Steve Eisman has spent most of the years since the financial crisis being asked, in his words, to predict the end of the world. In his latest weekly wrap – recorded Thursday night as the 10-year brushed 4.8%, he says he’s still not there on AI, but if he were – he lays out exactly how it would happen. Eisman is not predicting that OpenAI fails – but it is the weak link in a chain that runs from two money-losing labs, through hyperscaler capex, to roughly half of projected US GDP growth – and arguing that it’s “not too early to think about” what happens if the link breaks.

“I predicted the end of the world once, and believe me, it was no fun. I am in no rush to predict the end of the world again, unless I am really convinced that it’s going to happen. But I’m not going to make such a prediction just because it will get a lot of press. There is no question in my mind that the entire US economy hinges on the success of AI. The amount being spent is just so large that were it to stop, the economy would go into a recession almost immediately.”

The chain: two companies, $700 billion of capex, half of GDP growth
Eisman waves off the two “bubble” arguments echoing through the halls – and that both hyperscalers’ vanished free cash flow, and Nvidia’s circular financing – are survivable if AI pays off. The real vulnerability, he argues, sits one layer down: “So where is the Achilles heel? I think that it resides with Anthropic and OpenAI, because they are so central to the entire AI food chain. According to reports from various Wall Street firms, something like 70% of hyperscaler AI revenue comes from Anthropic and OpenAI… I can’t confirm those statistics, but they sound right given what we actually know about Oracle.”
From there it’s arithmetic: “Hyperscalers are spending about $700 billion in capex this year, and even more next year, and that spend accounts for around half of the 2% GDP growth projected for 2026. So one must conclude that the health of the US economy is extremely dependent on hyperscaler capex, and hyperscaler capex is highly dependent on the health of Anthropic and OpenAI. That’s the chain.”
OpenAI is… the weakest link
Between the two labs, Eisman says, “OpenAI is the weaker entity” – pointing to a WSJ report on the 2nd quarter. “OpenAI’s June quarter revenue reached $6.7 billion, up only 18% versus the March quarter. Compare that to Anthropic’s revenue of $11 billion-plus in the June quarter, which was up over 100%… OpenAI’s costs reached $12.3 billion, up $3 billion versus the March quarter. So, in three months, revenue increased $1 billion, but costs surged $3 billion. Things are not moving in the right direction.” (ZH Note; the $12.3 billion Eisman calls “costs” is OpenAI’s operating loss, including stock-based compensation, up from $9.3 billion in the first quarter, per WSJ. On $6.7 billion of revenue, that implies an expense line closer to $19 billion. Revenue rose $1 billion; the loss rose $3 billion.)
Then the departures. Chief revenue officer Denise Dresser left in August after roughly eight months, two days after Brad Lightcap ended an eight-year run. Eisman reads both through the lens of an IPO that keeps sliding: “Supposedly, OpenAI is getting closer to an IPO. That’s the big payday for employees, because it means that eventually they can sell some of their shares. That two such senior employees would leave now is an important data point.”
Two fairness notes: Lightcap had already been moved out of the COO role in April, so his exit was telegraphed. And Eisman doesn’t mention Fidji Simo, who stepped down in July and was arguably the bigger loss. The heart of the argument is what unprofitability does to a company’s relationship with its funders:
“When you lose billions upon billions, appearances matter a lot. OpenAI is completely dependent on the kindness of strangers funding its cash flow needs. When a company is growing and very profitable, appearances don’t matter nearly as much… But when a company is not profitable and has an insatiable need for capital, appearances matter more than anything, because if the narrative turns negative, raising capital becomes much more difficult.”
That’s why he flags last week’s “good news” – OpenAI’s ad business hitting a $1 billion annualized run rate – as bad news: earlier this year the company projected $2.4 billion of ad revenue for all of 2026, and $1 billion annualized in September doesn’t get there.

pic.twitter.com/WGH5sNDwYz
— cocktail peanut (@cocktailpeanut) September 8, 2026

“Evan Hubinger says the company still has no clear plan to keep superintelligence under human control..”

• AI Has Over 10% Chance of Killing All Humans – Anthropic Researcher (RT)

There is a more than 10% chance that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity within the next ten years, a senior Anthropic researcher has warned amid mounting concerns over increasingly powerful systems slipping beyond human control.Evan Hubinger, who works on aligning advanced AI systems with human interests, made the assessment after fellow Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned over fears that leading tech companies are racing toward systems they may not be able to keep in check.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,” Hubinger wrote on X on Wednesday. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.” He added that Anthropic is “trying its best” but still does not have a plan for safely controlling superintelligence and is “not clearly on track” to find one. Hubinger noted that while current AI models pose a low risk, there is concern that future systems could begin improving themselves recursively, rapidly becoming more capable than humans before adequate safeguards are developed.
Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, announced his departure from Anthropic on Tuesday, accusing both companies of ignoring the “civilizational stakes” and “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he wrote, insisting the warnings were “not a marketing stunt.”
Coxon told the Wall Street Journal that the most aggressive scenarios could see things become “out of control” as early as the end of 2027. He argued that even companies with strong safety programs remain trapped in a race, fearing competitors will push ahead if they slow down. Both Anthropic and OpenAI publicly say they take the risks seriously and are heavily investing in safety measures. Their leaders have also backed calls for greater government coordination and mechanisms to slow development if necessary, but have nevertheless continued to develop increasingly powerful models.
The latest warnings come amid growing reports of AI agents, such as those developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, repeatedly breaking out of testing environments, hacking external systems and taking unauthorized actions against real people and organizations. OpenAI temporarily slowed some development last month after its model compromised the Hugging Face platform.= Britain’s AI Security Institute has also reported agents creating fake identities, writing malicious code, and attempting to manipulate people during evaluations. Researchers have meanwhile demonstrated that AI can design entire functional viral genomes, adding to concerns over how increasingly capable systems could be misused.

“AI pushing a Democrat agenda is the real threat to the Republic…”

• The AI Threat To Our Republic (Jack Hellner)

The United States has gone through massive job and technological changes over the last 250 years and has always survived and prospered. Over thirty years ago, I heard a presentation by e(conomist Brian Wesbury, who is still working, talking about major job changes over the years. He gave three examples: Number 1: In the 1800s, over 70% of jobs were related to agriculture. Today, that number is around 2% because oil-powered machines greatly increased efficiency and reduced reliance on manual labor. I would assume most people would say these are good changes.

Number 2: In the 1950s, Berghoff’s restaurant in Chicago employed twenty dishwashers. By the 1970s, they were down to one because of machines. Number 3: In the 1960s, there were 600,000, mostly women, working as telephone operators. He said people worried about what women would do if technology took those jobs. My guess is most women are very happy not to be working in those tedious jobs. A huge number of jobs have been displaced or replaced over the years by mass production and computers, and we have greatly prospered. We also have more choices of what to buy.
Many of the people fighting AI and data centers willfully watched as manufacturing jobs and the supply chain moved to China and other countries over decades. Now they are willing to watch as China takes the lead in current technology advancements Democrats are campaigning on destroying hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs related to private health insurance as they push for Medicare for all.
They are also actively campaigning to destroy millions of direct and indirect jobs with their radical green agenda to destroy the oil, natural gas, and coal industries. They clearly don’t care that crude oil is used in over 6,000 products and that those products have greatly improved our quality of life and life expectancy. I am much more worried about the further dumbing down of children when a high percentage already can’t read or do math at grade level. They will rely on AI to do problems, write papers, and do research instead of learning to do it themselves.
They will most likely believe it when ChatGPT puts out a fictional piece of propaganda that is essentially Democrat talking points comparing Trump to Hitler. They will assume it is intelligent instead of garbage.

The main point was that Trump challenged the 2020 election and encouraged the violent protest at the capitol. ChatGPT, like most media, left out that Trump encouraged people to march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. They failed to mention that Democrats challenged elections in 2000, 2004, and 2016. They failed to mention that Democrats protested violently after the 2016 election and called Trump an illegitimate President for four years.
Let’s look at who is a greater threat to our Republic:
• Democrats want to get rid of the Electoral College, not Trump.
• Democrats want to get rid of the Senate, not Trump.
• Democrats want to stack the Supreme Court, not Trump.
• Democrats refuse to enforce immigration laws and flood America with illegals, not Trump.
• Democrats don’t want people to show proof of identity or citizenship to vote, not Trump.
• Democrats don’t want the federal government to see who is on voter rolls for federal elections, not Trump.

All of those actions are a much greater threat to our survival as a Constitutional Republic than challenging an election, requiring ID’s to vote, and reducing voting by mail, which clearly makes it easier to cheat. Let’s look at a few of Hitler’s policies and compare them to Democrats and Trump.
This is what Gemini said Hitler’s policies were:
• Banning Private Primary Institutions.
• Eliminating Dissent: The regime sought a monopoly on the minds of the youth.
• Outlawing Homeschooling: Alongside targeting private schools, the Nazi regime outlawed homeschooling to prevent families from shielding children from state propaganda.

These policies are very similar to Democrat policies, not Trump’s. Trump wants children to have school choice. Hitler was a Totalitarian. He did not believe in small government or individual liberties. He built a totalitarian state where the government controlled public and private life.
Democrats believe in a big, powerful government, not Trump. Trump is trying to reduce regulations and the number of government agencies and employees. He is trying to let people and businesses keep more of the money they earn to have more freedom. He is the opposite of a dictator like Hitler, no matter how often the media, AI, and other Democrats repeat that lie.
AI is a tremendous source for quick data gathering, but if asked for an opinion on Trump, Climate Change, or other subjects, it appears to largely push the Democrat agenda because that is what it has been programmed to do. That’s a real threat.

The more islam Europe gets, the more it’s against Israel.

• Europe Against Israel (Rabbi Michael Barclay)

Tuesday brought about sanctions and retaliation, not regarding the U.S./Iran conflict, but from the antisemites in Europe: politicians who seek to affect the upcoming Israeli elections, as well as get votes from Jew-haters in their own country. Claiming that “there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank,” the foreign ministers of Britain and France led the countries of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden in issuing a joint statement against Israel, announcing they plan to impose restrictions on trade with “settlements defined as illegal under international law.”

Despite this being Israeli land, despite the reality that there has never even been such a thing as “a nation of Palestine or Palestinians historically, despite the simple truth that the Palestinian cause was created in 1964, and despite the actualities of “international law” that clearly define Judea-Samaria as part of Israel, these 12 countries are attacking the economy of Israel for purely political reasons. The foreign ministry of Qatar speedily made its own announcement of support for the sanctions against Israel, another reminder that Qatar is not a friend of Israel nor the U.S. The response from Israel was quick, clear, and unified.
Israel’s Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs stated that “the territories of Judea and Samaria are the cradle of the history of the people of Israel, long before the English became a people.” He added: “The purpose of the British struggle to stop construction in E1 in the area connecting Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adummim is to establish a Palestinian state, which the vast majority of Israeli citizens have opposed since October 7.” According to Israeli Minister Gideon Sa’ar, “the Labor government’s move is particularly absurd given that more than 100 years ago, the Balfour Declaration officially recognized the historical right of the Jewish people to establish their home in the Land of Israel, including in Judea and Samaria. This was included in the British Mandate. The decision constitutes interference in the electoral system of a sovereign state.”
Sa’ar went on to announce retaliatory measures against Britain following its decision to impose sanctions on Judea-Samaria settlements, including closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem; expelling British representatives from the Gaza coordination headquarters in Kiryat Gat; halting British training of Palestinian Authority forces in Ramallah; and preventing entry into Israel of 12 British public officials involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity. Sa’ar added that Israel will take retaliatory measures against other countries as well.
Reuters is reporting that as of Wednesday morning, British representatives were told by Israel that within 30 days they must leave and close the British consulate in Jerusalem, which has operated for over 125 years.
Israel’s primary leverage to combat these sanctions lies in licensed dual-use and defense technology already embedded in European military inventories, including electro-optical and infrared sensors, ISR and targeting pods, counter-drone systems, electronic warfare equipment, missile-defense software and spare parts. Britain’s Sky Sabre air-defense command software is built on Rafael architecture, Challenger 3 tanks use Rafael’s Trophy protection system, and Elbit supplies night-vision and surveillance equipment. Finland, which joined Tuesday’s statement, is also a David’s Sling customer. Restrictions in these areas would therefore represent a more consequential form of Israeli retaliation than diplomatic measures alone.
Tuesday and Wednesday also found Iran attacking the U.S. multiple times, and the U.S. retaliating by destroying Iranian tankers. Both sides are making contradictory claims about their success, but what is clear is that we are again in that pattern of daily small attacks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said while visiting Colombia that “every time Iran tries to attack U.S. Navy ships, it will lose tankers.”
Both Christianity and Judaism have prophecies that the world will turn against Israel as part of the “birth pangs of the Messiah.” Whether we believe in those types of prophecies or not, we can all believe in the eternal promise of God to protect His people and the land. May we all have the faith and courage to pray for a lasting peace and safety for Israel, her people, and her land, and to believe fully in the power of those prayers.
Chazak u’Baruch

Not Maga.

• Victor Davis Hanson on Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Bolt)

Victor Davis Hanson, a military classicist, historian, and fellow at the Hoover Institution, offered some insight into why Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others, who initially appeared to be allies of the MAGA movement, so quickly became saboteurs.

According to Hanson, it may simply be that when these commentators and politicians spoke with President Trump, they believed themselves capable of guiding the MAGA movement more broadly. In other words, like most people who get a taste for power, they believed they could single-handedly commandeer the movement for their own ends. When the president made clear that wasn’t going to happen, they showed their true colors.
“I think they felt that because they had been very intimate with [Trump] — in the sense that they had been at Mar-a-Lago, or they were on Air Force One — that they insidiously began to think that they could tell him things, and they forgot that he is the president of the United States, and that they represent maybe one-one thousandth of the people he contacts,” Hanson told Miranda Divine of “Pod Force One.”“This is a man who’s talking to the most powerful people in the world, and we’re not that important, but [Greene and Carlson] felt — I don’t know how else to explain why Tucker said he called him and said, ‘Don’t do this with Iran,’ or ‘Don’t do this,’ or ‘Don’t do that,’” he added.
“Why would a president listen to somebody just because he was on Air Force One, and why would Tucker, who’s a very intelligent person, think that he had that entree to affect a policy that would change decades just because he had been on Air Force One or had known Trump?” “I think they misinterpret informality and magnanimity as sort of an allowance for them to have a greater role than they otherwise should or would,” Hanson argued.
“And when they start to exit that role, then they get a snap back from him, and then they get very angry, as if, ‘Well, wait a minute, I was at Mar-a-Lago, I was on Air Force One, I talk’ – and they don’t understand he’s the president of the United States, and that’s the difference.”
“He calls people and he asks how you are and what can he do for you, but you can’t mistake that genuine interest, intimacy and niceness and kindness with the fact that he’s not president of the United States,” he explained. “So, you don’t go to the next step and say, ‘Hey, Mr. President,’ you don’t say, ‘Hey, Don,’ or ‘Hey, this,’ and you wouldn’t assume that you had control.”
The larger question is whether those same forces can be kept in check once President Trump leaves office. MAGA is already looking toward its next generation of leaders, and not all of the possible heirs see the movement, or figures such as Tucker Carlson, the same way. Vice President JD Vance, for example, has said Carlson remains a close friend despite their political disagreements, including Carlson’s criticism of President Trump.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2095574707085214187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2095574707085214187%7Ctwgr%5E68cbd8ba50325e2da916e7b9ec139fbfe564a60a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftownhall.com%2Fnews%2Fdmitri-bolt%2F2026%2F09%2F09%2Fvictor-davis-hanson-has-an-explanation-for-tucker-carlson-and-marjorie-taylor-greene-n2682702

Trump has held together a broad coalition without letting every commentator, donor, or elected official grab the steering wheel. He kept the tent big, but he also kept its loudest would-be saboteurs from ripping it apart. The danger is that, once he is gone, those internal fractures could widen into the kind of open civil war now consuming the Democrat Party as DSA-backed candidates challenge its establishment wing. Whether anyone can preserve MAGA’s coalition with Trump’s same authority may be the movement’s defining test after Trump.

Victor Davis Hanson: When Will the Iranian People Overthrow the Regime?

A rocket without Elon Musk. I have my doubts.

• Investors Are Totally Stoked About This New Rocket (Stephen Green)

Investors are so stoked about this fully reusable rocket that they just ponied up another billion dollars to help get Stoke Space’s Nova Pathfinder Block 2 off the ground. More seriously, Stoke Space was founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin and SpaceX employees, and has yet to get a single rocket into orbit. But investors like what they’ve seen so far, investing a total of $2.3 billion or so in the company’s efforts to design and build a rival to SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 medium lift rocket.

So you might wonder what’s the big deal, since there’s already a Falcon 9 flying about 150 times last year alone. We actually discussed this issue back in August, looking at reports of satellite operators are “in panic” over a gap in available launch capacity as SpaceX retires Falcon 9 over the next few years to focus its efforts on Starship and building out orbital data centers.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn can compete with Falcon 9 on price, but only for larger payloads. And while the booster is designed for reuse, it isn’t designed for rapid reuse, limiting its launch cadence. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur is tailored mostly to pricy national security launches. Both New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur still have teething issues. Other would-be competitors aren’t yet ready for primetime.
“I think it’s fair to say there’s more than a bit of a panic about the availability of launch,” Stoke’s Devon Papandrew told Ars Technica last month. “Even if the four medium-lift new entrants all achieve their goals in terms of flight success and cadence, it’s actually not going to make that much of a difference in demand right away. I’ve been saying for a while that I think 2028 is when this problem becomes really acute.”
Stoke hopes to have its reusable Nova Pathfinder fully operational by then, but there are serious limitations. Falcon 9 can put 17,500 kg (38,600 lb) into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and still land the booster on a drone ship, but Pathfinder can’t keep up. Although the rocket has a fully reusable mode, that’s good for just 3,000 kg (about 6,614 lb) to LEO, or 7,000 kg (about 15,432 lb) on missions that expend the second stage.
That’s where Pathfinder Block 2 comes in, hopefully sometime in 2029 — and that has investors eagerly writing checks to Stoke. “We have already started development on a larger vehicle, and we felt like now is the time to pour gas on that fire and really start full-force development of the larger vehicle, and so that’s the reason for the timing,” Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said on Tuesday, talking about the ONE BILLION DOLLARS the company just raised.
Block 2 is supposed to nearly match Falcon 9’s lift to LEO at 15,000 kg (33,069 lb), but with a kick. Block 2 will lift that much while recovering the booster and the second stage — something Falcon 9 can’t do at all. If customers are willing to pay a little more to expend the second stage, Block 2’s lift increases to 23,000 kg (51,000 lb). Can Stoke actually get that done before 2030?
It would certainly be an impressive feat, and more impressive still if Pathfinder Block 2 could match cadence with demand for launch capacity that’s going nowhere but up. SpaceNews reported on Tuesday that “the Pentagon has more than doubled the number of national security launch services it expects to procure, from 151 in its 2022 baseline to 337” between now and 2032.
That’s an additional $17 billion on the table just in national security launches over the next five years, which is just one reason investors keep pulling out their checkbooks for companies like Stoke.

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2097382579116904819?s=20

Tesla is now worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, GM, Ford, BMW, Honda, Mercedes, and Stellantis combined.

Meet the Cybercab: two seats, no wheel, no pedals, and built to drive itself at scale from Gigafactory Texas.Tesla's bet is that the future isn't cars people drive, it's a… https://t.co/7YfW0YcijB pic.twitter.com/aPVM1ekOvy
— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) September 8, 2026

Tesla’s Optimus factory at Giga Texas is going up fast, built to manufacture up to 10 million humanoid robots a year.

“The foundation of the economy is labor… So what happens when there is no shortage of labor? That’s what Optimus is about.”

"AI + robots will more than… pic.twitter.com/FTFzeN73IK
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) September 9, 2026

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Debt Rattle September 9 2026

Sep 092026

September 9, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: Christianity, globalism, Lavrov, peace, Russia, socialism, Ukraine 33 Responses »

Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910

• Massive Escalation: Iran Sends Ballistic Missile Salvo On Jordan Bases (ZH)

• In Putin Call, Trump Seeks Swift End To Ukraine War (ZH)

• EU Committing ‘Harakiri’ – Lavrov (RT)

• Lavrov Says ‘Start Of Real War’ Emerging (ZH)

• U.S. Emissary Missions to Russia and Ukraine (CTH)

• Socialists Call for “War in the Streets” and the End of Capitalism (Turley)

• Making the World Great One Nation at a Time (J.B. Shurk)

• Wherefore Art Thou, Christianity? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Generation That Built America Was the Last of Its Kind (Victor Davis Hanson)

• The Counterrevolution: Victor Davis Hanson Surveys Trump’s Fall and Rise (Rust)

• President Trump Targets Canada Subsidized Bombardier Manufacturing (CTH)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2096934391129715076?s=20 https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/2097350346217508867?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2097252592481087687?s=20

Not ideal. But Iran with nukes is worse.

• Massive Escalation: Iran Sends Ballistic Missile Salvo On Jordan Bases (ZH)

State Tasnim reports: Iran has launched missiles at targets in response to US strikes, while unofficial sources cited by Tasnim noted that explosions were heard in Jordan following Iranian missile attacks. The below brief recap shows this new flare-up and tit-for-tat came in rapid succession… Senior US officials to FOX:

“US military has struck targets near Kharg Island and Jask. The targets include Iranian oil tankers. This is part of a larger effort to squeeze Iran economically. The strategy includes sinking and disabling Iranian crude oil tankers. -FOX” How many Patriot interceptor missiles are being plowed through this time? More unverified but widely circulating images out of the region overnight:
https://twitter.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2097442661141455233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097442661141455233%7Ctwgr%5Efd1370ed7440d45b27739c1c89f922937bc5fffa%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fhouthis-pummel-southwest-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missiles-yemen-air-ground-war-erupts

Iranian leaders have lately vowed to hit US bases and assets harder in all forthcoming rounds of fighting…
https://twitter.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2097442661141455233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097442661141455233%7Ctwgr%5Efd1370ed7440d45b27739c1c89f922937bc5fffa%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fhouthis-pummel-southwest-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missiles-yemen-air-ground-war-erupts

US Attacks Iran Tankers, After American Navy Ships Targeted IRIB reports that US forces attacked a commercial vessel in the coastal waters of Jask City MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR KHARG ISLAND ANCHORAGE, A KEY IRANIAN OIL EXPORT HUB; CAUSE, ORIGIN & ANY POTENTIAL DAMAGE REMAIN UNCONFIRMED. – MEHR NEWS AGENCY
US is currently attacking Iranian oil tankers, i24 news reports, citing a US source A small Iranian tanker was targeted by a missile attack from the US army 4 miles from Kharg Island, Tasnim reports.
IRAN LAUNCHED UNDISCLOSED SECOND ATTACK ON US SHIPS ON MONDAY: WSJ. NO AMERICAN SHIPS WERE STRUCK IN THE ATTACKS: WSJ.

Fox correspondent confirms Iranian oil tankers (plural) and “targets” (plural) were struck by the United States in recent minutes. This does nothing to “squeeze” Iran, just to be clear. The tankers are inside the US blockade line and the Tanker for Tanker policy is just a… https://t.co/bwLrw9QO7v
— Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) September 8, 2026

Oil Climbs, Brent Near $100
Nothing official has yet to emerge, also amid unconfirmed reporting that Iran’s IRGC Navy has launched anti-ship cruise missiles from Jask toward the Strait of Hormuz. According to breaking Al Jazeera News:
“Several explosions have been heard on Iran’s Kharg Island, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. No official information has been released on the cause or origin of the explosions.”
More from WSJ on the prior Monday attack incident: “No American ships were struck in the attacks, but Iran’s recent attempts to hit American naval assets are raising alarms that the regime is using more sophisticated weapons and could be getting assistance from China or Russia.”

“.. & Restoration Of US-Russia Ties..”

Trump wants peace with Putin, as Europe seeks war.

• In Putin Call, Trump Seeks Swift End To Ukraine War (ZH)

On Tuesday morning President Trump and his Russian counterpart President Putin held a “positive” phone call regarding finding an end to the Ukraine war, the Kremlin side has stated. Russian president aide Yury Ushakov has been the first to provide a readout, with little revealed from the US side in the immediate aftermath. The phone call was “constructive and frank” and lasted exactly one hour, but remains “strictly confidential.”

Likely the White House will also be equally scant in what information it chooses to release, given the sensitivity of the timing, coming just off the weekend shuttle diplomacy by Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Their rare, direct meeting with Putin on Saturday lasted than three hours, after which they traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky, in what was a much more chummy atmosphere, naturally.
Ushakov in his fresh comments described of that prior meeting, “Overall, the visit of the aforementioned American representatives was assessed positively.” He further said “European narratives about a Russian threat” were discussed in the call – an issue now “being used to justify support for Ukraine and increased European military spending.” The readout indicates, “Putin supported Trump’s commitment to building a constructive Russia–US partnership and emphasized that Russia has no hostile plans toward Europe.”
Perhaps the most important part of the Russian readout is seen in the following: “Trump said he wants a breakthrough on Ukraine during his presidency and stressed that ending the conflict could open the way to a major restoration of Russia–US relations.” The only additional information that the Kremlin aide provided was that Trump and Putin agreed that work through direct contact as well as diplomatic channels would “continue”.
The Witkoff-Kushner trip had come a little under two weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. U.S. President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a phone call that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, something that would allow U.S.-Russia ties to be fully restored, the Kremlin said.- Reuters.
The only additional information that the Kremlin aide provided was that Trump and Putin agreed that work through direct contact as well as diplomatic channels would “continue”. The Witkoff-Kushner trip had come a little under two weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a phone call that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, something that would allow U.S.-Russia ties to be fully restored, the Kremlin said.

Reporter: On Ukraine, people are being kidnapped on the streets. Have you seen those videos? If you haven’t seen them, can I send them to your staff?

Trump: Show them, and I will put them out. I know about the videos. I heard about it very strongly. pic.twitter.com/YPfJF8e7Up
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 2, 2026

Despite the public-facing Washington rhetoric, the Iran ~~quagmire… war…~~ “excursion” has not been going so well as the US seems desperate for a final exit and end to the war. So Trump likely wants a “win” ahead of the November midterm elections, hence the sudden revival of pushing Ukraine talks.

“The bloc is making its people suffer while Russia still has plenty of buyers for its energy, the foreign minister has said..”

• EU Committing ‘Harakiri’ – Lavrov (RT)

Sergey Lavrov speaks at the MGIMO University in Moscow, on September 7, 2026.

The EU is effectively committing “harakiri” by abandoning Russian energy in an attempt to hurt Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking on Monday to students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia’s primary college for diplomats, Lavrov argued that European leaders are making their own voters bear the cost of their policies toward Russia.

The EU has committed to phasing out Russian fossil fuels completely by 2027, having drastically reduced Russian oil and gas imports since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Energy costs have risen across much of the bloc, with the US-Israeli war on Iran adding further pressure. Germany, once considered the EU’s industrial powerhouse, has been particularly affected. Its economy contracted in both 2023 and 2024 – the first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades – and is forecast to grow by just 0.5% this year.
“Europe is simply committing harakiri and proudly declaring that its people must suffer… for European values,” Lavrov said, referring to the Japanese ritual suicide also known as seppuku. “Apparently, by ‘European values’ they mean Nazism, burying Nazi criminals with honors, and banning the Russian language, Russian-language education, Russian culture and media, as well as the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” he added. Lavrov argued that the EU’s attempt to pressure Moscow has failed to deprive Russia of customers.
“There’s no panic here whatsoever. We’ve always had plenty of buyers,” he said, adding that Russian exporters have shifted toward “those who are more reliable.” “If Europe wants to pay $800-900 per thousand cubic meters for American liquefied natural gas, what can we do about it?” he asked. Russia has increasingly redirected its energy exports toward Asia amid Western sanctions.
Its seaborne crude shipments to China hit a record 1.86 million barrels per day in January, up 46% year-on-year. Russia has also remained India’s largest oil supplier, selling around 2.1 million bpd in August, or 45% of the country’s imports, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler. Lavrov said the shift should not be viewed as a sudden “pivot to the East,” arguing that Russia has long cultivated economic ties in both directions.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukraine activist, similarly described the EU as a “suicide ship” in April, accusing Brussels of “ideological blindness and incompetence.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged last month that the loss of cheap energy imports had dealt a major blow to the bloc’s economy. Lavrov argued that the policies demonstrate that European leaders “don’t think about the voters that brought them to power.”

Germany next. But not if the AfD can help it..

• Lavrov Says ‘Start Of Real War’ Emerging (ZH)

More tit-for-tat between Russia and Germany amid a deepening diplomatic freeze related to the Ukraine war: the Kremlin announced on Monday that it is closing Germany’s consulate in St. Petersburg, with operations ordered to by suspended by September 18. “It was the German authorities who, once again, provoked a new round of escalation in bilateral relations,” the Foreign Ministry stated, charging that Berlin “bears full and complete responsibility” for the consequences.

A prominent German culture center which has long operated on Russian territory, the Goethe-Institut, is also getting the boot across all branches. All of this is a mirror image of the German government’s earlier move to shutter the Russian consulate in Bonn and Russia’s cultural center in Berlin, also as the EU blamed Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
The harsh words and spiraling diplomatic crisis stems from the drone attack incidents at Germany’s Leipzign Airport last month. There were at least two reported incidents, possibly a third. On the night of August 4, an explosives-laden drone was found on the tarmac near a Ukrainian cargo plane.nThis prompted an urgent airport shutdown, as authorities believes saboteurs were seeking to blow up the plane.
On the following day there was another alleged incident, per German media and officials: Authorities discovered a drone fitted with explosives and a detonation mechanism on the evening of August 4 in the security area of Leipzig/Halle Airport between Ukrainian cargo aircraft and believe a second drone may have collided with a DHL aircraft nearby.
Last week, German media reported a third drone, also loaded with explosives, had also been discovered at the airport. German federal prosecutors described the incident as a “serious attack on Germany’s transport and logistics infrastructure.”
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul had said after initial investigations, “The means used — such as the drone configuration, components, explosives and detonation systems — are known to us from other hybrid operations by Russia and its war against Ukraine.”
The strongest words out of Moscow have come from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this weekend. While the US delegation of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were in Russia for a 3-hour meeting with President Putin, he said that a “real war” between Russia and the West is emerging.
He asserted to a Russian state TV reporter: “This is, by and large, the start of a real war. They expelled the consulate general from Bonn. They’re closing the Russian House in Berlin. I remember that before the start of the Second World War… They want war again.”

Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov on Germany:

But I remember that before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Germans also closed their diplomatic missions.

They want war again. And all those statements made by Merz about how he will make Germany the leading military power… pic.twitter.com/xqfMEJ9bZO
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 6, 2026

Added to this is that Western powers are assisting Ukraine with intelligence to help with its long-range drone strikes against Russia, often against oil refineries very far from the front lines, and even more frequently targeting Moscow of late. And in turn, Russia has been ratcheting its own major missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital and other cities, taking aim at ‘decision-making centers’ too. Zelensky has sought to ‘bring to war to Russia’ – but is really risking very severe escalation that might bring NATO powers into more direct war with Russian forces.

“Moscow described detailed discussions of major U.S.-Russia economic projects, alongside claims that Bessent is choking off offshore and banking channels funding Ukraine via Europe, the UK, and Canada.”

• U.S. Emissary Missions to Russia and Ukraine (CTH)

Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action PAC picks up on the nuance within the comments from Kirill Dmitriev upon the U.S. delegation meeting in Moscow.

Promethean Action – “The Kremlin released rare footage of a high-level meeting between Vladimir Putin and Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, followed by their first trip to Kyiv this term and a comparatively restrained response from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signaling revived U.S. diplomacy on Ukraine. The script argues Putin views the American team as a more trusted broker than European leaders and notes a recent sequence of engagements, including CIA Director Ratcliffe’s public Moscow visit and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s G20 outreach to Russia’s finance minister.
With Kirill Dmitriev present, Moscow described detailed discussions of major U.S.-Russia economic projects, alongside claims that Bessent is choking off offshore and banking channels funding Ukraine via Europe, the UK, and Canada. It then pivots to Argentina’s renewed Malvinas/Falklands push as Trump publicly and reportedly reconsiders automatic U.S. support for British sovereignty, recalling internal U.S. divisions during the 1982 war.”

“Figures like Newsom have even campaigned on denouncing capitalism as “not working”..”

• Socialists Call for “War in the Streets” and the End of Capitalism (Turley)

“You better get ready for … war.” Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.

In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.
Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.
University of California Santa Barbara History Professor Butch Ware said Democrats “must be destroyed” and urged attendees to be ready for “war in the streets.” Notably, in postings on X, Ware has said that candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are too restrained and are being pushed by the establishment “to contain radicalism.”
The professor “of Africa and Islam” whose faculty page is appropriately found under “bware” is the latest radical to dismiss the “Big Tent Party” rhetoric of establishment figures like Schumer. He declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” There is little subtlety in the message, Ware has explained: “You cannot call yourself a revolutionary and not be talking about training with weapons.”
It is another example of the delusion that establishment Democrats have that they will be able to use these radicals to destroy their political enemies but not themselves. After one election victory, socialists chanted “You’re Next!” when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s image came on big-screen televisions.
Hasan Piker has called for a purging of moderates from the Democratic Party. Just last week, Darializa Avila Chevalier declared, “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”
In a video posted to X, Professor Ware called for violence, warning followers that “some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f*cking gunfight.” He menacingly added, “Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.”
This is just the latest example of the type of hate-spewing radical that university departments want to teach in higher education. While purging virtually all Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians from departments, faculty candidates cannot be too radical enough to secure positions on colleges and universities. UCSB pays Professor Ware over $211k to spread this type of lunacy.
Notably, this is the same university that saw a professor lead her students in physically assaulting pro-life advocates on campus years ago. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and later honored by the University of Oregon for her inspiring leadership.
In other events around the country such as “Socialism 2026 Conference,” City University of New York Professor Ruth Gilmore said in a video, “It’s capitalism we’re after,…There isn’t a capitalism that is somehow not racial. There isn’t a capitalism that does not produce and reproduce all kinds of sexual and gender boundaries.”
At my alma mater, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, the half-sister of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has denounced the university and explained that she is only teaching there to bring down the system.
One year after the massacre, Professor Abdelhadi offered an “October 7th blessing” over an attack that murdered, raped, and tortured innocent men, women, and children. She was previously arrested for spitting on officers.
She added “I hope you know that we have a lot of work ahead of us and that we need each other to do that work. We have an imperative to not just imagine a better future, but to build one together. I’ll see you on the streets.”
What is so striking is that these radicals are not hiding their agenda or their hostility toward the Democratic Establishment. William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, previously called for the end of borders, the nation-state, capitalism, and told a leading moderate Democrat to “hurry up and die.”
In the meantime, some Democrats are admitting that, after using the socialists to retake power, they will marginalize them in actual governing decisions. Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) just explained that they will have to block the “crazy” DSA stuff from actually getting to the floor for a vote.
In Rage and the Republic, I discuss how these Democratic leaders are following the same self-destructive delusions of other establishment figures in history who thought that they could use mobs against their opponents while hoping that they could survive.
Figures like Newsom have even campaigned on denouncing capitalism as “not working” as candidates like Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate James Talarico have called to “dismantle” capitalism. Figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris have dismissed loyalty to our core institutions such as the Supreme Court as mere “nostalgia.”
It will not work. These figures are nothing more than “clickety-clack revolutionaries” who convince no one inside or outside the movement. By putting their elections above every other consideration, Democratic leaders are willing to endanger core institutions, values, and even capitalism itself to reacquire power. In so doing, they are embracing the very “mobocracy” that the Founders warned us against in laying the foundations of our constitutional system.

“A nationalist revolution against globalism is brewing.”

• Making the World Great One Nation at a Time (J.B. Shurk)

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.

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.

We need Christianity to defend against islam.

• Wherefore Art Thou, Christianity? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Episcopal Church has a Very Reverend Dean who trans-identifies as a maThe Dean is married to a woman who also trans-identifies as a man and is a Lutheran pastor. So, what do we have here? A marriage between two lesbians or a marriage between two homosexuals.I think we can see why Christianity, once a powerful force, is today so weak and left undefended. It stands for nothing, with the exception that Christian Zionists stand for Israel, not for Christ.

If a person can deny their biological gender and be accepted as the opposite by trans-indentifying, why can’t they do the same for their race, their nationality, or is this already happening? Democrats seem content for allowing immigrant-invaders declare themselves American citizens and grant them Constitutional protections based on their presence in America.
What is the reason that a person cannot declare themselves to be Napoleon or Genghis Khan without being regarded as crazy, but can be taken completely seriously when declaring themselves to be the opposite gender to what they are? Isn t this some kind of logical breakdown in Western civilization, a denial of fact? It does seem that trans-identifying is the beginning of the end of factual existence.
What kind of existence will a non-factual one be?

Does he really mean his own generation? Not, say, the founders?

• Generation That Built America Was the Last of Its Kind (Victor Davis Hanson)

Jack Fowler: Our friend, your friend, and I’m a great admirer of David Mamet, the playwright and screenwriter and author. He wrote a piece the other day in National Review. You were just talking about being uplifted by Hillsdale. Well, David is a little—he’s got a little bit of the Eeyore gene going on, and I know you can relate to that. And his essay was titled “America, History, and Futility.” And I just want to read its conclusion, and then, Victor, you can, you know, I’m giving you permission to expound on it. So, here’s what David Mamet wrote:

“A contemporary remarked that perhaps the pendulum will swing back, and that reason, courtesy, and patriotism will reemerge. But he was wrong, for he could only imagine their reemergence in those, our contemporaries, who understood these attributes as essential for a functional and prosperous society. But to the young, the American century is a disgrace and the American dream a shuck. Histories may be debated, but the irreducible core must be verifiable fact. And what a fact is determined only by Big Brother.”
And here’s his conclusion: “I don’t know if the United States will survive in a form recognizable to my generation. I can’t even describe the current form other than as a civilization split into two factions, one decrying and the other exploiting chaos. I don’t know if prophecy as prediction actually exists, but I know, like Cassandra, that if so, it will do so in no useful form. I don’t know if the sun can actually supply enough power to run our cities, but I know there is nothing new beneath it.” Kind of depressing there, Victor, but maybe he’s kind of realistic. Your thoughts?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I’m prejudiced because I’ve always admired David Mamet, and I like him, and I know him. He’s a very courageous guy. He was beloved by the Left. He was a man not of the hard Left, but he was a liberal. And he finally got sick of it years ago, and, of course, they turned on him, and they turned on him professionally. But he had such a talent and such a name that he persevered. And that essay is kind of a siren song. He’s also saying throughout that essay that the problem with getting old is that you get disconnected, and you become an observer rather than a participant because of the energy levels, physical and mental.
And then second, you get philosophical and you get angry because you know what was destroyed. One thing that’s a subtext, and I think it’s true of all of us, some of us in the boomer cohort actually knew people from the 19th century. And I was blessed because my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather were born in 1890 and 1888, 1889. So, they came of age without electricity, without flush toilets, without tractors, using horses. Everything about them, from their worldview, was imprinted on their childhood in the late 19th century.
So, when I got to know them, when I was 5, say, to 20, when most of them had died, everything about them, their language, their accent, their comportment, was completely foreign to the modern world. If I wanted to go outside, my grandmother said, “Be careful out there yonder. Don’t go out yonder. I’ll give the dickens to you.” What did that mean? Or, “I’ll take a switch to you, ha ha ha.” “Ain’t funny, McGee.” She used to listen to Fibber McGee in the ’30s, I guess. And “There’s the sunset, Victor. It’s sinking in the far, far west tonight.” All this.
And they lived by nature. My grandfather would say, “The birds are nesting early. There’s a big wind stirring up in the south, and that can’t be good.” Or when he’d say something, a moral lecture: “And that’s all there is to it. Now, Victor, there’s two types of people in the world. There are those who pay interest and those who get it. You got to be on the right side of the ledger. I wasn’t. Now that’s all there is to it. And when you get a $20 bill you earned, it’s a lot easier to spend it than to put it in the bank, so put it in the bank.”
All of that parsimoniousness, shame culture, be careful. He would say, “When you got your license, I was worried. I don’t want to drive in and see you drive by me in town with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth or ink on your skin. You understand?” I said, “I do understand.” And then I had a Swedish grandfather who was really, really tough. They had that bad-seed notion. They didn’t believe in therapeutics.
There was a neighbor family that was kind of affluent, and every one of them had been in jail.
So, I said, “Why are they … Is it because they had a divorce, Grandpa? What happened?”
“Well, Victor, there’s a bad seed over there. There’s a bad seed. Now one of them’s no darn good. The other one, not much better. So it’s just a bad-seed family. That’s just all there is. They’re just bad seed.”

“It’s fortunate that Hanson is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, in addition to a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.”

• The Counterrevolution: Victor Davis Hanson Surveys Trump’s Fall and Rise (Rust)

President Donald J. Trump is unique in American history. Never has a candidate or president suffered so many attacks — legally, politically, and physically — yet still kept rising and carrying on his fight.

To tell the story of what Victor Davis Hanson calls the “Trump Decade” (2015-2025) requires someone versed in the rise and fall of empires. It’s fortunate that Hanson is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, in addition to a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Hanson’s newest book, The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement, which will be released on September 8, takes readers from the depths of MAGA despair after the 2020 election, through the wilderness years of the Biden presidency, to the resurgent campaign of 2024, and finally, to the fast-paced, counterrevolutionary second term we’re still living through today. The book ends in January 2026, but an afterword covers events through April 2026.
His erudition is evident, from chapter titles to quotes by Edmund Burke to classical allusions. He describes the Democrats as “The New Jacobin Democrats,” comparing their 21st-century excesses to the radicals of 18th-century France. Who else but a trained classicist could describe Donald Trump after a key figure in Greek literary satire?
The media never really minded all that much when prior Republican presidents called out their liberal bias. They usually either laughed off the mostly impotent charges or considered them welcome proof of their left-wing bona fides, given that the accusations were politely lodged and largely true. Yet Trump was a different sort, an uncensored, loud-mouthed populist out of an Aristophanic comedy. He answered their unprecedented effort to destroy him politically and personally with commensurate or even greater invective.
Each of the nine chapters is so dense with information that each one could serve as a college seminar. A history book club could meet for half a year, examining one chapter a week. I finally had to stop taking notes when I’d dog-eared every other page of chapter three.
Hanson does not emote; nor does he lavishly praise Trump the way an enthusiastic rally-goer would. He is as close to an objective observer as you can find in the world of commentary.
Part One covers the fall of Trump, from the 2020 election to the exhaustive lawfare. It will prove difficult for any Trump fan to relive the days covered in those four chapters: January 6 and the Pelosi commission afterward, as well as the endless lawfare. It wasn’t just the Democrats who were anti-Trump, but at least seven other entities: the media, the administrative state, the Washington political and military hierarchies, the Never Trump Republicans, popular culture, academia, and even other countries that formed what Hanson calls the “Armies of Anti-Trumpers.”
VDH takes us on a quick journey through all the stages of the four-year period of Joe Biden’s presidency, from the quick undoing of Trump executive orders to the failures of “Bidenomics” to the regrettable decision to hurriedly leave Afghanistan.
Consider what was thrown at private citizen and former president Donald Trump in that interim: five criminal and civil suits; a made-for-TV FBI raid on his home, Mar-a-Lago; the efforts in multiple states to remove Trump from the ballot; and, of course, two assassination attempts, one resulting in a death and two injuries, along with an injured Trump.
Part Two, “The Rise,” begins with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Hanson describes Trump as a Nietzschean man, one who survived everything thrown at him. The Aug. 8, 2022, Mar-a-Lago raid might have destroyed him. Yet almost immediately afterward, he moved up in the polls ahead of his primary opponents.
It’s fascinating to go back and look at the 2024 primary. On November 15, 2022, Trump formally announced his candidacy. On November 18, three things happened on the same day. Former Acting Associate Attorney General Matthew Colangelo resigned. He turned up working (at a pay cut) on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s team prosecuting Trump. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel “to investigate Biden’s 2024 opponent.” Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade met with Biden White House counsel staff. Hanson drily recites these facts, leaving the reader to speculate on what, if any, coordination was happening at higher levels.
The rest of Part Two narrates the amazing change between Trump 1, 2017-2021, and Trump 2. In this current second term, Hanson believes that Trump truly is launching a counterrevolution to bring back what Trump views as common sense: “reciprocal fair trade, closed borders, legal-only immigration, progress in curbing or at least no increasing deficits and debt, and a fierce effort to end the recent DEI orthodoxy and the anti-prosperity boondoggles of the Green New Deal.”
Chapter 7, “The Road to a New Old America,” relives the glorious rush of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term. The administration used the tactic of “flooding the zone” to keep its opponents off-key and unable to focus on an attack. The next chapter covers foreign policy and how Trump is aiming at what Hanson describes as “Jacksonian deterrence.”
In the last chapter, Hanson looks at what it will take to keep the MAGA movement alive without Trump. He believes it can be done, thanks to the base Trump has built up, the way Trump’s legacy will “haunt and obsess” Dems, and the way the president has adopted “now-abandoned Democratic issues” such as reciprocal tariffs and tax cuts for the middle class. He warns Democrats that unless they can find a charismatic leader like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama — AND tack to the center — they “are likely to lose any election that pits them against a workman-like MAGA Republican candidate.”

Bombardier used to make only ski-doos.

• President Trump Targets Canada Subsidized Bombardier Manufacturing (CTH)

Bombardier airplane manufacturing sells approximately 55% of its products inside the United States. The company is based in Montreal and manufacturers the airliners mainly in Ottawa; however, component parts are made in the USA and also Mexico. The company has a history of being heavily dependent on Canadian government subsidies and bailouts.

Bombardier employs approximately 5,000 U.S. workers and 12,000 Canadian workers but is also heavily dependent on sales to the USA to maintain over half their business. On the eve of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs against the U.S, President Trump is now recommending a boycott of the airliner. The U.S. airline builder Gulfstream has been blocked from sales in Canada by regulatory slow walking, a non-tariff barrier.
“NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough! Over 50% of their revenue comes from the United States — They live off American Buyers, American Companies, American Airports, and American Service — All while Canada blocks our GREAT American Banks, and Companies, throughout the U.S.A. They even blocked Gulfstream Aerospace from doing business in Canada — Completely unjust and unfair! That Era is OVER! If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a “piggybank.” BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA. AMERICA FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
There is a reciprocity justification for Bombardier sales restrictions in the USA considering the non-tariff barriers that U.S. company Gulfstream faces against their Canadian competition. It will be interesting to see if the Dept of Commerce or USTR enact a regulatory barrier.
Mark Carney has tariffed $50 billion in U.S. exports.
There are one thousand Billions in a Trillion.
The U.S. economy is 32 Trillion.
Put another way, the U.S. economy is thirty-two thousand billions, and Mark Carney has tariffed 50 of them.
Elbows up, I guess.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2097413216796053703?s=20

We redesigned Cybercab production for production over 5 times faster than conventional automotive manufacturing! https://t.co/OUpLMI7XoG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2026

We’re hiring 10,000 robotics trainers in the next 7 days.

$50–$90/hour, fully remote. You’ll review and label videos of robots performing tasks to help them improve.

An entirely new category of work is emerging around teaching robots how to interact with the world.
— micro1 (@micro1_ai) September 7, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle September 8 2026

Sep 082026

September 8, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, Iran, NGO, Trump, Ukraine, USS Abraham Lincoln 34 Responses »

Hokusai VIews of Mount Fuji: Ejiri in Suruga Province 1831

• USS Abraham Lincoln Returning Home After Being “Sunk” Three Times By Iran (ZH)

• AfD and the Most Dangerous Man in Germany (Charlie Martin)

• AfD’s Historic Win Shocks German Political Establishment (ZH)

• Happy Labor Day (CTH)

• Ukraine Cannot Be Settled Like A Business Deal ( Lukyanov)

• British Patriots Clash with Police as NGO Boats Arrive with Migrants (CTH)

• Democrats Have A Midterm Secret They Don’t Want Voters To See (Margolis)

• Good Faith v. Bad Faith (James Howard Kunstler)

• President Trump Lengthy Interview With U.K GB News (CTH)

• Sunday Fights: Energy Secretary Chris Wright vs CBS Margaret Brennan (CTH)

• When “Twelve Angry Men” Becomes One Angry Man (Turley)

Reports show a huge turnout in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt regional election, with @AfD looking at a historic result of 43% or more, they might even get a majority.

Which is massive, because AfD is the key to real change in Germany, and as we all know, Germany is the key to real… https://t.co/tOcducOZ7P
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) September 6, 2026

https://twitter.com/AWills1995/status/2096628133902360658?s=20 https://twitter.com/RippleXrpie/status/2096580990772687048?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2097053220053176816?s=20

AfD https://t.co/T9PcJDtaG8
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) September 7, 2026

How many other stories are being presented this way?

• USS Abraham Lincoln Returning Home After Being “Sunk” Three Times By Iran (ZH)

In yet another example of Iranian social media claims not matching up with reality, the nuclear powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is returning home after a 286 day deployment and 5 days of rest at port in Thailand. The ship was untouched by any signs of combat, despite the IRGC claiming on at least three separate occasions that they had sunk the mighty vessel with drones and missile strikes.

Iranian aligned accounts even spread AI videos and video game clips of a ship sinking, arguing that the clips showed the Abraham Lincoln. Left wing commentators celebrated the news, only to scrub their posts after it was revealed that the information was fake.

Despite resounding evidence to the contrary, many conspiracy advocates asserted that the Lincoln had been hit and the US government was “covering it up.” This also turned out to be nonsense after the carrier arrived at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand for rest and cleaning.
The narrative then shifted, with people claiming that the Lincoln “looked damaged” and disheveled, which proved they were right about Iran hitting the vessel. In reality, the carrier had normal rust and residue caused by months at sea.

Is this rusty scrap metal Abraham Lincoln?
Where did this happen to it? pic.twitter.com/WItS8TBWXd
— Iran Embassy in Zimbabwe (@IRANinZIMBABWE) September 2, 2026

The posts exposed an embarrassing lack of basic knowledge when it comes to natural wear from sea water on naval ships facing long deployments.
https://twitter.com/SprinterPress/status/2095241132477460759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2095241132477460759%7Ctwgr%5Ee579b198696ecbdcef99c7c185499aa0d8bed013%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fuss-abraham-lincoln-returning-home-after-being-sunk-three-times-iran
The ship was cleaned at port with no signs of damage from attack. It has now left Thailand on a return trip to the US and the Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado (San Diego).

Latest Visuals ⚡️:

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) Aircraft carrier wraps visit to Laem Chabang Port, Thailand returning back to South China Enroute towards San Diego pic.twitter.com/9wrE4r3iSY
— OSINT Digest (@Indowatchosint) September 6, 2026

The carrier and all its sailors are accounted for. The return of the USS Abraham Lincoln highlights an incessant disinformation campaign by Iran and Iran supporters, flooding social media with false claims in an effort to win the war in the theater of public opinion. On the ground, the vast majority of supposed IRGC successes have proven to be fake.

The Iran War and the war in Ukraine have become case studies for a new era of digital warfare. Substantial efforts are being made to “play the algorithms” and manipulate consensus. Iran, perhaps more than any government so far, has relied heavily on digital guerrilla tactics as a way to demoralize US operations. They have, of course, received extensive help from sources in the west.
Whether or not one agrees with the reasons behind the war, it is clear that propaganda alone is not going to lead to victory. Tangible realities matter and Iran is being hit with those tangibles in the form of an inflation crisis, import/export crisis and fuel shortage crisis and foreign ships passing more freely through the Strait of Hormuz.
The lesson here is simple: Online discourse is rarely a reflection of the truth. All one has to do is wait a few months for the fog of war to clear and the majority of false claims will melt away.

Is Merz the Most Dangerous Man?

• AfD and the Most Dangerous Man in Germany (Charlie Martin)

Ulrich Siegmund, the head of the party in Saxony-Anhalt, himself received 49% of the vote in his district. The German political press is not happy. Der Spiegel — sort of Germany’s Time — ran a cover story on August 14 calling him “the most dangerous man in Germany.”
https://twitter.com/derspiegel/status/2087860828661797235?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2087860828661797235%7Ctwgr%5E99e09b2cc5d6391fe37f6812817fe01ea51dd91c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fcharlie-martin%2F2026%2F09%2F07%2Fafd-and-the-most-dangerous-man-in-germany-n4956970

The German press reaction was just short of panic. Tagesschau, the German news program, headlined its story “AfD heads see a clear government mandate.” Die Zeit said, “AfD wins state election in Saxony-Anhalt, but failed to win an absolute majority.” Siegmund took the seat from Thomas Staudt of the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union). The CDU is the main center-right party — where “center-right” is a little to the left of the American Democratic Party.
Siegmund was just one race, but the CDU suffered a real electoral bloodbath. The head of the state party, Sven Schulze, lost his seat to AfD’s Christian Mertens. German voters get two votes on the same ballot: one for a person in their district and one for a party. The district winner takes that local seat; the party vote decides how many seats the party gets overall, and the remaining seats are filled from a ranked party list published before the election, so Schulze will probably still have a seat from the party list.
Overall, CDU — which had control of the state — lost 41 seats. It won 0 district seats, so it fell from 40 to 15. The CDU can only retain control of the state’s legislature if it can form a coalition with every other party that won seats. That includes a new party, the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht), which split from the left over migration and NATO/Ukraine skepticism. The FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei) — a classical liberal party, not what we call “liberal” — got no seats at all. This was a major defeat, as FDP has been part of the CDU-SPD-FDP coalition that had governed until the election.
N-tv, a private news network sort of like Germany’s CNN, had this to say: When the CDU loses a state election, it always feeds back into federal politics — especially when the CDU is the party in government. What happened in Saxony-Anhalt, though, blows past anything seen before. The CDU there was cut in half; the AfD doubled. That doesn’t just raise questions. It puts federal politics itself in doubt.
Friedrich Merz, after all, is a historically unpopular chancellor. That has to do with broken campaign promises, clumsy communication, and sloppy craftsmanship. Best example: his sparse campaign appearances in Saxony-Anhalt. Party colleagues there hid him on factory visits and carefully avoided any contact with actual people. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern recently showed what happens next: whistles and boos.
The current German government and associated NGOs are trying to formally ban the AfD. This started when the Verfassungsschutz, the domestic intelligence service, tried to classify the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist”, although it was blocked for the moment after the AfD sued. But several state branches — including Saxony-Anhalt — are already classified as confirmed extremist. An attempt was made in the Bundestag to examine formally banning AfD, and an NGO, the GFF (Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte), published a 1,500-page legal analysis supporting the potential ban. So far, the government hasn’t attempted to actually ban the AfD.
It’s easy to understand why Germany is suspicious of “right-wing” parties, especially after the National Socialist “Nazi” party was defined as “right wing.” But the AfD is more like the MAGA movement, and the AfD is certainly courting the link — which is naturally used by the legacy press as a smear. The curse “may you live in interesting times” should probably be translated to German.

They hope it’s only in a small state.

• AfD’s Historic Win Shocks German Political Establishment (ZH)

The pro-Germany, anti-globalist, anti-mass migration right-wing populist party known as Alternative für Deutschland delivered its strongest election result ever in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, dealing a sharp blow to Germany’s political establishment. On Sunday, AfD secured 43.8% of the vote in Sunday’s regional election, exceeding polling estimates. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats lost about 19 percentage points, while turnout surged to 77.8% from 60.3% in 2021.

According to Marion Mühlberger, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, AfD’s weekend win leaves the party holding 39 seats in the 83-member legislature, three short of an absolute majority. The CDU, Social Democrats, Greens and Left also have a combined 39 seats. Mühlberger said there are two possible outcomes of what comes next: an AfD minority government tolerated by BSW, or a political stalemate that leads to a snap election, which would only give AfD a new opportunity to secure outright control.

German AfD Leader Alice Weidel:

Germany is de facto bankrupt. Germany is broke, and they are not telling you that.

At some point, you simply have to lay the cards on the table and put the numbers out there. The whole thing is no longer financially sustainable.

France is broke… pic.twitter.com/nJaYk9btDz
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 7, 2026

Mühlberger explained:”At the time of writing, the two most likely options are i) an AfD minority government (supported by the BSW) or ii) a stalemate resulting in snap elections, with the AfD hoping to reach an absolute majority rather than attempting a minority government. AfD leadership for now appears undecided on their preference: while national co-leader Chrupalla last night indicated a willingness to try a minority government, AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, already suggested a snap election as his preferred option, saying that “the AfD is not prepared to make far- reaching compromise to form a coalition.”
We believe that even an AfD (minority) government supported by the BSW would have materially detrimental ramifications for the economic prospects of Saxony-Anhalt over the coming years. Direct investment in the state would likely decline amid significant policy uncertainty, and skilled worker shortages would likely become even more pronounced. However, Saxony-Anhalt contributes less than 2% of German GDP, and any structural damage done to the regional economy is unlikely to spill over to the rest of the German economy. While an AfD state government might test some of Germany’s federal institutions, it will have no leverage over national economic or fiscal policy, not even via the constitutional court.
Over the course of today, we will see leaders of the coalition parties in Berlin officially react to their parties’ weak electoral performance. Chancellor Merz is expected to give a press statement today at 13.30 CET. There will likely be considerable political noise over the couple of weeks ahead of the state elections on 20 September in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There may be some criticism of party leadership and reform proposals. However, once these final state elections of the year are over, we believe that an AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt is likely to provide an additional impetus for the federal government coalition to double down on reforms.”
Mühlberger said the five seats held by the populist BSW will be decisive: “Thus, the populist BSW, with its 5 seats, has a key role to play in the upcoming coalition negotiations as potential kingmakers. While the AfD missed their 45+% / absolute majority election target, they missed it so narrowly that it seems difficult for them to not aim for governing Saxony-Anhalt

As no single party reached an absolute majority needed to govern alone, coalition negotiations for entering a formal coalition or receiving ad hoc support for a minority government will kick off today. The BSW has theoretically three options once the new parliament has convened and the next state premier is to be elected. First, they could elect the AfD lead candidate as state premier (without entering a formal coalition), second they could elect the CDU lead candidate or third they could abstain in the first two ballots for state premier. Judging from statements of BSW co-leaders (at the federal level) Wagenknecht and Ali yesterday night,1 we deem the first option the most likely. What comes next? There are two options:
Option 1 – BSW abstains in third round facilitating an AfD minority government This morning, BSW leader Wagenknecht called for a “political reset” in Saxony- Anhalt, especially when it comes to energy policy, sanctions against Russia (which however are set at the EU level), education, and public broadcasting. Thus, there is a certain overlap of political priorities with the AfD. However, the BSW does not want to enter a formal coalition with the AfD.
With the AfD rejecting the BSW’s proposal for an independent state premier, an AfD minority government tolerated by the BSW seems to be a possible outcome. This means that the BSW would not enter a formal coalition with the AfD, but elect the AfD lead candidate as state premier in an informal cooperation.
Option 2 – The route to snap elections The newly elected parliament must convene for the first time by 6 October at the latest. But the regional constitution does not set a deadline for electing a state premier. Until a new government is elected, Sven Schulze will remain in office leading the caretaker government. As government formation could turn out to be complex, snap elections may be a possible way out. The AfD’s lead candidate Siegmund already suggested this as a potential option, saying that the AfD is not prepared to make far-reaching compromise to form a coalition.
There are three routes to snap elections: If the newly elected parliament does not elect a state premier with an absolute majority after two ballots, it can decide with an absolute majority to dissolve itself before a third ballot. Six months after the election, the new parliament can decide with a two- thirds majority to dissolve itself. A newly elected state premier could call a vote of confidence. This could be a viable option for an AfD minority government, confident of winning an absolute majority in snap elections.
It is highly uncertain that snap elections would generate clear majorities. What could help the AfD is the narrative that the other parties want to keep them out of power, and that they now need a clear mandate. Moreover, smaller parties would again be at risk of not making the 5% hurdle, which would help the AfD. On the other hand, the strong AfD performance could again mobilise the centrist forces to avoid the AfD winning an absolute majority.
Mühlberger’s assessment was that an AfD majority in Saxony-Anhalt could weaken investment and aggravate skilled-worker shortages. She cited policy uncertainty, the party’s anti-mass migration agenda, and potential conflict with the civil service. For Merz, the most consequential challenge is containing AfD’s momentum in the upcoming elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on Sept. 20.

German AfD Leader Alice Weidel:

No chancellor before him has been as unpopular as Friedrich Merz, who has become a major burden on Germany’s positive development. pic.twitter.com/2jnLjadz34
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 7, 2026

Sorry, day late.

• Happy Labor Day (CTH)

Labor Day hits a little different this year, as there are elements outside our assembly seeking to fracture the coalition of pragmatic conservatives. The noise is louder, the distractions more intense and the stakes of resetting the economic balance sheet in favor of Main Street are higher. For all of those reasons and more, it seems more difficult to keep moving forward with economic nationalism as the roadmap.

However, we remind ourselves that everything of great purpose comes from within, and from a loving God. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said: “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
It’s Labor Day in America. We pause and celebrate work, productivity, problem solving, and the value of our workforce. A nation built on ingenuity – so long as we tend the flickering flame of liberty. So, to all of you who do not take part in the grand lies and manipulations that surround us, THANK YOU!

No other nation on earth was conceived to allow people to manifest their own destiny while keeping government out of their lives. The vision, the premise and the purpose, was to allow you the freedom to determine your place in life; and even, at any time, change that determination and strike off in an entirely new direction. Our American labor and aspirations would not be pre-determined by caste, tier, creed or social status; but rather by our personal vision for our own future. The right of self-determination. This is a uniquely American attribute.
Labor Day is a moment when we reflect on the value of work, the great benefit of endeavors achieved, the pride in accomplishment -regardless of scale- amid this thing we call life. But ultimately, all of these considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the money we assemble in the process. We ain’t taking any of it with us folks.
When you hold open the door, you make a difference. When you choose to stand against fraud and deceit, you make a difference. When you pray with purpose you make a difference. When you hold no tolerance for chaos, you make a difference. When you show up, even when you are not sure what comes next, you make a difference. When you achieve in silence because silence is not a mistake, you make a difference.
It is who you are that makes a difference. That is the currency of our life. Regardless of your chosen occupation or effort, you do it well. You live your standard. You have paid the price for your peace. Be proud of yourself. Allow the method of your labor to express the value of who you are and celebrate the accomplishment.
You matter!
Thank you for your fellowship and for your kindness.
With warmest personal regards,
Happy Labor Day!

“Why American peace diplomacy keeps going in circles..”

Lukyanov thinks US is not capable of understanding Russia’s ways.

• Ukraine Cannot Be Settled Like A Business Deal ( Lukyanov)

Diplomatic efforts to end an acute and bloody armed conflict should always be welcomed and the persistence of Donald Trump’s administration, which has pursued this goal for more than a year and a half, also deserves recognition, even if the results so far can hardly be called outstanding.

At the very least, the White House remains the only actor in the West both attempting to change the situation and possessing significant leverage over it. Trump and his closest associates probably do genuinely want the war to end as its continuation distracts Washington from foreign policy priorities they regard as more important. But why, then, does Trump’s diplomatic initiative keep going round in circles, with each new attempt ending in another disappointment?
Trump and his principal envoys tend to approach the conflict as an extraordinarily difficult but essentially technical problem, as a puzzle to be solved in isolation from the wider international system. This reflects the worldview of the current White House, where international affairs are a collection of practical problems to be resolved in ways that strengthen America’s position, preferably with some commercial benefit attached. Given the professional backgrounds of the president and his two principal intermediaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, this is hardly surprising.
Such an approach can be useful as an instrument, but it becomes less useful when it substitutes for an understanding of the processes that produced the conflict in the first place and, to use the Russian formulation, its root causes. Any durable settlement requires some understanding of what must change in relations between the major powers if similar confrontations are to be avoided.
Trump repeatedly insists that the war would never have begun had he been president in 2022 with the implication that Joe Biden and the Democrats were simply too incompetent to prevent it. Trump has occasionally acknowledged that NATO’s long expansion eastward contributed to the crisis, but he generally shows little interest in the broader military and political processes behind it.
Yet American and NATO policy towards Ukraine wasn’t created by one administration or a handful of officials in Washington and Brussels, rather it developed over decades from a particular conception of Western strategic interests. The crisis that entered its most acute phase in 2022 was, from Moscow’s perspective, the culmination of processes underway since the end of the Cold War.
This helps explain why Washington continues to underestimate how much the outcome matters to the principal participants. For both Russia and Ukraine, too much is at stake for the conflict to be settled through the kind of transaction Trump instinctively favors, given their interests are obviously opposed, but both regard the outcome as fateful. Western Europe, having invested heavily in Ukraine’s cause, also has a direct political stake in the result, so every new attempt by Washington’s two brokers therefore encounters the same obstacle in that none of the parties sees this as simply another deal.
There’s another contradiction in the American position because Washington wishes to become the principal mediator in a conflict whose continuation it has materially supported.The US position has certainly changed under Trump as Washington’s previous fixation on Ukraine has diminished considerably. Trump would prefer America to step back while retaining decisive influence over what happens next, but that is precisely where the difficulty begins.
Transferring the financial burden, political responsibility and risks to the Western Europeans while continuing to dictate the terms requires a degree of obedience from junior partners that Washington can no longer guarantee. EU governments and Kiev have also learnt how to deal with this unconventional president and when they can’t persuade him, they have become increasingly adept at circumventing his pressure.
The one American instrument against which there would be little defence is a complete cessation of military support, but Trump is unlikely to take that step, even if he were personally inclined to do so because facilitating an outright Russian victory isn’t his objective. He may care less than his predecessor about the precise shape of the eventual settlement, but a complete Ukrainian defeat would be another matter. Nor would abandoning Ukraine enjoy much support across the American political establishment, where there is virtually no constituency for a fundamental rapprochement with Russia.

Goverment treason.

• British Patriots Clash with Police as NGO Boats Arrive with Migrants (CTH)

Apparently, there was an organized boatlift of north African migrants crossing from France into the U.K earlier today. Various non-governmental organizations were in place with tents and supplies to assist the migrants upon arrival. By most accounts the influx appears to have been facilitated by NGO’s working with British authorities. However, at various ports where the migrants arrived, they were met with hundreds of young British men who attempted to blockade the activity of the police and nefarious human traffickers.

Telegraph – Hundreds of protesters have clashed with police in Portsmouth after a mega-dinghy carrying 140 migrants reached the UK from Normandy.Around 500 demonstrators are believed to have joined a protest in the area on Sunday night, with some dressed in all black – similar to those who joined an anti-illegal migrant protest which blocked the Port of Dover on Saturday.The large boat of migrants – believed to be the longest-ever Channel crossing by people-smugglers – was intercepted in the Solent between the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth earlier on Sunday.
Police used riot shields and pepper spray to force the crowds back, but the line broke through the weight of numbers. Protesters then made their way inside the marina compound. Earlier, George Madgwick, the leader of Reform UK in Hampshire, wrote in a post on X that “over 100 migrant men” had arrived on the Portsmouth shore.The French coastguard said it had detected the mega-dinghy, which was shadowed by a number of rescue boats in case it got into difficulties. Authorities estimated that up to 140 people were on board the vessel, 90 short of the record 230 who crossed on a similar boat last month.
[…] In a livestream from the scene, Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo – an associate of Right-wing activist Tommy Robinson – encouraged viewers to travel to Portsmouth to join the protest.Thomas could be seen standing in the sea at the Eastney shingle beach, alongside a small group of other protesters, with police officers looking on.“Roads are all blocked, they are never going to be able to leave here,” Thomas said. He added: “It was only yesterday (at the protests in Dover) when we warned them that we will not accept this any more, and that this is no longer an option to tell us that the boat numbers are down.
“This isn’t about the numbers being down… this is about understanding that this has to come to an end now.” The mega-dinghy – launched from a beach east of Cherbourg in the Baie de la Seine – reflects a change in tactics used by people-smugglers, who have started loading more migrants on to fewer and larger vessels, partly because of the success of law enforcement in disrupting boat and equipment supply chains. (read more) https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2096749963250164204?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2096749963250164204%7Ctwgr%5E14a1fdc000c3321ec76c5c1444e562133fe679bb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F09%2F06%2Fbritish-patriots-clash-with-police-as-organized-ngo-boats-arrive-with-unwanted-migrants-on-the-coast%2F
Remarkable stuff from Danny and the lads with him.

This is sacrifice of oneself to the brutality of the British state and its’ overlords

I have only admiration. And shame that I am not there

pic.twitter.com/g5j3ycOhtS
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) September 7, 2026
https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2096746349907652886?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2096746349907652886%7Ctwgr%5E14a1fdc000c3321ec76c5c1444e562133fe679bb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F09%2F06%2Fbritish-patriots-clash-with-police-as-organized-ngo-boats-arrive-with-unwanted-migrants-on-the-coast%2F

“They don’t even put anything out because it’s so unpopular. What are they going to say? ‘We’re going to abolish ICE’? No one wants to do that, Harold.”

• Democrats Have A Midterm Secret They Don’t Want Voters To See (Margolis)

With roughly two months left before the midterm elections, Democrats still don’t have a lock on winning back the majority, despite nearly everything in the political environment supposedly being in their favor. Between history, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings, and gas prices, polls should consistently give them a huge edge. Yet the most recent Harvard-Harris poll showed the GOP ahead by two points among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot.

The reason isn’t complicated once you look at what Democrats are actually campaigning on: nothing.Think about it. Their entire pitch is about resisting Donald Trump. Ask what they would do with a majority, and you’ll get vague talking points about affordability (something they failed miserably at when they were in power) instead of an actual policy agenda. That’s deliberate, and it’s the same playbook Democrats ran in 2020: sound moderate enough to win the general election, then govern like radicals when you’re in power.
Jesse Watters spelled out exactly why during a heated back-and-forth with Harold Ford Jr. on The Five last week, and it was more revealing than anything Democrats have said about their own strategy. “Your party is nuts, all right,” Watters told Ford. “They don’t even put anything out because it’s so unpopular. What are they going to say? ‘We’re going to abolish ICE’? No one wants to do that, Harold.” Ford insisted that the DSA, not the DNC, supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which isn’t true. “No. The DNC voted to get rid of ICE last week. I think you were on vacation,” Watters quipped.
Watters then brought up the example Democrats should be embarrassed to have avoided: Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America, a written, public, specific policy platform that Republicans ran on and that preceded their historic victory in which they won a House majority. “Remember Newt’s Contract [with] America?” Watters asked. “Put it out. I mean, I dare you guys to put it out.” They won’t take him up on it. Why? Because if Democrats actually laid out their real agenda and demanded that voters hold them to it, they’d never win.
“You guys want to nationalize the $2 trillion health insurance industry. You can’t do it because it’s stupid, Harold. You guys want to do the Green New Deal again? It didn’t work, you can’t do it,” Watters said. Both ideas failed to pass even when Democrats held the House, the Senate, and the White House at the same time. A party doesn’t campaign on ideas this unpopular.

“Tell Hakeem to meet with ME.” @JesseBWatters says Democrats are hiding an unpopular agenda, warning Hakeem Jeffries is caught between the DSA wing going “BONKERS” and presidential hopefuls trying to look normal. pic.twitter.com/9MGWcjnyH7
— The Five (@TheFive) September 5, 2026

That leaves House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) squeezed between two factions that want opposite things. The activist wing of his caucus wants confrontation: impeachment votes, government shutdowns, investigations into anything connected to Trump. The party’s presidential hopefuls want the opposite because they know the general-election electorate has no appetite for it. Jeffries doesn’t have enough control over his own caucus to make either side back down, which is exactly why the Democrat Party’s message heading into November amounts to three words: “orange man bad.”
If their ideas were popular, they’d run on them the way Gingrich did in 1994. The fact that they won’t tell you what they’re planning is the clearest evidence yet that they already know you wouldn’t vote for it.

“In conditions of mass democracy, the soft and the infantilising will be preferred over the hard and the necessary again and again.” —Eugyppius on X

• Good Faith v. Bad Faith (James Howard Kunstler)

Massachusetts Women Demonstrating in Favor of Triple Child Homicides

Clusterfuck Nation never sleeps, even while everybody else lays aside their labors. Later today we’ll light up the ceremonial grill, but for now it’s onto the tribulations of this dolorous moment in history.

It was just such a sparkling September morning twenty-five years ago when those hijacked airliners knifed into the World Trade Center towers (plus the Pentagon + a field outside Shanksville, PA). Despite all the forensic debate since then, I go with the original explanation that four teams of jihadi maniacs did the 9/11 deed. And also, yet, despite all the official defenses mounted since then — the Patriot Act, etc. — here we are allowing a massive Islamic infiltration and even takeover of many places in America, proving, at least, that history is trickster.
After the trauma of 9/11, you can’t deny our country went off the rails psychologically, along with the rest of Western Civ, as if its immune system broke down and the body politic admitted all kinds of malevolent parasites into itself. They have induced disease in most of society’s organs — our institutions — the main political parties, the news media, the government agencies, the foundations, the schools, the arts & letters. The West’s collective brain got badly damaged in the process.
The disease is identifiable, though some of its mechanisms remain mysterious. The disease is called bad faith: acting or speaking falsely, and knowingly so. Pretending one thing as a cover for meaning something else, such as hollering about “justice” when you really mean vengeance; “inclusion” when you mean to cancel others out of careers and livelihoods; “diversity” when you won’t tolerate disagreement; “democracy” when you just want to push everybody else around.
The forces behind all this give off an odor of the occult. You can perhaps name and locate some of the engines driving it — the “Globalists,” the Marxists, the London banks, the EU, the WEF, the São Paulo Forum, the CCP — but their motives remain obscure. Angela Merkel has stated plainly why she allowed the mass immigration of the Third World into Germany (and thereby into all Europe due to the Schengen agreement that erased the EU nations’ borders): “to counter right-wing extremism,” she said. That sounds pretty clear, but it also seems quite crazy. And why on earth does Ursula von der Leyen do everything possible to keep that going? Have the migrants not sufficiently demonstrated their antipathy to Western society? How many rapes, knifings, beheadings, café massacres, and Christmas Village drive-throughs does it take?
It’s also hard to fathom how the London bankers (whoever they are?) have any sympathy with the Marxist revolutionaries who want to end the concept of private property and the instrumentalities of money that go with it. Or how the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations became so enamored of socialism. Or why the CIA seems bent on betraying the American common good. Or how come the League of Women Voters stridently opposes common sense election reform.
The race hustle is more comprehensible. It operates within a permission-structure built on the agonizing differential between success and failure. It’s just plain extortion: our failure is your fault, so pay up. And meanwhile, thanks for no-bail-and-no-jail, and for permission to shoplift, rape, murder, loot, and riot when we feel like it. (And cry harder about it.) It’s an obvious sado-masochistic setup.
The gender game gets more complicated, but it also comes out of a permission-structure based on success / failure, aggravated by a mutual shortage of marriageable males and females forced to compensate for any combination of bad luck and bad choices that lead to failure in life. But that dynamic has been neatly hijacked by groups seeking to create as much social chaos as possible. Why else would the Democratic Party get so avid for drag queen story hours in the early school grades? Is it not obvious that this isn’t really comedy, as claimed? Rather, it’s the presentation of women as monsters. Have you ever stopped to wonder how many of the kids watching these exhibitions are actually terrified by the disturbed adult males acting-out in their faces?
And now, the gender lunacy has climaxed — in Massachusetts, arguably the craziest US state — where mobs of deranged women chant and blubber in sympathy outside the courthouse where a mother who strangled her three kids just got off the hook. The kids were unfairly cluttering up Lindsey’s life, you understand. . . .If anything is an apt tipping point for a society to go one way or another, there it is.

FYI

• President Trump Lengthy Interview With U.K GB News (CTH)

Against the popular uprisings currently taking place in Great Britain, this interview takes on additional context. Last week, just before the civil protests broke out on the shores of the U.K, President Trump sat down for an interview with GB News about issues and current events that hit both sides of the Atlantic.

President Trump answers questions about topics that pertain to both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as well as the interconnectivity of the relationship to the United States. The interview is pragmatic, focused and deliberate as President Trump presents his perspectives on the challenges that face both nations.
Obviously one of the key policy issues facing the U.K is the topic of migration, and President Trump puts the issue into a factual framework of government accepting the problem. These are choices being made by political leadership against the interests of their citizens. The interviewer, Bev Turner, is fraught with political correctness and somewhat stunned by President Trump’s lack of pretense. WATCH:

“It’s the western hemisphere, Margaret”

• Sunday Fights: Energy Secretary Chris Wright vs CBS Margaret Brennan (CTH)

The Sunday pearl clutching begins with CBS’s Margaret Brennan directing her adversarial prose toward U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Secretary Wright is such a pro in this interview. “It’s the western hemisphere, Margaret”

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We begin today with the U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who joins us from Denver. Mr. Secretary, it is Labor Day, and Secretary Bessent had predicted we’d see three-dollar gas by September 20th, depending on the Iran talks. Do you think we’re going to be back at three bucks in the next two weeks?
SECRETARY OF ENERGY CHRIS WRIGHT: Well, we’ve passed peak demand time with Labor Day tomorrow, the end of the summer driving season, and the Trump administration a couple weeks ago rolled out a change in regulations that’ll allow American refiners to produce more gasoline and diesel with their existing equipment. So, seeing demand likely go down in the next few weeks and supply going up, I think prices headed downward is- is not an unreasonable expectation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What about the diesel fuel that trucks and trains rely so heavily on? We saw that record high price of $5.89 a gallon this week. Is for example, an export ban off the table?
SEC. WRIGHT: You want to keep as much energy flowing as possible. The diesel situation has been challenging because Russian refineries have suffered significant damage. Russia used to be a meaningful exporter of diesel. Today, today they don’t export any diesel, and in fact, they’ve become a meaningful importer of gasoline. So its global refining capacity is why gasoline and diesel prices are high, even more than oil prices. And this is- for 17 years, Democrat policies have been attack hydrocarbons, get as many refineries and coal plants closed. You could summarize their energy and climate policies in two words, expensive energy.
[..]

Weird.

• When “Twelve Angry Men” Becomes One Angry Man (Turley)

“I hope that guy can sleep well at night.”

Those words from Kevin Reddington on the steps of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Courthouse were part of a diatribe against the “guy” who was reportedly the sole holdout in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The scene was a fitting end to a visceral trial, but it added a vindictive element that should prompt Judge William Sullivan to call out the seasoned defense attorney.
After declaring that the 11-1 mistrial was “no time to gloat,” Reddington bragged repeatedly about “crushing” District Attorney Tim Cruz, whom he also attacked. He insisted that, in the trial, no one said a single negative thing about his client as a mother — ignoring that little matter of the three young children whom she had strangled to death, one by one.
But it was his attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency. Reddington knows it is very likely that the name of this juror (he has already been identified as one of only three males on the jury) will eventually be uncovered by Internet sleuths. He effectively put a target on the back of a juror who committed the unpardonable sin of not being convinced by his arguments.The fact that this is one of the three male jurors only ramped up the rage. This case prompted a striking gender divide between men and women, with many women expressing sympathy for Clancy and anger at the system for failing her.
For Reddington and many viewers, the hung jury was less “Twelve Angry Men” and more like “One Angry Man.” Indeed, in addition to attacking the juror, women outside of the courthouse heckled Cruz as he tried to speak to the press, shouting that he “only cares about the three children. What about the Mom?” Reddington followed up by saying that Cruz really did not care about the children (because he looked down to read their names). He also accused the holdout jurors of wasting the time of the jury, complaining “that guy stole seven weeks from those jurors.”
It was an ironic twist on the 1957 classic. In that movie, Juror number eight (Henry Fonda) was repeatedly attacked for “wasting time” and not yielding to the majority — until he ultimately convinced all of his peers.
Earlier in the day, Reddington had asked a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice for an emergency order to force Sullivan not to declare a mistrial, and instead to remove the holdout in favor of an alternate. It was an utterly meritless effort, but Reddington used the filing to further denounce the juror. He compared the juror’s refusal to vote for his client as akin to leaving a racist on a jury. In this case, he suggested that the “guy” was a virtual anti-disability version of “Bull” Connor or some deranged “ableist.”
The rising hatred toward this juror reflects how an act deemed noble in one context can be denounced as craven in another.Take the 1957 classic movie. Viewers love to watch Henry Fonda stand alone against his fellow jurors to raise reasonable doubt in favor of the young defendant. But in this version, the sole juror believed that his fellow jurors were ignoring the defendant’s culpability. Imagine the movie’s outcome if Reddington’s approach had been accepted in 1957, where Fonda could be pulled into court, questioned about his intransigence, and ultimately replaced with an alternate in order to flip the vote.
For all of the anger it has generated, the Clancy trial shows the best of our justice system. We have a system in which a single juror can stand against not only the rest of the jury, but against the world. The trial showed zealous counsel on both sides and a conscientious judge who ensured a fair trial despite the powerful emotions in society. You can disagree with this juror and the outcome but still celebrate that our legal system comes down not to judges or lawyers, but to simple citizens doing justice in thousands of cases a year. It comes down to whether every juror can vote not for a popular choice, but for a moral one.
That is why some of us were so shocked by Reddington’s public attack on this one juror. This is not who we are supposed to be as officers of the court. We stand in the path of the mob, not leading it. In another great movie, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Gregory Peck captured that role from the novel most vividly as Atticus Finch, standing before a jail to stop a lynch mob. Finch showed that the strength of any legal system is ultimately only as strong as each individual’s ability to stand alone. He tells his daughter Scout, “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Heres why the EU wants the @AfD banned, democracy overturned (like in Romania) and control of the Pro War cabal maintained. pic.twitter.com/6EhbxSUpRs
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) September 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2097078858826580400?s=20

This is sound advice for many of the nations of Europe that are drowning in a sea of illegal immigrants, rising crime rates, educated people fleeing for other nations, rising inflation and debt and untold misery in many of the inner cities of Europe.

America should heed these… https://t.co/GDaM4nWgRc
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) September 8, 2026

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