Zero Hedge

Inside Five Years Of Taliban Rule Since US Chaotic Exit

Inside Five Years Of Taliban Rule Since US Chaotic Exit

Via Middle East Eye

Five years after the Taliban’s return to power on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has transformed from a chaotic battlefield into a functioning but deeply authoritarian state. Foreign troops are gone, and fragmented opponents have failed to mount a significant challenge to Kabul’s centralized control. The movement has established a degree of internal security unimaginable under the previous government. 

However, this stability rests on systematic exclusion, most notably of women, leaving the nation economically fragile and politically isolated. While the Taliban have proven they can govern without western support, they remain an international pariah managing a historic humanitarian crisis.

via AFP

Afghanistan today is quieter than before 2021, but it is also poorer, more isolated, and severely repressive towards half its population.  The regime's primary achievement in its first five years was territorial consolidation. The next five will test whether it can survive mounting internal and external pressures. 

Criminalization of Public Criticism

The central story of the last five years is the patient, quiet accumulation of power by the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who operates from Kandahar. Since his appointment in 2016, Akhundzada has transitioned the movement from an insurgency to a rigid governing authority. 

Akhundzada has built a powerful network, ensuring key state positions, including the premiership, the central bank, and the chief justiceship, sit in Kandahari hands. This is reinforced by a massive patronage system of roughly 15,000 registered madrassas, in which students receive stipends and teachers receive graded salaries. This network secures the loyalty of the provincial clergy, the movement’s core constituency, by granting them both status and sustainable resources. 

In Kabul, high-profile figures such as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Maulvi Yaqoob, and Amir Khan Muttaqi manage daily governance, economic policy, and foreign diplomacy. However, real power resides in Kandahar, where a 119-article criminal procedure code was quietly approved in early 2026 to cement absolute obedience and criminalize public criticism. 

“Hibatullah’s influence reaches far beyond religious affairs: major political, judicial, and administrative decisions increasingly reflect the preferences of the Kandahar leadership,” Muhammad Israr Madani, an Islamabad-based analyst and co-author of a book on state-building in the Taliban-led Afghanistan, told Middle East Eye.  

This centralization of power in Kandahar has “strengthened the Taliban’s ability to prevent internal fragmentation” while creating “resentment among commanders who believe that power is becoming excessively concentrated in one faction”, a mid-level Taliban leader who oversaw Khost told MEE in early 2024.  

Yet he emphasized that internal disagreement should not be mistaken for imminent collapse; top leaders recognize that unchecked conflict could cause the regime to crumble.

Ultimately, the Taliban have learned a crucial state-building lesson: durable control requires more than military force - it depends on patronage, financial leverage, ideological alignment, and the institutional capacity to systematically reward loyalty.

Economic void

Afghanistan faces a multifaceted economic crisis defined by structural dependency and extreme isolation. 

Following the 2021 takeover, Afghanistan lost international grants that previously covered 75 percent of public expenditure. The financial void was exacerbated by the freezing of $7bn in central bank assets and the suspension of US humanitarian funding in early 2025, which previously accounted for about 45 percent of the country’s aid lifeline.

While the Taliban have managed the economy better than many observers expected, expanding revenue collection through more effective customs duties and mining royalties, this has not translated into recovery for ordinary Afghans. Today, about 75 percent of Afghans cannot meet their basic needs. 

Economic expansion slowed from 2.3 percent in fiscal year 2023/2024 to 1.9 percent in 2024/2025, according to a May report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

Rapid population growth, fuelled by the expulsion of over five million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan since 2023, has outpaced these minimal gains. Consequently, real GDP per capita fell by an estimated 2.1 percent in 2025/2026, straining communities with scarce jobs and overstretched infrastructure, the UNDP added.  

Compounded by natural disasters, particularly earthquakes, diplomatic isolation, and severe international banking restrictions, Kabul remains cut off from World Bank and IMF support, locking the nation into an unsustainable cycle of forced self-reliance. 

Even the regime’s most touted achievement, an opium ban that reduced poppy cultivation by 95 percent, has functioned as economic self-immolation for the poor. While landowning farmers reaped capital gains from soaring prices on existing stockpiles, the ban decimated the livelihoods of land-poor rural households who relied on opium for their income. 

Women: the defining cost of Taliban rule 

The suppression of women and girls remains the most globally condemned aspect of Taliban rule, with international organizations such as Human Rights Watch framing the system as “gender apartheid”.

A relentless succession of decrees from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has stripped women of fundamental freedoms, such as restrictions on movement, employment, and public life. Girls remain barred from secondary education, and women are prohibited from attending or teaching at universities. Enforcement has intensified sharply, with authorities detaining women for “improper hijab” or travelling without a male guardian. 

Reflecting this crisis, the International Criminal Court issued secret arrest warrants for Supreme Leader Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, citing gender-based persecution as a crime against humanity.

Beyond its human toll, this policy represents severe economic self-sabotage. Barring women from the workforce deprives the nation of vital human capital while accelerating brain drain. The United Nations estimates that restricting female labor force participation costs Afghanistan up to $1bn annually, or nearly 6 percent of its GDP.

The structural fallout, particularly acute shortages of female healthcare workers, teachers, and civil servants, has been “crippling basic health and education delivery for a generation,” said a Kabul-based humanitarian expert working for a UN body.

By sacrificing half its population to enforce ideological purity, the regime is “dismantling the country’s prospects for sustainable economic recovery and long-term development”, he told MEE. 

The bitter divorce with Pakistan

The relationship between the Taliban and their historical sponsor, Pakistan, has undergone a catastrophic collapse, shifting from strategic partnership to “open war” by early 2026. 

Initially, Islamabad celebrated the Taliban’s August 2021 return to power as a major geopolitical victory that would secure Pakistan’s western border and eliminate Indian influence. Then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that Afghans had broken “the shackles of slavery”, while current Defence Minister Khawaja Asif posted a photograph of a Taliban leader with former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, captioned, “God is great.”

However, that initial optimism quickly unraveled. The Taliban administration’s refusal to suppress the militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known colloquially as the "Pakistani Taliban", transformed the border between the countries into an active flashpoint. 

Islamabad accused the Taliban administration of granting the TTP safe havens and access to abandoned US weaponry, driving a sharp escalation in cross-border attacks. 

A recent UN Security Council report reinforced these concerns, reiterating that the “terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan remained largely unchanged”, and warning that militant sanctuaries pose an enduring risk to neighboring states and Central Asia. 

In response, Islamabad deployed aggressive coercive measures, deporting around 2.6 million Afghans since late 2023, repeatedly closing vital border crossings, and launching retaliatory air strikes inside Afghan territory. 

Publicly, Taliban officials reject allegations that they harbor TTP fighters, dismissing the violence as an internal Pakistani security crisis. Privately, however, managing the TTP has exposed deep ideological fractures within the regime. 

“Hardline elements within Taliban ranks view Pakistani militants as historical comrades-in-arms, making any forcible disarming politically unthinkable,” said a Taliban mid-level official now working with the interior ministry. 

He said that shielding the TTP is deepening Afghanistan’s international isolation, while taking aggressive action against it risks driving disaffected fighters directly into the ranks of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). 

Minority marginalization

The fifth year of Taliban rule has accelerated the systematic exclusion of Afghanistan’s religious and ethnic minorities, particularly Shia and Hazara populations, who comprise 15 percent of the country.

Despite early promises of inclusivity, Shia jurisprudence has been erased from legal systems, universities, and schools, stripping away protections won under the former republic. 

Local Shia leaders highlighted a recent Taliban decree shuttering two vital cultural institutions, the Khatam al-Nabieen Educational Centre and Tamadon TV. Furthermore, Supreme Leader Akhundzada has excluded Shia scholars from new provincial ulema councils, even in Shia-majority provinces like Bamiyan and Daykundi.

The Taliban "are systematically working to remove our sect from the country’s legal and educational landscape,” warned a Quetta-based Hazara Shia cleric connected to the Afghan Shia community, who chose to remain anonymous for safety concerns. 

Beyond the Shia population, the Taliban launched a sweeping crackdown on the Salafi minority under the guise of severing ISKP’s ideological pipeline, severely restricting access to mosques and seminaries. Analysts warn this heavy-handed repression risks alienating local communities and driving radicalized youth directly into ISKP’s ranks, exacerbating national instability.

Outlook

Five years after returning to power, the Taliban regime appears militarily entrenched yet structurally fragile. No organized opposition possesses the foreign backing, territory, or unified leadership needed to threaten Kabul. 

Armed groups like the National Resistance Front remain fragmented, incapable of challenging the regime’s centralized security apparatus. 

However, the regime’s greatest threat lies within its political architecture. Internal rifts continue to widen, prompting rare warnings from Akhundzada that discord could dismantle the government from within. While these political failures have not yet triggered a power crisis, an outright collapse would likely plunge Afghanistan into a civil war, devastating civilians and destabilising its neighbours. 

Demographics present an equally existential hurdle. With a stagnant economy and a population projected to double by 2050, long-term survival hinges on delivering livelihoods, food, and employment - a mandate current policies fail to meet. 

Internationally, pragmatic ties with Russia, China, and Central Asian neighbors provide economic lifelines without western recognition. Yet by governing through an extreme ideological police state, the leadership risks complete public alienation. 

The coming years will test whether the Taliban can transition from ruling through coercion to sustainable governance. Given their trajectory, this evolution remains improbable. Instead, persistent economic despair, social repression, and regional friction threaten to reignite systemic instability, preserving Afghanistan as an enduring catalyst for regional crises. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 23:20

Where In The World Are The Beer Lovers?

Where In The World Are The Beer Lovers?

While many countries have their own special days to celebrate beer, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages known to humankind, International Beer Day is aimed at beer drinkers everywhere.

Every first Friday in August, special events are held in bars and pubs around the world.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, some countries' inhabitants might be more prone to celebrate than others.

Where in the World Are the Beer Lovers? | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

A recent Statista Consumer Insight survey shows that some Latin American countries exhibit a share of between 35 and 44 percent of regular beer drinkers. Brazil tops the list with 44 percent of survey participants between legal drinking age and 64 years old regularly consuming the alcoholic drink usually made with malted barley, hops, water and yeast. Coming in first is Spain, however, with 45 percent of respondents saying the same.

Another Southern European country, Italy, also ranks high with 42 percent regular beer consumers.

Asia is also home to some of the biggest beer lovers, with 44 percent in Vietnam and 40 percent in Thailand saying they were regular beer drinkers. Muslim countries Malaysia and Indonesia see much fewer people drink beer on the regular, at just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively. In China, the world's largest beer market, only a third of respondents say they are regular consumers. Overall, developing countries with younger populations are more likely to see higher beer consumption and production, while those with aging or shrinking populations typically see fewer beer drinkers.

Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom, countries associated with many popular beer brands and varieties, are closer to the 31-country average of around a third of respondents being regular beer drinkers.

In the United States, this figure was even lower at around a quarter of respondents between the ages of 21 and 64 years old.

While the Chinese may not be the biggest drinkers in the worlds, they are the world’s leading producer of beer, according to the latest BarthHaas Report. In 2025, the country’s output stood at 354 million hectoliters of beer. A hectoliter is equivalent to one hundred liters.

As the following chart shows, the United States is the second biggest producer of beer with an output of 175 million hectoliters last year. However, both countries have seen production decline over the past two years, as have a number of other nations, mostly in the developed world.

Beer Production Sinks in Some Large Markets | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

As the beer market struggles with changing consumption patterns and stagnating real incomes, countries with aging or declining populations have yet another factor weighing on the alcoholic beverage market.

Germany, Spain and Japan all saw their production fall over the course of the past two years.

Rounding off the top 5 countries are Brazil, Mexico and Russia, which all saw production increases since 2023. Asia showed more of a mixed picture with production increasing in Vietnam as well as India, Thailand and the Philippines, while it was down in China, Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile, the African continent saw a significant 16 million hectoliter increase in output since 2023.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 22:45

How Much Money Should You Convert To A Roth Each Year?

How Much Money Should You Convert To A Roth Each Year?

Authored by Javier Simon via The Epoch Times,

A Roth conversion allows you to turn funds in a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. As a result, you get to enjoy qualified tax-free withdrawals in retirement. And you avoid the required minimum distributions (RMDs) that may trigger major tax consequences for retirees.

Roth conversions can deliver major tax benefits, but knowing how much to convert is crucial. Jack_the_sparow/shutterstock

However, a Roth conversion can also set off surprise tax bombs if you convert a large enough amount. But if you convert too little, you could be letting substantial tax savings slip away.

Luckily, there's no maximum or minimum as to how much money you can convert to a Roth IRA.

So how much should you convert into a Roth IRA? Let's see what the experts say.

Convert Only Enough to Fill Lower Tax Brackets

The IRS treats the amount of money you convert into a Roth IRA as ordinary taxable income for the year in which you made the conversion.

So many financial advisers recommend you convert just enough to fill the marginal income tax bracket you're currently in without converting enough to push you into a higher one.

So let's see how you can do that step-by-step.

First, determine your taxable income for the year from all sources. This includes the following.

  • Wages
  • Social Security checks
  • Pension payments
  • Dividends and interest

Next, subtract your standard or itemized deductions. Most people take the standard deduction. In calculating how much of your social security income is taxable, the Social Security Administration has a website calculator that is highly useful.

Then, check to see the highest level of your current tax bracket and see how much room there's left before reaching the next highest one.

Now, let's crunch some numbers.

Suppose you're a 45-year-old individual with gross income for the year of $80,000 and you're filing single. Subtract the standard deduction of $16,100 to get $63,900 in taxable income. That puts you in the 22 percent tax bracket. The top level for that bracket is $105,700.

That means you have $41,800 to "fill" the 22 percent tax bracket before you spill into the 24 percent tax bracket.

So you can convert around $41,800 and stay in the 22 percent tax bracket, making it a potentially tax-efficient move.

But higher income individuals may need to tread a bit more lightly.

That's because Roth conversions could increase your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). And if it's high enough, it could trigger major surcharges on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. These surcharges are called the Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA).

So you should be aware of key thresholds you may want to avoid crossing - especially if you're near or over age 65. That's the age when you begin qualifying for Medicare.

IRMAA Thresholds

The Social Security Administration (SSA) determines whether you owe IRMAA to your Medicare premiums by looking at your MAGI from two years prior.

You may face IRMAA in 2026 if your 2024 MAGI was greater than $109,000 as an individual filer or if it was larger than $218,000 for couples filing jointly.

So you may want to run the IRMAA thresholds against your total MAGI. This would include the Roth conversion amount.

If you're in the 24 percent tax bracket, which opens at $105,701 in income, you may have little room to convert before you cross the IRMAA thresholds.

But a Roth conversion could still make sense if the pros outweigh the cons. Think about how much tax-free withdrawals in retirement, the avoidance of RMDs, and protection from potential future tax rate increases may benefit you.

Pro Tip: Timing Matters

Some financial advisers recommend considering Roth conversions during the sweet spot or gap years. This is generally the time after you retire, but before you begin collecting Social Security checks and before RMDs kick in (age 73 or 75, depending on birth year).

In theory, you would be in your lowest tax bracket at this time and have strong control over how you manage your cash flow from existing accounts.

But there's more you should be aware of.

Understand the 5-Year Rule

The five-year rule is key to the mechanism of a Roth IRA. But here's what you need to know about this rule when it specifically comes to Roth conversions.

In order to withdraw converted funds and their earnings tax-and-penalty-free, you must meet the following criteria.

  • Have had the Roth account for at least five years
  • Be at least 59.5 years old

If you withdraw converted funds before five years have elapsed and you're under age 59.5, you will likely face a 10 percent penalty on any pre-tax assets that were converted as well as the earnings. Plus, you'd owe income taxes on those earnings.

The Bottom Line

The right amount to convert depends on a variety of personal factors. These include your income, your current and future tax situation, your Medicare situation and more.

And remember, Roth conversions could be most ideal when you'd be in a higher tax bracket in the future than the one you are in now.

But you can also strategically make Roth conversions over time. This is known as staggering conversions. Nonetheless, you must understand that every conversion has its own five-year rule.

As you can see, a Roth conversion can be as beneficial as it is complex. So it's important to discuss this strategy with a qualified tax professional before you move forward.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 22:10

The Massachusetts Abortion Law Could Backfire On Democrats

The Massachusetts Abortion Law Could Backfire On Democrats

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey spent this week signing away one of the last hard limits on abortion in a state that already ranked among the most permissive in the country, and now even some of her own party's lawmakers think she went too far.

The Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act strips away the state's statutory ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Physicians in the state can now perform abortions at any point in the pregnancy, based on their own professional judgment, with no gestational cutoff written into law. The measure also expands legal protections for providers, shielding them from consequences that once accompanied performing procedures deep into the third trimester. Critics have a simple way of describing what changed: abortion in Massachusetts is now legal up until the moment of birth.

The bill cleared the Massachusetts House 119-33 on July 22, and the vote broke down almost exactly the way you would expect in a legislature that Democrats control by an overwhelming margin. Almost exactly, but not quite. Nine House Democrats voted with Republicans against the bill, and several of them made clear that their objections went beyond politics.

Rep. Jeffrey Turco, a Winthrop Democrat, did not hold back.

"This new law represents an extremist and dangerous position," Turco told Fox News Digital.

He added that the law "allows abortion anytime, unrestricted, and in many cases, publicly funded until the moment of birth." Turco also complained about the process itself, saying the bill was "rushed through the legislative process in two weeks, without an opportunity for the public to weigh in." He called the result "out of step with the views of the average person in Massachusetts" and added, "The new law is barbaric."

Rep. Chris Markey raised a different kind of objection, one rooted less in outrage than in unease about where the law leaves physicians.

He said the bill "creates a very slippery slope" and "puts doctors in a very difficult ethical dilemma."

Markey argued the law conflicts with what most of his own constituents actually want.

"While many are pro-choice, you can still be pro-choice and see this law as going beyond the norms of acceptability." Rep. Dennis Gallagher, also a Democrat, said he simply saw no need for the law in the first place.

Healey's office defended the bill by pointing to what it described as an ongoing “assault” on reproductive rights nationwide since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

"I've heard heartbreaking stories from women and families who were preparing to welcome a healthy baby into their family, only to receive devastating news later in their pregnancy," Healey claimed, describing families who traveled long distances and paid out of pocket rather than relying on doctors they already trusted.

A 2024 poll by the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation found 66 percent of Massachusetts voters supported expanding abortion access after 24 weeks, with 34 percent opposed.

That number will get cited endlessly by supporters of the law. It also happens to describe one of the bluest electorates in America, which is exactly the problem Democrats elsewhere are about to run into.

National polling on abortion has never lined up neatly with the binary pro-life versus pro-choice framing that dominates cable news. Gallup has tracked the moral acceptability of abortion since the early 2000s, and its 2025 survey found 49 percent of Americans consider it morally acceptable, down from a record 54 percent in 2024. Gallup's Values and Beliefs poll from May of this year found 48 percent of Americans want abortion legal in all or most circumstances, split between 33 percent favoring all circumstances and 15 percent favoring most. Meanwhile, 49 percent want it to be illegal or legal only in a few circumstances, split between 17 percent favoring illegality and 32 percent favoring rare exceptions. That split has held steady on the broader question of legality since at least 2022.

Read those numbers together, and a pattern emerges. Most Americans lean pro-choice in the abstract, yet a majority still wants some boundaries. This instinct is a lot closer to Bill Clinton's old "safe, legal, and rare" formulation than to anything resembling abortion without limits. Massachusetts Democrats just passed a law that abandons limits entirely, and the timing of this is very inconvenient for them.

Democrats already face a midterm environment complicated by a socialist insurgency inside their own coalition, an ideology that polls poorly with the general electorate.

Layering abortion extremism on top of that gives Republicans a matching set of arguments heading into November: a party too far left on the economy and now demonstrably too far left on one of the few issues where most voters still want some compromise.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 21:35

A Tour Of America's Blue-topias

A Tour Of America's Blue-topias

Authored by Spyridon Andrews via the Abstract Truth Substack,

I lived in Massachusetts for a number of years and even at one time owned a home there. The home was in a town called Cotuit, on the Cape, a small, pretty town that recalled the atmosphere of the television show Lost or the novel Lord of the Flies. There was an equivalent feeling of desolation and desperation and the strange notion that cannibal zombies ran the town. We determined that it was not the place we wanted to spend our free time, even though I have to say that the clam strips were delicious.

When I was a student, I lived in the Boston area, and that was a different feel, more of what we can find in our Blue American cities today. I have to say that Cambridge was ahead of its time. When I worked on the student janitorial crew, my boss, one of the wisest men in Boston—a dyed-in-the-wool Bruins, Red Sox, and Patriots fan and Vietnam vet—comforted me one day as we sat together on the steps in Radcliffe Yard. Bob said to me, “Donnie, the thing you need to know about this place is that it’s basically an insane asylum where the inmates would never think of leaving.” It is a fact of my life that the best advice I have ever received has not come from professors or academics, and certainly not lawyers, but working people.

As effed up as Massachusetts is, even I was stunned to see the spectacle of the governor signing what, in my view, amounts to infanticide into law while a bunch of cackling celebrants stood around her clapping. This finally even got a rise from the local Catholic bishops, not a frequent event because God forbid they should lose parishioners. Clearly, I have more fieldwork to do in Massachusetts to understand the delirious reaction of women to removing legal restrictions on aborting their own children at an advanced stage of pregnancy. But I suppose we can take solace in knowing that this lunacy—which was once largely confined to university campuses—is now active throughout the country, and especially in America’s major cities.

So, I think it is time we took a tour of some of our major cities and important organizations so we can show the fecundity of choices that we have in terms of where to live in the relevant blue states.

I believe that it’s only fitting that we begin in the “Big Apple,” where a thirty-something, self-declared democratic socialist with no experience running anything is currently mayor of the world’s leading financial center.

New York City

Mamdani’s rhetoric and positions have struck many people, including many Jews, as openly hostile to Israel and even antisemitic, so it only makes sense that Jewish people would line up to vote for him. I’ve written about this before, and we are always reminded of the heartwarming stories of German Jewish and Hungarian leaders urging Jews not to panic and to work together with the Nazis. But the difference is that the Jews who support Mamdani today have university degrees, so they know better. And just because they elect a guy who has been reluctant to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”—a phrase many Jews understand as a call for violence—or the destruction of the Jewish state doesn’t mean he’s not a swell guy. He cares.

He caps this off nicely with a piss-poor understanding of economics. Since we have unlimited money—don’t we?—we can have fare-free buses and city-supported grocery stores because the government runs everything so efficiently, and frozen rents because I suppose we want to make it completely undesirable for developers to build new housing structures. But the best part is that Mamdani wants to finance all this with higher taxes on corporations and wealthy people who actually provide jobs and fuel the development of the city. He appears to be shocked by the fact that rich people might leave New York City and take their jobs and development plans elsewhere.

Mamdani’s dream city is rounded off by his history of supporting the “defund the police” movement. Of the many super-dumb ideas that American socialists and communists have put forward, this may be the dumbest. It is, in fact, so dumb that it has been repeated in blue cities like Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It is usually accompanied by dim-witted announcements from social scientists that there are “social causes” for crime and no real criminals, and then followed up with an appeal to shut down the jails.

Boston

But let’s continue our tour and mosey on up the East Coast to the city of Boston. The socialist mayor, Michelle Wu, has called for the abolition of ICE, a mantra repeated in many blue states and cities, and does not seem all that concerned about drug trafficking and human trafficking associated with illegal immigration. After all, she needs every last vote to stay in power. Logically, she has supported noncitizens voting in local elections, along with many similar lunatics in the Boston City Council. She is also a big backer of rent control, something the state eliminated in 1994. But bad ideas, like cockroaches, don’t go away, and she seems determined to employ fallacious economic theory in the laboratory she calls Boston.

But before we leave Boston, we should say a word about the Massachusetts governor. Governor Maura Healey has now signed legislation removing the state’s previous set of specified conditions for abortion after twenty-four weeks and replacing them with the “best medical judgment” of the physician. The law no longer supplies a clear gestational boundary of its own. Not being stupid, let’s understand that this makes it possible to forum-shop for a doctor willing to supply the necessary medical judgment to terminate a pregnancy very late in the process. In Rome and Sparta, they were courageous enough to call this infanticide. Here we refer to this as “health care.” Although I’m not sure that unborn children, if they could express an opinion, would agree with that assessment. And I’m not sure that female unborn children would find this as liberating for women as Governor Healey does.

Seattle

Let’s continue our journey and take a 3,000-mile journey across the country and visit Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson. Mayor Katie is hardly an economic success story, but then that doesn’t matter if you are a socialist. One of the controversies during the campaign involved financial assistance from her parents, including more than $10,000 in campaign-related childcare expenses that were not properly reported, for which her campaign paid a fine. But this fits nicely with all the other socialists living in their parents’ basements. In America these days, it’s not necessary to have a job, know anything about American history or the Constitution, or even believe there is such a thing as right or wrong in order to vote. Katie tapped heavily into this voter base in winning her election.

Katie has also demonstrated a command of economics sufficient to out-Mamdani Mamdani. When she was confronted with the very real scenario of wealthy people leaving Washington because of the state’s aggressive taxation proposals, she famously said, “Bye.” This is the same woman who left college in her final year six weeks before final exams because she wanted to “burn a bridge to the conventional professional world.” Now, if she had perhaps crossed the bridge, she would have seen that even socialist utopian projects like the ones dancing in her head require tax revenue. And tax revenue comes from people who make money—some of whom are millionaires. She is a perfect fit for Seattle, whose residents have gone out of their way to turn one of America’s most beautiful cities into a trash heap.

Katie didn’t just talk the talk; she also walked the walk. She campaigned on a citywide capital-gains tax designed to target wealthy residents. All of her favorite programs—subsidized transit and universal childcare—need to be paid for, and so she expected to be able to ask wealthy residents for money the same way she asked Mom and Dad. It never occurred to her that these are not her parents and they don’t have to stay around Seattle and give her money.

Katie has also fallen in line with the sanctuary-city rhetoric of not distinguishing between American citizens and people who are here illegally and making use of our resources. She has courageously directed her law-enforcement authorities not to cooperate with ICE, because why would you ever want to alienate future voters? Illegal gangs, drug and human trafficking be damned.

Chicago

But we really need to go to the Midwest to enjoy the full panoply of socialist woke delights. In one sense, we have to hand it to Chicago’s Brandon Johnson in that he not only stuck around for final exams but went on to get a master’s degree from Aurora University. The bad news is that he taught social studies and not economics. This was obvious from his support for reviving a “head tax” per employee on large businesses as part of his effort to close the enormous budget gap in Chicago. Brandon helped create that budget gap by spending outrageous sums of money on newly arrived migrants, to the detriment of actual legal residents. This created waves of outrage amongst residents who were not even receiving basic services. So, perhaps being contrite over destroying the economic infrastructure of the city, he felt that he could offer a solution by chasing businesses out of the city. Like other socialist geniuses, he made it his goal to bleed high-income earners and businesses to fund his sanctuary-city resistance.

Well, he may not have wanted to do much about drug and human trafficking carried out by Central American gangs, but at least he made up for it by reducing portions of the police budget and calling for the abolition of ICE. See how smart that is? Brandon’s rhetoric about white people and “white supremacy” has also been inflammatory. He does not consider this to be much of a problem in a city where white people happen to live, because he seems to see them mostly as an endless tax base to fund his permanent revolution.

Brandon doesn’t seem to have won over the nonwhite voters either. Polls have placed his approval rating between 23 and 30 percent, and one survey found that fewer than one in seven voters wanted him to run for reelection. He has accomplished nearly the impossible in making himself even less popular than his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, currently of Harvard University.

Los Angeles

I would be remiss if I did not include my hometown mayor, Los Angeles’ Karen Bass, in this whirlwind tour. Karen, after deploying the usual defund-the-police rhetoric, actually discovered that police do play an important function in restoring order, and her later budgets called for hiring more of them. But she has displayed the same fiscal prowess as her fellow blue mayors and governors. Her budget shortfall is only about $1 billion. In her first couple of years, Los Angeles spent billions on programs to combat homelessness. Homelessness didn’t meaningfully improve, the money disappeared into a network of agencies and contractors, and questions were buried. But Mayor Bass has a distinction that her fellow progressive mayors do not share. On her watch, her own city burned down.

Mayor Bass has a tremendous record of placing incompetent wokesters into key positions. The Santa Ynez Reservoir serving Pacific Palisades was empty and offline when the fire began, and hydrants lost pressure during the emergency. Her fire-prevention leadership included committed wokesters who seemed to make up in woke rhetoric what they lacked in practical preparation. Her fire chief was on camera after the Pacific Palisades Fire had eaten half of the oceanfront communities, complaining about not having resources. One of the fire chief’s senior officials had previously made strange comments suggesting that someone needing rescue might object to being carried out of a fire by a woman who looked like her. But this was better than Mayor Karen, who was in Ghana at a presidential inauguration. And she was better than Governor Brylcreem, who had taken to disappearing altogether—when he wasn’t falsely assuring residents that he was working with President Trump to resolve the problem.

Bass had plenty of warnings and can be blamed for presiding over a government that was catastrophically unprepared for it. The empty reservoir, loss of hydrant pressure, inadequate pre-deployment, and later controversy over the after-action report all belong to the government she led. It may be hyperbole to say she burned her own city down. But, in the eyes of many who lost their homes, it doesn’t seem like it.

Like all her pals on the blue team, Mayor Karen is also soft on crime, anti-ICE, and, as a bonus, seemingly anti-fire prevention. This is hardly surprising given her history on the radical Left and her work in her youth with a pro-Castro organization. Like her socialist and communist pals, she is also an unwavering supporter of abortion, earning a 100 percent score from NARAL Pro-Choice America. So, we need to ask, if we burn the homes down of all the wealthy residents, chase all of the Hollywood studios out of Los Angeles, and make it unreasonable for anyone with a business to stay or relocate to Los Angeles, where are you going to get your tax revenue? And she seems to also want to take care of the next generation by joining in the effort that has resulted in nearly 1/3 of Generation Z disappearing through abortion.

As we take our tour of American hellholes, we cannot help but think of Margaret Thatcher’s words: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Between scaring off job providers and denying any rights to unborn children, there is not going to be a lot of money—or many people—around to fund the Leftist utopias of the future. Some of these Leftists may even have to do the unthinkable and get real jobs working construction, digging holes, building shelters, and growing crops, rather than dictating to the rest of us how we should live our lives. But for the moment, as they celebrate chaos in the streets and cheer on infanticide, this is their shining moment. Let them enjoy it, because it won’t last much longer.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 21:00

Trump: 9 Months At Sea For USS Lincoln 'Not Nearly Long Enough'

Trump: 9 Months At Sea For USS Lincoln 'Not Nearly Long Enough'

President Trump shrugged off mounting concerns over the welfare of 5,000 sailors aboard the USS Lincoln on Friday, denying that family members were worried and telling reporters that nine months at sea was "not nearly long enough." His remarks came on the same day that he promised an audience that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory, and that higher gas prices were a small price to pay so that a "very evil country" wouldn't obtain "a nuclear weapon."

The media's questioning of the US commander-in-chief was prompted by concerns raised by family members of sailors aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, who say their loved ones are suffering from low morale from being stuck on the ship so long, and that they're enduring moldy showers, rationing of food, and a lack of basic hygiene supplies like toothpaste, deodorant and soap. One woman says her son told her the food situation has been so bad at times that a meal consists of only a half-cup of rice and two tortillas. Things are so bad that there are reports that at least two crew members have recently attempted to kill themselves by leaping off the towering deck of the ship, which has been participating in the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

As he was about to leave Washington for a rally in New York, a reporter started to frame a question by noting that family members were concerned about what was happening to the crew of the Lincoln. "No, they're not," interrupted Trump, contradicting the fact that many have raised their worries in a town hall with Navy Secretary Hung Cao attended by some 200 family members, and with the media. 

"That ship is moving right now -- well, very shortly -- and it's being replaced with another very similar ship," Trump continued, referring to the USS George Washington. When the reporter asked if the deployments were going on too long, Trump replied, "No, no, no -- not nearly long enough." 

The Lincoln departed its San Diego base on Nov. 21, 2025, on what was supposed to be a seven-month deployment. That deployment is now in its ninth month, but what's far more remarkable is that the Lincoln went more than 200 days without a port call. Typically, a carrier crew might expect a port call every 30 to 45 days, with each break spanning around 3 to 5 days. On Friday, the New York Times reported that problems resupplying the Lincoln and other ships were due in large part to Iran's prompt destruction of a major logistics hub at America's Navy base in Bahrain soon after the country was attacked in the middle of ongoing negotiations.  

Later, addressing a rally in Garden City on New York's Long Island, Trump claimed that the nearly six-month-old war on Iran has been a great success. "After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon, I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump said, eliciting cheers from a crowd dominated by police, firefighters and other first responders. The event  was part of the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman. 

No doubt wary of the war's potential effect on the upcoming midterms, Trump also asked the audience to be patient with higher prices for gas and diesel, saying that, just before he joined Israel in starting a war on Iran, gas prices were only $1.85 a gallon. "For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you're doing it so that a very evil country...[cannot have] a nuclear weapon." Starting in 2007 and repeatedly up to the February 28 start of the war, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. "I'll never apologize, I did the right thing," he told the crowd. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 20:25

Are China's Surveillance Exports Turning Nations Into Digital Dictatorships?

Are China's Surveillance Exports Turning Nations Into Digital Dictatorships?

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

Is Beijing hoping to turn other authoritarian societies into digital Chinas?

China’s rise as the world’s leading exporter of surveillance technology is yielding some disturbing results. Beijing’s surveillance export packages comprise an entire technological architecture that can give governments an unprecedented ability to see, identify, and track their populations.

Those technologies include cameras, artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, cloud computing, facial recognition, license-plate recognition, and centralized command systems. Many mid-sized countries are becoming or are already customers.

Turning Other Nations Into ‘Little Chinas’

Turkey is an important case study.

To be clear, Turkey has not yet become a Chinese-style surveillance state. Its political system and institutions remain different from China’s. That said, Chinese technology companies have established a significant presence in Turkey’s digital infrastructure, and they’re not shy about it. In fact, Huawei has explicitly marketed its AI-powered CCTV and “Safe City,” i.e. surveillance technologies, in the Turkish market.

It’s no mystery that China wants to sell as much merchandise to as many trading partners as possible. But is it also possible that China wants as many partners as possible to use and become dependent upon its surveillance technology so that their societies turn into “little Chinas” by deploying Smart City tech?

AI Camera Surveillance

The first building block is the camera.

Chinese companies such as Hikvision and Dahua have become global leaders in video-surveillance equipment. Meanwhile, Huawei has developed AI-powered cameras capable of performing sophisticated image recognition and analysis. CSIS notes that Chinese firms can provide technologies ranging from cameras to AI analytics and centralized deployment.

Huawei’s AI-enabled technology is in Turkey, using cameras with embedded AI chips and deep learning capabilities to perform recognition and identification while feeding information into cloud-based big-data systems. Such systems could operate across enormous numbers of cameras.

That represents a fundamental shift in surveillance capability for nations such as Turkey. A conventional camera records what happened. An AI camera can begin answering who, when, where, and what.

A screen shows visitors being filmed by AI (Artificial Intelligence) security cameras with facial recognition technology at the 14th China International Exhibition on Public Safety and Security at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing on Oct. 24, 2018. Nicolas Asfouri /AFP via Getty Images

The difference is enormous.

‘Smart Cities’ Can Become Surveillance Networks

The second technological piece is the smart-city platform.

Huawei’s smart-city operation combines 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet-of-Things devices, cloud computing, and big-data analytics. The company describes an integrated “digital brain” capable of connecting multiple government functions and data sources.

None of those technologies is inherently authoritarian.

Smart traffic systems, energy management, and connected public services are all examples of how technology can make cities more efficient.

The problem begins when these systems become interconnected with security databases.

A camera produces an image. A telecommunications network produces location and communications data. A smart-city sensor produces movement information. AI can combine those streams instantly.

The result is no longer simply a collection of cameras. It’s an urban information and surveillance system.

This technology isn’t new, but the worry is about its widespread adoption. CSIS has documented Huawei “Safe City” agreements involving CCTV, intelligent video surveillance, facial and license-plate recognition, crowd monitoring, command centers, and other security technologies in dozens of countries over the years.

Huawei’s Digital Footprint

Another factor is telecommunications. Amplifying on the Turkish case, Huawei has operated in Turkey (and other nations) for decades and has established a substantial local research and technology presence. Employing roughly 1,500 people in the country and operating an R&D center in Istanbul, Huawei has its own people running the technology, providing additional opportunity for data gathering.

That matters because telecommunications infrastructure is the nervous system of the modern surveillance state. It’s a powerful technological information loop where cameras and sensors collect information, telephones generate it, networks transfer it, cloud systems store and analyze it, while AI interprets it.

The more deeply those systems become integrated, the greater the potential for governments to build a comprehensive picture of their citizens.

Huawei’s smart-city model explicitly combines those technologies.

Scalable Surveillance Technology

Why do governments buy it?

The answer is not necessarily ideology, although that may be part of it, but it is often simple economics.

China’s surveillance companies can offer governments a complete technological package at competitive prices. Huawei’s Safe City partners are disproportionately middle-income countries, noting that affordability and commercial promises can be important drivers of adoption.

That alone gives Beijing an enormous commercial opportunity. Why build surveillance infrastructure from scratch when you can just buy it off the shelf?

What’s more, such systems may well help illegitimate governments remain in power. But also, once a country has invested heavily in a particular technological ecosystem, replacing it can become expensive.

A woman stands at the booth of Huawei featuring 5G technology at the PT Expo in Beijing on Sept. 28, 2018. Reuters

CSIS has warned that countries adopting Huawei equipment could become effectively “locked in” through high replacement costs, while Chinese companies gain market share and establish technical standards.

That doesn’t mean that Huawei’s clients aren’t authoritarian regimes, many are.

Data as Strategic Assets

Another consequential factor is data.

China’s surveillance exports potentially provide Beijing with more than equipment sales. They can help Chinese companies expand their technological standards, gain experience in foreign markets, and deepen commercial relationships.

The strategic concern is that if Chinese companies become the suppliers of the world’s cameras, networks, cloud systems, and AI platforms, they would become deeply embedded in the digital infrastructure of other nations.

That creates influence even without direct access to every byte of data.

What Does it Mean?

Turkey, among others, is therefore a warning sign—not necessarily because it is becoming China, but because it demonstrates how surveillance capabilities can enter a country through ordinary commercial infrastructure.

Thus, the struggle between China and the West is increasingly a contest over technological models adopted by a growing number of nations.

China’s model emphasizes scale, integration, and centralized control.

Western democracies generally place greater emphasis on privacy, transparency, and legal restrictions, although Western governments also use facial recognition, AI surveillance, and other monitoring technologies.

The Chinese advantage is that Beijing’s companies can offer much of the infrastructure as a package. That makes the technology easy to export and, once deployed, difficult and expensive to replace.

The United States and the West, therefore, face a challenge that goes beyond Huawei, Hikvision, or Dahua. They must compete with an entire technological ecosystem.

The real question is not necessarily whether every Chinese camera is secretly spying on foreign citizens. But rather, it’s whether countries like Turkey and many others with a growing exposure to China’s digital infrastructure could become digital dictatorships because of it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 19:50

Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Judges?

Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Judges?

Authored by Matthew Andersson via AmericanThinker.com,

There is growing interest in whether an “ai” or, artificial intelligence judge can make better rulings than a human one.  

This is understandable as many legal decisions are either wrong or flawed in some critical way.  

Partisan politics and “lawfare" also continue to corrupt the legal system to a degree that has undermined its fundamental credibility, including public trust.

No one knows better than President Trump who was maliciously prosecuted as a civilian. 

Down in the trial courts where legal arguments start, many of the facts of a case get ignored by the court, or never get a fair hearing because they are denied on technical grounds, or from favoritism, or corruption.  

Critical facts are also not discovered or recognized due to human error, or lack of relevant subject competence.

When a case then gets bumped up to an appeal, the appellate courts are even more removed from facts. They may reverse on procedural mistakes, or if a particular statute or law was thought to be seriously misinterpreted, but appellate courts are notorious for affirming lower court rulings because sending a case back to the trial court implicates their judicial colleagues and hurts their record.

In law school, the judges, moreover, were originally trained almost entirely by reference to these abstract appellate cases, and usually don’t get their hands dirty on the nitty gritty of trial court facts.  

This is a mistake, and often produces judges with a sense of the law as a separate, rarified intellectual exercise.  This also lets personal bias creep into their method of thinking because bias can hide behind obscure law language that often appears little more than a legal “magic spell.”  

The term “legal reasoning” is an old concept, but it comes with costs: it rests on interpretations of prior rulings, or precedent — and the majority of those have problems.  The errors therefore keep compounding. Those errors are rarely caught by subsequent judges who assume the facts are settled.   

But another factor that is slowly bringing the use of AI into the legal system, involves the widespread corruption, and human abuse, of the law itself.  Partisan judges can rule based on political party allegiance, and sometimes without recognizing it. That’s how the human mind works.  AI doesn’t. 

The term “lawfare” also didn’t come out of thin air: it is the human manipulation of the normal legal system by lawyers or prosecutors who bring malicious charges, and then rely on judges who are not difficult to persuade.  That is partly because most judges have limited if any experience in business, technology and even work: they came out of law school, went straight into law or worked as law clerks, and their entire frame of reference is the internal culture of the system they are in. The charges have all the appearances of legal formalities that they are used to, so they get processed as if they were legitimate. 

Judges are also under pressure to manually process their caseloads, consisting of mountains of paperwork that clog up the system, most of which is never carefully studied, or read. Their own careers, and retirement interests, can short-circuit their willingness to think hard about the arguments before them. Judges are also risk-averse, especially when cases and facts may be controversial. AI doesn’t worry about controversy.

Law professor and federal appellate judge, Frank Easterbrook, in his increasingly criticized ruling in Klaassen, is an example. It concerned Indiana University student appeal over constitutional violations of their medical privacy. The court ruled against them by relying on an antiquated, irrelevant case from the year 1906. The court used “precedent” not to reason, but to simply process a decision, and ignored medical evidence, political facts, and law itself. At the time, judges were “all in” on the Dr. Fauci fraud, which was also reinforced by institutions including the CDC and NIH, which made any doubts, in their minds, beyond the necessity of critical thinking. 

What would an AI judge have ruled?  It would have been more capable, theoretically, of making a massive sweep, and test, of statistical data concerning documented COVID medical risk, the chemical analysis of vaccines, the regulatory lapses, and corporate profit accounting, including from medical providers.  

The constitutional law interpretations of the First Amendment, and the Establishment Clause of religious rights, were also clear, but ignored by the court. Judges on the bench, and in the Bar, can be motivated to protect their own closed system: legal precedent, even if utterly irrelevant to new facts, is a method of reinforcing that system.  AI has no culture to protect. 

Some elite law schools, such as the University of Chicago, are claiming that they are providing a “template for law schools around the world” by the way AI is simply added into their curriculum.  In some cases they are providing public presentations that report on how AI compares with human judges in case decisions. Their larger teaching posture, however, is that AI is just an elective, and creates no underlying disruption to the traditional law degree. It is still business as usual.  They're likely wrong.

What schools like UChicago are really representing, is an AI policy for the ABA law school system, asserting their legacy institutional domain over technology which threatens to replace them.  Apparently, doing things the way they’ve always been done is their template for the future. 

The entire legal system from schools to firms to courts, don’t have a firm grasp on what the larger AI strategic implications are. Few are acquainted with, or understand, the AI data centers that are being built across the U.S.  The number of such centers already reaches into the thousands. 

So, what are they for?  

Some observers point to them as being modern high-tech replacements of an older industrial, mechanical system, and a “21st century” infrastructure backbone in a new vision of the future.  Certainly in logistics, commercial order fulfillment, customer data, government records and other uses, it is powerful.  But there’s much more to it: networked data centers that blanket the country, represent a strategy to replace many human systems. 

In law, this strategy is seductive, especially if you look back on the way the DNC and its progressive donors abused the legal system by human intervention and political corruption -- and got away with it.  Illegally changing voting rules under pandemic pretext is an example. The targeting of a former U.S. president with malicious prosecution, fully enabled by corrupt judges, is another prominent example, and a powerful rationale for current legal system modification.

The federal courts operate under congressional authority, and Congress can remove them.  That, combined with the use of AI threatens the status quo. AI can more efficiently find and gather facts, while filtering or exposing legal mistakes and procedural irregularities, including tracking the affiliations and records of judges.

AI also puts legal education on trial, and may signal significant changes.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 18:40

"Won't Be Short-Lived": JPMorgan Warns Next Global Food Crisis Could Erupt Next Year

"Won't Be Short-Lived": JPMorgan Warns Next Global Food Crisis Could Erupt Next Year

JPMorgan is the latest institutional research desk to warn that the next global food crisis may already be taking shape, driven by what its analysts describe as the "Five Ws": War, Weather, Warehousing, Water, and Waste.

In a new report titled Food Security Is National Security: A Compounding Storm, a team led by London-based senior global economist Nora Szentivanyi warned that disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz and the emergence of a potentially historic El Niño could weaken crop yields, constrain agricultural production, and keep food inflation elevated through the first half of 2027.

"Successive shocks since COVID have compounded, eroding food production capacity and keeping food price pressures elevated into 2027," Szentivanyi said, warning that "this is not a short-lived shock; it has reduced the likelihood of near-term disinflation, and the food inflation cycle is likely to exert pressure through 1H27."

She expects global food inflation to accelerate from 2.8% in the first half of 2026 to 5% in the first half of next year.

The warning comes despite a modest improvement in hunger statistics. About 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, down roughly 43 million from 2022. Yet 2.1 billion people, or 25.8% of the global population, still experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.

Szentivanyi outlined the most immediate vulnerability: fertilizer. She noted, "Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the coming super El Niño are adding to fertilizer and food price pressures." 

She said that "crop and price effects are still building and agricultural impacts lag the oceanic peak by 6 to 12 months."

Szentivanyi warned that this year's energy shock could roughly double the inflationary impact of a super El Niño, lifting global food CPI by about 1.5 percentage points, compared with the historical .7-point increase. Food inflation is projected to reach a 5% annualized rate in the first half of 2027, adding .6 percentage points to headline inflation and slowing full-year disinflation by .3 points.

"Exposure is concentrated in South and Southeast Asia, including rice, sugar, and coffee; West Africa, including cocoa; and parts of East and Southern Africa," the analyst said, adding, "EM bears the brunt of El Niño. The largest food inflation responses are concentrated in EM Asia and Latin America, where weather-sensitive agriculture plays a larger role in economic activity, and food carries a higher weight in consumption baskets. India, Colombia, Indonesia, Brazil, Taiwan, and Korea emerge as among the most sensitive economies"”

Furthermore, China has been stockpiling food, fertilizer, energy, and industrial metals. While the West has strategic oil reserves (quickly draining to offset the loss of Gulf supplies), it lacks a meaningful fertilizer buffer. With the Hormuz chokepoint still disrupted, crop conditions deteriorating, and export controls spreading, Szentivanyi suggests that the next inflation shock may emerge not at the gas pump, as seen earlier this year, but potentially in the grocery aisle next year.

Szentivanyi's note should not be surprising to readers, as we've cited numerous institutional desks, including Goldman, HSBC (read here), and others, warning of mounting food inflation risks that could materialize from the confluence of drivers mentioned above.

This comes as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's global food price index climbed to a three-year high in July.

Bank of America analyst Robert Ohmes recently warned that another food price spike could arrive in supermarkets this fall. He said that grocery inflation "may be on the way," citing a blended index of wages, diesel, and commodity costs.

For readers, reducing exposure to increasingly fragile food supply chains may require building some resilience in the backyard. That could mean putting unused space to work with chickens, a garden, or both. While this year's growing season has largely passed its peak, now is the time to plan for next spring. Establishing relationships with nearby ranchers, farmers, and local food producers can also provide an alternative supply network when national distribution networks come under pressure.

Professional subscribers can read more on El Niño, Food Supply, and other critical topics at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 18:05

Fauci In Hiding As ABC Censorship Bombshell Explodes

Fauci In Hiding As ABC Censorship Bombshell Explodes

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Dr. Anthony Fauci just refused a private transcribed interview with Sen. Ron Johnson's subcommittee. The same week, a former ABC News correspondent revealed that the network gutted a 2021 Wuhan lab leak investigation after the script was sent to Fauci for review.

The pattern is unmistakable. Stonewall. Censor. Invoke privilege. Repeat.

On Friday, Fauci's attorney notified Sen. Ron Johnson that the former NIAID director would not appear for a closed-door, transcribed interview as part of the ongoing investigation into the failed COVID response.

Johnson laid it out plainly:

"Dr. Fauci's attorney has just notified us that Fauci refuses to appear for a private transcribed interview. The American people deserve answers to legitimate questions regarding our miserably failed response to COVID-19. Some of those questions can only be answered by Dr. Fauci. He arrogantly once stated that he was 'very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee. I have nothing to hide.' Apparently, he has a lot to hide. Since Fauci refuses to talk about his role and decisions related to COVID-19, my Subcommittee will continue to obtain his records and request to speak with key individuals that he worked with. We will explore our legal options before deciding our next steps."

This comes days after the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt for his July 29 performance, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment roughly 112 times.

Fauci's lawyer responded to Johnson's request by claiming any effort to compel his appearance would "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes."

The AP reported the decline, noting it followed the partisan contempt vote and the earlier hearing in which Fauci repeatedly declined to answer questions about pandemic decisions, origins, and funding.

The contempt referral is already heading toward the Justice Department. Sen. Rand Paul has argued the Biden preemptive pardon removed any legitimate basis for the Fifth Amendment claims, leaving Fauci with no shield against answering.

While Fauci ducks the Senate, a separate bombshell landed from inside the media machine that once amplified him.

Former ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran, speaking on The Fifth Column podcast, described what happened to his early 2021 Nightline investigation into the COVID lab-leak theory.

Moran said the piece examined evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had received Chinese military funding - something the lab's "Bat Lady" Shi Zhengli had denied. He and his team laid out the arguments.

Then the review hit.

"The day it was supposed to air, it gets 'reviewed.' It comes back to me...I was told: FAUCI," Moran stated.

He added that he was "absolutely livid," cursing in the booth as the final product arrived "incomprehensible," loaded with caveats and legalized language that stripped the original work of meaning.

"I've never watched that story [again] and I never want to. Because it wasn't mine, and most importantly, because it was incomprehensible."

He was told the script had gone to lawyers, standards - and Fauci.

This was not a conservative activist speaking. Moran is a longtime network journalist. His account directly undercuts years of media insistence that questions about the lab were fringe conspiracy theories while Fauci and allies worked to shut them down.

These latest refusals and revelations sit atop a mountain of prior evidence already documented.

Secret texts recovered from Fauci's government iPhone showed him privately warning in January 2021 that the second COVID vaccine dose "theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester" because of cytokine storms and fever. Publicly, he and other officials pushed the shots for pregnant women with no such caveats.

Emails previously released by Sen. Rand Paul showed Fauci instructing then-NIH Director Francis Collins to "read it, then destroy it" - language Paul has called a violation of federal records law.

At the July 29 hearing itself, Fauci offered an opening statement accusing Paul of an "unhinged obsession," then refused nearly every substantive question.

CNN legal analysts noted that the 112 Fifth Amendment pleas likely made his position worse, given the pardon removed criminal jeopardy and left him exposed to contempt.

The American people watched schools shuttered, businesses destroyed, and dissent crushed while the same officials privately fretted about risks they would not acknowledge publicly.

Now the central figure in that response continues to refuse basic questions under oath or in transcribed interviews, and a network reporter has confirmed that even internal journalistic work was routed through him for approval.

Johnson's subcommittee says it will keep pursuing records and other witnesses. The contempt referral sits with the Justice Department. The lab-leak story that was sanitized in 2021 is no longer radioactive. Accountability is no longer optional.

Fauci had years of unmatched power and media deference. That time is over.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 17:30

More Than Half Of Gen Z Investors Have Moved Money Into Sports Bets

More Than Half Of Gen Z Investors Have Moved Money Into Sports Bets

A growing share of young Americans is folding sports gambling into their long-term financial plans, according to new research from the investment platform Betterment.

In an online survey of 1,000 U.S. retail investors conducted in late March and early April and released this week, 52% of Gen Z investors said they had shifted money originally set aside for stocks or other investments into sports wagers over the past year. Only about one-third of Gen Z participants reported no involvement in sports betting at all, compared with 63% across all age groups in the survey.

26% of Gen Z respondents - those born between 1997 and 2007 - said they view sports betting as a deliberate, ongoing part of their wealth strategy. That figure drops sharply with age: 14% of millennials, 6% of Gen X, and just 1% of baby boomers reported the same outlook.

Of those Gen Z respondents, roughly 11% described betting as an investment strategy aimed at high returns, while 15% treated it as a short-term way to raise cash.

The betting numbers sit inside a broader shift in where young investors get their information. Social media is now Gen Z's most commonly cited source for financial news, rising from 45% in 2024 to 60% this year - nearly three times the 21% who cite a financial advisor.

The findings highlight how the rapid growth of legal sports gambling and prediction markets is competing for the same discretionary dollars that once flowed into retirement accounts and brokerage portfolios. The state-regulated sports betting industry in the United States has expanded into a nearly $17 billion business in recent years. Prediction markets have also surged; Robinhood Markets, long known for democratizing stock trading, added them to its app in 2025 and has called the segment its fastest-growing business line ever.

Betterment Chief Executive Officer Sarah Levy warned that the trend carries risks. "When a prediction market or sportsbook starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem," she said in a statement. "These products are designed to keep people seeking the next quick score, not to help them build toward the next decade. Younger investors deserve access to the tools and information that meet them where they are, but the industry also has a responsibility to be clear about the difference between participating in a trend and building lasting wealth."

Robert Kosciuk, a 32-year-old from Huntington, New York, illustrates the shift - maintaining a Robinhood account for stocks but devoting more energy this year to betting, Bloomberg reports. He says he approaches sports wagers with the same discipline he applies to investing: researching outcomes carefully, avoiding emotional decisions, and limiting most bets to $100. He acknowledges the activity is gambling but believes he manages it more thoughtfully than casual players. So far this year he has earned roughly $2,500, enough to cover a vacation he attributes in part to successful bets on the Carolina Hurricanes.

Industry representatives push back on the idea that betting should be treated as investing. Joe Maloney, president of the Sports Betting Alliance - whose members include FanDuel, DraftKings, Fanatics Betting & Gaming, bet365, and betMGM - told Bloomberg that sports wagering is entertainment, not a wealth-building strategy. Adults who choose to bet, he added, should do so responsibly within a fixed entertainment budget and never with money needed for savings or essentials.

Broader economic pressures may be amplifying the appeal of high-risk options. Eighty percent of Gen Z respondents who already use or are considering speculative investments said concerns about falling behind financially played a role, according to a Northwestern Mutual study of 4,357 adults conducted by the Harris Poll in January. As homeownership grows more difficult and everyday costs rise, some younger adults are turning to sports betting, prediction markets, and crypto in hopes of accelerating progress toward their goals.

The Betterment survey also examined how investors make decisions. 56% percent said they rely primarily on their own research and judgment - more than any other single source. That self-reliance increased with age, rising from 40% among Gen Z respondents to 69% among baby boomers. About one in three participants reported trusting artificial intelligence for financial advice. Of those, 53% said AI had prompted a decision they would not otherwise have made, including 48% of all Gen Z respondents. Gen Z investors were eight times more likely than baby boomers to say they were comfortable using AI for long-term financial planning - 41% against 5%.

The survey polled 1,000 U.S. retail investors between March 27 and April 3, split evenly across four generations, meaning each generational figure rests on roughly 250 respondents. Participants were recruited through an incentivized online panel and were required to hold at least one investment outside a 401(k).

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 16:55

Rage Politics: Hakeem Jeffries Will Take A Baseball Bat To The Supreme Court

Rage Politics: Hakeem Jeffries Will Take A Baseball Bat To The Supreme Court

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has struggled to pander to the mob to secure power in the midterm elections, including brandishing a baseball bat on social media to show his radical bona fides.

With Democratic Socialists chanting “you’re next” when seeing Jeffries, he continues to struggle to stay in front of the mob.

This week, he doubled down on his pledge to throw the Supreme Court to the mob if they make him the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

After the recent gains by far-left candidates in states like Minnesota and the near victory of Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Jeffries came out to reaffirm his intent to radically change the highest court. According to the Washington Times, Jeffries declared, “There’s a variety of different options that are on the table, and I think that we can’t foreclose any single one of them.” He added that the “conservative, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has become basically a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party.”

He promised to make far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) the driving force behind changing the Court, including possible 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and expanding the Court to create an instant liberal majority.

Notably, none of these figures were claiming that the Court was fundamentally flawed until it ruled against them, particularly in cases that impacted their political power such as declaring racial gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

What is interesting is that the liberal justices reject this narrative, reminding citizens that the Court has delivered major losses to the Trump Administration. Indeed, President Trump has routinely attacked conservative justices for ruling against him and his Administration.

In addition, polls show that the majority of the public supports virtually all of the recent major rulings, including the ban on racial gerrymandering.

It is only the Democrats who oppose those rulings and are now demanding a hostile takeover of the Court.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has called for packing the Court because it does not follow her views and those of “widely held public opinion.” I have pushed back on that rationale, given the Court’s function as a countermajoritarian institution. However, these polls even challenge the flawed rationale for court packing.

So Jeffries is promising that the work of James Madison will be undone by the likes of Jamie Raskin and Elizabeth Warren. To have these calls on our 250th anniversary is crushingly ironic.  Other leading Democrats have lined up to pledge to fundamentally change the Court, which has played a key role in making this the oldest and most stable republic in history.

It is simply about power. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

I have called it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. Democratic leaders are pledging to “just do it” to appease the mob. Of course, some of these measures would be challenged if done without constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court would then have to rule on the effort to pack or limit its members. The expansion can be done by legislative vote. Although most Americans oppose court packing, Democrats view control of the Court as essential to pushing through a radical agenda to change the political system to their advantage.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.

In Federalist 10, Madison discussed the destructive impact of factions in forcing through opportunistic changes to advance their interests:

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

We are witnessing the same factional politics being pushed by leaders who believe that they can ride a rage wave into power. They have a greater likelihood of causing lasting damage to our system than guaranteeing their own lasting power. History is not on their side. Today’s revolutionaries are often tomorrow’s reactionaries in an age of rage.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 16:20

Woke 2.0 Will Be Worse

Woke 2.0 Will Be Worse

Authored by Spencer Klavan via AmericanMind.org,

Readers familiar with Dr. Seuss’s classic, The Cat in the Hat, will remember the twin chaos agents Thing 1 and Thing 2.

“‘These Things are good Things,’” the Cat reassures the children whose mother has inexplicably left them under the supervision of a fish.

“‘They are tame. Oh, so tame! / They have come here to play.’”

The Things briefly feign innocence, then quickly reveal themselves to be marauding imps, knocking over nightstands and ruining the linens.

“I do not like the way that they play!” says the son of the house.

Now here comes Woke 1 and Woke 2.

“Woke 1 was crazy,” said U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoting an unnamed city councilman in a viral interview for ABC. The congresswoman sheepishly acknowledged that Americans did not like the way Woke 1 played out, while also implicitly announcing that there will soon be, or already is, a Woke 2. And it will be tame. Oh, so tame!

There is, in fact, a new version of wokeness in the making. But just as Thing 2 was fundamentally identical to Thing 1, Woke 2 will not be any different in essence from Woke 1. They are both here to upend the furniture.

Wokeness in all its forms is grievance politics.

Its central idea is that an injustice lies at the heart of America and must be corrected to atone for the historical misery inflicted on groups of innocents.

What is changing in Woke 2 is the account of who those innocents are, and how they have been wronged. Woke 1 was founded on the notion that black women are the most oppressed, and therefore most righteous, of all people. “I’m thinking,” said Kamala Harris in her vice presidential victory speech, “about the generations of women—black women.” She mentioned many other kinds of women, of course, but the list began and ended with “the black women—who are too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of this country.”

This approach had rhetorical power, up to a point. It traded on the successes of second-wave feminism and the reality of black slavery in America’s past. But it ran into some problems. Third-wave feminism, as worked out by theorists like Judith Butler, made it basically impossible not to affix the prefix “trans-” wherever the word “woman” appeared. So the flag of Woke 1 became the complicated and confusing progress pride flag—a gay rainbow with black and trans colors intruding from the left.

To make matters worse, the legacy of slavery did not actually touch all the racial minorities that Democrats wanted to bring into their fold. Most Nigerians, for example, had not experienced segregation in the United States. Nor had the millions of unvetted South and Central Americans streaming across the border. They were certainly “people of color.” But so were Chinese, Japanese, and Indian Americans, whose typically enviable life outcomes fit awkwardly into the narrative that the country was built on a ruthless caste system.

The contradictions heightened as Woke 1 faced a series of embarrassments such as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the 2023 Supreme Court case in which Asian students complained that admissions officers were discriminating against them in favor of black applicants. Then there were the notorious Trump ’24 ads that pinned Harris to her previous support of taxpayer-funded gender surgeries for federal prison inmates. Placing black women at the center of the moral universe created an unexpected and electorally unworkable set of obligations to illegal immigrants and queer felons.

Clearly, the coalition needed shuffling. And so rearranging the order of priorities in the grievance hierarchy is what the reinvention of woke has actually been about. In place of the black trans woman who defined Woke 1, Woke 2 has chosen as its ideal victim the dispossessed Palestinian liberationist, fighting with Hamas against Israel. This has a number of interesting strategic advantages.

First, the racial argument has been neatly streamlined. Rather than implausibly analogizing every racial group in America to the victims of Jim Crow, Woke 2 presents the black American story as just one instance of a global fight for justice carried out by minorities everywhere and epitomized in the intifada.

In 2023, on a panel for the Democratic Socialists of America, future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” He was outlining the blueprint for Woke 2, which takes its cues not from Judith Butler but from post-colonialist Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). “Between colonial violence and the insidious violence in which the modern world is steeped,” wrote Fanon, “there is a kind of complicit correlation, a homogeneity.” Therefore, “The colonized, underdeveloped man is today a political creature in the most global sense of the term.”

Recently, in an intriguing interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed put forward an argument that connects Fanon’s global struggle to America’s domestic economy. He claimed that pro-Israel politicians are allowing “the money that should be spent taking care of our kids to be sent to a military that has done a genocide.”

In other words, Woke 2’s new order of priorities allows its proponents to suggest that white or white-coded (read: Jewish) oppressors are funneling money away from America’s working poor to fund a worldwide campaign of mass slaughter. Distant as this account is from reality, it is much more ruthlessly focused as a line of woke reasoning. It emphasizes foreign policy and the economy, where the public’s real anger lies, and deftly mutes the discredited claims of LGBTQ extremists.

In practice, any woke administration of any variety will end up imposing pretty much the same bizarre sexual priorities on the country once elected. But for purposes of advertisement, Woke 2 will try to keep its trans members less conspicuous than Woke 1 did, for at least as long as it takes to re-establish national power. Replacing the progress pride flag with the Palestinian flag will distract from the ravages of queer excess while infusing socialist revolution with the moral self-righteousness of anti-white resentment.

Whether this tactic succeeds with voters is another matter.

If it does, though, Americans will discover that both Woke 1 and Woke 2, like Thing 1 and Thing 2, only play nice until they can start pitching over tables.

If we want to avoid a rerun of the early 2020s, then—to paraphrase Seuss—we will have to get rid of Woke 1 and Woke 2.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 15:10

Ukraine Hits Key Russian Space Facility With Flamingo Cruise Missiles

Ukraine Hits Key Russian Space Facility With Flamingo Cruise Missiles

Ukraine's long-range drone attacks have frequently targeted military bases and oil refinery and energy sites of late, and more recently warehouses of major Russian online retailer Wildberries - but on Saturday a new target has been added: space facilities.

Ukrainian forces have touted that they've struck the Progress Rocket and Space Center in Russia's Samara region. The facility focuses on the manufacturing and operation of space launch vehicles.

Illustrative: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Space.com/NASA

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X that Ukraine hit the space manufacturing center with FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles - among the largest in Ukraine's arsenal, and which are domestically developed and produced.

He said it was necessary to target Russian space agency Roscosmos as among Russia's "key enterprises" - and that the targeted site was also involved in "electronics production" connected to military operations.

Other sites targeted in the fresh wave of attacks included Savasleyka air base in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which hosts aircraft used to attack Ukraine, as well as an oil facility in Ust-Luga, which lies close to the Estonian border.

"Our plan of long-range sanctions against Russia for this war is being implemented, and it is important that Russia’s war potential be reduced," Zelensky stated.

Ukrainian national media offered this as a backgrounder:

The “Progress” Rocket and Space Center is one of the key enterprises in the Russian Federation’s rocket and space industry, producing launch vehicles of the “Soyuz” family. These are used to launch Russian spacecraft for military, reconnaissance, and communications purposes into orbit.

In particular, the “Soyuz-2.1b” is used to deploy the Russian “Rassvet” satellite constellation – a broadband satellite communications system that Russia positions as an analogue to Starlink.

The Progress Rocket and Space Center also manufactures Earth observation satellites, which the enemy uses for reconnaissance purposes.

Russia also attacked Ukraine overnight, as has long been the norm. Over 150 Russian drones were sent on the country, with Ukrainian forces claiming shootdown or neutralization of 124 of these, according to a military statement.

The fresh onslaught resulted in dozens of injures. As for potential casualties inside Russia, little is yet known of this in terms of secretive space and airbase facilities targeted.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 14:35

Somali Piracy Surges Amid Hormuz Blockade

Somali Piracy Surges Amid Hormuz Blockade

Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced hundreds of commercial ships onto longer routes around Africa, and Somali pirates are moving quickly to exploit the sudden increase in traffic off the continent’s eastern coast. Oil tankers MT Honour 25, MT Eureka and MT Asana were hijacked in the Gulf of Aden and off Puntland between April and July 2026, the largest attacks by Somali pirates in years. The Iran war has now delivered these groups more targets, spread across thousands of miles of ocean, while diverting naval resources to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Somali piracy peaked in 2011 before an international crackdown reduced attacks to a fraction of their former levels. The first major revival came in late 2023, when Houthi attacks in the Red Sea forced hundreds of vessels away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope. And with U.S. forces all diverted to the war against Iran in the Persian Gulf, it’s largely a free-for-all for Somali pirates.  Unlike the disorganized bands of the early 2000s, today's Somali pirates are ranging much farther from shore, and their operations have become much more sophisticated. And perhaps even more concerning, according to reports from a UN panel of experts, there is now direct coordination between Yemeni militants and Somali networks.

In exchange for creating maritime chaos to keep Western navies distracted, the Houthis have supplied Somali pirate cells with advanced weaponry, military training and precision GPS tracking devices to pinpoint commercial hulls. Al-Shabaab--one of the most lethal terrorist groups in Africa--provides onshore logistical backing along parts of the Somali coast where pirate gangs launch operations or hold hijacked vessels. Intelligence reports indicate the group receives a generous cut of up to 30% from successful maritime ransom payouts.

According to a joint study by Interpol, the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Horn of Africa piracy generated over $400 million in ransom payments from 179 hijacked ships between 2005 and 2012, averaging roughly $2.23 million per ship. The money follows a structured economy, with pirate crews receiving a standard 10% to 15% fee, local financiers claim 30% to 50% for funding food, fuel and weapons, while the rest is laundered into legitimate businesses, according to the study. And it’s only becoming more lucrative with time. 

A June 30, 2026, analysis by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) reports that ransom demands have been made for all three commercial vessels hijacked in the current wave.

The demand for Eureka was reportedly $10 million.

Separately, the pirates holding Honour 25 have demanded $3 million for the tanker, cargo and crew. 

GI-TOC says pirates received $1.2 million-$1.5 million for the release of the Chinese fishing vessel Liao Dong Yu 578 in March this year. The same vessel had reportedly generated another $2 million ransom in 2024. GI-TOC says counter-piracy officials believe the latest payment helped catalyze the current wave of attacks.

The Gulf of Guinea is yet another piracy hotspot in Africa thanks to the region’s riches in oil and gas as well as a well-trained militia due the Delta's secessionist movement. While local law enforcement and naval forces have managed to curb attacks in shallower waters, pirates are highly adaptable to new environments. Now, they are using heavily armed mother ships to strike targets well outside state jurisdictions and exclusive economic zones. The region’s pirate networks now operate with military-grade weapons, an intricate shipping intelligence network and complicated financial backing.

War-risk insurance premiums for commercial shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf spiked by over 1,000%--surging from pre-conflict levels of roughly 0.15%–0.25% of a vessel's value up to 7.5% and 10% per voyage shortly after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March.

With African maritime zones highly vulnerable due to a lack of equipment and manpower, and with American forces diverted to the Persian Gulf indefinitely, piracy sees its biggest opportunity yet. It means an African diversion isn’t necessarily going to avoid risk premiums.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 14:00

Record Highs: Should You Chase The Rally?

Record Highs: Should You Chase The Rally?

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Pinned and Stretched

There is nothing bearish about the tape, and the overall trend could not be much cleaner. The S&P 500 sits above every major moving average and above a rising 200-day line it has not closed beneath since April. That is a healthy, intact uptrend, and it deserves respect. The problem is not the direction, but the distance from the longer-term trend, which is more concerning. As is always the case, deviations above the long-term trend eventually “revert to the mean.” We see it almost every year.

At Friday’s close, the index sat roughly 10% above its 200-day moving average. That is one of the widest gaps of this entire cycle, and it sits about 3.7% above the 50-day line, too. Add our Money Flow and Breadth Indicator at 80%, with 72% of members above their own 200-day average. This market has done a lot of work in a short window. Friday’s quiet fade from record highs is the kind of small caution flag that shows up when a tape gets this extended.

Look at the ceiling first. Price is pressed right against its own record highs, with Thursday’s 7,801 close and 7,817 intraday high just overhead. Above that sits the round 8,000 mark, which also happens to be Goldman’s year-end target. Round numbers act like magnets until they act like ceilings, so that’s where sellers tend to dig in. The floor sits much further away. First support is the 20-day line near 7,585, then the 50-day line near 7,510, both comfortably below Friday’s close. The takeaway is the asymmetry. There’s little cushion above, and plenty of open air below, down to those averages.

Neither support level is very far away, and a pullback to either would be routine housekeeping within an uptrend, not a break of it. The number that matters for risk is lower down. As noted, the gap from here to the rising 200-day line near 7,076 is roughly 10%, and that mean-reversion “air pocket” is the risk. The trend remains up, but momentum is overbought; therefore, entries here offer poor near-term reward relative to risk.

Record Highs: Should You Chase The Rally

Last week in the Bull Bear Report, I flagged that our Money Flow and Breadth Indicator had pushed into extreme overbought territory. This week, it pushed even further.

“As of August 14, 2026, with the S&P 500 at 7,785.76, the Money Flow Breadth Ratio (MFBR) stands at 80% and rising, versus 75% the prior week – a 15 percentage-point increase over the trailing four weeks. This places the indicator in extreme overbought territory (75% or higher). The raw breadth signal still reads BUY, but the MFBR is a contrarian indicator at extremes: readings this stretched have historically been followed by below-average forward returns, so the model treats this as a caution flag rather than a green light to add risk.“

Regardless, the market shrugged, as it tends to do when momentum runs this hot. The S&P 500 is back near record highs, just under 7,800, and suddenly everyone wants back in the pool. So, here is the honest question before us this week:

“Should you keep chasing record highs here, or is the smarter move to participate while quietly managing the risk building underneath it?”

The Inflation Data Just Made The Bulls’ Job Easier

Before we answer that larger question, let’s touch on what changed this week. Both inflation reports came in soft. July CPI rose just 0.1% on the month and 3.4% over the year, with core at 0.2% and 2.5%. The reports were all in line with forecasts, and the shelter reading did most of the lifting, a slow-moving piece that the Fed will likely fade. The next morning, PPI landed flat at 0.0% versus a 0.2% gain expected, and the annual rate cooled to 4.7% from 5.5%. Final demand goods prices actually fell 0.7%. The tariff “passthrough” the hawks keep warning about simply hasn’t shown up in the pipeline yet, a point I walked through in Friday’s commentary.

That data is important, as the upcoming FOMC meeting in September won’t be about rate cuts but rather about a small minority of “hawks” rescinding their previous dissenting opinions. Coming into the week, futures had the September meeting near a coin flip. After the CPI print, the odds of the Fed holding rates jumped to roughly 64%, and the soft PPI only reinforced that move. A hike on September 16 is now the least likely outcome, particularly following very weak employment and retail sales reports.

For stock buyers, a Fed parked on hold removes the one macro tail risk that could have knocked a richly priced tape off course, a surprise hike into record highs. Notably, the recent data isn’t the same as “all clear,” and inflation is still running north of 3% keeps the Fed on hold for now. However, the near-term policy threat is smaller, and that is precisely the backdrop that emboldens buyers.

Speaking of that, let’s talk about who has been buying this market lately.

The Buyer List Behind Record Highs Keeps Growing

Give the bulls their due, because the setup is real. Scott Rubner at Citadel Securities laid out his “buyer checklist” this week, and it keeps getting longer.

Earnings are carrying the load, with Q2 profits for the index growing roughly 33%, one of the steepest revision paths in a quarter century. Furthermore, the forward multiple has actually fallen to about 20x earnings from 23 last October.

In other words, earnings are doing the heavy lifting, not “easy money” multiple expansion. Passive demand never blinked either. Households pushed a record 350 billion dollars into ETFs in July alone, part of 1.6 trillion in year-to-date inflows.

More than a trillion dollars of buyback authorizations reopen this month, and nearly 70% of them sit outside Technology.

When several sources of demand strengthen simultaneously, and selling pressure fades, the path of least resistance is higher. Breadth has healed, volatility has fallen, and the same rule-based strategies that were dumping stocks in the spring can start buying them back. Such is the mechanical reality of this tape right now.

That is the bull case, and it is a compelling one. However, a market where the buyer list is this crowded, moves this fast, and is on the heels of a 26th record high for the year, is also a market where the easy part of the move is behind us. In other words, it is now the marginal new buyer who is “paying up” for exposure near the highs.

Retail Is Back, And Buying What Already Burned It

As noted above, retail investors returned as net buyers across Citadel’s platform with a vengeance, reversing the selling seen at the end of June. However, while participation is back, conviction seems to be lacking. The same traders buying cash equities are still paying up for downside protection. Put buying sits near its highest reading since the March lows, and “what” they are buying is notable. Over the last two weeks, retail’s most-bought names were semiconductors and memory, the exact “story” trades that got cut hard in the summer washout.

We wrote about one flavor of this on Monday in Leveraged ETFs: Math Often Trumps Hype, where a widely shared post pitched a 2x-leveraged SK Hynix fund as “magnified exposure” to a doubling of the stock. The math does not work that way in option-backed ETFs. Daily resets and volatility decay mean a leveraged fund can end a year in the red even when the underlying stock doubles. Buying the same crowded names that already burned you, and doing it with leverage, is not a strategy. It is a “this time is different” bet.

The question, naturally, is if the flows are this strong, why fight them? I am not saying fight them. I am saying do not confuse a strong tape with a safe entry point.

Stretched Breadth: A Reason To Chase Record Highs?

As discussed in yesterday’s Daily Market Commentary, market breadth is very healthy. As noted above, more than 72% of the S&P 500 now trades above its 200-day moving average, the broadest participation since December 2024, up from a washed-out 41% this spring, and cross-stock correlation sits near record lows.

Historically, when more than 50% of stocks are trading above their 200-day moving averages, it indicates a long-term uptrend. As StockCharts has noted for years, readings north of 70% are technically overbought, yet in a real uptrend, overbought stays overbought. Over the next 6-12 months, broad market participation like this has been a tailwind more often than not. Citadel’s own point reinforces this:

“Breadth is rising while cross-stock correlation sits near record lows, indicating a wide market, not a narrow pocket of leadership.”

From a contrarian view, this is also where the risk resides. Elevated breadth by itself has NOT reliably preceded corrections. What precedes them is a divergence, the index pushing to new highs while fewer stocks tag along. We don’t have that today, as breadth is rising into the highs rather than fading beneath them.

Here is what you should take away from this data. The biggest forward returns show up after washed-out lows near 20%, not after the crowd is already all-in near 70%. In other words, breadth predicts risk better than it predicts return. While over the next 3, 6, and 12 months the odds tilt toward higher returns, the next month is the stretch when an overbought tape can correct without changing the larger trend.

That is exactly why this past Monday, we took profits in winners like MSFT across the Equity 60/40 Portfolio and the Dividend Growth Model, and rebalanced the AI, Crypto, and Infrastructure thematic sleeves back toward target weights

The “Supply Of Stock” Nobody Is Talking About

With the market now back to more overbought conditions, what could cause the next correction? Is there a “supply of stock” waiting above current levels, where “trapped longs” who bought the previous semiconductor highs and rode them down into the lows will look to sell the instant they get back to breakeven? The honest answer is: yes, but less than a classic top. In a classical textbook distribution-topping process, the index pushes to record highs while fewer and fewer stocks tag along. That “divergence” is what marks the overhead supply. Currently, we do not see that in the data, particularly with breadth rising into the highs, not fading beneath them.

When overall market participation is high, and prices reach record highs, most of the buyers who were underwater relative to the old highs are getting whole and holding, not dumping. That is the difference between a market building a base of support and one quietly distributing stock to the next greater fool. Do not confuse less supply with no risk, though. Such is where the calendar comes in.

As shown in the chart above, September is typically the weakest month of the year for stocks. Over the last decade, the S&P 500 has averaged a loss in September and finished higher only half the time, the worst reading of any month on the calendar. Now layer the events on top. A September 16 FOMC meeting with a fresh dot plot, a midterm election on November 3 that reliably injects volatility, and a VIX pinned near 14.6 after spiking toward the low 30s in the March selloff. The VIX seasonal pattern points in the same direction. Volatility tends to trough right about now and grind higher into the fall, and it does so more dependably in a midterm year.

A compressed VIX is not a signal to sell. It is a signal that protection is cheap, right before the calendar turns hostile.

Key Catalysts Next Week

Next week hands us the two things this tape cares about most. We get a fresh read on the consumer and the Fed. After Friday’s soft retail sales print, the retail bellwethers offer a real-time answer to the same question. The FOMC minutes hit on Wednesday, and Jackson Hole starts Friday, pushing the rate-path debate back to center stage. All of it lands right before the September 16 meeting.

This week, we also get numbers from key retailers to gauge consumers’ actual health. Are high oil prices finally creating some demand destruction in the economy? Or is slower job growth showing up in consumer spending that suggests the economy is slowing more than expected?

The through-line is simple. Say the retailers echo Friday’s soft sales, and the minutes show a Fed leaning toward patience. Then the “Fed on hold” story we lean on gets firmer footing. If a hawkish surprise turns up at Jackson Hole, the calm priced into that 14-handle VIX gets tested in a hurry. Either way, the playbook holds, and this is a week to hold quality, keep the cash buffer, and let the tape come to us.

What Should Investors Do Now

So what do you actually do with all of this? For now, continue to participate while managing your risk. Those two actions are not in conflict and do coexist successfully. The trend is up, breadth is broad, and the flows are real, so this is not the moment to run to cash. It is the moment to stop chasing record highs and start rebalancing.

Consider the setup on both sides. Goldman just raised its year-end target for the S&P 500 to 8,000, roughly 3% above current levels. However, here is the “risk” for your portfolio: while there is 3% to gain, the market sits roughly 10% above its 200-day moving average, one of the widest stretches of this entire cycle. Pay attention to the math: for every new dollar you invest, you risk $3.33 in losses.

When the upside is a coin-flip 3%, and the downside air pocket is roughly three times larger, committing fresh capital in size into record highs right here is the textbook definition of poor risk-reward. That skew doesn’t argue for selling, but does argue for how you participate, which is why the following tactics make sense.

Does that mean sell everything and hide? No. It means take the gifts the market is handing you now, while it is still handing them out. Such is the discipline that separates managing risk from trying to time the top.

Manage risk into the strength, not after it breaks. I hope this helps.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 12:50

Lutnick Draws Red Line: "Great American Companies" Shouldn't Use Chinese Memory Chips

Lutnick Draws Red Line: "Great American Companies" Shouldn't Use Chinese Memory Chips

One week after The Wall Street Journal reported that Tim Cook's Apple was testing memory chips from China's CXMT, a company blacklisted by the Pentagon over alleged ties to the People's Liberation Army, the outlet published a follow-up story with an interview with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who publicly urged Apple not to proceed. The standoff comes as the AI data-center buildout absorbs global memory supplies, driving prices sharply higher and forcing consumer-electronics manufacturers to explore alternative sources.

"The Trump administration is not in favor of that," Lutnick said in an interview after touring a new Apple manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas. There have to be "other solutions to the memory issue, but it's not great American companies using Chinese memory."

Lutnick said he has told Apple "plainly" that US tech giants shouldn't use Chinese memory. Apple has tested chips from CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies for potential use in devices sold in China, though Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan declined to comment on the trials, saying her team must examine "all options."

Apple can buy standardized Chinese memory chips without government approval, but customized components could require licenses.

As we've covered, the iPhone maker has been waging a lobbying campaign to secure the White House's blessing to ease the financial pressure from soaring memory-chip prices. A recent FT report said Apple approached the Commerce Department earlier this summer about procuring Chinese memory chips.

Related:

But Lutnick's comments to the WSJ make clear that the White House has, at least for now, withheld that blessing.

Meanwhile, Micron Technology and US senators from states benefiting from planned US memory investments are lobbying the administration to block US tech giants from procuring Chinese memory chips, warning that doing so would undermine domestic production and national security.

The WSJ previously reported that other device companies are also seeking supplies from CXMT:

Laptop makers HP and Acer have started using memory chips from CXMT in devices sold outside the U.S. to alleviate some of the memory supply strain, people familiar with the matter said.

Back to the Lutnick interview from Friday, the outlet reported:

Even so, Lutnick, who is spearheading the administration's plan to increase domestic chipmaking, said the administration continued to press Apple to bring more production to the U.S. 

"Relentlessly, more and more and more," he said, describing the pressure. "They've built their supply chains on low-cost labor. And now they need to build a supply chain on advanced manufacturing. Can Apple do it? Of course they can." 

"You're going to see step by step, and piece by piece, they're going to bring significant portions of their business home," Lutnick said. 

Most of Apple's supply chain is in Asia, and the company has been working with contract manufacturers to build new iPhone assembly plants in India.

Asked if Apple has any plans to bring iPhone production to the U.S., Khan pointed to efforts the company has already made, including commitments to spend tens of billions of dollars on made-in-USA chips for iPhones, as well as adding an assembly line for Apple's popular Mac Mini desktop computer in Texas. He also said Apple was focused on helping chip manufacturers reshore their supply chain end to end.

To sum up, Apple does not appear to have the White House's blessing to use Chinese memory chips, leaving the company with fewer options to offset soaring component costs and signaling continued upward pressure on product prices.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 12:15

The Gold Tax Surprise: When Gold Profits Get Taxed At 28 Percent

The Gold Tax Surprise: When Gold Profits Get Taxed At 28 Percent

Authored by Adam H. Douglas via The Epoch Times,

If you bought gold during its 2023-2026 rally, you may be sitting on a large profit and a tax rule you have never heard of.

Gold’s tax treatment can surprise investors, especially when selling after a major rally. Nattapon Saisaard/shutterstock

The IRS classifies physical gold, and even the popular bullion-backed gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as collectibles, a category shared with art, stamps, and antiques. That classification changes the tax bill when you sell. Most holders discover it at the worst possible moment: after the sale, when nothing can be done.

Here is the rule to understand before you sign anything.

Quick Answer: How Is Gold Taxed When You Sell?

Long-term gains on physical gold and bullion-backed ETFs are taxed as collectibles: at your ordinary income tax rate, capped at a maximum of 28 percent. That cap is the part many investors misunderstand and what a lot of media coverage gets wrong. If you are in the 12 percent bracket, you pay 12 percent, not 28 percent. The 28 percent figure only bites investors whose ordinary rate would otherwise be higher, and it compares unfavorably to the 15 or 20 percent long-term rates on gains on stocks.

Gold held for one year or less generally produces short-term gain taxed at ordinary income rates. State tax and, for some higher-income taxpayers, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax may apply separately. Choosing the year you sell can be a structural advantage, so learn the rules first.

The 28 Percent Rule - The Details

Two important details about the 28 percent rule:

  • It's a ceiling, not a flat rate. Long-term collectibles gains are taxed at whatever your ordinary rate is, up to 28 percent. Many retirees selling in a modest-income year owe far less than the headline rate.
  • It only applies after one year. If you sell gold that was held for a year or less, the gain is short-term, taxed as plain ordinary income with no cap benefit at all. For someone in the 35 percent bracket, selling a month early costs more in tax than if they were to wait another month.

Higher earners should also budget for the 3.8 percent net investment income surtax and any state income tax, which stack on top for gold just as they do for stocks.

The Same 'Gold' Is Taxed Three Different Ways

The ETF row surprises the most people. Funds that hold physical bars in a vault are typically structured as grantor trusts, so the IRS looks straight through the fund wrapper to the metal inside. You never touched a coin, but you are taxed as if you had.

Mining stocks, by contrast, are shares of companies, taxed like any other stock. Gold in a traditional IRA or 401(k) is generally taxed as ordinary income when withdrawn, not at the collectibles rate. Roth treatment differs.

Cost Basis: Where Sellers Save or Lose Thousands

You are taxed on the gain, not the sale price, and the gain depends on your cost basis. Basis generally starts with what you actually paid for the gold, including any dealer premium and applicable acquisition costs, not merely the spot price. A seller who reports only the spot price on the purchase date overpays.

The classic problem arises from coins bought for cash years ago. If you cannot document what you paid, the IRS may treat your basis as zero and tax the entire sale price. Before selling, gather what you can:

  • Dealer invoices and receipts, the gold standard of proof
  • Credit card or bank statements showing the purchase
  • Records of the date acquired, so you can reconstruct the price and premium from that day

Even partial reconstruction beats nothing, and a folder of paperwork assembled before the sale is worth thousands after it.

Inherited Gold and Gifted Gold Are Opposites

These two get confused constantly, and the difference is the whole tax bill. Inherited gold generally receives a stepped-up basis: Your cost resets to the market value on the date of death, and the holding period is automatically long-term, so selling soon after often produces little or no taxable gain.

Gifted gold is the trap. It carries over the giver's original basis and holding period, so if mom hands you coins she bought decades ago, and you sell, you owe tax on all those decades of appreciation. Families deciding whether to give gold now or leave it later should understand they are choosing between those two treatments.

The Deadline You Choose

Almost every other tax rule happens to you on someone else's schedule. This one waits for your signature. You decide the year the gain lands, which means you can sell in a lower-income year, split a large sale across two tax years, or confirm your documentation first.

Knowing the collectibles rule before the sale, rather than after, is the entire game.

FAQs About the Gold Collectibles Tax Rate Does Everyone Pay 28 Percent on Gold Profits?

The 28 percent figure is a maximum, not a flat rate. Long-term gains on gold are taxed at your ordinary income rate, capped at 28 percent, so a seller in the 12 or 22 percent bracket pays that lower rate. The cap only matters for investors whose ordinary rate would exceed 28 percent. Short-term gains, on gold held for a year or less, get no cap at all and are taxed as regular income.

Are Gold ETFs Really Taxed as Collectibles?

The physically backed gold ETFs are taxed as collectibles. ETFs that hold bullion in vaults are generally structured as grantor trusts, so shareholders are treated as owning a slice of the metal itself, and long-term gains face the collectibles rate of up to 28 percent. Funds that hold mining stocks are taxed as ordinary equity funds at 15 or 20 percent. Check the fund's tax documentation before assuming, because the ticker alone does not tell you.

What If I Have No Receipts for Gold I Bought in Cash?

Act before you sell. Search for any payment records, dealer correspondence, or notes establishing when you bought your gold, then reconstruct the price and typical premium from that date. Documented partial basis is far better than none, because without any support, the IRS can treat your basis as zero and tax the full sale amount. For large holdings, a tax professional can help you build a defensible basis file.

Does the IRS Know When I Sell Gold?

Form 1099-B reporting depends on the transaction, the dealer's status as a broker, the form of the metal, and applicable quantity thresholds. Current IRS instructions provide exceptions for many precious-metals sales, including transactions below the minimum quantity required for a CFTC-approved regulated futures contract (CFTC stands for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission); related sales within 24 hours, however, may be aggregated. Regardless of whether a Form 1099-B is issued, you must report a taxable gain or loss.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 11:40

Socialism Simplified: A System Where Government Uses Your Money To Solve Everyone Else's Problems

Socialism Simplified: A System Where Government Uses Your Money To Solve Everyone Else's Problems

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

They are coming for your money, and they have a ton of momentum right now. Democratic Socialists are winning election after election by promising free stuff, but of course free stuff is never actually free. Somewhere along the way, someone has to pay for it. If you find yourself protectively reaching for your wallet as you read this, I don’t blame you one bit. Socialism is a system where the government uses your money to solve everyone else’s problems. Unfortunately, it is also a system that is becoming increasingly popular among our young adults.

In a previous article, I noted that a poll that was taken in 2025 found that a whopping 62 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 now have a positive view of socialism.

That should chill you to the core.

Meanwhile, Americans view capitalism less favorably than they once did…

  • Fewer than half of Americans say capitalism is working even “somewhat” well — down from 60% about a decade ago, according to a June Wall Street Journal-NORC poll.

  • 61% of Americans said they were bothered “a lot” by the feeling that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes, per a Pew Research Center poll in January. That included 41% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

  • The same poll showed another 60% overall — and 42% of Republican-inclined voters — said the same about some corporations paying their fair share.

  • And views of big business went from 19 points positive in 2012 (58%-39%) to 25 points negative last year (37%-62%), according to the Gallup data.

This is crazy.

So why is this happening?

Well, the truth is that a large portion of the population is very frustrated with the economy.

The rising cost of living has been absolutely eviscerating the middle class, and many young adults consider homeownership to be completely out of reach because home prices are so absurdly high.

When someone comes along and starts promising all sorts of free stuff in this very harsh economic environment, it can be very seductive.

But if the Democratic Socialists of America were actually able to implement their entire agenda on the federal level, it would more than triple federal spending…

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) propose new spending that could more than triple federal outlays. They propose the government pay for health care, housing, higher education, and electricity. Jobs are government-guaranteed, retirement benefits are expanded, paid family leave is universal, fossil fuels are eliminated, and reparations are paid.

The DSA platform claims that the bill for all this will be sent to “the richest individuals and corporations.” Tally up that bill, and it ballparks between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in new spending over the next decade. Confiscating every dollar of high-end wealth and corporate profits would cover only a fraction of those costs. The DSA agenda necessitates high taxes on middle-class Americans.

If you took every penny from every billionaire in America, that would only account for 8.4 trillion dollars.

So where is the rest of the money going to come from?

They don’t have an answer to that question, but they have been winning major races all over the country.

And now a 37-year-old Democratic Socialist named Francesca Hong is favored to win Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary…

The 37-year-old restaurateur and chef-turned-member of the state Assembly is leading in polls by relatively wide margins ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who represents the famously liberal state capital of Madison, comes equipped with politically problematic tweets covering everything from abolishing the police to the racist origins of Thanksgiving.

It is hard to believe that someone like that could actually become the next governor of Wisconsin.

I wouldn’t even hire her to run a Dairy Queen.

But this is where we are at as a society, and it appears that lots of Democratic Socialists will be heading to D.C. after the midterm elections.

In 2026, Democratic Socialists have been repeatedly winning primaries in deep blue congressional districts…

  • Claire Valdez (New York – 7th District): Won the Democratic primary in an open congressional race.

  • Darializa Avila Chevalier (New York – 13th District): Defeated a 30-year progressive incumbent in a highly publicized upset.

  • Melat Kiros (Colorado – 1st District): Defeated long-time incumbent Representative Diana DeGette in the Denver-based Democratic primary.

  • Christopher Rabb (Pennsylvania – 3rd District): Won the open Democratic primary race for this Philadelphia-based congressional seat.

  • Donavan McKinney (Michigan – 13th District): Unseated incumbent Representative Shri Thanedar in the Michigan Democratic primary.

What will D.C. look like if the Democrats take back both the House and the Senate?

Some of the Democrats that are running for seats in Congress appear to be absolutely psychotic.

If there is a major progressive wave in the fall, that could potentially make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez one of the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

As Ben Shapiro has aptly pointed out, she seems to be pushing a new version of “woke” that is more palatable to many Americans…

Woke 1.0 forced Americans to say, “Am I racist or am I not?” Woke 2.0 is, “Is American capitalism inherently corrupting and bad? Is the West’s system of freedoms and free markets inherently imperialistic, colonialist, genocidal, and racist?”

It’s easier to pitch woke 2.0 than woke 1.0. Why? Americans have been convinced over the course of the last 25 years or so that America is the bad guy, that we and our allies are fundamentally evil, that our foreign policy decisions of the past two decades and maybe longer, going all the way back to World War II, according to some, are actually terrible and horrible, and we’re the bad guys in the world.

Add the economic angst right now, combine those two things, and you get woke 2.0, Ocasio-Cortez’s new program. It is about hatred of America.

But no matter how AOC may want to market it, the content is still the same.

In so many ways, the socialists want to turn our country completely upside down and make it the exact opposite of what it once was.

They intend to do this by taking over the Democratic Party.

Democratic Socialists always run for office as Democrats, and most of them openly identify themselves as Democrats…

Self-identified democratic socialists do not see socialism as being mutually exclusive and continue to identify with other terms on the left, including more mainstream Democratic labels. Of Socialist Democrats, 92% consider themselves to also be Democrats, 84% consider themselves to also be Obama Democrats, and 80% consider themselves to also be progressive.

We are being told that there is a civil war in the Democratic Party, but the truth is that the differences between “mainstream Democrats” and Democratic Socialists are not actually that significant these days.

They are all heading in the same direction. Mostly, their disagreements are about how far to go and how fast it will take to get there.

We already have the biggest government in human history, but they want to make it even bigger.

But socialism doesn’t work.

As Margaret Thatcher once warned, the problem with socialism is that the socialists always eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.

Considering the fact that we are nearly 40 trillion dollars in debt, our country is rapidly approaching that point too.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 10:30

Post-Maduro Venezuela Wants Its $4BN In Gold Back From England

Post-Maduro Venezuela Wants Its $4BN In Gold Back From England

Venezuela wants its gold back. And now with Maduro having been removed and Caracas being essentially a puppet of Washington influence and interests, it has a much better chance at this than ever before.

Venezuela’s government and opposition are teaming up to wrest back $4 billion in gold bullion currently locked in the Bank of England’s vaults, according to a Friday report by the Financial Times.

Bank Of England/Shutterstock

A freshly issued joint statement confirmed they are actively working "to recover Venezuela's international reserve assets held in the Bank of England."

If successfully repatriated, the funds are slated in part for post-earthquake reconstruction efforts and to soften the blow of years of US sanctions, which still haven't actually been fully lifted.

The funds have been the subject of a lengthy court battle, after since 2018 the United Kingdom has blocked access by denying recognition to Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist government.

Despite Maduro having been ousted by a US military operation last January during a shock overnight military raid on the capital, the Bank of England is demanding absolute legal clarity on who actually holds the reins of power in Venezuela before agreeing to open up the vaults.

An unnamed opposition figure revealed to the FT that both factions are hashing out a "transparency mechanism" designed to ensure the billion-dollar windfall isn't quietly siphoned off.

President Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro's former VP, has made personal request to King Charles for the gold:

The bullion has been the ​subject of a long-running legal battle in British courts, and it has not been released despite Maduro's capture by the U.S. in January and a ​request by acting President Delcy Rodriguez to King Charles.

The South American ​nation was hit by devastating twin earthquakes at the end of June that killed ‌more ⁠than 6,000 people.

Rodriguez said the government and lawmakers had agreed to focus on projects aimed at rebuilding households, health capacities, electricity availability and clearing rubble, and to this end, "concentrate efforts to promote ​the recovery of ​Venezuela's international assets ⁠in the Bank of England."

Venezuela had long charged England with "theft" as part of a regime change agenda aimed at the former government, which Washington had finally effected early this year.

For the first time there is no longer a clean "we don’t know who the legitimate government is" excuse... The value of the gold roughly doubled while it was frozen.

Under Rodriguez, the socialist system does remain in place, however Caracas has shown itself to now side with the US and West on a variety of foreign policy issues - from shifting its outlook on Israel, as well as distancing itself from Russia, China and Iran.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/15/2026 - 09:55

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