Zero Rss

Disney Asks FCC To Declare 'The View' A News Show, Exempt From Equal Time Rule

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Disney is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare the daytime talk show "The View" a "bona fide news" program to bypass the federal equal opportunities law, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced May 22.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris (C) chats with the hosts during a commercial break at “The View” in New York on Oct. 8, 2024. From left are Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg, Harris, Joy Behar, and Sunny Hostin. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

The show, co-hosted by Joy Behar, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Whoopi Goldberg, Sarah Haines, Sunny Hostin, and Ana Navarro, has come under scrutiny in recent years for its programming that heavily favored progressive guests and commentary.

In February, Carr told reporters the agency was investigating whether the show violated the federal "equal time" requirements for political candidates.

The equal time rule requires broadcast radio and television stations to give comparable airtime to legally qualified political candidates.

In May, Disney-owned TV stations KTRK-TV, Houston, Texas, and American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) filed a request with the agency to exempt the show.

"The companies ... suggest in their Petition that they believe the federal equal opportunities statute itself would not survive First Amendment scrutiny today or at least if it is applied today to 'The View' would not survive any such review," the FCC stated in a public notice issued May 22. "The companies also point to a letter from an FCC staffer from 2002 in support of their argument that 'The View' qualifies as bona fide news."

If FCC commissioners exempt "The View" from the equal time rule, the program would be allowed to continue having almost exclusively left-leaning politicians and guests on to discuss political issues.

"Disney argues that The View qualifies as 'bona fide news' under the law, comparing itself to Meet The Press or Face The Nation," Carr posted on X. "Therefore, Disney argues, it can have one partisan candidate for office on The View while denying equal opportunities to all others."

Under the law, television shows don't qualify as news shows if their content is based on partisan purposes, such as if they intend to harm someone's candidacy for office, Carr said.

The FCC has opened public comment on the request, allowing written comments until June 22, before commissioners consider the request.

Stations can petition the FCC to seek exemptions from the rule for bona fide news programming.

Congress created exemptions for two news programs, "Meet the Press" and "Face The Nation," in 1959 by passing an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, because of the traditional question-and-answer formats used.

Congress passed the equal time rule to prevent media gatekeepers from deciding the outcomes of elections, Carr said.

"The law, even when it applies, does not prohibit anyone from having any candidate appear on any show," Carr said. "Rather, Congress intended it to empower voters with more information and encourage more speech."

In April, the FCC ordered an early review of license renewals for Disney's ABC television stations as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the company and its stations were following federal communications laws and rules.

President Barack Obama appears on the ABC daytime television talk show "The View" in New York, alongside hosts (L–R) Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Saul Loeb/Getty Images Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 17:30

Ivanka Trump Was Reportedly Targeted For Assassination By IRGC Terrorist

First Daughter Ivanka Trump was allegedly targeted in an assassination plot by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-trained terrorist seeking revenge for the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, reportedly pledged to kill Ivanka Trump and was found with a blueprint of her Florida home after his recent capture, according to an exclusive report from the New York Post.

The alleged plot traces directly to the January 2020 drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad. 

Al-Saadi, who US authorities describe as a high-ranking operative within Iraq-Iran terror circles, had reportedly idolized the IRGC Quds Force commander as a father figure after his father died in a plane crash in 2006. That personal connection, analysts say, transformed a political grievance into something far more volatile. Ivanka Trump, 44, who converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner in 2009, emerged as Al-Saadi's primary target. 

Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington and now head of the Future Foundation, says Al-Saadi began openly vowing revenge after Soleimani's death. "We need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house," Al-Saadi allegedly told associates. "We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka's house in Florida," Qanbar adds, noting that a second source independently confirmed the existence of the plot.

Al-Saadi posted a map image on social media showing the exclusive Florida enclave where Ivanka and Kushner own a $24 million home, paired with a warning in Arabic that "neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you" and that "our revenge is a matter of time." In that same post, he declared that he and his network were "currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis,” framing the operation not as an aspiration but as active preparation.

“Al-Saadi is said to be a high-ranking figure in Iraq-Iran terror circles, arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited to the US, where he is charged with 18 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States, per the Department of Justice,” the New York Post reports. “He’s been behind attacks on US and Jewish targets including the firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March, the stabbing of two Jewish victims in London in April and a shooting at the US consulate building in Toronto, also in March, according to the DoJ.”

Court documents also state that he "planned, coordinated" and claimed responsibility for attacks on Jewish communities, including the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam.

What makes the case especially striking is how openly Al-Saadi allegedly operated online. 

According to federal investigators, he posted photos with missiles, praised Qasem Soleimani, threatened “the American enemy,” and even shared images tied to alleged terror targets. Authorities also say he used a religious travel agency as cover to connect with terror cells internationally and traveled with an Iraqi government-issued service passport that reduced scrutiny at airports.

Analysts say Al-Saadi had deep ties to Iran-backed militias and maintained connections with both Soleimani and his successor, Esmail Qaani. He is now being held in solitary confinement in Brooklyn while supporters in Baghdad reportedly portray him as a resistance figure.

🇺🇸🇮🇷 An IRGC-linked Iraqi terrorist named Mohammad Baqer Al-Saadi was plotting to assassinate Ivanka Trump as revenge for the U.S. killing of his mentor Qasem Soleimani.

He had a blueprint of Ivanka’s Florida home, posted maps and threats online, and was actively involved in… https://t.co/pubLwRaJj7 pic.twitter.com/PCCto7v8yT

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 23, 2026

“Ivanka Trump was allegedly targeted in an assassination attempt tied to Iranian terror groups. Thankful Ivanka remains safe right now,” House Republicans said in a statement on X. “The failed assassination plot shows Iran’s true colors (and why we must make sure they never have a nuclear weapon). They hate America and they clearly see President Trump as the man standing between them and death to America. That’s why they’re targeting his daughter. It’s sick.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 16:55

What 'Compassion' Isn't

Authored by Laura Hollis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One of the most frustrating aspects of contemporary conversations about politics and public policy is how often the deleterious effects of terrible programs - local, state and federal - are brushed aside with distracting and even deceitful claims that the intentions behind the policies were "compassionate." This is an utterly wrongheaded analysis for many reasons. Laws, public policies, and government programs should be evaluated by their results, not by the state of mind of their advocates or sponsors.

Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash.com

The weaponization of compassion has launched a de facto competition of who can be thought to be the most "compassionate" or, at least, not thought to be uncompassionate. The result of this arms race has been chaos, destruction, and depravity.

It's easy to lose sight of just how often this pernicious dynamic takes place, so it's worthwhile to point out a few of the disastrous policies that were promoted, and in some cases continue to be promoted, as being "compassionate" and to call them out for the societally corrosive lies they are.

1. It wasn't "compassionate" to close our mental hospitals. The impulse was understandable; plenty of those facilities were substandard. But the results were catastrophic. Until fairly recently in this country's history, the "homeless" population consisted largely of small numbers of unattached males who drifted from place to place seeking work. But since the 1980s, the homeless population of the United States has exploded. Nearly three-quarters of a million people are homeless, and the number jumped 18 percent from 2023 to 2024. California has 187,000 of the country's homeless; more than 70,000 are in Los Angeles County alone.

2. It isn't "compassionate," nor is it respect for "individual autonomy" or "dignity," to leave the homeless to live as they do. Homeless encampments are hotbeds of filth, including human urine and feces, crime and diseases like leptospirosis, typhus, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and even plague. Across the country, cities are dealing with the economic impact of shuttered stores and declining downtowns attributable to the presence of ever-growing numbers of homeless.

3. It isn't "compassionate" to hand out needles or create places where addicts can use drugs. Leaving aside what should be an obvious argument that we shouldn't be encouraging, much less facilitating, the use of dangerous drugs, two-thirds of America's homeless have a diagnosed mental health illness. A third have a serious substance abuse problem. Approximately half suffer with both. Open-air drug use exacerbates those problems and creates others.

4. It isn't "compassionate," or "equitable," for that matter, to eliminate teaching math, giving grades, standardized tests, advanced academic programs for gifted students or graduation requirements, or to lower entrance qualifications for college and graduate school. It punishes high-achieving students and sends the message to lower-performing students that they aren't capable of meeting basic standards. That, then, undermines public confidence in the graduates of our high schools, colleges, and professional schools.

5. It wasn't "compassionate" to stop enforcing our immigration laws.

6. It isn't "compassionate" to allow violent criminals back on the streets.

7. It isn't "compassionate" to subject children and teenagers with gender dysphoria, and other emotional disorders, to permanent alteration of their bodies with medical and surgical interventions before they are old enough to understand the implications of those decisions.

None of these decisions have had beneficial impacts on their intended populations. Worse still, they are all deeply destructive to other individuals, groups, and society at large. Everyone affected should be able to protest the consequences of these failed policies without getting smeared with the false accusation that they "lack compassion."

Another reason to eliminate "compassion" as a basis for public policy, which we're seeing daily with painful clarity, is that these policies end up being vehicles for massive fraud. Anyone can set up a 501c3 nonprofit, claim to be working for a charitable purpose, and deceive donors into giving money that does little but line the CEOs' pockets. And when government grants are involved, there is little oversight, take Minnesota, for example, and more incentive for grift, bribery, and payback in the form of pouring money into the campaign coffers of politicians who hold the grants' pursestrings. What we end up with is a situation where neither the nonprofits nor the politicians have an incentive to solve the underlying problems, since they're getting rich from their continued existence.

Why has the United States become a nation where "compassion" trumps all other considerations?

Scholars like Helen Andrews argue that the emphasis on "compassion" over logic and methodical analysis is a function of what she calls "the great feminization." Women, Andrews claims, are hardwired to be maternal, and thus more likely to be persuaded by something that tugs at their empathy than by that which appeals to their reason.

I'm not so sure. First, women have functioning brains, and they are certainly intellectually capable of dispassionate analysis. Second, an awful lot of men seem to be just as hornswoggled by appeals to their "compassion" as are misguided women. And third, I don't understand how it is "feminine" or "maternal" to witness the collapse of huge sections of our cities into third-world slums; or to know that drugs are pouring into the country, children are being trafficked for sex, and young women are being raped and murdered because the borders are unenforced; or to see people stabbed to death on public transportation, pushed in front of trains or run down by crazed lunatics at Christmas parades because criminals aren't incarcerated; or to watch as multiple generations of disadvantaged minorities struggle because of schools with weak disciplinary and academic standards; or to want children and emotionally troubled teens to be chemically castrated or surgically sterilized before they're old enough to drive a car, drink a beer, or understand the concepts of sexual satisfaction, fathering, giving birth to or nursing a child, none of which they will experience if they are "transitioned."

None of this is "compassionate." It's objectively irrational. It's wantonly destructive. It is the deliberate disregard of monumental, systemic, catastrophic failure, the evidence of which is irrefutable. There's something seriously wrong with anyone who continues to defend these policies and programs, and I'm not persuaded that it's a matter of chromosomal biology or evolution.

I don't profess to have a complete solution. But a good start would be to demand meaningful metrics when we discuss proposed and existing policies and programs. What matters isn't "compassion"; it's consequences.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 16:20

AI Content Is Swamping The Internet: How It Impacts Critical Thinking

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A never-ending flood of content generated by artificial intelligence is reshaping the internet and the way people engage with information faster than ever.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik

From news summaries to social media posts to academic research, the sheer volume of machine-assisted materials has been correlated with a spike in "cognitive offloading" - a phenomenon in which people outsource critical thinking and verification to automated systems.

A 2025 analysis of how AI tools affect cognitive offloading showed a "significant negative correlation" between frequent use of AI tools and the ability to think critically in people across age groups and educational backgrounds. The researchers at the SBS Swiss Business School found that younger age groups exhibited a higher amount of dependence on AI models and lower critical thinking scores.

What's more troubling is a Pangram/YouGov study in May that found only 55 percent of participants, all of whom were Gen Zers aged 18 to 28, were able to identify fake or misleading AI-generated material. That number is lower in older age groups, which means half or fewer of adults over the age of 28 were confident in their ability to spot AI content online.

"AI-generated posts and comments can distort public perception, especially when volume is mistaken for credibility," Javi Pérez, an editor of AI-assisted consumer education websites, told The Epoch Times.

"If a user sees dozens of similar posts about a product, trend, political claim, health issue, or financial topic, they may assume there is broad agreement."

'Confident Sameness'

Pérez said consumers need to beware as AI content increases the volume of what he called "confident sameness" online.

"Many articles and posts now repeat similar structures, similar advice, and similar phrasing. For casual readers, this can create the impression that a topic has more consensus or certainty than it really does, because they keep seeing the same ideas repeated across many sources," Pérez said.

"The risk is that people stop knowing which content has been checked. In fields like finance, health, law, education, or news, readers need to know whether claims were reviewed against primary sources, updated recently, and edited by someone accountable."

AI strategy consultant Armand Cucciniello III told The Epoch Times that AI-generated content is changing not only how we consume information, but also how quickly we process and trust it.

"We're moving from deliberate reading toward rapid skimming of polished summaries, commentary, short-form videos, and AI-assisted content designed for speed and engagement," he said.

As someone who has worked in the "U.S. national security landscape," Cucciniello said one of his biggest concerns is that AI systems "can unintentionally amplify large volumes of inaccurate or deliberately manipulated content simply through repetition and scale."

He also believes the high volume of AI-generated content is creating real pressure on public trust.

"When readers encounter nearly identical phrasing or interpretations across multiple sources, it's natural to question whether the information was independently reported or simply repackaged," he said.

Carl Stroud, a public relations expert and chief storyteller at the Smoking Gun Agency, has also witnessed AI content take a toll on the public.

"The fundamental audience need has not changed: People want to trust what they are reading," Stroud told The Epoch Times. "What has changed is how much harder that judgment has become.

"AI-generated content, aggregation, and low-quality slop have made the information environment noisier, flatter, and more confusing, so audiences are now trying to work out whether they are reading original reporting, rehashed content, or something that should never have been published in the first place."

Beyond social media and academia, few industries have been hit as hard with AI-generated misinformation as the news. Stroud, who has spent two decades within UK media circles, editing, and journalism, said he's seeing the AI content churn create fatigue among readers searching for accurate information.

"Fatigue is dangerous because when people feel overwhelmed, they either disengage or become easier to mislead," he said.

Losing Touch

Ashutosh Khulbe, founder of RawPickAI, tests AI tools for a living - about three to four new ones every week.

"What I notice most in my corner of the internet is that everything sounds the same now. Like, eerily the same," he told The Epoch Times. "I'd guess 70 to 80 [percent] of 'best AI tools' articles are AI-generated at this point.

"It creates this weird feedback loop where AI writes reviews based on what other AI already wrote, readers assume there's a consensus, and the actual experience of using these tools gets buried."

He said he tested one writing tool that had hundreds of positive reviews online yet was unusable at the free tier. "You couldn't even finish a paragraph before hitting the limit. But good luck finding that info in a Google search," he said.

Khulbe is especially bothered by the way information distortion is affecting the public.

"AI content skews relentlessly positive because it's trained on marketing pages and affiliate reviews. Nobody's training models on 'I tried this for two weeks, and it sucked.' So the negative signal just disappears from the internet," he said.

The effects of the AI content boom can now be seen in what some are calling "AI psychosis," or a disconnect from reality. While not a clinical diagnosis, the term has become a popular catch-all phrase to describe when AI reinforces an unusual, fixed, or even delusional perception of something in the real world.

People with mental health conditions could be predisposed to developing "AI psychosis," but it's also not limited to that population, according to Dr. Ragy Girgis, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

"The phenomenon of AI psychosis is quantitatively new and could be very dangerous, but qualitatively it's very similar to what's been happening for decades now since the advent of the internet," Girgis said during an interview with the National Academy of Medicine in March.

This photo illustration shows a person holding two mobile phones displaying viral AI-generated videos of students and an elderly woman sharing views on the impeachment of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte in Hong Kong on June 20, 2025. Days after the Philippine Senate declined to launch the impeachment trial, the two videos arguing for and against the move went viral. Yan Zhao/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 15:10

'Impossible To Negotiate With Ukraine' After School Dormitory Strike, Kremlin Informs UN

The last year of the Ukraine war has been marked by both warring sides remaining far from the negotiating table, instead opting for a battlefield solution, also as a deadly tit-for-tat drone and aerial war continues to unfold. This week things just got even worse concerning the distant prospect of restarting direct peace talks, something underscored by a fresh statement of Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Friday after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on a college in Starobelsk (Starobilsk) in the Lugansk People's Republic that it's now impossible to negotiate with Kiev.

via BBC Hardtalk 

"This clearly confirms the treachery and non-negotiability of Kiev, which, with the encouragement of its Western sponsors, is not only not committed to a peaceful settlement, but also openly sabotages it," Nebenzia told a meeting of the UN Security Council.

"This deliberate attack on a civilian facility where children study and live, carried out at night when the dormitory was full, was clearly carried out with the aim of maximizing the number of victims," the Russian envoy continued.

The death toll from the Thursday overnight into early Friday hours attack has risen to at least 18, amid a massive rescue effort which went through Friday. At least 39 were initially reported injured.

Large-scale destruction was observed at the academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College, which teaches students aged 14 to 18. Over 80 students were at the complex at the time of the attack.

Additionally, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those responsible needed to be brought to justice, calling it "a monstrous crime" - given the "attack on an educational institution where children and young people ⁠are present."

The assault also included multiple strikes and drones, ruling out the possibility of an 'accidental' targeting, Amb. Nebenzia continued in his remarks. He further blasted Ukraine's western backers.

"Such strikes using long-range weapons provided to the Kiev regime by NATO countries, including drones, are being carried out with technical assistance being provided by foreign specialists from well-known NATO states," Nebenzia added.

State media also underscored that "He argued that the attack demonstrates that negotiations with the current Ukrainian leadership are impossible."

President Putin had on blasted the mass casualty incident as a "terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime" while vowing swift revenge. He has reportedly asked for input from the Defense Ministry, meaning that plans are in motion for a likely imminent, heavy aerial assault on Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 14:35

"Preserve All Records": DOJ Puts Democrat-Run Maryland On Notice In Election Integrity Probe

Submitted by Maryland Freedom Caucus, 

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced on X last night that she has ordered Maryland’s State Board of Elections to preserve their records concerning the utter debacle of mail-in ballots during the state’s primary election season.

It's the wrong time to send voters the wrong ballots. This @TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights will not let Maryland's mail-in ballot mistakes go unnoticed! pic.twitter.com/nm9S1x9amX

— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) May 22, 2026

“It's the wrong time to send voters the wrong ballots. This @TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights will not let Maryland's mail-in ballot mistakes go unnoticed!” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

This update comes just one week after SBE was forced to admit that its third-party, out-of-state vendor mailed half a million or more ballots to the wrong primary voters. 

President Trump himself called for a federal investigation into this breach of trust with Maryland voters...

... immediately after the Maryland Freedom Caucus had suggested the same:

To restore faith in Maryland's electoral process, decisive action is necessary. We must release the voter rolls to the federal government to allow for a thorough audit into the reported issuance of 400,000 incorrect ballots. pic.twitter.com/39PJlDyKiN

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) May 16, 2026

The Maryland Freedom Caucus has been on the front lines of election integrity since our formation, placing Voter ID, citizen-only voting, and in-person voting at the center of our legislative platform. This past year, our landmark legislation, the Secure the Vote Act of 2026, did not even receive a vote in committee. To date, no other legislative group - Republican or otherwise - has called for the intervention of the Justice Department in oversight of Maryland’s elections.

But Maryland voters need not despair, because together with our grassroots partners, Secure the Vote MD, we have been pushing for reform in the court of public opinion and it is working. With AAG Dhillon’s announcement last night, the oversight of Maryland’s elections we have been calling for since last fall may soon come to pass.

AAG Harmeet Dhillon is exactly right. Voters receiving the wrong ballots isn’t a harmless mix-up; it is the kind of sloppiness that shatters confidence in our elections at the worst possible time. Mass mailing of ballots has always been a bad idea. It compromises the chain of… https://t.co/QXM2RZA0vH

— Matt Morgan (@MattMorgan29A) May 22, 2026

“AAG Harmeet Dhillon is exactly right. Voters receiving the wrong ballots isn’t a harmless mix-up; it is the kind of sloppiness that shatters confidence in our elections at the worst possible time. Mass mailing of ballots has always been a bad idea. It compromises the chain of custody on a large scale, and this isn't the first time Maryland has dropped the ball on issuing ballots,” said Maryland Freedom Caucus Chair, Matt Morgan.

Morgan added, “Thank you for making sure the DOJ Civil Rights Division holds Maryland accountable. Common sense tells us fair elections demand accuracy, not excuses. Integrity first.”

“565,639 Maryland voters were failed by the very system entrusted to protect their vote. We are grateful that Harmeet Dhillon and the Department of Justice are paying attention — because clearly, Maryland’s State Board of Elections is not. SecuretheVoteMD will not stop until every one of those voters be has a guaranteed path to a clean, counted ballot,” said Kate Sullivan, president of SecuretheVoteMD, the state’s citizen watchdog group. 

Delegate Lauren Arikan, a founding member of the Maryland Freedom Caucus, thanked President Trump on X last night for following through on his promise to investigate what went wrong with Maryland’s no-excuse mail-in ballots this year:

The Trump administrationis once again walking towards the fire, even in a state that most Republicans would consider a lost cause. President Trump is going to Make Voting Great Again. 👏👏👏👏

— Lauren Arikan (@laurenformd) May 23, 2026

“The Trump administration is once again walking towards the fire, even in a state that most Republicans would consider a lost cause. President Trump is going to Make Voting Great Again," Arikan noted. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 14:00

Nvidia CEO Urges Super Micro To "Enhance Compliance" Amid AI Chip-Smuggling Probe

In a rare public comment that Nvidia is growing more sensitive to downstream risk, CEO Jensen Huang was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying Super Micro Computer must strengthen internal compliance controls after Taiwanese authorities detained three people accused of smuggling banned AI chips to China.  

"Ultimately, Super Micro has to run its own company," Huang told reporters on Saturday in response to the chip smuggling scheme. "I hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and avoid that from happening in the future."

The U.S.-based server and data-center hardware company primarily builds high-performance servers, storage systems, networking gear, and complete AI/data-center racks for various customers, but most importantly for those working on edge computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

Huang said Nvidia is "rigorously" explaining the complex regulatory environment to all its partners to avert further downstream diversion risk.

Huang's comments stem from federal prosecutors charging the co-founder of Super Micro and two associates with participating in a scheme to divert roughly $2.5 billion in Nvidia AI accelerators to China.

How the Alleged Scheme Worked:

• The group used a company in Southeast Asia as a front buyer to place huge orders with a California-based U.S. manufacturer.
• Once the servers arrived in Southeast Asia, they were quickly repackaged and secretly shipped to customers in China through a network of brokers.

Related:

• $92 Million In Banned AI Chips Went From Super Micro To Little-Known Chinese Tech Company

Our view is that Huang's comments suggest he is trying to insulate Nvidia from a widening chip-smuggling investigation while preserving access to highly scrutinized international markets.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 13:25

When Unfairness Is Systemic, The Consequences Are Flight, Resistance, Revolt

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth."

Let's weave together two threads that look different: systemic unfairness and civilizational psychosis. As I often note, social species that organize themselves into hierarchies (i.e. primates, including humans) have an innate sensitivity to fairness, as this trait is essential to maintaining social stability, and therefore it has been selected as advantageous.

This sensitivity applies both to individual instances of unfairness / injustice and to systemic unfairness / injustice. If there is no redress when an individual is treated unfairly or abused, the social order is weakened. This is why early civilizations instituted legal codes and systems of redress as they expanded into nations / empires that needed bureaucracies to organize, manage and enforce the rules and responsibilities of every class.

If the mechanisms of redress have become empty shams, then the unfairness is systemic: it isn't just some individuals who have been treated unfairly--everyone is being exploited and treated differently from what the system claims is the operative set of values and rules.

When there's an external source of wealth to be exploited, the leadership has the luxury of becoming extractive and oppressive, because they have a source of wealth that's external to their own populace. Consider the progression from a society of systemic fairness to a society of systemic unfairness.

Consider a fledgling nation that was a society with high levels of social trust and cohesion generated by a dutiful leadership, social mobility and a system in which social pressures meant members of each social class had to respect the same set of social rules.

This structure is the essential foundation of a functional society and economy, for if the resident populace is immiserated by an unfair system, they respond by either fleeing the system (i.e. opting out or leaving), resisting the unfairness / exploitation or revolting against the status quo.

If the nation transitions into an expansionist empire, the leadership can jettison fairness / redress because it can extract wealth via conquest or exploiting new resources. The bureaucracy is co-opted / bought off via the spoils of conquest and corruption, and as the imperium expands, it has sufficient wealth to buy off the citizenry class with bread and circuses or equivalent largesse.

In other words, systemic unfairness--what we now call a rigged casino--is accepted as long as the key social classes feel they're getting ahead. The Roman state / empire is an example of these dynamics, but there are many others.

As long as there's enough external wealth flowing in to enable people to feel they're still getting ahead, social decay is tolerated as "the cost of progress." In other words, who needs fairness if I have a seat in the rigged casino?

But this structure is inherently unstable, both economically and socially. External sources of wealth / resources are eventually depleted, and the largesse diminishes asymmetrically: the wealthiest few at the top continue amassing fortunes, the bureaucrats are squeezed, and the lower classes are now being taxed to cover the decline of external wealth extraction.

The systemic unfairness that was tolerated is no longer tolerable once the majority are no longer getting ahead. This presents the leadership class reaping the lion's share of the wealth extraction with a problem: how to persuade the masses that 1) they're still getting ahead, even as they visibly lose ground, and 2) how to mask the systemic unfairness, i.e. the rigged casino that stripmines the many to benefit the few.

The leadership's "solution" is civilizational psychosis: the founding mythology of the state--so inspirational and lofty--is heavily promoted, even as this mythology (super-abundance, democracy, etc.) no longer maps the real world.

This widening divide generates civilizational psychosis as the masses are corralled into a state of denial that temporarily eases their anxiety at the recognition they're no longer getting ahead and the ladders of upward mobility have all crumbled.

This state of inspirational delusion enables denial to take a superficially plausible inspirational form: Rome is eternal, so we don't have to do anything but await an automatic return to greatness, AI will make us all rich, technological Progress is inevitable and automatically solves all our problems, and so on.

We fervently believe these delusions because the alternative is too painful to bear. The system is rotten to the core, it's all artifice masquerading as authenticity, and not only are we no longer getting ahead, there are no pathways left to get ahead other than gambling, selling our blood or delusional aspirations to become one of the tiny handful of newly minted Tech Bro millionaires.

There is an emotional progression that parallels the progression from a stable society of dynamic equilibrium to civilizational psychosis: denial breaks down into anger, a volatile state with uncertain outcomes, which eventually transitions to bargaining (please let the stock market go back up so I can exit without losses) which leads to depression (it's all lost) which once processed can move to acceptance (oh well, time to start over).

Both denial and civilizational psychosis are inherently unstable as they're self-liquidating. So denial will blossom into anger whether we "like" it or not.

Now that we've drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of "wealth" is a catastrophically delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of "wealth." Since the top 10% managerial / entrepreneurial / professional class the leadership needs to run the empire own 90% of the bubbling assets, inflating a credit-asset bubble is a painless way of generating the illusion in this class that they're still getting ahead.

Until the bubble pops, of course, and all bubbles pop, even when we insist they're not bubbles.

Bubbles masquerading as "wealth" is a manifestation of civilizational psychosis, and so these asset bubbles are equally unstable and self-liquidating: they implode not as a result of some external influence but as an inevitable consequence of their internal structure / nature.

Once the system's transition to a rigged casino becomes undeniable, denial cracks wide open and is replaced by anger. The responses to systemic unfairness are flight, resistance and revolt: dropping out, laying flat, let it rot, opting out, booing toadies worshiping the new gods of AI and eventually, manifestations of revolt as political, economic and social redress are suppressed as needless by a delusional leadership class that has embraced civilizational psychosis.

The price of believing their own PR will be higher than anyone thought possible.

*  *  *

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)

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Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:50

No Wonder Men Are Opting Out

Authored by Bettina Arndt via DailySceptic.org,

The warning signs have been there for decades.

Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book — The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment — arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic, inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible and less than a real man.

Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame and the yoke comes off.

Forty years on, the yoke has disappeared. In April 2026, the American male labour force participation rate hit its lowest level since records began in the 1940s, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. One in three American men — roughly 33% — were not working or actively looking for work. The overall male participation rate for men aged 16 and over stood at just 67%, down from 73.5% two decades ago and from 87% in the postwar years when Ehrenreich’s story begins.

The trend is not confined to America. Similar declines — though less dramatic than in the United States — have occurred in the UK, Australia and Canada.

The marriage collapse runs in lockstep with the workforce data. According to US Census Bureau data, married-couple households made up 71% of all US households in 1970; today it’s just 47%. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox documents in his 2024 book Get Married, the marriage rate has fallen 65% in the last half century.

Ehrenreich had made the argument that marriage and productivity were inseparable — that the same mechanism which got men to the altar got them to work. The data suggest she was right.

What Ehrenreich did not fully reckon with — and could not have foreseen in 1983 — was that the inducements for tying the knot would collapse. The shame mechanism has disappeared, yes. But the incentive has simultaneously imploded. The product on offer has changed beyond recognition. If you want to understand why men are voting with their feet, you need to look not just at what marriage now costs them — and the costs are severe — but at what it delivers. Increasingly, what it delivers is a pretty dud deal.

The modern woman: a prospectus:

• They are the most miserable, anxious and insecure cohort in living memory — hardly great marriage material.

• Most married women go off sex — and the husband who objects is seen as the problem.

• Many women don’t actually like men very much. The more educated she is, the higher the contempt.

• They’ve gone full throttle Left — and three quarters of college-educated women won’t even date a man who votes differently.

• They’ve rigged the education system and colonised corporate and institutional life, turning universities and workplaces into man-repellent factories.

• Yet their hypergamy is still running hot. Despite outnumbering men in education and careers, they still demand a tall, equally high-status unicorn.

• The modern female threat-detection system is hyperactive. Almost any male behaviour — silence, opinions, jokes, breathing — gets flagged as a red flag.

• They’re extremely well-versed in the lucrative economics of divorce, including a well-timed false allegation to eliminate tedious shared parenting.

What rational man reads this list and thinks: yes, that’s exactly what’s been missing from my life?

To examine more carefully what is going on here, let’s start by looking at the latest addition to this sorry reckoning. I’m referring to the finding published in the New Statesman last month that many young women don’t like men.

A Merlin Strategy poll of young Britons aged 18 to 30 found three times more young women than young men held a negative view of the opposite sex. Only about 50% of women had a positive view of men compared to 72% of men feeling positive about women. For women under 25, it was even starker: only around one-third (35%) reported a positive view of men. This applies particularly to professional and managerial young women of whom just 36% hold a positive view of men, compared with 61% of working-class women.

The contempt for men is hardly surprising – that’s what they have been taught. Mary Harrington, a British journalist and cultural critic who writes on Substack, frequently criticises what she calls the “femosphere” — the online feminist spaces where women bond through shared grievances about men.

“The online feminist scene often feels like one long group therapy session for women to compare notes on how awful men are,” she writes, suggesting this makes men the universal scapegoat, where ordinary male behaviour is routinely framed as toxic or oppressive, while women’s collective resentment is rewarded and amplified. “Casual, low-level male-bashing has become the background hum of progressive online culture.”

Not only does this toxic climate encourage women to be wary of men, but growing up in a hate-fuelled online sewer takes a toll on their mental health.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long been warning that the toxic world of social media would lead to a rise in mental health problems, particularly in girls and young women.

“Since the early 2010s, young people across the developed world are becoming more anxious, depressed and lonely. The increases were even greater in young women,” he said.

Recent large-scale surveys (Ipsos 202-–2026 across 31 countries, Gallup 2025) are showing Gen Z women currently report the highest recorded levels of anxiety, persistent sadness, hopelessness and depression of any female generation at the same age.

Not much fun for their partners. Last year Psychology Today had a stark warning for men about these women as marriage prospects.

The saying ‘happy wife, happy life’ may have some validity, but the lesser-known saying ‘anxious wife, miserable life’ has research-approved validation. … The more neurotic the spouse is, the less happy the relationship — but women’s neuroticism seems to carry more weight in the overall marital happiness equation.

Then there’s the intriguing issue of married women turning off the tap, leaving sex-starved husbands as the norm. For as long as anyone can remember, men were shamed into showing up economically. Society has absolutely nothing to say to women who stop showing up sexually. One obligation was enforced by church, law and community for centuries. The other is now abrogated on the grounds of bodily autonomy.

So here we have the portrait of the modern woman as marriage prospect: miserable, anxious, politically radicalised, contemptuous of men, often sexually rejecting and trained to see menace in ordinary male behaviour. And yet the puzzled chorus from commentators, economists and policymakers continues: why won’t men commit? Why won’t they work?

The approved explanations are dutifully trotted out. The economic story: men have been displaced by automation and globalisation. The health story: opioids, disability, mental illness. The educational story: men are falling behind women in universities and therefore in the job market. The cultural story, favoured by progressive commentators: toxic masculinity is preventing men from adapting to a modern service economy. All of these contain a grain of truth. But they do not account for what is really going on.  The obvious explanation — the one staring out of every data table — is intentionally ignored.

Marriage was the primary incentive for sustained male economic effort. It has always been — Ehrenreich knew it in 1983, and the economists have now confirmed it. There’s an economic research paper, ‘The Declining Labour Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men, which establishes that the prospect of forming and providing for a family constitutes a critical male labour supply incentive, and that the decline of stable marriage directly removes it. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculated that declining marriage rates are responsible for roughly half the drop in the hours men work.

Remove the marriage and you remove the responsibility. The data have been telling us this for decades.

But here is what nobody in the mainstream conversation will say: it is not only that marriage has become too costly and too legally treacherous for men — though it has. It’s that many young women themselves have become, to put it plainly, not worth having. Half of young British women don’t trust men. More than half of educated young women view men negatively. They arrive at relationships pre-loaded with grievance, primed by algorithms that have fed them a diet of male failure and female outrage since adolescence. They are, by their own account, anxious, miserable and politically furious.

What rational man, surveying this landscape, concludes that what his life is missing is a legally booby-trapped commitment to a woman primed to be impossible to keep happy?

Ehrenreich feared in 1983 that if the shame mechanism collapsed, male productivity would follow. She was right. What she could not have anticipated was the other half of the equation — that the feminist revolution would produce not a generation of fulfilled, generous, companionable women, but one that is, by every available measure, angrier and unhappier than any before it.

The yoke is off. The men have looked at what’s on offer. And many have, with considerable rationality, decided to go and play video games instead.

As one of Australia’s first sex therapists, Bettina Arndt began her career discussing sex on television and training doctors and other professionals in sexual counselling at a time when such topics were largely taboo. Her current – and even more socially unacceptable – passion is exposing Australia’s unfair treatment of men through the relentless weaponisation of laws and policies that portray women solely as victims. Her decades of advocacy for fair treatment of men in the Family Court included serving on key government inquiries. Bettina makes YouTube videos and blogs on Substack.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:30

Tulsi Gabbard Resigns As Director Of National Intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard is stepping down from her role as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to support her husband, Abraham, as he battles an extremely rare form of bone cancer, according to Fox News.

Gabbard informed President Donald Trump of her decision during a meeting in the Oval Office on Friday. Her last day at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will be June 30, 2026.

In her formal resignation letter, obtained exclusively by Fox, Gabbard expressed deep gratitude to Trump, writing:

"I am deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half. Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer."

She added that her husband "faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months," and that she must step away from public service to be by his side.

"Abraham has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage... His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge. I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position."

Gabbard noted the significant progress made during her tenure, including major declassification efforts (more than half a million pages), reducing the size of the intelligence community and saving taxpayers over $700 million annually, dismantling DEI programs, and establishing a "Weaponization Working Group" to address government weaponization.

Today, with great humility and sincere appreciation, I shared the below letter with President Trump. It has been a profound honor to serve the American people as DNI. pic.twitter.com/p7AZ4wa9Yi

— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) May 22, 2026

The news comes roughly a week after a controversy involving the CIA reclaiming approximately 40 boxes of sensitive documents - including files related to the JFK assassination and MKUltra - from the ODNI. The incident sparked accusations of a “raid” on Gabbard’s office by some lawmakers, though her team pushed back against that characterization amid her broader push for declassification.

Gabbard was confirmed as DNI in early 2025 and has been a key figure in advancing transparency within the intelligence community.

//--> //--> Tulsi Gabbard out by June 30?
Yes 27% · No 73%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

This is a developing story.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:30

Ukraine Regained Territory After Cutting Russia's Black Market Starlink Terminals

According to a newly declassified U.S. defense intelligence assessment first reported by Bloomberg, Moscow’s frontline command-and-control structures suffered a catastrophic blackout earlier this year due largely to coordinated crackdown that disabled thousands of black market Russian Starlink terminals.

The Pentagon document highlights just how deeply Russian forces had come to rely on Elon Musk's commercial satellite terminals to patch over their own spotty military communication systems. For months, Russian units bypassed international sanctions via shadow supply networks to source the hardware.

The Friday Bloomberg report claims that a "Ukrainian offensive against Russia earlier this year retook about 400 square kilometers after thousands of portable Starlink internet terminals operated by Russian forces were deactivated," citing analysis from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. 

The document, authored jointly by the DIA and US European Command, states that "Russian military capabilities in Ukraine were temporarily yet significantly degraded following Ukrainian officials’ efforts in February to deactivate thousands of Starlink terminals that were illicitly used by Russian forces to coordinate movements and unmanned aircraft strikes in areas where communications were unreliable or easily jammed."

Ukrainian forces then made their first territorial gains since 2023, after years of steady Russian gains, with Russia military comms now said to be "temporarily yet significantly degraded" due to the loss of the terminals.

The report further describes that Kiev forces working in tandem with SpaceX were able to deploy sweeping geographic restrictions that target-locked and deactivated unauthorized terminals operating inside the combat zone. This resulted in "instant" results.

What also didn't help is the Kremlin's own tightening restrictions on the use of Telegram by Russian forces, and so also the recent lack of this favored encrypted messaging platform among military units left frontline commanders totally isolated.

While US intelligence noted that Russia still maintains an overall structural advantage in raw combat functions, and of course manpower and firepower remains on Moscow's side, the incident demonstrates that communications are still a vital backbone to any modern warfare and command system.

SpaceX has long sought to officially bar Russian consumers from using Starlink, due to long-running sanctions, and to prevent military use against Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 12:15

Highlights From 2nd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files Include A UAP Shootdown

The Pentagon’s second batch of declassified UFO files released on May 22 includes videos such as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) being shot down over the Great Lakes and audio of astronauts witnessing a series of unexplained phenomena.

​Dozens of documents were cleared for release on Friday, adding to the previous document dump on May 8, which revealed that Apollo 11 astronauts reported seeing a “sizable” object near the moon.

​The Epoch Times' Jacki Thrapp offers the following highlights from a partial review of the newly released files.

UAP Shot Down

The U.S. Air Force shot down a balloon-shaped UAP over Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes located between the United States and Canada, on Feb. 12, 2023.

A U.S. Air Force Air National Guard F-16C shoots down a UAP over Lake Huron on Feb 12, 2023. Department of War

The video, which the War Department said was likely taken by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform, showed the UAP being struck and “fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high-energy event.”

Fragments fall from the UAP after it was shot. Department of War

The War Department did not reveal what fell from the object.

Officials did not share if any attempts were made to recover the fragments.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of War for additional information.

​UAP Formation Caught on Camera

The Department of War released a video showing “four areas of contrast” seemingly making a formation, according to a video apparently filmed by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform.

A screenshot from a video titled “UAP USO Formation.” USO stands for unidentified submerged object. Department of War

The eight-minute clip, which was edited and digitally altered, showed four objects moving in a parallel direction as they became “increasingly indistinct over time as the video quality degrades.”

Four unexplained objects moving in the same direction in a screenshot from video. Department of War

The War Department did not share the date or location of the unexplained formation.

International Sightings

An infrared sensor spotted a UAP, described as “four areas of contrast,” zoom past what appeared to be ships in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in Iran on August 2022.

In a separate incident that year, video captured “multiple spherical UAP” near a submarine in March that were going “in and out of water.”

A UAP, or possibly more than one, appears on the lower left side of a classified video taken in Iran on August 2022. The red circle was added by The Epoch Times to clarify what the Department of War considered to be an unknown anomaly. Department of War

Additional videos showed UAP in Syria in 2021, a “spherical UAP over [Afghanistan] in and out of clouds” in November 2020, and a video that starts in color and shows a bright UAP over the water off the East Coast of the United States. 

The latest document dump included a CIA intelligence information report from the Soviet Union that was recorded in the summer of 1973.

The decades-old report revealed that an unnamed source on the Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range in Kazakhstan witnessed a “sharp, (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.”

The source, who was identified as a former Soviet citizen, said the “green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass.”

The witness did not hear any sounds associated with the phenomenon.

NASA Audio

The second batch of UFO-related files also included several audio clips released by NASA from its Mercury and Apollo missions.

An audio recording from Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962, featured pilot Scott Carpenter describing reflective white particles that moved at “random” and appeared to “look exactly like snowflakes.”

He said the phenomena moved faster than his spacecraft.

Additional “little white objects” were also reported months later during the Mercury Atlas 8 mission.

On Oct. 3, 1962, pilot Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. described “little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off.”

Minutes later, Schirra reported a burst of light in his window.

“[I’m] getting a real burst of light in the window, and I really don’t know what it is,” Schirra said. 

In December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission, the 11th and final crewed mission in the Apollo program, Cmdr. Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans reported “very bright particles or fragments of something” that drifted by outside the spacecraft as they transited to the moon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 11:40

Delivery Hero Confirms Uber's Takeover Bid In Push For Global Food-Delivery Empire

Summary:

• Delivery Hero Confirms 33 Euro Takeover Bid 

• Uber Speculation of Delivery Hero Takeover 

• Uber Builds Large Stake in Delivery Hero 

Delivery Hero Confirms Takeover Bid 

Delivery Hero has confirmed that Uber has proposed buying the German food delivery company for 33 euros per share, in line with earlier takeover reports.

Following today’s press publication, Delivery Hero SE confirms that Uber Technologies, Inc. reached out with an indicative proposal of €33 per share in respect of a potential takeover offer to all shareholders of the Company.

Delivery Hero continued:

The Company remains fully focused on executing its strategic review process. Further updates will be provided as required or appropriate.

Recall earlier reports that said Uber built a 19.5% stake in Delivery Hero, plus 5.6% option exposure, as it explored takeover opportunities.

Our previous note outlined that Uber’s move to acquire Delivery Hero was likely aimed at expanding its international footprint.

Uber Builds Large Stake In Germany's Delivery Hero As Takeover Speculation Builds

Uber is exploring a potential takeover of Delivery Hero after building a large stake in the rival German food delivery company, Bloomberg News reports. This follows an earlier report that Uber had built a 19.5% stake.

On Monday, Uber disclosed that it owns 19.5% of Delivery Hero, plus an additional 5.6% through options. The position was built with the help of Morgan Stanley traders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Uber's move to acquire Delivery Hero could be an attempt to expand Uber Eats' global footprint and improve its competitive position against DoorDash outside the US.

Delivery Hero operates in more than 60 countries, giving Uber exposure to markets where it is either underscaled or trailing its competitors.

Map of Operatoins of Delivery Hero Brands

"While Uber's ultimate intentions on further stake-building remain unclear, we view the move as a clear endorsement of the strategic attractiveness of Delivery Hero's asset base for Uber," JPMorgan analysts wrote in a note.

Earlier, Uber said it "currently" has no intention of increasing its stake in Delivery Hero beyond 30%.

Delivery Hero shares in Frankfurt are up nearly 50% this year and have more than doubled from their March lows of around 15 euros. Uber shares were marginally lower in early afternoon trading.

Berenberg analyst Wolfgang Specht wrote in a note that Delivery Hero's investment case has changed following news of Uber's stake. He said it now seems prudent to assign value to scenarios that include a potential takeover.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 10:47

40,000 Evacuated In Southern California As Chemical Tank Threatens Leak Or Explosion

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Roughly 40,000 people in Garden Grove, a Los Angeles suburb, were evacuated on Friday after a chemical storage tank was determined to be at risk of failing and spilling thousands of gallons of toxic material or exploding.

The malfunctioning tank holds methyl methacrylate, a flammable and volatile chemical used in plastics manufacturing for aerospace applications, igniting widespread worries over potential toxic vapor release.

The situation broke out Thursday, when the tank at a manufacturing facility started displaying signs of instability. By Friday, an update increased fears of an explosion, Orange County Fire Authority interim Chief TJ McGovern said.

On Friday, employees saw that the tank was bulging, a sign it was still “actively in crisis,” as one official described it.

The manufacturer said a valve had been damaged, preventing a controlled release.

Firefighters were working to cool the tanks with a mechanical device operated from a safe distance, stabilizing the temperature and buying critical time, officials said.

“I know I keep talking about we were handed this situation where there’s only two things that can happen: it could crack and leak, or it could blow up. That’s not acceptable to us,” Craig Covey, division chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video posted on social media.

Covey added in a later video, “I have an entire team actively working locally, regionally, across the state, and across the country, to try to figure out how to fix this.”

He said he is working to “get all these brilliant minds together to put a plan together, so that we don’t let this blow up.”

In an earlier announcement, Covey said the tank could fail and spill up to 7,000 gallons of toxic chemicals or explode and compromise neighboring tanks.

Garden Grove, which is home to 172,000 residents, is located approximately 30 miles south of Los Angeles. The evacuation zone affected neighborhoods in and around the city, and extends to nearby areas including parts of Anaheim, Cypress, Stanton, Buena Park, and Westminster.

Officials established three evacuation shelters in Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Cypress. Schools and roads in the affected areas were closed.

Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said approximately 15 percent of those under evacuation orders were refusing to leave.

Health officials said that released vapor could prompt severe respiratory issues with prolonged exposure. Air quality monitors, however, had not detected any vapor as of Friday, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

“You are safe as long as you are out of the zone that was determined to be an evacuation zone,” Chinsio-Kwong said.

Methyl methacrylate has a sharp, fruity odor. Some residents miles away reported smelling it amid the unfolding events.

The chemical is used in aerospace plastics manufacturing.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:55

Trump Speaks With Qatar Emir As Pakistani-Led Iran Peace Push Intensifies

US-Iran de-escalation hopes drove crude oil and rates lower and put a bid in equities by the end of Friday's trading day, amid speculation that President Trump would stay at the White House over Memorial Day weekend instead of attending Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas.

"As Iran/oil/rates pressure eased on de-escalation hopes, leadership rotated toward small caps, equal weight, housing, transports, discretionary, and selective defensive growth, with short covering in high short-interest/profitless tech and consumer cyclicals reinforcing the catch-up trade," UBS analyst Torsten Sippel wrote in a note to clients late Friday.

Early Saturday morning, Bloomberg reports that President Trump held a phone call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, regarding Pakistani-led efforts to de-escalate Gulf tensions and preserve the fragile US-Iran ceasefire.

Iran's top negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf met Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir in Tehran earlier today amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring the US and Iran to a peace deal, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media.

Ghalibaf told Munir that Iran's Armed Forces "have rebuilt themselves during the cease-fire in such a way that if Trump foolishly restarts the war, they will definitely be more crushing and bitter for the U.S. than on the first day of the war."

The Iranian top negotiator also said, "We will not compromise on the rights of our nation and country."

There was a series of headlines from Sky News Arabia, citing sources, indicating that a major push for regional diplomacy was underway earlier today, with officials from Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Qatar working to mediate with Tehran to avert another flare-up in the conflict.

Sky News Arabia sources said Pakistan’s mediator helped break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear file, though several major issues remain unresolved, including the conflict in Lebanon, sanctions on bank accounts, the status of Iranian ports, and the presence of U.S. military forces in the Gulf area.

Iran is reportedly demanding the lifting of restrictions on its ports and a U.S. military withdrawal from the region before reopening the Strait of Hormuz and entering a new round of talks within 30 days.

There is also a reported internal conflict between Iran’s government and the Revolutionary Guard over Tehran’s negotiating demands.

Latest negotiation headlines (via sources) from Sky News Arabia:

• Iranian Foreign Ministry: Iraqi and the Omani Foreign Minister discuss in a phone call the ongoing diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation

• The foreign ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the necessity of concerted efforts to ensure the success of mediation efforts with Iran to reach a sustainable solution that addresses all the roots of the crisis and prevents the renewal of escalation.

• The Foreign Ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the continuation of coordination of efforts to support targeted mediation aimed at ending the escalation in the region and restoring security and stability.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The Pakistani mediator has succeeded in overcoming the deadlock on the Iranian nuclear file.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: The issues that have not yet been resolved include stopping the war in Lebanon and lifting the ban on financial accounts.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: Iran demands the lifting of the siege on Iranian ports and the withdrawal of military forces from the region to open the Strait of Hormuz and proceed to a round of negotiations within a 30-day timeframe.

• Sources to Sky News Arabia: There is a severe disagreement between the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guard regarding Iran's demands for negotiations.

Additional overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Economic Impact

• The dollar ended the week nearly unchanged as risk assets got a boost from optimism around US-Iran peace talks [BN]
• Germany's business outlook improved for the first time since the Iran war began, with an expectations index rising to 83.8 in May [BN]
• UK retail sales fell 1.3% as consumers made fewer car journeys amid the global energy shock from the Iran war [BN]
• Qatar Airways will skip bonuses for almost 60,000 workers this year after the war forced cancellation of tens of thousands of flights [BN]

Military Readiness

• The US halted arms sales to Taiwan to ensure sufficient munitions for the Iran war, according to Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao [BN]

• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post, with her anti-war views having spurred tension with the White House [BN]

Trade Disruption

• Japan is set to receive its first Persian Gulf oil shipment to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, with the Idemitsu Maru carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude [BN]

• Anglo American is redirecting Brazilian iron ore output to Asia as the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz prevents shipments to Bahrain Steel [BN]

Polymarket Odds For US-Iran Peace Deal By ...

//--> //--> US x Iran permanent peace deal by May 26, 2026?
Yes 8% · No 93%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Charting Brent Crude

Friday's US-Iran Wrap

• Iran Says 'No Deal' Will Materialize If US Insists On Enriched Uranium Handover

Hormuz Chokepoint:

• Iran Says 35 Ships Exited Strait Of Hormuz As Rubio Condemns Tolls

Chart of the Day (read UBS note): 

Fuel Shock Risks Begin Spilling Into Broader Economy

• Hormuz Shock Raises Recession Risk As Retailers Sound Alarm On Consumer Stress

Professional subscribers can review the latest institutional reads on Iran, Hormuz, energy markets, and more at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 09:20

Ukraine Uses High-Altitude Balloons To Extend Suicide Drone Strike Range

Ukrainian forces have borrowed a page from China's hypersonic glide-weapon testing and applied it to the Eastern European theater, using one-way attack drones against Russia.

Instead of launching the Hornet strike drone from a ground-based catapult, Ukrainian operators tethered it to a high-altitude balloon, extending its range. 

Defense news website Defense Blog reports:

The test, details of which circulated through Ukrainian military channels, involved a Hornet manufactured by Perennial Autonomy being dropped from a balloon at approximately 8 kilometers altitude after the aerostat carried the drone 42 kilometers from its launch point.

Ukrainian troops tested launching the Ukrainian-American Hornet kamikaze drone from a balloon. The aerostat carried the drone 42 km and released it from 8 km altitude, while the UAV used only 5% of its battery. The method extends range by combining balloon distance, high-altitude… pic.twitter.com/YUlKcaQf7e

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) May 20, 2026

The outlet said the new tactic would effectively double the Hornet's range to 300 kilometers (about 186 miles).

Military observers have marveled at Ukraine's rapid weapons innovation curve, particularly its use of "low-tech" solutions such as drones and interceptors. These have become so effective that the U.S. military and allied Gulf countries have begun procuring some of these weapons.

The Ukraine-Russia war has effectively become a weapons and AI laboratory, accelerating battlefield technology and bringing forward weapons that would otherwise have been seen in the 2030s.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 08:45

Morocco Launches Mass Deportations To Block Europe Migration Route: EU's 'Externalization Strategy'

Via Middle East Eye

Since April 14, Morocco has been conducting large-scale deportation operations targeting sub-Saharan Africans migrating to Europe, reportedly arresting over 100 per day, local sources told Middle East Eye.

According to Moroccan human rights groups, around 800 people were detained during coordinated raids in the forests between Fnideq and Belyounech, in the northern tip of the North African state, where many were sheltering before attempting to reach Europe.

Tramway rail construction site in Morocco's city of Casablanca, via AFP

The operation is still ongoing, with authorities then moving their focus to operations in and around Tangier. Witnesses have described mass arrests, beatings, racist abuse and forced transfers toward the Algerian border.

Sudanese and Chadian detainees were bused south and abandoned near border zones, while people from countries including Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Guinea were deported on flights departing Casablanca.

The crackdown comes as the European Union has intensified its cooperation with Morocco as part of its border externalization strategy, which is a key component of the bloc’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum set to take effect in June.

The EU increasingly outsources immigration enforcement to North African nations with poor human rights records, designating over €900 million within the bloc's Global Europe development instrument to fund stricter migration control, border management and surveillance initiatives across the region.

"The EU wants to restrict people’s mobility as far down the route as possible - what officials describe as stopping migration downstream," Frey Lindsay, a journalist on Statewatch's Outsourcing Borders project, which tracks how the EU outsources migration control, told Middle East Eye. "It's about exerting border control without getting your hands dirty, basically."

Raids and expulsions

Morocco is a key transit country for sub-Saharan Africans en route to Europe. They sail across the Strait of Gibraltar or climb the towering razor wire fence that separates Morocco from Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves within the kingdom.

Over the years, Morocco has increased cooperation with Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, to prevent migrants from departing the North African coast. In 2025, Moroccan authorities thwarted 73,640 irregular migration attempts toward Europe, according to a report from the interior ministry, a slight decline from 2024 - attributed to alternative migration routes.

In recent weeks, Moroccan security forces have stepped up their role as Europe’s de facto border enforcer, carrying out regular raids on makeshift forest camps and key transit points used by people trying to reach Spain. Attacks on migrant camps have long been pervasive, but have escalated since April 14, with operations concentrated in the north of the country. People who are not deported are typically exiled to the south in an effort to disrupt migration routes.

"According to migrants we have been in contact with, they were subjected to various forms of humiliation, insults and mistreatment by authorities," Chad Boukhari, a journalist and member of Border Resistance, a grassroots collective that supports migrants across the Mediterranean, told MEE.

Some were abandoned near the Algerian border without food or water, where they were detained by Algerian forces. "The Algerian army allegedly tortured many of them. Some individuals also found the bodies of other migrants in the desert," Boukhari added.

In 2025, Algeria expelled more than 30,000 migrants to Niger, abandoning many "deportation convoys" in the Sahara desert. Testimonies of abuse, torture and enslavement have been reported. MEE contacted the Algerian, Moroccan and EU authorities for comment but had not received a reply by the time of publication.

Sub-Sahara Africans often reach Morocco by crossing the Sahel, the arid perilous land belt stretching across the continent. They typically cross through Niger into Algeria or via Mauritania to enter Morocco. Many of the countries along these routes are plagued by chronic instability and rank among the lowest on the Human Development Index.

Once in Morocco, migrants can spend months to years sleeping in the country’s dense, dry woodlands. Humanitarian groups tend to know the whereabouts of informal encampments and provide modest assistance, but even these efforts are often thwarted by authorities.

Since 2014, Human Rights Watch has documented repeated incidents where Moroccan police beat migrants, deprived them of their few possessions, burned their shelters and expelled them from the country without due process.

“Oftentimes, the Red Cross would enter the forest and provide us with blankets and clothing. But we knew that was always a bad sign. Shortly after the Red Cross visits, Moroccan security forces would appear, as if they were watching,” Ousman Sow, a Guinean man who spent a year in Morocco before he was able to cross into Spain, told MEE.

“They burned all of our belongings before driving us far away and dropping us off in remote areas without any possessions," added Sow, who now lives in Germany. The goal is to prevent migrants from reaching Ceuta and Melilla, the only European territories with a land border in Africa.

On 24 June 2022, at least 37 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, were killed under unclear circumstances while attempting to climb the fence into Melilla. Another 70 people from that day remain missing, amid reports that Moroccan authorities were burying bodies in unmarked graves.

Externalizing control

Despite stricter enforcement, crossings from North Africa continue amid the war in Sudan and worsening instability across the Sahel. For many, the promise of Europe is still worth the risk.

“The more borders and walls you put up, the more dangerous ways people go around them,” Lindsay told MEE. “Securitization doesn't change the reason why people want to leave; it just means more people will die.”

Rights groups also say the latest crackdown is a consequence of the EU’s new migration pact, which seeks to overhaul the bloc’s current immigration system, expediting asylum case proceedings and deportations. The new system expands biometric surveillance and increases rejections on the grounds that people passed through a designated “safe third country” before reaching the EU.

Morocco is included in the list of safe countries alongside other nations accused of human rights abuses, such as Egypt and Turkey. If migrants passed through any of these nations on the way to Europe, their deportation will be expedited.

Over 50 NGOs formally objected to the pact, arguing the new expedited procedures deny the right to a fair and thorough review of asylum cases. The EU has progressively blocked migrants before their asylum case can be filed by externalising immigration enforcement, collaborating with countries outside of Europe to prevent migrants from reaching EU soil.

Under the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, it has poured hundreds of millions of euros into strengthening migration enforcement in Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria.

FRANCE AND MOROCCO PREPARE MAJOR NEW TREATY

France and Morocco say they are preparing a first-of-its-kind agreement aimed at deepening cooperation between the 2 countries.

The move follows France recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara last year.

Source:… pic.twitter.com/HvzAtJXKDi

— NewsForce (@Newsforce) May 22, 2026

The adoption of the Pact on Migration and Asylum has put political pressure on the European Commission, which must secure member state backing for a politically contentious overhaul of EU asylum rules.  “The new migration pact is a really critical legislative package for [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen and her cabinet. They need this to be a success politically, and will do everything to ensure the pact doesn’t fall apart,” said Lindsay.

“Member states have made it very clear that they are unwilling to go along with the pact if the European Commission doesn’t do everything it can to make sure people don’t arrive - and to deport as many people as possible,” he added.

The new approach has drawn particular scrutiny in Libya, where EU-backed groups have been linked to systemic abuses. The EU directly funds, trains and equips Libya’s coastal authorities, which have been accused of collaborating with human trafficking networks to capture migrants, subjecting them to exploitation, physical and sexual violence, and even enslavement.

The EU is now in the process of funding a maritime control centre in Benghazi aimed at intercepting migrants at sea and forcibly returning them to Libya. This requires cooperation with General Khalifa Haftar, who controls eastern Libya in opposition to the UN-recognised government in the west and has been accused of war crimes.

Similar patterns of violent pushbacks have emerged across Europe’s eastern borders. Along the Balkans route, Croatian authorities have been documented violently pushing people back into Bosnia, effectively preventing them from accessing asylum procedures on EU territory.

The new pact also introduces the concept of “return hubs”, nations where rejected asylum seekers may be transferred to and detained while awaiting deportation to their home countries. Migrants will likely have no connections to the designated countries they are deported to; the EU has proposed options everywhere from Bangladesh to Rwanda.

Rights groups say the Pact on Migration and Asylum embodies a broader hardening of attitudes and policies toward migrants across the EU member states, with detrimental consequences for those trying to reach Europe. "Whenever the political climate changes in Europe, you can feel it in Morocco," Sow told MEE. "If Europe wants immigrants, Morocco is okay. If not, it’s hostile there."

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 08:10

Lukashenko Offers To Meet With Zelensky 'Anywhere' After Russia Sent Belarus More Tactical Nukes

We reported earlier this week that for the first time Russia's 'Union State' ally Belarus hosted multi-day drills involving a "rehearsal" of Russia’s use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

The exercise ran from Tuesday to Thursday and was presided over by Presidents Lukashenko and Putin, and saw hundreds of Russian missile launchers, warships, nuclear submarines, and jets deploy and engage in military maneuvers. As part of it, Russia reportedly sent more tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

Pool image, via Moscow Times

On the occasion, and amid angry denunciations from European leaders, the 71-year-old Lukashenko - who has ruled the former Soviet nation since 1994 - asserted that "We threaten absolutely no one."

He followed with: "But we have such weapons, and we’re ready in every possible way to defend our common fatherland from [the western Belarusian city of] Brest to [Russia’s Pacific port of] Vladivostok."

In Ukraine, President Zelensky warned Belarus of "consequences" over potential deepened involvement in Russia's 'special military operation' - though Belarus did act as a staging ground for the initial attack waves in early 2022.

"The de facto leadership of Belarus" must "stay on its toes – that is, clearly understand that there will be consequences if aggressive actions against Ukraine, against our people, are taken," Zelensky said while making a visit this week to a Ukrainian city which is just dozens of miles from the Belarusian border.

Interestingly, and in what appears another first, Lukashenko actually offered to meet with Zelensky, and that this meeting could take place "anywhere" in Belarus or Ukraine.

"If (Zelensky) wants to discuss something, seek advice, or anything else, please do. We are open to it," Lukashenka said on Friday, according to state media.

"I am ready to meet with him anywhere - in Ukraine, in Belarus - and discuss the problems of Belarusian-Ukrainian relations," the Belarusian leader emphasized. 

He also addressed Zelensky's latest accusations, rejecting the premise, and explained that his armed forces won't join the conflict unless "aggression is committed against (Belarusian) territory."

Russia's defense ministry released footage of this week's nuclear drills coordinated with Belarus:

🇷🇺🇧🇾 Russia releases video of nuclear weapons exercises with Belarus

A display of military power and strategic readiness. pic.twitter.com/E5xECipGoc

— Iran War Update ☫ (@IranWarUpdate_) May 22, 2026

Of course, such a meeting is very unlikely to ever materialize, unless part of some kind of final lasting peace settlement, which has proved elusive over 4+ years of war.

The Ukrainian leader dismissed the overture. "Since 2022, it has been obvious to everyone that this man's words mean nothing, and we should pay attention to his actions," Zelensky's advisor Dmytro Lytvyn told a press briefing later.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 07:35

'Great Replacement' Fears Soar In Belgium

Via Remix News,

A major social study commissioned by VRT, known as the “Photo of Flanders,” reveals that a majority of Flemish people are afraid they are being slowly replaced by migrants, with this study now joining similar ones in France and Germany, which reveal serious fear across Europe about the ongoing Great Replacement.

The VRT survey shows that 56 percent of respondents agree with the statement: “I am afraid that Flemish people are slowly being replaced by migrants/people from abroad.”

Within this category, individuals aged 45 to 64 score at 58 percent, while those over 65 score at 59 percent.

Teenagers between 12 and 17 years old also show a high level of agreement at 58 percent.

The study also showed that 52 percent of Flemish people are afraid of a mosque being built in their neighborhood.

Only 23 percent of Flemish people explicitly say they would be open to a mosque where they live.

Notably, 22 percent of people who say they have no fear of being replaced by migrants also say they would not like to have a mosque in their neighborhood.

According to VRT, the study shows that the fear that “Flemish people will be replaced by migrants” remains great.

Belgium has also been actively erasing traditional signs of Christianity, such as renaming Christmas markets into “winter markets,” which the VRT study indicates has led to divisions in society, especially between older and younger generations.

Discussions surrounding inclusive naming conventions also generate pushback. A majority of Flemish people, at 57 percent, maintain that a Christmas market should simply remain a Christmas market. Resistance to neutral terms like winter market is highest among older demographics, with 64 percent of 45-to-64-year-olds and 67 percent of those over 65 opposing the change. This opposition drops among younger populations, with 41 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds and 45 percent of 25-to-44-year-olds objecting to the replacement of the traditional name.

The Photo of Flanders is an ongoing tracking study that VRT has conducted since 2009 to observe the social themes that concern Flemish residents.

Regarding specific statistics on Islam, 60 percent of Flemish people report feeling concerned about Islam’s presence in Flanders.

This concern peaks among individuals aged 45 to 64 at 65 percent, and among those over 65 at 67 percent, though these percentages have decreased slightly compared to 2023 and 2024.

For youth between the ages of 12 and 17, the figure stands slightly lower at 61 percent, though researchers note an upward trend in this youngest bracket.

Patrick Loobuyck, an ethical philosopher of the University of Antwerp/UGent, states that these anti-diversity figures are “quite high” and Flemish people are struggling with “rapid social changes.”

“They are concerned about themes that are important to our society: who we are, what the future is of Flanders and what is the place of the population that is there today,” said Loobuyck.

“The population has actually changed a lot in recent decades. That diversity is no longer limited to cities, but is felt almost everywhere. People see and feel that, and also notice consequences in education and society.”

Is there a “plan” behind population replacement?

Nevertheless, despite this clear demographic replacement, which is quantifiable and observable, Loobuyck says that “theories” put out by the identitarian right, like the Great Replacement, should not be embraced.

“There is sometimes a pretense that there is a plan behind it, as if elites are consciously allowing mass migration to destroy us. That adds to the uncertainty that is already there,” he said.

Often, this is how the left and the mainstream try to “debunk” the Great Replacement, attaching all kinds of meanings to it that were not behind the original meaning, as articulated by the man behind the original term. For example, claims that Jews are behind the replacement, or that a cabal of elites is behind the replacement, are not actually what Renaud Camus articulated. However, if those opposed to the term can assign extraordinary meanings to it, they can more easily “debunk” whatever it is they say the term is actually supposed to mean.

Nevertheless, in many ways, this has been a “plan.” A UN think tank, for example, has promoted 60 million migrants for Europe by 2050. The UN, which has long advocated for “replacement migration” as a solution to Europe’s aging population, is now warning that Europe will not gain these migrants “if it does not stop being a fortress against immigration.”

Europe’s top leader, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is calling for more legal migration after already record numbers of immigrants arriving. If anyone is an “elite,” it is most certainly von der Leyen, who wields an enormous amount of power within the EU.

Even for those elites who have routinely been the target of conspiracy theories, such as George Soros, there are quotes on record where he openly promotes and supports mass immigration.

Speaking about former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s effort to control migration, Soros stated that:“[Orbán’s) plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

During the height of the migration crisis, Soros stated: “[Europe] has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future.”

Soros even proposed in a column he wrote for MarketWatch in 2015 that Europe should take on debt to pay for “surge funding” for refugees and migrants, suggesting that EU member states implement a massive €45 billion spending package. Soros even says in the article that might not be enough, and that spending more would be “justified.”

In the piece, Soros wrote that paying extra money for migrants upfront “would allow us to address the most dangerous consequences of the crisis — including anti-immigrant sentiment in receiving countries and despondency and marginalization among refugees — more effectively.”

Soros also wrote that a large influx of refugees results in panic, which can lead to “expensive and counter-productive measures, like erecting fences and walls.”

There have also been numerous top left-wing politicians who have long promoted mass immigration as a means to gaining more power, while journalists have promoted this very trend as well in thousands of articles and publications.

A German left-wing politician claimed Germany needs more migrants because the "Nazi" Germans are not very good at making babies.

"Every year, more Germans die than are born. Fortunately, this is because the Nazis are not very prolific," said MP Gregor Gysi.

Gysi is a long-time… pic.twitter.com/EDk65oxjHJ

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 7, 2025

Notably, poll after poll from across Europe shows that a majority of Europeans want an end to mass immigration, and yet, it continues unabated.

A majority or near majority of Europeans feel they are being replaced in their home countries. For example, nearly half of Germans also agree with the statement: “I believe that Europeans are gradually being replaced by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, in France, 60 percent of voters believe France is witnessing “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations” at a time when immigration has reached record levels.

In Belgium itself, Brussels has already seen massive population replacement, with 72 percent of children and teens in Brussels now having a non-EU migration background, while only 10.5 percent are Belgians of Belgian origin

It can be openly debated what the motive for this mass immigration is, but the reality is that there are many players behind it, all the way from business interests to radical ideologues, which means there is no “single” reason for mass immigration. There are, in short, many motives. There are many actors, and they are not necessarily all working in concert.

🇧🇪 Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden said in an interview this week you'd have to be a "hero" to go for an evening jog in Brussels these days. pic.twitter.com/1ctwlbUhDT

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) May 21, 2026

Nevertheless, the demographic change behind the Great Replacement, which simply states that non-Europeans are replacing Europeans in their native countries, is a statistical reality. There does not have to be a “nefarious” elite that conspires in a room with the blinds drawn, but there is undoubtedly an elite that wants more immigration.

At the same time, the term Great Replacement will continue to be promoted by the right because it is a term that is remarkably apt for the situation that is unfolding. Europe, which values free speech, must allow for an open discussion about the motives, players, and ideological movements behind this demographic development, along with why it is happening, who benefits, and even how it can be reversed. Otherwise, we are quite simply not living in the liberal democracy that the most powerful politicians and journalists in Europe continuously tell us we are living in.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 07:00

Iran Says 'No Deal' Will Materialize If US Insists On Enriched Uranium Handover Summary

• Iran Foreign Ministry says "no deal" will be reached if the US makes enriched uranium handover demand (Al Jazeera).
• Rubio confirms that there's been no deal and that "we're not there yet" - amid broader late morning pushback against morning optimistic, premature headlines.
• Saudi sources report Pakistan army chief & a Qatar delegation en route to Tehran, after which Field Marshal Munir arrives - calls trip 'last ditch effort' to avert war.
• Influential Iranian parliament member threatens 'preemptive' military action if preparations & movements by US forces in region is perceived. 

//--> //--> US x Iran permanent peace deal by June 15, 2026?
Yes 40% · No 61%
View full market & trade on Polymarket Speculation Over Trump Staying Close to D.C.

There's been plenty of afternoon speculation that President Trump could order renewed attacks on Iran this Memorial Day weekend after the below Truth Social post on missing his son's wedding...

Iran FM: Agreement 'Not Close'

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson says cannot necessarily say that have reached a point where an agreement is close, Tasnim reports; focus of negotiations is on ending the war:

• Delegation from Qatar is currently holding talks with Iran's foreign minister, but Pakistani side remains the mediator in negotiations.
• Details related to the Nuclear issue are not being discussed at this stage.

At around the same time as the above headline emerged, Sky News Arabia offered more optimism, citing a source who said that "broad outlines" have been reached in terms of an understanding on the nuclear issue.

Still, Al Jazeera reports that "no deal" will be reached if the US makes an enriched uranium handover demand. The Foreign Ministry maintains this will be a non-starter:

“We will not reach a conclusion if we try to delve into details related to highly enriched uranium in Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Baghaei also said a Qatari delegation ‌is currently holding talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, ⁠adding ⁠Pakistan remains the main ⁠mediator in ⁠the ⁠negotiations.

Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir has arrived in Tehran: 'Last Ditch Effort'

So it looks like the rumors were true, after Pakistan officials first seemed to deny, and also said no comment. 

Army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, a key mediator between Iran and the US, has arrived in Tehran as the Iranians are said to be reviewing the latest updated Washington proposal for peace.

Pakistan FM: "Not Aware of Any Visit" to Iran by Army Chief

In a quick market update, Newsquawk says risk-off as reporters push back on optimistic geopolitical reporting + Rubio says not there on Iran deal.

And this bit of serious contradiction of earlier reports, via CBS:

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said Friday that he was "not aware of any visit right now" when asked about reports by Iranian state media since Thursday that Army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, a key mediator between Iran and the U.S., was expected in Tehran.

"I am sure this will be announced in due course, if it is to be announced. I can neither confirm nor deny it now," Abdrabi said.

"As regards the details of any agreement, our consistent position on this matter is that we do not talk of specifics. As a mediator and as a facilitator, it is the inherent ingredient of our mandate that we remain quiet on the individual positions and the process — also not ascribe any adjective to the process i.e. fast, slow, medium," said Adrabi, adding that he would "stick to this consistent position."

Pakistan, Qatar Delegations En Route to Tehran

Despite the attempts of some regional outlets to spin a narrative of imminent peace (which we saw yesterday), a senior Iranian source told Reuters on Thursday that "no deal had been reached with the US" - though he did also claim that "gaps had narrowed" - somewhat in line with the optimistic narrative.

The Islamic Republic is reportedly still reviewing the latest peace blueprint handed down by the Trump administration. However, this is the latest from a Wall Street Journal correspondent:

Source tells me the draft “deals” circulating are inaccurate.

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) May 22, 2026

Trump has meanwhile explicitly warned that further military action remains firmly on the table if Tehran doesn't bend the knee. Yet there's more 'action' taking place in the interim - as Pakistan's army chief once again is on his way to Tehran, per Al Arabiya, and this - though already previewed the day prior - caused oil to dump amid the usual daily optimistic headlines emerging just ahead of the US market open. And in an apparent first, Qatar is sending a delegation too:

Futs hits session high on Reuters report Qatar has sent negotiating team to Tehran with the US team to help secure a deal to end war.

Field Marshal Asim Munir is expected to receive and relay Tehran's answer to Washington on the latest.

Iran Threat of 'Preemptive' Military Action

Meanwhile, speaking to state television, Fadahossein Maleki, an influential member of Iran’s Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, strongly hinted that Iran might not wait around to be hit. When pressed on whether the ceasefire could collapse, Maleki bluntly stated, "Anything is possible."

He took it a step further, openly floating the idea of an Iranian preemptive strike if Iran believed the Pentagon is moving its forces into position for resumption of military action.

“It could even come from Iran’s side, frankly," Maleki warned, according to a report by Iran International. "If we feel that something is happening from a US base, Iran has the legitimacy to respond and prevent it."

Despite these threats, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has freshly said there has been some "slight progress" in talks with Iran to end the war, but followed by saying he did not wish to exaggerate how much.

Which helped push crude oil prices to the lows of the day...

More possibly premature reports of a 'final draft' being worked on...

🔴 BREAKING: The final draft of a possible agreement between the United States and Iran, mediated by Pakistan, is expected to be announced within hours, according to Al Arabiya sources. Its key terms include the following:

🔴 Final draft of possible US-Iran agreement mediated by… pic.twitter.com/Fb0gTmv8nd

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) May 22, 2026 Rubio Condemns Toll System: Unacceptable

Rubio is going full press against Iran's efforts to impose a Hormuz toll system under its own permission protocols. “They're trying to convince Oman, by the way, to join them in this tolling system in an international waterway. There is not a country in the world that should accept that. I don't know of a country in the world that's in favor of it, except Iran, but there's no country in the world that should accept it,” Rubio said in Helsingborg, Sweden, on the sidelines of a NATO ministers meeting. 

“I don't know of anyone in the world that should be in favor of a tolling system in an international waterway, that's just not acceptable. It can't happen,” Rubio continued.  

“If that were to happen in the Strait of Hormuz, it will happen in five other places around the world. Why would countries all over the world say, 'Well, we want to do this too'? Not to mention how vital and critical that strait is to every country represented here today, but frankly, to countries not represented here today, particularly the Indo-Pacific,” he also said. Importantly, he also confirmed there's as yet no deal - which should be obvious to all. He underscored "we're not there yet".

More Headlines

More latest developments via Newsquawk:

• Arabiya and Al Hadath exclusively report the text of the anticipated US-Iran agreement in case of its approval. The agreement includes: an immediate, comprehensive, and unconditional ceasefire on all fronts, a halt to military operations, ensuring freedom of navigation in the Arabian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Sea of Oman and establishing a joint mechanism for monitoring and resolving disputes.
• US Secretary of State Rubio said there has been slight progress on Iran. Iran is trying to create a tolling system in the Strait, and no nation should accept that. We will be continuing talks with Iran, and there is progress.
• "A Pakistani source says that cautious optimism is the prevailing sentiment in the ongoing discussions regarding the planned agreement.", Al Arabiya reported.
• Pakistan source said the US and Iran's insistence on raising the bar for their demand regarding uranium and the Strait of Hormuz has led to a "crisis in negotiations", Al Jazeera reported.
• Pakistani Interior Minister met again with Iran's Foreign Minister to study proposals for resolving disputes between US and Iran, Al Jazeera reported, citing the Pakistani Embassy.
• Pakistan's Interior Minister will remain in Tehran on Friday to continue consultations and meet with Iranian officials, while a high-level source said the Pakistani Army Chief would not travel to Tehran on Thursday night, according to Al Arabiya.
• Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said China supports mediation efforts and has presented a 5-point initiative.
• Iranian National Security Commission member Rezei posted "These negotiations are probably also a hoax and the Americans have no desire for diplomacy"; says "instead of diplomats, send missiles to negotiate."
• Iranian Foreign Ministry said "Everything being circulated about the status of the negotiations is not accurate", Al ArabyTV reported.
• UAE official said there is a '50-50' chance of US-Iran Strait of Hormuz agreement, AFP reported.
• Unconfirmed reports of explosions in the UAE, Tasnim reported. Details of the explosions have not yet been released.
• Iraqi ports said search teams have been mobilised within territorial waters after contact was lost with two ships, while they did not receive any distress calls from the two Bolivian-flagged ships with which contact has been lost.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/23/2026 - 03:25