Zero Rss

Police Attacked During Massive "Teen Brawl" At Wisconsin State Fair

The establishment media commonly uses strategic phrases to hide or omit the truth behind certain uncomfortable situations.  Since the BLM era, journalists cannot simply describe a violent mob as a "black mob", even if that description is generally true.  Today, one must say the words "teen brawl" in order to avoid any implications of race. 

It's a very similar tactic to those used by the media in the UK whenever a migrant (or child of migrants) commits a brutal crime - Simply call the suspect a "London Man" or a "Liverpool Man" or a "Glasgow Man" and hope no one asks questions.

In the US, whenever the media uses the words "teen brawl", it's easy to conclude who was involved.  The fatigue is real.

Over the weekend the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis (a suburb of Milwaukee) experienced yet another of these seemingly spontaneous outbreaks of chaos when a horde of "teens" flooded into the event and began randomly attacking anyone nearby.  It should be noted that even the witnesses are reticent to admit who the culprits were, choosing their words carefully. 

Witness accounts report that law enforcement officers on scene were also targeted, with multiple police suffering injuries.  Dispatch audio indicates chaotic moments near the rides. "They need some help at Spin City. Send anybody extra you have," one police officer could be heard saying. 

🚨#BREAKING: Absolute CHAOS broke out at the Wisconsin State Fair as "teens" began BEATING ANYONE IN SIGHT.

MULTIPLE police officers were badly beaten, as families with kids were seen RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES as teens began brawling.

WE DON'T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS!!! pic.twitter.com/gBbE73ph3f

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) August 17, 2026

Last day of the Wisconsin State Fair.

They went on a rampage. Anyone they could get their hands on. Shots were allegedly fired.

They’re calling it Killwaukee now.

We can’t keep living like this, something has to change. pic.twitter.com/AJ7Xi3BPiZ

— Kim "Katie" USA (@KimKatieUSA) August 17, 2026

Local news reports show police attempting to break up the fights, but the assailants swarm into the fairground crowds to avoid arrest.  Roving mob fights involving black "youths" are common at state fairs across the region every year.  The Minnesota State Fair reported similar incidents last year and rumors suggest a "bigger brawl" is likely this year.

It’s not just Wisconsin.

This was the Minnesota State Fair last year—and the year before there was a shooting in the midway.

Every year it gets more and more violent. I wonder why🤔#fight#statefair https://t.co/ktUFWO8377 pic.twitter.com/7Um9Tc6oYy

— AmyLouWho (@perseverare1776) August 17, 2026

Why start brutal fights at the state fair?  Maybe because the whole point is to ruin everyone else's day.  Maybe the point is simply to create chaos and bask in the violence and misery.  What is clear is that events that used to be safe for families are being turned into open melees just so urban demographics can revel in their own lack of impulse control.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 21:20

Deep Capture: The Administrative State's Intellectual Origins

Authored by Sofia Karstens via Brownstone Institute,

Woodrow Wilson holds a distinction no other American president has: he earned a Ph.D., completing his doctorate in political science and history at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. That same year, he wrote an essay called "The Study of Administration," later published in the inaugural volume of Political Science Quarterly. Historians widely credit this essay as the founding document of public administration as a formal academic field, and Wilson himself as the father of that discipline.

Wilson's central argument was that government should be split into two separate domains: politics, where elected officials set broad goals and policy direction, and administration, a technical, expert-driven sphere that should be run with "large powers and unhampered discretion" and insulated from day-to-day political interference.

Wilson suggested that government ought to be removed from the political process...in other words: "Democracy is too important to be left to voters." He explicitly encouraged American reformers to study European administrative models - including Prussia's - for lessons in efficiency, arguing that the US had fallen behind other nations in developing a science of government administration.

Later scholars have debated how far Wilson actually intended this separation to go, and some interpret his argument as calling for administrators to be almost entirely removed from political accountability. His essay laid the intellectual groundwork for what would become the modern professional civil service - insulated from patronage and run by career administrators rather than political appointees or elected officials.

The Frankfurt School's American Exile

Nearly 50 years later, a very different intellectual tradition found refuge in the same city that Wilson's ideas would eventually help administer. Max Horkheimer became director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany in 1930, leading a group of thinkers who developed what became known as Critical Theory. Its core members included Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Leo Lowenthal. Critical Theory is a philosophical framework that analyzes power structures and social inequalities.

Developed by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and 1940s, it shifted Marxism from a strict economic focus to a critique of culture, media, and modern society. Critical Theory was a different way of looking at philosophy; where philosophy was a search for truth - trying to explain phenomena and things that were not easily proven by science (ethics for example) - Critical Theory shifted to look at philosophy specifically through the lens of Marxism. It became no longer a search for truth but a means of propagandizing, which some would argue was a betrayal of philosophy.

When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Horkheimer was forced to relocate the group first to Geneva and then to New York, where it formed a loose affiliation with Columbia University in 1934-35. Horkheimer's actual scholarly project - laid out in works like Dialectic of Enlightenment and Eclipse of Reason - described how instrumental reason, mass culture, and authoritarianism are able to take hold in modern societies.

It was also between 1933 and 1937 that several regulatory agencies were established that would come to form the backbone of the modern Administrative State.

Port Huron and the Old/New Left Split

By the early 1960s, the American left was largely defined by an older tradition: labor unions, industrial organizing, and class-based politics rooted in the fights of the 1930s and '40s. In June 1962, a group of Socialist Organization representatives, student activists, organized labor unions, civil rights leaders, and foreign observers gathered in Port Huron, Michigan, and produced a document that would come to mark a generational break from that tradition.

Students for a Democratic Society had grown out of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, the youth wing of an older Socialist educational group called the League for Industrial Democracy, which itself traced back to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society founded in 1905. In early 1960, that student branch renamed itself Students for a Democratic Society.

The manifesto produced at Port Huron was drafted primarily by Tom Hayden, a University of Michigan student and former editor of the Michigan Daily, working from ideas that blended the sociology of Columbia's C. Wright Mills and Walter Reuther with the direct-action tactics of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The week-long meeting brought together groups who wrote, debated, and voted on a 60-page document. Notably, it took place at a United Auto Workers retreat, with the UAW under Reuther's leadership covering a range of the convention's costs. Inside circles among Reuther's contemporaries referred to it as "The Long Journey."

The statement opened with a line that became its signature: "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." Its authors argued that two forces had shaken them out of complacency - the civil rights struggle against racial bigotry in the South, and the threat of nuclear war under the Cold War's shadow.

Where the Old Left had organized around labor and class struggle, Port Huron's New Left shifted the terrain. It called for a "participatory democracy" in which ordinary people - not just union leaders or party bosses - would have a direct hand in the decisions shaping their lives, workplaces, schools, and government. It criticized both American Cold War policy and Soviet communism, explicitly opposing the Soviet system's suppression of organized dissent. And because the statement judged the civil rights, peace, and student movements too poor and marginalized to drive change on their own, and organized labor too quiet, it looked instead to universities - which it saw as institutions open to people of nearly any viewpoint who could be recruited as "useful innocents" (often mistranslated as "useful idiots") to carry the water - as the engine of a new movement. Media, unions, high schools, and elementary schools were to follow.

The Port Huron Statement went on to shape the framing of Great Society-era politics, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the broader counterculture that carried into the early 1970s. Historians and participants alike have described it as the founding document of the New Left and a turning point.

The Modern Left's Long March

The strategic logic for how a university-centered movement might expand its influence beyond campus came from Germany. West German student movement leader Rudi Dutschke, nicknamed "Red Rudi," coined the phrase "der Lange Marsch Durch die Institutionen" (the long march through the institutions), borrowing the "long march" imagery from Mao's Chinese Communist Red Army march of 1934-35. The idea was that instead of pursuing a frontal revolutionary confrontation with the state, radicals should embed themselves inside existing institutions and overtake them from within over time. The name (and indeed his nickname) was a deliberate echo of the Chinese Communist Party.

Herbert Marcuse (The Frankfurt School) explicitly endorsed the approach of pursuing radical change not through revolution but by working patiently inside the institutions of government and civil society until they were captured and transformed from within. Writing to Dutschke in 1971 he intoned: "Your notion of the 'long march through the institutions' is the only effective way" forward for the movement. Marcuse became an enthusiastic backer of the strategy, and summarized Dutschke's strategy in his 1972 book Counterrevolution and Revolt as "working against the established institutions while working within them."

He described infiltrating while learning their actual skills and functions rather than simply obstructing them; by "not simply 'boring from within' but by 'doing the job'...learning how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence.

Writing nearly three decades later, cultural critic Roger Kimball invoked this same Marcusean formulation to explain how the radicalism of the 1960s ultimately achieved its aims not through revolution but through patient institutional capture - "by insinuation and infiltration rather than by confrontation" (The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America). The result, as later commentators (The Successful Long March Through the Institutions, The American Vision) have characterized it, was a transformation accomplished without open conflict: "Not a shot was fired. No one was forced into concentration camps. Millions of parents willingly sent their children into public schools and universities systems..." that had, by then, been reshaped from within. Effectively replacing "bloody revolutions from without" with institutional capture from within.

Dutschke's thinking is often linked to the earlier work of Antonio Gramsci, the imprisoned Italian Marxist theorist who argued that revolution in developed Western societies wouldn't come from a single decisive uprising but from a slow "war of position" - a patient campaign to win cultural and institutional influence over time. While there's no direct evidence Dutschke had read Gramsci when he coined the term, notably, his diaries and biography reference other influences, including Georg Lukacs, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong.

Khrushchev famously said "We will bury you," which he later clarified to mean that communism would trounce capitalism. The Long March Through the Institutions is reminiscent of the Marxist/Communist concept of the "Vanguard State" as the "bridge" between a Capitalist state and a Socialist/Communist state.

Marcus Raskin and the Institute for Policy Studies

One American figure who embodied this institution-building, infiltrating strategy was Marcus Raskin. Born in Milwaukee in 1934 to Russian immigrant parents, Raskin studied at the University of Chicago, where he earned his law degree in 1957. During his time at Chicago, Raskin studied under Rexford Tugwell, who was a Columbia economist and a key member of Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust."

It was Tugwell who had suggested that it would be necessary to collect money (from the American people) to begin the process of creating an Administrative State.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, requiring most Americans to surrender their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve in exchange for paper dollars, citing that private gold hoarding was worsening the Depression. The following year, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 revalued gold from $20.67 to $35 an ounce - a roughly 69 percent devaluation of the dollar against gold - which meant the government profited handsomely on the gold it had just collected at the lower price. Tugwell was among the New Deal's most influential architects of expanded federal planning, helping design agencies like the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Resettlement Administration. The devaluation, paired with an expanded money supply, gave Washington greater fiscal room to fund Administrative State projects.

After Chicago under Tugwell, Raskin went on to work as legislative counsel for several Congressmen in the late 1950s, then joined the Kennedy administration's National Security Council in 1961 as an aide to McGeorge Bundy. He resigned in 1962, citing his opposition to the Cuban Missile Crisis response. In 1963, alongside fellow Kennedy-administration alumnus Richard Barnet, Raskin co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. - widely described as the first independent progressive think tank, built explicitly on the idea that the systemic change they wanted couldn't be achieved from inside government, and would instead have to come through social movements and infiltrating institutions.

IPS was closely tied to the New Left from the start. Historian Brian Mueller has written that IPS "epitomized the ideals of the New Left, especially those found in the 1962 Port Huron Statement" and, in fact, a 1962 prospectus Raskin wrote for IPS contained ideas strikingly similar to Port Huron's. Fellow IPS founder Arthur Waskow joined SDS in 1963, and both men wrote for the New Left magazine Ramparts.

IPS drew sustained scrutiny throughout the Cold War for its foreign-policy positions. The House Committee on Internal Security and later conservative critics documented Raskin and Barnet's contacts with North Vietnamese communist officials during the Vietnam War, Raskin's board membership at Ramparts (which the same committee called "pro-Hanoi, pro-Castro") and, later, in the 1980s, IPS-organized conferences with Soviet officials that a bipartisan group of roughly 80 members of Congress warned could be used for Soviet intelligence purposes.

Carter, Ink, and the Reshaping of Federal Administration

The administrative machinery Wilson had theorized decades earlier took its modern shape under President Carter. By 1977, Carter had concluded that the federal civil service system needed its first comprehensive overhaul since the Pendleton Act of 1883. The opportunity came in the aftermath of Watergate and amid broader public distrust of government institutions. In March 1978, he sent Congress his reform proposal; after 13 days of hearings and testimony from more than 200 witnesses, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act, and Carter signed it into law that October - just over seven months after it was introduced.

The Act abolished the US Civil Service Commission and split its functions among three new agencies: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which handles federal personnel policy; the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which adjudicates federal employee appeals; and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), which oversees federal labor-management relations.

The reform's chief architect and implementer was Dwight Ink, a career federal executive who had served in every presidential administration since Eisenhower. Ink had already built a formidable reputation of cutting through red tape and quickly executing major government overhauls, earning him the nickname "Mr. Implementation." Ink himself later wrote that he couldn't recall any other government-wide management reform as broad as the 1978 act being enacted so quickly. The transformation was praised by Marcus Raskin's intellectual incubator, IPS, which has documented ties to the American Communist Party and drove DNC capture between 1972 and 1978.

That same year, Carter signed a second landmark law. The Inspector General Act of 1978 established 12 statutory offices of Inspector General across major federal departments and agencies, giving each the authority to audit internal agency documents, investigate fraud, and report findings both to their agency heads and directly to Congress every six months. By 1988 additional IGs had been added for smaller independent agencies, and there are now 73 statutory Inspectors General across the federal government. By systematically replacing public servants with IGs and positions functioning as commissars who decide investigative targets, including the US elections commission, the landscape for a coup became fertile.

Marching Along

CIGIE, created in 2008, was established by the Inspector General Reform Act by merging two earlier coordinating bodies: the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) and the Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency (ECIE). Those two predecessor councils themselves went back to 1992, created by executive order under President George H.W. Bush. Between the original 1978 IG Act and the 2008 creation of the unified CIGIE structure are three decades of Long March institutional groundwork.

CIGIE functions as a coordinating and standard-setting body for the IG community - running training, setting audit and investigation standards, and housing an Integrity Committee that investigates allegations against IGs themselves. Its voting members include not just the Inspectors General of individual agencies, but also representatives from the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Office of Special Counsel - a genuinely broad cross-section of oversight and intelligence-adjacent offices sitting on one council, which could be described as a "control layer."

The IG Act has continued to evolve since 1978: notably, the 2022 Securing Inspector General Independence Act added new protections against politically motivated IG removals, requiring the President to give Congress 30 days' notice and a substantive, case-specific rationale before removing an Inspector General.

CIGIE today represents a sui generis entity where one office effectively oversees software integrity across 3,143 counties. This structure echos Woodrow Wilson's administrative state-framed government as "too important to be left to the voters," relying on a political-technocratic elite and completes the Marxist Commissar model.

The GAP

In 1977 the Institute for Policy Studies formed the Government Accountability Program (GAP). On its surface it looked like a place for whistleblowers to find shelter, especially after the Pentagon Papers, and indeed many whistleblowers from the intelligence community and national defense program gravitated there. Critics suggest, however, that it was actually used as a honeypot to entice, contain, and control the whistleblowers, even as it collaborated and often even worked directly with the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC).

The Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman was created in January 2019, as part of the House rules package adopted at the start of the 116th Congress (when Democrats took control of the House). It established, within the House of Representatives, a mandate to develop practices for House offices receiving confidential information from whistleblowers about government wrongdoing - including setting up reporting systems, maintaining confidentiality, and training staff.

It sat without a director for about a year. Then in February 2020, shortly after the conclusion of Trump's first impeachment trial (which had been sparked by a whistleblower complaint), Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she had appointed Shanna Devine as the inaugural director of the office. Devine had previously worked at GAP.

Critics questioned whether someone from an advocacy group could serve a "nonpartisan" role, citing concerns that the position could function as a filter protecting officials from exposure, and worrying whether this infrastructure meant this office could effectively legally spy on everyone - including Congress.

GAP also had a prominent role in advocating for the office's creation. Samantha Feinstein, GAP's senior legal and international analyst, testified before Congress to request the creation of the Ombudsman Office, which meant GAP was influencing policy from the outside as well.

The Modern Left's Electoral Rise

Decades after Port Huron, the left flank that it and IPS helped seed has grown into an electoral force. The Democratic Socialists of America was formed in 1982 through the merger of two left-wing organizations: the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, founded in 1973 by socialist Michael Harrington, and the New American Movement. For decades it remained small and aging - its median member age was 68 in 2013.

That changed after 2016. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign highlighted disaffection with mainstream Democratic politics and helped consolidate a younger left wing, and DSA's median member age dropped to 33 by 2017. One commentator described the shift as transforming the group from a "musty debate club for retired social democrats into an electoral powerhouse of young, ecumenical radicals."

Electoral wins followed quickly. In 2017, fifteen DSA members won local and state offices, including Lee Carter's election to the Virginia House of Delegates. The breakthrough came in 2018, when DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley in a primary upset in New York's 14th District, becoming a national figure. She and Rashida Tlaib became the first two DSA members elected to Congress that year.

The organization's footprint in elected office has continued to grow, with Ashik Siddique, a research analyst at one IPS program (National Priorities Project) who is also separately, and much more significantly, the current national co-chair of the DSA. That means that a sitting IPS staffer simultaneously holds DSA's top elected position.

Notable DSA-linked officials now include Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, elected in 2025. By 2025, more than 250 DSA members held elected office across 40 states, with 90% of them elected after 2019. As of mid-2026, DSA has grown to more than 120,000 members and now plays an influential role within the Democratic Party, and the group and its local chapters have endorsed 150 candidates this year, claiming 38 wins so far.

The group draws sharp fire from opponents. President Trump has characterized Mamdani and other DSA-backed candidates as "communist," exposing their links to adversaries like the CCP - though DSA describes itself as aiming for "democratic socialism."

Expert Colonel Tim Shindelar describes The New Left's methodical inching into the Modern Left as "The Final Mile." The Old Left (Marxism, 1908-1962; 54 years) was about class struggle and establishment of unions. The New Left (Social Justice, 1962-1982; 20 years), focused on issues like abortion, capital punishment, civil rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights and gender roles, and immigration. The Modern Left (Final Mile, 1982-present; 44 years) has evolved into policies like the Green New Deal, making higher education free, social ownership of the American economy (placing governors on true free market capitalism), national defense reduction, a Democratic Party shift into the progressive far left, along with pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist causes.

The Media and The Last Mile

This shift to administrative power effectively renders elected officials powerless. Just because someone is elected to office doesn't mean they have any real power; the administrative state will allow elected officials (even executive ones) to ride in the back but they cannot drive the car.

Which means that voters are at the kids table, because it doesn't matter who the elected official is if the power lies with the Administrative State...thus embodying and defining Wilson's vision of keeping politics out of government because democracy is too important to be left to voters. The politics in which we all engage is merely a rubber match, and is unconnected to the outcome; the real match is occurring in a different stadium entirely.

Much of this neutralization and marginalization of the actual people (voters), while maintaining the illusion that it is neither by validating the scrimmage to its participants, traces to mid-20th-century globalist planning (1952-1956), building on Wassily Leontief's 1953 work aimed at phasing American labor to China while addressing excess human labor and galvanizing wealth concentration among a technocratic elite. Individual self-interest via game theory was expected to align populations toward what we now describe as the Singularity, but Marx's framework did not anticipate AI collapsing labor demand to zero - accelerating the need for focused population control programs. But there would be no buy-in unless a different diorama was presented.

The 1928 book Propaganda was written by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays (1891-1995). Bernays was the son of Freud's sister and also related through his mother, who was Freud's sister. His father was also the brother of Freud's wife Martha.

Bernays is often called the "father of public relations" and Propaganda argued that manipulating public opinion is a necessary part of a functioning democracy. It drew heavily on his uncle's psychoanalytic theories to explain how to influence mass behavior through unconscious desires rather than rational argument.

George Orwell didn't invent the world of 1984 out of thin air - he drew it directly from Stalinist Russia, where erasing and reshaping history was institutionalized state policy. Not long after Stalin consolidated control, images of Leon Trotsky, the driving force behind the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, started vanishing from public life. In their place came grand, fictionalized depictions of Stalin standing shoulder to shoulder with Lenin as co-architects of the Bolshevik uprising, while Trotsky, despite having founded the Red Army himself, was written out entirely. These doctored scenes became fixtures of Soviet propaganda, plastered across office walls, towering billboards, museum halls, and postage stamps.

The effect on public memory was profound. Younger citizens absorbed the fabrication as historical fact, while older ones who had lived through the actual events found their genuine recollections gradually blurring with the state's preferred narrative - a strange kind of political false memory syndrome. People who reconciled what they actually remembered with that which the government insisted they believe developed what Orwell described as "doublethink." Those who refused - old revolutionaries who knew firsthand - were branded traitors, class enemies, or fascist sympathizers; they faced arrest, torture, forced public confessions, and execution.

With total command over media and law enforcement, it is possible to rewrite the collective memory of an entire population if you have one generation in which to accomplish it. With fully infiltrated and captured institutions it is possible to take control over an entire country without firing a shot if you have two. We are in the final mile, and the ghost in the machine has a government ID.

Sofia Karstens is an activist in California who worked closely with publisher Tony Lyons and Robert F. Kennedy Jr on several projects, including Kennedy's best-selling book: The Real Anthony Fauci. She collaborates with several organizations in the legal, legislative, medical science, and literary spaces and she is co-founder of Free Now Foundation, a non-profit preserving medical freedom and children's health.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 20:55

Peter Thiel Makes $76 Million Bet On Argentina's Top Shale Exporter Amid Milei Reforms

Vista Energy SAB's American depositary receipts are up 5% Monday on news that Peter Thiel's hedge fund disclosed a $76 million stake in Argentina's largest oil exporter.

Thiel Macro LLC reported owning almost 1.2 million shares of Vista at the end of the second quarter, valued at about $76 million. This was the fund's second-largest disclosed holding after Amazon.

Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, has deepened his ties to Argentina. He recently bought a home in Buenos Aires and met President Javier Milei in April, fueling speculation about increased investment in the country, which is undergoing a radical shift from failed socialism toward free-market capitalism.

Vista Energy is a Mexico-incorporated independent producer focused almost entirely on Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale formation. Latest data show that the formation's combined oil and natural gas output has surpassed 1 million barrels a day.

Bloomberg noted:

Under Milei, Argentina has removed controls on oil prices and exports, and regained access to global financial markets, jump-starting growth in its Vaca Muerta shale patch in Patagonia, where combined crude and natural gas production has already surpassed 1 million barrels a day. The boom is starting to transform Argentina's economy.

Since Milei was sworn in on December 10, 2023, taking the oath of office in Buenos Aires, Vista ADRs have risen 139%.

Bloomberg data show that Theil now ranks as the 15th-largest shareholder. 

Milei's economic reforms are aimed at attracting foreign investment, particularly in the country's natural resources, including oil, rare-earth minerals, and lithium.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 20:30

Iran War Pushes Middle Eastern Airlines Towards $4.3BN Loss In 2026

Via Middle East Eye

As the US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on February 28 2026, Iran struck back near US military installations in the Gulf, including in Qatar and the UAE. Several international airports were hit by Iranian strikes, including Dubai, the world's busiest for international passengers, as well as Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Bahrain. 

The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait closed their airspaces due to safety concerns, gradually reopening them a week later as hostilities lessened. The war has had long-lasting consequences for regional aviation: falling passenger and cargo demand, fewer private jet flights, and global repercussions from high jet fuel prices. 

via AFP

The International Air Transport Association's (IATA) June outlook estimated that airlines operating from the Middle East will see a $7.2bn net profit in 2025 become a $4.3bn net loss in 2026.

Most major regional carriers have resumed operations, including Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways, but not at full capacity. Emirates CEO Tim Clark told the Financial Times in June his planes were flying at three-quarters capacity. 

Conversely, most European and Asian airlines' flights in the region remain suspended. Air France expects to resume in late August and Lufthansa in September, while British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines are all targeting late October. 

Air Canada is not planning to resume before mid-January 2027, and many others have not announced a restart date at all. Regional airspaces have reopened, but are still facing intermittent closures and disruptions. 

The EU Aviation Safety Agency’s most recent bulletin advises operators to "avoid the airspace of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and part of the Gulf of Oman until 31 August 2026".

The result is limited choice for travelers. For a one-week round trip between the UAE and London in September, the only options are Emirates to Dubai, Etihad to Abu Dhabi, or Air Arabia to Sharjah, while to fly between Doha and Tokyo on those same dates, only Qatar Airways is available.

Business under threat

Gulf airlines organize their activity around a hub-and-spoke model concentrating traffic at a central base and operating flights worldwide from there. Passengers connect onward from the main hub, offering connections that are otherwise unavailable or sometimes cheaper fares than direct flights. 

This model has long relied on the Gulf’s strategic position between Europe and Asia, forming what analysts describe as a "bridge" between the two continents. But the war has put this model at risk.

Naveed Kapadia, an aviation lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University, told Middle East Eye that while competition for airlines such as Qatar Airways and Emirates is “greatly reduced”, allowing them to “capture market share and maintain stronger fares”, they remain “connecting carriers whose economics depend on moving large volumes of passengers efficiently through Dubai and Doha”.

Kapadia said IATA’s June data showed Middle Eastern passenger demand fell 13.9 percent year-on-year, while direct traffic between Europe and Asia rose 11 percent, already revealing a strain on the Gulf carrier’s model.

This leads to cost increases across the board. “Where flights must use longer or less efficient routings, airlines face higher fuel burn, longer crew duty periods and reduced aircraft utilisation,” Kapadia said. The extra fuel many now carry in case of disruption also directly limits “passenger or cargo payload that can be carried”.

The hub-and-spoke model leaves airlines susceptible to disruption, as aircraft and crews can be stranded far away, causing cascading delays and cancellations across the entire schedule.

Emirates innovates  

Emirates has been innovating to win back the customers it had before the war, as many are hesitant to book flights connecting through Dubai in case hostilities resume.

One measure is an unprecedented travel insurance policy, offering comprehensive coverage even in case of conflict-related cancellation. Until now, most travel insurance voided cover in the event of war-related disruption, leaving passengers to absorb the costs themselves. 

The policy aims to prevent passengers from being stranded, with Emirates offering to fly them home on other airlines if needed. CEO Tim Clark told the Financial Times the aim was to guarantee “we would get you back irrespective [of whether it's] on Emirates or not”.

Iran war hands Syria windfall as airlines reroute over its airspace https://t.co/cVX6ipeefi pic.twitter.com/UjNM6FbOAW

— Mutlu Civiroglu (@mutludc) June 2, 2026

Dubai has also been trying to reboost tourism more broadly, offering complimentary packages for visitors invited by Emirati nationals and free hotel stays for long connecting flights.

Cargo demand lags 

Cargo carriers have also been impacted by regional disruptions. Kapadia said Middle East cargo demand grew roughly a third slower than the rest of the industry’s, at 5.6 percent year on year, behind the global rate of 8.5 percent.

Citing IATA figures, Kapadia said traffic between Europe and the Middle East remained 41.1 percent below the previous year, while Asia-Middle East traffic was down 4.1 percent.

He added that while “disruption to maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is creating demand for faster alternatives, particularly for urgent, high-value and time-sensitive shipments”, this was not a "straightforward windfall" for Gulf-based cargo airlines.

Middle Eastern carriers such as Qatar Airways Cargo and Emirates SkyCargo account for around 13 percent of global air cargo traffic.  “The more important question,” he said, “is whether they can convert short-term urgency into sustained and profitable cargo flows.”

Private jets staying  

Similar disruptions have also been observed in the private jet sector. Nick Koscinski, an aviation analyst at WINGX, told Middle East Eye that as of 10 August, overall private jet traffic originating in Gulf countries was down 46.5 percent since the war began. 

“The vast majority of flights stayed within the Middle East region,” he said, though volumes there are “still down considerably”. Europe remains the second most common destination from Gulf origins, but Gulf-to-Europe flights are down 41.0 percent.

Koscinski said Qatar Executive, one of the top Gulf-based private jet operators, had been more resilient than UAE or Saudi Arabia-based competitors.  Total flights are down 6.7 percent since the war began, against 28.7 percent for a comparable UAE-based operator and 39.0 percent for a Saudi one. 

Koscinski said operators “likely have some ability to pass increased operating costs, like fuel spikes, through to the consumer via surcharges”, but lags in repricing and “softer demand overall” mean they will still take a financial hit.

Fuel costs squeeze margins

Jet fuel prices fell 20 percent in June as Gulf oil flows temporarily improved, Kapadia said, but remained “45.8% higher than a year earlier”. IATA forecasts the 2026 jet fuel price average will run 70 percent above 2025 levels.

Kapadia expects “Gulf airfares to remain elevated and volatile rather than rise uniformly” because “airlines will try to recover higher fuel and disruption costs through fares to some extent, but they cannot pass on every additional cost without weakening demand, particularly among price-sensitive leisure travellers.”

Low-cost carriers around the world have been particularly vulnerable to the jump in fuel cost: US-based Spirit Airlines ceased operations on 2 May 2026, while Air Baltic and Wizz Air face growing bankruptcy risk and are forced to restructure operations. 

A McKinsey report found that around 70 percent of jet fuel surcharges are passed directly to consumers, with airline margins recovering only briefly when fuel prices fall. It said the economic pressure will force airlines to retire older aircraft, cut less-booked routes, and further trim overhead costs.

Not every carrier is equally impacted. Israel’s national airline, El Al, has recently reported record profits, more than double the previous year.

Many passengers have criticized the “outrageous” fares, as the continued flight suspension by international carriers leaves the airline in a near-monopoly.

Harsha Jaison, an aviation consultant at ICF, told Middle East Eye the conflict has set a precedent that will probably outlast it. “Airport investment deals, geopolitical risk is increasingly being reflected in downside scenarios, valuation assumptions and risk premiums,” she said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 20:05

Record Ground Beef Prices May Finally Be Breaking Consumer Demand

Last week's retail sales report provided fresh evidence that the K-shaped economy is buckling, with national average gasoline prices still printing above $4 a gallon and discretionary spending weakening. Consumer stress is now surfacing in the grocery aisle: as beef prices hover near record highs, Americans are beginning to trade down to cheaper proteins.

Bloomberg cites new data from Chicago-based market research company Circana, showing that beef sales volumes declined .3% during the 13 weeks through mid-July. Volumes had risen about 5% during the same period in each of the previous two years. The decline is notable because it occurred during the peak grilling season around Memorial Day and July Fourth.

Source: Bloomberg

Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that the national average price of ground beef in the supermarket is hovering just below $7 per pound, a record high, as a prolonged cattle shortage shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

The Trump administration has focused on easing elevated beef prices through increased imports, but any meaningful relief will take years. The US cattle herd remains near its lowest level in more than five decades, while imported animals must be raised for months before entering the food supply.

Bank of America analysts recently cited Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Derrell Peel, who warned that the US cattle cycle is unlikely to improve anytime soon and that beef prices are poised to remain elevated through at least next year.

Read:

• When Will The Cattle Cycle Turn? BofA Has Answers For Beef Lovers

We noted in late July that one of the most overlooked affordable proteins is pork, which averaged $4.81 per pound in mid-June, compared with $7.95 per pound for ground beef, while pork chops cost roughly one-third as much as beef steak, according to Bloomberg, citing NielsenIQ data.

"Consumers are stretched," Chris DuBois, an executive vice president at data-analytics firm Circana, told Bloomberg. "It's not always just about the price of food, there's the price of life that hits, so that puts some of the pressure on total volume in the store."

Last week (view report), retail sales in July were a big disappointment, with discretionary categories seeing spending pullbacks. Notably, lower-income spending held up well, while higher-income spending cooled modestly.

July retail sales weakness was driven by a plunge in non-discretionary spending by higher income households https://t.co/TbbJ6WB81K pic.twitter.com/dDUdAOGawX

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 14, 2026

With that said, demand destruction levels for beef may finally be hitting, which is a promising sign of early rebalancing. However, consumers will not be thrilled, as they will have to trade down to cheaper proteins such as chicken and pork.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 19:40

Charges Against Palisades Fire Arson Suspect Revised

City News Service via The Epoch Times,

LOS ANGELES - The man accused of setting a blaze that grew into the deadly Palisades Fire, the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history, is facing one less criminal charge, with federal prosecutors obtaining a revised indictment in the case.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is posed after his arrest on charges that he intentionally ignited the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles, before his first court appearance in Orlando, Fla., on Oct. 8, 2025. Department of Justice/Handout via Reuters

In June, a federal court jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquitting Jonathan Rinderknecht on three arson-related charges stemming from the 2025 firestorm, which prosecutors say began on New Year's Day as the Lachman Fire, which smoldered for a week before Santa Ana winds re-ignited it into the Palisades Fire. In light of the deadlock, a judge declared a mistrial, but prosecutors vowed to retry the case.

The Palisades Fire killed 12 people, burned 23,448 acres, cost billions in damage and insurance claims, and ruined much of the exclusive Pacific Palisades community, destroying about 6,800 structures.

Rinderknecht was originally charged with three federal arson counts: destruction of property by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, and timber set afire. On Aug. 13, however, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment with only two charges - destruction of property by means of fire and arson affecting property used in interstate commerce.

In the new indictment, the first charge refers only to Rinderknecht's alleged setting of the Lachman Fire, rather than the Lachman and Palisades fires.

Rinderknecht is due in court for a status conference this week, with a re-trial tentatively set for October.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli insisted after the mistrial was declared in June that prosecutors would eventually win a conviction.

"The evidence is strong that Jonathan Rinderknecht is responsible for igniting the fire on January 1, 2025, which eventually became the Palisades Fire," Essayli wrote on X. "We fully intend to retry this case before a new jury and obtain guilty verdicts on all charged counts."

Defense attorney Steven Haney told reporters outside court, however, that his client is innocent, and a retrial won't give prosecutors a better result. He said prosecutors "failed miserably" in their efforts to prove their case.

"If they want to re-try it again, we can re-try it again," Haney said. "If Bill Essayli wants to cheerlead from the sidelines, maybe he should come in and try the case himself next time."

He said a re-trial would likely end up with Rinderknecht being acquitted.

"Ten-to-two is an overwhelming message from the jury that the government failed and did not have enough evidence to prove their case," Haney said.

Rinderknecht remains in federal custody pending the new trial.

During the 10-day trial earlier this year, the jury heard evidence that the deadly Palisades Fire was a "holdover" fire - a continuation of the Lachman Fire that began early in the morning on New Year's Day 2025. Although firefighters quickly suppressed the Lachman Fire - named for a street near the Skull Rock Trailhead - the fire continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation.

On Jan. 7, 2025, heavy winds caused the underground fire to re-surface and spread above ground in what became known as the Palisades Fire, which caused widespread damage in Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

Prosecutors used witness statements, video surveillance, cell phone data, and analysis of fire dynamics and patterns at the scene to try to show Rinderknecht intentionally set the Lachman Fire and then lied about it to investigators. The evidence was largely circumstantial.

Haney argued that no hard evidence tied his client to arson, and the Lachman and Palisades fires were two separate events. The first fire was likely caused by errant New Year's Eve fireworks, he told jurors, and the second blaze could've been arson.

According to Haney, Rinderknecht was on the trail near the Hidden Buddha clearing where the Lachman Fire was thought to have started, but the part-time Uber driver did nothing more than call 911 to report it.

Haney insisted the Lachman Fire "could've started before Jonathan even arrived [on the scene]. Nobody knows for sure when it started. Everyone is guessing. A man's on trial and nobody knows when the fire started."

Prosecutors told jurors Rinderknecht, driven by anger, loneliness and a thirst for revenge against the wealthy, used a grill lighter to ignite hilltop vegetation around midnight on Dec. 31, 2024 at a remote, deserted area adjacent to the Pacific Palisades' Summit neighborhood. That fire ultimately exploded into the deadly conflagration that wiped out much of the upscale community six days later.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 19:15

Parents Are Paying Thousands For Sorority Rush Coaches

SAAS is starting to mean sororities as a service.

Parents are spending thousands of dollars on consultants to help their daughters navigate sorority recruitment at major Southern universities, turning rush into a process with its own coaches, preparation packages and, in some cases, five-figure services, according to Bloomberg.

The consultants advise prospective new members, or PNMs, on what to wear, how to introduce themselves, which photographs to remove from social media and how to handle conversations during recruitment. Some help prepare résumés and introductory videos, secure recommendation letters and remain on call throughout rush week.

The business is expanding as Southern universities attract more students from the Northeast, Midwest and West, including families with little familiarity with the region’s Greek-life traditions. “Until very recently, people didn’t even know this industry existed outside of the South,” says Trisha Addicks, founder of Atlanta-based consulting firm It’s All Greek to Me. Her one-year program costs $6,500, and this fall she is introducing a two-year Legacy Mentorship package for $12,000.

Bloomberg noted multiple examples in its report. Lorie Stefanelli, founder of New York-based Greek Chic, says she has gone from about five clients a season to nearly 80. In 2024, she left her job as a human-resources manager to run the consultancy full time. On the eve of this year’s University of Alabama rush, six of the eight families she was working with were from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. Many of her Auburn University clients come from the tristate area and Illinois.

The geographic shift reflects broader enrollment changes. Since 2004, Louisiana State University and the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee have more than tripled their percentage of incoming first-year students from outside the South, according to National Center for Education Statistics data. Large football programs, scholarship offers, school spirit and active Greek systems have helped draw students from elsewhere in the country.

For families unfamiliar with Southern sororities, consultants sell knowledge of a recruitment process that can begin months before students arrive on campus. PNMs may record introductory videos, assemble résumés and professional headshots, seek letters from sorority alumnae and describe their philanthropic interests. Consultants review social-media profiles, recommend outfits and coach students on making conversation, maintaining eye contact and avoiding subjects such as politics, religion and partying.

Social media has added another layer to the preparation. A 2022 University of South Carolina analysis found that the average #RushTok video received about 66,000 views. Consultants say the attention has increased the focus on expensive outfits, highly sought-after houses and the possibility of social-media exposure or brand partnerships.

The coaching comes on top of tuition and the cost of Greek membership itself. Lindsay Lookingbill, a Maryland teacher whose daughter Reagan was heading to the University of Mississippi, initially dismissed a friend's suggestion that she hire a rush consultant. The family was already paying about $21,000 in out-of-state tuition, while sorority dues could add at least $3,000 per semester. They eventually hired Mindy Farr, founder of Alabama-based SororitySolutions, and Reagan later received a bid from Alpha Delta Pi.

Other families are making similar calculations. Alabama sophomore Brooke Goodrich, from Massachusetts, paid Stefanelli $3,000 for four individual preparation sessions and on-call help during rush week. She later joined Alpha Chi Omega. “I knew nothing about Southern sorority rush before I hired Lorie,” Goodrich says. “By the time I got to campus, I felt confident.”

There is a large potential customer base. More than half of undergraduates at Mississippi and Auburn are affiliated with fraternities or sororities, while roughly 40% of undergraduates at Tennessee and Alabama participate in Greek life. Clemson University reported 1,869 new sorority members in 2025, more than twice the 905 recorded in 2017.

“Most of my clients are looking for sports culture, school spirit and a place where the community really rallies around the university and their students,” Stefanelli says. “And if you’re going to go to a school like that, you may as well go all the way and join Greek life.”

Demand is also attracting new consultants. Auburn senior Marisa Mathson, who grew up in Iowa, started Refined Presence this year and sold out of $315 and $550 packages offering wardrobe consultations, social-media audits and interview coaching. She says she was in contact with about 70 students before rush, many from California, Chicago and the Northeast.

What was once largely advice passed among relatives, alumnae and friends is increasingly being sold as a professional service. For families without connections to Southern Greek life, rush consultants are offering a way to learn its expectations before their daughters arrive on campus—and some parents are willing to pay thousands of dollars for it.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:50

The Never-Ending Cycle Of Taking Offense...

Authored by J.B.Shurk via AmericanThinker.com,

Americans should not fear the past...

I remember the first time I came across a “trigger warning.”  I was on a university campus in the ‘90s, attending the first lecture of a new history professor.  As I perused her course syllabus, I was impressed with the reading list and organization.  Then I spotted an incongruous “warning” to women and African Americans suggesting that they might find some of the material offensive.  At first, I thought it was an inappropriate joke.  I asked someone about it, and I was informed that “trigger warnings” had become increasingly common in the classrooms of America’s elite boarding schools.  I rolled my eyes because I knew right then and there that it would take decades to remedy the problem.

The idea that a history professor would implicitly warn students to be afraid of the past unnerved me.  I had always believed very much the opposite — that it was important for young minds to face the past with open eyes.  As living members of the human race, we enjoy the great privilege of being able to learn as much from those who came before us as possible.  And a person can never learn too much about the past!  Whether you take the lessons of history with you to the battlefield, boardroom, small office, or kitchen table, understanding the people, events, and ideas that created today’s world is an invaluable tool for navigating the present and building the future.

I don’t want people to be afraid of the past.  I want them to be invigorated by it.  I want them to exercise their imaginations and step into the centuries that came before us.  I want them to understand the points of view of our ancestors and to appreciate everything that we have inherited from them.  Our role as the current custodians of this material world is not to judge previous generations by today’s mores and standards.  Our job is to prevent the great lessons of history from ever slipping through our grasp.  Sometimes, grappling with the past takes courage!

But the “trigger warning” was just the tip of a much bigger and more socially destructive iceberg.  The message on that syllabus was antithetical to personal growth.  It communicated three poisonous ideas: (1) History is terrifying.  (2) It’s okay to look away.  (3) It’s permissible to rewrite history if it makes us “feel” better.  None of these messages is true.  History is treasure.  Understanding the past is the only way of glimpsing the future.  And if a person understands that seeing into the future is priceless, then that person should similarly understand that learning from the past is priceless, too.  

Furthermore, I do not believe that we should be teaching children to be afraid.  Do we want them to learn that a hot stove burns skin?  Of course.  Should we then encourage them never to sit near a fire?  Absolutely not.  Courage is a virtue.  It comes only when we appreciate the dangers before us and move carefully around them anyway.  History is not there to scare us.  It can’t hurt us.  What it can do is inform us.  It can equip us with the wisdom and strength to ably meet the real challenges of this life.

Whether printed on classroom syllabi or repeated as some modern mantra of “political correctness,” “trigger warnings” exude cowardice.  Why must leftist politicians recite “land acknowledgments” before government meetings or solemnly intone, “Black lives matter,” during public speeches?  Why must they patronize the descendants of native tribes who were here before the Pilgrims?  Why do they insist on treating black Americans as if they were children? 

But that’s the point, isn’t it?  At their heart, “trigger warnings” are infantilizing.  Although outwardly respectful, they are outrageously condescending.  They say, “You do not possess the intelligence to process the past or the moral strength to persevere after learning what your ancestors might have experienced.”  Those who provide “trigger warnings” essentially appoint themselves as higher authorities who are ostensibly capable of doing the tough job of deciding what parts of history should be known and which should be buried.

And there’s the rub!  Because as soon as some privileged group of elites decide to become the official “guardians” of history, their efforts to hide the past from the people are never finished.  Bowdlerizing history becomes its own end.  There is always some new collection of people who might be offended about old news from the past.  There is always some old idea from the past that might be newly adjudged as offensive. 

This never-ending cycle of taking offense is a hallmark of “political correctness” and cultural Marxism, more generally. 

Leftism’s engine runs on the fuel of social conflict.  The working class must be taught to hate business owners.  Blacks must be encouraged to hate whites.  Women must replace men.  Gays must revolt against the nuclear family.  “Transgenders” must rebel against biological sex.  Islamic supremacists must wage war against Christians.  There must always be “oppressed” groups to support; there must always be “oppressors” to resist.  The “revolution” must continue at all times.  It can never be permitted to end.

This is how we have gotten to this absurd point in history when self-described “intellectuals” redefine their beliefs every few years.  They wanted a color-blind society and an end to segregation; then they wanted race-based affirmative action programs, “diversity” quotas, black-only graduation ceremonies, and awards based on skin color, not merit.  They wanted equal rights for women; then they wanted special rights for women; then they wanted to shove men in women’s locker rooms.  They believed in genetics and biological sex; now they believe in “gender” and that physical differences between men and women are imaginary “social constructs.”  Had I asked a group of university professors twenty-five years ago whether they believed men and women are biologically distinct, every single person would have raised a hand; now those same professors would insist that men can have babies.  Moral and intellectual relativism produces cowards.

The antidote to ever-shifting Marxism is to stop dividing people into groups and to begin treating everyone with respect and dignity.  Doing so requires that we acknowledge that there are good ways and bad ways to live.  There are virtuous ways to behave, and there are sinful ways to behave.  Virtue and vice do not change from one decade to the next.  Courage, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope, and charity cannot be expunged with “trigger warnings” or “political correctness.”  No matter how often we fail to live honorable lives, the struggle to be moral, honest, and virtuous provides its own eternal rewards.  

These truths echo something President Calvin Coolidge said in a 1926 speech celebrating the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: “If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”  

In other words, America’s Founding principles require no “trigger warnings.”  They are just as true today as they were two-hundred-fifty years ago.  As Coolidge said so eloquently, “If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.  Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”

Young minds should not be afraid of history.  They should approach the past with courage and be grateful for their inheritance.  Living virtuously requires the strength to face difficult truths.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:25

Colombia Begins Mass Mobilization Against Terror Group As Moscow Warns Of New "Anti-Russia Provocation In Latin America"

Trump-backed Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has wasted no time combating Marxist terrorist groups in a country that is part of the US-led "Shield of the Americas," an initiative aimed at eliminating transnational drug cartels and preventing weaponized migration flows toward the US. 

De la Espriella recently announced joint US military operations targeting the far-left terror networks, as footage posted on Instagram by local media outlet Primicia Caribe shows what appears to be a mobilization of Colombian troops.

🔴| 🇨🇴 ATENCIÓN COLOMBIA. El Escudo de las Américas, rumbo al #Catatumbo, con el objetivo claro de combatir a las guerrillas y recuperar el territorio. pic.twitter.com/E9JCiyvsf0

— Liliana Franco (@lilianaf523) August 17, 2026

In recent days, Colombia's far-left ELN guerrilla group threatened de la Espriella's new government over military operations targeting rebel-held territory. 

#Colombia La comandante del Ejército de Liberación Nacional ELN, Silvana Guerrero, lanzó amenazas al gobierno de De la Espreilla, sobre incursiones dle ejército en zonas controladas por el grupo. Armada con una carabina de patrón M4 y sus guardias están armados con fusil Type… pic.twitter.com/mCcWTpp3pF

— Klaveec (@klaveec) August 16, 2026

Silvana Guerrero, identified as the leader and commander of the self-proclaimed Northeastern War Front of the ELN, warned that the group would resist efforts to restore state control, as armed fighters displayed military-style assault rifles. It appears that de la Espriella's government is preparing for a fight against the ELN, with a retaking of territory near the Ecuadorian border. 

On Sunday, de la Espriella wrote on X about an attack against troops and warned that the "narcoterrorists of the ELN" would pay dearly. He said, "The order to the public forces is clear: without truce and with resolve, we must put an end to that cancer."

Este ataque contra nuestros héroes le saldrá caro a los narcoterroristas del ELN .

La orden a la fuerza pública es clara: sin tregua y con contundencia, hay que acabar con ese cancer.

Mi solidaridad con las víctimas y sus familias.

¡Firme por la Patria!

(A.D.L.E) 🇨🇴 🐅 https://t.co/nN7X2rLzg4

— Abelardo De La Espriella (@ABDELAESPRIELLA) August 16, 2026

Under former socialist Colombian President Gustavo Petro's "Total Peace" policy, ELN was allowed to consolidate power, expand its territorial control, and use negotiated ceasefires to recruit fighters and further its drug trafficking operations.

By Monday morning, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation chimed in on X. It claimed a Western intelligence service, working through Ukrainian proxies, is preparing an information operation targeting Russia in Latin America:

A Western intelligence service, working with Ukrainian proxies, is preparing a new anti-Russian provocation in Latin America. ❗️ The plan: accuse Russia of supplying weapons to criminal groups in Venezuela, Colombia & Mexico.

⚡️ Russia’s #SVR:

A Western intelligence service, working with Ukrainian proxies, is preparing a new anti-Russian provocation in Latin America.

❗️ The plan: accuse Russia of supplying weapons to criminal groups in Venezuela, Colombia & Mexico.https://t.co/wHk2BnHhgE pic.twitter.com/ch9Oeoh3Qk

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) August 17, 2026

Russian state media Sputnik cited Russian intelligence that said, "The West is plotting a provocation to frame Russia for arming Latin American cartels." 

More from Sputnik:

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has warned that the West is preparing a provocation to accuse Russia of "illegal arms supplies" to drug cartels and criminal groups in Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. 

• To do that, Russian-made weapons captured during the special military operation are being smuggled into Latin American countries 
• Fake audio and video recordings are being prepared to "confirm" the alleged transfers 
• The goal is to undermine Russia's constructive ties with the region and pressure Latin American governments into adopting an anti-Russian stance

🚨 West plotting provocation to frame Russia for arming Latin American cartels - Russian Intel

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has warned that the West is preparing a provocation to accuse Russia of "illegal arms supplies" to drug cartels and criminal groups in… pic.twitter.com/smSBTHbXFt

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) August 17, 2026

To sum up, the developments suggest Colombia's renewed campaign against the ELN could become entangled in the wider Russia-versus-the-West conflict. Bogotá's alignment with the Trump administration and its push to reclaim guerrilla-held territory create what may be only a new information war of competing narratives about who is supplying the ELN.  

Russia's claims remain unverified. Meanwhile, all eyes are on Colombia as the government prepares to confront cartels and insurgencies. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:00

Half Of Typical US Family's Paycheck Swallowed By Housing, Childcare

Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,

Typical families in the United States spend half of their income on housing and childcare, according to a report released on Aug. 17 from the real estate platform Redfin.

A man holds a baby outside a coffee shop in Washington on March 11, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Based on data from Redfin and childcare marketplace Winnie, the typical working family purchasing a home today spends 52 percent of their annual income on housing and childcare combined.

While these costs can decrease as children enroll in public pre-K or kindergarten, researchers say that where a family resides can significantly influence these costs.

Among the 100 most populous U.S. metros, working families residing in Little Rock, Arkansas, would spend less than 40 percent - the least in the country.

Annual housing and childcare costs would total $29,151 for the typical Little Rock working family, compared with a median local income of about $73,000.

The next two most affordable metros include Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (40.8 percent) and Des Moines, Iowa (41.8 percent).

Conversely, Los Angeles had the highest cost nationwide: 96.8 percent. Families spend a combined $94,613, about $3,000 less than the median local income of almost $98,000.

The next least affordable were New York City (95 percent) and San Francisco (94.2 percent).

The numbers indicate that families need to factor in childcare and early childhood education into their affordability calculations, says Sara Mauskopf, co-founder and CEO of Winnie.

"Families considering a move should weigh both of those big costs - as well as job opportunities - when deciding where to put down roots," Mauskopf said in a statement.

"Families should also make sure childcare is actually available near where they want to live. If care is scarce or unaffordable, an otherwise affordable area may not be a practical place for a family with young children."

Another challenge for families may be that home prices are modest, but childcare costs account for a sizable share of household budgets.

In Buffalo, New York, for example, childcare can make up nearly half of the combined childcare and housing price tag.

Other cities have far lower ratios, Redfin reported.

A man with children walks in Washington on July 13, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Dallas had the lowest share of family income going toward childcare, at 11 percent. This was followed by Charleston, South Carolina (11.4 percent) and Austin, Texas (11.6 percent).

Labor Shortage Cited

Families across the country have endured immense childcare costs for years.

Care.com released its 13th annual Cost of Care Report for 2026 in January. It found that the average weekly cost of daycare or a family care center for one child exceeded $300 last year. For families with two children, the number was slightly below $600.

Zooming out reveals a more financially dire picture of childcare costs, which even outpace general inflation, according to a report by the tax firm KPMG.

Between 1990 and April 2024, the cost of day care and preschool climbed 263 percent. By comparison, the consumer price index rose by 133 percent over the same period.

A key contributor, KPMG researchers say, is a labor shortage in both childcare and eldercare, which is pushing prices up faster than inflation.

"In 2026, growing challenges in the care economy will increasingly affect workforce outcomes, employer costs and overall economic performance. Though all states and industries are impacted, some are more at risk than others," the report stated.

The federal government and states need to implement reforms to adapt to changing conditions and ensure working families can afford childcare, says Glencora Haskins, a senior research associate at the Brookings Institution.

Some measures could consist of bolstering federal subsidies and states imposing price caps.

"The fact that there is no U.S. state that meets HHS's affordability standard for childcare demonstrates that the need for federal relief is both widespread and severe," Haskins said in a July paper.

"In sum, the potential benefits of federal childcare subsidization are being hamstrung by three main factors: insufficient funding, prohibitive eligibility standards, and misaligned affordability thresholds."

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 17:40

Reddit's Woke WNBA Forum Just Banned Sophie Cunningham's Name Amid Trans Row

The biggest unofficial WNBA fan forum on Reddit just made it nearly impossible to type the name of one of the league's own players.

On Sophie Cunningham's 30th birthday, users trying to post a simple "Happy Birthday Sophie" on r/WNBA ran straight into an automated brick wall. The community doesn't allow "Sophie" in post titles. Same goes for "Cunningham," "sc," "scunningham," "soph," and a handful of other variations. The Indiana Fever guard's name had effectively been filtered out of the main discussion space.

One user pushed back in a private message to the moderators, asking the obvious: Why ban talk about an actual WNBA player?

The reply was blunt. "We filter content based on Sophi because it tend to bring out trolls and people that aren't fans of the W," a mod wrote. When the user kept pressing, the response got sharper: "We have chosen to filter content. If you want to post freely about Sophie you can go to different sub... You aren't even a contributor to this sub, so I suggest you go back to the other WNBA subs. This is our decision. If you keep messaging about this you will be banned."

Screenshots of the exchange spread fast. Conservative media and sports accounts on X framed it as straight-up erasure. Outlets from the New York Post to OutKick and the Mirror ran with versions of the story, calling it a name ban on Cunningham's birthday.

pic.twitter.com/PXM2RdCFbX

— Johnny Connolly (@XJohnnyConnolly) August 16, 2026

Then, there was an 'update' to 'clarify' (i.e. 'we're sorry we got caught and this is going viral') - with mods insisting Sophie Cunningham content is not banned. Basketball-related posts - games, highlights, stats, interviews, injuries - are still welcome. Off-court material can land too. What's getting filtered, they said, are the politics, culture-war debates, and drama that have been attracting brigades and low-effort trolling. The mods also said they had raised the community karma threshold required to post and turned up Reddit's Crowd Control tools to keep the sub from getting overrun.

Cunningham became a culture-war flashpoint after a July 21 ESPN profile published her comments about protecting women's sports. She said she wanted to "protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men," while insisting she doesn't hate transgender people and describing herself as politically "in the middle." Her remarks were about youth sports, not her own league. She doubled down days later: "I said what I said. I think it's kind of common sense."

The fight moved to the WNBA anyway. The league's collective bargaining agreement says only players who are women are eligible - and across 409 pages, never defines "woman." Two former NBA players took the opening. Royce White declared for the 2027 WNBA draft on Aug. 4, and Enes Kanter Freedom followed on Aug. 7, both citing the league's own language on self-identification. "If simply declaring who you are is all that's required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA," Freedom said. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert responded in a memo to teams and convened a task force of presidents and general managers to review eligibility.

EXCLUSIVE: Former NBA first-round pick Royce White says he's declaring for the 2027 WNBA Draft, claiming he now identifies as transgender for the purpose of playing professional basketball.

The 6-foot-8 former Houston Rockets draft pick follows fellow former NBA player Enes… pic.twitter.com/yUI8NdoiaX

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 8, 2026

After careful consideration and reviewing the current eligibility guidelines,
I’m officially declaring myself a @WNBA prospect.

If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA.

My team and I have… pic.twitter.com/msncUZUT1J

— Enes Kanter FREEDOM (@EnesFreedom) August 7, 2026

LFG!!! 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 17:20

Geopolitical Reality Has Ended The Rush To Renewables

Authored by Rashid Hudain Syed via The Epoch Times,

The world is quietly abandoning the fantasy that renewables alone can guarantee energy security.

The U.S.–Israel war on Iran exposed how vulnerable the global economy remains to disruptions in fossil fuel supply chains. Any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz quickly affects global fuel prices, inflation, and energy costs worldwide.

For years, Western governments pushed rapid decarbonization and a transition away from oil and gas. But war and supply disruptions have exposed how difficult that transition really is. Countries are once again looking to stable producers for reliable fossil fuel supplies.

Oil is once again a precious commodity, and producers are benefiting.

Canada is no exception.

Surging global oil prices, the expansion of export infrastructure like the Trans Mountain pipeline, and improving relations between Ottawa and Alberta on carbon pricing and energy policy are helping drive renewed growth and investor confidence in Canada’s oil sector. Massive resource windfalls and record free cash flows are flowing through the industry.

Canada’s vast reserves and political stability are becoming increasingly important as geopolitical tensions grow. Canada holds the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Policy changes have also made Canada more attractive to long-term investment. Major producers are aggressively returning capital to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks, while benefiting from narrower discounts for Western Canada Select crude relative to U.S. West Texas Intermediate benchmarks.

Oil and gas companies, which have long argued that federal regulations and environmental policies have crippled industry growth, cautiously welcomed the recent agreement between Ottawa and Alberta. Reuters reported that ConocoPhillips Canada president Nick McKenna said the deal significantly improves the risk profile for oil and gas investment in Canada.

The shift is global.

U.S. oil companies are ramping up production as rising prices revive energy security concerns. Companies, including Diamondback Energy and Continental Resources, are expanding drilling operations.

Veteran oilman Harold Hamm, who owns Continental, told the Financial Times he planned to increase capital expenditures by roughly $300 million to $2.8 billion in 2026 because of higher oil prices.

“We don’t expect prices to go back to where they were prior to the Iran war,” Hamm said.

That marks a dramatic reversal. Earlier this year, Continental planned to halt new drilling in North Dakota because oil prices had fallen below US$60 a barrel. Hamm is now reconsidering that decision.

Publicly traded U.S. shale producers increased their capital spending forecasts by nearly $500 million in first-quarter reports compared to projections issued just three months earlier, according to energy consultancy Enverus.

Low oil prices at the start of the year caused U.S. production to slip to 13.53 million barrels per day in the first quarter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But soaring prices are now expected to push production to a record 14.21 million barrels per day by the end of next year.

Even Norway, one of the world’s leading advocates for aggressive climate policy and renewable energy, is expanding fossil fuel production again. Oslo plans to reopen three North Sea gas fields—Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk, and Tommeliten Gamma—by 2028, nearly three decades after they were shut down.

“We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf,” Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Aasland recently declared.

Equinor, Norway’s state-owned energy giant, plans to invest US$6 billion annually through 2035 to maintain production levels and prevent output declines.

Norway pumped 2.31 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first quarter, nearly 9 percent more than during the same period last year.

Critics argue the policy undermines Norway’s climate goals and delays Europe’s transition away from fossil fuels. Lars Haltbrekken of Norway’s Socialist Left party condemned the move as “greenwashing through and through.”

But the Iran crisis exposed how deeply the world still depends on fossil fuels. Governments are once again turning to dependable producers to protect their economies.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 17:00

Rand Paul Goes To Fort Knox To Verify That US Gold Stockpile Still Exists

In September 1974, amid public and congressional concerns, a high-profile inspection occurred at the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. In a rare exception to the "no visitors" policy, members of Congress and the press were invited in.

This was followed immediately by a special audit conducted by the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) in cooperation with Treasury auditors. It covered roughly 21% of the gold bars stored there at the time and found that the holdings matched the depository records.  Since that event, there has been no independent audit of federal gold stores.  The contents of Fort Knox has remains a mystery.  

In 2024, the US treasury Department stated that Fort Knox held 4580 metric tons of gold in the vaults, but many fiscal conservatives have been skeptical.  It makes sense to be suspicious; why would the federal government avoid independent audits for over 50 years unless there's some kind of problem? 

The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 presented a rare opportunity for the public to press for verification that Fort Knox is, in fact, still holding gold.  We are seeing some indication that the Trump Administration is taking these concerns seriously, with Senator Rand Paul being given access to Fort Knox vaults last week. 

I have been asking to see the gold at Fort Knox since February of 2025. This week I finally went deep underground and looked for myself. Yes, the gold is there, roughly 147 million ounces.

The real lesson is not the gold itself. It is what happened to the dollar after 1971, when…

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 14, 2026

Rand Paul's inspection of the gold stores does not constitute a true audit, but it is the first outside verification of the US gold stockpile in decades.  The audit of 1974 started with visual inspections, so this could potentially lead to a more thorough inventory down the road.  Rand Paul notes that the gold is, indeed, still sitting at Fort Knox.

"Yes, the gold is there, roughly 147 million ounces..."

After seeing it himself, Paul quickly moved past the question of whether the gold exists. "It is impressive, but the real point is what it still teaches in 2026," he wrote.  Paul pointed to 1971, when the U.S. ended the dollar's convertibility into gold, and said the currency has lost roughly 85% of its value since then.

Public worries have grown over the stability of the US economy since the credit crash of 2008-2009.  The Federal Reserve's massive bailout programs pumped trillions of dollars into the global monetary system and created the catalyst for an inflationary crisis.  Ron Paul's limited audit of the bailouts in 2011 found over $16 trillion in emergency loans at 0% interest over the course of 3 years.  A large portion of these loans went to foreign banks.  

Ron Paul's audit was not a full accounting of central bank activities.  We still don't know for certain how much dollar devaluation occurred. 

Since the credit crisis, the Fed has engaged in multiple QE measures and bailouts, keeping interest rates near 0% for approximately 7 years.  The pandemic bailouts in 2020-2021 were the straw that broke the camel's back, triggering the inflation crisis that alternative economists had been predicting.

Any reversal of long term inflationary pressures will likely require a return to a commodity backed currency standard, otherwise, the trend will continue until the dollar eventually breaks and the system crashes.  The confirmation by Rand Paul of the Fort Knox holdings offers hope that a return to the gold standard or a mixed commodity standard might one day be possible and that the US economy can still be saved from an inflationary spiral.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 16:40

"Both Parties Are Whirling Around The Drain Of Extinction..."

Authored by Jim Kunstler,

“A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the ancient boundary between the mad and the free.”

- LHGrey on “X”

Back in the days of sailing ships, a certain subtropical zone of the ocean became known as the “horse latitudes.” There, an eerie windless calm prevailed, sometimes for weeks, stalling the progress of ships in mid-crossing. In desperation to save water on-board, captains ordered the horses being transported to America to be cast overboard, and the animals’ bloated carcasses drifted in an ominous cortège of warning to other mariners entering the zone of stillness and death.

This stretch of weeks in late summer has become the horse latitudes of human affairs for American politics. The primaries are mostly over, at least the ones that mattered. Congress has departed the Potomac swamp for the lakes, seashores, and the county fairs out where the corn grows high. The heat in the Arabian Sea must turn the deck of an American aircraft carrier into a giant hot-plate sailors fear to tread. Even the country’s multitude of lawyers turn off their cell-phones and contemplate the blank, watery horizon with heads full of iced brown liquor.

We civilians are stuck between that old rock and a hard place... two political parties whirling around the drain of extinction in a nation seeming to drift toward the edge of the known world.

In the background, a massive realignment grinds away.

The old parties of labor and of property have forgotten their reasons for existence. Labor vamoosed to Mexico, China, and obscure faraway lands decades ago. Property is still here, but it’s all been collateralized into grift and fraud.

In the absence of working people to defend, the Democrats became a party of racketeering race-and-gender hobgoblins, now marshaling into an insectile host of predatory Marxists, and altogether their antics present as a spectrum of mental illness. Voters who somehow managed to preserve some sense of mental decorum increasingly abandon that lunatic coalition — but where to go? This is exactly what is happening in the state of Michigan with the rise of Abdul el-Sayed, who adds a caboose of jihad to his choo-choo train of Bolshevik nuttery. Long-time Dems like Democratic attorney Julian Epstein are publicly jumping ship to support el-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers.

The clueless old gorks in charge of the Democratic Party — the likes of Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mark Warner, Liz Warren, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse — are suddenly nowhere to be seen (or heard). They don’t dare denounce this latest onrush to new-and-improved insanities because, apparently, insanity is all the party has left — stealing other peoples’ property. . . pretending to change sexes. . . organizing giant frauds. . . demanding payoffs for hallucinated affronts. . . and feeding the vicious Leviathan they want government to be.

And don’t be too sure that coalescing around the figure of one AOC in 2028 is going to save this outfit. Sandy is trying to pretend she’s somewhere in the middle, between the feckless old official leadership and the outright commies, but she’s still a member of the odious “Squad” composed of Somali fraudster Ilhan Omar, jihadist Rashida Tlaib, and race-hustler Ayanna Pressley — meaning, its just the same brand of crazy the party has been cultivating for more than a decade. What remains for America to discover about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that she’s a mere opportunist with nothing inside except some skill at middle-school girl games. . . Eva Peron without the savvy.

On the other end of the political transect stand the Republican phantoms of Congress busy getting nothing done for the past year and a half despite holding the majority in both houses.

They’re personified perfectly by Senator Mitch McConnell, quite possibly dead for all that anyone really knows. In John Thune you have something like an anti-leader, doing everything possible to evade his duties, squashing election reform under arcane procedural bullshit, obstructing the confirmation of important agency nominees and federal judges, and “gaveling-in” ghost sessions of his chamber to prevent the president from making recess appointments. And why? Probably for no better reason than he just wants to dissociate himself and many of his fellows from the president because he’s seen as too gauche for their club.

Speaking of whom, you see Mr. Trump and his faction stand apart, but not alone, in this big game. He’s going through a rough patch in these horse latitudes of summer. But despite some appearances, and despite the bluster emanating from Tehran, he has already succeeded in neutralizing Iran while Secretary Bessent keeps the maniac IRGC in an ever-tightening economic squeeze. There’s reason to believe this well end well for the Middle East, actually in an epic realignment of actual interests, rather than obsolete tribal animosities.

Mr. Trump is also working hard to realign American interests at home into an economy based on making things of value instead of just taking profits on financial shell-games. It’s a gigantic task and one that will take time to get working because factories can’t be built overnight and the demoralized working class can’t be instantly realigned to opportunities that are months from materializing. In the meantime, have a little faith if you can, even though these have been notably faithless decades for our sore-beset nation, and we are too accustomed to bad faith.

Just power through these listless, torpid dog days of August and gird your loins for action in the fall because it’s coming. And that includes a long-awaited accounting for the many crimes against the people of this land by some of our own people. A new permission structure is building out there in the foggy gloaming: you will be set free to stop pretending about a lot of stuff that matters.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 16:20

"Cash Crunch" Deepens? Mark Walter Explores Chelsea FC Stake Sale To Clearlake

The latest developments surrounding Mark Walter's empire appear to reinforce Yahoo Sports reporter Jack Baer's warning last week of a potential "cash crunch" following the abrupt $12.5 billion sale of the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and former Disney chief Bob Iger. The Financial Times also reported last week that the FBI seized phones belonging to Walter and Guggenheim Investments President Dina DiLorenzo last year as part of a federal investigation into entities controlled by Walter.

Bloomberg reported Monday that Walter has explored selling his stake in Chelsea FC to Clearlake Capital, the London football club's majority owner. The report is based on information from people familiar with the matter and has yet to be officially confirmed.

Walter's family office approached the Santa Monica-based alternative asset manager, led by Behdad Eghbali and José Feliciano, in recent days, the report said.

For context, Clearlake is Chelsea FC's majority shareholder, holding more than 60% through the BlueCo consortium formed to acquire the club from Roman Abramovich in 2022. The remaining interest is held by Todd Boehly, Mark Walter, and Hansjörg Wyss, each with a minority stake.

The report noted that potential divestment comes as Walter's TWG Global pursues deals to address loans on its insurers' balance sheets that have sparked a federal investigation.

Last week, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for a record $12.5 billion.

Yahoo Sports reporter Jack Baer said last week, "Mark Walter is reportedly facing a cash crunch."

The Wall Street Journal noted the same:

Review last week's developments:

• FBI Seized Mark Walter's Devices Months Before Record $12.5 Billion Lakers Sale

TWG Global's sports portfolio extends well beyond Chelsea and the Lakers. The company notes on its website that it owns:

• Los Angeles Dodgers: Walter is the MLB franchise's controlling owner and chairman.
• Los Angeles Sparks: An ownership interest in the WNBA franchise.
• RC Strasbourg: Indirect ownership through BlueCo, the holding company that also controls Chelsea.
• Professional Women's Hockey League: TWG founded and financed the league, which recently added its first outside investors.
• Billie Jean King Cup: TWG owns 49% of the joint venture operating the women's international tennis competition.
• Cadillac Formula 1 Team: TWG Motorsports holds a majority interest alongside General Motors.
• Andretti Global: Teams competing in IndyCar, Indy NXT, and Formula E.
• Spire Motorsports: A NASCAR Cup and Truck Series organization.
• Wayne Taylor Racing: An IMSA sports-car racing team.
• Walkinshaw Andretti United: An Australian Supercars team.
• Teton Ridge: A Western sports, media, and entertainment platform.

The Los Angeles Lakers remain listed on TWG's website despite Walter's deal last week to dispose of the team.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 15:40

Almost 60% Of Democrats Have A Favorable View Of Socialism

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Recent polls show steady growth in support for socialism among Democrats. A new CBS poll shows how popular it is, with 58 percent holding a positive view of socialism—26 points more than the 32 percent with a positive view of capitalism. This may explain why House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, while rejecting core parts of its platform, embraced Democratic Socialists this week as part of the Democratic Party. In addition to a variety of anti-Semitic figures within its ranks, the DSA wants to get rid of the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and other institutions (as well as borders, immigration enforcement, and much of private property).

Yet, Jeffries still believes they share values and wants them to be part of the Democratic party.

In other words, there are many “fine people” in the DSA despite being committed to the destruction of our core institutions.

The poll also found that 24 percent of Democrats have “no opinion” of socialism, while 18 percent have no opinion regarding capitalism.

Other polling shows similar results.

An Economist/YouGov survey recently found that 62 percent of Democrats said they would vote for a “Democratic Socialist” candidate.

At the same time, Democratic Socialists have been spinning fables about the Framers not opposing those who acquire too much wealth. They also repeat the mythology that socialism has worked in other countries. It destroyed the economies in France and Great Britain.

Nevertheless, British prime minister, Andy Burnham declared that he wants to restore the policies of 40 years ago, before the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

In his own version of promising the “warmth of collectivism,” Burnham declared, “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.”

Burnham’s account leaves out that the supposed golden age under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, which he was referencing, led in 1977 to the so-called “winter of discontent.” Those policies destroyed the British economy, and the nation was faced with the humiliation of being rescued by the International Monetary Fund as if it were some banana republic.

Ultimately, capitalist policies were restored by Margaret Thatcher and the economy rebounded.

In “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the economic philosophy of the Founders in exploring the history and future of this unique Republic.

Notably, this is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith’s free-market theory was an instant hit with the founding generation. These men had just created the first major Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.

Yet, they knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s economic theory was the perfect companion for their political theory. Rage and the Republic discusses the rise of socialism in the United States and around the world. It calls for a recommitment to what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”

The Democratic leaders from Harris to Buttigieg to Newsom believe that they can ride this rage wave into power by offering up core American institutions. They wrongly believe that the mob will destroy their enemies, but not themselves. 

History has proven them wrong time and time again.

This election is shaping up to be arguably the most important in our history as we fight for the identity of this Republic on its 250th anniversary. We have come face to face with Benjamin Franklin’s warning that this is a Republic if we can keep it.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 15:20

Bill Maher Draws The Line: American Values Are Not Negotiable

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Even Bill Maher has finally had enough. The longtime left-leaning comedian used his HBO platform to deliver a blunt message that cuts through years of open-borders ideology: if you want the American dream, you take American values with it. No exceptions. No special pleading. And no, it's not "racist" to say so.

On a recent episode of Real Time, Maher laid out a straightforward standard that should never have become controversial. Immigrants are not free to reject the foundation of the country they chose to enter.

"If you want the American dream, you have to take the American values," he said. "But you have to answer one question: Do you like Western civilization? Because that's what we are. And that's not negotiable."

? BILL MAHER: THE AMERICAN DREAM COMES WITH AMERICAN VALUES

Maher says immigrants are welcome to bring their food, language, religion and traditions — but America's fundamental values aren't up for negotiation.

"If you want the American dream, you have to take the American... pic.twitter.com/bt9jopmFur

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) August 16, 2026

Maher was careful to note that while some immigrants still seek to assimilate, the problem is a growing contingent that treats the melting pot with open contempt. "Melting pot? F - you, you melt," was how he characterized the new attitude.

He listed practices that remain firmly off-limits: honor killings, forcing women to cover their faces, polygamy, cousin marriage, and female genital mutilation. "There's lots of stuff we don't do here, and it's non-negotiable."

These, he stressed, are not "White values."

They are liberal values - gay rights, women's equality, free speech, separation of religion and state - that people fought and died to establish.

"It's not racist to say if you want to come here to help form a more perfect union, great. But some things are too fundamental to change," Maher stressed.

He went further, calling out progressive politicians who quietly soft-pedal those same liberal values when they collide with Muslim sensitivities.

He cited Democratic congressional candidate Melissa Chaudhry, who reportedly explained the absence of LGBTQ issues on her website by saying "a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately."

Maher's response was direct:

"Is this the progressive policy now? ... We throw gay people under the bus any time it clashes with what makes Muslims uncomfortable?"

He also dismantled activist Linda Sarsour's line that "Our number one priority is our community. It is not to assimilate." Maher's reply: "OK, but that's not really how immigration works."

He offered a simple analogy. Move to Japan and start demanding they abandon their customs for yours, and see how far that goes.

Maher rejected the usual smear. Accusations of "Islamophobia," he said, are "just a bulls - word to cow people into not talking about this."

His concern is not skin color or demographic change. "I don't give a s - about colors. ... I care about liberal values being replaced by illiberal ones."

That clarity stands in stark contrast to the direction taken across the Atlantic. In Britain, the official response to mass migration and parallel cultural demands has been the opposite of Maher's: expand the list of protected sensitivities, log criticism, and punish those who refuse to self-censor.

Maher's monologue is not a sudden conversion to America First realism. It is a late recognition that a society which refuses to defend its own foundational principles will eventually lose them.

The United States still has the cultural confidence - and the political space - to draw the line he described. Britain's experience shows what happens when that confidence is abandoned in favor of managed decline and institutional self-censorship.

Assimilation is not oppression. It is the price of entry into a successful civilization. Maher finally said it out loud. The only remaining question is how many more on the left will admit the same before the damage becomes irreversible.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 14:40

Trump Accuses BBC Of Harassing His Family In $10bn Lawsuit

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

President Donald Trump has accused the BBC of harassing his family after the state-funded broadcaster's lawyers tried to force his children and son-in-law to testify in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit.

The corporation's legal team asked a Florida court for authorisation to serve subpoenas on Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Court filings show the BBC claims the three "have personal knowledge and likely have possession, custody, or control of records relevant to multiple elements" of the case.

Attempts to deliver the papers in person were repeatedly blocked by the Secret Service and local law enforcement.

BREAKING: US President Donald Trump has accused the BBC of harassing his family after the broadcaster tried to subpoena his children.

? Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604
? Become a Friend of GB News: https://t.co/c2dfqbeDpJ pic.twitter.com/eoRbIvqscG

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 16, 2026

A spokesman for Trump's legal team made the president's position clear: "The BBC intentionally defamed President Donald J. Trump, and now the BBC is seeking to harass him, his family, and supporters by abusing the deposition process. The BBC is simply trying to distract away from their own obvious liability."

The BBC's process servers tried to hand documents to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at their Florida home, only to be stopped at a police checkpoint. The Secret Service later confirmed it could not accept the subpoenas on their behalf.

Separate attempts to serve Donald Trump Jr at Trump Tower in New York were turned away by security and staff who said the legal department was unavailable.

Unable to complete personal service, the BBC is now asking the court for alternative methods such as email or notice to the family's lawyers. The broadcaster insists the three family members were present or involved around the January 6, 2021 speech at the heart of the lawsuit and can speak to Trump's intentions that day.

'The BBC are now trying to subpoena members of the Trump family. It's farcical.'

Podcaster Paul Duddridge reacts as Donald Trump accuses the BBC of harassing him as the corporation pursues further action in Donald Trump's defamation case against it. pic.twitter.com/bopKNfIaMS

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 16, 2026

Donald Trump says BBC harassed his family by 'abusing the deposition process'https://t.co/QZVXf0ueE8

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 17, 2026

The lawsuit itself targets a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary that spliced together portions of Trump's speech delivered more than 50 minutes apart. The edit created the false impression that the president was urging supporters to storm the Capitol.

Trump has always maintained he called for peaceful protest. He is seeking $10 billion in damages for harm to his reputation, brand and businesses. A trial is scheduled for February 2027 in Miami.

This is the same scandal that already cost the BBC its top leadership. In late 2025, Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness both departed after the misleading edit became public.

Trump had warned at the time that the corporation's "very dishonest people" had tried to interfere in an American presidential election and threatened legal action that later escalated into the current $10 billion claim.

While the Corporation fights tooth and nail in American courts to avoid accountability for its own editing practices, the UK government has been working to force social media platforms to artificially boost BBC content.

Plans outlined earlier this year would require YouTube and other giants to prioritise the state broadcaster's output under the guise of fighting "disinformation."

Critics have long argued that the same organisation now seeking to compel testimony from a sitting U.S. president's children is the one British taxpayers are forced to fund and that ministers want algorithmically force-fed to the public.

Trump's legal team frames the latest move as an attempt to muddy the waters rather than confront the original doctored footage that triggered the entire case.

The Florida court will decide whether the BBC can proceed with alternative service.

Whatever the ruling, the spectacle of a foreign state broadcaster chasing the children of the American president after being caught splicing his words reeks of desperation.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 14:00

Copper Squeeze Deepens In London As Futs Near Record; Barclays Flags Top Mining Picks

Copper prices in London have held above $14,000 a ton for nine consecutive sessions, with steep backwardation signaling that near-term demand is outstripping available supply. A confluence of bullish drivers is pushing prices toward record highs, while the key cash-to-three-month spread has widened to its highest level since the 2021 market squeeze.

The spot price traded as much as $543.50 a ton above three-month contracts on the London Metal Exchange, a hallmark of steep backwardation that signals near-term demand is outstripping available supply.

LME copper curve signals deep backwardation:

Three-month futures rose as much as 1.7% to $14,396 a ton on Monday, closing in on January's record of $14,527.50.

Richard Garchitorena, a New York-based Barclays equity research analyst covering North American metals and mining stocks, wrote Monday morning that mining stocks are poised for further gains as copper supplies continue to tighten.

Garchitorena said copper supplies remain constrained for a number of reasons: Chilean production fell 6.7% year over year through June, prompting Cochilco to cut its 2026 forecast to 5.27 million tons, down 2.6%. Antofagasta separately reduced its annual guidance by about 5% after severe weather disrupted its Los Pelambres mine. An outage at Indonesia's Gresik smelter has also delayed shipments, with no restart date established.

He added that LME copper stockpiles have plunged 32% from a month earlier to 205,000 tons, while Comex inventories rose 8% to 735,000 tons as traders await a potential U.S. tariff on refined copper. He also noted that speculative net-long positions increased to 77,123 contracts, up 20% from July.

Garchitorena's preferred individual mining stocks to watch include Freeport-McMoRan, First Quantum Minerals, Hudbay Minerals, Newmont and Agnico Eagle.

Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX)

Separately, David Wilson, head of metals strategy at BNP Paribas SA, told clients, "There seems to be momentum for it to get there," referring to the potential for LME copper to exceed the January record. "It's moving into overbought territory, but I don't know if that means anything at the moment, given how tight it is."

"Normally you'd expect to get more Chinese deliveries into the LME," BNP's Wilson said. "But the thing is, why would you deliver to the LME when you can still effectively ship metal into the US?"

Bloomberg noted that the copper squeeze comes "ahead of the third Wednesday of the month delivery date, the main focus of liquidity in the LME's contracts. That may pile pressure onto traders with short positions."

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 13:40

Massachusetts Mayor Charged With Using COVID Loan For Election Campaign, Debt Payments

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

A Massachusetts mayor was arrested on Aug. 14 on allegations that he fraudulently secured more than $1.5 million in COVID-19 small-business loans to fund his election campaign and pay personal taxes and mortgages.

Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña, 61, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

DePeña has been released from custody following his initial appearance in federal court in Boston on Aug. 14, subject to several conditions, including turning over his passport.

According to his indictment, he allegedly applied for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) for Tenares Tire Services Inc., a tire sales and automotive services business he owned in Lawrence, between 2020 and 2021.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offered those loans to eligible small businesses that were facing financial difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prosecutors alleged that DePeña obtained $150,000 in EIDL loans for Tenares Tire in June 2020, using most of the funds as working capital for his business. In early 2021, his mayoral campaign was struggling to pay bills, and he owed back taxes to the IRS and $900,000 to two private lenders.

DePeña allegedly applied in April 2021 for an increase in his business’s EIDL loan, which the SBA later approved for an additional $350,000, according to the statement.

Prosecutors said DePeña allegedly used $85,000 of the funds to pay off personal tax debts and transferred $120,000 to his personal account, of which $90,000 was later deposited into his mayoral campaign account.

In October 2021, DePeña allegedly requested another EIDL loan increase, which the SBA approved for more than $1.15 million. He then transferred the entire amount to a personal account and used $42,112.96 of that fund for his mayoral campaign, prosecutors alleged. He also allegedly used more than $883,000 to pay off his debts.

The mayor had made 16 payments on the Tenares Tire EIDL as of Aug. 5, 2026, leaving an outstanding principal balance of about $1.6 million, according to prosecutors.

“This was emergency financial assistance meant to be a safety net for struggling businesses, not Mr. DePena’s own personal ATM,” Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Field Office, said in the statement.

“When elected officials misuse federal funds for personal gain, they’re breaking the trust of their constituents—and breaking the law.”

DePeña has served as mayor since 2021. He was reelected in November 2025 and previously served on the Lawrence City Council.

He faces up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000 if convicted of wire fraud. For money laundering, DePeña could face up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine if found guilty.

DePeña’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/17/2026 - 13:20