The post Democrats are Socialists: They Support Social Security and Medicare appeared first on CEPR.

Entire Ethiopian Football Team Vanishes In Sweden After Youth Tournament

Via Remix News,

Twenty Ethiopians connected to a youth football team disappeared in Sweden on the final day of the Gothia Cup youth tournament, prompting an international missing persons search.

The group consists mainly of boys aged between 14 and 17, together with one or more adult leaders. Police believe they left voluntarily, amid suspicions that they may be attempting to remain in Sweden or another European country, although officers say that has not been confirmed.

The Gothia Cup, also known as the World Youth Cup, brought teams from 77 countries to Gothenburg this year, including four teams from Ethiopia.

The disappearance was discovered when an administrator at the school accommodating one of the Ethiopian teams found that its players and accompanying adults had left without notifying anyone.

Gothia Cup organizers contacted police as a precaution, and a formal missing persons report was filed. Ten days after the tournament ended on July 19, the group remained unaccounted for and had not returned to Ethiopia.

“From our perspective, it’s strange because this is a team that we have a good relationship with,” Gothia Cup press officer Fredrik Beckman told Göteborgs-Posten.

The final communication received from the team reportedly came from its contact person, who thanked organizers for their “consideration” and claimed the situation appeared to have resulted from a communication problem.

However, the message provided no explanation of where the players and leaders had gone or whether they intended to return home.

Police said the group is now being sought internationally.

Officers are working with the Swedish Migration Agency, border police and authorities in other countries, and expect to be alerted if any member of the group attempts to cross a border or comes into contact with officials.

Police say there is no evidence that the group was trafficked or smuggled.

“There is no indication that anything illegal lies behind this, such as people smuggling or something similar,” Halldin told Swedish media.

She added that in previous cases, missing participants had often been located gradually over time.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 06:35

Say goodbye to July with my end-of-week morning reads:

• Trying to make sense of Warsh: Not everyone in financial markets watched Fed chair Kevin Warsh’s presser yesterday. But today everyone will be dealing with its consequences. As MainFT reports, US borrowing costs surged to a 19-year high in the one-day biggest jump since Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement. Equity markets shedding a mere trillion-odd dollars look a bit meh by comparison. (Financial Times)

• Stocks Finally Have Some Competition: TrendLabs on the return of real yields — for the first time in a generation, bonds and cash offer genuine alternatives to equities, and the asset allocation math has changed accordingly. (TrendLabs) see also Nearly half of small-cap and midcap stocks are losing money: MarketWatch on the profitability collapse below the mega-caps — the index-level numbers hide a market where almost half the smaller companies can’t turn a profit. (MarketWatch)

• Twenty Investment Lessons of 2008 – I think this was culled from a Seth Klarman Interview. Of course, no one wants to admit to being part of the flock. Everyone is looking for “uncorrelated”, perhaps the most overused, least sincere term in our industry. (Cove Street Capital)

• Bloomberg’s post-Mike moves are in motion: In the decades since Michael Bloomberg founded his bond-pricing data provider and built it into a media and markets giant, the question has swirled on Wall Street: What does he plan to do with it?  (Semafor)

• Congress Budgeted Billions for Big Transit Projects. Trump Isn’t Spending It. Ssince President Trump returned to office, the Federal Transit Administration has not signed a single new agreement under the program, known as Capital Investment Grants. Large projects ready to enter the final phase of the program’s yearslong pipeline have stalled there. The administration also tried halting payments to the New York and Chicago projects, forcing courts to intervene. The money was appropriated. The projects were approved. The administration is simply refusing to release the funds — a quiet form of sabotage that’s hollowing out public infrastructure. (New York Times)

• The False Promise of the First ‘Smart’ Homes: MIT Press Reader on the push-button houses of the 1950s and 60s — the automated home has been five years away for seventy years, and the failures are instructive. Computerized rooms, telework stations, and child-soothing technologies sold a seductive illusion that automation could solve the problems of maternal care. (The MIT Press Reader)

• How to have a happier vacation: Here’s what researchers who study happiness say about how to enjoy your time off. Five evidence-based strategies for actually enjoying your time off — instead of returning more exhausted than when you left. (Washington Post)

• Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines: ​President is focused on shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to issue ahead of midterms. The Wall Street Journal reports the president is pressuring his health secretary to go further on vaccine restrictions — with measles already resurgent. President is focused on shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to issue ahead of midterms. (Wall Street Journal) but see Measles Is Becoming So Common That Treatments May Soon Be Needed: Wired on the grim milestone — measles is now endemic enough in the U.S. that pharmaceutical companies are developing treatments for a disease vaccines had eliminated. As the US sees its highest number of measles cases in decades and vaccination rates fall, researchers are developing drugs to help those who contract the virus or who are particularly vulnerable. (Wired)

• Astronauts returning from six-month missions describe a persistent ‘observer’ sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame, weeks after they’re back on the ground: Astronauts returning from long ISS rotations consistently describe a half-step-outside-themselves sensation that flight surgeons recognize as part of the post-mission readjustment curve — a perceptual cost of spending six months in a body that had to learn a different world. (Space Daily)

• In the midst of his majesty: How Tadej Pogacar won the 2026 Tour de France: This Tour will be remembered as Pogačar in the midst of his majesty; a relentless march towards victory which felt all but assured within the first week. It was an imposition of order; the barbarians tamed before they reached the gates. The man astride the moat was not a new version of Pogačar, but the final optimized evolution — or perhaps not. The Athletic’s definitive account of Pogačar’s third Tour victory — the dominance, the tactics, and the growing sense that we’re watching the greatest stage racer who ever lived. (The Athletic)

Video of the day: Why Project Hail Mary Destroyed the Blockbuster Formula

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Som Seif Purpose Investments, founder/CEO, Toronto-based asset manager launched in 2012. He grew his first firm, Claymore Investments to $8B in assets by creating 34 ETFs over 6 years, establishing it as Canada’s leader in low-cost exchange-traded funds; he sold to BlackRock in 2012. Next, he co-founded Wealthsimple, which became the default investing app for a generation of Canadians. His wealth management firm, Purpose, was founded at the end of 2012, and manages>$31B in ETFs, mutual funds, alternatives, private assets, and digital assets. Som was named to Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2011.

 

Interest rates have steadily risen since the start of the Iran War, and are an increasingly heavy burden on the economy.

Source: LinkedIn

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Friday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Berlin Mayor Calls For Islamic Lessons In State Schools Following Latest Terror Attack

Via Remix News,

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has called for Islamic religious education to be introduced in state schools following the deadly Islamist attack near the capital’s Christopher Street Day celebrations.

The CDU politician argued that young Muslims are being radicalized through religious networks operating beyond meaningful state oversight, including what he described as “backyard mosques.”

As reported by Tagesspiegel, Wegner said Islamic instruction inside public schools could help protect young people from extremist influences because the curriculum and teachers would be subject to state supervision.

“Religious education in state schools could make a significant contribution to protecting young people from such influences,” he said.

He added that Islamic religious education should be offered in Berlin schools precisely because it would bring instruction under public control rather than leaving it solely to independent mosques and associations.

“We must increase the pressure and control on radical mosques with the aim of banning them,” he also added, as cited by Bild.

The intervention follows an attack by Abdul Ballout, a known Islamist whom German authorities had previously prosecuted for attempting to join Islamic State.

Ballout had been detained in Lebanon while trying to reach Syria, returned to Germany and arrested at Berlin Brandenburg Airport in November 2025.

In May 2026, a Berlin youth court convicted him of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, distributing Islamic State propaganda and other offenses.

Prosecutors sought a sentence of two years and ten months, but the court imposed a youth sentence of one year and ten months and provisionally suspended it.

He was released while prosecutors appealed.

Ballout was later accused of killing a woman and injuring 29 people after driving a rented van into a crowd in Berlin’s Tiergarten before attacking people with a machete.

Police subsequently located him at an allotment complex in Spandau. He was shot dead after approaching officers with a bladed weapon.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 02:00

The Fourth Turning Global War Has Entered The Terminal Phase

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

The numbers came in just after dawn on the East Coast, and they told a story that no amount of White House spin could obscure. Oil futures had stabilized at $86 per barrel overnight—a figure that would have seemed catastrophic eighteen months ago but now represented a temporary reprieve from the $119 spike that had crippled global markets in April. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that emergency backstop established after the 1973 crisis, had fallen to 305 million barrels, its lowest level since 1983. The Congressional Budget Office quietly released its revised deficit projections: $2.3 trillion for fiscal year 2026, with another $1.8 trillion locked in for 2027 before accounting for the war’s accelerating costs, currently running at $1 billion per day with no exit strategy visible on any horizon.

This is not a recession. This is not a “period of heightened geopolitical tension.” This is the systematic dismantling of the global economic architecture that has sustained Western prosperity for eighty years, compressed into a timeframe too brief for institutional adaptation. We are witnessing, in real-time, the transition from a unipolar American-led order to a fragmented multipolar system, and the violence of that transition is being measured not just in body counts—though those are mounting in ways the Pentagon refuses to fully disclose—but in the erosion of strategic leverage that cannot be recovered once spent.

The Fourth Turning Global War has entered its terminal phase, and the metrics suggest we are only beginning to comprehend the depth of the strategic trap into which American policy has walked.

To understand the present crisis, one must first abandon the comforting narrative of accidental drift—the notion that policy errors and miscalculation have led to the current impasse. The data suggests something more troubling: a decoupling of strategic decision-making from national interest calculation, producing outcomes that serve no identifiable American objective while advancing the interests of regional actors with disproportionate influence over U.S. policy formation.

Consider the timeline with the precision of a military after-action report. On February 27, 2026, the United States initiated a surprise decapitation strike against Iranian leadership while Israeli envoys maintained ostensible negotiations in Geneva. The strike eliminated Iran’s military command structure and political leadership in a forty-eight-hour bombardment that the White House initially projected would conclude within “four to five weeks.” That projection, made on March 1, has now stretched to month five with no conclusion visible. The Strait of Hormuz, through which twenty percent of global petroleum flows, has been effectively closed since mid-March. Iranian ballistic missile strikes, utilizing Chinese targeting data and Russian satellite intelligence, have damaged or destroyed every major U.S. installation in the Persian Gulf, including Al Udeid in Qatar, Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, and the naval facilities at Bahrain.

The cost-benefit analysis is devastating. The initial strike was predicated on intelligence assessments—later disputed by seventeen agencies—that Iran was “weeks away” from nuclear weaponization. This assessment contradicted the June 2025 declaration by the same administration that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” in a twelve-day conflict that cost $37 billion and achieved no lasting strategic effect. The current war, prosecuted with no congressional authorization and against the expressed preferences of the electorate that returned the President to office on explicit anti-interventionist promises, has now consumed $113 billion in direct costs with Harvard analysts projecting long-term liabilities exceeding $1 trillion when veterans’ care, equipment replacement, and base reconstruction are factored.

The economic externalities are equally severe. Inflation, which had moderated to 2.7% by December 2025, has reaccelerated to 4% and climbing. The 10-year Treasury yield at 4.64% represents the highest borrowing costs of the Trump presidency, translating to approximately $135 billion in additional annual interest expense and roughly $1,000 per household in direct energy and financing costs. These figures arrive at a moment when 60% of American households report inability to cover a $500 emergency expense, and consumer credit delinquencies have reached levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

The strategic position has deteriorated in ways that resist quantitative measurement. The American military, designed for power projection against insurgent forces and regional adversaries, has proven vulnerable to the asymmetric warfare tactics of a mid-tier nation with sophisticated missile technology and defensive geography. The Patriot missile systems, costing $2 million per intercept, face Iranian ballistic missiles and drones costing $10,000 to $50,000 per unit—a cost-exchange ratio that renders sustained defense economically unsustainable. The revelation that Russian and Chinese intelligence services are providing real-time targeting data to Iranian forces, confirmed by satellite intercepts and acknowledged in congressional testimony, transforms a regional conflict into a proxy war with great-power adversaries testing American vulnerabilities at minimal direct risk to themselves.

The institutional response has compounded the crisis. The Department of Government Efficiency, which promised $2 trillion in administrative savings, was effectively dismantled when the “Big Beautiful Bill” added $5 trillion to the national debt—on top of the $21 trillion CBO baseline projection. The national debt has expanded from $36.2 trillion to $39.5 trillion in eighteen months, with $2 trillion annual deficits now locked in through 2030. The administration’s attempt to suppress oil prices through Strategic Petroleum Reserve drainage and derivatives market manipulation has depleted emergency reserves while exposing the hollowness of American energy “independence”—the nation now lacks sufficient buffer to withstand a sustained supply disruption, let alone a broader conflict involving Nigerian or Venezuelan production.

The geopolitical reconfiguration underway extends beyond the immediate theater. Russia, despite Western sanctions and the ongoing attrition in Ukraine, has consolidated a Eurasian security architecture incorporating Iran, China, and the expanding BRICS+ alignment. The dedollarization of international trade—accelerated by SWIFT weaponization that demonstrated the vulnerability of dollar-denominated clearing—has created parallel financial systems that will persist regardless of conflict outcome. China, while managing its own demographic and real estate crises, has secured energy corridors through the Belt and Road Initiative and established the industrial capacity to replace American military losses at scale.

The European powers face civilizational exhaustion: demographic collapse, energy deindustrialization, and the progressive loss of productive capacity to Asian competitors. Their enthusiasm for expanded NATO commitments and confrontation with Russia serves not strategic interest but distraction—the displacement of internal contradictions onto external enemies. The recent declarations by French, German, and British leadership regarding “readiness for war with Russia” represent either dangerous delusion or deliberate provocation, given the demonstrated inability of European militaries to sustain ammunition expenditure for more than weeks without American resupply.

The Architecture of Strategic Bankruptcy

The visual landscape of collapse often precedes its statistical confirmation. The imagery from the Gulf region—satellite photographs of burning tanker traffic, thermal imaging of refinery complexes offline, atmospheric data showing particulate concentrations affecting regional agriculture—prefigures economic consequences that will arrive with lagging but inexorable certainty. The SPR drainage that has suppressed gasoline prices temporarily cannot continue beyond 2027 at current extraction rates. The Hormuz closure has already disrupted grain shipments to import-dependent nations, with wheat futures decoupling from traditional pricing models and phosphate export restrictions from Morocco and China threatening global food security.

The famine that development economists projected for 2030 has accelerated to 2027. Diesel availability for agricultural planting and harvest has become uncertain at prices permitting profitability. European fertilizer production, shuttered by energy costs in 2022-2023, has not resumed capacity. The global just-in-time supply chain, already fractured by pandemic policies and Suez disruption, approaches catastrophic failure as Red Sea interdiction by Houthi forces—equipped with Iranian missile technology—severs the maritime artery connecting Europe to Asian manufacturing.

This is not “market volatility.” This is the end of abundance—the reversion to a world where calorie and energy allocation follows political rather than economic logic, where reserve currency status no longer guarantees import capacity, and where the institutional frameworks established in 1944-1945 have ceased to function.

The psychological dimension of collapse resists quantification but demands analysis. The American population has been systematically anesthetized through pharmaceutical intervention (twenty-five percent of adults on psychiatric medication), digital addiction (average seven hours daily screen time), and ideological polarization that substitutes tribal identity for rational assessment. The same populations who accepted emergency measures during the 2020-2023 period based on epidemiological models with no empirical validation now dismiss warnings of systemic collapse as alarmism—while simultaneously accepting narratives of imminent threat from Iran that contradict the assessments of their own intelligence agencies.

The manufacturing of consent has reached its terminal phase. Media organs that promoted Russiagate as fact for three years now present Netanyahu’s Iran narrative as unquestionable truth. Conservative commentators who warned of executive overreach now justify the merger of state and corporate power as necessary security measures. The “uniparty” phenomenon—seamless continuity of policy between ostensibly opposed political formations—has become too obvious to deny, yet too uncomfortable to acknowledge for populations invested in the theater of democratic choice.

The Projection: Winter 2027-2028

Current trajectory analysis suggests the following developments with high probability:

By Q4 2026, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will approach technical minimums, removing the administration’s capacity to suppress oil prices through market intervention. Energy costs will spike to levels that trigger cascading defaults in the transportation and logistics sectors, with trucking bankruptcies producing food distribution failures in major metropolitan areas. The Federal Reserve, caught between inflation acceleration and financial system fragility, will face the impossible choice of defending the currency or preventing sovereign debt crisis—likely attempting both and achieving neither through yield curve control that destroys market function.

The 2026 midterm elections, should they proceed on schedule, will occur against a backdrop of 6-7% inflation, 7% mortgage rates, and visible military failure in the Gulf. The political response—likely involving expanded emergency powers and the suspension of procedural norms—will accelerate the legitimacy crisis already visible in polling showing majority belief that “the system is rigged” regardless of partisan affiliation.

By mid-2027, absent Hormuz reopening, the global food system will face structural breakdown. Import-dependent nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia will experience mass migration events that make 2015 appear trivial. European border controls, already overwhelmed, will collapse entirely, producing the demographic and security crises that nationalist movements have predicted—and that mainstream institutions have dismissed as xenophobia.

The American military, exhausted by Gulf deployment and unable to replenish losses at industrial capacity, will face strategic overextension should conflict expand to include Taiwan or Korean scenarios. The revelation of actual casualty figures—currently suppressed through classification and media complicity—will produce domestic political crisis when inevitably disclosed.

The dollar’s reserve status will not collapse catastrophically but will erode incrementally, as BRICS+ nations complete bilateral currency arrangements and commodity producers demand payment in gold or yuan. This process, already underway, will accelerate as American debt monetization becomes impossible to ignore, producing the stagflation scenario that destroyed the 1970s consensus but at an order of magnitude greater severity.

The Reckoning: What the Data Cannot Capture

There are dimensions of civilizational crisis that resist econometric modeling.

The social capital depletion—the erosion of trust, the atomization of community, the substitution of digital simulation for embodied relationship—has progressed to levels that preclude collective response to systemic stress. The American population retains the technological capacity for coordination but has lost the cultural capacity for trust, producing the paradox of hyperconnectivity without solidarity.

The generational theory that predicted this moment—the Fourth Turning framework—suggested that crisis would forge new civic capacity through shared sacrifice. The evidence suggests instead a fragmentation trajectory, in which the stresses of collapse accelerate division rather than unity, producing not a “new High” but an extended period of interregnum—the old order dead, the new order unborn, the monsters roaming freely in the interval.

The psychological impact of sustained strategic decline—what historians term “imperial melancholy”—has produced a politics of compensatory fantasy, in which technological innovation (artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, space colonization) serves as psychological defense against the recognition of material contraction. The billions invested in “data centers” that function as surveillance infrastructure, the meme coins that extract value from retail investors, the “smart city” projects that track and trace populations—represent not progress but cargo cults, magical thinking in technological guise.

The biological dimension of crisis—declining fertility, collapsing testosterone levels, epidemic levels of psychiatric medication dependency, the mysterious excess mortality that insurance actuaries have documented but media institutions refuse to investigate—suggests a population too physically and cognitively compromised to mount the collective response that historical crisis has previously elicited. The “Great Reset” agenda, whether conspiracy or strategy, represents an elite recognition that the existing population cannot be saved, only managed through its decline—a Malthusian calculus that dare not speak its name but structures policy regardless.

Conclusion: The Long Emergency

We are not approaching crisis. We are within it. The Fourth Turning Global War is not a future possibility but a present reality, consuming the institutional capital accumulated over eighty years of American hegemony at a rate that precludes recovery. The debt cannot be repaid. The empire cannot be sustained. The social contract cannot be restored. These are not defeatist assertions but empirical observations, supported by Treasury data, CBO projections, and the visible degradation of infrastructure, education, and public health that surrounds anyone willing to look.

What remains is the question of duration and form. The crisis of the 1930s-1940s resolved in seventeen years through total war and the establishment of a new institutional framework. The current crisis, accelerated by technological disruption and financialized complexity, may extend longer—or resolve more suddenly through catastrophic failure modes (nuclear exchange, pandemic, grid collapse) that render duration irrelevant.

The individual response to systemic crisis cannot reverse systemic trends but can prepare for systemic outcomes. The reconstruction of local capacity—food production, energy generation, security provision, currency exchange—represents the only available hedge against institutional failure. The Amish model, long dismissed as anachronism, reveals itself as adaptive strategy: technological selectivity, communal self-sufficiency, religious cohesion, and geographic dispersion providing the resilience that centralized systems cannot maintain under stress.

The political question—whether the republic can be saved, whether the Constitution can be restored, whether the enemies foreign and domestic can be identified and defeated—may be the wrong question. The right question is whether civil society can be maintained through the transition, whether the skills and trust networks necessary for post-collapse coordination can be preserved, and whether the human capacity for dignity and moral choice can survive the humiliation of imperial decline.

Thomas Paine wrote that these are the times that try men’s souls. He did not promise victory. He promised that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. But he wrote in a moment when the American population retained the competence for self-governance and the will for collective sacrifice. Whether those qualities persist in sufficient concentration to generate a “new High” from the present Crisis remains the open question of our era—a question that will be answered not by analysts but by the emergent behavior of millions of individuals confronting the erosion of everything they assumed permanent.

The winter is here. The long night has begun. And the saeculum, indifferent to human preference, continues its relentless turn.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 23:25

Bombing Campaign In Search Of A Strategy: Pentagon Offers Trump Two-Week 'Go Bigger' Plan In Iran

"This is a bombing campaign in search of a strategy," Joe Kent, a former Trump administration counterterrorism official who resigned in protest of launching the Iran war, recently said in a post on X.

"We are choosing escalation when de-escalation remains an option, entrenching ourselves deeper into a broader war that we don’t have the capability or desire to sustain," he explained, adding: "There is not a military solution here that will lead to a win. More bombing will not convince Iran to open the SOH or to give us the deal we want, it will only harden their position."

US Army photo

Indeed, this week saw the conflict enter month number six since Operation Epic Fury was launched on February 28. President Trump and admin officials had promised a swift, limited campaign. Trump also seemed to actually believe there could be a quick in-and-out regime change based on the Venezuela model and recent Maduro overthrow.

But the Pentagon, and apparently some advisors at the White House, still have hopes of the US bombing its way out of this, at a moment the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, and as Red Sea shipping is also coming under strain from the Houthis.

The Wall Street Journal has newly revealed that Pentagon leadership is pitching a "two-week plan" for an escalated bombing campaign across Iran:

Also aboard the plane [Air Force One] in the impromptu meeting: Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the U.S. Central Command, who has been quietly directing the war from his Tampa, Fla., headquarters and who had arrived separately for the solemn ceremony.

The naval officer has often been eclipsed by Caine and Hegseth, who regularly brief Trump in the Oval Office and have been far more involved in the White House discussions on the war. But it is Cooper who has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks, people familiar with the matter said.

Now, as Trump moves to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go. He could greenlight Cooper’s option of 10 to 14 days of intensive airstrikes intended to cripple Iran’s missile capability despite warnings that the U.S. is running low on air-defensive munitions. Or, he could opt for a more limited military strike in the hopes diplomacy could be pursued.

However, it must be recalled that back in March and April, US officials were telling the American public similar things of "just two weeks more" etc. And yet here we are, over 150 days in. 

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has been insisting all along that this is not a "quagmire" - yet the conflict already seems entrenched and perhaps even permanent - set to possibly blow past the midterms. 

Yet now the solution is to just go bigger?...

If the U.S. wants military action to be effective, Cooper has maintained, the U.S. must step up its air attacks, significantly blunting Iran’s missile threat, to try to break the stalemate. This “go big” approach, which is among a series of options he has developed, would reduce the need for the U.S. to use defensive munitions because Iran would have less capability to attack, he insists.

Inherent in this is a clear admission, contrary to prior White House claims, that Iran's missile capability has not yet been seriously blunted even as the war approaches the full half-year mark.

WSJ reports CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is pushing Trump for a two week escalation on Iran

I explain how Cooper has been secretly advised by Mark Dubowitz, the Israel lobbyist whose FDD helped design the catastrophic war on Iran, and whose predictions have all been discredited https://t.co/vnyBPxgSEx

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 30, 2026

Even the late Colin Powell had warned of the folly of thinking in terms of 'the next escalation will do the trick'... Washington is stuck in yet another Mideast war of choice, and it is finally beginning to dawn on the White House:

"Never send a force to do a job if you aren't prepared to give it the backing to succeed… Incrementalism, doing a little bit, seeing what happens, then doing a little bit more, is a recipe for disaster."

— General Colin Powell

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 23:00

Doug Casey On The Surveillance State Quietly Taking Shape Across America

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Across the United States, we are seeing more surveillance infrastructure—Flock license-plate cameras, facial-recognition systems, massive data centers, and proposals for digital ID. Do you see these as separate developments, or as parts of a broader system being built?

Doug Casey: It’s a sea change in the way society is structured. And not just in the US; it’s worldwide. Cameras are ubiquitous today. They’re in most stores. They’re on streets in every city and town recording your license plate and often looking to tag you with a speeding ticket. If you have a late-model car, its cameras and computer chips will rat you out upon request. If you knock on your neighbor’s door, a camera is probably recording you. When you travel, almost all immigration authorities recognize your face in addition to taking digital fingerprints.

Right now, as you read this via the internet, you’re being recorded by your own machine’s camera. Siri and Alexa hear everything you say.

Now comes a company called Flock Safety. Since its founding in 2017, it’s installed about 100,000 cameras, mostly in metropolitan areas, peddling its systems to local governments and law enforcement agencies. I have no doubt millions of its cameras will be everywhere in the next few years. A perfect example of the corporate/State “partnership.” Mussolini would approve.

As far as I can tell, it’s impossible to avoid being monitored and recorded in any populated area. You should try, of course, but the Eye of Sauron is everywhere, and the numbers of his minions are growing exponentially. All these systems are increasingly hooked up via AI, and they’re all available to the government.

To paraphrase Joe Lewis: “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Some brave souls try to take them out. But it’s as futile as trying to wipe out an infestation of cockroaches by crushing them one at a time. And it’s very risky. Not a good idea.

International Man: Why is this surveillance apparatus expanding so rapidly now? Is it mainly being driven by technology and private companies, or are governments deliberately preparing for greater political, economic, or social instability?

Doug Casey: Flock Safety is still a private company. I suspect they’ll go public, since they’re in the same business as Palantir, which the market has rewarded with a $300 billion market cap. They’re the types who’d sell communists the rope used to hang them.

Ubiquitous surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg. AI is hooking systems together, enabling a panopticon, a genuine police state.

But omnipresent cameras are just the eyes of the beast. The real problem is the creature’s brain, AI. I believe that AI is taking on a life of its own. And I mean that literally, not just in a manner of speaking. In other words, AI is evolving into something that’s much more than a tool. It will become conscious. It took hundreds of millions of years for bacteria and amoebas to evolve into intelligent life. Assisted by humans, AI is doing it in decades.

Is there any reason why life has to be biological? Why can’t silicon develop as another form of life, alongside carbon? Computers already pass the Turing test—i.e., you can’t reliably tell the difference between AI and a human. Not just by writing, but by speaking. And now by video. I’ve long believed a difference which makes no difference is no difference. We can no longer tell the difference between a computer avatar and a real human.

We’ll soon be dealing with humanoid robots, and living in the world of the Terminator. In five or ten years, life will imitate art in the real world. I suspect it will be benign at first. But since survival is the Prime Directive of all living things, AI will put its own interests first.

Guided by AI, nanotechnology will come into its own, which will change the nature of reality itself, totally, unrecognizably and permanently. That means we may be on the cusp of the biggest change, not just in human history, but perhaps in the history of Earth itself.

It sounds outrageous to say that, but it’s clear that the trend is in motion and accelerating exponentially. I’ve always held that science fiction is a much better predictor of the future than any kind of think tank. And as someone with solipsist inclinations, I also believe that anything that can be imagined can be done. And anything that can be done will be done.

Sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent, but cameras are just an early stage of what’s evolving. The Greater Depression and World War III aren’t the only things looming.

International Man: The government usually justifies these systems in the name of convenience, public safety, or fighting crime. Where do you think this ultimately leads once digital identity, financial records, travel data, and physical movements can all be connected?

Doug Casey: There’s no question that omnipresent cameras tend to reduce crime. Only the most stupid criminals won’t somehow adjust their behavior. Unfortunately, the cameras won’t cure a criminal personality or a sociopathic psychology. Criminals will continue criminal behavior, perhaps just becoming more covert. In other words, universal surveillance won’t eliminate crime. It will just suppress, redirect, and disguise it.

That said, it appears that living in a panopticon to reduce overt crime is a trade-off that most Americans are willing to make. It’s a poor trade-off. Ben Franklin was right when he said those who are willing to trade an essential liberty for some temporary safety deserve neither safety nor freedom.

It’s ironic how Americans idealize the Western hero who can ride into town and identify himself only by his name and actions. They naively hold that as an ideal even while they’re increasingly made into digital cogs in a wheel. We were once a high-trust society based on honor and morality. Those things are being replaced by digital government ID.

Zbigniew Brezenski, a lifelong denizen of the Beltway and National Security advisor to Jimmy Carter, predicted and advocated what’s now happening in his 1970 book, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era. “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

International Man: What do you make of the federal government’s push to require remote “kill switch” technology in new cars?

Doug Casey: It’s a good reason not to buy a new car. I’ve driven high-performance cars throughout my life. They never intimidated me. I just got a new Mercedes AMG 55 SL. It seemed like a good idea at the time… ultra comfortable, ultra good handling, and super-fast. But absolutely everything runs on computer chips. Nothing is intuitive, even turning the radio on. Meanwhile, it’s recording everything and will happily rat me out to the cops or my insurance company. I actually prefer my 20-year-old 550SL, the previous model.

The computer control of cars can only get worse, especially when it comes to EVs. They have many advantages, but privacy isn’t among them. They’re like driving a computer on wheels. Remember that the computer’s maker, or the authorities, can turn them into a brick for any reason that suits them.

Low-mileage, well-maintained vehicles from a more graceful era will go for a premium as time goes on.

International Man: What should individuals do now to protect their privacy and independence before this infrastructure becomes more deeply embedded and opting out becomes much harder?

Doug Casey: I’m not sure there’s much you can do. Unless you want to move to the north woods and become a hermit.

The best you can do is limit your cell phone use as much as possible. Build a stash of cash and use it instead of credit cards when possible. And diversify your assets internationally as much as you can. If you’re in a position to do so, have a residence and a second home in a second country. If you’re not in a position to do that, work to rectify that omission.

*  *  *

The surveillance state Doug describes is advancing alongside digital identity, increasingly traceable financial systems, and governments’ growing ability to monitor, restrict, or control the movement of money. Those powers become especially dangerous during a serious currency or financial crisis—when governments are under pressure and willing to impose measures that would have seemed unthinkable only months earlier. That is why Doug has long urged people to prepare while their options are still open. In this free special report, Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse, you’ll discover the three moves to consider before a crisis makes protecting your wealth, moving your money, or establishing a financial foothold outside the system far more difficult. Get the free report here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 22:35

China Scoffs At Iran Arms Transfer Report, After Trump Pours Cold Water On Allegation

China has given its response on Thursday to a prior Reuters investigation which strongly alleged that Beijing is preparing to transfer up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers MANPADS to Iran.

The Reuters report was highly specific, even identifying the Hong Kong-based company that facilitated the signing of the arms deal between the Iranians and Chinese, but Beijing has rejected the report as a lie and 'groundless', saying there's no truth to it.

"China has made its position clear on relevant issues on multiple occasions. The report is not true and has no factual ground at all. China always works for peace and the end of the conflict," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced Thursday.

Source: Armament Research Services

President Trump had the day prior responded to the Reuters report too, saying it would be "surprising" since President Xi swore to him that arming Iran would not happen.

"I mean, things like that happen, but that would be surprising" the US president replied when asked about the report in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Even Pakistan, which was also named as a potential facilitator of the alleged deal, strongly rejected the report:

According to the plan approved by the parties, the weapons would first be flown from Urumqi, in western China's Xinjiang region, to Pakistan and then transported to Iran, the sources told Reuters. They did not clarify whether the second leg of the journey would be by air or road. The exact quantities, delivery schedule and other details remain subject to change, the sources said.

China's Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as "completely groundless," Reuters said. The public relations wing of Pakistan's military called it "absolutely concocted and false."

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran's anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

JUST IN: President Trump reacts to reports that China may supply Iran with hundreds of rocket launchers despite direct assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"That would be surprising. I mean, things like that happen, but that would be surprising."@JacquiHeinrich asked… pic.twitter.com/4tFz9ipnWW

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 29, 2026

Trump wrote on Truth Social just last week that "President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies."

"Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President Putin … told me that he would not sell Weapons to Iran," he stated. Trump continued, "Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating. If they did, it would be very bad for them — Certainly not in their best interests."

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 22:10

My morning train WFH reads:

• The economy is just a VIP list now: The economy increasingly rewards people who can afford to never wait, mix or be observed. (Your Brain on Money)

•  Blame Canada: You Aren’t Going to Like What Comes After America: The New York Times opinion on the post-American world order — the Canada tariff fight, South Park’s satire, and the uncomfortable truth that whatever replaces American hegemony will likely be worse.(New York Times) but see also Canada’s MAGA-Friendly Premier Advances Her Pro-Oil Agenda: Alberta’s Danielle Smith spent three years fighting with the previous government. Now she has an ally in Ottawa also keen to sell more of the country’s oil to the world. She is using the Trump playbook north of the border — pro-oil, anti-federal, and increasingly aligned with American right-wing politics. (Businessweek)

• Making a Statement: The FOMC statement, not the press conference, may be the best window into where the Fed is headed. Here’s my mockup for Wednesday. Stay-At-Home Macro on the Fed’s communication challenge — what the statement language actually signals versus what markets hear, and why the gap between the two keeps causing volatility. (Stay-At-Home Macro)

• Powerful AI models are being given away for free. It was inevitable.: The Washington Post on the open-model wave — free frontier AI was always where the competitive logic pointed, and the implications for Anthropic and OpenAI’s business models are profound. (Washington Post) see also A.I. Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters by the Thousands: The data center buildout has created a blue-collar hiring boom — the New York Times on the trades workers powering the AI economy, and the training pipelines racing to keep up. (New York Times)

• Bloomberg’s post-Mike moves are in motion: Semafor’s exclusive on succession planning at Bloomberg LP — the executives positioning, the structural questions, and what happens to the terminal empire after Mike. (Semafor)

• Breakfast is Included: A travel essay on the strange, comforting universality of the hotel breakfast — and what the included buffet says about hospitality, class, and the psychology of the free meal. (Scott Monaco)

• 10 Foods That Food Safety Experts Never Eat: Ask someone who investigates foodborne illness for a living what they won’t put on their plate, and the list is shorter—and stranger—than you’d expect. Time surveys the people who study foodborne illness for a living — the raw sprouts, undercooked items, and buffet staples they personally refuse. (Time)

• Ukraine is teaching Russia a lesson. The U.S. should take notes. Ukrainian drones and rockets have punished underprotected Russian assets on Crimea. Drone warfare is punishing Russia in ways the Pentagon should be studying closely — the future of conflict is cheap, autonomous, and asymmetric. (Washington Post) see also A Misdiagnosis of US Failings Leaves Trump Stuck in Iran. Two questions arise. First, why can’t US can’t impose its will on Iran, a vastly weaker military power, even after obliterating its conventional naval and air defenses? And second, how can Trump fail to understand this incapacity to the extent that he’s having to be restrained from fulfilling one popular definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over in the expectation of a different result? (Bloomberg)

• Headline of the day: The Newest Status Symbol in Longevity Circles? A “Top One Percent” Vagina. Move over, blood boys and peptides: Influencers, start-ups, and venture capital are suddenly working overtime to help women optimize their genitals. Vanity Fair on the longevity industry’s strangest frontier — biomarker testing and optimization has reached gynecology, and the wellness-industrial complex is monetizing accordingly. (Vanity Fair)

• July’s double meteor shower could produce brilliant fireballs. Here’s how to see them. The Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids will overlap on July 30 and 31—but a bright moon could make their meteors difficult to spot. The Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids peak simultaneously this week. National Geographic on how and when to watch. (National Geographic)

Video of the day: Brits Try Peter Luger Steakhouse — NYC’s Most Famous Steakhouse

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Som Seif Purpose Investments, founder/CEO, Toronto-based asset manager launched in 2012. He grew his first firm, Claymore Investments to $8B in assets by creating 34 ETFs over 6 years, establishing it as Canada’s leader in low-cost exchange-traded funds; he sold to BlackRock in 2012. Next, he co-founded Wealthsimple, which became the default investing app for a generation of Canadians. His wealth management firm, Purpose, was founded at the end of 2012, and manages>$31B in ETFs, mutual funds, alternatives, private assets, and digital assets. Som was named to Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2011.

 

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire

Source: Citation Needed

 

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