Zero Hedge

US Limits Its Air Defense Coverage For Tankers Sailing Through Hormuz: Report

US Limits Its Air Defense Coverage For Tankers Sailing Through Hormuz: Report

Via The Cradle

The US military has reduced the daily window in which it offers air defense to commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times (FT) reports on Saturday.

Since May, Washington has sought to break Iran's control of Hormuz by providing air defense for vessels sailing through the strategic strait along a southern route hugging the coast of Oman.

Image source: US Air Force

Iran imposed a blockade on the strait shortly after the US and Israel launched an unprovoked war on the Islamic Republic on February 28.

However, the US began limiting the time slots in which vessels can receive protection from US aircraft as of the start of this month, FT reported.

The move comes in response to stepped-up Iranian attacks on ships transiting Hormuz, particularly at night. Ships are reportedly advised but not required to sail during the air defense time slots.

To receive protection, shipowners must apply to a US naval coordination center known as the Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS).

Upon approval, the vessels received coordinates to follow during a broad time window. However, that window was "reduced to two specific time slots daily around the start of September," FT wrote, citing emails NCAGS sent to maritime advisors.

Vessels are now being told to begin their journey at specified times, such as 9:00 am, to receive air defense.

"We are now providing recommended transit times that vary by day. Your vessel is not required to go during these times, but it is encouraged to receive the best support," one NCAGS email said.

"Transiting during a period of darkness has not proven to be the most secure time of day," stated another email, highlighting the increased threat of Iranian attacks at night.

Iranian forces have attacked dozens of vessels attempting to pass through the strait since the beginning of the war, greatly limiting the oil exports of Washington's Gulf allies.

The US responded by imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports in a bid to block Tehran's own oil exports. Before the war, at least 20 percent of world oil exports passed through Hormuz.

Not only security but also cost considerations may have influenced the US decision to reduce the protected transit window.

Joshua Tallis, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), stated that it costs the US Navy $25,000 to $75,000 an hour to operate its advanced aircraft.

Both Iran and the US stepped up their attacks on commercial vessels in the region earlier this week. Iran targeted two vessels and eight oil tankers in Hormuz in response to US strikes on five Iranian tankers. The US launched the strikes following an attack by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on a US warship days earlier.

"These waters aren't safe," stated Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at maritime intelligence firm Windward. Bockmann estimated that oil exports from Gulf countries other than Iran in August stood at about two-thirds of prewar levels, largely because of exports rerouted through pipelines to bypass Hormuz.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei announced on Saturday that foreign ministers from several Gulf states will meet in Oman on Monday to exchange views on regional issues, including talks between Iran and Oman on designating safe routes for transiting the strait.

Baghaei added he hoped the meeting would improve understanding among regional countries and contribute to joint regional security.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 21:00

China's 70% EV Target Deals Another Blow To Oil Demand

China's 70% EV Target Deals Another Blow To Oil Demand

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

China aims to have electric and hybrid vehicles account for as much as 70% of all passenger car sales by 2030, in a massive transport shift set to further dent oil demand for road fuels.

As of the end of last year, the share of the so-called new energy vehicles was 54% of all passenger vehicle sales.

In the new five-year plan for the automotive industry compiled by nearly a dozen Chinese government agencies, China also targets to have 40% of new commercial vehicle sales be electric by 2030.

The 70% target by 2030 could even be achieved earlier than planned, analysts say, as this year's oil and fuel price shock is accelerating the shift to electric vehicles.

EVs and hybrids accounted for 65% of China's total passenger car sales in August, according to data by the local Passenger Car Association (PCA) cited by Bloomberg.

The ambitious EV targets are expected to continue eroding road fuel demand in China, which has been falling for the second year in a row. This year, the decline has been steeper amid the energy price shock following the start of the war in Iran.

Chinese state refiners expect continued declines and prepare for the future of plateauing and falling road fuel demand.

For example, China's Sinopec, the world's top refiner by capacity, expects Chinese oil demand to drop by 8.9% in 2026 from a year earlier amid demand destruction from higher oil prices and the acceleration of electric vehicle adoption. Gasoline demand is set for an 8.7% decline, while diesel consumption is expected to crash by 11.4%, Sinopec Economics & Development Research Institute says.

The high oil prices destroyed some demand and sped up the adoption of EVs, which has been growing anyway in recent years, suppressing total oil demand even without blocked crude supplies in the Middle East.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 19:50

What Critics Keep Getting Wrong About Capitalism

What Critics Keep Getting Wrong About Capitalism

Authored by Vincent Geloso via FEE,

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is not a publication most would be familiar with. It is meant as a repository of overviews of big topics in philosophy broadly defined, inclusive of political theory. As such, entries added to it are unlikely to generate strong responses by the experts deeply familiar with each individual entry. Every rule has exceptions though.

Image Credit: Custom image by FEE

Recently, Chiara Cordelli, a political philosopher at the University of Chicago, delivered her "three years in the making" commissioned piece on "capitalism." The piece went viral. The reason that it sparked such attention is that it read to many as basically a rehash of old online talking points spewed by more refined trolls. That is unfair but there is truth to the claim that there is no smoke without fire. It is indeed a boring "takedown" of capitalism.

Let me be precise here: the problem is not that the entry is critical of capitalism. There is nothing wrong with criticising capitalism, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman or classical liberalism. The problem is that much of the discussion does not pass even a modest ideological Turing test. An ideological Turing test asks whether one can state an opposing position so accurately that its proponents would recognise the argument as their own before one proceeds to criticise it. Here, too often, they would not.

This points to a common reflex in debates over "capitalism" and "neoliberalism." The vocabulary is often not used to define but rather rationalise already-held ideological priors. The characteristics one dislikes are incorporated into the definition of the system, after which those same characteristics are rediscovered as criticisms of it. The conclusion has, in part, been smuggled into the premises. But these end up being recycled over and over as one scholar states it before another regurgitates it back as fact and so forth.

Some examples help show this usual reflex. When describing the "market capitalism" advanced by Hayek and Friedman, Cordelli claims that they believed capitalism required "complete, private, and unregulated markets," and that this stemmed from their acceptance of a "general equilibrium" view, with the implication that "capitalism goes wrong when it is politically interfered with." But both claims - which underlie much of the entry - are massively incorrect. Not minor quibbles, mind you, but major and easily verifiable errors. Friedman initially advocated antitrust laws and, while he moderated on this front later in life, he still believed they did some good. He supported a negative income tax - a variant of a guaranteed minimum income - and schooling vouchers. Hardly the mark of someone who believed in the complete absence of political interference. Hayek for his part rejected the idea of general equilibrium altogether and preferred to speak of competition and markets as discovery processes. He defended regulation of natural monopolies and he also spoke in favour of some basic welfare state functions.

But this is not new. This description of Hayek and Friedman - and others like them - has been there since the 1960s and it can be found in the work of many. So too are the replies pointing all of this out. The claim has been recycled and vomited back. The replies have been ignored - the mark of the inability to undergo the key Turing tests I mentioned. Thus, the entry massively misrepresents what it dubs "normative defences" of capitalism.

And then, the preferred views of the entry's author also eschew major criticism raised at it. The best illustration of this is visible in the considerably detailed treatment that Karl Marx gets. Marx is presented as complete, coherent and accurate. No mentions are made of the fact that Das Kapital self-contradicts itself via the well-known transformation problem. Marx first argues that the value of commodities is determined by the labour required to produce them (i.e., the labour theory of value). This is the key foundation of "exploitation" theory in Marxist theory. But he later recognises that competition tends to equalise profit rates across industries. For that to happen, market prices must diverge from labour values. The problem, then, is explaining how one gets from labour-determined values to observed competitive prices without abandoning the labour theory of value itself. Marx never provides a fully consistent solution to that transformation. And no solution to the problem exists.

It explains why Marxist predictions fail to materialise. The most obvious example is that wages and incomes for unskilled workers were rising while Marx was writing his works. Not only that, he was writing in Britain - a society where inequality was actually falling! Moreover, in the United States - the country most often described as most capitalist by Marxists then and now - even socialist writers like Charles Spahr produced data which, when used with subsequent works, show massive growth in living standards at the bottom while inequality between the top 1% and the bottom 90% either stagnates or actually declines.

Not only did Marx predict that capitalism would generate pauperisation; he also added that it generated persistent pressure to lengthen working hours and lower labour's share of national income. Historical evidence runs strongly against these predictions: working hours have fallen dramatically since the nineteenth century, both annually and as a share of waking life - with only modest influence on unions or legislation. Marx's prediction about labour's share of income also fares poorly empirically, as many studies find that greater economic freedom (a proxy for capitalism) and globalisation are associated with a larger share of national income accruing to labour. In fact, in causal empirical tests, economies that become more capitalist (by liberalising) tend to show rising boats for everyone. Taken together, these findings suggest that some of Marx's central empirical predictions about capitalist labour markets have been contradicted rather than confirmed by subsequent economic history.

All of these massive holes in the Marxist account of capitalism are ignored and set aside. The criticisms are still presented as high-quality despite the fact that they have repeatedly failed to generate the predictions they are supposed to.

This is precisely where the usual reflex in debates over "capitalism" becomes problematic: early and criticised claims (even debunked ones) are built into the description of capitalism itself and then rediscovered as criticisms of it, even when the empirical evidence points in the opposite direction. Once repeated often enough, such claims pass from one scholar to another as established facts, with the original empirical proposition increasingly insulated from serious testing. The entry falls prey to this and while it does offer insight into how some people think about capitalism, it is merely a sophisticated rant - nothing more.

This article was originally published by CapX.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 18:40

Bill Maher Delivers A Brutal 9/11 Reality Check To The Left

Bill Maher Delivers A Brutal 9/11 Reality Check To The Left

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

On Real Time with Bill Maher, in a segment titled "Clash of Civilizations," Maher walked through what has happened in the 25 years since 9/11.

"Since it's the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and since, for 25 years, we've been kept relatively safe from anything close to another 9/11, how about a hand for the Americans who made that happen? Because it didn't just happen; there was a war on terror, and we won," he said. "And yet so much has changed since 9/11; for example, back then we were against the terrorists."

The audience laughed, but he was being serious.

Around the 20th anniversary, for example, four American journalism associations issued guidance insisting that "terrorism should only be used in quotes because it's emotionally and politically loaded." Canadian state broadcasters instructed staff, "Do not refer to the September 11th attacks as terrorist attacks." The BBC told its reporters that using the word "terrorist" can be a "barrier rather than an aid to understanding."

The pattern shows that the media establishment many years ago concluded moral clarity amounted to a kind of bigotry and that to name an ideology responsible for mass murder was the same as harboring hatred towards all those who happen to share that ideology.

Maher made that distinction himself by dividing radical Islamism from Islam in general and also separating both of them from the issue that liberals consistently avoid, which is why so many of them came to sympathize with the side that attacked the West rather than with the side that was attacked.

Maher revisited his own history on this point, playing a clip of himself from shortly after the attacks on his ABC show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in which he argued that political correctness "is something we can no longer afford" because "feelings are going to get hurt so that actual people won't."

Maher lamented that the idea of "ditching political correctness and actually being honest" never "even got off the ground."

He then pointed out that after 9/11, there was a big debate over whether it was a "clash of civilizations." According to Maher, "it was, and it still is." But that clash isn't between Muslims and Christians, but rather radical Islamism and Western liberalism.

Maher then referred to a poll that showed that one in five young Americans now holds a positive view of Osama bin Laden (which would have been unthinkable 25 years ago) and compared it to how Luigi Mangione came to be seen as a folk hero; he assassinated Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. In both cases, a killer becomes a symbol of grievance, and the actual victims become a footnote to a woke narrative about systemic injustice.

"You hear it in a lot of places now that the worst thing about 9/11 was innocent Muslims came under suspicion," Maher continued. "Yeah, where that did happen, it's wrong, but the worst thing about 9/11 was 3,000 people got roasted at the office. But the prevailing view of so many young people is that 'Well, come on, we're the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can't be all bad.' That certainly wasn't the attitude 25 years ago. In fact, I know a guy whose show got canceled just for saying that terrorists weren't cowards, and that guy was right; they weren't cowards. But I'll tell you who is: Democratic Party politicians. And I'll tell you why, because nowhere has this moral confusion become more obvious than in a place called Gaza."

Maher argued that activists have recast the conflict as genocide at the hands of Israel to serve broader attacks on capitalism, borders, and Western institutions. "And the fact that so many prominent Democrats go along with it is, to me, the party's worst moment since they undid Reconstruction after the Civil War."

Maher's monologue traces a straight line from post-9/11 unity against Islamic terrorism to a political culture on the left that now treats the side committing violence as more sympathetic than the side that was attacked. Younger generations have learned to locate the villain in American power rather than in the perpetrators of an attack. Maher describes the slow erosion of the basic instinct to know who the villain is when violence occurs. That instinct used to be reflexive, requiring no debate and no hedging. Its disappearance from mainstream left-wing politics isn't a matter of nuance or sophistication - it's actually a failure of judgment in the name of tolerance.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 17:30

Trump: Houthis 'Don't Want' US In Yemen - So They're Letting Most Red Sea Shipping Through

Trump: Houthis 'Don't Want' US In Yemen - So They're Letting Most Red Sea Shipping Through

After it was widely reported this week that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urgently sought military assistance from President Donald Trump amid the rapid Houthi takeover of Yemen's Red Sea coast from the forces of the internationally recognized Sanaa government, Trump has said the Houthis are in contact with him and have pledged to let ships through the Bab Al-Mandab Strait. 

Trump is currently in Ireland. He said to reporters Saturday while meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, "The Houthis called us, and they don't want to fight with us. They don’t want us to go after them." 

He further explained that "they would much prefer not having us involved:" and so "they are letting most ships go through." The president did acknowledged they do have a ban on Saudi vessels, however.

Indeed this is consistent with Ansar Allah's latest statements declaring the Red Sea passage remains open, but closed to Saudi and Israeli-linked shipping.

This seems to confirm prior reporting that said Trump rejected MbS' request for US military intervention in Yemen. To review:

Axios: Trump declined Saudi requests to strike Ansarallah as they advanced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called U.S. President Donald Trump twice on Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against Yemen’s Ansarallah as they advanced along the Red Sea coast toward Bab al-Mandab, two U.S. officials told Axios. Trump declined, with Washington saying it has no plans to intervene directly for now.

It seems Washington also doesn't want to see the Iran conflict explode into a runaway regional war which would certainly greatly exacerbate the global energy crisis.

Aaran Kennedy, a maritime security analyst with the global consultancy, Control Risks, has described to Al Jazeera that while "These advances strengthen the Houthis’ already strong position over the Red Sea. They simply make it even easier for the Houthis to target shipping" - the reality remains “It doesn’t necessarily mean that, right now, they’re going to expand their maritime target set."

Kennedy believes a full Bab al-Mandeb closure is unlikely. "Just because the Houthis have gained this territory near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to close it down. That situation remains highly unlikely. But what it does do is it expands their capabilities because it puts their weaponry closer to the Red Sea shipping lanes."

But this does also ultimately given Tehran huge leverage, given it can persuade its Houthi allies anytime to take drastic action over the strait. Houthi threats over regional waters was on full display during the height of the Gaza War, which saw the US Navy get involved in the Red Sea, but warships later departed under the guise of handing security over to regional as well as European allies.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 16:55

DHS Proposes Quickly Removing Visa Holders After Job Loss

DHS Proposes Quickly Removing Visa Holders After Job Loss

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is floating the end of a 60-day grace period that currently allows some immigrants to remain in the United States after they lose their jobs.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin speaks during a news conference in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, on July 17, 2026. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Immigrants with temporary work visas such as H-1B visas would have to immediately leave the country if they no longer have a job, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a proposed rule filed on Sept. 10 and set to be formally published in the Federal Register on Sept. 11.

Such visas are contingent on an immigrant's employment, and a company sponsors the employee. Some of the visas are granted only to workers who have specialized expertise.

DHS originally provided the grace period to encourage immigrants who no longer have jobs to remain in the United States and try to obtain another form of legal status or get another job, Mullin said. But rulemakers did not sufficiently consider the negative effects of the grace period, such as burdening immigration officers who handle additional paperwork from visa holders during the time period, he said.

"DHS now believes that once the alien is no longer fulfilling the very specific conditions under which he or she was admitted or otherwise provided status, such status, as well as the authorization to remain in the United States, should definitively cease and the impacted alien should immediately depart the United States (unless otherwise authorized to lawfully remain in the United States)," he wrote.

"This is generally consistent with the requirements for aliens admitted or otherwise provided status in other non-immigrant categories when the alien fails to fulfill the very specific conditions under which he or she was admitted or otherwise provided status."

If finalized, the change could cause thousands of jobs to not be filled by specialty foreign workers, DHS estimates.

The department is presuming that the companies looking to fill the jobs "will either offer the same jobs to equally qualified U.S. workers or go through the I-129 petition process depending on their workforce requirement," the notice said, referring to the process of bringing foreign workers to the United States.

"In some situations, aliens who have gone abroad can be readmitted for employment if the I-129 petition filed on their behalf is approved and the alien is admissible. Even though these petitioners would witness a temporary loss of productivity, they might be able to gain U.S. workers for the positions that were generally offered to ... nonimmigrants during the possible grace period," the notice reads.

The proposal will be available online on Sept. 11. Parties can comment on the proposal for 60 days. Officials will then decide whether to finalize it, potentially with alterations in response to comments.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 15:10

Trump & Hegseth Try To Tie Iran To 9/11 At Pentagon Ceremony

Trump & Hegseth Try To Tie Iran To 9/11 At Pentagon Ceremony

The two main 9/11 ceremonies on Friday marking 25 years since the terror attacks were held at Ground Zero in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. President Trump attended the latter while VP JD Vance was present at the former.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth also helped lead remembrance events at the Pentagon, but at the annual NYC commemoration, Vance appeared to keep a lower profile while listening from the audience to names being read out.

Trump and Hegseth in their respective addresses tried to tie the ongoing Iran war to Sept. 11, 2001. They both sough to frame current Iran action as a continuation of the Global War on Terror.

"We salute the service members working right now to ensure the world's number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon," Trump said at the Pentagon.

via Associated Press

As for Hegseth, he spoke just ahead of the president and said that US forces remain "vigilant" against the "Islamic theocracy" in Iran.

"Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11," he said.

"A regime that has sponsored terrorist attacks against Americans for decades, killing thousands, including our comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they did not factor in this president," the Pentagon chief continued.

"We’re still sending terrorists where they belong — to hell — and tankers to the bottom of the ocean, where they belong," Hegseth added. "And we are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon."

Ironically it was close American ally Saudi Arabia which actually factors in most directly to the 9/11 tragedy, and family members of victims have filed a lawsuit against the kingdom for state-level and intelligence complicity in the terror attacks.

The majority of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and each and every one of them was a Sunni Muslim. As for Iran, it is a historic enemy of the Sunni Saudi kingdom and practices Shia Islam, which Riyadh considers 'heretical'.

Trying to link Iran to 9/11 also has a whiff of Bush-era propaganda to it. Not only did some NeoCon pundits at the time try to link Tehran to it, but a major talking point was also a far-fetched 'Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda alliance'.

Of course, Saddam was a secular Ba'athist autocrat and historically sought to persecute radical fundamentalist sects. Still, Iraq got invaded on the heels of Afghanistan and Saddam was overthrown by US forces.

More recently, in the last decade of the Syria proxy war, Iranian officers and Shia militias were typically the ones along the front lines fighting ISIS and other Sunni jihad movements. The latter were often sponsored by the Gulf states as well as US intelligence. When it comes to the Middle East and Washington policy, nothing is ever as it seems.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 14:35

Sweden Discovers That Deporting Immigrant Gangsters Reduces Crime...

Sweden Discovers That Deporting Immigrant Gangsters Reduces Crime...

Authored by Mike McDaniel via AmericanThinker.com,

Among the things a police career taught me is that a small number—usually single digits—of felons commit most felonies. They’ll draw in other criminals, involve them in their crimes, and when convenient, abandon them to arrest. There is no honor among thieves. And the number of the most prolific felons increases and decreases slightly from place to place, and in relation to the specific type of crime.

In some places, crooks specialize in home or business burglaries. In others, specialization might involve burglarizing vehicles or carjacking.

But one thing is certain: take these small bands of crooks out of circulation, and the number of their crimes in those areas immediately, dramatically plummets. The trick is identifying the crooks and rolling them over on each other. Catch some in the act or with the evidence, and the second part is usually easier than the first. When they’re put away, innumerable people we’ll never know don’t end up as victims.

Of course, these kinds of positive results also rely on prosecutors willing to prosecute and judges willing to keep criminals in jail and hand down realistic sentences. That’s a real issue in blue cities and states.

Now it seems Sweden is discovering this reality, particularly where gang-committed, immigrant crime is involved. And it’s about time too. Reports out of Sweden, which has shown suicidal empathy for third-world barbarians, indicate that hand grenade(?!) attacks have become common. At PJ Media, Stephen Green explains:

So Sweden elected a conservative prime minister four years ago who promised to send criminal migrants back to their home countries, and you'll never believe what happened next.

Violent crime went down. Way down. Particularly gang violence, according to a new report out this week.

Imagine that.

Graphic: X Post

When he campaigned for the PM spot in 2022, Ulf Kristersson — then a member of the Swedish parliament or riksdag — said of violent acts: "If you commit such crimes in Sweden and are not a Swedish citizen, you should be thrown out of the country.”

Apparently, Swedes got tired of dodging grenades and having their women raped.

By the summer of '22, escalating gang shootings and even bombings were commonplace in what had once been a country better known for spas than jihads. In total, Sweden suffered 361 shootings, 62 shooting deaths, and 90 bombings. The problem with migrant gangs escalated so quickly that Swedish authorities didn't bother to record bombings until 2018.

By the last election, even the governing soft-on-crime Social Democrats promised tougher measures, but that wasn't enough to stop Kristersson from putting together a coalition big enough to oust the SD.

Sweden didn’t bother to report bombings until 2018? That’s terminal suicidal empathy, but the Swedes had enough. They better funded the police, did more wiretapping, and directly focused on stopping gang recruitment among the young.

As it turns out — and again, you won't be shocked by this — sending foreign criminals home is just as effective as locking up homegrown thugs. But the numbers must be seen to be believed. 

Shootings are down "by 80 per cent since their 2022 peak," the Financial Times reported on Monday, and Kristersson reduced "the number of asylum seekers to its lowest in four decades."

It was apparently a huge deal earlier this year when one Swedish paper reported "No shootings in May."

“The fact that you have headlines saying no shootings at all this month: it says something,” Kristersson told the FT.

Sadly, the national tendency toward suicide may once again assert itself:

Still, Sweden holds another national election on Sunday, and the Social Democrats could very well take power again. “There’s a lot of discussion about the Winston Churchill effect,” Mattias Karlsson, the nationalist Sweden Democrats' chief ideologue, said.

Having all but won the war, will Swedish voters reject the man who got them this far?

The “Churchill effect” refers to what happened to Winston Churchill after WWII. Without him, England likely would have fallen to the Nazis. He was, during the war, the indispensable man, but once the war was won, he was put out to pasture, and the kinds of political forces that would have lost the war wormed their way back into power.

Having once again discovered the benefits of national sanity, Will Sweden fall back into leftist delusion and defeat? Perhaps there’s a lesson there for our midterms and beyond.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 14:00

Beijing Threatens To Cancel Trump-Xi Summit If US Approves New Arms Sales To Taiwan

Beijing Threatens To Cancel Trump-Xi Summit If US Approves New Arms Sales To Taiwan

Chinese President Xi Jinping used today's 18th BRICS Summit to push for a greater diplomatic role in Gulf affairs. The move appears to be transforming the bloc's economic weight into geopolitical influence, really positioning it as a counterweight to US foreign policy.

Beijing's leverage also rests on its control over rare-earth and other critical-material supply chains, as it maintains a "quasi-monopolistic" grip on the industry that will persist through the end of the decade.

Keeping that leverage in mind, Japanese news outlet Kyodo News reported that Beijing threatened earlier today to cancel the summit with President Trump in Washington if the US approves new arms sales to Taiwan.

Kyodo stated:

China has told the United States that it intends to cancel a planned meeting between their leaders later this month if Washington approves any new arms sales to Taiwan by then, multiple sources familiar with bilateral ties said Saturday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, apparently eager to showcase some diplomatic achievements ahead of November's midterm congressional elections, places great importance on holding the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

While preparing for Xi's upcoming trip, China has restated its position that the Taiwan issue is a "red line" in bilateral relations, sources said.

The report comes ahead of Xi's planned summit with Trump at the White House on September 24. The threat is another obstacle for the administration as it seeks to maintain an already fragile diplomatic and trade truce amid worsening relations over the Gulf conflict.

Polymarket traders appear unfazed by the Kyodo report, with Xi still leading the "Who will Trump meet with in September?" market at 95% and odds showing little reaction to the reported threat.

Taiwan arms sales have already emerged as a critical focal point for both superpowers. After meeting Xi in May, Trump declined to commit to approving another weapons package, while Beijing warned that mishandling Taiwan could spark a conflict.

A late-August report cited by Taiwan's main English-language daily newspaper, the Taipei Times, said that China had deployed a record 244 coast guard, research, and other government vessels around the island amid mounting fears of a blockade next year.

"Might be the first in history to see a power play coming from China when it comes to this. Not because they want, but because they can. One of the main reasons would be because of the control they have over critical minerals US has to pick which front to focus on- China or Iran," Teo Sinamin, who runs a Substack focused on rare earths, wrote on X.

Sinamin continued ...

A further deterioration in US-China relations could trigger tighter export licensing or renewed restrictions on critical materials, intensifying pressure on Western industrial and defense supply chains. This issue resurfaced earlier this month when Reuters reported that some Chinese rare-earth suppliers refused shipments to US customers for fear of repercussions from Beijing.

The ongoing disruption supports the bullish investment case for reducing dependence on China, with junior miners and established producers offering alternative supplies. That is certainly the talk among private equity and hedge funds to date. Further escalation could push the decoupling theme to the forefront across the investing world, as these critical-material supply chains are the building blocks for AI data center buildouts, electrification upgrades, reindustrialization, and the upcoming rearmament cycle.

The strongest beneficiaries would likely be companies that can deliver ex-China supplies at scale in time to ease Western shortages as demand soars for the reasons mentioned above.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 12:15

Gen Z Has No Idea What 9/11 Is

Gen Z Has No Idea What 9/11 Is

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Twenty-five years after Islamist hijackers murdered 2,977 people on American soil, a young man in Lower Manhattan looked at 2,977 memorial drones drawing the towers in the night sky and asked why anyone would build a "fake" building.

He called the Tribute in Light the "Batman signal."

This is what happens when media and universities treat the Islamist nature of the attack as a political embarrassment instead of a fact.

"We have enough buildings, bro. Why are they making a fake one?" The guy filming the video states.

Critics assert that education about the September 11 2001 attacks has been avoided due to the Islamist nature of the terror attack, leaving large parts of Gen Z with almost no knowledge of what happened that fateful morning.

Washington Examiner columnist Kimberly Ross called the indifference inexcusable. Younger Americans cannot be blamed for being born after 2001, she wrote, but they can be charged with treating the day as a bother.

"If you have the immense privilege of calling yourself an American, you have a duty to understand both the scope of loss and how it forced a titanic shift in our national perspective," she writes, noting that the dead, the jumpers, Flight 93, Todd Beamer's "let's roll" cannot be treated as optional educational content.

The vacuum is not accidental. Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia told teachers not to "associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims" and not to "center the extremists."

Roughly half of that district's commemorative guide is devoted to "safe spaces" for Muslim students.

Penn GSE's "Teaching Beyond 9/11" curriculum, pushed into New York City schools and several state education departments, gives the attacks themselves a single paragraph, says the United States merely "accused" Osama bin Laden, and then piles on units about Islamophobia, right-wing extremism, and "avenues for solidarity."

Only a handful of states mandate real instruction. Texas just approved language tying "radical Islam" to the attacks; Democrats on the board called it an outrage.

One Navy veteran put the motive in the open:

Others expressed consternation about the lack of knowledge among Gen Z:

While that ignorance played out over Manhattan, New York's first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood at Ground Zero after families and first responders spent weeks begging him to stay away.

Giovanni Galante, whose wife Grace was killed in the North Tower, organized a petition that passed 100,000 signatures. "We don't believe in what he believes in, and we really want us to be left alone," Galante said. "This 25th anniversary is for victims and survivors... not have a circus around us."

Charles Wolf, who lost his wife, said: "This mayor is not serving us. He's serving himself." Monica Iken asked him to "respect us from 7 to 11 and let us have our mourning." Cheri Sparacio, whose husband Tom died on the 84th floor of the South Tower, pointed to Mamdani's chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented a convicted al-Qaeda operative.

City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino demanded he "not show his face at that sacred ground." The Port Authority Retired Police Association, which lost 37 officers that morning, told him the day was "not a political occasion, a photo opportunity, or a platform."

He came anyway. Cameras then caught him laughing with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while family members read the names of the dead.

They're Showing You EXACTLY Who They Are...

Mourner Walter Matuza, whose father was killed and who helped push the petition, said: "He showed up anyway. It does bother us." Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani had already said Mamdani's presence "offends" him and that the mayor "stands in direct support of the movement that killed their children."

Andy Ngo documented another face of the same contempt a few blocks and a few hours from the names: a trans 'activist' who regularly dances at Pride events ripping pages from a Bible at a 9/11 "direct action."

Sick. Just sick.

Meanwhile, 9/11 families have once again demanded release of files that the deep state has spent a quarter-century ducking. Terry Strada, after reading her husband Tom's name, asked: "How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?"

She said families had "proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism" and sent agents to support the hijackers. "For 25 years, administration after administration... chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families." She told Vice President JD Vance: "Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans."

The nephew of Lisa Marie Terry said: "For 25 years, the Deep State has hidden the truth about what happened 25 years ago. President Trump, you're our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia, while what's left of the victims' families are still alive to see it."

9/11 Family Members Demand Trump Admin Release Docs 'Deep State Has Hidden'

A generation that cannot identify a silhouette of the towers has no grounding in modern American society. A school system that treats "Islamophobia" as the real lesson of 9/11 will not produce one.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 11:40

Left-Wing Media Doxxes And Attacks Black "Rogue" Lindsay Clancy Juror

Left-Wing Media Doxxes And Attacks Black "Rogue" Lindsay Clancy Juror

Critics say they have never seen a more egregious example of political groups and the media attempting to expose and destroy a juror for not making the decision they wanted. 

During the Lindsay Clancy trial Judge William Sullivan sealed the identities of all 12 jurors until at least September 18th, citing safety concerns after the high-profile trial.   An incident in which a woman was arrested for allegedly attempting to film and intimidate the jury added weight to the decision.  Deranged feminist activists have been rallying for weeks hoping to manipulate the outcome of deliberations in favor of Clancy, a mother who brutally strangled her three small children and then claimed "postpartum psychosis" as a defense.  

The announcement of a mistrial due to one male juror triggered a rabid fervor among leftist wine moms, leading to immediate calls for the juror to be doxxed, harassed and potentially "punished" for his refusal to conform to the wishes of the rest of the jury.  Evidence suggests that a pro-Clancy group formed very early in the deliberations process, and this group pressured the few holdouts to give in.  Only one man remained.  

The problem for the political left?  The juror is black, and they were hoping for an "evil white man".  This revelation has caused liberal heads to explode because black people within woke culture generally rank higher on the DEI totem pole than white women.  However, as everyone knows, when a black person leaves the liberal plantation these activists can become some of the most racist people on the planet.  They would rather destroy a minority than let him "go rogue".  

New outlets and online headhunters have been scrambling to dig up dirt on the black juror in order to gain some kind of narrative leverage.  Media sources have somehow obtained the man's name, though they can't release it yet without violating the court order.  NBC published a hatchet job article outlining the jurors criminal history.  

Defense Attorney Kevin Reddington's wife is apparently leading the charge on social media to undermine the juror's credibility.  It's a bizarre decision given that the trial is already over, unless the goal is to intimidate future jurors in a future trial. 

The man's previous charges include a restraining order filed in 2021 by his wife, who claimed at least one incident of physical abuse.  It should be noted, though, that all criminal charges were dismissed.  NBC also dug up a $12,000 civil dispute the juror had with a landlord.  NBC has not attempted to dredge up dirt on any other juror in the Clancy trial, only the juror who refused to accept the insanity plea.

It's only a matter of time before the juror's full identity is revealed, opening the door to a barrage of harassment from activists and journalists.    

It shouldn't need to be explained, but the man's past is completely irrelevant to his duties on the jury.  He was approved by the defense and criminal histories of all candidates are examined during jury selection.  Perhaps Reddington assumed that the jury was stacked in Lindsay Clancy's favor and adding a black man to the list was the same as adding another sure vote.  This explains why the lawyer acted so aggressively to have the juror pressured or removed - His "rogue" decision" is viewed as a betrayal.     

This effort by political movements and establishment journalists to assassinate the character of a juror from a trial that has already ended represents a dangerous subversion of America's justice system.  If future juries cannot make decisions based on evidence without being worried that they'll come under attack after the trial is over, this would mean the death of the jury based system.  

Such a precedent would devolve into absolute chaos within the legal structure, and of course, vigilante justice to fill the void that follows. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 11:05

No Secretary Bessent, We Aren't Magically Growing Our Way Out Of Debt

No Secretary Bessent, We Aren't Magically Growing Our Way Out Of Debt

Authored by Vincent Cook via The Mises Institute,

As the official federal debt hit the $40 trillion mark and attracted a lot of negative publicity, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to reassure CNBC's Sara Eisen in an August 20 interview that there is nothing to worry about:

Well, yes, I mean, look, Sara, there's nothing magic about the $40 trillion number. And we can grow our way out of that. So, but what we do want to signal is, I think that there's been a lot of misinformation in terms of what's going on with the deficit, what's going on with the deficit to GDP. We actually had a fiscal consolidation for the calendar year 2025. We had, we are at about 5.7 percent of GDP. And one of the things that's temporary here that's influencing the deficit has been these tariff refunds. And we won't have to do that again. . . . The other big item in the budget that we're seeing is the hit that we're taking from, to revenues for the immediate expensing of factories and of equipment and farm structures. And I think that, if people sit back and think, that's not government spending. That is actually an investment in the future and we're increasing the tax base. And that's how, that is what measures the wealth of a nation, is the ability to increase after-tax return on capital. So we're pulling back the, think of it as pulling back the slingshot here. We have a lot of potential energy that will turn into kinetic energy during this year, next year, as these factories come online.

While Republicans have long been chanting "voodoo economics" incantations (i.e., claiming that increased growth happens in spite of federal deficit surges caused by tax reductions, so tax revenues will eventually catch up to spending over the long run), Bessent's remark does represent a new wrinkle on this theme. Here Bessent focuses attention on the ratio of the official budget deficit to GDP, as if the official budget is the only relevant factor affecting the future growth of total public debt and as if a short-run increase in GDP is a strongly positive indicator of the economy's long-run ability to sustain increased taxes.

The most basic objection to Bessent's argument (and indeed to the older versions of "supply-side" voodoo as well) is that it doesn't make any fundamental difference in the physical quantity of capital goods if private savings are consumed by higher deficits instead of being consumed by higher taxes. Either way, the labor and natural resources that otherwise could have been devoted to increased net capital accumulation are instead diverted towards increased present consumption and/or increased governmental malinvestments. Giving a tax break to encourage greater investment without corresponding decreases in government spending is self-defeating, since increased deficits divert the additional savings away from private businesses towards the government and its clients and minions.

We can see through the Republican smoke and mirrors to visualize the relationship between deficits and net saving with a graph of historical data. Figure 1 shows these amounts as fractions of net national product (NNP, a measure of what was actually earned by Americans at home and abroad) over the past seventy-five years, with the green line representing net saving and the green line representing federal surpluses and deficits.

Figure 1: Net saving, federal surpluses/deficits as fractions of net national product, 1950-2025

Source: BEA and OMB via FRED®

During the first twenty-four years, net saving varied between ten percent to fifteen percent of NNP, while the federal budget was close to being balanced. However, net saving peaked in 1965, and has since declined to very nearly zero percent in the 2020s. This sixty-year decline in net saving coincides with the emergence of steadily worsening federal deficits, which started becoming particularly acute in the 1980s and early 1990s at around 5 percent of NNP (roughly comparable to the New Deal deficits of the 1930s). During Clinton's two terms things turned around and the federal budget climbed all the way back to a small surplus, coinciding with a partial recovery of net saving.

Since the Clinton era the deficit situation has severely deteriorated, punctuated by sharp spikes during the 2008 financial crisis and during the 2020 covid lockdowns. It is in this fiscal morass that net saving has almost vanished. While Bessent can truthfully boast that net saving in 2025 was a little bit better than in 2024, keeping up this rate of improvement for three more years won't even get net saving back to the level achieved under the first Trump administration in 2019.

Chronic deficits have canceled whatever successes Republicans have had otherwise in reducing tax rates on investors. Their failure since the Eisenhower administration to keep spending under control, in conjunction with the equally reckless fiscal policies of the Democrats, has had a catastrophic impact on America's ability to keep increasing its stock of capital goods out of its own private thrift. While soaring deficits didn't cause the entire decline of net saving over the past sixty years, they did account for roughly half of it.

The official debt figure as such isn't even accurate as a measure of the problem, let alone magical, as $40 trillion gravely understates total federal obligations. This official figure does not include the net present value of the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security, Medicare, and federal employee trust funds, which the trustees (including Secretary Bessent) estimate will put the federal government a further $80 trillion in the hole in the absence of any growth-killing tax increases or political career-killing benefit cuts. The total liabilities of the federal government add up to at least $120 trillion; just servicing such an almost incomprehensible burden requires extremely powerful magic indeed, since no politician even dares acknowledge that two of the trust funds are set to go broke in the early 2030s, let alone come up with a plan to balance all the trust fund budgets.

So what are we to make of Bessent's contention that everything is fine because GDP is growing faster than deficits are? The deficit/GDP ratio referenced by Bessent (figure 2) did decrease from 6.2 percent in 2024 to 5.8 percent in 2025, but such a tiny improvement is barely noticeable when viewed over a seventy-five year perspective.

Figure 2: Federal surpluses/deficits as a fraction of GDP, 1950-2025

Source: BEA via FRED®

The deficit-GDP ratio in figure 2 looks very similar to the red line of figure 1, the main difference being that GDP is somewhat larger than NNP because it includes capital depreciation expenses (which makes "gross" metrics bigger than "net" metrics), offset slightly by the overseas earnings of Americans (which makes "national" metrics smaller than "domestic" metrics). GDP has grown slightly faster than NNP over this period, but it is NNP that is the better proxy of the income tax base, since depreciation expenses are not taxable while overseas income is taxable.

Admittedly Bessent overstating growth slightly by his preference for GDP over NNP is a minor issue, but it highlights a more fundamental methodological problem in his thinking. He starts by cherry-picking a popular metric to compare to the deficit metric and then extrapolates long-term trends from a single year's changes in each metric. What he fails to do is to apply sound economic theories deduced from the incontrovertible fact of human purposefulness to the historical statistics, a priori theories which are necessary both for selecting the most relevant comparative metric and for correctly inferring what possible combinations of causal factors might account for observed changes. Moreover, extrapolating a sustained trend reversal from a single, small year-over-year improvement makes absolutely no sense; a credible time-series analysis of these data can only show a worsening budget trend.

The GDP growth illusion conjured up and widely touted by Trump, and Vance, as well as by Bessent depends heavily on wicked black magic of the monetary variety. The accelerating creation of fiat dollars out of thin air by the Federal Reserve and the creation of fractional reserve dollar deposits and other dollar-denominated substitutes out of thin air by the banking system - that is, accelerating inflation and faster inflation-caused price increases - are what temporarily boost GDP, what permanently increase trust fund obligations via statutory cost-of-living adjustments, and what fuel wasteful boom-bust cycles characterized during the bust phase by burgeoning deficits, severe declines of net saving due to intensified government interventions, and the writing off of massive quantities of malinvested capital.

This sort of monetary hocus-pocus never makes tax revenues catch up with soaring expenditures over the long run; inflation can "solve" the federal liabilities problem only by utterly destroying the purchasing power of the dollar and thereby making all dollar-denominated obligations worthless. Whatever one may think about the efficacy of the central bank's monetary wizardry and the Treasury's fiscal sorcery, none of their spell-casting, witchery's brews, or prestidigitations are equivalent to private restraint of present consumption by Americans making more labor and natural resource inputs available for growing the physical quantities of sustainably-productive factories, equipment, and farm structures in America. The green line in figure 1 demonstrates that such growth has virtually halted; over the decades Republicans and Democrats alike have put a bipartisan hex on growth.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 10:30

"Riyadh In Difficult Position": Saudis Shutter Critical East-West Pipeline After Drone Attacks

"Riyadh In Difficult Position": Saudis Shutter Critical East-West Pipeline After Drone Attacks

Saudi Arabia temporarily shut its 7 million-barrel-a-day East-West pipeline following multiple drone attacks, exposing a massive vulnerability in a critical export route used to bypass the Strait of Hormuz during more than six months of US-Iran conflict.

The closure puts new pressure on Saudi oil exports as the pipeline designed to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint becomes a target. The Energy Ministry described the shutdown as precautionary while emergency crews secured the pipeline and assessed its safety.

Here's the ministry's statement:

An official source at the Ministry of Energy stated that the East-West Pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions was subjected to multiple attacks on the morning of Thursday, 10 September 2026. The pipeline was shut down as a precautionary measure. The attacks resulted in a number of injuries, and medical care was provided to those affected.

The source said emergency and specialised technical teams responded immediately following the attacks, taking the necessary measures to secure the pipeline and assess its safety in line with approved safety procedures and emergency response plans, in coordination with the relevant authorities. Any further developments will be announced in due course.

The shutdown deepens an already severe export squeeze on the kingdom. Saudi oil shipments fell to about 3 million barrels a day in August, the lowest level on record since early 2017.

Iran-backed Houthis seized the strategic island of Mayun in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait last week, tightening pressure on the kingdom's Red Sea export hub. With Hormuz already disrupted, ongoing threats to both maritime chokepoints are narrowing the kingdom's options for moving crude to global markets. 

"Riyadh is in a difficult position," said Rapidan Energy Group analyst Fernando Ferreira. "As the US maintains the blockade and succeeds in escorting more tankers out of the region, Iran will pivot toward increased attacks on Gulf energy facilities."

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 09:55

UK Government Reserves Two-Thirds Of Elite Jobs By Race; Leaked Doc Exposes

UK Government Reserves Two-Thirds Of Elite Jobs By Race; Leaked Doc Exposes

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Sixty-six per cent of the slots are ringfenced for staff who are ethnic minority, disabled, or from a lower socio-economic background. Everyone else - including the white working-class kids the same government claims to champion - can take whatever is left. They've essentially built a public-sector caste system.

The Cabinet Office's defence is the same tired formula used across the British state. The scheme, it says, complies with the "positive action" provisions of the Equality Act. In plain English: race, disability status and class background are now official sorting criteria for who gets accelerated towards the top of the machine that writes the country's laws.

Reform UK's home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf put the objection in one line: "Jobs and opportunities should be awarded on merit, not handed out according to someone's ethnicity."

"Positive action" is the legal fig leaf. Positive discrimination is illegal in Britain. Positive action is the workaround: employers may favour a candidate from an under-represented group if they are "as qualified" as the other person. In practice, the ringfence comes first. Two-thirds of the places are already spoken for before a single application is scored on competence.

The Civil Service already runs dedicated fast-tracks for favoured identities. META - the Minority Ethnic Talent Association - sits on top of the Future Leaders Scheme. DELTA does the same for disabled staff. Mentoring, mock interviews, senior sponsorship and extra visibility are reserved for those groups. The leaked 66 per cent figure is simply that architecture made explicit: most of the taxpayer-funded pipeline is not open competition. It is a reserved lane.

Official numbers make the "under-representation" story look thinner by the year. Civil Service Statistics 2026 put ethnic minority representation at a record 19.2 per cent, against 19.6 per cent of the economically active working-age population.

Declared disability among civil servants is now 18.4 per cent - above the national working-age average. The gap that remains is concentrated at the Senior Civil Service, where ethnic minority staff sit at 10.6 per cent. The official answer is not to test harder for the best people. It is to fence off two-thirds of the development scheme and call it justice.

This is not an isolated HR experiment. Britain's domestic intelligence service has already told white students, including poor ones, not to bother applying.

For the 2026/27 academic year, MI5's Summer Intelligence Internship is confined to people "from a Black, Asian, mixed heritage or ethnic minority background and from a socially or economically disadvantaged background."

The agency's own careers page states: "We're confining the applications for this internship to those within this demographic due to a current underrepresentation in our workforce." White British applicants - even those from the most deprived postcodes - cannot submit a form. A narrow "White other" box exists for Romany Gypsy, Scottish Travellers or Irish Travellers. Ordinary white Britons are out.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp called it "flagrant racism from MI5 & GCHQ." He wrote: "White applicants for summer 2027 internships - including from disadvantaged backgrounds - can't apply. The scheme must be scrapped." And: "Applications should be merit-based and colour blind. Working class white boys are among the most disadvantaged - yet are ignored."

Security minister Dan Jarvis has defended the internships as "a lawful measure (as set out in the Equality Act 2010) used to encourage people from under-represented demographics to consider national security careers." The same statute, the same incantation. The people who will one day hold files on the rest of the country are being pre-sorted by ethnicity before they sit a single test.

The National Audit Office ran the same play. Its six-week paid public-sector accounting internship in Newcastle accepted only applicants who were female, of black heritage, or from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Middle-class white men were barred. Yusuf called that "blatant discrimination."

The same pattern reached frontline policing in April 2025. West Yorkshire Police, one of the largest forces in the country, told white British candidates to wait while "under-represented groups" were waved through the door.

The force's recruitment page stated: "We are currently accepting applications for the two police constable entry programmes (uniform and detective) from people from our under-represented groups... If you are not from one of these groups, please keep checking this page for future recruitment opportunities."

A whistleblower report to senior officers, seen by The Telegraph, said the effect was blunt: "the pipeline for anyone white British is strangled, whilst anyone not white British is ushered through." Over a 15-month stretch, ethnic minority candidates were given 446 days to apply. White British applicants were given 99. In one round they had 48 hours.

West Yorkshire denied it was a ban. It said early applications from minorities were "positive action" and that those files were held until the scheme opened to everyone. The force still employs a small army of DEI officers. Chief Constable John Robins has argued that the law itself should be changed to permit open positive discrimination.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the episode "social engineering." She said she believes in "meritocracy, not race-based quotas," and warned that such policies risk "the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes that ethnic minorities cannot succeed unless a well-meaning Leftie is holding the door open." Police, she added, exist "to prevent crime and catch criminals, not social engineering."

Once the recruitment gate is racialised, the training follows. Thames Valley Police put officers through "equity training" covering "white privilege," "micro-aggressions" and the difference between being "non-racist versus anti-racist."

The course landed a month after an employment tribunal found the same force had positively discriminated against white officers by handing an unadvertised inspector post to an Asian sergeant.

An independent review ordered by the police and crime commissioner noted that white privilege "can often be seen as demonising white people and therefore building barriers to the learning." The training went ahead anyway.

Police Scotland's anti-racism package lists the same canon: white privilege, white fragility, micro-aggressions, allyship. The National Police Chiefs' Council Race Action Plan treats "unconscious bias" as a fact about everyone and proceeds from the premise that many people still believe policing is institutionally racist.

Officers are taught to see their own skin as a problem before they are taught to see a suspect. That is not operational training. It is political catechism, paid for by the public those officers are supposed to protect.

The legal profession also has its own reserved lane. The Bar Council partnered with the 10,000 Interns Foundation on a paid six-week scheme that excluded white applicants. Sophie Corcoran, a commentator who had been exploring a legal career, applied and was shut out.

She said she was "shocked to discover that the scheme is restricted to applicants of a particular racial background." She has since issued proceedings. "This case is not simply about my own experience," she said. "I am pursuing it because I believe that no person in Britain should be denied opportunities because of the colour of their skin. I believe strongly that equality before the law must apply to everyone."

The Bar Council's answer is, again, the Equality Act. It has called the scheme "lawful positive action under sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act based on evidence of under-representation in relation to access to the profession," filed a defence, and said it will "vigorously contest" the claim. The 2026 intake went ahead.

Rupert Lowe, then an independent MP, had already described the programme as "anti-white racism."

He further urged, "What message does this send to a generation of talented, hard-working young people who happen to be white - that their ambitions are less worthy? That they must be excluded to balance some imagined historical scale?"

The body that speaks for barristers is defending a racial filter on entry to the profession that exists to interpret the law equally.

The same logic has already eaten the Treasury. In 2020 the department that runs the public finances quietly scrapped the numerical reasoning test on its policy adviser graduate scheme.

Internal papers obtained by The Spectator explained why. "The Numerical Reasoning Test (NRT) was removed due to evidence of the test having adverse impact on candidate diversity."

Board minutes were more direct: "We want more diverse ethnicity at assessment centre." Two tests were treated as "an additional 'hurdle'" and "another opportunity for candidates to be sifted out of the process."

The verbal reasoning test later went the same way. In its place came a "Civil Service Strengths" questionnaire, including items such as "I find it frustrating when others don't understand my ideas." Dr Zubir Ahmed's verdict on the numeracy decision was short: "I'm sorry, but this is insane and helps no one."

A state that deletes the maths test from the Treasury application so that the ethnicity numbers look better is a state that has stopped caring whether the people who will spend your money can count.

Every one of these schemes points back to the same statute. The Equality Act 2010, passed by Labour and left standing by the Conservatives, created the "positive action" gateway.

Ministers, permanent secretaries and police chiefs now treat that gateway as a mandate. The Civil Service Code itself tells officials they must support "equality and diversity." Once that is written into the operating system, every talent board, internship and constable intake becomes an exercise in demographic engineering.

Labour has pushed the same logic from the other direction. In 2025 Pat McFadden announced that the main Civil Service undergraduate internship would be restricted to students from "lower socio-economic backgrounds," judged by what their parents did when they were 14.

"We need to get more working class young people into the civil service so it harnesses the broadest range of talent and truly reflects the country," he said. Class ringfences and race ringfences now sit side by side. The one group that is never the intended beneficiary is the ordinary white applicant who is neither poor enough nor minority enough to clear the new hurdles.

Across the Atlantic, the second Trump administration has spent two years ripping DEI out of the federal government and the universities. Whitehall has spent those same years thickening the paperwork. America First meant colour-blind hiring. Britain First, in the hands of the Blob, has meant the opposite.

Edginton's leak does not reveal a rogue HR officer. It reveals the settled doctrine of the British governing class. A taxpayer-funded talent programme with 66 per cent of places reserved is not "inclusion." It is a quota with better branding.

MI5 internships that refuse white applications, police portals that tell white Britons to check back later, classrooms that instruct officers in their privilege, and a Bar scheme that locks white graduates out of paid chambers experience are not separate scandals. They are one policy, applied wherever the state still controls the gate.

A country that sorts its future mandarins, spies, constables and barristers by ancestry should stop calling itself a meritocracy. It should at least have the honesty to admit what the leaked paper already says: two-thirds of the ladder is reserved, and the people who built the state are no longer first in line to run it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 09:20

President Xi Urges BRICS To Stand On "Right Side Of History", Calls For Gulf Peace

President Xi Urges BRICS To Stand On "Right Side Of History", Calls For Gulf Peace

At the 18th BRICS Summit earlier today, held at the Bharat Mandapam convention center in New Delhi, India, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged member nations to help end the war in the Middle East, positioning the bloc as a force for global stability.

Speaking Saturday at the BRICS summit, Xi said members should stand on the "right side of history" and take a leading role in promoting peace, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

Xi said the conflict in the Gulf region undermined the international community's shared interests and pledged Beijing's cooperation in ending hostilities. Those shared interests include importing cheap Iranian crude and other products to Asia. 

"BRICS countries should firmly stand on the right side of history," Xi said.

Xi's comments show that Beijing is turning BRICS's economic weight into geopolitical influence and positioning the bloc as a diplomatic power broker. However, the remarks stopped just short of a concrete ceasefire plan.

The Trump administration, including the president himself, has framed BRICS as "anti-American" and threatened steep tariffs over efforts to challenge the dollar.

Trump has made several comments about BRICS, including threatening tariffs against member nations if the bloc creates a rival currency. He has also threatened additional tariffs on countries aligning with BRICS' "Anti-American policies."

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 08:45

Tylenol Use In Pregnancy May Reduce Daughters' Fertility, Study Finds

Tylenol Use In Pregnancy May Reduce Daughters' Fertility, Study Finds

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Female reproductive organ development could be impacted by a mother taking Tylenol - also known as acetaminophen or paracetamol - during pregnancy, according to researchers in Denmark.

Tylenol and acetaminophen tablets in a CVS store, in this file photo. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

On average, infant girls exposed to the pain relief drug in the womb had smaller ovaries; fewer ovarian follicles, which are the structures that contain immature eggs; smaller wombs; and lower levels of reproductive hormones, according to the findings of the study published Wednesday in Human Reproduction Open.

Long-term follow-up will be required to determine whether the differences observed in infants have implications for fertility later in life and a woman's age at menopause, study leader Margit Bistrup Fischer of Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen said in a statement accompanying the study.

Animal studies have previously suggested that fetal exposure to Tylenol, the most commonly used drug in pregnancy, might affect ovarian egg reserve and later reproductive function, but this is the first time that research has reported similar findings in humans.

Women 'Should Not Be Alarmed'

Women who have used Tylenol, the brand name for the generic drug acetaminophen, widely known as paracetamol outside of North America, during pregnancy should not be alarmed, Fischer said.

"Animal studies have demonstrated that impaired formation of ovarian follicles can lead to reduced fertility and earlier reproductive aging. Whether the differences observed in our study have implications for fertility and age at menopause in humans remains unknown and will require long-term follow-up of the girls in our cohort.

"Women who have used paracetamol during pregnancy should not be alarmed by our findings. Our study examined associations at the population level and cannot predict outcomes for any individual woman or child," she said.

The researchers studied 302 3-month-old girls whose mothers' use of Tylenol had been tracked during pregnancy. Of these babies, 92 were first exposed to the drug in the womb before 17 weeks of pregnancy, 67 were exposed after 17 weeks, and 143 were born to mothers who had not used the drug while pregnant.

The women all took relatively low amounts, with none exceeding the recommended daily maximum dose of 4,000 milligrams. Most took it to help with headaches or musculoskeletal pain.

A girl's ovarian reserves are established while she is a developing baby in the womb, although other factors may determine the age she goes through puberty and menopause.

The 3-month-old girls in the study who were exposed to Tylenol in utero had ovaries that were 40 percent smaller, wombs that were on average 13 percent smaller, and 23 percent fewer ovarian follicles, the researchers found.

Babies exposed early in pregnancy - before 17 weeks - also had lower levels of Anti-Müllerian hormone, an indicator of the number and quality of eggs in the ovaries.

Smaller Wombs and Ovaries

The researchers also followed a separate group of 1,210 girls from infancy to adolescence whose mothers had reported Tylenol use during pregnancy. Fetal exposure in this group was associated with smaller uteruses at puberty and smaller ovaries during adolescence.

The study cannot predict outcomes for any individual female, Fischer said, explaining that many women who used Tylenol during pregnancy had daughters whose ovarian measurements were similar to those of daughters born to women who did not use the drug.

Current guidelines from health authorities recommend Tylenol as safe for treating pain and fever during pregnancy. Untreated high fever or severe pain can themselves pose risks to both mother and baby, Fischer said.

Dr. Christian De Geyter, a reproductive medicine specialist at the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, said in an accompanying commentary that the findings of the study fit well with data from animal research, and that their importance "cannot be stressed enough."

Follow-up of girls in the study should extend into menopause, he said, adding that recommendations on the drug's use during pregnancy should be reconsidered.

Franziska Denk, professor of neuroscience at King's College London, said the study was "good quality research," although he thought the sample size was too small for the 13 different variables being examined.

"Right now, I think it is too early to recommend a change in behavior - as correctly indicated by the authors in the press release," he said.

'Several Notable Weaknesses'

Stephen Burgess, professor of biostatistics at the University of Cambridge, said the study had "several notable weaknesses."

"Mothers who took paracetamol during pregnancy are likely to differ substantially from those that did not - this is known as confounding. Confounding makes it difficult to know whether differences between outcomes are attributable to paracetamol itself or to other characteristics of the mothers or their pregnancies," he said.

He said that it could not be determined that the drug was the cause of the differences found by the researchers.

"It may be that these findings are driven by infection or fever - women take paracetamol due to mild sickness, and this sickness is the cause of differences in early-life ovarian volume. It may be that impaired fetal development and its causes are what lead to increased paracetamol usage, not that increased paracetamol usage leads to impaired fetal development."

Burgess added that even if there were negative consequences of taking paracetamol during pregnancy, there were "likely future negative consequences attributable to taking away one of the only remaining available and widely tolerated medications from pregnant women."

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, may be associated with autism, at the White House on Sept. 22, 2025. With Kennedy are President Donald Trump and acting Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Dorothy Fink. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images US Officials Linked Drug to Autism

President Donald Trump's administration has said that evidence suggests the use of Tylenol during pregnancy could be linked to autism, although the claim was dismissed by major health organizations.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and Trump spoke about the use of Tylenol during pregnancy in September 2025, with the government subsequently advocating caution over prenatal exposure. The department's current fact sheet says exposure to the drug during pregnancy is an unresolved area of concern, while acknowledging that causality has not been established.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to monitor and evaluate the drug's use in pregnancy, but states that it has not found clear evidence that Tylenol's use at recommended safe levels causes adverse pregnancy, birth, neurobehavioral, or developmental outcomes.

The FDA and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Danish study.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the clinical significance of the study's findings remain "uncertain or unknown," and that current guidelines for women should not change because of it.

"The oldest participants evaluated were adolescents, and the study cannot determine whether the observed differences are associated with future reproductive outcomes such as fertility, ovulatory function, reproductive lifespan, or other measures of reproductive health," it said, adding that the observational study had various limitations.

"These findings should be viewed as a potential area for further investigation and do not indicate that current clinical recommendations should change. Consistent with ACOG's existing guidance, acetaminophen remains one of the only safe medications that can be used during pregnancy when indicated, and patients should consult their obstetric care professional before making any changes to medication use."

Ongoing Lawsuit

The Danish findings come as Tylenol manufacturers face an ongoing lawsuit in the United States over alleged risks associated with prenatal exposure.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Kenvue, which now owns the Tylenol brand after Johnson & Johnson spun off its consumer health business into a new company in 2023. The suit alleged that the company engaged in deceptive advertising by failing to disclose evidence concerning a possible link between prenatal Tylenol exposure and autism.

While a judge dismissed most of the claims, one consumer-protection claim against Kenvue Brands LLC has been allowed to proceed, with the company's attempt to have it dismissed rejected in February.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Kenvue advised pregnant or breastfeeding women to check with a health professional before using acetaminophen, which the company says is the most studied and safest pain reliever during pregnancy.

It noted that the study has methodology limitations and does not support a causal relationship between the drug and postnatal reproductive development.

Kenvue shares fell more than 3 percent Wednesday following the study's publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2026 - 08:10

PLA Purge May Be Driving China To Rely More On Military Pressure Against Taiwan: Analysts

PLA Purge May Be Driving China To Rely More On Military Pressure Against Taiwan: Analysts

Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times,

China's purge of senior military leaders may be pushing Beijing to rely more heavily on military intimidation and gray-zone operations against Taiwan, even as the upheaval leaves the Chinese military with a weakened command structure, according to two Chinese academics and an insider familiar with the Chinese military.

Chinese ships patrol as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) conducts drills on Pingtan island—the closest point to Taiwan—in eastern Fujian Province, China, on Dec. 30, 2025. Adek Berry/AFP via Getty Images

The insider and academics spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

The developments are raising concerns that Beijing's increasingly aggressive operations around Taiwan could become more difficult to control as analysts say political loyalty takes precedence over military expertise within the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Taiwan's Defense Ministry has reported near-daily Chinese military activity around the island, describing the operations as increasingly aggressive and unpredictable, according to Taiwan's national news agency CNA. Chinese military planners are studying drone swarms, long-range strikes, ammunition consumption, maritime blockades and coordination with other countries, while exploring methods that could potentially isolate Taiwan, cut off outside supplies, and weaken its defenses during the early stages of a conflict.

At the same time, the PLA is undergoing an unusually extensive leadership purge. The seven-member Central Military Commission (CMC), which formally oversees China's armed forces, is down to just two members.

A Chinese military academic told The Epoch Times that the continuing purge suggests Xi remains deeply concerned about the loyalty of senior military commanders.

"The CMC has had so many people fall. There are already very few military members of the Central Committee," he said. "The possibility of war is not very high, but the harassment [against Taiwan] will not stop."

Military Pressure Continues

The academic said the purge has created serious gaps in the military command structure at a time when Beijing continues to use military pressure against Taiwan.

He said former CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia had been authorized to oversee simulated training for operations against Taiwan and that it would be difficult to find a replacement with comparable experience.

"At present, the pressure on Taiwan is concentrated on military intimidation," the academic said. "If they give up intimidation, they simply cannot come up with a better method."

The leadership turmoil has unfolded alongside a series of high-level purges. In October last year, nine senior military officers, including CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong, were expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military.

In January, the Chinese regime announced investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, chief of the CMC's Joint Staff Department.

The academic said the military could be experiencing an unusually broad leadership vacuum ahead of the CCP's 21st National Congress next year.

The leadership upheaval does not necessarily mean that Beijing is preparing to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Instead, military pressure could continue precisely because it is one of the few tools available to a command structure weakened by political purges, according to the academic.

Chinese military activity around Taiwan has increasingly extended beyond conventional military exercises. Beijing has also been combining military drills, combat-readiness patrols and China Coast Guard operations, creating pressure that remains between ordinary peacetime activity and open warfare.

Taiwan's National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told reporters in July that the months of July through September are typically a period of heightened Chinese military exercises. Taiwan had detected increased activity by the Chinese navy and other maritime forces, including four Chinese naval formations operating in the western Pacific at the time.

A Chinese military academic and researcher told The Epoch Times that Beijing was increasingly integrating military exercises with combat-readiness patrols and coast guard enforcement.

The approach allows China to maintain sustained pressure on Taiwan without crossing the threshold into open conflict, the researcher said.

He cautioned, however, that the pattern should not necessarily be interpreted as preparation for an imminent attack.

"If [the CCP] wants to launch military action against Taiwan, [it] needs to first carry out war mobilization, deploy logistical support, and even more importantly, have powerful offensive weapons and a strong and effective command system," he said.

Potential Blockade

Taiwan's Defense Ministry has assessed that China does not yet possess all the capabilities required for a full-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But Beijing has other options, including maritime isolation, a joint blockade, missile strikes, cyberattacks, and information warfare.

A blockade or maritime isolation campaign could require fewer forces than a full-scale invasion and could be conducted under the cover of military exercises or law-enforcement operations, according to researchers who spoke to The Epoch Times.

That creates a dilemma for Taiwan. If Taipei does not respond, Beijing could gradually expand its control over surrounding waters. If Taiwan responds militarily, Beijing could portray Taipei as the party responsible for escalating tensions.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said on Sept. 2 that Taiwan's defense budget for next year would exceed NT$1 trillion ($32 billion) for the first time, according to CNA. The government plans to invest in unmanned systems, AI, and Taiwan's domestic defense industry.

The Chinese military researcher said the continued expansion of Chinese military and maritime operations around Taiwan is reducing the island's warning time.

The greater concern, he said, is not a deliberate decision by Beijing to start a war, but the possibility that an incident could escalate when military judgment is compromised by political considerations.

For Taiwan, he said, that makes continued vigilance essential.

Shi Youliang contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 22:35

Appeals Court Won't Allow Trump Admin To Implement New Rules For Mail-In Voting

Appeals Court Won't Allow Trump Admin To Implement New Rules For Mail-In Voting

A federal appeals court on Sept. 10 declined to permit the Trump administration to enforce a new U.S. Postal Service (USPS) rule that changes mail-in voting requirements before the midterm congressional elections on Nov. 3.

The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar request.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to pause an injunction issued on Sept. 4 by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which extended a temporary restraining order that she granted on Aug. 27. The injunction halted key parts of the Postal Service's final rule.

The injunction applies to the Nov. 3 elections and any federal elections that take place before then.

The injunction blocks the mandatory parts of the Postal Service's final rule published on Aug. 26 that implements Section 3 of President Donald Trump's executive order 14399. That provision would assign federal agencies a larger role in who receives a mailed ballot and how those ballots are processed by the USPS.

As Matthew Vadum reporets for The Epoch Times, the Trump administration previously said the executive order would help to keep federal elections honest. The Department of Justice argued that the USPS is imposing mailpiece design and data standards under its general authority to regulate the mail, not deciding who is eligible to vote; states are still free to set voter lists and count ballots.

Talwani had said the postal rule could disenfranchise voters, was probably unlawful, and likely violated the U.S. Constitution, which gives states authority to run federal elections taking place within their borders. The judge previously said the postal agency presented no evidence of fraudulent mail-in voting that would justify the new Postal Service rule.

Talwani held that the USPS lacked authority to enforce the rule, and that, as election officials have said, given existing time constraints, complying with the rule for the midterms was "likely impossible."

Talwani said Congress never agreed to delegate its powers under the Constitution's elections clause to the USPS, so the rule "clashes with Congress's statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on ... [those] powers but also that power left to the States."

The judge added that even a small glitch in the new system would be problematic and could mean that ballots never go out, that eligible voters would almost certainly lose the chance to vote by mail, and that the disenfranchisement of plaintiff groups such as the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts was "practically inevitable."

Advocacy groups and a coalition of Democrat-led states had sued to block parts of the rule, arguing that implementation would lead to voter disenfranchisement. Republican states intervened in support of the federal government, arguing that the rule would promote election integrity.

In its new ruling, the First Circuit said the federal government failed to show that the Postal Service rule was likely lawful or that the district court's ruling was in error.

The appeals court panel said it agreed with the district court that the rule likely regulated the manner of holding elections for members of Congress, which the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress, not to an executive agency such as the USPS acting without congressional authorization.

The federal government is trying "to avoid the constitutional problem by denying that the Final Rule regulates the manner of holding elections," but "this denial rings hollow," the panel said, quoting the district court.

"The title of the Final Rule is 'Ballot Mail for Federal Elections,' and the Final Rule explicitly and exclusively regulates election mail," the panel said.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Sept. 3 to allow the government to begin implementing a regulation that tightens rules around mail-in voting. After Talwani dissolved the temporary restraining order, the federal government withdrew its application and filed a new one targeting the Sept. 4 injunction.

That application is still pending before the Supreme Court.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 22:10

Somali Piracy Was Under Control, Then Came The Iran War...

Somali Piracy Was Under Control, Then Came The Iran War...

Authored by Khaled Mahmoud via Responsible Statecraft,

From the start, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a story of unintended consequences. Contrary to President Donald Trump's hopes for a quick victory, the conflict has morphed into a sustained crisis, one that has driven up oil prices, driven down tourism in the Middle East, and reshaped the region's geopolitical map.

Somali pirates on captured MV Faina off the coast of Somalia in 2008. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass communication Specialist 2nd Class Jason R. Zalasky)

Now, a new unintended consequence has emerged: the return of piracy to Somalia's coasts. This shift, which comes after a decade of quiet, threatens some of the world's most important shipping lanes and the interests of the United States and its allies.

Pirates have attacked at least 15 vessels in the region this year, a sharp uptick from the five attacks that occurred last year, according to data from the International Maritime Organization. The renewed criminal activity has led to extended hostage situations, including one ongoing seizure of an oil tanker and its crew.

A controversial operation to free the MV LATUF, carried out by Somali forces and the Turkish navy late last month, raised questions about whether a ransom was paid. The government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, says it has evidence of phone contacts between Somali government officials and the pirates, which undermines the official story from both Ankara and Mogadishu. The vessel was carrying Turkish weapons and satellite and communication equipment bound for a Turkish training facility in Mogadishu.

Global piracy dropped in the first half of 2026 to its lowest level since 1992 - only 38 incidents, compared to 90 in the same period of 2025 and 60 in 2024. But data from the International Chamber of Commerce shows that, by the end of last month, six commercial ships were still being held, with more than 90 seafarers on board.

When ransom money funds the pirates

The pirates recently received a new ransom estimated at around $1.7 million for the release of the hijacked ship MV Sward off the coast of Puntland, along with its crew of Syrian and Indian sailors, after a crisis that lasted more than four months.

On 26 April, about ten armed Somali men in three speedboats intercepted the ship near the town of Garaad. The vessel flies the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis and is managed by Turkey-linked companies. It was only six nautical miles from the coast. The ship had left the Egyptian port of Adabiya/Suez heading to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of cement or fertilizer.

According to a well-informed maritime source in Puntland, this incident shows the pirates going back to their classic method: using the hijacked ship as a mother vessel to carry out more attacks, including the hijacking of Iranian fishing boats.

Before the war on Iran, the threat from piracy to international shipping had dropped significantly. Now that the pirates are active again, the international community needs to rethink how military forces are deployed in the Middle East and the Red Sea to close the security gap the pirates are exploiting - a gap that stretches from Somalia's eastern coast through the Gulf of Aden to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Dr. Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert at Auxilium Worldwide, says the Houthis are playing a key role in the return of piracy. He points to the transfer of know-how and technology from them to Somali pirates, which could increase their ability to disrupt shipping.

Ralby says the main beneficiaries are the pirates themselves. But he does not rule out that other groups, including the Houthis and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may find an indirect interest in the ongoing chaos. He also notes that the attacks have reached the waters off Yemen, widening the threat and increasing pressure on naval forces and coast guards.

The gaps behind the return of piracy

Somali State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Omar admits that the return of piracy shows there are still gaps in maritime security. The long Somali coastline makes monitoring difficult, and the country's naval capabilities are still being developed, he told RS.

But Omar stresses that today's Somalia is not the same country that faced the global piracy crisis more than a decade ago. It now has federal institutions, security forces and maritime authorities, along with wider international cooperation, especially with Turkey, to strengthen its naval capacity.

But the problem is not limited to poor policing, Omar said. It is linked to illegal fishing, organized crime, poverty in coastal communities, weak maritime surveillance and the wider security situation in the Gulf of Aden.

This view matches what Ralby says: the return of piracy is no longer a purely Somali issue. Attacks have moved further into the Gulf of Aden, and there are signs of technology and expertise being passed from the Houthis to the pirates. The challenge for Somalia is not only to regain control of its coastline, but also to stop piracy from becoming part of a wider effort to disrupt shipping.

Egyptian national security expert Mohamed Abdel Wahid, who focuses on Somalia, believes the international focus on securing navigation through Bab el-Mandeb (at the mouth of the Red Sea) and the Strait of Hormuz has helped create a security vacuum.

Who benefits from the return of piracy?

Colonel Mohamed Jama, a maritime security expert in Puntland, says the pirates' return has become a cross-border regional threat that exploits a gap in maritime coverage, partly because Puntland forces are busy fighting ISIS.

According to Jama, the pirates successfully hijacked six commercial ships between April and August. Their operations have extended into Yemeni waters and deep into the Indian Ocean, putting vital shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea at greater risk.

Jama says the beneficiaries of the return of piracy to the region include financiers and investors; arms and ammunition suppliers; fuel and logistics providers; suppliers of khat and drugs; and maritime smuggling networks. Somali and Yemeni networks are also moving resources, people and information across maritime borders.

Jama stresses that the focus should not only be on those who board the ships, but on those who finance the operations, supply the weapons and control the money.

Omar, the Somali minister, has warned about what he calls fragmented security arrangements as an additional reason for the return of piracy off the north-eastern coast. For years, Somalia has cautioned against outside actors training, funding and equipping security or maritime forces without the knowledge, coordination or supervision of the federal government. Such arrangements, he says, create parallel security structures, intelligence gaps and make accountability almost impossible.

The Somali solution

Warships alone will not defeat piracy, the Somali minister says. The whole issue requires unified national institutions and a responsible, coordinated international partnership.

As a journalist who has followed the pirates' activity for nearly 18 years, both at its peak and in its quiet periods, I can say that those I once described as the jinn of the sea and a headache for the world and international shipping are the result of mistakes both inside and outside the country. Not least among them is the conflict of authority between the federal government in Somalia and the Puntland administration.

But the most dangerous trend now is the security vacuum in the Red Sea created by the war on Iran, which has allowed the pirates to return in force. As long as the war continues, there is little hope of stopping this burgeoning banditry on the high seas.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 21:45

"Stud Or Dud" Dating App Launches A Platform For Background Checking Prospective Matches

"Stud Or Dud" Dating App Launches A Platform For Background Checking Prospective Matches

The Daejon Love story is already having an impact on the dating world...

And singles who want to know more about a match before agreeing to a date now have another option besides scrolling through social media and playing amateur detective, according to the NY Post.

Stud or Dud, a new platform from public-records company PeopleFinders, is designed to gather publicly available information about a potential partner in one place. The service can surface details such as past addresses, bankruptcies and other records, while also organizing some of the findings into easier-to-read red- and green-flag categories.

The tool is aimed at a familiar modern dating problem: online profiles can create a convincing picture without proving that the person behind them is being truthful. A seemingly normal Instagram account, polished dating bio or professional-looking LinkedIn page may still leave major gaps about someone’s identity or history.

PeopleFinders CEO Amber Higgins said that distinction is important. “Records give you context, not certainty,” she said, describing background information as another layer of verification rather than definitive proof that someone is trustworthy.

The Post writes that the launch also comes as romance fraud and fake online identities remain a concern for daters. According to survey figures cited in the article, one-quarter of Americans said they had interacted with a fake profile or AI bot, and 15% reported losing money through an online dating or romance scam.

Stud or Dud is meant to streamline work that many singles already do before meeting someone: searching names online, checking employment claims, reviewing tagged photos or asking friends to investigate. Instead of relying heavily on material that a person can curate themselves, the platform emphasizes public records that may be harder to manipulate.

Still, a background search cannot replace judgment. Higgins pointed to behavior as another important warning system, including refusing video calls, changing details about work or location, pushing a relationship ahead unusually quickly or introducing financial problems early in the conversation.

Money requests are an especially significant warning sign. “If money comes up before you’ve met in person, that’s a moment to pause, not lean in.”

The broader idea behind the service is to make basic vetting a routine part of online dating rather than something people do only after becoming suspicious. For users already accustomed to checking a match before meeting, Stud or Dud essentially packages that research into a faster, more centralized process.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/11/2026 - 21:20

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