Via Remix News,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is there a “plan” behind population replacement?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more here…

Summary

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

Speculation Over Trump Staying Close to D.C.

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

Iran FM: Agreement ‘Not Close’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pakistan, Qatar Delegations En Route to Tehran

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

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

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

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) May 22, 2026

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

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

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

Iran Threat of ‘Preemptive’ Military Action

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

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

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

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

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

More possibly premature reports of a ‘final draft’ being worked on…

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

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

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) May 22, 2026

Rubio Condemns Toll System: Unacceptable

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

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

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

More Headlines

More latest developments via Newsquawk:

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

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The New Silk Roads/BRI and its derivations such as the Northern Sea Route/Arctic Silk Road remain alive and kicking

SHANGHAI – This is it.

The Russia-China strategic partnership, the leaders in the process of Eurasia integration, the leaders of multipolar bodies BRICS and the SCO, have formally endorsed and boosted the drive towards multipolarity and a new system of international relations via a strategic joint declaration signed, sealed and delivered during President Putin’s visit to China this Wednesday.

This is one for the History books – in several more ways than one. I was privileged to follow the proceedings in Beijing during the whole day at the Aurora College, a top Shanghai private school and university, among a fabulous congregation of teachers and students.

So we had plenty of time to discuss the implications of how the Top Two Eurasia powers – and global powers – are establishing the lineaments of a new geopolitical future for most of mankind. The exceptions will be exceptionalist recalcitrants and vassals addicted to commit serial political suicide.

We all remember President Xi’s visit to Russia in 2023, when leaving the Kremlin, side by side with Putin, he voiced what he was already polishing for some time, in a very concise way: “Right now there are changes we have not seen in 100 years.” And then Xi and Putin agreed that now, “we are the ones driving these changes together”.

The practical result is the sharply focused Beijing joint statement, penned by unmistakable “civilizations with ancient history.”

Let’s go through some of the highlights.

The declaration minces no words and no concepts when it comes to offering a serious alternative to the current – dwindling – unilateral historic moment.

Polycentrism: “The attempts of a number of states to single-handedly manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of other countries in the spirit of the colonial era have failed.” Russia-China will focus on establishing a “long-term state of polycentrism.”

The ”law of the jungle”: “Basic universally recognized norms of international law and international relations are regularly violated (…) there is a danger of fragmentation within the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle’.”

A new security architecture: “It is necessary to pay due attention to the rational concerns of all countries in the field of security, to focus on cooperation on security issues, to reject bloc confrontation and zero-sum game strategies, to oppose the expansion of military alliances, hybrid wars, and proxy wars, and to promote the creation of an updated, balanced, effective, and sustainable global and regional security architecture (…) It is unacceptable to force sovereign states to abandon their neutrality.”

This is exactly what Moscow proposed to Washington and NATO in December 2021: indivisibility of security. The non-response response precipitated the SMO in Ukraine two months later, as it became obvious to Moscow that NATO’s plan was a blitzkrieg in Donbass.

Hegemony: “Hegemony in the world is unacceptable and should be prohibited. No state or group of states should control international affairs, determine the fate of other countries, or monopolize opportunities for development.”

Global governance: that’s President Xi’s cherished concept, fully delienated in the SCO summit last year in Tianjin: “In global governance, which is an important tool for streamlining the system of international relations, it is necessary to adhere to the principles of sovereign equality, the rule of international law, multilateralism, human-centeredness, and results-oriented approach.”

The United Nations: it’s necessary to “strengthen the role of multilateralism as the primary tool for addressing the multifaceted and complex global challenges, and to prevent the weakening of the United Nations.” That should lead to “the reform of the United Nations”. Yet everyone knows that will definitely not happen under the current administration in the White House.

Point 4 of the declaration: global civilizational and value diversity. That may be the crux of the matter – inexorably burying any Exceptionalist pretensions: “The spiritual and moral system of any civilization cannot be considered exceptional or superior to others. All countries should advocate a view of civilizations based on equality, mutual exchange of experience, and dialogue, and should strengthen mutual respect, understanding, trust, and exchanges between different nationalities and civilizations, promote mutual understanding and friendship among the peoples of all countries, and protect the diversity of cultures and civilizations.”

Enter the new “indispensable nation”

The Russia-China declaration, as concisely as possible, delivers what amounts to much-needed hope for humanity to delve into the matrix of a civilizational past as the means to forge an auspicious, more egalitarian future.

It is by all means a humanist mini-manifesto that goes way beyond the set up of a new security architecture and forging key changes in the current system of international relations. Its credibility is supported by the backing of two Big Powers which also happen to be civilization-states, fully sovereign and fully independent.

I have called this process for quite a while “The Eurasia Century”. That is what this fateful May 20, 2026 in Beijing, within the scope of an official visit by President Putin to China, was celebrating.

The breath, scope and ambition of the joint statement clearly overshadows other aspects of Putin’s Beijing journey, although they are quite relevant by themselves.

Starting with the sealing of the new “indispensable nation”. Exit the Exceptionalists; enter China. The old order is being evicted – in real time. And yes, this is the most consequential shift in Great Power alignment since the end of the Cold War – complete with the Empire of Chaos that sanctioned Russia to death targeting its “isolation” and economic collapse inexorably out-maneuvered by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The 25-year Treaty of Good Neighborliness between Russia and China was massively upgraded – featuring strategic energy corridors (the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline), very close military coordination and a shared civilizational/ideological framework.

Of course there will be no substantial leaks on what Xi and Putin discussed during their two-hour-long, informal tea time. The proxy war in Ukraine and the illegal war on Iran had to be on the menu, including Putin arguably briefing Xi on Russia’s possible next moves in an increasingly direct, toxic confrontation with NATO, and both evaluating the technicalities of the Russia-China support for Iran.

So in a nutshell the New Silk Roads/BRI and its derivations such as the Northern Sea Route/Arctic Silk Road remain alive and kicking; and the de-dollarization of the global economy – a reflection of the Russia-China trade balance, now advancing exclusively on yuan and rubles – is more than alive and kicking.

As for BRICS, destabilized by the U.S. from the inside via India and the UAE, it may eventually resurrect from its coma; this process will have to be led by Lavrov and Wang Yi. And the focus must change: BRICS must develop some sort of strategic coherence among the Global Majority for the multipolar transition to really work.

Then there’s the bright future of Power of Siberia 2. China, finally, may even forget the “Escape from Malacca” obsession, in effect since the early 2000s, and back to the limelight with the American faux blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports.

The leadership in Beijing has always been fully aware that blocking the Strait of Malacca is essential in the American strategy of containing and suffocating China. Power of Siberia 2 offers a solution completely outside of the thalassocratic Empire of Piracy, pumping gas directly to China from the Yamal peninsula through the Altai mountains and the Mongolia steppes.

There was a lovely touch at the Great Hall of the People, amidst so much drama: a TASS-Xinhua joint exhibition, “The Unbreakable Friendship of Great Nations, the Strategic Partnership of Great Powers”, with 26 photos documenting the Putin-Xi friendship over the years, in several G20, BRICS and SCO summits, the One Belt, One Road forum, Victory Day in Moscow, and the Beijing Olympics.

Putin and Xi visited the expo with two quite special tour guides: TASS CEO Andrey Kondrashov and Xinhua CEO Fu Hua.

Compounded with the tea ceremony, call it the human, all too human, deep bond, person-to-person touch indispensable to travel the long and winding road towards a geopolitical future of equanimity and mutual respect.

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

Our warning at the start of the year, well before the U.S.-Iran conflict erupted, rested on one very simple theme that much of Wall Street missed, perhaps because analysts were still wearing their ‘green’ glasses and focusing on the wrong crises or actually non-existent crises.

The more immediate threat to data centers was never about climate change or soaking up the world’s resources. It was the very real threat of a data center being hit by a low-cost Shahed-style one-way attack drone, exposing the missing layer in cheap, scalable counter-drone defenses at nearly every data center worldwide.

Even we were surprised by how quickly that theme was validated. One month later, Iranian drone swarms targeted data centers across the Gulf, taking some hubs offline and forcing Wall Street, hyperscalers, insurers, and the defense community to confront an uncomfortable new reality.

Expanding on this theme, about three months into the ongoing U.S.-Iran war, counter-drone company Allen Control Systems CEO Steven Simoni warned on X that drones are in the very early stages of reshaping modern warfare and physical security, with the Russia-Ukraine war serving as the warning shot.

Simoni pointed out that in just four years, drones have become responsible for roughly 80% of casualties in that war, surpassing traditional battlefield systems such as artillery, aircraft, helicopters, rockets, and landmines. The result is that low-cost drones are becoming the dominant weapons platform on the modern battlefield.

“But an acute threat, because instead of the effect of these new fires being widespread and chaotic (which actually gives defenders a chance), they will be ultra-targeted and precise. Think more like, specific structural points of infrastructure from skyscrapers to nuclear power plants and particular faces from leaders to dissidents being recognized and targeted,” he said.

Simoni added, “Another example: think about the capex that is going to be just datacenter buildout across the world over the next ten years. Imagine what kind of insurance (and the insurer’s) reinsurance is involved in protecting all of that compute, all of that data, and all of those people. It’s enormous.”

“Drones, among other things, will be part of the threat model facing their physical security, their power infrastructure, and their personnel. All of that investment will be at risk, in part, from drones,” he continued, adding, “The problem is so enormous, it’s bigger than you think, and it’s going to get more global and more acute.”

Which way, Western man? pic.twitter.com/PwkL4xT6bF

— Quantum Daddy (@LegalPrimes) May 13, 2026

He cited a video from the Naval Podcast and told his followers, “Everyone should watch this.”

Naval Podcast states in the video that drone warfare will fundamentally change the structure of violence in society – and therefore how militaries and entire states are architected. It said the historical parallels are similar to the rise of the modern state, in which a rifle enabled a former peasant to take down a feudal knight on the battlefield.

New:

The Logic of Violence
A podcast film pic.twitter.com/HsRZqFeEUt

— Naval Podcast (@navalpodcast) May 12, 2026

Being one step ahead, we see a boom in the counter drone defense space – not with million-dollar interceptor missiles – but cheap, scalable solutions:

• Micro AI Sentry Guns May Be Next Layer Of Defense For Data Centers Against Kamikaze Drones

• Interceptor-Drone Arms-Race Emerges

• U.S. Deploys Ukrainian Acoustic Sensors, Interceptor Drones At Prince Sultan Air Base

And just wait until micro jet engines become standard on suicide drones …

Jet-powered drones are becoming a new phase of modern warfare.

The article below highlights the growing Czech-Ukrainian partnership in the development and production of compact turbojet engines for next-generation UAV and defense platforms, with PBS expanding its manufacturing… pic.twitter.com/lWly7lhw8f

— PBS GROUP (@PBS_GRP) May 21, 2026

Welcome to 2030s warfare. The world only gets more dangerous from here as the innovation curve for ground robots, autonomous drone swarms, AI kill chains, and eventually humanoid soldiers accelerates.

Authored by Bettina Arndt via DailySceptic.org,

The warning signs have been there for decades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The modern woman: a prospectus:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of intentionally targeting civilians after a “terrorist” overnight drone attack on a school that left six dead and scores of young people wounded. 

At least 39 were injured and counting, amid ongoing rescue efforts after a school complex was torn apart on the multi-drone strike attack. It happened at a school dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region. Over a dozen victims are still missing, including children, reports say.

Putin blasted the mass casualty incident as a “terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime” while vowing swift revenge. 

“The Russian Foreign Ministry has been instructed to inform international organizations and the international community about this crime,” Putin said. “In such cases, statements from the Foreign Ministry alone would not suffice. Therefore, the Russian Defense Ministry has been ordered to submit its proposals.”

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

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

“The most important thing now ​is to take measures to clear the rubble ​and provide assistance to those who are still ​trapped beneath it,” Peskov added.

Britain’s Sky News has noted that the Ukrainian government has yet to acknowledge the attack:

Severely damaged buildings could also be seen, one of which appeared to have partially collapsed, as well as fires still burning.

Ukraine has yet to comment. Its forces are fighting to try to recapture Luhansk, one of four regions Russia unilaterally claimed as its own in 2022, in what Kyiv considers an illegal land grab.

Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said 86 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 had been asleep inside the hostel belonging to Luhansk Pedagogical University’s Starobilsk school when Ukrainian drones attacked during the night.

Earlier this month, Russia and Ukraine observed a 3-day US-backed ceasefire for Russia’s V-Day; however, after that Russia unleashed several consecutive days of heavy aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities, especially the capital.

Last week, Ukraine ‘answered’ with a large-scale, long range drone attack on the Moscow area. Currently, these tit-for-tack strikes are ramping up, with increasingly deadly consequences for innocent bystanders on both sides.

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned six Ethereum addresses tied to a Sinaloa Cartel-linked money laundering network that allegedly converted drug proceeds into cryptocurrency.

OFAC added the addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals list (a US sanctions list of people, entities and assets subject to blocking restrictions) on Wednesday as part of sanctions against 11 individuals and two entities connected to two Sinaloa Cartel financial networks.

Treasury said one network, led by Armando de Jesus Ojeda Aviles, collected bulk cash in the US from fentanyl and other drug sales before allegedly converting the money into cryptocurrency for transfer to the cartel in Mexico.

The action highlights how cartel-linked money laundering networks are using digital assets alongside cash couriers and front businesses, raising sanctions compliance risks for crypto exchanges and other virtual asset service providers.

OFAC adds six new Ethereum addresses to sanctions list. Source: OFAC

Cartel cash moved into crypto

The Sinaloa Cartel is allegedly using blockchain technology to launder its illicit fiat money proceeds, according to OFAC.

Cointelegraph contacted OFAC for more details surrounding the Sinaloa Cartel’s money laundering operations.

Treasury did not identify which crypto platforms or protocols were allegedly used by the network.

The listed Ethereum addresses, however, create sanctions exposure for exchanges, wallet providers and other crypto firms that screen blockchain transactions.

Looking at some of the biggest cryptocurrency hacks, attackers laundered the majority of the $1.4 billion stolen during the Bybit hack, or about $1.2 billion, through THORChain, swapping funds from Ether to Bitcoin, according to Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou. 

Attackers behind the recent $293 million Kelp DAO hack also primarily used THORChain to swap the Ether for Bitcoin, generating about $910,000 in fee revenue for the protocol, Cointelegraph reported on April 23.

In 2025, the world’s busiest airport was not in Dubai, London, or Tokyo.

It was Atlanta.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport handled 106.3 million passengers, making it the only airport in the world to cross the 100 million mark.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, ranks the world’s busiest airports by total passengers boarded and deplaned in 2025, using new data from the Airports Council International. Transit passengers are counted once.

Why Atlanta Still Ranks #1

The Atlanta airport, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2026, has been the world’s busiest airport every year since 1998, except for 2020 during pandemic-era travel restrictions.

This table lists the world’s busiest airports by 2025 passenger count.

Named after two former mayors, Hartsfield-Jackson serves as the main hub and headquarters for Delta Air Lines, the world’s top airline by both revenue and brand value.

Smaller airlines like Frontier and Southwest also maintain operating bases at the airport. Consequently, more than 1,000 flights depart from Hartsfield-Jackson each day.

The U.S. Big Four Airports

Atlanta is not the only U.S. airport near the top. The U.S. accounts for four of the 10 busiest airports worldwide, more than any other country in the ranking.

Dallas Fort Worth (85.7 million), which anchors two of the country’s largest cities, ranks fourth worldwide in passenger traffic, while Denver’s sprawling airport lands in the 10th position with 82.4 million passengers in 2025.

Sixth-ranked Chicago O’Hare (84.8 million) held the title of world’s busiest airport for a quarter-century before losing it to Atlanta in 1998. It continues to be the airport with the most takeoffs and landings, recording more than 860,000 aircraft movements in 2025.

Eurasia’s Biggest Airports

No African or South American airport cracks the world’s 10 busiest airports, which are instead dominated by East Asian and Middle Eastern hubs like Tokyo Haneda (91.7 million), Shanghai Pudong (85 million), and Istanbul (84.4 million).

London Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport, handling 84.5 million passengers in 2025.

Meanwhile, Dubai (95.2 million) has become the world’s second-busiest airport, while remaining the busiest for international passengers. This reflects the United Arab Emirates’ strategy of positioning Dubai as a global aviation hub connecting Asia, Europe, and the West.

Curious how size factors in? Check out World’s Busiest Single Runway Airports on Voronoi.

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter and took the company over in 2022, he proceeded to fire approximately 80% of the social media company’s bloated 7500 person workforce.  This included almost all HR related employees.  The company roster was pared down to a lean 1500 people.  Everyone in the establishment media claimed that Twitter (now called “X”) was going to collapse. 

The political left and their corporate allies did everything in their power to make this happen, including advertising cancellations and even government intervention, but they failed.  X’s monthly active user (MAU) count has grown over the past 5 years – rising from roughly 360 million in 2021 to over 550 million by early 2026.  Part of the reason for this success despite the constant attacks was Musk’s removal of internal saboteurs. 

The majority of corporations today have inflated their teams with people who do not add value – Rather, they create problems from thin air and drag the company down.  The primary vehicle that facilitates this sabotage is the Human Resources department. 

HR departments were originally created as a means of monitoring compliance with state and federal laws to avoid liability.  In many cases this revolved around “sexual harassment” or “discrimination” in the workplace, but it ended up becoming a progressive crusade to make women, LGBT and minority groups a protected class of workers that are difficult to fire because HR is more concerned with lawsuits. 

This lack of accountability based on gender and minority privilege reached its peak during the height of the woke era and DEI.  Companies were rife with useless employees who did little work while raking in six-figure salaries. 

Today, the situation is changing rapidly.  A wave of layoffs has hit the white collar sector since 2025.  The end of DEI is leading to mass cuts which are largely affecting women, with minority women making up the bulk of the job losses. 

One company CEO, Ryan Breslow of Bolt, saved his company from implosion by a simple change which allowed him to more easily make a number of other changes:  He fired his entire HR department. 

Breslow, who stepped down as CEO in 2022 but returned in 2025, cut 30% of the workforce in April and replaced HR with a smaller “people operations” team focused on training.  “They were creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow, 31, said at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”

Bolt was founded in 2014 and makes checkout payments technology. The company saw a whopping valuation collapse from $11 billion in 2022 to $300 million in 2025.

But HR wasn’t the only group to lose their jobs. Breslow said employees had grown complacent during the boom years. He gave workers 60 days to adapt to a leaner culture but said 99% couldn’t make the shift. “There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company,” he said.

He fired nearly the entire leadership team and eliminated four-day workweeks and unlimited PTO.  Bolt now operates with about 100 employees, down from thousands. “We have a team a quarter of the size, who are much more junior, who work a lot harder, who have better energy,” Breslow says.

The CEO’s observations echo across the corporate world in the US and in Europe, and it’s the reason why many DEI related jobs are disappearing and why so many college graduates with psychology and communications related degrees can’t get hired to save their lives.

It makes sense; Human Resource employees are 75% to 80% women and 18% LGBT, far above the averages in most white collar fields.  These demographics commonly lead to a grievance-based work environment and an entitlement culture.  These are the groups who often create problems from thin air as a means to manipulate the policy courses of companies and they are difficult to eject because of liability fears. 

Placing them in a position of power with the ability to drum up internal conflicts is a detrimental mistake. 

Time, however, is healing.  The era of easy salaries for low value employees is quickly coming to an end.  Numerous tech companies and venture capital companies that expanded during the last decade are cutting the dead weight.  The viral TikToks of women spending most of their workday in corporate cafeterias and yoga rooms are disappearing.  The free ride is over, and soon there may not be any HR department’s left to protect the barnacles from being scraped off the ship.      

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

A supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is set to arrive in Japan early next week after clearing the Strait of Hormuz in late April, in the first shipment of Middle East crude to Japan via the chokepoint since the Iran war began on February 28.

The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Idemitsu Maru, which had departed from Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura port in the Persian Gulf in mid-March, is expected to arrive in Nagoya on May 25, data on MarineTraffic showed. As of early Friday, the supertanker was close to the coasts of Japan.

The cargo is destined for the Aichi refinery of local refiner Idemitsu Kosan, according to a briefing document of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry cited by Bloomberg.

The imminent shipment will mark the first cargo from the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz to have made it to Japan since the conflict erupted at the end of February and halted most energy supplies via the strait, which is blocked by Iran and separately blockaded by the U.S. in the Gulf of Oman to prevent Iranian oil exports.

Another Japan-bound tanker, Eneos Endeavor, cleared the Strait of Hormuz last week. The Eneos Endeavor, currently in the Malacca Strait, is expected to arrive in Kiire, Japan, on May 30, per data on MarineTraffic. It departed from Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait on February 28, the day on which hostilities began.

Meanwhile, Japan in April imported the lowest volume of crude oil from the Middle East on record dating back to 1979 as the Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked supply from the region.

Japan’s crude imports from the Middle East plummeted by 67.2% in April compared to the same month of 2025, provisional trade data from Japan’s Finance Ministry showed on Thursday.

Since the war in the Middle East began, Japan has scrambled to secure crude oil supply from alternative sources and released stocks from reserves as its dependence on crude from the Middle East passing through Hormuz was more than 90% of all crude imports