Authored by David Hebert via TheDailyEconomy.org,

A recent report from The Heritage Foundation argues that “the wealthy” are not “idle idols” but are instead owners and investors of wealth-creating ventures.

Through their ownership of productive assets, they are the driving force behind overall wealth creation in the country and, in some cases, the world.  The report reveals a crucial truth that is often lost in today’s political rhetoric: the overwhelming majority of American wealth among the most wealthy (88.2 percent) consists of assets linked directly to businesses and economic production. Despite the commonly accepted belief that millionaires hold their money in real estate or “yachts, sports cars, private planes, gold bars, and jewelry,” most of that wealth is investment, not consumption goods.

Building on this important truth, we emphasize two additional insights that may inform our current policy debates, particularly as the Trump administration seeks to expand government ownership stakes in private companies.

First, we must acknowledge that capitalism, for all its flaws in practice, is fundamentally a system that rewards serving others, not exploiting them.

Look at Henry Ford: he benefited tremendously from figuring out how to mass produce cars such that the common man was able to afford a vehicle. But I submit to you that, while he became fabulously wealthy from his innovations, the real winners of this exchange were people like you and me. Everyday Americans received better access to transportation, fundamentally transforming our lives. People like Ford already had access to this then-privilege, so while he may command more wealth as a result of his efforts, the efforts themselves improved our lives much more than his.

The people who create medical treatments and vaccines against disease also often become wealthy. But when people all around the world are freed from contracting diseases, enjoying a fundamentally better and happier life, the wealth gained by their inventors seems small. 

Or think of tech moguls like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook. By bringing computing power to the masses, they fundamentally transformed the way we all live our everyday lives.

Consider this ad for computers from 1990:

In today’s dollars, these items would cost $6,590, $2,533, and $5,829, respectively. Also in 1990, the average nominal pay for the whole United States was $23,602, meaning that the average person would have to work 220 hours, 84 hours, and 194 hours respectively, to buy these items. Today, with an average wage of $36.44 ($72,880 annually), the hours worked to afford these items (at their 2025 prices) would be 181, 70, and 160.

But we wouldn’t be buying computer equipment from 1990, anyway. Computer prices have actually fallen dramatically. At the time of this writing, a comparable baseline iMac costs $1,299 (35 hours of work).  The latest LaserJet printer from HP costs $169 (4.6 hours).  IBM sold its computer hardware division to Lenovo in 2005, and a Lenovo desktop computer now costs $859 (23.5 hours). Even if we ignore the massive improvements in quality and the explosion of computing power contained in those devices, computing power has never been more affordable. Millions of careers were transformed by the efforts of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and everyone else from engineer to assembly line at Microsoft and Apple. And while the CEOs and employees of these companies have surely become wealthier, the real winners of the innovations are everyday people like you and me.

In a free society characterized by capitalism, wealth is generated by serving others.

Those who can best serve others — and consume less than they generate — find themselves amassing what we define as “wealth.”

The second lesson we can glean from the Heritage study is what the ultra-wealthy actually do with the wealth they amass. Nearly 90 percent of their fortunes are tied up in productive economic activity, not luxury consumption. Only three percent of the top one percent’s wealth is in consumer durables — things like cars, furniture, and jewelry. For the bottom quintile, that ratio is likely to be 15-20 percent.  

Far from being “idle rich,” the wealthy invest their fortunes, providing the capital necessary to fund increased economic activity. For the rest of us, that means more jobs, more production, and better access to the goods and services that enable us to live healthily and wealthily, however we choose to define these terms.

That investment cycle also helps explain why “eating the rich” is a recipe for disaster. Sticking the rich with exorbitant federal taxes can only mean that wealth is removed from productive economic uses to pay for public sector malfeasance. Policymakers are not taking gold coins out of a swimming pool à la Scrooge McDuck, they’re taking investments out of the private sector. The loss of capital impacts not the rich, primarily, but the prosperity that the rest of us have come to enjoy and depend upon.

The reality is that the wealth of the wealthiest people in America largely represents the market’s assessment of their ability to continue serving their customers in the future. As new information comes to light, this assessment can and does change. Tesla, for example, started off white-hot, with stock prices skyrocketing. But lately, after the abysmal launch of the Cybertruck and delays in its production and delivery, combined with some of Musk’s stupendously bad investments, the market has revised its assessment of Tesla downward.  As a result, Musk has lost more than $80 billion in wealth thus far in 2025 alone.

This brings us to a troubling development: President Trump, Congressional Republicans, and members of the so-called New Right have recently floated the idea that we should tax the rich more. Even more alarmingly, these same people hold that the federal government should take equity stakes in private companies. This is a fundamental departure from the principles that allowed for the creation of the wealth policymakers now wish to strip away, and a complete rejection of lower-tax, small-government Republicanism.

President Trump is “taking a 10 percent stake in Intel,” making the federal government the single largest stakeholder of the company. Earlier this year, the sale of US Steel to Nippon was approved, contingent on the US government receiving a “golden share.” While Trump is in office, this golden share is held by the President (i.e. Donald Trump), and after he leaves office, it will revert to being held by the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Importantly, while he is in office, the President will have veto power over some production and wage decisions. Not wishing to be left behind, the Pentagon is taking a 15 percent stake in MP Materials, a producer of rare-earth magnets, among other things.

All of this shifts the nation away from the capitalism that created an economy (and indeed, society) the likes of which has never been seen in human history and toward the type of capitalism found in, say, China. Trying to “out-China” China is a fool’s errand.
The reality is that economies, societies, and the nation itself are best served when individual people are given the freedom and tools to succeed, not when government bureaucrats pick winners and losers.

In a free-market, capitalist system like the one the US for the most part enjoys, the best way to serve oneself is by serving others.

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

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, held from August 31 to September 1, was clearly an economic ‘show of force’ aimed at the West, which included the typical formal greetings and speeches, and group photos – but also with some not so subtle messaging.

Amid the chummy atmosphere which saw Presidents Xi, Modi, and Putin share hugs, handshakes, and warm moments filled with laughter, it is intent on signaling to the world a major shift away from US-led global dominance and toward a multipolar world increasingly shaped by Asia, Eurasia, and the Global South, also coming at a moment Washington is threatening severe secondary sanctions on any nation doing business with Russia.

The populations of China, India, and Russia represent over a third of the global population alone, and heads of state from over 20 more countries were also represented, among them Belarus and Slovakia.

Russian President Putin at one point hailed it as a summit of “authentic multilateralism” and called for a new Eurasian security framework free from Western influence. Indian Prime Minister Modi’s presence was a first in many years.

The NY Times described “a scene in eastern China almost certainly intended for an audience on the other side of the world: The leaders of China, Russia and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, smiling and laughing like good friends as they greeted each other at a summit on Monday.”

The publication went on: “It starts with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia holding hands and walking into a meeting hall filled with other world leaders. They head straight for President Xi Jinping of China, shake hands and form a close circle. A few words are exchanged before translators join the huddle. Mr. Putin cracks a broad smile, and Mr. Modi lets out a big laugh. At one point, Mr. Modi joins hands with the two leaders.”

The Times further says the SCO summit has “given China and Russia a platform to rally partners such as Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Pakistan.”

Putin & Modi share warm embrace

Did someone say tariffs? https://t.co/X58RZklRVA pic.twitter.com/AkKukBkEVC

— RT (@RT_com) September 1, 2025

Various state media outlets have been emphasizing this theme of standing up to America’s military and economic might. For example, Russian state media, interviewing a China analyst, said:

China and India can now stand together against US hegemony — Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies

“The Dragon and Elephant ‘have the wisdom’ to resolve their differences and border conflicts.”

China’s Xi in his opening speech urged the attendees to stand against the “Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation and bullying.” He urged for the organization to “forge ahead’ amid “global upheaval.”

All of this is of course happening amid the backdrop of the Ukraine war, and China is one of the few places Putin can freely go and enjoy the red carpet, where Global South heads of state clamor for a handshake with him, or photo op.

One Moscow-based Wester journalist captioned a photo, ironically: Isolation, today in China.

Contrast this with the sad image of European leaders being collectively and ceremoniously humiliated at the White House last week https://t.co/3lIjcnJsGD

— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) August 31, 2025

However, Gautam Bambawale, India’s former ambassador to China, cautioned in an interview with CNBC: “The dragon and the elephant are not dancing as yet. They are just looking at each other from opposite sides of a room and trying to assess what are the implications of the relationship between the two? It’s going to take time to bring the relationship back on track.”

Still, the years-long trend has been that the more Washington ramps up pressure and the threat of sanctions on both, the faster that historic tensions and divides are healed.

Group photo as Putin and Xi inseparable…

JUST IN: 🇨🇳 World leaders take group photo at SCO summit in China. pic.twitter.com/VcZJIuO6L9

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) August 31, 2025

Russian media has framed the optics as follows:

The pitch: Xi is promoting an order that “democratizes” global governance and reduces dependence on US-centric finance (think: less dollar gravity, more regional institutions). Putin called the SCO a vehicle for “genuine multilateralism” and Eurasian security. By calling China a partner rather than a rival, Modi signaled New Delhi won’t be locked into Washington’s anti-China agenda.

The audience: More than 20 non-Western leaders were in the room, with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres endorsing the event organisation – not a club meeting in the shadows, but a UN-centered frame at a China-led forum.

President Trump responded to the clear messaging of ‘friendship’ and ‘unity’ among China, Russia, and India on Monday – writing on Truth Social, “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us.” He added that the US remains India’s “biggest client.”

Vice President JD Vance featured the somewhat defensive statement on X as well…

“The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high Tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one sided disaster! Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S. They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” Trump posted.

As for Modi, he wrote on X just following the close of the summit, “Held an excellent meeting with President Putin on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin. We discussed ways to deepen bilateral cooperation in all spheres, including trade, fertilizers, space, security, and culture. We exchanged views on regional and global processes, including the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

American left-wing heroes are proving to be a creepy bunch.

So what do some of the most renowned “resistance” left-wing heroes have in common other than shared hatred of conservative America?

They are either criminals, pathological liars, or self-described performance-art victims.

Take Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the current face of progressive resistance to the enforcement of federal immigration law.

No one questions that Garcia had previously received deportation orders before he was re-arrested by ICE.

No one argues that his current wife, Vasquez Sura, had in the past successfully petitioned for at least two protective restraining orders against Abrego Garcia—to stop his violent beatings and his manic destruction of household items.

In the old Democratic Party, the worst allegation possible was to be cast as a beater of women.

No one contests that in 2022, Garcia was pulled over in Tennessee for speeding and recklessly veering out of his lane.

He was then found to have an invalid driver’s license. He was accompanied by eight illegal aliens without IDs. And his vehicle was registered to an imprisoned and likely human trafficker. Garcia had been variously recognized in deportation hearings as a member of the violent and lethal MS-13 gang.

Yet when ICE began to deport him, the left went ballistic and constructed him as some sort of civil rights saint.

Senators tossed drinks with the illegal alien.

A few politicos trekked on a holy hejira to El Salvador to demand from the autonomous El Salvadorian government the release of a Salvadorian citizen held in jail on Salvadorian soil—as if they were 19th-century Yanqui imperialists dictating to an elected Central American government that the United States had more rights of jurisdiction over an illegal alien than did the government of El Salvador over one of their own citizens on their own soil.

Feminists said little about his brutal propensity to strike women. Anti-gang activists went mostly mum about his MS-13 affiliations. Those decrying human trafficking were quiet about his transportation of illegal aliens.

Instead, all that was needed of this useful illegal alien pawn was the Democrat meme that Abrego Garcia was a victimized person of color and a target of Trump’s supposedly racist, restrictionist, and xenophobic border policies. His crimes in comparison were immaterial if not advantageous to the cause. No one bothered to remember the legions of innocent women killed and raped by violent illegal aliens.

Mahmoud Khalil was a different, far smoother sort of leftist icon. The pro-Hamas Algerian “student” came to the US supposedly for the chance at an Ivy League education. He soon stayed on a green card, becoming the poster boy of anti-Israel protests at Columbia.

To counter sometimes violent campus and urban pro-Hamas demonstrations and endemic anti-Semitism in elite higher education, the Trump administration decided that it no longer wished to import student force multipliers of widespread anti-American and anti-Semitic boilerplate.

In other words, the Trump administration ordered Khalil deported on the grounds that he was admitted as a guest student, not a perennial campus gadfly organizer spouting support for the terrorists of Hamas.

Note the U.S. is the host, Khalil the guest. And hosts need no reasons to disinvite unruly or obnoxious guests, who abuse the privileges (that most American citizens lack) of attending an Ivy League school.

Yet in the Democratic binary of oppressed/oppressors, Khalil fit the bill.

He was a “lite” Hamas supporter and a clever anti-Israel activist who oversaw demonstrations that were overtly anti-Semitic in his host country. The only lingering question is why do pro-Hamas, anti-American Palestinians so often demand to visit and study in the hated U.S. when there are universities receptive and conducive to Islamists and Hamas enablers closer to home?

The left seemed mostly uninterested in any of the 1,200 slaughtered on October 7 in a time of peace, only in those who championed the cause of that murderous rampage.

The left also went gaga over the wealthy, aristocratic, and supposedly charming young Luigi Mangione, the assassin of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson. Not since the terrorist and mass murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev adorned the cover of Rolling Stone has the left so romanticized a stone-cold psychopath.

Mangione quickly became a supposed counter-culture freedom fighter, with his good looks battling the corporate insects who supposedly feed on hoi polloi.

In reality, Thompson was an up-from-the-bootstraps Midwesterner who, by merit, not birth, climbed to the top of the corporate world, murdered by Mangione, a spoiled, rich wannabe pseudo-intellectual who cowardly hid in wait to blow apart Thompson for the supposed crime of running the company that made a profit selling needed health insurance to willing buyers.

But for the left, the death throes of Thompson were out of mind and out of sight, while Mangione was interviewed and lauded on social media as a righteous revenger and the arm of the exploited.

Do we even now remember the faker Jussie Smollett?

He was the multiracial actor who was worried that he was a fading star in a soon-to-be-cancelled TV show.

So he staged a violent crime in which he hired two burly assailants with red MAGA-like hats to 1) ambush him in the early morning hours, 2) be warded off by the feisty, heroic, cell-phone- and sandwich-holding diminutive Smollett, and 3) manage nonetheless to “whiten” Smollett with bleach (defying the laws of chemistry by not freezing when thrown on Smollett in the arctic winter Chicago night temperature) as they tossed a “noose” over his neck, shouting MAGA slurs about his black-cast Empire television series.

Smollett’s rent-a-thugs were taped buying the tools of the ambush. They had cashed Smollett’s checks as proof of his hire and confessed both to the crime and its practice run.

Yet, Smollett became the immediate heroic victim and thus proof, according to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris, of endemic racism.

What a horrific America when brilliant and brave black stars had to fight off red-hatted, noose-carrying, bleach-bringing, Empire-hating, 2-AM-lurking, white-male, MAGA racist bullies, prowling randomly in sub-zero temperatures for targets in a liberal, mostly black neighborhood, and on the lookout for innocent, brilliant, brave, young, black, movie stars so often wandering in the deep night.

The left not only fell for that skit but for days ran with Jussie as proof of what black men have to put up with from the white establishment in Chicago.

There are lots of criminals who could be added to the leftist pantheon.

The now iconic George Floyd, despite the tragedy of his detention and death, was resisting arrest while stopped under the influence of drugs, while likely trying to pass counterfeit money, while an eight-times convicted felon, and while a former four-year convict who previously had staged a home invasion and robbery and aimed a gun at the abdomen of a female occupant.

No wonder he soon appeared memorialized on murals with wings and a halo.

Michael Brown, of the lie “hands up, don’t shoot” that went viral, was supposedly gunned down in the back as he vainly tried to flee a white racist cop looking for prey in Ferguson, Missouri.

No matter that in truth, Brown was a thief who had just strong-armed a store clerk and was confronted by a policeman while brazenly walking down the center of the street.

Brown then attacked the cop and sought in vain to grab his weapon. After their struggle, he ran away, then turned and charged the officer until he was shot.

For the left, he was another instant, noble victim of racist white police.

So naturally, weeks of protests followed, sometimes violent, as liberal elected officials visited Ferguson to show solidarity against “the militarization of the police” and to honor Michael Brown. White, entitled CNN anchors paraded in their newsrooms while holding their hands up, chanting the lie “hands up, don’t shoot.”

Octogenarian Native American activist Leonard Peltier was recently granted limited parole. He was successfully convicted a half-century earlier of murdering two FBI agents—allegedly executing two defenseless young officers with coup de gras shots to their heads as they lay wounded.

For decades, he posed as a “political prisoner” of a racist, white-rigged system. And despite an earlier failed prison break and serially refused pardons, nonetheless, in the fleeting hours of the autopen Biden administration, Peltier was finally released home under supervision—a defiant leftist resistance hero and unrepentant murderer to the end.

Both these violent and suave heroes were canonized by the left because of their perceived opposition to corporate America, or law enforcement, or a conservative administration, or white people, and, in particular, more recently, to the hated Trump.

Given its cosmic morality, the left never really cared that Jussie Smollett not just lied but that his lies could not possibly in a Newtonian world be true, or that assassin Mangione showed all the mercilessness of a professional Mafia hit man, or that it proved impossible for the guest “student” Khalil ever to voice disapproval of the mass murdering act of Hamas on October 7, or that America in 2025 did not need to import more wife beaters, human traffickers, and gang members.

Why does the left make martyrs out of monsters?

One, in postmodern America, there are too many victims for too few victimizers. So to distinguish the one from the many requires all the more psychodramas and grammar-school dramatics. Violence and claims of racism add to the hero’s mystique.

Two, the heroes are mere pawns in a larger game of “social justice” in which both useful idiots and ruthless criminals alike can advance the cause.

Morality, then, is never defined by the means but only by the eventual ends. Facts don’t matter; only the noble lies for the cause.

Three, the worshipers are, for the most part, affluent and safe; the worshiped are not so tame.

So it became easy to immortalize a Garcia—as long as he does not live next door.

It is virtuous to praise publicly a Mangione—unless he is armed and hiding in wait for your parents.

Smollett is a noble victim, at least when you’re not a cop at 3 AM trying to sort out all the preposterous lies of Jussie’s noose, bleach, and “bruises.”

“Hands up, don’t shoot” is a catchy civil-rights call to arms—at least when Michael Brown is not strong-arming you in a store or he is not charging you head down.

You can play-act Gandhi—when you’re not Garcia’s battered girlfriend, or you do not answer the door at night when George Floyd barges in with a pointed gun, or you’re not wounded and begging for your life when Leonard Peltier pulls the trigger.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Brianna Keilar thought she had Seb Gorka cornered. Instead, she got STEAMROLLED with the facts.

Gorka said the quiet part OUT LOUD about the transgender shooter epidemic and the anti-Christian ideology that’s fueling it.

Then he dropped the HAMMER:

“Forgive me if I don’t go with CNN’s stats, okay? CNN has proven itself to be WHOLLY inaccurate…”

By the end, he even called her out for creating “live FAKE news” to her face—leaving CNN’s narrative in flames.

What CNN thought would happen and what happened were directly at odds with one another.

When anchor Brianna Keilar sat down for an interview with Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, she didn’t see the headlights of a locomotive coming straight for her.… pic.twitter.com/ULfceTb06f

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

What CNN thought would happen and what happened were directly at odds with one another.

When anchor Brianna Keilar sat down for an interview with Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, she didn’t see the headlights of a locomotive coming straight for her.

Her foot was caught between the tracks.

The topic: the recent shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Another data point on the rising curve of violence committed by unhinged transgender shooters, once again targeting Christians.

And it immediately went in the direction no one at CNN wanted it to go.

Gorka said the quiet part out loud about the transgender shooter epidemic…live, on their own network.

Not only that, he called out the anti-Christian ideology fueling these attacks.

Gorka began the unraveling of the narrative: “We have to put this incident into the broader context of what we’ve witnessed.”

First, the transgender part.

“In just the last few years, more than half a dozen attacks of a similar variety involving individuals who were confused about their gender, to put it mildly.”

Second, the attacks on Christianity.

“And then, as you mentioned, at the top of your monologue: we have the videos, we have the statements from the dead shooter that were clearly anti-Christian, just as with the transgender attack on the Nashville Christian school, in which more children were killed.”

“There is an ideological connection to multiple of these attacks where innocent children, especially Christians and Catholics, are targeted. And that is very, very disturbing.”

This was just the beginning.

Keilar, with network talking points in hand, wasn’t about to let the truth come to the surface without spin. Trying to steer the conversation back into CNN-friendly territory, Keilar reached for a stat.

“Okay. So let me ask you about this. You know, 96% of attackers—when you’re… pic.twitter.com/SnwvVLH8N3

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

Keilar, with network talking points in hand, wasn’t about to let the truth come to the surface without spin. Trying to steer the conversation back into CNN-friendly territory, Keilar reached for a stat.

“Okay. So let me ask you about this. You know, 96% of attackers—when you’re looking at the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020—96% were non-trans men.”

“So I know you’re focusing on this shooter being trans. The shooter was trans…and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here, when you zero in on that instead of more broadly the school shooters as an epidemic—and you perhaps miss the through line that connects them all?”

It was riddled with issues and Gorka knew exactly what she was trying to do.

He shut it down immediately with one VERY inconvenient truth.

CNN was padding the numbers by lumping in inner-city gang violence to dilute the real trend. This happens all the time on networks unwilling to face the hard truths.

“Well, no, because your facts obfuscate two things.”

He called out what CNN didn’t want anyone to notice.

“You are using data based upon the predominant gun violence, which is gang-on-gang violence with zero ideological content.”

“If you remove all of that—the gang violence on the streets of Chicago, L.A., Detroit—then you come down to a much smaller data set.”

“So it’s like those who say gun violence in America causes so many deaths, and then fail to note that the majority of the stats they are using refer also to suicides by gun, which of course is not what we are talking about here today.”

He wasn’t letting her move the goalposts.

“So let’s concentrate on mass shootings at schools, specifically Christian or Catholic schools.”

“Then the data set is wholly different. So don’t conflate different data sets just to make a political point. There was an ideological content to this attack. That’s what terrorism is.”

“It’s not because somebody didn’t get the drug deal they wanted. It is an ideological message.”

This was the first time someone had called out this kind of data manipulation on live cable news.

This was the precise moment when the segment EXPLODED.

It went “off the rails”, if you will.

Keilar, still fighting to preserve her network’s narrative, said:

“So let’s narrow it down then, because by CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings since 2020, in which you… pic.twitter.com/qBfkMfPXwx

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

This was the precise moment when the segment EXPLODED.

It went “off the rails”, if you will.

Keilar, still fighting to preserve her network’s narrative, said:

“So let’s narrow it down then, because by CNN’s count, when you look at 32 school shootings since 2020, in which you have four or more people who have been killed—so these are the larger school shootings—only 3 of 32 of those shootings were committed by transgender shooters.”

She thought this would shut him down, but there would be no coming back from what came next.

Gorka nuked the very network that was hosting him.

It was an awakening.

The Sword of Damocles had fallen on the mainstream media.

“Forgive me if I don’t go with CNN’s stats, okay?”

“CNN has proven itself to be WHOLLY inaccurate in all kinds of things for the last ten years.”

Gorka brought the receipts of where the network had gotten things completely wrong in the past.

“Perpetrators of the Russia Russia hoax, and that we didn’t have an open border. So PLEASE forgive me if I don’t take your stats for granted!”

Keilar tried to regain control: “All right. It’s simple math. 2 of 32 shootings—”

But Gorka didn’t let her finish: “No it’s not, it’s distortions.”

“YOU are distorting the facts.”

And then came the hammer:

“Let me be clear, in just a couple of years, we have seen SEVEN mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who were confused in their gender. SEVEN in just the last couple of years. That is inordinately high.”

One last jab for good measure.

“I’m going to stick with the facts and not CNN’s pseudo-facts.”

Brutal.

The interview wasn’t quite finished though. Then Keilar tried to twist the knife, putting words in Gorka’s mouth.

Keilar then tried to put words directly into Gorka’s mouth and he didn’t let it slide.

“Well, let me ask you this. You’ve made it clear, and this is not going to… pic.twitter.com/bl12BT5zHx

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

The interview wasn’t quite finished though. Then Keilar tried to twist the knife, putting words in Gorka’s mouth.

Keilar then tried to put words directly into Gorka’s mouth and he didn’t let it slide.

“Well, let me ask you this. You’ve made it clear, and this is not going to change, you think transgender people are the problem here. So what specifically do you think should be done?”

That’s when Gorka called out Keilar for creating “live FAKE news” out of thin air.

“When did I say that? When did I say that Brianna?”

“You just created live—you just created live FAKE news.”

“You just did it right in front of the small viewership you have, okay?”

Keilar was not happy.

She was clearly rattled but kept pressing: “Mr. Gorka what do you think should be done here?! You have—you have zeroed on the fact on what you see as a problem, what you claim is a problem. What do you want to do about it?”

Gorka asked: “Do you think it’s a problem that individuals are targeting little children at Catholic schools? Do you think that’s something we should ignore?”

Keilar: “Of course I think that’s a problem.”

Gorka: “Thank you! So, what we should do, is we should look at the early warning signals, the signs.”

He then broke down in detail what needs to happen to actually prevent future tragedies against America’s children.

It was something that no one else in the media wants to talk about.

“I find it hard to believe that an individual goes from getting his mother to sign a change of name certificate, age 17, and then just a handful of years later, is mowing down INNOCENT children in a church pew during a Catholic mass, and NOBODY realized there was a problem.”

“That’s what we have to address to save the next children from the next atrocity.”

Gorka hit CNN with a hard fact that they seem incapable of grasping when anyone brings up the transgender shooting epidemic.

“It’s not about the sexual proclivities of the individual. It’s the fact that nobody seems to notice a very disturbing pattern towards violence.”

He made the point: none of this happens in a vacuum.

The shooter in Minneapolis, just like others before, had glaring red flags, digital footprints…yet no one did anything.

The final moments were all too revealing for CNN.

Keilar, still grasping for her narrative, asked Gorka a follow-up: “And what about all the non-trans school shooters?”

This was a mistake…because Gorka’s entire point applies to all shooters.

It’s the opposite of what the left… pic.twitter.com/b4JjDRIMJK

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

The final moments were all too revealing for CNN.

Keilar, still grasping for her narrative, asked Gorka a follow-up: “And what about all the non-trans school shooters?”

This was a mistake…because Gorka’s entire point applies to all shooters.

It’s the opposite of what the left always demands after mass shootings: gun control.

Instead, Gorka made it clear the problem isn’t the weapon. It’s the person pulling the trigger.

“The same thing happens. They have multiple interactions with authorities, with their schools, with the principals. Why is something not being done?”

“Instead of blaming an inanimate object, which is the weapon, how about addressing the human being instead? And giving them aid, giving them psychological support, giving them an off-ramp?”

“That’s what needs to happen. We need to stop the violence before it occurs.”

But somehow, Keilar still wasn’t finished.

Hard to believe.

She tried a last-ditch gotcha question aimed at the Trump administration…and it backfired spectacularly.

“To that point, DHS cut funding to the Minnesota Department of Safety and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office in July. That is the kind of funding that’s used to assess and manage mass violence threats like these. Was that a mistake? And should it be reinstated?”

Gorka was ready.

This wasn’t about federal funding. It was about failed state policy.

He made Keilar take a closer look at Minnesota…since she brought it up.

“The same state of Minnesota that actually enacted gun-free zones that we know THIS killer actually favored in his manifesto, in his videos. He studied the Aurora shooter’s policy of looking for sites where individuals were not allowed to legally carry and protect themselves.”

It was a reckoning on gun restrictions.

And this was the moment Keilar knew she had just lost the battle.

The defeated expression painted on her face said it all. Gorka continued.

“So I’d start not with the policies coming out of the Department of Homeland Security that gets the threat—and I’d concentrate on those municipalities and those governors like Tim Walz, who do what? DISARM honest citizens who could protect lives and save lives.”

“Let’s start there.”

It was over.

The locomotive had destroyed everything in its path, including CNN’s narrative.

Watch closely. This was EXACT moment that Brianna knew the narrative had been crushed.

Watch closely. This was EXACT moment that Brianna knew the narrative had been crushed.

That sigh said everything that needed to be said. pic.twitter.com/pPWfOQi4pw

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 31, 2025

That sigh said everything that needed to be said.

*  *  *

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.

It was the White House ambush that shocked the world.  A South African delegation headed by president Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in Washington DC with big grins and smug confidence, ready to milk the American taxpayer for even more foreign aid.  What they received instead was thorough embarrassment.

Trump confronted Ramaphosa on the issue of race-based land seizures through the Expropriation Act of 2024, which largely targets white farmers for confiscation (There are 140 race based laws that oppress whites in SA) .  The land is then redistributed to black citizens who often run the farms into the ground. The leader has denied that land confiscation is taking place.  The South African government and the leftist media has spent the better part of the year trying to spin the issue and deny their motives.  

When asked by reporters what he could do to convince Trump there there was no threat of “white genocide” in South Africa, Ramaphosa chuckled and shrugged off the accusation, suggesting that Trump had been misinformed.  Trump surprised the leftist political leader with a video montage proving otherwise. 

The South African government, dominated by woke political activists, has tried to cover up the targeting of white farmers by race communists for years.  Their efforts to expropriate land from those same farmers sent a clear message that they are in support of the ethnic cleansing of whites.  

Trumps montage featured a number of speeches by communist EFF party leader Julius Malema.  Malema represents around 10% of South African voters, but all parties in South Africa are essentially socialist or communist in their ideals and Malema’s sentiments are shared by many of their members.  White conservatives in SA have near-zero representation in the government.  Malema’s chant of “Kill the Boer” (kill the white farmer), is not limited to members of the EFF. 

Malema had been brought up on charges of inciting race violence through hate speech before, and was convicted on lesser incidents in 2011.  None of the charges for his genocide chants stuck.  The courts categorized “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” as a type of protest song.  It was treated as protected cultural expression rather than what it really was, a call to mass murder.  Malema famously noted:

‘No white man is going to beat me up…You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing…”  

The Home Office said Malema had also made “statements calling for the slaughter of white people [in South Africa] or hinted that it could be an acceptable option in the future”.

However, after pressure placed on SA leaders by the Trump Administration through sanctions, South Africa is starting to feel the pain and they are rolling over.  Malema has been brought up on charges again and this time he was convicted by an “equality court” for inciting violence through hate speech.

It might be the first time that a leftist bureaucratic institution in South Africa has actually punished a leftist group instead of protecting them from prosecution.  The EFF has responded by rolling out one of their token white members to deflect, concocting a story in which Malema led the chants because of a supposed “racist incident” at a high school that occurred years earlier (which did not involve farmers).  In other words, it was the white man’s fault that Malema called for the killing of whites.  

The EFF asserts that their actions are in response to “white supremacy”, but that excuse isn’t going to hold water anymore.  The equality court’s ruling justifies Trump’s concerns about anti-white racism in South Africa.  Furthermore, whites only make of around 7% of the population and have no power in government.  A group cannot be “supreme” if they have no power.

It is the leading party, the ANC, and their partners in numerous other socialist parties that have run the nation into the ground.  At this time, South Africa is nearing total collapse, with a 33% unemployment rate and crumbling infrastructure.

This is what happens when leftists are allowed to take power.  The result is an economic implosion with white conservatives and producers used as a convenient scapegoat. South African leaders are clearly not used to this kind of scrutiny.  They have long been shielded from western criticism by the establishment media. 

Trump is the first president to put a spotlight on the backwards leftist government and its grotesque mismanagement, and it appears that his efforts are beginning to have an effect.  Not so much in punishing Malema, it is unlikely he will face any real consequences.  Rather, it’s the fact that South Africa has been forced to acknowledge the ethnic hatred of whites as a tangible issue.  It’s a geopolitical win and a win against leftist propaganda. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Back to School

“We are living in what I call the 3rd Arc of American history, a period as consequential as the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War.”

– Gen. Michael Flynn

Yellowed leaves were already dropping here in August with the lack of rain and tomatoes won’t turn red when the air hits the mid-forties at dawn. Summer is trying hard to end, though technically there’s almost a month left. This is the real new year, of course, not the noisy one in January with all the drunken commotion and confetti. Tomorrow, it’s back to school, back to the job, the grind, the responsibilities, the worry, the rage, the hope, the yearning, as we gyre toward cold and fire. Enjoy ye burgers and hot dogs while ye can this Labor Day.

Anyway, the geniuses of Silicon Valley are attempting to end labor, at least any labor of the mind. A-I is coming for your job, ye middle managers, ye info manipulators, ye engineers, copy-writers, clerks, and numbers-crunchers, coming for whatever remains of the American bourgeoise. I’m telling you now: A-I will be a huge disappointment. Not only will it wreck the scaffold of our social order but, after it makes everything stupid — even worse than today — it will hallucinate so badly that anything it touches will become crazier than the Democratic Party.

That’s not a hard goal to reach either, with literacy at about what used to be age-eight-level for over half the US population. In such a milieu, gnostic communism is sure to flourish.

The immiseration of all becomes the greatest good for the greatest number. We’re already halfway there — though it is a pretty sure thing that the story will turn sharply. It’s not for nothing that we call this moment in history a “fourth turning.”

One turning point might lie directly ahead. You are now in the season of financial fiascos, and boy-oh-boy are we ever set up for a humdinger. Are you following the money-bloggers? Those boys and girls are staring into the abyss staring back at them, with their hair on fire and their eyes bugging out. Just about everything is unreal and out of whack: equity markets, bond rollovers, the fun-house of shadow banking, the value of collateral (if it’s even there), the fate of currencies, perhaps even the fate of nations. France, for instance, is chattering about an imminent IMF bailout. Well, if that one goes, what do you think happens in Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium . . . Western Civ, that is?

The cliché these days is that looming financial chaos and potential economic collapse is what’s driving the EU countries to all their loose war-talk. As if. . . as if they were even marginally capable of prosecuting any sort of war except the war against their own citizens currently underway — which requires only bureaucrats declaring new restrictions on liberty, not missiles, drones, bombs, bullets, and live human troops and, most of all, some comprehensible reason to fight.

Paranoia about Russia seeking to invade Western Europe is not a comprehensible reason to launch a war against Russia — because it’s just paranoia, political crazy, in the absence of any rational aspiration in current European governance. The Germans have tried “green” energy planning, shutting down their nuclear power plant fleet, applauding the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Where did that get them? I will tell you: it got them to a crashing standard-of-living. It got them to their current (maybe not-for-long) chancellor Friedrich Merz telling them last week to wave auf nimmer wiedersehen to their social welfare system, you know: cheap, subsidized medical care, free college, six-week vacations, cushy pensions. (And, meanwhile, do you mind if we spend whatever’s left of your taxes on free stuff for the hordes of third-world savages we stupidly imported into the country?)

But then, we’re not Europe. Mr. Trump has other ideas and is trying to lead a movement for re-ordering the economy back toward the production of real goods. It’s been tough-sledding, with every half-educated federal judge attempting to nix any-and-all executive actions in that direction. Anyway, if Europe’s banking system blows (and the accessories of banking, like markets and currencies, with that), then the damage is sure to spread to America, indeed probably all over the world, and then the fourth turning will rev-up to turning and churning at full speed. What will that mean?

A universal fall in global standards-of-living . . . the collapse of governments and sharp contraction of economies (Europe especially) . . . a period of very uncomfortable flux, how long, no one knows . . . and then the re-ordering of life that anyone with half a brain has expected, though perhaps not the way they expected. Here’s what I expect: the failure of most things organized at the giant scale: global corporations, national chain retail, distant supply-lines, and consequently the laborious, painful reconstruction of far more localized economies. I expect radical simplification of everyday life, including less high-tech, less intrusive government, irregular electric service, falling oil production, and a notable drop in population levels.

I expect a surprising shift in social relations, including a return to divisions of labor based on gender; de-pornified courtship manners and a revival of trad mating behavior, with priorities on motherhood and child-rearing in a crisis of infertility; a revival of religious communion (already underway in America’s youngest generation); a necessary return to the ethic of personal responsibility as government support withers; and a return to swift justice, including execution for significant crimes. I expect some nations to fracture into smaller regional and ethnic units, certainly Canada, possibly even the United States.

That’s a lot of upcoming action and, of course, it won’t all happen right away or at once, but it will get underway in earnest this fall. It’s not exactly Mr. Trump’s “Golden Age,” and surely not what a lot of people had expected in the way of a “Singularity” or a tech utopia or a unicorn nirvana. But it will have its charms and, for a while anyway, we will have to stop being stupid and crazy.

Late last month a CDC advisory committee launched a review into the “safety, effectiveness, and immunogenicity” of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as whether mRNA remains in the body longer than advertised. 

As part of the review, they will look at gaps in existing knowledge “relating to bio distribution, pharmacokinetics, and persistence of the spike protein, mRNA, and lipid nanoparticles to inform immunization recommendations,” the document states. In other words – they’ll be looking at whether the vaccine has ever worked, as well as harms it may cause. As ZeroHedge readers know, studies have found that the spike protein and mRNA in the vaccines persist for some time. 

Days after the committee was announced, the Department of Health & Human Services announced that Susan Monarez, who championed mRNA shots for COVID-19, is “no longer director of the CDC” – after she “clashed with the secretary (Kennedy) over vaccine policy,” which ultimately led to her firing.

Meanwhile at least four other CDC officials resigned on Wednesday in a massive leadership shakeup at the agency: Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology.

As the leadership crisis at the CDC unfolds, President Trump issued a somewhat cryptic ‘truth’ – challenging Pfizer and other vaccine makers to make public the same ‘GREAT’ claims his administration was shown in order to justify operation Warp Speed. 

“It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree!” Trump wrote. 

“I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not???” the ‘truth’ continues. “With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.” 

According to Trump, drugmakers need to “clear up this MESS,” adding that they “let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work.”

* * *

Meanwhile Rasmussen with the reminders…

Jan 2023 –https://t.co/GxELPw2xGk

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) September 1, 2025

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Peace-loving people throughout the world breathed a sigh of relief when the Israeli-American war on Iran ended in June after 12 days, with President Trump racing to triumphantly declare US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.

While his rhetoric suggested he wanted Israel and the world to view the US bombing as a lasting resolution of accusations that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, Israel and its Western collaborators are already setting the stage for new aggression against Iran. Israeli strikes could be just days or weeks away, with Netanyahu hoping that, this time, the United States will be drawn into yet another protracted, bloody regime-change campaign to further the Israeli agenda.

On Thursday, France, Germany and the United Kingdom notified the UN Security Council that they were starting the process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran via “snapback” provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal. Under that agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran agreed to many additional safeguards to ensure its nuclear program remains peaceful. For example, Iran eliminated its inventory of medium-enriched uranium, cut its low-enriched uranium by 98%, capped future enrichment at 3.67%, and rendered its heavy-water reactor inoperable by filling it with concrete. In exchange, Iran was granted sanctions relief.

Despite Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, President Trump spontaneously withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions that his administration called “the toughest sanctions ever imposed” on Iran. Victimized by a new round of Israel-encouraged US economic warfare, and lacking any other leverage to nudge the United States back into the deal, Iran began enriching uranium well above the levels allowed under the JCPOA.

Parroting Israel, Trump has insisted that Iran must cease all nuclear enrichment, something Tehran has categorically ruled out for years, asserting that it’s Iran’s right, both as a sovereign state and — unlike nuclear-armed Israel — as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Internal politics play a significant role in the impasse, with important Iranian segments opposed to bending to Western demands on a point of national pride for the scientifically-advanced country.

In something akin to Vito Corleone’s “offer that can’t be refused,” US-Israeli insistence on zero enrichment is — quite deliberately — a demand that won’t be accepted. To the benefit of the warmongers, this demand helps ensure perpetual tension and recurring US-Israeli military brinksmanship, all pursuant to Israel’s long-standing goal of maneuvering the United States into an all-out war on Iran, or at least a major drive to topple the regime via proxies. That’s consistent with Israel’s strategy, which centers on continuously shattering territories and countries throughout the region so none can serve as a potent rival. It’s a strategy that’s taken an unfathomable toll that falls heaviest on the people of the region, but also profoundly harms the United States.

If broader UN sanctions are indeed reimposed on Iran via the JCPOA snapback provisions 30 days from last week’s joint notification, Iran’s rulers will be under pressure to respond. In July, Iran’s deputy foreign minister threatened that Iran may do so by withdrawing from the NPT, which would mean an end to ongoing supervision of the Iranian nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA is already badly strained. “Iran expelled IAEA inspectors in the wake of the US-Israeli war in response to the watchdog’s role in providing a pretext for the initial Israeli attack and for its failure to condemn the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities,” explained Antiwar.com’s Dave DeCamp. Iran also says it suspects Israel obtained information from the IAEA that enabled the assassinations of more than a dozen Iranian scientists in June.

Iran allowed a team of inspectors to return last week, but it remains to be seen how much access they’ll be given. Among the largest questions looming over Iran’s bombed nuclear program: Where is the stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium that had been held deep under a mountain at Fordow? That enrichment facility was hammered by US bunker-buster bombs on June 22, but some reports have suggested Iran preemptively moved the uranium to another location before the Trump-ordered strike.

With both Israel and the United States threatening renewed warfare if Iran makes good on its promise to continue enriching uranium, Tehran will be justifiably reluctant to disclose the fate of its 60%-enriched uranium, or to give full access to its nuclear facilities, including those hit by Israel and the United States in June. After all, full transparency would certainly be exploited by military planners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

It’s a no-win situation for Iran. A withdrawal from the NPT will be portrayed by Israel and its Western allies as proof that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. The same narrative will be promoted if Iran continues to allow inspections, but fails to grant every request for access to sites around the country. It’s easy to purposefully trigger refusals — for example, by asking for access to sites that aren’t sincerely suspected of harboring nuclear assets, but are nonetheless sensitive from an Iranian national security standpoint.

Either way, Israel and its collaborators in Western governments can create a pretext for military intervention. Ironically, Israel may be pushing Iran into a corner that prompts Ayatollah Khamenei to withdraw his religious edict forbidding the development of nuclear weapons, turning a long-false accusation into reality.

Short of an all-out war or regime-change campaign, Israel — at the least — wants to impose a new, violent reality on Iran, says Trita Parsi, executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “What the Israelis wanted to achieve [in June], short of decapitation, was to make sure that they turn Iran into the next Lebanon or Syria, a country that Israel can bomb at will without American involvement and with complete impunity,” said Parsi on a recent appearance on the Scott Horton Show. “It’s part of the larger security strategy of the Israelis, which is security through complete military hegemony and domination. This is why they are very inclined to start a war again, and they want to do so before the political window in Washington closes.”

To preclude a new era in which Iran is routinely bombed by Israel, Parsi thinks Tehran will take a far more aggressive approach to retaliation than it did in June. “The Iranians will not show any of the restraint they showed in the last 12-day war. It’s very clear they were [planning] for a long confrontation, and as a result, they were not consuming everything they had at an early or a fast pace. But for the next war, they’re probably going to go all-in right away to completely dispel any notion in Israel that they can turn Iran into the next Syria.” Such a massive retaliation would seemingly amplify the risk of major US involvement.

CRAZY FOOTAGE 🔴

Video shows an Iranian hypersonic missile slamming down with lightning-like force. pic.twitter.com/YweBMOr0kH

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 16, 2025

Iran’s likely approach to the next round of warfare may be driving a sense of urgency in Israel to strike soon, given both countries are racing to replenish their arsenals. It’s not clear who’s best-positioned for that competition and the next exchange of fire.

Israel rapidly neutralized Iran’s air defenses in June, but, as the war progressed, Iran had increasing success of its own, bypassing Israeli air defenses and achieving some spectacular hypersonic ballistic-missile strikes on targets around the country. On the other hand, Iran’s offensive missile arsenal was depleted by use and degraded by Israeli attacks, and its missile and fuel production facilities were also hit.

IDF air defenses reportedly ran low on ammunition too, and the US arsenal was also weakened. In the most egregious example, to defend Israel from the consequences of its aggression, the US military burned through a quarter of its global inventory of high-end, THAAD missile interceptors, firing 150 of them at a staggering cost of some $2 billion. At the pace Lockheed Martin produces them, it will take more than a year to restore the THAAD inventory.

In addition to the ambiguous, multi-variable dynamics of the arms race, Israel’s eagerness to start the next round of warfare could also be driven by the shelf-life of whatever assets the Mossad still has inside Iran. Such assets played a major role in Israel’s surprise attack — reportedly deploying long-concealed drones, destroying anti-aircraft batteries, and facilitating the assassination of scientists and military commanders. Since the war, Iran has been sweeping the country for remaining Israeli assets, and rounding up suspected spies.

As Parsi indicated, US politics must also figure in Israel’s calculus. Americans’ support of Israel has been cratering as the IDF campaign in Gaza continues to produce images of suffering on an enormous scale, alongside a never-ending stream of credible testimonies about Israeli atrocities against civilians. The collapse in pro-Israel sentiment extends to what has long been the foremost cornerstone of Israeli support — the Republican Party. A spring Pew poll found that 50% of Republicans under 50 now have an unfavorable view of the Zionist state, and Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war on Iran in June sparked an uproar from his America-First base, led by influential figures like Steve Bannon.

Meanwhile, legislators from both sides of the aisle have been enduring disruptions at summer-recess town halls, with angry constituents condemning them for failing to block ongoing US facilitation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Add it all up, and Israel would likely want to make its next attempt at entangling Trump in a major war well before he’s highly sensitized to the potential impact on the 2025 midterms. Taking the longer view, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others must be contemplating the possibility that the long era of unwavering US support of Israel could be at the beginning of its end — incentivizing them to cash in on every American dollar, missile, UN veto and misguided military intervention they can before the party’s over.

In the meantime, Israel and its collaborators throughout the West will continue doing all they can grease the skids for the next war, which includes propaganda campaigns to cultivate fear and loathing of Iran. Decades into that undertaking, the anti-Iran material is dominated by tired old lines that just don’t hit like they used to, like warnings that Iran is “months away” from having a nuclear weapon — warnings we’ve been subjected to for decades, despite contradictory conclusions of the US intelligence community.

After launching his war on Iran in June, Netanyahu dusted off a propaganda line from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, claiming Israeli intelligence had just learned that, if Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it would hand them over to non-state proxies to inflict “nuclear terrorism on global scale.” The fact that Netanyahu quickly dropped that far-fetched claim from his wartime oratory speaks volumes.

Speaking of things that sound made up, last week Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his security agencies determined Iran had directed arson attacks on a Jewish business and a synagogue in Australia in 2024. Western reporters dutifully quoted the claim, without adding their newfangled “without evidence” modifier they selectively apply to statements made by politicians they revile. Iran’s supposed motive? “To undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community,” said Albanese with a straight face. Embedding a second dubious claim inside the first, Australia says its intelligence community reached its conclusion about Iranian government involvement in the arsons on its own.

After leveling the accusation, Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador — the first time it did so to any country’s ambassador since World War II — and designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. Aside from serving the broader propaganda campaign, the claim and related moves carried potential political benefits for Albanese — countering Netanyahu’s recent accusation that Albanese had failed to take “decisive action” against an “alarming rise of antisemitism in Australia.” Netanyahu even went so far as to assign the Australian prime minister a Sept 23, Rosh Hashanah deadline to “replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve.”

You can expect many more accusations to be leveled against Iran in the coming days and weeks. Some may be true, but allow me to pass on a useful reminder from Aussie Caitlin Johnstone. With each new claim, bear in mind Hitchens’ Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

STARK REALITIES: Invigoratingly Unorthodox Perspectives For Intellectually Honest Readers 

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

Authored by Jeff Louderbeck via The Epoch Times,

Marking the unofficial end of summer, Labor Day has long been highlighted by parades, backyard barbecues, and leisurely pursuits. However, the national holiday’s origins reflect a darker time for workers and include unrest over oppressive working conditions and a strike that turned violent.

During the Industrial Revolution, after the Civil War, many workers toiled for at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, on railroads and in factories, mines, and mills just to make ends meet.

While the hours were grueling, the working conditions made their days even worse, which ultimately led to the growth of labor unions.

Appealing for shorter workweeks and better conditions, the labor movement arose and escalated in the 1860s and 1870s.

Like Independence Day, Labor Day is a time when many small towns and big cities host celebratory parades. In the late 19th century, activists from the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor spearheaded what is known as the first Labor Day event, when about 10,000 workers marched through the streets of New York City on Sept. 5, 1882.

Organizers proclaimed it “a general holiday for the workingmen of this city.” The parade became an annual event, and in 1884, it was set for the first Monday in September, according to the New-York Historical Society.

Between 1887 and 1894, Labor Day became an official holiday in several states. The day varied among the first day of September, the first Monday of September, and the first Saturday of September.

Oregon was the first state to designate a Labor Day holiday in 1887. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York followed the next year.

In 1893, Sen. James Kyle of South Dakota introduced a bill to declare Labor Day a federal holiday. The bill languished without discussion in the Senate until June 26, 1894, when Congress passed it. President Grover Cleveland signed the legislation on June 28, 1894, and the first nationwide Labor Day was celebrated on the first Monday of September that year.

President Grover Cleveland (1837–1908), the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Courtesy of the National Archives/Newsmakers/Getty Images/TNS

Although Kyle is credited with presenting the legislation, it is uncertain who first suggested making Labor Day a national holiday.

Some records point to Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, according to the Department of Labor. In 1882, he reportedly recommended establishing a day for a “general holiday for the laboring classes” to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Others believe that machinist Matthew Maguire, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday.

Maguire eventually served as secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, New Jersey. He proposed the holiday in 1882 when he was secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York, the Department of Labor reported.

Response to the new holiday was positive.

Parades across the country drew large crowds. At the first official Labor Day parade in Chicago, Lawrence McGann, chairman of the House Labor Committee, told 30,000 revelers, “Let us each Labor Day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement [sic], and the laws will be changed,” according to the Office of the Historian for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Haymarket Riot

Another labor-centered holiday, May Day, was created in the aftermath of the Haymarket Riot in May 1886. Workers flooded Chicago’s streets to demand an eight-hour workday. Scuffles between police and workers ensued over several days. Police ordered the crowd to disperse, and a bomb detonated on May 4.

At an international gathering of socialists in Paris in 1889, May Day was declared a holiday honoring workers’ rights. Cleveland feared that May Day would become “a memorial to the Haymarket radicals.” He encouraged state legislatures to celebrate a labor-centric holiday in September instead and eventually signed the federal holiday at the same time that tension arose in a company town outside of Chicago.

Employees of the railway sleeping car titan George Pullman went on strike on May 11, 1893.

Pullman, Illinois, was founded by Pullman in 1880 and designed to serve as a utopian community for workers.

Residents worked for the Pullman Palace Car Company. Their paychecks were drawn from the Pullman bank, and their rent was set by Pullman and automatically deducted from their paychecks.

In 1893, there was a nationwide depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined. Pullman laid off hundreds of employees. Workers who remained saw their wages cut while rents remained consistent.

Employees walked out, demanding higher pay and lower rents.

Led by Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1920, the American Railway Union aided the striking workers. Railroad employees across the country boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Burning, pillaging, and rioting of railroad cars followed. Mobs of nonunion workers participated.

Faced with a national crisis, Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and sent federal troops to end the unrest on July 3, days after signing the Labor Day legislation.

Troops fired into a crowd of protesters on July 7, killing as many as 12 people.

The strike ended on Aug. 3, 1894.

Even with the creation of Labor Day, it wasn’t until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that the United States established a minimum wage, mandated a shorter workweek, and limited child labor.

‘The Father of Labor Day’

Kyle is regarded as the father of the formal celebration.

Kyle was born at his family’s farm in Cedarville, Ohio, in 1854, and his family moved to Illinois when he was 11. He eventually made his way to South Dakota and entered politics in 1890 shortly after his new home became a state.

First elected to the state senate, he soon became a U.S. senator. During his time in office, Kyle was chairman of the Great Industrial Commission, which was tasked with investigating questions regarding immigration, labor, agriculture, manufacturing, and business.

Kyle was also chairman of the Education and Labor Committee and introduced the bill that Cleveland signed into law establishing Labor Day.

Cedarville calls itself “the home of Labor Day.” Signs at the entry points of the rural village recognize Kyle as “the father of Labor Day.”

Grover Cleveland

Cleveland was the first president to leave the White House and return for a second, nonconsecutive term, a feat that President Donald Trump matched.

First elected president in 1884, Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888 but was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison. He and his wife moved to New York, where he became a father and told a colleague that he “had entered the real world” for the first time.

Life as a private citizen proved unfulfilling for Cleveland. He saw an opportunity to defeat Harrison in a rematch because the president had grown unpopular. Cleveland won his party’s nomination and defeated Harrison in the rematch.

After Cleveland signed the legislation that established a national Labor Day holiday and summoned troops to Chicago to enforce the injunction against a railroad workers’ strike, he said, “If it takes the entire Army and Navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered.”

On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that Washington, D.C., had become a “crime-free zone” in just a matter of weeks. This follows years of failed social-justice policies that backfired and ignited a violent crime tsunami across the nation’s capital and just north in still crime-ridden Baltimore City. 

Fast-forward to Monday morning, Trump praised Mayor Muriel Bowser on his Truth Social platform for working with his administration to reduce violent crime, claiming that “crime is down to virtually NOTHING in D.C.”

However, Trump blasted leftist mayors in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Baltimore, who, according to the president, are resisting assistance from the White House to clean up violent crime spurred by years of toxic social justice policies. He said that officials in these progressive towns are “justifying crime instead of eliminating it. ” 

Here’s the Truth Social Post from earlier:

Wow! Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. has become very popular because she worked with me and my great people in bringing CRIME down to virtually NOTHING in D.C.

Her statements and actions were positive, instead of others like Pritzker, Wes Moore, Newscum, and the 5% approval rated Mayor of Chicago, who spend all of their time trying to justify violent Crime, instead of working with us to completely ELIMINATE it, which we have done in Washington, D.C.,  NOW A CRIME FREE ZONE.

Wouldn’t it be nice to say that about Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and even the Crime Drenched City of Baltimore??? It can happen, and it can happen FAST! Work with us!!!

Mayor Bowser’s ratings have gone up, in a short period of time, 25%, and the people of D.C. are thanking her for stopping crime wherever she goes. It’s not a miracle, it’s hard work, courage, and being SMART.

The top Law Enforcement Officer in L.A. said, during the riots, and when I sent the troops in early, that they couldn’t have done it without us. They were completely overwhelmed! If we hadn’t gone in early, on top of the Palisades plus fires, L.A. would have lost the Olympics. Congratulations to Mayor Muriel Bowser, but don’t go Woke on us. D.C. is a GIANT VICTORY that never has to end!!!

And this. 

On this Labor Day, we honor the men and women in law enforcement who work tirelessly day and night to keep our communities safe.

In Washington, DC, 71 additional arrests have been made—including another Tren de Aragua gang member—and 9 more illegal firearms are off the street.… pic.twitter.com/0z3xqhmIFL

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) September 1, 2025

Last week, radical leftist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order restricting city authorities from cooperating with the federal government, including National Guard troops. Apparently, Johnson doesn’t want to address years of failed progressive policies, police defunding, and other missteps that have left parts of the imploding metro area resembling a “war zone” because optics here would be terrible for Democrats. 

BREAKING: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signs executive order to limit Chicago authorities from working with federal law enforcement and to try to stop Trump from sending the national guard

He doesn’t want his city to become safer

Unreal pic.twitter.com/fd4Y3iMUSW

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 31, 2025

The common denominator among leftist mayors resisting and denying federal assistance to clean up crime-ridden metro areas is that accepting help would amount to admitting their so-called progressive utopias have entirely failed.

Many based Americans already recognize that Democratic leadership across many cities has been nothing short of disastrous, which leaves some wondering if social-justice policies were likely never designed to work, but rather to destroy.

The failures are most across progressive cities…

Democrat-run cities are plagued with crime because they choose to let it happen. It’s not an accident—it’s a masterclass in failure.@PressSec drops the truth, WATCH 🔥 pic.twitter.com/f9uePDl9zn

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 28, 2025

Everyone knows that the ‘defund the police’ agenda pushed by Marxist BLM was a disaster.

It’s not a mystery why Baltimore is resisting help. Gov. Wes Moore and … 

Related:

• Democrats “Are Society Destroyers”

• Even A Trump-Hating Governor Calls Out Democrats’ Crime “Doesn’t Exist” Narrative

• Amid DC Takeover, Trump Eyes Crime In Other Cities – Here’s What To Know

• Restoring Law & Order In Crime-Ridden Cities May Be Key To Resolving Affordability Crisis

• The Chart Baltimore Democrats Hope You Never See

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