Submitted by The Bureau’s Sam Cooper, 

In a case reminiscent of the underground prison break of Sinaloa cartel boss “El Chapo” Guzmán, a high-profile Chinese national code-named Chino — who prosecutors say trained Hispanic drug traffickers to operate on U.S. soil, and who has been described as one of the main suppliers of fentanyl and a financial architect for both the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels — has suspiciously escaped Mexican custody through a hole in a wall while under house arrest. According to President Claudia Sheinbaum, he had been on the verge of extradition to the United States.

Indictment documents identify him as Zhi Dong Zhang, born in Beijing in 1987, and describe “Chino” as approximately five feet seven inches tall, weighing 175 pounds. He bridged the Chinese and Mexican wings of cartel fentanyl networks — and, significantly, is alleged to have served as a rare operative between Mexico’s two largest rival trafficking groups, the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels.

Demonstrating the financial reach that underscores what national-security experts have told The Bureau — that Chinese networks exert significant influence over the cartels by controlling both money laundering and chemical precursor supply — Zhang was tied to “approximately 150 companies and approximately 170 bank accounts,” according to U.S. investigations.

Zhang, known also as “Brother Wang” and “Pancho,” is charged in the Northern District of Georgia with a series of narcotics and financial crimes, including conspiracy to import cocaine and fentanyl, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and money-laundering conspiracies and monetary transactions affecting interstate and foreign commerce. The government’s 30-page detention motion, filed on July 11, 2025, lays out his alleged command role in a transnational network spanning Mexico, the United States, and China — a filing that came just weeks before Mexico extradited 26 cartel prisoners on August 12.

In the early hours of July 11, Zhang reportedly evaded National Guard members stationed outside his residence and slipped through a tunnel connecting his home in the Lomas de Padierna neighborhood to a neighboring property. According to reporting, three outsiders helped him flee — a maneuver quickly compared to El Chapo’s 2015 escape from the Altiplano prison.

Sheinbaum confirmed three weeks ago that Zhang had been “about to be extradited to the United States” when he escaped — an unusually frank admission of the diplomatic stakes.

Zhang was detained in an elite Mexico City neighborhood in October 2024 by federal forces acting on a U.S. extradition request. Despite the gravity of the charges, a Mexican judge allowed him to trade prison for guarded house arrest. The Attorney General’s Office is now investigating the guards and judicial officials assigned to protect him, Sheinbaum said.

El Universal reported that the company responsible for installing the electronic bracelet that Zhang broke free of was not certified to provide such security and that his escape bore the hallmarks of corruption and collusion.

Mexican media have reported that Zhang is allegedly responsible for trafficking more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, 1,800 kilograms of fentanyl, and over 600 kilograms of methamphetamine, generating an estimated $150 million annually in profits, with operations spanning the United States, Central and South America, Europe, China, and Japan.

According to U.S. court filings, Zhang directed the preparation of cocaine and fentanyl shipments in Mexico, arranged smuggling into the United States by couriers using vehicles and aircraft, and managed logistics once the drugs arrived. He also oversaw underground “stash house” cash brokerages where cartel proceeds were collected, counted, and deposited into major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase. Distribution points, prosecutors allege, stretched from Georgia and California to Illinois, Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, New York, and Michigan.

In the government’s telling, Zhang functioned not only as a financier but as a corporate manager — orchestrating narcotics supply and laundering networks across multiple continents, while directing associates in Atlanta to train Hispanic couriers to make structured cash deposits into U.S. financial institutions.

A raid on one California stash house revealed “approximately 150 companies and approximately 170 bank accounts that were connected to Zhang’s organization through wire transfer records and corporate registration information,” indictment filings state, leading detectives to “approximately USD $20 million in proceeds that were deposited into bank accounts controlled by Zhang’s organization in 2020 and 2021.”

Through the interception of encrypted communications on DingTalk, WeChat, and Signal, and admissions by a cooperating conspirator, investigators learned that Zhang served as the critical bridge between two arms of his operation: a Mexican wing responsible for collecting drug proceeds directly from traffickers, and a Chinese wing tasked with laundering the money through bulk cash smuggling, bank deposits, and wire transfers. The evidence portrays Zhang in a command-and-control role, linking fentanyl suppliers in mainland China to the cartel logistics network in Mexico. U.S. national-security experts have separately warned that China’s chemical sector — including operators with Chinese Communist Party ties — has been subsidized to produce and export precursor chemicals critical to fentanyl production, providing the geopolitical backdrop to Zhang’s activities.

Experts such as former DEA Special Operations Division investigator Donald Im told The Bureau that operators at Zhang’s level often maintain significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party — both through underground banking and money-laundering networks, and through privileged access to state-regulated precursor chemical supplies.

In an unrelated post today, responding to a New York Times investigation on Chinese election-interference networks in New York City, former CIA analyst Peter Mattis asserted that the CCP “is comfortable with criminality” and linked its operations to drug-trafficking cases. “We also have the CCP’s export of fentanyl precursors as a matter of national policy via VAT rebates,” Mattis wrote, citing U.S. congressional investigations and testimony.

California Stash Houses Reveal Cartel Cash in U.S. Banks

In March 2021, detectives raided the residence of a cooperating conspirator in Rowland Heights, California, uncovering a stunning cache of evidence that laid bare the financial backbone of Zhang’s network. Inside, authorities found hundreds of documents tied to Zhang’s organization: folders containing names, aliases, IDs, passports, corporate registrations, bank records, SIM cards, and post office keys. Many paired photographs with bank accounts investigators later confirmed as belonging to Zhang’s associates. The cache revealed at least 25 accounts used to launder cartel proceeds, anchoring the probe that traced drug money from Mexican traffickers through Zhang’s Chinese laundering arm and into the U.S. banking system.

The indictment details Zhang’s financial footprint. On July 20, 2020, $35,000 and $20,000 were deposited into JPMorgan Chase accounts and $80,000 into a Wells Fargo account, all linked to Zhang’s front company Mnemosyne International Trading, Inc.; on December 2–3, 2020, additional deposits included $35,000 into Bank of America, $65,000 into another Chase account, and $50,000 each into two more Chase accounts. Federal forfeiture schedules list seizures of more than $431,000 from a Citibank account, $145,000 from First Citizens Bank, $52,000 from Wells Fargo, and additional tens of thousands from Bank of America and Chase accounts — all alleged narcotics proceeds.

In August and September 2021, acting at Zhang’s direction, a cooperating conspirator leased five more stash houses and two vehicles across California — in Los Angeles, Rowland Heights, Diamond Bar, Alhambra, and Monterey Park — for drug and laundering operations, later training an associate known only as “Willy” to manage them.

Court records also detail surveillance of a July 2020 Atlanta operation in which $100,000 in cartel cash was delivered to one of Zhang’s associates, Jesus Miranda Cota. Authorities observed Cota make structured deposits: $35,000 into a Chase account, $80,000 into Wells Fargo, and another $20,000 into the Chase account.

In January 2022, investigators say Zhang expanded further. While in Hermosillo, Mexico, he recruited another conspirator, “CC-2,” introduced by Willy. In intercepted messages, Zhang and CC-2 discussed shipments into Atlanta, including one initially set at 15 kilograms of cocaine and one kilogram of fentanyl, later adjusted to 10 kilograms of cocaine and one kilogram of fentanyl. In these encrypted exchanges, Zhang used coded language, referring to fentanyl as “coffee” and cocaine as “food.”

Zhang is now considered a high-priority fugitive from U.S. justice. Interpol has reportedly issued a red notice.

Over the past year, long-unique Southwest Airlines has been announcing big changes to its boarding and checked-baggage policies that will make it much like every other airline. However, the carrier distinguished itself from the field on Friday by pioneering the use of secondary cockpit barriers — something pilots, flight attendants and 9/11 family members have been demanding since 2001.

In 2023, the FAA issued a final rule requiring that all newly-delivered commercial aircraft be equipped with a secondary barrier on the flight deck, to bolster security when the main cockpit door is opened during flight for food service and lavatory breaks. The rule only applies to new aircraft — there’s no requirement for airlines to retrofit their existing fleets. To comply with FAA regulations, the so-called “installed physical secondary barriers” must delay would-be hijackers from advancing into the cockpit “long enough so that an open flight deck door can be closed and locked before an attacker could reach the flight deck.”

While the original FAA deadline was set at Aug 25, 2025, last month the FAA moved the deadline back by a year, to Aug. 25, 2026. The trade group that represents major US carriers had requested a two-year delay, pointing in part to the fact that the FAA had not yet certified any secondary-barrier designs. While the Air Line Pilots Association had pressed the FAA to “reject this latest stalling tactic,” the FAA granted a postponement.   

On Friday, however, an aviation-safety milestone was achieved when a Southwest flight from Phoenix to Denver used a brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 equipped with a secondary barrier. While Southwest’s design and location specifics haven’t been publicized, the broader concept centers on lightweight, retractable security gates that separate the passenger cabin from the area outside the cockpit door and lavatory door. “We felt like we could get it done and put it in production as soon as the aircraft was ready,” said Southwest EVP for operations Justin Jones.  

Ever since terrorists took over the cockpits of four airliners on 9/11, pilot and flight attendant unions — bolstered by activism of women who became widows when their husbands were killed as they piloted airliners on 9/11 — have been pressuring Congress and the FAA to institute a secondary-barrier requirement to counter cockpit vulnerability when reinforced cockpit doors are opened in mid-flight. In the meantime, flight crews have been creating secondary barriers of their own, using galley carts to block the aisle on the front of the passenger cabin. However, as this dramatization from a CBS “Seal Team” episode demonstrates, a galley cart is far less effective than a floor-to-ceiling gate: 

Last year, under pressure from investors, Southwest announced it will abandon its decades-long open-seating policy, by which passengers take whatever seat is available when their boarding group enters the plane. Assigned seats are now in force for flights on or after Jan. 27, 2026. In another move that erased a major differentiator, the Dallas-headquartered carrier next killed its “bags fly free” policy, by which all passengers could check two bags at no charge. “Free” checked bags will continue as a perk for certain ticket classes and rewards-club members.   

Southwest last week announced it will stop being the airline of choice for fat people, requiring them to buy a second seat if their blubber or limbs “encroach on the neighboring seat.” That change also takes effect on Jan. 27. Southwest has been giving plus-size passengers an option of either buying an extra seat in advance and requesting a refund for it later, or asking for a free extra seat at the airport. Under the new rule, they’ll still have some chance of being refunded, but only if the flight wasn’t fully booked at departure, and only if both tickets are in the same booking class.  

Tigress Osborn, executive director of the Western civilization-corroding National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, told the New York Times the change is “devastating” for her people, lamenting that “Southwest was the only beacon of hope for many fat people who otherwise wouldn’t have been flying, and now that beacon has gone out.” If so, that could translate into fuel savings for Southwest.  

Having imposed that visual on our treasured readers, let us compassionately conclude with a stark contrast from Southwest’s glorious past:   

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I’m sure some of you saw that recent op-ed about airport lounges.

It was written by David Mack for The New York Times. He laments the decline of airport lounges, recalling a grim experience at Orlando’s Club MCO: long waits, sad buffets, and weak drinks that hardly justify the hype.

Lounges used to feel special, a perk reserved for business travelers. Now they’re overcrowded, uninspired, yet somehow more coveted than ever—thanks to social media flexes and pricey credit card perks. Access has become so common that no one feels special anymore, even as airlines and banks keep building ever-fancier spaces while quietly raising fees to thin the crowds.

Far be it from me to agree with anything in The New York Times, but honestly? That piece nailed it. Airport lounges are a disaster. But here’s the thing: it’s not just lounges. It’s not just airlines. It’s not even just travel. It’s every. single. industry.

I’m not being hyperbolic. Everywhere you go, everything you do, every service you pay for—it feels like customer service simply no longer exists. And even worse, most places you go actually make you feel like an asshole for daring to be a customer in the first place. I catch myself constantly asking, “Why am I putting up with this shit?” right before looking down at the Cheez-Doodles or baseball cap I’ve somehow convinced myself I can’t live without.

Because here’s the ugly truth: service is dead. The only thing still alive is the endless, humiliating upsell and self-service. The drugstore, the bank, the dentist—it doesn’t matter. On a given day I interact with supposedly “best-in-class” businesses, and nearly every time I walk away feeling bent over a barrel. And this is when I’m choosing the premium option. The premium experience is still garbage.

Which is why, when I think about the future, I don’t see the next big opportunity as another buzzy app or sleek new product. It’s customer service. Full stop. Any company, in any industry, that actually treats its customers like human beings will have me throwing money at their doorstep. Charge me a premium, I don’t care. Just don’t interrogate me for my phone number every time I buy a bar of soap. Don’t act like handing you a credit card is some bizarre ritual you’ve never seen before. Pretend, at the very least, that you want my business.

Take something as simple as buying a pair of running shoes in Philadelphia. First, I can’t make it two blocks to the store without being ambushed by clipboard warriors trying to rope me into saving the whales, curing baldness, or whatever today’s cause-of-the-day is. Like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar said: “I just want to get from my car to the office without being confronted by the decay of western society.”

“Can I ask you a question?” they always begin, standing directly in my path. No, you f*cking can’t. Now get out of my way before I plow through you like Frank Gore running over a junior high linebacker.

When I finally reach the store, it takes 15 minutes to find an employee. When I do, I tell them what I want, and their response? “Why don’t you just buy it online? We’ve got more colors there.” I don’t know, maybe because I want to go for a run in an hour and would like shoes on my feet instead of in an Amazon box next Tuesday?

The associate eventually trudges into the back, gets me the shoes, and I head to checkout. I hand the cashier my credit card. She looks at me like I’ve just asked her to barter goats for spices.

“Can I have your name?” she asks. “No,” I reply. “You can have my money.”

Then comes the phone number. Then the email. Then a stool sample and the name of my favorite childhood pet. I decline. Finally, after this interrogation, I’ve spent $300 and she asks if I’d like a bag. Of course I want a f*cking bag.

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“That’s 25 cents,” she says. Excuse me? I just bought two shoeboxes the size of microwaves. What did you think I was going to do—balance them on my head down Walnut Street like I’m in a National Geographic special? Why can’t stores just build the damn bag into the price instead of insulting me at checkout? I’m not asking to be hand-fed grapes like Julius Caesar. I’m asking for a bag. Basic service. The stuff that used to be, you know, normal.

And God forbid I need to call anyone about anything. Changing an airline ticket? Calling my credit card company? Forget it. Every road leads to an automated voice system with the warmth of a Soviet switchboard. Look, I get it. It’s 2025. Most stuff can be handled online, and that’s great—I don’t want to talk to anyone if I don’t have to. But when I do need a human being—because no, chatbot Karen, you cannot solve this problem with a “help article”—there should be a way to reach one without descending into phone tree purgatory.

Then there’s the pièce de résistance: self-checkout. Bill Burr has a bit about stealing from self-checkout as payback for being conscripted into a job you never applied for. And honestly, he’s right. You’re not a customer anymore—you’re an unpaid employee scanning your own groceries while the one overworked human employee hovers like a prison guard, ready to pounce if you don’t place the cantaloupe in the “bagging area” fast enough. You’re damn right I’m stealing a bag. And I dare your lazy ass to chase me down Market Street to stop me.

So yes, customer service isn’t dying—it’s dead. Buried. Cremated. Scattered to the wind. What’s left is a charade where companies pretend to offer “premium experiences” while nickel-and-diming you, automating you into oblivion, and treating your desire for basic service like an outrageous demand.

The opportunity is there for any business bold enough to zig while everyone else zags. Charge me more, fine. But make me feel like a customer, not a nuisance. Make me feel like I’m buying something, not auditioning for an FBI background check. Because until that happens? We’re all just paying top dollar to be reminded—daily—of how little most corporations actually think of their customers.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on Aug. 29 that he was calling state lawmakers back to the capital for a special session tasked with redrawing the congressional district lines ahead of the 2026 election.

His announcement came just hours after fellow Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Texas’s new congressional voting map, setting the stage for the GOP to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives.

Scheduled to begin Sept. 3, T.J.Muscaro reports for The Epoch Times that Missouri’s redistricting also appears to give Republicans help in the coming midterms, as Kehoe’s proposed map looks to stretch a Kansas City-area district – currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver—into Republican-leaning rural areas.

“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government,” Kehoe said in a statement.

Cleaver is one of two current Democratic-controlled districts in the state. The other is in St. Louis, held by Rep. Wesley Bells. There are six total congressional districts in Missouri.

Cleaver decried the decision to alter his district in a statement.

“This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines; it will silence voices. It will deny representation,” he said.

The state’s Democratic House Minority Leader Ashley Aune also spoke out against the change, accusing Kehoe of looking to “steal a congressional seat for Republicans.”

However, Missouri Democrats are unlikely to stop their Republican colleagues from passing the new map.

While they could filibuster in the Senate, Republicans have procedural means to shut it down, and the number of Democrats is too small for their absence to prevent a quorum.

Meanwhile, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking voters to approve a new congressional map that seeks to help his party win five seats as a response to Texas’s new map favoring Republicans.

It passed the lower state Assembly by a vote of 57–20, and then the state Senate in a 30–8 vote on Aug. 21. It was signed into law by Newsom about 30 minutes after the legislature approved it. California voters will get their say on Nov. 4.

There are redistricting movements being considered in other states as well, including Florida and Indiana, where Republicans look to gain an advantage, as well as Illinois, Maryland, and New York, where Democrats seek to further expand their foothold.

Republicans won a 220-215 majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives in 2024. Democrats will need to net three seats in November 2026 in order to reclaim the lower chamber.

Missouri’s special session will also consider a constitutional amendment that would increase the difficulty for citizen-initiated ballot measures to be approved. Current ballot measures resulted in the abortion and marijuana legislation amendments that were adopted by the state in recent years.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has fired 24 workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after a cyber breach threatened national security, she announced on Aug. 29.

A cyber hacker breached FEMA systems, but no sensitive data was taken from any Department of Homeland Security (DHS) networks, the department reported. FEMA is an agency within the DHS.

FEMA’s chief information officer, chief information security officer, and 22 other IT employees allegedly responsible for the security failure were immediately terminated.

The Epoch Times’ Jill McLaughlin reports that Noem accused longtime employees of working to prevent DHS personnel from solving the problem and downplaying how bad the breach was when DHS stepped in to fix the issue.

While conducting a routine cybersecurity review, the DHS’s chief information officer discovered “significant security vulnerabilities” that gave a hacker access to FEMA’s network.

“The investigation uncovered several severe lapses in security that allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA’s network and threaten the entire Department and the nation as a whole,” the DHS reported.

Noem had ordered the review of all of FEMA’s operations and IT systems, according to DHS.

The alleged failures included an agency-wide lack of multi-factor authentication, use of prohibited legacy protocols, failing to fix known vulnerabilities, and inadequate operational visibility.

FEMA spent nearly half a billion dollars on IT and cybersecurity measures in fiscal year 2025.

News of the FEMA security breach and the firings came days after nearly 200 current and former FEMA employees signed a declaration protesting the Trump administration’s disaster response changes.

The employees published a petition to Congress, arguing FEMA is under the leadership of people “lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA Administrator.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks after signing a letter of intent with Chilean Minister of Public Security Luis Cordero for a Biometric Identification Transnational Migrant Alert Program (BITMAP) at the Ministry of the Interior in Santiago de Chile, Chile, on July 30, 2025. Noem announced the firing of two dozen FEMA employees following the discovery of a security breach at the agency on Aug. 29, 2025. Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images

The employees alleged that FEMA’s senior officials and Noem hinder the agency’s mission. The declaration also told Congress that the alleged inexperience of Trump’s appointees could lead to another catastrophe similar to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which claimed nearly 1,400 lives in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Early in his second term, Trump criticized how FEMA manages its disaster response and suggested he would consider eliminating or significantly overhauling the agency. He said it would be more efficient for states to handle such responses locally.

The president also ordered the creation of a review council for the agency, citing concerns of political bias in the wake of how it handled Hurricane Helene’s aftermath last year.

Noem said on July 13 that the Trump administration was working to remake the agency, rather than dismantle it.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A council in the county of Essex, close to London, has been ridiculed for offering emotional support to employees they claim are feeling unsettled by seeing so many people raising the national flag in the streets of towns and cities across the country.

As we have highlighted, the action is being taken by everyday people in Britain who are sick to the back teeth of mass illegal immigration and the fallout it’s having on their communities.

An email sent to staff by Essex County Council states that it is “aware of the increasing visibility of St George’s and Union Jack flags displayed on road signs, bridges and trees in parts of Essex”.

The email continues, “While these symbols may hold different meanings for different people, we recognise that for many – particularly our colleagues of colour – they can evoke feelings of discomfort and be associated with anti-immigration rhetoric”.

Anti-illegal immigration, yes. Go on.

“We stand firmly against all forms of racism and discrimination, and we are committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for everyone,” the email ridiculously states, as if being perturbed about boat loads of illegals washing up in dinghies and being put up in four star hotels at taxpayer expense and allowed to wander freely around local communities is “racist”.

As we highlighted yesterday, it’s the centrist position of most British people now.

The council email continues:

As your senior leadership team, we want to express our deep concern and solidarity. We stand firmly against all forms of racism and discrimination, and we are committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for everyone.

If you are feeling unsettled or affected by what you’re seeing, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

You can speak with your line manager, Service Manager, Global Majority Leads, Antonia, Assistant Director, or Director. We are here to listen, support you, and ensure that both you and the children and families we serve feel safe and valued.

Making the actions of Essex Council even more ridiculous is the fact that right outside their own HQ building there flies a Union Jack and  St George’s Cross.

There’s literally both outside the building in which they work. https://t.co/B7c4OVVX8g pic.twitter.com/qMpWQntQAv

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 29, 2025

Commenting on the situation, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage noted “I’ve got to tell you, as an Essex MP, and yes, I was in Clacton at the weekend and there are an awful lot of St George’s crosses.”

“And yes, there are some in places they ought not to be. But I found this whole thing rather uplifting,” Farage added, labelling the council’s actions as “unbelievable.”

‘I’ve found this whole thing rather uplifting!’@Nigel_Farage reacts after Essex County Council has offered ‘support’ to staff ‘unsettled’ by the national flag.

🔓 Become a GB News Member: https://t.co/mNsRsGC8ef pic.twitter.com/tw4ufDctyq

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 28, 2025

Essex County Council is totally out of touch with the county. No wonder they didn’t want elections in May!https://t.co/3OYAgwSyja

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) August 28, 2025

Farage’s GB News guest Lord Maurice Glasman remarked “You get mugged and your bag nicked and that’s nothing to do with them, but you put a flag up and it’s suddenly an issue.”

Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis also responded “This is two-tier. The council won’t fix a pothole but worry about this.”

In related news, the British government has won its legal fight against a separate local council that sought to shut down a migrant hotel in Essex.

The Court of Appeal ruled on Friday that a temporary injunction obtained by Epping Forest District Council against the continued use of the Bell Hotel to house so called “asylum seekers” should be overturned.

The hotel has been a site of intense protest by locals and anti-mass immigration activists for weeks following the arrest of a migrant charged with sexually abusing a child.

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.

Authored by Armchair Warlord,

A dark theory for the evening…

A dark theory for the evening. Let’s talk about Russian strategy in Ukraine.⬇️

Looking at developments lately, specifically: (1) the Ukrainian casualty leak showing an astronomical 1.7M KIA/MIA; and (2) the Ukrainian collapse north of Pokrovsk – I thought should revisit a dark… pic.twitter.com/uOvB2gJEvX

— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) August 29, 2025

Let’s talk about Russian strategy in Ukraine…

Looking at developments lately, specifically:

(1) the Ukrainian casualty leak showing an astronomical 1.7M KIA/MIA; and

(2) the Ukrainian collapse north of Pokrovsk

I thought should revisit a dark thought I had a while ago, namely that, “maybe the killing itself is the point of all of this.”

I’ve said before that the Russians have fought an extraordinarily clean war in Ukraine, but it should be understood that there is a very legalistic shade on that assessment.

They’ve killed very few civilians, and Ukrainian propagandists are perpetually beclowning themselves trying to pretend that the usual single-digit handful of injured civilians that accompany the latest attack using hundreds of standoff weapons fired into city centers (producing secondary explosions visible from outer space as military targets hidden among civilian infrastructure are destroyed with surgical precision) somehow constitute gEnOCiDe rather than some of the most well-controlled warfighting in the history of the business.

There is another and far darker side to Russia’s “clean” war, however.

Let us consider the fate of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – legal combatants all, whom the Russians can and do target and kill without limit. I mentioned the casualty leak earlier, but I feel this needs to have a line drawn under it – one point seven million personnel killed or missing in action in the AFU, over the course of the war. 1.7 MILLION. Seven or eight percent of Ukraine’s prewar population, probably something like a quarter of the entire national cohort of military-aged males, dead or missing. Casualties on the scale of a genocide, sufficient to permanently cripple any postwar Ukrainian nation.

Casualties multiple times that which I assessed two years ago as sufficient to shatter the AFU based on the experience of Nazi Germany.

This brings me to the Ukrainian collapse north of Pokrovsk two weeks ago, in which a run-of-the-mill Russian attack walked through twenty kilometers of Ukrainian defensive belts and into open country.

The Ukrainian propagandists coped by whining about how the single most important front sector for the AFU had somehow “run out of infantry.”

But did the Russians throw in a mobile reserve to collapse the front and chase the AFU back to the Dniper, despite doubtless knowing full well what was going on? No, they did not – they consolidated in the breach and awaited the inevitable, panicked Ukrainian counterattack, in which they would have the opportunity to destroy Ukraine’s remaining elite troops.

Which brings me to my conclusion.

The Russians have had countless opportunities to make large advances in this war, especially recently – the Ukrainian front line is an absolute shambles and their “drone wall” tactic will falter against any serious attack. So ineffectual is the AFU that very few Russian moves at the front even face serious opposition these days, with most geolocations of Russian advances showing them already established in place and dealing with harassment by kill drones after having seized positions bloodlessly. The Russians have in fact consistently foregone breaking the front and taking swathes of ground in favor of killing the largest possible number of Ukrainian soldiers on the existing front line under the existing attritional combat dynamic.

This “tactical directive” held true even during the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo, fought in prewar Russia. Rather than counterattacking aggressively to evict the AFU, the Russians saw the opportunity to kill gigantic numbers of Ukrainians in a trap the enemy wouldn’t be able to extract themselves from for ideological reasons, and they took it. That battle ended up being nine months of hideously lopsided butchery that broke the back of the AFU.

All of this makes observing the war more than a little maddening, but it’s a consistent pattern of behavior that begs for explanation.

So here’s my theory.

The Russian government has consistently sought to end the war via peace treaty with the existing Ukrainian government, not via regime change, outright conquest, or even killing enough of that government to find a more flexible interlocutor among the Maidanites. Putin apparently wants a treaty with Zelensky. The Russians have also consistently made demands of the Ukrainian government – and its NATO sponsors – that are absolute political nonstarters for the Maidan-era regime and which that regime, by its very nature, simply cannot accept. Russian language rights, Orthodox religious rights, demilitarization, large territorial concessions which would see the AFU surrender vast urban areas without a shot fired. And yet the Russians insist, and they’re going to continue killing Ukrainian soldiers at ever-more lopsided ratios until they get their way.

Which leads me to the brutal conclusion: Putin doesn’t want to see Ukraine conquered. He’s never publicly expressed any desire for that.

The consistent Russian policy is instead to see Ukraine – a “free” and “independent” Ukraine, having come to this impasse of its own sovereign will – utterly humiliated.

Putin wants to make Zelensky put on a suit, come groveling to the Kremlin, and sign a treaty that will see the Maidanite government surrender its arms, disgorge huge amounts of territory, and reverse every single anti-Russian policy position it ever had.

Ukrainian nationalism will be discredited overnight by the hands of those very nationalists, and the economically irrelevant, demographically shattered rump state will be sucked back into Russia’s political orbit in a matter of days.

So of course the Russians are only advancing in the most leisurely way possible.

Their goal is to place the Ukrainian government into a militarily untenable situation so as to force a flamboyantly humiliating peace treaty upon them that includes large territorial concessions beyond the line of control – the ultimate Ukrainian taboo – so as to discredit Ukrainian nationalism by the hands of the very ultranationalists who took their nation to war in the first place.

Authored by Nicolás Sánchez via the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE),

Some laws extinguish fires; others ignite them. In Spain, a country that has mastered the art of legislating against reality, we have more of the second kind. Every time private property is violated and individual responsibility is replaced with state imposition, problems multiply. The State tends to cover a bad law with an even worse one, like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

For decades, the 1957 Forestry Act imposed strict limits on the private management of woodlands.

Owning a forest did not mean deciding how to use it: activities were tightly regulated, and uses were subject to administrative supervision. The law’s intended to keep the land as “forest” permanently, shutting the door to any alternative use.

The result was property emptied of content, where owners bore the burdens but enjoyed few legitimate benefits.

A large share of forest fires in Spain are deliberately set. The 1957 Act did not automatically prevent burned land from being rezoned or given other uses. Much depended on urban planning discretion and later administrative decisions. In practice, this opened the door to suspicions of intentional fires, since once burned, land could lose its forest value and gain urban or agricultural interest. Each summer, as flames spread across the hills, voices pointed to urban interests lurking behind the smoke. The most infamous case was Terra Mítica, where a fire preceded the rezoning of the land to build the theme park.

No hard proof was needed for the idea to take root in public opinion: fire could be the first step to business. The problem is that for the herd of public opinion and lawmakers alike, the solution was never to confront the root of the problem or to give landowners freedom to manage their forests without needing to burn them. Instead of removing perverse incentives and letting each owner care for and profit from his land, lawmakers chose the path they know best: another legal lock.

The 2003 Forestry Act was introduced as the great modernization of the forest regime. In reality, it did not solve the root problem, since restrictions on the free use of property were maintained and even expanded. Landowners still could not manage their plots without administrative approval. The big change was the “thirty-year rule”: if woodland burns, it cannot be rezoned or given a different use for three decades. The logic was that if there was no profit after a fire, the incentive to start one would disappear. However, this measure only shifted incentives. No one would now set a fire to have land rezoned (something that, in fact, was never clearly proven), but it opened a new possibility: sabotage. Imagine a plot of land in the process of rezoning. If a competitor wanted to block it, all it would take is setting it on fire. If the flames came before the paperwork was finished, the project would be dead for thirty years.

The distorted incentives to provoke fires are only part of the problem. The other major consequence of Spain’s forestry laws lies not in why fires start, but in why they spread with such violence: decades of legal restrictions have turned forests into vast warehouses of fuel. What makes these fires national catastrophes is not only that they are sometimes deliberate, but that once they begin—whether natural or intentional—they rage out of control through woodlands abandoned by design.

A fire does not grow from a spark alone; it needs fuel. Dry biomass, fallen branches, and flammable underbrush are the real drivers of disaster. This accumulation is no accident, but the result of a legal framework that for decades has encouraged abandonment. The 2003 Act, far from solving the issue, maintained restrictions on land management and even expanded them. It limited permitted uses (article 36) and required every action to pass through technical plans and authorizations (article 37). At the same time, it imposed on owners the duty to prevent fires and keep their land in good condition (article 48), while making it an offense to cut, uproot, or even gather firewood without authorization (article 67, sections c and j).

This is a heap of contradictions: owners are told to prevent fires, but stripped of the incentives to do so, while facing costs, paperwork, and potential fines. An asset that generates expenses but no income is an asset destined for abandonment. For centuries, such cleaning never depended on bureaucrats or subsidies but on spontaneous practices that benefited both locals and owners. Shepherds brought their herds, woodcutters collected branches, and neighbors gathered fuel for their homes. All this reduced biomass while providing legitimate use. Today, those practices are punished or buried under endless authorizations.

Even setting aside the perverse incentives the law creates to provoke fires, and leaving aside the abandonment it encourages, a greater problem remains: What happens after the forest has already burned? Once the fire has spread, the 2003 Act adds a decisive obstacle. By imposing the thirty-year rule, any burned land was locked, and all incentives to restore what was destroyed disappeared. The law made no distinction between a natural fire, an accident, or arson: all were equally condemned. What owner would invest in recovering a woodland that, by law, had to remain sterile for thirty years? Instead of encouraging regeneration, the law produced the opposite effect: leaving the forest abandoned and thus perpetuating devastation.

Paradoxically, in the name of environmental protection, those with the greatest interest in conserving the land have been expelled from it.

The result is a forest effectively belonging to no one: not to the owners, who cannot manage it; not to the traditional users, who no longer benefit from it; and not to the State, which lacks the means to care for it. This is the real problem.

So each summer the ritual repeats: helicopters flying overhead, dramatic TV footage, unstoppable flames, exhausted firefighters, and politicians posing among the ashes. The scene plays out year after year, always with the same promises of reform and new commissions of study.

Meanwhile, the underbrush keeps growing, dry and ready, waiting for the next spark. The fire won’t wait, and the law won’t stop it.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Three – interlocked – dates ahead of us could not be more crucial in shaping the next configuration of the currently incandescent geopolitical chessboard.

1. August 31/September 1st. Tianjin – half-an-hour by high-speed rail (120 km, roughly $8) from Beijing. The annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), with all 10 member-states, two observers (Afghanistan and Mongolia) and 14 dialogue partners (plenty from Southeast Asia). Crucially, Putin, Xi and Modi (his first visit to China in 7 years) will be on the same table, as well as Iran’s Pezeshkian. That’s a compounded BRICS/SCO heavyweight show. This summit may be a turning point for the SCO as much as the summit in Kazan last year was for BRICS.

2. September 3. The Victory Day Parade in Tian’anmen Square, officially celebrating the 80th anniversary of “the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”. No less than 26 heads of state will be present, including Putin (on a 4-day state visit). They come from all over the Global South, but none from the Global North.

3. September 3. Vladivostok. The start of the 10th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a must-go to understand the finer points of the Russian national strategic priority to develop the Arctic and the Russian Far East, including vast tracts of Siberia; that’s a mirror policy of the Chinese effort to “Go West”, which started in 1999, to develop Tibet and Xinjiang. A who’s who of corporate and business circles from all latitudes across Eurasia will be present in Vladivostok. Putin addresses the plenary session right after his return from China.

Taken together, these three dates span the whole spectrum of the Russia-China strategic partnership; the increasingly interlocked geopolitical and geoeconomic aspects of Eurasia integration and Global South solidarity; and the concerted push by Eurasia actors to accelerate the drive towards a multi-nodal, equanimous system of international relations.

Western revisionism hits an iron wall

It’s impossible to overstate how important the Victory Day parade is for the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese in a thousand years – and more – will never accept WWII American revisionism such as “the US and Japan jointly ended a war 80 years ago”. And much less European revisionism: “Europe’s commemorations of the Normandy Landings also involved a shocking rewriting of the history of the Eastern Front. These actions remind us that the September 3rd military parade’s attendance list has become a criterion for identifying which countries remain steadfast in their anti-fascist stance.”

So Putin in Beijing on the Chinese Victory Day parade is a mirror image of Xi in Red Square on May 9, when Russia officially celebrated the 80th anniversary of the USSR victory in the Great Patriotic War.

No wonder the Chinese Foreign Ministry is adamant: the historical victory of WWII cannot be distorted. And this shared historical memory – vehemently against Nazi-fascism and its resurgence in the West – is a guiding light for the Russia-China multilateral, multipolar, and multi-nodal coordination, from the UN – unfortunately sliding towards irrelevancy – to the dynamic BRICS and SCO.

Modi talking directly to Xi on Sunday, on the sidelines of the SCO summit, seals the sorry fate of the tariff war on India – part and parcel of the Empire of Chaos Hybrid War on BRICS, and for that matter, a great deal of the Global Majority.

The latest mantra spun by Trump 2.0 circles is that New Delhi is supporting Moscow’s war on Ukraine by buying Russian oil, thus helping to enrich Putin even more.

End result: the original RIC (Russia-India-China), all of them sanctioned/tariffed, locked up in a tight embrace.

The sound of the Eurasia heartland rockin’

Vladivostok may carry a few surprises – but on the US-Russia business front.

First of all, speculation is rife on whether Trump might have decided to turn the planned EU theft of Russian foreign assets upside down, and instead force the funds to be invested in the American economy. If that would be the case – after all Trump himself proclaims “I can do anything I want” – there’s absolutely nothing the chihuahua EUrocracy can do to prevent it.

Then there’s the enticing possibility of US-Russia deals being discussed. One option would be ExxonMobil returning to the Sakhalin-1 mega gas project. There’s also immense American oil industry interest in re-starting the sale of equipment for LNG projects, including the Arctic LNG-2; and the US purchasing Russian nuclear icebreakers.

That would be beyond ground-breaking, in more ways than one – because it would enable the US to directly compete with the Northern Sea Route (or Arctic Silk Road, in Chinese terminology), which is being built by Russia as an alternative to the Suez Canal. ​

On the Ukraine front – and that will be discussed in excruciating detail at the SCO summit – there are no illusions among the members, according to Central Asian diplomatic sources. And that mirrors the predominant Russia-China interpretation. The Empire of Chaos will never desist from conforming Ukraine as a strategic buffer against Russia; keep a key foothold in Eurasia; and keep raking in solid profits (in euros) for the industrial-military complex.

That’s what permeates everything from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the Pentagon’s Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to NATO’s Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), launched nine years ago and de facto running the military backbone of the Kiev/NATO armada. Add to it US Navy P-8 Poseidon spy planes circling over the Black Sea on a daily basis – watching everything happening in the waters from Novorossiysk to Sevastopol.

As much as we’ll be absorbing new moves on the chessboard during the next crucial week, in the end we all circle back to the Mackinder-drenched “The Grand Chessboard” as outlined by the late Brzezinski.

Before the end of the millennium, the fear was that an alliance of Russia, China – and Europe, prior to the consolidation of the EU – would manage to control Eurasia, and thus the world, following Mackinder.

Well, now we can picture the ghost of Mackinder listening to the latest remix of Deep Purple’s Made in Japan – the greatest live rock album ever, which was recorded in the early 1970s… in Asia. In this new, Asia-centered world, the top Global South actors at BRICS/SCO exhibit over twice the US GDP, and are paving the way to de facto replacing the US dollar by increasing trade in their own currencies.

Even the previous US autopen administration authorizing the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines – to make sure Europe would be dependent on expensive US natural gas and not Russia’s – did not substantially alter the chessboard.

Apart from the fact that Europe is committing serial harakiri; is advancing its own de-industrialization; and for all practical purposes is now dead as a geopolitical actor. It’s all about the Empire of Chaos versus BRICS/SCO.

So let next week rock: call it the sound of the Eurasia heartland re-affirming its sovereignty. Play it loud.

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