For years, globalists pushed “climate crisis” propaganda across Western countries, directly attacking the fossil-fuel industry in favor of unreliable “green” energy, while orchestrating a heist on the U.S. Treasury through climate legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act that plowed billions into dark money-funded NGOs.

There was a war on your mind, a war against humanity through climate propaganda.

These radical leftists used children like Greta Thunberg to scare the public into submission and indoctrinate multiple generations into believing a looming climate disaster would wipe out humanity, with the only “solution” being de-growth, nation-killing policies, such as attempting to ban petrol-powered cars, cow farts, and gas stoves – yet leaving private jets and mega yachts untouched, long with more and more and more carbon taxes. 

A newly uncovered U.S. State Department award from the Biden-Harris regime years, found by the X account Alladdin, has many scratching their heads, further suggesting that Greta could’ve been a globalist puppet, or an indoctrination weapon aimed at the youth. 

“Greta Thunberg: The U.S. State Department funded a $16,633 translation of Greta Thunberg’s book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference into Kyrgyz for distribution in Kyrgyzstan,” Alladdin said. 

He continued, “What other reason could there be for this expenditure besides the department actively promoting her environmental ideology to sow discord and amplify her global reach?“

Greta Thunberg:
The U.S. State Department funded a $16,633 translation of Greta Thunberg’s book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference into Kyrgyz for distribution in Kyrgyzstan. What other reason could there be for this expenditure besides the department actively promoting… pic.twitter.com/VRmgttVttI

— Alladdin (@Alladdin1983) September 2, 2025

Mike Benz commented… 

The book “No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference” compiles Greta Thunberg’s very scripted speeches, delivered at the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the World Economic Forum, all centered on an alleged climate crisis. Its core theme was the urgent warning about imminent dangers to the planet.

Yet years later. We’re still here, and it was just one of the coldest Augusts in some parts of the Lower 48 in decades.

Remember her 2018 prediction?

Why the State Department under the Biden-Harris regime wanted to rile up the youth in Kyrgyzstan about some climate crisis is beyond us – but it certaintly seems as if globalist elites hid behind the child to project their powerful and malevolent green political agenda of power consolidation worldwide.

Greta has moved on from climate to Palestine. Follow the money… 

The truth is, our planet is resilient. It’s endured volcanic eruptions, cosmic events, and ice ages. Yet we’re pitched that corrupt globalists bent on centralizing power will “save” the planet through banning cow farts and taxing the working class into submission. The period of bullshit is over – folks have caught on.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

For far too long, entrepreneurs and employee representatives have silently accepted the ecological crash course of politics. Now, the chemical union IG BCE is demanding a shift in climate policy. Slowly, the penny seems to be dropping.

A storm is brewing in Berlin. The faint rumble that barely drew attention weeks ago has now grown into unmistakable thunderclaps: After Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius sent an urgent letter to the Chancellor calling for a return to reality and a rethink of strict CO₂ targets, the chemical union IG BCE has voiced sharp criticism. Their message to policymakers is clear: the destructive climate policies from Brussels and Berlin are pushing industry to the brink of collapse.

End of the German Special Path 

The IG BCE calls for abandoning Germany’s national goal of climate neutrality by 2045. Union leader Michael Vassiliadis emphasized that many companies are fighting for survival. 40,000 jobs are at risk, and 12,000 employees are already on short-time work. Regarding climate targets, even aligning with the EU goal by extending the deadline five years to 2050 could help—but even that is not enough, says Vassiliadis, speaking for 570,000 members. Many companies need immediate support; otherwise, stagnation and job losses are inevitable.

The union is particularly critical of CO₂ pricing. This instrument doesn’t work as intended—it kills businesses, Vassiliadis says. And nowhere else in the world is it applied as harshly as in Germany. While Asia and the U.S. ignore European guidelines, German companies face massive competitive disadvantages. Technologies, infrastructure, and energy sources for climate-neutral production at reasonable costs simply do not exist.

Germany’s “special path” keeps standing out. In the land of devout climate activists, the aim is to set a good example. Realism, global perspectives, and climate facts are ridiculed and dismissed as much as possible by climate proselytes in the media, NGOs, and politics.

The Consequences Are Real 

The hardest hit are energy-intensive sectors—chemicals, plastics, rubber, glass, paper. Production is falling everywhere; entire value chains are disappearing. Vassiliadis’ words send a clear signal: even in traditionally SPD-aligned unions, long conditioned to ecological orthodoxy, open resistance to green climate policy is growing.

The Dam Has Broken 

The dam seems broken; the vow of silence by business and unions has ended. The crisis of the German economy—now in its third year of recession—cannot be ignored. The country has become a location from which capital flees rather than settles. Last year alone, €64.5 billion in net direct investment was withdrawn. These are real investments that create jobs and secure the future.

Across party lines, ecological zeal has caused irreparable social damage. Since 2019, some 250,000 industrial jobs have been lost; in Q2 2025, industrial employment fell 2.1 percent, about 4.3 percent over six years. Currently, 5.43 million people still work in industry, but they sit on a melting iceberg—over 100,000 positions vanished in 2024, including 45,400 in the automotive sector.

Construction is also in retreat: bankruptcies rose 17 percent last year—high interest rates, declining orders, and Kafkaesque bureaucracy paralyze investors and builders.

Industry Raises Sails 

Chemical and steel production, among others, have dropped over 15 percent since pre-COVID times—Germany’s economic decline is absolute, accelerating, and eroding the foundations of society.

Depression, Not Recession 

The numbers describe an economic depression. Calling it a recession would be euphemistic, masking the damage green fanaticism and unbridled regulation have caused. The state has been captured by green-socialist ideologues, turning it into a weapon against the heart of the German economy.

It is regrettable that it took so long for leading economic figures to oppose this destructive course, fulfilling their civil responsibility. The elite has so far failed to meet its rightful high standards. Respect is due to Källenius and Vassiliadis, who now stand against the powerful climate lobby and must hope for allies.

Dealing With the New Command Economy 

Germany—and by extension all EU states—will soon be forced by economic realities to a regulatory pivot: Brussels and national planners are running out of money for further experiments. The same will soon affect the defense industry.

The Argentine model seems paradigmatic: bureaucracy and regulation must be compressed with a shock moment. “Economy before politics” must prevail; all attacks on private wealth and economic freedom—minimum wages, rent caps, heat pump mandates, or the combustion engine ban—must be buried in the swamp of socialist experiments.

That the IG Metall seems ready to convert struggling civilian production into a wartime economy with state aid would be a step from the frying pan into the fire.

We need consensus that state-managed economies fail and cannot work. Agreement is essential to politically and narratively break Brussels’ front.

Brussels in Heavy Turbulence 

Green transformation and the attempted European wartime economy must be understood together. The political aim is to revive idle industrial capacity, control basic industry and energy sectors, and establish a green-socialist command economy. Power is prioritized over societal prosperity and individual freedom—a Brussels minor key.

But the Eurocrats’ score ends abruptly. Public debt, permanent recession, job losses, and growing criticism of Brussels’ ideological course threaten the centralization project. German criticism cannot be ignored; international business representatives will join German “strikebreakers.” The clock is ticking for Brussels.

President Ursula von der Leyen and her EU Commission face a multi-front battle, with the U.S. increasing pressure on Brussels’ regulatory and censorship policies. The coming weeks will be challenging.

Possibly, the last week of August 2025 marks a groundbreaking wake-up call from the German economic elite, finally stirring the sluggish Berlin coalition. Anything less than a complete break with planned climate policy signals either political incapacity or unwillingness to reform. Given deep entanglements with the climate complex, a hard clash between ideology and civil society seems inevitable.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Laura Dodsworth via DailySceptic.org,

I recently returned from holiday. The segue from hot dry days oiled with rosé and factor 30 to a best-of-British grey rainy day was harsh. But as I took myself out for provisions, slapping my sandals through puddles under a leaden sky, my mood lifted. The high street was lined with our beautiful Union flags. Bright red, white and blue cut through the drizzle like fireworks. A reminder that this is home.

Not everyone feels the same. X, that great sewer of national neurosis, is on fire with polarised responses to a few flags on lampposts. Some of us see hope, pride and courage. Others see racism, fascism and the end of civilisation. And so I would like to coin a new word for our times: Vexillophobia.

Vexillology is the study of flags. A vexillophile is someone who loves them.

I am amazed that no one else has coined the obvious opposite, vexillophobia, until now. Yet here we are, in a country that actually needs a word for people who recoil in horror at bunting.

A vexillophobe hates flags. They are allergic to bunting. They start to twitch at the sight of a fluttering Union Jack. The St George’s cross provokes maximum fear and outrage in the vexillophobe.

Take Andy Burnham, who said:

“You can obviously display a flag if that’s your choice but I don’t know, I do wonder about the times we’re living in. It’s like people are seeking confrontation.”

I think Andy Burnham is a vexillophobe.

He is not alone — vexillophobia is sweeping the land. Professor Kehinde Andrews told Good Morning Britain that people who put up flags are really signalling that “Britain is white and we shouldn’t be here”. Essex County Council sent staff a note warning that England flags on roundabouts might make people feel “unsettled”. The Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, complained last summer that nationalists “defile the flag they wrap themselves in”. Poor Justin, what does he make of the Last Night of the Proms when the Albert Hall becomes a glorious sea of flags, Rule Britannia! soaring and hearts pounding with joy? Perhaps he considers it a televised hate crime.

The media is consumed with bunting panic. NBC asked, ‘Patriotic pride or anti-immigrant campaign? Why the English flag is suddenly everywhere‘ and the BBC dourly warned: “National flags have started lining our streets. They may say something more.”

A YouGov survey last year revealed that one in four Britons has an unfavourable view of people who fly the Union Jack or St George’s Cross. Keir Starmer claimed that the Labour Party was the patriotic party, but Labour voters were 13 times more likely than Conservative supporters to describe England’s flag as “racist and divisive”. Almost half of Labour voters took a negative view of those who hang a St George’s Cross outside their home.

Parliament has an APPG on British Muslims, building on the APPG on Islamophobia which preceded it, and is determined to push for legal and institutional recognition of Islamophobia as a form of racism. There are APPGs dedicated to health and mental health. So, why is there no All-Party Parliamentary Group on vexillophobia? This country urgently needs one. MPs must step up and support sufferers of this terrible malady. Imagine how difficult it must be to go about your daily business while breaking into a cold sweat every time you pass a car dealership or a Wetherspoons festooned with Union Jacks. Truly, this is a silent epidemic.

And it gets worse, since I suspect the vexillophobes don’t just complain, they project. They accuse people who love flags of being “flag-shaggers”. No one is shagging flags — one wonders whether there is something distinctly Freudian about this insult?

No, I am afraid that vexillophobia is a giant red flag for hatred of one’s own nation — in other words, a form of contorted self-hatred. If you cannot take joy in your own country’s symbols, if you sneer at those who fly the flag at home, if it drives you mad to see your flag in the high street, then you have a deeper problem.

J.D. Vance has told patriotic Britons to “push back against the crazies”. But what should we do about the crazies themselves?

British humour at its finest

Fortunately, psychology has answers. The classic treatment for phobias is exposure therapy. Arachnophobes are encouraged to look at a spider from a distance, then closer, then to hold one in their hands until the fear subsides. Likewise, we can only hope that if vexillophobes are exposed to more and more flags they will not only be de-sensitised, but even learn to enjoy the thrilling colours and elegant geometry of one of the best flags in the world.

There is no cure but courage. Vexillophobes must learn to stand tall, eyes fixed on the flagpole, and embrace what they fear.

So, people, you know what to do. Proudly raise the colours. Hang a flag from your window, tie bunting across your garden, stick a Union Jack on your car. If nothing else, it will help our poor vexillophobic neighbours confront their demons.

The red, white and blue is ours. Let it fly.

This article was first published on Laura’s Substack, the Free Mind. Subscribe here.

Islam is the world’s second-largest relgion and 1.8 billion Muslims are spread across every continent.

The visualization below, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, ranks each country by the number of adherents, along with their share in the population revealing where Muslim communities are largest.

The data for this visualization comes from two complementary sources: Pew Research, which tracks global religious affiliation, and the CIA World Factbook, which publishes the latest national demographic splits.

Due to data restrains, the most recent figures between 2020–2023 have been used, depending on availability per country.

Ranked: Countries With the Most Muslims

Indonesia (242 million), Pakistan (235 million), India (213 million), and Bangladesh (150 million) alone account for nearly 40% of the world’s Muslims.

Each of these densely populated nations has seen steady population growth over the past two decades, and fertility rates in Pakistan and Bangladesh remain above the global average.

Together, they underscore the demographic weight of South and Southeast Asia, regions sometimes overlooked when the focus is on the Middle East.

The presence of Malaysia and Uzbekistan in the top 20 further highlights Asia’s central role in shaping global Muslim demographics.

Muslim-Majority and Muslim-Plurality States in Africa

Meanwhile, Africa is home to some of the fastest-growing Muslim populations.

Nigeria, already the continent’s most populous country, now counts more than 124 million Muslims, over half its citizens.

In North Africa, Egypt and Algeria each report that roughly 95-98% of their inhabitants identify as Muslim, reflecting centuries-old cultural and religious continuity.

Across the Sahel, countries like Niger and Mali post near-complete Muslim majorities, even as they grapple with rapid urbanization and climate pressures that influence migration patterns.

Minorities in Demographic Giants: India and China

While India’s 213 million Muslims comprise only 15% of its population, that minority is larger than the total populations of most countries.

China’s Muslim share is just 1.4%, yet the absolute number—25 million—is comparable to the entire population of Australia.

These examples illustrate how sheer population size can translate even small percentages into tens of millions of adherents.

Demographers expect India’s Muslim community to surpass Indonesia’s by mid-century if current fertility differentials persist, potentially redrawing the global ranking.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out America’s Religious Landscape on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The Chancellor seems to have collided with reality during the summer break. Merz sees the German social system in deep crisis. Meanwhile, his political allies in Brussels are calling for an increase in the very dose of poison that is making Europe sick.

Let’s be blunt: Large parts of the political elite have a fractured relationship with reality. This applies equally to the economic decay of Germany and the EU, as well as to the public communication of strategic political goals, which are systematically obscured. Open criticism of the course could cause the political fairy tale to collapse faster than reality seeps into public opinion.

Merz and the Welfare State

All the more remarkable are the warning words of Chancellor Friedrich Merz during his Saturday appearance at the CDU state party conference in Lower Saxony. “I am not satisfied with what we have achieved so far – it must be more, it must be better.”

Hear that! A faint tremor of self-criticism from the Chancellor. Rare, indeed. Yet the statement raises the question: what exactly does Merz mean by “achievements”? Is he referring to the so-called investment booster, supposedly providing marginal relief to the German economy while it teeters on collapse? Or does he mean the massive debt packages and widening financing gaps, most likely to be closed with tax hikes?

In his speech in Osnabrück, Merz later spoke unusually clearly about the state of the welfare system: “The welfare state, as we have it today, is no longer financially sustainable given what we can deliver economically.” A blunt diagnosis, leaving little to be desired in clarity.

There was, however, no mention of a market-oriented turn, trust in individual solutions, personal responsibility, or rapid bureaucratic reduction. The message seems to be: stay the course.

Moments of Honesty

Merz also spoke unequivocally about citizen welfare payments: it cannot continue like this. 5.6 million people receive the payments. Many could work but do not, he said. A reality that politics usually avoids.

A tentative attempt to openly name the precarious state of German social insurance. In times when political sugar-coating is routine, it’s almost a stroke of luck when a leading politician at least partially acknowledges economic realities.

Have the latest economic data perhaps shaken Merz and his colleagues in Berlin? GDP shrank again in the second quarter, and the outlook remains bleak. With the state intervening via massive credit programs and new debt hitting about 3.5% this year, the private economy is contracting at 4–5%. Calling this a recession would be euphemistic — we are in a depression.

More EU Centralism

While the Chancellor stumbled through Germany’s harsh economic reality, EU representatives launched media trial balloons.

It was Mario Draghi, the EU’s political all-rounder, who easily alternates between former Italian PM and ECB chief, presenting yet another report.

He reiterated his familiar demand: the European Union must act more cohesively, like a single state, if it wants to retain a geopolitical role.

More of the medicine that made Europe sick: more centralization, less subsidiarity, and intensified technocratic rule. Draghi once again demonstrates Brussels’ plan — as during the sovereign debt crisis 15 years ago: power concentrated in Brussels, decisions outside democratic control, enforced by a political apparatus orchestrating media narratives. Strict censorship, media manipulation — dirty tools to silence opposition to centralization. The same authoritarian logic that worked then is being revived.

Lagarde and Migration

Draghi’s ally, ECB President Christine Lagarde, also hit the media circuit. She touched on migration, a topic skillfully avoided or distorted in German politics and media.

Lagarde floated a trial balloon at the Federal Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, subtly testing Europe’s mood. According to her, Europe could no longer grow without massive migration (of which growth exactly?). She claimed Germany’s GDP would be roughly six percent lower today than in 2019 without foreign workers.

That the country has been in a depression for some time seems not to have reached the ECB leadership. Then came the familiar trump card: without migration, the labor shortage cannot be addressed. No mention of technological advances via AI or robotics, which could offset labor shortages. No mention of migration as a security risk, of cultural conflicts, or a political Islam incompatible with European values.

Lagarde’s stance was particularly striking as the U.S. begins repatriating illegal migrants, ending the Europeanization of American policy. Her speech in the land of rational awakening and political turnaround likely caused nothing but raised eyebrows.

Jackson Hole highlighted the EU’s trajectory: open borders, elites ignoring risks, while the left expands its voter base at Europe’s cultural and economic expense.

Bitter Balance

Combine the three events — Merz’s speech, Lagarde in Jackson Hole, and Draghi’s latest report — and the conclusion is alarming: the economy is accelerating toward collapse due to a self-inflicted energy crisis and overregulation. Social funds, strained by mass illegal migration, risk implosion. The proposed solution? Centralization, regulation, and continued unchecked migration.

Even Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil’s usual tax hike debates fit seamlessly: the individual counts for nothing, the state controls everything, increasingly burdening citizens. The audacity to attack private property and raise taxes further is staggering, meeting little resistance. The Merz CDU has become a paper-thin bourgeois protective wall of hot air.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Oh, what a show that was. A pan-Asia, pan-Eurasia, crossover Global South ball, with glittering dynamo Tianjin as backdrop, enjoyed as such by the overwhelming majority of the planet, while predictably generating cascades of sour grapes among the fragmented West – from the omnipotent Empire of Chaos to The Coalition of the Toothless Chihuahuas.

History will register that as much as BRICS finally stepped into the limelight at the summit in Kazan in 2024, the SCO replicated the move at the summit in Tianjin in 2025.

Among a feast of highlights – hard to top Putin and Modi walking hand in hand – this was of course M.C. Xi’s ball. The original RIC (Russia, India, China), as conceptualized by the Great Primakov in the late 1990s, were finally back in the game, together.

But it was Xi who personally set the main guidelines – proposing no less than a broad, new Global Governance model, complete with important ramifications such as a SCO development back, which should complement the BRICS’s NDB, as well as close AI cooperation in contrast with Silicon Valley’s techno-feudalism.

Global Governance, the Chinese way, encompasses five core principles. The most crucial, no doubt, is sovereign equality. That connects with respect for the international rule of law – and not a shape-shifted, at will, “rules-based international order”. Global Governance advances multilateralism. And also inevitably encourages a much-lauded “people-centered” approach, away from vested interests.

Putin for his part detailed the role of the SCO as “a vehicle for genuine multilateralism”, in tune with this new Global Governance. And he crucially called for a pan-Eurasian security model. That’s exactly the “indivisibility of security” that the Kremlin proposed to Washington in December 2021 – and was met by a non-response response.

So taken together, BRICS and SCO are totally engaged in burying the Cold War-era mentality, a world divided by blocs; and at the same time they are visionary enough to call for the UN system to be respected as it was originally conceived.

Now that will be the Mother of Uphill Battles – including everything from taking the UN out of New York to completely revamping the Security Council.

The dance of Bear, Dragon and Elephant

If Xi set up the guidelines in Tianjin, the strategic guest of honor had to be Putin. And that extrapolated to their one-on-one meeting on Tuesday at the Zhongnanhai in Beijing: very private, as only special conversations are held at the former imperial palace. Xi greeted his “old friend” in Russian.

As Putin emphasized the central role of the SCO Development Program for the next 10 years, he was playing it very much the Chinese way, when it comes to all those successive, successful 5-year plans.

These roadmaps are essential to set long-term strategies. And in the case of the SCO, that means organizing its progressive shift from initially an anti-terrorism mechanism to a complex multilateral platform coodinating infrastructure development and geoeconomics.

And that’s where China’s new idea – the establishment of the SCO Development Bank – comes in. It’s a mirror institution to the NDB – the BRICS bank based in Shanghai, and parallel to the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the multilateral bank based in Beijing.

Once again, BRICS and SCO run intertwined, as their key focus is to progressively ditch dependence on Western paradigms and at the same time fight the effect of sanctions, which not by accident hit hard on the four top members of both BRICS and SCO: Russia, China, India and Iran.

And of course, among all the camaraderie in Tianjin, there was Modi in China for the first time in 7 years. Xi went straight to the point: “China and India are great civilizations whose responsibilities extend beyond bilateral issues.” And M.C. Xi once again hit the dancefloor: the future lies “in the dance of the dragon and the elephant.” Cue to the Three Eurasia amigos chatting amicably in the corridors.

The Tianjin Declaration – not as extensive as Kazan last year – still managed to emphasize the key points that apply to Eurasia: sovereignty, above anything else; non-interference in internal affairs of member-states; and total rejection of unilateral sanctions as tools of coercion.

Crucially, that should apply not only to SCO member-states but to partners as well – from the Arab petromonarchies to the Southeast Asian powerhouses. Development strategies of different nations already cooperate, in practice, with BRI projects, from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to the China-Belarus Industrial Park, extrapolating to cross-border e-commerce, AI and Big Data.

The SCO’s astonishing geographic scale, combined with half of the world’s population, carries tremendous potential across the spectrum – for instance on trade, transport infrastructure, cross-border investment and financial transactions. The potential is far from being realized.

But the high-speed trains are already rolling: geopolitical imperatives are guiding increased pan-Eurasia geoeconomic interaction.

Shanghai Spirit eviscerates “War on Terror”

So this is the top takeaway of the Tianjin Show: the SCO affirming itself as a solid strategic pole uniting a great deal of the Global Majority. And all that without the need to metastasize into an offensive military behemoth like NATO.

It’s a long way from a pavillion in a Shanghai park in 2001, only three months before 9/11 – which was marketed by the Empire of Chaos as the foundation stone of the “war on terror”. That other initially modest foundation stone – with Russia, China and three Central Asian “stans” – was the “Shanghai spirit”: a set of principles based on mutual trust and benefit, equality, consultation, respect for the diversity of civilizations, and an emphasis on common economic development.

How the Shanghai spirit actually outlasted the “war on terror” leaves us with much to ponder.

In his toast at the elegant banquet offered in Tianjin for SCO guests, Xi had to quote a proverb: “In a race of a hundred boats, those who row the hardest will lead”.

Hard work. Results of which can be seen by anyone facing Tianjin’s spectacular development. That has absolutely nothing to do with “democracy” – as debased by its allleged practitioners as it is across the collective West – opposed to “the autocrats”, or “villains”, or Axis of Upheaval, or any other stupidity. It’s always about hard work – for the common good. That’s what BRICS and SCO are fighting for.

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

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

The more information we get about the “Trump economic zone” proposal in southern Lebanon, the worse it seems for the people who live there. The latest reports reveal the plan to totally depopulate the south of the country, to place the whole area under US military control, and to grant Israel to right to build “permanent” bases in what are currently Lebanese towns and villages.

The plan first appeared a little over a week ago, with the US presenting it as their proposal while Israel maintains they came up with the idea. The broad strokes are that it is meant to replace border villages with Lebanese government-run industrial zones.

But the plan would involve no less than 27 villages being depopulated, spanning the Israel-Lebanon border from Naqoura to Marjayoun. Among those, Israel is demanding it be granted permission to construct permanent military sites within 14 of the former villages.

The plan would involve the absolute destruction of Odaisseh, Kfar Kela, Houla, Markaba, and Ayta al-Shaab. Israel wants rights to occupy those militarily as well as Khiam, Ramiya, Yaroun, Aitaroun, Alma al-Shaab, Al-Dhayra, Marwahin, Maroun El-Ras, and Blida.

Underpinning the plan would be 1,500 to 2,000 US troops occupying the Trump Zone, which will be meant to “assure” Israeli settlers in northern Israel.

It is unclear from the reports if these will be US military personnel or simply American military contractors. Either way though, Lebanon would be ceding all sovereign authority over the south of their country.

The economic aspect of the zone is to create state-run industry in the south, which US officials have suggested would provide jobs even though nobody would be allowed to live there anyway. They have tapped Saudi Arabia and Qatar to bankroll this scheme.

Though presented as mainly about harming Hezbollah, the Trump Zone is depopulating not just Shi’ite villages, but also Sunni towns in the west like al-Bustan and even Christian-heavy towns like Rmesh. Lebanon is known being split among Sunni, Shi’ite and Christian populations, and none of them are spared in this plan.

In a stunning shake-up at one of Japan’s biggest beverage giants, Suntory Holdings Chairman and CEO Takeshi Niinami has resigned after being questioned by police over an overseas purchase of supplements allegedly containing THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis that’s illegal in Japan above certain levels, Japan Times reports.

The company announced Tuesday that Niinami, one of Japan’s most prominent business leaders and a member of a government economic panel, stepped down after police launched an investigation tied to supplements he bought overseas – products he insists he believed were legal.

“We apologize from the bottom of our hearts for causing trouble over the incident,” Suntory Holdings President Nobuhiro Torii said at a hastily convened news conference in Tokyo.

The Breaking Point

Torii said Niinami informed Suntory on Aug. 22 that he was under police investigation. The company brought in an external attorney, who confirmed Niinami’s account that he purchased the supplements “with the understanding that they were legal.”

But the Fukuoka Prefectural Police suspect otherwise. Investigators believe the products may contain THC and became aware of Niinami’s possible involvement after another man was arrested in July over illegal drugs.

Niinami has denied wrongdoing, telling investigators that a female acquaintance ordered the supplements and had them sent to him. He voluntarily submitted to a urine test for THC, which came back negative.

Guess times aren’t so relaxing for Niinami…

Despite the pending investigation and the absence of confirmed wrongdoing, Suntory’s board urged Niinami to resign, citing concerns over his judgment and the company’s reputation.

Torii said the controversy “makes him unfit to remain as chairman,” especially since Suntory itself sells supplements. After initial reluctance, Niinami agreed to step down on Monday, ending his more than 10-year tenure with the company.

Torii nonetheless praised Niinami’s leadership – saying “He was a bold, decisive and capable business leader,” adding “For the 10 years he was with the company, he significantly expanded the company’s sales and profitability. That is an undeniable fact.”

Suntory Vice President Kenji Yamada stressed that Niinami’s resignation was final regardless of whether police eventually clear him:

“This decision was made in light of the seriousness of the issue, which concerns his qualification to be the leader of a company that deals in supplements. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, this matter will remain unchanged.”

Niinami, who became Suntory’s president in 2014 and took over as chairman in March this year, also serves as head of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai), a high-profile business lobby.

Investigators have not located the supplements in question, and no formal charges have been filed.

Wonder if Sammy Davis Jr. was on THC when he adlibbed this Suntory ad? Maybe something with a little more kick. 

Authored by James Lyons-Weiler via The Brownstone Institute,

When Demetre Daskalakis resigned as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC, his letter to leadership carried a tone of finality and moral conviction. 

“Enough is enough,” he declared, explaining that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s leadership had made it impossible for him to continue. The letter has been praised as principled, but when read closely it is less a defense of science than a portrait of the very rhetorical habits that drove the public away from CDC in the first place: appeals to authority, catastrophic predictions, ad hominem attacks, and factual distortions.

Consider his charge that he can no longer serve in an environment that “treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” 

This is a false dichotomy. It frames the choice as binary: either one accepts CDC’s “scientific reality,” or one is accused of designing policies to harm.

Yet the last five years have shown what most Americans already know: what CDC has called “science” has often been neither transparent nor replicable, but political judgment dressed in a white coat. 

He accuses the new HHS of narrative enforcement, when, in reality, CDC has become infamous for the same partly on his watch.

Lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates were not the inevitable products of neutral science — they were policy choices, frequently contradicted by the very data the CDC refused to release. Kennedy did not cause that collapse of trust. Power overreach and failed policy did.

Still, Daskalakis appeals to institutional sanctity: “unvetted and conflicted outside organizations seem to be the sources HHS use over the gold standard science of CDC.” 

But the claim that CDC represents “gold standard science” rings hollow. The agency’s failures are well documented: contaminated Covid tests that delayed early detection, failure to use standard qRT-PCR to control for false positives, shifting guidance on masks that left the public whiplashed, withheld vaccine safety data buried in VAERS and VSD, and FOIA evasions that stonewalled independent scrutiny. To describe this record as “gold standard science” is an appeal to authority wholly unsupported by the evidence.

The catastrophism in his letter is striking but rings hollow. He warns that Kennedy’s policies will “bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer.” He’s pretending that Kennedy has said he wants no vaccines for anyone. This is a combined fallacy: false dichotomy and slippery slope. Questioning the safety of excipients, the timing, number, or necessity of vaccines does not condemn the country to Darwinian misery. 

In fact, mortality from infectious diseases like measles, pertussis, and diphtheria had already declined long before mass vaccination, thanks to sanitation, nutrition, and reduced exposure to livestock reservoirs. The fact of loss of protection due to waning immunity is not found in his resignation. Balanced debate about risks and benefits does not mean “returning to the dark ages.” It means practicing science as it should be — open, skeptical, and transparent and will full accountability on scientific claims.

At points, the rhetoric becomes openly hostile. ACIP members are dismissed as “people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor,” and Kennedy himself is cast as an “authoritarian leader.” These are ad hominem attacks, not arguments. They dismiss individuals rather than engage with data or reasoning.

I’ve worked with Secretary Kennedy long enough to know him as a sensitive, thoughtful, non-reactionary, considerate leader. He is so considerate it can at times nearly irk his underlings who would like to see him come to decisions faster. But that’s because they have already made up their minds. Kennedy works arbitrarily and uses contrarianism – debate, adversarial set-ups – to hammer out the details until the description of a problem and its solution fits the mold. I’ve never heard of anyone spun out of his orbit for doing due diligence-based dissent. Meanwhile, Daskalakis pines for the old “following the leader” model of authoritarian “trust the science” CDC. Those days are gone.

The gravest claim in the letter is that “eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated.” Daskalakis gives us no quotations, policies, or documents. Sometimes words just sound right when one is upset, I suppose. Ironically, the accusation is not only unsubstantiated but inverted. Kennedy has consistently warned against coercive health policies and corporate capture, both of which he argues worsen inequality. To portray his emphasis on transparency and medical freedom as eugenics is a straw man — a distortion intended to silence rather than to debate.

Daskalakis goes further, blaming Kennedy for violence: “I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that his and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur.” 

This refers to a shooting at CDC. Again, no hint of evidence has been offered by Daskalakis or anyone else to connect Kennedy’s words to the crime. It is a post hoc fallacy, exploiting tragedy to smear a political opponent. It’s shameless and ripens the fruit of his letter to rot.

Perhaps most jarring is his claim that Kennedy’s HHS has sought to “erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming, and terminate key research to support equity.” 

The rhetoric here is catastrophic, baseless, and false. In reality, under Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s leadership, the NIH has made HIV a top research priority. Far from “ceasing HIV programming,” Kennedy’s administration has pledged to tackle the epidemic with fresh eyes, free from the pharmaceutical capture that distorted earlier approaches. To suggest otherwise is not just hyperbole; it is disinformation.

Daskalakis also insists he has “always been first to challenge scientific dogma.” His self-nomination as a leader in this activity is again unsupported by evidence. Did Daskalakis speak up when Moderna and Pfizer inflated their efficacy estimates? Did Daskalakis write a letter of complaint when CDC reported that 20 layers of cloth masks, no 16, no, thank you Dr. Fauci, only 1 layer of cloth mask was sufficient to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus in its tracks? I could go on, but the answer is not one peep from this challenger of dogma.

And yet, in practice, his defense of CDC orthodoxy shows the opposite. The real challenger of dogma has been Kennedy, who has questioned the sacred cows of American public health — vaccine trial design, regulatory capture, chronic disease drivers, and the silencing of dissent. What Daskalakis calls “dogma” is only that which challenges the CDC. What he calls “science” is whatever the CDC itself declares. Policy-first narrative enforcement activities.

None of this is to deny the human element. Daskalakis thanks his colleagues as “dedicated professionals committed to improving the health and well-being of communities across the nation.” 

Burnout and disillusionment are real, and his sense of betrayal is palpable. But compassion must extend beyond the walls of the CDC. For decades, the American people have suffered from rising chronic illness. Six in ten live with at least one chronic disease. Life expectancy has declined relative to peer nations. Autoimmune conditions, autism, and metabolic disorders have surged. To claim that Kennedy caused mistrust is to invert reality: mistrust grew because what CDC did was not science but policy, enforced without transparency, accountability, or humility.

The refrain “enough is enough” was meant as a rebuke of Kennedy’s HHS. But for the American people, it applies first and foremost to the CDC itself. Enough of secrecy disguised as science. Enough of fear-based rhetoric to silence dissent. Enough of sanctimony about “gold standards” while health outcomes decline due to medicine optimized to proxy outcomes. Kennedy’s critics mistake his reforms for authoritarianism when, in fact, they are the first genuine challenge to authoritarian policy disguised as medicine.

The resignation of a career official should not be mocked. But it should be read for what it is: a defense of a failed paradigm, framed as a moral stand. The task ahead is not to preserve the CDC’s aura; that is undeserved. It is instead to put public health on a foundation of honesty, openness, and freedom worthy of trust. That — not resignation letters steeped in fallacy — is what will truly make America healthy again.

Among the major agreements to come out of President Vladimir Putin’s official visit to China, hosted by President Xi Jinping this week (for the SCO conference and upcoming Chinese military parade, also to be attended by North Korea’s Kim), is the signing of a legally binding deal to construct and bring online the much-delayed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline.

Alexei Miller, chief executive of Gazprom, confirmed to state news agencies that a memorandum of understanding has been signed on the construction of the new, ambitious gas pipeline.

It will transit gas reserves in Russia’s West Siberia to northern China via eastern Mongolia, at an expected estimated supply of 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, Miller said, Interfax reports.

This is a three-decade long commitment and contract for the Power of Siberia 2. Miller further revealed that the price of gas transferred will be subject of a separate agreement.

Coinciding with this new deal, widely seen as an act of defiance aimed at that West and at a moment the US is threatening strong secondary sanctions on any country importing Russian energy, is that Gazprom will ramp up supplies to China via the existing Power of Siberia pipeline.

An industry executive and insider has underscored to CNBC that this sends a strong signal of the Russia-China-India desire to push back against Western economic bullying as BRICS countries forge ahead with their ‘multi-polar world’ platform:

“For the past decade, Gazprom has been pushing China to give the go-ahead for Power of Siberia-2, only to be met – until now – with positive but non-committal noises. So today’s signing of a MOU is a step forward for Gazprom,” Granville told CNBC by email.

“The fact that this has happened against the background of the fraught Ukraine war endgame, is a clear enough signal of China’s steady strategic backing for Russia as the lynchpin of the new multipolar order to which both these core Eurasian powers aspire,” Granville said.

Given the by and large loss of the European market, Moscow will be forced to sell gas at a lower than what Gazprom charges its European customers – no doubt part of the big appeal for Beijing – which could prove a big hurdle given the extreme cost and difficulty of constructing Power of Siberia 2 across a difficult and lengthy geographical terrain.

Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh is also in Beijing, where he has held meetings with Putin and Xi, during which time nearly two dozen agreements were signed. Russian state media has hailed it as a Warning to West, and a beacon for the Global South…

Russia remains third-largest provider of liquified natural gas (LNG) to China, after Australia and Qatar. The current 3,000 km pipeline, Power of Siberia, went online in 2019 as part of a 30-year, $400 billion deal.

Interestingly, President Putin while in China has struck a positive tone anytime US pressure is brought up in the context of the Ukraine war and American-led sanctions regimen. Putin said this week that the Trump administration “is listening to us” – unlike the prior Biden administration.

“Now we see this mutual understanding, it’s noticeable,” Putin told Slovak President Robert Fico in a bilateral meeting in China. “We are very happy about this and hope this constructive dialogue will continue.”