A new proposal from the Swedish government would dramatically raise financial incentives for migrants to return to their countries of origin, with individuals eligible to receive up to SEK 350,000 (€32,000) and families up to SEK 600,000 (€55,000) as part of a broader effort to curb immigration and address integration challenges.
Migration Minister Johan Forssell confirmed the agreement among the coalition parties and emphasized that the program would include strong oversight mechanisms, telling Swedish news agency TT that the government wants to minimize the risk of people exploiting the allowance by coming to Sweden solely to claim the payment.
As reported by the Samnytt news outlet, the proposal also includes a clause requiring full repayment of the grant if the recipient returns to Sweden, regardless of the time elapsed.
The remigration proposal is the latest in a series of measures aimed at reshaping Sweden’s migration and integration policies. It comes amid growing public concern over violent crime, particularly gang-related violence involving individuals with migration backgrounds. Reports have highlighted a surge in homicides and increasingly brazen criminal activity in Swedish cities. Sweden now reportedly records 50 percent more homicides than El Salvador, a country once plagued by gang violence until a sweeping crackdown by President Nayib Bukele.
The Swedish government has framed its remigration policy as one response to what it describes as a decline in social cohesion and the failure of decades of integration efforts.
In March, the Swedish Ministry of Justice also introduced a proposal to tighten citizenship eligibility by raising the minimum income threshold for applicants. Under the draft, migrants applying for citizenship would need to demonstrate an annual income equivalent to three income base amounts, amounting to a gross monthly income of approximately SEK 20,000, or around €1,820.
“Being granted Swedish citizenship is something you should feel proud of. We are tightening the requirements to make it more meaningful and to ensure that those who become citizens have made an effort to become part of our society,” said Forssell at the time.
If approved, the new citizenship rules will take effect on June 1, 2026.
Despite the tough rhetoric from the ruling coalition, which is propped up with votes from the right-wing Sweden Democrats, skepticism persists about the government’s follow-through.
Remix News reported in March how Sweden granted citizenship to 60,000 foreign nationals in 2023, a number that has raised eyebrows among conservative commentators and immigration critics.
In an editorial last month, the newspaper Expressen warned that many of the new citizens had not sufficiently proven their identities, writing, “It is dangerous. Especially considering that citizenship cannot be revoked.”
“No one can concentrate on anything for long these days. It’s completely ruining society.”
That’s quite a comment from my philosophically minded Uber driver, and it caught my attention. It had the ring of truth, something about which I’ve been thinking, but I was startled to hear this coming from a stranger. So I asked him to elaborate.
“It’s social media. Everyone is spending their days scrolling to get 3 and 4-second hits of instant gratification from content that has no meaning. We’ve lost patience for extended and meaningful narratives.”
You mean long movies?
“Not really. I mean big and important books, classics, well-constructed books, literary masterpieces put together with care that have stood the test of time.”
Intrigued by this, I thought further. It does have the ring of truth. To think that social media has done this to everyone in varying degrees is rather shocking. I do not exclude myself. The time I spend with long narratives that stretch over hundreds of pages and a reading time of many days has become ever less.
I was thrilled when the news cycle opened up and included ever more voices and more real-time updates. It seems like a better world than the one into which I was born, wherein three newscasters read almost identical scripts about the same big events. Everyone trusted them. We moved on with our lives.
Now we are tempted to believe that constant refreshing of pages will make us more informed. We are going to find out the truth of public life now. We are no longer denied alternative voices and we are being given stunning looks into alternative explanations. This is great, and we naturally think it is an improvement.
Maybe it is. Surely it is. But the question is, at what cost? It is gravely tempting to spend whatever excess time we have obsessing about this or that thing with infinite options of sources, podcasts, videos, feeds, trending topics, and unrelating blasts of breaking news that amaze us and probably further tribalize us.
What is the cost? It is what we would otherwise be doing. Maybe that is investing in personal relationships and family. Maybe it is picking up a big physical unplugged book and reading from page one, thrilling in the gradual unfolding of a narrative. Maybe it is thinking about long-term financial planning and learning new ways to think about finance and implementing the lessons.
There can be no doubt that this goes on ever less and less. A 20-something friend says he knows of only two people in several years who have read an actual book. We all know that it is true. Empirical evidence on this varies, and the book market itself seems to be doing fine. Whether and to what extent people under the age of 30 actually have extended and disciplined time with mighty books is a real question. Surveys alone won’t give the answer.
What does it matter anyway? Again, I asked my Uber driver.
“It’s completely changing people. And the culture too. It’s all about now, not the future. It’s all about whatever stimulation we can realize in the moment without a thought about the long term.”
So what?
“The problem is that this outlook makes people selfish. It’s all about themselves. They don’t care about others. They don’t even notice others. People are nowhere near as aware of what is around them and how others respond to them. Social media is turning everyone into a sociopath.”
That’s a serious charge, but I’m hard-pressed to dispute it. Several experiences on my travels have confirmed this, not big things but small ways in which people are disinclined to give up their temporary comfort for something larger than themselves.
Maybe it is making the middle seat available to someone on a plane where seating is unassigned. The first thought these days is to look out for number one and plot to keep everyone away.
How often do people help strangers with luggage? Do they even notice? How about letting someone else order food or drink before you do? How about letting others who might miss a flight get in front of you in a line to deplane?
These are small points but it certainly seems true that we grant less social deference to each other than we once did. Indeed, we once took basic manners for granted. Now it seems like it is every man for himself under all circumstances.
Of course every generation decries the corruption of its time while looking back nostalgically on times past. It’s a bias that stems from selection: It is easier to remember the good and forget the bad the more time has marched forward, and easier to be more aware of the bad around you than dig deeper for the good.
That’s always true. And yet, the advent of social media, universal pocket media displays, personalized earbuds, and infinite content choices is all very much new. Nor are they going away. If they have changed us as a people and a culture, is it forever? Can we push back on it?
My driver’s thesis—I’ve come to take more seriously the observations of a common worker over an Ivy professor—causes me to consider all the other ways in which our time horizons have been shortened.
It’s documented thoroughly that appliances that once lasted a generation now break in two or three years. We buy phones and computers—very expensive items—with no sense that we are investing for the future. We know for sure that they will last two or three years before we get another.
Shoes are the same. Throw down $150 for a pair that looks great but in six months of wear, they seem ready for the bin. It’s this way with most clothing. Forget handing down a suit to offspring. It falls apart after a few wears. The sweater that looks great at the store has tears here and there by the end of the season.
Most clothing has become disposable. Most everything in the digital world is this way, and the more our real-world products become digitized, the less they have by way of longevity. Hardly anything is fixable anymore; you are almost always better off throwing out and buying new.
With inflation as it has been for years, we are encouraged to spend now rather than save because the saving isn’t being rewarded. At best, we break even so why not go into debt buying “experiences” rather than thinking of the future?
The economist Irving Fisher introduced the concept of time preference to explain interest rates. He said that a lower rate of time preference means that people are willing to sacrifice consumption today by saving. That drives down the interest rate by making more funds available for lending.
The opposite is true too: a higher rate of time preference—the burning desire to consume now rather than plan for the future—leads to lower savings and a depleted fund for capital expansion. That causes higher interest rates, all else equal.
It’s fascinating to follow the thinking of Murray Rothbard, who saw in this time preference theory a big explanation for the rise and fall of societies. More developed civilizations are a result of lower time preferences: investment, long-term thinking, frugality, and putting off today’s joys for a better tomorrow. Less developed societies do the opposite, all the way toward the state of nature in which everyone is just getting by for today.
We might be living through what we could call the Great Shortening. Our time preferences are higher. Our attention spans are shorter. Our horizons and outlooks on our place in society are characterized by getting what’s good for me now rather than thinking about what’s good for family, community, and society in the long run. Instant gratification is the defining mark of cultural life. You see it everywhere.
In some ways, what happened five years ago with lockdowns shattered community feeling and drove forward a kind of short-term egoism. That has been reinforced by technology that feeds us exactly what we want: a zip and zing now rather than edification and contemplation about the future. The less hopeful we are about the future, the more it makes sense to live only for the present.
Is this the Great Shortening? Maybe so, but there is no need to acquiesce. I recently took on a great book over three days, reading every sentence and word with rapt attention. The book in question is Laura Delano’s “Unshrunk,” and it is wonderful precisely because it features a very long story arc even though it is an autobiography.
My point is not to highlight this one work but to urge everyone to pick up any one book, preferably physical. Make it a classic of Victorian-era literature or one of the great books you knew you should read but never did. Dedicate three long days to it, and you will see exactly what I mean.
You might find yourself shocked at what it archives for your mind and spirit. You cannot fix the social order or culture, but you can care for yourself by saying: I won’t be manipulated by the systems that encourage me to think only about the here and now. All of us can do our part, in our own self-interest, to remember what it takes to build great minds and lives.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Crowd Control: Nassau County Seeks To Make It Illegal To Stand Within 15 Feet Of Police During An Emergency
Nassau County lawmakers want to make it illegal to stand within 15 feet of cops and other emergency workers — but critics say the “buffer zone” would be unconstitutional, according to the New York Post.
Civilians who enter the “zone” for police, firefighters and other first responders during an emergency would be slapped with a misdemeanor and a $1,000 fine — with the possibility of up to a year behind bars, according to a new bill introduced by Republicans in the county Board of Legislators.
The Post article says that the goal of the bill aims to protect emergency responders from “threats, harassment, and physical interference” while on the job, according to lawmakers.
Legislator John Ferretti commented: “It is important that first responders are not obstructed during emergency situations and that our frontline heroes are allowed to engage in the lifesaving actions they are trained to perform without distractions.”
Even Democrat Seth Koslow agreed: “Our cops and first responders shouldn’t have to fight crowds while they’re saving lives. This bill gives them the authority to keep chaos out and do their jobs without interference. It’s backed by both parties — because protecting those who protect us shouldn’t be political.”
New York law already penalizes interfering with first responders, but Nassau County’s proposed 15-foot buffer zone would go further, barring even approaching them during emergencies — a move critics call ripe for abuse.
“Floating buffer zones offer yet another way for police to keep their activities hidden from public scrutiny,” said Justin Harrison of the NYCLU. “Laws that make it harder to monitor the police…violate the Constitution… and foster distrust in law enforcement.”
Similar laws in Louisiana, Arizona, and Indiana have been blocked by federal courts, the report says. “We expect that Nassau’s law, if passed, will meet the same fate,” Harrison added.
It could take up to five years to develop a domestic supply chain to supplant China’s global monopoly in processing rare earths into materials needed to produce everything from iPhones to F-35 fighter jets.
While the United States has most of the 17 rare earth elements and 50 critical minerals underground, it has no industrial capacity to refine them into processed metals and magnets, according to Melissa “Mel” Sanderson, American Rare Earths board member and Critical Minerals Institute co-chair.
“Currently in the United States, we have zero magnet manufacturers,” Sanderson told The Epoch Times.
She said that’s why China imposed export restrictions on seven “heavy” rare earth elements on April 4 in response to President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement that boosted levies on China imports. After tit-for-tat tariff hikes, the United States is currently levying Chinese imports for 145 percent, with electronics exempted for now.
“I certainly hope, as the administration is working through this critical area—no pun intended, it’s a critical area—they realize there’s this vulnerability gap, a four to five year gap, no matter how you look at it, in terms of ramping up domestic production,” Sanderson said.
Trump’s April 2 order gives Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick 180 days to suggest how the federal government can help develop a “circular” domestic rare earth supply chain.
The president is also pondering an order allowing deep-sea mining and commercial stockpiling.
Whatever the administration does, with enough permit reform, deregulation, and public-private incentivizing, industry will respond, economist Antonio Graceffo told The Epoch Times.
“The short answer is if China bans the sale of rare earth minerals to the United States” permanently, “that’s a positive thing because it’s going to force the United States to find a solution,” he said.
An analyst who writes about U.S.–China trade relations for The Epoch Times, Graceffo said there are “tons of solutions” to building a domestic rare earth supply chain, including the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine.
“Absolutely, we can overcome the problem,” he said. “In the long run, it’s going to be much better if China cuts us off. [Industry] will definitely find a way.”
Colorado School of Mines economics professor Ian Lange agrees. “I’m on the optimistic side,” he said.
Lange said there are substitute materials for the seven restricted rare earths, and some manufacturers are telling him they’ll survive without them.
He questioned if China can sustain its rare earth export restrictions because American industries are their biggest market.
“We’ll see if this is a real or just another hoop to jump through,” Lange told The Epoch Times. “And we have been slowly building up the supply chain over the last couple years.
“We’re getting close to having something here in the United States.”
But “close” is a relative term when it comes to mining and refining, where proposed projects can routinely take 10 to 20 years to be approved.
‘Long Way Off’
Australian-based American Rare Earths is among a wave of start-ups in the United States engaged in rare earth and critical mineral mining.
It will also process dysprosium and terbium, two of the seven restricted “heavies,” by building a refinery near its Halleck Creek mine outside Wheatland, Wyoming. Dysprosium is used in magnets incorporated in motors and generators for wind turbines, electrical vehicles, and nuclear reactor control rods. Terbium compounds are used in electronics, semiconductors, and fluorescent lighting.
The company, which also has a mine in Arizona, secured a $7.1 million grant from Wyoming and a Letter of Interest for up to $456 million in debt financing from the United States Export-Import Bank to produce what it says is a 20-year supply of key rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium.
Also in Wyoming, Ramaco Resources is breaking ground on an estimated 1.5 billion-ton rare earth deposit and pilot processing plant at its Brook Mine, while Rare Element Resources has started “proprietary processing and separation operations” at its Bear Lodge demonstration plant in Upton.
Oklahoma-based USA Rare Earths, which is opening a “neo-magnet” factory this year, produced its first sample of dysprosium oxide from its Round Top, Texas, mine this year and processed it at its research plant in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Ucore Rare Metals is developing the Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex in Alexandria with $20 million in state incentives, and Energy Fuels, a uranium mining company, is processing monazite sands to extract rare earths at its White Mesa Mill in Utah.
Both are Canadian-owned corporations.
The two most prominent rare earth operators in the United States are Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths, the world’s largest rare earth developer outside China, and Las Vegas-based MP Materials Corp.
Both are crucial in processing rare earths for the U.S. Department of Defense, which is midway through a five-year plan to build a “sustainable mine-to-magnet supply chain” to support its needs by 2027.
Lynas Rare Earth subsidiary Lynas USA was awarded $258 million in 2023 to build a 150-acre commercial separation plant in Seadrift, Texas, to process heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium.
The Pentagon said in January it doubled its initial project request beyond military requirements to “strengthen supply chain resilience for … burgeoning high-tech industry as well as … national security needs.”
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded MP Materials $35 million to build a processing plant at Mountain Pass in California.
And, in 2024, it received a $58.5-million federal tax credit to build the nation’s first fully integrated rare earth magnet manufacturing plant in Fort Worth, Texas, for GM electric vehicle motors.
In 2024, MP Materials achieved an all-time U.S. high output at Mountain Pass, delivering more than 45,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides and refined products.
The output included a U.S. record of 1,300 tons of neodymium-praseodymium oxide, key elements in “permanent magnets,” which retain their magnetic strength for decades.
“This milestone marks a major step forward in restoring a fully integrated rare earth magnet supply chain in the United States,” MP Materials CEO and founder James Litinsky said in a January statement.
“We have reached a significant turning point for MP and U.S. competitiveness in a vital sector.”
Yet, both Lynas Rare Earth and MP Materials produce more rare earth ore than they can process. To sustain operations, they must export much of what they excavate.
“MP is basically China’s largest offshore supplier” of rare earth ore, Critical Minerals Institute Executive Chair Jack Lifton said, noting China-based Shanghai Resources Industrial & Trading Co. bought 32,000 tons worth $350 million from MP Materials in 2024.
MP Materials did not return phone calls or email interview requests.
First Tariff Shock Set To Hit Port Of Los Angeles, With Ripple Effects Across The Broader Economy
Ocean freight transit times from Shanghai to Los Angeles typically range from 14 to 40 days, with faster services—such as CMA CGM’s expedited routes—delivering containers in as little as three weeks. With 145% tariffs now applied to most Chinese imports, the full economic impact will likely emerge with a lag of about a month or more as reduced import volumes and supply chain disruptions begin to take effect. Early high-frequency indicators already suggest those disruptions are imminent.
Let’s review the key trade war developments since President Trump, following “Liberation Day” on April 2, announced a tsunami of tariff hikes on Chinese imports to 145% on April 11.
On Wednesday, new data from Port Optimizer, a tracking system for vessel operators, showed that scheduled import volumes into the Port of Los Angeles are set to decline sharply beginning on Sunday.
Adding to the conversation, FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller posted on X that trucking activity at the LA Port, the largest container port in the Western Hemisphere, has just plunged …
“Year-over-year trucking activity out of Los Angeles down 23%. It will likely drop to 50% in the coming weeks if there isn’t trade war resolution,” Fuller said.
Year-over-year trucking activity out of Los Angeles down 23%.
It will likely drop to 50% in the coming weeks if there isn’t trade war resolution.
He warned: “Massive layoffs coming to the West Coast trucking sector.”
The incoming disruption at Port LA will soon result in sliding containerized flows from China, which will ripple through the Southern California economy.
Here’s how the disruption could unfold:
Plunging Container Volumes
Volume Drop: A decline in imports would slash throughput at the port, disrupting operations that rely on consistent traffic for profitability.
Revenue Hit: The Port of LA, which generates revenue through container handling fees, leases, and other port services, would face a significant decline in income.
Job Losses
Dockworkers & Terminal Staff: ILWU labor hours would be cut; possible layoffs or furloughs.
Truckers & Warehouse Workers: Major layoffs in the Inland Empire’s massive logistics hub (Ontario, Riverside, etc.)—home to over 200 million square feet of warehousing.
Broader Economic Fallout (Southern California)
The logistics sector is the largest private employer in the Inland Empire. A large drop in volume could collapse parts of the warehouse economy.
Retail & Consumer Ripple Effects
Higher costs and shortages for imported goods would pressure retailers and consumers alike.
Port Diversions
Shippers would increasingly reroute to Mexican and Canadian ports, bypassing LA entirely.
Companies could shift sourcing to Mexico or other non-tariffed nations, reducing LA’s role as a China-facing import hub.
While the first wave of disruptions is materializing at Port LA and could soon ripple across the Inland Empire and then the Heartland, across the Pacific, high tariffs on Chinese goods have already sent factories in the world’s second-largest economy into a tailspin, as per a new Financial Times report:
Wang Xin, head of the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, an industry group representing more than 2,000 Chinese merchants, said many of them were “extremely anxious” and had told factories and suppliers to halt or delay deliveries. This had prompted some factories to suspend production for one to two weeks, she said.
. . .
It is unclear how widespread the factory suspensions are, said Han Dongfang, founder of China Labour Bulletin, which closely tracks Chinese manufacturing and labor. “The rearrangement of China’s manufacturing sector will be a long-term process and workers will be sacrificed,” he said.
What’s telling is that the Trump administration is bracing for impact and has likely viewed this port data as new signs emerge of possible de-escalation of the trade war with China.
The White House has put itself and the country in a bad situation but doesn’t realize it yet.
Around April 10th China to USA trade shut down.
It takes ~30 days for containers to go from China to LA.
On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Bessent told investors at a closed-door meeting: “No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable, at 145% and 125%, so I would posit that over the very near future, there will be a de-escalation. We have an embargo now on both sides.”
“There will be a short term interruption… I don’t think it’s going to be big.” “There will be disruption”… Is President Trump preparing us for the Mass Start Awakening? pic.twitter.com/UfQX2ehiFG
The adjustment period seems imminent. Even before it fully arrives, Americans are already panic-searching for “USA products.”
It’s time to break the nation’s addiction to cheap Chinese goods and restore critical supply chains—an essential step to securing economic dominance in 2030 and beyond. Without these supply chains to produce drones, smartphones, chips, electric vehicles, and humanoid robots (all under similar ecosystems of production), it will be impossible to compete with China in the decades ahead. The adjustment period nears.
Since December, when the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, Syria has witnessed a chilling wave of mysterious kidnappings of young women, predominantly from the Alawite community.
Evidence continues to emerge that these women, primarily from the Alawite religious sect, have been abducted and taken to live as sex slaves in Idlib governorate, the traditional HTS stronghold, by armed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government.
Shockingly, the mass kidnapping and enslavement of Alawite women now being carried out by HTS-affiliated factions mirrors the enslavement of the thousands of Yezidi women by ISIS during the 2014 genocide in Sinjar, Iraq.
The activist who spoke out
In a now deleted Facebook post, Hiba Ezzedeen, a Syrian activist from Idlib, described her encounter with a woman she believes was captured and taken to the governorate as a sex slave during the wave of massacres carried out by government-affiliated factions and security forces against Alawites in the country’s coastal areas on March 7.
“During my last visit to Idlib, I was at a place with my brother when I saw a man I knew with a woman I had never met before,” Hiba explained.
“This man had been married multiple times before and is believed to currently have three wives. What caught my attention was the woman’s appearance – specifically, it was clear she didn’t know how to wear a hijab properly, and her scarf was draped haphazardly.”
After inquiring further, Ezzedeen learned that the woman was from the coastal areas where the March 7 massacres, in which over 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed, took place. “This man had brought her to the village and married her, with no further details available. No one knew what had happened to her or how she got there, and naturally, the young woman was too afraid to speak,” Ezzedeen added.
Because the situation was so strange and alarming to her, she began asking everyone she knew, “rebels, factions, human rights activists,” about the abduction of Alawite women from the coast. “Unfortunately, many confirmed that this had indeed happened, and not just by one faction. Based on what friends said, accusations point to factions of the National Army and some foreign fighters, with varying motives,” she reported.
Syria’s new HTS-led security forces have incorporated armed extremist groups, including Uyghurs from the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and Syrian Turkmen from factions of the Turkish-intelligence-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), into their ranks since coming to power in Damascus.
Various SNA commanders and foreign extremists have been appointed to top positions in the Syrian Ministry of Defense.
While the HTS-dominated General Security units participated in the March 7 massacres in many areas, former SNA and foreign fighter factions are believed to have led the campaign. Militants went door to door in Alawite villages and neighborhoods, executing all military-aged men they could find, looting homes, and at times killing women, children, and the elderly.
Ezzedeen concluded her post by stating, “This is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. The government must immediately reveal the fate of these women and release them.”
Rather than investigate the issue and seek to rescue the captive women, the HTS-appointed governor of Idlib issuedan order for Ezzedeen’s arrest, claiming she had “insulted the hijab.”
Ezzedeen’s courageous revelation shed light on the fate of many young women from minority communities who had mysteriously disappeared in recent months, after self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and HTS toppled Assad and took power in Damascus.
A pattern of abductions
In one of the earliest cases, a young Druze woman from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Karolis Nahlah, disappeared on the morning of February 2, 2024, while on her way to university in the Mezzeh area. The case was strange because no ransom was demanded, and nothing was heard of her again.
Over time, information began to trickle out that young women like Karolis were being kidnapped and taken to Idlib as slaves, as Hiba Ezzedeen finally confirmed.
Above: Screenshot of a Facebook post inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing Karolis Nahla. The caption reads: “Karolis Nahla has been missing since yesterday. She is a second year university student studying French Literature. She had class at 9:00 am. At 12:00 pm we lost contact with her. Please, if anybody knows anything about her or has seen her, inform us.”
On March 21, Bushra Yassin Mufarraj, an Alawite mother of two, went missing from the bus station in Jableh. Her husband later posted a video appeal stating she had been abducted and taken to Idlib. “My wife was taken captive in Idlib. Is there anything more cruel that could happen to a man in the world? That his wife and the mother of his children be in such circumstances,” he stated in a video appeal for help published on social media 10 days later.
Bushra’s disappearance was followed by a wave of kidnappings in the following days and weeks. The Kurdish Jinha Agency reported on 25 March, citing local reports, that more than 100 people were kidnapped by armed groups in Syria’s coastal regions over the previous 48 hours, including many women.
On April 5, 21-year-old Katia Jihad Qarqat went missing. The last contact with her was at 9:20 am near a shop at the Bahra circle in Jdeidat Artouz in the Damascus countryside. Her family pleaded that anyone who had seen or had any information about her should contact them.
Above: A screenshot of a social media post inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing Katia Jihad Qarqat. The caption reads: “A girl has gone missing in the Damascus countryside. The young woman, Katia, was last seen yesterday Friday, at 9:20 AM near a shop at the Bahra circle in Jdeidat Artouz. She is from the village of Hina and is a third-year university student. Anyone who has seen her or has any information is kindly asked to contact the following number 0994479206.”
On April 8, 17-year-old Sima Suleiman Hasno went missing at 11:00 am after leaving her school in the village of Qardaha in the Latakia countryside. Sima was released four days later in Damascus, where she was handed over to her aunt by members of the HTS-led Syrian government. Surveillance footage from shops near the abduction site circulated widely on social media, sparking widespread outrage.
On April 11, at 4:00 pm, contact was lost with 22-year-old Raneem Ghazi Zarifa in the Hama countryside, in the city of Masyaf. “We are extremely worried about her. We ask that anyone with information about her, no matter how small, please contact us immediately,” her family said in a social media post.
On April 14, Batoul Arif Hassan, a young married woman with a three-year-old child from Safita, disappeared after visiting family in the village of Bahouzi. Contact was lost with her around 4:00 pm as she was traveling in a public minibus on the Homs–Safita Road. Her family asked in a social media post for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact her brother by phone.
On the morning of April 16, Aya Talal Qassem, 23, was kidnapped after leaving her home in the coastal city of Tartous. Three days later, Aya’s kidnapper freed her and sent her to Tartous on the Homs highway, only for the HTS-led General Prosecution Service to detain her.
Aya’s mother posted a video to social media explaining that her family was not allowed to be with her in detention and that her father was arrested when he insisted on seeing her. The mother said that the General Prosecution Service tried to force Aya to give testimony, saying that she was not kidnapped but had instead run away with a lover. The mother added that she was pressured to tell such a story despite the presence of bleeding cuts and wounds on her body.
A video was posted online of the moment of her emotional return home to eagerly awaiting family and relatives. On April 21, 26-year-old Nour Kamal Khodr was abducted with her two daughters, 5-year-old Naya Maher Qaidban and 3-year-old Masa Maher Qaidban.
Nour and her daughters left their home in the village of Al-Mashrafa in rural Homs at noon, heading toward a neighbor’s house. Witnesses saw a masked group affiliated with the HTS-led General Security abduct them, placing them in a vehicle marked with the group’s emblem before fleeing.
Echoes of Sinjar
By April 17, Iraqi media outlet Al-Daraj reported on ten confirmed kidnappings of Alawite women from the coastal regions. According to one survivor, pseudonym Rahab, she was abducted in broad daylight and held in a locked room with another woman.
One woman who spoke to Al-Daraj under the pseudonym Rahab was released after the kidnappers allegedly feared a raid by General Security. She said she was kidnapped in broad daylight and held in a room with another woman, stating:
“They tortured and beat us. We weren’t allowed to speak to each other, but I heard the kidnappers’ accents. One had a foreign accent and the other a local Idlib accent. I knew this because they were cursing us because we were Alawites.”
The other woman, held with her, pseudonym Basma, remains in captivity. She was forced to call her family to tell them she was “fine” and to assure them that “they should not publish anything” about her abduction.
Al-Daraj also documented the case of an 18-year-old girl who was also kidnapped in broad daylight, from the countryside of a coastal city in Syria. Her family later received a text message warning them to remain silent about her abduction or else she would be sent back dead. The girl later sent the family a voice recording from a phone number registered in the Ivory Coast, saying she was fine and unsure where she had been taken.
The Iraqi media outlet compared these cases to the ISIS genocide of Yezidis in Sinjar. Over 6,400 Yezidis were enslaved by ISIS in 2014. Thousands were trafficked into Syria and Turkiye, sold as domestic or sex slaves, or trained for battle. Many remain missing.
HTS: The ideological continuity of ISIS
That Alawite women are now appearing in Idlib is unsurprising given HTS’s ideological lineage. HTS, which seized Idlib in 2015 with CIA-supplied TOW missiles, shares the same genocidal worldview as ISIS. It was founded by ISIS and led by Sharaa – then known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who was dispatched to Syria in 2011 by the late “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish the Nusra Front, forerunner to HTS.
In 2014, Syria analyst Sam Heller therefore described Nusra’s clerics as promoting “toxic – even genocidal – sectarianism,” towards Alawites, based on the teachings of the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah.
Though HTS and ISIS clashed in 2014, their ties endured. When Baghdadi was killed in 2019, he was hiding in Barisha, just outside HTS-held Sarmada. At the time, numerous enslaved Yezidis were also in Idlib.
The Guardianconfirmed this, quoting Abdullah Shrem, a Yezidi rescuer, and Alexander Hug of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), who said missing persons were often held “in areas beyond government control.”
In 2019, Ali Hussein, a Yezidi from Dohuk, toldNPR journalist Jane Arraf of his attempt to purchase the freedom of an 11-year-old Yezidi girl who had been abducted by ISIS but was “sold to an emir of an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria – Jabhat al-Nusra [Nusra Front] – [and] that she’s no longer a virgin.”
“I told you $45,000 from the beginning. I know what they pay in Raqqa. I told you, in Turkiye, they would pay $60,000 or $70,000 and take out the girl’s organs. But I don’t want to do that,” the ISIS contact threatened during the negotiation.
Reuters reported the rescue of a young Yezidi boy, Rojin, who had been captured and enslaved by ISIS along with his brother in 2014. At 13 years old, Rojin was taken to the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp in eastern Syria. He was held there alongside thousands of ISIS families and supporters after the organization’s final defeat in the Syrian border town of Baghouz in 2019.
The Saudi ISIS fighter who had purchased Rojin then arranged for him to be smuggled from Al-Hol to Idlib. He was freed five years later, in November 2024, as HTS was preparing its lightning assault on Aleppo.
Reuters reported that in another case, a 21-year-old Yezidi named Adnan Zandenan received a Facebook message from a younger brother he presumed was dead, but who also had been trafficked to Idlib.
“My hands were trembling. I thought one of my friends was messing with me,” Zandenan recalled. However, Zandenan’s euphoria quickly turned to despair when his brother, now 18 years old and thoroughly brainwashed by extremist Salafi ideology, refused to leave Idlib and return to the Yezidi community in Sinjar.
The repackaged caliphate
In December 2024, just one day after Julani’s HTS entered Damascus to topple Assad, Rudaw reported that a 29-year-old Yezidi woman had been rescued from slavery in Idlib. The Iraqi Kurdish outlet stated that many Yezidi women have been rescued from the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp.
However, others “have been found in areas of Syria controlled by rebels [HTS] or Turkish-backed armed groups [SNA], and some have been located in third countries,” it added.
In the days following Assad’s fall, jubilant crowds took to city squares, chanting in support of Julani, now rebranded as Ahmad al-Sharaa. Yet as western diplomats scrambled to meet the new ruler, the meaning of his “freedom” quickly became clear. The abductions of Alawite women – mirroring the Yezidi tragedy –signaled that Julani had simply repackaged the ISIS model.
Under the guise of liberation, a brutal system of sectarian violence, enslavement, and rape was unleashed upon those now under his rule. In response to growing denial, genocide expert Matthew Barber warned of the same pattern that surrounded the initial days of the Yezidi genocide: disbelief, dismissal, and derision – until the truth proved far worse.
“No one believed it could be happening … Even Western analysts and journalists did not believe our claims,” Barber said. “The reality was even worse than what we were claiming.”
The victims’ silence is not voluntary – it is coerced. And as this campaign of gendered terror continues, the question remains: How long will the world avert its gaze?
Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle increasingly advocate for affordable, reliable, and clean energy. This is for good reason – modern society requires energy that is affordable and available on demand. Environmental concerns are also very important. Together, affordability, reliability, and cleanliness form the three pillars of ideal energy policy.
Both analyses find natural gas is the most affordable, reliable, and clean electrical power source. Not far behind natural gas are nuclear, hydro, and coal. Lagging at the bottom of the affordability scorecard are wind and solar power.
Natural gas is easily the lowest-cost electrical power source, with coal the second-most affordable. Natural gas also scores very high for reliable high-volume power production, as do nuclear and coal.
Despite some claims that wind and solar are less expensive than conventional power, the opposite is true. Wind and solar benefit from far more subsidies than other power sources, which merely shift their high costs to taxpayers rather than directly to customers’ electricity bills. Also, the intermittent and often unpredictable nature of wind and solar power impose substantial costs on the grid, requiring other power sources to frequently ramp up and down – quite inefficiently – to cover for the variability of wind and solar. Finally, wind turbines and solar panels must often be built far from population centers, requiring extensive and expensive networks of transmission wires to deliver power to customers.
Taking all the above factors into account, a peer-reviewed analysis of full-system levelized costs of competing power sources shows wind power is seven times more expensive than natural gas power and solar power is 10 times more expensive. That explains why most of the world – and nearly all the developing world – is building natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants rather than wind and solar power facilities.
Perhaps the most noteworthy findings of the two independent analyses are the poor environmental performance of wind and solar power. Wind and solar, like hydro and nuclear, are emissions-free. However, wind and solar score quite poorly regarding many other important environmental factors. Wind and solar require disrupting and developing far more land and ecosystems than other power sources. Wind and solar generation directly kill far more animals than other power sources, including many protected and endangered species. The mining of toxic and rare earth minerals for wind turbines and solar panels is enormously and uniquely harmful to water and soil health.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order noting the affordability and abundance of coal and removing obstacles to coal production and utilization. The two new analyses support the Trump administration’s energy policies, which emphasizes increased domestic production of oil, natural gas, and coal. At the same time, the two analyses support similar action to remove obstacles to nuclear power, hydro power, and – especially – natural gas.
Don’t expect the big utilities to necessarily support natural gas and other affordable, reliable, and clean power sources. Utilities typically operate under a government-protected monopoly such that they don’t need to produce affordable power to gain an edge over competitors. Also, governments typically guarantee utilities approximately 10% profit on so-called green power projects and expenditures. As a result, utilities typically lobby for the most expensive power sources to boost their total profit.
For consumers and grid integrity, however, natural gas is the gold standard for affordable, reliable, and clean electricity generation. Nuclear, hydro, and coal are not too far behind.
‘JUDICIAL COUP’: Judge Blocks Key Component Of Trump’s Election Integrity Order
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has dealt a partial blow to President Donald Trump’s push to secure America’s elections, blocking his initiative to require proof of citizenship for voter registration. The ruling marks yet another roadblock from the judiciary thwarting the administration’s America First agenda, which could raise further concerns among conservatives about the integrity of the electoral process.
Kollar-Kotelly also prohibited the Election Assistance Commission from withholding federal funds from states that fail to comply with the citizenship verification mandate.
“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections,” the judge wrote in her 120-page opinion obtained by ABC News. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
Kollar-Kotelly declined to halt key components of President Trump’s election security order, allowing tightened mail-in ballot deadlines and a directive for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cross-check immigration databases with state voter rolls, The Hill reports.
In March, Trump signed an executive order to enforce federal law and “to protect the integrity of our election process”—a move which sparked several lawsuits from organizations that were partly represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
States that fail to comply with parts of the Trump memo risk losing federal election funding, the order reads.
“The Attorney General shall take appropriate action against states that count ballots received after Election Day in Federal elections. Federal election funding will be conditioned on compliance,” the executive order says.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller blasted the ruling, labeling it a “JUDICIAL COUP.”
Earlier this month at a Wisconsin rally aimed at boosting voter turnout, Musk and DOGE volunteer Antonio Gracias disclosed that millions of noncitizens were granted Social Security numbers under former President Joe Biden’s administration. They presented a chart illustrating a consistent annual rise, peaking at over 2 million in FY 2024, which concluded on September 30. In both FY23 and FY25—the latter starting in October and running through September of this year—approximately 1 million noncitizens received Social Security numbers.
“None of this would have happened without President Trump,” Gracias told Fox News. “President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases. He signed an executive order. It’s never been done before, where agencies could talk to each other and databases could talk with each other.”
“That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records. It really took a lot of courage,” he added.
In Friday’s episode of The Peter Schiff Show, Peter sets his sights on the market’s astonishing complacency in the face of gold’s surge, the misplaced confidence in U.S. trade policy, and the broader implications of America’s debt addiction. He makes the case that the real warning signals aren’t flashing on Wall Street or Capitol Hill, but embedded in the price of gold—while few seem willing to pay attention.
But you know, what’s more significant even than the increase in the price of gold is the fact that nobody cares. Nobody pays attention. You know, I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. When you don’t know there’s a bubble, you don’t see the pin. And that is something that I came up with during the housing crisis. Because a lot of people, even after 2007, after the subprime market really started to collapse, most people just shrugged it off. They didn’t care. They thought it was nothing.
What’s even more significant is that this is happening during a time of turmoil. Trump basically started it with these tariffs, launched this global trade war, created all this economic uncertainty. No one knows what the hell is going on. Trade is a big part of the global economy. And again, remember, all of these so-called experts predicted that tariffs would cause the dollar to go up. That’s why the dollar rallied right after Trump won, because the markets were saying, oh, we’re going to get tariffs, that’s good for the dollar.
I’ve got to counter all the nonsense that I’m hearing… Trump or one of his advisors said that China is desperate to make a deal. … China needs to make a deal because China wants what we have, the American consumer. China wants consumers. There’s a billion Chinese. Why would they need consumers? They got more consumers in China than we got in America. What’s so special about the American consumer that China needs us?
Reinforcing the theme of economic misunderstanding, Peter spotlights a fundamental error in how government officials—particularly at the Treasury—think about abundance and scarcity. He uses a simple analogy to question why policymakers seem to prefer an economy of limits, rather than one of overflow:
What is better if you can make more than you need, or you can’t make as much as you need, right? If you make too much food, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Some of it’s going to rot. If you don’t make enough food, you could starve to death, right? So what do you want to have, a surplus? Do you want to have abundance or do you want to have scarcity? See, according to the Secretary of the Treasury … scarcity is better than abundance.
Peter wraps his analysis by returning to the heart of the issue: the United States’ addiction to debt and the inevitable consequences of monetary intervention. He warns that we’re heading toward not just another crisis, but a distinctly American reckoning—one that might spare the rest of the world for once:
I mean, that is the bottom line, right, massive QE. We are heading to another financial crisis, only it’s not a global crisis, it’s going to be a U.S. crisis. We’re going to liberate the world, because they’re not going to be dragged down, they’re not going to be buying our dollar and buying our debt. They’re going to be taking their money home, keeping their goods for themselves. And so the world is going to be better off keeping its stuff and investing its savings in their own economies rather than giving us their stuff and investing their money here in America.
‘Cuomo Lied, New Yorkers Died!’ – Protesters Storm Stage At Mayor Candidate Forum
As he continues his bid for the New York City mayor’s office, scandal-plagued former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was accosted by storm-staging protesters at a candidate forum on Wednesday evening. The young throng hurled profane insults at him, and condemned him for his deadly and dishonest mishandling of the Covid pandemic. Afterward, the organizer of the “Black Agenda for NYC” forum said it was a particular “disgrace” that some of the disrupters were white people.
Cuomo was in mid-sentence on the stage at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn when the group of perhaps 10 protesters stormed the stage, some shouting “Fuck you, Cuomo!” They tried but failed to unfurl a long banner — as NYPD officers wearing “Community Affairs” shirts quickly moved to intercept them.
It appears at least one of the prominent words on the banners was “KILL.” As they were ushered out of the auditorium, some of the protesters chanted “Cuomo Lied, New Yorkers Died!” That line of attack almost certainly refers to Cuomo’s catastrophic bungling of New York’s response to Covid-19, which struck during his tenure as governor. His administration was widely condemned for ordering nursing homes to accept Covid-positive patients who were discharging from hospitals — a mandate linked to upwards of 15,000 deaths. The Cuomo regime was also accused of deliberately understating the number of those long-term-care-resident deaths by some 50%.
Cuomo barely budged as the mayhem broke out and then engulfed him. When it subsided he said, “That’s part of the problem in this system, right? Too much politics, not enough substance, not enough discussion.” Later, he said, “If I don’t get protested about something, it’s a slow day…A lot of these issues are contentious. People have different opinions and God bless.” Speaking of God, Cuomo resigned his governorship in August 2021 after at least 11 women filed various accusations of unwelcome sexual advances by the now-67-year-old — from kisses to groping to creepy comments.
At the podium, Henry Butler, the vice chair of the Brooklyn Democrats and organizer of the event — and an endorser of Cuomo — expressed disgust that white people would attempt to affect black people’s opinions:
“The clown show is over. One of the issues and problems with the Democratic Party, who claim to be a big tent party, is that if you don’t have a certain view, then they try to shout you down. And I think it’s a disgrace when I see a bunch of young, WHITE progressives trying to tell black people who we should vote for. Do not tell us who we should vote for — we are educated, we know how to think for ourselves. We don’t need you here telling us what we should be doing and how we should vote!”
Contrary to Butler’s characterization, it appeared most of the protesters were black — including the first ones to mount the stage. If he’s blaming the white protesters for the actions of the black ones, that would seemingly contradict his assertion that black people “don’t need [whites]…telling us what we should be doing.” Regardless, his denunciation of the white presence predictably elicited loud cheers and applause from the crowd:
“I think it’s a disgrace when I see a bunch of young, white, progressives trying to tell Black people who we should vote for,” Brooklyn Dems Vice Chair Henry Butler, who’s endorsed Cuomo for mayor, said after the protesters were walked out. “We know how to think for ourselves.” pic.twitter.com/qPRDKXh227
It’s been a rough couple weeks for Cuomo. First, auditors reported that, under Cuomo, the state government poured $453 million into building an enormous stockpile of medical equipment essentially that went unused: Out of 247,343 medical devices purchased, the state wound up using only three pieces of equipment — then left it to decay in warehouses the state rented to hold the horde. It’s still sitting there five years after the pandemic arrived.
On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi, renewing his committee’s criminal referral urging that Cuomo be investigated for making false statements to Congress — about the deadly nursing home scandal. The previous referral was ignored by the Biden administration.
Several candidates are running for the Democratic nomination, but a recent poll has Cuomo well out in front at 45%, leading Socialist, Muslim, ethnic-Indian, Uganda-born, New-York-raised, failed rapper and Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who’s the choice of 22% of likely voters. However, he’s surged from just 9% in January on a campaign centered on rent-freezes, free buses and free childcare funded in part by higher corporate taxes. Consistent with the messaging of the stage-stormers, he’s also attacked Cuomo on his handling of Covid-19.
“We will tax the most profitable corporations at the same rate as the radical socialist utopia of New Jersey and use those taxes to pay for things that’ll improve the lives of every New Yorker.”
If you enjoyed Wednesday night’s spectacle, there’s ample opportunity for more: The Democratic primary isn’t until June 24; the general election is on Nov. 4.
