Via Remix News,

The attack targeting a military patrol in the Benzú area of Ceuta last night was a pre-planned ambush rather than a spontaneous clash, according to preliminary findings from the National Police. Now, military sources are speaking of soldiers who are unable to use physical force, have no weapons, and are vulnerable to such attacks in the future.

Regarding the ambush, police investigators at the scene discovered an abnormal accumulation of heavy stones that did not match the natural geology of the terrain. Police believe the projectiles were intentionally stockpiled at the location in advance, setting a trap for a vehicle or convoy passing through the area.

Images of damaged military vehicles have gone viral across social media. Multiple vehicles suffered smashed windshields and other damage in the attack.

🔴 #URGENTE | Los inmigrantes ilegales de Ceuta han atacado esta madrugada los vehículos de los militares españoles.

Este es el estado de algunos de los coches y camiones del Ejército que les ha ayudado a instalarse en polideportivos. pic.twitter.com/KnT9RU35AM

— Vito Quiles 🇪🇸 (@vitoquiles) August 27, 2026

The ambush occurred while troops from the 54th Regular Group of Ceuta were conducting routine patrol duties. Dozens of illegal immigrants ambushed the patrol vehicle with a heavy barrage of rocks. The sudden intensity of the assault severely damaged the vehicle, shattering its windows and trapping the occupants inside.

Surrounded by a high volume of projectiles, the soldiers “feared for their lives,” according to statements later provided to investigators, as reported by Spanish newspaper El Debate. Four soldiers were left injured and officials told the press that sthe all-terrain logistical vehicles were not armored and not equipped to deal with such attacks.

Marco Antonio Gómez, president of the Association of Spanish Troops and Sailors (ATME), stated that the “very serious aggression” shows “our military is helpless.”

“They go without weapons. Our colleagues had to run away to save their own lives.”

Speaking to El Debate, military sources who are directly on the ground in Ceuta say that soldiers have their “hands and feet tied.”

Although the military is working with National Police, the situation remains dangerous.

The source said “they have done what is necessary and have intervened in situations in which the illegal immigrants bothered the inhabitants of Ceuta.”

🇪🇸🔴 A young Spanish woman is fleeing Ceuta because she no longer feels safe.

“I don’t want to feel anxious every time I step outside… It seems awful to me that all this is allowed to happen and nobody can close the border or do anything.”

However, she also claims that the… pic.twitter.com/o6KVfhR7p8

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 10, 2026

However, these military sources complain that various legal frameworks have left soldiers without weapons, and these policies also restrict soldiers from carrying out arrests and using any type of force.

Migrants may even be aware of these restrictions, empowering them to conduct ambush strikes against soldiers with near impunity.

🇪🇸🔴 5 migrants tried to gang rape a 12-year-old girl as she screamed for help, said locals in Ceuta who stopped the attack.

“There were five against a 12-year-old girl. She was a little girl, they were taking off her pants. She was screaming, screaming, screaming. She was… pic.twitter.com/g97pj8phUR

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 25, 2026

Since the attack, 12 suspects have been taken into custody at the scene by National Police’s Prevention and Reaction Unit (UPR). Some migrants reportedly tried to evade arrest by jumping into the sea. Reinforcement from the Civil Guard also helped secure the perimeter.

The Union of Military Troops (UMT) issued a statement expressing its “strong rejection and indignation,” stating they had warned about the conditions facing troops already ten days eariler.

The National Police investigation remains active as authorities work to trace all remaining individuals involved in the ambush.

Read more here…

Authored by John Walter via John Walter,

We publish this piece in the August of 2026, as the machinery of global commerce groans and sputters, as hollow men in expensive suits speak of “corrections” and “adjustments” while families count pennies in dimly lit kitchens. The photograph you see above – those gaunt men hunched over bowls of thin soup, their eyes fixed on some middle distance between hunger and dignity – was snapped nearly a century ago, yet it could have been taken yesterday in any tent city stretching like a scar across the American landscape. We do not traffic in false nostalgia here, nor in the cheap comfort of historical distance. The Great Depression was not a sepia-toned folktale; it was a meat-grinder that chewed through 25 percent of the working population, that evicted grandmothers into snowbanks, that turned proud men into beggars and children into scavengers. The bones of that era still jut through the soil of our present moment – visible to anyone brave enough to look. What follows is not a curiosity shop of antiquated customs, but a field manual written in blood and hunger, a record of how ordinary human beings refused to break when the world snapped in half. Read it. Memorize it. The wolves are already at the door.

Introduction

October 29, 1929, began as a Tuesday and ended as an autopsy. When the stock market shed its skin that Black Tuesday, it revealed something putrid beneath the gilt and glamour of the Roaring Twenties – the entire economic edifice had been a painted facade, a stage set propped up by speculation and debt. Within months, the iron sinews of American industry seized up. Factories that had belched smoke and churned out automobiles now stood silent as tombstones. Construction cranes froze in place, their skeletal arms reaching toward empty skies. The breadlines formed not from laziness but from the sudden, violent evaporation of work itself – fourteen million pairs of boots kicked dust on Main Street, fourteen million stomachs growled in concert.

The trauma cut marrow-deep. Men who had worn white collars found themselves fighting rats for garbage. Women who had managed households like generals now found themselves bartering wedding rings for sacks of beans. Children learned to sleep through the rumble of empty bellies, to recognize the particular gray color of hunger. This was not merely poverty – poverty implies a falling from somewhere. This was collapse, the sudden plunging of an entire civilization into a pit without handholds. The American Dream, that peculiar national religion promising infinite ascension, revealed itself as a confidence trick played on the desperate.

Yet here is the strange miracle: they did not all perish. They did not all devolve into the savage calculus of dog-eat-dog, though some surely did. Instead, something older and tougher emerged from the wreckage – a kind of stubborn, ornery ingenuity that had lain dormant during the fat years. People remembered how to do things. They recalled skills their grandparents had brought from the old country: how to stretch a dollar until it screamed, how to mend what was torn, how to find nourishment in landscapes others called barren. They discovered that the human animal is infinitely adaptable, capable of surviving on pride and lard and sheer cussedness when the supermarkets close and the ATMs go dark.

We have grown soft in the intervening decades. We have forgotten the taste of true scarcity, the texture of want. Our landfills overflow with the discarded, while our grandparents hoarded string and bacon fat like treasure. We order sustenance through glowing screens, disconnected from the soil and the seasons. But the old knowledge persists, passed down through whispered conversations in kitchens where the radio once played FDR’s fireside chats. The fifty fragments of wisdom that follow are not theoretical. They were paid for with calloused hands and sleepless nights. They represent the collective survival manual of a generation that faced the abyss and chose, defiantly, to keep walking.

50 Tips From the Great Depression

1. Move as a clan. When work dried up in Akron or Detroit, families packed their possessions into trucks and rolled toward the horizon like Bedouins. Staying together meant pooling resources, sharing bread, ensuring that when one member stumbled, others could prop them up. The lone wolf starved; the pack endured.

2. Follow the harvest. Migrant farm work was the artery that kept many alive. Cotton in Texas, apples in Washington, wheat in Kansas – each crop had its season, its hunger for hands. A family could stitch together nine or ten months of labor by chasing ripeness across state lines, living in tents that leaked when it rained.

3. Ask not what the job is; ask only if it exists. Pride was a luxury item, quickly pawned. Men who had managed offices took up shovels. Women who had worn silk now scrubbed floors. The work itself mattered less than the doing of it, the exchange of sweat for coins.

4. Put every able body to the grind. Children sold newspapers, gathered bottles, ran errands for pennies. Grandparents watched infants so mothers could scrub laundry. No one sat idle; the family was an economic unit, a small cooperative where survival was the only dividend.

5. Scavenge value from the discarded. Driftwood became fuel. Rusted metal became scrap. Bones became glue. The beachcomber and the junk man were aristocrats in this economy, turning refuse into currency through sheer force of will.

6. Embrace the government’s outstretched hand – cautiously. The New Deal programs, for all their bureaucratic weight, taught skills and poured concrete. Men learned masonry while building dams; they learned forestry while planting trees. Take the help, but keep your eyes open.

7. Work until you cannot stand. There was no retirement, no gold watch and pension. Seventy-year-olds swept floors. Eighty-year-olds watched grandchildren. The body worked until it broke, and then it found lighter work.

8. String together fragments. When full-time work vanished, people cobbled three part-time positions into a patchwork income. Dawn at the bakery, noon at the cannery, night at the loading dock. Sleep became a negotiable commodity.

9. Knock on every door. The unemployed did not wait for advertisements; they walked the streets, entering every shop and factory, offering labor by the hour. Persistence was the only resume that mattered.

10. Create your own occupation. Women arose before dawn to cook stews and pies, then sold them outside factory gates during lunch breaks. Men sharpened tools on porches, offering services to neighbors. Necessity was the mother of small enterprise.

11. Cultivate the jack-of-all-trades. The specialist starved. The man who could fix a roof, shoe a horse, and balance books found three times the opportunity. Breadth trumped depth when the market for expertise collapsed.

12. Accept payment in kind. Farmers took on hands they couldn’t pay in dollars, offering instead bushels of corn or sides of pork. A chicken was as good as a five-dollar bill in many towns.

13. Crowd under one roof. When the bank took the house, families scattered like seeds – not to the wind, but to the homes of relatives. Three generations in one farmhouse was cramped, but the body heat alone saved on coal.

14. Convert your vehicle to shelter. Those with cars or trucks slept in them, parking behind churches or in empty lots. Public gyms offered showers for pennies; the automobile became a rolling bedroom.

15. Build from scrap. Tents, shacks, lean-tos constructed from packing crates and corrugated tin – these were not dwellings but declarations of continued existence. A roof, however patched, meant dignity.

16. Insulate with desperation. Mud, newspaper, tar paper, old coats – anything that could block the wind was stuffed into walls. The goal was not comfort but survival, keeping the pipes from freezing and the children from turning blue.

17. Wear your coat indoors. Thermostats were turned to near-freezing. Families sat in overcoats and mittens, breath visible in the parlor, saving fuel for cooking rather than warmth.

18. Harness evaporation. Wet sheets hung over doorways created crude air conditioning. As the water dried, it drew heat from the room, offering slight relief when the summer sun turned shacks into ovens.

19. Refinance before the hammer falls. Those who could, renegotiated mortgages to lower payments, buying time if not salvation. It was a dance with the devil, but it kept the sheriff away for another month.

20. Cash the safety net. Life insurance policies, that morbid savings account, became emergency funds. Better to feed the living than to enrich the beneficiaries.

21. Trade without currency. Barter economies sprouted like weeds. A morning’s labor might yield a gallon of milk; a repaired fence could earn a bushel of apples. Money was scarce; ingenuity was not.

22. Beg without shame. Outside restaurants, on corners, at church doors – asking for help was not criminal but human. The rich who still ate in warm dining rooms sometimes emerged with leftovers, and the hungry learned to wait with hollow eyes.

23. Distrust the marble halls. When banks began closing their doors, taking lifetimes of savings with them, the wise kept cash in coffee cans and under floorboards. Institutions failed; paper promises burned.

24. Keep the books loose. Storekeepers extended credit to regulars, scratching debts on ledgers they might never collect. It was a gamble on community, on the hope that better days would come.

25. Dig in the dirt. The vegetable plot was the difference between malnutrition and survival. Even city dwellers tore up lawns to plant potatoes. Seeds cost pennies; harvests were priceless.

26. Hunt and hook. Rabbits, squirrels, fish from the creek – these were not sport but sustenance. A shotgun was as vital as a plow, and the woods were a larder for those who knew how to read them.

27. Gather what grows wild. Nuts, berries, dandelion greens, cattail roots – nature provided for those who knew her language. Children became expert foragers, their eyes trained to spot edibles in the ditch.

28. Put up the harvest. Canning was not a hobby but a survival skill. Rows of jars in the cellar – tomatoes, beans, peaches – represented edible insurance against winter’s lean months.

29. Eat the inedible. Tumbleweed, once cattle fodder, found its way onto plates. Young shoots of plants previously ignored were boiled and seasoned with desperation.

30. Waste nothing of the beast. Hearts, livers, kidneys, feet, heads – every part served a purpose. Offal was ground, stewed, fried. Even the hooves yielded glue and gelatin.

31. Stretch with smoke. A single strip of bacon could flavor a week’s worth of beans. The rind, the fat, the drippings – all were saved in tins, used to fry bread, to add richness to thin soups.

32. Cultivate the commons. Vacant lots became collective gardens. Parks were divided into plots. The soil belonged to whoever worked it, and tomatoes grew where roses once bloomed.

33. Swap the surplus. Neighbors traded cucumbers for eggs, corn for milk. Variety entered the diet through exchange, through the web of relationships spun across fences.

34. Cook from zero. There were no boxes to open, no packets to tear. Flour, water, salt – these were the building blocks. Recipes required time and labor, not just microwave minutes.

35. Shop the dying day. Saturday evenings, before Sunday closures, vendors slashed prices on perishables. The savvy bought bruised fruit and day-old bread, eating better for less.

36. Keep livestock close. A cow meant milk and butter; chickens meant eggs and Sunday dinner. Even a single goat could sustain a family, turning grass into protein.

37. Fill with starch. Meat was for the wealthy. The poor bulked meals with bread, potatoes, noodles – cheap calories that filled the stomach if not the soul. Lard added the illusion of richness.

38. Boil the bones. Soup was the universal meal, adaptable to whatever scraps remained. Water was free; bones were cheap; the pot could simmer endlessly, feeding many from little.

39. Mend the soles. Shoes were repaired until they could not be repaired again. Leather from belts patched holes; rubber from tires became new soles. A cobbler’s needle was worth its weight in gold.

40. Sew from sacks. Feed sacks, flour bags – these became dresses, curtains, shirts. Women learned to cut patterns from whatever cloth came to hand, turning agricultural packaging into fashion.

41. Cancel vanity. Fashion was a dead letter. Clothes were worn until threadbare, then turned into patches for other clothes. The goal was coverage, not style; warmth, not trend.

42. Pass it down. Outgrown garments traveled to younger siblings, then to cousins, then to neighbors. A single coat might warm three children over a decade, its history accumulating in every patch.

43. Rip for rags. When fabric could no longer hold stitches, it became cleaning cloths, quilt stuffing, rug yarn. The final death of a garment was a slow unraveling into utility.

44. Abandon entitlement. No one believed the world owed them a living. The able worked; the unable hoped to work again. The safety net was the family, the church, the neighbor – not the distant government.

45. Help the striving. Those who tried and failed found open hands. Those who refused to try found closed doors. Charity was reserved for the willing, not the wanton.

46. Tighten the community weave. Neighbors shared tools, labor, news. They pooled money for the desperate, organized relief for the sick. The atomized individual perished; the networked group survived.

47. Lend with strings. Town welfare loans were not gifts; they were debts of honor, recorded meticulously, expected to be repaid. Dignity was preserved through obligation, not handouts.

48. Value the collective. Independence was a luxury; interdependence was the reality. The man who could not ask for help starved; the man who could not offer help lost his humanity.

49. Expect loss. They learned that possessions were temporary, that security was illusion, that everything could vanish overnight. This knowledge was terrible but liberating.

50. Keep walking. Above all, they maintained forward motion. Despair was indulged in private, briefly, then packed away. The sun rose; the work continued; the human animal adapted and endured.

Conclusion

The photograph fades, but the hunger remains. We stand now at a similar precipice, staring into a future that promises uncertainty, that whispers of contractions and corrections and collapses yet to come. The machines we have built are complex, interconnected, fragile – subject to the same tremors that brought down the house of cards in 1929. We have forgotten, in our age of abundance, how thin the margin is between comfort and catastrophe, between the full pantry and the empty bowl.

Yet the old knowledge persists, encoded in the DNA of those who survived. It tells us that we are tougher than we believe, more adaptable than we imagine, capable of finding nourishment in landscapes we once called barren. The fifty fragments above are not archaeology; they are prophecy. They remind us that when the trucks stop running and the screens go dark, we still possess hands that can plant, minds that can calculate, hearts that can share.

The men in that black-and-white image are all dead now, dust and memory. But their stubbornness echoes forward. They teach us that dignity is not purchased with dollars but carved out of will, that community is not a buzzword but a lifeline, that survival is not a given but a choice made daily, hourly, breath by breath. The wolves are at the door, yes. They always have been. But we remember now how to bar the gate, how to sharpen the knife, how to look our brothers and sisters in the eye and say: We have less, but we have enough. We will make it through another winter. We will see the spring.

The US government is exploring an unusual legal route for dealing with Iranian oil and ships captured as part of its blockade: bringing back a wartime maritime system that has barely been used for generations, according to Bloomberg.

The Justice Department, working with the Pentagon, is preparing to use prize law, which historically allowed courts to decide whether vessels and cargo captured during armed conflict could legally become property of the United States. The mechanism was once commonplace in naval warfare but largely disappeared from American practice after the 19th century and has been dormant since World War II.

The appeal for the administration is largely practical. At present, the government generally relies on civil forfeiture to take ownership of vessels accused of sanctions violations or other offenses. Those cases can become complicated and slow, particularly when shipping companies, creditors, terrorism victims or other parties assert competing rights to the ship or its cargo. A prize proceeding could potentially narrow those disputes and allow captured oil to be sold more quickly, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury.

Bloomberg writes that Houston is being considered as a central venue for these cases. The Southern District of Texas has jurisdiction over a major port and sits alongside the country’s largest concentration of petrochemical infrastructure, giving it the capacity to receive and store substantial quantities of crude. US Attorney Aaron Reitz, whose office is working with DOJ officials in Washington, said the department is “now reviving” prize courts, describing the concept as an “ancient body of maritime law.”

The effort comes as Washington looks for additional ways to put economic pressure on Iran. US forces have already intercepted Iranian-owned or Iran-linked vessels since the blockade was imposed in April. Using prize law could turn those captures into a more direct financial tool: ships and oil deemed lawful prizes could be liquidated, potentially generating revenue while depriving Iran of valuable exports.

Supporters also see a strategic purpose beyond the money. Reviving the system would reinforce the message that the US considers the blockade a serious wartime measure rather than simply another sanctions regime. It could also make it more difficult for neutral commercial vessels to continue transporting goods that Washington believes support Iran.

But there is considerable uncertainty over how a centuries-old framework would operate under modern international law. “This really is a historical area of law that is not tested in modern times,” maritime attorney Allison Luzwick said. Courts could be asked to determine whether the current conflict provides sufficient legal grounds for invoking prize authority at all, particularly given questions surrounding congressional authorization for the hostilities.

The practical challenges are significant as well. Federal judges, prosecutors and the Navy have virtually no contemporary experience administering prize cases, meaning procedures would effectively have to be rebuilt for modern shipping and warfare. Shipowners and other parties with financial claims are also expected to contest seizures.

There are broader geopolitical risks. Critics argue that normalizing prize law could create a precedent that Washington may later regret. A rival power such as China, for example, could point to US practice when attempting to seize American or neutral merchant vessels during a future conflict.

The proposal therefore offers Washington a potentially faster way to convert captured Iranian oil into government revenue and tighten economic pressure on Tehran, but it would do so by reopening an area of wartime law that has gone largely untouched for more than a century.

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times,

China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country’s armed forces.

Once China’s No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.

The statement didn’t offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.

Zhang, also a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) ruling Politburo, was abruptly placed under investigation in January, along with another senior commander, Liu Zhenli. Both men were accused of serious violations of discipline and laws, a phrase that generally refers to corruption or disloyalty.

Liu was also stripped of his title as a member of the national CMC, according to Xinhua.

Technically, China has two separate CMCs-one affiliated with the state and the other within the CCP-sharing the same personnel and leadership. In practice, however, the Party’s CMC holds the real power. The two commanders haven’t been formally, or at least publicly, expelled from the Party’s military body.

The latest announcement effectively reduced the CMC from six members to one, plus Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the top.

China’s armed forces have been embroiled in an unprecedented purge that has almost vacated the leadership of every branch of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), raising questions about the military’s combat readiness.

A February report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that more than 100 senior military commanders have likely been purged since 2022.

Unlike the military chiefs previously targeted, Zhang and Liu are among the few active-duty generals in the country who have battlefield experience. Zhang served in China’s brief war with Vietnam in 1979, while Liu took part in border skirmishes with Vietnam in the 1980s.

Because these officers were members of the legislature, they previously had legal protection against arrest or prosecution. By removing them from those positions, that protection was stripped away, opening them up to criminal prosecution.

According to China insiders who previously spoke to The Epoch Times, Beijing has already decided to charge Zhang, likely with corruption-related allegations, to shift attention away from the power struggle within the Party.

In addition to Zhang and Liu, the NPC on Aug. 28 revoked the membership of Zhong Shaojun, a long-time aide to Xi, according to Xinhua.

Zhong became Xi’s secretary in the early 2000s when Xi was transferred to a position in Zhejiang, China’s top economic powerhouse on the eastern coast. Since then, Zhong followed Xi into roles in Shanghai and, later, the central leadership in Beijing.

After Xi took power as the Party leader in late 2012, Zhong was appointed to the CMC chairman’s office, working directly under Xi, and elevated to the military rank of senior colonel.

Also expelled from the NPC on the same day was Ju Qiansheng, commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force.

Xinhua did not provide reasons for their departure.

The purge in the defense establishment shows no signs of abating. In an Aug. 24 notice, China’s military said it’s seeking information from the public on potential procurement violations in the Rocket Forces, a secretive PLA unit that commands the country’s conventional and nuclear missiles.

This notice echoed a 2023 announcement by the PLA’s Equipment Development Department that encouraged citizens to report potential corruption and misconduct related to hardware procurement going back to October 2017. Since then, China has expelled two defense ministers and all four generals who had commanded the Rocket Forces.

Brazilian socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro are virtually tied as August comes to a close, according to UBS analysts citing new polling data, turning October’s presidential election into a potential coin toss. A Bolsonaro victory would accelerate the eradication of left-wing rule across South America as the continent undergoes a once-in-a-generation rightward political realignment. That shift may also offer an early signal of Europe’s upcoming 18-month election cycle, in which right-wing parties and candidates are gaining momentum across several major countries.

Alexandre de Ázara, a managing director and chief economist for Brazil at UBS, told clients on Friday that “the gap is closing” in Brazil’s presidential race as Bolsonaro pulls within striking distance of President Lula.

UBS’s latest polling aggregator shows Lula taking 44% of valid first-round votes, down one percentage point from Monday’s update. Bolsonaro rose one point to 38%, while other candidates remained at 18%.

First round aggregator and polls (% of valid votes for Lula)

First round aggregator and polls (% of valid votes for Flávio)

The runoff numbers are even tighter, according to Ázara. Lula now leads Bolsonaro by just 50.6% to 49.4%, cutting the incumbent’s advantage to 1.2 percentage points from 2.8 points at the start of the week.

Ázara uses a mixture of polling data from Datafolha, Veritá, Nexus, Gerp, Indexa and PoderData. He said new polling data from Vox, Nexus, Real Time Big Data, and Atlas are expected over the next few days.

Prediction markets appear considerably more confident in Lula than the polls.

Polymarket gives the president a 62% chance of winning…

…compared with 35% for Bolsonaro. Kalshi places the contest at 61% versus 39%.

Brazilian voters face a stark ideological choice in October between the incumbent socialist Lula and right-wing Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has portrayed the economy as trapped by high spending, high interest rates, and rising debt.

Barclays estimates that the next administration would need a fiscal adjustment of at least 2.5% of gross domestic product, or about 350 billion reais, to stabilize the debt burden by 2031.

TS Lombard expects Lula to pursue limited spending reforms following the election but projects that debt would still peak at 94.7% of GDP in 2034. Under Bolsonaro, the analysts model a faster adjustment and a proposed debt-linked spending rule, but debt would still reach 90% in 2032.

Comments from Bank of America’s Latam Equity Quant:

Brasilia in election mode: investors on standby waiting to see how the elections play out. Uncertainty on the electoral outcome remains high as polls have been showing more convergence in President Lula’s and Flavio Bolsonaro’s voting intentions.

ING Analysts:

BRL: Presidential polling in play

It has been a positive environment for the carry trade, but what has also been helping the Brazilian real this week has been an opinion poll showing that President Lula’s lead over Flavio Bolsonaro has dropped to just one percentage point. Bolsonaro is running on a ticket of fiscal consolidation and hoping to emulate the victory of Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella this year, which has been greeted warmly by local asset markets.

The first round of the Brazilian presidential election takes place on 4 October. Expect USD/BRL to be bounced around by polling results before then. But with 12% implied yields through the forwards and the chance of a regime change, we suspect the real can continue to comfortably outperform the steep forward curve.

The election may determine whether Brazil moves further left or right politically. Across the continent, the latest country to shift right was Colombia. Many others have followed:

Nomura analyst Andrzej Szczepaniak expects a similar right-wing sweep across Europe in the coming elections.

More broadly, voters in the West are rejecting left-wing regimes, as failed progressive experiments, open borders, and nation-killing socialist policies have been nothing but devastating.

Authored by Nolan Denaro via Antiwar.com,

When Donald Trump launched the Iran War on February 28, the usual suspects were in full support. From the moment the conflict ignited, many couldn’t help but immediately express admiration for the president, saying that only a brave, noble, and strong leader would’ve had the courage to do what Trump did here. For weeks, we heard that this war was essential, that we would be better off as a result, and that to be unsupportive was to be siding with the IRGC.

As weeks went by, however, it became apparent that the rosy picture that had been painted in the war’s infancy was not based in reality. One month turned into two, and then three, and here we are now about six months later, with none of the war’s stated objectives having been achieved. Because of the historic nature of this defeat, it is important to reflect on how we got here.

Who were the voices cheering the administration on as it led us down this dark path?

Why did they have such hatred for those of us who opposed the war?

Most importantly, who can’t we trust going forward?

Ben Shapiro

Among the war’s top early cheerleaders was Ben Shapiro. From the first moments of the conflict, Shapiro was praising Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war.

“President Trump is the most courageous commander-in-chief in modern American history,” Shapiro excitedly said. “What he just did is the bravest move by a president of the United States of my lifetime, bar none, without a doubt.”

Shapiro also immediately made it his mission to smear the war’s critics. Doing his best play on David Frum’s 2003 article “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” Shapiro began labeling some of the most prominent anti-war voices – including libertarian Dave Smith – “America-haters.” In a March 4 episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro makes some very bold – and uninformed – predictions for how the war would play out.

Addressing concerns early on in the war about U.S. munition stockpiles, Shapiro urged his audience to ignore the naysayers, and rest assured that ” we do have significant stockpiles.” To build on his narrative, he claimed that the Iranian’s were “running out of missile launchers.” “This is a major problem for them,” he emphasized.

“The status is pretty good,” Shapiro told his podcast listeners, “things are moving pretty well.”

Shapiro’s blind faith in the government narrative was not enough to will the U.S. to victory, however. His uncritical rereading of Trump’s Truth Social post – in which he claims that we have a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions – may have convinced his audience to get on board with the war, but this trust in the administration eventually crashed against the rocks of reality.

The U.S. does not have “unlimited” munitions. The Iranian’s ability to launch missiles has not been effectively degraded. This war has not gone as the administration intended, and the biggest proof of this is the conflict’s length. The war was originally sold as a weeks-long offensive, but it turned out to be a drastically larger undertaking than the White House anticipated, and one that has engulfed the Trump presidency.

Marc Thiessen

Neoconservative Marc Thiessen, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, was among the war’s most enthusiastic boosters early on. Once a leading figure within the “Never-Trump” movement, Thiessen has become a vocal supporter of the President. This change of heart is mainly due to Trump abandoning his dovish 2016 rhetoric, and embracing a more hawkish foreign policy.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post on March 3, Thiessen outlined what he viewed as the mastery of Trump’s Iran strategy.

“At this moment, the U.S. is striking Iran from the air – eliminating the regime’s leadership, its retaliatory capabilities, its nuclear program and its infrastructure of repression.” Thiessen explained. “Expect this campaign to last for weeks, not days.”

Thiessen also expressed faith that the Iranian population could be organized – as one collective unit – and mobilized in an orderly fashion to achieve America’s objectives, saying “there is no need for a U.S. invasion force. The Iranian people are the boots on the ground, and the fate of the country is in their hands.”

This uprising of course did not happen, and based on the size of the crowd that attended the funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there are signs of a “rally around the flag” effect having taken place in at least some capacity.

In an effort to play to Trump’s ego, Thiessen struck a familiar cord, saying “If he succeeds in defeating Islamic radicalism in Iran, Trump will take his place alongside them as one the most consequential presidents in U.S. history.”

Surely we should expect a follow-up on these wildly-incorrect predictions, right? This war not only wasn’t wrapped up in “weeks” like Thiessen had assured us, but his premature claims of success have also proven false.

To be fair to Thiessen, let’s assess the success of this war by his own standards, which he kindly published in his Washington Post op-ed on March 11. His three “levels of success in Iran” are as follows:

“Level One: The United States eliminates the regime’s ability to project force beyond its borders.”

“Level Two: The Iranian regime collapses and is replaced by a new government answerable to Washington.”

“Level Three: The Iranian people rise up and take back their country.”

As for the first objective, Iran’s ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz has showcased an expansion – not a retraction – of Iranian influence in the region. Ships have been struck multiple times in the past month, even as we are told the military fighting is on pause.

The Iranian regime has also not collapsed as Thiessen has hoped, and they are no more answerable to Washington than they were before. In fact, due to the unwillingness of Trump to hold up his end of a potential deal, Iran has become more reluctant to negotiate.

As I previously explained, Thiessen’s dreams of a people-powered uprising were not based in reality. If you think about the plan in simple terms, you can quickly see its problems. The idea was that the U.S. was going to bomb Iran, assassinate the country’s political and religious leader, kill innocent civilians, threaten to eliminate all of Persian civilization, and then the everyday people would suddenly become motivated to rally to the cause of the foreign nation that is attacking them. This is an illogical proposition, but one that was genuinely believed by neoconservative ideologues like Marc Thiessen.

Jesse Watters

Fox News’ primetime hosts were leading the war’s propaganda effort, and none were as shameless as Jesse Watters. Watters monologues on his show “Jesse Watters Primetime,” as well as his remarks on “The Five” have been shockingly detached from reality, and his statements immediately following Trump’s initial strikes have not aged well.

“We’re crushing them,” Watters told the panel of “The Five” on March 3. “These guys were nuking up, Trump’s not going to wait around.”

“With Venezuela and Iran, we’ve basically tipped over two petro-dictatorships,” Watters said, just a few days into what has turned into a prolonged conflict. “We now control almost the entire world oil market.”

It is genuinely unbelievable how history manages to repeat itself like this. In what is now an infamous moment of presidential embarrassment, George W. Bush spoke on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” He gave the speech only a few weeks after the launch of the Iraq War. Despite Bush’s proclamation of a completed mission, the war would go on to last for years, resulting in thousands of American troop deaths, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent. This speech has since served as a reminder of how hubris can blind political leaders from military realities. Much like in 2003, it seems that many were blinded by hubris in Iran. The thought of an American strategic defeat against Iran was unfathomable to the war-hawks. This is because they are in a bubble, where they only hear feedback which reaffirms their pre-existing ideology. If they were to have heeded the warnings of the wise voices who opposed this war (John Mearshiemer, Scott Horton, Jeffrey Sachs, Andrew Napolitano, Ron Paul, Tucker Carlson, etc.), they would’ve at least understood the incredible risks inherent in this project.

But, of course, their strategy relies on maintaining an unshakable narrative: the war will be a success, without a doubt. The skeptics of foreign interventionism – despite all of the ridiculous smears – have once again been proven right. Perhaps we should listen to them sometime. We would be much better off.

Nolan Denaro is an independent political analyst, writer, and host of “The Quest For Clarity” podcast, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify. His work has been published by Antiwar.com, Responsible Statecraft, the Libertarian Institute, The Daily Caller, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes on U.S. foreign policy, economics, and current events, with a particular focus on war and imperialism. He writes opinion pieces on his Substack, and you can follow him on X @nolandenaro. Nolan can be reached for correspondence at nolansdenaro@icloud.com.

The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study that found a measurable link between accepting transgender ideology and supporting left-wing political violence.

Researchers at Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute and the Network Contagion Research Institute produced the report, called “Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?” which was obtained by the New York Post ahead of its release.

The team surveyed 1,208 American adults on the importance of affirming gender identity, on perceived threats to transgender people from groups the survey lists as “white supremacists, men, the Supreme Court, etc.,” and on support for anti-democratic behaviors.

To gauge a respondent’s degree of support for gender ideology, researchers built a metric they call the Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale (CGAS), drawn from what they describe as “consensus positions” of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, chosen because they “represent the official scientific and clinical establishment on care for individuals who identify as transgender.”

Researchers then asked respondents about six potential targets of political violence. The report describes them as “killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police.”

Across preregistered analyses, CGAS and related gender ideological-belief measures were strongly associated with left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), with Spearman correlations ranging from ρ = 0.44 to ρ = 0.59. CGAS also significantly predicted LWA, accounting for 31.5% of its variance. In ordinal regressions predicting CGAS, political identity was the strongest predictor, but LWA remained an independent predictor after controlling for political identity and age. LWA and CGAS were also positively associated with justification of political violence across six targets: killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police. Both independently predicted all six violence outcomes after controlling for left-wing political identity.

These findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with LWA and willingness to justify political violence. Experimental research is needed to determine causality.

The report’s conclusion reaches past correlation. Gender ideology, the authors write, “may function as an ideological accelerant, telling left-wing authoritarian psychology who the enemy is, why the situation is urgent, and – in those already disposed toward force – that violence is legitimate.”

Researchers also examined what they term catastrophizing beliefs. The report assessed “the perceived likelihood that a genocide of individuals that identify as transgender is currently under way,” alongside what it calls “associate extremist responses,” including support for censoring and punishing people who reject transgender ideology or ignore Supreme Court rulings on gender issues. The authors treat the strength of that connection as unsettled. “We have good reasons to expect that LWA and CGAS will predict support for these sorts of anti-democratic beliefs, but those are empirical questions which will be answered in the analysis that are ongoing,” they write.

Study researcher Colin Wright called the results among the most striking he has encountered. “One of our study’s most interesting and perhaps shocking findings was that accepting gender ideology appeared to augment authoritarian attitudes on support for political violence,” Wright told the Post. He offered one possible mechanism. “We believe this may result from gender ideology defining specific oppressed classes and their oppressors, and the promotion of extreme narratives of harm for those who refuse to affirm transgender identities both socially and medically,” Wright said. He stopped short of calling that explanation settled. “That is only speculative at this point, but we are addressing this directly in a follow-up report,” Wright said.

The rise of violence linked to transgender perpetrators or allies is hard to dismiss. Last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly shot Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in the neck while he addressed a crowd at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Robinson reportedly had a relationship with a transgender roommate. In 2022, Nicholas Roske, who identifies as a transgender woman, approached Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed, with the attempt to assassinate him. 

Individuals who identified as transgender carried out separate school shootings in Minnesota and Tennessee in the years since. None of this proves causation, and the study’s authors concede as much themselves, and a follow-up study is in the works.

“A second study is being designed to address some of the limitations of the study described herein,” the authors explain in the conclusion. “This second study will take the causal direction issue head on by using an experimental design to test whether exposure to CGAS-consistent content produces the patterns predicted by the present theory. The cross-sectional correlations reported here constitute the discovery sample; the planned pre-registered experiment will constitute the confirmatory causal test.”

Authored by Stavroula Pabst via Responsible Statecraft,

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that the maintenance backlog for military installations has ballooned to more than $285 billion – leaving many facilities in disrepair, while risking readiness and service members’ quality of life.

This figure is a jump up from 2022, when the maintenance backlog was about $137 billion. But the backlog continues to grow, because the services only request about 80% of the funds they need for installation repairs and maintenance.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report, released Friday, found.

Indeed, service members face a range of issues at the facilities where they work and live. Barracks at Naval Station Norfolk, for example, have had suspected mold since 2023. But the installation office declined requests to test the growth observed there “due to the cost of testing and potential remediation.”

Another highly used facility at that Naval station had evidence of asbestos and significant water damage, GAO found. While all the station’s piers require renovation, the Navy was “actively improving” only one – leaving the rest to operate in a “degraded condition.”

At one Naval Base Guam facility, GAO observed, rust build-up and algae on an emergency door’s lock could “affect the door’s functionality during an emergency.” The base’s facilities have also been prone to HVAC failures and roof leaks, GAO found, leading to suspected mold.

Beyond physical hazards and operational risks, other issues undercut service members’ overall quality of life.

About 3,000 soldiers live at Fort Wainwright, for example, yet the army installation’s dining facility was only built to serve 800.

“The dining facility is not able to serve soldiers in a timely manner, so many opt to eat less-healthy food in their living spaces at their own expense, especially in the winter when it is too cold to wait in line outside,” GAO found. Officials have repeatedly advocated for expanding the dining facility, but the installation has not yet received the funding needed to do so.

The maintenance backlog continues to swell despite the Pentagon’s rapidly expanding budget. The White House requested a record $1.5 trillion defense budget for FY 2027.

Summary:

• Trump announced “biggest oil deal in history”
• Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit 
• U.S. is Nears Deal For 17 Venezuelan Oil Fields under 100-year Leases Operated by U.S. oil companies
• Trump Close To ‘Massive’ Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela’s Vast Oil Fields

Trump announces deal with Venezuela: 65+ billion barrels of oil reserves

President Trump has made it official with a late in the day Friday Truth Social Post, announcing a deal has been struck with Venezuela for a US majority stake in more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, after six months of administration scrambling to control the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

On Truth Social he called it the biggest oil deal in world history which comes “at no cost to” U.S. taxpayers and which more than doubles the US oil reserve.

“This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States,” Trump wrote in the post. Also…

Trump said the Venezuela deal should bring down prices at the pump. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached around $4.09 on Friday, a 27% increase year over year, according to AAA.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to deal, following US officials having long hyped Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of ‘talks’ or ‘negotiations’… in reality this is more simply about demands be dictated to the ‘new’ post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit

Focus on the Strait of Hormuz is shifting to South America late in the week as the Trump administration moves to secure new long-term crude supplies in Venezuela. The U.S. is nearing an agreement that could place 17 Venezuelan oil fields under 100-year leases operated by U.S. oil companies.

According to Bloomberg, sources told the outlet that Caracas has discussed a possible exit from OPEC with U.S. officials. The sources said no final decision has been made, but the discussions come as the U.S. negotiates 100-year leases on several Venezuelan oil fields that require billions of dollars in investment.

Such an exit from OPEC would be symbolic, given that the South American country was one of the organization’s five founding members in 1960 and played a key role in establishing the expanded OPEC+ alliance with Russia in 2016.

More recently, the United Arab Emirates became another producer to announce its departure from OPEC. Venezuela is only considering withdrawal, while Iraq has expressed frustration but has yet to announce a formal exit.

A Venezuelan exit would not result in an immediate surge in crude production because of years of underinvestment, which is why the U.S. is seeking to take a large stake in the nation’s oil fields.

Venezuela currently produces about 1.16 million barrels per day, according to a Bloomberg survey, and is not subject to an active OPEC quota.

For President Trump, a U.S.-Venezuela energy alliance could prove very valuable by weakening OPEC, increasing non-Middle Eastern crude supplies, pressuring oil prices and locking down a massive reserve base in America’s backyard.

Trump Close To ‘Massive’ Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela’s Vast Oil Fields

Amid ongoing global oil supply disruptions due to the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis, and also as Ukraine’s war on Russian oil refineries and export terminals heats up, the Trump administration has been scrambling to tap new reliable and long-term energy sources.

Now, nearly eight months since the US miliary raid on Caracas which removed from power and captured socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration is said to be on the brink of a massive deal to gain ownership stake in the countries vast oil resources.

Axios is newly reporting Thursday of ‘negotiations’ (sure) in the works: “The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world’s largest proven reserves.”

The report cites one official as saying that “Calling this deal huge would be an understatement” as is is “massive.”

The wars in Iran and Ukraine, and especially the race to reopen Hormuz to international crude transit, have added heightened urgency to the talks – and given the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has reached a 40-year low.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to the “talks”, with Trump officials hoping for a quick breakthrough after long hyping Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of ‘talks’ or ‘negotiations’… in reality this is more simply about hammering out details on what orders will be dictated to the ‘new’ post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Axios details further of what’s at stake in the deliberations with Caracas:

• The fields in question, which has 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, used to be controlled by former Venezuelan insiders — including some who’ve been indicted — as well as interests once controlled by China, the official said.
• In return for giving the U.S. an ownership stake, Venezuela’s government would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue to that country.

But this latter note remains the big question and risk, in terms of a potentially long timeline before the new potential Venezuelan oil flows make a noticeable difference.

Though sitting atop the world’s biggest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has long been known for its derelict and largely defunct infrastructure for getting crude out of the ground and refining. There’s also the question of security, which has been a source of discussion between the US admin and American oil companies being courted.

The oil majors must be convinced that they can operate in enough safety to be successful, not just for the coming months, but for years down the line. But if a broad and major ‘deal’ is struck with Caracas, these issues will probably look minor. 

There are also lingering transparency and accountability questions concerning the Venezuelan oil exports that Washington already took over since Maduro’s ouster. This summer, the Council on Foreign Relations asked ‘where has all the money gone?’…

In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3 military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

The CFR also wrote:

The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.

But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the U.S. Treasury accounts. It is not clear if the balance in either the Qatar or U.S. Treasury accounts has been shared with Congress.

The last public update was shared by President Trump to reporters in late July. He indicated the US has collected more than $13 billion from the sale of Venezuelan crude.

″$13 billion from Venezuela? I think even more than that,” the president previously told reporters, and boasted that “We’ve paid for that war many times over.”

With both the Venezuelan oil export control scheme and this new plan for US companies to move in based on a grand deal, the White House is touting that this is all about securing America’s energy future.

But as for the Venezuelan people’s future…

🇻🇪 Washington Is Making Venezuela Pay for Its Own Occupation — 32% of Oil Revenue

The U.S. invasion has turned Venezuela’s oil industry into a revenue stream for Washington. Economist Francisco Rodríguez says the Trump administration has charged Venezuela $4.7 billion, or 32%… pic.twitter.com/3jwxLHLWZe

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 14, 2026

“President Trump is close to securing America’s energy future for generations to come, not just in the U.S. but in the hemisphere,” an official said to Axios.

As a reminder Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez was previously Maduro’s Vice President, and so the chavista socialism system is still actually in place, even if the new ruling regime is in reality now a puppet of Washington interests.

While President Trump initially declared that Washington would effectively “run” Venezuela, he later had openly endorsed Rodríguez as a temporary caretaker during the transition, despite her being as hardcore a Leftist pro-Maduro figure as anyone.

Among the first US actions with a compliant Rodríguez at the helm in Caracas was to cut off Venezuela’s oil supply to nearby ally Cuba. So ultimately, an eventual grand deal for American companies to take over Venezuelan oil fields should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to what Washington’s real long-running regime changes aims in Venezuela were all about. In the meantime Western MSM outlets like Axios still pretend in their framing of these developments that the US is at the helm of some kind of “rules-based order”.

A little-used corner of the clean-energy market is getting a potentially decisive trial in Utah. At a government-backed research site, engineers are testing whether equipment and expertise developed during America’s shale boom can turn deeply buried heat into a dependable source of electricity, according to Bloomberg.

Conventional geothermal power works only where heat, permeable rock and underground water happen to occur together. The newer approach tries to manufacture those conditions. Wells are drilled several miles down, water is sent through cracks in hot rock and the heated fluid is brought back to the surface, where its energy can be converted into electricity.

Bloomberg writes that success would considerably enlarge the industry’s geographic reach. Instead of being restricted to rare geological formations, geothermal projects could spread across parts of the western United States where sufficiently hot rock lies within drilling distance. Supporters envision a low-emission power source capable of operating day and night, regardless of sunlight or wind.

That consistency has become more valuable as data centers increase electricity demand. AI infrastructure requires enormous quantities of uninterrupted power, giving geothermal developers a potential customer base willing to sign long-term supply contracts. Fervo Energy, which is developing a project near the Utah research site, already has a deal connected to Alphabet, although commercial output there is not expected until later this year.

The Utah experiment is intended to answer whether the concept can work continuously outside a controlled demonstration. Researchers will watch how quickly the underground system loses heat, how much injected water disappears and whether repeated pumping produces problematic seismic activity. Even encouraging technical results will still need to be replicated at other locations and translated into commercially viable projects.

Geothermal has retained political support that wind and solar have recently lost. The Utah program began during the Obama years, has attracted $328 million in federal commitments since 2020 and remains supported by the Trump administration. Industry cost estimates suggest new geothermal facilities can already compete with several other forms of electricity generation, although drilling remains expensive and project development carries substantial geological risk.

The experiment could therefore determine whether enhanced geothermal becomes a meaningful national energy source or remains a promising niche. If developers can drill deeper, preserve underground heat and repeat the process at declining cost, technology inherited from the oil industry could help create a new class of always-available clean power plants.