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Spanish Beach Stormed As Ceuta Chaos Spreads

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Spanish Beach Stormed As Ceuta Chaos Spreads

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Dozens of military-age men leapt from boats onto packed tourist beaches in mainland Spain this week, sending holidaymakers scrambling for their belongings as the fallout from the Ceuta mass crossing continues to escalate.

Footage from Cala del Barco near the exclusive La Manga Club in Cartagena captured the moment a large vessel packed with predominantly North African males in their late teens and twenties powered close to shore in broad daylight.

The men jumped into the water, waded or swam the final metres, and charged inland past stunned sunbathers.

Families packed towels and umbrellas and fled.

One woman was overheard saying “It’s a f*****g patera” before urging companions to collect their things and call the police.

Local officials did not hide their anger. Cartagena mayor Noelia Arroyo stated: “This cannot be normalised. We cannot accept that human trafficking mafias have such an easy time reaching our shores.”

“If a migrant boat can reach a cove like this, disembark in full view of citizens and then leave, we have to ask ourselves how the control of our maritime borders is working,” Arroyo further urged.

Former mayor Francisco Bernabe asked: “How is it possible that a boat of that size was not detected by the surveillance radar? Are they broken? Do they have them turned off? Or are they working and they simply ignore them?”

Authorities later reported 62 people aboard, including 45 adult men, two adult women and 15 minors, mostly of presumed Algerian nationality.

Police and Red Cross responded after the vessel had already turned and left.

The landings come weeks after more than 70,000 people poured into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. While officials claimed the majority returned, thousands remained, and the spectacle of open landings on mainland tourist beaches has left many Spaniards convinced the message of impunity has spread.

In Ceuta itself the situation remains dire. Spanish police relocated hundreds of mostly young male migrants from El Trampolín beach to temporary facilities in industrial and military zones.

Makeshift tent camps were erected even as the government had previously insisted those who entered irregularly would be returned to Morocco.

However, within hours the same beach was reoccupied. Videos show migrants returning almost immediately after clearance operations.

Police unions described a daily cycle of clear, transfer, and reoccupation with no end in sight.

One union statement noted officers were forced to repeat the same operation day after day while those responsible for a lasting solution remained silent.

Cleanup crews finally returned to the beach after earlier efforts were suspended over security concerns. The sand and surrounding areas had become littered with waste after weeks of open camping. Yet as soon as authorities cleared sections, new groups moved back in.

Hospitals and health centres in Ceuta have reported rising cases of scabies, measles, impetigo and ringworm. Police and military personnel assigned to the operation have also contracted scabies.

Spain’s Defence Ministry confirmed 24 cases among troops but insisted the infections were unrelated to the migrant influx, attributing them instead to humidity and substandard barracks conditions. Officials described scabies as common in the region.

Doctors on the ground have painted a different picture. Medical staff have spoken of a “health catastrophe,” with hospitals overrun, medicine running short, and cases of tuberculosis, scabies, impetigo and gastroenteritis linked to the overcrowded beach settlements and lack of sanitation.

One doctor noted that Ceuta had “basically turned into a full-on slum” with thousands living in rough shacks on the sand.

Playgrounds that once hosted local children have been taken over. Footage shows groups of young men lingering in the same spaces where mothers previously brought their kids.

Reports from animal caregivers describe cat colonies vanishing, with mutilated carcasses and half-eaten birds found near the camps. Volunteers stated cats had left their habitats once the large numbers of arrivals settled in the area.

Schools have not been spared. Just weeks before the start of the academic year, migrants occupied and damaged at least one educational building in Ceuta.

Videos circulating from the site show the state of the facilities left behind, prompting calls for full disinfection before any children return.

Police have reported a more serious threat involving minors. Officials stated that hundreds of underage migrants need to be moved because girls are being dragged into the surrounding mountains for gang rapes.

Civil Guard figures earlier confirmed multiple sexual assaults since the July crossings, including cases involving very young victims.

Local mothers have appeared on camera weeping, describing how their teenage daughters can no longer move freely without male escorts and how some families have already fled the city or sent children to the mainland.

Spain is now subjected to landings on the mainland, revolving-door clearances in Ceuta, disease among both residents and security forces, public spaces rendered unusable, and a growing sense among locals that the authorities have lost control of the border.

While government statements continue to emphasise returns and temporary measures, the images from both the tourist coves of Murcia and the beaches of Ceuta tell a different story – one of emboldened crossings and a crisis that has moved from the African enclave onto the Spanish peninsula itself.

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Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/22/2026 – 07:00

Who Really Drives Global Terrorism? Internal US Govt Data Offers A Surprising Answer

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Who Really Drives Global Terrorism? Internal US Govt Data Offers A Surprising Answer

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com

Every administration reaches for the same line. Iran, we are told, is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism — a claim now central to the case for war. It carries the weight of an official designation: Iran has sat on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism since January 19, 1984, the longest-running designation currently on the books, alongside Cuba, North Korea, and Syria. The supporting figures get repeated as settled fact — more than a billion dollars a year in terror financing, and somewhere between 140,000 and 185,000 IRGC-Quds Force partner fighters spread across Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen.

The problem is that the government’s own record doesn’t back the headline. The place to test the claim is the data the State Department itself publishes — the statistical annex to Country Reports on Terrorism, and before it Patterns of Global Terrorism, the congressionally mandated series that has catalogued international terrorist incidents year by year since 1990. When you actually read those tables, a different picture emerges from the one sold on cable news.

Who commits the attacks

The annex doesn’t sort attacks by sect, but it doesn’t need to. The identity of the top perpetrator groups tells the story on its own. Year after year across 2004–2023, the most active and lethal groups are Sunni: the Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, al-Shabaab, the TTP. On the order of nine in ten attacks in the reporting trace back to Sunni extremist actors operating out of the Salafi-jihadist tradition. None of them answer to Tehran. Most regard Shia Muslims — Iran very much included — as heretics, and target them accordingly. ISIS has spent years at open war with Iran and its allies.

A separate French dataset, compiled by FONDAPOL over a longer 1979–April 2024 window, lands in the same place. The five deadliest Islamist groups over that period account for better than 80 percent of all victims of Islamist terrorism — and every one of the five is Sunni: the Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaeda.

Where are the Iran-linked groups in all this? Largely absent from the top of the tables. Hezbollah and the Iran-aligned militias tend not to appear, in part because their operations are directed mainly at military forces rather than civilians, which places them outside the working definition of terrorism the reports use. The Houthis are the main Shia-linked group to surface in recent editions, and only as a small share of the total.

It is only in 2023 that three groups in Iran’s orbit — the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah — break into the top ten at all. They do so because of their attacks on Israel, and those attacks were aimed primarily at military targets. Before 2023, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah ranked among the groups responsible for the most attacks worldwide. That is a remarkable fact for two organizations routinely described as among the planet’s most prolific terrorists.

The Israeli numbers

Take the definition of terrorism that Benjamin Netanyahu himself uses — violence against civilians for political ends — and apply it to Israel’s own government data, drawn from the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s record of victims of Palestinian violence covering 2000 through April 2024. (That dataset predates and excludes the October 7, 2023 attack.)

Two things stand out. First, Palestinian attacks have trended downward since 2003. The peak sits in the 2000–2005 window — the Second Intifada. Across the full 24 years, 1,552 Israelis were killed and 5,595 wounded, and the violence is heavily concentrated in that early-2000s spike: roughly 76 percent of the deaths and 92 percent of the wounded fall within the Second Intifada years. Second, Hamas is not the terrorist engine the public imagination makes it out to be. Only about 15 percent of attacks over the 24-year span are attributed to Hamas, acting alone or with another faction. None of this makes Hamas a peace movement — it isn’t — but it is not an organization waging ceaseless slaughter either.

The rocket fire is the clearest case of rhetoric outrunning arithmetic. Hamas and Hezbollah have launched thousands of rockets at Israel over 25 years. The death toll specifically from those rockets across 2001–2025 is on the order of 50 to 75 people — not the “thousands” the coverage implies. The gap between the two numbers is the whole point.

Set against this is the asymmetry no honest accounting can skip. Israel killed an estimated 11,200–11,500 Palestinians between 2000 and October 6, 2023. Since October 7, the figure in Gaza has climbed past 73,000 by the Gaza Health Ministry’s count — a number an Israeli military official effectively conceded in January 2026, accepting more than 71,000 killed by direct Israeli fire.

Who actually funds the perpetrators

If the metric is real, it points somewhere other than Tehran. The Sunni groups that dominate the casualty tables have drawn financial support from the Gulf Arab states — and, more awkwardly, from the United States itself.

The paper trail runs through Syria: US and allied money reaching outfits spun off from ISIS, including the al-Nusra lineage that produced Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, whose leader Washington once had a $10 million bounty on before quietly retiring it. The same government that brands Iran the foremost sponsor of terrorism has, at various points, been a facilitator of the very groups doing the most killing.

The bottom line

The designation is doing political work, not analytical work. Iran is not, by the government’s own incident data, the major driver of global terrorism; the perpetrators overwhelmingly belong to a Sunni jihadist current that is hostile to Iran and financed from elsewhere.

A serious campaign against the sponsors of terrorism would start with the Gulf states, not with Tehran. Instead, a charge the data won’t support is being used as the pretext for an unprovoked war. A country living in a glass house should think twice before throwing rocks.

Anticipated objections — and the answers

“But Hamas and Hezbollah entered the top ten in 2023, so Iran’s proxies are major terrorists.” They entered in a single year, and only because of a war with Israel in which their fire was directed mainly at military targets — soldiers, bases, the IDF in the field. The State Department’s own definition turns on violence against civilians for political ends. A spike driven by attacks on an army during an active war is not evidence of sustained civilian-directed terrorism; it’s evidence of a shooting war. For the two prior decades of the reporting, neither group cracked the list of the world’s most active perpetrators. One year inside the top ten, produced by combat with a state military, does not overturn twenty outside it.

“You’re leaning on data that excludes October 7, 2023 — the deadliest single day in the whole record.” The exclusion is stated plainly, not smuggled: the Israeli Foreign Ministry dataset runs through the period before that attack, and October 7 is the largest single event on the Israeli side of the ledger. Grant it in full. It changes the total for one day; it does not change the structure of the twenty-year record, in which Palestinian violence trends downward after 2003 and Hamas accounts for roughly 15 percent of attacks. Nor does a single mass-casualty event convert Iran into the foremost global sponsor of terrorism, when the groups filling the casualty tables every other year — ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab — remain Sunni, anti-Shia, and unconnected to Tehran. October 7 is a real and terrible data point. It is not the trend, and it is not the sponsorship question.

“Body counts don’t measure sponsorship — the designation is about the support a state provides, not how many its proxies kill.” This is the fairest objection, and it’s worth meeting directly rather than dodging. Concede the distinction: state sponsorship is measured by money, weapons, and training, not by proxy casualty totals. But the “foremost sponsor” claim is almost never used that narrowly in practice. It is deployed to characterize the threat — to argue that Iran is the principal engine of the terrorism Americans should fear. Measured against the actual distribution of terrorist violence, that characterization collapses: the threat is overwhelmingly Sunni jihadist. And on the sponsorship axis itself, the framework is applied selectively. The Gulf states that financed Sunni networks, and the U.S. and allied money that reached groups spun off from ISIS in Syria, never draw the “number one sponsor” label. A designation that is consistent only when it points at Iran is a political instrument, not an analytical finding.

“Calling Hezbollah’s targets ‘primarily military’ whitewashes real atrocities.” The claim is about the pattern the reporting captures, not a denial that Hezbollah has ever killed civilians — it plainly has, from the 1980s bombings to attacks abroad. The point stands at the level of the aggregate data: across the reporting period, the group’s operations register mainly against military forces, which is precisely why it sits outside the top perpetrator tables that are built on civilian-directed attacks. Acknowledging the exceptions doesn’t move the aggregate.

*  *  *

Sources: U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism (statistical annex, 2004–2023) and Patterns of Global Terrorism; FONDAPOL, dataset on Islamist terrorism 1979–2024; Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, victims of Palestinian violence and terrorism 2000–2024; Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures. I have synthesized this from my previously published Sonar21 essays.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 23:25

“Fibermaxxing” Craze Forces Big Food into Reformulation Cycle

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“Fibermaxxing” Craze Forces Big Food into Reformulation Cycle

BNP Paribas analysts say Gen Z’s growing awareness of healthy, high-protein, high-fiber diets is accelerating a reformulation cycle across the Big Food industrial complex, as manufacturers race to make products more appealing to the youth and those on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. 

In a report titled “Fiber Is the New Protein,” BNP analyst Joan Lim said the protein craze ignited by GLP-1 adoption has been coined “fibermaxxing,” as younger consumers seek food products promising satiety, digestive health and weight-management benefits.

Consumer research firm Nielsen shows protein-rich categories have seen stronger volumes versus junk food categories. 

The global dietary fiber market was valued at roughly $9.6 billion in 2025 and is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 9.6% through 2034, as the fiber-maxxing trend gains even more momentum.

Fibermaxxing is already visible, according to Lim. Only 20% of people globally consume the recommended daily amount of fiber, yet social media posts using the #fibermaxxing hashtag attracted more than 150 million views on TikTok in 2025.

Food and beverage research firm Datassential found that 52% of US consumers are interested in trying fibermaxxing and 42% consider products labeled “high fiber” healthier.

Fiber has also overtaken probiotics in digestive-health marketing. Some 38% of products carrying a digestive-health claim now advertise high fiber, compared with 19% featuring probiotics. PepsiCo and Nestlé are among the big food companies that are placing fiber claims more prominently on their packaging.

About 35% of US consumers increased their protein intake between 2024 and 2025, while 75% said they would pay more for protein-rich foods and beverages. The global market for protein-rich products is estimated at $65 billion and growing at 6%-8% annually.

With GLP-1 penetration at 12% in the US and in the low single digits globally, adoption is expected to increase as the drugs become widely available in oral form and more affordable. Lim pointed out that “GLP-1 users need to consume more protein to mitigate the effects of muscle loss.”

BNP identified Tate & Lyle and Ingredion as best positioned to benefit from fibermaxxing. 

Kerry Group, DSM-Firmenich, IFF, Givaudan and Novonesis could benefit from demand for flavors, enzymes, cultures and texture solutions.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 23:00

Trained On 53 Million Pages: US Supercomputer-Backed Tool To Search Nuclear Reactor Data

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Trained On 53 Million Pages: US Supercomputer-Backed Tool To Search Nuclear Reactor Data

Authored by Aman Tripathi via Interesting Engineering,

Nuclear power stations across North America have begun using a dedicated virtual system called NIVA. The software was created by Atomic Canyon in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Atomic Canyon collaborated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to train the FERMI models. (Representational image)

It provides engineers and technicians across the commercial reactor fleet with an automated method to query vast archives of technical, operational, and regulatory records.

“The U.S. nuclear sector sits on decades of invaluable technical and operational knowledge, but too much of that knowledge remains difficult to access at the speed modern deployments require,” said Trey Lauderdale, Founder & CEO, Atomic Canyon.

“The fleetwide availability of NIVA shows that AI in nuclear power is real, operational, and ready to be deployed responsibly at a fleetwide scale.”

Technical architecture for model training

The technological foundation of the platform rests on a specialized model family named FERMI. Standard, general-purpose language systems frequently fail to parse the dense technical terminology, precise abbreviations, and domain-specific syntax common in nuclear engineering. FERMI was built to resolve this issue by interpreting technical meaning rather than simply scanning for exact keyword occurrences.

Atomic Canyon collaborated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to train the models on the Frontier exascale supercomputer. The training dataset included more than 53 million pages of documentation from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The completed model weights are publicly available on the Hugging Face repository.

FERMI functions within an operational software interface called Neutron. While NIVA applies the retrieval models across broader sector archives, the Neutron environment links those capabilities directly to an individual station’s private network. This structure lets local engineering departments run searches across their own licensing bases, routine maintenance logs, technical drawings, and operating procedures.

The current rollout provides plant personnel with two functional modules, alongside a third tool scheduled for future release.

Functional modules with commercial expansion plan

The first component is the Knowledge Assistant. Plant staff can enter queries in conversational phrasing to obtain direct answers extracted from verified technical repositories. The system sources information from NRC Regulatory Guides, NUREG reports, NEI guidelines, INPO standards, and EPRI research publications. Every output includes direct citations in the text, allowing engineers to verify statements against the original source documents.

The second component is the Operating Experience Assistant. This tool reviews historical plant performance logs and previous event reports. It evaluates the underlying context of a query instead of looking for surface-level word matches, and engineers can interact with the returned records through a conversational query window to investigate past equipment behavior. A third tool focused on diagnostic and troubleshooting tasks is undergoing software development, with plant trials planned for later this year.

The commercial deployment follows a six-month pilot evaluation period at several operating utilities, including Constellation Energy, which operates 21 reactors across 12 station sites.

Atomic Canyon previously tested its generative tools on-site at the Diablo Canyon facility managed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

To finance the expansion of the software across additional commercial sites, Atomic Canyon secured an investment round. Backers include NVIDIA, Plug and Play Ventures, and former Vanguard Group chairman Mortimer Buckley. The funds will support ongoing software engineering and integration across operating facilities.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 22:35

Russia Says Ready For ‘New Ideas’ From US On Ending Ukraine War

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Russia Says Ready For ‘New Ideas’ From US On Ending Ukraine War

The Kremlin has newly said it is ready for dialogue with Washington and open to ideas for ending the conflict in Ukraine, but still says it will not compromise on Russia’s core aims.

A senior Russian diplomat has stressed that any future talks must align with President Vladimir Putin’s position. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stated in an interview published by national media on Friday that Russia is open to proposals that are in line with “realities on the ground.“

“The Russian Federation is ready to listen to any reasonable proposals and ideas that are in line with the goals set by the Russian president and meet the ‘realities on the ground’,” Ryabkov said.

“At this stage, it is more important to what extent Washington is able to influence the decisions of the Kyiv regime and its European sponsors, who still dream of a ‘strategic defeat’ of Russia,” he added.

via Reuters

The remarks suggest that the Kremlin is responding positively and openly to recent overtures initiated by Washington.

“US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has indicated the need to put forward new ideas toward a settlement, and we are ready to listen to them if this constitutes the mentioned ‘efforts’ of the Americans,” Ryabkov continued.

“We remain open to dialogue with Washington, but that does not mean that we will abandon our fundamental positions,” he added.

Time is working against Ukraine and its Western backers in Europe, “something they will have to reckon with,” Ryabkov additionally pointed out.

President Trump has this summer signaled that his outlook on Ukraine’s chances on the battlefield may have softened or changed of late:

By the time Trump and Zelensky met at a NATO summit in July, the American president said the Ukrainian leader had “been very effective” in the war. “We’ve actually developed a good relationship,” Trump added.

But as Ukraine’s strikes have intensified, so have Russia’s — and Kyiv faces major challenges in defending against them because of shortages of American Patriot air defense missiles.

Zelensky, for his part, has been explicit that the new long-range strikes are meant to force Moscow to the negotiating table under conditions that favor Kiev.

The LA Times has recently outlined significant developments this summer, which are part of this risky strategy:

  • As part of the campaign against oil infrastructure, Kyiv said it hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, more than 1,550 miles from Ukraine.
  • Kyiv has also targeted defense manufacturing centers. It hit a factory making navigation systems multiple times, including with its own Flamingo missile.
  • In July and August, Ukraine struck warehouses for major Russian online retailer Wildberries. Kyiv said the company helps supply the Russian military. Moscow denies that.
  • Many of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian air defenses and radar are around Russian-held Crimea and are often carried out with drones.

But there are still no signs that Russia’s own retaliatory strikes are letting up – instead they are intensifying and becoming more and more deadly – also at a moment Ukraine’s air defense munitions and capabilities are dwindling fast.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 22:10

The Six Nooses: How Interventionism Is Strangling The Family’s Will To Reproduce

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The Six Nooses: How Interventionism Is Strangling The Family’s Will To Reproduce

Authored by Felix Yang via the Mises Institute,

The total fertility rate needed to sustain a population is 2.1. Averaged over 2020-2024, South Korea’s stands at 0.78, Taiwan’s at 0.89, and Hong Kong’s at 0.79. Mainstream demography still treats these as cultural anomalies, when they are in fact the terminal readings of a century-long experiment in administrative intervention.

The standard explanation blames housing costs, changing values, or the burden of raising children in a modern economy. Examined through the lens of praxeology – the deductive logic of human action – that explanation gets the causation backward.

Childbearing is, at bottom, a long-horizon investment: a rational actor accepts a low time preference, sinking two decades of capital and labor into a payoff that only matures across generations. That calculation depends entirely on a stable institutional environment in which the link between sacrifice and reward holds. Modern interventionism, the self-reinforcing pattern Mises identified in which each intervention’s side effects become the pretext for the next, has severed that link through six distinct mechanisms.

The first is fiat-currency inflation. Since the Federal Reserve’s founding in 1913, the dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its purchasing power. Money’s evolved function as a store of value across time has been replaced by a bureaucratic IOU that depreciates by design. A family cannot rationally sink twenty years of capital into a child when the currency in which that capital is denominated is being quietly devalued year over year.

The second is the socialization of old-age support. Pay-as-you-go pension systems are, by their own actuarial logic, generational Ponzi schemes: they accumulate no real assets and depend entirely on new entrants to pay existing claims. The US Social Security Trustees project the OASI trust fund will exhaust its reserves by 2033, at which point benefits fall automatically to 77 percent of what has been promised. Once old age depends on the political solvency of a pooled fund rather than on the number or quality of children a person raises, raising children loses its economic rationale as an intergenerational contract.

The third is medical monopoly. Administrative licensing and price controls replace price rationing in healthcare with queue rationing; the scarcity remains, only relabeled. In Canada, the median wait from referral to specialist treatment now exceeds thirty weeks, the longest in the Fraser Institute’s thirty-three years of tracking; an estimated 24,000 Canadians died last year while still waiting for treatment they were promised for free. When survival itself becomes a bureaucratic waiting list, family planning becomes an act of faith rather than calculation.

The fourth is the nationalization of education. Before compulsory public schooling, private and community-funded education had already brought English literacy to roughly 85 to 90 percent in Britain and the United States. Compulsory schooling was not introduced to fix a market failure; Prussia’s own architects of the system said openly that its purpose was to discipline the individual will to the needs of the state.

Modern public education systems – lacking any price mechanism or profit-and-loss discipline – level toward mediocrity, forcing families into a second, private tuition market simply to buy back their children’s competitiveness. Demographer John Caldwell’s Wealth Flows Theory shows that fertility collapses precisely when the direction of intergenerational wealth reverses, from children supporting parents to parents indefinitely subsidizing children, a reversal driven above all by the spread of compulsory schooling.

The fifth is the stripping of housing sovereignty. Zoning and land-use regulation manufacture artificial scarcity, transferring wealth from young families to entrenched incumbents under the banner of protecting communities from externalities. A natural experiment between two American cities makes the point starkly. Houston has rejected zoning by popular referendum three times – in 1948, 1962, and 1993; its price-to-monthly-rent ratio (PM/R, sale price divided by monthly rent) sits near 108, and its total fertility rate holds at 1.98. San Francisco – fully regulated under the California Environmental Quality Act – has a PM/R above 360 and a fertility rate of 1.49. Even Houston’s relatively favorable outcome still falls short of replacement, because housing freedom alone cannot offset the other five nooses operating at the federal level.

The sixth is administrative relief. When government nationalizes a function that was once a community mutual-aid contract grounded in local knowledge, it does not eliminate poverty; it manufactures a self-perpetuating administrative class with every incentive to manage poverty rather than end it, along with well-documented adverse selection. In the United States, the extension of welfare benefits conditioned on remaining unmarried is directly implicated. In Thomas Sowell’s research, the rise of single-parent households among black Americans increased from roughly 22 to 67 percent between 1960 and 1985.

These six mechanisms compound each other rather than operating in isolation, closing a systemic trap across four dimensions of family sovereignty: the financial, the physical, the temporal, and the spiritual. Rome ran the same experiment two thousand years ago.

Bread-and-circuses welfare, currency debasement from a near-pure silver denarius to a five-percent-silver disc, and the administrative capture of the yeoman farmer class produced, over four centuries, the same terminal outcome: infant abandonment recorded in the papyrus record of Roman Egypt, and a city of a million reduced to roughly 100,000 residents by the sixth century.

The conclusion is not a call for better-designed subsidies. Every subsidy is simply a further extension of the same interventionist logic that caused the collapse in the first place. Each of the six nooses was, in its own time, sold to families as a trade: surrender this piece of sovereignty, and the state will guarantee that safety in return.

Benjamin Franklin’s words – later carried into Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom – exposed exactly where that trade always ends: those who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. The family bore that trade six times over and has a falling fertility rate to show for it – the safety was never delivered, and the liberty is gone.

The only path back is the restoration of private property and the family’s own sovereignty over its financial, physical, and intergenerational decisions.

Felix Yang is the author of “Why the Cradle Stands Empty: How Interventionism Strangles Fertility.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 21:45

US Treasury Classifies Hezbollah As Arm Of The IRGC, Not A ‘Stand-Alone’ Group

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US Treasury Classifies Hezbollah As Arm Of The IRGC, Not A ‘Stand-Alone’ Group

The new US Treasury sanctions on Hezbollah unveiled Thursday do more than ever before in ‘legally’ classifying the Lebanese militant group as essentially an arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Treasury action – which is certainly not the first designation against the group – underscored that it operated in “service to the Iranian regime under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.“

A State Department official characterized the re-designation as specifying that Hezbollah is an “Iranian proxy, not a stand-alone operation as implied by the previous designation.“

“This action builds on years of US designations that have repeatedly documented the operational, financial, and logistical integration between Hizballah and the IRGC-QF,” the official also stated, calling Hezbollah “an extension” of the IRGC’s Quds Force.

“This underscores that Hezbollah operates with little to no regard for Lebanese sovereignty, the Lebanese people, or the Lebanese state,” the US official added, which reflects longstanding Washington policy toward Lebanon.

The Treasury action had additionally targeted ten individuals accused of being part of a network that transfers cash to the Shia group.

Hezbollah has responded Friday by stating that this action “will not deter” its fighting against Israel.

“All these unjust sanctions and classifications will not deter us from adhering to the path of resistance and the right of Lebanon and the Lebanese to defend their land, sovereignty and resources,” the fresh Hezbollah statement said.

The statement also asserted that the paramilitary group “does not need anyone to vouch for its Lebanese identity and patriotism.” However, it boasted that “Our close and fraternal relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran is a relationship we cherish and are proud of.“

While long-running cooperation between Iran and Hezbollah is obvious, including in the context of the Syrian proxy war – wherein the two defended Assad – most scholars of Lebanese history tend to see the group as springing out of a legitimately local or regional movement tied to Shia grievances and lack of representation in Lebanon’s impoverished south.

It was largely a latecomer in the Lebanese Civil War, but has grown to be the most powerful and well-armed faction among all the different players in Lebanon. 

The group is even more powerful than the small Mediterranean country’s national army, and has been in a decades long war with Israel for control of contested border regions, and standing against Israeli occupation of Lebanese lands as well as the Syrian Golan Heights.

But Washington’s new action is ultimately tied to the broader economic war towards completely isolating Iran and its proxies – something likely to prove easier said than done, given Russia and China are not going to play along, as well as perhaps much of the Global South and BRICS nations.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 20:30

Let Americans Keep The Savings They Find

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Let Americans Keep The Savings They Find

Authored by Wendy Barnes via RealClearPolitics,

As candidates spend the coming months telling voters how they would transform American health care, they should not overlook reforms that could make care more accessible and affordable without requiring complex new government programs.

Millions of Americans are already trying to make their health care dollars go further. They compare prices, explore alternatives to insurance, and choose lower-cost ways to obtain prescriptions and routine care. Yet federal policies often penalize them for doing exactly what policymakers say they want consumers to do: shop carefully and choose the best value option.

A practical health care affordability agenda should begin with a simple principle: When Americans use their own money to pay for legitimate health care, government rules should help that money go further.

Policymakers can put that principle into practice in two ways.

First, consumers should receive credit for the money they actually spend on prescriptions.

Consider a consumer whose insurance requires an $80 out-of-pocket payment for a prescription. That same drug may be available for $30 through a cash-pay option. Choosing the $30 price should be an easy decision.

But under many health plans, that spending may not count toward the consumer’s deductible or annual out-of-pocket maximum because the prescription was purchased outside of traditional insurance. The consumer saves $50 at the pharmacy counter but forfeits credit for the $30 spent.

That is not how a system designed to encourage cost-conscious choices should work.

The Every Dollar Counts Act, introduced this year by Rep. Greg Murphy, M.D., offers a straightforward solution that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle should support. It would require out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs to count toward a consumer’s deductible and out-of-pocket maximum regardless of where the medication is purchased.

Americans should not have to choose between finding the lowest available price and receiving the full value of their insurance. If enacted, this legislation would help remove that tradeoff.

Second, Congress should modernize flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) to reflect how people receive health care today. These accounts allow consumers to use pre-tax dollars for qualified medical expenses, but health care delivery is evolving more quickly than the rules governing which expenses qualify.

Consumers increasingly use low-cost memberships that provide access to discounted prescriptions, virtual visits, or other health care services. In many cases, a consumer can use FSA or HSA funds for the prescription or appointment itself, but not for the membership that unlocks the lower price.

Congress has already begun to recognize that health care memberships can be legitimate medical expenses. As of this year, certain direct primary care memberships can be paid tax-free from an HSA under a change implemented through IRS guidance. But that change is narrowly limited, leaving out broader memberships that may combine prescription savings, virtual care, and other services.

Lawmakers should extend the same principle to other health care memberships and to HSAs and FSAs. Clear eligibility standards and reasonable monthly limits could prevent abuse while allowing consumers to use their own health care dollars for services specifically designed to reduce the cost of care.

Neither of these proposals would replace insurance or require Washington to construct a new health care system. They would simply update existing policies to reflect how Americans already seek and pay for care.

Candidates will continue debating ambitious plans throughout the election season. But affordability is also shaped by technical rules with very real consequences: whether a consumer’s spending counts, whether personal health care funds can be used, and whether someone can confidently choose a lower price.

Washington should give people credit for making responsible health care decisions. When Americans find a legitimate way to pay less for the care they need, public policy should reward that choice.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Wendy Barnes is president and CEO of GoodRx, the leading platform for prescription access and affordability.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 20:05

Buying May Not Beat Renting Until Retirement In Some Expensive Markets: Zillow

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Buying May Not Beat Renting Until Retirement In Some Expensive Markets: Zillow

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

For a typical U.S. household, it can take decades to save for a home and reach the point where buying becomes cheaper than renting, with the timeline stretching into retirement in some expensive markets, according to an Aug. 20 Zillow report.

A “for sale” sign is posted in front of a home for sale in San Marino, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2023. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Zillow calculated the number of years that a household saving 10 percent of the area’s median income would need to save for a 20 percent down payment on either a typical single-family or starter home. The break-even period was when the cumulative cost of owning a home fell below the cost of renting a similar home.

Nationally, Zillow found that after about 15 years, the average household can reach the point where purchasing a home becomes financially advantageous compared with renting for the same amount of time. This includes about 8.5 years of saving for the down payment and another 6.2 years to break even on the purchase.

For starter home purchases, the saving and break-even point is much shorter, at just 7.2 years, compared with renting a multifamily unit.

However, in some high-cost markets, the timeline can be very long. In San Diego, where the median list price was $1.23 million as of July 31, it takes nearly 50 years to reach that point – the longest timeline nationwide.

Other notable markets with lengthy saving and break-even periods include Boston, New York City, and Seattle – all at more than 27 years.

“The common wisdom is that saving early to buy a home is the smart financial move, but the reality is more nuanced,” Zillow senior economist Kara Ng said in the report.

“The breakeven number tells you something about a market that a price tag alone doesn’t. Buyers should think about not just when they can afford to buy, but how long they’d need to stay before owning makes more financial sense than renting.”

Ng added that while homeownership provides equity and stability, renting can offer more flexibility and freedom from unexpected household bills.

On Aug. 18, Zillow reported that the typical asking rent increased to $1,962 nationally in July – a 2.3 percent annual jump and the fastest pace in more than a year. Based on that rent, Zillow said a household would need an annual income of $78,488 to afford it, compared with nearly $100,000 to afford a typical mortgage payment.

In Memphis, Tennessee, which had a median list price of $168,423 as of the end of July, the timeline shrank to 11 years, the shortest in the country.

The report also shows that the number of years required to save a down payment in Austin, Texas, skewed lower than the national average, at just eight years. At the end of July, the median list price there was $563,250. However, it notes that due to declining rents, that same buyer would need another 18 years to break even on the purchase compared with renting, surpassing the national average by more than three times.

Miami, meanwhile, presented a contrasting case: Buyers needed about 13 years to save for a down payment but could break even with renting in just 9.6 years. Miami’s median list price stood at $646,600 as of July 31.

Zillow noted that in 2019, the combined timeline was 11 years nationwide – about four years shorter than today. It said the housing shortage of some 4.7 million homes was contributing to rising costs and longer timelines for both saving and breaking even.

“The metros with the largest shortages tend to also have the longest break-even timeline,” the report says.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/21/2026 – 19:15

Mobility Data Flashes Warning Sign Along Pakistan’s Iran-Linked Copper-Corridor

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Mobility Data Flashes Warning Sign Along Pakistan’s Iran-Linked Copper-Corridor

AI-powered geospatial data platform xMap’s data scientist, Dana Harrison, asked in a LinkedIn post: “Can Mobility Data Spot Commodity Supply Risk Before the Market Does?”

Harrison used location data from points of interest and human mobility data to focus on what she says are “changes in human movement” over recent months along Pakistan’s Chagai copper-gold corridor, home to Saindak and the massive Reko Diq development, which is located near the Iranian border.

Harrison continued:

On this episode of The Reckless Rabithole, I noodled around with xMap mobility data along Pakistan’s Chagai copper-gold corridor, home to Saindak and the massive Reko Diq development.

During a period of growing security and logistics disruptions, mobility in Nushki and Dalbandin began to diverge materially from comparable locations elsewhere in Balochistan, with both ending July roughly 20 index points below the regional benchmark.

Not suggesting mobility caused or predicted the disruption. But it raises a question I find much more interesting:

Could changes in human movement provide an early signal of operational stress around critical-mineral supply chains?

The data does not directly track copper shipments and/or mine production. It merely shows overall human movement is declining, and sharp declines may suggest road restrictions, security operations, reduced commercial activity, telecommunications outages, or population displacement along the N-40 Highway, the main artery connecting Quetta with Nushki, Dalbandin, Saindak, and Pakistan’s border with Iran.

Source: x-Map’s Dana Harrison

For context, the Chagai copper-gold corridor lies largely along the N-40 Highway near both Iran and Afghanistan and contains two strategically important mining assets:

Given President Trump’s “ECONOMIC D-DAY” statement against Iran earlier this week, in which he warned that any country working with Iran would suffer “severe economic consequences,” it remains an open-ended question why mobility is declining in Pakistan’s critical-mineral corridor (near Iran). However, this type of data may hint at potential future supply disruptions emerging from the region.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/21/2026 – 18:50

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