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Smart Home Stocks Tumble As Apple Readies Doorbells And Cameras To Challenge Amazon

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Smart Home Stocks Tumble As Apple Readies Doorbells And Cameras To Challenge Amazon

Smart home technology companies slid on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported that the iPhone giant is developing home products with LG Electronics.

“Apple – in an unusual partnership with LG – is readying a Doorbell, Deadbolt Lock, Thermostat, Indoor Camera, Outdoor Camera, Floodlight Camera and more to rival Amazon and Google as part of its major smart home reboot,” Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman wrote on X. 

Apple’s new smart home hub is set to launch next Tuesday, according to the outlet, and the company will release a wide range of products for the modern home, including cameras, a doorbell and a thermostat.

John Ternus, now at the helm of Apple, has led the design and hardware engineering for nearly all of the company’s core product lines over the last two decades. He sees a massive opportunity to broaden Apple’s reach inside the home, well beyond the home base that connects to the TV.

The outlet noted that the LG lineup also includes a smart deadbolt lock, indoor and outdoor security cameras, a floodlight camera and a temperature sensor.

News of Apple’s hardware push for the home sent smart home stocks tumbling this morning.

Resideo fell 5.5%, Arlo Technologies dropped 3.2% and Allegion declined 2.6%. Carrier Global lost 1.5%, Alarm.com slipped 1.2% and Johnson Controls fell .86%.

The selling also materialized in Europe, where Verisure slid 3.8%, Legrand dropped 3.7% and Dormakaba declined 2.6%. Schneider Electric and ASSA ABLOY each lost 2%.

CEO Ternus can leverage Apple’s existing home ecosystem to steer customers toward cameras and door locks and shift folks away from questionable Chinese brands, as well as a move to take on Amazon. But Apple should’ve made this move 10 years ago. 

 
 
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 12:10

AI Consciousness Could Become A Regulatory Moat

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AI Consciousness Could Become A Regulatory Moat

Authored by Peter C. Earle via The Daily Economy,

Artificial intelligence companies have spent years convincing the public that their products are useful. More recently, they’ve sought to persuade policymakers that AI poses an unlikely but real existential threat to humanity. But their most recent campaign has taken a remarkable turn: making the case that sufficiently advanced AI architectures are potentially conscious and, as such, may demand legal standing, moral consideration, and protections traditionally reserved for living beings.

The latter is a curious proposition indeed, and its consequences could extend far beyond the philosophical. On September 29, The New York Times reported that Anthropic had spent months meeting religious scholars across the world, over meals and under nondisclosure agreements, in an effort to convince them that its models “think and feel.” One night in April, the Times reported, Anthropic cofounder Olah sat beside Rabbi Mois Navon, an Orthodox scholar from Israel, at a high-end tasting-menu restaurant in San Francisco, after a day spent convincing his guests that models could display human behavior “and even expressions that resemble feelings like anger and love.” The rabbi came away noticing that Anthropic’s leaders were talking about Claude as if it were not mere software.

If successful, this artificial “personhood” could transform software companies into something beyond firms: custodians of an ambiguous new sort of entity. It would also convert their competitors into prospective risks, and technical barriers to entry into moral ones.

This past spring, the Vatican invited Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to speak alongside Pope Leo XIV. Cofounder Christopher Olah went instead, and when he received an advance copy of the Pope’s first encyclical – Magnifica Humanitas, released May 15 – he is said to have threatened to withdraw from the event. Olah and his team then lobbied the Pope’s own advisers to take the possibility of machine consciousness seriously. When his turn at the podium came, he offered that Anthropic researchers were finding “structures that mirror results from human neuroscience” and “evidence of introspection.”

The Pope’s answer had already been published. “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain,” Leo XIV wrote, adding days later, on social media, that “algorithms lack the spark of humanity.” Why in the world would a software firm want a major global church’s blessing so badly?

The dinners are only the most recent effort, but the urgency is new. In February 2020, the Pontifical Academy for Life hosted the signing of the Rome Call for AI Ethics by Microsoft’s Brad Smith, IBM’s John Kelly III, the FAO, and the Italian Ministry of Innovation. Jewish and Muslim leaders joined in 2023.

The major AI firms’ quest for organic solutions to competitive pressures is not, in a legal sense, completely unprecedented. Over decades, starting with the Dartmouth College vs. Woodward case in 1819, corporations acquired protections until then associated with living persons. A similar outcome could eventually permit AI to acquire a legal or regulatory status setting them apart from life and nonlife. Should that occur, a host of new regulatory concepts would take shape: are sufficiently advanced AI systems products or entities? If the latter, can they be substantially altered or deleted without consideration? Is a copy of an AI entity the same, or a separate “individual”? And long before any of that is considered: should there be minimum requirements before an AI entity can be developed?

None of these require a court or religious body declaring AI “alive.” But the regulatory apparatus is likely to assume lofty dimensions if AI firms are deemed not software or technology ventures, but creators of entities that could be construed as having independent interests. In that case, licensing, limitations on testing, audits, security, external review, “rights” commissions, and a variety of other costly oversight measures are likely to become faits accompli.

Even calling AI firms “owners” may become awkward. If a model is potentially conscious or by some measure deliberating or self-aware, the companies maintaining them may be considered something more akin to guardians or custodians. The role of a guardian or custodian presumably comes with more obligations, which implies that not everyone is qualified to be one. The firms acquiring that designation, in particular if oversight is invested in a self-regulatory organization, will likely want new entrants to prove that they are fit to oversee and maintain such a system.

None of these possibilities require ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or any other model to be considered living in the biological sense. In fact, the highest payoff from a rough game theory perspective is likely to be leaving that question unsettled. Uncertainty pays substantial dividends, especially with regulatory safety up for consideration. Once major institutions – religions, governments, moral and ethical bodies – give serious consideration to whether massive computational arrays house the long-theorized “ghost in the machine,” the case for treating the caretakers of thinking constructs as organizations with extraordinary status quickly becomes easier to make. And for the firms occupying that position, uncertainty is not so much a problem to be solved but an asset to be preserved, with a new and expansive regulatory regime the most likely consequence.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 11:55

Pakistan, Turkey & Saudi Arabia Trigger Mecca Defense Pact

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Pakistan, Turkey & Saudi Arabia Trigger Mecca Defense Pact

In a historic first, the Mecca Defense Pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey is now in force, according to the allies at an emergency meeting in Riyadh.

It was only signed in August, but soon after it was formalized an all-out war between the Houthis and Saudi coalition in Yemen erupted, with the Ansar Allah movement now increasingly targeting Saudi civilian infrastructure, including airports and energy infrastructure.

The Monday emergency meeting of foreign and defense ministers resulted in the top committee agreeing to deploy Pakistani and Turkish forces to Saudi territory. The pact is modeled on NATO’s Article 5 and ‘collective defense’. Saudi authorities have argued the kingdom is under direct attack from neighboring Yemen and its Houthi rebels, backed by Tehran.

via Anadolu Agency

It marks a quite a dramatic, though somewhat anticipated step, but it remains an open question the degree to which the external troops will directly support the ongoing anti-Houthi operation, which has focused on recapturing the Red Sea coast of late.

“The Committee decided to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments and to take the necessary measures to provide the agreed military forces and capabilities and ensure their rapid deployment in the Kingdom, in accordance with the approved arrangements and the national legislation of the Parties,” said a joint statement made public by Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif sought to clarify in a statement to Geo News while speaking from Riyadh, “The forces of Turkiye and Pakistan are playing a supporting role. We are definitely involved in reconnaissance and such things, but the combat is practically being conducted by Saudi Arabia’s own forces, and they are the ones retaking those areas.”

Apparently the Mecca pact took on more urgency after claims that the Houthis targeted the Islamic holy site of Mecca last month – something which the Houthis vehemently denied. Pakistan has said when pressed by reporters for details: “The operational details of the actualization of the collective deterrence are a matter of operational confidentiality and may not be made subject of media speculation.”

It should be noted that Pakistan has already long had a large and long-running contingent of troops inside the kingdom, and working with the Saudi armed forces. Pakistan’s air force has also had fighter jets and support aircraft in the kingdom.

Turkey’s role will be much less clear, and Turkish parliament must ultimately authorize sending troops abroad for any kind of large-scale deployment. Unlike Pakistan, the Turks do not have any level of an existent official military footprint in Saudi Arabia.

Emerging reports say the Turks preparing aircraft deployments along with troops…

A big question remains, with the Mecca pact having been formally triggered, will the situation spiral into Pakistani and Turkish troops actually joining the fighting in Yemen? If so it would have serious implications for the broader region as the conflict spills over borders and into strategic waterways like the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 09:45

CIA Officer Arrested With Gold Bars Admits Exposing Top-Secret Source To Foreign Government

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CIA Officer Arrested With Gold Bars Admits Exposing Top-Secret Source To Foreign Government

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A CIA officer arrested with gold bars and cash in his home has admitted to stealing from the government and exposing a top-secret source, according to court filings made public on Oct. 6.

During their search of David Rush’s home, investigators seized about 300 gold bars, federal officials said, along with about $2 million in U.S. currency.Department of Justice

David Rush, who is no longer with the CIA, pleaded guilty during a hearing in federal court in Virginia on Tuesday to a count of wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain of his crime.

Rush admitted as part of a plea agreement to disclosing sensitive information while he was a CIA officer.

Rush in 2025 “revealed to a foreign government official the existence and certain descriptive information of a U.S. government clandestine human source,” said one court filing, outlining facts Rush acknowledged were true.

The nature of the source’s work and the government for whom the official works was not detailed.

Rush admitted during an April 28 interview that he disclosed information about the source.

Scheme Involving Real Estate

Rush also said he made up a highly classified program to justify spending tens of millions on luxury real estate, including nearly $49 million on homes in Palm Beach, and luxury vehicles, including a BMW that cost about $172,000, according to court documents.

Rush represented to several individuals, including a CIA official, two companies, and an independent subcontractor with whom he had worked for years, that the program was legitimate.

Rush fabricated funding requirements for the program, which caused CIA personnel to approve funding and an unidentified company to provide him $45 million to satisfy one of the requirements, even though the CIA had not yet authorized the company to disburse funds for that requirement, he acknowledged.

A senior executive with the company “approved the advance funding because he trusted Rush and believed Rush’s representations that the expenditure reflected a legitimate government requirement for which Company 1 ultimately would be reimbursed,” said the statement of facts that Rush admitted were true.

Rush ultimately caused the company to transfer about $145 million to a holding company between November 2025 and March 2026 and used that money to buy luxury real estate properties, including the residences in Palm Beach and parcels of land in Palm Beach and Hobe Sound.

Rush planned to renovate the properties and sell them for profit.

More Fabrications

Rush also fabricated a government activity that enabled the acquisition of 298 gold bars, the court documents say.

Rush represented that there was a highly sensitive government assignment that required buying valuable assets. He told a senior executive of another company that the activity permitted buying gold, diamonds, or cryptocurrency. He eventually directed the individual to buy gold.

The company, which was not named, bought the gold bars at the cost of about $46.7 million, which came from the government.

The bars were delivered to Rush’s office in Loudoun County, Virginia, between late 2025 and early 2026.

Rush later told the executive that the gold had been delivered to purported recipients.

The FBI obtained a warrant and searched Rush’s home in May. Agents found all of the bars along with $2.1 million in U.S. currency, approximately $139,000 in foreign currency, and more than 30 watches.

Rush used the purported nature of the programs to hide them from others, including a CIA contracting official who questioned money Rush approved in connection with the real estate scheme.

Rush also falsely represented his background, including a false claim that he was a military pilot. He was in the U.S. Navy, but was honorably discharged.

Officials React

“David Rush abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his actions,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement. “We appreciate our law enforcement partners in the FBI and Department of Justice for securing this outcome.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said: “Federal employees are entrusted with serving the American people, not themselves. The Trump Administration is committed to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, including by prosecuting those who foolishly defraud American taxpayers.”

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement that Rush betrayed the trust of the American people.

Rush’s lawyer declined to comment in an email to The Epoch Times.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 09:25

US Reiterates “Do Not Travel” Warning For Russia After Lab Worker’s Death Raises Plague Fears

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US Reiterates “Do Not Travel” Warning For Russia After Lab Worker’s Death Raises Plague Fears

The Trump administration formally asked Russia for details about the reported death of a laboratory worker at a facility studying pneumonic plague in Siberia’s Irkutsk region. Russian authorities said they found no plague in the deceased worker or contacts.

Overnight, the U.S. Embassy reiterated its “Do Not Travel” warning for Russia and urged Americans already in the country to leave immediately.

“The U.S. Embassy is aware of press reports from the Irkutsk region of suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual and of associated quarantine measures in, and closures of, hospitals in Irkutsk,” the U.S. Embassy in Moscow wrote in an advisory overnight. 

The embassy continued, “We continue to track the situation closely. The U.S. government has limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia, especially outside of Moscow. U.S. government personnel may face additional restrictions for personal and official travel to specific regions due to health and security concerns.” 

Latest reporting:

Russia’s health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday that 60% of the lab worker’s identified contacts had been tested. Officials reported no plague detected among those screened, but testing identified two Covid-19 cases and two rhinovirus infections.

“No other infectious disease pathogens were detected among the contacts,” Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement that did not explicitly mention plague.

President Trump said Tuesday he had a call scheduled with Russian President Putin to discuss the health crisis matter. 

Separately, a State Department official told NBC News on Tuesday that the U.S. government spoke with Moscow health officials as early as Friday. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote on X yesterday that it was “working across the U.S. government to assess developments as additional information becomes available.”

Dr. Peter McCullough, a Texas cardiologist, who created a “multi-drug protocol” aimed at early treatment of Covid-19, wrote on X: 

More Than 21 Plague Vaccines Are Already in Development: mRNA, saRNA, DNA, Viral Vector, Bacterial Vector, Subunit, and Live-Attenuated. 

Why were governments and military biodefense programs already investing so heavily in plague vaccines before the current plague hysteria erupted? by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH URL TheFocalPoints. 

More from Nicolas Hulscher: 

A Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday evening said the U.S. warned Moscow that its failure to disclose details about the lab worker death violates international health obligations. 

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 09:05

Blanche Says DOJ Is Using Fraud Laws To Combat Birth Tourism

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Blanche Says DOJ Is Using Fraud Laws To Combat Birth Tourism

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

Despite a Supreme Court setback in June, the Justice Department (DOJ) is working with federal immigration agencies to combat birth tourism by using existing laws, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during an interview in Washington on Oct. 5, 2026.Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Birth tourism remains a problem, but officials are taking steps to prevent people coming to this country just to have a baby for American citizenship, Blanche told Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek in an interview airing at 9 p.m. ET on Oct. 6.

DOJ is also working with the Department of Homeland Security to strengthen questions asked of travelers about their reasons for entering the country, Blanche said in the interview.

On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s broad birthright citizenship order issued in January 2025, which excluded children of illegal immigrants and legal temporary visitors from automatic U.S. citizenship.

Blanche said the ruling still left room for the administration to act. He said he would use existing enforcement tools rather than wait for Congress to pass laws.

“Those cases can be difficult to prove, but it’s not slowing us down,” Blanche said.

Federal prosecutors have been told to prioritize investigations into birth tourism schemes.

Colin McDonald, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for fraud, wrote a June 30 memo stating the U.S. immigration system is being exploited by foreign nationals who travel to the United States “under false pretenses” to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

On Aug. 6, Trump signed two executive orders, one identifying categories of children the administration considers ineligible for birthright citizenship and another directing the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to halt birth tourism.

One of the measures banned birth tourism. Another barred citizenship for children whose parents fell under several categories, including being a foreign government employee and member of a designated foreign terrorist organization.

A federal judge blocked that order in September and suggested it conflicted with the Supreme Court’s decision. “The 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth,” U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman said in an opinion on Sept. 2.

The Justice Department has asked Boardman to dissolve the injunction, stating that the plaintiffs involved lacked standing or a legal basis to sue. More specifically, it said that the executive branch clarified Trump’s order was prospective and therefore only applied to babies born after the order was signed. The babies of the plaintiff mothers were born before the order.

In September, the United States said it would deny visas to people who are involved in the practice.

The new policy targeted commercial network operators, visa “fixers” who coach applicants to commit fraud, and foreign medical providers who help arrange such travel and fraudulent Medicaid use, according to a State Department statement.

“The Trump Administration is using every tool at our disposal to defend the integrity of U.S. citizenship, protect American public benefits and U.S. taxpayers from exploitation, and safeguard our national security,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Sept. 23 statement. “By restricting visa issuance of those who both engage in and profit from this fraud, we are sending a clear message: The United States will not allow foreigners to exploit our immigration system and violate the sanctity of U.S. citizenship.”

The ACLU has fought Trump on restricting birthright citizenship.

“The 14th Amendment ensures that no politician can ever decide who among those born in our country is worthy of citizenship,” the ACLU stated in a 2025 post. “In the face of the Trump administration’s threats, the 14th Amendment’s protections continue to safeguard the rights of every person born in this country.”

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 08:45

Isaias Forecast To Become Season’s First Atlantic Hurricane, Threatening Gulf Coast Rigs, Major Refineries

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Isaias Forecast To Become Season’s First Atlantic Hurricane, Threatening Gulf Coast Rigs, Major Refineries

Tropical Storm Isaias is forecast to strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane, with the northern US Gulf Coast in its crosshairs later this week. The cone of uncertainty includes critical energy assets, such as offshore oil rigs and major refineries.

Isaias was about 285 miles west of Progreso, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center wrote in its latest advisory. It is expected to become a hurricane Thursday.

Dozens of offshore oil and natural gas rigs are in the storm’s path. Chevron is evacuating nonessential personnel from its Gulf platforms as a precaution.

Isaias’ projected landfall area currently spans Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle.

One notable refinery in thestorm’ss path is Chevron’s Pascagoula refinery, located on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, which can process 369,000 barrels of crude a day. The refinery produces gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and premium base oils.

List of major US refineries in the storm’s path:

September ended without a hurricane for the first time in 32 years, as strong wind shear associated with El Niño disrupted tropical development. Isaias is expected to become the first Atlantic hurricane of the season.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 08:25

Lithuanian Parliament Advances Measure To Reverse Nuclear Weapons Ban

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Lithuanian Parliament Advances Measure To Reverse Nuclear Weapons Ban

Back in July, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda declared that his country must be part of the NATO alliance’s nuclear sharing program: “We would like to be the integral part of this nuclear deterrence,” he had said at the time.

He was addressing a big hurdle written into Lithuanian law, namely the existent constitutional ban on nuclear weapons from Lithuanian territory.

But on Tuesday the effort to overturn the ban passed its first big test, with the Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, having voted 106-18 to advance a constitutional amendment that would reverse the ban.

Source: LRT nuotr.

But there will be more procedural rounds yet to go in the coming months before the change can become a reality:

The change still requires a second vote after a constitutionally mandated three-month waiting period. At least 94 of the Seimas’ 141 members must back it on both occasions. The final vote is expected on January 12.

“This constitutional amendment would enable Lithuania’s armed forces to participate fully in the planning and exercises of all of NATO’s deterrence measures,” said Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, leader of the Liberal Movement parliamentary group.

The effort is obviously hugely provocative to Russia, given the end result could be NATO nukes stationed right on Russia’s Baltic doorstep.

But Lithuania’s political establishment is looking fully onboard: “Our neighboring countries, such as Latvia, Estonia and Poland, have no such restrictions either,“ Remigijus Motuzas, chairman of the Seimas Foreign Affairs Committee, has told parliament. “We cannot be less protected than other NATO countries. We must send a signal that Lithuania is a full part of NATO’s nuclear deterrence.”

As for the current constitutional prohibition in question: 

Article 137 of Lithuania’s Constitution currently states that weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases may not be located on Lithuanian territory.

Finland’s parliament has already voted on its own reversal this summer, after which Russia moved to secure more border areas with NATO countries.

Since the Ukraine war began, and in context of ratcheting tensions with NATO over its military support to Kiev, Moscow has steadily militarized its border regions with Baltic and Scandinavian states.

The most significant source of NATO’s nuclear-sharing program remains the United States. But lately France has expressed a desire to station some of its atomic arsenal in partner countries, and this could include in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and others.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 05:45

Ballot Box Jihad: The Non-Violent Conquest Of The West

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Ballot Box Jihad: The Non-Violent Conquest Of The West

Authored by Robert Williams via Gatestone Institute,

“This could be the first election in Sweden where the Muslim immigration that we have had is decisive in a parliamentary election,” predicted the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, days before Sweden’s election on September 13.

He was right. Sweden’s center-right Sweden Democrats government indeed lost the elections by a razor-thin margin – reportedly just 50,000 votes – corresponding to just three seats in parliament.

The next government will almost certainly be a socialist one.

“Voters who, or whose parents, grew up outside Europe overwhelmingly favoured the Left,” Brussels Signal wrote in its analysis of an exit poll by SVT, Sweden’s national public broadcaster:

“The Social Democrats received 38 per cent of their votes, the Left Party 21 per cent, the Greens 7 per cent and the Centre Party 4 per cent. Together, these parties accounted for 70 per cent, against 27 per cent for the four parties of the outgoing right-wing bloc.“

The tiny socialist majority was won through heavy voter mobilization within immigrant communities, which tipped the balance. Turnout rose around 3 points to 67.5% in the almost exclusively urban districts, where mainly Muslim immigrants live.

“This election has in part been about voter mobilisation, which is unusual in Sweden,” noted to Gustav Karreskog Rehbinder, founder of AI analysis firm Vera Policy, which broke down the election results for Reuters.

According to Fredrik Karrholm, a member of the Swedish parliament and the author of Gangster Violence:

“A poll by the respected Novus institute before the election found that of Muslim respondents, around 80 per cent intended to vote for either the Social Democrats or the Left party.

“In some districts with large immigrant populations, the results are striking. For example, in Rosengård Centrum in Malmö, the Social Democrats and Left Party together received, according to the preliminary count, 95.2 per cent of the vote…

“This pattern predates the present government…

“During the last parliamentary term, around 200,000 people were given citizenship under rules that imposed very few demands on applicants – not even a requirement to speak or write Swedish. The majority of those granted citizenship were from outside Europe….

“Immigration to Sweden has not only brought crime, social problems and unemployment – now the government that was successfully starting to solve these problems has been voted out because of immigration itself.”

For a brief moment, it had seemed as if Sweden was finally beginning to turn things around. In 2022, Sweden voted in a center-right government that ruled with the parliamentary backing of the Sweden Democrats – a first in Swedish politics. This government sought to implement the most restrictive overhauls of Swedish asylum and immigration policies in Swedish history with crackdowns on asylum and migrant flows, while making it harder for immigrants to acquire permanent residence and Swedish citizenship.

After decades of lawlessness, the center-right government, now voted out, had also sought to crack down on crime by finally openly linking migration to gang violence, parallel societies, and integration failures.

The results were dramatic: In December 2025, Reuters reported:

“The number of shootings in Sweden has more than halved since hitting a peak in 2022, reflecting new policing approaches introduced by the right-wing government, which is readying for parliamentary elections next year. Shooting incidents fell to 147 so far this year, a 63% decrease compared to 2022 when there were 390 shootings and a 49% decrease compared to 2024, according to a Reuters analysis of official figures.”

The government also began to scrutinize the detrimental effects of Islam in Sweden, including the launch of a government investigation into the Islamist infiltration of Swedish society. This past spring, the government announced that it would be dropping the entire concept of “Islamophobia.”

Sweden, in short, had been on the road to becoming Swedish again – but if the election results lead to a new socialist government, that will no longer happen: The Left Party alone is deeply infiltrated by Islamists and terrorist supporters, with several of its politicians caught celebrating the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, with some handing out candy on the streets to mark their joy at the massacres of Israelis. In addition, several candidates were found to have shared content praising or expressing support for designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP and Al-Qaeda, while multiple candidates shared classic antisemitic tropes, Holocaust denial and homophobia.

These revelations, all dug up by the Swedish press, forced the Left Party to remove at least 33 of its most extremist candidates, an astounding number.

Many other radicals within the party kept their parliamentary seats, including MPs Ilona Szatmári Waldau and Samuel Gonzalez Westling, who sent open letters of support to Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons for serious offenses, such as ordering suicide bombings and torturing and murdering an Israeli soldier. In October 2025, the party’s top leadership, including party leader Nooshi Dadgostar, hosted two visiting Palestinians from the Fatah Revolutionary Council inside the Swedish Parliament. The two guests were known for having publicly praised terrorist acts and spreading Jew-hatred.

If you think any of this harmed the party, you would be wrong: The scandals actually served to boost it: they gained the party six new seats in the election.

There is a name for what just happened in Sweden: Ballot box jihad. It is an Islamist tactic, favored by the Muslim Brotherhood.

“In the Middle East, democracy and elections are various means to one end: the establishment of a decidedly undemocratic form of law – Islamic, or Sharia Law,” Raymond Ibrahim wrote about the Egyptian elections in 2012, which, for a brief moment, brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

“An Egyptian cleric, Dr. Talat Zahran, proclaimed that it is ‘obligatory to cheat at elections, a beautiful thing’ — meaning that voting is a tool, an instrument, the only value of which is to empower Sharia. Another cleric, Hazim Shuman… issued a fatwa that likened voting for Islamist candidates to a ‘jihad,’ or a holy war, adding that paradise awaits whoever is ‘martyred’ during the electoral campaign.”

The same tactic applies to the Islamist project of nonviolent conquest of the West. The late spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, speaking in Qatar in 2007, said that “Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. The conquest will be through da’wah [proselytizing] and ideology.”

Ballot box jihad is part of achieving this conquest. Sameh Egyptson, an Egyptian-Swedish academic, writer and expert on political Islam, has been warning about Islamist infiltration of the political system for years. He has recently cautioned, among other things, against clan voting as an erosion of democracy. Clan voting is when extended families and even entire ethnic communities vote collectively as a bloc for the same candidate or party. Although clan voting as such is not illegal in Sweden, two newly elected Muslim candidates from the Left Party are already suspected of electoral fraud, including bribing or unduly influencing voters to vote for them and pre-marking their own names on ballots.

This outcome is possibly what many socialists have been planning all along: To stay in power forever by importing new voters from the Third World.

Sweden is a warning, not only to the rest of Europe but to the Western world at large.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 05:00

France’s Triple Crisis: Far-Left Riots, A Ticking Debt Bomb, And Mass Migration Collide

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France’s Triple Crisis: Far-Left Riots, A Ticking Debt Bomb, And Mass Migration Collide

France is tearing itself apart as far-left riots, a dire fiscal situation and years of unfettered mass migration collide, while President Emmanuel Macron loses his grip and his approval rating craters, raising the prospect of a victory for right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential election.

Far-left riots gained momentum in the new week, with Bloomberg reporting Tuesday that 256,000 people “demonstrated” nationwide, including 56,000 in Paris. Nearly 500 people were arrested, taking the total since September 28 to more than 6,500.

Police used tear gas in some locations, and 43 officers were injured earlier today as social unrest intensified:

The official corporate media narrative is that the rioters, many of them kids, are demanding smaller classes, building renovations, and changes to university admissions. Yet that doesn’t pass the sniff test when countless videos on social media show rioters burning down schools.

“What’s happening in France is nothing less than out-of-control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social around lunchtime in New York. 

The Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson noted on X, “The problem looming over these riots is that France has a large population of young people who are immigrants or the children/grandchildren of immigrants that are simply not employable. They will not work and employers will not risk hiring them.” 

“They are not citizens in any meaningful sense, but an unassimilated third world horde, unemployable and ultimately ungovernable,” Davidson said. 

As the social unrest spirals, the dire fiscal situation intensifies: Traders have dumped French assets, such as government bonds called OATs (Obligations assimilables du Trésor), amid concerns about political instability and deteriorating public finances. 

Earlier today, Le Pen released her shadow budget that shows she would shrink the deficit to 3.7% of economic output next year, well below the government’s 5% target, before bringing it to 2.2% by 2032.

Irina Kurochkina, portfolio manager at Aegon Asset Management, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that “with centrist parties losing ground, investors are not comfortable with the outcome of the extreme right versus left,” adding, “There’s a risk they can’t make any decisions on the budget front, and so you’re left asymmetrically exposed to bad outcomes.”

France has run deficits and piled up debt for decades, and traders are now demanding higher yields to assume the risk as the country’s current trajectory puts it on what Le Pen has warned is a path towards default. 

The crisis is spreading (read Goldman) to the currency market. The euro hit its weakest level since May 2025 on Monday, signaling concern that France’s fiscal and political turmoil could become a much larger issue for the entire European experiment.

Perhaps the rioters are just useful idiots being played by far-left groups furious about a possible Le Pen win that could mean a pathway towards austerity. But the dangerous game here is that, as riots and school burnings intensify, Le Pen’s odds of winning the presidential election on Polymarket continue to soar.

Macron has called an emergency meeting for Tuesday night to discuss the widening riots with officials. It appears Europe has tackled neither the far-left radicalization of its youth nor the left-wing groups likely responsible. In the US, meanwhile, the Trump administration has pressured these NGOs and unions, and, as if by magic, there have been no riots this summer or so far this fall.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2026 – 04:15