Beige Book - August 2025

Most of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts reported little or no change in economic activity since the prior Beige Book period—the four Districts that differed reported modest growth. Across Districts, contacts reported flat to declining consumer spending because, for many households, wages were failing to keep up with rising prices. Contacts frequently cited economic uncertainty and tariffs as negative factors. New York reported that "consumers were being squeezed by rising costs of insurance, utilities, and other expenses." Contacts observed the following responses to the consumer pullback. Retail and hospitality sectors offered deals and promotions to help price-sensitive consumers stretch their dollars—supporting steady demand from domestic leisure tourists but not offsetting falling demand from international visitors. The auto sector noted flat to slightly higher sales, while consumer demand increased for parts and services to repair older vehicles. Manufacturing firms reported shifting to local supply chains where feasible and often using automation to cut costs. The push to deploy AI partly explains the surge of data center construction—a rare strength in commercial real estate noted by the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago Districts. Atlanta and Kansas City reported that data centers had increased energy demand in their Districts. Overall, sentiment was mixed among the Districts. Most firms either reported little to no change in optimism or expressed differing expectations about the direction of change from their contacts.

Labor Markets

Eleven Districts described little or no net change in overall employment levels, while one District described a modest decline. Seven Districts noted that firms were hesitant to hire workers because of weaker demand or uncertainty. Moreover, contacts in two Districts reported an increase in layoffs, while contacts in multiple Districts reported reducing headcounts through attrition—encouraged, at times, by return-to-office policies and facilitated, at times, by greater automation, including new AI tools. In turn, most Districts mentioned an increase in the number of people looking for jobs. However, half of the Districts noted that contacts reported a reduction in the availability of immigrant labor, with New York, Richmond, St. Louis, and San Francisco highlighting its impact on the construction industry. Half of the Districts described modest growth in wages, while most of the others reported moderate growth. Two Districts noted little or no change in wages.

Prices

Ten Districts characterized price growth as moderate or modest. The other two Districts described strong input price growth that outpaced moderate or modest selling price growth. Nearly all Districts noted tariff-related price increases, with contacts from many Districts reporting that tariffs were especially impactful on the prices of inputs. Contacts in multiple Districts also reported rising prices for insurance, utilities, and technology services. While some firms reported passing through their entire cost increases to customers, some firms in nearly all Districts described at least some hesitancy in raising prices, citing customer price sensitivity, lack of pricing power, and fear of losing business. In some cases, as highlighted by Cleveland and Minneapolis, firms reported being under pressure to lower prices because of competition, despite facing increased input costs. Most Districts reported that their firms were expecting price increases to continue in the months ahead, with three of those Districts noting that the pace of price increases was expected to rise further.
emphasis added

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Q2 Update: Delinquencies, Foreclosures and REO

A brief excerpt:

Even with the recent weakness in house prices, it is important to note that there will NOT be a surge in foreclosures that could lead to cascading house price declines (as happened following the housing bubble) for two key reasons: 1) mortgage lending has been solid, and 2) most homeowners have substantial equity in their homes.

With substantial equity, and low mortgage rates (mostly at a fixed rates), few homeowners will have financial difficulties.

But it is still important to track delinquencies and foreclosures.
...
This graph shows the nominal dollar value of Residential REO for FDIC insured institutions based on the Q2 FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile released last week. Note: The FDIC reports the dollar value and not the total number of REOs.

The dollar value of 1-4 family residential Real Estate Owned (REOs, foreclosure houses) was up 15% YOY from $766 million in Q2 2024 to $852 million in Q2 2025. This is still historically extremely low.

There is much more in the article.

From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary

The number of job openings was little changed at 7.2 million in July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, both hires and total separations were unchanged at 5.3 million. Within separations, both quits (3.2 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.8 million) were unchanged.
emphasis added

The following graph shows job openings (black line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.

This series started in December 2000.

Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for July; the employment report this Friday will be for August.

Click on graph for larger image.

Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are usually pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover.  When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs - when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs.

The spike in layoffs and discharges in March 2020 is labeled, but off the chart to better show the usual data.

Jobs openings decreased in July to 7.18 million from 7.36 million in June.
The number of job openings (black) were down 4% year-over-year. 

Quits were down 5% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (See light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for "quits").

White House Has Backup Strategy If Trump's Tariffs Are Overturned: Bessent

Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the White House has plenty of tools at its disposal to implement President Donald Trump’s global tariffs if the Supreme Court does not uphold his use of a 1977 emergency powers law.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters during a briefing at the White House on April 29, 2025. Travis Gillmore/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 7–4 on Aug. 29 against the current administration’s decision to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as justification for levies on foreign goods unveiled in April. The court’s decision does not take effect until Oct. 14, allowing the White House ample time to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

The IEEPA grants the president broad authority to regulate international economic transactions—regulating imports and exports, freezing foreign assets, or halting financial transactions—after declaring a national emergency.

In a Labor Day interview with Reuters, Bessent stated that while he is confident the high court will uphold the president’s reciprocal tariff agenda, the administration has various options available.

“I’m confident the Supreme Court ... will uphold the president’s authority to use IEEPA. And there are lots of other authorities that can be used—not as efficient, not as powerful,” Bessent said.

He referred to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. It contains a trade provision that authorizes the president to impose new tariffs or additional duties of up to 50 percent on foreign products entering the United States for a period of five months if they are determined to threaten domestic commerce.

Bessent said he is planning a legal brief for the U.S. Solicitor General to highlight the urgency of stopping the flow of fentanyl into the country. Pointing to the approximately 70,000 fentanyl-linked deaths per year in the United States, he questioned what would be considered an emergency.

“If this is not a national emergency, what is?“ he said. ”When can you use IEEPA if not for fentanyl?”

The senior administration official also intends to argue that persistent trade imbalances will ultimately reach a critical threshold, triggering more immense consequences for the U.S. economy.

“We’ve had these trade deficits for years, but they keep getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “We are approaching a tipping point ... so preventing a calamity is an emergency.”

The last time the United States registered a trade surplus was in 1975.

In July, the U.S. goods trade deficit widened by $18.7 billion to $103.6 billion, the largest gap in four months. Imports rose by more than 7 percent to $281.5 billion while exports dipped 0.1 percent to $178 billion.

Long-term U.S. Treasury yields popped on Sept. 2, driven by concerns that the federal government will be forced to repay tariff income and forego potentially trillions of dollars in tariff revenues.

Yields on the 20- and 30-year government bonds surged about 5 basis points to around 4.92 percent and 4.98 percent, respectively.

“Global trading partners will no doubt find it premature to be celebrating just yet, but we'll be interested in seeing whether the Treasury market comes under any further pressure if the US has to hand back already received tariff revenues,” ING economists said in a Sept. 1 note.

In this fiscal year, the federal government has collected $183.1 billion in tariff revenues, including $31 billion in August.

Wall Street in New York City on April 4, 2025. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Looking ahead, according to projections from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, tariff revenues could rise to as much as $50 billion per month, or 1.5 percent of GDP, “before declining some as supply chains adjust.”

The Yale Budget Lab estimates the effective U.S. tariff rate is 18.6 percent, the highest since 1933.

‘Performative’ Relationships

Bessent also shrugged off the apparent cordial relations between China, India, and Russia at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization as “performative.”

“It’s more of the same,” Bessent said, adding that Beijing and New Delhi are “fueling the Russian war machine.”

“I think at a point we and the allies are going to step up,” he said.

Last week, the president’s additional 25 percent tariff on India went into effect, bringing the total import duty to 50 percent on many imports entering the United States. The administration doubled down on punitive levies over India’s enormous purchases of Russian crude oil.

Trump, writing in a Sept. 1 Truth Social post, stated that India has offered to reduce its tariffs to zero percent.

“India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S.,” Trump said. “They have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people to ponder!”

He noted that the United States does “very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us.”

According to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office, the U.S. goods trade deficit with India was $45.8 billion last year, up 5.9 percent from 2023.

India, the only nation slapped with secondary tariffs for Russian oil purchases, has been surpassed by China as the world’s largest buyer of discounted petroleum products from Moscow.

Bessent defended the administration’s decision not to impose secondary tariffs on Beijing. In an Aug. 19 interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Bessent stated that China was already the Russian energy sector’s client.

“China importing it is suboptimal,” Bessent said. “But if you go back and look pre-2022, pre-invasion, 13 percent of China’s oil was already coming from Russia. Now it’s 16 [percent]. So, China has a diversified input of their oil.”

India, on the other hand, dramatically accelerated its purchasing following the breakout of the war in Ukraine, Bessent noted.

In 2021, India imported $2.31 billion of Russian crude oil, according to United Nations COMTRADE data. By 2024, imports surged to almost $53 billion.

The tariff pause between the United States and China, meanwhile, was extended last month until Nov. 10.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 09:25

EU Accelerating Toward Collapse: Merz, Draghi, And Lagarde Reveal Europe's Crisis Path

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

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

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

Merz and the Welfare State

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

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

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

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

Moments of Honesty

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

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

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

More EU Centralism

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

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

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

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

Lagarde and Migration

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

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

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

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

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

Bitter Balance

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

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 09:11

The Quiet Rebranding Of CBDCs As "Digital-ID"

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Let’s call them for what they are: Social Credit systems.

We know that “CBDC” stands for Central Bank Digital Currencies – and we have long held our hypothesis on what those entail (the TL;DR is that they will either launch as, or morph into, China-style social credit systems).

We’ve seen an Executive Order expressly ruling out CBDCs in the US, but as I keep warning readers: we’re seeing components we’d expect to see under a CBDC system appearing – only they aren’t originating at The Fed (who has never really expressed an interest in them, anyway).

Now the US Treasury Department is seeking comments on Digital ID as it relates to DeFi:

“The Department of the Treasury has filed a request for public comments to provide input on the use of “innovative or novel methods to detect and mitigate illicit finance risks involving digital assets” in accordance with the GENIUS Act, as well as in accordance with Donald Trump’s policy to support “the responsible growth and use of digital assets,” as outlined in the President’s Executive Order to strengthen US leadership in digital financial technology.”

— TheRage.co

The areas covered range from:

“the use of APIs “to help enforce strict access controls, monitor transactions and activities, and bolster security and integrity of financial institutions providing digital asset services”, the use of Artificial Intelligence to “make predictions, recommendations or decisions” to “effectively identify illicit finance patterns, risks, trends, and typologies”, and blockchain monitoring to “evaluate high-risk counterparties and activities, analyze transactions across multiple blockchains,trace or monitor transaction activities, and identify patterns that indicate potential illicit transactions.”

As well as Digital ID (which I think is the catch-phrase we’re going to see a lot of in the future, that will capture a lot of the objectives of CBDCs)

“the treasury is also seeking comments on the introduction of “portable digital identity credentials designed to support various elements of AML/CFT and sanctions compliance, maximize user privacy, and reduce compliance burden on financial institutions” to potentially be used “by decentralized finance (DeFi) services’ smart contracts to automatically check for a credential before executing a user’s transaction.”

Sounds similar to what the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) wants to do in terms of rating individual crypto wallets for AML compliance.

In a white paper titled An approach to anti-money laundering compliance for cryptoassets they propose to:

“leverag[e] the provenance and history of any particular unit or balance of a cryptoasset, including stablecoins”

In order to assign an “AML compliance score”.

That score would be based on:

‘the likelihood that a particular cryptoasset unit or balance is linked with illicit activity may be referenced at points of contact with the banking system (“off-ramps”)’

In this way, authorities could enforce a “duty of care” among “crypto market participants”.

Coverage from The Rage (again) pulls out some of the juicier tidbits from the white paper:

“An AML compliance score that references the UTXOs for bitcoins or wallets for stablecoins could use the information on the blockchain, including the full history of transactions and the wallets they have passed through”

It basically sounds like a social credit score, for crypto wallets:

None of the above should surprise anybody (unless you really believed that there would be no CBDCs in the US).

We’ve long said we expect the on-ramps and off-ramps to be heavily regulated and KYC-ed as the crypto-economy becomes a bigger component of the global financial system.

Remember the flip side of that: we also expect more capital flowing into the crypto-economy to be on a one-way trip.

Today’s post was excerpted from the Eye on Evilcoin section of this month’s Bitcoin Capitalist. Every month we cover the roll-out of social credit systems under the guise of CBDCs, “Health Passes” and Digital-ID. Bombthrower readers can get a special trial offer here. 

If you’re not on the Bombthrower list, sign up here, free and get a copy of The CBDC Survival Guide when it comes out.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 08:05



 

 

On this special edition of the show, I speak with Neal Katyal, Milbank LLP partner and former acting Solicitor General of the US. We sat down in the studio on Wednesday, August 27th, just two days before the D.C. Court of Appeals issued its decision in VOS Selection vs Trump on Friday, August 29th.

It was a resounding 7-4 victory for Katyal’s clients, which found Presdient Trump’s tariffs null and void. The case was remanded back to the International Court of Trade for remedies.

The decision was around 5 pm Friday evening before the long Labor-Day holiday weekend; we followed up on the results Sunday, August 31st, when we reviewed the decision and discussed the likely path forward.

Katyal explained the process of challenging President Trump’s authority to impose steep tariffs on imports from other countries, and what the next steps could look like as the case makes its way through the US legal system. We also discuss his career working on appellate and complex litigation, including arguing over 50 cases before the US Supreme Court.

A transcript of our conversation is available here on Monday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

 

 

 

 

The post MiB: Special Edition: Neal Katyal on Challenging Trump’s Global Tariffs appeared first on The Big Picture.

Pentagon Taps 600 Military Lawyers To Serve As Temporary Immigration Judges For DOJ 

According to a federal government memo reviewed by The Associated Press, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the branches of the armed services to transfer up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges, following an urgent request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security. The move is intended to ensure that President Trump's deportation of criminal illegal aliens proceeds smoothly. 

The Aug. 27 memo stated that the military will send the first tranche of 150 attorneys - both military and civilian - to the DOJ "as soon as practicable." The first group is expected to arrive at the DoJ next week. 

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Bloomberg that members of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG, would "augment existing resources to help further combat a backlog of cases by presiding over immigration hearings." 

Parnell did not confirm whether the AP's report about 600 military lawyers was accurate but noted that the request for legal personnel came from the DoJ.

This comes as immigration courts face mounting backlogs amid Trump's nationwide crackdown on criminal illegal aliens. It is important to note that immigration judges determine whether individuals are eligible for relief or face removal.

Bolstering immigration court capacity comes as the administration sent in National Guard troops into Washington, DC, to restore law and order after violent crime waves sparked by years of failed progressive policies transformed parts of the nation's capital into crime-ridden "no-go" zones.

Violent crime has fallen across the DC metro area in the last several weeks due to Trump's move to shore up the struggling police force... 

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters about plans to deploy federal law enforcement to crime-ridden, far-left-controlled Chicago and Baltimore to combat violent crime. 

If it's deporting illegal aliens or restoring law and order in cities, the Trump administration is cleaning up the mess left behind by the Democratic Party's nation-killing progressive policies that transformed parts of some metro areas into "hell holes." 

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 07:45

From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

Mortgage applications decreased 1.2 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 29, 2025.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 1.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 3 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 1 percent from the previous week and was 20 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week and was 17 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

“Mortgage rates declined last week, with the 30-year fixed rate decreasing to its lowest level since April to 6.64 percent. However, that was not enough to spark more application activity,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Refinance applications saw a small increase from the previous week, driven by FHA and VA refinance applications, but conventional refinances declined. The FHA rate is averaging about 30 basis points lower than the conventional rate in 2025, which has made those loans relatively more appealing to eligible borrowers. Purchase activity pulled back, after a four week run of increases, as slower homebuying activity led to declines in applications across the various loan types.”
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($806,500 or less) decreased to 6.64 percent from 6.69 percent, with points decreasing to 0.59 from 0.60 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index.

According to the MBA, purchase activity is up 17% year-over-year unadjusted. 
Red is a four-week average (blue is weekly).  
Purchase application activity is still depressed, but above the lows of October 2023 and slightly above the lowest levels during the housing bust.  

The second graph shows the refinance index since 1990.

The refinance index has increased from the bottom, but remains very low.

Germany Says Russia Using 'Disposable Agents' To Conduct Sabotage

The German government has launched a public campaign warning about Russian attempts to recruit so-called "disposable agents" through social media for espionage and sabotage, AFP reports.

The accusation comes after years of a shadow war which has involved apparent tit-for-tat sabotage attacks and assassinations both in Europe and in Russia. Mystery fires have erupted, for example, in defense sector manufacturing plants on the European continent and in the UK. Also, similar potential sabotage events have been observed inside Russia. Many observers see it as a behind the scenes 'dirty war' which parallels the Ukraine conflict.

German police and intelligence services allege these operations often involve untrained individuals committing acts like arson, property damage, or photographing or monitoring sensitive installations.

People are at first unwittingly recruited through online forums and popular social media sites, and as conversations proceed, targeted individuals are offered sums of money in return for carrying out criminal acts.

According to AFP's reporting on the fresh statements from Berlin authorities:

The campaign warns that suspected Russian spies aim "to destabilize Germany with the help of people in Germany".

"This gives them a decisive advantage: they don't have to 'get their hands dirty' themselves."

Chief of Germany's BND foreign spy agency Bruno Kahl, warned this week, "Sabotage, espionage and propaganda activities carried out by foreign intelligence services deliberately undermine the stability of free societies."

"They are an attack on our democracy through deception, intimidation and subversion," he added. The Czech Republic has reportedly issued a similar public alert.

Telegram is one specific platform named by European authorities as being used by Russian intelligence to recruit unwitting actors. Interestingly, it was of course Telegram which lately came under suspicion and a far-reaching crackdown by French authorities, especially during last year's Pavel Durov arrest saga.

Just this summer, 'Russian saboteurs' were alleged to be behind a suspected arson attack at a Bundeswehr facility in Erfurt, Germany - which destroyed half a dozen large military trucks. NATO and the Ukrainians have been suspected of doing their own dirty war sabotage operations inside Russia as well.

German authorities also just days ago charged that Russian intelligence has been utilizing small drones in order to monitor weapons shipments routes in German border states.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 06:55

Google's Android Lockdown: Are You Really In Control Of Your Phone?

Authored by Juan Galt via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Android’s new rule requires all app developers to submit personal information to Google, even for apps outside the Play Store. Critics argue this threatens user freedom and ignores solutions...

Android, Google’s mobile operating system, announced on August 25 that it will be requiring all app developers to verify their identity with the organization before their apps can run on “certified android devices.”

While this might sound like a common-sense policy by Google, this new standard is not just going to be applied to apps downloaded from Google Play store, but all apps, even those “side-loaded” — installed directly into devices by side-stepping the Google Play store. Apps of the sort can be found online in Github repositories or on project websites and installed on Android devices directly by downloading the installation files (known as APKs). 

What this means is that, if there is an application that Google does not like, be it because it does not conform to its policies, politics or economic incentives, they can simply keep you from running that application on your own device. They are locking down Android devices from running applications not with their purview. The ask? All developers, whether submitting their apps through the Play store or not, need to give their personal information to Google. 

The decision begs the question, if you can not run whatever app you want on your device without the permission of Google, then is it really your device? How would you respond if Windows decided you could only install programs from the Microsoft app store?

The move has of course made news in tech and cybersecurity media and caused quite a stir as it has profound consequences for the free and open web. For years, Android has been touted as an open source operating system, and through this strategy has gained massive distribution throughout the world with users in developing countries where Apple’s “walled garden” model and luxury devices are not affordable.

This new policy will tighten up controls over applications and its developers, and threatens the freedom to run whatever software you like on your own device in a very subversive and legalistic way. Because of Google’s influence over the Android variety of phones, the consequences of this policy are likely to be felt by the majority of users and devices, throughout the world.

Android justifies the policy change with concerns about the cybersecurity of their users. Malicious apps side-loaded into devices have led to “over 50 times more malware,” Android claims in their announcement blog. As a measure of “accountability,” and with the council of various governments throughout the world, Android has decided to take a “balanced approach,” and the language couldn’t be more Orwellian. 

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

– Benjamin Franklin

Put in simpler terms, Google is looking to collect the personal information of software developers, centralizing it in its data centers alongside that of all of its users, in order to “protect” users from hackers that Google can’t seem to stop today in the first place.

After all, if Google and Android could actually keep personal user data secure in the first place, this would not be a problem, right?

Google’s solution to user data leaks is to collect more user data, ironically enough, in this case the data of developers who use the Android platform. A remarkable leap of logic, lazy and fundamentally decadent, a sign that they’ve lost their edge and arguably truly forgotten their now scrubbed “don’t be evil” motto.

Information Wants To Be Free

The reality is that Google finds itself trapped by a dilemma set up by the nature of information and the digital age, to quote the 90s cypherpunk Steward Brand, “information almost wants to be free.”

Every hop that personal data — like your name, face, home address or social security number — makes throughout the internet is an opportunity for it to get copied and leaked. As your information moves from your phone, to a server in your city to another server in a Google datacenter, every hop increases the likelihood that your data gets hacked and ends up on the dark web for sale. A thorny problem when user data is the primary business model of a giant like Google who processes it and sells it to advertisers who, in turn, create targeted ads. 

We can measure the truth of Brand’s information principle by looking at two fascinating statistics, which not too many people seem to talk about, oddly enough. The first is the absurd amount of data hacks that have taken place in the last 20 years. For example, the Equifax Data Breach in 2017 affected 147 million Americans, and the National Public Data Breach of 2024 affected over 200 million Americans, leading to leaked data that included social security numbers, likely ending up for sale on the dark web.

While legendary hacks like that of the Office of Personal Management of the U.S. government, compromised a large number of the U.S. Government officials at the time, including everything from social security numbers to medical records.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that a majority of Americans have had their data hacked and leaked already, and there’s no easy way to reverse that. How does one change their face, medical history or social security number after all?

The second statistic, which no one seems to connect to the first, is the rise of identity theft and fraud in the United States. Did you know that in 2012, 24 billion dollars’ worth of identity theft were reported? Twice as much as all other forms of theft combined that same year. Business Insider reported at the time from Bureau of Justice statistics that “identity theft cost Americans $24.7 billion in 2012, losses for household burglary, motor vehicle theft, and property theft totaled just $14 billion.” Eight years later that number doubled, costing Americans $56 billion in losses in 2020. Both of these trends continue to grow to this day. It may indeed already be too late for the old identity system, which we still rely so heavily on. 

Generative AI adds fuel to the fire, in some cases trained on leaked user data with examples of image models able to create high-quality images of humans holding fake IDs. As AI continues to improve, it is increasingly capable of fooling humans into thinking they are talking to another human as well, rather than a robot, creating new attack vectors for identity fraud and theft.

Nevertheless, Google insists that if we just collect a bit more personal user data, maybe then the problem will just go away. Convenient for a corporation whose main business model is the collection and sale of such data. Has any other corporation done more damage to civilian privacy than Google, by the way? (Facebook, I suppose.) 

In Cryptography We Trust

To be fair to the 2000s Web2 tech giants, the problem of secure identity in the digital age is not easy to solve. The legal structures of our societies around identity were created long before the internet emerged and moved all that data to the cloud. The only real solution to this problem now is actually cryptography, and its application to the trust that humans build in their relationships in the real world, over time.

The 90s cypherpunks understood this, which is why they invented two important technologies, PGP and webs of trust. 

PGP

PGP invented in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann, pioneered the use of asymmetric cryptography to solve this fundamental problem of protecting user data privacy while also enabling secure user authentication, identification and secure communication.

How? It’s simple, actually, by using cryptography in a similar way as Bitcoin does today to secure over a trillion dollars of value. You have a secure “password” and keep it as secret as possible, you don’t share it with anybody, and your apps use it carefully to unlock services but the password never leaves your phone. We can do this, it works, there’s even custom-made hardware to lock down precisely this kind of information. The person or company you want to connect with also creates a secure “password,” and with that password we each generate a public address or digital pseudonymous ID. 

The company encrypts a message with their password and your public address and sends you a message. Well, thanks to the magic of cryptography, you can decrypt that message with your password and the company’s public address. That is all we need to secure the web. These public IDs do not have to reveal any information about you and you could have one for every brand or identity you have online. 

Webs Of Trust

But there is also the question of reputation: How do you know that the company you are trying to connect with is who they claim to be? In cybersecurity, this is called a man-in-the-middle attack, where a malicious third party impersonates who you actually wish to connect to. 

The way cypherpunks solved this problem in the 90s was by developing the concept of webs of trust, through real-world ceremonies called “signing parties.”

When we meet in person, we decide that we trust each other or affirm that we already know and trust each other enough to co-sign each other’s public IDs. We give each other a cryptographic vote of confidence — so to speak —  weighed by our brand or publicly known nym. This is similar to giving a follow to someone on a public forum like Twitter; it is the PGP equivalent to saying “I’ve met Bob, I recognize XYZ as his public ID, and I vouch that he is real.”

While this sounds tedious, antiquated and like it would never scale to the whole world, technology has advanced a great deal since the 90s; in fact this fundamental logic is how the internet is sort of secured today.

Remember that green lock that used to be displayed on every website? That was a PGP-like cryptographic handshake between your computer and the website you were visiting, signed off by some certificate authority or third party out on the internet. Those certificate authorities became centralized custodians of public trust and like many other institutions today probably need to be decentralized.

The same logic can be applied to the verification and authentication of APKs, by scaling up webs of trust. In fact, in the open source world, software hashed into a unique ID derived from the data of the software, and that hash is signed by developer PGP keys to this day. The software hashes, PGP public IDs and signatures are all published alongside software for people to review and verify. 

However if you don’t know whether the PGP public ID is authentic, then the signature is not useful, since it could have been created by an impersonator online. As users we need a link that authenticates that public ID belongs to the real-world developer of the app.

The good news is that this problem can probably be solved without having to create a global surveillance state giving all our data to the Googles of the world. 

For example, if I wanted to download an app from a developer in Eastern Europe, I likely won’t know him or be able to verify this public ID, but perhaps I know someone who vouched for someone who knows this developer. While I may be three or four hops away from this person, the likelihood that they are real suddenly goes up a lot. Faking three or four hops of connection in a web of trust is very expensive for mercenary hackers looking to score a quick win. 

Unfortunately, these technologies have not been adopted widely, beyond the high-tech paranoid world,  nor gotten as much funding as the data mining business model of most of the web. 

Modern Solutions

Some modern software projects recognize this logic and are working to solve the problems at hand, making it easy for users to leverage and scale cryptographic webs of trust. Zapstore.dev, for example, is building an alternative app store secured by cryptographic webs of trust using Bitcoin-compatible cryptography, the project is funded by OpenSats, a nonprofit that funds open source, Bitcoin-related software development.

Graphene, an Android operating system fork that’s become popular among cybersecurity enthusiasts, has also implemented an alternative app store that addresses many of these issues without having to DOX app developers, and serves as a high-security operating system, looking to solve many of the privacy and security issues in Android today.

Far-fetched as it may seem, cryptographic authentication of communication channels and digital identities is the only thing that can protect us from personal data hacks. Entropy and the security created from randomness via cryptography are the only things AI cannot fake. That same cryptography can help us authenticate ourselves in the digital age without having to share our personal data with every intermediary out there, if we use it right.

Whether this new policy by Android is sustained, or whether enough public outcry can stop it and better solutions do get popularized and adopted remains to be seen, but the truth of the matter is clear. There is a better way forward, we just have to see it and choose it.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 06:30

Was Greta Thunberg A Globalist Propaganda Weapon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Alladdin (@Alladdin1983) September 2, 2025

Mike Benz commented... 

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

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

Remember her 2018 prediction?

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

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

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 05:45

German Union Demands Climate Policy U-Turn

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

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

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

End of the German Special Path 

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

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

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

The Consequences Are Real 

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

The Dam Has Broken 

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

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

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

Industry Raises Sails 

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

Depression, Not Recession 

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

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

Dealing With the New Command Economy 

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

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

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

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

Brussels in Heavy Turbulence 

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/03/2025 - 05:00

Escobar: The Tianjin Show - Let's Dance To The Multipolar Groove

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dance of Bear, Dragon and Elephant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shanghai Spirit eviscerates “War on Terror”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 23:45

'Trump Zone' Would See South Lebanon Depopulated For Qatari, Saudi-Bankrolled Projects

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

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

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

Historic church of St. George in Rmeish, Lebanon. Source: The Wandering Maronite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 22:55

Ukraine Urges China To Pressure Putin As War Overshadows SCO Summit

Authored by RFE/RL staff via OilPrice.com,

• Ukraine called on China to take a more active role in pressuring Russia toward peace as Putin arrived in Beijing after the SCO summit.

• Kyiv criticized the summit’s Tianjin Declaration for omitting any reference to the war in Ukraine.

• European leaders plan to meet in Paris to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, while Trump’s proposed trilateral peace summit remains uncertain.

Ukraine urged China to pressure Vladimir Putin to move toward peace as the Russian president arrived in Beijing following his participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit -- where he defended the war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

"Given the significant geopolitical role of the People's Republic of China, we would welcome a more active role [for Beijing] in bringing peace to Ukraine based on respect for the UN Charter," Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said in a statement as Putin arrived in the Chinese capital on September 2.

The ministry statement noted that the SCO’s final declaration avoided mention of the conflict, which has become a full-scale war since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“We consider it eloquent that the main final document of the summit, the 20-page Tianjin Declaration, does not contain a single mention of the Russian war against Ukraine,” the statement said.

“It is surprising that the largest war of aggression in Europe since World War II was not reflected in such an important, fundamental document, while it mentions a number of other wars, terrorist attacks, and events in the world.”

It said the failure to mention Russia’s war in Ukraine in the declaration “indicates the failure of Moscow's diplomatic efforts.”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has consistently called on China -- a close ally of Russia -- to put pressure on Putin to end the war.

Another high-profile diplomatic event in China will be held on September 3 -- a massive military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Many leaders -- including Putin -- are remaining in China after the SCO to attend the parade.

Putin Blames The West

At the SCO in Tianjin outside of Beijing, Putin sent a defiant message against the West over his invasion of Ukraine after standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Putin said the war in Ukraine came about “not as a result of a Russian attack” but because of a Western-backed coup in Kyiv, according to comments carried by the Russian news agency TASS.

That was an inaccurate reference to the Maidan protests that pushed Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014, after he scrapped plans for a trade agreement with the EU and turned toward Russia instead.

Putin added that what he called the West’s attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO posed a "direct threat to Russia’s security," a claim that the military alliance has repeatedly denied.

Meanwhile, Kyiv's European allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing -- led by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer -- are set to meet in Paris on September 4 to discuss potential security guarantees for Ukraine.

"Together with our partners, and in coordination with NATO, we will work to define robust security guarantees for Ukraine. These are a necessary prerequisite to move credibly towards peace," Macron wrote on X following talks with NATO chief Mark Rutte.

"We will also review Russia’s stance, as it persists in its war of aggression and continues to reject peace," Macron added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on August 31 said Kyiv's European allies were working on “pretty precise plans” and a "clear road map" for a potential deployment of troops to Ukraine should a peace deal be struck between Kyiv and Moscow.

Von der Leyen, in comments published in The Financial Times, added that any such venture would have the full backing of the United States, which has swayed back and forth on potential involvement over the past year.

'No Concrete Plans' For Trilateral Summit

Separately, on the sidelines of the SCO, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov said there were no immediate plans for a trilateral meeting between Putin, Zelenskyy, and US President Donald Trump, contradicting recent remarks by Trump that he was arranging such a meeting.

"Now everyone is talking about a trilateral summit...but there has been no concrete agreement on this between Putin and Trump," Ushakov said.

Trump, who has made ending the war a top priority of his administration, has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin's refusal to meet with Zelenskyy but has suggested he was moving toward a trilateral meeting with himself included.

Trump has also expressed anger with Russia's nonstop campaign of air assaults on Ukrainian cities, causing civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure.

On September 2, Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the regional military administration, said an overnight Russian air strike on the city of Bila Tserkva near Kyiv killed one person and created a massive blaze at a multistory building. Attacks were also reported near the cities of Chernihiv and Sumy.

Inside Russia, the Rostov regional governor reported early on September 2 that some 320 people were evacuated from an apartment block after a Ukrainian drone attack. Details were not immediately available.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 20:25

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.

Wednesday:
• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

• At 10:00 AM, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for July from the BLS.

• At 2:00 PM, the Federal Reserve Beige Book, an informal review by the Federal Reserve Banks of current economic conditions in their Districts.

Schools Make Kids Crazy

Authored by James Bovard via The Brownstone Institute,

Almost one-third of government schools nationwide are now surveilling the mental health of students. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed a bill to bring “universal mental health screening” to two million Illinois students as part of his Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative. But this rescue effort will ravage many students and is a warning shot to parents across the nation. Manhattan Institute fellow Abigail Shrier warned that the new Illinois law will mean “tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most will be false positives.”

If politicians want to help kids, they must recognize how government schools systematically undermine students’ mental health. 

The Covid school lockdowns nuked the mental health of millions of young Americans. A 2024 JAMA Original Investigation found that between 2018 and 2021, young people saw an almost 300% increase in the number of hospital emergency visits for eating disorders and suicidal ideation. Suicide attempts increased 250% during that time. Depression and anxiety skyrocketed among youth from the start of the pandemic, but politicians and policymakers ignored the mental carnage that Covid policies inflicted.

A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that 44% of high school students said they “persistently felt sad or hopeless in the past year.” Females were almost twice as likely to be depressed, with 57% “persistently felt sad and hopeless” versus 31% of male students. School shutdowns dismally failed to thwart the spread of Covid. After schools reopened, students were hassled to comply with idiotic mask mandates that did nothing except multiply anxiety. 

 Schools are subverting students’ mental health by endlessly hectoring them to doubt or despise their own bodies. These school antics reached epidemic level even before the start of the Covid pandemic. In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. Montgomery County, the largest school system in the state, announced that it would choose books for the curriculum “through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a brief filed at the Supreme Court by parents who successfully challenged the school system. That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the county school board admitted. 

The indoctrination produced a 582% increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in Montgomery County schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that almost half of the students identified themselves as non-binary. But non-binary kids are far more likely to suffer mental illness. One survey found that more than half of transgender and non-binary youth considered committing suicide in 2022. That has not stopped other school systems from openly or covertly campaigning to sway children to repent or revolt from how they were born. 

Schools have bludgeoned kids with “Chicken Little – The Sky is Falling!” environmental propaganda for decades. The result, according to the American Psychological Association, is that 58% of American youth are “very or extremely worried about climate change” and 43% said “climate change impacted their mental health.” Harvard Medical Magazine reports that for many young people, “worry over threats of future climate change results in panic attacks, insomnia, obsessive thinking, and other symptoms.”

Schools hold up as a role model Greta Thunberg, the deranged Swedish teenager whose incoherent ravings against the modern world turned her into a saint. It is irrelevant to school masterminds that many of the environmental alarms have proven to be bogus or wildly exaggerated. Children have been taught to dread, and they have been taught to implore politicians to rescue them – two very bad outcomes for mental health. Surveys by Eco-America indicate that between 57% and 70% of teens aged 13 to 17 “report anxiety symptoms linked to climate.” Ella Emhoff, the stepdaughter of former Vice President Kamala Harris, recently lamented on TikTok: “I think everything with the environment is really f—ing getting to me, and it is — I experience a lot of climate anxiety, like all of us do.” Turning climate anxiety into virtue signaling guarantees there will be no shortage of angst. 

Schools are also subverting mental health by vastly exaggerating other perils that students face via bizarre school shooting drills. In Indiana, elementary school teachers were shot as part of a “safe schools” training program. According to the Indiana State Teachers Association, sheriffs’ deputies ordered teachers “into a room four at a time, told them to crouch down and then shot them execution-style with pellets in rapid succession,” leaving several of them bloodied and many of them screaming. The union complained, “The teachers were terrified, but were told not to tell anyone what happened. Teachers waiting outside that heard the screaming were brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.”

Schools are “increasingly turning their hallways into an imitation of a real mass shooting, complete with police officers firing BB guns and drama students enlisted to play victims, made up with fake blood and bullet holes. Occasionally, the drills are sprung on teachers and students without warning,” as a student newspaper in Great Neck, New York, observed. A Pennsylvania teacher commented that she was “more traumatized than trained” after teachers were shot with airsoft guns by a fake active shooter. “We had colleagues shooting colleagues, we had people getting hit with [plastic] pellets.…People were screaming, trying to run. People were tripping over each other. It was just horrendous,” Elizabeth Yanelli recalled.

One of the primary beneficiaries of such antics is pharmaceutical companies that hustle anti-anxiety drugs to children. Former policeman Raeford Davis commented on lockdown/active shooter drills, “These simulated execution rituals are conducted for fear-based mass social control purposes to traumatize, instill fear, hopelessness, personal dis-empowerment, reliance on authority figures to save and protect you.” A 2021 study by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers “found that anxiety, depression and stress increase by around 40% after [school shooting] lockdown drills.” Such collateral psychic damage is especially unfortunate since the drills that schools compel students to perform are mostly useless in a real crisis. 

Plenty of students are bummed because they recognize they have practically no escape from surveillance. Schools boast of giving kids free laptops, but that becomes the equivalent of wearing an electronic ankle monitor to track everything a person writes or every step they take online. A recent study found that the vast majority of companies that schools hire to surveil students online actually track kids 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, using school-issued devices. The study found that 29% of the companies “generate student ‘risk scores’ based on online behavior.” (It is not known if such scores are skewed by visiting the Libertarian Institute website.) The Center for Democracy and Technology reported in 2023: “Student activity monitoring continues to harm many of the students it claims to help: Disciplinary actions, outing of students, and initiation of law enforcement contact are still regular outcomes” of surveillance of students’ computer use. 

A recent sea change in federal grant policy hints at how much damage Washington’s mental health interventions have already inflicted on students. In July, the US Department of Education proposed revising guidelines to prohibit federal mental health grants from “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”

The fact that a new guideline would be needed for such things is indicative of the follies previously propagated by federal bureaucrats. Will another regulatory change be necessary to stop using federal grants to make kids afraid of the dark? 

Politicians, psychiatrists, and public schools are the last places to trust to safeguard mental health. Young Americans are already suffering from a downward politico-psychological spiral thanks to decades of abusive, repressive policies. Curtailing political and bureaucratic power is a vital first step to make America sane again. 

An earlier version of this piece was published by the Libertarian Institute.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 19:40

Kennedy Derangement Syndrome Running Rampant

Authored by John Klar via AmericanThinker.com,

Sufferers of Kennedy Derangement Syndrome (KDS) pathologically reject beneficial policy prescriptions if they are recommended by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy challenged toxic dyes in children’s food. He seeks to improve soil health, conduct more thorough studies of pesticides (and novel drugs), restrict pharmaceutical advertising, restore the integrity of captured regulatory agencies, enhance the quality of school lunches, and undertake a host of other initiatives to improve Americans’ health.

These should not be controversial or partisan in nature. Yet they are, solely because of the name of the person who proposed them.

The adage “Hate the sin, not the sinner” is thus turned on its head.

This is a pattern in KDS, TDS, and MDS (Musk Derangement Syndrome).

Upholding law and order, eliminating graft, and ending wars are all anathema to leftwing sufferers of these demonstrable mental illnesses. A curious commonality to all three conditions is that there a) must be only one political party in America, and b) adherents must kowtow to every single issue in Borg-like conformity.

I was recently conversing with a neighbor whom I know suffers from these syndromes, and I was deliberately trying to find common ground and avoid contention. (Yes, we could discuss the weather, but that might turn to geoengineering, or global warming — nothing is politically safe these days.) Since my neighbor teaches about physical health, I found myself extolling the virtues not just of healthy foods, but also of the essential benefits of regular exercise for longevity, brain health, stress relief, and better sleep, among other things.

My neighbor commented on the gross lack of physical fitness among young people applying for military service and recounted how the standards have been lowered so that would-be soldiers could meet the requirements. That’s when I made a misstep, if amity were my goal: I mentioned that the MAHA Commission Report advocated for improved exercise education for young people.

On Pavlovian cue, my neighbor began to spew heatedly about his contempt for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. One would think I had asked him to allow Charles Manson to babysit his daughter.

His vitriolic diatribe was only half begun when I interjected, “But even if you disagree with Kennedy about vaccine safety, don’t you agree with him about advocating for regular exercise for health?”

This was too much to ask.

A concession for Kennedy on any single issue is verboten to KDS sufferers — for them, one drop of vaccine skepticism spoils the entire MAHA policy platform. I continued by arguing rather ardently that mRNA vaccines were neither safe nor effective, and scoffed that anyone believed they were. I then quickly pivoted back to the exercise issue: couldn’t my liberal friend agree that Kennedy was taking the correct approach to improving Americans’ health by advocating for improved exercise recommendations?

Begrudgingly, my companion conceded the point — then launched into a foamed-mouth tirade against the former Democrat and longtime defender of harbors, oceans, and waterways. Some grave transgression had occurred, that Kennedy would question the regimen of 73 vaccines currently recommended for children, administered by doctors paid handsomely to inject them, and manufactured by foreign multinational corporations afforded complete legal immunity for any harms caused. How dare we MAHA tinhats dare threaten human health by raising critical inquiries or calling for increased drug testing?

Most sufferers of KDS would agree on 9 out of 10 of the MAHA Commission Report’s recommendations if promulgated by AOC or Jasmine Crockett. Yet for these unwell minds, the one perceived poison apple of questioning the integrity of government agencies to adequately study possible links between vaccines and autism spoils the whole barrel. Indeed, to grant Kennedy ground on a single point would open the door to agreement on another. Before you know it, KDS sufferers might consider that since they agree on 9 out of 10, perhaps he is correct on the #1 issue as well!

Many on the Left today seek to undermine Kennedy’s efforts to deny pesticide manufacturers legal immunity for the cancers inflicted by their products, rid their own kids’ and grandkids’ baby foods and school lunches of heavy metals and pesticide residues, or remove unhealthy candies and high fructose syrup sodas from the diets of SNAP recipients in an effort to combat diabetes and obesity. They want tariffs to spike inflation; they want illegal gang members to distribute fentanyl; they want the war in Ukraine to continue.

This pattern of cognitive dissonance is common to all such oppositional derangements. If President Trump declared oxygen salutary, TDS sufferers would promptly seal their lips around tailpipes and inhale deeply.

Next thing you know, KDS victims will object to educating schoolchildren about the many health benefits of regular exercise… solely because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommended it.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 18:20

Trump To Deploy National Guard To Chicago, Baltimore; Maryland Gov. Caught "Half-Naked" On Clooney's Yacht

President Trump announced Tuesday afternoon that he will deploy federal law enforcement to crime-ridden, far-left-controlled Chicago and Baltimore to combat violent crime. These progressive utopias of the Democratic Party have imploded into violent crime and chaos after years of failed social justice policies like "defund the police." 

During a press conference in the Oval Office, a reporter asked the president about sending National Guard troops to Chicago. The president responded: "We're going in," but added, "I didn't say when."

"Chicago is a hellhole right now, Baltimore is a hellhole right now," Trump said, adding, "I have an obligation .... this is a political thing." 

Trump is definitely sending in the National Guard to Chicago…

Chicago is a HELL HOLE
Baltimore is a HELL HOLEhttps://t.co/uc0MvnUlRy https://t.co/YSI8LWNx0A pic.twitter.com/67qIiygTSa

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) September 2, 2025

Just south of Baltimore City, Trump federalized the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department and deployed the National Guard to clean up crime-ridden streets after years of lawlessness in some parts. Crime statistics so far indicate that the administration's move is heading in the right direction to restore law and order. 

"If the governor of Illinois would call up, call me up, I would love to do it," Trump said earlier. "Now, we're going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it."

Meanwhile, far-left Maryland Gov. Wes Moore was caught "half-naked" on George Clooney's luxury yacht ... 

Damning photos burn top Democrat Maryland Gov. Wes Moore's 2028 plans to the ground as he's busted half-naked on kingmaker George Clooney's luxury yacht in ITALY while his 'hellhole' state faces crime apocalypse https://t.co/lkQk7yhjo1 pic.twitter.com/kjYYZpVYVM

— Daily Mail US (@Daily_MailUS) September 2, 2025

Local Baltimore media reports. 

I am pressing the Lt. Gov.'s office if she was delegated temporary authority to govern in Gov. Wes Moore's absence as he is abroad in Italy, according to pics published by the Daily Mail.

This comes as @realDonaldTrump says he is sending in federal intervention to Baltimore. pic.twitter.com/UhL2a1XmL6

— Gary M. Collins (@realgarycollins) September 2, 2025

Trump is not wrong about labeling Chicago and Baltimore "hellholes." These crime-ridden metro areas are the result of a failed progressive experiment. Democrats own these "hellholes." 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/02/2025 - 18:00