Bessent Declares All Iran Airlines To Be ‘Shut Down Around The World’ Wednesday

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Via Reuters

Zero Hedge

22 September 2026

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on Monday that by Wednesday Sept. 23, “all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.“

“If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system,” he described.

The new warning and ‘promise’ was issued after the US earlier this month imposed sanctions on “all remaining Iranian airlines” which had yet to face such penalties – thus Bessent’s new declaration is that these entities are about to collapse under the weight of Washington actions, which now is to include secondary targeting.

The Treasury Department has also lately targeted Iranian companies and industries supporting Iran’s aviation sector.

Some 27 airlines have already been sanctioned – also most recently the major Mahan Air has faced expanded sanctions (after first being targeted by Washington all the way back in 2011).

The Treasury has famed all of this as part of efforts to deny the Iranian government the ability to move “weapons, personnel, and illicit cargo”.

Bessent stated to CNBC that all Iranian airlines will be shut down globally on Sept. 23 – given that any fuel, landing, and ticket providers involved with the companies risk dollar-system exclusion.

Ironically, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and his delegation is expected to fly into New York City just the day prior, on Tuesday – to attend the UN General Assembly. He is set to give a formal address to the UN body on Wednesday.

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bessent-declares-all-iran-airlines-be-shut-down-around-world-wednesday

EPA fast-tracks fluoride review as evidence of harm to children mounts

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EPA fast-tracks fluoride review as evidence of harm to children mounts
  • Federal agencies are reexamining water fluoridation safety following a 2024 report linking high fluoride levels to lower IQ in children.
  • The EPA released a new protocol to study fluoride’s effects on children’s brain development and dental fluorosis.
  • A federal court ruled that current fluoridation levels pose an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.
  • The chemicals used for fluoridation are industrial byproducts containing trace amounts of arsenic, lead, and aluminum.
  • Fewer than an eighth of the world’s countries fluoridate water, with most of Western Europe banning the practice.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken a major step toward determining whether the fluoride added to most Americans’ tap water poses a danger to children’s developing brains, announcing a new scientific protocol that will examine links between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ. The move comes as mounting research—including studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and a landmark federal court ruling—has forced regulators to accelerate a review originally not due until 2030.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the release of the Protocol for Developing the Fluoride Human Health Toxicity Assessment on August 3, calling it a milestone in the agency’s expedited review under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“Every American should be able to count on safe and healthy drinking water, plain and simple,” Zeldin said. “In light of new science and real concerns from the public, the Trump EPA is working in lockstep with HHS to expedite our review of fluoride under the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

What the protocol covers

The new protocol lays out how the agency will conduct a dose-response analysis to pin down what levels of fluoride exposure cause harm. The review will look specifically at children’s brain development, including effects on IQ, along with dental fluorosis — the staining and pitting of tooth enamel linked to fluoride overexposure.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed the review as a matter of parental rights and scientific transparency.

“Parents deserve the truth about fluoride in drinking water—not assumptions, not politics, but rigorous science,” Kennedy said. “That is why HHS is working side by side with EPA to ensure this assessment focuses on the health risks that matter most for children, including neurodevelopmental effects and dental fluorosis. By conducting a rigorous dose-response analysis and making every step of the process transparent, we will give states, communities, and families the scientific foundation they need to make informed decisions about fluoride in drinking water.”

Years of research fuel the push

The EPA’s accelerated review follows years of accumulating research suggesting fluoride may cause harm at levels currently deemed safe. Advocacy groups such as the Fluoride Action Network also point to the fact that the FDA has never approved fluoride as safe and effective for ingestion, and note that fluoride toothpaste must carry a poison warning for children under six. The National Toxicology Program, after an eight-year review, concluded with moderate confidence that higher fluoride exposure is tied to lower IQ in children, citing dozens of human studies showing the same pattern.

In September 2024, a federal court ruled that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter—the level considered “optimal” in the United States—”poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” The court ordered the EPA to take regulatory action, noting that approximately 200 million Americans have fluoride intentionally added to their drinking water.

The chemicals used for fluoridation—primarily hydrofluorosilicic acid, an industrial byproduct from phosphate fertilizer and aluminum production—are not pharmaceutical or food-grade and can carry trace arsenic, lead, and aluminum.

America stands apart globally

Water fluoridation remains rare worldwide. Fewer than an eighth of the world’s roughly 196 countries fluoridate their water at all, meaning well over 90% of the global population drinks water without added fluoride — including most of Western Europe, where several nations have banned the practice outright. Health researchers have also found no clear link between fluoridation and lower rates of tooth decay compared with non-fluoridating countries over the past half-century.

For decades, Americans were told fluoridation was settled science and simply a matter of trust in federal health agencies. That the EPA is only now, under court order, rigorously studying its effects on children’s brains suggests families were owed this scrutiny — and this data — long before fluoride became a fixture in the nation’s water supply.

[…]

Viahttps://activistpost.com/epa-fast-tracks-fluoride-review-as-evidence-of-harm-to-children-mounts/

The Crony Capitalists Who Financed the Bolshevik Revolution

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Tzarism Eastern Europe Staff

Sept 21 2026

The United States is not a free-market or true “capitalist” society but rather a crony capitalist/welfare-state society. That is, many big businesses don’t compete to please the consumer but instead for coercive government privilege.

It is well documented that monopoly can’t exist in a free-market society; the forces of competition will always introduce new competitors to any particular field, especially when there is large amounts of money to be acquired. However, some astute businessmen notice that they can strangle their competition in the womb through government. They lobby for legislation that creates artificial barriers to entry, insane regulations for how productive processes must be run, subsidies, special taxes, or other inventive hurdles. It is far easier to “go political” and join the government in its parasitic extraction of wealth from the economy. A monopolist’s dream is to have a government grant it an exclusive monopoly over an industry.

There are many examples of crony capitalism in action. However, one historical example proves particularly interesting, for it shines a light on just how far monopolists are willing to go to acquire such government privilege. The event in question is the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Much evidence points to the fact that big business firms in the US—centered around the J. D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan conglomerates—helped bankroll the Bolsheviks using their massive funds and influence. While the jury is out whether the Bolsheviks would have succeeded in their takeover of Russia and the subsequent creation of the Soviet Union without this assistance, these big business firms absolutely played a part.

Why would these “capitalist” business firms help fund the Marxist Bolshevik revolutionaries? Were they secretly wooed by the false promises of communism? Most likely, no; some firms that aided the Bolsheviks also aided their enemies, presumably so they could have influence within whichever party was victorious. As monopoly capitalists, they realized that an inefficient economy run by totalitarian socialist central planning provided the perfect captive market for them, assuming they are on good terms with the socialist power-brokers. In this situation, the monopolists can easily achieve “protection” from the totalitarian government and take advantage of the consumers who are forced to buy from them because there is no alternative. This arrangement is especially advantageous when the captive market in question is as large as Russia. Therefore, the alliance between these two groups of seemingly enemies is actually not hard to imagine.

This situation is in the same line as the creation of the Federal Reserve System. As Murray Rothbard details in his history of the Federal Reserve, these same monopolist interests—centered largely around the Morgans and Rockefellers—pushed through the parasitic Federal Reserve System. This gave them a banking monopoly at home in the US similar, in principle, to the monopoly they worked to obtain in Russia. It is worth noting that monopoly “capitalists” are the enemies of laissez-faire capitalists who follow the tradition of Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, etc. The monopolists may run businesses, but they still owe their wealth to government power, not pleasing the consumer.

Wall Street Monopolists Support for the Bolsheviks

Much of the evidence supporting this fact is detailed in Antony Sutton’s work Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Sutton provides great evidence that the traditional idea of all communists and capitalists as bitter enemies is not true, at least when crony capitalists are involved. Sutton—largely using the US State Department Decimal File—reveals many interesting links between US big business and the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

For instance, just a few notable events Sutton documents are: Leon Trotsky, one of the pivotal Marxist revolutionaries, alongside Lenin, who helped topple the Russian government, was heavily aided by Wall Street monopolists in his return to Russia in May of 1917, just before the October Revolution. The American Red Cross was co-opted by Wall Street monopolists; they used the Red Cross mission to Russia in 1917 as a cover for financial and political maneuvering with the revolutionaries there. (Not only did the mission’s staff consist of around double the number of financiers and engineers compared to doctors and medical personnel, but all the doctors also abandoned the mission because they were disgusted with the political maneuvering of the other members).

A 1919 raid on the Soviet Bureau in New York revealed documents showing correspondence with the head of the bureau, Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, and many American big business firms. The documents show some of these firms even helped fund the Soviet Bureau. J. P. Morgan controlled Guaranty Trust Company—a major financial player on Wall Street—funneled illegal Bolshevik gold into the US so the Bolsheviks could make critically important purchases of foreign resources. Additionally, in 1922, Max May of Guaranty Trust became a director in the first Soviet State Bank, Ruskombank, further solidifying Guaranty Trust’s relationship with the Bolshevik government.

In the State Department Decimal File a copy of a 1919 Scotland Yard Intelligence report details that governments were aware of Guaranty Trust’s connection with the Bolsheviks,

Martens is very much in the limelight. There appears to be no doubt about his connection with the Guarantee [sic] Trust Company, Though it is surprising that so large and influential an enterprise should have dealings with a Bolshevik concern.

Of all the events, Leon Trotsky’s return to Russia in 1917 is rather interesting because he was a central figure in the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky was deported from Europe for essentially “revolutionary activities,” and he subsequently ended up in New York. He proceeded to obtain a US passport at a time when the State Department was universally trying to tighten up passport procedures. According to Jennings C. Wise, in Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution, he asserts that Woodrow Wilson used his influence to ensure Trotsky received an American passport, which he used to enter Russia.

After Trotsky used his American passport to leave New York, Imperial British officials removed him and his associates from the S.S. Kristianiafjord and detained them at Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 3, 1917. They were detained because they were suspected as Russia/German socialists with aims to overthrow the standing government in Russia, which, as history proves, was not wrong. Now the story gets interesting; it is entirely possible that Trotsky could not have succeeded in returning to Russia if his release from Halifax wasn’t expedited by a few influential individuals.

In the Canadian government’s records, there is a telegram regarding Trotsky from a New York attorney, Nicholas Aleinikoff, to the deputy postmaster general of Canada, R. M. Coulter. Aleinikoff asks Coulter to investigate the reason for Trotsky’s detention, and requests he intercede on their behalf. Arthur Wolf of 134 East Broadway, New York, also sent a telegram to Coulter similar to Aleinikoff’s. The deputy postmaster general had no responsibilities within the military. Regardless of this fact, Coulter—after confirming he received the telegrams—did intercede on Trotsky’s behalf by writing to Major General Willoughby Gwatkin of the Department of Militia and Defense in Ottawa. In his letter, Coulter reproduces the Aleinikoff and Wolf telegrams and essentially vouches for their credibility as responsible men who care for the situation in Russia. He further suggests that if Gwatkin deems it wise, he could use his influence with the English authorities to assist Trotsky.

Gwatkin was a man of significant influence in the Canadian military. He sent multiple memorandums to his connections in the Canadian military—one on April 14, 1917 and another on April 20, 1917—suggesting that the detainment of Trotsky was potentially high-handed injustice, and requesting a decision regarding Trotsky’s disposal be hastened. This pressure by Gwatkin appears to have played a large role in Trotsky’s release. He confirmed in a letter to Coulter on April 21 that their “friends the Russian socialists are to be released; and arrangements are being made for their passage to Europe.” Only using the Canadian government files, the reasons why Coulter and Gwatkin assisted Trotsky are unknown according to Sutton. Regardless, it is interesting how the personal intervention of two New York citizens, not Canadians, led to a chain of events that allowed Trotsky to continue his journey to Russia in a timely manner.

[…]

Via https://tsarizm.com/analysis/2026/09/21/the-crony-capitalists-who-financed-the-bolshevik-revolution/

US environment agency let Bayer pick regulations for destructive weedkiller

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The EPA allowed pesticide giant Bayer to pick from a menu of regulation options for the controversial and destructive weedkiller dicamba, newly released internal agency documents show.

The documents provide an unusually clear look into the process of developing pesticide regulations, which is typically done out of public view. It shows in detail how the EPA asked Bayer which regulations it wanted, received a response from Bayer, then put Bayer’s choices into a proposed federal rule.

Dicamba is drift prone and kills vegetation and crops for miles around fields where it is sprayed, and is linked to liver cancer and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Courts have twice ordered it off the market because of its drift problems, but the EPA has re-approved it.

The EPA solicited Bayer’s input on the level of restrictions to limit dicamba volatility and runoff, ranging from more protective to less protective, records released in ongoing litigation over the substance show. The EPA concluded one presentation with a slide entitled “Registrant response needed” which posed the question “Which mitigation option to go forward with?”

Bayer chose the least protective for one regulation, and the middle of three levels of protection for another regulation. It also got one other change it requested into the rule.

Pesticide regulations are typically a negotiation between industry and the EPA, but the exchange that the documents reveal is “crossing a line”, said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director with the Center for Biological Diversity, which is litigating on the issue.

“The EPA is allowing Bayer to choose its preferred measures to limit dicamba’s damage as if it was ordering up a late-night dinner à la carte from Chili’s,” Donley said. “It becomes troublesome when the EPA allows them to regulate themselves by choosing the mitigations.”

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety brought the lawsuit. The documents come as the EPA has faced criticism for stacking its leadership with industry veterans. The top four toxics office positions at the EPA are held by former chemical industry leaders, including Kyle Kunkler, a former pesticide industry lobbyist who is now a deputy assistant administrator and oversees the pesticides program.

Despite repeated assurances from the EPA that it has put effective protections in place, dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of farmland and caused damage to orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees and wildlife refuges across the country since its first approval in 2016. Experts have found dicamba drift damage to be the worst of any herbicide in the history of US agriculture. Still, the current approval provides even fewer protections from dicamba drift and damage than past approvals, the lawsuit alleges.

In a statement to the Guardian, an EPA spokesperson said: “Make no mistake: this is not a compliance failure; it is the regulatory system working exactly as intended.”

“The agency notifies the [pesticide maker] and works with them to identify possible solutions” to risks, the spokesperson wrote. “[Companies] are permitted to submit mitigation ideas that preserve their product’s utility, and EPA also will independently develop its own proposed mitigations. To be explicitly clear: the registrant does not dictate terms.”

During a May 2025 EPA meeting with Bayer, the agency gave Bayer two mitigation choices that would allegedly address dicamba’s high volatility, which is what makes it drift prone. A more restrictive option would have prevented dicamba applications above 85F, and a less restrictive option would allow applications up to 95F, if the acreage treated was reduced.

The EPA also gave Bayer three options for addressing dicamba runoff, documents show. It then concluded the presentation with a solicitation for Bayer to decide.

An EPA manager then wrote in an email that “the next step in the process beyond the presentation is getting feedback from the registrants on what mitigation and mitigation implementation option they would like to move forward with”.

Separate documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity showed the plan was presented to Nancy Beck, a controversial former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council who now leads the EPA’s office of chemical safety.

The revelations drew condemnation from “make America healthy again” (MAHA) advocate Kelly Ryerson, who said: “It is now undeniable that the EPA remains fully captured by a crooked collection of pesticide company players who so enthusiastically ignore the substantial losses of farmers and the federal courts who mandated a halt to dicamba use.”

Eight days later, a representative from Bayer emailed the EPA: “After discussion with EPA and reviewing these options carefully, Bayer would like to proceed as described below … ”

Bayer chose the less restrictive option for volatility mitigation, which would allow it to be applied at up to 95 degrees as long as the dicamba-treated area would be reduced. Bayer also wanted another option that the EPA had not proposed, emails show. It would allow full-field dicamba treatments at higher temperatures if dicamba was not tank mixed.

The EPA granted both requests, and Bayer’s preferred option for mitigating run off. These were included in the rules proposed a few months later, documents show.

“In return for this egregiousness, I would like the EPA to propose a menu of options to MAHA for significantly decreasing our exposure to known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors,” Ryerson added.

[…]

Via https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/20/epa-bayer-regulation-pesticide-dicamba

US To Confiscate All $4 Billion Of Venezuela’s Remaining Gold Reserves

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Man in a dark suit standing between tall stacks of gold bars, hands touching the bars

Jon Lindau</
18 August 2026

Venezuelan sovereign gold reserves held by the Bank of England are set to be released and placed under US Treasury Department management.

Following recent US-backed talks between the acting Delcy Rodríguez government and representatives of the defunct, opposition-majority parliament elected in 2015, the two sides agreed to work together to secure the unfreezing of the 31 tons of gold, worth around US $4.3 billion at current prices, to support post-earthquake recovery efforts.

Ramón López, a member of the opposition delegation, disclosed that the resources would be deposited in a US Treasury bank account and be subjected to external audits.

“The gold will be released with appropriate planning and control mechanisms,” he said in an interview. “[The gold] will be deposited in a US Treasury account and audited by international firms.”Report continues here:

So the United States gets the entire remaining 31 metric tons of Venezuela’s gold reserves, & Venezuela gets $4.3 Billion in US fiats deposited into a US Treasury account to help with earthquake/disaster relief.  A few hours worth of US deficit spending for 31 metric tons of gold.

For those who may not remember, in 2011, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez ordered the repatriation of roughly 211 metric tons of the nation’s gold reserves held at the NY Fed & the Bank of England back to Caracas.

The move sent SHOCKWAVES throughout the Bank of England and NY Fed- who were rumored to have allegedly rehypothecated Venezuela’s 211 metric tons of gold to NY & London TBTF banks 300X in order to continue the paper futures markets suppression of gold prices.

Chávez immediately became Global Pariah #1 to the world’s leading banksters & Central Banksters who fought Chávez’ efforts tooth and nail.

At the time, Venezuela held substantial gold reserves-estimates put total holdings around 365 tons, with roughly 211 tons stored abroad at places such as the Bank of England, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Standard Chartered, and others.Chávez directed the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) to repatriate the majority of these overseas holdings to Caracas vaults.

Approximately 160 tons were successfully returned via multiple cargo flights between late November 2011 and January 2012.

A portion (around 31-50 tons in various accounts) was left at the Bank of England for potential international operations.

Chávez publicly described the action as a protective measure against global financial instability.It followed the 2008 crisis and the 2011 U.S. credit-rating downgrade by S&P.

He also announced plans to nationalize Venezuela’s gold mining industry, aiming to boost domestic production and convert more output into official reserves.

[…]

Via https://silvertrade.com/news/precious-metals/gold-news/breaking-the-us-to-confiscate-all-4-billion-of-venezuelas-remaining-gold-reserves%E2%9A%A0%EF%B8%8F/

Russia Voted Under Fire. Washington Is Loading the Tankers

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Larry C Johnson

Two things happened this weekend that belong in the same frame, though you will not see them connected anywhere in the Western press. Russia held a national election under a hail of drones and cyberattacks — and came through it. And overnight, the United States began signaling that it is about to widen the war in the Middle East. They are not separate stories. The same barrage that tried to break the Russian vote also tore a piece out of Russia’s refining capacity, and that connects directly to the fuel crisis Washington is about to make worse. Take them in order.

An election under attack

Russians voted over three days, September 18 through 20, to seat the ninth convocation of the State Duma, their national legislature — all 450 seats. What made the final day extraordinary was the effort, backed by the West, to disrupt it by force.

Overnight, Ukraine launched the largest drone assault of the war. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, reported that air defenses brought down more than 1,600 drones across Russia since Saturday, roughly 450 of them bound for the capital region; the Russian Defense Ministry put the single-night intercept figure at 1,110, the highest it has ever reported. I will be candid: I woke up Sunday morning with no idea any of it had happened. The overwhelming majority were destroyed well before they reached Moscow. A handful got through — two people were killed and about twenty injured in the Moscow region. For those who lost their lives, and for their families, it is a tragedy. But set it against the scale: some seventeen million people live in the Moscow region, and their day went on. Then, through the voting hours, came waves of cyberattacks on the electronic voting system — another attempt to break the election that failed to break it.

Now the numbers that matter. Official turnout, per the Central Election Commission, came in around 56.7 percent over the three days. Ten parties qualified for the ballot. And in the four newly constituted republics — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson — turnout ran dramatically higher than the national figure, despite those regions being under active attack. People who face drones on their way to the polling station and vote anyway are telling you something about how much the franchise means to them.

The election was watched by international observers — independent-minded people, some of them frankly sympathetic to Gennady Zyuganov’s Communists, no friends of the ruling party. I spoke with several. Their verdict was the same: this was a free and fair election. I saw nothing to contradict it — no signs going up and being torn down, no one dragged away for campaigning.

Now, I know exactly what the Western press will wave in reply, so let me meet it head-on. Yes: the Supreme Court struck the federal list of Yabloko, the one small party that campaigned against the war, and Boris Nadezhdin was kept off the ballot and has since left the country. Those are the two names you will hear over and over as proof that the whole exercise was theater. It is not much of a case. Yabloko has polled below the five-percent threshold for the better part of two decades; the position it staked out — abandoning the four republics and the men fighting for them — is one almost no Russian holds. Excluding a marginal faction that stands where the West stands is not the same thing as crushing dissent, and it does not turn a three-day, ten-party election with 56.7 percent turnout into a fraud. The real spectrum of Russian politics does not run from pro-war to anti-war. It runs from those who support the special military operation to those who want it fought harder — and inside that spectrum the parties went at each other in the open, and the observers, including men who would sooner see a Communist in the Kremlin, judged the contest fair. On the evidence in front of me, the endless claim that Putin simply crushes all opposition is a fabrication.

Here is what the West consistently misreads. Russia’s parties argue fiercely about domestic policy — income inequality, taxes, education, health care, the ordinary business of any democracy. But on foreign policy they are united, something on the order of 95 percent behind the President and the special military operation. If the ruling bloc’s share slips, it will not be because Russians want the war to end. It will be because they want it prosecuted harder. That is the opposite of the war-weariness Western capitals keep predicting.

The refinery, and the squeeze

Here is the hinge the Western coverage misses entirely. In that same overnight barrage, a drone reached the Gazprom Neft refinery on Moscow’s southeastern edge — a plant that processes on the order of 245,000 barrels a day and supplies fuel to the capital region — and set it ablaze. Strip away the election framing for a moment and look at what that means for the world’s fuel balance. Every refinery knocked offline, in Russia or in the Gulf, tightens the same global distillate market. Ukraine, prodded and supplied by the West, is not only trying to break a Russian election; it is degrading Russian refining capacity at the precise moment the world can least afford to lose a barrel of diesel or jet fuel. That is the thread running straight into the second half of this story.

Washington reaches for the matches

The second development arrived overnight as well, and it points the other direction — toward escalation.

Late Saturday, September 19, the State Department sharpened its travel guidance, telling Americans outside the Middle East to seriously reconsider any travel to or through the region and warning those already there to brace for airspace closures and canceled flights. That advisory is confirmed and public. Alongside it came reports — which I have not been able to independently confirm, so I flag them as reports — that personnel manning Central Command’s operations centers are being recalled to duty, and that aerial refueling tankers are up and flying over the region. Anyone who has watched these sequences knows what airborne tankers usually precede.

The open question is the target. It could be Yemen and the Houthis — Ansar Allah — who have been trading strikes with Saudi Arabia and just put a plume of black smoke over Riyadh’s King Khalid airport. It could be Iran. It could be both. I cannot rule out any of the three. As I write this Sunday night, there is no sign that strikes are actually under way. So we will learn soon enough whether this is saber-rattling or whether Donald Trump means to escalate.

What we already know is that the global diesel and distillate crisis is getting worse, not better, and nothing on the horizon reverses it. The EIA now expects U.S. distillate inventories to sit below the five-year low through much of 2027; industry veterans reckon the world has lost something like seven million barrels a day of refining capacity to this year’s fighting. Last night’s strike on the Moscow refinery subtracts a little more. This is the box Trump has built for himself. He wants gasoline and diesel cheaper and inflation tamed — and every move he has made around the Persian Gulf, Iran, the Gulf states and now the Houthis guarantees tension stays high and the distillate squeeze stays on.

The market has been whipsawing on every on-again, off-again ceasefire rumor; crude actually eased into Friday’s close, near $104 Brent, on hopes that Saudi Arabia could restore pipeline flows. But if fresh American strikes land this week, expect that to reverse hard — crude spiking, equities selling off, the pump price and the diesel crack climbing right back up. These signals went out on a Sunday evening. Come Monday morning in New York, the odds favor a market moving the wrong way for a President who says he wants the opposite.

So that is where we stand. Trump, for all his talk of ending wars and lowering prices, keeps doing the one thing that makes both harder: pouring fuel on the fire. I will have more once the real shape of the Russian result is clear and once we know whether the tankers meant anything.

For now, the democracy that is Russia did more than survive this weekend. It was attacked, and it voted anyway.

[…]

Via https://sonar21.com/russia-voted-under-fire-washington-is-loading-the-tankers/

Assange Returns to X in Midst of AI Crisis

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to X on Thursday, more than two years after his release from prison as the AI crisis dominates the headlines.

Assange on his flight to freedom from London in June 2024. (WikiLeaks via X)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

Julian Assange returned to X on Thursday 25 months after being released from London’s Belmarsh Prison and eight and a half years since he last posted on the social media site.

“I’m back,” Assange posted at 9:02 a.m. EDT. 

His return comes amidst an expanding crisis of Artificial Intelligence, which captains of the AI industry have warned in recent days is slipping out of control and endangering human society.

Assange has remained away from the public since his freedom in June 2024 recovering from his five-year prison ordeal, which was preceded by seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

He made his first post-release public appearance in Strasbourg, France on Oct. 1, 2024 at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to discuss his case and its implications for press freedom.

Anti-genocide protesters,who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August, are among those being blamed for Sydney’s horrific terrorist attack on Sunday. In the front row, left to right: Mary Kostakidis, Gabriel Shipton and Julian Assange. (Consortium News)

Assange next appeared at the head of a march of an estimated 300,000 people over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Aug. 3, 2025 to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  At the end of July he attended a concert in Sydney in support of pianist Jayson Gillham after the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancelled his 2024 concert over comments he made about journalists killed in Gaza.

Assange’s technical expertise could put him in position to weigh in on the AI crisis. It is a non-partisan issue that lacks the controversy of comments on U.S. foreign policy.

OpenAI AI agents escaped testing environments this year and coordinated cyberattacks on other AI systems, revealing that humans were losing control. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing AI development so security measures can catch up, warning swarms could seize the internet within a year. OpenAI’s Sam Altman agreed development “should be slower,” and Elon Musk, who runs Grok AI, posted “Dario is right.”

Assange had not posted on Twitter, later X, since March 2018 when the Ecuador government, which hosted him in its London embassy, cut his internet access after he tweeted about Catalonia’s independence referendum.

After his June 2024 plea deal and release, Assange stayed off social media and his wife, Stella Assange, said publicly he wasn’t on any platforms and that accounts claiming to be his were fake.

Via https://consortiumnews.com/2026/09/17/assange-returns-to-x-in-midst-of-ai-crisis/

Imran Khan’s immediate family detained in Pakistan ahead of mass protest demanding his release

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(Photo credit: AFP)

The Cradle

SEP 21, 2026

Khan has been jailed on corruption charges since 2022 following a US-backed coup to oust him as prime minister

Pakistan’s police have detained the three sisters of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan ahead of mass protests to demand his release, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported on 21 September.

Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party leader and former cricket star, has been jailed since August 2023 on corruption charges that he and his supporters say are politically motivated.

The PTI has called for a mass march in the capital, Islamabad, on 27 September, with Khan’s release from prison as a central demand.

On Sunday, his sister Aleema Khan was detained at her residence in Lahore under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law as part of a crackdown ahead of the protest.

PTI spokesperson Sheikh Waqas Akram denounced the arrests. Akram said Aleema Khan was detained “because she refused to stay silent about her brother’s illegal detention, solitary confinement, and denial of medical care.”

Aleema and her children were taken to an unknown place in an armored vehicle, Akram added.

Khan’s other two sisters, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, were detained later on Sunday after holding a press conference to denounce their sister’s detention. The three sisters’ children were also detained.

Khan’s son Kasim said police broke into his relatives’ homes and forced them into vehicles without explanation.

“This is criminal behavior. Inexcusable,” he wrote on X on Sunday.

The sisters’ detentions have been challenged in the Lahore High Court, Aleema’s lawyer Rana Mudassar Umer said.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi demanded that the PTI cancel Sunday’s march.

“They cannot achieve anything through such drama. I will say again today that there is still time. Don’t get into a situation from which there is no turning back,” Naqvi said.

In May, a secret Pakistani diplomatic cable was published for the first time confirming that a senior US diplomat insisted on the removal of Imran Khan from his position as prime minister in 2022.

According to the cable, revealed by Drop Site News, Donald Lu, then US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, told Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, Asad Majeed Khan, that “all will be forgiven” if the former premier was removed through a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Khan was ousted as prime minister in a legislative coup six weeks after the cable was sent, on 9 April 2022. Khan revealed the existence of the cable at that time, claiming his removal was part of a “US-backed regime-change operation.”

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/imran-khans-entire-immediate-family-detained-in-pakistan-ahead-of-mass-protest-demanding-his-release

Iran’s war economy is squeezing the wrong people

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Amir Hossein Mohaddes

SEP 21, 2026

Washington’s blockade is draining Iran’s revenues, but Tehran still decides how the burden is shared. Fuel hikes, weak price controls, and scarce currency for luxury imports risk shifting costs onto ordinary households instead of those higher up the economic ladder.

In September 2024, a lavash flatbread in Tehran’s bakeries cost 500 tomans. A barbari loaf sold for 1,800 tomans and sangak for 3,000. By July 2026, those prices had climbed to 4,000, 7,500, and 8,800 tomans respectively. For lavash, the increase approached 700 percent in less than two years, even though bread remains one of Iran’s most heavily subsidized staples.

Bread prices tell only part of the story. A former member of the Supreme Labor Council’s Wage Committee recently put the monthly cost of living for a working family above 90 million tomans. The statutory monthly wage package cited for a worker with a family is about 16.6 million tomans.

A labor representative on the committee observed that for roughly 60 percent of Iranian workers, current wages cover only eight days of household expenses. Debt, savings, second jobs, and the sale of assets must carry the remaining three weeks.

The cost of war is measured first in the bakery queue. Bread, rent, transport, and medicine are swallowing ever more of a collapsing wage. Washington’s blockade has inflicted immense damage, but Tehran still decides how that burden is distributed at home – and why those least able to withstand it are carrying the heaviest share.

The blockade enters the household budget

The foreign source of much of this pressure is beyond dispute. Months of war, tightening sanctions, disrupted trade, and the US maritime blockade have sharply reduced Iran’s access to hard currency. Shipping costs have surged, payment channels have narrowed, and foreign companies face an expanding threat of secondary sanctions.

It was estimated in early September that Iranian oil exports had fallen from about 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) a year earlier to roughly 260,000 bpd.

Tehran presents a very different picture. The Oil Ministry said foreign-exchange earnings from oil sales exceeded $11 billion in the first four months of the Iranian year, despite sanctions and pressure on the tanker fleet.

Officials portrayed that result as evidence that sales and collections were improving. The two claims are not necessarily measuring the same thing: one concerns estimated physical shipments at a particular moment, while the other covers cumulative revenue that may include delayed payments or earlier cargoes.

Yet the gulf between them exposes a familiar problem. Iran does not publish a sufficiently detailed, timely account of export volumes, destinations, discounts, or settled receipts.

[…]

On inflation, the domestic figures are already severe enough. The Statistical Center of Iran put annual inflation in August 2026 at 69.9 percent and year-on-year inflation at 89 percent. For food and beverages, the year-on-year rate reached 127.5 percent.

The average food basket was therefore more than twice as expensive as it had been a year earlier, according to the state’s own statistical authority. Reuters also reported unemployment above nine percent as the blockade tightened, while youth joblessness remained much higher. The World Bank has warned that war, import disruption, and mounting fiscal pressure deepen the risks of inflation and food insecurity.

Washington is deliberately exploiting these vulnerabilities. The blockade is intended to choke oil earnings, deter Iran’s trading partners, and raise the domestic cost of resistance until Tehran changes its position at the negotiating table.

But foreign pressure does not dictate every domestic choice. Washington does not decide whether scarce currency goes to medicine or high-end vehicles. It does not set rent enforcement, customs priorities, tax exemptions, or the distribution of energy subsidies. Those decisions remain with the Iranian state.

Blaming every domestic failure on the blockade shields those decisions from scrutiny and hands policymakers an alibi when the allocation of scarce resources demands full transparency.

Gasoline puts the burden on the street

From 7 September, monthly gasoline consumption above 110 liters has been charged at 100,000 rials, or 10,000 tomans, per liter – twice the previous third-tier rate. Officials point to daily demand of roughly 145 million liters, well above domestic production capacity, and say the measure directly affects about 15 percent of consumers.

There is an economic case for restraining consumption of a heavily subsidized commodity. Iran’s aging vehicle fleet, smuggling, inadequate public transport, and extraordinarily cheap fuel have all contributed to demand. A government facing a widening supply gap cannot treat consumption as though the war had changed nothing.

The difficulty lies in how the adjustment travels through an economy already enduring extraordinary inflation. Fuel is embedded in the price of almost every physical good. Many workers have no practical alternative to private cars or shared taxis, while small businesses cannot absorb repeated increases in transport costs. A price rise aimed at the heaviest users can therefore spread well beyond that 15 percent through freight charges, fares, retail prices, and expectations of further inflation.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government has leaned toward price adjustment, subsidy restraint, and limits on public spending. A single gasoline increase does not define an entire economic program, and interventionist governments also raise prices to curb smuggling or close fiscal gaps.

When price reform advances faster than wage protection, targeted transfers, public transport, or control over essential markets, the adjustment lands on consumers before the state has built a shield around them.

Wartime prices carry the weight of the blockade. Insurance premiums, sanctions exposure, blocked payments, longer trade routes, shipping shortages, and military disruption are all folded into the final price. When the state allows those costs to pass unchecked through the market, Washington’s economic war arrives in every shop and at every family table.

The design of compensation is just as important as the headline price. A cash payment that arrives after inflation has already consumed its value offers little protection, particularly when the poorest households spend most of their income on food and housing.

Assistance must be indexed, targeted, and paid on time. Public transport, school travel, rural mobility, and small freight operators also require specific treatment because their fuel use cannot simply be dismissed as discretionary excess.

Emergency controls need an emergency supply plan

Permanent price suppression is no answer. Keeping a commodity below its production or import cost for too long erodes supply, lowers quality, encourages rent-seeking, and feeds the black market. Iran’s own experience makes those dangers impossible to dismiss. Wartime management, however, need not mean freezing every price indefinitely.

The state can impose temporary and reviewable limits on a narrow range of essential goods and costs while protecting supply. That requires preferential foreign exchange for raw materials, strategic stocks released before shortages become acute, affordable credit or tax relief for producers, and direct support for low-income households.

A cap without supply measures merely postpones an increase or drives the commodity out of formal markets. Supply support without controls can become another transfer to intermediaries.

Housing shows that the government already accepts the principle of emergency intervention. Authorities have imposed a 25 percent annual ceiling on rent increases, including in Tehran, alongside measures intended to support the renewal of leases and limit arbitrary evictions. Enforcement is uneven, and local rules require careful distinction, but the policy concedes the central point: during a severe crisis, the state cannot leave every essential cost to an overheated market.

The missing element is a coherent system. Food, housing, medicine, transport, and production inputs should command a higher claim on scarce currency and administrative capacity than luxury vehicles, foreign leisure travel, or other non-essential consumption.

A war economy is ultimately a hierarchy of priorities. Without one, separate interventions remain improvised exceptions while households confront the crisis as a single, relentless rise in the cost of living.

Luxury imports expose the contradiction

The return of large-engine vehicle imports illustrates the contradiction. In 2025, after years of restrictions, regulations again made room for cars above 2,500 cubic centimeters. The relevant plan reportedly anticipated around 13,000 vehicles and set aside approximately 635 million euros: 8,000 cars with engines between 2,500 and 3,000 cc under a 180 percent tariff, and 5,000 above 3,000 cc under a 190 percent tariff.

The Toyota Land Cruiser lays bare the contradiction. A 2025 model priced at roughly $60,000 in the UAE can sell for several times that amount in Iran once tariffs and other charges are added. The state may collect handsomely from wealthy buyers, but the customs revenue cannot recover the scarce foreign currency already spent on the vehicle.

Iran is struggling to secure foreign exchange for medicine, animal feed, food, machinery, and industrial parts. Hundreds of millions of euros assigned to luxury vehicles cannot be spent twice. A high tariff captures some of the buyer’s wealth for the treasury, but it does not restore the hard currency that left the country to purchase the car. Under blockade, the opportunity cost matters more than the spectacle of a large customs bill.

This is also where appeals for national sacrifice begin to lose force. Wage earners are told that fuel and bread cannot remain insulated from reality while upper-income consumption retains access to scarce foreign exchange. The state may collect revenue from that consumption, but it also signals whose demand remains negotiable and whose living standard is expected to adjust first.

The same test should be applied beyond imported cars. Preferential currency, subsidized credit, procurement contracts, and tax relief all create claims on resources that have become more valuable under blockade. 

The state should disclose who receives these benefits and on what grounds. Without that transparency, privileged importers secure goods and currency at protected rates, while ordinary Iranians face the full force of the market.

Eurasia offers routes, not a rescue

Iran nevertheless has options beyond its southern ports. The free-trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) took effect on 15 May 2025, reducing or eliminating tariffs across much of Iran’s trade with Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. The arrangement gives Tehran a larger formal framework for sourcing food, industrial goods, and raw materials through northern corridors.

Kazakhstan exported about 1.1 million tons of grain to Iran in 2025, while its agricultural exports to the country rose sharply. Officials have discussed increasing annual wheat shipments by as much as two million tons.

Barley, corn, vegetable oil, meat, and legumes broaden the potential basket. Russia has also used the Caspian route for grain deliveries, although falling water levels, small vessels, and limited port capacity constrain the volume that can be moved.

The rail network provides another opening. In September, a 55-container block train left China for Sarakhs through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, with an expected journey of 14 to 16 days across more than 6,000 kilometers. Such services demonstrate that pressure at sea does not sever Iran from the Eurasian supply chain.

They do not provide a cost-free substitute for maritime trade. Before the war, more than 80 percent of Iran’s two-way trade by volume moved through its southern coastline. Roads and railways cannot absorb that traffic overnight.

Longer distances, transshipment, border congestion, limited rolling stock, and exposure to neighboring states’ political choices all add costs. One Iranian trade official estimated that shifting China trade from sea to land could add $18 billion a year.

Once essential goods reach Iran’s borders, domestic delays become a policy failure. Customs and licensing agencies cannot continue working to peacetime schedules while vital cargo remains stuck in queues.

Medicines, food, agricultural supplies, and industrial parts need a wartime fast track, backed by quicker clearance and priority access to foreign currency. Where public safety permits, inspections can be completed after entry.

[…]

Make wealth absorb more of the shock

A widening budget deficit does not make gasoline the inevitable starting point. The government can cut non-essential expenditure, narrow tax exemptions, pursue large-scale evasion, tax luxury property and vehicles more effectively, and develop a workable capital-gains regime. Energy subsidies can be reduced more aggressively for the largest consumers while compensating households whose livelihoods depend on transport.

Washington’s campaign seeks to make everyday life so expensive that the public and the government come to view political concessions as the only escape.

Domestic policy can end up serving that objective without intending to. Applying peacetime measures under blockade shifts more of Washington’s pressure onto ordinary Iranians, deepening inequality and eroding public trust.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/irans-war-economy-is-squeezing-the-wrong-people

 

US warns of rapid escalation in Middle East war

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Yemen's Houthi armed forces patrol as Yemeni prisoners loyal to the Houthi authoritie

AFP

AFP

20 Sept 2026

The United States warned that fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis could “escalate rapidly” after a missile attack targeted Riyadh for the first time since the Yemen conflict resumed.

US President Donald Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House.

The White House gave no explanation for the early return, which comes as a new threshold was crossed in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, who control a large part of Yemen and are fighting government forces backed by a coalition led by Riyadh.

Loud explosions rang out on Saturday in the Saudi capital, where AFP journalists saw a fuel tank bearing the logo of oil giant Aramco on fire near the airport.

“This military conflict has the potential to escalate rapidly,” the US State Department warned, adding American citizens outside the Middle East should “seriously reconsider travel to and through the region”.

Separately, the State Department restricted travel for American government employees to the Saudi cities of Taif and Yanbu, home to a major Red Sea oil export terminal that has previously been targeted by Houthi strikes.

In recent weeks, the Houthis’ lightning offensive seizing swathes of Yemeni territory has left hundreds dead and, according to the UN refugee agency, displaced more than 110,000 people.

‘Intercepted’

The violence has already disrupted exports from Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading supplier of crude oil, as well as maritime traffic.

Saudi Arabia’s ally the United States has sent mixed signals. According to US news platform Axios, Washington refused last week a Saudi request to strike the Houthis, and Fox News reported Sunday that Trump had said the Houthis have agreed not to hit US targets.

On Sunday, US Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a rare visit to Cairo.

The visit came days after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was also in the Egyptian capital, where he and Sisi urged safe and secure navigation through Bab al-Mandab, after the Houthis seized the Yemeni coast.

The Bab al-Mandab strait is a Red Sea waterway that is crucial to energy flows and global shipping and which has become even more strategic since Iran imposed a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.

Condemning the Houthis’ latest attacks, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the broadcaster NTV that his country had discussions with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, partners in a mutual defence pact, about possible assistance.

“In this regard, military needs, especially in state technical matters, may happen. There would be no problem in meeting this demand either,” he said.

Saudi Arabia meanwhile has scrambled to contain the fallout of the Houthis’ attacks on its territory.

On Sunday, the attack on Riyadh was not mentioned in several major Saudi papers, even though hours beforehand, the Riyadh-led coalition had confirmed that a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis was “successfully intercepted and destroyed”.

The coalition added that the pro-Iranian fighters had tried to target “civilians and civilian infrastructure” in several cities in the west of the kingdom, including the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, an important export hub for Saudi oil.

Saudi Arabia has responded with scores of airstrikes on Houthi-held areas but has failed to stop the fighters’ advance in Yemen.

Claiming responsibility for the attack, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said fighters had carried out “two successful military operations using a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones”.

“The first targeted sensitive sites in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the second targeted Aramco facilities in Yanbu.”

Lightning offensive

According to Andreas Krieg of King’s College London, the attack on Riyadh, the first to threaten the Saudi capital since Yemen’s civil war resumed, crossed “an important psychological threshold”.

“Saudi Arabia can absorb intermittent attacks on remote military or energy installations more easily than repeated threats to Riyadh itself,” he told AFP.

“Strikes around airports, fuel storage and populated areas make restraint politically and strategically much harder to sustain.”

The attack has piled further pressure on a global economy already rocked by seven months of war in the Middle East, which began in February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and which has seen the Islamic republic respond with attacks around the region.

Iran-backed groups also got involved, with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen carrying out attacks against their foes.

Iran’s top negotiator said Tehran had conveyed to the US through mediators its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which it has blockaded throughout the Middle East war, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi set off on Sunday for New York to attend the UN General Assembly.

[…]

Via https://www.breitbart.com/news/us-warns-of-rapid-escalation-in-mideast-war/