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U.S. Denies Its Salvadoran Mercenaries Have Been Killed in Haiti

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Kim Ives
Last Sunday, October 18, 4 Salvadoran soldiers belonging to the Gang Repression Force (FRG) were victims north of the capital.

The story is very straightforward.

On Sun., Oct. 18, five mercenaries from the U.S.-concocted, UN-blessed Gang Suppression Force (GSF), arrived in an armored Toyota Land Cruiser – called a “Zo Reken” or “shark bone” in Haiti – at a supermarket in the Santo neighborhood of northern Port-au-Prince to shop for some food.

The local population, including soldiers of the local Chen Mechan (“Vicious Dog”) armed group, saw them go into the store and then ambushed them when they came out with fierce gunfire. The mercenaries made it to their vehicle, but the Chen Mechan soldiers set it ablaze, burning and killing all five occupants.

The Chen Mechan, which is part of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) neighborhood armed group coalition, has retrieved the five bodies from the vehicle and is holding them.

The Viv Ansanm presumes that at least four of the bodies are the missing Salvadoran mercenaries, which the Salvadoran military has admitted are “unaccounted for,”  and that the fifth one is maybe the driver, but they don’t know his nationality.

This is the account provided to Haïti Liberté by Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, the leader and principal spokesman of the Viv Ansanm.

Although three Kenyan policemen, deployed as part of the Multinational Security Support mission (MSS), died in 2025 while fighting armed groups in Haiti’s Artibonite Valley, this is the first time that the Viv Ansanm armed groups have counterattacked and killed foreign mercenaries of the MSS or GSF in Port-au-Prince. (A foreign mercenary of Erik Prince’s Vectus Global force, which nominally works for Haiti’s de facto Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, was killed when carrying out an operation in Croix-des-Bouquets in November 2025 by soldiers of the 400 Mawozo, another Viv Ansanm affiliate.)

The irony is that the U.S., which conceived, mustered, mostly pays for, and ultimately commands the 1,563 uniformed soldiers and policemen which make up the force (only 28% of the 5,500 which U.S. Secretary of State promised and the UN Security Council blessed when it was launched in September 2025), wants to deny that these soldiers were all killed in an ambush by the very force that the U.S. seeks to crush.

“Yesterday, four Salvadoran GSF soldiers suffered an intense ambush as they were returning to base from a market just outside Port au Prince,” said U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Walz at an emergency UN Security Council meeting the next day. “These thugs attacked their armored vehicle with hundreds of bullets and explosives. By God’s grace, we believe the men, four of the men survived, but they do remain unaccounted for. I just spoke with Ambassador Lopez from El Salvador to send a message to the people of El Salvador, to President Bukele, to every El Salvadorian service member deployed in Haiti that America stands shoulder-to-shoulder with them.”

While the U.S. and El Salvador to continue to insist on saying only four Salvadoran mercenaries are missing, the New York Times gave a different account.

“Five Salvadoran soldiers, members of a new U.N.-backed force sent to stop gang violence in Haiti, were ambushed while out shopping near the capital on Sunday and were still missing hours later, three people familiar with the situation said,” it reported on Oct. 18.

The Associated Press reported that the “armed forces of El Salvador said in a statement Monday that the four aviation technicians were returning to camp when their armored vehicle was attacked with explosives and set on fire,” which is a little closer to the Viv Ansanm’s account. But then came what may well be invention.

“The military noted that the four men managed to flee the burning vehicle and it is working with international forces to ‘establish contact and determine the location of our military personnel,’” the AP report continues. “Salvadoran authorities said that helicopters were dispatched to the area but they, too, came under fire as they dispersed armed men in the area. ‘Multiple attempts to approach by land and air have been made, but these have been hampered by the intensity of the fighting,’ the Salvadoran military said.”

The AP called it the biggest attack on the force since it began operations.

Why is the U.S. trying to hide that five of its mercenaries were killed? Is it because the U.S. does not want to discourage other countries from sending troops to the GSF which is now, over a year since its launch, only at 28% of capacity? There current force only has troops from Chad, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. It was only on Oct. 8 that the GSF was officially “deployed” with a ceremony filled with dance and martial arts demonstrations.

In any case, as the Haitian proverb says, “twou manti pa fon,” the hole a lie makes is not deep. And in the very near future, the truth will come out.

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/10/26/the-u-s-denies-that-its-salvadoran-mercenaries-have-been-killed-in-haiti/

Koreans reject U.S. empire’s plan to make South Korea the next Ukraine

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Strategic Culture Foundation

South Korea is rebelling against U.S. dominance. It is witnessing a formidable opposition movement against the United States’ historic control over the Asian country’s military forces.

There is also growing pressure on the South Korean government to refuse demands by U.S. President Donald Trump for Korean troops to deploy in the Persian Gulf.

A major driver of this surging opposition movement is the widely held concern that Washington is maneuvering South Korea to fight a war with China.

Political analyst KJ Noh explains that the Korean people perceive the United States as positioning their country as a proxy to fight an eventual war with China, in a similar way to how Ukraine is being used as a front line to provoke Russia.

“The U.S. empire is making South Korea into the next Ukraine,” says KJ Noh. “It is weaponizing South Korea.”

This is analogous to how Ukraine was groomed and weaponized since 2014 to serve as a proxy for the U.S. and NATO to confront Russia.

He points out that China has always been the main target for American imperial planners seeking to extend U.S. hegemony. Pentagon Generals have openly spoken about going to war with China since 2025. Several strategic documents cite the imperative of confronting China for the U.S. to pursue its ambitions of global dominance.

Recently, the American commander in South Korea, General Xavier Brunson, referred to the country as “a dagger pointed at China” and “an unsinkable U.S. aircraft carrier.” Such brazen comments have sparked even broader opposition.

KJ Noh contends that U.S. strategists assumed defeating Russia and Iran would be relatively easy, paving the way for the main target: China. However, the protracted war in Ukraine and Trump’s debacle in the Persian Gulf have delayed the war plan against China.

Nevertheless, Korean people understand that when the U.S. empire gets around to attacking China, their country will be deployed as Uncle Sam’s proxy.

Historically, for the past 76 years, Washington has exerted full control over the South Korean military. This was enabled by the U.S. using fascist collaborators from the Second World War to control South Korea – a legacy that persists among the deep state in South Korea.

KJ Noh surveys a history of genocidal violence perpetrated by the U.S. empire in South Korea to wipe out political opposition movements. The scale of mass murder and mass graves is shocking and hardly known in the West.

Despite the brutal oppression over many decades, there is still a defiant consciousness among Koreans who refuse to be vassals of the U.S.

Koreans do not want to do Uncle Sam’s dirty work any longer, and they do not want their country to be dragooned into a proxy war against their Asian neighbor, China, with which much of the Korean economy has beneficial relations.

This is why Koreans are demanding that the United States finally hand over Operational Control of the country’s military. President Lee Jae-myung reflects the popular will by calling on Washington to comply. It is also why the Korean people and government are refusing Trump’s peevish calls for deployment in the Persian Gulf. Given the history of loyal Korean service in U.S. wars, this latest defiance is a watershed in relations.

Via https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/10/26/up-in-arms-koreans-reject-u-s-empires-plan-to-make-south-korea-the-next-ukraine/

‘We Are Media Guerrillas,’ Says One of the Creators of Iran’s Lego Videos

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Think BRICS and Marco Fernandes

Exclusive interview originally published on Brasil de Fato.
Republished with permission.

On one side, a few young people with cheap laptops. On the other, studios with budgets in the billions of dollars. That is how members of the Iranian collective Explosive Media—the creators of the “Lego” videos that went viral worldwide during the United States’ war against Iran—describe the battle they have been waging since the United States and Israel attacked the Persian country on February 28.

One of its members, who identifies himself as Explosive Man, received Brasil de Fato for an exclusive interview in a café at the top of a 14-story building in Tehran, Iran’s capital. At the very beginning of the conversation, he pointed to a plane flying on the horizon and said: “A light like that, during the war, was a missile.”

They say their videos have accumulated more than 1 billion views in just a few months, since they released their first video at the start of the so-called “Ramadan War,” which lasted 40 days until the ceasefire in April. The collective is anonymous and brings together around ten young people, aged 18 to 25, trained in communications, engineering, and theology. They began in June 2025, during the 12-Day War, producing videos in Persian with a live presenter.

The first video to use “Lego”-style animation was completed on the last day of that war, but it was never published because the ceasefire came into effect. When the war resumed at the end of February, they posted the first video, went to sleep, and woke up to find the material being discussed in the British press—and, from there, around the world.

Their formula combines artificial intelligence, their own rap music, and the pop grammar of the United States. A two-minute video takes about 24 hours to produce, and the video about the April ceasefire was ready before the official announcement. The team’s favorite, titled “A Vengeance for All,” dedicates each missile to a victim of empire: Indigenous peoples, enslaved Black people, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Iran Air Flight 655, and the children of Epstein’s island. “I cried when I watched it,” Explosive Man says.

The success came at a price. In April, YouTube shut down the channel for “spam, deceptive practices, and scams,” while Instagram removed the account. “In a country that is home to Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney, an independent animation channel was taken down. Why?” reacted Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

The LEGO company has never commented. Western media coined the label “slopaganda”—low-quality, AI-generated propaganda—a term the group rejects: “We see our work as art. It is cinema.” The format has already crossed the ocean: in May, an art historian from Havana published a video in the same style against Trump’s threats to Cuba, and the collective welcomed her as “LRF Cuba,” the Lego Resistance Front.

But none of this, in their view, explains what matters most. Asked what secured Iran’s resistance—the missiles, the drones, or the videos themselves—he answers with faith: “It was the serenity God granted us.” In the first nights, with the Supreme Leader dead, they were in the streets when they saw an American drone in the sky: “We were not afraid at all.”

Below is the full text of the exclusive interview with Brasil de Fato:

Brasil de Fato: What was most important to Iran’s success in resisting the U.S. and Israeli attacks? Drones, missiles, the Revolutionary Guard, or the Lego videos you made, which won hearts and minds around the world by presenting Iran’s view of this war?

Explosive Man: It was the serenity God granted us. In the Quran, God says that when Muslims—when believers in God—face enemies, He sends a kind of serenity upon them so that they do not fear them. We still do not understand that serenity, but I think we will understand it many years from now.

When I think of ourselves in the first days of the war, in the first nights, we had no leader. Our leader had been martyred. And we were in the streets at night. We shouted it at the United States: “We will defeat the United States,” but we did not really know what it meant for the United States to be against us.

We were in the streets, and I saw an American drone in the sky. We were not afraid at all. It was an air-defense system that shot it down, and we were watching. The people—men, women, elderly men, elderly women, children—no one felt fear. That is what God did for us. It is very powerful.

Tell us a little about the group. You began producing content for the public about five years ago. How did you move from personal videos with a presenter to English-language animations made for the whole world?

We were making videos for the Iranian public. In the first days of the war, we made our first Lego video. We posted it on our channels on Iranian apps. Then we went to sleep. When we woke up, we saw that an account had tweeted the video. Soon afterward, The Times and The Telegraph were writing about it. So we realized it was something different, and that this should be our next step: to start making videos for English-speaking audiences.

Could we say that your main audience is the people of the United States?

During the war, yes. Most of our audience is also American. On Twitter, around 60%. Then Canada and Great Britain.

And you are very young—at most 20 years old.

We have a colleague who is 15.

You combine backgrounds in communications, engineering, theology, and AI. How do these different backgrounds come together in your work? What is the creative process like?

Passion and love unite us, and we all love our country. So, with these different backgrounds, we came together to create something for our country. As for the process, we have an ideas bank. We discuss ideas weekly. You know, we have ideas 24 hours a day. We think about the work even when we are sleeping. It is incredible. So we have an ideas bank, and we hold meetings during the week. We think about the ideas, write our plans, write our scripts, and throughout the week we produce them one by one.

We trained ourselves to do all of this. At the beginning, one of us knew how to use Photoshop, one knew how to animate, another knew how to communicate. But we trained ourselves so that a single person could do everything—from writing the script to animating, creating images, and communicating. We read books about cinema. We watched videos.

Did you decide to start with this type of video because of the war, or were you already making content with a global audience in mind?

No, we made the first Lego video on the last day of the 12-day war. But when the ceasefire began, we did not publish it. Still, we were ready; we knew how to make it. So, in the first days of the next war, we posted the first video, but for the Iranian public. The first was “Chronicles of Victory,” then “The Strait of Hormuz Is Closed,” and then “A Vengeance for All.”

That is the video in which you show Black people in the United States, Indigenous peoples, Palestinians, and the girls who suffered because of Epstein?

Yes. It is the one I like most. I cried when I watched it. It was incredible. Then came “Rise Up,” in Persian, with that religious singer Mahdi Rasouli. It said, “Heidar, Heidar.” That was the one I liked most. “Heidar” means “lion”; it is an epithet of our first Imam, Imam Ali [the son-in-law of Muhammad].

[…]

What led you to choose Lego as a form of expression?

We tried many formats. But Lego has a certain comic quality. You do not need to be exactly realistic. If you are making Trump, you can make something that resembles him, and people will know it is Trump. When you make realistic videos, people look for flaws. They say: “Ah, Trump is not like that. His nose is not like that. His hair is not like that.” But when you make Lego videos, people look for similarities. They say: “Ah, that really looks like him.” That is an advantage of using Lego, and Lego brings people nostalgia. When people were children, their children played with Legos, or they themselves played with Lego.

Many of you are at university, and the university was being bombed. What was it like to post the videos, receive hundreds of millions of views, and at the same time have little internet access while drones and missiles flew overhead? What were those 40 days of war like for you?

We felt that we were fighting too. We are a media army; we are media guerrillas, and we needed to act fast. We did not go home at night. We slept there, in our office. Yes, we worked 24 hours a day, and we wanted to do something. It was our duty. We did not want anything from anyone. We only wanted to fulfill our duty for our country.

You have said that you studied U.S. media and reverse-engineered their narratives about wars. At the same time, the Iranian armed forces also reverse-engineered Western drones and missiles. In the case of media, what does that reverse engineering mean?

We have lived in an environment of Western media warfare for years. We were born into it. There are many Persian-language channels sponsored by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. So that is our environment. We learned it naturally. We were not taught propaganda or psychological warfare at university.

We lived it. So we saw how Western media buries the truth beneath its lies. How it reverses truth and falsehood. How it magnifies a small problem in our country as much as possible. How it makes our young people lose faith in our country. So we understood this and decided to do something against it.

But not with lies—not with that kind of cruelty, that kind of propaganda—but with the truth. We knew that humanity has a love for truth in its soul. So when you speak the truth, it liberates the mind; it unbinds it. Some chains will break. People will understand: “Ah, there is a truth. They were lying to me all these years.” So we turned the situation around, but not with lies.

You use AI in the videos, but AI also carries a great deal of Western bias. What has that experience been like, and how do you confront that bias?

Sometimes we had problems with prompts and with the restrictions on AI accounts. Sometimes the AI says: “Ah, we cannot do that because of such-and-such. We cannot challenge that person. We cannot say that. We cannot create that image.” But we find a way around it. They are little magic tricks [laughs].

Both YouTube and Instagram took your accounts down. Even so, the videos kept spreading everywhere. Do you have any idea how many accounts are sharing your videos?

I do not know how many accounts, but I know that in the first months of our work, our work received more than 1 billion views worldwide.

[…]

This is the first time in history that the United States wages war against a country without controlling the narrative. 

[…]

Via https://thinkbrics.substack.com/p/we-are-media-guerrillas-says-one

 

In ‘unprecedented confrontation,’ IDF chief said resists Netanyahu’s order for military action tied to Iran

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Left: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, August 5, 2026; Right: IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir attends a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 10, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90, Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)Left: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, August 5, 2026; Right: IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir attends a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 10, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90, Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Oct 26, 2026

An “unprecedented confrontation” has been unfolding in recent days between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir surrounding an instruction by the prime minister for unspecified military action that defense officials believe could lead to a swift confrontation with Iran shortly before the election, Channel 12 reported Sunday.

The TV network, which cited anonymous sources, said Zamir had been resisting carrying out the military action, no details of which were provided, and sought further deliberations, as well as signed documentation from Netanyahu regarding legal authorization for it.

The issue had come to a head in the past 24 hours, the outlet said, noting that its report was being broadcast within the limitations of Israel’s military censorship regulations.

It quoted a military source saying, “This relates to an action that could lead to a flare-up with Iran, at a sensitive and dramatic moment, creating this [potential] miscalculation.”

The report further quoted unnamed sources familiar with the issue, who said there was concern among military leaders of an effort by the political leadership “to utilize the Iranian issue for political benefit.”

Asked about the report during an interview with Channel 14, Netanyahu called it “nonsense,” saying “there was no fight” with Zamir. Earlier in the interview, the prime minister said that he had recently “instructed the IDF and Mossad to topple the [Iranian] regime,” though this did not seem to be connected to the report of a specific instruction from recent days.

The Channel 12 report said that the hostility and tension between Netanyahu and Zamir were evident at a discussion at Palmahim Airbase on Sunday, where the atmosphere in the room was “extremely sour.”

The report quoted a senior security source as saying, “History will not forget the role that Zamir has played in recent days,” without offering further details.

Channel 13 reported on Thursday that Zamir had said during a recent private meeting that he did not see an operational need to strike Iran before the election. “We do not see any indications of a need to strike Iran before the election. If we determine that a strike on Iran is necessary, we will carry it out,” Zamir was quoted as saying.

Reports have intensified in the final stretch of the election campaign that Netanyahu could be seeking renewed conflict with Iran, allegedly to boost his election prospects or possibly delay the vote. The prime minister has denied such intentions.

Chorus of opposition outrage: He’s gone off the rails

Responding to Sunday’s report, opposition leaders said Netanyahu presented a security threat to the country.

Opposition frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot posted on X, “Netanyahu, I’m watching you,” and added that the premier “refuses to understand that Israel’s security isn’t a tool in a political game, that the lives of Israel’s citizens and IDF soldiers aren’t worthless, and the State of Israel is not his private property.”

Eisenkot voiced support for Zamir and said he would not let “the IDF be turned into a tool in Netanyahu’s campaign of survival.”

Speaking at a campaign rally shortly before Channel 12’s report aired, Eisenkot had told supporters that Netanyahu would go to any lengths to retain power. “I see the polls, I know the data, and I know Netanyahu,” Eisenkot, who chairs the Yashar party, said. “He’ll stop at nothing — no lie, no extreme measure — to stay in power.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, number two in the opposition’s B’Yachad party, wrote that Netanyahu “wants to bring about an escalation and conflict with Iran just to postpone the election. The man has gone off the rails. We must send him home.”

Yair Golan, chair of the left-wing Democrats party and a former deputy IDF chief, voiced support for Zamir and added, “We must not allow any military step that lacks a clear security rationale, strategic goal, and responsible plan of action.”

He added, “When the citizens of Israel go out to vote on Tuesday, they must remember: Netanyahu presents a security threat to Israel. He will not hesitate to sacrifice our children’s lives for his survival on the eve of the election — that’s what the IDF is trying to block.”

Avigdor Liberman, chair of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, wrote, “I have no doubt that Bibi is trying to forcefully drag Israel into military action in order to prevent the election. This behavior is tantamount to treason toward the state and its security.”

He called on Zamir to protect the IDF and its soldiers, and not to “risk them because of the prime minister’s worry that he’s going to lose the election.”

PM again warns Iran

At the same time, both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have increased their threatening rhetoric toward Iran.

Netanyahu on Sunday again warned that Iran or one of its allies could attack in the coming days, urging Tehran not to “test” Israel.

Making the comments in front of an Arrow anti-ballistic missile battery at the Palmahim base, Netanyahu said that the military was prepared for any scenario on “both defense and offense.”

“We have intelligence signs that Iran and its proxies could challenge us with attacks in order to disrupt the elections,” he said, without elaborating.

Netanyahu has issued several similar warnings in recent weeks, sparking complaints from his election rivals, who have accused him of fearmongering and pushing for a renewal of the war against Iran to influence or delay the October 27 vote.

“I’m warning them,” Netanyahu said of Iran on Sunday. “Don’t test us.”

“You will suffer disproportionate blows,” he said. “We are much stronger than you think. Don’t underestimate us. Don’t test us.”

Netanyahu’s warning came hours after he posted an AI image on social media of a nuclear bomb exploding over Tel Aviv, and text suggesting Israel could face a second Holocaust if he was not reelected.

Axios reporter Barak Ravid said officials in the White House were alarmed by the post, fearing it could cause Iranian officials to miscalculate and attack, restarting the war.

He said US President Donald Trump’s statement that there would be no strike on Iran on Sunday may have been a reaction to the prime minister’s post, designed to calm officials in Tehran.

Trump’s comments came just hours after saying that he was facing a crucial decision on Iran.

“Do I make a deal with them or do I finish them off?” he told Fox News. “That’s the only question.”

“We now control the Hormuz Strait,” Trump continued, referring to the critical pathway for the global oil and gas supply, which Iran has sought to obstruct since the beginning of the war in late February. “We get everything; they get nothing.”

Trump said that the US knows “exactly what’s going on at Pickaxe Mountain,” referring to a key Iranian nuclear site that has not been attacked. “We can read the badge on somebody’s shirt.”

Iran says new war will not change anything

Responding to the repeated threats from Netanyahu and Trump, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that a potential resumption of war would not change his country’s positions.

“Recently, there has been talk of a new war, but I am already thinking about the post-war period. Whether there is war or not, our policies remain the same,” said Araghchi during a televised event in Tehran.

“They have already done so twice and have seen the results,” he said. “If they want to try again, they know they will achieve no different outcome from those of the past.”

An April 8 ceasefire between Iran and the United States put an end to the most intense fighting, apart from sporadic exchanges of fire in and around the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy supplies.

These military flare-ups have seen a lull in recent weeks.

Iran has claimed control over the strait since the outbreak of the war and has regularly targeted vessels that attempt to cross without its authorization — moves strongly opposed by Washington and countries in the region.

In response, the US has been maintaining a naval counter-blockade on Iranian ports.

In June, Iran agreed with the United States to a memorandum of understanding laying out a pathway to a permanent settlement of the conflict, only for the deal to quickly unravel as each side accused the other of violating it.

Tehran has since called for a return to talks to end the conflict. According to sources, Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Sunday as part of an effort to de-escalate regional tensions in coordination with the US, though the extent of the meeting was not reported.

“The current war has changed everything. We must accept that new realities are taking hold. Shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz will no longer be the same, and the management of the strait will no longer be the same,” said Araghchi.

“To achieve peace and stability, our region must move towards the complete absence of foreign forces.”

Via https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-unprecedented-confrontation-idf-chief-said-resisting-military-action-tied-to-iran-ordered-by-pm/

Iran Hosts Quadrilateral Meeting with Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia on Regional Security

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Iran Hosts Quadrilateral Meeting with Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia on Regional Security (October 26, 2026),

Al-Manar

Oct 26, 2026

A quadrilateral meeting between Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia on regional security and stability was held in Tehran.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said President Masoud Pezeshkian met with representatives responsible for defense and security affairs from Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The meeting was attended by National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said the defense minister’s visit to Tehran was part of efforts by the parties to the Mecca Agreement on joint defense to de-escalate tensions.

The ministry added that the visit aimed to encourage dialogue and diplomatic solutions among the parties to the current crisis and support mediation efforts led by Qatar and Pakistan.

“We look forward to the parties to the crisis engaging positively and pragmatically with the outcomes of the visit and the mediation efforts,” the ministry said, stressing the importance of opening channels of negotiation to prevent a return to military escalation in the region.

It also expressed hope that an agreement would be reached to end the crisis and achieve security and peace in the region and around the world.

Earlier, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tehran was hosting officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey, adding that the initiative for the meeting emerged during Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran.

The spokesperson said the meeting could pave the way for establishing regional security through greater cooperation among countries in the region.

He added that efforts by regional countries to develop mechanisms for ensuring security based on their own interests were welcome, emphasizing the importance of initiatives that strengthen their ability to safeguard regional stability and security.

Via https://english.almanar.com.lb/article/142997/

Lula’s Upset Win for Rule of Law and Blow to Trump

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Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, greets supporters after casting a ballot at a polling station during the runoff election in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, greets supporters after casting a ballot at a polling station during the runoff election in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on Sunday, October 25.
Maira Erlich/Bloomberg/Getty Images
TNR
Oct 26, 2026

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s surprising victory over far-right, Trump-aligned Flávio Bolsonaro shouldn’t just be celebrated by left-leaning Brazilians. It’s a win for democracy, the environment, and the rule of law that will reverberate globally, since it happened in the world’s seventh-largest country by population. It’s also an important defeat for global villains: the Trump administration, the international far-right movement, and Mark Zuckerberg. And it provides something of a road map for those trying to fight authoritarians around the world.

Brazil had been a shining example of democracy and the rule of law resisting far-right authoritarianism—and this election preserves that legacy.  After Flávio’s father, Jair, was elected president in 2018 and proceeded to rule like a dictator, a broad pro-democracy coalition led by Lula defeated him in the 2022 election. Bolsonaro wouldn’t concede, and his allies attacked government buildings in an attempt to stop the transfer of power, eerily similar to what Trump and his supporters did in the United States two years prior. That effort failed, and Lula took office. Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison (he is on house arrest), while its electoral court barred him from running for public office until 2030. Many scholars and pro-democracy experts say Brazil’s treatment of Jair Bolsonaro is what should have happened to Trump.

Flávio Bolsonaro was likely to govern in the autocratic style of his father and use government power to punish Jair’s enemies. It would have been akin to Donald Trump Jr. being elected president in 2024—not as bad as the autocrat returning to office but essentially an exoneration of his coup attempt. Sunday’s election averted that terrible outcome.

Flávio Bolsonaro was also expected to repeat his father’s aggressive anti-environmental policies. That would lead to further deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest, as James North explained in a recent TNR piece. Another calamity avoided.

And Lula’s win was in many ways a unique victory for democracy itself. The blue wave likely to hit America next month and deliver huge losses to Republicans is excellent news, but Trump’s unpopularity can be attributed to high gas prices and the anti-incumbment sentiment hurting leaders across the world. It’s not clear that the U.S. elections are a rejection of Trump, the far right, or authoritarianism. Brazil is different. Lula is the incumbent. And after he finished behind Bolsonaro in the first round of the election, he and his supporters fully leaned into the argument that Brazil was choosing between democracy and authoritarianism. Brazilians chose democracy, putting aside their concerns about electing an 80-year-old to a fourth term.

“We don’t want dictatorship. We don’t want hatred. We don’t want guns. We want a country of love,” Lula said on the eve of the election.

The Bolsonaros and far-right activists in Brazil weren’t the only losers on Sunday. President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and much of the administration in Washington had worked aggressively to put a Bolsonaro back in power in Brazil. Their regime-change efforts were both overt and covert. After Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction, the U.S. imposed additional tariffs on Brazil and revoked the visa of one of the Brazilian Supreme Court justices involved in the ruling. Trump met with Flávio Bolsonaro in June and released a Truth Social post praising the Brazilian and showing the two of them meeting in the Oval Office.

Behind the scenes, two State Department officials, Darren Beattie, senior adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Ricardo Pita Macedo, deputy assistant secretary for North America, spent the last year imploring U.S. diplomats in Brazil to do everything possible to undermine Lula’s administration and restore a member of the Bolsonaro clan to the presidency, according to a detailed report by Reuters.

The administration’s moves in Brazil are part of a broader imperialistic bid by the United States to dominate Latin America, by either forcing reluctant leaders of those countries to carry out U.S. edicts, helping more pro-American figures win power, or in the case of Venezuela, arresting their leader and then replacing him with a proxy beholden to the U.S. Lula is perhaps the most vocal figure in Latin America opposing Trump’s agenda, both in that region and around the world. It would have been a great victory for Trump to defeat one of his most prominent enemies. Brazil’s voters denied the American autocrat such a win.

Lula’s win is a blow to the billionaire class, as well. While American billionaires weren’t overtly helping Bolsonaro as they do Trump, there is considerable evidence that Instagram was suppressing pro-Lula content but not accounts and posts favorable to Bolsonaro. Brazil’s election court thought that the allegations of favoritism were serious enough that it issued a ruling demanding that Meta’s media platforms treat the candidates’ content equally. (Meta denies that its platforms discriminated against Lula.) 

The other good news about this election is how Lula won. After finishing behind Bolsonaro in the first round of voting, Lula and his campaign essentially adopted an all-of-the above strategy. Lula blasted Bolsonaro’s antidemocratic views while also announcing a slew of populist economic proposals, most notably reducing the workweek there from six days to five. His campaign greatly increased its presence on social media. They aggressively courted people who hadn’t voted in the first round, as well as evangelicals, a bloc that leans right but includes many people who would consider a left-wing candidate.

And Lula’s campaign, unlike liberals in the United States and other nations, didn’t hesitate to bluntly accuse a billionaire-owned social media platform of favoring the right. It forced Meta to commit to neutrality. That’s an important precedent from which other left and liberal leaders around the world should borrow. 

Lula’s campaign didn’t adopt the doom and fatalism of so many of those fighting the far right. They assumed that voters could be convinced to oppose Bolsonaro—and acted on that belief.

To be sure, what happened in Brazil is more avoiding the worst possible outcome than achieving the best one. It’s discouraging that the Bolsonaro family continued to dominate one of Brazil’s major parties after Jair’s antidemocratic rule and coup attempt. It’s even worse that so much of Brazil’s electorate doesn’t prioritize democracy and the rule of law and nearly put a Bolsonaro back into the presidency. And while it didn’t win the presidency, the Bolsonaro-led Liberal Party made huge gains in Brazil’s Congress in this fall’s elections. They will be able to implement much of their agenda and block Lula’s.

And Brazil aside, Trump allies are gaining power throughout Latin America. The far right is ascendant in Germany and much of Europe. And even if Meta was chastened by this election, billionaires will continue to use their media properties and other holdings to help authoritarians, who tend to reduce regulations and taxes on the superrich.

All that said, the narrow defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil likely followed in two weeks by a resounding rejection of Trump’s party in the United States is worth celebrating. The far right isn’t dead. But neither is the movement against the far right.

[…]

Via https://newrepublic.com/article/217122/lula-upset-win-blow-trump

What Is Making People Near Data Centers Sick (and What Could Fix It)

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Data Center Architecture: An In-Depth Overview of Design - Dgtl Infra

A Midwestern Doctor

The noise, infrasound, and dirty electricity pouring out of data centers explain the backlash against them, and the same money driving the buildout could finally bring cheap, clean power to market

Story at a Glance:

•Harmful products are rarely removed because of the harm they cause; they are removed once an equally profitable alternative exists. This article applies that principle to the largest deployment of capital in American history, the AI data center buildout.

•Communities next to data centers are reporting a cluster of health complaints that closely matches what electrically sensitive people have described for decades. A Bloomberg analysis of 770,000 home sensors suggests why: data centers inject enormous amounts of “dirty electricity” back onto the grid, and the worst power distortion in the country clusters within 20 miles of them.

•Since so much money is behind the buildout, a potential solution to this quandary is to make it cheaper to build somewhere data centers do not impact communities, and the unprecedented need for power creates the first real chance in fifty years to bring a cheap, safe, and abundant form of nuclear energy to market.

[…]

The Buildout

The White House’s July 2025 AI Action Plan directed agencies to fast-track any data center needing more than 100 megawatts of power and opened federal land to them,

Because data centers need city-sized amounts of power, land, and fiber, many are being placed in less affluent communities (including throughout the Midwest, which is a large part of why I wrote this). Residents there are experiencing rising electricity bills (as grid upgrade costs get passed to ratepayers; the clearest documented case being the PJM grid serving the mid-Atlantic, whose independent monitor attributed most of a ten-fold jump in capacity prices to data center demand),¹ large water draws for cooling,¹ constant noise from cooling systems and generators, and air pollution from onsite turbines.¹

As a result, local politicians who approved data centers over vocal opposition have been recalled,¹ more than 300 state bills targeting data centers were filed in the first six weeks of 2026,¹ New York enacted the nation’s first statewide moratorium,¹ and in March 2026, 71% of Americans opposed data centers being constructed in their areas. The response from the administration and much of the conservative media has been to characterize this opposition as helping China, and while that is likely true to some degree, it does not negate the fact that what motivates most of the opposition is the impact the centers are having on communities. More importantly, framing the issue this way skips the actual question, which is why the centers are making people sick.

The Bell Curve of Sensitivity

A major theme of this newsletter has been that some individuals are much more sensitive to toxicity than others, and hence are disproportionately injured by things like pharmaceuticals, then gaslighted by their doctors when they experience those injuries.

[…]

Given this, the symptoms people reported from living next to data centers (which were attributed to the noise) caught my eye. Beyond the constant hum, vibration and generator fumes, residents consistently report sleep disruption, headaches or migraines, feeling constantly on edge, fatigue and poor concentration, nausea, dizziness or vertigo, ear pressure or fullness, tinnitus, and feeling the sound in the head or chest,¹,²,³ along with pets becoming restless and birds disappearing. Many of these (headaches, sleep disruption, fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus) overlap with what individuals with electromagnetic hypersensitivity report,¹,² and already EMF sensitive individuals report some of their other symptoms (e.g., burning skin) near data centers.

[…]

Sound Toxicity

Data centers produce a constant hum from their cooling systems (along with diesel generators during tests and outages, and at some sites gas turbines that run around the clock), and residents describe it as a vacuum left on that can still be heard after going inside, along with vibration in windows, walls, and sometimes the body, and a sense of pressure rather than an ordinary sound.

However, infrasound did not explain the rest of what people were reporting, and I did not see why a data center would need to emit massive amounts of microwave radiation into its vicinity (which is typically generated by cell phones, WIFI, bluetooth or radar).

Dirty Electricity

With EMFs, the greatest effects people experience are typically from microwave sources. However, the fields generated by electrical wiring also cause issues, particularly when “dirty electricity” (high-frequency electrical noise riding on household 50/60 Hz wiring) is present,¹,²,³ which is often due to devices within the home (e.g., solar inverters¹ or certain bulbs that sometimes need to be removed to provide sensitive individuals with relief).

From looking this up, I discovered the actual issue appears to be that data centers draw their power through enormous non-linear loads (tens of thousands of switched-mode server power supplies, uninterruptible power systems, and variable-speed cooling), which inject harmonics and high-frequency voltage distortion back onto the grid. But rather than a few low-output devices creating it, something which draws 10,000 times as much power as a house is doing it and affecting everything around it.

In December 2024, Bloomberg News published a remarkable study of 770,000 home power-quality sensors made by Whisker Labs (which are dense enough that nearly 90% of American homes are within half a mile of one), cross-referenced against the locations of nearly 1,500 data centers. Using the 8% total harmonic distortion threshold the IEEE considers damaging to equipment, Bloomberg found:

-More than three-quarters of the highly distorted readings in the country were within 50 miles of significant data center activity, and more than half of the households with the worst distortion were within 20 miles. The sensors with the cleanest power were typically at least 87 miles from any major data center. About 3.7 million Americans live in the most affected areas.

-In Loudoun County, Virginia (home to “data center alley”), the share of sensors exceeding the 8% threshold was more than four times the national average, and around one newly opened facility nearby, 78% of sensors were above the limit.

-The worst distortions occurred at night, when data centers make up a larger share of total demand (i.e., when everyone else is asleep and the servers are not).

[…]

Bloomberg’s concern was electronics (appliances running hot, motors rattling, lights flickering, increased fire risk, and billions in cumulative damage to home appliances and grid equipment). However, as a limited body of research on dirty electricity has shown, there are also consequences for human beings, including many of the exact same symptoms individuals living near data centers report (sleep disruption, headaches, irritability, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus, worsened asthma, and nausea).¹,²,³ Animal studies corroborate this (e.g., a study of 1,705 cows across 12 dairy farms found milk production fell in proportion to the transients and harmonics on the farms’ power, and that the distortion was coming from the utility lines rather than the farms).

[…]

Solving the Data Center Dilemma

The AI sector faces a few critical bottlenecks: shortages of chips, insufficient energy (Musk recently cited a consensus estimate of at least a 15-gigawatt power shortfall for AI chips in 2027),¹ a grid that cannot sustain the loads, and public pushback that can block construction or shift elections. Given the law of displacement, I believe these pressures will force the industry to find a way to scale without harming anyone, and the ideal site for a data center is not hard to describe: cold (so cooling costs largely disappear), on U.S. soil, sparsely populated (so the noise, water, and dirty electricity land on no one), rich in energy that can be used on site rather than pulled off a residential grid, and wanted by its state government.

Alaska meets every one of those criteria. Its mean annual temperature is about 35°F against Texas’s 65°F (and the North Slope averages 14°F), which the governor has said saves a one-gigawatt campus on the order of $150 million a year in cooling.¹ It has 740,000 people on a landmass larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. The state has issued a preliminary decision to lease North Slope land for a 1–3 gigawatt campus disconnected from the grid,¹ and the North Slope holds 37 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that has been stranded for fifty years because no pipeline was ever built to move it.¹

The model that works in Alaska is the one the lower 48 states lack and will likely soon need (and the one figures like JD Vance have begun calling for in response to the pushback): generation built next to the servers, consumed behind the meter, and never touching a residential wire. This matters because the harmonics a data center produces travel along whatever wiring connects it to everyone else, so a campus on its own generation keeps its dirty electricity to itself rather than pushing it onto homes twenty miles away. Likewise, Alaska is already built on the principle that resource extraction pays the public, so a lease written with a percentage of receipts flowing to residents turns the host from a victim into a shareholder.

The Thorium Opportunity

This is also what makes Alaska the natural home for something I have waited decades to see. I care immensely about the health of the earth, and after looking at every alternative energy option, I long ago concluded “green nuclear power” was the most viable one we had, then watched the promising designs go nowhere. The most promising is thorium: there is 3–4 times as much of it in the earth as uranium¹ (and since it occurs alongside the rare earths America is now scrambling to secure, we already extract it and then throw it away as radioactive waste), all of it can be used as fuel (rather than the 0.72% of uranium that can, which leaves behind mountains of depleted waste), the molten-salt designs it is paired with have no solid core to melt (if they overheat, the salt expands, the reaction slows, and the fuel drains into a tank without pumps), they produce far less long-lived waste, and they greatly reduce the risk of weapons proliferation, since no enrichment plants are needed.

This raises the obvious question of why it was never adopted. Simply put, the entire American nuclear complex was built as a weapons program with a civilian branch attached, and uranium was the fuel that made weapons. Oak Ridge demonstrated a working molten salt reactor in the 1960s, but in the early 1970s the Atomic Energy Commission committed the country to a plutonium breeder instead, its director Alvin Weinberg was pushed out after eighteen years for continuing to argue his reactor was the safer path, and the program was cancelled in 1973.¹,² Thorium’s low proliferation risk, now its great selling point, at the time simply meant it did not offer what the nuclear establishment wanted. After that, the industry became large enough to keep competitors from getting off the ground (mirroring what I have watched happen with countless forgotten medical technologies).

The result is that the technology now requires a supply chain that does not exist, so two things are needed: a relaxing of regulatory restrictions (which began in May 2025, when Trump signed executive orders setting a goal of quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050 and ordering the NRC to decide new reactor applications within 18 months)¹ and a very large investment, which is now possible for the first time, as an industry has emerged that needs enormous amounts of power and is willing to pay almost anything for it. The published models place thorium power among the cheapest sources of electricity ($20–55 per megawatt hour),¹,² a fraction of what new conventional nuclear plants cost ($175–255).¹

[…]

Via https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-is-making-people-near-data-centers

Putin-Witkoff talks expose broken Western unity on Ukraine

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By Ahmed Adel
October 24, 2026

Germany, France and Britain struggle to prop up Zelensky amid US-Russian push.

On October 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin met in St. Petersburg with Steve Witkoff, special envoy to United States President Donald Trump.

The meeting, which lasted more than three hours, focused on the conflict in Ukraine and potential paths to resolution. Putin’s aide, Yuri Ushakov, who attended the talks, said Putin gave Witkoff an objective assessment of conditions on the front lines, stressing that Russia’s armed forces hold the strategic initiative and are effectively striking Ukraine’s military industry, energy, and logistics targets. Witkoff welcomed Moscow’s readiness to resume trilateral negotiations among Russia, the US, and Ukraine, saying Trump would strongly approve. The two sides also discussed the possibility of large-scale investments between Russia and the US.

The meeting followed a series of public statements by Trump criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to pursue a negotiated end to the conflict. Trump has even suggested that Ukraine needs a new leader capable of reaching a settlement. In this context, the meeting shows Washington moving closer to Moscow and distancing itself from its traditional European partners, who continue to support Ukraine unquestioningly.

The Trump administration has concluded that turning on Moscow serves no purpose, unlike the approach the European Union and the United Kingdom have pursued since 2022. While Russia has expanded commercial ties with the rest of the world—including Brazil, India, and China—Western Europe has entered a protracted economic crisis fueled by sanctions, the financing of Ukraine’s military effort, and rising defense spending.

Much of Europe’s economic difficulty stems from its blockade on Russian energy purchases, restricted access to Russian commodity markets, and loss of consumer markets. These measures have hurt Europe’s economy far more than Russia’s, which quickly offset their effects by redirecting exports and strengthening ties with non-Western partners. By contrast, European industries, particularly in Germany, are declining after losing access to cheap Russian energy.

Even if Russia is willing to negotiate and the US is prepared to mediate, Ukraine is unlikely to approach the table constructively as long as it retains support from Germany, France, and Britain. Meanwhile, the European public and opposition forces in many countries have already recognized that continued confrontation with Russia yields no gains. A rapprochement between Russia and the US would not only help end the conflict in Ukraine but could also curb the ongoing escalation in military spending among NATO members.

Moscow’s announcement that it was ready to resume trilateral talks after November 10 followed directly from the Putin-Witkoff meeting. During the meeting, Putin also praised American mediation efforts.

Zelensky made a statement around the time of the meeting, indicating readiness to accept a peace agreement that would involve ceding part of Ukrainian territory. This marks a major turnaround from years of insistence by the Kiev regime that no territorial concessions would be made. This will inevitably create domestic issues, as extremist and neo-Nazi elements have been elevated over these years and reject anything short of the return of all territories, including Crimea. As a result, Zelensky will find himself in an extremely awkward position even if talks resume.

Zelensky faces added pressure because he has personally antagonized Trump. The American president has publicly said Zelensky should be replaced and that someone else should negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf. Intelligence sharing has also been visibly disrupted. Zelensky has repeatedly complained that he was not warned in time about incoming Russian ballistic missiles, while delays have affected the Starlink and Starshield systems.

Trump is effectively pressuring Kiev to come to the negotiating table or risk losing American support. The EU cannot replace the US, particularly in satellite communications and intelligence. Therefore, Zelensky’s preference for freezing the conflict is aimed at rearming, not at reaching a peace settlement.

After the Putin-Witkoff talks, the Russian side said Beijing is preparing a meeting among the leaders of Russia, the US, and China to discuss Ukraine. The meeting could take place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18–19, and all three leaders have already indicated they will attend. If Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping agree on the basic principles of a peace deal, it will make it nearly impossible for the EU to continue making extreme demands from a different position.

Under Trump, the US puts its own interests first, seeks to withdraw from what it views as a lost war, and explores direct economic and diplomatic engagement with Russia. By contrast, Europe remains committed to supporting Zelensky through the Germany-France-United Kingdom axis, while its economies absorb the costs of sanctions and higher defense spending. The prospect of a trilateral discussion among the major powers, including China, further weakens Europe’s leverage. The St. Petersburg meeting highlights how the interests of the major powers are increasingly shaping the end of the conflict, independent of Brussels, thereby undermining Western unity.

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-witkoff-talks-expose-broken-western-unity-on-ukraine/5944385

The Climate Scenario That Changed the World — And Is Now Being Quietly Dropped

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By Mark Keenan
October 25, 2026

For more than a decade, one climate scenario exercised extraordinary influence over public policy, media reporting, corporate planning, and public consciousness.

Most people never heard of it. It was known simply as RCP 8.5.

Yet behind countless headlines predicting climate catastrophe, behind many of the studies cited by activists and politicians, and behind much of the urgency driving climate policy stood this single scenario.

Different RCP scenarios result in different predicted greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (from 2000 to 2100).

RCP8.5 would result in the highest greenhouse gas concentration (measured as CO2-equivalents). (CC BY-SA 4.0)

RCP 8.5 was developed as one of several emissions pathways used by the IPCC climate-modelling community.

Although originally intended as a high-end scenario, it gradually became treated throughout much of the scientific literature, media reporting, and policy discussion as a plausible “business as usual” future.

Thousands of studies employed it. Governments used projections derived from it. Journalists routinely cited forecasts based upon it. Yet in recent years a growing number of researchers involved in climate scenario development have argued that its assumptions do not represent a realistic pathway for the world economy. The debate has now become sufficiently prominent that even many mainstream climate scientists no longer describe it as the most likely future.

Now, with the development of the next generation of climate scenarios for CMIP7 and the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, its role as a plausible baseline future is being quietly retired and pushed aside with remarkably little public discussion.

My attention was first drawn to this important development through the work of Dutch science journalist Marcel Crok, director of Clintel (Climate Intelligence), whose recent analysis highlighted the significance of the proposed changes to the IPCC’s next generation of climate scenarios. Crok has been documenting the problems surrounding RCP 8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 for many years, including in Clintel’s 2023 book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC.

For years the public was told the world was heading toward catastrophe. Trillions of dollars of spending, regulations, taxes, subsidies, net-zero policies, ESG mandates, school curricula, media campaigns, and legal judgments were justified using projections heavily reliant on a scenario that many climate scientists now acknowledge was implausible.

The controversy is not that the IPCC has formally deleted RCP 8.5. It has not.

The controversy is that a scenario frequently presented to the public as a plausible “business as usual” future is increasingly being treated by many climate researchers as an extreme stress-test rather than a realistic forecast. The scenario itself remains available for modelling exercises, but its status has changed dramatically.

Roger Pielke Jr. has argued for years that RCP 8.5 was being misused as a “business as usual” future and that much climate-impact research came to rely upon an increasingly implausible emissions pathway. More recently, Detlef van Vuuren and more than forty scientists involved in developing the next generation of official CMIP7 climate scenarios concluded that the highest-emissions pathway should no longer be regarded as a plausible representation of the world’s likely future. The key passage is in Section 2.2.2:

“For the 21st century, this range will be smaller than assessed before: on the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible…”

Even scientists who strongly support climate action increasingly describe SSP5-8.5 as a high-risk stress-test scenario rather than a realistic baseline forecast.

In effect, one of the most influential scenarios underpinning the modern climate emergency narrative has shifted from “this is where we are heading” to “this is a highly adverse scenario that may never occur.”

An important question is what the rise and decline of RCP 8.5 reveals about the way modern societies increasingly govern themselves through models rather than reality. RCP 8.5 was never merely an obscure scientific exercise. It became the engine room of modern climate alarmism.

Newspaper headlines warning of climate catastrophe, studies predicting economic collapse, forecasts of mass migration, agricultural failure, and extreme weather frequently relied upon assumptions embedded within RCP 8.5.

Although originally developed as an extreme emissions pathway, it gradually came to be treated as something very different: the future we were supposedly heading toward if governments failed to act.

Schoolchildren were frightened with projections built upon it. Politicians cited it. Activists marched beneath its shadow. Courts referenced studies derived from it. Corporations restructured investment strategies around it.

Entire industries emerged to manage the risks of a future that increasingly appeared unlikely even to many climate researchers. In theory, RCP 8.5 represented only one possible future among several. Over time, however, it acquired a status far beyond that original role. It became the climate apocalypse scenario.

Again and again, dramatic forecasts of future warming, extreme weather, crop failures, economic disruption, and environmental catastrophe were built upon assumptions contained within RCP 8.5. Although often presented to the public as a likely future, critics increasingly argued that many of its underlying assumptions were detached from observable economic and technological trends.

Even scientists who broadly accepted mainstream climate theory began questioning whether the scenario represented a plausible future. The world envisioned by RCP 8.5 appeared increasingly unlikely.

Yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the implications of this shift. For years, some of the most alarming climate projections presented to the public were derived from assumptions that many experts now regard as implausible.

Under RCP 8.5, researchers projected everything from dramatic increases in heat-related mortality and economic damages to severe agricultural disruption, sea-level impacts, and more frequent extreme weather losses.

The scenario appeared in thousands of academic papers and became deeply embedded in climate-impact research. Studies based on RCP 8.5 were cited in climate litigation, adaptation planning, ESG investment frameworks, and government policy documents around the world.

Imagine a pharmaceutical company selling a drug using a risk assessment model that was later deemed unrealistic.

Imagine a bank restructuring the financial system using stress tests based upon assumptions later acknowledged to be implausible.

Imagine military planners justifying vast expenditures using threat projections their own analysts no longer considered credible.

There would be inquiries, investigations, and demands for accountability.

Yet when one of the most influential climate scenarios in history quietly falls from favour, the reaction is largely silence.

There are no front-page apologies.

No public reassessments by the media organisations that amplified the most alarming projections.

No serious discussion of whether citizens were given a balanced picture of the uncertainties involved.

Consider some of the consequences.

Governments across the Western world declared climate emergencies.

Net-zero commitments were embedded into law.

Pension funds and investment firms adopted ESG frameworks.

Courts increasingly entertained climate litigation.

Schoolchildren were told they faced an existential threat.

Entire sectors of the economy were reorganised around assumptions derived from climate projections.

Yet remarkably little attention is being paid to the fact that one of the most influential scenarios underpinning those projections is no longer regarded by many experts as a realistic representation of the future.

Instead, the climate emergency narrative simply moves on.

This should matter. Not because climate never changes. Not because environmental stewardship is unimportant.  But because policies affecting billions of people were often justified using projections built upon this framework.

The issue extends beyond climate science itself. RCP 8.5 illustrates a broader tendency that has become increasingly common throughout modern society.

Models are useful tools. They allow researchers to explore possibilities and test assumptions. Problems arise when hypothetical scenarios are transformed into political narratives and then presented as probable realities.

What remains is the conclusion.

Eventually, many people came to assume that its projections represented the future rather than one hypothetical future. As questions about RCP 8.5 accumulated, however, a curious thing happened.

There was no major public reckoning. No widespread media reflection. No serious discussion about whether the public had been misled regarding the likelihood of extreme climate outcomes. Instead, the scenario simply began fading from prominence.

The climate emergency narrative remained. The policy agenda remained. The rhetoric remained. Only the underlying scenario quietly changed. This should concern anyone who values scientific integrity.

The problem arises when institutions spend years promoting a particular narrative and then show little interest in examining whether the assumptions behind that narrative were sound.

Most importantly, it raises uncomfortable questions about how modern societies make decisions.  The central issue is whether governments, media organisations, corporations, and international institutions should build policy around increasingly speculative models while presenting their conclusions as settled reality.

This question extends far beyond climate. A new technocratic culture is emerging in which models often enjoy greater authority than direct observation.

The disappearance of RCP 8.5 should therefore serve as a warning. Not merely about climate science. About governance itself. A free society depends upon informed citizens capable of questioning assumptions and evaluating competing claims. It cannot function properly if speculative models are repeatedly transformed into unquestionable political truths.

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-scenario-changed-world-now-quietly-dropped/5930681

Pakistan reopens Iran border crossing after week-long closure sparks fuel shortages

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(Photo credit: AFP)

The Cradle

OCT 25, 2026

Washington is seeking to strangle Iran economically through a land and sea blockade

Pakistan reopened its border crossing with Iran at Gabd-Rimdan, restoring bilateral trade and allowing stranded trucks to resume movement, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported on 25 October.

The border was opened after a week-long closure that choked off vital food and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) imports from Iran to Pakistan.

Pakistani border officials cleared commercial vehicles possessing a consignment note dated 16 October or earlier to cross the Gabd-Rimdan gate in Gwadar.

“Pakistan has opened the border with Iran at Gabd-Rimdan this morning and allowed trucks and other vehicles to move toward Iran and Pakistan with import and export goods,” confirmed Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the Gwadar Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Pakistan’s resumption of cross-border trade with Iran is expected to ease a nationwide LPG shortage and reduce soaring energy and food prices.

Hundreds of trucks were stranded on the border, many carrying perishable foods.

Pakistan imports ​about 7,000 metric tons of LPG a day from Iran, including more than 4,000 tons a day through Gabd-Rimdan.

The closure caused the price of a 12 kg LPG cylinder to rise from 4,500 Pakistani rupees ($25) to 7,000 rupees ($45) within days.

The Gabd-Rimdan and Taftan crossings were closed on 17 October amid unclear circumstances, Reuters reported last week.

Local Pakistani officials said they ordered the closure to address security concerns and fight smuggling. Iran’s foreign ministry cited technical issues.

On Thursday, unidentified gunmen attacked commercial vehicles stuck near the closed border crossing, setting dozens of trucks ablaze and damaging several others.

However, pressure from Washington on Pakistan to enforce US sanctions on Iran may also have played a role in the border closure.

“Although Pakistani officials have cited security concerns, the decision to close the border appears to be motivated by broader strategic considerations, with security as a possible factor amid economic sanctions on Iran,” Imtiaz Baloch, a Quetta-based independent researcher, told Al Jazeera.

On Thursday, unidentified gunmen targeted the backlog of freight vehicles parked near the closed Gabd-Rimdan crossing, setting dozens of trucks on fire.

Meanwhile, Iraq shut the strategic Al-Sheeb border crossing with Iran on 21 October, in response to intense US pressure on Baghdad to strangle the Islamic Republic.

An Iraqi source told AFP that the crossing was shut “until further notice.” Two other sources said Washington is pressuring Baghdad to close more border crossings.

Iranian judiciary-linked website Mizan reported that the shutting of the crossing came “following a decision by the Iraqi prime minister’s office.”

According to other sources, the US wants Iraq to close all its border crossings with Iran.

Separately, the UAE-based Al-Ain outlet reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi informed leaders of the Shia-led Coordination Framework, during a 19 October meeting, that Washington had demanded the closures.

Zaidi was reportedly informed that the US will resume its war on Iran. “Iraq cannot become involved in this war, and its repercussions will affect the political system and the state,” an Iraqi source told Al-Ain.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/pakistan-reopens-iran-border-crossing-after-week-long-closure-sparks-fuel-shortages