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Taxpayers Must Not Be on the Hook for Bailing Out the AI Industry

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By C.J. Polychroniou

September 3, 2026

Hundreds of billions of dollars are flooding the AI industry. Economist Gerald Epstein says this bubble could burst.

The U.S. economy is heading toward uncharted territory. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming business operations and all areas of finance, the national debt is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and most middle-income Americans cannot keep up with rising costs. Moreover, as hundreds of billions of dollars are flooding into artificial intelligence, there are serious concerns that an AI bubble could trigger another bailout with taxpayer money.

In the interview that follows, leading progressive economist Gerald Epstein, who initiated and directs the Game Changers project at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talks about AI’s impact on finance and the bailout problem and how a transformative public finance strategy can revive democracy, promote equity and social justice, and build strong and sustainable communities. Epstein is professor of economics and founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute.

C.J. Polychroniou: AI is possibly the fastest-growing technology in history and is already reshaping the U.S. economy in innumerable ways as organizations of all kinds are deploying AI tools across every functional area. But there are many public concerns surrounding AI, including whether it is becoming “too big to fail.” If so, taxpayer money may be used yet again to bail out private companies and institutions from collapse. What are the dangers here?

Gerald Epstein: There are indeed many public concerns about the economic and financial implications of AI. But let me focus on AI’s impact on finance as there are legitimate fears that the government may be asked at some point to bail out the AI industry, especially given the close ties of the Trump administration to AI firms.

As Marc Jarsulic and I argue in our Game Changers policy analysis “No More Bailouts,” the AI investment boom is increasing the level of risk for AI-related firms. The reason is that for these investments to be profitable, AI revenue will need to grow substantially. But some financial analysts doubt that the revenue will materialize. For example, in Bain’s Technology Report 2025, it is estimated that capital expenditures of $500 billion per year would be required to cover anticipated AI demand. To fund this investment, annual AI revenue would need to increase to $2 trillion. However, after accounting for likely cost reductions at the AI firms, Bain’s research concluded that their annual revenues would fall $800 billion short of that mark.

In that context, some of the risks of the AI-led investment boom have been shifted to financial markets as the AI boom is relying increasingly on debt. The revenues of the tech monopolies are extraordinary, but they are insufficient to pay all the costs of data centers. In 2025, the capital expenditures of the top five hyperscalers were more than 30 percent of their total revenue. They are projected to rise to more than 40 percent by the end of 2026. This has forced these companies to turn to debt and equity markets for finance. In 2025, major tech hyperscalers alone issued $120 billion in debt, but the figure was pushed toward $175 billion in 2026 and is expected to rise to $300 billion annually in the coming years.

A distorted government response to an AI-bust is in the cards. A rational policy response to an AI bust would not include bailouts of AI-related firms or their creditors. The investment boom, and the debt that helps finance it, have been engineered by sophisticated actors aiming to dominate a potentially lucrative innovation. There is no ex ante (“before the event”) government safety net for financial bets of this kind. Caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) applies to the firms playing the AI domination game if it ever applied to anyone. Unfortunately, we cannot count on a rational response from the current administration. Extensive conflicts of interest and cronyism mean that government bailouts for insiders would be on the table. Hyperscalers and other AI-related firms have received extraordinary government support. The Trump administration has taken over 90 federal actions to help the AI industry, including executive orders easing permitting for massive data centers, federal support for AI exports and reducing regulatory barriers for the industry. The Trumpian transactional quid pro quo is apparent. Nvidia and Intel have given the government equity to curry favor. A number of major AI companies contributed several million dollars to Trump’s White House demolition — a.k.a. his “ballroom” — fund. And AI firms continue to finance MAGA. This is business as usual for Trump.

If AI goes south, we should expect major pressures from the Trump administration for a debt- or taxpayer-funded bailout.

Bailout operations are a trademark of neoliberalism. That being said, what is the actual problem with bailouts, and how do we put an end to the bailout problem?

Charles Kindleberger, the famed MIT economic historian, summed it best when he said that international financial crises are “a hardy perennial” of capitalism. Going back to the 16th century, bubbles and crashes have occurred roughly every 10 years. And government bailouts have not been far behind. As Andrew Haldane, former chief economist of the Bank of England, put it, “Historically, the link between the state and the banking system has been umbilical. Starting with the first Italian banking houses in the 13th century, banks were financiers of the sovereign.”

Sovereign defaults were frequent and dangerous for banks. But, as Haldane noted, “For the past two centuries, the tables have progressively turned. The state has instead become the last-resort financier of the banks” through bailouts and other supports.

Ominously, writing in 2009, Haldane noted that “Today, perhaps the biggest risk to the sovereign comes from the banks. Causality has been reversed.” In other words, these days, the pressure for massive bailouts can get so powerful that the resulting government debt can be destabilizing for the entire economy. The extreme financial deregulation cemented by Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, and others, best exemplified by the overthrow of the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, paved the way for the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 tried to put new guardrails into place but began to be eroded by both Democrats and Republicans even before the ink was dry. It has now practically been torn up by the Trump administration in its push for all-out war on financial regulation.

Government bailouts are in the cards not only for AI. Crypto might be in line as well. Crypto currencies are privately created, speculative, and highly volatile digital “assets.” They are traded on online private exchanges. As with war, one might ask: what is crypto good for? Despite crypto’s common reference as a “digital currency,” the fact of the matter is that it satisfies virtually none of the qualifications to serve as a currency. It is not widely accepted as a means of exchange; it is highly subject to fraud; the “blockchain” technology that underlies it is inefficient and error-prone; and, perhaps most important, its value relative to goods and services is highly unstable.

There are “use cases” for crypto, but they are mainly for money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. According to the 2026 Crypto Crime Report, crypto laundering activities skyrocketed in 2025, with a record $158 billion of crypto tokens were sent to criminal wallets, representing a 145 percent increase from the previous year.

Like AI, the growth of the crypto industry creates a raft of problems for the financial sector. A run on stablecoins backed by a significant amount of short-term Treasury bills could create a market shock.

As Andrew Haldane emphasized, an important factor that leads to financial crises is the financier expectation of government bailouts. These bailouts mean that financiers do not have to pay the full costs of their risky behavior and, as a result, they take on more risk than is warranted, risks that increase the chances their banks will get into financial trouble. The insurance term for this dynamic is “moral hazard.”

A no-bailout rule would help interrupt this dynamic. Perhaps the best-known early advocate for such a rule was the 19th century journalist and economic commentator, Walter Bagehot. Bagehot’s prescription for central bank bailouts dealing with a financial panic was clear: the central bank should lend freely, only to solvent banks, against good collateral and at a high (penalty) rate of interest. In other words, no bailouts for the bankrupt. A commitment to a no-bailout rule would help prevent the development of financial doom loops of excessive risk-taking, crisis and bailout. But historically, as Kindleberger puts it, “the only rule is that there is no rule.” Central banks and governments have felt compelled to bail out banks and/or financial markets when panic strikes, it seems, no matter what preconceived strictures they have tried to put on their behavior.

Progressive economics also mandates that we address the problem of inequality. How can this be done in a manner that is consistent with sound public finance, especially since, as you have pointed out, “the way Washington finances its spending today is itself a driver of inequality.”

As Aaron Medlin and I show in our Game Changers analysis of tax policy, the United States has a massive inequality problem. The top 1 percent of households hold about a third of the nation’s household wealth and roughly half of the stock market. In terms of income, the top 1 percent takes home twice as much total income as the entire bottom half of the country combined.

The way Washington finances its spending today is itself a driver of inequality. Working Americans cover much of the cost through taxes on their labor income, while the wealthy and corporations pay far less than their share. What these regressive arrangements leave uncollected, the government borrows, largely from those same wealthy households, paying them interest year after year and deepening the concentration of income and wealth. Our proposal flips the script by funding the future in a completely different way: it asks the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share, creating more equality in the process.

Republican administrations especially — beginning with Ronald Reagan, then George W. Bush, and continuing through both Trump terms — have made these problems much worse, enacting large tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and greatly widen federal deficits. In July 2025, the Trump administration signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which permanently extended and expanded the 2017 tax cuts and delivered its largest gains to the top. The richest 1 percent of households are projected to receive tax cuts worth more than $50,000 a year, and the richest 10 percent more than $14,700 a year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the law will reduce federal revenue by trillions of dollars over the next decade and widen the deficit by roughly $3 trillion through 2034, and, in fact, more than $4 trillion once added interest is counted, while increasing spending on the military and immigration enforcement. These trends have been compounded by a steep decline in corporate tax revenue, from about 7 percent of GDP in 1944 to about 1 percent in 2019.

[…]

Via https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/03/taxpayers-must-not-be-on-the-hook-for-bailing-out-the-ai-industry/

MMR Vaccine-Linked Deaths Outnumber Measles Deaths in 2026

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Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

A 1-year-old died from cardiac arrest one day after MMR, another 1-year-old died from disseminated vaccine rubella, and a 76-year-old died from vaccine-associated measles pneumonia.

So far in 2026, there have been

Yet Americans hear virtually nothing about deaths occurring after MMR vaccination. Instead, the captured mass media blasted out headlines claiming that two children in Pennsylvania had died from measles—claims that have since fallen apart under scrutiny. Meanwhile, three highly concerning MMR-linked deaths have already appeared in VAERS this year:

2026 U.S. MMR VACCINE DEATH REPORTS (VAERS): 3

1-year-old boy: fatal cardiac arrest just ONE DAY after MMR

The first case involves a 1-year-old boy who suffered fatal cardiac arrest just one day after receiving MMR. The extraordinarily short interval makes the report impossible to simply dismiss as some distant event occurring long after vaccination. Along with MMR, he was also subjected to a battery of four additional vaccines—Varivax, Havrix, Vaxelis, and Prevnar 20—for five vaccines total at the same visit. The child was hyper-vaccinated and died the following day.

1-year-old girl: died from disseminated rubella after MMR

The second case is even more biologically concerning. A 1-year-old girl died from disseminated rubella after receiving MMR. She reportedly had an undiagnosed primary immunodeficiency when she was vaccinated.

This matters because MMR does not contain an inert rubella antigen. It contains a live attenuated rubella virus designed to replicate in a controlled manner and generate immunity. In a person with severe immune dysfunction, however, the immune system can fail to adequately contain or eliminate the attenuated virus. Instead of remaining limited, vaccine-strain virus can persist and disseminate into tissues throughout the body leading to multi-organ failure.

76-year-old woman: vaccine-strain measles detected during fatal pneumonia

The third case may be the most remarkable of all. A 76-year-old woman developed measles vaccine-associated pneumonia after receiving MMR, progressed to severe respiratory failure, and died after a 16-day hospitalization.

Critically, vaccine-strain measles was detected in her respiratory tract, including pulmonary samples. In other words, this was not simply a patient who happened to test positive for measles after vaccination. Molecular testing identified the vaccine strain itself.

The measles component of MMR is also a live attenuated virus. In immunocompromised individuals, the weakened virus can escape normal immune control, continue replicating, and produce serious systemic disease. When that process involves the lungs, it can produce measles pneumonitis or pneumonia, impair oxygen exchange, and progress to respiratory failure.

2026 U.S. MEASLES DEATHS: 0

Now contrast those three reports with what happened in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania officials announced two “measles-associated deaths,” but the CDC refused to add them to the national measles death count, stating that the available information “does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

The first infant did not die from measles according to the coroner’s assessment of the primary cause of death. The child suffered a ruptured or lacerated spleen with catastrophic internal bleeding. Despite that, the death was publicly promoted as “measles-associated.”

The second Pennsylvania case remains even less clear. No case details have been released, no cause of death has been provided, and there has been no confirmation of measles involvement. It may be an entirely fabricated “measles death” pending the release of such information.

CONCLUSION

That leaves an extraordinary contrast in 2026: ZERO confirmed U.S. measles deaths, while at least THREE deaths have already been reported following MMR vaccination.

One involved fatal cardiac arrest the day after vaccination.

One involved fatal disseminated rubella after administration of a live rubella-containing vaccine.

And one involved fatal measles vaccine-associated pneumonia with vaccine-strain measles detected in the respiratory tract.

VAERS is widely recognized to be substantially underreported. A federally funded investigation led by Lazarus et al. found that fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events may be reported to national surveillance systems. In other words, there are likely far more 2026 MMR vaccine deaths.

These three 2026 reports also arrive against the backdrop of our recent nationwide study of MMR/MMRV-associated mortality in VAERS, where we found hundreds of sudden deaths among infants and toddlers within days of MMR vaccination—2,657% more deaths than measles itself. The fatal presentations included sudden infant death syndrome and unexplained sudden death, cardiac arrest, seizures, respiratory distress, encephalitis, and severe febrile illness.

The captured mass media will blast an alleged measles death across the country before the underlying facts are even known. But when a toddler dies one day after MMR, or when vaccine-strain virus itself is implicated in a fatal illness, the silence is deafening.

[…]

Via https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/mmr-vaccine-linked-deaths-outnumber

West not safe from Ukrainian terror

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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova during a regular press briefing.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow, January 26, 2024. ©  Sputnik/Sergey Guneev

RT

4 Sep, 2026 

Kiev’s backers have created a monster they cannot control, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said

Kiev’s Western backers cannot guarantee that Ukrainian terrorist attacks will not endanger their own citizens, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

Moscow has long accused the Ukrainian government of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin has described Vladimir Zelensky’s recent threat against foreign airlines operating in Russia as “state terrorism.”

“They (Western nations) have created a monster, and we always said that this monster will go rogue, as did all the monsters they created before,” Zakharova told Izvestia on Friday.

“What guarantee do they have that Zelensky won’t strike their own citizens when carrying out those terrorist attacks?” she added. “Nobody could ever guarantee that.”

In June, a female Ukrainian national carried out a bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family. After returning to Ukraine, she was allegedly murdered by two suspected masterminds of the plot – an active operative of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency and a police officer suspected of secretly working for the domestic security service SBU.

The same agencies were involved in firefights in Kiev this week in what appeared to be a dispute over custody of an HUR operative whom the SBU has accused of involvement in a for-profit plot to organize a political assassination.

German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which caused one of the most serious incidents of damage to energy infrastructure in recent history.

Media reports have also described clandestine Ukrainian operations in Africa and the Middle East purportedly intended to undermine Russian interests, including the training and arming of local militant groups

Kiev has also been blamed for dozens of drone attacks targeting commercial vessels involved in Russian maritime trade, a practice Moscow has denounced as outright piracy.

Putin criticized Ukraine’s Western backers in remarks on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they effectively become accomplices.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/russia/645123-zakharova-ukrainian-terrorism-west/

Trump envoys in Moscow: Where do peace talks stand?

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Trump envoys in Moscow: Where do peace talks stand?
US President Donald Trump during a plenary session with development countries at the G7 Summit, Evian-les-Bains, France, June 16, 2026. © Getty Images / Anna Moneymaker

RT

5 Sep, 2026

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are bringing a “proposal to end the war” to Moscow and Kiev.

The “situational pause” in US President Donald Trump’s effort to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict has seemingly come to an end, with his diplomatic envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, on the ground in Moscow and expected to later stop in Kiev.

The mediation process has been on hold due to the crisis in the Middle East, and the twin visits have been anticipated for months already.

Here is RT’s breakdown of where the peace process stands:

A visit to both capitals?

Witkoff and Kushner have arrived in Moscow for talks anticipated to take place on Saturday. They were greeted at Vnukovo airport on Saturday by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who previously held several rounds of talks with both envoys in Russia and the US.

After a 3.5-hour lunch with Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner arrived in the Kremlin, where they held talks with Putin.

Earlier on Friday, the US president said his envoys would bring a “proposal to end the war” to both Moscow and Kiev, but refrained from further details on the upcoming trips.

At source told RT at that time that visits to the Russian and the Ukrainian capitals could happen over the weekend.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Trump’s envoys “are always welcome guests, and we are pleased to work with them,” appearing to hint at the upcoming visit. Neither Washington nor Moscow, however, gave any official estimate on when exactly the trip might happen. Both men have been on missions to Moscow during Trump’s second term, yet neither traveled to Kiev, with the disparity openly bemoaned by Vladimir Zelensky.

Ukraine back on agenda

Trump proclaimed his intent to turn back to trying to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the G7 summit in France in June, when it was anticipated the conflict with Iran would be settled shortly.

“Now that this [Iran war] is finished, we are gonna be focusing on that [Ukraine conflict] and see if we can get that one done,” he told reporters, referring to the memorandum of understanding with Tehran.

The hostilities between the US and Iran, however, have continued despite the signing of the memorandum. Both sides have accused one another of breaching the agreements, repeatedly exchanging strikes over the past few weeks. The continuing hostilities have apparently derailed Trump’s plans to focus on Ukraine, with mediation efforts appearing to resume more than two months later than expected.

European reaction

The prospect of renewed US diplomacy has reportedly unsettled EU officials, who fear Europe could again be sidelined if Washington pursues direct talks with Moscow.

“Having Trump be distracted was not necessarily a bad thing,” one EU diplomat told Politico.

French President Emmanuel Macron insisted Europe must be involved in any settlement talks, arguing that it now bears much of the burden of supporting Kiev.

“The right kind of negotiation is one with Ukraine and Russia sitting around the table, and the Europeans and Americans by their side,” he told TF1.

Where do the talks stand?

After Washington resumed direct contacts with Moscow following years of diplomatic freeze under Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine and the US held three rounds of talks aimed at reaching a settlement – two in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by a third in Geneva later that month.

The negotiations made some progress but failed to produce a peace deal, with key disagreements persisting, particularly over territorial issues.

A new round expected in March was postponed after Washington shifted its focus to the Iran war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov subsequently said the trilateral negotiating process was “on pause,” while Moscow continued contacts with Washington.

What settlements have been proposed?

Following the Alaska summit, Washington developed a 28-point peace roadmap based in part on proposals discussed with Moscow. The leaked draft called for Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions, withdraw its forces from parts of Donbass still under Kiev’s control, and cap its military at 600,000 personnel.

Moscow said the proposal could serve as a basis for a settlement, although some provisions required further work. The framework was subsequently revised following US-Ukrainian talks in Geneva. Trump said the original 28 points had been reduced to 22, while Putin later said the proposals had been divided into four separate components and passed to Moscow.

A subsequent 20-point framework worked out by Washington and Kiev envisaged an 800,000-strong Ukrainian military in peacetime, Western security guarantees, reconstruction measures and a path toward EU membership. The document had not been agreed with Moscow.

The framework has continued to evolve. Russian officials have said Moscow is prepared to discuss the revised US proposals, while insisting that any settlement should build on the understandings reached between Putin and Trump in Alaska.

What are the next steps?

On Tuesday, Trump discussed Ukraine with Zelensky and other leaders during a closed-door G7 session and later held a separate meeting with the Ukrainian leader. While details were not disclosed, Zelensky said afterward that it was important to “coordinate positions.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to resume contacts with Moscow after shifting their focus to the Iran war. Putin aide Yury Ushakov said preparations are under way following Sunday’s call between the Russian and US presidents.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said no dates had been set and that the issue will likely be revisited after Washington signs its memorandum with Tehran.

Europeans split

European countries remain divided between those favoring engagement with Moscow and those seeking to maintain pressure on Russia.

Hungary and Slovakia have urged direct dialogue with Moscow and criticized policies they say prolong the conflict.

Those seeking to maintain pressure, which includes Poland, the Baltic states and much of the EU leadership, argues that political, economic and military pressure must continue. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reiterated that stance on Monday, calling support for Ukraine a top G7 priority.

France and Germany occupy a middle ground, backing continued aid to Kiev while acknowledging that any lasting settlement will require negotiations with Russia. That approach was tested last week when French, British, and German envoys met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin in Moscow. According to Russia, however, they merely repeated calls for a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine, prompting Moscow to argue that the countries arming Kiev cannot act as neutral mediators.

Trump’s position

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours through direct diplomacy, though he later acknowledged that a settlement would be harder to achieve.

Since returning to office, he has criticized both Moscow and Kiev at various times, accusing each side of hindering peace efforts, while consistently arguing that the conflict should be resolved through negotiations rather than prolonged fighting.

After speaking with Putin and Zelensky on Sunday, Trump described both conversations as “very good” and said both leaders were “very open” to peace. According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, he also told Putin he was prepared to “influence” Kiev and its European backers toward a settlement.

Speaking at the G7, Trump said he would “look” at what could be done regarding Ukraine, while suggesting the conflict was of limited importance to the US, adding that “it has no impact on us other than we sell weapons.”

Zelensky’s demands

Amid mounting battlefield pressure, Zelensky has insisted on securing a temporary ceasefire and continued Western support, while maintaining that Ukraine will not formally recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over territories that joined Russia through referendums.

He has also opposed any settlement negotiated directly between Moscow and Washington without Kiev’s participation, also insisting that Ukraine’s European backers be included in the process.

Russia’s stance

Moscow has consistently opposed freezing the conflict, arguing that a temporary ceasefire would only give Kiev time to rearm. It insists that any settlement must address the root causes of the conflict, including Ukrainian troop withdrawals from Russian territories, protections for Russian speakers, and Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, Putin said Russia remained committed to a settlement based on understandings reached with Trump in Alaska, but blamed Kiev for blocking progress. He later told Trump that Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure and proposals supported by Zelensky and his European backers were hindering peace efforts and prolonging the conflict.

Amid reports that Zelensky had invited Putin to meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no official channel existed to convey such a proposal. He added that if Zelensky is ready for “serious” talks, he remains welcome in Moscow.

Zelensky reiterated that he was not prepared to meet in Russia, suggesting Türkiye, Switzerland, or the Middle East as alternative venues.

Via https://www.rt.com/news/641667-trump-resume-ukraine-peace-efforts/

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s sewage system triggers algal bloom, shutting down Israeli desalination plants

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(Photo credit: Ofer Vaknin)

The Cradle

Sept 5, 2026

Five of six desalination plants supplying over 80 percent of Israeli drinking water are offline, forcing nationwide rationing

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water and sewage infrastructure has backfired into a domestic water emergency, with five of Israel’s six desalination plants supplying over 80 percent of Israeli drinking water shut down after an enormous algal bloom choked the coastline, Haaretz reported on 3 September.

Scientists cite two aggravating factors behind the algae – elevated sea temperatures and nutrient loads from Gaza’s sewage – which has poured untreated into the Mediterranean since Israeli bombardment deliberately destroyed the besieged enclave’s sanitation network.

The algae originated as microalgae in the Nile Delta and traveled east on sea currents, according to the satellite imagery firm Satalize, which recorded dense chlorophyll readings in the water as far north as Tel Aviv and lighter traces up to Caesarea.

With flow through the national supply lines weakening, the Israel Water Authority ordered local councils to curb consumption for farming, gardening, and other public use, while the Israeli government completely shut off external water supplies to Gaza.

The self-inflicted blowback comes after nearly three years of Israeli bombardment left close to 90 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure damaged or destroyed throughout the genocide in the strip, including desalination units, wells, reservoirs, and distribution networks.

All six of the besieged enclave’s wastewater treatment plants have been knocked out of service, along with the overwhelming majority of sewage pumping stations during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Roughly 40,000 cubic meters of untreated waste now empties into the sea every day, with a further 15,000 cubic meters draining into the ground through cesspits and broken lines.

The collapse has poisoned Gaza’s coastal aquifer and driven cholera and other water-borne diseases through a population already facing starvation and lacking proper healthcare due to Israel’s genocide, with the rainy season set to deepen the contamination.

Israeli blockade on fuel, spare parts, and equipment classed as dual-use has strangled every attempt to repair the ruined facilities.

Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s water and sewage systems was a deliberate campaign to manufacture the conditions for the spread of disease throughout the enclave, and render life unbearable for its almost 2 million residents by stripping them of the basic requirements for survival.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-destruction-of-gazas-sewage-system-triggers-algal-bloom-shutting-down-israeli-desalination-plants

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): Last Hope for Peace?

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PM in a group photograph at the 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on September 01, 2026. (GODL-India)

By Peter Koenig
September 04, 2026
On 1 September 2026, the 26th meeting of the Council of Heads of State (CHS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held at the Yrys-Ordo Congress Hall in Bishkek,  Kyrgyzstan, under the chairmanship of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Sadyr Japarov. While this was the 26th conference of the SCO’s Heads of State, the Bishkek summit did celebrate the organization’s 25th Anniversary.

The summit will be remembered not only for the high caliber heads of states in attendance, but foremost because it is the first-time that a political and economic force clearly seems to point to the future of a multi-polar world, and simultaneously giving clear signs of an ever-declining West.

However, it must be mentioned, a West that will not disappear overnight, and a West will not leave the world stage without a major struggle. One of the West’s non-stop aggressions on its population is a multi-faceted attack on its people from all sides with the one goal, of massively reducing world population (based on the Club of Rome’s first major Report of 1972, “Limits to Growth”) – a massive reduction starting with the so-called Western populace.

Why? Because once the Western population is reduced to a minimum and the thinking is largely taken over by artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, control and unopposed management of the still assumed economically and militarily leading west will be a piece of cake, in a manner of speaking. That’s the larger thinking of the self-centered and self-nominated Western empire. But will it?

Many doubt this projected development scheme will actually pan out, including a number of Western analysts. Western hypothesis is still based on linear thinking, while the world is dynamic, unpredictable, and the forces, both economically, militarily, as well as scientifically (research) are rapidly shifting. This fact seems to be escaping Western so-called leaders. To their detriment.

Back to the ten-member country SCO summit which was attended by China (Founding member); Russia (Founding member); Kazakhstan (Founding member); Kyrgyzstan (Founding member); Tajikistan (Founding member); Uzbekistan (Joined in 2001);  India (Joined in 2017); Pakistan (Joined in 2017); Iran (Joined in 2023); Belarus (Joined in 2024).

The bloc also has two observer states, Mongolia and Afghanistan, as well as 15 dialogue partners, including Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, without full voting membership rights.

For the record, the meeting’s high-flyer attendance included the President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko; Prime Minister (PM) of India, Narendra Modi; President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian; President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev; PM of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif; President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin; President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon; President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev; as well as SCO Secretary General Nurlan Yermekbayev; and Director of the Executive Committee of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, Ularbek Sharsheev. Also in attendance was UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

.Outlook for a Future World Order

The ten SCO member states now cover roughly a quarter of the world’s landmass, account for more than 42% of its population, and generate over 23% of global GDP. About half of the world’s inhabitants were represented in Bishkek. The leaders’ of China, Russia and India alone, simultaneous presence, embody the world’s largest countries by area, the second-largest economic block, and with the latter two, China and India, the globe’s most populous nations.

Along with the SCO’s other members, they form a demographic, resource, industrial, and political bloc without which any serious discussion of reshaping the international order is now impossible.

However, and the topic may have been mentioned behind closed doors, or not at all, because it is known to all of them, the group is still ultra-diverse, in culture, in financial autonomy, geographic location, as well as consistent political affiliation. A true analysis of the SCO summit must include this fact. It is one that requires serious work for closer unification, as geographically it is not possible, at least a closer alignment in matters of politics, economy, finance and monetary policy is needed and must be possible.

The SCO is a platform from where a new balance of power is supposed to emerge through regular meetings between leaders, security coordination, settlements in national currencies, new transportation corridors (implementation and expansion of the Belt and Road), energy cooperation, and the gradual development of independent mechanisms for growth.

The summit in Kyrgyzstan should be seen as more than another entry on the diplomatic calendar. It attempted to demonstrate, and partially was successful, that multipolarity is no longer an abstract formula, but is beginning to acquire a clear institutional shape.

However, looking closely at the economic and financial independence of the SCO members, many of them have a long way to go to reach sufficient autonomy and economic and trading sovereignty, to gradually gravitate towards a new type of a common SCO policy-sovereignty. All the while it is understood though that SCO members will maintain their national sovereignty, legislative as well as financial, but closer aligned with each other.

The summit focused on issues of multilateral cooperation across the full range of areas: politics, security, trade, investment, energy, industry, ecology, tourism, new technologies.

The Agenda

Under the title of “25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity,” topics of security with economic and connectivity priorities were blended together.

They comprise security because given the West’s aggressive posture, security is a priority, in order to pursue the peaceful and peace-building, as well as economic development agenda:

Economic connectivity and trade: Transport corridors (notably the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway), which is also part of the Belt and Road plan.

Energy security: Cooperation on energy systems and proposals like an SCO Energy Consortium, alongside bilateral pipeline talks (i.e., Power of Siberia between Russia and China).

Development finance and de‑dollarization: Renewed push for an SCO Development Bank and settlement mechanisms in national currencies to reduce reliance on the US dollar.

As mentioned above, the truth is that most of the BRICS countries, some of them also important SCO members, and associates are still not free from the dollar. Many of them (especially Brazil and India) still have strong links to Wall Street and IMF / WB which all keep “dollars flowing.” In other words, the dollar hegemony is still in control of most of the BRICS countries (except for China and Russia).

This may become a major issue for a real multi-polar world, and might become the subject of an entirely separate SCO summit; politically not easy, but with China and Russia in the lead it should be possible.

Sustainable development: Climate action, green technology in favor of protecting water resources, making sure that water, as a Human Right, is not systematically privatized, which is silently already happening, as people do not pay attention.

Geopolitical context: The joint statement condemned US / Israel actions on Iran and Western sanctions on some members, while leaders also discussed the Ukraine war, Afghanistan’s instability, and the SCO’s role in a multipolar order.

What is missing is a clear condemnation of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestine in general, and rapidly expanding to Lebanon, Syria — soon Sudan and Iraq; the gradual but ever faster expansion to Greater Israel, at the cost of millions of citizens lives.

This quick assessment of the SCO Conference nevertheless sheds a light of hope for peace onto an uncertain future.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/shanghai-cooperation-organization-sco-last-hope-peace/5938999

Vaccinated People Spread Measles, The CDC, the WHO, and Johns Hopkins Just Said So on the Record

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A preregistered systematic review in Expert Review of Vaccines found 70 vaccinated transmitters, 812 downstream cases, and one small study underneath the claim that MMR reduces onward spread.

 

A new peer-reviewed study by CDC, WHO, and Johns Hopkins leadership found that nearly 8 out of every 100 vaccinated people who catch measles pass it to someone else. Almost a third of them had received two doses. And the world has exactly one study, of 137 people, trying to measure how much the vaccine actually reduces onward spread.

For a generation, the public message about the measles shot has been simple. If you are vaccinated, you cannot spread it. A new study, written by the people who run the global measles elimination program, quietly says otherwise.

View and share the X thread dedicated to this post:

Who wrote this

Not activists. Not skeptics. The paper is co-authored by the former director of the entire U.S. Immunization Program at the CDC, the CDC’s own measles laboratory chief, the head of Johns Hopkins’ vaccine access center, the recent WHO measles program lead who is now Canada’s Acting Chief Public Health Officer, the man who chairs the WHO commission that certifies whether entire regions have eliminated measles, and PAHO’s top immunization official for the Americas. One author is a paid consultant to Merck, Sanofi, Moderna, Dynavax, and Seqirus. Another runs an institute that discloses funding from vaccine manufacturers.

These are not outsiders raising doubts. The people who spent their careers building the measles elimination framework — at CDC, Johns Hopkins, PAHO, RIVM, and the WHO regional verification commissions — are the people who signed this paper.

[…]

Via https://envirowatchnz.com/2026/09/05/breaking-vaccinated-people-spread-measles-the-cdc-the-who-and-johns-hopkins-just-said-so-on-the-record/

Elderly outnumber young children for first time in history

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Elderly outnumber young children for first time in history – census
©  Getty Images/Thanasis Zovoilis

RT

Published 4 Sep, 2026 

The world’s elderly population has overtaken the number of young children for the first time in human history, according to a new US Census Bureau report. Europe, already the world’s oldest region, is at the forefront of the trend.
People aged 65 and over accounted for 10.5% of the global population in 2025, surpassing children aged five and younger for the first time, the bureau said in its An Aging World: 2025 report.

The reversal has been driven by longer life expectancy and falling birth rates. The Census Bureau said sustained fertility below replacement level can create a “fertility trap,” as the number of potential parents eventually declines.

Around 132 million babies are now born worldwide each year, down from a peak of roughly 142 million in the early 2010s, according to UN data. Africa accounted for roughly 47 million births in 2024, reflecting an increasingly uneven global trend.

The decline has been particularly pronounced in Europe. Just 3.55 million babies were born in the EU in 2024, nearly half the 6.8 million recorded in 1964. The bloc’s fertility rate has fallen to a record low of 1.34 children per woman.

The demographic shift is set to accelerate. The global population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion by 2060, while the number of people aged 65 and over will rise by around 1.15 billion, according to the US Census Bureau.
The elderly are projected to account for 19.6% of humanity by then, up from 10.5% today. In Europe, their share is expected to rise from 21% to nearly 31%, the report said.

The shift will put further strain on government budgets as fewer workers and taxpayers support a growing number of retirees. The Census report estimates that across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, increased government healthcare spending over the next decade will amount to 2.6% of GDP, twice the projected 1.3% growth in revenues.

At the same time, European governments are ramping up military spending as they cite the perceived threat from Russia. EU defense expenditure is projected to reach €454 billion this year, up around 75% since 2021.

The OECD warned in June that higher military spending would force governments to make “tough choices” over spending priorities, particularly in heavily indebted countries such as Belgium, France, Italy, and the UK. It said larger defense budgets would compound existing pressures from growing pension and healthcare costs.

The competing demands are already shaping European politics. Belgium has tightened pension and welfare rules, while Germany is taking on more debt to fund its military buildup and France is constraining non-defense spending.

In Britain, the Conservatives this week proposed welfare cuts to fund an additional £10 billion ($13.5 billion) in annual military spending, including reductions in housing support and the restoration of a cap on child benefits.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/645120-elderly-outnumber-children-report/

Pentagon shuts off advertising trackers on phones, computers after Iran exploits data to target US forces

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(Photo credit: Kylie Cooper/Reuters)

The Cradle

SEP 4, 2026

US soldiers are fighting and dying in the war against Iran, which President Trump is waging on Israel’s behalf

US military officials have disabled advertising trackers on a range of phones and computers after Iran used publicly available data collected from the trackers to target US troops, Reuters reported on 4 August.

The US Air Force said it disabled the advertising identifiers on computers and mobile phones two months ago.

US Special Operations Command said it had “recently” disabled the trackers on its Windows devices.

The army stated that advertising IDs tied to mobile devices had been disabled since earlier this year.

The measures suggest that location data collected on individuals by the advertising industry and sold by data brokers can be used to track and target military personnel deployed to war zones.

Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in February, Iranian forces have killed 18 US service members and injured 759 more, according to the Pentagon.

Officials say the vast majority of the injuries are traumatic brain injuries, many resulting from Iranian missile and drone attacks on US bases around West Asia.

On Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated in an interview on CNBC that no US service members had been killed in the war.

“The way the president is playing Iran, right, there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic chokeout which the administration is now executing more broadly, and I think it’ll be very effective,” Lutnick stated. However, he apologized on Thursday, claiming in a post on X that he “misspoke.”

Lutnick is a billionaire investor, a staunch supporter of Israel, and a close advisor to US President Donald Trump.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently boasted that he had convinced Trump and other US officials to wage war on Iran, in part with the help of nearly a thousand hours of time on US television programs.

Israel is no longer attacking Iran, leaving the burden of the war on the US military, which is running low on missile interceptors needed to defend US troops from Iranian attacks.

The US army has nearly exhausted its supply of interceptors in part to protect Israel.

A recent opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post encouraged the US to launch a ground invasion of Iran, which would lead to large numbers of US soldiers dying.

The piece, authored by retired Canadian Armed Forces officer AJ Jaff, called on the US government to take advantage of the high levels of debt among young US citizens to raise a ground force of 750,000 to 1.5 million troops for an invasion.

A large number of young people could be recruited by offering to pay off their student, credit card, and auto loans, Jaff argued.

“The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration,” Jaff wrote, saying that “states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have.”

At least 4,418 US soldiers were killed, and 31,994 were wounded fighting in Iraq after the illegal 2003 invasion, according to the US military.

The US war on Iraq was orchestrated by pro-Israel members of former US president George W. Bush’s administration in a bid to weaken the country – Israel’s long-time regional rival – and to gain access to Iraqi oil for Israel.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/pentagon-shuts-off-advertising-trackers-on-phones-computers-after-iran-exploits-data-to-target-us-forces

AI Data Center Opposition Unites People Across Political Lines

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by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News

Here in 2026 Americans have finally found an issue that unites them as Americans, regardless of political affiliations: opposition to AI data centers being rapidly built in their communities with little to no oversight, as the AI bubble continues to inflate.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 71% of Americans oppose AI data centers near their homes, triggering a wave of legislation that has already stalled $130B in projects.

Americans unite against data centers, with 71% opposing local builds

A Gallup poll conducted in March 2026 found that 71% of American adults oppose building an AI data center near their home, with 48% saying they are strongly opposed.

For historical context, public opposition to nuclear power plants peaked at 63% during the height of anti-nuclear sentiment. Opposition to AI data centers sat somewhere between 42% and 47% in late 2025. By March 2026, Gallup had it at 71%. A separate May 2026 Heatmap Pro poll confirmed the figure, also recording 71% opposition, but with an even sharper edge: 55% of respondents in that survey said they were strongly opposed.

Around half of data center opponents cite electricity and water consumption as their primary grievances. The rest of the opposition cohort points to noise, pollution, and the prospect of higher utility bills.

Gallup found that between 63% and 75% of both Republicans and Democrats oppose local data center construction.

In the first quarter of 2026 alone, community and legislative actions blocked or delayed more than 75 data center initiatives, representing over $130 billion in planned investment.

Roughly 300 state-level bills targeting data center regulation were introduced in the first half of 2026. New York’s governor signed an executive order in July 2026 pausing new hyperscale data center permits for a year. California and other states are advancing their own regulatory frameworks.

Source.

One has to wonder what is up with the other 29% of Americans who are not opposed to these data centers? I would imagine that they are the “faithful MAGA base” who continue to “trust the plan” and cheer the bombing of innocent people, including children, in places like Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran as they continue to worship their Pedophile in Chief, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has attacked these Americans who make up over 70% of the country, stating that “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

If you do not live in a community where a new data center is being constructed, and are wondering what all the fuss is about, I have put together a short video that is just over 10 minutes long where you can hear it from the people themselves in these communities that Trump has belittled.

Fox News and some other Right-wing Conservative groups are trying to cast these people who oppose data centers as being part of the “far-left”.

So listen to these people yourself and see if they sound like “far-left” climate control freaks, or if they sound like ordinary, average Americans concerned about their homes, their families, and their future with Big Tech in control. (Video also can be watched here.)

Ohio is one of the largest battlegrounds where this is happening, as both Larry Ellison’s Oracle and Facebook parent company Meta are each building huge data centers in their state.

One of the most outspoken persons in Ohio, who was the last one who spoke in the video above, is Carl Setzer, who accurately stated that there is a huge AI bubble, and that there is no guarantee that any of these companies will even be around in 10 years.

And the current facts backup Setzer’s concerns.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire Zionist friend of Donald Trump and owner of Oracle, has already lost hundreds of billions of dollars with his investing into AI.

One analyst has already stated that the AI bubble is 17 times larger than the dot-com bubble, and four times the size of the 2008 real-estate/subprime bubble.

Oracle’s Massive AI Bet Has Already Cost Larry Ellison $207 Billion. Analyst Warns the AI Bubble Is 17 Times Bigger Than the Dot-Com Bubble.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle gambled its balance sheet on an AI future that analysts are now calling the most dangerous financial bubble in history, and the bill is coming due faster than anyone expected.

by AJ Tiarsmith
24/7 Wall Street

Excerpts:

Larry Ellison has lost $207 billion in less than a year.

Oracle’s market value has fallen by roughly $494 billion since peaking at $877.1 billion in September 2025.

Oracle’s Q4 8-K reported Remaining Performance Obligations of $638 billion, up 363% year-over-year, most locked into long-dated contracts that will not convert to cash for years.

A large chunk ties to OpenAI, whose IPO has slipped to 2027.

S&P Global downgraded Oracle’s credit rating, warning the buildout might pay off long term but could weaken near-term financial position. Melius Research questioned whether Oracle’s spending plans hold if OpenAI or Anthropic scale back demand for compute.

Sitting behind all of it: Project Stargate, a plan to invest up to $500 billion in AI-focused data centers over four years.

The 17x Thesis

In October 2025, Julien Garran, partner at UK firm MacroStrategy Partnership, published a report arguing the AI investment frenzy is a “misallocation of capital” 17 times the size of the dot-com bubble and four times the size of the 2008 real-estate/subprime bubble.

He called it

“the biggest and most dangerous bubble the world has ever seen.”

His “golden rule” case: large language models are statistical word-prediction engines with architectural limits, coding tools reproduce rote patterns, and capability has hit a “scaling wall” since GPT-4 launched in March 2023.

Garran’s answer to “who is actually making money” is blunt: only NVIDIA. Data-center operators, LLM developers, and LLM-based software vendors are, in his framing, “all heavily loss-making” and depend on a “permanent funding tour” of new rounds, with SoftBank and sovereign funds like Saudi Arabia’s serving as backstops.

Full article.

The Great Reset is coming.

And thanks to The Leah Files, we now know the plan that has just been executed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to kill the U.S. dollar and replace it with crypto Stablecoins.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2026/ai-data-center-opposition-unites-people-across-political-lines-as-trump-attacks-americans-who-oppose-big-tech/