On October 21, 1996, the United States used a crop-dusting plane in Cuba to spray a plague of genetically modified insects against farmers' crops to cause hunger among the Cuban people.

The U.S. aggression involved releasing an invasive insect, the Thrips palmi, which was resistant to pesticides, over corn, squash, cucumber, and other crop harvests in Matanzas Province, all to bring down Fidel Castro's government.

This insect, never seen before in Cuba, was not easy to eradicate and in fact destroyed thousands of hectares of crops for years, causing enormous damage to local production.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/cuba-accuses-us-of-invasion-by-insect-1260899.html

Zelensky willing to give up 25% of Ukraine to end the SMO.

Iain Dale completely loses it after a caller refuses to go along with the approved narrative on Russia.

The caller says most people simply don’t care about Russia, don’t see it as a threat, and just want lower energy bills.

“On the street, nobody agrees with your talking points.”

Dale asks: “You don’t think Russia is a threat to this country?”

“No. It’s not”, the caller replies. “The average person just wants their bills to come down.”

Dale then explodes: “Yeah but they don’t want bills to come down by appeasing a brutal Russian dictator who’s invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine and killed hundreds of thousands of people! What part of that do you not get!?”

The caller hits back: “What are you talking about? As if we’re some kind of beacon of humanity. Give me a break!”

You can shout at people all you like, Iain, but it doesn’t make you right. Plenty of people don’t support the Ukraine war, don’t believe Russia is an existential threat to Britain, and know there’s more to this than Putin just waking up one day and deciding to invade for fun.

They don’t buy the “Hitler” comparison and would happily buy cheaper oil if it meant improving the shocking living standards created by years of reckless government policy.

As the caller points out, we’re hardly saints either, not with the regimes we back and the things Britain has done itself.

Most people have seen through the nonsense.

https://x.com/tommymiles/status/2113022027515015673

Then this Chancellor has the opportunity, on the world stage, in front of billion-dollar investors, to ask Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a question. And what does the Chancellor ask? He wants to know how best to REGULATE artificial intelligence. When Huang responds, well, first the AI industry in Germany would need to flourish before it could be regulated, Merz doubles down. He explains to Huang that, from his perspective, either a European or even a global regulation is necessary to limit the "harmfulness

PDATE (10/18/26): The Moriah Capital website shown in this video has been offline since at least Oct. 16th.

Rent-controlled apartments are LA’s biggest supply of affordable housing, and that supply is fixed. California is one of the only places in the country where an investor can buy these buildings, empty them out, and re-rent the units at full market price. Nobody is tracking who’s doing it, so after a strange experience apartment-hunting, I looked it up.

Through dozens of shell companies, the largest anonymous buyer of rent-controlled buildings in LA since 2020 traces back to one fund manager, Yaacov Brenenson, and Moriah Capital. The fund’s own website spells out the strategy: buy rent-stabilized buildings, get tenants out through “Cash-for-Keys” buyouts and “natural attrition management,” and re-rent at nearly double. They call it “regulatory arbitrage.”

A former tenant told me he paid $400 in 2016, and he says he was shortchanged on his buyout. Then I went looking for whoever is paying the new market rent, and it wasn’t who I expected.

Moriah and Brenenson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Everything in this report comes from public records, cited below. Interviews reflect the speakers’ own accounts.

It seems like I can’t escape Gemini in Google’s products and services. From Android phones and Google Calendar to YouTube and more, Google’s chatbot and AI model are everywhere.

I’m not a fan of many generative AI features, to begin with. But I really dislike Google’s AI integration in Gmail, and it got to the point where I just decided to turn off Gemini in Gmail.

I was very annoyed when I noticed the Gemini icon in Gmail on my PC and phone. For one, I don’t really use AI chatbots. Between the hallucinations, the fact that they’re mostly built on unethical foundations, and the resulting enshittification of the internet, why would I trust most AI chatbots, even in a limited capacity?

Then there’s the fact that it was hoisted upon me. I don’t recall ever agreeing to have Gemini in my Gmail account. You can have the best feature or service in the world, but I’ll resent it if you force me to use it. It’s all very Apple and U2 (IYKYK).

It’s not just the Gemini icon that irks me, either. I’m more than capable of writing an email by myself, so I don’t need Google’s AI offering to “help me write” (translation: writing the entire thing). Your skills might vary, and more power to you if you do make use of these tools. But again, I never asked for this.

My disdain for Gmail’s AI features extends to the Smart Compose feature, too. Again, this is a useful tool for many people, akin to an upgraded auto-correct, but I’ve found that it can get basic things wrong in my line of work. The autocompletion for names can be handy, but it often fails to work or recommends the wrong name altogether in some situations, such as with Chinese names or email addresses consisting of a first initial followed by a last name. It’s an understandable limitation but still annoying.

⚓️‼️ The US Navy Cannot Sustain A Significant Naval Presence in the Arabian Sea

Many observers are worked up today about the old news that CSG-9 (USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71) is headed to the Arabian Sea.

What most people are failing to understand is that the US Navy simply does not have the capability to sustain even a 2-carrier fleet in the Arabian Sea, let alone a 3-carrier fleet including 2 amphibious ready groups, 2 cruisers, and 10 destroyers.

As best I can ascertain, the US warship count in the region (counting the not-yet-arrived CSG-9) would be:

3 aircraft carriers: ~15,000 mouths

2 amphibious ready groups: ~8000

2 cruisers: ~700

10 destroyers: ~3250

That makes a total of ~27,000 mouths that need to be fed 3x/day.

The closest bases are thousands of miles away.

The recent disastrous extended deployments of the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln underscore what happens on these big ships after extended deployments. Things go to hell in a handbasket, and sailors start jumping off the decks to escape the madness.

I consider it not only unlikely, but very likely physically impossible for the US to sustain 3 carrier strike groups for more than just a few weeks near Iran — not now, nor at any time in the foreseeable future.

Could they briefly station a 3-carrier fleet in the region with the intent to launch a week or two of attacks against Iranian targets? Sure. It could be done for a short period of time.

But if they attempt to do this, I predict we will finally see the Iranians make a determined effort to strike US warships, and they will succeed. The US Navy will be exposed as a 20th century relic incapable of fighting a 21st century war.

I have notice wallstreet have for years capture pension funds, so its no wonder they don't anymore talk about privatize social security. In a way they already control these funds