🇨🇳🇮🇳 China’s Lhunze airbase, just 100-kilometers from Tawang, India is evolving fast—new shelters, hangars & expanded aprons highlight its ongoing military upgrade, a move that will recalibrate the airpower balance along the LAC in the eastern sector

🔗 Damien Symon

🇩🇪 Germany's AfD party continues to gain ground in the polls and is now on a par with the CDU for the first time.

🔗 Disclose

🇺🇸💸 Lots of partisan grifters and charlatans commenting on the US economic and financial situation - some even posing as investment analysts. Here is a master of the trade, Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital, giving an accurate assessment:

🔴 The tariffs are the biggest shock to the US economy in the lifetime of anyone alive today.

🔴 Macro forecasting is often useless but it becomes especially so in situations like these.

🔴 Every forecast has a probability of error - with error tracking the level of uncertainty at any given time. The level of uncertainty today is enormous and so the error cancels out the value of the forecast.

🔴 America’s economic problems are longstanding and have to do with overborrowing from abroad. These did not appear this week, nor did they appear when Trump appeared in 2016.

🔴 There is a real risk that the dollar hegemony that underwrite this overborrowing might collapse and this could trigger a major fiscal crisis.

Watch the whole clip. It is infinitely better than the slop circulating on X these past few days.

🔗 Philip Pilkington

🇺🇸 U.S. Military Expands Presence in the Middle East

• Over 40,000 troops deployed.
• USS Truman in Red Sea, USS Carl Vinson en route.
• B-52s, B-2s, A-10s, F-15Es, F-35s & MQ-9s in theater.
• More THAAD & PATRIOT systems deployed.

🔗 Clash Report

🇺🇸🇾🇪 Ian Ellis on X:

According to USNI, 96 U.S. Navy ships are currently deployed, and 70 are underway. I count at least 26 ships below, representing approximately 1/4 of the fleet.

Total battle force: 295 (USS 234; USNS 61)
Deployed: 96 (USS 68; USNS 28)
Underway: 70 (41 deployed; 29 local)

If you compare the ships currently underway in theater to the number of non-local ships deployed and underway (41 per USNI), the ~20 or so represents closer to 50% of the deployed fleet.

🔗 Ian Ellis

🇺🇸🇾🇪 Vleckie on X:

I've seen some suggestions this was a tribal meeting, but I find this unlikely.

1 - No Houthi media reporting on a strike which would have lots of civilian casualties.
2 - Location is outside main local populated areas.
3 - Right in defense system built by Houthi forces.

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/VleckieHond/status/1908454644252110938

🇺🇸❌🇸🇸❗️ — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declares the he is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders in US

He says that US Government will restrict any further issuance to prevent entry into the United States by South Sudanesss, effective immediately, due to the failure of South Sudan's transitional government to accept the return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner.

https://fxtwitter.com/SecRubio/status/1908637376403890383

🇪🇺🤝🚩 The European Commission admits it has used EU funds that were supposed to "fight climate change" for financing left-wing NGOs and climate organizations with the aim of silencing the voices of European conservatives in a secretive influence operation.

The funds came from the LIFE Program, which is supposed to fund environmental initiatives and has had a total budget of EUR 9 billion since 2014.

The LIFE program is a funding instrument dedicated to environmental, nature conservation, and climate action projects but some of the funds were instead used to attack conservative and eurosceptic voices according to the Austrian newspaper eXXpress.

According to internal documents, the targeted campaigns were designed in cooperation between EU agencies and climate NGOs, including planning which critics would be targeted.

According to the European Commission, changes are now to be introduced to the LIFE program to prevent future excesses.

Guidelines banning subsidized lobbying by EU institutions were already introduced in autumn 2024 - but it is only now that the abuses are being publicly confirmed.

Only a third of organizations and NGOs that received money from the LIFE Program openly disclose their income and how the funds are used, which has led to criticism of lack of transparency.

The former EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans orchestrated the secret contracts with environmental NGOs.

These contracts reportedly included detailed lobbying plans specifying targets and goals. It means that the European Commission provided not just funding but also strategic direction on whom to oppose in a coordinated effort to attack political opponents of the European Commission's climate agenda.

NGOs were instructed to focus on critics of the Green Deal, such as conservative MEPs, national politicians, or parties (Austria’s FPÖ and ÖVP parties are likely among the targets) who resisted stringent climate regulations.

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/visegrad24/status/1908561357114352127

🇯🇵📉❗️ — Japan's Nikkei 225 average futures down 8.3% in early trade