🇮🇱☢️ Satellite images show intensified construction at Israel’s Dimona nuclear site, long linked to its suspected atomic weapons program.

Experts say it may be a new heavy water reactor or facility to assemble warheads, but secrecy clouds certainty. — AP

🔗 Faytuks

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Comparing the drones at this year's military parades.

Who wore it better?

🔗 Jason Smith

🇫🇷 The Fifth Republic established by Charles de Gaulle is looking increasingly ungovernable. — POLITICO

French politics are so paralyzed that the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron — an idea once only whispered in the corridors of power — is now being openly debated.

But while Macron’s departure would be an earthquake on the European diplomatic stage, there’s increasing doubt it would fix the gridlock stalling the Fifth Republic.

France’s problems appear to be deeper.

Macron is already scouting around for his fifth prime minister in less than two years, in the expectation that François Bayrou will be ousted on Monday over his unpopular measures to slash the country’s eye-watering budget deficit.

But would a new prime ministerial nominee from Macron be able to force through the billions of euros in budget tightening that the country needs to avoid a debt crisis? And would a new snap election create a workable majority? Neither outcome seems likely. And even if Macron were to resign, his successor would almost certainly face the same obstacles.

The legislature is deadlocked, budget talks are flatlining, and murmurs of social unrest are growing louder. Financial markets are jumpy, and Bayrou himself is warning that Paris faces a Greek-style scenario unless it reins in spending.

Against that backdrop, far-right National Rally President Jordan Bardella and far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose parties together account for a third of seats in the National Assembly, are openly calling for the president to go.

The broader conversation about his departure is no longer outlandish and now includes reputable political commentators and some figures from the center right.

“We’re hearing this even from voices close to the Macron camp,” said Mathieu Gallard, a pollster at Ipsos France. “The discomfort is real.”

Macron is still seen as extremely unlikely to throw in the towel, not least because his premature exit — a presidential election isn’t due until 2027 — would do nothing to resolve the mess.

Surveys show a new legislative election in the coming weeks would most likely yield another hung parliament with a few more seats for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸🇵🇷 U.S. Marines and Sailors with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (22nd MEU), part of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) which consists of the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7), USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28) and USS San Antonio (LPD-17), have begun amphibious landing exercises in Southern Puerto Rico, only around 500 miles north of Venezuela.

The 22nd MEU is part of the naval task force deployed by the U.S. Navy to the Southern Caribbean Sea to combat narco-terrorism emanating from Latin America, with the task force launching its first kinetic strike yesterday against a vessel linked to Tren de Aragua/Cartel de los Soles off the coast of Venezuela.

🔗 OSINT Defender

🇮🇱🤝🇺🇸❌🇵🇸 — According to Axios the US Secretary of State indicated to Israeli officials in private meetings that he does not oppose Israel's annexation of the West Bank and that the Trump administration will not stand in the way.

🇺🇸 When asked why is the Department of Justice slow-walking the release of the Epstein files and if Trump is doing that to protect his friends or donors, Trump said:

"This is a Democrat hoax that never ends.. it reminds me of the Kennedy situation. We gave them everything and more and more and nobody is ever satisfied.

From what I understand, thousand of pages of documents have been released but its really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's irrelevant to the success we've had as a nation since I've become president.

Even if you look at DC right now, its a totally safe zone (...) you can walk down and its safe, no crime, no murders (...) we've had a lot of problems, in other places too, all run by Democrats, so what they're trying to do with the Epstein hoax is get people to talk about that instead of focusing on the tremendous success

I've ended 7 wars, seven wars, nobody's gonna talk about it, they're gonna talk about the Epstein whatever (...) we've released thousands of files and I think that's enough and we should continue talking about the success of our country (...) We are having the most successful 8 first months of any presidency in history and that's what I wanna talk about not the Epstein hoax".

@CIG_telegram

🇨🇳⚔️🇺🇸 U.S. Ambassador to NATO Whitaker says China can't fight the U.S. because they stole U.S. weapons technology, saying China "can't—couldn't fight the United States if they tried. You know, we are the only world superpower with the biggest, strongest economy."

🔗 Disclose.tv (@disclosetv)

🇨🇳🦑🇵🇪 A satellite view of Chinese illegal, unreported & unregulated (IUU) fishing vessels swarming in Peruvian waters!

Chinese vessels illegally enter Peruvian waters mostly to catch giant squids.

🔗 Michael Turner

🇺🇸 Rubio says intercepting drug vessels doesn’t work, blowing them up does

Rubio on Wednesday argued that the traditional policy of intercepting drug-carrying vessels had not worked. Instead, the US is “going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

“The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allow us to interdict and stop drug boats. We did that. And it doesn’t work,” Rubio said at a press conference in Mexico City.

“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” he said, arguing that interdiction doesn’t work because drug cartels plan to lose 2% of their cargo.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/03/politics/rubio-blow-up-drug-ships

🇺🇸🇺🇳 "If Washington isn’t careful, its dive into deep-sea mining risks undermining the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and creating opportunities for China and others to bend, break, and remake the rules of the sea to their benefit," — CSIS

📝 John Konrad on X:

1) USA didn’t sign the law of the sea

2) China doesn’t follow the law of the sea

3) Nobody is willing to stop them

4) The UN’s Maritime Agency is already on a voyage to crazytown

5) The UN’s Seabed Mining Law Agency was born in crazytown & never left

🔗 John Konrad

🇺🇸🌎 The Fourth Turning and America’s Hemispheric Play

The Fourth Turning lens suggests every 80–90 years, the U.S. reaches a crisis climax where the old institutional and monetary order can no longer hold. The Civil War, the Depression and WWII, the Cold War and Bretton Woods each reset emerged out of turmoil, redefining the structure of power. By that clock, we are in the late stages of another cycle. The period 2025–2032 is the decisive window when the next system will be hammered into place. Against that backdrop, the U.S. may be moving to lock down its own hemisphere before the global showdown with Eurasian rivals escalates.

If you step back, Washington’s actions in Venezuela, Mexico, and across the Caribbean look less like isolated counternarcotics missions and more like an effort to eliminate vulnerabilities. Cartels are being recast not simply as criminals but as parallel sovereigns. By designating them as terrorist entities, sanctioning their banks, and striking their logistics at sea, the U.S. is asserting that migration flows, mineral corridors, and energy infrastructure fall under national security, not law enforcement. This is a prelude to reshaping the Western Hemisphere into a secure bloc under U.S. oversight.

This is important now because in a Fourth Turning, external wars and internal instability collide with monetary strain. The dollar based order, built after 1971, is stretched by debt, inflation whiplash, and rival experiments in commodity backed clearing. The U.S. can only preserve leverage if it has unchallenged depth at home. Guyana’s oil, Mexico’s supply chains, Brazil’s minerals, Venezuela’s reserves, these aren’t regional matters anymore, they are pillars of the global system. If China, Russia, or Iran can exploit instability in the Americas, they can weaken Washington at its core.

Seen this way, the moves in South America are not distractions from Ukraine, Taiwan, or the Middle East, they are prerequisites. In the 1940s, before storming Europe, the U.S. secured the Western Hemisphere through bases, naval patrols, and political deals. In the 1980s, before the Soviet endgame, it did the same through counterinsurgency in Central America. Today’s strikes and sanctions are the modern version of trying to clear the board at home so resources can be projected abroad.

The risk is that the U.S. is running out of time. Fourth Turnings force resolution. If cartel power is not brought to heel, migration crises, illicit mineral flows, and energy disruptions could destabilize the U.S. politically just as global confrontation peaks. That would embolden adversaries to push harder, believing Washington is overstretched. But if the U.S. succeeds in forcing cartel concessions and bringing Latin America into closer alignment, it would emerge with secure depth, resource flows locked down, and financial dominance intact far better positioned to face China, Russia, and Iran.

In this hypothetical, what looks like drug enforcement is really a structural play to tighten control of the hemisphere, convert shadow powers into constrained actors, and secure energy and minerals before the crisis climax. Whether it results in war abroad, a cold bifurcation of the world economy, or a negotiated reset, the aim is the same which is to ensure that the next monetary and strategic order is written on U.S. terms.

🔗 EndGame Macro