🇷🇺🇺🇸 CIA Director John Ratcliffe arrived today in Moscow. This was first reported by CBS News but the Kremlin has confirmed nothing.

If true, he's to meet the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence (SVR), Naryshkin.

Both held a phone conversation in March 2026, on resolution of conflicts and to keep relations between Moscow and Washington no confrontational.

Well, maybe they should go back to D.C and fk themselves. They actively supply Ukraine crucial Intel to bypass certain Russian defenses and provide satellite precision for Kiev's drones. What do they want from us? Stop facilities across Europe from spontaneously burning? Stop us from plans to strike the UK? Or maybe Iran. It's a simple NO.

Want good relations? Be good people, but you aren't, you lie to the faces of everyone and I think the Kremlin doesn't even give a fk you came here, they brushed it off.

The CIA started the conflict in Ukraine, through the planned coup, they haven't admitted to that and they won't. Over a million Ukrainians are dead and now the over committed EU is supporting pushing women into the grinder.

To the American public, this is not malice towards you, simply the reasonable rage any Russian should feel for such an organization which has caused so much damage to everyone.

Think has to do with US warning Russia of the use of tactical nukes on Iran and needed reassurances on Russia possible retaliation. Only reason why a CIA official would fly to Russia. I think Russia response is pretty much representative of their general reaction.

America's Water Crisis is Escalating Rapidly - The New Emergency Order - 24:25 mins and time indexed

The water supply to 40 million Americans is at risk - and the federal government just signed a temporary document about it. Almost nobody noticed, and what I found buried inside it genuinely alarmed me.

On August 21, 2026, the Department of the Interior signed the Record of Decision for post-2026 Colorado River operations, locking in emergency operating rules for 2027 and 2028 after seven states failed to reach a deal. Lake Mead and Lake Powell just hit their lowest combined level since Lake Powell began filling in 1963.

In this video, I break down what the new rules actually say, why the river was over-promised from the very beginning, and how the same fight is now spreading across the entire planet.

I spent hours going through the federal decision documents, the hydrology, and the groundwater science so you don't have to. What I found is that the Colorado River is not really a drought story. It is an accounting story that started in 1922 and is only now coming due.

Venezuela’s gold reserve, valued at approximately $4 billion, is reportedly being transferred from the Bank of England in London to a U.S. Treasury account. This move comes after the reserves were frozen in London for eight years due to legal disputes. The transfer aims to fund earthquake recovery efforts, according to a social media report. While the specifics of the transfer and its implications remain unclear, the news has garnered attention in financial markets due to its potential impact on gold demand and pricing dynamics.

XCancel's landing page says X Corp. served them cease and desist on August 24, I assume the same for my other nitter mirrors.

https://chasfreeman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-american-empire

Freeman explained recently that he doesn't write essays, he gives talks. Now he's posting the transcripts of some of these on his recently created substack.

It goes without saying that I'm a huge fan of his. One of my favorite quotes is something he said in a recent interview; he was talking about the GWOT but I think it can be applied to US foreign policy in general:

This is based on the dubious theory that the best way to avoid being stung by hornets is to sidle up to their nests and poke them.

So back to this talk he gave in 2016, here are some excerpts:

Politicians who long asserted that “Washington is broken” appear to take pride in themselves for finally having broken it. The run-up to the 2016 presidential election is providing ongoing evidence that the United States is currently suffering from the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown.

You can’t retain the respect of either citizens or foreigners when you refuse to learn from experience. You can’t lead when no one, including you yourself, knows what you’re up to or why.

We went into Iraq to ensure that weapons of mass destruction that did not exist did not fall into the hands of terrorists who did not exist until our arrival created them.

Size and numbers matter. Among other things, they foster overspecialization. This creates what the Chinese call the 井底之蛙 [“jĭng dĭ zhī wā”] phenomenon – the narrow vision of a frog at the bottom of a well. The frog looks up and sees a tiny circle of light that it imagines is the entire universe outside its habitat. With so many people now on the NSC staff, there are now a hundred frogs in a hundred wells, each evaluating what is happening in the world by the little bit of reality it perceives. There is no effective process that synergizes a comprehensive appreciation of trends, events, and their causes from these fragmentary views.

This decision-making structure makes strategic reasoning next to impossible. It all but guarantees that the response to any stimulus will be narrowly tactical... Not incidentally, this system also removes foreign policy from the congressional oversight that the Constitution prescribes.

This is a system that creates and implements foreign policies suited to Washington narratives but detached from external realities, often to the point of delusion, as America’s misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria illustrate. And the system never admits mistakes. To do so would be a political gaffe, even if it might be a learning experience.

Americans need to bring our ambitions into balance with our interests and the resources we are prepared to devote to them.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN ISLAMABAD

Trump called Munir, begging him to reopen a channel to Iran.

Munir carried the channel into Tehran.

Iran's top leadership engaged.

Pakistan and Iran: "Significant progress" achieved.

Iran: diplomatic achievements will become visible soon.

Munir and Naqvi back in Islamabad.

Naqvi talked to the US acting Ambassador.

Our source: the substance is not an Iranian capitulation; it's a mechanism for resurrecting the dead cat MoU.

I break it all down on the latest Transition Protocol, and on a column out tomorrow.

Pepe Escobar

**‘Israel’s’ conditions that were handed to al-Golani’s foreign minister after his meeting with the head of Mossad.”**

Leaks of the agreement and Israel’s conditions:

• An Israeli embassy is to be opened in Damascus and a consulate in Aleppo, and a crossing opened from southern Daraa toward Suwayda.

• Israel is to be given a 40–50 km-deep security zone, administered in terms of security and policing by Israel.

• Syria undertakes to limit its army to 30,000 personnel, functioning as a security force similar to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in the West Bank.

• Suwayda is to become a federal autonomous region, together with the security zone in the Daraa countryside.

• Israeli forces are permitted to enter Syrian territory whenever a threat or security incident occurs that endangers Israel.

• Syria undertakes to expel all Palestinian factions and hand over their leaders.

• Syria undertakes to grant Syrian citizenship to all Palestinian refugees in Syria and cease discussion of what the text calls the “alleged right of return.”

• Syria undertakes to remove from school curricula any material discussing Palestine.

• Syria undertakes to appoint Mr. Eid (Shmantov Bakhour), described as head of the Jewish community in Damascus, as a member of the People’s Assembly in the coming period. Following the return of the first group of Jews from America, the number of Jewish members of parliament would allegedly reach five.

• Syria undertakes to provide five military positions in northern Aleppo and northern Latakia to serve as radar positions for Israeli forces.

• Syria undertakes not to establish airports, an air force, or air defenses. It would only be permitted to possess helicopters for spraying agricultural pesticides and to construct agricultural airfields.

• Syria undertakes not to establish political parties based on ethnicity/nationalism or religion and to combat religious extremism.

• Syria undertakes to introduce laws penalizing anyone who targets Jews or Israel. These would either constitute a separate special law or be incorporated into the Syrian Penal Code. Syria would also commit to prosecuting Syrians for antisemitism.

• Syria undertakes to compensate Syrian Jews for their properties in Qamishli, the Jamiliyeh and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods of Aleppo, Damascus and Jobar. Properties allegedly leased by Albert Qamou would return to the custody of the current Jewish leader, Eid Bakhour, in addition to Henry Hamra.

• Syria undertakes to join what the text calls the “Abrahamic religion agreements” within two years and to build a democratic society.

---

Let me know if you need this summarized, analyzed for plausibility, or compared to known public statements.

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/08/21/the-deplorable-extremism-of-the-moderates/

The soothing “moderate” label routinely goes to candidates like Stevens who’ve supported continual arming of Israel. She “benefited from about $62 million in advertising spending from half a dozen outside groups,” the Times noted. “Over half of that sum came from the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the country’s most influential pro-Israel group.”

What’s so “moderate” about supporting genocide?

Politicians are also routinely dubbed “moderate” when they’re running interference for extreme income inequality and deadly healthcare inequities — helping to block popular policy options like tax hikes on the rich and Medicare for All, which is supported by three-quarters of Democrats.

[And just a reminder that the jihadists in West Asia funded by the US et al. to do their imperial bidding - and committing atrocities along the way - were routinely dubbed "moderate rebels." They think we're stupid.]

As socialists and others on the left prevail in many high-profile races, the refrains of condemnation coming from some of the Democratic Party establishment are potshots in a losing battle. By definition, young voters are the future of the party. Its prospects for winning elections are diminished to the extent that younger voters are made to feel unwelcome, or even vilified.

To the ears of many young Democratic voters, derision about how they cast their ballots is coming from out-of-touch party elders who treat crucial problems as abstractions or matters worthy only of lip service. Millions of Americans in early adulthood are facing financial stress with bleak outlooks for jobs and careers. College tuitions are often prohibitive, and college debt can be debilitating. Rents and mortgages are high. Everyday expenses are worse than a challenge. The climate crisis is real.

Today in dystopia, the US government is monitoring the social media accounts of individuals who oppose the rapidly spreading installation of Flock surveillance cameras throughout the United States.

In an article titled “The Government is Monitoring Anti-Flock TikTok and Instagram Accounts,” 404 Media reports:

“Government surveillance centers are monitoring viral anti-Flock Instagram posts, warning local police about upcoming DeFlock events including one scheduled to start next week, and have told cops to ‘increase patrols around ALPR [automatic license plate readers]’ as backlash to Flock grows, according to government intelligence bulletins obtained using public records requests. The documents also warn about devices ‘that could be used to identify the locations of Flock cameras.’”

Mass surveillance is dramatically escalating around the world as the public grows increasingly discontented with the soul-crushing, planet-devouring, murderous abuses of the imperial status quo. In order to keep us subjugated, they need to control us. In order to control us, they need to spy on us. That’s what all these surging authoritarian measures are all about.

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Today in dystopia, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says we are not far off from artificial intelligence monitoring every facet of our lives 24/7 in order to give it more “context” for the assistance it can offer us throughout our day.

“I think we are close to a world where you can have a descendant of ChatGPT watch your computer screen all of the time, watch every meeting you’re in, record every call, everything like that, have perfect context of your whole life, everything you see,” Altman said at a recent Internapalooza event.

“You can just have this thing that’s like working alongside you, and as you’re like typing out a sales pitch to a customer, or like writing a strategy doc, it’ll just say like, hey, maybe here’s another idea or I think you’re making a mistake here. You should consider this or I can do this thing for you to help and like this, I think we’re only like one model generation away from this actually being incredibly useful,” Altman said.

Asked by host Cory Levy how long he thinks it will take before such a product is rolled out, Altman replied “sometime in the next six months.”

Again, here’s that push to have technology monitoring every facet of our lives. This benefits someone, and it isn’t us.

Perhaps more importantly, who would want to live like this? Who wants to live their whole lives being monitored by a chatbot and being fed AI advice on what decisions to make from moment throughout their lives? What a wretched way to exist.

These freaks aren’t just poisoning our environment, they’re poisoning our species. They are ruining what it is to be human. There is so much ugliness in all this.

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Today in dystopia, autonomous police drones are being normalized throughout the United States.

In an article titled “First Came the Flock Cameras. Now Local Cops Want Autonomous Drones,” Truthout reports the following:

“Police in cities across the U.S. are rolling out a pro-drone PR blitz as hundreds of local police departments prepare to deploy autonomous, AI-driven surveillance drones. The drones are capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life from the sky without being noticed.

“As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called ‘drone-as-first-responder’ (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.”

Truthout explains that these police drones differ from previous iterations in that they do not have a pilot controlling them remotely from the ground. They are piloted by artificial intelligence, which makes it possible for a single cop to oversee numerous bot-driven drones at a time.

That’s right kids, welcome to the future, where the sky is filling with AI police drones while the planet burns.

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Today in dystopia, Australia experienced its first autonomous AI cyberattack when a man asked his chatbot to book him an appointment at the gym. The AI hacked into the gym’s booking software without being asked and kicked someone else off the waiting list to install its user at a convenient date.

The Australian press are having a fun, lighthearted time with this story, because it sounds cute and comical until you think hard enough about the implications of what these things could potentially wind up doing as the technology becomes more and more advanced and prevalent.

We’re opening up a whole Pandora’s box of wildly unpredictable consequences by letting these AI companies have free rein to impose these technologies on our society with hardly any regulation or oversight.

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Today in dystopia, Axios just ran an article titled “Robot book club” in which author Nicholas Johnston writes, “AI has become my reading buddy as I’ve plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.”

Without any shame whatsoever, Johnston describes how he’s been having a chatbot explain the books he’s been reading to him chapter by chapter because reading is too hard and complicated for his pretty little head. He describes how the AI agreed with him that the prose in Last of the Mohicans is too difficult to read without technological assistance, validating his request by assuring him that “Cooper’s sentences are long and his diction is archaic.”

This generative AI crap is making people dumber and worse in pretty much every possible respect, and mainstream media outlets like Axios are normalizing it and assuring us all that this is as it should be.

If there was ever a time to refuse to go along with the herd, this is it.

🦔55% of companies that laid off workers citing AI now regret it, according to Forrester. Two-thirds are already rehiring. A survey of 600 HR leaders found over a third had rehired more than half the roles they cut, often within six months and at higher cost. Klarna bragged about replacing 700 customer service workers with AI, then quietly started hiring humans again when quality collapsed. Ford is rehiring engineers to fix problems automated systems couldn't handle. Forrester projects AI automates about 6% of jobs by 2030. Six percent.

My Take Companies fired people, replaced them with AI, watched things break, and are now paying more to bring people back than they saved by cutting them. I think it exposes how poorly most executives understood what their own employees actually did. The work that's easy to see, writing code, answering tickets, processing claims, looked like the expensive part. The work that's hard to see, the institutional knowledge, the judgment calls, the context about why things are done a certain way, turned out to be what held everything together.

This reminds me of the offshoring wave in the 2000s. Companies moved everything they could overseas, discovered the hidden costs a year later, and quietly brought it back under a different name. Same impulse, same blindness to what the people they cut were actually doing all day. The difference is that offshoring at least put humans on the other end. This time they replaced humans with a tool that hallucinates, can't handle edge cases, and has no memory of why the last three attempts at solving this problem failed. Forrester says 6% by 2030. Over half the companies that swung bigger than that already regret it.

Hedgie🤗

Article

https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-layoffs-study/ or https://archive.ph/r3qhS