Poland secures airspace during Russian attack on Ukraine

 The Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said on Thursday that it has commenced "military aviation operations" to secure the country's airspace amid Russia's attack on Ukraine.

The statement said "necessary forces and resources" have been activated and that "ground-based air defense systems and radar reconnaissance have reached a state of readiness." It also noted that the move is "of a preventive nature" and aimed at "securing airspace and its protection, especially in areas adjacent to threatened regions."

Ukraine reported at least two deaths and six injuries in Russia's overnight attack on Kyiv.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Poland-secures-airspace-during-Russian-attack-on-Ukraine/66953041

Independent Women’s Voice ad exposes the DSA’s gap between promise and reality

 by Miranda Devine

Republicans have struggled to articulate the threat of the far-left insurgency engulfing the Democrat party to a generation ignorant of the bloodstained history of Communism.

But by telling a real story, not delivering a lecture, a clever new ad campaign from Independent Women’s Voice has found a way to combat the false lure of the Democratic Socialists of America – especially to women. 

In the AI-generated video, “Take Me Back!”, a young woman falls for the DSA slogans of “free” healthcare and housing, “Defund the police!” and “People over profit!”

She wakes up in 2050 to find utopia is not what it’s cracked up to be. 

There’s a months-long wait at the hospital, the store shelves are empty, criminals run rampant, and she has no choice about where to live. 

The mini-drama ends with her ripping a DSA poster off her bedroom door.

“Socialism is being sold to a new generation with a very shiny coat of paint,” said Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, a conservative non-partisan advocacy group focused on women and swing voters. 

“But repeating the same warnings louder isn’t going to cut through. We need to be more creative, more surprising, and more willing to meet people outside the traditional language of politics.”

Socialism has been so romanticized that younger voters now are easy dupes for radical left policies repackaged as new solutions to their economic woes.

IWV’s campaign doesn’t mention socialism or attempt a history lesson. 

It simply shows the gap between the promise and reality. 

Part of a series by IWV, the ad will appear on social media from Thursday, in the hope of inoculating young people against the ideological poison spreading across the country.

https://nypost.com/2026/08/19/opinion/miranda-devine-independent-womens-voice-ad-exposes-the-dsas-gap-between-promise-and-reality/

US CFTC seeks comment on compute derivatives as AI demand grows

 The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Wednesday it was seeking public comment on compute derivatives contracts, as the AI boom drives demand for new market products tied to computing power.

The request is an early step by the derivatives regulator toward setting rules for markets that could help companies and investors manage the cost and availability of compute, a critical input for artificial intelligence.

Here are some details:

• Wall Street investors have chased the AI trade for years, betting on companies and assets poised to benefit from the technology’s rapid adoption.

• The derivatives regulator said it is seeking comments on compute cash markets, market oversight and manipulation concerns, customer protection and perpetual compute futures.

• “America cannot win the AI race without a robust derivatives market for compute,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement.

• “This request for comment is the first step toward establishing clear rules of the road for American compute markets,” he added.

• The rapid expansion of AI has increased demand for computing power, prompting questions about how companies can hedge exposure to compute costs and availability.

https://srnnews.com/us-cftc-seeks-comment-on-compute-derivatives-as-ai-demand-grows/

Iran’s mullahs mirror World War II Japanese generals’ mindset

 by James Zumwalt

As President Donald Trump announced, as of August 18, peace talks with Iran had terminated, it will be interesting to see if he pursues a necessary tact markedly different from how Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.

After the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, as far as its Emperor Hirohito was concerned, it was the final nail in the coffin of reality. It was he, and not the military, that sought an end to the war. Although his military pleaded with the emperor to fight on to the last man, he understood the high price of doing so. Despite the military’s “never surrender” mindset, its loyalty to the emperor took priority.

Representing the Allies and understanding the Japanese military’s lack of contrition was General Douglas MacArthur. Accordingly, he orchestrated a signing of the surrender documents that would convey the reality of what he could not be commanded.

On September 2, 1945, the Japanese delegation arrived—consisting of only eleven members, most of whom were senior military. The site MacArthur selected was the battleship USS Missouri as it represented the home state of President Harry Truman.The battleship, filled to the brim with overjoyed sailors who had to contain their excitement as per MacArthur’s orders, was joined by 250 Allied ships laying at anchor in Tokyo Bay.

Standing directly behind MacArthur were U.S. General Jonathan Wainwright and British Lieutenant General Arthus Percival. These two men, looking emaciated and much older than they actually were, had both been captured in early 1942—surrendering Corregidor and Singapore respectively at a time the Japanese army appeared to be unbeatable—and spent over three years as prisoners-of-war.

Only a small table stood between MacArthur and the Japanese generals whom he had purposely positioned so the surrendering generals would have to meet the gaze of Wainwright and Percival in a reversed role—the latter now being the victors. When the signing of the document was completed, a thunderous roar was heard overhead as the Tokyo skies were filled with over 450 U.S. carrier planes flying in formation, followed by a fleet of U.S. bombers.

While the Japanese resisted showing a broken spirit, witnesses said tears could be seen in the eyes of some delegation members. MacArthur had achieved his purpose in breaking the Japanese military’s fighting spirit, recognizing, “You do not need a man to kneel if you have already built the room that makes him small.”

But absent Japan’s civilian leadership, it was evident an Allied invasion of the country would have been necessary to bring an end to the war due to its military’s commitment to continue.

Turning to Iran, it is interesting to see the contrast.

Tehran is headed by an emperor equivalent known as the Supreme Leader, ruling along with his mullah associates. Currently, Majtoba Khamenei is the Supreme Leader, elevated to that position following the premature death of his father in an Israeli bombing attack.

When the mullahs first came to power in 1979, as the existing army was loyal to the deposed Shah of Iran, a parallel army consisting of mullah loyalists—the Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC)—was established. The regular army basically operates as an ICE force while the IRGC has a constitutional mandate to ensure the Islamic Republic’s integrity. Ever since then, the IRGC has been the primary force to do the mullahs’ bidding for them.

Although efforts have been made with the mullahs to reach an end to hostilities, it is difficult to achieve such a resolution when the status of Iran’s current leadership is uncertain. Supreme Leader Khamenei may no longer even be alive as he has remained out of public view. A 15-second undated video of him was recently released but, absent a verifiable date, we really do not know if he is still alive.

However, regardless of Khamenei’s current status and despite the devastation the U.S. has wrought upon Iran, it should be obvious the mullahs lack any desire to surrender. Theirs is a mindset mandating that all other religions submit to Islam—a mindset that will forever leave them committed to fighting a war that has been fought for 1,400 years now. And they, like the Japanese generals, prefer to see the country fight to the last man rather than surrender. Unfortunately, what worked to end World War II is not working to end the Iran war.

This is why President Donald Trump embarked upon a new diplomatic direction in hopes of securing peace. And, unlike the Truman administration which pursued it through civilian authority, it appears Trump has re-directed efforts to pursue it through military authority—i.e., the IRGC—by opening a direct backchannel link.

Obviously, it is through the IRGC that the mullahs live and breathe. And, while the surviving mullahs can turn a blind eye to the devastation heaped upon the country, for the most part it is the IRGC that has borne firsthand witness to the devastation that has occurred. While the IRGC may huff, it is too exhausted to do much puffing. Just like Hirohito grasped the reality about the war, so too does the IRGC as it embraces a reality that is undoubtedly breaking its fighting spirit.

Despite the Islamic extremism that feeds both the mullahs and the IRGC, it is those who really know the face of war, rather than just the sound of its guns, who are more likely to engage in a serious effort to end it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/iran-s-mullahs-mirror-world-war-ii-japanese-generals-mindset/

Politically, We All Live In Piker’s World Now

 by Allan J. Feifer

Broadly speaking, there are three classes of people most of us fall into, and they form what I term the Reality Triangle:

• Pragmatists—People who make decisions based on what works in the real world. Outcomes drive them.


• Opportunists—People who act based on advantage—personal gain, leverage, timing, or self-interest.


• Idealists—People who act based on principle—moral frameworks or philosophical commitments.

However, there is a fourth, much smaller and, to my mind, darker group of people: True Believers, who are existential threats because their calculations of self-interest are subordinate to their emotional commitment, making them resistant to, or even activated by, evidence to the contrary.

Societies function well when people remain responsive to reality. Outcomes, incentives, and consequences induce corrections. Societies become destabilized when people unresponsive to those mechanisms acquire enough influence to shape the behavior of everyone else.

That may be happening now in American politics, with the Democrat party discovering that it has less control over its political future than it believes. For generations, political influence generally flowed through a standardized institutional structure:

Party → Candidates → Media → Voters

The party helped determine which candidates emerged. The media helped shape the political conversation. Candidates sought votes by appealing to voters within that system.

But a different model is rapidly gaining sway:

Influencer → Community → Political Identity → Voters → Candidates

That distinction represents a shift in where political power originates. The political influencer builds community first. The community develops its own language, heroes, villains, grievances, and political identity. That identity then shapes what candidates the voters demand. The political party may find itself responding to a political movement it did not create and therefore cannot control.

Political parties are increasingly becoming downstream from political communities they didn’t create. That should concern anyone who believes political power ought to be accountable. The unsettling part is not that a social media streamer has influence. It is that he can now build a political community outside the party and acquire enough influence to make the party accommodate it. Yet that may be precisely what the new digital political ecosystem has created.

Hasan Piker provides a useful case study.

Hasan Doğan Piker, known online as HasanAbi, is a Turkish-American political commentator and one of Twitch’s most-watched streamers. Raised mostly in Istanbul, he graduated from Rutgers University. His streams blend political analysis, news reactions, gaming, and audience interaction, making him a major influence on a specific audience and a rising star on the left.

The clearest takeaway in Piker’s political messaging is that he frames major issues—foreign policy, labor, culture, media, and elections—through a materialist, anti-imperialist, left-populist lens. His appeal is particularly strong among digitally native young men who prefer interactive political commentary to traditional media and are entranced by confrontational, anti-establishment rhetoric.

But Piker’s significance is not simply the millions who watch him daily. It is what happens inside the community he has created. Traditional political media tells you what happened; streamers create an alternate universe in which viewers spend enormous amounts of time surrounded by people who share the same political assumptions. The same arguments, grievances, and conclusions are reinforced repeatedly. Political identity becomes not merely something a person believes but something he experiences as part of a community.

We used to call that model brainwashing.

Digital platforms have changed everything. Americans have traditionally resisted this kind of political socialization because independent institutions, competing media, religious organizations, civic groups, and individualism provided competing sources of identity and information. A person might encounter an idea at church, at work, from a newspaper, from a neighbor, or from a political party. No single source necessarily controlled the information environment.

That is different inside a highly engaged digital community where the community itself becomes the information environment. Once that happens, the political influencer is no longer merely persuading people; he determines what viewers see as credible.

That brings us back to the Reality Triangle. What makes someone a True Believer rather than simply an extreme Idealist? It is not the extremity of the belief. An Idealist can hold deeply unpopular beliefs and still change his mind when reality proves him wrong. The distinction is what happens when belief collides with evidence.

That is the test we should apply to Piker.

Does contrary evidence cause him to reconsider, or does it simply become another reason to attack the people, institutions, or facts that produced it? Does reality remain capable of changing the conclusion, or has ideology become all that matters?

True Believers run the gamut from high-functioning evil geniuses to those who can’t string ten words into a coherent sentence. Intelligence is not the distinguishing characteristic. True Believers are the pathological exception to the norm: people for whom belief itself overrides reality.

This is where the political implications become starkly relevant, revealing how the Democrat party increasingly has to contend with political actors who exist outside its institutional hierarchy yet possess something the party itself can no longer generate: an intensely engaged political community.

Democrats want these people inside the party. They may believe they are recruiting young political actors and can moderate them once they become candidates. They’re discovering instead that the party is recruiting itself into their political movement.

There is an old cautionary tale about a young woman who “rides the tiger.” She enjoys the thrill and believes she is in control. But eventually the tiger turns and devours her. The lesson is simple: once you climb onto a tiger, control is an illusion.

That is the predicament facing Democrats today, and it’s profound: the party once helped shape the candidate and the message. Now, the influencer can shape the community, the community can develop the political identity, and that identity can determine which candidates receive its energy.

Democrats have a choice: resist that movement, attempt to absorb it, or follow it. The danger is that the third option eventually makes the party subordinate to a movement it can no longer control.

This may help explain something that otherwise seems difficult to understand about the modern Democrat party. Its movement to the left may not have been the party’s choice. Pressure may have come from political communities that developed outside the traditional party structure, forcing the party to respond.

The party no longer creates the demand; it may simply have no other choice but to acquiesce.

That is why Piker matters. The question is not whether he is influential; clearly he is. Nor is it simply whether his politics are extreme. The larger question is whether America is entering an era in which political identity is increasingly formed outside traditional political institutions—and those institutions are then forced to accommodate the communities that form it.

If so, the Democrat party’s problem is considerably larger than Hasan Piker. It may be discovering that the party no longer shapes the movement; the movement is shaping the party.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/08/politically-we-all-live-in-piker-s-world-now/

The Cyclospora Panic of 2026

 by John F. DiLeo

If the government discovered a new risk that you could catch an illness -- like a really bad stomach flu -- from eating something, would you want the government to warn you?

Now, what if they didn’t know which one thing was spreading this illness, but it could be any of a number of different fruits and vegetables? Still want that vague warning?

Now, what if this illness is always present, with a few thousand cases every year, but this year, the spread just might be worse than usual? So, the difference this year is really just a matter of degree. Still want them to tell you?

A few thousand people get cyclosporiasis every year (and yes, it is awful). In 2026, federal agencies suspected it might hit the tens of thousands of cases.

Still a drop in the bucket, in a nation of 340 million.

So these agencies reported the risk. They didn’t go overboard and ban everything imaginable. They tried to use their bully pulpit responsibly by sharing the warning and looking for the source of the somewhat higher-than-usual incidence of this parasite.

As the summer went on, the public learned more and more about the source of this illness. It’s a parasite. It lives in fecal matter. It’s destroyed by proper water processing systems. But some water processing systems don’t process sewage correctly, so when farms irrigate their crops with improperly treated water, the very process of irrigating crops can spread it onto fresh crops. You buy raw ingredients, eat them, ingest the troublemaker, and get sick. Cyclosporiasis hits.

In response to this information, many Americans spent their summer avoiding raw ingredients. People who usually start their meals with a salad started skipping that salad. People who usually have burgers with tomato, onions, and lettuce started ordering their burgers plain. People who usually have tacos and similar foods that contain raw vegetables switched to foods that don’t contain raw vegetables.

People who usually eat fresh fruit as a snack switched to other snacks. Potato chips and cookies were considered “safer” than salad or fruit trays.

Note that this doesn’t mean the alternative is objectively safe, objectively healthy, objectively nutritious -- just that the alternative is free of this one particular risk.

The alternative may also have been less nutritious, more fattening, more expensive -- but the popular trend this summer was to avoid things that could carry cyclospora, and the health risks presented by alternative choices weren’t top-of-mind.

It’s a free country. We all have the right to choose what kind of food to eat, as long as we can afford to pay for it. We have the right to choose which risks to run with our diets – to go heavy or light, to cook everything or eat raw, to be carnivorous or vegetarian. These are personal choices.

But have we thought through the impact -- in personal behavior, in economics, in the business community -- of even the relatively moderate notices that our government is empowered to produce?

If the government mandates a recall, the cost is direct and self-evident. Distributors have to refund purchases, cancel orders, collect and destroy already-delivered prepacked salads or ingredient packets. How many farms had to plow under entire fields this summer when the threat was discovered, without certainty, even then, that the next crop would be immune?

And even if no government mandate is issued, a cautious public notice can produce the same result by crashing demand.

If necessary, because of a confirmed risk of contagion -- then that’s life; it’s the right action. But if it’s an overreaction, it’s a very costly choice indeed.

Thinking back on this past summer, we should ask ourselves:

How many of us switched from our usually healthy food choices to an unhealthier diet this summer, because of this possibly overblown risk?

How much additional spoilage was there in the produce sections of our nation’s grocery stores and fruit markets this summer, as fresh groceries went unpurchased?

How much did restaurants and cafeterias suffer, in salads and raw ingredients stocked but never served? (Obviously, the issues vary from vegetable to vegetable -- carrots, celery, and onions not served raw can be used in sauces and soups, but lettuce, cucumbers, and radishes not served cold won’t get used at all).

How much damage did this fear do to Vietnamese restaurants, Mexican restaurants, and other such cuisines that specialize in foods served raw, where they lost whole dining parties this summer, as customers chose other cuisines, or chose not to dine out at all?

And what has this done to individual people’s health, as this one fear drove them to choose other risks instead? Picture a burger, normally served with fresh lettuce and tomato, and the customer switching to fried onions and sautéed mushrooms instead, and then skipping the salad and getting a breaded and fried appetizer instead, for another thousand calories?

For a day or two, such choices won’t break an individual diet or an individual business. But over the course of a summer? How many farms suffered, how many restaurants and grocery stores? And how many people got fatter because their fear of a bout of gut illness drove them to eat more pizza, fried chicken, and ice cream?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: what if the risk was never outsized enough to deserve mention? What if the cyclospora incidence (which, after all, is always present in a limited way, every year) was only a little higher in 2026 than in most years, but the vast majority of us wouldn’t in fact be likelier than usual to get it anyway?

As summer comes to an end, cyclosporiasis appears to have increased three or fourfold this year, but in a country of 340 million, that’s still a tiny amount. Was the fear overblown, or was the result relatively mild only because people reacted to the warnings and took precautions? And if so, was it worth it? Who knows?

This isn’t to attack the government for issuing these limited warnings. Both the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services seem to have restrained themselves this time (in contradiction to their “The sky is falling!” approach to COVID-19, six years ago).

But it is a worthwhile wake-up call, if we think it through, and realize how much even a restrained warning can affect the marketplace.

One of the great truisms of political science is Chief Justice John Marshall’s dictum that “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

It is too easy to forget that Justice Marshall wasn’t just talking about taxes; he was talking about all government power, from laws to regulations, and even to public health warnings.

Our federal government is now so powerful that it can bankrupt or shut down a commodity, an industry, or a class of restaurant with a single decree.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/08/the-cyclospora-panic-of-2026/