Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse on Friday, plunging the nation into darkness and leaving millions without power amid a US pressure campaign that has largely blocked oil from reaching the Caribbean’s largest island. Friday’s collapse was triggered by a failure in high-voltage transmission lines in central Cuba that occurred around 2pm local time, authorities said. … Cuba’s aging power generation system has been under severe strain from fuel shortages and decrepit infrastructure for years, but a US-imposed oil blockade that began in January has vastly worsened blackouts and led to more frequent grid collapses.” (09/19/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260919-cuba-s-power-grid-collapses-again-leaving-island-in-darkness
Source: The Hill
“‘Hostile act’: Trump threatens to stop trading with EU over Canada associate membership.” (09/18/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/6083817-rising-september-18-2026/
Source: EconLog
by Alberto Mingardi
“The movement took its name from a Ned Ludd who never existed—yet protesters signed letters and proclamations against mechanization as Ned Ludd, King Ludd, or General Ludd. It began in Nottinghamshire in March 1811, peaked in 1812, and had flickered out by 1816. It was the most prominent, but neither the only nor the first, episode of machine-breaking. Resistance to the introduction of machines in production was not new. It was strongest in old trades, such as wool and hosiery, which were long established in England and capable of expressing political demands. Mechanization in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England was not merely the introduction of new machinery; it was also a breakthrough in that particular technology known as organization.” (09/18/26)
https://www.econlib.org/ai-and-the-luddites
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“US President Donald Trump has said his proposed triumphal arch will double as a complex to store military equipment, complete with the ability to deploy snipers and drones. In a Sunday morning post, Trump said he is updating the plans at the ‘strong request’ of the US military and for ‘national security purposes’. … Construction on Trump’s 250-foot arch, planned for a site across the Potomac River from Washington DC just outside the Arlington National Cemetery, was expected to begin this month.” (09/20/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqdj4pez00dzo
Source: The New Republic
“Fox in Full Meltdown as Network’s Own Poll Hits Trump with Brutal News.” (09/18/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/215566/fox-full-meltdown-network-poll-hits-trump-brutal-news
Source: Persuasion
by Charles Lane
“The southern border is a case in point.” (09/18/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/congress-failed-to-act-on-the-border
Source: Politico
“AI giants Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are facing allegations of collusion following recent calls for a coordinated slowdown of AI development, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court Friday. The complaint claims that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s public plea earlier this month for ‘industry-wide coordination’ to ‘pace the frontier’ of AI advancement, which drew agreement from SpaceXAI head Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, amounted to an illegal business agreement between competitors under U.S. antitrust law.” (09/18/26)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/18/anthropic-openai-spacexai-google-sued-over-calls-to-pace-ai-development-01085023
Source: Serious Trouble
“Kennedy, Centered.” (09/18/26)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/kennedy-centered
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the great English individualist and classical liberal, emphasized that societies based on contract, unlike societies based on status and coercion, blossom with creative diversity. (How wokeism has corrupted that word in our time!) Free association bestows countless benefits on all socioeconomic levels. Paradoxically, greater individuality accompanies growing interdependence through specialization, the division of labor, and trade. Self-sufficiency is the way to stay poor. The result of industrialism, Spencer wrote, is general affluence and a fading away of coercion.” (09/18/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-herbert-spencer-real-liberalisms
Source: American Greatness
by Adam Turner
“The Shia Muslim terror proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Houthis of Yemen, are tightening their control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This is a big deal, because an average of 8.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum liquids moved through the Strait during the second quarter of 2026. There is also the non-energy trade. All this international trade then heads to Europe and/or the Americas. … With Iran also threatening the Strait of Hormuz—however ineffectively—this is bound to have grave repercussions for the world energy market and the international economy. Which leads me to my big question for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi: ‘What would you say … you do here, President Sisi?'” (09/18/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/18/egypt-should-be-fighting-against-the-houthis-in-yemen/
