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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spent Sunday fearmongering on public broadcaster ARD, warning that a potential victory for Alternative for Germany in next Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt election could inflict economic damage on the region.

Deutschland kann viel. Die Potenziale unseres Landes sind groß – und diese müssen wir nutzen. pic.twitter.com/4GFF5gtmyt

— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) August 31, 2026

Merz's assessment conflicts with Nomura's political analysis, which suggests investors no longer reflexively fear right-wing victories. Instead, markets are increasingly focused on the economic consequences of left-wing policies, particularly deindustrialization, elevated energy costs, and uncontrolled mass migration, all of which have been nothing short of nation-killing.

"If things turn out the way the polls suggest, this federal state will face significant problems," Merz told broadcaster ARD. He questioned whether international companies would invest or build factories in a state governed by an AfD premier.

Polls show the AfD attracting more than 40% support, potentially double the roughly 20% backing for Merz's Christian Democratic Union. The center-right party has governed Saxony-Anhalt for more than two decades.

"The state will suffer considerable damage if the scenario we currently fear comes to pass," Merz said during the interview.

An AfD victory this coming weekend could produce Germany's first state government led by the right-wing party.

Merz's fearmongering comes as his approval ratings are the lowest recorded for any postwar German chancellor. Economic troubles have rocked Europe's largest economy, while voters have grown increasingly frustrated with Berlin.

Andrzej Szczepaniak, a senior European economist and executive director at Nomura, wrote last week about "the seeds of political change" and noted that "politics in Europe is lurching towards more populism."

Szczepaniak said, "Five years ago, financial markets would not have seemed so at ease with such a prospect. But then again, these populist right-wing political parties were previously not as fiscally prudent as they are perceived to be today. Indeed, Italy's Giorgia Meloni is the standard-bearer for financial markets of how a populist right-wing political party can govern: fiscally prudent enough to show investors that the party can govern responsibly while focusing heavily on social issues, including immigration and culture wars, to keep grassroots supporters happy."

He added, "Financial markets are much more concerned about populist left-wing parties being elected due to their desire to increase spending, often paid for through higher borrowing or higher taxes, which are likely to shut the engine off of already stuttering economies."

Polymarket:

Looking ahead, Szczepaniak noted that right-wing parties are positioned to make significant gains across Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK over the next 18 months.

Read the report.

Marine Le Pen would win France's 2027 presidential election against every major rival now being measured, according to a major survey by Elabe published on August 29 for BFMTV and La Tribune Dimanche.

France elects its president in two rounds: a crowded first round on April 18 cuts the field to the top two - no one will win outright - and the survivors meet again on May 2. Elabe has Le Pen at 34% to 35.5% in round one depending on who else runs, far clear of the pack, then beating every potential runoff opponent it tested. The new poll comes on the heels of a Nomura report which showed Le Pen with a commanding first-round lead. 

The rest of the field is fighting over second place. Édouard Philippe, the former prime minister and the most plausible face of the post-Macron center, leads that pack at about 17% when he stands alone. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on 14% to 14.5%, having lost his summer lift. Raphaël Glucksmann, now in the race, is between 11.5% and 14%. Gabriel Attal's presence mainly splits the moderate vote.

According to the poll, here's Le Pen:

• versus Philippe: 52.5% to 47.5%
• versus Attal or Glucksmann: 57% to 43%
• versus Mélenchon: 69.5% to 30.5%

For a generation, French presidential politics assumed a front républicain: a cross-party second-round squeeze that would keep the National Rally out of the Élysée. It elected Chirac 82-18 over her father in 2002 and Macron twice over her; yet the margin has narrowed every time. According to the Elabe poll, that squeeze is no longer automatic. Le Pen is not only first in April. She is ahead in May against every opponent Elabe put up. Even against Philippe, the closest of them, she leads by five points.

Le Pen's popularity has perhaps been boosted by her status as a martyr - created by what some might consider establishment efforts to throw her off track. On July 7 the Paris court of appeal upheld her embezzlement conviction in the European Parliament assistants case. It shortened the ban on holding office enough for her to stand and imposed a year of house arrest with an electronic tag. Her appeal to the Cour de Cassation freezes that sentence while she campaigns. The court has said it aims to rule before the first round. A confirmed tag would not take her off the April ballot. It would frame the May runoff. Le Pen herself has said she could not campaign tagged - though sentence remission could free her by early 2027 either way. Jordan Bardella remains the party's designated stand-in.

At the summer gathering of MEDEF (France's main employers' federation) at Roland-Garros on August 27 she set out a €125 billion savings path and a plan to let long-tenure workers retire at 60 to 62, costed at about €9 billion and described as a "societal choice." French banks are still wary of financing National Rally campaigns. On these numbers, voters are less so.

Bond markets are pricing the wider strain - as French 10-year yields have been near 4.1%, their highest since late 2008. The extra yield over German Bunds is about 80 basis points, the wide end of a 59-to-85 range over the past year. That premium reflects a hung Assembly, a government that has already stumbled on the budget, a 2027 finance bill due in October that may not pass in ordinary form, a deficit still near 5% of GDP, and IMF debt figures already around 118.5% this year and through 120% in 2027. 

The working rule of French politics was that Le Pen could reach the steps of the Élysée and not the door - but rules were made to be broken. 

A Southern California corruption case unraveled in dramatic fashion after federal agents discovered tens of thousands of dollars hidden underground at the home of a longtime local politician, according to the NY Post.

Ricardo Pacheco, a former Baldwin Park councilman, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for taking bribes while in office. Investigators recovered $62,900 buried in his backyard, part of more than $83,000 ultimately seized from him.

Federal prosecutors said Pacheco used his position to help private interests win favorable treatment from the city. Much of the misconduct involved companies seeking approval to operate marijuana businesses in Baldwin Park.

Pacheco also took money from a police officer who was secretly cooperating with the FBI. Authorities said he received $37,900 from the officer and later backed a police association agreement valued at more than $4 million over three years.

The Post writes that another former elected official, ex-Compton Councilman Isaac Galvan, was caught up in the same investigation. Galvan admitted giving Pacheco $70,000 in exchange for assistance with marijuana permits and separately acknowledged failing to report more than $500,000 in income.

Both men received 18-month federal prison sentences. Pacheco was fined $10,000 and ordered to surrender nearly $220,000, while Galvan was ordered to pay more than $323,000 in restitution.

After pleading guilty and leaving office, Pacheco began cooperating with federal investigators and helped build cases against several other people tied to local government and the marijuana business.

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

As President Trump has repeatedly pointed out, the Canadian government embraces a peculiar notion of national sovereignty: It depends upon the U.S. military for security and expects to sell its domestic products to Americans as if Canada were just another U.S. state. At the same time, it insists on censoring American sources of news, restricting the flow of American goods into Canada, and rebuking American foreign policy decisions.

When former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Trump following his 2024 re-election, the Canadian leader's foremost concern was to prevent the new Trump administration from seeking fair and reciprocal trade (actual free trade) between the two countries - a goal that the president and his economic team had pursued during Trump's first term and which ultimately resulted in the replacement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). From Trump's point of view, USMCA did not resolve decades-long trade imbalances between Canada and the United States, but it did kill NAFTA and put the U.S. in a legal position to recalibrate its economic relationship with Canada by 2026. Trudeau and the Canadians needed for the old system to endure, and he told Trump that Canada could not economically survive if Canada were forced to remove its own trade barriers against the U.S. This is when Trump suggested to Trudeau that if Canada cannot exist without American welfare, then it is operating as a de facto American state.

Trump's unvarnished truth-telling created an international brouhaha. Never one for pretending or backing down, the president spent the next several months advising Canada to make its dependence upon the American Union official by becoming the fifty-first state. Canadians from British Columbia to Newfoundland took great offense, and the Canadian Establishment used the issue as a catalyst for installing central banker Mark Carney as prime minister, under the rationale that the former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England was the ideal candidate for taking on President Trump.

Since his premiership began, Carney has been on a mission to ruffle Trump's feathers and cause friction between Canada and the U.S. He has worked to strengthen Canada's economic bonds with communist China. He has repeatedly described Canada as an extension of Old Europe, rather than part of the New World. He has promised to "defend" Greenland from any American attempts to assert dominion over the island. He has pledged additional Canadian support for Ukraine in a war against Russia that President Trump wishes to end. He has used every public speech to insult the United States as an unreliable and dangerous nation that cannot be trusted. He has declared Canada to be in an economic "war" with the U.S. and has encouraged Canadian citizens to be obnoxiously hostile toward Americans.

These provocative stances and statements might make sense if Canada were not so economically and militarily dependent upon the United States. If Carney wishes to strengthen communist China at America's expense, he cannot expect the U.S. to give Canada the most favorable trade terms of any nation in the world. Nor can he expect America to protect Canada as an ally if Canada allies itself with America's principal geopolitical foe. If Carney wishes to fight Americans so that the Kingdom of Denmark can continue to lay claim to a North American territory whose 56,000 residents are nearly all Inuit, then he should not expect the U.S. military to defend Canada from invasion. Furthermore, Carney should not expect the U.S. to protect Canada under a Golden Dome missile defense system for North America that depends upon having operational control of Greenland. He certainly shouldn't expect American taxpayers to foot the bill for Canada's national security when Canada is working to provoke a direct U.S.-Russia conflict over Ukraine. He also shouldn't expect preferential treatment from the United States when he undermines American strategic objectives around the world.

Canada's flamboyant pomposity is obscene.

Canada's Hillary Clinton, Chrystia Freeland, was the trade negotiator who tried to keep Canada's one-way tariffs intact during President Trump's first term. She's currently serving as an unpaid "infrastructure reconstruction" advisor (or what some might call, "the CEO of wartime money-laundering in Europe") to Ukraine's holdover-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She popped her head up from Ukraine's funny money operations last week to denounce the United States for treating Canada as a "vassal state."

Since Canada is not economically or militarily viable without enormous welfare assistance from the U.S., Canada is a vassal state; pretending otherwise is absurd.

But here's the thing: Central banker Mark Carney and the Canadian Establishment have chosen to fight back against President Trump's efforts for reciprocal trade by binding Canada to communist China, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Carney can't beg for help from General Secretary Xi Jinping, King Charles III, and Queen Ursula von der Leyen without making Canada a vassal state of communist China and Old Europe.

Canada is not a "middle power" because it has no power. It has squandered its natural resources and economic wealth by pursuing foolish "climate change" policies that have no effect on the weather. Sovereign nations capable of militarily defending themselves do not indulge costly, "woke" delusions. Only vassal states commit economic suicide while puffing out their chests and acting tough. Why? Because real nation states stand behind and take care of them.

It is also fascinating how Chrystia Freeland publicly argues that the best way to fight back against the Trump administration is to assist Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Calling it the "Donut Strategy," Freeland says that the Canadian government must go around the White House and manipulate the American people. Canada's minister of industry, Mélanie Joly, is doing exactly that by strategizing with prominent Democrats around the country on the best ways to undermine President Trump's trade policies. Ontario Premier Doug Ford not only pledged to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections but also told Trump to "kiss his ass." Central banker Mark Carney and his globalist friends are coordinating an information war against American voters. In other words, all the Canadians who whine about President Trump not respecting Canadian sovereignty have absolutely no respect for American sovereignty.

Prominent members of the Canadian government nonchalantly admit to interfering in American elections, and corporate news talking heads just nod and smile. Do you remember when news media spent years lecturing Americans about "foreign election interference" after Trump clobbered Hillary in the 2016 election? All we heard during the president's first term was, "Russia, Russia, Russia!" Now Canadian officials admit to manipulating American voters in past elections and promise to do so again this year, and not a single pundit is even whispering, "Canada, Canada, Canada." After Hillary Clinton's campaign and Barack Obama's intelligence agencies used the Russian Collusion Hoax to perpetrate a fraud against the American people, Democrats collude openly with the Canadian government to manipulate elections. Do you think that "foreign election interference" might have been just another propaganda press talking point to advance another anti-Trump narrative?

Along with Canada, the United Kingdom seems to play a central role in sabotaging Trump's government. It was MI6 spy Christopher Steele who put together Hillary's fake dossier on Donald Trump that triggered Robert Mueller's two-year special counsel investigation into the president. Later, British "Russia expert" Fiona Hill testified against the president when Democrats (and Mitt Romney) turned a Biden Family corruption scandal involving Ukraine into a Trump impeachment. During her testimony, Hill insisted that Russia "meddled" in the 2016 election. Now King Charles III's North American prime minister, Mark Carney, is openly meddling in the 2026 midterms. Will Chris Steele and Fiona Hill return to testify about Canada's election interference? Let's not hold our breath.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Submitted by The Bureau's Sam Cooper (emphasis our own),

The Ring of Fire sits about 500 kilometers northeast of Thunder Bay in the muskeg of Ontario’s James Bay Lowlands, on Treaty 9 territory. Prospectors found it in 2007 and named it after a Johnny Cash song.

Beneath the peat moss lies the Canadian Shield, deeply seamed with nickel and cobalt for batteries used in electric vehicles and smart phones, copper for the grids that power data centers, titanium, platinum and palladium for aerospace, and the largest deposit of chromite — critical to stainless steel — in North America.

Nine Cree and Ojibwa communities live in and around it.

On September 14, Prime Minister Mark Carney opens the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, where he is expected to pitch the Ring of Fire as Canada’s answer to a new world in which access to critical minerals has become an instrument of great-power leverage.

A coalition that advertises itself as anti-capitalist will be in Toronto too.

One of its three conveners has direct organizational ties to CODEPINK, the American anti-war group now under investigation in Washington and London.

The Indigenous and eco-justice coalition says it brings together labor unions and climate networks, and opposes “the sell-off of Canada’s public infrastructure and resources to global private capital.” From September 12 to 14, it will hold a counter-summit, “culminating in a mass rally and demonstration to crash Mark Carney’s Investment Summit.”

Of the conveners, World BEYOND War has the deepest international connections. Headquartered in the United States, it obtained its own charitable status in September 2021 after years under a fiscal sponsor. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin sits on its advisory board.

Whether interests from Beijing sit behind CODEPINK’s funding is now a question for two Five Eyes governments. No such allegation has been made about any organization in the Ring of Fire coalition.

The Telegraph reported in August that Britain’s Home Office was examining claims that Beijing was funding pro-Palestinian protests to “sow division and chaos” in Britain.

The paper also reported that a British company linked to CODEPINK allegedly received about £250,000 from businesses connected to Neville Roy Singham, a China-based technology millionaire accused of financing Chinese propaganda.

Singham has consistently denied allegations of Beijing backing.

Yet footage from a November 2025 academic forum in Shanghai, co-sponsored by Singham with East China Normal University, showed him standing with attendees, fists raised, as the communist anthem “The Internationale” played. He is married to Jodie Evans, CODEPINK’s other co-founder.

In Washington, a congressional committee and the Justice Department are running parallel inquiries into whether Singham used his money to spread pro-China propaganda and advance the interests of Beijing.

The New York Times documented in 2023 that entities linked to Singham had supplied more than $1.4 million to CODEPINK — close to a quarter of its donations since 2017. The Times’ investigation, cited since in congressional letters and at a February 2026 Ways and Means hearing on foreign influence in American nonprofits, opened not on the Middle East causes the Telegraph raised this year but on a street fight in London.

“The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators,” the Times reported. The fight, in November 2021, “started when men aligned with the event’s organizers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong.”

“On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial injustice,” the paper reported.

“In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the center is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.”

Mr. Singham, the Times added, “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.”

CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin’s connection to World BEYOND War is financial as well as advisory.

Her family foundation, Arc of Justice, reported a $100,000 grant to World BEYOND War in its 2022 federal tax filing, recorded as general support. The same filing lists $355,350 to CODEPINK.

The two organizations also share an institutional funder, the Tides Foundation, a large American grantmaker. World BEYOND War names Tides among its foundation supporters; Tides reported grants of $104,500 to CODEPINK in 2022 and $54,500 in 2023.

In March, CODEPINK helped organize what it called a humanitarian convoy to Cuba with The People’s Forum, one of the New York groups the Times identified as funded by Singham. Medea Benjamin, whose CODEPINK had received more than $1.4 million from Singham-linked entities, joined the trip, along with political streamer Hasan Piker. The Treasury Department opened an administrative review. Benjamin called it intimidation and denied reports that she had been subpoenaed.

In March 2025, World BEYOND War joined an anti-mining protest in Toronto — at the world’s largest mining gathering — alongside the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Sudanese Solidarity Collective, and Canadian indigenous groups.

The demonstrators denounced what they called conflict minerals and green militarism, naming cobalt, coltan, antimony, rare earths, niobium and thorium. “Every F-35 fighter jet has about 900 pounds of rare earths in it,” one argument ran. “Those weapons are being used to bomb civilians in Gaza.”

Another held that “Canadian companies can dig up critical minerals used to make the bombs that are bombing other Indigenous people, on their lands, around the world.”

On January 21, 2026, World BEYOND War published on its own site an essay by CODEPINK’s “War Is Not Green” campaigner, arguing that artificial intelligence data centers are an engine of militarized extraction, relying on critical minerals.

“The process of obtaining these minerals ... requires the militarization, destabilization, and total plunder of mineral-rich regions.”

The question of whether foreign money moves through Western environmental coalitions was put to Brenda Shaffer at a Hudson Institute panel in Washington on May 19, convened by former U.S. national security official Michael Doran with research fellow Zineb Riboua and this reporter. Shaffer teaches at the United States Naval Postgraduate School’s Energy Academic Group.

She was asked about Tides — which World BEYOND War lists among its funders — and called it “an American based organization” that is “strongly affiliated with democratic causes in the US.”

“Many, many organizations and American organizations work as pass throughs for China to block energy in Canada, but also to block energy in the United States,” Shaffer said. “For instance, there’s Energy Foundation, which is based in San Francisco, which used to be a legally explicit Chinese organization, but it broke off to an American organization and a Chinese organization.”

“You see the 990 forms and you see money comes in from China to Energy Foundation,” she said. “Money goes from Energy Foundation into various environmental movements in the United States that are working against fossil fuels. And if China was really so interested about stopping fossil fuels, you would think they, the largest consumer of coal in the world, the largest producer, they would stop it at home.”

On December 16, 2025, 26 state attorneys general asked Attorney General Pamela Bondi to investigate Energy Foundation China under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, alleging it “is supervised by the National Development and Reform Commission — an arm of the Chinese government” and is led by Beijing-based former Chinese Communist Party officials. Its chief executive, Ji Zou, previously served as a deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy. The letter says that “in 2023 alone it gave over $156 million in grants to environmental and climate-focused groups.”

A search of the Tides Foundation’s amended 2022 Form 990 shows that it reported $16,292,728 in grant-making expenditures and investments in East Asia and the Pacific. The filing itemizes 157 grants of more than $5,000 to recipients in that region.

Because the public-disclosure form leaves foreign recipients’ names and employer identification numbers blank, it cannot be determined from this filing whether Energy Foundation China or any other particular entity received those funds.

The public filing also does not identify Tides’ contributors, so it cannot establish whether Tides received funds from Asia.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Given the Trump administration's shift from a military campaign against Iran to primarily one that seeks economic 'strangulation' and isolation - there's been a big diplomatic push by the White House to get regional allies on board.

But the early case remains that reactions from other Gulf allies have so far been muted, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier confirmed that Trump has been phoning world leaders to join him in isolating Iran.

But this is what makes images coming out Monday from a place further to the east so resounding, symbolic, and defiant: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is busy getting the red carpet treatment while attending the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have arrived in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek for the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit - the primarily China/Russia founded Eurasian political, economic and international security organization which is now made up of ten member states

The bold defiance in terms of the optics will surely not be missed by Washington:

Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have arrived in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek for the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also attending the summit, which marks 25 years of its existence.

Also in attendance for the two-day summit which kicked off Monday, and which has already included a Putin-Xi meeting on the sidelines, are the leaders of Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and others.

"Uncertainty grows against the backdrop of unprecedented changes" — China's Xi Jinping tells Vladimir Putin

Notably, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also there, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

???? Kyrgyz people welcomed President Pezeshkian with traditional sweets.

During his visit to Kyrgyzstan, in addition to participating in and delivering a speech at the summit of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the "SCO plus" format, President… pic.twitter.com/wL4a6dFSy2

— ???????????????? ?????????? (@SprinterPress) August 31, 2026

Warm greetings between Iranian and Pakistani leaders...

#VIDEO: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meets Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Bishkek on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. pic.twitter.com/XdU0IBBcbP

— Saudi Gazette (@Saudi_Gazette) August 31, 2026

It must be remembered that Pakistan is a long-running nuclear-armed Washington ally... so this is awkward to say the least, for the US.

But Islamabad has also been a key mediator throughout the now 6-month long Iran war. Whenever its officials get dispatched to Tehran, the relationship with Iranian officials seems chummy and warm. This has already been on display at the SCO conference...

Meeting between the Prime Minister and the President of Iran on the sidelines of SCO CHS Meeting in Bishkek.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif held a meeting with the President of Islamic Republic of Iran, H.E. Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian today, on the sidelines of SCO Council of… pic.twitter.com/liQazEaA1R

— Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) August 31, 2026

Tehran is hoping that its membership and active involvement in regional accords such as the SCO as well as BRICS can be a key to weathering the US-led economic storm and strong sanctions regimen.

Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reaffirmed in a statement that cooperation between China and Iran "has always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted." So far, US Treasury sanctions have yet to take direct aim at significant Chinese financial institutions.