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🇮🇱❌🇱🇧 - Israel is carrying out the largest air-strike campaign on the Lebanese front since October 8th, 2023, with more than 60+ airstrikes within a short period of time.

🇲🇱⚫️ Al Qaeda's Sahelian affiliate JNIM attacked the main military air base and a gendarmerie base in Bamako, its first attacks in Mali's capital since 2015. JNIM likely conducted the attacks to undermine the legitimacy and support of the Malian junta. The first attack in the capital in nearly a decade directly undermines the junta's narrative that security has improved since it came to power. The timing of the attack also occurred near the first anniversary of the Alliance of Sahel States and Mali's independence day. JNIM also likely targeted Senou Air Base to support its narrative that it is an avenger of the human rights abuses inflicted by Malian and Russian forces. JNIM highlighted that it targeted “Wagner mercenaries” and avenged the “massacres” of the junta and its Russian allies. JNIM has significantly strengthened its support zones in southern Mali since 2022 and is likely using these areas to support more sophisticated and frequent activity in and around the capital. The group has already likely used these support zones to conduct its first two suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attacks in the Koulikoro region since 2022 and support an attack campaign on the roads around Bamako. 🔗 Critical Threats

🇺🇦 How Ukraine turned mobile phone microphones into an air defence network While modern air defences are designed to effectively target limited numbers of large, highly-capable fighter and bomber aircraft using costly precision missiles, such systems are proving unsuitable for protecting friendly airspace against large quantities of small suicide drones – formally known as one-way UAVs. These small vehicles fly low and slow, and cost just a fraction of what a high-end anti-aircraft missile does. Attempting to target waves of one-way UAVs with conventional air defences would quickly exhaust the limited supply of munitions. Compounding the problem is how low such vehicles fly – as little as 200ft above ground level, according to the European headquarters of the US Air Force. At such minuscule heights, the curvature of the Earth makes it so that conventional air defence radars can only track objects at a distance of around 10nm (18.5km), according to General James Hecker, the commander of US Air Forces in Europe. Ukraine’s solution to this problem is a novel approach that targets the acoustic signature of incoming aerial threats. Kyiv has deployed a system called Sky Fortress throughout the country to detect and triangulate one-way UAVs by listening for them. Hecker says the network deployed in Ukraine includes 9,500 ground-based microphones that match sounds in the environment to known audio signatures of aerial vehicles. Once threats have been identified, more affordable defences can be deployed against the slow moving drones, such as man-portable air defence missiles like the Raytheon FIM-92 Stinger or anti-aircraft batteries like the German Gepard system. 🔗 https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/how-ukraine-turned-mobile-phone-microphones-into-an-air-defence-network/159997.article

🇨🇳🇺🇸 BYD would still have the cheapest EV in the US, even with a 100% tariff Even with the new 100% tariff on electric vehicles imported from China, BYD would still have the cheapest EV in the US. According to a new report, BYD’s lowest-priced EV would still undercut all US automakers at under $25,000. BYD’s cheapest electric car, the Seagull EV, starts at under $10,000 (69,800 yuan) in China. Its affordable electric and hybrid models are squeezing gas-powered vehicles out of China’s auto market, especially from foreign automakers. BYD has no plans to enter the US passenger vehicle market (it already sells electric buses), the company’s North American CEO Stella Li said. If it did, it could hold an advantage over US automakers. According to AutoForecast Solutions CEO Joe McCabe (via Nikkei), BYD would still have the cheapest EV in the US, even with the new 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicle imports. The tariff will take effect on September 27 and is intended to “protect American manufacturers from China’s unfair trade practices,” according to a press release from The White House. McCabe said BYD’s lowest-priced EV for the US would be $12,000. Even with a 100% tariff rate, BYD would have the cheapest EV in the US at under $25,000. Tesla, which still holds a commanding lead (48% share in July) in the US EV market, has yet to break the $30,000 threshold. 🔗 https://electrek.co/2024/09/17/byd-would-have-cheapest-ev-us-100-tariff/

🇦🇺 Australia's population reaches 27 million with growth largely driven by overseas migration New data issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the national population grew by 2.3 per cent to 27.1 million in March this year. It's an increase of about 615,300 people over the previous year, with net overseas migration driving about 83 per cent of this growth. The "natural increase", which means births and deaths, accounted for 17 per cent of the growth. All states and territories saw increases in population ranging from about 3.1 per cent in Western Australia to 0.4 per cent in Tasmania. 🔗 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-19/australia-s-population-reaches-27-million/104370682

🇯🇵 Japan faces labor shortages and demographic crisis as elderly population hits record high Government data released ahead of the event showed that Japan’s population aged 65 and over had risen to an all-time high of 36.25 million. While the country’s overall population has been declining, the segment of those aged 65 and above has grown to 29.3% of the population, the highest share of any country, according to the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Meanwhile, 2023 saw the number of Japan’s workers aged 65 and over rise for a 20th consecutive year to reach a record 9.14 million, Statistics Bureau data showed. Feldman warned that as these elderly workers begin to retire from the workforce, there won’t be the same number of young workers stepping up to replace them. Based on recent trends, Japan’s proportion of elderly people is expected to continue to rise, hitting 34.8% in 2040, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. Meanwhile, a recent research note from Morgan Stanley’s Feldman estimated that based on past demographic trends, the total labor force could drop from about 69.3 million in 2023 to about 49.1 million in 2050. 🔗 https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/18/japan-faces-demographic-crisis-as-elderly-count-hits-record-high-.html

🇨🇳 The Great China Car Blitzkrieg Officials in Beijing may deny it. But – make no mistake – China has launched a global car blitzkrieg. China will export a stunning 6 million cars to more than one hundred countries this year, cementing its position as the world’s No. 1 exporter. The average price of those made-in-China cars: $19,000. That’s less than half the average price of a new car in America and Europe. Consumers in every time zone are leaving their Chevys, VWs and Hondas in favor of new models from Chery, MG, Changan and BYD. While Chinese automakers steal chunks of market share, Japanese, European and American competitors appear to have no response. They are confused and overwhelmed by the speed and strength of the Chinese offensive... 🔗 https://newsletter.dunneinsights.com/p/the-great-china-car-blitzkrieg

⚔️ The Indo-Europeans, Aristocratic Individualism & the Faustian Spirit Over three billion people today, distributed across every continent, claim an Indo-European language as their mother-tongue. From 5 milllennia ago, the warbands of the Proto-Indo-European people spread out across Eurasia from their home in the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea. They left no annals of their conquests, no mythical conquerors to remember, but their legacy remains in the language and blood of billions. These were the Aryans. For decades, we could only speculate on a hypothetical origin population of the Indo-European languages. Modern developments in genetic science have revealed the story of a series of explosions of populations out of the Steppe, movements where these conquerors often replaced entire populations in the new lands they conquered: "In vast regions of Northern Europe, the Bronze Age steppe herders replaced earlier farming societies, the invaders unceremoniously sweeping away all before them, which often meant the extermination of indigenous male-dominated elites." With technological innovations like the domestication of horses, the development of wagons, and the “secondary products revolution” in which domesticated animals were used not only for meat but products like dairy and leather (lactose tolerance is another marker of PIE expansion), they spread to the outer reaches of Europe. To this day, 80-90% of Irish men carry their DNA. Contrary to the belief the Irish had descended mostly from Celts, they and other populations like the Scots are actually descendants of the first waves of PIE expansion. The Indo-European spirit is the root of the "Faustian" spirit of Europe: aggressive, restless, daring, innovative -- the spirit of a warlike people expanding out of the great steppe: a “uniquely aristocratic people dominated by emerging chieftains for whom fighting to gain prestige was the allpervading ethos. This culture is interpreted as ‘the Western state of nature’ and as the primordial source of Western restlessness.” The militarised culture of Indo-Europeans favoured an aristocratic individualism, where leadership was determined by competence and heroism. Leaders had to answer to their followers in a way despots did not, they were "first among equals" rather than the absolutist kings and chieftains found in other cultures. At the center of their society was the institution of the Männerbund, "the warrior brotherhood bound by oath to one another and to their ancestors during a ritually mandated raid." 🔗 https://fxtwitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1836741137454842341

🇰🇷 South Korea's expat population has reached an all-time high of 1.7 million people in 2024 In 1990, there were only 43k foreigners living in the country. 🔗 https://www.yahoo.com/news/country-saw-4-000-increase-212951828.html

🇺🇸 Teamsters decline to endorse election candidate – but claim majority backs Trump The Teamsters International, a powerful US transportation workers union that represents over 1.3 million workers, declined to endorse a candidate ahead of November’s presidential election – but released data suggesting most of its members backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. Polling conducted before Joe Biden, who in 2023 became the first sitting president to join a picket line, dropped out of the race, showed that the union’s members preferred Biden to Trump, 44.3% to 36.3%, according to the Union. In polling conducted after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris 59.6% of members said they wanted the union to endorse Trump over 34% for Harris. The Teamsters’ decision to not make an election endorsement was the first time the union has chosen not to make an endorsement since 1996. The Union has endorsed every Democratic candidate since 2000. 🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/18/election-teamsters-endorsement-harris-trump