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Twelve people were shot in seven overnight incidents in Washington, D.C., on Friday night and early Saturday morning, the most violent night recorded in the city since a federal law enforcement surge began in August, reports the Washington Post.

The Telegraph (UK).

Migrants are travelling to Spain on tourist visas and abandoning their children so that their families can claim asylum, Spanish police have said.

The parents leave their children outside police stations and children’s homes before flying home so they can be taken into state care as refugees, police in the east coast province of Tarragona said.

They aim to play the system and use the children to secure family reunification at a later date, authorities warned.
Police said they uncovered the “sophisticated” operation and have now arrested 30 people accused of abandoning their children.

The total scale of the social security fraud could amount to £1.3 million, a spokesman for national police in Spain’s Catalonia region, covering Tarragona, said.

The Telegraph (UK).

Rachel Reeves is reported to be looking to introduce a new mansion tax in next month’s Budget.

Owners of properties worth £2m and above could face a charge of 1 per cent of the amount by which the property exceeds that value, under the proposals.

Meanwhile, owners of a £3m property will face a bill of £10,000 every year, according to the Mail on Sunday.

People who own homes worth tens of millions and second home owners would also pay higher rates.

The great slogan of the Left is “TAX THE RICH!”, but the problem is that The Rich don’t have enough money to fund the modern welfare state. So: The modern state has to tax the middle class (and sometimes even the ‘working’ class) and print more paper money to fund all of the spending that they like to do.

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Of all the famous ‘conspiracy theories,’ the Great Replacement (that white populations in Western countries are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants) is arguably the most well-known. I have always been reluctant to entertain it, partly on the grounds that conspiracies are usually oversimplifications of more complex issues, partly because political incompetence gets you to your destination just as quickly as conspiracy, and partly because the policy of Replacement Migration as “a solution to declining and ageing populations” was just about believable (no matter how moronic it might have been). Nonetheless, the fact that Le Grand Remplacement is playing out before our very eyes, conspiracy or not, is significant; a point far better elucidated by the term’s progenitor, Renaud Camus:

The Great Replacement is not a theory, it is a chrononym, like the Great War or the Great Depression—a name for an era on the basis of its most significant phenomenon, namely the change of people and of civilization, or “genocide by substitution” (as the black poet and long-serving communist mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire, called it). In my book of the same name, Le Grand Remplacement, the idea of a conspiracy never arises, for that would be a totally ridiculous way of describing the enormity of the industrial, financial, cybernetic, ontological, and even metaphysical mechanisms that have led to this disaster, the replaceable man, interchangeable at will. Since the Great Replacement is not a theory but a fact, a crime, the crime against humanity of the twenty-first century, it cannot be a conspiracy theory or a theory of the far right.

Clearly, there is some tension between demographic reality and the understandable reluctance to subscribe to a ‘far-right’ conspiracy. I was reminded of this discord earlier this month, when research by Channel Four revealed that UK advertisers are vastly over-representing black people in TV commercials. According to the last census, just 4% of England and Wales is black. Despite this, more than half of TV commercials feature black people. That’s no small disparity.

Newsbusters.

On Thursday, Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse filled in viewers on several car crash deaths caused by illegal aliens who were allowed into the country under the Biden administration.

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A 26-year-old Venezuelan illegal alien is being detained in Chicago on allegations he stabbed a man to steal the man’s cellphone, CWB Chicago reported, citing prosecutors.

Anthony Vasquez Guedez is charged with robbery and three counts of aggravated battery after attacking a man last month, CWB Chicago said.

Guedez has been arrested eight times since 2024, CWB reported

The Times (UK).

However, those who have earned their partnership now find themselves in Rachel Reeves’s crosshairs as the chancellor battles to shore up the public finances in her November budget.

Reeves is considering a £2 billion tax raid on limited liability partnerships (LLPs), it emerged last week, in a bid to make the tax system fairer and shift the burden towards the wealthy. LLPs allow their members’ personal assets to be protected from the business’s debts and obligations; they are only liable for any money they have invested, not what the partnership owes. In a traditional partnership, the full burden of its financial obligations falls on the partners.

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this week. Two additional narco-terror drug boats were destroyed with guided missiles, and there was news overnight that two Rockwell B-1 Lancer supersonic bombers entered Venezuela’s ADIZ before switching off their transponders in what appears to have been a simulated strike mission – a posturing maneuver that President Trump denies.

Venezuela’s socialist regime is coming under intense pressure from the Trump administration for using cartel networks it controls to smuggle drugs into the U.S., contributing to the worst drug death crisis in American history, with more than 100,000 deaths per year. Some have described the drug death crisis as a “reverse Opium War.” Last week, President Trump authorized covert CIA operations inside the country, an escalation that only suggests command and control structures of drug cartels will be targeted. He noted, “No to CIA-orchestrated coups d’état.”

While the mainstream narrative is that these military efforts are aimed at dismantling cartel-linked drug trafficking networks, there may be another objective for the Trump administration, one that would certainly interest Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

As Washington Examiner reporter Mike Gonzalez reveals, Venezuela has been exporting left-wing political influence operations, some of which may be linked to dark-money-funded NGO networks. If accurate, the report suggests that stopping the radical left from destabilizing the U.S. and attempting to collapse capitalism to install a socialist or Marxist system may require scrutinizing foreign-linked networks. And perhaps that’s why Venezuela is front and center with the Trump administration.

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Fearless. Brave. Competitively selected. America’s best. But at the highpoint in the gradually ascending melody, in the very first verse: “Men who mean just what they say.”

SSgt Sadler wrote these words over 50 years ago now, and a lot has changed since then. At first blush, the modern ear might almost be inclined to pass over this line, to ignore its prominent placing in the song. It seems almost a little innocuous, a little gentlemanly, a little highbrow, for the nation’s most potent, the killers at the frontlines, the deadliest greatest manliest men alive.

What do we get now? “Toxic masculinity!”.

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A dramatic video surfaced on X overnight showing what appears to be an attempted ramming attack by a deranged driver in a U-Haul truck at a military checkpoint at Coast Guard Base Alameda in California.

KPIX photojournalist Rick Villaroman captured the moment when a man dressed in all black, wearing safety glasses and a respirator mask…

… backed the box truck up to the military checkpoint, then floored it, only to be met with a hail of gunfire by base police, causing him to retreat in the opposite direction.

Could we perhaps sell California to the North Koreans? Maybe they can clean the place up.

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The Protestant Anglican Communion has witnessed the largest schism in its near five hundred-year history after a body representing between one half and 85% of its total members has broken with the Church of England.

On October 15, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) announced that it has severed ties with the Archbishop of Canterbury and formed a new “Global Anglican Communion”. The decision, GAFCON said, was necessary after the Church of England “abandoned the Scriptures” through its endorsement of same-sex blessings and theological revisionism—an accusation marking the most serious rupture in Anglican unity in a century.

The announcement followed days of escalating controversy surrounding the October 3 appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. Her elevation to the post—the first woman to hold it—antagonised conservative Anglicans who reject the possibility of women’s ordination and episcopal leadership. The move provoked condemnation from clerics such as Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, primate of the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria, which counts some 18 million members.

What business does the Church of England have outside of England? “Anglican Church of Nigeria” sounds like an oxymoron.

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The semitruck driver accused of causing an eight-vehicle, chain-reaction crash that killed three people on a Southern California highway Tuesday is a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from India who had a commercial driver’s license issued by the state.

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued an arrest detainer — a request to hold a person for potential deportation — for Jashanpreet Singh of Yuba City, California.

Singh has been charged with three counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of driving under the influence causing injury, with an enhancement for great bodily injury and multiple victims.

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A federal grand jury has indicted Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, for the stabbing death of 23-year-old Ukrainian citizen Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte, North Carolina, light rail train. The indictment makes him eligible for the death penalty.

The Aug. 22 murder created a national furor and even involved monitoring from the Ukrainian Embassy.

President Donald Trump added his thoughts in a social media post in September, writing “The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.”

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Irish police arrested 23 people on Wednesday after bottles, bricks, and fireworks were thrown at officers during a protest outside the Citywest Hotel in Saggart, southwest of Dublin. Two officers were hospitalized with head and arm injuries.

The violence followed six arrests the previous night, when a police van was set on fire. Monday’s initial protest had been peaceful.

The unrest was sparked by a 10-year-old girl’s report that she had been sexually assaulted by a 26-year-old African man who has been living in Ireland for six years, had been refused international protection last year, and was slapped with a deportation order back in March.

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An Indiana man was killed after an illegal alien driving a semi-truck without a valid commercial license crossed into oncoming traffic and slammed into the victim’s car, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Federal officials say the suspect, Borko Stankovic, a native of Serbia and Montenegro, has been living in the U.S. illegally for more than a decade.

Stankovic’s semi-truck veered into the wrong lane on U.S. 20 in Portage, Indiana, hitting a Subaru Crosstrek driven by 54-year-old Jeffrey Eberly, who was killed instantly.

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The president-elect of the Oxford Union has been voted out of the role following comments he made celebrating the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

In a leaked message in a WhatsApp chat, 20-year-old George Abaraonye wrote, “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s (expletive) go,” while a story he shared on his Instagram account read, “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.”

Members of the influential student union voted in person on Saturday in a motion of no confidence in the incoming president, who will not be allowed to take up the highly prestigious position.

UPDATE: George Abaraonye deserves his downfall (The Spectator)

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The Louvre in Paris reopened on Wednesday, three days after thieves made off with historic jewelry worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102 million) in a spectacular heist that has raised urgent questions over security lapses at the museum.

Visitors queued to enter through the Louvre’s glass pyramid for the first time since Sunday’s brazen robbery, in which hooded assailants broke through a second-floor window using a stolen movers’ lift before making off with jewels from the royal collection.

Later on Wednesday the museum’s director will appear before the French Senate to answer lawmakers’ questions.

Evidently both the director and the chief of security were female DEI hires with no relevant experience.

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As the establishment political center in Germany clings to power, sociopolitical disunity and profound disaffection have created a new East-West divide.

The elites’ use of firewalls and miscounts against opposition parties perpetuates that divide and an unsavory two-tier society.

It’s been more than three decades since the German reunification of 1990. Between Kiel and Freiburg, Dusseldorf and Dresden, many today have no first-hand recollection of the country’s Cold War era—much less its division. A divided Germany is history; East and West are reunited—or are they?

October 3 was a public holiday in Germany, the Day of German Unity. And yet, not insignificant differences and palpable tensions between the former East and West Germanies persist.

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On the night of Tuesday, October 21st, a 10-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an asylum seeker in Dublin. The man—rumoured to be of African origin—was residing at the Citywest IPAS Centre, a hotel used to accommodate migrants. According to Irish media reports, the child—supposedly in the care of the Irish Child and Family Agency, Tusla—was attacked on the hotel grounds and is now receiving medical care.

The suspect, who has been living in Ireland for six years, was refused international protection in 2024 and has been subject to a deportation order since March. He has now been charged with sexual assault and provided with an Arabic interpreter and legal aid.

The incident sparked widespread outrage and led to an anti-immigration protest in West Dublin, where a police car was set on fire. More than 500 people gathered outside a local building, waving Irish flags and holding placards showing anti-migration messages. Some protesters also threw glass bottles and fireworks at police officers during the unrest.

Previous similar demonstrations against illegal immigration took place in June 2025 and July 2024 , reflecting growing public safety concerns over migration, as can be seen in this video.

The Irish have historically had a deep moral sense that is easily outraged, and when the Irish become outraged violence is likely to follow. Their political leadership, beguiled by the sweet Wokeness of Brussels, have lost touch with their country.

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Every time the US government has faced an existential financial crisis in its history, it has chosen to change the rules rather than honor its promises in full—usually by replacing gold or silver with paper.

From the War of 1812 when interest payments were missed, to the Lincoln’s Greenbacks, to Roosevelt voiding gold clauses in 1933, the end of silver redemption in 1968, and Nixon closing the gold window in 1971, Washington has defaulted five times before—often by shifting the terms of payment rather than admitting outright failure.

There’s no doubt these episodes were defaults. To claim otherwise would be like trying to unilaterally change the terms of your dollar-denominated mortgage or credit card bill so that you could pay your liabilities with Argentine pesos or Zimbabwe dollars—and then pretending that somehow it wasn’t a default.

The US government is essentially telling its creditors the same thing Darth Vader once said: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Just like in Star Wars, the message is clear—Washington will change the rules whenever it needs to. Creditors may get paid, but not in the way they were promised, and certainly not in the way they expected.

Today, the US government is once again in an existential financial bind. The national debt is unmanageable, federal spending is locked on an upward path, and interest on that debt has already surged past $1 trillion a year. At this pace, interest could soon overtake Social Security as the single largest item in the federal budget.

I hate that guy.

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A classic saying among preparedness experts in the US is that America is capable of weathering many crises, but when the food stamps shut down all bets are off. In other words, when the free stuff army loses their handouts, that’s when all hell breaks loose.

The US government spends over $100 billion on SNAP programs every year; the largest single food welfare project in the world. It’s difficult to predict what an end to SNAP might look like.

One can assume the worst and be ready for a “Walking Dead” disaster in which angry mobs run rampant. Or, tensions might continue to simmer. Many people might be forced to simply get a job, and the welfare subset could decide to adapt. But they probably won’t.

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The inherent threat of socialist programs rests in the fact that they can be used by a political party or a politician as a means to bribe voters from certain demographics to support destructive policies in exchange for handouts. The Democratic Party understood this well when they introduced “The Great Society” welfare programs under President Lyndon B Johnson in the 1960s.

The idea? Primarily to secure the votes of minorities and people under the poverty line in the US for the Democrats for generations by offering taxpayer funded subsidies that would eventually make these groups dependent on the government for their very survival. Specifically, the welfare system lured in black women and single mothers, offering increasing incentives per child as long as there was no father in the picture.

This encouraged black women to have multiple children out of wedlock and increased their divorce rate from 17% in 1960 to 48% in 2024. Single mother households in the black community skyrocketed from 20% in 1960 to 65% in 2024. Compare this to the white community in the US, which has an 18% single mother rate.

Economist Thomas Sowell cites the Great Society programs and endless welfare as more destructive to black Americans than any other factor in US history, including the legacy of slavery that progressive activists often rant about.

Navy Matters.

Recently, a reader (username “Chinese Gordon”) made the astute observation that mine countermeasures (MCM) was not a path to flag rank. He’s correct, as far as I can tell. Of the 250 or so flag officers we have, how many are former MCM operators? I don’t know but my guess is somewhere between none and almost none. This may explain, in part, why the Navy has, for all practical purposes, abandoned MCM. If we had a couple dozen flag officers with MCM career backgrounds, I’d like to think the Navy would be paying more than lip service to MCM.
How do we get more MCM officers into flag ranks?
Well, this is where we run into a brick wall. Even if the Navy magically decided to add MCM officers to the flag ranks … … there aren’t any to add. There simply are no MCM focused officers left in the Navy. The Avengers are essentially gone, parked pierside, rotting as they wait to be officially retired. The LCS has yet to field a viable MCM module so there are no LCS officers that have worked LCS-MCM.
You’d have to go down to the Lieutenant level to find anyone who deals with MCM to any degree and those few are doing one-at-a-time, unmanned mine hunting technology development, not real world MCM.
Who in the Navy has ever cleared a thousand-mine field, or even just a hundred, in the real world? No one. Who has engaged in an amphibious assault exercise that included actual clearance of mines from a 50 mile approach to the beach? No one. Who has cleared mines from a chokepoint while under enemy fire, real or simulated? No one. And so it goes. No officer in the Navy has even a rudimentary level of MCM expertise as it would pertain to a peer war or even a disagreement with a group of radical Girl Scouts.
We can’t develop flag level focus on MCM because no one in the Navy has any MCM experience.
We’re screwed. We’ll be forced to learn MCM on the fly in a real war and that is a very costly way to learn anything.
By the way, the same applies to offensive mine warfare.

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Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has asked the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) to review what he says is evidence that entities tied to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC)’s EPIC City project violated state and federal securities laws — and to refer the matter back so he can file suit.

Paxton called the alleged misconduct “flagrant,” arguing that state law requires a TSSB referral before his office can bring a securities action.

EPIC City is a 402-acre master-planned community near Josephine, Texas, spanning Collin and Hunt Counties. Materials describe housing (single-family, townhomes, multifamily), a mosque, schools, parks, senior living, and retail. The project vehicle, Community Capital Partners, LP (CCP), has been described in EPIC’s promotions as created by EPIC, with EPIC as the beneficiary of project profits.

That’s all we need, a big knot of potential jihadists in east Plano.

As long as Islam exists, ‘jihadis’ will be a problem. It’s been that way for 1400 years, and there is no indication that it will change. Whether our Ruling Class will continue prating how ‘peaceful’ Muslims are while ignoring the mass murder, or whether they will wake up and decide to do something about it, is an exercise left for the reader. 

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Hate crimes against Christians are rising across Europe, especially in Austria. In Vienna alone, five incidents of vandalism against churches and Christian memorials were reported between mid-September and early October. Attacks included destroyed statues, graffiti, defaced religious icons, arson and threats.

Some of these acts were linked to left-wing extremists. A paint attack on the Paulaner Church was claimed via an anonymous video on the extremist platform Indymedia, targeting a pro-life demonstration. During the October 5th opening mass of the March for Life at St. Charles’ Church, worshippers discovered a bag containing fake ticking bombs.

The Foundry.

Americans don’t just disagree on policies. In three key areas, they disagree on the principles that lead to the creation of those policies.

The first is truth. Some people believe that absolute truth exists—a shared reality outside of ourselves. We may not like the truth, but attempting to deny it will only cause confusion, frustration, and failure. Others believe that truth is relative. Priority should be given to one’s lived experience and what individuals believe to be true.

The debate where this is most obvious concerns sex. Either sex is based on biological reality or personal feelings. The former is objective and observable. The latter is subjective and self-selected.

But this isn’t just a personal choice. It permeates societal disputes about pronouns, sports, locker rooms, and surgeries. In some places, biological men are housed in women’s prisons. Unsurprisingly, that has resulted in some of those men raping female prisoners. But the Left doesn’t care about those “lived experiences.”

John Hinderaker.

When I went to law school, the law was a masculine profession. Almost all lawyers were men, and women in my law school class were a small minority who were viewed as pioneers. In the intervening years, the law business has undergone a near-inversion: most law students today are women, and most associates in law firms are women.

Some women, of course, have proved to be great lawyers. I know a number whom I would put in that category. But the general feminization of the legal profession threatens–or promises, take your pick–major cultural changes. This article by Helen Andrews, titled “The Great Feminization,” is intensely interesting. It documents the ways in which our culture has been feminized, and points out the changes–mostly for the worse–that such feminization has entailed.

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A group of GOP lawmakers, led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her office to refer Smith, who was involved in two federal cases against then-former President Donald Trump, to the Office of Professional Responsibility for an investigation.

A statement from Blackburn’s office said Smith had “allegedly engaged in serious prosecutorial misconduct through the politically motivated Arctic Frost investigation and must face appropriate consequences, up to and including disbarment.”

It was revealed earlier this month that the FBI had obtained cell phone records of several sitting Republican senators.

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Given that the Federal Reserve has obviously abandoned its 2 percent target for the rise in prices brought on by its own paper-money inflationary policy, it’s important that we keep in mind how our nation’s paper money-system and the Fed’s inflationary policy plunder and loot the American people.

There is the plunder and looting that takes place through the simple inflationary expansion of the money supply. By inflating the amount of money in circulation, the Fed reduces the value of money sitting in people’s savings accounts or that they receive in income. Their savings and income buy less than before simply because the federal government, through its inflationary policy, has debased the value of money.

This is what has been occurring ever since the U.S. government converted to a paper-money standard during the President Franklin Roosevelt administration during the 1930s. Prior to that time — in fact, for more than 125 years prior to that time — the official money of the American people had been gold coins and silver coins. That’s because the Constitution mandated gold coins and silver coins as the official money of our nation.

But gold coins and silver coins cannot be printed, like paper money can. So, FDR used the excuse of an economic “emergency” to declare a permanent end to our constitutional monetary system. Indeed, he did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. And the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his extraordinary “emergency” power to effectively amend the Constitution through executive order and congressional law, even though the Constitution does not delegate“emergency” powers to either the president or the Congress.

Ever since then — year after year, decade after decade — the value of the paper dollar has gone down. That’s because the federal government found it more convenient to pay for its out-of-control welfare-warfare-regulatory programs through newly printed money than by simply raising income taxes on people.

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Saturday, October 18, you might have heard, is this year’s culminating “No Kings” protest demo all over land.

We’ve been to a couple of these curious spectacles since springtime here in the Hudson River Valley, in the next town over.

The crowd there was just about entirely made up of aging Boomers, joyfully re-living the halcyon days of the Vietnam protests. It was kind of like a street production of the old Broadway hit Hair, only with a cast of 75-year-olds. Let the sun shine in! But this rural, small-town corner of America is overwhelmingly geriatric. There is next to nothing for young people to do around here, so they flee at the earliest opportunity. The catch is: turns out that opportunity is rather scarce elsewhere, too.

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Layoffs hit NBC News this week with the network division facing cuts ahead of Comcast’s spinoff of Versant. About 150 jobs have been eliminated so far which only represents 7% of the total newsroom staff. However, the company has been less forthcoming on where the jobs are being cut: The majority of layoffs are targeting Diversity and Equity teams.

DEI staff from specialized verticals focus on culture and identity-based stories. These teams were reportedly eliminated in their entirety, with only a handful of staff (up to 5) potentially retained for freelance contributions.

NBC News eliminated the majority of teams dedicated to covering Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups as part of its layoffs, according to two sources familiar with the matter, a significant culling as the Peacock network separates from its sister news network, MSNBC. A number of media outlets have either refused to report these details or they have outright lied, claiming that the layoffs don’t focus on specific teams.

To admit that mass firings are now decapitating DEI related offices would be to admit that conservatives and the alternative media were right in their predictions over the past several years. Woke hiring has been a disaster for progressive news companies.

Richard Hanania.

When I started writing about the problems with civil rights law, few people had any idea what I was talking about, even in right-wing circles. Most understood the Civil Rights Act as the bill that got rid of Jim Crow and banned explicit discrimination. It did in fact do those things, but as I argue in The Origins of Woke, civil rights law has over the years expanded to mandate differential treatment based on race and sex, and institutionalize concepts like affirmative action and disparate impact.

It seems that I’ve succeeded in changing the conversation around these issues. Now, conservatives know that the whole thing is a con and understand that when someone is a “civil rights advocate” they’re not simply demanding equal treatment for women and minorities, but in favor of policies that lower standards, restrict freedom, and discriminate against whites, men, and Asians. “Diversity” and “DEI” have similarly become politicized terms.

I feel like the conversation around unions within many intellectual spaces is about where the civil rights discourse started. I’ve heard people defend organized labor on freedom of association grounds. Why can’t workers get together and engage in collective bargaining with their employers? Don’t they have a right to do so? This lack of understanding has coincided with people on the right starting to say nice things about labor unions, including JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and the intellectuals around American Compass. It may be that conservatives who have taken on organized labor in the last decades have been too successful, to the point that young people on the right don’t even know what unions are anymore.

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New data shows that foreigners account for a substantial share of people living in absolute poverty in Italy, even as the poverty rates of families with two Italian parents drops. One director of La Verita newspaper, Maurizio Belpietro, has run an opinion piece in his newspaper lamenting that Italy is “importing poverty.”

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Federal prosecutors in Texas have for the first time filed terrorism charges targeting antifa, FBI Director Kash Patel said Thursday, citing President Donald Trump’s recent designation of the far-left anarchist movement as a terrorist organization.

Cameron Arnold of Dallas and Zachary Evetts of Waxahachie, Texas, were charged on Wednesday with providing support to terrorists for their alleged role in the non-fatal shooting of a police officer at an immigration detention facility. Both were arrested in July with eight others and charged with attempted murder and weapons offenses.

None of the defendants has entered a plea in the case, court records show, but Arnold and Evetts are set to do so at an Oct. 22 court hearing.

Read it.

What do they know that you don’t?

Financial Times.

Between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers, sheltering on the fringes of the frigid mammoth steppe that shrouded much of the European landmass, entered limestone cave networks, such as Altamira in northern Spain and Chauvet and Lascaux in southern France, carrying pigments. Yellow and red ochres, black manganese oxides, white kaolin clay. On the walls, they rendered images of the beasts that filled their world. Mammoths and bison in heart-thumping lifelikeness. Aurochs and horses. Reindeer and salmon.

Since the 19th century, archaeologists have been fighting over what the pictures might have meant. Initially, priests and gentleman scholars believed they might be a sort of magic for supercharging hunts. Later, some researchers believed they related to shamanic rituals; trances performed in the flickers of animal-grease lamplight. Others argue that whatever meaning there might have been will remain inaccessible to us for ever, holed up in the dark.

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The academic performance of German pupils has fallen sharply, according to a report by Berlin’s Humboldt University.

Of the 48,000 Year 10 pupils (15-16 year olds) tested, 34% failed to meet the minimum standards required for secondary school graduation.

This marks a steep decline compared with previous studies in 2012 and 2018.

Wall Street Journal.

Voters are showing their opposition to the net-zero climate agenda whenever they get the chance. But that isn’t stopping the United Nations, which this week is poised to impose what amounts to a global tax on carbon emissions. Yes, this is the definition of taxation without representation.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a U.N. body based in London, hopes at its meeting this week to secure final approval for its “net-zero framework” for shipping. The measure would impose charges per metric ton of carbon-dioxide that ships emit above certain limits; the tax would be $100 or $380 per metric ton depending on various factors. That could translate to an annual tax take of $10 billion-$12 billion.

If you’ve heard about this at all, it’s probably because the Trump Administration last week threatened to slap sanctions on any country that votes in favor of imposing this tax. Washington rightly worries it will increase the costs of goods American households buy by increasing global shipping costs as much as 10%. Setting aside the trade-policy irony, at least someone in the Trump Administration is worried that expensive imports might be bad for the American economy.

The damage from this U.N. climate tax is as much political as economic. The U.N. has previously toyed with emissions-monitoring schemes, such as for aviation, and the IMO claims this proposal is no different. But this is the first instance we can find of the U.N. claiming the ability to levy a tax—the revenues from which will be paid directly into a U.N.-controlled fund.

The Times (UK).

The deteriorating relationship between Britain and China in the years after David Cameron’s “golden era” of close economic relations did not stop Beijing from pouring billions of pounds into the UK to secure its place in the country’s critical national infrastructure.

From nuclear power plants to transport infrastructure, Chinese companies have been able to buy stakes in crucial projects, despite the potential security risks.

Britain is the third largest recipient of Chinese investment over the past two decades, behind the US and Australia, according to figures from the American Enterprise Institute.

The Times (UK).

hina obtained “vast amounts” of classified government information over a period of many years by compromising a network used to transfer data across Whitehall.

Dominic Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020 but that there had subsequently been a cover-up.

He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence. He claimed that the breach included some “Strap” material, which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.

The breach, which was confirmed by two other senior Whitehall sources, was said to have been connected to a Chinese-owned company involved in Britain’s critical national infrastructure. Tom Tugendhat, a former Tory security minister, supported Cummings’s account.

Yeah, I know that wasn’t what the cartoonist meant, but it’s too good to pass up.

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LEAVE OUR CRIME ALONE!

Los Angeles County has declared a state of emergency over ongoing ICE raids – and will provide rent relief for tenants who have ‘fallen behind as a result’ of the enforcement actions targeting people living in the United States illegally.

The declaration – introduced by County Supervisors Lindsey P. Horvath and Janice Hahn, passed by as 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger opposing. In addition to rent relief, it will also use taxpayer funds for legal aid and other services, ABC News reports.

Newsbusters.

Even in what you might call the mainstream liberal media, you’d have to look far and wide to find outspoken support for the often-violent, blatantly antisemitic, pro-Hamas student protesters that have plagued American colleges in recent times.

But look no further than CNN This Morning and its host, Audie Cornish, formerly of NPR. Last week, reacting to a poll showing a majority of Americans opposing sending more weapons to Israel, and supporting sending humanitarian aid to Gaza,

The Times (UK).

Shabana Mahmood will warn on Wednesday that the UK’s failure to control its borders is eroding trust not just in politicians but in the state itself.

The home secretary will host counterparts from six western Balkan countries that are crucial to the prevention of illegal immigration to Europe. She will admit that Britain and other European countries do not have control of their borders.

The western Balkans are a major transit route for people smuggling — almost 22,000 people passed through last year, although numbers have fallen after Britain and the EU focused enforcement measures upon the region.

Read it.

She ought to play against him, and take the first opportunity to kick him in the nuts.

Read it.

Vice President JD Vance says he believes that government subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act contribute to waste and fraud in the insurance industry.

“The tax credits go to some people deservedly,” he said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

But he added that the subsidies create problems.

Every government program leads to fraud, which is why they ought to be few, scrupulously overwatched, and not subsidies that attempt to put the government in the place of consumer choice.

Read it.

An Arkansas man charged with killing his 14-year-old daughter’s rapist is now running for sheriff, reports the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Aaron Spencer, 37, made the announcement in a video posted to his Facebook page Friday.

“I’m the father who acted to protect his daughter when the system failed. I’m also a husband, combat veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, a contractor, and a farmer,” Spencer said.

I’d vote for him.

Read it.

Princeton University announced this week that it will be reinstating the requirement for undergraduate applicants to submit standardized test scores in the 2027–28 admissions cycle. It is only the latest reversal for an ill-conceived and poorly supported movement to achieve greater equity and diversity by eliminating standardized testing in higher education.