Read it.

I’ve written in the past about Rawa Majid, the culture-enriching leader of the Foxtrot criminal network in Sweden (see previous posts here, here, and here). For several years Mr. Majid has carried out terrorist activities for Iran in Sweden and neighboring countries. Under orders from Tehran, his role has recently been extended in the wake of the Israeli campaign against Iran.

The following report aired a few days ago on SVT (Swedish public TV).

Read it.

“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”

Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.

“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”

Read it.

A member of Congress introduced a bill Tuesday asking the secretary of state to consider designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a foreign terrorist organization.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations brands itself as a 501(c)(3) Muslim civil rights and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., but according to Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., the group is “a terrorist organization.”

“I think in this time of conflict in the Middle East, and this time in which Muslim terror groups are operating with impunity in our cities and on our college campuses, it is important that we stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough’ and we designate these organizations as the evil organizations that they are,” Fine told The Daily Signal.

Read it.

A top far-left city official in southeast Los Angeles County is now under federal investigation after allegedly posting a video on social media calling on Mexican gangs to mobilize against ICE agents. If this isn’t textbook insurrectionist behavior, it’s hard to imagine what is.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin broke the story on X late Tuesday afternoon. He stated that Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez is under investigation for urging 18th Street and Florencia 13 gang members to defend their territory against ICE, reportedly telling gang leaders to “get your f***ing members in order.”

Meanwhile, the city of Cudahy has posted links on social media, including X, for illegal aliens to call the “CHIRLA Rapid Response Hotline” amid ongoing local ICE raids. 

As U.S. braces for Iranian attack, a ‘brain drain’ weakens its defenses, former officials say (David Rohde/NBC News)

Trump calls for ending war after Iran’s retaliatory missile attack (Barak Ravid/Axios)

Trump wants to take out Iran’s nuclear program. His attacks may backfire. (Michelle Bentley/Vox)

Supreme Court eases rapid deportations to countries where immigrants have no ties (Politico)

Supreme Court Lifts Limits on Deporting Migrants to Countries Not Their Own

Supreme Court allows Trump to swiftly deport certain immigrants to ‘third countries’ (Lawrence Hurley/NBC News)

In win for Trump, Supreme Court lifts judge’s limits on deportations to third-party countries (Maureen Groppe/USA Today)

Supreme Court allows Trump to restart deportations to non-origin countries (Sareen Habeshian/Axios)

Supreme Court Hands Trump Huge Win On Deporting ‘Worst Of The Worst’ Illegals

Supreme Court allows Trump to resume 3rd-country removals without court-ordered due process requirements (Devin Dwyer/Reuters)

161. The Court’s Disastrous Ruling in the Third-Country Removal Case (Steve Vladeck/One First)

Breaking: SCOTUS allows Trump admin to deport people to random countries with no notice (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process (Ian Millhiser/Vox)

The Chaos and Cruelty of DVD v. DHS (Quinta Jurecic/Lawfare)

Jeffries fumes at Trump for blindsiding Congress on Iran strikes (Andrew Solender/Axios)  I’m sure he does. Let him fume. It’s good practice.

3 ways Americans could pay for Trump’s war with Iran (Eric Levitz/Vox)

Trump’s Strikes on Iran Were Unlawful. Here’s Why That Matters. (Oona A. Hathaway/New York Times)

CBS Teams Up With Dem to Clutch Pearls Over Iran Strike Legality

MAGA Doves Learn to Love The Bomb (Will Sommer/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew are fully onboard the latest Bash-Trump Express.

AG Bondi Fends Off Dem Rep. DeLauro Over ATF-DEA Merger  DeLauro is almost a parody of an aging hippie AWFUL.

Trump administration plans to rescind rule blocking logging on national forest lands (Associated Press)  The swine!

Murkowski leaves door open to scenario of caucusing with Democrats (Stef W. Kight/Axios)  That would be too honest.

The MTV Reality Star in Trump’s Cabinet Who Wants You to Have More Kids (Caroline Kitchener/New York Times)

Trump Administration to End Protections for 58 Million Acres of National Forests (Lisa Friedman/New York Times)  The swine!

What ‘Split’? 9 in 10 MAGA Voters Back Trump Strikes on Iran, Poll Shows

Democrats struggle to come up with a unified response to Trump’s Iran strikes (NBC News)

‘Clouded in mystery’: how Ice became a rogue agency that does Trump’s bidding (Ben Makuch/The Guardian)

The Shock-and-Awe Deportations Will Get Worse (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  We certainly hope so.

Geopolitical WrestleMania — To a POTUS stuck in the past, the Iran bombing campaign … (Greg Olear/PREVAIL)

In a timeline of Trump’s decision to drop 12 of the reportedly 20 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs … (Heather Cox Richardson/Letters …)

Trump’s “Mission Accomplished” moment (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

CBS Brings in Soros-Funded Group to Declare Trump Failed, Iran Now MORE Dangerous

Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize over Iran-Israel ceasefire deal (Elizabeth Elkind/Fox News)

Newsbusters.

The headline deck to the June 16 piece by Jesús Rodríguez for the Washington Post, a profile of the first transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court, heralded the gush to come.

Soon after publication, the Supreme Court ruled against Strangio’s side in the case of U.S. vs Skrmetti, as the ACLU lawyer and trans man (biological woman) failed to persuade the court that a Tennessee law blocking doctors from providing what Rodriguez called “gender-affirming medical treatment” (i.e. genital mutilation) to teenagers was unconstitutional.

Rodriguez took the left-wing line that conservatives started the transgender culture war (“the political right had tried to use them as a wedge issue”), not the biological male trans-activists demanding access to women’s sports and women’s bathrooms.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Left.

When the extent of the university’s involvement with slavery was unearthed, a scholar tracking descendants of enslaved workers was suddenly fired.

Gee, I wonder why?

Read it.

Belgian activists from the ‘Stop Arming Israel’ campaign group raided buildings of the defense company OIP on Monday, reportedly causing almost a million euros’ worth of damage. Destroyed equipment means a new delivery of military equipment will be delayed by “at least a month,” according to CEO Freddy Versluys, which is a fairly successful result for the protesters…

… except that OIP has not made defence systems for Israel for 20 years. Versluys explained that “we do not sell anything to Israel, they have destroyed vehicles for Ukraine.”

OIP was likely targeted because its parent company, Elbit Systems, is Israeli-owned. But the work of this “extreme left-wing militia,” as Belgian defence minister Theo Francken put it, has simply delayed the delivery of tanks that would have been used in the war against Russia. This, said Versluys, is “the only thing these ‘Hamas sympathisers’ have achieved with their action.”

If these activists are anything like their leaders in Brussels—who slate Israel’s wars against Hamas terrorists and an Islamist regime while apparently pining for a never-ending conflict in Ukraine—they will be sorely hurt by their slip-up.

Newsbusters.

A federal judge ordered the release of Columbia student agitator and protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil from ICE detention. Naturally, it was a matter of time before the legacy media fell over themselves to score that exclusive interview. ABC News ended up scoring the interview, and it was as disgusting as you’d expect.

The interview, conducted by 2024 presidential debate co-moderator Linsey Davis, proves yet again that the media will grab onto anyone that can stand in as Resistance. This was not a hard-hitting news interview, but celebrity fluff.

The tell that this was a celebrity interview was its opening with a “feelings” question, wherein Khalil was asked to describe the moment he saw his wife and son.

Read it.

As rents skyrocket and the cost of living keeps climbing, a new study from Highland Cabinetry aims to answer a simple but critical question: are America’s most expensive cities actually worth it? Spoiler: not really.

The study analyzed a wide range of metrics — including housing costs, income, safety, traffic, pollution, and unemployment — using data from sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Zillow. The goal? To identify the cities where people are paying a premium and getting a whole lot of hassle in return.

Newark, NJ claimed the dubious honor of being the most overpriced city in the U.S., earning a perfect — and in this case, perfectly awful — score of 100, according to Highland Cabinetry.

Living here will cost you over $5,100 a month, and for what? A safety index barely above 24, one of the worst in the country. Median household income is a modest $53,818, far below cities with similar costs. If you want the luxury of paying big-city prices for small-city problems, Newark’s got you covered.

Coming in hot at number two is New York City, which scored 98.17. It has the highest real estate price tag in the country — a staggering $18,402 per square foot in the city center. But with its famously clogged streets, questionable safety (index: 49.16), and a median income lower than in L.A. or D.C., you’re not exactly getting what you pay for. As the report shows, “Cost of living alone doesn’t define the value of a city.”

Read it.

Several other California cities also ranked in the bottom 10 of 148 cities, including Stockton (138), Los Angeles (139), Long Beach (140), Fresno (141), and Oakland (146).

The finance website created a “Quality of Services” score of 36 metrics split into six categories, which was then measured against 148 of the nation’s most populated city’s per-capita budget.

San Francisco came in last overall, ranking 89th in financial stability, 137th in education, 102nd in safety, and 135th in economy.

The WalletHub study also looked at the operating efficiency of cities, by comparing the quality of city services residents receive against the city’s budget.

Read it.

Israel on Monday destroyed multiple targets the Iranian regime uses to stifle popular unrest and police internal dissent, potentially paving a way for the country’s repressed population to rise against its hardline rulers. The strikes came just a day after President Donald Trump put out a call to “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN” and signaled support for regime change.

The Jewish state shifted the focus of its campaign from the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program to regime power centers and Tehran’s internal security apparatus. The strikes were meant to further destabilize a regime already on the ropes after the United States dropped massive bunker-buster bombs and tomahawk missiles on its three most significant nuclear sites.

More than 50 Israeli fighter jets struck “military command centers” across Tehran, including its Basij Headquarters, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) outpost that enforces Islamic law and detains those who violate it, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Other targets included the Sayyid-al-Shuhada Corps, a homeland defense faction that suppresses internal unrest, and the General Intelligence Directorate of the Internal Security forces, which oversees Tehran’s domestic security wing and disseminates propaganda.

Read it.

Israeli intelligence operatives personally phoned several of Iran’s senior military commanders shortly after preemptive strikes began last week, warning them to flee the country or be assassinated along with their wives and children, according to audio messages published Monday.

During one such call, an excerpt of which was obtained by the Washington Post, an Israeli agent informed one of Tehran’s senior military leaders that he had 12 hours to leave the country or otherwise face death. The Israeli operation was meant to sow discord and fear among Tehran’s senior leadership in the hours after the assault on Iranian nuclear sites began.

Read it.

A top staffer for Zohran Mamdani, the leading socialist candidate for New York City mayor, appeared to support naming a street after Luigi Mangione, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the Daily Caller reported.

Julian Gerson, the political director for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, expressed apparent admiration for a murder suspect and said he hoped to one day drive down a street bearing the man’s name.

In a Dec. 29 Facebook post, an account under Gerson’s name linked to an opinion piece that praised Mangione, who is charged with murder in the killing of 50-year-old Thompson on Dec. 4.

No surprises here.

Read it.

Former President Barack Obama had some harsh criticism for Big Tech platforms that allow free speech, while delivering remarks at the June 17 Connecticut Forum. Obama lamented that America had lost its “monoculture” and no longer unanimously listened to legacy media sources such as CBS anchor Walter Cronkite or TIME Magazine. Obama lamented that Americans are divided on the facts and not the issues. This is rich, particularly coming from a man whose political party claims that men can switch genders and have babies. After placing the blame on his political opponents and Big Tech greed, Obama proposed that the media and the government had a role to play.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

The right circumstances being that nobody in the actual Republican party believes her bullshit any more?

Read it.

A major poll before primary day in New York City shows Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani pulling ahead of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the race to become the city’s next mayor.

According to Emerson College / Pix11 / The Hill, Mamdani – a socialist and former rapper who went by “Mr. Cardamom,” has a 52% edge over Cuomo’s 48% among early voters and likely voters.

New York City is on its way to shoot itself in the foot–again.

Time to leave.

The Telegraph (UK).

Oh, really? ‘Illegal’ means ‘against the law’. What law? Certainly not American law. And nobody in America cares about French or ‘European’ law.

‘International Law’? There is no such thing; nations just pretend that there is for public relations purposes.

The Telegraph (UK).

Israel has vowed to strike targets in the “heart of Tehran” after Iran violated a ceasefire agreement by launching a new missile attack.

The Israeli military said two ballistic missiles were launched from Iran this morning, forcing civilians into bomb shelters once again as sirens rang out in northern Israel.

Israel Katz, the defence minister, said he had instructed the IDF to “respond forcefully” to the ceasefire violation by launching strikes against targets in Tehran.

It comes after both sides said they had agreed to a ceasefire earlier this morning.

Well, that didn’t last long, did it? I guess you just can’t trust a scorpion to keep an agreement.

The Times (UK).

Almost a third of Scottish households have used private healthcare in the past two years, a survey reveals, as doctors’ leaders warn the NHS is “dying”

The majority of those who paid for treatment said they did so because waiting times on the NHS were too long.

Iain Kennedy, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland, will tell a major UK conference on Tuesday that Scottish society is divided between those “languishing” in line for treatment and those who can afford to pay to access care more swiftly.

Imagine if your doctor’s office were run like the DMV. That’s what government-provided healthcare is like.

The Times (UK).

Britain is on track to lose a record 16,500 millionaires this year as tax increases and falling economic confidence drive wealthy residents abroad.

The exodus is part of a “historic wave of wealth migration”, with multiple countries competing for talent and capital, according to the latest Henley Private Wealth Migration Report. It says that a record 142,000 millionaires across the globe will relocate to a new country this year.

The study, which analyses migration trends among people with liquid assets of more than $1 million (£740,000), predicts that the UK will lose twice as many high net worth individuals as China and ten times as many as Russia in 2025.

Time to leave.

The Times (UK).

A hospital trust at the centre of a row over transwomen sharing female changing rooms has come under fire for producing a Pride calendar celebrating “polyamory” and “pansexuality”.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is being sued by eight nurses who claim that a policy allowing transwomen to use single-sex changing rooms puts women at risk.

The nurses claimed that a biological male colleague identifying as a woman called Rose stared at their breasts as they were getting undressed and lingered too long in the changing room.

NHS England intervened, urging Darlington Memorial Hospital, where the nurses are based, to act “with speed” to provide male, female and gender-neutral changing rooms.

The Times (UK).

Iran could be funding Palestine Action, Home Office officials claimed, after Yvette Cooper announced there would be a vote on whether to proscribe it as a terror group by the end of next week.

The home secretary said she had decided to ban Palestine Action after a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage” culminating in its “disgraceful attack” at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday.

The move, which will be voted on by both houses of parliament next week, would place Palestine Action alongside terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda, Isis and Hamas and make it illegal to be a member or invite support of the group with a maximum punishment of 14 years in jail.

The Foundry.

When Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk goes to speak on campus and attracts a large following, that’s not the story—the story is how the Right conspired to open the door to his “extremism,” according to journalists presenting at an investigative reporting conference.

David Armiak, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy, and Kyle Spencer, a former New York Times contributor and the CEO of the Pro-Democracy Information Lab, coached a room full of 124 reporters and editors on “Tracking Right-Wing Influencers and Movements” at the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference in New Orleans on Friday. Robert Downen, a Texas Monthly senior writer, moderated the panel. (The conference counted 124 attendees at one point in the panel, though people came and went throughout.)

Armiak recounted seeing Kirk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s library mall last fall. He saw Kirk “in the center of campus with frat bros all around him, you know, spewing anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+ talking points” and campaigning for Donald Trump.

Read it.

Investigations by the newspaper Welt am Sonntag reveal that millions of euros in public funds have been allocated to organizations participating in an initiative by Germany’s Ministry for Family Affairs to promote social cohesion. Some of these organizations have made openly antisemitic statements or maintain ties to extremist environments.

One of the most striking cases is that of the group Teilseiend, based in Heidelberg. Its founder, Isa Koray Panz, went so far as to describe “Jewish Zionists” as “a disease” and rhetorically asked on social media whether Germany was becoming “a Jewish state,” accompanying his words with images of the Hanukkah menorah in front of the Brandenburg Gate. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Panz described the German Chancellor’s statement as “disgusting.” Despite these expressions, the Teilseiend project received, up to the end of 2024, part of a €2.8 million grant as part of the CLAIM alliance against Islamophobia, which continues to receive public funding in 2025.

Another organization under scrutiny is BIWOC Rising, which received €800,000 for a coworking space aimed at migrant women. Its director, Loubna Messaoudi, celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th as “resistance against colonialism” and compared a police operation in Germany to practices of the Nazi regime. Members of her advisory board deny Israel’s right to exist and refer to Israeli settlers using dehumanizing language.

Read it.

Massie, who has served as the 4th Congressional District of Kentucky’s representative since 2012, is known to occasionally buck the GOP party line with his fiscal conservatism and foreign intervention skepticism. That has served him well representing his district, where he won 75% of the vote in the 2024 Republican primary. But Massie may have finally worn out Trump’s patience by declaring on X that his weekend bombing of Iran was not constitutional.

Read it.

In its fight for survival, Israel is not only facing Islamist extremists in the Middle East but also an army of hostile Western NGOs, many funded by European governments. Following the standard pattern for the past 25 years, the network of influential political advocacy NGOs claiming to promote human rights and other moral agendas has launched a propaganda campaign against Israel’s defensive strikes to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons. Their unified message condemns Israel and calls on governments and the UN to pressure and sanction Israel. With a few notable exceptions, tens of such organizations have produced a chorus of allegations based on invented evidence while massively distorting the language of morality and international law.

In contrast to the relatively supportive statements from many European leaders who highlight Israel’s right to self-defense and the danger of a nuclear Iran (alongside the usual slogans of restraint and peaceful solutions), the NGOs they fund under the labels of civil society and human rights continue with their propaganda campaigns.

Read it.

On Sunday, June?22nd, a significant anti immigration protest swept through Dublin, with thousands of people voicing their strong discontent with the ruling government’s pro-migration stance.

Police had to set up barriers in the Irish capital to separate the protests from a simultaneous anti-racism march.

Protestors carried Irish tricolour flags and waved banners reading “Ireland is Full” and “Ireland for the Irish.”

The protest was fueled by growing anger toward government policies, which many blame for exacerbating housing shortages, overstretching healthcare, and inflating living costs.

Organisers said that it was the largest march to date on the issue, estimating that tens of thousands took part.

Three women attending the march told Gript that they had lived in inner city Dublin most or all of their lives and they felt “ordinary people are being pushed out of the city.”

Read it.

Belarus opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was released following an appeal from the White House, said on Sunday, June 22nd, that U.S. President Donald Trump could secure the freedom of all Belarusian political prisoners.

Tikhanovsky spoke to reporters in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius a day after he was released from several years of prison with more than a dozen others. He said he hoped to return to Belarus, “but when, I don’t know yet.”

Tikhanovsky was joined at the news conference by his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition movement after he was jailed.

The prisoner release on Saturday came just hours after U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg met Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, the highest-profile U.S. visit in years.

Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years. The popular YouTuber had planned to run against Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election, but was arrested and detained weeks before the vote.

Tikhanovskaya—a political novice at the time of her husband’s arrest—ran against Lukashenko in his place but lost after what the opposition described as widespread falsification. She later fled Belarus.

The eastern European country still holds more than 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Belarusian human rights group Viasna.

Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, has outlawed all genuine opposition parties.

Will Trump get any credit for this victory on the part of the Usual Suspects? Of course not.

No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences (Simon Tisdall/The Guardian)  Because the Narrative Media will never, ever shut up about it.

Three ways Trump’s attack on Iran could spin out of control (Zack Beauchamp/Vox)  Betcha it doesn’t.

“It was a headfake”: Inside Trump’s secret orders to strike Iran (Axios)  More mind-reading from the Narrative Media.

Legacy Media’s Early Reaction to U.S. Bombing Iran Nuke Sites: SHOCK AND SQUAWK

Trump floats regime change in Iran, muddying the administration’s message (Politico)

Trump’s team launches group to unseat GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (NBC News)

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ice detainee dies in transit as experts say more deaths likely (Timothy Pratt/The Guardian)

If You Thought Donald Trump Would Never Do This, You’re an Idiot (Michael Tomasky/New Republic)  And thus qualified to write for the New Republic.

Trump Changed. The Intelligence Didn’t. (Shane Harris/The Atlantic)

“Deploying Additional Resources To Religious Sites” – Major US Cities On Alert After US Airstrikes On Iran

ICE will likely detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite judge’s motion to have him released (Laura Romero/ABC News)

IMF’s Georgieva Warns of Broader Risks From US Strikes on Iran (Bloomberg)

Iran strikes push Vance, a foreign intervention skeptic, into the role of salesman (Henry J. Gomez/NBC News)

PBS News Hour Turns Library of Congress Firing Into Censorship, Assault on Democracy

Trump administration says U.S. does not seek regime change in Iran (Zachary Basu/Axios)

Shifting Views and Misdirection: How Trump Decided to Strike Iran (New York Times)  More mind-reading from the Narrative Media.

Trump’s Risky Gamble on Attacking Iran (New York Times)  You’d think that they were the conservatives, with their obsession with ‘risky schemes’.

Obama Bros Go Ballistic After Trump Bombs Iranian Nuke Program

Playbook: Mission accomplished? (Politico)  Trump and Bush: Two bashes for one!

‘Make Iran Great Again?’: Trump contradicts his top officials on potential regime change (MSNBC)

Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie (Mohamad Bazzi/The Guardian)  Bush and Trump! Two bashes in one! Written by a guy named Momamad! Trifecta!

Trump loves saying ‘You’re fired.’ Now he’s making it easier to fire federal workers (Andrea Hsu/NPR)  Most of whom it would profit the nation to fire.

Inside Trump’s Decision (New York Times)  More mind-reading from the Narrative Media.

Trump’s reckless Iran strikes could backfire spectacularly (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice) Could! That proves it!

Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow (Mark Landler/New York Times)  Oh, proglodyte dreams always survive, despite reality’s best efforts.

Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran as unprovoked and unjustified (Washington Post)  Unprovoked? Iran has been technically at war with the U.S. since 1979. Unjustified? Oh, sure, leaving insane Muslim jihadists have nuclear weapons is TOTALLY justified….

Trump taunts Iran with prospect of ‘regime change’ after strike on nuclear sites (Financial Times)

Trump ‘wags the dog’ (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned … (Heather Cox Richardson/Letters …)

A new war based on manipulated intelligence (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

The Worst Person at the Worst Time — The last thing I thought before I fell asleep last night was, “We are at war.” (Mary L Trump/The Good in Us)  Mary Trump’s paycheck depends on bashing her family.

Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Set Off a Wave of Disinformation After Iran Bombing (David Gilbert/Wired)

Could Anything Be More Bigoted Than Trump’s Travel Bans? (Harold Meyerson/American Prospect)  Yup. Every DEI program ever.

H ere Is All the Science at Risk in Trump’s Clash With Harvard (New York Times)  Because, as we all know, if the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer–don’t pay for it, NO SCIENCE WILL HAPPEN.

Putin Is Still Attacking Ukraine, But NATO’s Bigger Problem Is Mollifying Trump (S.V. Date/HuffPost)

Fallout — Trump lied. Iran’s nuclear program wasn’t “completely and totally obliterated” So now what? (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Trump’s war with Iran signals perilous shift from showman to strongman (David Smith/The Guardian)

BUNKER BUSTED: David Frum Claims ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ Hours Before Iran Strike

Read it.

“Can’t deny.” Looks like CNN has fallen back on those words to cover those unfortunate situations where—much as commentators would like to diminish the accomplishments of the Trump administration or address inconvenient truths—pesky facts have made that impossible.

One often hears the phrase “He’s a man of his word” but one never hears the phrase “She’s a woman of her word”.

Ponder why that is.

ZMan is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

One of the critical questions in any strategy is “Then what?” This question must be asked with every proposed move and counter move. The question is both a reminder and an assumption that the other players will react to your move. Good strategy focuses on the range of possibilities to each move and is prepared for them. Bad strategy just assumes the move will work and good things will flow from it. This is often referred to as the lack of second-order thinking.

For the last five years this has been at the center of American politics. The regime has clearly lost the ability to ask, much less answer the question, “Then what?” The war in Ukraine is in its fourth year because no one in the West could bother to ask the question, much less answer it. President Trump now has himself in a terrible jam because no one on his team thought to ask this question when they were plotting the Pearl Harbor style sneak attack on Iran.

It does not appear that any of them asked the question when planning the operation against the Iranian bunker facilities. By the looks of it, they settled on this attack because they assumed it would satisfy the Israelis, satisfy the crazies in Washington screaming for blood and provide an off-ramp in the conflict. Signaling to Iran that it was a one-time thing was supposed to induce them back to the bargaining table or at least encourage them to seek a cease fire in the war.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Especially if there are cameras.

“All the girls who weigh less than one-twenty wear as little as possible, and the rest of them put on cloaks and medieval dresses to conceal their bulk. You get used to it.”

— Sharyn McCrumb, BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN (1988)

A book about SF conventions. Highly recommended.

BioRxiv.

Writers from Darwin to Dawkins have noted that, in humans, women are considered the “beautiful sex,” whereas in most species, it is the males who display more elaborate and visually striking traits. This reversal of typical sex roles is a peculiarity of the human species and has been the focus of extensive theoretical debate. Yet, it has never been systematically examined or empirically verified. Here, we present a comprehensive cross-cultural meta-analysis of same-sex and opposite-sex ratings of facial attractiveness from around the globe. Our findings confirm the existence of a robust “Gender Attractiveness Gap” (GAP), with female faces rated significantly more attractive than male faces across rater genders, cultural backgrounds, and portrayed ethnicities. Notably, the effect is more pronounced among female than male raters, suggesting gender-specific modulation. We show that approximately two-thirds of the GAP is mediated by structural facial sex-typicality. However, this mediation is asymmetric: controlling for facial dimorphism substantially reduces the attractiveness of female—but not male—faces, indicating a specific aesthetic preference for structural femininity by both male and female raters. This suggests that attractiveness judgments are driven by general aesthetic evaluation processes that extend beyond heterosexual mate choice. We also observe a general tendency for greater stringency among male raters. Overall, these findings contribute to evolutionary psychology and social perception, offering new insights into mate selection theories and underscoring the importance of accounting for gender-specific and cultural influences in attractiveness judgments.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it.

The shift from “search engine” to “answer engine” has been discussed for years. But we’re now watching it happen in real time — and professional services aren’t ready.

Legal services in particular have long been immune to disruption because they’ve hidden behind regulatory insulation, geographic moats and old-school word-of-mouth. But the AI layer doesn’t care about any of that. A good LLM doesn’t need to know your bar number — it just needs to know how people ask legal questions and what a competent, jurisdiction-specific answer should sound like.

That’s why some law firms are already building their own GPTs — custom-trained legal assistants that sit natively on their websites and handle intake. Others are feeding vector databases with cleaned verdicts, client FAQs and state-specific procedures to make their firms “AI-readable” in the next wave of query-routing tools.

The ones thinking a step further are trying to get inside the models — via licensing deals, training partnerships or API-driven apps that plug directly into platforms such as ChatGPT’s GPT Store.

Because let’s be honest: If your law firm doesn’t show up in the AI’s output, you’re invisible to the next generation of clients.

Read it.

Read it.

The hottest weekend of the year saw records for UK ‘small boat’ arrivals smashed on the Kent coastline. By the evening of Saturday, June 21st it was clear that more than 1,000 migrants had crossed the channel in the last 48 hours.

According to a GB News headcount, Border Force vessels and lifeboats picked up almost 600 migrants on Saturday, just one day after 437 made the crossing in seven small boats. These informal figures are usually firmed up in an official Home Office release of the known figures a few days after arrival.

If 1,019 made the illegal crossing between Friday morning and Saturday night, it would bring the total for the year to around just under 18,400.50% more than the total number at this point in time last year.

This comes despite a high-profile promise from Labour prime minister Keir Starmer to ‘Smash the Gangs’ going as well as his hapless predecessor Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ‘Stop the Boats.’

Read it.

A shooting and suicide bombing at a Damascus church during a packed service on Sunday, June 22nd, killed at least 22 people, authorities said, blaming a member of the Islamic State group for the unprecedented attack.

“A suicide attacker affiliated with the Daesh (IS) terrorist group entered the Saint Elias church in the Dwelaa area… opened fire then blew himself up with an explosive belt,” an interior ministry statement said.

State news agency SANA, citing the ministry of health, reported a death toll of 22, with 63 injured.

The attack was the first of its kind in the Syrian capital since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December. It was also the first inside a church in Syria since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.

Syria’s Christian community has shrunk from around one million before the war to under 300,000 due to waves of displacement and emigration.

Syria’s new president is a former terrorist, and Islamist fighters have been involved in the massacre of thousands of Christians and Alawites in recent months.

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In the Reinhardswald near Kassel, known as the Fairytale Forest, a previously untouched natural and cultural landscape with trees over 500 years old, is today being irreversibly destroyed. Why? To protect nature and the climate, the wind industry and green proponents claim.

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I guess they missed that whole Ukraine thing. Down the Memory Hole!

Oh, and what happened after Biden threw away billions of dollars in Afghanistan. (But who’s counting? Not the Narrative Media.)

Oh, and all the lawfare against Trump. (Not a war, technically, I suppose, but it caused as many headlines as a Real War.)

The Washington Poop, the Paper of Record of the Deep State. “Good boy! Go on the paper!”

Because, as we all know, health care is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer.

Well, at least they didn’t say ‘decimate’.

Read it.

Apparently some people are more human than others, and Jews don’t qualify.

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As they do.

Every day, in every way, Britain is reminding Americans of the value of a written constitution with a Bill of Rights.

Read it.

I’m thinking that Ukraine really wishes they’d kept those nukes they gave up after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Read it.

Africa, a continent rich in resources and resilience, is a mostly silent battleground in a geopolitical contest. While global attention fixates on the Middle East, Ukraine, or Taiwan, China, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is reshaping Africa’s future through loans, infrastructure, and control of critical minerals. This isn’t just Africa’s story—it’s a test case for a global model that trades sovereignty for dependency. Democratic nations must counter with partnerships that prioritize African agency, learning from past mistakes to avoid repeating them.

Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The mainstream media has been obsessed with the fear of regime change ad nauseam for 2 weeks now. Every day another headline appears making the same exact unoriginal argument that God forbid Israel or the United States contemplate regime change in Iran, it would open the gates of hell. The Washington Post has run more than 7 pieces warning about regime change in Iran. With the bombing by the U.S. of Iranian nuclear sites, the anti-regime change lobby has reached a crescendo of false warnings.