Read it.

What began as a California statewide voter referendum in 2008 to approve initial funding for a high-speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles has become a financial black hole with no railroad to show for it.

Read it.

Remember when beautiful people were the standard in American marketing? Remember when advertising focused on demographics according to their common interests and their percentage of the general population? It wasn’t all that long ago, but the woke cult has been working hard over the years to “deconstruct” cultural norms, specifically by hijacking advertising and convincing corporations that DEI is the wave of the future.

Anyone born before Y2K is well aware of the dramatic changes to American media and the startling disappearance of attractive people and white people in ads. TV shows, movies and even commercials have been carefully crafted with a perfect pie chart of diverse representation while removing the one group that is the actual majority (perhaps even more of a majority as deportations continue). Most of America does not look like New York or Los Angeles, but if you were to study modern advertising without context you might assume white people in the US are a minority.

Please, Mr. President, Keep Talking Epstein (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Senate Democrats try to force DOJ’s hand on Epstein files (Jordain Carney/Politico)

How Does the Epstein Scandal End? (Anna Merlan/Mother Jones)

Trump’s explosive new claim about Epstein at odds with past statements (Judd Legum/Popular Information)  As twisted by the Narrative Media, of course.

Democrats invoke rare Senate rule to force release of Epstein documents (Josephine Walker/Axios)

Trump’s Epstein Fiasco Worsens as Dems Suddenly Find Big New Weapon (Greg Sargent/New Republic)

Mysterious ‘Orange Shape’ Raises More Questions About Epstein Footage (Josh Fiallo/The Daily Beast)

LIVE: Epstein files news conference held by Senator Chuck Schumer

LIVE: Democrats Announce Update on Epstein Files

Corporate Media: DNI’s Russiagate Doc Dump ‘Baseless,’ ‘Distraction from Epstein’

The antitrust war inside MAGA Powerful lobbyists are battling populist reformers (Sohrab Ahmari/UnHerd)

MAGA Champion Who Said Trump Would Fight Child Predators Is Arrested on Charges of Being a Child Predator (Jack Silvers/The Daily Beast)

Gaza starvation widens MAGA’s rupture with Israel (Axios)

MAGA is turning on Israel over Gaza, but Trump is unmoved (Politico)

The Only MAGA That Counts Is Trump’s (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Check it out.

Intelligence by the Slice.

Chicago Tribune.

Fembot ‘journalism’–start with an endearing anecdote, then try to stretch it into ‘data’ that supports the agenda you started with.

Skip the first eight paragraphs to get to the actual news.

Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land, according to data from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management, a nonprofit association that helps farmers make management decisions. The rest is leased to farmers by individuals, family trusts and, increasingly, businesses.

The Tribune is launching a series of special reports analyzing the hurdles many farmers face in trying to be good stewards of the land as climate change intensifies. Among the challenges are fewer opportunities for farmers — and would-be farmers — to own their land.

And there you have it: CLIMATE CHANGE! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Read it.

Skechers recently started selling a line of kids shoes that have a hidden compartment under the insole for inserting Apple’s AirTag item tracker.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Babylon Bee.

No surprises here.

Babylon Bee.

Go ahead. We’ll wait.

(Remember:If you hear the ‘dog whistle’, then you’re the dog.)

Read it.

A 29-year-old Somali man has been arrested in Zweibrücken, Germany, accused of kidnapping, torturing migrants, and murdering a boy by stabbing him in the throat. The arrest was carried out in coordination with German police and Italian authorities under an international warrant issued by the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office.

According to investigators, the victim reportedly resisted a rape attempt. The suspect allegedly intended to film the assault in order to blackmail the boy’s family for ransom. The investigation began with a complaint from a fellow Somali migrant who arrived in Lampedusa in 2023, claiming the suspect had tortured detainees in a Libyan detention centre in Bani Walid under the orders of human traffickers.

Additional testimony from other migrants and digital evidence, including IP address analysis linking the suspect to both Libya and Europe, helped confirm his identity. His arrest follows months of joint investigation by Italian and German authorities.

Read it.

The number of unofficial migrant arrivals in the UK by boat has now passed 24,500 so far this year as of Thursday, July 31st. In the latest spike, Border Force intercepted two boats in UK waters, each carrying over 90 migrants. Approximately 900 people landed on UK shores on Thursday alone.

With the total expected to surpass 25,000 next month, the political pressure is likely to intensify. The current figure is already over 50% higher than this time last year. The tally, compiled by GB News, typically takes several days to be verified by the government as official data.

In a separate development, the National Crime Agency (NCA) reported a success after helping to seize a shipment of inflatable boats at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing in Bulgaria. The lorry was transporting 25 boats intended for use by smuggling gangs operating in the English Channel. Many of the boats were designed to carry 50 to 60 people, often overcrowded.

Jacque Beer—NCA Regional Head of Investigation—stated that

This was a significant seizure, with these vessels destined for use by the organised crime groups running small boat crossings from France to the UK.

Read it.

At a pivotal UN conference in New York, several key Arab nations—including Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—have jointly called for the end of Hamas’ control over the Gaza Strip. The proposal, outlined in a seven-page document, argues that dismantling the Hamas government is essential to resolving the long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict.

“As part of ending the war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas must end its rule in the Gaza Strip and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority with international commitment and support,” the document declares. The statement also condemns Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

A total of 17 countries have endorsed the proposal so far, with backing from Western nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Norway, and Ireland. More endorsements are expected ahead of September, when the initiative is scheduled for formal adoption at the UN.

Read it.

British Hamas kidnapping victim Emily Damari has condemned the announcement offering to formally recognise the state of Palestine as one that risked “rewarding terror.”

According to Ms. Damari, who was shot in the hand by her Hamas abductors, the Prime Minister’s approach would send a ‘dangerous message that violence earns legitimacy.’

Read it.

As illegals flood into Blue States, Americans are migrating to Red States. Guess who wins?

UPDATE: Migration to Red States Is Accelerating, Study Says

Newsbusters.

Years after the Black Lives Matter protests and attendant vandalism, looting and burning, the PBS News division is suddenly worried that masks….help people get away with crimes! Why the sudden interest? Well, it’s a way to indirectly fault ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for criminals impersonating agents. Sunday’s NewsHour Weekend segment carried the online headline “Rise of ICE agents wearing masks creates opportunity for imposters to conduct crimes.”

For years conservatives have pointed out that Antifa and other left-wing mobs took advantage of masking (supported by the liberal media’s bizarre mask fetish) to hide their criminal behavior under the guise of preserving their health or hiding their identity for safety reasons. Those rules apparently don’t apply to ICE agents, who must apparently go maskless and risk doxxing from the vengeful online left.

Read it.

It’s always Hitler — never Stalin, who killed more people, never Mao, who killed millions more people, never Lenin, who was arguably more evil, never even Franco, who at least was on the right — always Hitler. The Left even likes to call Jews Hitler, which boggles the mind.

Read it.

The Times almost certainly knew the provenance of the photos it published and didn’t care. The paper has its agenda.

The Foundry.

Since the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution contains no right to abortion, the abortion industry has waged a campaign to ensure that an abortion right would continue in effect, if not in law.

Planned Parenthood, the cause’s corporate embodiment, won another victory in that campaign on Monday when it convinced a federal judge in Boston that by excluding Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursements, Congress violated the First Amendment and unconstitutionally punished the abortion provider.

The Massachusetts litigation concerns Planned Parenthood’s challenge to the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a provision of which disqualified organizations like Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.

Federal law already prohibits public funding of abortions, but because money is fungible, public funds paid to Planned Parenthood, even for other medical services, still effectively underwrite the abortion business.

Read it.

“Hello! I want to come to your country and get free stuff!’

The Foundry.

While President Donald Trump nixed funding for California’s “train to nowhere,” taxpayers remain on the hook for other projects that are billions of dollars over budget and more than a decade behind schedule, according to a new Senate report.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, issued “Off the Rails: The Billion Dollar Boondoggles Taking Taxpayers for a Ride,” a report that details projects such as Minnesota’s costliest project in history and a project that is more than half of Hawaii’s entire state budget.

“From poor planning and mismanagement to red tape, there are a laundry list of reasons why these projects are delayed,” Ernst told The Daily Signal. “Somehow, the solution is always more tax dollars, but enough is enough. As I continue to work with the Trump administration to restore accountability to Washington, there is no better place to focus than on these projects that have cost run-ups totaling more than $160 billion.”

As part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act during the Biden administration, Ernst got an amendment passed that requires the Department of Transportation to issue a public report each year disclosing any taxpayer-funded project that is more than $1 billion over budget or is five years or more behind schedule. (Ernst voted against the bigger bill).

Read it.

Jean Respail predicted all of this back in 1973. Buy the book here.

Each day brings ever more jaw-dropping news from Great Britain, otherwise known as Starmerstan.

The government cannot gain control of the migrant boats ferrying invaders daily like a dinghy armada. A thousand years ago and more, when Viking longboats carried ferocious Scandinavian war bands across the waters to conquer the British Isles, the natives had no difficulty seeing what was happening and doing what they could to defend themselves.

Today, though, the new invaders come without weapons, knowing with certainty that the mush-brained Brahmins of Britain’s ruling class will not only fail to resist them, but will put them up in fancy hotels, give them smartphones, put them on the dole, and extend benefits to these illegal entrants that would have been unimaginable to previous generations of Britons. Has there ever been a nation in history that offered such succor to its would-be colonizers?

The Other McCain.

This seemed like it was going to be one of those weird social-media episodes that would get a few laughs and disappear before I could be bothered to write about it, but then ABC’s Good Morning America felt the need to weigh in on the Sydney Sweeney Nazi Jeans Scandal, and so here we are, on a Wednesday, still talking about it.

Making a sophomoric double-entendre — “jeans”/“genes” — American Eagle employed This Year’s It Girl to promote their product: “Great jeans,” get it? And were it not for the fact that Donald Trump is president and half of our fellow citizens are in a state of panic-stricken hysteria, this not-remotely-clever ad campaign would never have become such a thing as to attract scrutiny from Major National News Organizations. But the same deranged mentality that justified baseball taking the All-Star Game out of Atlanta because Joe Biden called their election law “Jim Crow 2.0” continues to prevail among the kind of people who voted for Kamala Harris, so I find myself on a Wednesday being compelled to comment on an advertising campaign for overpriced blue jeans.

Read it.

A Jewish man from France and his young child were called “murderers” at an Italian motorway service station before being surrounded and harassed by a crowd chanting “Free Palestine.”

Mobile phone footage captures the lead-up to the attack, which began after the man took his child to the toilet. The confrontation appears to have started with a cashier at the service station shop. As the man left the restroom, he was attacked by a group of 15 to 20 people, knocked to the ground, and repeatedly kicked. One of the attackers shouted, “We are not in Gaza, we are in Italy.” The six-year-old child was not injured.

Police arrived about 10 minutes later, and the crowd quickly dispersed. Strangely, officers then told the victim—via his Italian son-in-law—that he should ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop bombing Gaza. The man responded, “But I’m not Israeli, I’m French.”

A police investigation is now underway. Milan city councillor Daniele Nahum asked:

Has attacking Jewish citizens truly become ‘normal’ due to Gaza events?

Tragically, some Europeans—from Belgium to Cyprus and now Italy—are answering her question in the affirmative.

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. 

Read it.

“If you are not conscious of their desire for conquest, you will be conquered.”

Yesterday I posted about the Muslim Brotherhood in Spain; today it’s Italy’s turn.

I began writing about the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) almost twenty years ago, and warned about the ugly mess the West would face if it didn’t wake up to what was happening and act against the Ikhwan. Well, it has finally woken up (at least parts of Europe have), but unfortunately it is too late: Islam has reached critical mass in Western Europe. A political solution to the issue is thus no longer possible; we may either submit to Islam, or use kinetic means to deal with the problem, the details of which cannot be described here, in the interests of prudence.

The Foundry.

Just minutes into a special Vacation Bible School Sunday service at CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan, on June 22, parishioners found their morning worship interrupted by the terrible crack of gunshots outside.

A man clad in a tactical vest and carrying numerous firearms had driven erratically onto the premises of the church, apparently intent on killing as many worshippers as he could that morning.

Fortunately for the nearly 150 people inside—including numerous young children—some of the gunshots they heard were, in fact, the sounds of two armed church members returning fire and killing the gunman before he could enter the sanctuary.

The men who heroically defended their fellow worshippers are part of CrossPointe’s safety team, which they and other members founded about a decade ago in response to acts of violence committed in places of worship around the United States.

Remember: When seconds count, police respond in minutes … if you’re lucky.

Victor Davis Hanson.

There was a very disturbing event this past weekend in Cincinnati, Ohio. There was an altercation between two males, apparently.

Things were said. We don’t know what was said. We don’t know if anything untoward was said.

But they developed—that altercation expanded. And what was disturbing of it, there was a racial component—black, white—but more importantly, after this altercation expanded, it was all asymmetrical. The black group was much larger than the white group. It was much younger. Most of the people were males, maybe 50 or so. Most of their attackers in the second part of this altercation were young and black.

More importantly, once people hit the ground or were sucker punched, people from the crowd came in, stomped on them, body slammed them, and it was almost like a free-for-all, that people smelled blood and they wanted to go in for the kill. It was very disturbing.

And the other thing that was disturbing about it was they sucker punched a woman, knocked her unconscious, and then people continued to pelt her. More importantly, there were black females that joined in this ruckus, like it was a celebration. They were stomping people on the ground. And then the reaction of the crowd, it was almost people were celebrating it.

And what was the reaction to law enforcement? They said they’re going to investigate the people who were involved. But I guess a lot of the reaction is that none of the media covered it, at least the legacy media. It was on Fox News and the New York Post, etc., but not in the legacy media. It was almost as if they were saying, “This is a taboo subject.”

Black people can beat on random white people and nobody dares take any action. Yet if something happens to a black person, even a drug addict under the influence or a criminal caught in the act, it’s all FREDDY GRAY and TRAYVON MARTIN and GENTLE GIANT and CIVIL RIGHTS and BLACK RIGHTS MATTER and riots and so on. Eventually white people are going to get fed up and black people will not enjoy what happens next.

UPDATE: Here’s How Attack in Cincinnati Gained National Attention and the DOJ Became Involved

Read it.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just took aim at a system that has failed Americans for nearly 40 years, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).

This program was created under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which shielded vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits over injury claims.

It was to gain the shield of this program that the COVID vaccine companies were pushing so hard for it to be officially recommended for children, one of the program’s prerequisites.

Before becoming HHS Secretary, Kennedy exposed how vaccine manufacturers were being hammered with lawsuits due to injuries.

One of the largest manufacturers at the time, Wyeth (now part of Pfizer), reportedly told President Reagan: give us legal protection or we’ll stop making vaccines.

Reagan’s response? Why not just make safer vaccines?

Wyeth’s answer: Vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”

That phrase—“unavoidably unsafe”—would later appear in a Supreme Court decision and reflects the legal premise that some vaccine injuries are inevitable.

“And so, anybody who tells you vaccines are safe and effective, the industry itself got immunity from liability by convincing the President and Congress that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe,” Kennedy previously stated.

The Foundry.

While Hunter Biden’s viral three-hour long interview on YouTube last week came across as an “entitled rant” to even MSNBC, the son of former President Joe Biden added a valuable piece in the puzzle about his father’s mental decline while in office.

According to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden was given Ambien, a sedative used to treat insomnia, before the 2024 presidential debate with Donald Trump that ultimately led to his bowing out of the race.

“He’s tired,” Hunter Biden said. “They give him Ambien to be able to sleep, and he gets up on the stage and looks like a deer in the headlights.”

But questions surrounding Joe Biden’s mental acuity go well beyond his son’s musings. Now, Congress is investigating the Biden White House’s use of the autopen in signing official documents, which some argue renders certain autopen-signed documents void.

Read it.

After a daycare center in Lower Saxony recently raised the hackles of parents by only serving sausages from halal-slaughtered animals, now a school in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhein-Westphalia, is also bowing to the demands of the Muslim population when it comes to food offerings. Starting next school year, Erle Comprehensive School will serve only halal meals, according to an announcement on the school’s website, Junge Freiheit reports. The catering company providing lunches for the school also supplies nine other schools in the city, all of which will now serve only meat prepared according to Islamic slaughter rules.

Around 60% of students in Gelsenkirchen have a migration background, with some districts seeing even higher numbers. Pork has already been banned in all schools since 2010, following a decision by the city’s food advisory board.

Other schools in Germany, including a special needs school in Baden-Württemberg, have also shifted to halal-only menus.

Experts have long predicted this trend, which follows the massive inflow of migrants from Muslim countries. In 2016, a former vice president of the German Nutrition Society said pork would gradually disappear from school menus. This is already happening, especially in areas with large Muslim populations like the Ruhr region.

Authorities tend to take the position that while the mode of slaughter is important to Muslims, other citizens probably don’t care that much how the animals that provide their meat are killed.

But some non-Muslim Europeans view halal-slaughtered meat being the ‘default’ offering as a form of religious accommodation that they have not chosen, or even a forced passive participation in a system they don’t adhere to. Certain Christians oppose consuming halal meat because the animal is dedicated to Allah, a deity they do not worship or recognize. And animal rights activists have opposed halal slaughter that does not stun the animal before its throat is slit and it is drained of all blood.

No word on whether German schools intend to cater to the religious food rules of the Jewish population—who do not consume halal foods.

Why not capitulate completely to the hand-wringers and make them vegan?

Read it.

Who are you going to believe: Me or your lying eyes?

Read it.

Unidentified individuals spray-painted “NYT Lies, Gaza Dies” on The New York Times building in Manhattan on Wednesday, with sections of the structure’s doors and windows also daubed with red paint.

The incident followed heightened criticism of the newspaper’s coverage of the Gaza conflict. The perpetrators remain unknown.

The graffiti appeared hours after the Times issued an editor’s note amending its July 24 article, “Gazans are dying of starvation.” Five days after publication, the Times acknowledged that its story referenced a Gazan boy, Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, suffering from severe malnutrition, but later learned from his doctor and medical records that the child also had preexisting health conditions. The editor’s note underscored that the article had been updated to reflect these new details.

Gainsay the Woke and they’ll give you a poke.

UPDATE: New York Times Issues Editor’s Note Over Condition of Child in Viral Image

Washington Free Beacon.

The former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) employee who now claims he witnessed American-backed “war crimes” privately threatened to become the aid organization’s “worst enemy” after being fired “due to poor performance, volatile conflicts with staff, and erratic behavior,” according to text messages and other GHF employees who testified under oath.

Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. special forces officer who worked as a contractor with GHF, ignited a media firestorm this week when he claimed to have resigned after witnessing “the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians” and committing other alleged “war crimes.” News outlets like the BBC and CBS News ran with Aguilar’s account, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) interviewed the fired former contractor in a YouTube video. The stridently anti-Israel Maryland Democrat led a group of 19 senators from his party who demanded that the Trump administration pull more than $30 million in funding for GHF.

Since his June 13 termination from UG Solutions, the security firm working with GHF, Aguilar has allegedly fabricated documents supporting his case and repeatedly begged the aid organization to rehire him. GHF presented multiple text messages Aguilar sent members of the organization that directly contradict his story.

In one June 22 text message Aguilar sent to GHF leaders, he instructed them to “stop f—ing around, put me back to work, and let’s get this mission done.”

“If you want to play games, we can play games,” Aguilar threatened. “I can be your best friend, or your worst nightmare.”

Washington Free Beacon.

Every day this week, hundreds of U.N. trucks stacked with pallets of humanitarian aid have exited Israeli-patrolled routes and rumbled into population centers in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has implemented daily pauses in military operations.

Many of those trucks, operating under enhanced Israeli protections introduced on Sunday, have not reached U.N. warehouses, according to Gazans and high-ranking Israeli military officers. Armed Hamas militants have hijacked them, the people said, and what aid has reached U.N. warehouses has disappeared into a patronage system controlled by Hamas.

Long-shuttered distribution sites for food aid at schools, mosques, and bakeries have remained so. Civilians have been forced to buy the aid, often still branded with the U.N. emblem, from sellers who charge exorbitant prices in order to pay heavy taxes to Hamas.

“Fifty trucks arrived yesterday at warehouses in Gaza City, and Hamas stole all of the aid,” said Moumen Al-Natour, a 30-year-old lawyer in the Gazan capital, on Tuesday. “Today, the aid went on sale in the black markets at very high prices.”

Al-Natour said a childhood friend, seeking to feed his family, joined a mob of hungry Gazans trying to loot the trucks and was trampled to death along with others.

Such Hamas-dominated violence and graft surrounding U.N. aid deliveries in Gaza is typical, several dozen civilians, Israeli officers, and others on the ground told the Washington Free Beacon.

Newsbusters.

n the latest installment of what is shaping up to be an ongoing series, the CBS Evening News Plus ran an item on Texas redistricting. And we continue to struggle to remember when such items ran relative to gerrymandered redistricting in Democrat states.

Read it.

More than two dozen protesters were captured on video last week delivering a faux coffin and flowers to the Wisconsin home of House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis.

The unwanted visitors, dressed in black and carrying cowbells, walked up the congressman’s private driveway in what appeared to be a mock funeral procession, before dropping a cardboard coffin prop with an epitaph at his front door.

Former Walworth County Democrat Party Chairwoman Ellen Holly was identified in the video footage posted to social media allegedly walking up to Steil’s front door, along with several other constituents from previous protests.

That is a death threat, straight up. But of course the Usual Suspects are immune from law enforcement in Blue States.

The Telegraph (UK).

New Zealand will reverse its ban on new oil and gas exploration that was put in place under Jacinda Ardern, the former Left-wing prime minister.

The country’s government voted on Thursday to overturn the ban, with Shane Jones, the resources minister, arguing that climate change was “largely moral hysteria”.

He said overturning the ban would stoke investment in petroleum exploration and help ease winter energy supply issues.

Mr Jones said: in a statement: “The ill-fated exploration ban in 2018 has exacerbated shortages in our domestic gas supply by obliterating new investment.”

Ms Ardern – who led the country between 2017 and 2023 – banned new offshore exploration in 2018, citing New Zealand’s “clean, green and sustainable future”.

The Times (UK).

The population of England and Wales has experienced its second-biggest annual jump in 75 years because of surging immigration, figures show.

There were an estimated 61.8 million people living in England and Wales as of June last year, an increase of 706,881 on mid-2023, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The Times (UK) 

Dejaun Campbell, 15, lay bleeding to death from a stab wound on a London street he pleaded to a stranger, “call my mum”.

Among the friends who brought flowers to his shrine was Kelyan Bokassa, 14. Four months later and just a mile away, Kelyan cried “I want my mum” as he bled to death after being stabbed on a bus.

Two teenagers were convicted at the Old Bailey on Wednesday for Daejaun’s death, a week after two other teenagers were jailed for his friend’s murder at the same court.

The War Zone.

First-person view (FPV) attack drones have been so successful in Ukraine that now Mexican drug cartels are reportedly seeking first-hand lessons on best practices. Intelligence agencies in Kyiv and Mexico City are investigating whether cartel members – fighting on behalf of Ukraine – are doing so to learn more about how to operate FPVs against rivals, according to Intelligence Online, a French investigative news outlet. Learning how to operate and maintain FPV drones from the world’s leading practitioners could drastically speed up the learning curve for cartels, which are in the early stages of using these weapons.

The investigation centers on cartel members who allegedly joined Ukraine’s International Legion, created at the beginning of the all-out war to allow foreigners to fight against Russia.

TheWarZone.

Before Russia launched its full-on invasion, Ukraine’s military-industrial complex was almost entirely directed by the government and large defense contractors. However, in the ensuing years, Ukraine has become a massive innovator in defense technology, especially when it comes to air, sea and ground drones, with small startups pushing the technological envelope alongside larger firms. This change, along with massive alterations to how weapons are procured, has come as a necessity as Ukraine fights for its life. The need to innovate and iterate at breakneck speed in order to survive is a critical lesson, among many others, that is lost on the West.

Deborah Fairlamb has had a front row seat to Ukraine’s rapid defense technology growth. An American who has lived in Kyiv for years, she worked in several roles as a leader in the technology investment space. Fairlamb opted to stay in Ukraine after Russia’s full-on invasion and co-founded Green Flag Ventures. The mission is to fund companies producing early-stage commercial products with military applications. To date, Green Flag has invested in companies developing swarming, counter-drone, navigation and communications technology.

In an exclusive hour-long interview with The War Zone, Fairlamb suggests that while these innovations have been a huge help to Ukraine’s fight against Russia, the lessons of success are being lost on or ignored by the U.S. and NATO allies.

Newsbusters.

Another explosive Russia Hoax revelation was revealed to the public today. And, as predictable as the Sun rising in the East, the legacy media completely avoided the story.

The report goes on to note that some of those documents reveal that the intelligence community discovered, through foreign intelligence sources, that the FBI was going to play a role in spreading the collusion narrative, which we refer to as the Russia Hoax. Furthermore, the report notes that these document-laden burn bags were found in a Secure Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility (SCIF) that was known only to seniormost FBI personnel and hidden within the Hoover Building.

No time was accorded to this issue on any of the legacy newscasts airing the day of the report (July 30th), to wit: ABC, CBS, NBC. We even took a look at Univision and Telemundo. No dice. Not a single second was given to the discovery of a potentially explosive and heretofore hidden trove of documents.

ABC was so devoted to suppressing the story that they didn’t even run the customary White House roundup! No Mary Bruce or Rachel Scott! Nothing out of DC whatsoever!

Read it.

Democratic leaders across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have really done it this time. Their reckless decarbonization agenda is backfiring spectacularly, driving power prices to some of the highest in the nation and financially crushing the very working-class families they claim to champion.

In Maryland, Democrats and Gov. Wes Moore have been scrambling to deflect growing dissent (even unleashing dark money NGOs to flood radio waves with propaganda) in the state as power bill costs erupt.

Read it.

Brussels officials are never lost for words on Gaza or the war in Ukraine. But critics say it is another matter entirely when it comes to the persecution of foreign Christians, especially by Islamists.

Dutch conservative MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen said on Monday that the European Union—as well as other international communities—is “far too silent about jihadist violence against Christians.”

Read it.

The recent call by the German Association for Education and Training (VBE) to establish comprehensive Islamic religious education in schools across the country has reignited the debate on institutionalised Islamisation in Europe. Gerhard Brand, the VBE’s federal president, urged political authorities to plan “adequate human and material resources” to implement such instruction in the short term, stressing that existing pilot projects must be evaluated, optimised, and rapidly expanded.

Federal states such as North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria already offer confessional Islamic teaching, while others rely on non-binding Islamic studies or have no consistent programs at all. This disparity has been used as an argument to demand a “comprehensive national offer” that, according to the VBE, would allow Muslim students to express their faith in a controlled school environment.

However, warnings have not been long in coming. The German Teachers’ Association, through its president Stefan Düll, acknowledged the risk that radical preachers are exploiting the absence of state-regulated Islamic education online and within closed family circles. In his view, a model supervised by the state could counterbalance the more extremist currents.

But the core problem lies not only in the form but also in the content of such education. Numerous experts have denounced that organisations such as DITIB, which still maintain structural ties with Ankara and the Turkish religious authority Diyanet, continue to influence Islamic education in Germany. Journalist Eren Güvercin, one of the most vocal critics, has warned that even if imams are trained on German soil, they continue to spread a nationalist and religious mentality alien to European values. The Bundestag has also come under fire for failing to sever ties with these entities.

The German case is not isolated. In France, the phenomenon is even more concerning.

Read it.

Lifeguards in the Swiss city of Basel are calling for urgent action after repeated problems with groups of young people of migrant descent—mainly from nearby France—causing trouble at the city’s public swimming pools.

The situation is especially tense at the popular St. Jakob garden pool, where staff say they’ve faced insults, threats, and even intimidation while trying to enforce the rules.

In a letter sent to city authorities, the lifeguards said the young visitors, often of North African background, regularly ignore hygiene rules.

Staff report being surrounded and harassed when asking people to follow the rules. Regular Swiss guests are reportedly staying away due to the chaotic atmosphere.

The lifeguards are demanding stronger security and clearer dress codes. One internal message even warned that if this continues, “what do we do then, call in the army?”

As we recently reported, the Swiss town of Porrentruy (Pruntrut) has barred entry to its municipal outdoor swimming pool to anyone who is not a Swiss citizen, resident, or officially employed in Switzerland. The drastic measure follows a wave of harassment and violent behaviour—much of it reportedly committed by French nationals crossing the border.

Meanwhile, public swimming pools have become the stage for a rising tide of sexual violence in Germany. According to recent data, 65% of the suspects in sexual assaults recorded in German pools during 2024 did not hold German citizenship.

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In an act many supporters of Israel were calling a “blood libel,” The New York Times first slapped an image of an emaciated Palestinian child on the front page of their Sunday edition paper and blamed Israel for his condition, accusing the Jewish state of using starvation as a weapon against children. But on Tuesday, the purported paper of record was forced to walk back their smears because it was exposed that the child had a pre-existing medical condition that was largely responsible for his physical appearance, and the image cropped out the child’s brother who appeared nourished.

In an earlier edition of the report available via the Wayback Machine, The Times introduced the child, saying: “Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months old, lives with his mother and brother in a tent on a Gaza beach.” Adding: “Mohammed, she said, was born a healthy child. ‘I look at him and I can’t help but cry,’ she said.”

But following The Times’ emphasis on the child, it was discovered that he was born with a condition that effected his muscle development, likely contributing to the emaciated look of his body.

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CNN’s primetime viewership plunged to 497,000 in July—a 42 percent drop from the same time last year—leaving the network far behind its cable news rivals, according to multiple reports Tuesday.

The network “averaged only 497,000 total viewers in prime time for the month of July, despite unrelenting waves of major news,” journalist Oliver Darcy reported on his Substack. “MSNBC, by comparison, averaged 865,000 total viewers. Meanwhile, Fox News averaged 2.41 million viewers.”

While Darcy’s Substack is only available to paid subscribers, former CNN host Chris Cillizza quoted from the report in an X post, describing the numbers as “disastrously bad.”

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Virginia councilman Lee Vogler was set on fire Wednesday by a man who forced his way into his office, according to media reports.

The man, identified as 29-year-old Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes by WBTM, is currently in police custody.

Hayes reportedly dumped a five-gallon bucket of gasoline on Vogler after forcing his way into his workplace at Showcase Magazine. Vogler ran to the front of the building to try to escape, and Hayes followed him and set him on fire.