Back to the Turd World where they belong.

Read it.

Coming forward to 2024, and we find that the sea conditions and terrain of a much-disputed island would make invasion of it difficult. The island in question is Taiwan and it is China, which sees the island as Chinese, which threatens to invade. Therefore, for the past two decades, China has been developing military means of subduing the island such as increasing the size of its navy and air force and developing long-range missiles. But would a Chinese invasion of Taiwan be feasible when considering Taiwan’s geographical advantages? And if an invasion were feasible, would it not come at too great a cost to China in terms of casualties and the loss of materiel if the well-armed Taiwanese exploit their landscape and weather, and are assisted by their powerful allies?

UPDATE: US demands to know what allies would do in event of war over Taiwan (Financial Times)

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As countries like Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and the United States see an ongoing revolt against mass immigration from India, Germany is opening its doors to the Asian country of 1.5 billion. In particular, the city of Berlin has been a top spot for migration from India, and it is the group that has seen the highest level of immigration to the city in the last ten years.

Official statistics indicate the number of Indians went from 3,579 in 2014 to 41,472 in 2014. That represents a 1,059 percent increase in 10 years, and accounts for the largest immigrant influx to the city during that time in terms of growth. However, in terms of raw numbers, Turks are still the largest group of citizens with foreign citizenship overall, representing 109,585, while Ukrainians are in second with 70,501, according to RBB.

Unlike immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, Indians are not routinely featured in the daily barrage of murders, rape, stabbings, and robberies. However, that does not necessarily mean that a massive influx of Indians is not going to be met with anti-immigration sentiment — at least if it continues at its current pace.

The Spectator.

There is, of course, no such thing as a bad Cornish pasty.

When it comes to traditional British food, there is always regional pride to contend with. Many recipes are intrinsically connected to the area from which they have sprung: Pontefract cakes, Chelsea buns, Lancashire hotpot, Welsh rarebit. They represent heritage and tradition — edible history. You must tread carefully to avoid offending regional heritage or just making silly mistakes. I certainly feel on safer ground making pronouncements from my Salford home on Eccles cakes than I do on Ecclefechan tart.

But when it comes to the Cornish pasty, the people of Cornwall have taken ownership a step further. In 2011, the Cornish pasty was granted Protected Geographical Indication by the European Union, which dictates where — and how — a true classic Cornish pasty can be made. This is the same protection enjoyed by products like champagne, Parma ham and Comté cheese.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Psilocybin, the active compound derived from psychedelic mushrooms, significantly delayed cellular aging and extended lifespan in a preclinical study. Researchers observed a 50% increase in the lifespan of human skin and lung cells and a 30% increase in survival in aged mice treated with psilocybin.

The compound appeared to reduce oxidative stress, preserve telomeres, and improve DNA repair, all key to slowing aging. These findings suggest psilocybin may one day enhance not just lifespan but also quality of life in aging populations.

Which is why its use is now illegal except with government permission.

Government is the primary reason why we can’t have nice things.

Read it.

The media minions constantly conflating severe weather with a climate apocalypse at the behest of climate cultists with policy agendas will continue to lose audience as those with more sensible and realistic perspectives, who are no longer silenced, are proven to be scientifically correct.

Read it.

New Mexico Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a self-styled moderate Democrat, has ramped up his resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities, a stark contrast to other vulnerable border district Democrats who have largely stayed silent on the issue.

Vasquez, a two-term Democrat from Las Cruces, denounced ICE raids in Los Angeles last month, accusing the Trump administration of “transforming our streets into war zones.” Vasquez voted against a resolution condemning riots that followed the raids, in which anti-ICE protesters hurled Molotov cocktails at ICE agents and set fire to police cars and other vehicles.

Vasquez has promoted other efforts to thwart ICE, advising undocumented constituents that they “do not have to open the door” to immigration agents.

“You do not have to share your immigration status or your place of birth,” Vasquez’s congressional website tells constituents. Vasquez also informs constituents that they “can report and document raids and arrests to share with attorneys and advocacy organizations.”

Vasquez’s advice comes amid multiple attacks on ICE agents in Portland, Ore., Alvarado, Tex., and McAllen, Tex., earlier this month.

Ask yourself why: Why are Democrats so invested with the ‘rights’ of illegal immigrants? In many cases, in competition with the American citizens who are their constituents?

Read it.

The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because we refuse to learn from experts, other countries, and our own history.

The government is typically why we can’t have nice things.

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They look like an ordinary pair of glasses – but these are tech-packed specs.
On a Zoom call, Niko Eiden, chief executive and co-founder of Finnish eyewear firm IXI, holds up the frames with lenses containing liquid crystals, meaning their vision-correcting properties can change on the fly.
This one pair could correct the vision of someone who normally uses totally different pairs of glasses for seeing near or far.
“These liquid crystals… we can rotate them with an electrical field,” explains Mr Eiden.
“It’s totally, freely tuneable.” The position of those crystals affects the passage of light through the lenses. A built-in eye-tracker allows the glasses to respond to whatever correction the wearer needs at a given moment.
However, tech-laden eyewear has a troubled history – take Google’s ill-fated “Glass” smart glasses.
Consumer acceptability is key, acknowledges Mr Eiden. Most people don’t want to look like cyborgs: “We need to make our products actually look like existing eyewear.”

Read it.

Jewish leaders on Thursday called on the School District of Philadelphia to take action against an administrator who they say has “rationalize[d]” Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.

The Philadelphia chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups wrote in a letter to the school district that they are “deeply troubled by a recently circulated video clip of Ismael Jimenez, Director of the Social Studies Curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia” in which he “appears to rationalize the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.”

“In a time of heightened threats to Jewish communities, school leadership must take seriously any endorsement or rationalization of hate-fueled violence,” the letter continued. “To the School District: At what point does inaction become complicity?”

Read it.

In a groundbreaking moment for the American mining industry, the Fluor Corporation has confirmed the feasibility of large rare earth element deposits at Ramaco Resources’ Brook Mine in Wyoming. This announcement marks a significant step towards redefining the United States’ position in the critical minerals market. The confirmation by Fluor not only solidifies the economic potential of the Brook Mine but also positions Ramaco Resources as a key player in reducing the country’s dependency on foreign sources of rare earth elements.

Read it.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is rescinding a 1998 interpretation of a law that allowed illegal immigrants to access certain government-funded programs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on July 10.

The health secretary is rescinding the interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), a law that said illegal immigrants cannot obtain “federal public benefits.”

The 1998 interpretation by the HHS said the law’s definition of benefits “does not provide sufficient guidance for benefit providers” and that HHS was stepping in “to facilitate compliance” with a requirement in the law for providers to verify a person’s qualifications for benefits.

It said that certain programs, including Head Start, which provides child care for lower-income families, were accessible to illegal immigrants.

That interpretation improperly narrowed the scope of the law, letting illegal immigrants access programs that lawmakers intended only for Americans and qualified immigrants, such as immigrants granted asylum, HHS said on Thursday.

Rep. Crockett Claims All Violence Comes from MAGA

Why You Should Fear a MAGAfied Fed (Paul Krugman)

Trump taps MAGA personality for diplomatic post, creates new test for Senate Republicans (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

Trump’s challenges to MAGA base expose divisions (Julia Mueller/The Hill)

Trump’s challenges to MAGA base expose divisions (Julia Mueller/The Hill)Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Awkward Truth about ICE as MAGA Seethes (The New Republic) First, fill your pot with MAGA; then put it on a low flame until you just get a few bubbles.

MAGA on “amnesty watch” as Trump weighs migrant worker protections (Axios) “Who’s that guy in the corner?” “Oh, that’s MAGA. He’s here to keep an eye on things.”

Donald Trump Warned of Move That Could ‘Break’ MAGA Coalition (Newsweek) I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was a “MAGA Coalition”–at least in the eyes of the Narrative Scribbler Coalition.

Who ya gonna call? NARRATIVE SCRIBBLERS!

L.A. Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Mayor Karen Bass announced a plan Friday to provide direct cash assistance to people who have been affected by the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration raids.
The aid will be distributed using cash cards with a “couple hundred” dollars on them, which should be available in about a week, Bass said at a news conference.
“You have people who don’t want to leave their homes, who are not going to work, and they are in need of cash,” she said.
Bass spoke about a family she met who needed two incomes to afford their rent. After one of the breadwinners was detained in an immigration raid, she said, the family is concerned they may face eviction.
It was not immediately clear what the qualifications will be needed to receive the cards.
The mayor emphasized that the money will not come from city coffers but from philanthropic partners. The cards will be distributed by immigrants rights groups such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
The city will coordinate between philanthropists and organizations distributing the cards, according to the mayor’s office.

Democrats–subsidizing criminality for decades now.

Read it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has withdrawn the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly as vice admiral and command of the Navy’s strategically important 7th Fleet over drag queen shows he permitted on board the USS Ronald Reagan nearly 10 years ago, reports the Daily Wire.

The Senate approved Donnelly’s nomination on June 29, but Hegseth withdrew his name without any explanation.

“The Secretary is thankful for his continued service and wishes him luck in his next position,” an email from a spokesperson with the DOD told Stars & Stripes.

Uniform Code of Military Justice, Art. 133. Conduct unbecoming an officer

Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

It used to be ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’, but we don’t have gentlemen in the officer corps any more.

Read it.

A man is on life support after he was injured during an immigration raid at an agricultural area of Camarillo on Thursday, according to a family member.

A woman who reached out to Eyewitness News said her family member, Jaime Garcia, fell 30 feet off a building while he was possibly trying to run from federal agents.

He was taken to the hospital with a broken neck and skull.

So basically it’s his Own Damned Fault. Memo to self: Don’t run from Federal agents. The neck you save may be your own.

And, of course, Trump is to blame.

Read it.

What happens when governments refuse to govern? We can see the answer in the small German town of Harsefeld, Lower Saxony, which has lately been gripped by a wave of crime. Residents have been complaining of a gang of what appears to be mostly migrant teenagers terrorising the town with violence, drug dealing, and extortion. Police have apparently been unable to deal with the chaos, citing staffing shortages. The police station in Harsefeld is reportedly also closed, forcing emergency calls to be rerouted to a town 15 kilometres away and allowing criminals to flee before the authorities arrive.

In response to this breakdown of the law, local residents have been forced to take the law into their own hands. Groups of citizens have been patrolling the town and recording incidents. A police spokesman has described the groups as “quite creepy” and warned that “a vigilante group doesn’t help anyone.” Neither, presumably, does a completely impotent police force.

Local police say that they are currently investigating a number of reports, but that “it’s taking time,” despite the fact that the gang leaders are known to the authorities and video evidence exists of their crimes. But a significant backlog, as well as the German legal system making it difficult to prosecute minors, means that no charges have so far been brought against any of the perpetrators.

John McWhorter.

I’m no fan of performative identity politics, and I think racial preferences are long past their expiration date. Yet I don’t think the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani did anything wrong when, as was reported last week, he checked off “Black or African American” on a college application. As a man of South Asian descent who spent the first part of his life living in Uganda, he was within his rights to call himself African American. The problem is that the term appeared on the application, or anywhere else. Plenty of Black people have never liked it, and ever more are joining the ranks. It’s time to let it go.

…

A term that is meant to be descriptive but that can refer to Cedric the Entertainer, Trevor Noah, Elon Musk and Zohran Mamdani is a little silly.

The Left has never shrunk from silly. Indeed, their entire program is to make the silly into a semblance of normal.

Read it.

Bomb bomb bomb … bomb bomb Iran….

Read it.

The Vandal Veto finds a home in ‘ C eh? N eh? D eh?’.

Macdonald was a titan, and those who wish to delegitimize Canada must destroy him to do it. Macdonald was, as Patrice Dutil noted in his essential rebuttal to this iconoclasm, remarkably progressive for his period, but activists have scavenged the historical record to cherry-pick quotes that sound racist to modern ears. References to Indigenous peoples as savages, for example, are touted as the measure of the man rather than a summation of the era.

The iconoclasts, however, do not explain why American Indians frequently fled across the border to the safety of Macdonald’s Canada to escape the U.S. Army, and do not mention that the government sent them supplies to ensure their survival on the winter prairies. When rations ran out—Dutil emphasizes Macdonald’s genuine anguish over this—the history is slanderously rewritten as a deliberate attempt to starve Indigenous people to prop up the “genocide” narrative. That, Dutil notes, is simply “not the case.”

Indeed, most Canadians are unaware of the fact that Macdonald made statements in defense of Indigenous rights against genuinely racist opposition and his own political interests, and even advocated for their political enfranchisement.

Read it.

Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for women’s and human rights in Iran, has received death threats from Tehran, the Nobel Committee said Friday.

Wow, who could have seen that coming….

Daily Record (UK)

Darwin Award candidate. The stupid we have always with us … until they die.

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Police have launched a hate incident investigation after a bonfire topped with an effigy depicting channel migrants was set alight in Northern Ireland.

A boat carrying mannequins wearing lifejackets topped the towering bonfire in Moygashel, County Tyrone. Banners which read “stop the boats”, “veterans before refugees” and “stop illegal immigration” were fixed to the pallets. An Irish tricolour flag was also placed on the tower.

The bonfire was lit on Thursday night as part of a Unionist tradition ahead of the Protestant loyal orders July 12 parades, despite police saying they were investigating the “hate incident”.

Politicians and religious leaders have condemned the bonfire as “racist, threatening and offensive”.

Democracy is worth defending unless the Ruling Class doesn’t like it.

UPDATE: Migrant Boat Effigy Burned In Northern Ireland (Times UK)

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When the train finally arrived—whether in the form of a populist backlash, a market correction, or simply the reality of physics and economics—the “climate experts” were left standing on the tracks, holding signs about “solidarity” and “resistance,” wondering why the world refused to listen to the apocalypse that never came.

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Dramatic video footage from Ventura County, California, shows an anti-ICE protester discharging what appears to be a weapon at federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in an agricultural zone. The nature of the weapon remains unconfirmed.

“A protester was seen apparently firing some kind of weapon at federal agents during the immigration raid at a farm near Camarillo on Thursday. It’s unknown if anyone was injured in the chaos,” local media outlet ABC7 wrote in a post on X.

International Man.

War, in the long run, is a matter of economics. If you can’t afford to fight a war, you’ll lose the war. Missiles are now the preferred weapon for taking out enemy targets, and the only effective counter is anti-missile missiles. The problem is that both are brutally expensive. Can the costs be kept down, so war is more… affordable?

Generals, politicians, and “defense” contractors, however, love expensive high-tech toys. But if you’re going to afford a war, the most cost-effective weapon is an ignorant teenage boy—something the Third World, especially the Muslim world, is awash in. They’re cheap and stealthy delivery systems, far more effective than multi-million-dollar missiles. There’s an endless supply of them, and they can be employed in a myriad of ways. From an economic point of view, it makes no sense for technologically advanced countries (like the US) to use ultra-expensive weapons to attack primitive countries, as we’ve done for the last 75 years.

Regardless of the weapons used, the thing to remember is that war amounts to setting wealth on fire. Missiles are about taking real goods, manufactured at great expense, and using them to blow up other real wealth; there can be a perverse logic to it. However, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, I’m not sure governments are too concerned about lots of young men dying. A surplus of unemployed young males is destabilizing, especially in poor countries.

Even a large country like the US will eventually collapse under the weight of war. That’s much more true of the Ukraine. And vastly truer of Israel. Israel will further bankrupt itself shooting down missiles with ultra-expensive anti-missiles. With a gigantic debt load, enormous war expenditures and losses, living on welfare from the US, and no prospect of things getting better, the prognosis isn’t good. About a million (it’s said) of Israel’s seven million Jewish citizens have recently made the chicken run, and those who remain aren’t allowed to leave. I think Israel has a near-insoluble problem. Giving them more money and missiles won’t help.

Read it.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) posted on X Wednesday, exposing how Communist billionaire Neville Roy Singham—who operates a dark-money NGO network allegedly tied to funding anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and resides in China with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—has suddenly vanished.

“Neville Singham— the billionaire communist with ties to the CCP, who funded the LA riots and used immigration & Mexicans as a Trojan horse for communism— is hiding from our letter requesting testimony,” Rep. Luna wrote on X.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning….

Instead of calling them ‘conspiracy theories’ we ought to call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

Trump faces MAGA trust crisis over Epstein debacle (Axios)

MAGA’s Ugly Budget at Odds with Its Creepy Pronatalism (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)

Trump Taps Hooters-Obsessed MAGA Diehard to Be an Ambassador (Ryan Bort/Rolling Stone)

Detained in immigration raids, Maga mom still has faith in Trump’s mass deportation plan (Regan Morris/BBC)

WashPost Welcomes a Clown To Insist Trump’s a Fascist, Not a Clown

Trump nominates ‘alpha male’ MAGA firebrand to serve as ambassador to Malaysia (Jacob Wendler/Politico)

Disaster: Liberal Goes Back In Time To Kill Hitler But Now Has No One To Compare People He Disagrees With To  (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

Across Europe, a new kind of politics is taking root. It is sectarian, identitarian, and increasingly shaped by the demands of Islamist interest groups, cloaked in the demands of progressivism and tolerance.

Sweden is a case in point. Jamal el-Haj, a Lebanese-born Swedish politician, was expelled from the Social Democratic Party last year after it was revealed he had intervened in an asylum case on behalf of a fundamentalist imam back in 2017. He had also previously attended a conference in Malmö in the spring of 2023 that had connections to Hamas, the Islamist terror group and perpetrators of the October 7th pogrom in southern Israel later that year.

Since being booted by the Social Democrats, el-Haj has been busy crafting a new party that better suits his beliefs. Paperwork dated from last month shows that el-Haj registered the creation of the so-called Unity Party, which he deems necessary to represent “the many who no longer recognise themselves in today’s Sweden,” especially those of migrant origin. El-Haj has so far maintained that the party will be secular, stressing that the Unity Party is aimed at “the entire Swedish population—not just Muslims or immigrants.” It will rather focus on international solidarity, humanism, environmental responsibility, and economic equality. Pro-Palestine activism will also no doubt play a leading role. Despite claims of the party being based around purely secular values, it has been noted that el-Haj held numerous meetings with imams, some in his home, about its formation. The organisation’s inner circle also comprises primarily Muslim religious leaders.

Read it.

Starting in 2027, a price shock at the gas station threatens drivers. The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS II) will be extended to include the transport and building sectors.

Another wave of price increases is rolling in. And yes, once again, the engine of inflation will be the European Union’s climate policy, as is so often the case these days. At the end of January, the Bundestag already approved the implementation of the reform of the European Emissions Trading System, which foresees the free trade of CO? certificates from 2027 onward in both the transport and building sectors.

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“storytime” events that teach children that Israel “senselessly murdered” thousands of kids in Gaza, depict a map in which Israel is entirely replaced with “Palestine,” and create art projects promoting the “Palestinian liberation” movement.

The Free Library of Philadelphia, which receives both state and federal funding, has scheduled at least six “Palestine Storytime & Crafts” events this summer sponsored by an extremist anti-Israel group called Families for Ceasefire Philly.

The Kingsessing Library, for instance, has advertised one storytime event on its website alongside a photo of a child wearing a headscarf that features an image of the Dome of the Rock and the Arabic phrase, “Jerusalem, we are coming,” a slogan Hamas and Hezbollah use to call for the destruction of the Jewish state. The library advertises the event—scheduled for Aug. 9—as being for “children of all ages.”

Read it.

Australia’s special envoy on antisemitism has warned of a “deeply troubling” rise in hate crimes against the Jewish community, following a 300% surge in reported incidents since the outbreak of war in Gaza.

Speaking on Thursday, Jillian Segal outlined a series of recommendations to combat the threat, warning that antisemitism in Australia had reached a “tipping point that threatens social harmony.”

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Segal said Jewish Australians have faced a wave of intimidation, including arson attacks on synagogues, harassment, vandalism, and threats. “We’ve seen cars being torched, synagogues being torched, individual Jews harassed and attacked, and that is completely unacceptable,” she told reporters.

One Melbourne synagogue was targeted in a suspected arson attack last Friday. On the same day, around 20 protesters reportedly stormed an Israeli-owned restaurant, and cars were defaced with antisemitic graffiti.

Segal called for tougher hate crime laws, better Holocaust education, and accountability for universities that tolerate antisemitism. Her report also urged action against online hate and biased media.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese backed Segal’s recommendations, calling recent acts of antisemitism “despicable” and vowing they “won’t be tolerated.”

I remember a time when that headline would have read “Australian Jews” rather than “Jewish Australians”. (Consider the delicate distinction between “American blacks” and “black Americans”.)

Read it.

Germany’s social insurance system is coming under increasing pressure from demographic shifts and a stagnating economy. Long-term care insurance is no exception. The political class attempts to sedate the symptoms.

It confirms what demographers and economists have warned about for years: Germany’s social security structure is not built to withstand demographic change or recession. It is a fair-weather construction—a luxury that prosperous societies afford themselves in times of surplus, only to pare it down in times of crisis. That crisis, anticipated by economists such as Stefan Fetzer and Christian Hagist, has now arrived. In a widely discussed study, they predicted that without fundamental reforms, the German welfare state would reach a tipping point by 2030. By then, the total contribution rate to social security would rise to 44.5% of gross wages—suffocating the private sector in the process.

Victor Davis Hanson

We’ve talked in the past a lot about the unfortunate turn to the hard Left that Democrats have made. But in the last week, it’s become surreal.

We had this minor official—a Democratic official—Sade Perkins, and she posted that she was almost happy that we lost over a hundred people, the majority of them children, in this flash flood in Texas. She said they were “all white,” and therefore, they were discriminatory. I’ve never seen anything like it.

And then, people weighed in. And they had some atrocious comments. A pediatrician was almost gloating. And they had a variety of mechanisms to show how grotesque and ghoulish they were.

Read it.

As Ace points out, former FBI director Christopher Wray had sworn that Antifa was “just an idea.”

I imagine I’m not the only person “of a certain age” who remembers the violent revolutionary perps of the 1960s and 1970s, and is reminded of that. Not exactly the same, of course – but it rhymes. This particular group seems to have very much intended to kill multiple ICE agents and/or police. They were apparently not all that competent at their task, fortunately. They are egged on by the MSM and the Democrat Party, who have made ICE agents out to be more or less the Gestapo, preying on poor innocents.

Read it.

Dan Osborn, the independent Nebraska Senate candidate who presents himself as a centrist, has two longtime Democratic Party operatives serving as treasurers for both his campaign and a “conservative” political committee that the campaign has launched to reach voters in the deep-red state.

Osborn, whose campaign website bills him as a “lifelong Independent,” launched his campaign Tuesday to unseat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, just months after losing to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. In addition to its normal campaign committee, Osborn’s team formed an “authorized committee” called Conservatives for Osborn to back his new bid. But a review of the organization shows the name is misleading.

Brandon Philipczyk and James Vihstadt, who serve as treasurers of both the Osborn campaign and Conservatives for Osborn, have worked for years in Democratic politics. Philipczyk, a principal at the firm Bison Strategies, served as director of operations in Nevada for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and national coordinated operations director for the Democratic National Committee until 2017, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also held roles with the Florida Democratic Party and Mike Bloomberg’s Democratic presidential primary campaign in 2020. Vihstadt is a delegate for the Nebraska Democratic Party and has donated exclusively to Democratic political candidates over the years.

Read it.

Allies of socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who unexpectedly won the city’s Democratic primary, are plotting primary challenges against the city’s top Democratic incumbents—including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“Mamdani’s allies, notably key leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America, are talking about running primary challengers against Jeffries and several other incumbents, including Reps. Ritchie Torres, Jerry Nadler, Dan Goldman and Yvette Clarke,” CNN reported Wednesday.

The intraparty tensions come at a precarious time for Democrats, who are facing plummeting approval ratings and struggling to rally behind a national leader ahead of the 2026 midterms. Mamdani’s surprise primary win last month has energized far-left voters but unnerved the party establishment. Most top Democrats, including Jeffries and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), have yet to officially endorse Mamdani.

Jeffries on Wednesday dismissed the primary threats, telling CNN that he has “no idea what these people are talking about.” But Jeffries senior adviser André Richardson issued a stern warning, saying that if Mamdani’s allies go forward with a primary fight, “our response will be forceful and unrelenting. We will teach them and all of their incumbents a painful lesson on June 23, 2026.”

Read it.

There’s nothing like an invigorating enricher-vs.-enricher knife fight to provide video entertainment. The footage below was recorded a few days ago at a bus stop in the Belgian town of Lommel.

Read it.

Germany continues to experience a sharp rise in immigration through family reunification, with more than half a million foreigners having entered the country via this route since 2020. This year, the number is expected to exceed 100,000, with Syrians and Turks making up the largest share.

According to the Federal Foreign Office, around 57,000 visas for family reunification were issued in the first half of this year alone. Most of these visas were granted to Syrian (9,000), Turkish (8,500), and Indian (5,000) individuals.

In response to the growing numbers, the Bundestag recently approved a partial suspension of family reunification rights for certain groups of foreign nationals. Specifically, the suspension affects relatives of individuals with subsidiary protection status, and the restriction will remain in place for two years.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) defended the regulation in parliament, stating that while Germany remains open to the world, there are limits to what its social systems can handle.

UPDATE: Migration Chaos Exposes Failures of EU and German Government

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Two people have died after a suspected attack by Houthi rebels on a Greek-owned vessel in the Red Sea, marking the first fatalities of seafarers in the vital shipping corridor for more than a year.

In the second attack in 24 hours, the Liberian-flagged cargo ship Eternity C came under fire from men in small boats and bomb-carrying sea drones on Monday evening, 50 nautical miles west of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, which is controlled by Iranian-backed Houthis.

Earlier, the rebel group claimed to have sunk a Greek-operated, Liberian-flagged commercial ship named Magic Seas. The Houthi attack on Magic Seas was the first in the Red Sea since December.

While no group has claimed responsibility for the strikes on Eternity C, Yemen’s exiled government and the European Union’s anti-piracy patrol Operation Atalanta blamed the Houthis.

Read it.

Democrats only follow the rules that they like.

Read it.

Despite its penurious name, the Southern Poverty Law Center has an endowment of more than $700 million, compensates leadership handsomely, and possesses more than $30 million in offshore accounts—likely in the Cayman Islands, its most recent IRS filing reveals.

“It’s very odd and frankly raises suspicion that a nonprofit organization would have accounts in places like the Cayman Islands, or as they reported $30 million in Central America,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the law firm Liberty Counsel, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.

“The Cayman Islands has always been known as one of these places that people select to hide their money from the government,” he noted. “This is a public charity, and they should explain to the public, why do they find it necessary to have money in these offshore accounts? I don’t think there’s any good explanation.”

As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay,” the SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, and it publishes an annual “hate map” that includes mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits alongside Klan chapters. The SPLC uses this map to urge Big Tech and financial companies to blacklist conservatives, to advise law enforcement on “hate” threats, and to urge donors to contribute to its cause of fighting “hate.”

The monetization of hate under the masquerade of opposing it is a specialty of the Left. They’ve been doing it for decades and they are very, very good at it.

Read it.

The Greek government announced tough new measures against migrants arriving from Libya on Tuesday, July 8th, following a major diplomatic incident in Benghazi, where local authorities denied entry for an EU delegation.

Migration flows from eastern Libya to Greece have surged in recent weeks. This week alone, 1,500 people landed on Crete after departing from Libya’s coast.

In response, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a temporary halt to asylum requests for individuals arriving from North Africa. “Greece will suspend asylum requests from individuals arriving from North Africa for three months,” he said.

The government aims to deter migrants from attempting the journey. “Those who manage to reach Greek territory will be confined in closed centers under administrative detention,” Mitsotakis noted.

The announcement comes just days after a high-profile EU delegation’s visit to Libya ended in controversy. Led by EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, the delegation first held talks in Tripoli with the internationally recognized government. Then, after reaching the Benghazi airport in Eastern Libya, the members of the delegation were treated as personae non gratae and forced to fly back to Europe.

They ought to have done this ten years ago. The best way to ‘deter migrants’ is to sink their boats and watch them drown, not feed them and shelter them and argue endlessly about what to do with them. “If your people come to our country illegally they will die. Take whatever action you think appropriate. It is YOUR problem, not OUR problem.”

Read it.

Finland and Lithuania are set to produce anti-personnel landmines, according to reports dated Wednesday, July 8th.

Domestic production of the devices will permit their domestic defence sectors to be kept supplied and for Ukraine to become a buyer of the lethal devices in the future. Both countries share a border with Russia, making growing regional tensions a major concern for their governments and populations.

The two Scandinavian and Baltic countries have both announced their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the use of such technology in war and peacetime and cites the long-term effects of anti-personnel mines on civilians in current and former war zones. Ukraine looks set to make the same decision. (Its antagonist Russia was never a party to the Convention in the first place.)

Separately, three other NATO and European Union member states—Estonia, Latvia, and Poland—are also scheduled to withdraw from the treaty, again citing the Russian threat, with Polish defence firms claiming that they are ready to move into landmine production if required.

Land mines are a force-multiplier when you’ve got a smaller population than an opponent and thus fewer troops. Worrying about the effects on civilians is a very female concern, convenient for bleeding-hearts who are not engaged in an existential struggle, which modern warfare typically is. When enemy troops are crossing your border you want then STOPPED and to hell with its effect on civilians, who ought to have the wit to stay out of that area. Once the war is over is time enough to worry about cleaning up the land mines.

Quillette.

Sam Tanenhaus, author of the acclaimed 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers and editor of the New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013, has finally completed his long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley, Jr.—the contract for which he signed more than 25 years ago! Whittaker Chambers had been a great friend of Buckley’s and a major influence on his political thought, so when the Tanenhaus biography of Chambers came out, the publisher asked Buckley to chair an event in the ballroom of a New York City hotel to promote it. As I recall, Buckley began the evening by telling the audience, “After I opened the manuscript and read it, I knew that I had just completed a masterpiece.”

So, it was not a surprise that Buckley agreed to let Tanenhaus write his authorised biography. Although Tanenhaus is not a conservative of any kind, the Chambers volume indicated that its author would strive to produce a fair and accurate, although not uncritical, portrait, and that he would not use the project as an excuse to score points against his political opponents. Buckley duly instructed his friends and family, associates, schoolmates, and political brethren to cooperate fully when Tanenhaus approached them for interviews and pertinent files they may have held.

What would Buckley have made of the upshot, were he alive to see it? On one hand, it is a magisterial work so compelling and fascinating that I wished I could read it in a single sitting (an impossible task given the book’s length). It will surely win the Pulitzer for biography in 2025 when the prizes are announced next year. Tanenhaus need not fear being relegated to the runner-up category, as his Chambers book was. Although blurbs are not a reliable guide to the quality of a newly published work, on this occasion, the lavish praise adorning the book jacket from authors like Beverly Gage, Max Boot, and Jonathan Alter is well deserved.

On the other hand, the portrait of Buckley that emerges is, in many ways, so unflattering that it has enraged a number of critics on the contemporary Right.

Buckley’s problem was that he was a native of the same East Coast Establishment that he so often criticized. He could never break himself of the top-down elitist we’ll-decide-for-you-what-you-ought-to-think attitude that has characterized the New York/Boston/Philadelphia/D.C. corridor since forever. The true heir of Buckley is not Donald Trump but David French.

Let it not be forgotten that former associates of his magazine National Review included not only people who went on to become pillars of ‘conservative’ thought (however defined) but also notorious turncoats like Gary Wills, David Frum, Conor Friediersdorf–and Ron Radosh.

Read it.

Oh, the delicious irony. For many years I’ve been writing about the southern US border and the many ways in which Mexico has used it as a “steam valve” to get rid of people in perpetual poverty, as well as malcontents, violent criminals and political revolutionaries. Who could have foreseen a time when the conundrum would be reversed and Mexico would be crushed by an avalanche of its own unwanted citizens?

But weren’t we told that migrants are an “economic boon” to any country lucky enough to have them?

The argument among progressives and open border activists has always been that migrants are average law abiding people (just like us) who slip across the border simply to integrate into our society and live the American dream. They claim that Mexican leaders are not in control of the situation and that people are desperate to escape crime and social decline.

In reality, government officials have long encouraged migrant caravans to traverse their territories and they have allowed illegal immigration into the US as a means to divert their failures into the laps of American taxpayers. Migrants aren’t trying to escape problems in Mexico, they ARE the problem in Mexico. The more of these caravans the Mexican authorities can get rid of, the better their economic situation appears.

Turd World countries in the Middle East use the same trick, for the same reasons.