Read it.

Would you believe that a tiny British territory has been secretly growing for over 150 years? Welcome to Gibraltar, whose story begins with the stroke of a pen in 1713, when Britain gained control through the Treaty of Utrecht during the War of Spanish Succession. What started as a strategic military outpost has evolved into something far more expansive than those 18th-century treaty writers could have imagined.

Picture this: A limestone giant standing guard at the meeting point of two continents, where the Mediterranean kisses the Atlantic. That’s Gibraltar – but what most visitors don’t realize is that this iconic peninsula isn’t quite as nature-made it. In fact, today’s Gibraltar would be barely recognizable to someone from 1854!

A fascinating map by Abel Gil Lobo for El Orden Mundial tells this hidden story of growth. Like rings in a tree trunk, different colors reveal Gibraltar’s expansion through time:

Harvard Medical School.

A pair of landmark studies has genetically identified the originators of the massive Indo-European family of 400-plus languages.

Results of the international ancient-DNA studies, published Feb. 5 in Nature and supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, place these linguistic pioneers within the borders of current-day Russia during the Eneolithic or Copper Age about 6,500 years ago. They were spread from the steppe grasslands along the lower Volga River to the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

The Times (UK).

Potholes are the £14.4 billion problem blighting Britain’s roads and leaving behind many a frustrated motorist.

Now engineers believe “self-healing” roads may be the solution. Research suggests that asphalt roads could be made far more durable by adding a new ingredient: recycled cooking oil.

Potholes typically appear when water penetrates cracks in the asphalt over the winter. When the water freezes, it expands, making the cracks larger and forming fresh ones. When the broken-up material is washed away, a pothole is left behind.

The research, which included input from Google and King’s College London, involved creating a sophisticated computer model of how this process unfolds at a molecular level. In particular, the team looked at how bitumen — the sticky black material used to bind together the asphalt mixture — becomes brittle and vulnerable to cracking as it reacts with oxygen in the air.

Read it.

A newly filed patent suggests Tesla may be preparing to embed Starlink dishes directly into vehicle roofs, bringing connectivity costs in-house under Starlink rather than continuing to pay third-party carriers like AT&T. Such a move would unlock space-based, high-speed internet for vehicles. Notably, some Tesla owners are already mounting Starlink Mini dishes onto their vehicles, offering an early glimpse of next-generation connectivity.

Tesla filed a patent covering a vehicle roof assembly that is transparent to radio frequencies, specifically noting that it allows for satellite communications to pass through.

“In some examples, this assembly enables the integration of overhead electrical modules and components, including antennae, directly into the roof structure, facilitating clear communication with external devices and satellites,” the patent explained in the abstract section.

Newsbusters.

The Bondi Beach massacre of Jews celebrating Hannukah resulted in two nasty blame-the-victim pieces, one in the far-left The Nation (no surprise, considering the author) and one in Time magazine, desperately blaming everyone but the actual Islamic perpetrators of the murders.

Marching mobs in Australia called to “globalize the intifada” – to attack Jews everywhere, not just in Israel — even before Israel had begun its counterattack after October 7, when over a thousand civilians were murdered and over 200 kidnapped, some sexually assaulted, by Hamas invaders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu correctly stated that Australia had rewarded Hamas terrorism by granting recognition to a Palestinian state without any move toward reform.

The Nation’s Dave Zirin, supposed “sports editor” of the far-left rag, spends much of his column space smearing Israel as genocidal and guilty of war crimes against the Palestinians while hardly mentioning the actual terrorists, kidnappers, and rapists of Hamas. He did so again in “Don’t Listen to the Ghouls Exploiting the Tragedy of Bondi Beach.”

Michael Copeland.

Epstein Files Release Highlights Clinton, Makes Scant Reference to Trump

Trump Refuses To Rule Out War With Venezuela

Judge Blocks WH From Altering Homelessness Funding Conditions

Biden White House Coordinated Mar-A-Lago Raid Before Taking Conversations ‘Offline’

Sen. Sanders to Urge Ban After Kennedy Center Renaming

Kerry Kennedy: ‘Grab a Pickax’ to Remove Trump’s Name From Kennedy Center

Kerry Kennedy says she’ll ‘grab a pickax’ to pull Trump’s name off Kennedy Center (Ryan Mancini/NewsNation)

Elise Stefanik Tried Everything to Please Trump. He Still Jilted Her. (Annie Karni/New York Times)

Trump Goes for the Stoner Vote (Wall Street Journal)

Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Visa Nets Over $1B in Sales

MAGA infighting over Israel and 2028 heats up at the Turning Point USA conference (Jonathan Allen/NBC News)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

How Democrats Used One Word to Turn the Tide Against Trump (New York Times)

Tucker Carlson inflames a raging battle for MAGA’s future (Washington Post)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Man accused of towing ICE SUV during LA immigration operation found not guilty (NBC Los Angeles)

Storied Law Firm Pays Brutal Price for Surrendering to Trump (The Daily Beast)  Losing all of their DEI hires? That’s a feature, not a bug.

Trickle release of Epstein files on a Friday signals move to bury Trump ties (Sam Levine/The Guardian)

Brooks Claims ‘Gigantic Portraits’ Of Trump Remind Him Of ‘The Stalin Era’  David Brooks licks the hand that feeds him.

White House Made Bizarre Demands for Trump’s Bogus Peace Prize (Adam Downer/The Daily Beast)

Colbert’s Christmas Cartoon Has Trump, ICE Arrest Santa

There’s a 92 Percent Chance Trump Is Making It Up (Marie-Rose Sheinerman/The Atlantic)

DOJ Likely Pulled Photo of Trump from Released Epstein Files (Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket)

Pride of Caste: Another Book on TDS

Read it.

While religion plays a direct role, socio-economic issues are a significant factor contributing to the bloodshed, says Brandon, founder and CEO of Across Nigeria, a Christian organization with the mission of bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Nigeria and supporting persecuted Christians in the African nation.

It is estimated that more than 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009, and about 7,000 in the first half of 2025 alone.

Read it.

Crete is coming under mounting migration pressure as smugglers increasingly redirect illegal crossings toward Greece’s southern islands, exposing the limits of EU border control and shifting routes across the Mediterranean.

Greek authorities confirmed that more than 1,000 illegal migrants have arrived on Crete during December alone, with over 650 intercepted or rescued in just the past two days. On Friday, the Greek Coast Guard, supported by the EU border agency Frontex, rescued 545 migrants from an overcrowded fishing vessel detected off Gavdos, Greece’s southernmost island.

The migrants were transferred to Crete, where local authorities are already struggling with limited reception capacity. Further incidents followed overnight. A Coast Guard patrol intercepted a dinghy carrying 27 people some 45 nautical miles southeast of Kales Limeni, while another boat with 35 migrants was found near Psari Forada, in the municipality of Viannos. All were brought ashore and are expected to be placed in migrant facilities.

Read itl

An attorney for Fulton County, Georgia admitted earlier this month that the county accepted roughly 315,000 early votes that were not lawfully certified in the 2020 presidential election.

Attorney Ann Brumbaugh made the admission while representing the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections at a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board, according to Wednesday’s reporting by The Federalist.

The SEB hearing pertained to a complaint filed by election integrity activist David Cross, who accuses Fulton County of having violated Georgia law by counting early votes that were not properly signed off by election workers.

As quoted by The Federalist, Brumbaugh told the board that Fulton County does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.”

ALSO: ‘Yes, We Stole the Election. Oopsie.’ (The Other McCain)

Read it.

Every year, The College Fix likes to remind readers of what higher education declared racist in the past 12 months.

From Taylor Swift, to liking Mozart, our scholars and so-called “experts” never cease to find racism hiding under every rock and in every tree.

Read it.

Disgraced DC Police Chief Pamela Smith appeared completely unhinged during her exit speech at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters on Friday, shouting, “To all my haters, f*ck you.”

“Never would I compromise my integrity. Never would I compromise 28 years in law enforcement for a few folk who couldn’t stand to be held accountable. And if I had to do it all over again… so I’m going to the Bible when I say this: to my haters, F you,” Smith emphasized.

She continued, “The same folks who said in that report that they changed their numbers and I did not. The report is very clear. I did not direct anyone. You should investigate those folks.”

Read it.

There are moments in public life when you read something and genuinely wonder if someone is having you on.

The briefing on the supposed rise of far Right activity by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the leading teachers’ union in Scotland, is one of those moments.

Scotland’s far Right is so tiny it could hold its AGM in the disabled toilet at Wetherspoons and still have room left for a flipchart. Yet here is the country’s largest and most influential union producing a 16-page political field manual that treats this microscopic fringe as if it is marching on Holyrood with flaming torches and matching armbands.

None of this resembles safeguarding. It is not professionalism. It is certainly not education. It is politics in fancy dress, and it insults the intelligence of teachers, parents and pupils alike.

Read it.

A mortgage fraud probe of a Democratic congressman began last month after William Pulte, the Republican head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, referred allegations from a conservative news site to his agency’s inspector general for possible criminal investigation, government emails seen by Reuters show.

On Nov. 12, The Gateway Pundit published an article alleging U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell had improperly listed his Washington, D.C., home as his “principal residence” on mortgage paperwork. Swalwell, a critic of President Donald Trump who represents a ?Northern California district and is now running for governor of California, an office that requires residency in that state, has said he is a ?permanent resident of California. According to loan documents, however, Swalwell had listed his home in Washington as his “principal residence.”

An email reviewed by Reuters shows Pulte sent a link to the article to the FHFA’s acting inspector general that day, urging him to take ?all appropriate action “including — if warranted — engagement with the Department of Justice regarding potential mortgage, tax or other fraud related to the representations made in mortgage documents or other items in the below article.”

Read it.

When you understand the working age population is 275 million and your friendly number fudgers at the BLS declare 103 million of them NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE, and hysterically declaring only 7.8 million Americans are unemployed, you understand what a fraudulent economy we have.

The reported 4.6% unemployment rate is complete and utter bullshit. In reality, it is north of 20%.

Welcome to the golden age…

Read it.

California is expected to begin reissuing approximately 17,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses that the state had planned to revoke following federal enforcement pressure. The decision comes despite ongoing corrective action requirements from FMCSA and raises fundamental questions about federal enforcement authority when a state openly defies compliance directives.

State transportation officials confirmed to sources that the Department of Motor Vehicles will begin restoring the contested licenses to immigrant drivers who received 60-day cancellation notices on November 6. The state has not clarified the specific process but points to the D.C. Circuit Court’s November 13 emergency stay of FMCSA’s interim final rule restricting non-domiciled CDL eligibility.

What California apparently misunderstands, or is choosing to ignore, is that the court stay addressed only the September 29 interim final rule. It did not address the separate compliance failures FMCSA documented during its 2025 Annual Program Review, which found that approximately 25% of California’s non-domiciled CDLs were improperly issued under regulations that existed before the emergency rule was ever published.

The federal government threatened to withhold more than $150 million in highway funding from California over these pre-existing violations. Those threats remain fully in effect regardless of the court’s stay of the new rule.

Read it.

This week, Senator Chuck Grassley released Department of Justice and FBI records that provide a new look on how FBI and DOJ leadership sabotaged the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

These records, which include internal emails, summaries of high-level meetings and calls, and intelligence from confidential human sources, reveal the Clinton Foundation investigation was sabotaged from the start.

During the Obama Administration, both DOJ and FBI leadership were openly hostile to the investigation. US Attorneys declined to cooperate, denying requests for subpoenas or other investigative support. And during the first Trump Administration, actors within the FBI and DOJ obstructed and delayed the development of the investigation by not approving the release of FBI materials and slowing the release of witness interviews to investigators. A frustrating tale of corruption and incompetence.

Relying on these new documents, as well as other public source materials and Special Counsel John Durham’s report, here is the comprehensive timeline of the Clinton Foundation investigation, as well as other parts of the overall Clinton corruption investigation that are relevant. It is an infuriating tale of corruption and incompetence from the highest levels of government which ultimately protected the Clinton’s schemes to trade on their political influence for millions of dollars.

Bill & Hillary Clinton may not be the biggest crooks in the Democrat party today—the competition for that title is pretty fierce—but they’re certainly in the running.

Newsbusters.

A radio anchor for the George Soros-controlled KCBS 740 AM “All News Radio” station who had the gall to unmask the vehicles of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operating in the gang-infested San Jose, California area in January has reportedly been demoted after MRC Business took him to task.

Anchor Bret Burkhart elevated the unmasking of “undercover” ICE agents from the leftist Rapid Response Network, which fights against deportation initiatives during the January 26 edition of KCBS Radio Weekend News. To make things worse, he gave exact descriptions of the vehicles the ICE agents were reportedly using, including specific locations. NewsNation confirmed January 27 that the agents were conducting an operation in the area around that time, meaning their cover was potentially blown and they were placed in significant danger.

MRC Business immediately cut the audio and published it in an investigative report detailing the incident in addition to the radio station’s connection to Soros. In February 2024, Soros purchased $400 million, or a 40 percent stake, of the bankrupt Audacy in February 2024. Notably, Audacy, which is America’s second biggest radio company, features or streams at least 16 powerful 50,000-watt radio stations, which means that their coverage is especially widespread. KCBS 740 AM was one of the stations prominently listed in that deal. At the time, FCC bizarrely fast-tracked Soros’s purchase of the radio giant — which was also backed by foreign money — and dubiously allowed him to skirt the rigorous review process for such acquisitions.

Read it.

It’s been a cold winter so far in the Midwest and much of the Northeast, early-in-the-season snow even in Washington, D.C., and temperatures falling to freezing and below in much of the South. Come to think of it, North America’s 2024-25 winter was pretty cold, too. It’s gotten to the point that “polar vortex” is a phrase on just about everyone’s lips.

Of course, you are surely aware—as those of us with doubts about inevitably disastrous global warming were often told—that there’s a difference between weather and climate. Weather is anecdote, climate is longstanding trend. And the longstanding trend in climate, we have been told this entire past quarter-century, is toward a hotter climate all over the world, with multiple catastrophic consequences.

Now, we seem to have reached an Emily Litella moment—the moment when, on the now half-century-old “Saturday Night Live” program, the befuddled character realized that she had misheard and misinterpreted some anodyne comment and had been propounding an absurd theory, and dismissed it with a hurried, “Never mind.”

Read it.

Over the past year, a new ideological framework, which I’ll call neo-decolonialism, has been taking hold in activist, academic, and political discourse. This framework has the potential to reopen and reinflame a vast number of conflicts. This is where slogans like “globalise the intifada” ultimately lead—to a world in which no political settlement is ever final, and no peace is durable.

It’s important to make a clear distinction between actual decolonisation and what I am calling neo-decolonialism. Real decolonisation was a concrete, historically specific process in which empires withdrew from territories they had been administering, as exemplified by the end of the Raj. These withdrawals changed legal and political realities on the ground: e.g. British colonial governance in India ended, and two new sovereign states, India and Pakistan, emerged.

This is not to say that the end of empire erased the effects of colonialism. Political borders, legal systems, and economic structures often outlived the formal withdrawal, and many societies still live with deep, measurable legacies of colonialism. It is one thing to argue for civil rights, equal representation, or institutional reform within an existing civic order.

But neo-decolonialism is not about dismantling real empires—even though some empires still exist today, such as the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Instead, it retroactively reclassifies political arrangements as “colonial” based on contemporary group dynamics, racial or ethnic categories (e.g. “whiteness”), and the question of which side has the most power.

Read it.

94 percent of Muslim politicians and candidates — including Zohran Mamdani and Virginia Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi — won’t express support for the U.S. Constitution. This should be disqualifying, regardless of the reason. It’s time to make this an issue.

The New Neo.

One wonders how much of the social welfare money handed out all over the country has been to perpetrators of fraud. We’ve always known fraud existed in such programs, but the scope of the fraud being uncovered seems mind-boggling even to many people already cynical about the subject.

ALSO: 5 Ways Trump Put Pressure on ‘Rampant Fraud’ in Minnesota This Week

Read it.

Trump, speaking at a White House event on Dec. 3, expressed admiration for tiny cars after seeing them in Japan, comparing these models to the classic Volkswagen Beetle.

“They’re very small; they’re really cute,” Trump told reporters. “And everyone seems to think they’re good, but you’re not allowed to build them.”

He confirmed that he authorized Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to “immediately approve the production” of these smaller vehicles, which are common throughout Malaysia and South Korea.

“So, you’ll be able to buy [them],” the president said.

…

The federal government does not explicitly ban Japanese-style microcars. However, regulatory exclusions effectively prevented automakers from producing these types of vehicles, forcing them to manufacture larger, heavier cars.

ince the 1970s, the United States has implemented modern federal crash-safety and highway-safety standards under the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. This includes airbags, crash-test performance, side-impact protection, and structural strength.

Kei cars—designed with small dimensions and engines—cannot comply with these standards without adding weight and size, ultimately undermining the very concept.

Speed the day. (As usual, government is the problem, not the solution.)

Read it.

Because we all want to do that, right?

There’s a growing list of public and private companies that are working to build reactors for various purposes. These reactors vary widely in their design, size, output, and potential purpose. Everything is on the table: from using the same designs we’ve used for decades to novel ideas still only on the drawing board.

This article is designed to serve as a point of reference when reading about a new company and the reactor they’re designing. Some of the features companies discuss are less novel than they sound, and vice versa. Hopefully, the information provided here can provide a more clear picture for the investor to make an informed decision.

Judge Dismisses Complaint against Miami Land Transfer for Trump’s Presidential Library

It’s Time to Kick Trump, 79, Out of the White House–and Into a Padded Cell (David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast)  TDS straight up.

Hysterical Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Declares Trump Larger Threat Than Islamic Terrorism  To Democrats, certainly.

Trump’s Attacks on Rob Reiner and Others Characterize an Uninhibited 2nd Term (Peter Baker/New York Times)  What ‘attacks’? Trump just points out the inconvenient truth, and of course in the proglodyte playbook that equals an ‘attack’.

‘Execution was abysmal’: Trump economy speech doesn’t meet GOP hopes (Eli Stokols/Politico) Disappointing minions of the Narrative Media is what Trump does best.

5 Rules for Reading the Epstein Files (Ankush Khardori/Politico)  Because, of course, you’re too stupid to read them for yourself without a Narrative Media zampolit to guide you.

Lies, Damned Lies and Trump Speeches (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

Monkey Sounds, “White Power” and the N-Word: Racial Harassment Against Black Students Ignored Under Trump (ProPublica)  The primary users of “the N-word” are black people. Is anyone going to charge them with racism? The question answers itself.

The legal “defense” for Trump’s ballroom is a joke (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)  Laugh, clown, laugh.

Voters blame Trump for their economic woes (G. Elliott Morris/Strength In Numbers)  Oh, really? (Polling Signals Serious Trouble For Democrats in Upcoming Midterms)

It’s time to accept that the US supreme court is illegitimate and must be replaced (Samuel Moyn/The Guardian)

Trump Is Walloping Construction Businesses. The Industry Stays Quiet. (Catherine Rampell/The Bulwark)  Perhaps because it’s not true?

Kimmel Decries Administration For Saying ‘Men Are Men’ Without Medical Degrees

104 murders in 107 days — One of the more surreal phenomena of the last year … (Radley Balko/The Watch)

White House inner circle seeks to get Trump on script (Julia Manchester/The Hill)

Revealed: FBI opened domestic terrorism investigations into anti-ICE activity across US (Sam Levin/The Guardian)  This is news?

Undaunted in Faith —In our warped political era, bullies and bigots with the chutzpah … (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian) Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

‘A Disgrace’: Dems Erupt As Kennedy Center Board Votes To Rename It ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’  Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

As polls show low approval for Trump on the economy, will taking his economic agenda to voters help? (Oren Oppenheim/ABC News)

A Somber Mood at Science Meeting as Trump Budget Cuts Continue (Eric Niiler/New York Times)  Because, as we all know, science is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government—and the Federal taxpayer.

The Horns and Whistles Work (Amanda Moore/Mother Jones)

Trump ousts more Biden-era ambassadors (Nahal Toosi/Politico)  Good.

Smug Dickerson, DuBois Sign Off ‘CBS Evening News’ with Trump Jab, Nod to Gaza

Federal judge temporarily blocks HUD permanent housing cuts for homeless (Cassandra Dumay/Politico)

Susan Quinn.

he title of this post was the argument I encountered recently in an online discussion. The people who were making this proposal were not lunatics: they were law-abiding citizens who had a modicum of understanding about Islam. And they were dead serious.

We live, and for several years have lived, at a time where radical Islam is showing up all over the world. Although I personally believe there are law-abiding Constitutionalists among the Muslim population in the U.S., I am concerned that many Americans believe that any Muslim is a potential terrorist.

A position with which I agree, based on having read the Koran and the Hadiths, which all Muslims accept as normative religious guidance. (Ask any Muslim.)

When I asked people if they were prepared to deport all Muslims, even those who already had reputations as good Americans (M. Zuhdi Jasser comes to mind), a few noted the rule of taqqiya; this tenet allows people to lie to protect Islam. So, the suggestion was made that if people seemed to support America, how do we know they are telling the truth? Also, for those Muslims who are law-abiding, how do we know whether or not they will eventually succumb to the radical Islamist doctrine?

Exactly so. There were many ‘good’ Nazis in Germany, but they all served to prop up a genocidal totalitarian regime. There were many ‘good’ slave-owners but slavery remains an unmitigated evil. There are many ‘good’ socialists, but socialism remains an existential threat to all freedom and prosperity.

I’m not saying it would be easy. But if we fail, the results will be slavery for us and for our children.

Read it.

Republican Senator Eric Schmitt has accused European governments of enforcing what he described as a sweeping censorship regime at home and attempting to export it to the United States, warning that American free speech is increasingly being affected by regulatory decisions made in Brussels, London, and other foreign capitals.

In a letter sent to Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers, published on X, Schmitt said, “European governments have imposed tyrannical censorship on their own citizens. Now, they’re trying to impose it on America.” In the letter, he urges the Trump administration to “sanction foreign actors—in the European Union and elsewhere—who aid and abet this censorship regime.”

The Foundry.

One of the most persistent mistakes in modern politics is the insistence on flattening all ideologies—pretending that all human beings think the same way, want the same things, and are motivated by the same forces. Every time policymakers fall into this trap, the result is not compassion or clarity but some of the worst public policy imaginable.

The assumption usually begins with a comforting but false premise: that all people harbor the same yearning for freedom in precisely the same way. That belief animated much of the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy, when the president famously declared that America’s mission was to end tyranny on planet Earth. Noble as the sentiment sounded, it was never sustainable. It presumed that every society shares America’s priorities, values, and political instincts. History has shown otherwise.

The same flattening impulse appears whenever violence is discussed. Instead of examining the specific causes behind specific acts—who committed them, why they were committed, and which ideas justified them—many commentators abstract everything into a vague moral generality. Violence is bad, they say. All people should know that violence is bad. And with that, the inquiry ends.

But ending the inquiry there ensures that real solutions never begin.

Read it.

Brussels is experiencing a sharp rise in violence, with multiple explosions and shootings reported over just five days in the Saint-Gilles municipality. The latest incident occurred on Wednesday evening on Rue du Céleri, near Place de Bethléem—a known hotspot for drug activity. Authorities confirmed that the street was cordoned off and that only material damage occurred. The Belgian army’s bomb disposal unit (DOVO) and police attended the scene, and an investigation is underway to determine the circumstances of the explosion.

This followed a Tuesday night blast in nearby Rue de Bosnie, believed to have been caused by fireworks. While it remains unclear whether the two incidents are connected, Saint-Gilles has also been the scene of two shootings this week. The first shooting took place last Saturday at around 3 a.m. on Rue du Métal, near the Parvis de Saint-Gilles. The second occurred on Monday at approximately 5 a.m. on Rue de Prague, only a few hundred meters from the first. In both cases, windows were hit, putting nearby residents—including children—at risk. Local authorities suspect the attacks were targeted. Mayor Jean Spinette explained that the area is home to two young individuals known to police and that authorities have previously restricted their access to certain streets to curb drug-related activity.

The surge in violence comes amid broader concerns about public safety in Brussels. According to police figures, the capital has seen 96 shootings in 2025—already surpassing last year’s total of 92. These incidents have resulted in eight deaths, and 48 injuries, compared to 43 last year. Only three years ago, in 2022, Brussels recorded 56 shootings, highlighting the rapid escalation of violence.

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Brussels woke up on Thursday shrouded in smoke, sirens, and the roar of tractors. The European Quarter—the administrative heart of the Union—was transformed for hours into a veritable battlefield. Smoke grenades, police charges, and blocked access points defined a day in which Europe’s countryside decided to make itself heard by force, exhausted by ignored warnings and endlessly postponed promises.

What filled the air was not just another sectoral protest, but accumulated frustration with a bureaucratic class that talks endlessly and delivers little. The violence—growing, undeniable, and deeply uncomfortable—did not come out of nowhere. It is the visible symptom of a political fracture Brussels has spent years refusing to confront.

The protest did not take place in a vacuum. It coincided—by no means accidentally—with yet another last-minute postponement of the EU–Mercosur agreement, a trade deal that has been in negotiation for 25 years and once again failed to reach a conclusion. Italy, under heavy pressure from its farming sector, forced the delay and left the agreement in political limbo, reinforcing an inconvenient truth: Mercosur has never enjoyed broad or genuine support across Europe’s nations. From the outset, it has been a top-down project, driven by offices, committees, and summits rather than by national parliaments or solid social consensus.

Read it.

Reading and math scores are abysmal across the country, as national testing results keep documenting. Illiteracy rates are rising: The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

In some inner-city schools, less than half of kids are reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Many high school grads can’t read their diplomas.

As an economist, I would submit that this is our greatest crisis. It puts the future of American prosperity in grave danger. Also, the learning gap widens income and wealth disparities.

The apparent solution among the education establishment is not to challenge kids to stretch their minds and hit the books but rather to dumb down the curriculum so everyone passes. I call this the “make everyone below average” solution.

Some schools are now no longer requiring kids in English class to read cover to cover the classic books that students have been reading for decades. Perhaps the students don’t have the attention spans. Perhaps their reading skills aren’t up to par. Perhaps they are too busy texting or playing video games on their cellphones.

Moral: Don’t send your kid to a government school.

Newsbusters.

PBS News is still riding the wrecked transgender train. One would have hoped PBS would have hopped off the discredited movement, given the increasing piles of evidence on the consequences of irrevocable “gender-affirming” operations, the lack of science backing up the emotional blackmail claims of the movement, and the departure of trans-obsessed reporter Laura Barron-Lopez.

But reporter William Brangham actually outdid Barron-Lopez in his anti-journalistic transgender-teen advocacy and euphemistic tendencies in Wednesday’s segment. There is no dissent allowed. It’s the most sensitive profile imaginable, or you can call it propaganda, an infomercial, that makes the red states sound repulsive for opposing trans “rights.”

The story is a follow-up to a 2023 story about a “transgender” male teen, now named Leah, whose family was feeling persecuted in close-minded Texas. Now they’ve moved to more tolerant Colorado, where the schools feature stories about gay teens.

We are fortunate that most ‘transgender’ surgeries result in their defective genes being removed from the gene pool. Evolution is a stone-cold bitch.

Newsbusters.

An illegal alien in Fairfax County, Virginia with a history of arrests, mental illness and apparent ties to MS-13 was arrested and charged with second-degree murder Wednesday – just one day after the illegal sanctuary county chose to release him rather than honor a detainer request by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

On Tuesday, 23 year-old Marvin Morales-Ortez – an illegal alien from El Salvador being held in jail on charges brandishing a gun, assault and causing injury – was released after charges were dropped and the sheriff’s office, led by Stacey Kincaid, refused to honor ICE’s detainer request.

“If Fairfax County would have simply worked to uphold our nation’s laws, then this tragedy may have never happened,” an ICE spokesman said, commenting on the fatal shooting of a man Morales-Ortez lived with, 40-year-old Marvin Ernesto Morales.

“The sanctuary politicians of Fairfax have blood on their hands,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said.

Newsbusters.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales denied that the online encyclopedia has banned right-leaning sources, only to reference an example of that practice in the same discussion.

In a Wednesday interview with The Verge, Wales responded to growing accusations of bias and Wikipedia’s ban on sources such as Breitbart. His answer? An admission disguised as a denial: “We don’t completely ban sources. We may deprecate them and say, ‘Well, it’s not preferred as a source. We’d rather have something better.’”

Wales then went on to further minimize the impact of Wikipedia’s effective blacklist by suggesting that the list merely elevates sources like The New England Journal of Medicine over sources like Breitbart.

In reality, Wikipedia’s own “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” list proves that the platform does blacklist media organizations, including Breitbart, The Heritage Foundation and Project Veritas. Other right-leaning outlets are effectively sidelined through deprecations and usage restrictions, most of which are not imposed on left-leaning sources.

The Media Research Center has repeatedly exposed the severity and real-world impact of this blacklist, which goes far beyond prioritizing peer-reviewed journals over right-of-center news organizations.

Read it.

Critics are now questioning whether the prestigious institution deliberately disabled security cameras, inadvertently creating blind spots that allowed the shooter to escape detection.

According to the latest reports shared by Headline USA, the shooter was identified as Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national. He has reportedly been found dead.

Conservative commentator Greg Price posted a video showing a tense moment when a Providence police press conference ended abruptly after a Latino Rhode Island radio host confronted officials. The journalist accused authorities of deliberately removing security cameras at Brown University because of sanctuary city laws designed to prevent recording of illegal aliens.

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On Thursday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Media Research Center founder and President Emeritus L. Brent Bozell III as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, despite obstructionist tactics by Democrats.

By a 53-43 evening vote, the Senate approved Bozell to fill the post vacated by former ambassador Reuben Brigety, who resigned in January.

“I am honored to have this opportunity to advance America’s relationship with South Africa and deeply grateful for the faith President Trump has placed in my ability and commitment to do so,” Bozell said following Thursday’s vote. “I look forward to serving his administration and the nation in this important diplomatic mission,” the newly-confirmed ambassador added.

This is going to be very entertaining—like confirming William F. Buckley as ambassador to the Soviet Union.

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Authorities across Europe have thwarted two more Islamist-inspired terror plots targeting Christmas markets in as many days, with arrests in Germany and Poland adding to a relentless wave of threats that has placed the West under daily assault from radical extremists intent on exploiting open borders and soft security measures.

German authorities have arrested a 21-year-old man from Central Asia on suspicion of plotting an Islamist-motivated terror attack against large crowds at a Christmas market in Magdeburg—the same location where a Saudi national carried out a deadly vehicle ramming last year, killing six and injuring hundreds.

The suspect, who entered Germany as an au pair in 2024 and reportedly received military training, faces deportation amid a pattern of threats targeting Europe’s holiday traditions.

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A recent article lays out the collapse of the dominant geopolitical model of “rising powers generate conflict”: The Stagnant Order And the End of Rising Powers (Foreign Affairs, paywalled). The basic idea is that the foundations of “rising powers”–demographics and productivity gains–no longer support grandiose planetary dominance.

Rather, demographics is already baked in as a crushing liability to all existing powers, and despite endless claims that technology will jumpstart productivity, the reality is productivity gains have flatlined for decades. “Growth” is a function of expanding debt, not productivity gains.

This dynamic extends beyond geopolitical models: all the models being used to explain and control the world are all collapsing: economic, social, political, they’re all collapsing because they are all constructs assembled in eras that no longer map the present.

As I explained in The Entire Bubble Economy Is a Hallucination, models collapse because of two limitations that define all models:

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President Trump ordered the suspension of the U.S. green card diversity lottery after federal investigators said the suspect in the Brown University shooting and the killing of an MIT nuclear scientist was a non-citizen who entered the country through the program.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in an X post late Thursday that, at Trump’s direction, she had ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) program.

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem said.

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For years UK officials turned a blind eye to rape gangs because it might look racist to crack down on foreigners. Now, suddenly, the real problem is young boys who are ‘radicalized’ into becoming misogynists. The only solution is of course Orwellian; and includes an agenda to reeducate British boys showing “signs of misogyny” (anti-wokeness).

According to the BBC, teachers will be given training to spot and “tackle” misogyny in the classroom, while high-risk pupils could be sent on behavior courses as part of the government’s strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG).

The goal is to ‘prevent the radicalization of young men’ by addressing misogyny early in order to prevent escalation into violence. Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips called violence against women and girls a “national emergency,” adding that the government’s goal is to be “so ambitious that we change culture.”

This sounds like the system used in the old Soviet Union to ensure socialist loyalty among the proletariat.

The fact is that both misogyny and Islamophobia are entirely justified in these degenerate modern times.

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The numbers in a new YouGov poll should serve as the final nail in the coffin of Germany’s so-called “Welcome Culture,” promoted during the 2015 migration crisis, which was promoted by Angela Merkel, her CDU, and the left. A decade later, Germans feature the prevailing view that the negative consequences of both legal and illegal migration vastly outweigh the positive. The new from YouGov shows a majority of Germans want an immigration moratorium and mass deportations.

The polling results, which were obtained exclusively by Welt, show that Germans are — despite all the claims of “we have space” that were promoted by the left — immensely fed up with illegal immigration. The poll shows that 81 percent of Germans state that illegal immigration was “far too high” or “rather too high” over the last 10 years. Only 5 percent view the levels as appropriate.

Another 75 percent say illegal migration has been bad for Germany.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Hannah C. Dugan, a Wisconsin state judge, was found guilty on Thursday of obstructing federal agents, a high-profile victory for the Justice Department in a prosecution of a judge who it said was illegally aiding an undocumented immigrant.

Judge Dugan faces up to five years in prison and, as a person who has been convicted of a felony, she is likely ineligible to continue to hold office as a judge in Wisconsin, according to the State Constitution.

She was acquitted of a less serious charge of concealing a person from arrest.

One of the most deleterious effects of Girl Boss Equality is that it puts women in positions of power, in which they inevitably prefer ‘feels over reals’. Emotion is a bad thing in a judge, because it leads to arbitrary and capricious rulings.

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Apparently blatant editorializing in place of straight news now seems to be becoming increasingly the rule not the exception at the Associated Press.

The latest example of AP breaking its own rules against opinionating in news stories is so blatantly absurd as to be laughable. The AP on Thursday actually took the November inflation rate of 2.7% which was below the expected 3.1% and somehow turned that good news into a negative. Check the headline on AP reporters Paul Wiseman’s and Anne D’Innocenzio’s editorial poorly disguised as an article, “US says price increases eased last month but data may be distorted and Americans aren’t feeling it.”

Yes. AP can not only determine that the data might be distorted but also somehow channel the feelings of millions of Americans to report it as an absolute fact. The very negative editorializing about lower than expected inflation continues in the body of the editorial/article.

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In December 2024, Congress did something unusual: it introduced a bill that openly acknowledges tobacco harm reduction. The POUCH Act of 2024, sponsored by Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) and co-sponsored by Rep. Don Davis (D-NC), aims to prevent states and cities from banning or restricting FDA–authorized lower-risk products, including modern nicotine pouches and vaping products.

It is a modest bill, but one that finally moves federal policy in a sensible direction. The basic premise is straightforward: if the FDA has determined that a product is appropriate for the protection of public health, states should not be allowed to ban it for political, fiscal, or ideological reasons. This should not be a radical idea, but within the chaos of American nicotine regulation, it almost counts as revolutionary.

However, the bill also reveals a deeper truth about why the United States struggles so badly with harm reduction. It exposes the forces that keep smokers tied to cigarettes, protect government revenue streams, and effectively eliminate smaller innovators who cannot survive the regulatory gauntlet.

The world is full of people who feel entitled to use the coercive power of government to keep YOU from doing something THEY feel is stupid. After all, what is your wisdom compared to theirs?

Self-rightous pricks….

Read it.

Half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen, a federal prosecutor said Thursday, describing the massive and multilayered fraud schemes as staggering.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said the scale of fraud puts services at risk for people who need them, including adults leaving addiction treatment centers who needed help finding a stable place to live and children with autism who were seeking one-on-one therapy.

While prosecutors typically see fraud manifest as providers overbilling, Thompson said during a news conference in Minneapolis that companies have been created to provide zero services while submitting claims to Medicaid and pocketing federal funds for international travel, luxury vehicles and lavish lifestyles.

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In a swift turn toward justice, police have opened an investigation into Michelea Ponce, the leftist agitator caught on video berating an elderly Target employee named Jeanie for daring to wear a Charlie Kirk “FREEDOM” shirt.

The harassment, which exploded across social media, highlights the toxic entitlement of progressives who can’t stomach symbols of patriotism in everyday life.

As we highlighted, the incident unfolded in a Chico, California Target store where Jeanie calmly folded clothes while Ponce unleashed a profanity-laced rant, accusing Kirk of racism and threatening to escalate the matter to management.

Michaela? Not Karen?

The cornerstone of proglodyte ideology is YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE AN OPINION THAT DIFFERS FROM THEIRS. That’s what we have to work with. Be prepared.

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Here we go again. The Donald recently offered a constructive 28-point plan that implicitly and correctly identified America’s Homeland Security interest in Ukraine as nichts, nada, nugatory and nyet. Yet before the ink was dry the Washington neocon brigade that he foolishly invited back into his government to sabotage it for the second time, did exactly that. This time they pulled the guts right out of the Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine, and did so in plain sight.

To wit, the only thing that really mattered in the original gussied-up word salad of 28-points was that—

• Ukraine would be partitioned roughly along the lines of the pre-1918 Novorussiya province of the Russian Empire, meaning that mainly Russian-speaking Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and the major parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be allowed to secede from the tyrannical, corruption-ridden, Nazi-tainted, anti-Russian Kiev regime.
• the resulting rump of Ukraine would forswear now and forevermore any interest in joining NATO. That is, eschew any possibility of functioning as a Cuba on Moscow’s borders just like Khrushchev foolishly attempted with JFK way back in October 1962.

Neither of these so-called “concessions” to Putin would harm America’s true homeland security by a whit because Russia with a $2 trillion GDP based on oil, grains and metals is no threat whatsoever to America’s $30 trillion high-tech economy.

Alma Boykin (“TXRed”).

Short Version: A very well written book about elements of the Medieval Catholic (and later) liturgy, and how they relate to church teachings, to music, and to art.

Long Version: “What color stole?” “Check the liturgical calendar.” Liturgy is a term associated with Christian worship, generally the more traditional denominations or “high church,” such as Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and the like. But Judaism also has a liturgy, as do other faiths. The Roman Catholic liturgy has had more cultural influence on Western Civilization over the years. Cosima Gillhammer’s book looks at a few specific points in the larger liturgical constellation, bringing in texts, music, images, and the rituals and patterns of worship and meditation. She focuses on the medieval and Dark Ages roots of the liturgy, and the emotions and “sense” of how texts and ideas were used.

The author begins by describing the darkness of the eve of Easter, and the vigil. Hushed darkness, fearful and waiting, then a light. One light, then more and more. Darkness remains outside the church, but fear shifts to hope. Dawn will come. That is the point of liturgy, to guide, and to bring emotion and power to what could be dry and confusing doctrines.

Alma T. C. Boykin is a prolific writer of excellent speculative fiction. She is one of few authors whose name on a book causes me to buy it automatically.