Quote:President Joe Biden is seemingly vowing to block legislation, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, that would require proof of American citizenship before an applicant is registered to vote in federal elections.
The SAVE Act, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and co-sponsored by more than 100 House Republicans, would require state election officials to mandate voter registration applicants provide proof of American citizenship before they are added to the nation’s voter rolls.
“Federal law has been interpreted to prohibit states from checking to see if you’re a citizen even though, technically, the law says you must be a citizen,” Roy told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.
This week, the Biden administration released a statement on the SAVE Act, effectively vowing to block it from becoming law should it make its way to the president’s desk.
“The administration strongly opposes H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” the statement from the White House reads:
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections — it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines. The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods. Additionally, making a false claim of citizenship or unlawfully voting in an election is punishable by removal from the United States and a permanent bar to admission. States already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls. [Emphasis added]
This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls. The evidence is clear that the current laws to prevent noncitizen voting are working as intended — it is extraordinarily rare for noncitizens to break the law by voting in Federal elections. [Emphasis added]
Instead, the Biden administration says Congress ought to pass the Freedom to Vote Act which would restore voting rights to millions of felons who are no longer serving their prison sentences. The bill would also usher in nationwide mail-in voting as well as nationwide automatic voter registration.
As Breitbart News reported, House Democrats are whipping votes against the SAVE Act — putting vulnerable swing district electeds in a tough spot just months ahead of the November election.
Requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote is hugely popular with Americans.
A poll from 2022 found that 65 percent of Americans support requiring proof of citizenship to vote, including 48 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of swing voters, and 88 percent of Republicans.
Quote:On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) stated that while he thinks President Joe Biden did well during his press conference earlier in the day, it doesn’t change his call for Biden to withdraw because “we can’t have a situation where, every day, we’re holding our breath, whether it’s a press conference, a debate, or a rally.”
Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “[W]hen you listened to tonight’s press conference, those questions that Biden took for an hour, did it change your mind on your decision today?”
Schneider responded, “No. I think the President did a fine job. He showed a command of the issues, both domestic and foreign, showed a stark contrast to what we’re dealing with with former President Trump. But, the fact is, and — as was said earlier, we can’t have a situation where, every day, we’re holding our breath, whether it’s a press conference, a debate, or a rally. And I think we’re at a historic moment where the President can pass the torch to the next generation, not only unite the Democratic Party, but unite the country, and, rather than slogging to a finish at the end of the election in November, we can run to the finish, win with a strong mandate, and continue this incredible experiment we’ve been working on for 248 years.”
Let's see if it's true that Biden was on focus during the press conference...
Quote:CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed at his high-stakes make-or-break NATO press conference that border crossings are lower than when former President Donald Trump left office.
VERDICT: FALSE. NBC News reported 84,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the border in June 2024. In January 2021, when Trump left office, there were 75,000 migrant encounters along the southwest border.
Biden’s false claim came after his attempt to blame Trump for the failure of the left-wing pro-migration border package earlier this year.
“So I took executive action last month. As a consequence, working with Mexico, border encounters have gone down over 50 percent. The current level is lower today than when Trump left office,” he claimed.
While Biden’s June border encounter numbers are the lowest of his presidency, per NBC News, they do not include the foreign nationals who entered America through Biden’s CBP One parole pipeline. The pipeline has seen millions of foreign nationals enter the U.S. since its inception in early 2023, as Breitbart News’s John Binder reported.
Moreover, southwest border encounters throughout the entire 2020 fiscal year were substantially lower than Biden’s best month in June. For instance, in April 2020, encounters registered 16,182, and 21,593 in May 2020. In December 2020, the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, border apprehensions registered at 70,630, as Breitbart News Texas’s Bob Price previously reported.
In March, the Heritage Foundation pinged the number of illegal aliens to enter the U.S. during the Biden administration to be over ten million.
The presser for Biden came as his horrendous debate performance in June ignited widespread panic about whether or not he should step aside for another candidate, though he has been adamant he will remain in the race. White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre noted Wednesday that the White House is making a concerted effort to have the president engage more with the press.
Quote:CLAIM: During his Thursday night presser, President Joe Biden claimed that “more children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.”
VERDICT: False, This is a regurgitation of an ongoing, false, leftist claim that guns are the number-one killer of children. Via fact checks, Breitbart News has shown again and again that in making this claim, the left counts people of voting age — ages 18 and 19 — as children.
Biden first made this claim on June 2, 2022, when he said, “Guns are the number one killer of children.”
Breitbart News noted that a FOX News report pointed to CDC figures that showed firearm-related deaths of people ages 0-19 totaled 4,368 in 2020, while motor vehicle deaths for the same age range totaled 4,036.
Breitbart showed that if a custom search is done on the CDC numbers so that you are limiting the category of “children” to those 0-17 (i.e. those below voting age) then the data completely flips.
The number of firearm-related deaths for children aged 0-17 was 2,281 in 2020, while the number of motor vehicle deaths for the same ages was 2,503.
Moreover, CDC data that the left omits shows that even if we keep the age range of 0-19, unintentional car deaths in 2020 among those individuals were 27 times higher than unintentional gun deaths in that age range.
Quote:President Joe Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday at the NATO Summit in Washington, DC, correcting himself seconds later with an incoherent explanation.
The embarrassing gaffe will increase the scrutiny on Biden’s health and further fuel questions about his political viability. Some Democrats believe Biden should be replaced as the party’s presumptive nominee.
“Now, I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination,” Biden said as he introduced Zelensky. “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.”
The audience slowly clapped while Biden realized the mistake.
“President Putin,” Biden corrected himself. “He’s going to beat President Putin — President Zelensky.”
“I’m so focused on beating Putin, we got to worry about it. Anyway…”
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Zelensky reportedly raised concerns about Biden’s health after watching his debate performance, a Ukrainian source told Axios on Tuesday.
“Let’s be candid and frank: Everyone is waiting for November,” Zelensky said in a press conference. “The whole world is looking to November, and truly speaking, Putin awaits November too.”
Biden, whom Special Counsel Robert Hur described as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” struggles to participate in unscripted donor events, the Wall Street Journal reported, and is often helped by aides who remind him of information.
Biden suffers from atrial fibrillation, peripheral neuropathy in his feet, and hyperlipidemia, according to his annual physical by physician Kevin O’Connor. The health challenges might explain why he struggles to remain upright. Biden tripped, tumbled, and stumbled at least five times during his presidency.
Quote:President Joe Biden mistakenly confused Vice President Kamala Harris with former President Donald Trump as his vice president during a solo press conference Thursday.
Democrats were waiting for Biden’s NATO press conference using a teleprompter, a critical moment that could decide if party members would ultimately withdrawal support for the president if he performed poorly. Some speculated that many Democrats would end their support of Biden’s candidacy after the press conference. So far, thirteen House Democrats and one Senate Democrat have publicly called for Biden to quit the race.
When questioned about the political viability of Harris to beat Trump if Biden were to step down as the presumptive Democrat nominee, Biden mixed up Harris with Trump, the second time in one day he has confused individuals.
“My question for you is, how are you incorporating these developments into your decision to stay and separately, what concerns do you have about Vice President Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump if she were at the ticket?” a reporter asked Biden.
“Look, I would have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president — Do I think she’s not qualified to be president. Let’s start there,” Biden said:
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The gaffe is the second in one day. Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin at the NATO Summit in Washington, DC, correcting himself seconds later with an incoherent explanation.
Biden, whom Special Counsel Robert Hur described as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” struggles to participate in unscripted events, the Wall Street Journal reported, and is often helped by aides who remind him of information.
Trump mocked Biden for the gaffe, saying “Great job, Joe” in a X post:
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Radio Station Removed Biden's Embarrassing Statements
Quote:A Milwaukee radio station admitted on Thursday to editing an interview with President Joe Biden at the request of his campaign, which they admit fell short of “journalistic interview standards.”
Following the disastrous debate against former President Donald Trump last month, Biden did an interview with popular host Earl Ingram with Civic Media, a talk-radio network based out of Wisconsin. A report later indicated that the Biden campaign requested certain edits from the interview, which the station complied with.
The station said in a statement released on Thursday:
On Monday, July 8th, it was reported to Civic Media management that immediately after the phone interview was recorded, the Biden campaign called and asked for two edits to the recording before it aired. Civic Media management immediately undertook an investigation and determined that the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed,” The station pledged to release the full, unedited interview online. The two edits made were Biden saying he had “more Blacks in my administration than any other president” and one in which he appeared incoherent when discussing former President Trump’s call for the death penalty on the Central Park Five.
“I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder,” he said.
...
“With a high-profile interview comes a listener expectation that journalistic interview standards will be applied, even for non-news programming. We did not meet those expectations. Civic Media disagrees with the team’s judgments in the moment, both with respect to the handling of the interview questions and the decision to edit the interview audio,” the statement continued.
The station further said it has clarified its policies “particularly for commentators and other non-news personnel.”
Quote:Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), or AOC, who has led opposition to Israel in Congress, lost her endorsement Wednesday by the national leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for not being anti-Israel enough.
In a statement, the DSA listed its reasons for rescinding its endorsement. These included the fact that AOC voted in favor of a resolution declaring that objecting to Israel’s right to exist amounted to antisemitism; that she signed a letter backing the Iron Dome, the anti-terror missile defense system developed by Israel to protect civilians; and that she recently participated in a panel discussion with two experts on antisemitism who oppose boycotts of “Zionists.”
AOC has been known as a “democratic socialist” since running for Congress in 2018. The DSA’s break with her is less a sign that she has moved to the center, and more a symptom of the DSA’s increasingly radical opposition to Israel.
The statement reads, in part:
We recognize that AOC has taken many courageous positions on Palestine such as co-sponsoring several House Resolutions (3103, 786, 496), naming Israel’s genocide as well as opposing House Resolution 894. However, members have raised their concerns regarding a number of her votes, including a vote in favor of H.Res.888, conflating opposition to Israel’s “right to exist” with antisemitism. AOC also co-signed a press release on April 20, 2024, that “support[s] strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems”
Finally, AOC recently hosted a public panel with leaders from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, lobbyists for the IHRA definition of antisemitism. On this panel, anti-Zionism and antisemitism were conflated and boycotting Zionist institutions was condemned. This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide through political and direct action in recent months, and in decades past.
A national DSA endorsement comes with a serious commitment to the movement for Palestine and our collective socialist project. We must endorse candidates who enthusiastically seek a relationship with DSA, and the National Political Committee as the highest body of the organization between conventions is responsible for setting the criteria we establish for national endorsements. Chapters have a responsibility to make this clear to their endorsed candidates when applying for a national endorsement. The NPC is committed to ensuring that all of our elected officials are unabashed in their support for Palestinian freedom. To build a socialist movement that’s capable of defeating capitalism, we must demand more from leaders in our movement.
AOC has spread anti-Israel propaganda since the October 7 terror attacks. She even blamed the Abraham Accords — a peace agreement between Israel and several Arab states — for the war.
Let me make a correction here. The Abraham Accords are NO Peace agreements but Normalization agreements. The difference is that none of the countries involved there ever approved any peace clause at all. They simply Recognized Israel's existence as a state and they are now reaping the economic benefits of such a deal.
Quote:On Tuesday, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) signed legislation that not only bars people under age 21 from purchasing ammunition, but also prohibits them from merely possessing it.
Guns.com reported that the legislation, SB 2845, “makes it a crime for adults under 21 to ‘own, possess, or control’ ammunition.”
The text of SB 2845 makes two exceptions regarding ammo possession. The first is for those who have “[met] the criteria to possess a firearm” during the age frame in question and the second is for those “actively engaged in hunting or target shooting or going to or from the place of hunting or target shooting.”
No exception is made for purchasing ammunition for the purpose of defending one’s own life.
KHON2 noted that Hawaiian state Rep. Diamond Garcia ® spoke against raising the age for ammo purchases by pointing out that the new law will constrain the behavior of the law-abiding rather than that of criminals.
Garcia said, “The vast majority of crime that is perpetrated is not done by legal guns or legal ammo. So thinking that, you know, new laws will change behavior is just false. Those who sell weapons illegally don’t care about age, they care about money.”
Quote:Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ® and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick ® have accused President Joe Biden of lying after he claimed he was unsuccessful in reaching state officials to secure disaster resources for Hurricane Beryl.
While more than 1.2 million Texans remain without electricity following Hurricane Beryl’s Monday touchdown, according to PowerOutage.us, Biden told the Houston Chronicle that the federal government could not distribute emergency relief supplies until the White House was able to “track down” state leaders.
“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said of Abbott, who is currently on an “economic development mission to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan,” according to his office.
Adding that he “kept tracking the lieutenant governor,” Biden said he was unable to connect with Patrick until Tuesday afternoon to approve the resource distribution.
“The president did not provide more details on his attempts to connect with Abbott or Patrick,” the outlet noted.
The Chronicle, which endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, originally published the article without comments from the state leaders in question, the Blaze reported.
The initial piece also contained a line claiming that a White House spokesperson “said officials tried to reach Abbott and Patrick multiple times,” apparently without success.
That line has since been removed, according to the Blaze.
Patrick shot back at Biden’s claims in a Tuesday X post, saying that the president “falsely” accused him of being unreachable:
“I am disappointed that President Biden is turning Hurricane Beryl into a political issue. We had a cordial call today that ended up with him granting my request for a major disaster declaration. But that’s not good enough for him,” Patrick wrote. “He is falsely accusing me that I was not reachable.”
“He obviously did not know his own employees from FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] were side-by-side with me for 3 days! All he had to do was call them and have them hand their phone to me. I even took a photo with them!”
Quote:Officials at Fort Liberty, the U.S. Army post formerly known as Fort Bragg, distanced themselves on Thursday from a slide shown to soldiers during a briefing on Wednesday that featured a pro-life organization as an example of a terrorist group.
In a statement to Breitbart News, the post said:
After conducting a commander’s inquiry, we determined that these slides were not vetted by the appropriate approval authorities, and do not reflect the views of the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Liberty, the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
The officials said the slides were developed by a “local garrison employee” to train soldiers who were manning gates at Fort Liberty in North Carolina, and that it would no longer be used.
“These slides will no longer be used, and all future training products will be reviewed to ensure they align with the current DoD anti-terrorism guidance,” officials said.
The slide came to the public’s attention after a military whistleblower posted it on X, sparking outrage among conservatives.
The slide featured the pro-life group National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the oldest and largest national anti-abortion organization in the U.S.
Breitbart News spoke with the soldier who took the photo of the slide.
The briefing was conducted by Department of Defense civilians who said at the time the briefing slides were not theirs, but that they had requested anti-terrorism officers come and give the briefing themselves, but were told “no.”
“I am unsure who originally produced or approved the slides,” the soldier said.
The soldier said the briefing was part of a two-week class on how to be a gate guard, and that the slide was shown as examples of things to look out for.
Preceding the slide on the NRLC was slides about Islamist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other Muslim terror groups, the soldier said.
Quote:California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is raising eyebrows on a national level by taking a tough stance against George Soros-backed prosecutor Pamela Price of Alameda County, which includes the crime-ridden city of Oakland.
Price faces a recall effort on the November ballot, as does “progressive” Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, whose home was recently raided by the FBI in an apparent corruption probe. Breitbart News described Price’s record in 2023:
Soros, who has funded radical prosecutors across the country, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing Price in 2018. She won in 2022 and immediately backed “criminal justice reform” of the kind that has upended law enforcement around the country.
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[C]rime has become so bad in Oakland — the largest city in DA Price’s jurisdiction — that police have encouraged the public to use airhorns to warn thieves away, and normally left-wing-minded residents are blasting a failed progressive utopia.” Even the local NAACP chapter has demanded more police and more aggressive action against crime on the streets of Oakland.
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New concerns have arisen recently about Price after it was revealed that she had hired her boyfriend to a six-figure salary job, though he had faced accusations in the past of extorting local businesses.
Newsom has supported Soros-backed prosecutors in the past, notably District Attorney George Gascón of Los Angeles. But Price appears to be a convenient target as Newsom tries to project an image of being tough on crime.
Quote:The Biden-Harris Campaign has reportedly commissioned an internal poll to gauge how Vice President Kamala Harris would perform as the Democrat nominee versus former President Donald Trump.
The New York Times reported on the development Thursday, citing three anonymous sources who “are informed about it.” The report comes as musings on the left about replacing Biden at the top of the ticket continue in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance, which sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party.
“They did not specify why the survey was being conducted or what the campaign planned to do with the results,” according to the outlet’s Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher, Reid Epstein, and Lisa Lerer, who note this appears to be the first Trump versus Harris poll commissioned by the campaign since the debate.
It is unclear what outfit is conducting the survey for the campaign.
The Times further noted that Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and Campaign Chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon worked to reassure staff in an internal memo that Biden remains the most viable candidate and that he has a path to victory:
In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump. Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
Notably, a poll from the reputable Emerson College Polling published Tuesday showed Trump with an even bigger lead over Harris than he has over Biden. It found that Trump led Biden by three and Harris by six nationally in hypothetical two-way races.
News of the internal Harris versus Trump poll on Thursday coincided with a report from the Times that some of Biden’s close allies are devising strategies to convince him to end his candidacy.
Quote:Activists are sounding the alarm about a large group of gunmen who kidnapped more than 200 migrants as they made their way north toward the Sonora-Arizona border. Some of the migrant’s relatives wired thousands of dollars to the alleged kidnappers, but the migrants remain missing.
According to an exclusive report by El Sol de Hermosillo, a group of more than 200 migrants had been loaded into a tractor-trailer late last month. The truck headed for the border city of Sonoyta, Sonora — just south of Arizona.
As the truck approached the town of Cuahutemoc, Chihuahua, the vehicle broke down. The migrants were forced to walk to another location where human smugglers were going to pick them up to continue their journey. Unfortunately, a large number of gunmen showed up and kidnapped the migrants, breaking them into smaller groups of 10-15 and stuffing them into their trucks.
It remains unclear where the kidnappers took the migrants. Some of the relatives quoted by Mexican media claim that they brought them to the border city of Ciudad Jaurez, Chihuahua, just south of El Paso, Texas. The migrants have been missing for more than 15 days, El Sol de Hermosillo reported.
Factions of the Sinaloa Cartel control the border region of Sonora, while the Juarez Cartel controls the regions near Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Both criminal organizations have a long-standing turf war for control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes into the United States.
Relatives told the Mexican newspaper that since the day of the kidnapping, the relatives began receiving threatening messages through WhatsApp where the alleged captors gave them instructions on wiring money to them to secure the release of their loved ones. Some of the relatives have wired as much as $10,000; however, the kidnapped migrants remain missing.
El Salvador's Court Sentences MS13 Gangster to Over 1400 Years in Jail
Quote:A court in El Salvador sentenced Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang member Ángel Geovany Guzmán González to 1,420 years in prison for dozens of crimes committed in the span of six months, the office of the Salvadoran Attorney General announced on Monday.
Guzmán González, also known with the alias “Diabólico,” (Diabolical) was convicted alongside 45 other MS-13 members on Monday in a mass trial against members of the Salvadoran criminal gang.
The Attorney General’s Office accused the convicted MS-13 members of planning to kill seven members of El Salvador’s National Civic Police (PNC) and local prosecutors. Local investigators reportedly managed to uncover and stop the mass killing conspiracy before it took place.
Collectively, all 46 gang members were found guilty on 56 counts of aggravated extortion, seven counts of aggravated homicides, and 45 cases of proposition and conspiracy to commit the crimes of aggravated homicide and organized terrorism. All of the crimes were committed in the span of six months, between September 26, 2018, and March 26, 2019.
Guzmán González’s 1,420-year-long prison sentence is the result of seven charges of aggravated homicide, 37 charges of aggravated extortion, and 25 charges of proposition and conspiracy to commit the crime of aggravated homicide against the nine PNC officials.
Some of the other men and women sentenced on Monday’s trial also received centuries-long prison sentences, the Attorney General’s Office revealed.
Hugo Alexander Argueta Bonilla received a 764-year-long sentence on multiple counts of aggravated homicide, aggravated extortion, and proposition and conspiracy to commit the crime of aggravated homicide. Carlos Eduardo Díaz Rodríguez, another MS-13 gang member, was sentenced to 567 years in prison on several charges of aggravated homicide, organized terrorism, proposition and conspiracy to commit the crime of aggravated homicide, and 17 counts of aggravated extortion.
Other top convicted individuals received sentences ranging from 148 to 338 years, while 37 MS-13 members received sentences ranging from eight to 138 years in prison. Ana Ruth Sagovia Merino, the only woman in the group of 46 convicted MS-13 members, was sentenced to 148 years in prison on charges of aggravated homicide, aggravated extortion, and organized terrorism.
The attorney general’s office explained that the victims of the extortion were truckers and merchants from the city of San Miguel from whom the gang members demanded money to not kill them.
“One victim was asked for $10,000 in a single payment to pay a lawyer to defend terrorists who had been arrested,” the attorney general’s statement read.
El Salvador has been under a de facto state of martial law since March 2022 as a result of a still-active emergency decree. The decree, which had an initial 30-day duration and has been continuously renewed on a monthly basis, has allowed the government led by President Nayib Bukele to conduct a widespread crackdown against the nation’s most violent criminal gangs, such as MS-13 and 18th Street. The crackdown has resulted in a dramatic reduction of crime and gang violence in El Salvador and the reported “virtual disappearance” of the gangs in the nation’s communities.
The still-ongoing state of emergency decree allowed the Salvadoran government to construct a 40,000-bed “mega prison” inaugurated in February 2023. According to Salvadoran Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro, authorities have arrested 79,184 gang members as of April. The Salvadoran government estimates that around 25,000 remain at large.
Quote:Cuba marked a somber third anniversary since the historic nationwide uprisings of July 11, 2021, on Wednesday, facing unprecedented economic disaster, increasingly violent communist repression, and the absence of hundreds of political prisoners still behind bars since that day.
Tens of thousands of Cubans in every major city in the country – an estimate from that year puts the total number at around 187,000 people – took the streets of the country on that day demanding an end to the over-century-old repressive communist regime. While anti-communist protests in Cuba have been a regular occurrence for decades, the July 11 movement differed from the standard protests both in its scope and the large number of people not affiliated with any dissident group or with a history of political activity that it attracted.
In addition to chanting anti-communist slogans, shouting “liberty,” and marching in protest, the crowds deliberately angered the Communist Party by using symbols associated with “counterrevolutionary” activity, such as the American flag and a statute of the Virgin Mary. Christians were prominently featured in the protests, including several members of the Catholic clergy. At least one priest, Father Castor José Álvarez Devesa, disappeared for days after receiving a public beating from regime sympathizers:
...
The regime of dictator Raúl Castro responded to the protests with outsized violence. Figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel appeared on television announcing that the “order of combat has been issued,” referring to a Communist Party command to regular Cuban citizens to violently assault anyone suspected of being a dissident in the streets. Videos leaking out of Cuba in the ensuing days showed government-organized buses full of regime thugs carrying clubs and other rudimentary weapons, shipping into the cities with the most protest activity to beat, abduct, and otherwise silence dissidents:
Quote:The national Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported on Wednesday that the country has seen a historic increase in the amount of money entering via remittances from the United States.
Nicaragua is experiencing a surge in remittances from the United States sent by Nicaraguans abroad to their relatives and friends at home. The money allows the communist regime to fund its repression of dissidents and collaborate with rogue regimes — such as China, Russia, and Iran.
La Prensa, citing statistics from the Nicaraguan Central Bank (BCN), reported that Nicaragua received $2.052 billion in remittances during the first five months of 2024, a 12.7-percent increase compared to the same period in 2023, translating to $231 million more.
The increase in remittances received, La Prensa said, was mainly driven by remittances sent from the United States, which comprised $1.688 billion of the total. The newspaper explained that for every $100 that entered the Nicaraguan economy through remittances, $82 originated from the United States.
La Prensa further noted that Nicaragua received a record-breaking $462.4 million in remittances in May 2024, of which $385.9 million originated from the United States. For comparison, U.S.-sent remittances to Nicaragua during May 2017 totaled $69.2 million.https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/07/11/army-officials-briefing-slide-featuring-pro-life-group-terrorists-was-not-vetted-and-will-no-longer-be-used/
The scale of remittances sent from the United States to Nicaragua in May is 3.2 times higher than the $118.2 million received in May 2021, when communist dictator Daniel Ortega reportedly began to implement plans to “weaponize” migration against the United States to force the U.S. government into potential sanctions relief negotiations with his authoritarian regime.
In recent years, Ortega’s regime has dramatically increased its brutal repression, banishing hundreds of political dissidents — including members of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, who have been subject to a fierce persecution campaign. The Church became a target after the April 2018 protests in which thousands of Nicaraguans flocked to the streets calling for freedom and the end of communism in their nation.
The deteriorating human rights situation in Nicaragua, which the Ortega regime caused, has prompted hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans to flee their country. La Prensa estimated in April that some 800,000 Nicaraguans have fled from their country since 2018. During the 2022 fiscal year, U.S. border officials logged 163,876 encounters with Nicaraguan nationals at the southern border.
Quote:“Jupiterian” French President Emmanuel Macron has written to the French people, reflecting on the failure of the recent snap election to produce a new government, but conveniently forgetting to mention his role in that outcome.
There will be no new Prime Minister or government appointed for some time, President Macron said in a nationally published letter to the people in which he talked up his role as “protector of the higher interests of the Nation”.
Macron congratulated the French people on having rejected the “extreme right” at the ballot box, despite the actual opposite of that having happened. The “extreme right” to which Macron refers — Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which actually has pretty left-wing economic views, but is in favour of border control — came first place in both rounds of the election in votes cast, rather making a mockery of the President’s claim.
In a result which has inevitably seen questions raised about the suitability of the 1958-vintage French election system for modern voting preferences, RN came first in votes but came third in seats. Macron’s group, meanwhile, came third in votes but second in seats.
Having failed in his gambit to strengthen his own group in the French Parliament and now faced with a left wing bloc as the largest group he warned just weeks ago would lead to “civil war” if they got near power, Macron appears to be playing for time to find a way out. Meanwhile, the hard-left leader Mélenchon accuses Macron of trying to subvert democracy — a brave take for a man in his position.
Stating the obvious but skirting around his role in apparently having called the election in a tantrum after his party received a drubbing at last month’s European Union elections, Macron told the nation: “no one won. No political force obtains a sufficient majority on its own and the blocs or coalitions that emerge from these elections are all minorities… As President of the Republic, I am both the protector of the higher interests of the Nation and the guarantor of the institutions and of respect for your choice… Last Sunday, you called for the invention of a new French political culture. For you, I will ensure this. In your name, I will be its guarantor.”
In all, President Macron said, he would not be appointing a new Prime Minister until the new political forces had “some time”. The old government would remain on in the meanwhile, he said.
So Macron is saying that things will remain the same as long as there is no agreement!?
Is that not the actual first step to become a modern tyrant, guys?
Macron Becoming the French Biden? Prosecutor Comes After Le Pen
Quote:French populist leader Marine Le Pen is facing an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations in relation to her 2022 presidential run against Emmanuel Macron.
Fresh off her anti-mass migration National Rally (RN) party’s best-ever performance in a legislative election, winning 143 seats in the National Assembly — the best ever for the party — it has been revealed that the Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a judicial investigation into alleged illegal financing of Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign.
The investigation, which was opened on July 2nd — just two days after her party won the first round of the snap legislative elections — will probe alleged fraud, forgery, and a potentially illegally accepted loan, broadcaster BFMTV reports.
Responding to the report a top RN official told the AFP: “We don’t know what the facts are. We had the information of the opening of this investigation, like everyone else, this (Tuesday) morning on BFMTV”
“I am very surprised because the campaign account was validated in December 2022 and repaid in February 2023,” he added.
Le Pen is already facing criminal prosecution over allegations that she and other members of her party fraudulently established fake employees in the European Parliament to divert money to fund political activities in France.
If convicted the populist leader could face up to ten years in prison as well as a ban on running for public office, potentially blocking her from running in the 2027 presidential election.
Quote:Ukraine will be able to use advanced British-supplied cruise missiles to strike targets inside Russia itself, the UK’s new left-wing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in Washington at the NATO summit.
While Sir Keir Starmer may have promised change with his new Labour Party government to the voters of the United Kingdom, in at least one key area his policy is one of strong continuity, with new pledges of support for Ukraine announced at the NATO summit in Washington DC overnight. While Ukraine has already used the Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles to great effect in their defensive war against Russia, Sir Keir has given the nod for them to be used for new deep strikes inside Russia for the first time.
Sir Keir said it was a matter for Ukraine to decide how to use the missiles the UK had given it, reports Bloomberg, a departure from the previous British position. Starmer also made a new commitment to cash for Ukraine, promising £3 billion ($3.8bn) a year to Kyiv from the British exchequer for the five-year life of this Parliament, The Guardian reported.
Ukrainian President Zelensky, who had his first bilateral meeting with the new British Prime Minister at the summit, said of the cruise missiles: “This morning, I learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory. Today, we had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision.”
Asking People to Behave Properly is Now a Dangerous Custom in the UK
Quote:A London bus passenger was stabbed by a fellow commuter after asking his assailant to take his feet off the seats, the latest in a week of knife attacks in the capital.
The victim, who was in his 50s, was attacked on a bus in Croydon, south London, the Daily Telegraph reports. Detectives have issued a picture of a suspect they want to speak about the incident.
The attack took place at around 3am on June 4 after the suspect boarded and put his feet up on the seats. The victim confronted him and an argument followed.
The victim was then stabbed several times in the leg during a brief struggle.
The injured man managed to get to a hospital, where police were called. The suspect (pictured below) left the bus at East Croydon railway station.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Detectives investigating a stabbing aboard a bus in Croydon have released an image of a man they want to identify and speak with.
“Anyone who can name the man pictured should report online, dial 101 or post on X @MetCC quoting 923/4JUN24.”
Quote:“People familiar” told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that Ukraine is considering direct talks with Russia at a second peace summit before the U.S. presidential election in November – a report that followed rumors President Volodymyr Zelensky is worried about the health of American counterpart President Joe Biden.
Zelensky is currently in Washington, DC, meeting with Biden and other world leaders for the annual NATO military alliance summit. Ukraine is not a member of NATO but has loudly demanded entry to the alliance for years. The declaration published after private talks among NATO states included a promise that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to membership, as well as millions of dollars in military support. NATO has refused to integrate Ukraine, however, or offer a concrete list of demands Kyiv must fulfill before joining.
During remarks on Wednesday, Zelensky indeed confirmed that Ukraine is seeking to organize a second “peace summit” to discuss an end to the full-scale invasion of his country that Russia launched in 2022. Switzerland hosted the first “peace summit” in June, refusing to invite Russia as strongman Vladimir Putin has demanded Kyiv cede the five territories the Russian military occupies – Crimea, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia – and give up its ambitions to join NATO.
Zelensky’s remarks about a second peace summit stated only that he sought to hold one before the end of the year, however – not necessarily before the American presidential election – and did not mention inviting Russia.
“Kyiv wants to convene a second meeting to achieve a fair peace settlement in Ukraine before the US elections in November, this time with Russia attending, according to people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg claimed. It described one of the “people familiar” as a “Ukrainian official,” without elaborating.
The outlet described the rumors as indicating that Zelensky feels a “sense of urgency” as polling increasingly indicates that former President Donald Trump could defeat Biden in the election and significantly change Washington’s Ukraine policy. Trump and Zelensky enjoyed a famously cordial relationship; Zelensky notably defended Trump from accusations of improprieties in a phone call with himself and celebrated Trump-era sanctions on Russian projects such as the now-defunct Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Bloomberg did not mention any opinion Zelensky may or may not hold about Biden. Another reported on Tuesday, however, suggested that the Ukrainian president is privately worried about Biden.
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is among the leaders who watched the presidential debate and is concerned about the situation, according to a Ukrainian source,” the D.C. website Axios reported. It did not offer any more details about what allegedly has Zelensky “concerned” about the situation, though Biden’s debate performance sparked a panic in the Democrat party that the elderly president may not be fit to serve another four years in the nation’s highest office because of answers to debate questions deemed unintelligible, confusing, or incoherent.
That Zelensky’s alleged anxiety surfaced in a report in Axios is significant as the Ukrainian president has used the outlet to complain even more directly about Biden in the past. In June 2021, Zelensky granted Axios an interview in which he said he was “unpleasantly surprised” by Biden’s decision to lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would have connected Russia to Western Europe.
“It still seems to me that Nord Stream 2 … we understand that this is a weapon, a real weapon, and I speak openly about it,” Zelensky said at the time. “A weapon in the hands of the Russian Federation, and it is not very understandable, I feel, and definitely not expected, that the bullets to this weapon can possibly be provided by such a great country as the United States.”
Zelensky predicted that lifting the sanctions could embolden Russia to attack Ukraine. Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the country seven months later.
On the issue of talks with Russia, the Ukrainian government has resolutely refused any such negotiations since the early days of the full-scale invasion. Zelensky has floated the possibility of another “peace summit,” however, but not mentioned Russian participation. Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Washington on Wednesday, Zelensky said Ukraine was preparing to “organize the second Peace Summit this year based on the Peace Formula – even more powerful, and truly decisive. We need that support from the US.”
Zelensky did not specify if “this year” would mean a summit before or after the November election.
Shortly after the conclusion of the first summit in Switzerland, which resulted in no concrete actions from any involved party, the Ukrainian government already suggested a second such meeting could occur before the end of the year, but again did not specify that it would occur before the election.
Quote:Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to full membership in NATO, the 32-signatories to the Western military alliance declared Wednesday.
NATO member countries issued joint statement from their summit in Washington, DC, setting out a series of steps aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s defenses, AP reports.
That includes the U.S., the Netherlands and Denmark revealing the first NATO-provided F-16s would be in the hands of Ukrainian military pilots by this summer.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted his appreciation of the effort to strengthen his air force, coming soon after Ukraine saw one of the deadliest strikes of the war, while disregarding policy experts who see Kyiv’s desire to join NATO as a direct threat to Moscow and cause for it to continue fighting now and into the future.
NATO also confirmed a long-term commitment of security assistance to Ukraine, and outlined the establishment of a new NATO center aimed at ensuring Kyiv gets a more reliable flow of arms and training from members of the alliance, the AP report makes clear.
But the commitments still fall short of the striking power Ukraine says it needs to defeat the invading Russian forces.
“Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” alliance members said in their statement. “We will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
Quote:The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Wednesday issued a statement condemning North Korea’s weapons exports to Russia and expressing concern about the alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow.
The statement was a major victory for South Korean diplomats who have been urging NATO to recognize North Korea as a threat to global security.
“We strongly condemn the DPRK’s exports of artillery shells and ballistic missiles, which are in violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions, and note with great concern the deepening ties between the DPRK and Russia,” NATO leaders meeting in Washington said on Wednesday. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North Korean tyranny’s preferred name for itself.
“Any transfer of ballistic missiles and related technology by Iran to Russia would represent a substantial escalation,” the declaration added.
NATO said North Korea and fellow axis of tyranny member Iran are “fueling Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine by providing direct military support to Russia, such as munitions and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), which seriously impacts Euro-Atlantic security and undermines the global non-proliferation regime.”
Both of those malignant states took a backseat in NATO’s condemnation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has “become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.”
“We call on the PRC, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council with a particular responsibility to uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, to cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort,” the statement said.
The NATO statement called for closer cooperation with South Korea and other major regional partners such as Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, to contain threats to security in the Indo-Pacific region.
Quote:The spire of Rouen Cathedral, not so long ago the world’s tallest building, was burning Thursday morning amid renovation work at the scaffolding-clad building.
Thick, black smoke poured from the 495 foot (151 meter) spire of Rouen Cathedral on Thursday morning after contractors working on the restoration of the church started a fire. Per French broadsheet Le Figaro, the fire was discovered by builders in the spire and the fire brigade said the burning material was “plastic construction site materials”.
The spire over the Cathedral’s transept tower has been burnt down several times before, with an identical wood and lead tower replacing the earlier spire after a fire in the 16th century. The spire was burnt again after a lightning strike in 1822, and was replaced with a new and considerably taller cast-iron spire completed by 1882. That spire remains today, and given its all-metal construction will hopefully survive today’s blaze.
The fire was first reported to the emergency services at midday local time and was said to be “under control but not extinguished” by lunchtime. The fire brigade say while they have not completed their inspections and can’t yet declare the fire totally extinguished, it is their belief the heat of the fire has not damaged the structure of the spire.
More pertinent now is the potential for water damage in the church below the spire, given the amount pumped up by the fire brigade to get the blaze under control.
The fire at an iconic European historic building during restoration work has inevitably drawn comparisons to the near-loss of the Paris Notre Dame cathedral five years ago, and the loss of Copenhagen’s Børsbygningen, one of the oldest buildings in the Netherlands earlier this year.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Is China Transporting & Selling Fuel or Cooking Oil?
China Caught Using Fuel Tankers to Store Cooking Oil
China’s state-owned China Grain Reserves Corporation, better known as Sinograin, is facing both public outrage and government investigations after a state-run newspaper caught the company transporting cooking oil in uncleaned tankers also used for fuel shipments.
Sinograin is China’s largest grain storage and transportation company. Reporters from the Beijing News followed tanker trucks from Sinograin and a privately-owned corporation called the Hopefull Grain and Oil Group and discovered the trucks were switching between cargoes of fuel and cooking oil without getting cleaned between shipments.
Some of the fuel involved in these unclean shipping procedures was from the China Energy Investment Corporation, which is also a state-run enterprise. The state-run China Daily reported that the fuel included loads of “coal-to-liquids,” a toxic chemical produced during coal processing.
Truck drivers told Beijing News it was an “open secret” among their ranks that tankers carrying toxic liquids, including some industrial chemicals in addition to fuel, were also transporting edibles, like cooking oil and syrup.
Chinese consumers, who have suffered through a long series of food and pharmaceutical safety scandals, were outraged by the report, especially since it involved major brand names and state-owned enterprises. One of the biggest social media firestorms of recent years erupted Saturday.
Sinograin tried a little damage control on Saturday, claiming it was as shocked by the Beijing News report as anyone and would order a full company investigation into truckers who might be violating food safety regulations.
The company’s spin doctoring was in vain. By Monday, Communist Party-controlled media outlets were denouncing company executives as accessories to attempted murder and demanding tough investigations by the central government.
State-run CCTV said the actions of Sinograin and Hopefull were “tantamount to poisoning,” and the public was “confused and stunned” to discover big brands linked to the state would show such “extreme disregard for the life and health of customers.”
China’s powerful State Council, effectively the national cabinet, sought to reassure the public by swiftly assembling a “joint investigation group” with officials from several ministries, including the Food Safety Commission and the Public Safety Bureau.
“Enterprises in violation and relevant responsible persons will be severely punished according to law,” the State Council pledged.
China’s state-run Global Times noted that social media users have uncovered old videos of news reports dating back to 2005 that documented dangerous incidents of food oil transported in the same tankers as chemicals.
The Global Times burbled that swift action by the gigantic Communist government could ensure food safety problems are “nipped in the bud,” but if these unsafe practices have been going on for 20 years or more, the situation would seem to have long ago passed the bud-nipping stage.
All of the companies linked to the scandal have promised to perform internal investigations, and Sinograin appears to have pulled its cooking oil products from some e-commerce platforms, although they remain available on others.
Chinese Warplanes Flying Over Taiwanese Airspace
Taiwan Reports Single-Day Record of Chinese Warplanes in Its Airspace
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said on Thursday it detected 66 Chinese warplanes and seven Chinese naval vessels circling the island during the previous 24 hours, marking the largest Chinese incursion into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in 2024.
Taiwanese officials said 56 of China’s planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which was once considered an informal buffer zone that neither side would cross to avoid misunderstandings and conflict escalation. China publicly stated in April 2023 that it would no longer respect the median line.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry noted that some of China’s ships and planes were apparently on their way to a military exercise involving the aircraft carrier Shandong. At the very least, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) did not go out of its way to avoid passing through Taiwan’s ADIZ while mustering its forces for the naval exercise.
The Defense Ministry published some photos of China’s aircraft, including the advanced J-16 Hidden Dragon strike fighter and the nuclear-capable H-6 bomber.
“The military has a detailed grasp of the activities in the seas and waters around the Taiwan Strait, including of the Chinese Communists’ aircraft and ships,” the ministry said, without indicating if the photos were new pictures taken on Wednesday.
Military expert Su Tzu-yun of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research noted that the incursions on Wednesday and Thursday were the largest since China petulantly staged aggressive military exercises in May to “punish” the island for electing William Lai Ching-te as president.
Su told Voice of America News (VOA) that China might be in punishment mode again, reacting angrily to Lai’s meeting on Wednesday with Raymond Greene, the new director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). The AIT informally serves as the U.S. embassy to Taiwan, making Greene the new de facto ambassador.
Greene told Lai the United States is committed to enhancing the “already rock-solid” ties between America and Taiwan and helping Taiwan defend itself. Su suggested China sent its warplanes and ships around Taiwan to “express its displeasure” at the support Taipei enjoys.
Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo added the observation that when China sent the aircraft carrier Shandong to join the PLAN exercise, it did not pass through the Bashi Channel, the route south of Taiwan normally used by Chinese ships heading for the Pacific. Instead, the carrier used the more southerly Balingtang Channel route, which took it close to the Philippines — another neighbor China has been working hard to intimidate lately.
Local Bully Accuses Neighbor of Committing a Crime
China Claims Japanese Destroyer Entered Its Waters ‘Illegally’
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Beijing lodged a formal complaint with Tokyo about the “illegal and improper” actions of a Japanese destroyer that entered Chinese territorial waters near Taiwan on July 4.
The JS Suzutsuki is an Akizuki-class destroyer that the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) operates. The ship was sailing off the coast of China’s Zhejiang province in July to monitor Chinese naval drills.
Zhejiang officials announced on July 3 that a “no-sail zone” was being established off the coast so the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) could conduct live-fire drills.
For reasons not yet clear, the captain of the Suzutsuki reportedly disregarded warnings from Chinese ships to leave the area when it made a rare approach within 12 nautical miles of the coast on July 4. This was much closer than JMSDF vessels usually come to Chinese territory.
Instead of leaving the area, the Suzutsuki reportedly accelerated and entered Chinese territorial waters for about 20 minutes before departing.
Japanese officials said the destroyer made a “procedural error” and entered Chinese waters by accident. They cited a provision of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that permits “innocent passage” through the territorial waters of another nation.
Some international legal experts question if the right of innocent passage can be applied to a military vessel since the UNCLOS stipulates that such passage must be safe and pose no realistic threat to national security.
Chinese officials countered that the Japanese ship was too advanced and its crew too skilled for such a navigational error to occur. They said the Suzutsuki did not request permission to enter China’s waters, as it could easily have done, so its passage could be interpreted as an “intentional provocation” or an illegal effort to gather intelligence on Chinese activities.
“I wonder why Japan made such a provocative move amid efforts by both countries to stabilize relations,” a Chinese diplomatic source grumbled to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Thursday.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Thursday that Beijing has “lodged representations” with Japan over the “illegal and improper actions” of the Suzutsuki. Japanese and Chinese officials have spoken unofficially since the incident occurred but have issued no formal statements as of Thursday.
Kyodo News reported on Thursday that the Japanese Defense Ministry has launched an investigation into the actions of the Suzutsuki’s captain. The ministry would offer no public comment on the status or scope of the investigation.
MIDDLE EAST
Western Countries & Israel
Report: Western Countries Slowing Ammunition to Israel in Informal Boycott
Western countries are slowing deliveries of ammunition to Israel in what amounts to an informal arms embargo, according to media reports.
The Biden administration has agreed to resume shipments of 500-pound precision bombs to Israel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. But it is continuing to withhold 2,000-pound bombs, and several other countries are reportedly withholding “simple” ammunition.
The Israeli newspaper HaCalcalist (“The Economist”) reported Tuesday (via Google Translate):
Calcalist has learned that arms suppliers from European countries … simply stopped answering their Israeli counterparts, and also that a foreign power other than the US, which used to trade with Israel, has since October 7 refused to supply Israel with raw materials from which ammunition can be manufactured.
…
Despite the requested attempt to strengthen local industry and thus reduce dependence on the world, those who believe that Israel will be able to produce all the ammunition it needs for itself are likely to be deluded. First of all, even in the case of a massive increase in Israeli production capacity, a significant portion of the ammunition is still expected to come from foreign countries in any scenario due to limited production potential. Even the United States is having trouble these days supplying itself and its allies, including Israel and Ukraine, with all the shells they need. Secondly, in order for the Israeli defense industries to be able to produce weapons materials in large quantities, a large quantity of raw materials from which bombs can be made is needed and cannot be to be mined in Israel, therefore these must also eventually come from foreign countries.
…
Since the outbreak of the war, more and more reports have been received about countries and companies wishing to reduce or limit defense trade with Israel. Among other things, a problem was reported in the supply of F-35 spare parts with Dutch suppliers; the governments of Italy, Canada and Belgium announced the cessation of defense exports to Israel (despite reports of shipments continuing to arrive and deals continuing to be signed); and the Spanish government even prevented a ship carrying a shipment of weapons from India to Israel from docking on the country’s shores.
At the same time, the report says, Serbia has helped supply Israel with ammunition, and “another country” has begun selling Israel the raw materials necessary for manufacturing weapons.
Still, the shortage of ammunition is so worrying to Israeli defense officials that some tanks in Gaza are not being fully loaded with shells, due to a desire to conserve resources for a possible war in Lebanon, according to a report in the New York Times earlier this month.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer, asked about the reports of an informal arms embargo, said Wednesday that he could not confirm them. But rumors of arms shortages have been circulating in Israel for several months.
Kibbutz Be'eri Massacre
IDF Inquiry Faults Delays, Commends Armed Citizens in Be’eri Massacre
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released the results Thursday of its investigation into the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas on October 7, finding that the military had failed to defend citizens and that armed civilians had stepped in.
Breitbart News was among the first outlets granted access to Kibbutz Be’eri in the days after the attack, and reported:
Buildings blown apart. Walls, homes, riddled with bullet-holes. Bloodstains, shattered glass. Spent bullet casings. Crushed bicycles. A kindergarten with a massive hole from a rocket-propelled grenade.
This is the scene at one of the communities hit hardest by Palestinian terrorists on October 7.
On this collective farm a few kilometers from the border with Gaza, 108 residents were brutally murdered, out of a population of about 1,100, meaning the kibbutz lost 10% of its residents.
…
Rami Gold, 70, a resident of the kibbutz, spoke about how he and about ten neighbors battled 120 Hamas terrorists for several hours, down to their last bullet, until finally Israel Defense Forces (IDF) resevists arrived to give them ammunition.
Hezbollah Rockets Kills 2 Civilians
Hezbollah Rocket Kills Two in Car in Israel’s Golan Heights
A rocket fired Tuesday by the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah killed two people traveling in a vehicle in Israel’s Golan Heights, part of a barrage fired to avenge the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s former bodyguard.
Israel National News / Arutz Sheva reported:
Two people were killed in a rocket barrage fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization on the Golan Heights on Tuesday evening. Both victims were in a vehicle that burst into flames upon being struck by a rocket and were pronounced dead at the scene.
The IDF stated that about 40 rockets were fired in the barrage on the Golan Heights.
Police, including bomb disposal squads, are working at multiple sites where rockets struck or debris from intercepted rockets landed in the Golan Heights. Police are also searching for additional sites where rockets may have struck or landed to remove any risk to the public.
The Times of Israel confirmed that the two killed were both civilians.
Earlier, an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed Yasser Qarnabash, Nasrallah’s former bodyguard.
The Golan is sparsely populated, and therefore it is somewhat rare that a rocket should hit a car directly. Drivers are advised to leave their cars and lay down on the shoulders of the road when sirens warn of incoming rocket attacks.
Israel and Hezbollah are on the edge of a full-scale war, following months of rocket and missile attacks by Hezbollah against Israel. Hezbollah began firing at Israel in October after the Hamas terror attack of October 7.
By operating in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1707, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
100 Terrorists Working for UNRWA
Israel Identifies One Hundred ‘Terrorist Operatives’ Working for U.N. Relief Agency
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified the United Nations last week that one hundred “terrorist operatives” have been identified as employees of UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for the Palestinians.
Israel asked the U.N. to terminate these employees without delay.
The letter from Israeli Ambassador Amir Weissbrod to UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini was sent on July 4, but was not made public until Thursday, when media outlets including Fox News and Germany’s Bild obtained copies of it. The editors of Bild were very upset to learn German money might have been used to fund terrorist operatives.
In the letter, Weissbrod noted the presence of Hamas operatives among UNRWA staff has been a “recurring concern” for Israeli officials. In January, the United States and several other countries suspended funding for UNRWA after Israel accused a dozen of its employees of actively participating in the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
Most of those countries eventually resumed funding for UNRWA, citing the desperate need of Palestinians in Gaza for humanitarian aid. Israel’s letter to the U.N. suggested that resumption of funding was a terrible mistake, because UNRWA’s staff in Gaza is still riddled with terrorists.
“In recent months Israel has discovered that hundreds of terrorists, members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have been employed by UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, some of them holding high-ranking positions in UNRWA or in Hamas,” Weissbrod told Lazzarini.
The Israeli ambassador attached a document listing one hundred names of “terrorists operatives who are currently employed by UNRWA-Gaza,” along with identifying information.
Weissbrod said this list was but a “small fraction” of the Hamas and PIJ operatives working as UNRWA staffers, promised more lists would be forthcoming – and vowed to send the lists to both Lazzarini and UNRWA’s donors.
“Israel expects from you and your organization to immediately terminate the employment of any member of Hamas or PIJ,” Weissbrod wrote. “Their work in UNRWA poses a security risk for Israel, and represents a breach of the principle of neutrality as was mentioned in Ms. Colonna’s report.”
Fox News noted that Lazzarini claimed he was horrified to learn UNRWA employees participated in some of the worst atrocities in human history, and moved fairly quickly to fire those identified by Israel.
“Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Lazzarini vowed in January.
The UNRWA chief’s tune has changed since then. At a meeting of the UNRWA Advisory Committee in Geneva on June 24, Lazarini complained Israel was making “a concerted effort to dismantle UNRWA with the aim of changing the established political parameters for peace in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Iraq Issues Death Sentence for First Wife of ISIS Leader
Iraq Issues Death Sentence for Wife of Slain Islamic State Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
The Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq on Wednesday sentenced an unnamed wife of former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to death, almost five years after her husband was killed by an American Special Forces operation ordered by President Donald Trump.
The Iraqi court ruled Baghdadi’s wife was guilty of cooperating with ISIS operations and holding Yazidi women kidnapped by the terror state as slaves in her Mosul home.
“The criminal court today sentenced Baghdadi’s wife to death by hanging for crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Yazidi people, and also for contributing to terrorism actions,” an Iraqi court official said.
The Yazidi are a tiny religious and ethnic minority who live primarily in the Sinjar mountains of Iraq’s northwestern Nineveh province. The Yazidis were hideously abused by the Islamic State, which raped, murdered, and enslaved them with feral glee. Some Yazidi children were forced into service as soldiers by ISIS.
The Yazidi, who are disdained as devil-worshipping heretics by some Muslims, were nearly wiped out by ISIS at the height of its power. Almost a decade after the attempted genocide began, many of them still live in refugee camps, in part because the central government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have been fighting over jurisdiction in Nineveh and delaying reconstruction of the devastated Yazidi homeland.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who, as his sobriquet implied, was born in the Baghdad region of Iraq – was the self-declared “caliph” of the Islamic State. His real name was Ibrahim Awad al-Badri.
Baghdadi was a secretive figure who was known mainly through mythmaking anecdotes spread by ISIS recruiters, but he was definitively known to have participated in the terrorist resistance to United States occupation after the fall of Saddam Hussein and was detained by American forces in 2004. Exactly how he came to be the political, military, and religious leader of the ISIS terror state remains something of a mystery.
Baghdadi lost much of his mystique by dying very poorly when U.S. special forces found him hiding in Syria in October 2019.
According to President Trump, he “died like a dog” after being chased into a tunnel by literal dogs, dragging three of his children with him as body shields. Trump said Baghdadi was “whimpering, and crying, and screaming all the way” until he decided to kill himself and his children by detonating a suicide vest.
“He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious, and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying,” Trump said.
Al Jazeera News said on Wednesday that Baghdadi was “known to have four wives,” one of whom was captured in Turkey about a week after his death.
The BBC spoke to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official who identified the woman sentenced to death on Wednesday as Baghdadi’s first wife Asma Mohammed, who also uses the name Umm Hudaifa.
Hudaifa was arrested in Turkey in 2018 and transferred to Iraqi custody in 2023. She gave an interview to the BBC from a prison in Baghdad in June, during which she denied participating in ISIS crimes and claimed she was married to Baghdadi for years before she realized he was a terrorist. She further claimed she did not know he was the “caliph” of the Islamic State until she saw him announce the foundation of the terror state on television.
Houthis Are Back
Houthis Claim Missile Attack on Maersk Ship, Fourth Attack in 24 Hours
The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen took responsibility on Tuesday for attacking the container ship Maersk Sentosa in the Arabian Sea — the fourth Houthi attack on commercial shipping in 24 hours.
The Houthis said they fired ballistic missiles at the Maersk Sentosa and two other ships on Tuesday. On Wednesday, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said a fourth ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait reported explosions nearby.
UKMTO said the captain of the Maersk Sentosa also reported explosions near his ship as he passed 180 nautical miles to the east of Nishtun, Yemen. The U.S. Navy’s Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) confirmed the attack and flagged it as the Houthi’s longest-range attack against international shipping since they launched their terror campaign in November.
“No injuries to the crew or damage to the ship or cargo were reported. The vessel is currently continuing her voyage towards her next port of call,” Danish shipping giant Maersk said in a statement on Tuesday.
Maersk described the Maersk Sentosa as a U.S.-flagged vessel sailing for the Maersk Line, Ltd. subsidiary, which often transports cargo for the American military and government agencies.
JMIC also confirmed a Liberian-flagged ship, named Mount Fuji, was attacked south of Mocha on Wednesday.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree additionally claimed missile and drone attacks against the Malta-flagged container ship Marathopolis in the Arabian Sea and the Liberian-flagged Patnaree III in the Gulf of Aden. Saree claimed the Patnaree III was an “Israeli ship,” although it sails under the Liberian flag.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc told his company’s clients in July that he expected Houthi terrorism to continue disrupting Red Sea shipping into the third quarter of 2024 and beyond. Clerc warned that high shipping costs and delays were likely to grow even worse, as long detours around Africa to avoid Houthi attacks kept ships at sea for longer and reduced the availability of cargo containers.
Was Biden's Gaza Pier a Scam?
Report: President Biden’s $230M Taxpayer-Funded Gaza Pier to Be Dismantled Permanently
President Joe Biden’s $230 million American taxpayer-funded Gaza pier is shutting down after about three weeks of usage and an unclear amount of aid actually delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.
Several U.S. officials anonymously told the Associated Press on Tuesday the pier — which Biden announced with fanfare during the State of the Union address in March and forced the U.S. military to build and operate — will be permanently dismantled after several more days of usage.
Biden announced the ill-fated idea during his speech on March 7. The pier — which took at least 1,000 U.S. troops to build and install and operate — opened on May 16.
The purpose was to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
The pier broke apart just nine days later, and had to be removed for repairs.
It was then reattached on June 7, but then had to be removed again a week later on June 14. It was then put back and then removed on June 28.
The Biden administration blamed the pier breaking apart on unexpected weather. However, as Breitbart News reported, the pier system, known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS), was never meant to be used in conditions with waves over about four feet. Breitbart News obtained exclusive video of the pier being battered by waves.
New Iranian President But Same Bloody Speech
‘Moderate’ Iranian President-Elect Launches Anti-Israel Rant to Shore Up Regime Support
Masoud Pezeshkian, the “moderate” and “reformist” candidate who won a surprising victory in Friday’s special election to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, on Tuesday declared his unwavering support for the regime’s terrorism against Israel and its Western allies.
Pezeshkian made his anti-Israel remarks to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who called to congratulate him on his victory in the election. Sudani told Pezeshkian he hoped to develop more “bilateral, regional, and international cooperation with Tehran” under the new administration, as Iran’s state-run Tasnim News put it.
Pezeshkian, in turn, commended the Iraqi government for its “wise and dignified” stance against Israel, which he accused of “crimes against the people of Gaza” during its military operation against the terrorists of Hamas.
Pezeshkian touched base with Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday, congratulating its murderous leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for his missile attacks against Israel.
“The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime,” Iran’s new “moderate” president told the Hezbollah kingpin.
“I am certain that the resistance movements in the region will not allow this regime to continue its warmongering and criminal policies against the oppressed people of Palestine and other nations of the region,” he said.
Pezeshkian promised that Iran’s financial and military support for Hezbollah is “rooted in the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “will continue with strength.”
A Hezbollah missile attack on Israel injured two civilians on Sunday, one of them a U.S. citizen. The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem said the American citizen, who is listed in serious condition at Galilee Medical Center, was not a U.S. government employee.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Defiant Former President Fist Pumps while surrounded by Secret Service agents
Jill Colvin and Julie Carr Smith (July 13, 2024 - 3:52PM EST Wrote:Former President Trump’s campaign said in a statement that he was “fine” after being whisked off the stage at a rally Saturday in Butler, Pa., after apparent gunshots rang through the crowd.
“President Trump thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “He is fine and is being checked out at a local medical facility. More details will follow.”
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee was showing off a chart of border crossing numbers during his last rally before the Republican National Convention opens Monday when bangs started ringing through the crowd. Trump could be seen reaching with his right hand toward his neck. There appeared to be blood on his face.
He quickly ducked behind the riser as agents from his protective detail rushed the stage and screams were heard in the crowd of several thousand people. The bangs continued as agents tended to him on stage.
The crowd cheered as he got back up and pumped his fist.
His motorcade has since left the venue. His condition was not immediately known.
Police began vacating the fairgrounds shortly after Trump left the stage in what local officers described as a crime scene.
The Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies did not immediately respond to messages.
Leaving Mass in Rehoboth Beach, Del., President Biden simply responded, “No,” when asked if he’d been briefed about the incident.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted on the social media platform X that he was praying for Trump.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:Former President Donald Trump released a statement following the alleged shooting that occurred at his rally in Pennsylvania, writing on Truth Social that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I want to thank The United States Secret Service, and all of Law Enforcement, for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Trump said, paying his respects to the individual at the rally who was tragically killed.
“Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the Rally who was killed, and also to the family of another person that was badly injured,” Trump continued.
“It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter, who is now dead. I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump said, explaining the he heard what he described as a “whizzing sound” before feeling the bullet rip though his skin.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening,” he said adding, “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
Details are still emerging, but the alleged shooter was killed by Secret Service. Trump could be seen standing up and pumping his fist to the crowd immediately after, with blood running down his face. It appears he mouthed, “Fight!” repeatedly to the crowd, which erupted into chants of “USA!”
Secret Service released the following statement, noting that one spectator was killed and two others are critically injured.
Secret Service Spokesman Anthony Gugliemi Wrote:Here is the latest information from our investigation. We are grateful to the Secret Service team and our law enforcement partners for their swift action. Our thoughts go out to the families affected by this tragedy.
Be Careful, Your Words Might Be And Will Be Used Against You Some Day...
Quote:President Joe Biden reportedly told donors on a phone call on Monday that it was “time to put” former President Donald Trump “in the bullseye.”
“Biden told donors on a private call this afternoon: ‘It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye,'” Kenneth P. Vogel, a reporter with the New York Times, wrote in a post on Monday.
Biden’s comments came days before what sounded like gunshots were heard at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday.
As the gunshots were heard, Secret Service agents could be seen swarming over to protect Trump as the crowd began screaming and ducking.
While being surrounded by Secret Service agents, Trump could be seen giving a fist bump. Blood was also seen on the side of his face and his ear.
Quote:The “Squad,” the most progressive members of Congress, condemned the assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday, though some were hesitant to specifically mention him.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the leader of the group, condemned the violence and issued the most forceful statement in support of Trump’s recovery.
“There is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania. It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms. My heart goes out to all the victims and I wish the former President a speedy recovery,” AOC said.
“Sending condolences to the family of the person killed at Trump’s rally. We should all be exhausted by the consistent senseless violence in our society. Political violence is abhorrent & must end. Wishing the former president a full recovery. This is a scary time for democracy,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).
Other members of the “Squad,” such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) condemned the violence without specifically mentioning former President Donald Trump.
Ilhan Omar Wrote:It’s sad to hear the tragedy that occurred at the Trump rally today. We must condemn acts of violence and pray for the victims. May calmness and decency prevail ??
Cori Bush Wrote:We must always collectively condemn political violence.
I mourn the loss of life and pray for the families of the victims. I hope for a full recovery for everyone injured today in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Quote:A witness at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday said in an interview with BBC following an assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump that he saw a gunman several minutes before the attack climb a nearby roof.
“We noticed the guy crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us,” the witness named Greg said. “He had a rifle, we could clearly see him with a rifle.”
The witness told the BBC reporter he and other bystanders allegedly tried to notify police and Secret Service about the armed man. The testimony from the witness has not been verified by BBC or Breitbart News.
“Next thing you know, I’m thinking to myself why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?” the witness said. “I’m standing there pointing at him… the next thing you know, five shots ring out.”
...
The witness estimated that the alleged gunman was on the roof for at least three or four minutes before shots rang out at the rally. The witness also surmised that Secret Service and police may not have been able to see the alleged shooter because of how the roof sloped to conceal the suspect.
“But why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here? I mean, this is not a big place,” he said to the BBC reporter.
BBC’s Washington correspondent Gary O’Donoghue wrote that more eyewitnesses he has spoken to believe the shooting “may well have come from a one-store building off to the right of the stage where Donald Trump was speaking…”
“It’s a building with a white roof, and one witness told me that he saw a man crawl onto that roof with a rifle and he then attempted to tell law enforcement about the man. Then, a few minutes later what appeared to be gunfire rang out,” he continued, again noting that reports are not fully verified. “Several witnesses have confirmed to me that’s where they believe the shooting came from.”
Unverified videos have been circulating on social media showing what appears to be a body on top of a white roof that is allegedly located near the rally.
Quote:The Republican National Convention (RNC) will take place next week two blocks away from the spot in Milwaukee where President Teddy Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt in 1912.
Roosevelt, then a former Republican president campaigning on the “progressive” Bull Moose Party ticket, was shot by saloon owner John F. Schrank outside the Gilpatrick Hotel, now the site of the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
There was no political motive; Schrank was mentally disturbed.
Roosevelt survived when the bullet was stopped by papers he was carrying in his breast pocket. He insisted on completing his speech before receiving medical attention.
The convention will begin just two days after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, with the shooter’s bullet just grazing his right ear.
Breitbart News spoke to Republican delegates at the hotel, who suggested that Democrats’s rhetoric had created an environment that encouraged Saturday’s assassination attempt, which claimed the life of one attendee at the rally.
The president is said to be fine and events at the convention are set to proceed on schedule — though likely with added layers of security.
Quote:Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the leader of then-Speaker Pelosi’s (D-CA) now-defunct January 6 Select Committee, introduced legislation in April 2024 targeting former President Donald Trump that would take away his Secret Service protection upon a conviction.
Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt during a Pennsylvania rally Saturday. After shooting began, Secret Service agents jumped on the president within seconds.
The shooter and one bystander are reportedly dead.
“Unfortunately, current law doesn’t anticipate how Secret Service protection would impact the felony prison sentence of a protectee—even a former President,” Thompson said in an official statement when introducing the legislation. “It is regrettable that it has come to this, but this previously unthought-of scenario could become our reality. Therefore, it is necessary for us to be prepared and update the law,” he continued, “so the American people can be assured that protective status does not translate into special treatment—and that those who are sentenced to prison will indeed serve the time required of them.”
...
Thompson is the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, the body tasked with protecting the safety of the American people.
As Breitbart reported at the time:
The Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act says that protection will “terminate for any person upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year.”
Thompson argues in a fact sheet for the DISGRACED Former Protectees Act, that the bill “would remove the potential for conflicting lines of authority within prisons and allow judges to weigh the sentencing of individuals without having to factor in the logistical concerns of convicts with Secret Service protection.”
Although Trump’s name is not mentioned in the bill’s text, the fact sheet points out that “former President Donald J. Trump’s unprecedented 91 felony charges in Federal and State courts across the country have created a new exigency that Congress must address to ensure Secret Service protection does not interfere with the criminal judicial process and the administration of justice.”
The fact sheet also points out that the bill proposed by Thompson will “apply to former President Trump.”
Byron York, chief political correspondent with the Washington Examiner, pointed out in a post on X that the underlying “obvious subtext” was that taking away Trump’s Secret Service would make it “easier for someone to kill Trump.” York wrote:
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson ran the January 6 committee, which mixed elements of show trial and reality series. Focused solely on Trump, of course. Now, Thompson wants to take away Trump’s Secret Service protection if Trump is convicted on any of the 88 felony charges levelled against him by elected Democratic prosecutors and a Biden Justice Department appointee. Obvious subtext here is that removing USSS would make it easier for someone to kill Trump, which is arguably the goal of Thompson’s bill, H.R. 8081: The DISGRACED Former Protectees Act.
Trump has accused the January 6 Committee led by Thompson of a being a sham and a weaponized political effort. Transcripts revealed this year showed that the committee withheld and even destroyed evidence that would vindicate Trump.
Quote:Tennessee state Sen. London Lamar (D) reacted to the assassination attempt on former President Trump by expressing hope that it will convince Republicans to support gun control.
Lamar did not mention the alleged would-be assassin was apparently killed by good guys with guns.
She posted to X:
Senator London Lamar Wrote:Now that Trump has stated he’s fine… I wonder will he consider sensible gun laws? Gun violence is too rampant in our country and I hope this situation changes the minds of his followers and Republican lawmakers.
At the time of Lamar’s post to X there is no knowledge of the type of firearm used in the assassination attempt nor any news on how it was acquired.
One might wonder what gun control would work when the type of firearm is unknown and the means of acquisition unclear.
...
Quote:Argentine President Javier Milei, a libertarian and vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, issued a statement in support of the 2024 presidential election frontrunner following an assassination attempt against him on Saturday evening, blaming the “international left” for the violence.
“All my support and solidarity to the president and candidate Donald Trump, victim of a COWARDLY assassination attempt that put at risk his life and those of hundreds of people,” Milei wrote in an extended message on Twitter.
Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening when a shooter opened fire at his podium. The bullets appeared to hit Trump in his ear, and law enforcement later updated that at least one rallygoer died, while one or two others are critically injured at press time. Security personnel also eliminated the shooter, whose identity remains unknown at press time:
...
In his response to the incident, Milei blamed the “international left” for the failed assassination and suggested that leftist violence was an international problem far larger in scope than the threat to Trump’s life.
“The desperation of the international left, that today sees how its nefarious ideology is expiring and is willing to destabilize democracies and promote violence to entrench itself in power, is not surprising,” Milei wrote. “With panic upon losing at the ballot, they resort to terrorism to impose their retrograde and authoritarian agenda”:
...
“I hope for the fast recovery for President Trump and that the elections in the United States occur in a just, peaceful, and democratic manner,” he concluded.
Milei later posted another message responding to a video of former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler in a television appearance prior to the assassination attempt.
“The little politically correct leftists are all cut from the same cloth, it doesn’t matter where in the world you look,” he wrote. “When in society a deviant adjective appears, there they will be to label their opponents with that adjective… we have several of these sinister beings in the country who can count on their journalist accomplices.”
“Easy, look for the politicians that do this and the journalists who play their game. There you will find the true enemies of LIBERTY. The cultural battle never stops,” he concluded, adding his catchphrase and campaign slogan, “long live liberty, damn it!”:
I wanna clarify here that the first 2 statements posted by President Milei were part of a single tweet.
Trudeau Acknowledges Young Canadians Are Having a Hard Time...
Quote:Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted that a generation of young Canadians will be denied housing wealth because they cannot buy their way into the nation’s migration-inflated housing market.
“They’re not going to get the same kind of homebuyers’ plan, necessarily, that people a generation ago did in terms of what the retirement nest egg would be,” he said to an allied advocacy group, Generation Squeeze, which claims to advocate for the interests of young people.
“[Young] people who have great jobs, a solid side hustle, and shifted expectations, and they still can’t find a place to actually start on that path towards home equity or homeownership,” he said, while trying to blame older Canadians for the damage he caused.
Trudeau refused to acknowledge how his easy immigration policy flooded the housing market and dramatically inflated the price of housing for young Canadians.
...
The same generational wealth shift is underway in the United States, where President Joe Biden’s decision to import 10 million migrants since 2021 is cutting wages and inflating housing prices.
“Home prices are now 47% higher than they were in early 2020, with the median sale price now five times the median household income,” CNBC reported in June 2024. “For renters,… prices are still 26% higher than they were in 2020 and rising in three out of every five markets,” CNBC added.
U.S. investors and landlords also know they can gain more by renting homes and apartments to groups of President Joe Biden’s migrant workers than by selling homes to single-income families. In New York, “Soaring rents and high upfront costs mean that fewer than 5% of New York City apartments were affordable for the average local worker last year,” Bloomberg reported in May 2024.
Quote:The U.S. Department of State issued a new travel alert about cartel gunmen kidnapping American passengers from buses traveling through the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The advisory comes even after Mexican border state officials dismissed a prior alert claiming the region has minimal crime statistics.
This week, U.S. diplomats from the consulate in Matamoros issued the travel alert claiming that gunmen were targeting buses from the Omnibus line that were leaving the city of Reynosa. In their alert, consular officials detailed that gunmen were focusing on U.S. citizens, residents, and other travelers with ties to the country.
Travelers reported to U.S. consular officials that gunmen had taken their documents and luggage, cleaned out their bank accounts, and that their loved ones had to pay thousands of dollars for their release.
The new travel alert comes one month after, as Breitbart Texas reported, the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros issued a notice of a similar trend where they didn’t specify which buses from Reynosa were being targeted.
Soon after that alert, Jorge Cuellar, a spokesman from the Tamaulipas government, dismissed the claims from U.S. diplomats, claiming that they had been irresponsible for relying on hearsay and not government statistics that show that the border state is virtually free of crime.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Cuellar has a long history of pushing false or doctored statistics to hide the fact that most of the state is under the control of drug cartels. Cuellar is the same official who has publicly denied a large number of cartel shootouts and blockades in the northern part of the state, claiming that they are part of social media disinformation.
Quote:An oil depot caught fire in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region Saturday following a Ukrainian drone attack in the early hours, local officials said, in the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.
Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow down the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is pressing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has made defenders vulnerable.
Rostov regional Gov. Vasily Golubev said a drone attack had caused a blaze spanning 200 square meters (2,100 square feet), but there were no casualties. Some five hours after he reported the fire on Telegram, Golubev said the fire had been extinguished.
In addition to two drones being intercepted over the Rostov region, Russian air defense systems overnight destroyed two drones over the country’s western Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Saturday.
...
Ukraine’s air defenses, meanwhile, intercepted four of the five drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said Saturday morning. Mykola Oleschuk, commander of Ukraine’s Air Forces, said the fifth drone left Ukrainian airspace in the direction of Belarus.
In other developments, Vadym Filashkin, the Ukrainian governor of the partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, said Saturday that Russian attacks on Friday had killed six people and wounded a further 22.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region that is also partly occupied, said Saturday that one person had been killed and six wounded as a result of Russian shelling over the previous day.
Quote:A court in Russia ordered the arrest of the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a hearing Tuesday that was conducted in absentia as part of a sweeping Kremlin crackdown on the opposition.
Yulia Navalnaya, who lives abroad, would face arrest if and when she returns to Russia.
Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ruled to arrest Navalnaya on charges of alleged involvement in an extremist group.
Navalny, the fiercest political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he had condemned as politically motivated. Authorities said he became ill after a walk but have otherwise given no details on Navalny’s death.
Navalny was imprisoned after returning to Moscow in January 2021 from Germany, where he had been recuperating from the 2020 nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Navalnaya has accused Putin of her husband’s death and vowed to continue his activities. Russian officials have vehemently denied involvement in Navalny’s poisoning and death.
Navalnaya mocked the court’s order on social media platform X, saying that it’s Putin who should be be prosecuted.
“His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV, but in Russia” she wrote, adding that he should be placed in the same colony and cramped cell “in which he killed Alexei.”
Her spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, described the court’s ruling as a recognition of her “merits.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz noted on X that Navalnaya is carrying on her husband’s legacy and denounced the Moscow court’s ruling.
Now the question is: how long will it take for the FSB, former KGB, to finally reach her?
Quote:United States intelligence was able to alert the German government to a Russian plot to assassinate the chief of Rheinmetall, the defence-industrial giant that has played a major role in keeping Ukraine armed.
Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger is said to have been one of the main targets of a Russian assassination plot. His company, a major global defence industry player, has received an €8.5bn German government contract to make 155mm shells for the Ukrainian armed forces and is planning to open an artillery shell factory in Ukraine.
The United States government is said to have detected the plot and informed their German counterparts, who were ultimately able to protect him.
The plot was originally reported by CNN, a favourite outlet for Ukraine war insider story dumps for the U.S. government, and subsequently widely reported in the German national and wider European press.
The news outlet cited unnamed U.S. and German government sources and asserted the attempt to kill Papperger was “one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defence industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort”.
Rheinmetall Wrote:@Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz, die Ministerpräsidentin des Königreichs Dänemark, Mette Frederiksen, und #Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius vollzogen heute in Unterlüß gemeinsam mit Armin Papperger, dem Vorstandsvorsitzenden der #Rheinmetall AG, den symbolischen ersten #Spatenstich für das „#WerkNiedersachsen“.
[translation]
@Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Minister-President of the Kingdom of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, and #Defense Minister Boris Pistorius carried out today in Unterlüß alongside Armi Papperger, the chairman of the board of Rheinmetall AG, the first symbolic laying of the cornerstone of the #Lower Saxony Factory.
[/translation]
Russia has issued the standard denial of the allegations. German broadsheet Die Welt cites Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who called the claims “fake news” that shouldn’t be “taken seriously”.
Quote:Teachers in the UK have reportedly been told to present the history of the British Empire similarly to the horrors of Nazi Germany.
So-called “anti-racist” guidance said to be offered to teachers in the UK has argued that both Nazi Germany and the British Empire should be presented as powers that “committed atrocities” and that teachers should refrain from offering students information about the historical goods done by the Empire.
According to The Telegraph, the guidance produced by “The Key” school support organisation stated that schools should “teach colonialism as ‘invading and exploiting’ other countries, and present the British Empire as you would other global powers that committed atrocities, e.g. Nazi Germany”.
The document reportedly continued to advise educators to “avoid presenting the British Empire as an equal balance of good and bad… The problem with the ‘balance sheet’ model is that the beneficiaries of Empire were one group of people (i.e. the colonisers) and the losers were those who were colonised.”
Additionally, it is said to have instructed teachers: “Don’t ignore the racism of historical figures such as Winston Churchill or the prejudices against black people expressed by Mahatma Gandhi – be upfront about their problematic views and the historical context that allowed them to go unchallenged.”
Meanwhile, despite classifying the British Empire as akin to Nazi Germany, the guidance reportedly says that teachers should honour the contributions of “Caribbean, African and Indian soldiers who fought for Britain in both World Wars” when the Empire still existed.
Conversely, the curriculum advice is said to argue that teachers should avoid presenting “white saviour narratives” such as the “focus on white abolitionists such as William Wilberforce” who was a leading voice in the international Christian movement to abolish slavery.
How the heck can anybody present an empire as utterly bad, except for the obvious exceptions like Nazi Germany?
And then be as bold and stupid as to claim that they should praise blacks or Indians and others for fighting for the empire!?
Wouldn't those fights make those people look as evil as the empire itself by definition?
Such craziness reminds me of an Israeli comedy sketch where the actress portrays a corrupt BBC reporter that keeps denying how evil Hamas is but barefacedly asks the production to raise the number of alleged Palestinian victims. At the end of that sketch or another one where they "interview" Hamas Leader Sinwar, they play a doctored videoclip where the narrator tells the audience that Britain was the bad guy while Germany was the victim. Right...
But not you can see some people quickly bought that idea, hook, line and sinker!
Quote:Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he would oppose cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Israel unless a “comprehensive, sustainable peace is established in Palestine.”
There is no such nation as “Palestine.” Erdogan was referring to the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s military operation against the terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is ongoing.
“It is not possible for the Israeli administration, which has trampled on the fundamental values of our alliance, to continue its partnership relationship with NATO,” Erdogan declared at a press conference in Washington, DC, where he was attending a NATO summit.
Erdogan railed against the supposed “expansionist and reckless policies” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the “atrocities” Israel is allegedly committing against the Palestinians in Gaza. He urged other nations to file complaints against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“I hereby call on all our allies to increase their pressure on the Netanyahu administration to ensure a cease-fire and the uninterrupted delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, who have been starving for nine months,” he said.
Erdogan called for sanctions against Israel during the NATO summit and accused the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who was hosting the event, of complicity in Israel’s “brutal murder” of civilians.
Erdogan’s stridently anti-Israel stance was at odds with most other NATO members, as was his diplomatic embrace of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Erdogan said he instructed his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, to arrange meetings with Assad and restart Turkey’s diplomatic relationship with Syria.
Relations between Ankara and Damascus became strained when Turkey supported rebel groups during the long and bloody Syrian civil war, which Assad eventually won with help from the outlaw regimes of Russia and Iran.
Erdogan put even more strain on that relationship by launching several military incursions into Syria to fight Kurdish militias, all of which he accuses of being aligned with the violent PKK separatist group in Turkey — even the Kurdish militias that worked closely with NATO powers to defeat the Islamic State.
UNRWA HQ was Hamas & Islamic Jihad's Command Center
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) discovered a command center this week used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists within the Gaza City headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Israel has long insisted that UNRWA supports terrorism in general, and maintains that several UNRWA employees participated directly in the October 7 terror attack. Terrorists have repeatedly used UNRWA facilities to launch attacks and store weapons.
The IDF said in a statement:
Following intelligence indicating that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and infrastructure were embedded inside the UNRWA Headquarters in Gaza City, IDF troops began a counterterrorism operation in the area earlier this week. At the start of the operation, the IDF opened a defined corridor to enable civilians to evacuate from the area.
During the operation, the Commando Brigade Combat Team under the command of the 99th Division conducted a targeted raid on a Hamas combat complex embedded inside a compound previously used by UNRWA. With the guidance of the Intelligence Directorate (J2), Maglan and Egoz special forces raided the compound and apprehended terrorists who tried to escape from the area.
During the activity, the troops engaged in close-quarters combat with terrorist cells that had fortified themselves inside the UNRWA compound and located parts for assembling a UAV, war rooms used for surveillance operations and large quantities of weapons, including tactical drones, rockets, machine guns, mortars, explosives and grenades.
Next to the terror compound raided by the troops, the IDF previously exposed and operated against an underground tunnel route and significant asset of Hamas’ military intelligence that passed under the building that served as UNRWA’s Headquarters in the Gaza Strip.
In additional scans carried out by the troops during the current operations in the area, the troops located an underground laboratory for the manufacturing of explosives and weapons inside a university building.
In February, the IDF revealed that it had found a Hamas command center underneath Shifa Hospital. Several countries suspended funding for UNRWA after reports emerged of UNRWA participating in the October 7 attack; but several have since restored it. Funding from the U.S. for UNRWA remains on hold; President Joe Biden initially restored $700 million in funding to UNRWA that had been cut by President Donald Trump out of terror concerns.
Quote:Israel’s Army Radio reported Saturday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had likely succeeded in killing Hamas’s military leader, Muhammad Deif, along with other senior terrorist leaders in an airstrike in the city of Khan Yunis in Gaza.
The IDF issued a terse announcement:
In a joint IDF and ISA [Israel Security Agency] activity based on precise intelligence, the IDF’s Southern Command and the IAF [Israeli Air Force] carried out a strike in an area where two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians. The location of the strike was an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings, and sheds.
Deif is considered the “mastermind” of the October 7 terror attacks against Israel, as Reuters reported in October:
A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public. So when Hamas’s TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday [October 7], Palestinians knew something significant was afoot.
“Today the rage of Al Aqsa, the rage of our people and nation is exploding. Our mujahedeen (fighters), today is your day to make this criminal understand that his time has ended,” Deif said in the recording.
…
The whereabouts of Deif are unknown, though he is most likely in Gaza in the maze of tunnels under the enclave. An Israeli security source said Deif was directly involved in the planning and operational aspects of the attack.
Army Radio reported that Hamas was preventing Palestinians from accessing the location of the airstrike, because it wanted to do everything possible to avoid confirming that Israel had in fact killed its main military commander.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday with a letter. You can read the full letter below:
My Fellow Americans,
Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation. Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans. We've provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Passed the first gun safety law in 30 years. Appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And passed the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today.
I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We've protected and preserved our Democracy. And we've revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.
It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.
I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision. For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me
reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.
I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can't do - when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America.
Quote:President Biden sent a shock wave through the American political system on Sunday when he announced he was withdrawing from the 2024 race for the White House, leaving delegates he earned during the primary election scrambling for an alternative.
Biden, who faced mounting pressure to step aside in the election and "pass the torch" to another candidate, made the announcement in a post to X. Shortly after, he offered his "full support and endorsement" for Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the party's presidential nominee.
It is unclear at this point, however, whether delegates will be moved in unison to support Harris to lead the ticket at next month's Democratic National Convention.
Two delegates who spoke to Fox News Digital said they are supportive of Harris, with a third expressing eagerness to learn more about her "plans."
At the convention, a candidate must win support from the majority of the party's nearly 4,000 delegates, the party officials who formally select the nominee. Delegates are distributed to candidates based on the results of primary elections in each state.
For the Democratic Party, there are "pledged" and "unpledged" delegates. Pledged delegates have to vote for the candidate who wins the primary or caucus in their respective state, while unpledged delegates may choose to vote for any candidate. In the Democratic Party, unpledged delegates are known as "superdelegates," current elected officials and party leaders who can support any candidate.
A total of 1,976 delegates are needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president. Biden won roughly 3,900 this year in primary elections throughout the U.S. in recent months. Those delegates, prior to Biden's decision to withdraw, had "pledged" to support Biden's candidacy, according to DNC rules.
"We have said from day one when these rumors started that unless and until President Biden gave us guidance in any direction, any other direction, we were with President Biden. He, this morning, gave us that guidance," said Samantha Hope Herring, a Democratic delegate and elected member of the DNC from Florida.
"Trusting his judgment and understanding that we want to see the most amazing work continue with the most qualified person that could possibly take the job right now, we are 100% supporting Kamala Harris," Herring added. "I can tell you that the delegation in Florida that I'm speaking with... people are 100% on board following President Biden's endorsement of Kamala Harris."
The support for Harris, Herring said, is leading delegates to feel "very strong" and supportive of seeing the Biden administration's agenda continue.
Quote:Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison promised to have a “transparent and orderly process” to select President Biden’s replacement as the presumptive nominee for president after his unprecedented decision to step down from the ticket on Sunday.
Without delving into how the process would unfold, Harrison promised that the party would adhere to its rules now that Biden has announced he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race.
“The work that we must do now, while unprecedented, is clear,” Harrison said. “In the coming days, the Party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
“This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the Party. Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people,” he added.
Harrison had been Biden’s pick to helm the DNC and had publicly stood by the president amid the mutiny by his own party.
Just after releasing his letter to the public announcing his political earthquake decision to withdraw, Biden formally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place.
Quote:Former President Barack Obama didn’t endorse Kamala Harris — saying Democrats would pick an unnamed “outstanding nominee” in his first statement on President Biden stepping aside from the party’s ticket.
“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” said Obama, 62. “But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”
Some Democrats fear that Harris, the 59-year-old vice president, could further diminish the party’s chances against former President Donald Trump, 78, in the Nov. 5 election.
“I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August. And I expect that every single one of us are prepared to carry that message of hope and progress forward into November and beyond,” Obama said.
...
Biden dropped out after Obama and other leading Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) privately expressed concerns that the sitting president would lead down-ballot Democrats to a wipeout defeat.
One Democrat who did not immediately endorse Harris was Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — a possible presidential contender — who tweeted that “I will work every day to ensure that [Trump] does not win in November” without explicitly backing Harris.
Let us remember what might have been one of the excuses, I mean, reasons why Biden dropped out on Sunday.
Quote:U.S. President Joe Biden, under pressure from fellow Democrats to drop his re-election campaign, tested positive for COVID-19 while visiting Las Vegas on Wednesday and is self-isolating after experiencing mild symptoms, the White House said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the positive test for the 81-year-old Democrat after Biden cancelled a speech due to the diagnosis.
"He is vaccinated and boosted and experiencing mild symptoms, Jean-Pierre said.
As he boarded Air Force One to depart Las Vegas to recuperate in Delaware, Biden told reporters: "Good, I feel good." But he climbed the stairs slowly, holding the railing tightly and pausing a few steps in and again towards the top.
The illness comes at a crucial time for Biden, who has been losing ground in battleground states against Republican Donald Trump, who is headlining a triumphant convention this week after he survived an assassination attempt on Saturday. The White House said Biden planned to spend a long weekend at his Delaware beach house. It was unclear how long the sickness would keep him for the campaign trail.
Minutes after the announcement, the president's motorcade was on the move to the Las Vegas airport after taping a radio interview in the city.
Biden had greeted a couple of dozen people at a Mexican restaurant prior to going into the radio interview. He was running late to deliver a speech to Latino civil rights group UnidosUS when the organizer, Janet Murguia, announced he had tested positive for COVID.
There were groans in the conference room at the news.
"He said to tell my folks that we're not going to get rid of him that quickly, we're going to have a chance to hear from him in the future directly," Murguia said.
Biden, who had spent two nights in Vegas on the campaign trail, is locked in a battle with some fellow Democrats who worry he is too old to seek re-election and want him to step aside in favor of another candidate.
Quote:The United States received intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to assassinate former President Donald Trump, CNN said on Tuesday, and a U.S. official said the Secret Service shared details of an increased threat with the Trump campaign.
The White House declined to comment, but said there were no indications that the suspected shooter in Saturday's attempted assassination of Trump had any foreign or domestic accomplices.
Iran said the accusations against it were "unsubstantiated and malicious."
U.S. officials have for years worried that Tehran would retaliate against Trump for his ordering of the January 2020 killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.
“As we have said many times, we have been tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration," said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.
"These threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority," she said.
CNN reported that the intelligence about the Iranian plot was passed on by a human source.
A U.S. official said that on learning of the increased threat, the National Security Council contacted the Secret Service, which added resources and assets for Trump's protection.
The Trump campaign was also made aware of an evolving threat, the official said.
In a statement to Reuters, Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York said "these accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious."
"From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice," Iran's statement said.
The Secret Service has been sharply criticized since the 20-year-old gunman who shot at Trump on Saturday was able to access a roof overlooking the rally and open fire, grazing Trump's ear, killing a rallygoer and wounding two other attendees.
President Joe Biden has ordered an independent review of how the gunman could have come so close to killing Trump, and the Secret Service also faces probes from Congress.
What I find laughable about this report is that they mentioned some human source there. I don't think any animal like a will ever tell us what somebody has commented on any conspiracy of sorts.
Secret Service Agents spotted 10 minutes before Trump took the stage
NBCNews's Julie Tsirkin, Julia Ainsley, Tim Stelloh and Chloe Atkins Wrote:The gunman who opened fire at former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally was reported as a suspicious person — and photographed — one hour before he began shooting, according to three sources familiar with a briefing for senators Wednesday.
Secret Service and FBI officials shared a timeline of events that revealed troubling new details about the assassination attempt and raised questions about why Secret Service officials allowed Trump to take the stage.
Thomas Matthew Crooks — who had a range finder and a backpack with him — was reported as a suspicious person one hour before he began shooting, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a statement after the briefing.
“This was a 100% cover-your-ass briefing,” Barrasso said. “He had a range finder and a backpack. The Secret Service lost sight of him.”
Roughly 30 minutes after the initial suspicious person report, Pennsylvania State Police notified the Secret Service of a suspicious person at 5:51 p.m. The Secret Service notified its snipers at 5:53 p.m., the sources said.
At 6:02 p.m., Trump took the stage. At 6:09 p.m., members of the crowd notified police that Crooks, 20, was on a rooftop. Two minutes later, Crooks opened fire on Trump at 6:11 p.m.
Senators were also told that Crooks visited the site of the assassination attempt last week, the sources said.
Barrasso said Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should be removed.
“No one has taken responsibility,” Barrasso said. “Someone has died. The [former] President was almost killed. The head of the Secret Service needs to go.”
In an interview Tuesday with ABC News, Cheatle said that she did not yet have all the details about the incident but that there was a “very short” period of time between when Crooks was identified as suspicious and when he began shooting.
A local police sniper team was inside the building from which Crooks fired at Trump, Cheatle said, and a decision was made not to deploy officers on the roof because it was sloped.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” Cheatle said Tuesday. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we would want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”
Local law enforcement officials denied that local snipers were in the same building as Crooks. On Wednesday, a Secret Service official told NBC News that the local sniper team was not actually in the building, as Cheatle said. Instead, it was in another building in the same complex.
In a separate statement to NBC News, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, “To be clear, the individual was never identified as a threat. The individual was identified as a suspicious person. Meaning there was no indication at the time that he was a danger. It was an individual that required further investigation.”
He said that it was “not accurate to say we were aware of a threat prior to the time that we identified him as a threat which was when he was neutralized.”
“Snipers were notified that local police were working an issue at the 3 o’clock position. That was what was communicated over police radio,” he added.
During Wednesday’s briefing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said investigators had not established a motive in the shooting, according to the three sources.
Wray told lawmakers that the FBI has interviewed 200 people and reviewed 14,000 images, including photos and livestreamed video of the rally, according to the sources.
Crooks had little to no social media presence, Wray said, and he used encrypted communication.
Wray also said investigators had not found a foreign connection to the attack, the sources said. The Biden administration recently obtained intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot against Trump, but U.S. officials said the threat had no connection to last week’s shooting.
Crooks, who worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home, requested the day off Saturday but told his employer he planned to return to work Sunday, a senior U.S. law enforcement official told NBC News.
After the shooting, Trump said on his social media platform that the bullet pierced the upper part of his ear. During an appearance Monday at the Republican National Convention, he had a bandage covering most of his ear.
Corey Comperatore, a former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company, was killed in the shooting. Two other people — David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74 — were injured. Their conditions were changed from critical to serious Wednesday, according to the hospital where they are being treated.
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Cheatle to appear for a public hearing this month, calling the assassination attempt “a total failure of the agency’s core mission.”
An official with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, responded with a letter, which was obtained by NBC News, saying Cheatle is available to testify later this month or early next month.
“The Department and USSS share your concern over the appalling events that occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend,” the official wrote, using the initialism for the Secret Service. “And are committed to doing all we can to get to the bottom of what happened.”
So we had a warning of someone suspicious at a Presidential Rally twenty minutes before the shooting, but it was neither a red flag and was a “very short” window, too short to do anything? And what's with the sloped window excuse given Crooks was on the roof? Its standard SOP... Don't let the client into the open under any condition if there's any possible threat. And there were plenty of people on video screaming there's a guy on a roof.
Quote:BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, has pulled an ad that briefly featured Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot and wounded former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The company said Crooks was a student at Bethel Park High School and appeared in the 2022 ad with other unpaid teens.
“In 2022, we ran an ad featuring a teacher from Bethel Park High School, in which several unpaid students briefly appeared in the background, including Thomas Matthew Crooks,” the company said in a statement to Reuters Sunday, adding that the ad has been pulled.
The 30-second BlackRock TV ad features an AP and honors economics class that Crooks attended at the time, with the would-be Trump assassin speaking with his teacher.
Crooks graduated the same year the commercial aired from Bethel Park High, where he was one of a dozen students who received National Math & Science Initiative Star Awards, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The company noted that while the ad has been removed from circulation, it is still available for investigators to review and is being circulated on social media.
BlackRock, which is expected to release its second-quarter earnings Monday, condemned Saturday’s shooting involving the former president that left one spectator dead and two others injured.
“The assassination attempt on former President Trump is abhorrent,” the company said.
“We’re thankful former President Trump wasn’t seriously injured, and thinking about all the innocent bystanders and victims of this awful act, especially the person who was killed.”
Quote:Would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks purportedly wrote a chilling online message that hinted at his sinister plans for the day he shot up the former president’s Butler, Pa. rally over the weekend.
“July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds,” the 20-year-old gunman allegedly wrote on Steam, a popular online platform where gamers communicate, Fox News reported. Investigators are currently working to determine whether the posting is legitimate.
The foreshadowing was revealed to US senators during a briefing by top law enforcement officials Wednesday.
Crooks, 20, also had images of the Republican presidential nominee as well as President Biden on his cellphone, and searched the dates of the Democratic National Convention and Trump’s Pennsylvania rally — where he shot at the 45th president from a nearby rooftop, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Investigators are mining the shooter’s phones and computer in search of answers to the assassination attempt — but have not yet identified a motive.
Their probe into the gunman’s search history did not reveal which side of the political spectrum Crooks, a registered Republican, was on, according to ABC News, which first reported the discovery.
Crooks, who was shot dead seconds after firing at the former president, had two cellphones — a primary device recovered near his body and a secondary one at his home that had just 27 contacts, according to Fox.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump called for unity and resilience Sunday after an attempt on his life added fresh uncertainty to an already tumultuous presidential campaign and raised sharp questions about how a gunman was able to open fire from a rooftop near a Pennsylvania campaign rally.
A full day after the shooting, the gunman’s motive was still a mystery, and investigators said they believe he acted alone. President Joe Biden ordered an independent security review of the attack, which left one bystander dead and two others critically wounded. The FBI was investigating the shooting as a potential act of domestic terrorism.
The attack shook the firmament of the American political system, causing a reassessment and a detente — at least temporarily — of the heated 2024 presidential campaign that has grown increasingly vicious.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said the upper part of his right ear was pierced by a bullet. His aides said he was in “great spirits” and doing well, and he headed to Milwaukee to the Republican National Convention that begins Monday.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he wrote on his social media site. “Much bleeding took place.”
In a subsequent social post Sunday, Trump said: “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”
The rallygoer who was killed was identified as Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief from the area, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who added that Comperatore “died a hero.”
...
The FBI identified the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the scene of the shooting.
The gunman had his father’s AR-style rifle and was perched atop a nearby roof when some rallygoers pointed him out to local law enforcement, said two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal probe.
A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer then retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, the officials said.
Questions abounded about how the gunman could have gotten so close in the first place. Kevin Rojek, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said “it is surprising” that the gunman was able to open fire on the stage before the Secret Service killed him.
Bomb-making materials were found inside both Crooks’ vehicle and at his home. FBI described the devices as “rudimentary.”
His motive remained unclear. Crooks wasn’t on the FBI’s radar, and he was believed to have acted alone. Investigators are combing through his social media feeds and his home, but so far have not found any threatening writing or posts. His family is cooperating.
Crooks’ political leanings were also not clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
The absence of a clear ideological motive added to the deepening questions about the shooting, denying the public any swift or tidy conclusions about the shocking crime.
...
The attack was the most serious attempt to kill a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It drew new attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized U.S. less than four months before the presidential election.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said agents are seeing increasingly violent rhetoric online since the rally and have seen people posing online as the shooter, who is dead.
Quote:Failed Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ high school further deepened the mystery surrounding the disturbed shooter’s teen years Saturday when officials denied allegations that he tried out for its rifle team, was bullied and threatened to shoot up the school years before carrying out his sinister plot.
Bethel Park High School “has no record” of Crooks, 20, trying out for the school’s rifle team, it said in an updated statement Saturday.
“The coach does not recall meeting him. However, it is possible that Crooks informally attended a practice, took a shot, and never returned,” the statement read.
“We don’t have any record of that happening.”
Two former classmates told The Post this week that Crooks tried out for the rifle squad, but was dismissed due to being a “comically bad” shot and for making concerning comments.
“We noticed a few things Thomas said and how he interacted with other people … He said some things that were kind of concerning,” the classmate claimed.
Officials also went on the record to dispel the “painful misconception” that Crooks was bullied while attending the Bethel Park, Pa.-based high school.
Undated footage that emerged in the days after the shooting appeared to show Crooks being relentlessly taunted by a classroom prankster who refused to stop yanking on his pant leg.
The school, however, claimed it had no record of any bullying incidents involving Crooks.
“According to our records, Mr. Crooks excelled academically, regularly attended school, and had no disciplinary incidents, including those related to bullying or threats,” the statement insisted — noting that the district “maintains detailed records, including academic performance, attendance, disciplinary history, and health records” for students.
Bethel Park slammed allegations that Crooks — who graduated in 2022 — ever threatened violence against the school as was previously reported.
“In 2019, there was an unfortunate incident involving threats made by a different student against specific school administrators. That incident was thoroughly investigated and quickly addressed, and the student involved received appropriate discipline” Bethel Park High School explained.
“It had no connection whatsoever to Thomas Crooks.”
The school’s denials came as rumors continued to swirl about his possible motive for opening fire on the crowd at Trump’s rally in Butler on July 13.
Quote:Thomas Matthew Crooks may have been trying to “diagnose himself” when he researched mental disorders months before he attempted to assassinate Donald Trump — a key step in what one former FBI agent described as the typical route some take to committing mass violence.
In April, Crooks made online searches for major depressive disorder, investigators discovered this week – though there is no evidence he was ever formally diagnosed with the condition.
“One thing may be that he was trying to diagnose himself and could tell that he was having these thoughts or these feelings,” former FBI terrorism task force supervisor Michael McKeown told WTAE of the unearthed searches.
“And then, unfortunately, instead of getting mental health counseling, he took the other route of violence,” McKeown added.
Crooks’ search history could be part of the first step in what the FBI calls the “pathway to violence,” which is known as expressing grievances, he explained.
When investigators examined Crooks’ devices, they also found that he made online searches for Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley and his parents, as well as GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump, President Biden, and other high-profile political figures.
He had also done target shooting at a nearby gun range that he frequented with his father, and appeared to have scouted out the rally location one week ahead of time.
On the morning of the shooting, Crooks returned to the rally grounds with a range finder – seemingly to test how authorities would respond.
Crooks’ movements in the lead-up to the assassination attempt could be viewed as the research and preparation step by the FBI, McKeown explained.
“They want to test that. Can they face law enforcement or an authority figure before they go on the attack? So they may do something small to test that and then see if it works out,” McKeown said.
Authorities are still trying to parse out Crooks’ motive for scaling the roof of a nearby factory and aiming his father’s AR-15 style rifle just 130 yards from the podium where Trump, 78, was addressing the crowds on July 13.
Quote:A Florida man was accused of making “written threats to kill” former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance and their families just days after a Pennsylvania man attempted to assassinate the 45th president.
The Jupiter Police Department announced that 68-year-old Michael M. Wiseman was arrested on Friday for charges for written threats to kill.
Authorities alleged that Wiseman wrote threats against the Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee on his Facebook account and also made to members of the Trump and Vance families.
The police department said it was notified of the threats, including bodily harm, by multiple members of the community.
Jupiter, Florida is about 20 miles, or an approximately 30-minute drive, north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach.
“JPD coordinated the investigation with the United States Secret Service and the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office,” the department said. “JPD officers took Wiseman into custody without incident.”
The threat came just days after Trump was shot at in a shocking attempt on the president’s life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Quote:A large explosion rocked Tel Aviv overnight Thursday amid the war with Hamas.
Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst was at the scene and shared video on X of him standing on broken glass that had shattered off a storefront across the street.
Yingst reported that emergency crews were checking a partially residential area to see if anyone had been injured by the blast.
"I'm being very careful about the details," Yingst said, adding that he hadn't been able to speak with any sources yet because it's the middle of the night there. "We're trying to determine what exactly took place."
A statement from the Israel Defense Forces said "An initial inquiry indicates that the explosion in Tel Aviv was caused by the falling of an aerial target, and no sirens were activated. The incident is under thorough review."
He added in a later post that a photo shop across the street from the U.S. embassy was damaged in the blast, calling the scene a "very fluid situation."
A police spokesperson said: "A short while ago, a report was received by the police hotline about an explosion heard in a building in Tel Aviv. Large forces from the Tel Aviv District Police and police bomb disposal experts have arrived at the scene and are handling the situation."
Israel has been involved in the Gaza war wince Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on the country last October.
Quote:Israel’s air force on Saturday launched surgical strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran-sponsored Houthi terrorist regime in Yemen.
According to an Israel Defense Forces statement, "A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the area of the Al Hudaydah Port in Yemen in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months."
In a video statement posted on X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that, "The port we attacked is not an innocent port. It was used for military purposes; it was used as an entry point for deadly weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran." Netanyahu, who is due to address Congress next week, congratulated the IDF and Air Force for the operation and warned: "I have a message for Israel's enemies: don't misunderstand us. We will protect ourselves in every way, on every front. Anyone who harms us will pay a very heavy price for his aggression."
Netanyahu noted that the port was over 1000 miles away from Israel's borders, saying "It makes it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the State of Israel will not reach."
On Friday, the Houthi movement fired a lethal drone into Tel Aviv, resulting in the death of an Israeli and at least 10 injured and severe damage to buildings. The strike took place near the U.S. consulate building in Tel Aviv.
Israel's Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said after the strikes in Yemen: "The fire that is currently burning in Yemen, is seen across the Middle East. The first time that the Houthis harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required."
He added, "I have just left the IAF [Israeli Air Force] Command Center where I met with the Prime Minister, IDF Chief of the General Staff and the Air Force Commander and closely monitored the strike conducted by IAF aircraft on the Hodeidah Port [in Yemen], 2,000 kilometers from the State of Israel." Gallant said "the significance is clear" of the fire in Yemen is important to show Israel’s enemies what they can face.
Gallant continued "The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required. The blood of Israeli citizens has a price. This has been made clear in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Yemen, and in other places. If they will dare to attack us, the result will be identical."
The reference to Lebanon is directed at the Hezbollah terrorist regime that is the de facto ruler over Lebanon.
A Houthi spokesperson said via a public Telegram board message that Israeli airstrikes targeted civilian facilities, oil tanks and a power station in al-Hudaydah.
Houthi-linked media reported that several people were killed, according to Iran International. A Houthi official told the pro-Hezbollah news outlet in Lebanon, Al Mayadeen, that the Houthi regime will retaliate against Israel for the IDF strikes in Lebanon. The U.S.-designated terrorist entity, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi regime and the Islamic Republic of Iran form the anti-American and anti-Israel "axis of resistance."
Iran International noted the IDF strikes on Saturday hit oil refining facilities in the Hodeidah port, according to sources cited by Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthi movement.
Quote:A Russian court has handed down its sentence for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich after over a year of proceedings.
The court found Gershkovich, 32, guilty of "gathering secret information" while reporting on a trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.
He has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Prosecutors claimed Gershkovich gathered secret information on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a plant about 90 miles north of Yekaterinburg that produces and repairs tanks and other military equipment.
The U.S. government classifies Gershkovich as "wrongfully detained," and is seeking his immediate release through diplomatic channels. He has also personally denied all charges, along with The Wall Street Journal.
"Evan’s wrongful detention has been an outrage since his unjust arrest 477 days ago, and it must end now," The Wall Street Journal said Thursday in a statement.
It continued, "Even as Russia orchestrates its shameful sham trial, we continue to do everything we can to push for Evan’s immediate release and to state unequivocally: Evan was doing his job as a journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously alluded to swapping the reporter for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian national jailed in 2019 for killing a Georgian citizen living in Berlin who had fought against Russian forces in Chechnya.
Judges said Krasikov had acted on the instructions of Russian authorities.
Quote:Chinese authorities say at least 11 people have died and 30 are missing in the partial collapse of a highway bridge in the northwest of the country following heavy storms and flooding. A similar number are missing in the southwest after dozens of houses were destroyed by storms.
The official Xinhua News Agency said five vehicles that fell off the bridge have been recovered after the structure in Shaanxi province crumbled at around 8:40 p.m. Friday. A photo released by Xinhua showed a section of the bridge snapped and folded down at almost a 90-degree angle into the rushing brown water below.
It said rescue operations were still underway Saturday in the province's Zhashui county, with some 20 cars and 30 people still missing.
In Sichuan province to the southwest, an estimated 30 people were missing and around 40 houses wrecked in flooding and storms, Xinhua reported. It said roads, bridges and communication networks in hardest hit Hanyuan county had been damaged or knocked out and that rescue teams had been working since before dawn to restore communications and transport connections.
As its economy boomed over recent decades, China built a huge network of highways, high-speed railways and airports, most of which have helped fuel further growth.
However, a dramatic decline in that economic expansion, the poor-quality infrastructure, poor safety supervision and a desire to cut corners by industries looking to save money have led to a steady stream of deadly accidents.
China's western and southwestern provinces are particularly prone to flooding and landslides due to their mountainous landscapes and the powerful rivers that run through them. Mining, tourism and rising urbanization have also disturbed a precarious balance with the natural environment that had been sustained over thousands of years.
Shaanxi is best known as one of the fulcrums of Chinese civilization, from which emerged the first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, who left the famed terracotta army as his legacy outside the capital Xi'an as part of a vast tomb complex that attracts massive numbers of visitors each year.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump said people who decide to burn the American flag should receive a “mandatory” sentence of one year in jail.
During a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night, Trump spoke about how the United States did not “need more people who want to burn” the American flag, referring to how anti-Israel protesters have burned American flags at demonstrations.
“We do not need more people who want to burn our flag,” Trump told the crowd.
“I watched yesterday, and the day before, they’re burning our American flag. And, I said, I know they say it’s unconstitutional, well, make it not unconstitutional. You burn our American flag, you should get immediately, mandatory, one year in jail.”
Trump’s comments come days after pro-Palestinian protesters descended upon Washington, DC, to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress.
Pro-Palestinian protesters set American flags ablaze after taking them down from the flag poles at Union Station and replaced them with Palestinian flags.
This is not the first time that protesters have burned the American flag. In May, pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City draped a Palestinian flag around a memorial, while burning the American flag.
In April, American flags were also burned during pro-Palestinian protests in New York City, as one protester waved a burning American flag, while another set a counter-protesters American flag ablaze.
Maryland Governor Thinks Biden Deserved a Better Treatment...
Quote:Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Joe Biden deserved better treatment than public calls for him to leave the presidential race.
Guest host Martha Raddatz said, “You had been a very strong supporter of Joe Biden staying in the race just a few days after that disastrous debate saying, he is not going to take himself out of the race nor should he. Did your concerns grow as the weeks went on?”
Moore said, “I had private conversations with the president. And I’m a big believer that when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And I had private conversations where I was telling the president the truth.”
He continued, “I also know that the president deserved better than people who were running around him and going into public and demanding that the President of the United States step down, particularly when you look at the track record of the Biden-Harris administration. I’ve had a phenomenal partner in the Biden-Harris administration to be able to deliver the kind of results that we needed in Maryland. And so I knew that if he said that he was going to continue pushing forward, that I was going to stand with him.”
Raddatz said, “But you said you told him the truth. What was the truth?”
Moore said, “Well, I think the truth was that there were real concerns. There were real concerns that I know that people had felt, but also that people were telling me that they had felt. I also know that, you know, I’m a loyalty person, and I believe that you can have private conversations and tell people the truth. You know be able to tell them what you’re hearing without turning around and trying to publicly embarrass them.”
Quote:U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) says Vice President Kamala Harris cannot run from the failed border policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Gonzales’ comments came during an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas.
Despite the Vice President’s recent attempts to distance herself from the title of Border Czar and a complicit mainstream media willing to help, Gonzales says no amount of media spin can change the devastating impacts of failed border policies across America — especially in the border states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.
“I’ve seen what she has done at the border as Vice President, which is nothing,” the Texas congressman stated. “I don’t want to see what she’ll do as President. It will be even worse.”
Representative Gonzales, whose district includes 800 miles of border(nearly two-thirds of the Texas border) with Mexico, says the idea of arguing whether the Vice President Harris is the Border Czar or not is a waste of time for her campaign.
“Whether you call her a Border Czar or not, it doesn’t matter,” he explained. “She cannot run from the failed border policies that this administration has enacted that have gotten Americans killed.” Gonzales added that Harris once referred to the porous southwest border in El Paso as “the new Ellis Island.”
Thus far, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nearly 1,400,000 migrants have been apprehended at the southwest border by the Border Patrol since October. Gonzales says the total does not include hundreds of thousands of migrants who have avoided apprehension by the Border Patrol this year. Nor does it include hundreds of thousands of migrants allowed to enter through land border ports and airports under this administration’s CBP-One application and humanitarian parole programs that Congress never authorized.
Gonzales says the Biden-Harris administration needs to clearly count the number of migrant entries along the southwest border and not fail to disclose to Americans the total of those that are admitted at the ports of entry through various parole programs.
According to CBP, the Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions during each of the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration have surpassed any other annual total since its inception in 1924.
Gonzales cautioned the importance of reminding Americans about the Vice President’s failure as the point person on border security over the last three years. “We have to remind people about the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration and how a Trump Presidency and Republican-led Congress is going to make America better off,” Representative Gonzales added.
Quote:San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents reportedly apprehended three suspected Palestinian terrorists after they illegally crossed the border between ports of entry. The suspected terrorists illegally crossed the Mexican border into California, according to a news report.
Border Patrol agents took three suspected Palestinian terrorists into custody earlier this month after they illegally crossed the border from Mexico into California, the New York Post reported. One of the men reportedly had a “salacious photo” of a masked man holding an AK-47 rifle, the article states.
A source within U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Breitbart Texas they could not confirm the report but said it is “highly likely.” Information on Special Interest Aliens (SIA) is generally not disseminated outside of the sector originating the report to be sent to higher headquarters.
Another source told Breitbart that San Diego Sector agents are apprehending so many SIAs that the report is “highly probable.”
The source believes the SIAs are being routed to crossing points in California after Del Rio Sector agents began performing extra background screenings in coordination with the FBI. The source said he believes California sectors are not currently performing this level of vetting.
“Since this whole mess began,” the source added, these crossings are “highly dangerous and this administration does not care one bit.”
The Post reports the San Diego Sector agents apprehended a Turkish migrant in addition to the three Palestinians. The Turkish migrant is also suspected of having ties to terrorist groups.
The four migrants with suspected ties to terrorist groups were transferred from Border Patrol custody to ICE and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force for further investigation.
In April, Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark reported that the apprehension SIAs was climbing along the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
“According to a Department of Homeland Security report reviewed by Breitbart Texas, nearly 25,000 migrants from Special Interest Countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have been apprehended entering the United States during the first six months of fiscal year 2024, which began in October,” Clark reported.
Second Man Injured During Butler Rally Leaves Hospital
Quote:The second man who was left injured after a gunman opened fire at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 was discharged from the hospital.
A spokesperson for Highmark Health confirmed to the Hill that James Copenhaver, 74, had been discharged from Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh after being injured during the former president’s rally weeks ago.
Copenhaver was one of two people who were left injured at the Trump rally on July 13 after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire from the roof of a nearby building with a direct line of sight of Trump. Trump was shot by “a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his right ear.
The other man who was left injured, David Dutch, was recently released from Allegheny General Hospital after he had been shot in his chest and liver.
Another man, Corey Comperatore, a former Pennsylvania fire chief was shot and killed during the rally while trying to shield and protect his wife and daughter.
Copenhaver’s family had previously issued a statement thanking “the first responders, medics, and hospital staff” who were taking care of him, and offered prayers for the other victims and Trump, according to KDKA News.
“Jim would like to especially thank the first responders, medics, and hospital staff who have provided him with initial and continuing care,” Copenhaver’s family said in a statement that was released from Allegheny Health Network.
The former president recently revealed that he was “going back to Butler” and would be holding a “big and beautiful rally” to honor Comperatore and the “brave patriots injured” at the rally.
Quote:A CNN report drawn from a recent survey of gun owners shows that more Americans are armed for self-defense than ever before.
CNN noted that the survey, published Thursday, centered on 2,477 “American adults who reported owning guns between May and June 2023.”
The report cited data from Injury Prevention journal, which revealed the percentage of gun owners that cited “personal protection” as the reason for getting a gun jumped from 26 percent in 1999 to 79 percent in 2024.
Dr. David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University, suggested the desire to be armed for self-defense is a response to the civil unrest America witnessed during COVID years.
Yamane claimed 2020 had much of the same unrest seen in the 1960s, when gun ownership for self-defense grew exponentially. He noted:
If you think about the year of 2020, it really had some of those characteristics. There was Covid, which rolls immediately into the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which rolls immediately then into an insane presidential election that rolls immediately into the insurrection at the Capitol.
On January 12, Breitbart News pointed to National Shooting Sport Foundation (NSSF) numbers showing the number of firearms in U.S. civilian hands topped 473 million by the end of 2021.
Chinese & Russian Airplanes Got Very Close to Alaska
Quote:The United States and Canada scrambled fighters on Wednesday as Chinese and Russian nuclear-capable bombers flew off the coast of Alaska.
According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), it was the first time a Chinese H-6 bomber had penetrated Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
An ADIZ is a buffer region surrounding a nation’s sovereign airspace. Sending military planes into another nation’s ADIZ is not an act of war, but it is considered provocative, especially since fighters will usually be launched to monitor the incoming aircraft and ensure they are not a threat.
China frequently sends warplanes into the ADIZ of Taiwan, for example, forcing the much smaller Taiwanese air force to exhaust itself in response — a tactic known as “gray zone” warfare.
NORAD noted that Russian bombers have entered Alaska’s ADIZ before, most recently in May, but this appears to be the first time Chinese bombers have accompanied them.
NORAD said it “detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC [People’s Republic of China] H-6 military aircraft” in the Alaskan ADIZ. The U.S. sent F-16 and F-35 fighters to monitor their activities, while Canada launched CF-18 fighters, the Royal Canadian Air Force version of the American F/A-18 Hornet.
“The Russian and PRC aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” NORAD said.
“This Russian and PRC activity in the Alaska ADIZ is not seen as a threat, and NORAD will continue to monitor competitor activity near North America and meet presence with presence,” the statement added.
A source told Air & Space Forces Magazine on Wednesday that the Chinese and Russian bombers were on a joint patrol and launched from the same Russian airbase.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Zhang Xiaogang confirmed the “strategic joint air patrol” in a press conference on Thursday.
“This is the eighth air strategic joint patrol organized by the two militaries since 2019. It further tested and improved coordination between two air forces and deepened strategic mutual trust and substantive cooperation,” said Zhang.
“This operation did not target any third parties and was in line with relevant international law and practice and had nothing to do with the current international or regional situation,” he insisted.
China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state,” a term Beijing created to give itself a greater role in exploiting Arctic resources. It has spoken of incorporating the Arctic into its infrastructure scheme as a “polar Silk Road” or “Silk Road on ice.”
The Pentagon said on Monday — before the Russian-Chinese joint bomber patrol flew into Alaska’s ADIZ — that it was troubled by growing Russian and Chinese cooperation in the Arctic.
Quote:Cuba announced on Wednesday that three vessels from Russia’s Baltic Fleet will visit the island nation starting Saturday, marking the second Russian war flotilla to visit the country in recent weeks.
The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (Minfar) made the announcement on social media in the evening hours of Wednesday, informing that the flotilla included the training ship Smólny, the patrol ship Neustrahimiy, and the offshore oil tanker Yelnya. The ships are expected in Havana from July 27-30, 2024.
“As we have pointed out on other occasions, the visits of naval units from other countries is a historical practice of the revolutionary government with nations with which we maintain relations of friendship and collaboration,” Minfar’s statement read.
“During their stay in our country, the Russian sailors will carry out a program of activities that includes courtesy visits to the Chief of the Revolutionary Navy, to the Governor of the capital, as well as touring places of historical and cultural interest,” the statement continued.
Officials from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden have not publicly commented on the upcoming visit of the Russian war vessels to Cuba at press time.
The upcoming visit of the three Russian Baltic Fleet vessels will occur less than two months after a Russian fleet led by the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and nuclear submarine Kazan visited Cuba for five days in mid-June as part of aerial and naval combat exercises that the Russian Navy conducted in the Caribbean Sea.
Following their visit to Cuba, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Akadémik Pashin oil tanker, which had accompanied the Russian fleet that visited Cuba, traveled to Venezuela for a four-day visit to the South American nation that saw the crews of both ships participate in a military parade organized by the socialist regime that commemorated the 213th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence.
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in June that the military exercises Russia conducted in the Caribbean Sea did not “pose a threat” to the United States.
“We’ve been tracking the Russians’ plans for this. This is not a surprise. We’ve seen them do this — these type of port calls before, and these are, you know, routine naval visits that we’ve seen under different administrations,” Singh said at the time.
Oh really, Singh? What about the next article then?
Quote:The regimes of Russia and Cuba held discussions for the construction of an oil refinery in Cuba following Russian lawmakers’ visit to the island, the Russian state news agency Tass reported on Monday.
The prospective Russian refinery, if built, would become Cuba’s fifth, joining the nation’s four other rundown refineries.
A delegation of Russian lawmakers that Duma Speaker Viacheslav Volodin led traveled to Cuba in July. During the visit, the delegation held meetings with the communist regime’s figurehead president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the head of the Cuban parliament, Esteban Lazo Hernández.
Volodin landed in Havana after a brief visit to Nicaragua, where he participated as a special guest in celebrations of the forty-fifth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in which dictator Daniel Ortega made public calls for the “disappearance” of the United States.
“Bidens, they come and go. While Cuba exists and will into the future,” Volodin said in reference to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to drop from the 2024 presidential race.
Duma Deputy Speaker Alexander Babakov, who was part of the Russian delegation, told Tass that the construction of the oil refinery was one of the subjects touched upon during the Russian lawmakers’ whirlwind visit to Havana.
“Cuba has crude oil, it is logical not to import oil products, but to produce them here,” Babakov said. “The largest Russian companies could participate here.”
“In this regard, a possible next step is deeper processing of oil products and including the creation of fertilizers,” he continued.
In recent years, the Castro regime has begun seeking an increased amount of aid from Russia, as Cuba suffers through a severe economic and humanitarian crisis — a direct consequence of more than six decades of communist rule.
Russia, a top financier of the Castro regime during the times of the Soviet Union, resumed its oil shipments to the island nation in late March after a year-long hiatus. The oil shipments seek to help Cuba ease its severe fuel shortages and run its dilapidated power plants, whose failures are causing near-endless power blackouts nationwide. Cubans are reportedly living through some of the most inhumane conditions since the 1959 communist coup.
The increase in Russian oil shipments also seeks to offset the diminishing number of heavily subsidized oil shipments that Cuba receives from the socialist regime in Venezuela, Cuba’s top oil supplier.
Quote:Leftist Latin American governments with friendly ties to Venezuela’s socialist regime, such as Brazil and Colombia, have decided not to send observers to monitor Sunday’s sham presidential “election” this week, responding to violent statements by dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The Maduro regime will hold a sham presidential election on July 28. Maduro, who clung to power in a similar fraudulent “election” in May 2018, is seeking to secure a six-year term in office.
Sunday’s pseudo-electoral event will see Maduro “run” against several handpicked “opposition” rivals and 74-year-old former diplomat Edmundo González, the only legitimate opposition candidate that regime-controlled authorities allowed on the ballot. Maduro will appear on Sunday’s ballot 13 times.
Last week, Maduro threatened that there will be “bloodbath” and a “fratricidal civil war” in Venezuela if he does not “win” the “election.”
“The destiny of Venezuela, in the 21st century, depends on our victory on July 28. If you do not want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, product of the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success, the greatest victory in the electoral history of our people,” Maduro said.
Maduro’s comments prompted Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — one of the Venezuelan socialist regime’s closest allies in the region — to express that he felt “scared” in response to the remarks. Lula claimed that he had told Maduro that “the only chance for Venezuela to return to normality is to have a widely respected electoral process.”
“I was scared by Maduro’s remarks that Venezuela could face bloodshed if he loses,” Lula said. “Maduro needs to learn that when you win, you stay; when you lose, you leave.”
Maduro, without directly mentioning Lula, responded on Tuesday by suggesting that anyone scared by his comments should “drink chamomile tea.” On Wednesday, Maduro questioned the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system by claiming that, unlike the Venezuelan electoral system, “not a single identity document is verified” by the Brazilian electoral authorities.
“Where else in the world do they do that? In the U.S.? The electoral system is unable to be audited. In Brazil? They don’t even audit a single ballot. In Colombia? They don’t audit a single ballot,” Maduro said.
Brazil’s top electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) refuted Maduro’s claims in a statement in which it asserted that it is “false” that Brazil’s electoral ballot boxes are not audited and that, as a result of Maduro’s statements, it would not send a group of electoral observers for Sunday’s sham election.
Quote:The United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) revealed in a report published this week that the communist Ortega regime banned nearly 8,000 Catholic processions between 2023 and 2024.
The silencing of traditional Catholic ceremonies occurred as part of dictator Daniel Ortega’s brutal campaign of repression against Christianity in the country.
The report also warned that the Ortega regime engaged in both physical and mental torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of imprisoned Catholic priests and other religious figures during their unjust imprisonment in local prisons, including forced nudity and deliberately reducing the amount of food provided.
GHREN, established in 2022, was tasked by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC) with investigating the Ortega regime’s gross human rights violations since the events of April 2018, when thousands of Nicaraguans flocked to the streets calling for an end to communism in their country. The group must also make recommendations based on its findings “with a view to improving the situation of human rights” and providing “guidance on access to justice and accountability.”
GHREN’s report, presented on Monday, covers the widespread systematic violations of human rights and abuses of international law committed by the Ortega regime against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church between April 2018 and May 31, 2024.
The majority of Nicaraguans are Catholic. Close to half — 44.9 percent — identify as Roman Catholic, and 38.2 percent identify as evangelical Christian. Another 2.4 percent identify as practitioners of other religions.
Ortega, who identifies as Catholic, has waged a brutal persecution campaign against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church since April 2018 as punishment for the local Catholic Church’s support of the pro-democracy dissidents. In recent years he has expanded persecution to other groups of Christians, particularly Evangelicals.
GHREN detailed that, since 2018, the government “has been implementing a discriminatory plan in order to eliminate all critical voices and any threat to state control” and stressed that some of the violations constitute “the crimes against humanity of imprisonment, torture, deportation and persecution on political grounds.”
The persecution against Catholicism — which dramatically intensified between 2022 and 2023 — has resulted in pro-Sandinista thugs carrying out violent assaults against Catholic churches, the forced imprisonment and banishment of Catholic priests, and the banishment of nuns and other members of the Church, as well as the prohibition of the celebration of numerous Catholic processions and traditional Catholic festivities, some of which are unique to Nicaragua.
...
The report confirmed the prohibition of at least 7,976 Catholic processions in Nicaragua between 2023 and 2024. GHREN pointed out that the number of banned processions “could be higher,” as activities planned to be carried out in rural parishes or communities were not included in the tally.
The U.N. body estimated that the widespread ban of religious practices common to the largest group of faith in the country may have affected the religious freedom and other related rights of more than three million people, noting that not only those who profess Catholicism attend the processions. The Group of Experts pointed out that it had not recorded similar aggressions against non-Christian religious denominations.
GHREN concluded that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that, in some cases, treatment of political prisoners “reached the threshold of torture due to its combination, prolonged nature, the presence of other stressors or vulnerabilities and the severe psychological and physical damage it inflicted on the victims.”
Quote:Ecuador’s Navy announced the start of a campaign to protect the Galápagos Islands from the predatory practices of Chinese illegal fishing vessels that have, for years, endangered their maritime biodiversity.
The announcement comes shortly after the conclusion of Galapex III, a series of multinational naval training exercises designed to fight illegal fishing that the Ecuadorian Navy hosted from June 23 to July 9. The navies of the United States, Canada, South Korea, Italy, Spain, and neighboring nations — such as Colombia and Peru — participated.
“The problem is that the number of foreign fishing vessels reaches a point where they begin to plunder ecosystems,” frigate captain Guillermo Miranda told Reuters. “When they fish, they affect really migratory species, which in many cases are part of the Galápagos marine ecosystem. It’s a pretty serious problem, not just for Ecuador.”
Every year, a fleet of roughly 400 Chinese illegal fishing vessels sail through the waters of the Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans, pillaging local fish stocks through mass depredation, causing significant damage to local ecosystems, and polluting the seas by dumping manmade waste.
The predatory practices of the Chinese fishing vessels also cause economic damage to the local fishing trade of Latin American nations — such as Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina. The overexploitation of fishing grounds by the Chinese vessels prevents fish species and mammals — such as whales — from approaching the coasts of Chile and Argentina, disrupting local food chains.
The illegal Chinese fishing vessels carry out their predatory practices on the waters near the Galápagos Islands, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site that is home to some of the highest levels of endemism on the planet and that houses species not found anywhere else in the world.
Quote:Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told top Chinese Communist Party diplomats in Beijing on Wednesday that his country is “willing and ready for dialogue and negotiations with Russia,” a stark change from repeated refusals by the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider direct talks.
Russia has been engaging in colonialist adventurism in Ukraine for a decade, first “annexing” Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 under President Barack Obama and backing pro-Russian “separatist” groups in the Donbas region. In February 2022, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a “special operation” to oust Zelensky, consisting of a full-scale military invasion of the country that persists today. Zelensky has for two years refused talks with Putin on the grounds that no talks should take place until Russian soldiers are no longer present in his country.
His last direct contact with Putin occurred in December 2019 – talks chaperoned by French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel that a frustrated Zelensky dismissed as useless, demanding “serious” countries help mediate instead of France and Germany.
Kuleba was in Beijing for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other senior Communist Party leaders on both the ongoing invasion and trade ties between Kyiv and Beijing. China is Ukraine’s largest trade partner despite being arguably Russia’s closest geopolitical ally.
“Today in China, I held detailed and thorough negotiations with my Chinese counterpart Wang Yi about the path to peace,” Kuleba wrote in a statement on social media posted after his talks with Wang. “I emphasized that Ukraine needs a just and lasting peace, not just an illusion of peace, and I appreciate that this position was reciprocated.”
Kuleba said he and Wang “agreed that all forces must work together to find common ground on the path to restoring true peace in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter.”
Quote:Ukraine on Sunday said it struck an oil depot in southern Russia that supplies the Kremlin’s troops as Russian strikes in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Moscow claimed further gains, left five civilians dead and 15 others wounded.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Kyiv’s security services were responsible for a drone strike in Russia’s southern Kursk region that morning on an oil depot used to meet the needs of the Russian military, and contains 11 tanks with a total volume of 7,000 cubic meters (about 247,202 cubic feet), adding the attack prompted “powerful explosions and a fire… probably involving containers with oil products.”
“The defense forces continue to take all measures to undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian occupiers and force the Russian Federation to stop its armed aggression against Ukraine,” the statement said.
Earlier Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said seven Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over Russian territory, while a regional official said a drone strike set fire to the oil depot in the Kursk province. Firefighters were battling the blaze on Sunday morning after three fuel tanks went up in flames, according to acting regional Gov. Alexey Smirnov. Smirnov said nobody was hurt.
The Kursk region lies on the border with Ukraine’s Sumy province where Ukraine has in recent months repeatedly targeted various sites, including oil depots and other military infrastructure, inside Russian territory, with drones and other weapons. Ukrainian officials have been pressuring Western allies to be able to use their modern and more sophisticated weapons to strike more valuable targets inside Russian territory.
Also on Sunday, Russian troops continued to eke out gains in Ukraine’s war-torn eastern Donetsk province as they pushed westward toward the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday said that its forces had taken control of two neighboring villages some 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk, Prohres and Yevhenivka. The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.
Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, sending millions of people fleeing to neighboring countries. Taking control of all of Donetsk, part of the country’s industrial heartland that now bears the scars of years of fighting, is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.
Five civilians died and 15 more suffered wounds following Russian strikes in the Donetsk region on Saturday and overnight, local Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on Telegram Sunday. Shortly later, other Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling wounded more civilians, including children, in the east and south.
At least eight people suffered wounds after Moscow’s forces on Sunday struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported that same day. Lysak said a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among the victims, six of whom had to be hospitalized.
Russian shelling on Sunday also wounded eight further civilians, including a 10-year-old and two teenagers, in a village in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, local official Roman Mrochko reported.
Quote:The government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán confirmed this week that it had taken out a billion-euro ($1,086,525,000) loan owed to Chinese banks that Budapest must repay in three years.
The loan process was reportedly completed in April, a month before China’s genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping visited Hungary to sign more than a dozen bilateral deals with Orbán. After Hungary assumed the presidency of the European Union Council Orbán and Xi met again in July as part of Orbán’s “peace mission” to find an end to active hostilities in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The massive loan, reportedly the largest in modern Hungarian history, owed to one of the most predatory lenders on the world stage, has caused some discomfort among observers aware of how China has exploited credit lines offered to impoverished nations such as Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Venezuela. China deploys many of its loans through a program known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure plan in which China offers loans to be used to pay Chinese companies to build cost-prohibitive infrastructure products in poor countries. Many nations fail to keep up with payments, losing the money and control of the projects in question.
Hungary is one of the most enthusiastic BRI partners in Europe.
The loans taken out in April appear to be independent of the BRI, though they do appear to be intended for infrastructure spending. According to Politico, which reported on the loans on Thursday based on a separate report in the Hungarian outlet Portfolio, they are owed to the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Hungarian branch of the Bank of China. They are under a “variable” interest rate.
“The loan agreement allows for the financing of investments in infrastructure and the energy sector, among others,” the government agency tasked with managing the loan said, according to Politico. “The transaction keeps the public debt-to-GDP ratio within the ceiling at 28.9 percent.”
Politico described Orbán’s economy as “in desperate need of cash” as a result of record-high public debts, in part the result of Orbán’s ambitious social program spending.
Orbán has recalibrated both the domestic and foreign policies of Hungary around the belief that communist China is “one of the pillars of our new multipolar world” and a trustworthy business and diplomacy partner. He has actively abstained from criticizing Chinese human rights abuses such as the rampant persecution of Chinese Christians and the ongoing Uyghur genocide, instead focusing on increasing trade and academic ties with China.
Orbán made Beijing one of his first stops upon assuming the EU presidency, meeting with Xi in early July to discuss what China could do to help end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China was Orbán’s first stop on a “peace mission” after Ukraine and Russia themselves.
“Hungary is willing to take the rotating EU presidency as an opportunity to actively promote the sound development of EU-China relations,” Orbán reportedly told Xi during his stop in Beijing, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, which paraphrased his remarks. “He added that Hungary highly appreciates and values China’s role and influence and is willing to maintain close strategic communication and coordination with China.”
“China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace from the beginning,” Orbán told reporters at the time. China is one of Russia’s closest geopolitical partners and has not condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a BRI country, since it began in February 2022.
Olympics Overlords: Let Chinese Athletes Get Doped
Quote:The International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and relevant Utah officials effectively stop questioning the legitimacy of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) probes into Chinese athletes, National Public Radio (NPR) reported on Wednesday.
The IOC announced on Wednesday that Salt Lake City, Utah, would host the 2034 Winter Olympics, its second time hosting since the 2002 Winter Games, on the cusp of the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. The announcement followed months of controversy in the swimming world after the left-wing New York Times revealed in April that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance, trimetazidine (TMZ), seven months before competing in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics – but the IOC did nothing to stop them from participating.
“Several of the athletes who tested positive — including nearly half of the swimming team that China sent to the Tokyo Games — went on to win medals, including three golds,” the Times recalled. Of the swimmers involved, 11 are expected to return to competition in Paris.
China’s national anti-doping officials claimed that the swimmers tested positive for TMZ because they inadvertently ate food that contained the substance and that they had not consumed enough of the substance to merit any consequences. WADA accepted this explanation and has repeatedly applauded itself for doing nothing in the face of negative substance tests. The scandal has particularly incensed American competitors and the U.S. government, which has held Congressional hearings on the matter and reportedly opened a criminal investigation into the use of banned medications.
NPR reported on Wednesday that the IOC, which has vocally defended WADA’s handling of the matter and has a long history of defending the Chinese Communist Party’s nefarious behavior, allegedly pressured American officials to drop complaints about Chinese doping if they want to host the 2034 Winter Olympics. Specifically, the IOC “demanded that officials in Utah — along with U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) — sign a contract affirming ‘respect’ for the authority of WADA in exchange for Wednesday’s agreement to hold the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.”
“If the U.S. doesn’t comply by accepting WADA’s authority, Salt Lake City’s status as a host city could be revoked,” NPR noted.
CBS News reported the threat as a “clause” in the contract to host that insisted Utah officials had to work with “federal officials,” presumably the Justice Department, “to alleviate your concerns” about the Chinese doping allegations. The language in the contract allows the IOC to abruptly take away Salt Lake City’s hosting duties if it feels that WADA is “undermined.”
“The president of the IOC is upset with the FBI’s investigation into the World Anti-Doping Agency’s decision to accept China’s reason behind nearly two dozen positive drug tests,” CBS added.
The IOC and WADA moved rapidly to crush any incoming criticism of the agreement on Wednesday, addressing the Chinese doping scandal directly.
WADA President Witold Bańka recalled in his remarks that WADA appointed an “independent prosecutor” who concluded “that WADA did not show any bias, undue interference or other impropriety in its assessment of the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency’s decision” and was “indisputably reasonable” in doing nothing to address the negative tests.
China declared victory on Wednesday through its state media mouthpiece, the Global Times, which condemned the “continued defamation” by concerned Americans regarding the positive substance tests.
“The investigation agencies in the US have a notorious history of double standards and imbalance, which is even more evident in cases involving China,” Chinese “expert” professor Li Haidong was quoted as saying. “This so-called investigation reflects its attempt to unjustly obstruct China in all areas where its influence is growing.”
Quote:...
Thousands of young Cubans have been sent as mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine. Many of them have been duped into fighting in this terrible conflict that has no relevance to the everyday plight of Cubans in the island.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 35, is one of those young Cubans. A math teacher and musician by profession, he was captured on the front lines by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in March. He is now a prisoner of war held thousands of miles away from his native Guantánamo.
I recently managed to have access to him for an interview in a prison somewhere in Ukraine. I gained access in both my capacity as the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance and working with the Diario Las Americas. I sought to speak with him to better understand the terrible situation faced by thousands of young Cubans caught in the middle of another foreign war as a result of the historic subordination of the Castro regime to Moscow’s dictates.
Jarrosay told me that he prefers to spend 50 years in a Ukrainian prison than return to Cuba, where he suffered from stifling poverty and lack of individual freedoms.
“I came here out of need,” he said.
Overwhelmed by what he calls “the system,” the set of political and economic measures that the dictatorship uses to suffocate Cubans, Jarrosay got enthused by the idea of going to Russia to work. The offer had been widely disseminated among the young people of Guantánamo.
His travel from Guantánamo all the way in eastern Cuba to Moscow was expedited by unseen hands. No one from the communist regime in Cuba, which meddles in every single aspect of individual life, did anything to prevent his recruitment and journey. Five other young Cubans accompanied him in the trip.
Once in Moscow he discovered that the contract was for war, not work. Fed and feasted, he was excited for the job at first.
“These are the guys!” he thought. “But life changes once you sign the contract.”
Everything changed once he arrived at the Russian military training center within Ukrainian territory. There, he says, he witnessed the horrors of war immediately.
On February 14, 2024, the Russian base he was in was hit by a Ukrainian bombardment. Four young Cubans and 14 Russians died in front of his eyes, he told me. He doesn’t know much about them and thinks that it will be very hard for the families back in Cuba when they find out. He says many Cubans have already died and thinks that the Russians have left the bodies behind in Ukrainian hands. He saw a steady stream of dead and maimed Russian soldiers returning from the front lines.
He described the dehumanization, in the Russian army, of Cubans being forced to the front lines under direct physical threat of death by Russian officers.
Quote:On Friday, the same day Russia sentenced American reporter Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal to 16 years in prison on fanciful charges of “espionage,” it sentenced Russian-American reporter Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to 6.5 years for “spreading false information about the Russian military.”
Like Gershkovich, Kurmasheva was rushed through a secret trial on charges rejected by both her employer and the U.S. government as entirely false. Kurmasheva’s trial in Tatarstan lasted only two days. As with Gershkovich, she was ordered to serve her time in a penal colony.
Kurmasheva, 47, works as an editor for the Tatar-Bashkir language version of RFE/RL. She was based in Prague but was visiting the Tatarstan regional capital of Kazan in June 2023 to handle a family emergency when she was arrested for spreading “false information” about the Russian army — a crime established under President Vladimir Putin’s harsh censorship laws after he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Kurmasheva was getting ready to board her flight back to Prague when she was taken into custody. She was slapped with a fine and additional charges for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” Russia considers all RFE/RL employees to be foreign agents because the network receives funding from the U.S. government.
The disinformation charges were apparently added after Russian investigators reviewed Kurmasheva’s 2022 book, Saying No to War, which included interviews with Russians opposed to the Ukraine war.
RFE/RL denounced the charges against Kurmasheva as “baseless” and “outrageous,” called her trial a “sham,” and demanded her immediate release. Unmoved by this response, a Russian court extended her lengthy pretrial detention even further in April and then sentenced her to prison on Friday.
Stephen Capus, the president and CEO of RFE/RL, denounced her trial and conviction on Monday as a “mockery of justice.”
“The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” Capus said. “It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday described Kurmasheva as “a dedicated journalist who is being targeted by Russian authorities for her uncompromising commitment to speaking the truth and her principled reporting.”
“Journalism is not a crime, as you have heard us say on a number of occasions, and we continue to make very clear that she should be released,” Miller said.
RFE/RL noted that, unlike Gershkovich, the Biden administration has not officially designated Kurmasheva as “wrongfully detained,” a designation that would raise the profile of her case and get her treated as a foreign hostage by the State Department.
President Joe Biden ignored a letter from the U.S. National Press Club in May that argued Kurmasheva “meets all the criteria” and should have been designated as “wrongfully detained” immediately.
“We have listened to the State Department twist itself into a pretzel explaining how there are other factors to be considered besides the criteria, but we have yet to hear a clear reason why State cannot declare her wrongfully detained,” the U.S. National Press Club told Biden.
Quote:Italy and China signed a three-year action plan on Sunday to implement past agreements and experiment with new forms of cooperation, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on an official visit to the Chinese capital.
Meloni is trying to reset relations with China as fears of a trade war with the European Union are interwoven with continued interest in attracting Chinese investment in auto manufacturing and other sectors.
“We certainly have a lot of work to do and I am convinced that this work can be useful in such a complex phase on a global level, and also important at a multilateral level,” she said in remarks at the start of a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Her five-day visit comes several months after Italy dropped out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a signature policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to build power and transportation infrastructure around the world to stimulate global trade while also deepening China’s ties with other nations.
Still, Italy remains keen to pursue an otherwise strong economic relationship with China. Stellantis, a major automaker that includes Italy’s Fiat, announced in May that it had formed a joint venture with Leapmotor, a Chinese electric car startup, to begin selling EVs in Europe.
Li, addressing Italian and Chinese business leaders after the meeting with Meloni, said that China’s push to upgrade its economy will increase demand for high-quality products, expanding opportunities for cooperation between companies from their two countries.
He pledged to open Chinese markets further, ensure that foreign companies get the same treatment as Chinese ones and create a transparent and predictable business environment, responding to frequently heard complaints from businesses operating in the world’s second-largest economy.
“At the same time, we hope the Italian side will work with China to provide a more fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies doing business in Italy,” he said.
Meloni told the business leaders that the two sides had signed an industrial collaboration memorandum that includes electric vehicles and renewable energy, which she described as “sectors where China has already been operating on the technological frontier for some time … and is sharing the new frontiers of knowledge with partners.”
Quote:China and the Philippines announced on Sunday they have reached a “provisional arrangement” to allow resupply missions to reach the BRP Sierra Madre, the beached ship that functions as a Filipino outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea.
China has been intercepting, and in recent cases attacking, supply ships in a bid to force the Philippines out of its own territorial waters.
Tensions hit the boiling point in mid-June when Chinese coast guard vessels rammed and boarded Philippine navy boats, an action denounced by Filipino officials as a “barbaric” act of “piracy.” A Filipino sailor lost his thumb in the conflict.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) offered no details of the arrangement with China on Sunday, but they said it was the result of “frank and constructive discussions” between the two powers.
“Both sides continue to recognize the need to de-escalate the situation in the South China Sea and manage differences through dialogue and consultation and agree that the agreement will not prejudice each other’s positions in the South China Sea,” DFA said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, said the arrangement was merely “temporary,” and Beijing still “demands that the Philippine side tow away the ship,” restoring the Second Thomas Shoal to its pristine status as “unmanned and without facilities.”
“If the Philippines needs to provide supplies to the ship’s occupants before the Philippines tows away the beached warship, the Chinese side is willing to allow the Philippine side to carry out the transportation and replenishment on humanitarian grounds,” a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry sniffed.
The rusting hulk of the BRP Sierra Madre has been parked on the shoal since 1999, serving as a base for a tiny detachment of Filipino troops. China incessantly complains about the presence of the ship and tells Manila to remove it, occasionally threatening to send in Chinese warships to drag it away.
The Philippine government was evidently content enough with China’s promises to refuse U.S. assistance in supplying the Second Thomas Shoal outpost. A statement from the Philippine military promised to “exhaust all means before seeking foreign intervention.”
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Monday the agreement with China does not mean his country is relinquishing its territorial claims in the South China Sea, but he said it was important to “de-escalate the situation” and “manage differences in a peaceful manner.” He urged China to “do the same.”
“In the face of challenges to our territorial sovereignty, we will assert our rights and interests in the same fair and pacific way that we have always done,” Marcos said in his State of the Nation address.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Monday pointed out the disparity between statements from Beijing and Manila on the provisional arrangement, which seems to be a very tenuous promise to avoid another violent clash like the one in June.
China Supports Forming Joint Hamas-Fatah Government in Gaza
Quote:The terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) met with the relatively “moderate” Palestinian faction of Fatah in Beijing on Tuesday and issued a statement pledging “national unity.” Hamas pledged “national unity” three times in a single sentence.
“Today we sign an agreement for national unity and we say that the path to completing this journey is national unity. We are committed to national unity and we call for it,” Hamas politburo member Mousa Abu Marzook said after emerging from a meeting with other Palestinian factional leaders, chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Wang said envoys from Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, and a dozen other Palestinian factions agreed at the meeting to create an “interim national reconciliation government around the governance of post-war Gaza.”
“Reconciliation is an internal matter for the Palestinian factions, but at the same time, it cannot be achieved without the support of the international community,” Wang intoned.
Reconciliation with the people Hamas and PIJ raped, murdered, and kidnapped on October 7 does not seem to have been on the agenda at the Beijing meeting. Hamas trumpeted an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that called for Israel’s military operation in Gaza to end “as rapidly as possible,” while seeming blissfully unconcerned that the ICJ would ever hold Hamas leaders responsible for their crimes against humanity.
Hamas and PIJ’s Chinese hosts cared little for their misdeeds of their guests, instead collecting the desired prize of a “Beijing declaration” that copiously thanked China for its “sincere efforts to support Palestinian rights, ending division, and unifying Palestinian positions.”
“The dialogue in Beijing also demonstrated a positive and constructive spirit, agreeing to achieve comprehensive national unity under the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” China’s state-run Global Times said on Tuesday.
The Chinese foreign minister strove to put a bland “three-step” bureaucratic spin on the same maximalist demands that Palestinian terrorist organizations have been making since Israel began responding to the October 7 attack:
The first step is to achieve a comprehensive, lasting, and sustainable cease-fire in Gaza as soon as possible, ensuring smooth access to humanitarian aid and relief.
The second step is to jointly promote post-war governance in Gaza, adhering to the principle of “Palestinians governing Palestinians.”
The third step is to push for Palestine to become a full member of the United Nations and begin implementing the “two-state solution.” These three steps are interlinked and indispensable.
Quote:North Korea’s latest anti-American propaganda video includes a brief image of former President Donald Trump as a predatory “U.S. imperialist” enemy, a touch that confused some subjects of the communist regime, as Trump had been depicted in a more positive light in previous videos.
The video, incorporated into the mandatory weekly political harangues that North Korea’s captive citizens must endure, shows Trump as one of the “U.S. imperialists and other hierarchical enemies are trying to recreate the bloodshed of the past on this land.”
The bloodshed that the video’s narrator refers to would be the Korean War of 1950-53.
“The only thing that has changed is that the various methods of how they kill and the weapons of murder they used that day are now covered in a sweet and fragrant outer shell, including movies, printed propaganda, superstitions, and drugs,” the propaganda video narrator raves as a photo of Trump shaking hands with dictator Kim Jong-un appears in the background.
The indoctrination lecture incorporating this video was titled “Guide To the Anti-DPRK Plot.” Paranoid political screeds are par for the course in North Korea, but some of the people forced to watch this particular presentation were surprised that Trump was depicted as one of the plotters, the implication being that his historic meeting with Kim was just a fake-out intended to obscure nonstop American skullduggery.
One North Korean told Radio Free Asia (RFA) he was “shocked” to see Trump portrayed as a villain after years of the regime touting Trump’s 2019 diplomatic outreach as a positive development.
“These days, the party’s regular lectures are held by watching recorded videos. This week’s lecture was conducted as a recorded lecture with the message that dreaming about American imperialism leads to self-destruction and death,” the North Korean resident said.
“The point of this lecture from the beginning to the end was to never to be caught up in the enemy’s persistent anti-DPRK conspiracy strategy,” he elaborated. “The authorities requested that we raise awareness of impure recordings, anti-socialism publications, drugs, religion, and superstitions that the enemy are spreading to destroy our republic from within.”
RFA’s source said his neighbors were equally baffled that the regime would suddenly denounce Trump as “headlining an anti-DPRK strategy” after years of saying it was “a great thing that Kim Jong-un and the U.S. president met and joined hands.””
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Row upon row of empty seats at the Paris Olympic Games has reportedly made organizers panic, prompting them to offer tourists tickets at fire-sale prices.
According to the Daily Mail, tickets have been offered to events for Team Great Britain for as little as £12, or USD 15.39.
But it’s not just events for the Brits that are getting the discount treatment.
As the Daily Mail reports:
Entry for the women’s Japan vs Nigeria group stage game at the Stade de France on August 31 and the Australia vs USA were both selling at just €15.
And tickets for Friday’s men’s quarter final at the Lyon Stadium are also on sale at the same price, with seats available for €15 for those who purchased more than four at once.
Basketball games on August 31 are also going cheap, with admission for two games – Japan vs Germany and Australia vs Canada – selling for just over £19 (€24).
Before the start of the Olympics, the Paris rail system was hit by a series of arson attacks that caused massive delays and caused widespread transportation issues throughout the French capital and the area around it.
Olympic organizers potentially gave ticket buyers another reason not to attend the Games after putting on a blasphemous performance during the opening ceremony, which contained, among other things, a drag queen-inspired parody of the Last Supper.
Regardless of the cause for the low attendance, organizers can’t be happy with where things currently stand.
Quote:Paris has once again surrendered to foreign occupiers. Except this time, the occupiers are not an armed encampment; they’re hungry athletes fed up with the vegan diet Olympic organizers tried to make them eat.
Olympic organizers were forced to order 4,000 pounds of meat and eggs quickly after athletes decried the fake meat and non-dairy options, the Daily Mail reports.
From the beginning, officials sought to make this year’s Games the most eco-friendly and green in Olympic history. However, lost somewhere in the social designers’ “grand design” was the fact that, while fake meat is fine in the faculty cafeterias of Harvard and Oxford, elite human machines do not run on fake meat.
While organizers initially sought to downplay the woke meal plans’ impact and assured that all would be well, eventually, they had to concede defeat.
“As far as food is concerned, we had to make a few changes, and we had to adapt, which is quite normal,” Paris 2024 chief executive Etienne Thobois told reporters.
“We have 700kg of eggs and a tonne of meat have been the increases we have provided to meet the needs of athletes.”
Is having to rush order over 4,000 pounds of a totally different menu item “quite normal?”
Thobois continued, “We have got a full vision in terms of nutrition which is designed to provide the products necessary, including organic food. We have adapted everything, and it is to the satisfaction of all concerned.
‘We have had discussions with the heads of delegation and we have put the athletes at the forefront of our concerns and adapted our services to meet the needs of the athletes.”
The menu is not the only area where major concessions from the Games’ eco-friendly planners are seen. Teams are also now being allowed to bring their own air conditioning. This is in contrast to the previous arrangement, where only teams from highly-funded, wealthy countries had their own AC, and others were forced to rent it.
The problems with nutrition and cooling off have followed the athletes onto the field of play.
Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus says the conditions contributed significantly to her inability to set a new world record in the 800m freestyle.
Quote:Herda Raouf, head of the Iraqi delegation to the Paris Olympics, said on Saturday that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has refused Iraq’s request not to display the Israeli flag next to theirs during soccer matches.
“When we arrived at Lyon Stadium, we found the Iraqi flag displayed next to the Israeli flag,” Raouf complained to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Raouf said his delegation emailed two requests to the IOC to move the Israeli flag, but the IOC refused both times, on the grounds that all participating national flags must be displayed “in alphabetical order.”
Israel’s soccer team played at a different venue, the Parc des Princes, under heavy security against possible terrorist attacks. French police are investigating death threats against three Israeli Olympic athletes, and said hate crimes were threatened during Israel’s soccer matches.
The match went off without terrorist incidents on Saturday, although there were plenty of hate crimes, including Palestinian supporters waving banners that read “Genocide Olympics” and making “gestures of an anti-Semitic nature,” as a spokesperson for the Paris Olympics put it. Israel National News cited social media videos that showed protesters “making the Nazi salute and chant” during the Israeli national anthem.”
The Israeli team lost to Paraguay, 4-2. Israel’s first match of the Olympics was a 1-1 tie against Mali last week.
The Israeli team’s last chance to advance into the knockout stage of the competition will be a match against Japan on Tuesday.
Iraq does not formally recognize the existence of the Jewish state and has outspokenly supported the Palestinians ever since the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. The Iraqi government refused to condemn the October 7 atrocities.
The Iraqi parliament passed a law in May 2022 that makes it a crime to normalize relations with the “Zionist entity.” The law, originally proposed by influential Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, imposes penalties up to life imprisonment, and even the death penalty, for Iraqis who take steps to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel.
The first positive test for illegal doping at the Paris Olympics resulted in the suspension of an Iraqi judo competitor suspended on Friday. Sajjad Sehen, 28, tested positive for the steroids metandienone and boldenone.
Quote:Concerns about water quality in the Seine River led Paris Olympics organizers to postpone the men´s triathlon Tuesday, with officials hoping the swimming portion of the race will be able to go forward in the long-polluted waterway in the coming days following an expensive cleanup effort.
Organizers said they will try to hold the men’s triathlon Wednesday instead. The women’s competition also is scheduled that day, but both will only go forward if water tests show acceptable levels of E. coli and other bacteria in the river. Friday is also planned as a backup date.
However, storms or rain are forecast Tuesday night through Thursday, which could complicate efforts to reschedule the events because rain generally causes bacteria levels in the Seine to rise.
Paris experienced a downpour during the Olympic opening ceremony Friday, with rain persisting into Saturday. The swimming portion of training events meant to let the triathletes familiarize themselves with the course was canceled on both Sunday and Monday because of concerns over water quality.
The delays come after Olympic organizers and city officials had expressed confidence in recent days that bacteria levels would improve as skies cleared and temperatures warmed this week, but that apparently wasn´t sufficient to ensure the athletes´ safety. Tuesday´s high in Paris of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) offers some hope of the heat wave killing off some of the bacteria.
Paris spent 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) to improve the water quality in the Seine so the swimming portion of the triathlon and the marathon swimming event next week could be held in the famed river that runs through the city center. But bacteria levels have remained in flux.
The decision to postpone the men’s triathlon followed a meeting early Tuesday that included the sport´s governing body, World Triathlon, its medical team, the International Olympic Committee and city officials.
“Despite the improvement on the water quality levels in the last hours, the readings at some points of the swim course are still above the acceptable limits,” organizers said, stressing that their “priority is the health of the athletes.”
Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan said “the trend is improving” but “we are still not below the necessary threshold.”
To hold the two competitions on the Seine on Wednesday “seems to us to be the best option,” he said. However, he did not rule out further delays “if there is an issue tomorrow after the results of the analysis.”
Daily water quality tests measure levels of fecal bacteria known as E. coli, with a safe limit of 900 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters determined by European rules. Monitoring group Eau de Paris releases data each Friday, but it is updated only through the previous Tuesday.
Aurelie Merle, the Paris 2024 director of sports, said one of four test sites was below the threshold for E. coli Tuesday morning. Two other sites were just above the limit and one was more elevated, she said, citing a range of 980 to 1,553.
Quote:Communist Cuba, a regime that has for decades used sports competitions to elevate its geopolitical profile, has faced a series of embarrassments in the first days of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics – including a high-profile defection before the Games even began and a loss in boxing to a Cuban exile.
Cuba has won 235 Olympic medals in the modern history of the Games, 83 of them gold – an impressive number for an impoverished island nation as a result of longtime communist dictator Fidel Castro, perceiving the propaganda potential of sports, investing heavily in cultivating talent. As the Cuban diaspora has grown, however – largely in part due to a growing number of Cuban athletes using international tournaments to flee communism – the Castro regime has struggled to maintain a stranglehold on its sports messaging and its athletic programs have suffered.
Athletes have increasingly defected as their national achievements have done little to improve their poverty and they struggle with being used for propaganda. In a particularly shameful episode for Cuban athletics in 2021, local Communist Party officials in in Ciego de Ávila celebrated Ronny Álvarez, a gold medalist at the Junior Pan-American Games, by gifting him two bottles of cooking oil, laundry detergent, a handful of yuca [cassava], and two packs of hot dogs, among other basic goods.
This year, Cuba is fielding a much smaller team than in previous years, bringing a delegation of 61 people to Paris. That delegation shrunk by one before the Games began when judoka Dayle Ojeda chose not to return to her quarters after a training session the week before the Opening Ceremonies. Ojeda was in Paris to help train other competitors in judo, rather than to compete, and disappeared before her return flight on July 24.
At the Opening Ceremonies, videos went viral of the Cuban delegation scowling on their boats in the Seine, waving their flags lethargically.
“Joy on the boat 21 that will parade along the Seine River,” a video published on the Chinese social medial outlet Tiktok by the account “Cubanos en UK” said in its caption.
Quote:A despairing French government said multiple telecommunications links were hit by “cowardly” acts of vandalism early Monday morning, with fiber lines being taken out along with fixed and mobile phone infrastructure as cities around the country host events for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The immediate scale of the impact is unclear, as is whether it has affected any Olympic activities.
The vandalism came after left-wing arson attacks crippled train networks around France on Friday, hours before the Olympics opening ceremony, as Breitbart News reported.
Marina Ferrari, secretary of state in charge of digital affairs, posted on X that damage in several regions overnight Sunday to Monday affected telecommunications operators.
She said that led to localized impact on access to fiber lines and fixed and mobile telephone lines.
“Damages committed in several departments last night affected our telecommunications operators,” Ferrari noted. “They have localized consequences on access to fiber, fixed telephony and mobile telephony… I condemn in the strongest terms these cowardly and irresponsible acts. Thank you to the teams mobilized this morning to carry out repairs and restore damaged sites to service.”
AP reports the attacks are spread across the country:
A French police official said at least six of France’s administrative departments were affected, which include the region around the Mediterranean city of Marseille, hosting Olympic soccer and sailing competitions.
Telecom operators Bouygues and Free confirmed their services were affected. French media reports said lines operated by provider SFR also were hit. The parent company of Free said its teams are mobilized to restore services.
Meanwhile, as Breitbart News reported, hundreds of railway employees have worked back-to-back shifts to get France’s world-famous high speed rail lines out of Paris operating again, and the operator SNCF said they had achieved this by early Monday morning.
Quote:A report has found that the United States military is “not prepared” to fight in a major war, as “major powers” — such as Russia and China — have become “top threats” to the U.S., with China “outpacing” the U.S.
The report, which the Commission on the National Defense Strategy released in July, reveals that while the U.S. is currently facing some of “the most serious and most challenging” threats since 1945, several problems are preventing the U.S. military from being able to address threats from China or Russia.
Among the problems preventing the U.S. military from addressing threats from China and Russia is reportedly the Department of Defense’s (DOD) “business practices, byzantine research,” and its “reliance on decades-old military hardware,” which reflects “an era of uncontested military dominance.” The report adds that “such methods” are “not suited to today’s strategic environment.”
The report also notes that the U.S. military has faced “recent recruitment shortfalls” that have led to a decrease in “the size of the Army, Air Force, and Navy.”
“The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war,” the report states. “The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.”
China and Russia are described as major powers that are trying “to undermine” the influence of the U.S., with China “outpacing the United States”:
The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor. China’s overall annual spending on defense is estimated at as much as $711 billion, and the Chinese government in March 2024 announced an increase in annual defense spending of 7.2 percent.
The report adds that China and Russia established a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022 that has “only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea.”
“This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war,” the report explains, adding that the U.S. “needs a similarly integrated approach to match, deter, and overcome theirs.”
The report notes that “the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners.”
Due to the U.S. industrial base not being able to produce “everything needed,” the Commission adds that the U.S. “should coordinate and partner with its allies” to “increase industrial capacity.”
The report adds that Congress, the DOD, “and other agencies” need to work together to “rewrite laws and regulations” to “remove unnecessary barriers to adopting innovation, budgeting, and procurement.”
Quote:Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) opened the hearing into the Trump assassination attempt Tuesday by targeting “easy access to AR-15 rifles.”
Durbin began his comments by talking about movies and books depicting “the international assassin with sophisticated technology, elaborate plans, [and] well honed skills, [who] sets out to kill a leading political figure in the United States.”
He quickly shifted gears to state that reality is quite different. In other words, the actual would-be alleged assassin was “a 20-year-old, introverted college student” who “outsmarted one of the most sophisticated American law enforcement agencies in history.”
Durbin segued, saying, “There is more to this story and other aspects we’ve got to consider as well.”
He then targeted America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15. “We cannot lose sight of the factor that contributed to the violence on July 13 — widespread, easy access to AR-15 military-style rifles.”
Durbin continued, “While we rely on the Secret Service to protect elected officials, we must acknowledge the unique challenges they face in light of the proliferation of ‘weapons of war’ on our streets.”
He then zeroed in on Pennsylvania gun laws, noting, “Pennsylvania, like many states, allows individuals to openly carry a loaded rifle without a permit. To make matters worse, ‘assault rifles’ can easily be purchased from unlicensed dealers without a background check because of dangerous loopholes in our gun laws.”
Durbin did not mention that the gun used in the Trump assassination was legally purchased, which means more point-of-sale background checks would not have hindered the shooting in the least.
Moreover, Durbin pointed out that AR-15-style rifles were used in Newtown (December 14, 2012), Uvalde (May 24, 2022), and Las Vegas (October 1, 2017). However, he did not point out that the AR-15 used in Newtown was stolen, and the guns used in Uvalde and Las Vegas were legally purchased. Again, no additional point-of-sale background check would have made a difference.
Quote:On July 30, 2024, over two weeks after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said the agency still does not know how the would-be alleged assassin got a rifle onto the roof from which he fired.
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) asked Abbate if the agency knew how the 20-year-old would-be assassin was able to get the rifle onto the roof.
Abbate responded, “We don’t have definitive evidence yet as to how he got the rifle up there. Based on everything that’s been collected thus far — photos, video, eyewitness accounts — we do believe he likely had it in the backpack.”
Sen. Butler followed up by asking, “Broken down in the backpack?”
Abbate said, “We’re still assessing that. Our laboratory has taken, looked at the rifle itself and measured that against the backpack itself and, if placed in the backpack, it would extend outside, it would have been visible.”
He went on to say no witness has mentioned seeing the rifle sticking out of the backpack.
Abbate observed, “It’s possible that he broke the rifle down, although we don’t have conclusive evidence of that, and took it out of the bag on the roof in those moments before and reassembled it there, that’s one of the theories we’re looking at and working on right now.”
Acting Director of Secret Service Claims They Didn't Know Crooks Was There
Quote:Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe testified Tuesday to the Senate Homeland Security Committee the Secret Service did not know there was a man on the roof of a building with a firearm until he fired.
“Based on what I know right now, neither the secret service counter sniper teams nor members of the former president’s security detail had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the AGR building with a firearm. It is my understanding those personnel were not aware the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots,” he said.
He said prior to the man — Thomas Matthew Crooks — fired, Secret Service was operating with the knowledge that “local law enforcement was working an issue of a suspicious individual.”
Rowe’s claim comes after speculation over whether Secret Service snipers had seen Crooks on the rooftop with a rifle, but did not shoot due to rules of engagement.
Rowe said, “I regret that information was not passed to Congress and the public sooner [and] I fear this lack of information has given rise to multiple false and dangerous conspiracy theories about what took place that day. And I want to debunk these theories.”
Rowe addressed speculation over the Secret Service sniper not firing sooner, saying, “The secret service counter sniper neutralized the assailant within seconds after the assailant fired his weapon, that counter sniper had full discretion to use deadly force to stop an attacker, and did not need to seek authorization to fire.”
So now that agency claims that the counter sniper didn't need any extra authorization to shoot Crooks down as the agent had stated days ago... How confusing!
Quote:Recriminations between local law enforcement and Secret Service agents over who is to blame for former President Donald Trump getting shot and almost killed are flying back and forth, some publicly and some behind-the-scenes, as investigations into what happened get underway.
Local law enforcement snipers on the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit (ESU), the county’s SWAT team, were assigned to secure the outside perimeter that included the American Glass Research building that Crooks climbed atop of.
Some Secret Service agents believe Beaver County law enforcement snipers would have seen 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks crawl onto the rooftop and get into position to fire at former President Donald Trump had they stayed at their posts — which were reportedly windows that overlooked the rooftop.
Videos released publicly show the windows where the snipers were supposed to be stationed that would have given them a clear view of where Crooks climbed to fire at Trump.
According to conservative podcast host Benny Johnson, local law enforcement snipers were not at their positions at the windows because one team member went home early, another one left his position to investigate after being notified that a suspicious individual — Crooks — was lurking outside the building, and the third went to go let the other sniper in after he forgot his access card into the building.
Johnson posted on X:
There was a three man SWAT sniper team located in this position. One member of the team went home early — not sure how this was allowed but it happened. The remaining two snipers positioned in this room were notified that a suspicious individual [Crooks] was lurking outside the building. One team member left his position to investigate, leaving just one sniper with overwatch of the roof.
The investigating team member found nothing and in the process of returning to his position realized he had forgotten his access card into the building. The last remaining sniper with overwatch LEFT [!!!] the position to retrieve his team member locked outside.
Crooks crawled across the roof and fired on Trump while this fully-equipped sniper nest with a perfect view of Crooks assassin position was left completely UNMANNED.
Johnson suggested Secret Service — who was in charge of the overall security plan for the event — was to blame for not leaving local law enforcement on the roof, allegedly allowing the local snipers to leave their posts, and not putting someone on a nearby water tower.
It is not clear who approved the Beaver County ESU snipers being inside the building versus on the rooftop.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle in an interview with ABC News on July 16, 2024, said “the decision was made to secure the building from inside,” but did not say who made the decision. She cited the safety factor of a “sloped” roof.
She later testified on July 22, 2024, that there was “overwatch provided” for the roof, but would not say who was responsible for the overwatch.
Quote:U.S. lawmakers passed a proposal requiring the federal government to purchase U.S. flags made 100 percent in America.
The All-American Flag Act, which Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced, has passed the House of Representatives after passing the Senate in November 2023, and it now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. Specifically, the legislation requires U.S. federal agencies to only purchase U.S. flags made domestically in the United States of America rather than importing them from elsewhere, including China.
As an example, a press release from Collins’ website reported that the U.S. imported “10 million American flags including 50,000 from China” in 2017 alone. Brown’s press release on the matter noted that the federal government is only currently required to purchase U.S. flags created with just 50 percent of American-made materials.
This means that “half of the materials in flags flown at our military bases and other federal buildings can be made in China,” according to his press release.
The legislation reads, in part:
Except as provided in subsections (b) through (d), funds appropriated or otherwise available to an agency may not be used for the procurement of any flag of the United States, unless such flag has been 100 percent manufactured in the United States from articles, materials, or supplies that have been grown or 100 percent produced or manufactured in the United States.
The legislation adds that the president may issue a waiver for the requirement “if the President determines a waiver is necessary to comply with any trade agreement to which the United States is a party.”
Quote:Data from Philadelphia’s City Controller indicates there have been more than 650 shooting victims in the Democrat-run city thus far in 2024.
According to City Controller Christy Brady, 141 shooting victims succumbed to their wounds and 511 survived.
Brady also pointed out that 85 percent of the shooting victims were male, 15 percent were female, and 81 percent of the victims were “Black (non Hispanic).”
The Philadelphia Police Department maintains a database on homicides in the city that shows 153 people have been killed in Philadelphia year-to-date. The figure of 153 homicides is 38 percent below where the city was on the same day in 2023.
On April 11, 2024, WHYY pointed to a Pew Charitable Trusts report which showed that the somewhat diminished homicide and violent crime crime numbers of 2024 came on the heels of a rough 2023 where “the number of property crimes, like car and retail thefts, skyrocketed.”
“The total number of major crimes — which is the combined tally of violent crime and property crime — reached a 20-year high,” WHYY noted in 2023.
Georgia Democrats & Republicans Demand Switch to Paper Ballots
Quote:Democrats and Republicans in Georgia have found common ground and are demanding the state election board ditch electronic voting machines and switch to paper ballots.
The two political parties in the state have called for the Georgia election board to go from using Dominion Voting Systems’ electronic voting machines to using hand-marked paper ballots, according to 11Alive News. The groups have noted how easily hackers can “manipulate elections.”
After the 2020 presidential election, Dominion filed a lawsuit claiming that Fox News had suggested that the company had rigged the voting machines, leading to former President Donald Trump losing the election to President Joe Biden.
“It’s madness, actually, to go into a system and have all of our ballots relying on that,” Jeanne Dufort, the chair of the Morgan County Democrat Party, said in a statement.
Dr. Rich DeMillo, the founder of Georgia Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, described a “series of breaches” — especially ones in cybersecurity within the last “two years” — as being “story after story” of some sort of “vulnerability in a system” that had been ignored.
“If you look at the series of breaches, global breaches of cybersecurity systems over the last two years, it’s story after story like this where some vulnerability in a system was ignored,” DeMillo said in a statement.
After the 2020 presidential election, several counties in Georgia that had used Dominion Voting Systems’ software reported that they had encountered glitches during the election.
The outlet also noted that security cameras had captured Trump supporters “entering the secure area of Coffee County’s election office” and that they had copied election software.
“We believe the experts who tell us that bad guys, foreign and domestic, are interested in overturning election results or interfering with them,” Dufort added. “And we absolutely believe they now have really good tools to do that.”
Quote:Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime broke ties with seven Latin American countries after their governments questioned the results of Sunday’s sham presidential election and dictator Nicolás Maduro’s “victory.”
The decision forces the immediate withdrawal of the diplomatic representatives from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay from Venezuelan territory.
Venezuelan electoral authorities — controlled in their entirety by the ruling socialist regime — proclaimed Maduro the “winner” of Sunday’s sham election, claiming he had obtained 51.2 percent of the votes.
The Venezuelan opposition has contested the results and claimed it has evidence that their candidate, Edmundo González, obtained an overwhelming victory against the dictator. In addition to widespread suspicions that election authorities manipulated the numbers, Maduro handpicked the candidates on the ballot and ensured his own face appeared on it 13 times. Opposition members have also complained of violence against their campaign staff and the unlawful arrests of several dissidents, ensuring the election was far from free and fair.
Several countries have called the election’s results into question. The United States, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and the European Union have called for a transparent recount of the votes, while countries such as Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Ecuador have not recognized Maduro’s “victory” as legitimate.
Unlike previous sham elections in Venezuela, when it occurred almost immediately after the election was called, the Maduro regime has not released detailed records that show a breakdown of the election’s “results” on a voting-center-by-voting-center basis in each and every state at press time.
The ruling socialists have also claimed that Venezuela’s electoral system — which they have repeatedly celebrated as the “best” in the world — was the target of an alleged hacking attempt that originated from North Macedonia and accused opposition leader María Corina Machado and other dissidents of being involved. Machado was the presidential frontrunner for much of the election season despite being banned from running for office.
The Maduro regime has not publicly provided proof that substantiates its accusations against Machado, nor has it publicly provided further details of the purported hacking attack from North Macedonia at press time.
The seven countries that Venezuela has now cut diplomatic ties with, together with Guatemala and Paraguay, signed a joint letter on Monday in which they expressed concerns with the Venezuelan sham election and demanded a “complete review” of its results.
The nine countries also called for an urgent meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) to address the situation. The Maduro regime had Venezuela withdraw itself from OAS in 2017.
Quote:Venezuelans began destroying statues of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez on Sunday and Monday as part of larger protests against the regime of current socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro “won” a fraudulent election on Sunday for a six-year term as “president” in which the one opposition candidate, Edmundo González, has denounced having evidence that shows him winning the election by a landslide.
Protests erupted in Venezuela on Monday in the wake of the National Electoral Center (CNE) proclaiming Maduro the “winner.” The regime’s repression of the protesters has reportedly left four dead and dozens of injured and detained as of Tuesday morning.
The Maduro regime made a significant effort to ensure that Sunday’s sham election was neither free nor fair, banning the opposition’s frontrunner María Corina Machado from the ballot and engaging in a repression campaign that led to the unjust arrest of dozens of dissidents.
Sunday’s ballot featured Maduro — who appeared 13 times on it — a varied assortment of “opposition” handpicked rivals, and 74-year-old former diplomat González, the only opposition candidate that the socialist regime allowed to run.
The Maduro regime chose to hold the election on July 28 as it marked the 70th birthday of Hugo Chávez, who died of an undisclosed form of cancer on March 5, 2013. Weeks before dying, Chávez announced on December 8, 2012 — his last public appearance — that he had chosen Maduro to be his successor to lead his authoritarian socialist regime upon his death.
After Chávez’s death, the Maduro regime posthumously granted the late dictator the title of “Supreme and Eternal Commander of the Revolution” and often avoids mentioning that he died — but rather, that he was “sown” into the soil or “stepped into immortality” instead.
The Maduro regime also marks several Chávez-related dates such as his birthday and death day as pseudo-holidays. Other examples include December 8, during which the ruling socialists mark the “Day of Loyalty and Love to Chávez” to commemorate his “order” to have Maduro be his successor, or February 4, which marks Chávez’s failed coup attempt in 1992 against the government of Carlos Andres Pérez. The military headquarters that Chávez fled to after his coup failed now serves as his mausoleum.
Venezuelan electoral authorities, which directly serve the Maduro regime, claimed that Maduro “won” Sunday’s sham election after allegedly obtaining 51 percent of the votes against González’s 44 percent. The Venezuelan opposition has contested the results, claiming that it can prove Maduro stole Sunday’s sham election and that González is the actual winner after obtaining an overwhelming majority of the votes.
The events prompted Venezuelan citizens to flock to the street to protest against the Maduro regime, leading to statues of Chávez being toppled, beheaded, burned, and destroyed across several states. After being toppled, some of the statues have been dragged through the streets by the protesters.
Quote:Concern for public safety and raw emotion are running high after a mass stabbing of young children in the United Kingdom, with the Prime Minister being heckled by the public over knife crime as he laid a wreath for the dead.
Three children were killed and a dozen other children and adults were seriously injured in a mass stabbing attack at a youngster’s summer holiday dance party in Southport, Merseyside, England, on Monday. The Home Secretary visited Southport on Tuesday morning, and hours later she was followed by Britain’s new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who met first responders and laid a floral wreath near the scene of the attack.
During the Prime Minister’s brief visit to the police cordon at the end of the road where the attack took place, there were terse words from the public appealing for action on public safety. A video record preserving the event shows several people jeering the Prime Minister, with anger becoming clearest as, just moments after having arrived, the Prime Minister turned away and got back into his car to leave.
Among the views aired were people shouting “How many more children are going to die on our streets Prime Minister?… How many more children Prime Minister? Are you going to do something?”, another calling “Time for change Starmer”, and another shouting “How many more children? It’ll be mine next”.
Another questioned, “Are you going to stand up for our children?” while a woman in the crowd, sobbing loudly, screamed: “I’ve just found out my friend’s nine-year-old daughter was killed, the person I held as a child, and you can’t do shit.”
As the Prime Minister walked away, flanked by protection officers, and got into his car one voice shouted out a sardonic ‘goodbye’. They said: “Bye-bye, got your photo, off you go. Make a real change, Prime Minister, for our children!”
In all, the Prime Minister’s motorcade was at the scene for all of three minutes. The outburst is very rare in the United Kingdom, where the public response to mass-casualty attacks has generally BEEN very carefully stage-managed by the government over the past decade.
Responding to the scenes, Nigel Farage MP reflected: “I know the Prime Minister went to lay flowers and was heckled, and it shows how unhappy the public are with the state of law and order in our country”.
Although attention for the wider knife-crime problem in the United Kingdom has long focussed on London, it is not a problem limited to the capital, and the country has experienced a four per cent rise in “knife enabled crime” this past year alone. Critics have said pressure on stop and search to get knives off the streets for reasons of racial politics and weak legal action against known offenders is leading to an environment of greater permissiveness and declining public safety but little meaningful action appears to have taken place.
Quote:Radical British preacher Anjem Choudary was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for directing a terrorist group, days after he was convicted in Woolwich Crown Court of being a member of a banned organization – the radical Muslim group al-Muhajiroun, or ALM – and for drumming up support for the group.
Justice Mark Wall said Choudary, 57, was “front and center in running a terrorist organization” that “encouraged young men into radical activity.”
ALM was outlawed by the British government in 2010 as a group involved in committing, preparing for or promoting terrorism.
Prosecutor Tom Little described Choudary as having a “warped and twisted mindset” and said he stepped in to lead ALM after Omar Bakri Muhammad, the group’s founder, was imprisoned in Lebanon between 2014 and March 2023.
Choudary, who was previously convicted of supporting the Islamic State group, denied at trial that he promoted ALM through his lectures, saying ALM no longer existed.
Under the terms of the sentence, Choudary must serve at least 28 years behind bars.
Prosecutors said the group has operated under many names, including the New York-based Islamic Thinkers Society, which Choudary has spoken to.
The Islamic Thinkers Society was ALM’s U.S. branch, said New York Police Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner, who called the case historic.
Choudary was convicted with one of his followers, Khaled Hussein, who prosecutors said was a dedicated supporter of the group.
Hussein, 29, of Edmonton, Canada, was convicted of membership of a proscribed organization.
The two were arrested a year ago after Hussein landed at Heathrow Airport.
Quote:The new leftist Labour Party government in Britain announced plans to slash winter energy benefits for around 10 million pensioners while preparing massive tax hikes to fund soaring spending driven largely by mass migration.
In her first major address to Parliament on Monday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves — the head of the Treasury Department — confirmed the high-tax, high spending agenda of the new Labour government.
Reeves claimed that she “did not want to have to do this” but asserted that the previous Conservative government of Rishi Sunak had left a £22 billion “black hole” in Britain’s finances, the Daily Mail reports.
This deficit was exacerbated by illegal immigration and the asylum system, the overspend on which rose to £6.4 billion this year alone. The chancellor also pointed to more spending on the National Health Service (NHS), funding for the war in Ukraine, and highway and road maintenance.
To meet the spending costs, Reeves said that the government would scrap energy bill support this winter for potentially up to 10 million pensioners.
She said that all those who do not receive pension credit will have their support cut, despite the ongoing energy crisis in the country. Reeves claimed this would save the government around £1.4 billion this year and a further £1.5 billion next year.
“This is not a decision I wanted to make, nor is it the one I expected to make – but these are the necessary and urgent decisions that I must make,” Reeves told the Commons.
While the government decided to scrap money for elderly people to heat their homes and despite concerns over fuelling inflation, Reeves committed to a 22 per cent pay rise for junior doctors to end the longstanding labour dispute.
Despite the country suffering under the highest tax burden since the Second World War, Reeves also suggested that billions more in taxes would need to be raised when she unveils her Budget at the end of October, with death taxes and capital gains likely being targets to fill the £16.4 billion gap left after the budget cuts announced Monday.
Zelensky Considers Working on Plan for Peace Negotiations
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday he will put the finishing touches on an “action plan for peace” by the end of November. He added that he cannot discuss a ceasefire while Russian forces occupy Ukrainian territory.
Zelensky touted his “action plan for peace” as an extension of June’s “Global Peace Summit” in Switzerland, which produced a communique calling for restoration of Ukraine’s “territorial integrity.”
Representatives from 91 nations signed the communique, but Russia was not one of them. Russian President Vladimir Putin instead demanded Ukraine surrender its occupied eastern provinces to Russian control and abandon its plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Putin additionally demanded all foreign forces withdraw from the Eastern European region he imagines as Russia’s sphere of influence.
Zelensky said in an interview with Japan’s NHK television news on Saturday that he still believes the international community can pressure Putin to give up his demands and negotiate for peace.
“Patience, support, and diplomatic pressure are the three factors for a just end to the war. If the U.S. and European nations maintain unity, it will add pressure and show Moscow that there is no chance,” he said.
Zelensky apparently timed his rollout date for the “action plan for peace” with an eye on the U.S. presidential election in November. Ukraine wants to organize another Global Peace Summit before the election, producing a second communique that Zelensky believes might “mark the end of the war.”
During his NHK interview, Zelensky said he invited Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to visit Ukraine. Trump has criticized heavy NATO spending on Ukraine’s defense and voiced skepticism the Ukrainians can win the long war of attrition with Russia, although he also praised Zelensky and said he maintains a good relationship with the Ukrainian leader.
Quote:The mother of one of the twelve children murdered Saturday by a Hezbollah rocket cried out in grief as she approached the local soccer field where they were killed.
“Tell me,” the local schoolteacher asked, as the mother wept behind her, “how am I supposed to erase their names from the register?”
Nearby, the crater of the rocket sits at a corner of the field, near a torn steel fence.
Local resident Dolan Abu Saleh, who lives near the field and saw the rocket fly over the town before striking the soccer pitch, points out that the rocket struck a point near the entrance of the local bomb shelter — meaning that children who had scrambled to take cover as warning sirens sounded were killed on their way to safety.
One paramedic, he said, loaded the lifeless body of his own daughter onto an ambulance before returning to treat the wounded.
Shrapnel hit the playground nearby; body parts were found on the roof of a neighboring building. The scene, even three days later, is almost too much for journalists to bear.
The streets are lined with black flags. Portraits of the victims hang on fences; a memorial, with a soccer ball or basketball placed in each of twelve empty chairs, along with jerseys featuring the names of the children, takes up the central roundabout.
Local dignitaries arrive to comfort the village and the grieving families. Former defense minister Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon; the mayor of the town of Karmiel; an imam from the Muslim community in the central Israeli town of Lydda.
The imam delivers a speech in Arabic calling for unity among all of Israel’s citizens — Druze, Muslim, Jewish, and Chrisitian. He leads Muslims in the midday prayer at the memorial site and embraces members of the community.
As they deliver eulogies, the message echoes from one leader to another: we must unite, as one nation, against hate.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed Tuesday evening that it had killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fuad Shukr “Sayyid Muhsan,” who was also wanted for his role in the 1983 U.S. Marines barracks bombing in Beirut.
The IDF issued a statement:
The IDF announces today (Tuesday), July 30, 2024, that in a targeted, intelligence-based elimination, Israeli Air Force fighter jets eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s most senior military commander and the head of its Strategic Unit, Fuad Shukr “Sayyid Muhsan”, in the area of Beirut. Fuad served as Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s right-hand man and was Nasrallah’s adviser for planning and directing wartime operations.
Fuad Shukr has directed Hezbollah’s attacks on the State of Israel since October 8th, and he was the commander responsible for the murder of the 12 children in Majdal Shams in northern Israel on Saturday evening, as well as the killing of numerous Israelis and foreign nationals over the years.
As the Head of Hezbollah’s Strategic Unit, Fuad was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs. He was responsible for force build-up, planning, and execution of terror attacks against the State of Israel.
Fuad joined the Hezbollah terrorist organization in 1985 and has since held a number of senior positions. As part of his role, he was a member of the Jihad Council – Hezbollah’s most senior military forum.
In the 1990s, Fuad advanced numerous attacks against the IDF and the South Lebanon Army. In 2000, he was directly involved in the abduction of the bodies of three IDF soldiers – SSGT Benyamin Avraham, SSGT Adi Avitan, and SSGT Omar Sawaid -who were killed by Hezbollah terrorists while patrolling the security fence adjacent to Har Dov. Since then, he has planned and directed numerous terror attacks against innocent civilians.
The Times of Israel added: “He is also wanted by the United States for his role in the 1983 bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut, with a $5 million bounty placed on his head by Washington.”
Quote:Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, a billionaire who ordered murder from luxurious exile in Doha, Qatar, was reportedly killed early Wednesday in Tehran, Iran, after the presidential inauguration.
Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration of new president Masoud Pezeshkian and met with “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei, together with the leaders of other terrorist groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis.
Multiple news sources, citing Iranian television, say that Haniyeh was killed and that Hamas confirmed the death.
Iran’s PressTV reported:
Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the resistance Palestinian movement Hamas, has been killed in an attack in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Wednesday morning that Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed when their residence was hit in Tehran.
The statement said the attack is under investigation and the results will be announced later in the day.
The New York Times confirmed the news, citing Iran’s terrorist Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps:
Ismail Haniyeh, one of the most senior Hamas leaders, was targeted and killed in Iran, according to a statement by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps on Tuesday.
Hamas accused Israel of killing Mr. Haniyeh, who led the Hamas political operations from exile in Qatar, in Tehran. Hamas made the statement on its official Telegram account.
The news came hours after Israel confirmed that it had killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fuad Shukr “Sayyid Muhsan,” who was responsible for rocket attacks on Israel and the 1983 U.S. Marines barracks bombing in Beirut.
Quote:Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an avowed Islamist and one of the loudest world leaders supporting the Hamas jihadist terror organization, threatened to invade Israel on Sunday.
“We must be very strong so that Israel cannot strike Palestine,” Erdogan told the audience at a rally for his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), according to Israel’s i24. “Just like we entered Karabakh and the way we entered Libya, maybe we’ll do the same thing. There’s nothing we can’t do. We have to be strong.”
Under Erdogan, Turkey has engaged in foreign interventionism for nearly a decade, sending troops into Syria in 2016 to allegedly “end the rule of the tyrant [Bashar] Assad,” but in reality, attacking U.S.-allied Kurdish groups. Turkey has also been active militarily in neighboring Iraq, similarly targeting Kurdish groups at the time fighting the jihadist Islamic State “caliphate.” In Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey, supplied its popular, relatively affordable Bayraktar drones to its Azeri allies, marking a decisive turn in the conflict that resulted in the completion of the genocide of Armenian Christians in the area.
Erdogan also announced an invasion of Libya in 2020 to defend the internationally recognized “Government of National Accord” (GNA) from an ongoing siege by Russia-backed warlord Khalifa Haftar. Turkish involvement in the conflict helped the GNA keep control of Tripoli through several attempts at conquest by Haftar, though Libya currently remains fractured and unstable, as neither political force has completely subdued the other.
Reports on the Turkish president’s comments on Sunday did not clarify if intervention in Israel would be a direct Turkish military action or Erdogan would consider selling Bayraktar drones or other equipment to Hamas, which Ankara enthusiastically supports. The Jerusalem Post added the context that Erdogan made the threat while “praising his country’s defense industry,” potentially a nod to the introduction of Bayraktars to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine [sic],” Erdogan claimed. “There is no reason why we cannot do this.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry supported Erdogan’s remarks with a statement later that day comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Iran’s so-called “Supreme Leader” has called for a direct attack on Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike on Tehran, Iran’s capital city, that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday.
The New York Times reported:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order.
Mr. Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning, shortly after Iran announced that Mr. Haniyeh had been killed, said the three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards. They asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Israel has not yet directly claimed responsibility for the airstrike.
An Iranian attack on Israel in April involved some 300 projectiles, almost all of which were intercepted by Israeli air defenses and those of allies in the region.
Many countries have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon, and some U.S. carriers have canceled flights to Israel, in anticipation of a possible war between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon.
Israel killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command in an airstrike on Beirut on Tuesday.
Quote:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his nation on Wednesday evening in the wake of successful airstrikes on terrorist leaders in Beirut, Lebanon, and Tehran, Iran.
As Breitbart News reported, Israel killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fu’ad Shukr, in Beirut on Tuesday; and killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday.
Notably, Netanyahu did not say directly that Israel was responsible for the latter strike.
His full remarks follow (translated from Hebrew by the Government Press Office):
...
Since the beginning of the war, I have made it clear that we are in a fight against Iran’s axis of evil. This is an existential war against a stranglehold of terrorist armies and missiles that Iran would like to tighten around our neck.
In my address to Congress several days ago, I noted that the three main arms of this axis of evil are Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, the three H’s. We have recently struck crushing blows on each one.
Three weeks ago, we attacked the Hamas chief-of-staff, Muhammad Deif. Two weeks ago we attacked the Houthis in one of the Air Force’s most distant assaults, and yesterday, we attacked the Hezbollah chief-of-staff, Fuad Shukr, aka Mohsin.
On behalf of the citizens of Israel, I would like to express deep appreciation to the IDF, the ISA, IDF Intelligence, the Air Force, and all of the security services for the precision operations on three different fronts.
In the attack yesterday, we eliminated Nasrallah’s deputy. Mohsin was directly responsible for the massacre of our dear boys and girls in Majdal Shams. He was responsible for the murder of many other Israeli citizens. He was responsible for the unceasing assault against our citizens in the northern communities over nine months of war.
He was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. The US put a $5 million bounty on his head, and for good reason. He was involved in the murder of 241 American soldiers and 58 French soldiers in Beirut in 1983. He was the main liaison between Iran and Hezbollah and he was responsible for the organization’s missiles.
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Citizens of Israel, challenging days are before us. Since the attack in Beirut, we have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a very heavy price for aggression against us from whatever quarter.
Citizens of Israel, in the first days of the war I said that the war would take time and require us to show patience. I reiterate that today as well.
For months, there has been no week in which they have not told us – at home and abroad – to end the war. ‘End the war’ because we have exhausted what can be achieved and ‘it is impossible to win’ in any case.
If we gave in to this pressure – we would not have eliminated senior Hamas leaders and thousands of terrorists. We would not have destroyed terrorist infrastructure and extensive Hamas underground infrastructure. They simply would have kept it. We would not be in control of the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah Crossing – the lifeline of Hamas by which they arm and rebuild themselves, and we would not have created the conditions that are bringing us closer to an outline that will also return our hostages, and which will allow us to achieve all of our objectives for the war: Returning all of our hostages, eliminating Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel, and restoring our residents securely to their homes in both the south and the north.
All of the achievements that we have achieved in recent months, we achieved because we did not give in, because we made courageous decisions despite the great pressure at home and abroad. And I tell you: This was not easy. I needed to reject very great pressure. But above all, we achieved this because our fighters, both reservists and conscripts, in the IDF, the Police, the ISA and the Mossad – did not give in. They are fighting like lions, they are determined to win, and I, together with the people of Israel, back them with great love and with great faith in the justice of our cause.
Quote:The Turkish government on Wednesday condemned the killing of Hamas terrorist Ismail Haniyeh in Iran as a “shameful” assassination that could escalate the Gaza war into a regional conflict.
“We condemn the assassination of the leader of Hamas’s political office, Ismail Haniyeh, in a heinous attack in Tehran,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We express our condolences to the Palestinian people, hundreds of thousands of whom, like Haniyeh, have been martyred in order to live peacefully in their homeland under the roof of their own state. The Netanyahu government’s lack of intention to achieve peace has been demonstrated once again,” the statement continued.
“This attack is also aimed at spreading the war in Gaza to a regional level. If the international community does not act to stop Israel, our region will face an even greater conflict,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
Turkey’s authoritarian Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was even more hyperbolic in a social media post on Wednesday morning, mourning Haniyeh as his “brother” and accusing the Israelis of “barbarism” for allegedly assassinating him.
“This assassination is a despicable act aimed at disrupting the Palestinian cause, the glorious resistance of Gaza, and the just struggle of our Palestinian brothers, and demoralizing and intimidating the Palestinians,” Erdogan railed.
Erdogan vowed that Turkey will “support our Palestinian brothers with all our means and all our strength.”
“We will continue to work for the establishment of a free, sovereign and independent State of Palestine, based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.
Erdogan was no fan of Israel before Haniyeh’s death, having compared the Israeli government to Nazi Germany. Two weeks ago, he said Turkey – an increasingly problematic member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – would block any NATO effort to cooperate with Israel.
On Monday, while holding forth at a rally for his AKP party, Erdogan threatened to invade Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.
“Just like we entered Karabakh and the way we entered Libya, maybe we’ll do the same thing. There’s nothing we can’t do. We have to be strong,” Erdogan said.
Turkey provided drones to the Islamist regime in Azerbaijan, helping it to conquer the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region by force in September 2023 and begin ethnically cleansing the Armenian Christians who live there. Turkish troops launched an outright military intervention in Libya in 2020.
Turkey does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization – on the contrary, Erdogan’s government actively encourages Hamas to hold rallies in Turkey – and Erdogan refused to condemn the October 7 atrocities perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorists. Instead, he insisted Hamas is “not a terrorist organization,” but rather a “liberation group” filled with “mujahideen” (Muslim holy warriors).
The AKP Party released its own statement on Wednesday claiming Israel “pulled the trigger” on a regional war by assassinating Haniyeh.
AKP spokesman Omer Celik called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration “the biggest obstacle to world peace.”
“This attack proves that the genocidal network is only going to increase its tyranny from now on,” he said.
“Initial reports say the assassination was carried out with a missile from another country. If this is true then it demonstrates Israel’s genocidal network,” he continued. The other country he obliquely referred to would most likely be the United States.
The exact circumstances around Haniyeh’s death in Tehran on Wednesday have not yet been revealed by the Iranian government. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Israeli government has not claimed any involvement in his death.
Quote:Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was targeted in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday while attending the inauguration of new president Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Times of Israel reported: “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemns the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, calling it a ‘cowardly act and dangerous development.'”
Theoretically, Abbas’s Fatah faction and Haniyeh’s Hamas organization are political rivals, but the Palestinian Authority has long supported and subsidized terror.
Abbas has yet to condemn the October 7 attack, though Fatah-controlled media outlets have criticized it on tactical grounds.
U.S. President Joe Biden has pushed for the Palestinian Authority to be placed in charge of Gaza after the current war ends. The Palestinian Authority ran Gaza from 1994 until 2007, when Hamas ousted the Fatah leadership in a bloody coup inside the territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stringently opposed allowing the Palestinian Authority to return, and has likewise pushed back against Biden’s attempt to achieve a Palestinian state as one of the outcomes of the war.
In these positions, Netanyahu is strongly supported by the Israeli public — as well as the American public, 80% of whom support Israel against Hamas, according to the Harvard-Harris Poll, which has shown consistent results throughout the duration of the war.
Quote:U.S. officials on Tuesday said American forces struck a base near Baghdad, Iraq, used by the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the Iran-backed Shiite militias that have launched numerous terrorist attacks on American forces since the beginning of the Gaza war.
Iraqi sources said the strike killed four PMF members and wounded four others. The Iraqi government condemned the strike as a “heinous crime” and a violation of the U.S.-led coalition’s mandate to help Iraq combat the Islamic State.
Yehi Rahool, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, said the U.S. attack was a “blatant aggression.”
“They targeted, with fighter jets coming from beyond the borders, Iraqi sites belonging to security forces in northern Babil province,” he said:
Such serious and uncalculated violations can significantly undermine all efforts, mechanisms, and frameworks of joint security work to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They could also drag Iraq and the entire region into conflicts, wars, and serious repercussions.
The PMF and Iraq’s leading Iran-backed militant organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah, were curiously subdued in their response to the strike. The PMF simply reported that the attack occurred, without identifying the attackers, although it added a demand for the Iraqi government to “make an immediate decision for the expulsion of foreign forces from our country.”
Kata’ib Hezbollah said that a U.S. strike, launched from Kuwait, took out a “group of drone experts” who were supposedly doing maintenance work on reconnaissance drones. The Iraqi militia warned Kuwait not to let its territory serve as a base for “American criminal actions.”
U.S. officials confirmed the strike took place and said the targets were militants threatening to launch drone attacks against American forces.
The last U.S. action against Iraqi militias took place in February, but the militias launched rockets and a drone at U.S. forces in July. The PMF rocket attack reportedly failed to cause any casualties or damage.
The American defensive strike against Iraqi militias came just hours after an Israeli airstrike killed Fuad Shukr, a commander of Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
USA
Surprise, Surprise: Biden Knows Nothing About Haniyeh's Death
Quote:Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the Biden administration was not informed in advance about any plans to eliminate Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of the Hamas terrorist organization.
Haniyeh was killed in Iran on Tuesday in an operation widely attributed to Israeli intelligence, although no public claim of responsibility has been made. Before his ill-fated trip to attend the inauguration of “moderate” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran, Haniyeh lived lavishly in Qatar, his accounts filled with loot skimmed from international aid to the Palestinian people.
“This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” Blinken said during an interview with Channel News Asia (CNA) in Singapore.
Blinken said talks for a ceasefire in Gaza would continue despite the liquidation of Haniyeh. He said it was “very hard to speculate” about the effect Haniyeh’s death would have on negotiations.
“We will continue to labor for as long as it takes to get there,” he vowed:
It’s vitally important to help end the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It’s vitally important to get the hostages home, including a number of Americans. It’s vitally important to, hopefully, put things on a better path for more enduring peace and more enduring security, so that focus remains, and, again, speculating on the impact of any one event, I’ve learned, is not a not a wise thing to do.
Blinken added that one of the administration’s top priorities is “trying to make sure that the conflict that emerged in Gaza doesn’t spread, doesn’t go to other places, doesn’t escalate.”
“The best way to bring temperature down everywhere and to put us on a better path is through a ceasefire in Gaza,” he asserted.
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) stated that Israel’s killing of a Hezbollah leader, which it says was in response to a rocket attack that killed children in Israel and its reported assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh make “it harder to accomplish a ceasefire. And that’s what we should be focused on is getting those hostages released, making it safe for those civilians again. That should be our north star in all of this.”
Host Yasmin Vossoughian brought up “the targeted assassination overseas of a top Hamas leader in Iran, … the bombing and killing of children on Saturday in northern Israel, … the killing of a Hezbollah leader in the suburbs of Beirut as well.”
Heinrich responded, “I think the most valuable thing we can do here, and it’s not a political thing, it’s just what is right to do, is to secure that ceasefire. And, unfortunately, these latest two attacks on the leader in Hezbollah, the political leader in Hamas, that makes it harder to accomplish a ceasefire. And that’s what we should be focused on is getting those hostages released, making it safe for those civilians again. That should be our north star in all of this.”
Quote:A Texas rancher, along with Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, is suing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for record-breaking levels of illegal immigration on its watch.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed suit on behalf of Michael Vickers, a veterinarian who owns a 1,000-acre ranch in Brooks County, as well as Coe, Atascosa County, and Kinney County that seeks to have a federal judge halt most of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies at the United States-Mexico border.
“By this time, it is glaringly obvious to all that the Biden administration has deliberately crashed border security in order to flood the country with as many illegal aliens as possible,” IRLI executive director Dale Wilcox said. “This is no mere policy failure, or just a violation of statutes, but flagrant disobedience to the Constitution.”
The lawsuit accuses the Biden-Harris administration of having “knowingly adopted numerous immigration policies … that, working in concert, encourage and facilitate the entrance and release of record numbers of illegal aliens into the United States while simultaneously preventing the removal of the vast majority of aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States.”
In particular, the lawsuit details the Biden-Harris administration’s parole pipeline that has welcomed nearly 1.2 million migrants to the U.S. — via the border and commercial flights — since the start of 2023.
The lawsuit states:
Defendants’ non-enforcement and parole policies have caused great harm to Plaintiff Vickers’ ranch. Because of Defendants’ policies, tens of thousands of illegal aliens have been released into the interior who thereafter travel cross country across the grasslands of Plaintiff’s ranch. In so doing, aliens routinely cause thousands of dollars in damage to fences or gates as they pass through the ranch. Since early 2021, Plaintiff Vickers has incurred more than $50,000 in fence and gate damages alone. Plaintiff Vickers has also spent thousands of dollars to mitigate environmental damage.
Aliens also deposit tons of trash and litter as they traverse Plaintiffs’ ranch, which compromises food and water sources for livestock. For instance, Plaintiff Vickers has autopsied cows with their rumen (large stomach) impacted with plastic bags and trash. Cattle also escape through cut fences and gates torn down by illegal aliens.
Quote:Investigative journalist Gerald Posner — whose deeply researched studies of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. made him a preeminent authority on political assassinations — says he can understand why so many people think there’s “something fishy” about the official story of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Noting the belated admission by the Secret Service that Trump’s security team was denied requested resources before the July 13 assassination attempt, Posner asks, “Did they refuse to give Trump extra security for a two-year period?” They were almost creating a situation in which somebody could take a shot. Now I’m not saying that’s the case, but I understand why that speculation would be there.”
Posner lays out his analysis of the events in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one man dead, seriously injured two others and wounded former President Trump in the most recent episode of the Drill Down podcast with Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers.
Posner has been following the hearings into the Secret Service’s failure, and he has many questions. “We knew there have been screw-ups before, but they can’t keep it silent anymore because people who attend the rally take out their cell phones and start recording what happened. Everybody could see — ‘Hey, there he is! There’s that guy! Look at that guy on the roof! Hey, officers!’ — So, we know more than they are telling us. No wonder we think something is fishy here.”
Before the event, the shooter “was walking around with a range finder and apparently a large backpack and they were tracking him. And then the Secret Service was made aware, they’re saying they now knew 30 minutes in advance,” Posner says. “Why did they allow Trump to take that stage?”
Posner has written thirteen books, including deeply researched reviews of the slayings of President John F. Kennedy, called “Case Closed,” and “Killing the Dream,” about civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. He and his co-author wife Patricia carefully reviewed the records around both assassinations, concluding that both Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray acted alone.
The new Acting Director of the U.S. Secret Service, Ronald Rowe, called the assassination attempt against former President Trump “a failure of the Secret Service,” not of local law enforcement. He spoke to a joint Senate hearing this week investigating how 20-year-old Thomas Michael Crooks, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, was able to get so close to Trump and fire eight shots, despite spectators clearly shouting to police they could see the shooter on a roof near Trump’s platform.
“It’s a massive failure of communications,” Posner tells the hosts. “We don’t know yet if the shooter had anybody else working with him. We’ll find that out. Was he encouraged by others to go ahead and do it? Did he have any assistance?” Posner asks.
There were enormous procedural failures, too. “There is a water tower there, by the way. I’ve looked at this in close detail. It gives 360-degree coverage of the entire area. Somebody could have been posted on that water tower. That had been discussed and, evidently, not done,” he says. “One of the things we’ve now learned is that the Secret Service never had a meeting with the local police or state police before this event took place. Was that common practice in the last couple of years on other security matters? Or was this particular for this event, or particular for Trump?”
Worse is that the service has already said it erased the radio communications from its archive as their “standard operating procedure.”
Schweizer notes that the cascade of Secret Service failures might begin to seem to some like a “directed incompetence.” Posner recalls the revelations that key high-level FBI officials held personal animus toward Trump during his presidency, and asks, “Will we find personal emails or possibly even, you know, government emails from secret service officials that say, I can’t stand that no good ex -president, you know, I really don’t like him at all?”
After watching the testimony of both Rowe and former director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned in disgrace last week after her appearance before a House of Representatives panel, it’s easy for the public to conclude that “we know more [about the situation] than they are telling us.”
After Schweizer and Eggers share FBI Director Christopher Wray’s offhanded remark during his own testimony that “there’s some question” as to whether Trump was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel,” Posner agrees that “you can understand why people are suspicious.”
These hearings “were a master class in how not to disclose information if you’re a bureaucrat,” Posner tells the hosts. “The whole system went into paralysis.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:During a back-and-forth with reporters after announcing a prisoner swap deal with Russia on Thursday, a visibly testy and confused President Joe Biden tried to blame his predecessor and possible successor, Donald Trump, for not rescuing hostages that were taken after Biden took office.
Biden, who inserted a churlish partisan dig at Trump into his announcement of the deal with Russia, was attempting to depart from the podium when a reporter noted that Trump has “said repeatedly that he could’ve gotten the hostages out without giving anything in exchange.”
“Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” Biden snapped before marching off the stage.
As the Republican National Committee immediately pointed out, Russia seized two of the three American hostages freed in the deal Biden announced on Thursday after Biden took office:
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Biden’s remarks on Thursday included a few moments when he seemed to grow preemptively angry at critics accusing him of making a lopsided deal to bring the prisoners home. The three Americans (and one U.S. green card holder) whom Russia held were innocents jailed on false charges, while the Russians released in the swap were hardened criminals convicted in proper court proceedings, including an assassin who conducted a political murder on German soil.
Trump has indeed stated that he could have arranged the release of Russia’s hostages without giving anything in return and would do so immediately if he returned to office.
For example, in a May post on his preferred social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said:
Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!
In July, after a Russian court sentenced Gershkovich, Trump wrote:
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was just sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Russian Court. Biden will NEVER GET HIM OUT, unless he pays a “king’s ransom.” I will get him out FOR NO COMPENSATION immediately following our victory on November 5th, and it will be my great honor to do so. Vote for TRUMP, and The Wall Street Journal should STOP BEING STUPID!!!
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), argued on Thursday that the Russians finally agreed to release long-held prisoners — including Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan — because they were nervous about Trump’s potential return to the White House.
“We certainly want these Americans to come back home. It was ridiculous that they were in prison, to begin with, but we have to ask ourselves, ‘Why are they coming home?'” Vance said during a CNN interview. “And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house.”
“That’s a good thing, and I think it’s a testament to Donald Trump’s strength,” he added.
Quote:Russia has agreed to release jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerskovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan in a prisoner swap, according to a report Thursday by Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg reported:
Russia is releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan as part of a major prisoner swap with the US, according to people familiar with the situation.
The men, jailed in Russia on espionage charges they and the US deny, are en route to destinations outside of Russia. The US and its allies will return prisoners to Russia that they hold under the deal, the people said, asking for anonymity to discuss matters that aren’t yet public.
Last month, Russia sentenced Gerskovich to 16 years in prison on bogus espionage charges. Whelan was left behind in a previous prisoner swap to release WNBA star Brittney Griner in 2022.
It is unclear which Russian prisoners held by the U.S. were released in the exchange, or what other concessions the U.S. made for Gerskovich and Whelan’s release.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had promised to secure the prisoners’ release, threatening enemies of the U.S. in his speech to the party convention last month: “To the entire world, we want our hostages back—and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”
Quote:President Joe Biden on Thursday hailed the complex prisoner-swap deal with Russia that freed unjustly imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and two others in exchange for prisoners including Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov as a prodigious “feat of diplomacy.”
Biden said all four of the recovered prisoners were “convicted in show trials” by Russia “for absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever.”
In addition to Gershkovich and Whelan, the freed detainees included Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Muza, a U.S. green-card holder and Washington Post contributor who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April for speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kurmasheva was arrested in 2023 while visiting her sick mother in the Tatarstan region. She was convicted in a hasty secret trial in July and sentenced to 16 years in prison on false charges of espionage.
Biden said he and the families of the released detainees were able to speak with them by telephone shortly before his statement from the White House:
“They’re out of Russia,” he said. “Earlier today, they were flown to Turkey, and soon they’ll be wheels-up on their way home to see their families. It’s an incredible relief for all of the family members gathered here. It’s a relief to their friends and colleagues all across the country. We’ve been praying for this day for a long time.”
“The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship,” he said. “Multiple countries helped get this done. They joined in difficult, complex negotiations at my request. I personally thank them all again.”
According to an ABC News report on Thursday, an especially tricky part of those “complex negotiations” was convincing Germany to release Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili.
German courts found that Krasikov carried out the killing on the orders of the Russian government, which supplied him with a false identity, false papers, and other resources.
The case caused a major diplomatic rift between Russia and Germany, which said Russia conducting a political execution on German soil was a “serious violation of German law and Germany’s sovereignty.”
The regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin has for years insisted that Krasikov must be part of any prisoner swap deal, including a rumored swap that might have freed dissident Alexei Navalny before he was killed under mysterious circumstances in a Russian penal colony in February 2024.
Honestly, I don't know why the US government should care about a green card holder at all. The guy's not a citizen as of yet so it does feel like the US admin just got tricked by Russia.
Quote:The Secret Service spokesman who falsely claimed in a statement that former President Donald Trump’s security detail was never denied requested assets is still employed, the agency’s acting director confirmed this week.
“He is still employed, senator,” Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said during a Senate hearing Tuesday under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Rowe said he was not sure who approved the statement.
Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service, claimed in a statement posted on X on July 14, 2024, a day after an assassination attempt against Trump:
Theres an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed. This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.
However, six days later, Guglielmi walked back that statement in a Washington Post report that said that “top officials at the U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel sought by Donald Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday.”
The Post reported:
After receiving detailed questions from The Washington Post, Guglielmi said the agency had learned new information indicating the agency’s headquarters may have in fact denied some requests for additional security from Trump’s detail and was reviewing documentation to understand the specific interactions better (emphasis added).
Previous to the Post‘s reporting, Guglielmi had also personally denied to Breitbart News that requests from Trump’s detail had been rejected and asserted that assets to Trump had been increased in June. He told Breitbart News on July 16, “There was some inaccurate reporting about things were denied — that’s not true. They actually were increased.”
Now, as of August 1, 2024, Guglielmi initial post on X has a Community Note that reads, “This has now been confirmed as false. The USSS has now confirmed they did in fact receive requests for additional resources on former President Trumps security detail which were denied.”
Quote:Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) in 2018 praised an apocalyptic Pearl Jam concert poster that depicted former President Donald Trump dead, according to his 2020 book, Grounded: A Rural Democrat’s Fight to Unite America.
Tester’s last reelection campaign enflamed controversy when a Pearl Jam poster for a get-out-the-vote concert promoting the Montana Democrat featured a dead Donald Trump and an American bald eagle eating the remains of his corpse. Tester is close friends with Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, who designed the poster.
Tester’s campaign, not Tester himself, disavowed the poster, only after the media shed light on the controversy. Two weeks after the literature was revealed, Tester has yet to personally disavow it.
Even though the 2018 Tester campaign condemned the violent imagery in the poster, the battleground Senate Democrat appeared to enjoy the artwork, per his 2020 book, Grounded: A Rural Democrat’s Fight to Unite a Divided America.
The Washington Examiner found that Tester “actually loved” the Pearl Jam poster.
“As soon as word spread of how wild the posters were, fans stood in line for hours to buy them all up at $35 a pop. Christie showed me a copy, gritting her teeth,” Tester wrote.
“And there’s an unmistakable image of me, flying on my tractor above the fire and fury, waving with my two-fingered left hand,” Tester added.
He said, “‘This is so … interesting,’ I told Christie. Though the poster was off message, I didn’t want to admit to her that I actually loved it. None of us knew about the posters before we saw them on sale at the concert.”
Tester went on to write that the “big news” was not the concert, but the “artwork.”
The revelation about Tester’s praise of the violent, anti-Trump artwork follows after the recent shooting of former President Trump.
Tester wrote that he “was appalled by the violence at the political rally” and called for an investigation into the shooting.
Tester has also made violent calls to attack Trump.
In 2019, Tester said that the best way to beat the 45th president is to “punch him in the face.”
NY Supreme Court Wants Texas to Keep Busing Illegals to NYC
Quote:The New York Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by Mayor Eric Adams attempting to block Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s migrant busing program. The ruling allows the State of Texas to continue busing migrants to New York City.
In a post on social media, Governor Abbott vowed to continue busing migrants from the Texas border region to New York City and other sanctuary cities. The ruling by the New York Supreme Court is the second legal victory for Abbott in as many days.
A lawsuit filed by Mayor Adams and the New York Civil Liberties Union accused the bus companies contracted by the Texas Division of Emergency Management of violating the State’s Social Services Law by dropping off migrants “without providing a means of support,” CBS News reported. The New York Supreme Court rejected the city’s request for an injunction.
The lawsuit also asked for $700 million to compensate the city for the costs of shelter, food, and health care, the article states.
According to the Office of the Texas Governor, Texas has bussed nearly 46,000 migrants to New York City since August of 2022.
LAW360 reported:
The Commissioner for the New York City Department of Social Services had asked the court to enforce against eight companies Section 149 of the New York Social Services Law, which states that anyone who knowingly brings an out-of-state “needy person” into New York for the purpose of making them a public charge should be obligated to bring them out of New York or monetarily support them.
However, New York Supreme Court Justice Mary V. Rosado ruled Monday that the nation’s high court ruled in Edwards v. California that a similar California law was unconstitutional because the transportation of indigent persons from state to state fell within Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.
“The mass migration of people within the country, which the commissioner seeks to chill or prevent, is an issue reserved by the Constitution for Congress, lest the United States fall to a regime of Balkanization with each state setting fort a patchwork of inconsistent criteria for crossing state lines,” Judge Rosado wrote in the order.
The New York case is The Commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services v. Buckeye Coach LLC et al., case number 150122/2024, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, LAW360 reported.
Quote:A central Dutch province is urgently warning parents not to take young children to a popular forest area near the city of Utrecht following two recent close encounters with a wolf displaying “atypical and worrying” behavior.
Utrecht province on Thursday was preparing to seek a permit to kill the wolf, which is a protected species throughout the European Union. It was seeking support and approval from the agriculture ministry for the permit.
On Wednesday, a child was pushed over by a wolf in Austerlitz, the province said in a statement. The incident came two weeks after another confrontation led to the closure of a popular walking area.
“Assuming it was a wolf involved, wolf experts say that the behavior displayed is atypical and worrying,” the statement said. “The province takes seriously into account that it is the same wolf that was previously involved in incidents in Leusden with another girl and a dog.”
Wolves have been spreading from east to west across rural areas of the Netherlands for years ever since arriving from Germany. The animals were officially confirmed as having returned in 2019, two centuries after being hunted to extinction, when a pair produced a litter of cubs.
While conservationists have welcomed the reappearance of a predator, wolves have been blamed for a string of attacks on livestock and have increasingly come close to members of the public. Earlier this year, authorities in a national park were given permission to use a paintball gun to scare off an animal that had been approaching humans.
Despite wolves encroaching on populated areas, there have been no serious injuries reported as a result of attacks.
Fauna Protection, a group that lobbies against hunting, said on X that “urgent advice is good, shooting is not.”
Quote:The UK Prime Minister has vowed to come down on what he called “a tiny mindless minority in our society” of people rioting against the mass stabbing of children as a judge names attack suspect Alex Rudakubana, citing the dangers of an information “vacuum” being allowed to form.
A British judge lifted reporting restrictions on the identity of the suspect charged with three counts of murder, ten of attempted murder, and one of possessing a knife on Thursday afternoon. Rwandan-heritage Alex Rudakubana of Merseyside was named , with the judge acknowledging doing so was “exceptional” because he is under the age of 18 and consequently ought normally to be tried anonymously, but saying the fact the defendant’s 18th birthday is in six days ameliorates the decision.
There have been several nights of protests turned to riots in some cases in towns across England following Monday’s attack and many have stated this situation has been fed by a major lack of information from the authorities about the attack. The judge acknowledged this too in his remarks accompanying lifting the anonymity of the suspect, stating: “Continuing to prevent the full reporting has the disadvantage of allowing others to spread misinformation, in a vacuum.”
The court heard that Rudakubana allegedly entered a dance party for young children in Southport, Merseyside, and stabbed 13 people inside with a “curved kitchen knife”. Rudakubana arrived at court this morning in a motorcade of police vehicles including riot vans, and large numbers of police officers stood outside the court to dissuade trouble.
Nevertheless, a large group gathered and Rudakubana’s police vehicle was cursed by some as it left the building. Newspaper The Daily Telegraph reports “a number of people shouted “f****** scumbag” as the prison van pulled out of the complex” and police stepped in to keep some people away from the vehicles.
Protests took place in Southport, Manchester, Hartlepool, Aldershot, and London. Over 100 arrests occurred nationwide.
In a week where a room full of children were stabbed, and where protests against the attack turned to riots, the government has decided to act against the rioters first, with the Prime Minister declaring “the immediate challenge is driven by far-right hatred” and announcing a new anti-riot police capability.
Quote:The UK Undercover Policing Inquiry was hearing evidence from a former police officer on Thursday when the feed was abruptly cut after he started talking about the role of the government’s domestic spying agency, MI5, in smearing political activists.
An inquiry into the conduct and activity of undercover policing in the United Kingdom from 1968 to 2008, commonly known as the ‘Spy Cops’ inquiry due to it having been set up over a decade ago in response to claims about police officers entering romantic relationships with female left-wing activists, is hearing evidence from its first former undercover police officer on Thursday.
Trevor Morris is a former undercover police officer who had used the recycled identity of a dead child to present as Anthony ‘Bobby’ Lewis, a disc jockey and German translator when infiltrating left-wing and activist groups in the early 1990s. As revealed by documents published by the inquiry, Morris takes strong exception to the criticism levelled at the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercover unit, arguing it saved countless lives and prevented much disorder by infiltrating radical groups.
While the SDS infiltrated dozens of groups in the decades of its existence until its role was taken over by the National Domestic Extremism Unit in the years following 2008, one of the cases which has grabbed most attention is that of the campaign for Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993. It has been alleged for years that undercover police officers who infiltrated the Lawrence Family Campaign had tried to find “dirt” to “smear” them.
Questioning inevitably turned to this during evidence-hearing on Thursday, and while former undercover police officer Morris totally denied the police tried to smear activists, he clearly implied other branches of government did so. He said: “nonsense. That’s not what we’re about, we’re about gathering intelligence, not smearing individuals. That’s a Security Service job, let them do that. We’re about gathering intelligence, that’s what we were doing.”
Apparently realising what he’d said, the police officer quickly followed up by remarking: “Sorry, I shouldn’t say that… let’s scrap that last bit, I’m not saying that”.
David Barr KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, then started to ask a follow-up question before the live-feed, broadcast on a ten-minute delay to allow for such moments, was cut. He asked: “Just to be clear, are you or are you not in a position to say whether or not the Security Service was seeking to sm-“.
The feed returned some 45 minutes later with the chairman of the Inquiry, retired High Court judge Sir John Edward Mitting warning the journalists in the room not to report what had been said during a period of time when the cameras had been off.
Sir John said, in sombre tone: “before you resume, may I say to those behind that there is a purpose to these orders. I know that you have complied with them up to now. They are serious orders, they do have a potentially serious consequence if they are breached. Please, I ask of you as well as demand of you, comply with what the order requires you to do. A transcript in due course will be published, which will contain part of that what was said between the hours of 11:16 and 11:22, but only part of it”.
Of these orders, the Inquiry official website notes: “These restrict certain information from being disclosed or published. They are issued by the Chairman and are legally enforceable.”
While a short break had been programmed in during the morning session, the camera was off considerably longer than the 15 minutes advertised, and the feed was taken down mid-sentence as the counsel spoke.
Quote:Since the new Labour Party government came into power earlier this month, over 3,000 illegal boat migrants have crossed the English Channel from France, throwing into question Sir Keir Starmer’s ability to “stop the boats”.
According to a tally from GB News, which had producers counting boat migrants as they were brought ashore, at least 133 illegals reached British shores on Tuesday.
The news outlet reported that the latest crossings have taken the total since the Labour Party came into government this month to more than 3,200.
This brings the total figure for the year to nearly 17,000, with most crossing under the previous ‘Conservative’ government of Rishi Sunak, which suffered its worst defeat in history in large part as a result of its failures to fulfil its repeated promises to the public on immigration.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said that his government will seek to “smash the gangs” behind the people-smuggling trade behind the continued waves of mostly young men arriving illegally in the country.
Critics, such as Reform boss Nigel Farage, have argued that merely targeting the gangs will be insufficient, as the lucrative model will simply motivate new criminals to fill the gaps, as with the endless and unsuccessful war on drugs. Farage and Reform UK have called for the UK to leave the deportation-blocking European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and to use the Royal Navy to immediately return boat migrants back to the beaches of France.
The English Channel migrant crisis is seriously straining public finances, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealing on Monday that the asylum system is already costing an additional £6.4 billion this year, alone.
Quote:Huw Edwards, the BBC’s former top news presenter, pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of making indecent images of children.
The offenses he pleaded guilty to at Westminster Magistrates´ Court in central London during a 26-minute hearing involved images shared on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021 by a man who had initially contacted Edwards via social media.
Edwards, who was the lead anchor on the BBC´s nighttime news for two decades and led the public broadcaster’s coverage of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, has been remanded on bail until a pre-sentencing hearing on Sept. 16. He could face up to 10 years in prison, though the prosecution conceded that a suspended sentence may be appropriate.
The court heard that Edwards, 62, was involved in an online chat with an adult man on the messaging service who sent him 377 sexual images, of which 41 were indecent images of children.
The images that were sent included seven of what are known as “category A,” which are the most indecent. Of those, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was aged between 7 and 9.
The court also heard that the unnamed male asked Edwards on Feb. 2, 2021 whether what he was sending was too young. Edwards told him not to send any underage images. Five more, though, were sent, and the exchange of pornographic images continued until April 2022.
“Accessing indecent images of underage people perpetuates the sexual exploitation of children, which has deep, long-lasting trauma on these victims,” said Claire Brinton of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Speaking in Edwards´ defense, his lawyer Philip Evans said there is “no suggestion” that his client had “in the traditional sense of the word, created any image of any sort.”
Quote:Moldova´s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday it has expelled a Russian diplomat after two Moldovan officials were detained on suspicion of treason and conspiracy against the European Union candidate country.
One of the Moldovan officials is suspected of treason for allegedly collecting and providing information to an embassy employee that could be used against Moldova´s interests, the Prosecutor´s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases said, and the other is accused of plotting against the country for personal gain.
One of the suspects works in Parliament and the other for the border police. Both were detained earlier this week for 72 hours and were allegedly collaborating with a foreign embassy in Moldova´s capital, Chisinau. The authorities did not state which country’s embassy was involved.
The foreign ministry said Thursday that it summoned Russia´s ambassador, Oleg Vasnetsov, to inform him that an unnamed embassy worker was a “collaborator” who was declared persona non grata and must leave the country. Information and evidence were obtained, the ministry said, “that attest to the conduct on the territory of the Republic of Moldova … of activities incompatible with the diplomatic status.”
It is the latest diplomatic spat to strain increasingly fraught ties between Russia and Moldova, whose pro-Western government has firmly opposed Russia´s full-scale war in neighboring Ukraine.
In March this year, Moldova expelled another Russian diplomat after the Kremlin opened six polling stations in Moldova´s pro-Russia breakaway region of Transnistria for its presidential election, against the wishes of Moldovan authorities.
Russia had previously agreed to open just one polling station at its embassy in Chisinau.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Russia became more interested in a prisoner swap with the United States after it became clear that Donald Trump could return to the White House, according to the Wall Street Journal, whose reporter, Evan Gerskovich, was freed.
The Journal noted Saturday that “Moscow’s concerns about a potential Trump presidency speeded up the deal.”
It added:
The German negotiation team was led by the deputy chief of the foreign secret service BND Philipp Wolff, a former prosecutor who joined the intelligence agency in 2007.
Wolff’s team saw an opening when their Russian counterparts said they wanted to wrap up the deal before the U.S. election in November. Some officials deduced that the Russians were either concerned about an unpredictable Donald Trump coming again to the presidency, or they feared that [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz would no longer be willing to help a president who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Germany.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, Trump notably said: “And to the entire world, I tell you this, we want our hostages back — and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”
Trump has prided himself on freeing Americans held abroad without being forced into lopsided exchanges such as those the Biden administration has accepted — and which, critics say, provide incentives for more hostage-taking in future.
In 2018, Turkey released Ameican pastor Andrew Brunson after Trump threatened to hit the Turkish economy with tough economic sanctions.
Russia may have preferred to negotiate with the more pliant Biden administration, which had shown its willingness in the past to trade valuable, even dangerous, convicts for Americans held abroad.
The Biden prisoner swap still left many Americans behind in Russian prisons, the Journal noted separately.
Quote:Some leftist members of the “Squad” in Congress are facing a class-action lawsuit regarding the anti-Israel encampment and protests that erupted at Columbia University a few months ago.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have been accused of “inciting and encouraging” the events, the New York Post reported on Saturday.
The outlet continued:
The trio of radical Democrats were among the “outside champions” who also slammed law enforcement for breaking up the hateful demonstrations — which included masked protesters taking over a campus quad, chanting “Free Palestine!” and burning an Israeli flag and throwing rocks — resulting in the violent April 30 takeover of the school’s Hamilton Hall, according to court papers.
Five anonymous students made the filing that also targets several activist groups. They called the encampment illegal and claimed it violated the university’s rules.
“Its occupants harassed, followed, physically blocked, intimidated, and bullied Jewish students,” the document read. According to the Post, two of the five students are Jewish.
In May, Jewish students at Columbia University wrote an open letter in defense of Israel following the protests, Breitbart News reported at the time.
“The letter not only celebrated Israel’s defense of Jewish people but also it being a democracy in the Middle East that also serves as home to Muslims and Christians. It concluded with a call for peace and understanding,” the article said.
The outlet reported on May 31 that anti-Israel protesters again set up an encampment at the university after the New York City Police Department (NYPD) conducted a raid.
Quote:A woman from San Antonio, Texas, was arrested Friday in Washington, DC, for allegedly threatening former President Donald Trump, the news coming after a gunman tried to assassinate him during his rally on July 13.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the agency received information about the suspect, identified as Christina Montoya, who had apparently traveled to the nation’s capital, where police found an unlicensed firearm and a magazine on her, KENS 5 reported on Friday. However, Trump was reportedly in the Hamptons to meet with donors the day of the woman’s arrest.
The type of threats she allegedly made against Trump were unclear, the outlet said, adding, “It’s also unknown the timeline of when she allegedly made them in the context of her Friday arrest, but the police report lists an ‘offense start date’ of July 20, 2024.”
“According to a police report, MPD arrested Montoya less than a mile from Capitol Hill and about three miles from the White House. She had the gun and a magazine on her at the time, authorities say,” the KENS 5 article stated.
Following the failed assassination attempt during his outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump credited God for his survival while speaking at another rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday, according to Breitbart News.
Trump described the Secret Service agents who protected him once the apparent shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire, calling the agents “brave.”
Quote:Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, acknowledged that he had cheated on his first wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, with their children’s nanny, adding that he “took responsibility” for his actions.
In a statement to CNN, Emhoff acknowledged that he and Kerstin had gone “through some tough time” due to his “actions,” but that they had dealt with things “as a family” and were now stronger.
Emhoff’s statement comes after a report from the DailyMail claimed that Emhoff had an affair with the couple’s nanny, Najen Naylor, 47, and allegedly got her pregnant.
“During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions,” Emhoff said in his statement. “I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side.
The outlet claimed that a “close friend” who had known about the affair and the alleged pregnancy said that Naylor did not end up keeping the baby.
Upon being approached by the outlet at her home in the Hamptons, Naylor reportedly told the outlet that she was “kind of freaked out right now” and did not comment on the story.
At the time of the affair, Naylor had worked as a teaching assistant and teacher at the Willows Community School in Culver City, California, as well as a nanny for Emhoff’s daughter, Ella. The school, which consists of kindergarten through eighth grade, has tuition prices that run from $32,525 to $41,535, according to the school’s website.
Stacey Brooks, another friend of Naylor’s, who gave birth to twin boys around the same time that Naylor would have been expecting her child, reportedly also confirmed the affair and the pregnancy, but would not provide additional details without consent from Naylor, according to the outlet.
The outlet reported that Naylor’s Facebook shows a video with three babies, Sawyer, George, and Brook. Sawyer and George are reportedly Brooks’ children who were born in July 2009, while it is uncertain whose child the third baby is, according to the outlet.
Another friend of Naylor’s reportedly dismissed claims that Naylor had been pregnant, stating that “There was no baby.”
Quote:Following a series of election-year gambits, Border Patrol reports show that migrant apprehensions along the southwest border fell to Trump-era levels for the first time since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office in 2021. According to an unofficial Border Patrol report reviewed by Breitbart Texas, the number of agents encountered fell to just over 56,000 during July.
In February 2021, the first full month of the Biden-Harris administration, agents encountered 97,643 migrants who illegally crossed the southwest U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry, according to official U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports. From there, the numbers continued to increase, peaking at 249,741 in December 2023. At that point, the Biden-Harris administration entered into an agreement with Mexico to reduce the number of migrants reaching the U.S. southern border during the months leading up to presidential elections in both countries, Breitbart Texas reported.
“Executive action and diplomatic efforts resulted in the current slowing in border crossings, not a big surprise,” a source operating within CBP told Breitbart Texas. “We know consequences work. Sadly, it’s an election year stunt and a charade that will end if this same administration wins in November.”
Late in December, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Department of Homeland Security Secretary traveled to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Breitbart News reported.
The article states that the Mexican president hinted to the U.S. delegation that he would reduce migrant crossings into the U.S. if President Joe Biden provided more aid and support to Latin American dictators. Reports from Mexico indicate AMLO wanted increased support for Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
An unofficial Border Patrol report reveals that agents encountered just over 56,000 migrants illegally crossing the border between ports of entry in July. This is the lowest number since September 2020, when agents encountered 54,771.
The busiest of the nine southwest border sectors in July were San Diego (just over 15,000), Tucson (nearly 12,000), and El Paso (nearly 12,000).
Following dropping approval ratings for President Biden and Vice President Harris on the topic of immigration and border security and a meeting between the Mexican president and two Biden administration cabinet members, actions taken by the Mexican government led to a drop of more than 125,000 migrant apprehensions in January. Apprehensions from nearly a quarter-million migrants in December to 124,215. As a point of reference, the largest number of migrants encountered during the Trump administration came in May 2019 when agents apprehended 132,856 migrants.
The July encounters report (approximately 56,000) reveals the lowest number of apprehensions during the Biden-Harris administration. In contrast, the lowest number of migrant encounters during the Trump era came in April 2020, when agents apprehended only 16,182 migrants.
A CBP official told Breitbart Texas in February that Mexico’s efforts are not a long-term fix to the problem. “The migrants are just being delayed from reaching the U.S. border,” the source stated. The migrants are being moved further south, delaying their efforts to reach their goal of seeking asylum in the U.S.”
Quote:Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe on Friday admitted that at the July 13 campaign rally for former President Donald Trump, the Secret Service was aware that local law enforcement was “working an issue” off to Trump’s right — where the shots would come from — but still could not explain how they missed the shooter until he fired.
During a press briefing, Rowe told reporters that all Secret Service members present at the rally knew was that “locals were working in issue at the President’s three o’clock — which would have been off to his right which is where the shot came from.”
He also said, “Our detail, our counter snipers, everyone that was there that day, were operating under the assumption, [and] under the last bit of information they received that there was an issue that the locals were working at the three o’clock. That’s the bit of information that we had, not anything about a weapon.”
However, Rowe could not explain why — knowing there was an issue at Trump’s right — Secret Service were still not able to stop Crooks sooner. Rowe said a Secret Service counter-sniper fired at Crooks fifteen-and-a-half seconds after Crooks began firing.
A recently released video recorded by one of the injured victims at the rally obtained by Fox News showed Crooks running atop the roof, clearly visible from where he was sitting behind Trump.
Asked about the video, Rowe did not explain how the Secret Service missed Crooks.
“As far as the timeline of him running back and forth, I know the FBI has provided a bit of a chronology as well. And so I’d have to go back and look at that. But the bottom line is…this was a Secret Service failure. That roofline should have been covered. We should have had better eyes on that,” he said.
Rowe claimed at the briefing that Secret Service never saw Crooks on the rooftop “with a firearm” until he fired at Trump, but did not specify when exactly they first saw Crooks.
Earlier this week, Rowe told Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) at a hearing that Secret Service did not see Crooks on the rooftop at all — with or without a firearm — until he fired at Trump.
However, ABC News reported on July 18 that Secret Service had seen Crooks on the rooftop 20 minutes before he fired at Trump.
Quote:Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Thursday revealed a Secret Service whistleblower alleged Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe made cuts to personnel who could have helped prevent an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and that there was retaliation against those who expressed concerns about security at Trump events.
In an August 1, 2024, letter to Rowe, Hawley said a whistleblower alleged that the agency’s Counter Surveillance Division (CSD) did not perform its typical evaluation of the site of Trump’s July 13 campaign rally and was not present at the rally.
“This is significant because CSD’s duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event,” Hawley said.
“The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder,” he added.
Hawley also said the whistleblower alleged that CSD could have flagged or mitigated the risk of leaving the building where a shooter fired at Trump from outside the Secret Service’s perimeter.
Hawley said the whistleblower alleged that Rowe “personally directed significant cuts to CSD” that included reducing the division’s manpower by 20 percent, and noted that Rowe did not mention this during his testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday.
Furthermore, Hawley said the whistleblower alleged retaliation against those within the Secret Service who expressed concern about security at Trump events.
“The whistleblower claims that following an event with the former President at a golf tournament in August of last year, Secret Service personnel present expressed serious concern that the Secret Service’s use of local law enforcement was not adequate for security needs: local law enforcement were not properly trained for the event or otherwise prepared to execute the tasks given them,” Hawley said.
“Further, Secret Service personnel expressed alarm that individuals were admitted to the event without vetting. The whistleblower alleges that those who raised such concerns were retaliated against,” he added.
Hawley asked Rowe for all records by August 8 relating to policy and personnel changes made to the CSD, and his personal involvement in changing or revising those policies, as well as the number of Secret Service agents facing disciplinary actions after raising concerns about Secret Service security practices.
Hawley additionally sought the exact breakdown of Secret Service personnel at the July 13 rally by division or unit.
Quote:Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) released a bizarre video on Sunday in which he admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park and staging it to look like it had been hit by a cyclist.
Kennedy released the video on X to stay ahead of an upcoming piece in the New Yorker about the incident. As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle, the female black bear was “discovered in bushes and partially covered by a bicycle in October 2014, prompting an investigation into the circumstances that never revealed answers, at least publicly, until Sunday.”
In the video, Kennedy spoke with Roseanne Barr about dumping the bear, saying he scooped the animal up after witnessing a woman hit it with her van. While laughing, Kennedy said he hoped to skin the bear and later eat it. However, as the hours passed, he ran out of time and devised a plan to abandon the bear in Central Park alongside an old bicycle he had in his van. At the time, the city had been dealing with an uptick in bicycle accidents.
“The next day, it was on every television station,” Kennedy told Barr. “Luckily, the story died down after a while.”
The bizarre confession follows another bizarre story in which he was alleged to have eaten a barbecued dog. He denied it. Last month, Vanity Fair released a detailed profile on Kennedy, publishing explosive allegations about his personal and political life, chief among them being the claim he ate a dog while visiting South Korea. Per the report:
Last year Robert Kennedy Jr. texted a photograph to a friend. In the photo RFK Jr. was posing, alongside an unidentified woman, with the barbecued remains of what appears to be a dog. Kennedy told the person, who was traveling to Asia, that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu, suggesting Kennedy had sampled dog. The photo was taken in 2010, according to the digital file’s metadata—the same year he was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain. (A veterinarian who examined the photograph says the carcass is a canine, pointing to the 13 pairs of ribs, which include the tell-tale “floating rib” found in dogs.)
Quote:Anti-Israel protesters who started encampments and protests on college and university campuses in the spring say that protests will resume for the fall semester.
Students will “continue their activism” in both “conventional and unconventional ways” as protesters continue to push their universities and colleges to divest from Israel and end academic ties with Israeli institutions, among other things, several pro-Palestinian protesters explained to the Hill.
This comes after anti-Israel protesters set up encampments on college and university campuses such as Columbia University, Rutgers University, George Washington University, and Harvard University, among many others.
“What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways,” Mahmoud Khalil told the outlet. Khalil had worked as a negotiator for the protesters at Columbia University.
Khalil added that students will not only organize protests and set up encampments, but will take “any available means necessary” to push Columbia University to divest from Israel.
Anti-Israel encampments began popping up on college and university campuses throughout the United States after an initial encampment at Columbia University was established on April 17. While the university removed the encampment, it later returned.
Protesters at the universities issued a varying list of demands, such as calling for their universities to divest from Israeli companies, full amnesty for protesters who were either suspended or arrested for their involvement in the protests or encampments, and the end of study abroad programs and academic ties to Israel.
Zainab Chaudry, who serves as a spokeswoman and the Maryland Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Hill that protesters were discussing how they could “continue to advocate” and raise awareness for “Palestinian human rights and genocide” occurring in Gaza.
“There’s definitely conversations happening regarding how they can continue to advocate, to raise awareness about Palestinian human rights and genocide that’s happening in Gaza,” Chaudry explained.
Quote:Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday refused to debate former President Donald Trump September 4 on Fox News, demanding the debate take place September 10 on ABC News.
Political insiders perceive ABC News as an ally of the Democrat party, although Fox News has not generally been pro-Trump, especially since Paul Ryan, former speaker of the House, became a member of the Fox Corporation Board of Directors.
“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out. He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told Newsweek.
“The Vice President will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to. Mr. Anytime, anywhere, anyplace should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th,” he added.
Late Friday, Trump said he agreed to debate Harris on Fox News on September 4. “The Debate was previously scheduled against Sleepy Joe Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant,” he posted on Truth Social.
“The FoxNews Debate will be held in the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at a site in an area to be determined,” he continued. “The Moderators of the Debate will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the Rules will be similar to the Rules of my Debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his Party – BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!”
President Joe Biden and Trump previously agreed to debate on September 10, but after Biden dropped out of the race, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, said on July 25 the event was scuttled.
“[It] would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds,” he said at the time.
Quote:A Chinese national has been arrested after allegedly trying to enter Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida club, while claiming to have documents that tie China to the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump.
Police said Zijie Li, of El Monte, California, attempted to get into the property on multiple occasions between July 19 and July 30, Fox News reported:
Li’s first of several attempts to reach Mar-a-Lago was… July 19, when Li reportedly drove up to the estate’s main entrance on South Ocean Boulevard in a gray Toyota Prius and told Secret Service agents that he had documents showing China was involved in the attempted assassination, according to an arrest report obtained by the Palm Beach Post.
…
Agents then reportedly told Li that he was trespassing and was not allowed on the property and the Palm Beach Police Department issued him a written warning, the report said. Police also told Li that he was not permitted to return to Mar-a-Lago, and if he did, he would be arrested.
Li’s next visit to Palm Beach was July 22, where footage from town security cameras showed that he drove east and then west again over the Royal Park Bridge twice, first in the morning and then in the afternoon, the arrest report said.
While Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago on Li’s July 19 visit, he was there when the man was seen driving on the Royal Park Bridge, which connects the club and other locations on the beach to the mainland.
On July 30, Li was seen once again while driving toward the club’s security checkpoint, leading to another police confrontation where an officer noticed that Mar-a-Lago’s address was loaded into the alleged trespasser’s GPS directions, the arrest report stated.
The police let Li go and he left town, but Fox News reported that it was “less than an hour later when his car was spotted south of Mar-a-Lago on South Ocean Boulevard.”
Palm Beach Police and Secret Service agents again told him not to return to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Li was finally arrested the next day, Wednesday, at an intersection near the club after he again returned, according to the outlet.
Trump was not on the property at the time.
Li is now facing a misdemeanor trespassing charge, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Jail records obtained by the outlet revealed that Li’s arrest was the first one related to security at Mar-a-Lago since the Butler, Pennsylvania Trump rally shooting, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple shots at the former president and injured his ear, two of his supporters, and killed another.
Li’s next court appearance is scheduled to take place on Monday. He was still in the Palm Beach County Jail on Thursday morning on a $3,000 bond, court records viewed by the local publication showed.
The contents of the mysterious documents the alleged trespasser claimed to have not been publicly released.
EUROPE
England Has Serious Issues with Rioters & Migration
Quote:As the anti-immigration protests and riots in England entered their fifth day on Saturday, hundreds of people surrounded a believed migrant hotel in Rotherham, setting fire to the building and clashing with police.
Anti-immigration protesters descended upon the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire on Sunday afternoon as nationwide unrest continues in the wake of the killing of three young British girls at a children’s dance party in Southport by an alleged Rwandan-heritage teenager.
The hotel, which has previously seen protests against housing supposed asylum seekers — many likely illegal boat migrants — at taxpayer expense. According to The Telegraph, the crowd could be heard chanting “Get them out”.
Footage posted on social media showed rioters throwing fire extinguishers and other objects at the retreating lines of police, while others were seen breaking into the hotel, which had partially been set on fire.
It comes as nationwide protest and riots broke out across the country on Saturday, many of which occurred in working-class, deep strongholds of the Labour Party such as Bristol, Liverpool, and Manchester.
Rotherham, also a Labour stronghold, is best known internationally for the infamous grooming gang scandal, in which at least 1,400 girls — some as young as nine — were groomed by Pakistani child rape gangs for years as the local Labour council and other officials turned a blind eye to the abuse over fears of being seen as racist.
The protests have become the first major crisis for recently-elected Labour Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer, who has faced heavy criticism for failing to take control of the situation.
Amid the power vacuum, there have been increasing calls from the left for a radical response. For example, Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on political violence, has suggested that coronavirus-style lockdown measures could be put in place to quell the riots.
Quote:British Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer has vowed that police have his full support in taking on “extremists” as anti-mass migration protests and riots have broken out across the United Kingdom following the mass stabbing at a children’s dance party in Southport earlier this week.
Facing a full-blown crisis less than one month into office, recently elected leftist Prime Minister Starmer gathered top cabinet ministers on Saturday as unrest erupted in dozens of towns and cities throughout the UK, in many cases in typical Labour Party strongholds in the north of England, in response to the slaying of three young girls and the stabbing of eight others, including children, allegedly by a 17-year-old Rwandan-heritage second-generation immigrant on Monday.
The Guardian, citing the far-left Hope Not Hate organisation, reported that an estimated 35 locations had been scheduled to see protests on Saturday, some of which saw violent clashes between participants and the police, as well as attacks on businesses, particularly in Belfast, Hull, Liverpool, and Manchester. According to The Telegraph, at least 90 arrests were made throughout the country on Sunday.
A Downing Street spokesman told the paper: “The prime minister set out that the police have our full support to take action against extremists on our streets who are attacking police officers, disrupting local businesses and attempting to sow hate by intimidating communities.
“The prime minister ended by saying the right to freedom of expression and the violent disorder we have seen are two very different things. He said there is no excuse for violence of any kind and reiterated that the government backs the police to take all necessary action to keep our streets safe.”
The hardline rhetoric from the left-wing PM, who has characterised the protests and riots as “far-right,” on the outpouring of rage and violence has been contrasted to his response during the deadly and deeply destructive Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, when he infamously took the knee in solidarity with the Marxist movement and described those involved as “people rightly demanding justice”.
The government has also faced criticism for refusing to discuss footage posted on social media appearing to show violent responses from large groups of Muslim or leftist counter protesters.
Quote:Belgium’s Olympic committee announced Sunday that it would withdraw its team from the mixed relay triathlon at the Paris Olympics after one of its competitors who swam in the Seine River fell ill.
Claire Michel, who competed in the women’s triathlon Wednesday, “is unfortunately ill and will have to withdraw from the competition,” the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee said in a statement.
The mixed relay triathlon is scheduled to take place Monday, with the swim portion of the competition slated for the Seine as well.
The statement did not elaborate on Michel’s illness but it comes after concerns over the river’s water quality.
Quote:Ukraine has sunk a Russian submarine and hit a Russian airfield in the past 24 hours, in line with a surge of long-range attacks against Russian targets, officials said. Russia said Ukrainian drones also hit an apartment building, killing one person.
The uptick in attacks since July come as Ukraine mounts pressure on allies to allow it to use long-range missiles to strike targets in Russia. Western allies, in particular the U.S., have so far resisted, fearing escalation from Moscow.
Ukraine struck a Russian Kilo-class submarine and an S-400 anti aircraft missile complex in the Moscow-occupied Crimean peninsula, according to a statement from the General Staff on Saturday. The air defense system was established to protect the Kerch Strait Bridge, an important logistics and transport hub supplying Russian forces.
Units of the missile forces, as well as the Navy damaged four launchers of the Triumph air defense system, while in the port of Sevastopol, the “Rostov-on-Don” – a submarine of Russia´s Black Sea fleet – was attacked and sank, the statement said.
The General Staff also confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck the Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region after launching a massive drone barrage on Russia. Hits were recorded in warehouses with ammunition, where guided aerial bombs were stored. The operation was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine, the Main Directorate of Intelligence and the Defense Ministry, the statement said.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the World
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I wanna clarify here that the first 2 statements posted by President Milei were part of a single tweet.
evil as the empire itself by definition? 
will ever tell us what somebody has commented on any conspiracy of sorts. 
