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Debt Rattle August 3 2026

Aug 032026
 
 August 3, 2026  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Edward Steichen Marlene Dietrich 1932


• Trump Says “Perimeters Of A Deal Reached” With Iran (ZH)
• Zionist Trump Regime Looks for New Reasons to Escalate Attacks on Iran (PCR)
• A Two-State Solution for Spain? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Regarding The Causes of The Ceuta Migrant Surge, Look Who’s Gloating (Amar)
• NO, The Invaders Have Not All Just ‘Gone Home’ (MN)
• Ceuta and the Collapse of Sánchez’s Pro-Migration Experiment (Daniel Lacalle)
• RFK Jr. Steamrolled Dana Bash Over Fauci’s COVID Lies (Matt Margolis)
• CNN’s Dana Bash Beclowns Herself During Confrontation with RFK Jr (CTH)
• Rubio Discusses Global Challenges and Hints At the Never Asked Question (CTH)
• What Does He Do on a Day Off? Marco Rubio Gets Personal (Sarah Anderson)
• In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again (Robert Spencer)
• Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill (Turley)
• J.R.R. Tolkien, the Atomic Bomb, and the Perils of Power (Miltimore)

 


 

 


 


“…To Reopen Hormuz After Call With Saudi Crown Prince..”

• Trump Says “Perimeters Of A Deal Reached” With Iran (ZH)

The past few days have been tense. Although no US strikes were launched from Friday night into Saturday morning and the Gulf region remained quiet early Sunday, anticipation surrounding President Trump’s next move is keeping energy traders and Gulf governments on edge. The big concern is that another round of strikes could trigger a wider regional conflict, particularly as the Iranian-backed Houthis have reactivated offensive operations in the southern Red Sea in recent weeks.


The Trump administration and Department of War may pursue de-escalation from here after Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday night: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

That de-esclation pathway was followed by a new signal early Sudnay from Saudi Press Agency, Saudi Arabia’s official state news agency, stating that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a call with President Trump, discussing the “necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions and the importance of exerting all possible efforts to achieve a truce that paves the way for diplomatic solutions that yield positive results for preserving the security and stability of the region and prevent it from being drawn into a wider conflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability.”

The MbS-Trump call was first reported by Axios, which got the scoop on Saturday evening: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke to President Trump on Saturday and expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes against Iran, according to two U.S. officials and a third source with knowledge of the call. . . .

Such an attack could lead to an unprecedented escalation in the five-month war, which has repeatedly paused as Trump opened the door to negotiations — only to resume when those diplomatic efforts failed. Iran has threatened to retaliate by launching attacks against energy and infrastructure facilities in Israel and the Gulf countries The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one U.S. official told Axios.

A second source with knowledge of the call said MBS urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Why the MBS-Trump conversation matters is that Saudi Arabia remains one of Washington’s top Gulf region allies. Riyadh has heavily influenced Trump’s Iran policy at previous inflection points and appears to have exerted similar influence in delaying or narrowing the next phase of US military action.

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Paul Craig Roberts. Calls Trump Zionist. I don’t think he fits the definition. For Mamdani perhaps, but for PCR?

The whole headline is nonsense too, of course. We’re losing ourselves.

• Zionist Trump Regime Looks for New Reasons to Escalate Attacks on Iran (PCR)

The New York Times and other of the whore media are reporting cyber attacks on US water systems in 7 states including Minnesota and Michigan. The attacks are attributed to Iran, although “Officials cautioned that they had not definitively determined that Iran was responsible for the attack.” So why report it? Is it news before it happens? It is not certain, but in my opinion likely, that this is disinformation being fed to the presstitutes by the Trump Zionist regime in order to justify more and more risky attacks on Iran. As we all know, Netanyahu has a firm hold on Trump and that is what Netanyahu wants.


American patriots seem inclined to believe that America is always under attack by some designated enemy. The George W. Bush Zionist regime even attributed “weapons of mass destruction” to Iraq, a total impossibility, in order to justify a US invasion in the interests of Greater Israel. As General Wesley Clark said “seven countries in five years.” Moreover, why would Iran, which attacks military, not civilian, targets, focus on water systems? It seems their cyberattacks would, like their military attacks, be focused on military infrastructure.

But assume Iran is behind the attacks on US water systems, keep in mind that Iranian civilian infrastructure and civilian residential areas continue to be targets of Zionist Trump’s attacks on Iran. So, if Iran is attacking US water systems, the cause is Trump’s attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. So, before you get all hot under the collar about Iran, get hot under the collar because of Zionist Trump who is using America for Israel’ benefit. Americans have no right to complain about others attacking us in kind.

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Someone organized this. Did israel do it?

• A Two-State Solution for Spain? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Israel is celebrating the overrunning of the Spanish city of Ceuta by 60,000 African immigrant-invaders, an invasion force larger than 50% of the city’s population. As in Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints, there was no Spanish force present to defend Spain.


The idiotic Spanish Supreme Court invited the invasion by ruling that the government did not have the authority to evict, and apparently prevent, the entry, of 60,000 invaders without having each of the 60,000 invaders’ “human rights” case heard in court. The imbecilic Spanish prime minister sent 60 troops to “help the police.” As RT reports: “Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez refused to declare a national emergency, but sent a token force of 60 troops.” What good are 60 soldiers against 60,000 invaders? In former times when European ethnicities had confidence in themselves, the Spanish PM would be hanging from the nearest lamp post. The prime minister sacrificed Spaniards to Immigrant-invaders.

Europe is upset, because once the invaders establish themselves in Spain they will continue to enter and spread themselves throughout Europe. “Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, and Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker all calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s Schengen borderless travel zone.” But in Israeli circles the reaction was jubilation. More success destroying the weak-willed, weak-minded gentile Europeans who have no sense of ethnic survival, just as Jean Raspail described. The immigrant-invaders into white ethnic civilization are overthrowing it and leaving Israel supreme.

Among the many, Israeli journalist Edy Cohen celebrated the victory against the gentile enemy that once expelled the Jews from Spain because of their financial exploitation of Spanish citizens: “Don’t be surprised if in a few years those same young people who stormed Ceuta are the ones taking to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona shouting the new slogan. He who invites the destruction of the Jewish state suddenly discovers that destruction can also start in his own home.” Centuries later. Jews don’t forget.

“Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined in the mockery, congratulating the moronic prime minister of Spain “for his profound commitment to welcoming immigration and ‘human diversity’.” “Ben-Gvir, who has called for the destruction of Lebanon, the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, called on Sanchez to go further and aid in the depopulation of Gaza.” Not a word from Israel’s puppet, President Trump, who is so weak, despite his laughable blustering, that he, the President of the United States, is not capable of standing up to Netanyahu.

Later reports allege that Spanish military forces eventually showed up and that the immigrant-invaders voluntarily returned to Morocco. Who really knows? Given the total unreliability of the news, we have no way of knowing. What does seem to be completely clear is that no European ethnicity has the confidence to defend its existence. Every white country is committed to its total destruction by its own government and white liberals. Any white ethnic who wants to know his future needs only to read Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints.

Read more …

”The Ceuta migrant surge was sold as a border panic. The harder question is who benefited from lighting the fuse.”

• Regarding The Causes of The Ceuta Migrant Surge, Look Who’s Gloating (Amar)

The recent burst of illegal migration into Spain’s Moroccan exclave of Ceuta was, above all, a sensational media event produced for political effect. It will have lasting consequences, but not in terms of who ended up where: Of the about 50,000 migrants who suddenly, as if on command, stormed Ceuta by land and sea, almost all quickly went back to Morocco. According to the EU’s home affairs commissioner, not a single Ceuta-crasher made it to the European mainland.


In that sense, the whole thing might as well not have happened. Apocalyptic fantasies of Ceuta turning into a wide open gate to the rest of fortress Europe were always, at best, silly: no, you can’t just travel on into Spain from there or to British Gibraltar, for that matter.

Worse, there have been many deliberate attempts at political profiteering by spreading panic. All through the West, figures from across the political spectrum did not miss a beat trying to exploit the Ceuta emergency: In America, President Donald Trump – under pressure from his self-imposed fiasco in Iran – spoke of a “catastrophe” for Spain and predicted even worse to come in the US if voters dare abandon his Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Elon Musk, richest oligarchs in the world, shared a fragment of the not-so-subtly Zionist horror epic “World War Z” to compare the migrants to Zombies.

Meanwhile in NATO-EU Europe, Italy’s leadership under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni staged some grand, irrelevant theater about the country’s perfectly unaffected borders, while making sour sounds about Schengen this and Schengen that. Not to be outdone, in France the Rassemblement National’s number two Jordan Bardella charged with equal absurdity that Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his liberal policies had “opened the doors of Europe.”

While especially strident, the EU’s new right was representative of almost everyone else: 22 governments signed a letter “implicitly criticizing” Spain rather than show solidarity with a fellow-EU member. Spain, meanwhile, is not prepared to meekly submit to this intra-Western hazing session. Sanchez has called out international reactions “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance or political interest.”

None of the above means that this fresh and unprecedentedly massive – five or six times as large as previous peaks, according to the Wall Street Journal – Ceuta crisis wasn’t real. Indeed, it was real enough to leave at least 67 casualties behind, namely, those migrants who did not manage to breach the Spanish border fortifications and drowned or were crushed to death. They, however, have met with little interest and no human compassion. Clearly, under Western eyes they are negligible. Western mainstream media and politicians have treated their lives as if they hardly mattered. Almost as if they were, say, Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, killed, robbed, and displaced by Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Which brings us to an especially intriguing aspect of this manufactured panic: Curiously, Israel’s UN representative Danny Danon has felt it is his job to go after Spain as well. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” he declared, adding “maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Ceuta and its sister exclave Melilla really are odd historical remnants, no doubt. But to hear an official representative of Israel, a genocidal settler colony led by an indicted war criminal, go on about colonialism is rich. But then, that is Danon’s default style: aggressive, shameless, and dirty.

More serious is the fact that Israel’s UN ambassador has chosen to make this statement when social media are already abuzz with theories pointing to Israel as somehow behind – if not necessarily alone – the storming of Ceuta. In essence, the idea is that the Zionist apartheid state and its international networks have found a way to pay Spain back for its far from perfect but – in NATO-EU Europe – unusual solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims.

No wonder that many Spanish observers, including the Minister of Transport, believe Israel’s involvement is real in this assault on Spain’s territorial integrity and standing within the EU. Indeed, Danon’s comment was so revealing that Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Dana Ehrlich, went into damage control mode, posting that Israel’s UN representative does not represent the position of the Israeli government. Make it make sense.

[..] The likeliest explanation for the Ceuta assault and its lethal consequences may well be a combination of factors. Yet the real question is not simply which causes contributed to this fatal outcome, but whether they came together spontaneously or by design. Was there a trigger or a catalyst? If there is one thing the genocide in Gaza should have taught everybody then it is that when Israel announces a crime, it will follow through and commit it. With that in mind, it is naïve to rule out the very real possibility that Ceuta was an Israeli psy-op against Spain, at the cost of dozens of lives no one in Europe seems to care about.

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But that’s what they publicly declare…

“One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin.”

• NO, The Invaders Have Not All Just ‘Gone Home’ (MN)

Spanish authorities and their leftist allies are pushing the line that the tens of thousands of migrants who stormed Ceuta have mostly “gone home.” The claim is pure fantasy. Fresh video from the streets shows the city still under siege, with invaders assaulting facilities, smashing graves, clashing with locals, and turning a Spanish enclave into a no-go zone. This is the same dangerous mass migration reality that open-borders ideologues keep denying, even as the evidence piles up in real time.


The official narrative landed hard on Friday. Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares declared that “the practical totality of those who entered Ceuta have already returned to Morocco.” The Spanish Embassy in the UK amplified the message, insisting almost everyone was gone, that no one could reach the mainland without ID checks, and that Schengen integrity remained fully guaranteed.b The Guardia Civil’s own association posted that Ceuta was “breathing again,” with returns advancing little by little and normality returning thanks to security forces.

Locals on the ground immediately called it a lie. One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin. Video filmed that same afternoon showed streets still packed, nothing like the “most have left” story. [..] Just days earlier, we documented the initial invasion and the subsequent rampage through homes and streets. The claim that the crisis simply evaporated overnight collapses under the weight of the footage still circulating.

While Madrid spun the returns, Moroccan migrants were filmed storming a public asylum centre in Ceuta. The CETI facility came under direct assault as the government continued insisting order had been restored. Elsewhere, invaders smashed Christian graves and hurled the broken pieces at Spanish citizens. Locals fought back with whatever they could grab while police and military presence remained inadequate.

Knives came out in the open. Migrants stabbed one another in the streets while Spanish residents stayed locked indoors, prisoners in their own city of roughly 80,000 people now overrun. Cars belonging to locals were attacked simply for driving past and showing dissatisfaction. Grocery stores had to be fenced off and guarded by police to stop looting by the hungry crowds.

Vehicles burned at the border as the surge continued. Groups of military-age men, far from the “families and refugees” talking point, were filmed taking escalators and moving through the city with the swagger of occupation rather than desperation.

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Daniel Lacalle is a Spanish voice. Appropriate.

• Ceuta and the Collapse of Sánchez’s Pro-Migration Experiment (Daniel Lacalle)

The new migration crisis in Ceuta is not an isolated episode or a simple border emergency. It is the result of a deeply irresponsible and damaging political and economic model. Sanchez boasts about aggregate growth while destroying cohesion, productivity, net real income per capita, and institutions. Spain is not an example of growth, migrant integration, or cohesion. It is a statistical mirage juiced by population increase and a fiscal time bomb. It has taken a migration crisis for the European Union to wake up.


Illegal immigration is not a stroke of fate or a recipe for growth and for shoring up public finances; it is a strategy of control and demolition of the nation from within, with the aim of creating a dependent, captive underclass, buying votes by altering demographics and shifting onto future generations the enormous cost to the state of a population increase whose net contribution to public accounts is overwhelmingly negative.

Spain was presented by progressives as a model of migrant integration. It was never true, and now it has become a full- blown crisis. The uncontrolled wave of illegal immigration is the direct result of the socialist government‘s policies: mass regularizations, subsidies, and the constant message that illegal migration pays.

For years, Spain has attracted uncontrolled inflows with promises of regularization and public transfers, while Brussels looked the other way because headline GDP grew and the statistics looked inclusive. However, the cost is enormous and borne by Spanish workers and taxpayers and, increasingly, by the entire European Union. Its elite tolerated Spain’s destructive policies as long as aggregate GDP was fattened, even in the face of the clear warning sign that GDP per capita was stagnating and pressure on public services and social unrest were rising.

The Sanchez government and its coalition have imposed unprecedented regularization processes, presenting them as a model for Europe and explicitly linking them to GDP increases and the supposed sustainability of the welfare state. This was a major deception. Regularized illegal immigration does not make pensions more sustainable; quite the opposite, because its net contribution to public accounts is unquestionably negative, as all studies on the matter show. Meanwhile, the government inflates aggregate GDP, but GDP per capita, net real wages, productivity, and the real effective employment rate remain stagnant.

The Spanish government has presented itself to the world with an openly pro immigration stance, at odds with decisions taken by the European Union itself. However, the Commission and the EU remained silent in the face of the assault on institutions, corruption, and the disaster of migration policy. European institutions bear responsibility because they supported and amplified S·nchez s destructive, extensive migration policy, presenting it as if it were inclusive. They ignored the evidence that Spain s numbers are poor once you look beyond headline GDP.

Stagnant GDP per capita: the IMF’s own estimates show that Spain’s GDP per capita will grow by just 1% a year between 2018 and 2027, exactly the same as the euro area average. Falling net real wages: under Sanchez they have fallen by almost 3%.Real unemployment: 3.7 million real unemployed, including inactive workers registered with the SEPE and 792,341 inactive permanent intermittent workers. The number of effectively unemployed has barely improved since 2019.

Zero fiscal consolidation: the net debt of the public administrations under the Excessive Deficit Procedure has risen to a record 1.6 trillion, while the total liabilities of the public sector have increased by more than half a trillion to 2.2 trillion. Debt to GDP and the deficit only appear to improve because the denominator is being doped with immigration and inflation above the euro area average. An unsustainable Social Security system: Snchez has multiplied Social Security’s debt, and the system needs a bailout every year from a state that is already in deficit. Immigration is not going to reduce that enormous hole; it increases it, as its net contribution is mostly negative.

All the data on the Spanish economy show weakness, statistical illusions, and severe imbalances, but the European Union and the Commission preferred to remain silent, buy the official propaganda, and cling to a doped aggregate GDP. The same thing they did with Greece between 2004 and 2007.

[..] It is not a mistake; it is a power strategy. Sánchez seeks to create a captive underclass, dependent on subsidies and papers, that will vote for him in the future and shift the social consequences and the bill onto taxpayers. While the government sinks under corruption scandals and loses social support, it tries to cling to power by dismantling Spain and its institutions and importing the future voters it is losing today.

Sánchez is not governing Spain; he is dismantling it in an attempt to cling to power. That is the big lie of Sánchez’s “rocket,” bloating up instead of truly growing.

It seemed Elon Musk was on to Sánchez early on. After the prime minister defended his amnesty plan in April, Musk wrote on X, “Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason.”

Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”

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Why would she try to prove him wrong? He’s read it all. Can’t win that one.

“I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”

• RFK Jr. Steamrolled Dana Bash Over Fauci’s COVID Lies (Matt Margolis)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. obliterated CNN’s Dana Bash during a fiery interview Sunday morning on State of the Union, and it was brutal. The segment aired as measles outbreaks tore through several states, with public health officials warning that unvaccinated communities were fueling the spread of the disease to levels not seen in decades. Those outbreaks trace back to Joe Biden’s presidency, when his administration allowed millions of illegal immigrants to pour across the southern border and bring diseases like measles back into communities that had all but wiped them out.


Bash spent much of the interview pushing Kennedy to look “into the camera” and tell parents to vaccinate their kids against measles. Kennedy did it. He said exactly what she wanted him to say. Then Bash kept going, and the interview went off the rails. The conversation curdled into a fight over how the media treated skeptics and anyone who dared question the Biden administration’s COVID-era public health guidance during the pandemic. Bash opened with an accusation. “You are the HHS secretary, and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country,” she said. “And it’s something that causes problems for people when there is not anything.”

Kennedy wasn’t having it. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?” Bash insisted her job was telling the truth. “There is study after study after study,” she said. “It’s one of the most studied things out there in science.” Kennedy pounced. “You’re repeating it like a parrot,” he said, twice for emphasis. Bash shot back, “So are you.” Kennedy wasn’t buying it. “I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”

From there, Kennedy dismantled the premise CNN built its entire segment on: that trusting government “experts” is the same thing as trusting the truth. “All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say, trust the experts,” he said. “That’s what you did during COVID. Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the ‘expert,’ was lying about everything, about masks, about social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying, and you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you’re rolling out the ‘experts’ again to talk about something that you have no personal knowledge of.”

Bash tried to defend herself. “That is my job, to talk to people,” she said. Kennedy wasn’t finished. “Your job is to tell the truth to the American people,” he replied.

If Bash thought she could lob a bunch of accusations against Kennedy and he would take it quietly, she was sorely mistaken. Kennedy didn’t dodge a single question. He turned every one of them into an indictment of a press corps that spent years demanding blind obedience and calling it science.

Read more …

The entire video.

“Defending Fauci, Censorship, Govt Fraud and Weaponizing Viruses.. “

• CNN’s Dana Bash Beclowns Herself During Confrontation with RFK Jr (CTH)

CNN propagandist Dana Bash had a full mask down episode today while trying to deny the truth about COVID-19 (all aspects) and defend Anthony Fauci (who she frequently text with according to Fauci’s diary).


HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was not going to allow CNN to fraudulently present nonsense claims under the guise of “settled science,” and he pushed back hard against her claims. At one point Bash notes she didn’t want to litigate the COVID-19 outcomes and RFK Jr appropriately pushed back saying the experiences need to be relitigated because Americans were censored, shut down, lied to and had liberty destroyed by a political health system devoid from science.

Things became even more heated as Bash was staring at the multi-page talking points prepared for her by corporate advertisers and Kennedy was systematically destroying them. Bash doubled, tripled and quadrupled down with the manipulative and combative questioning, ultimately removing any facade of journalism in the process.

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That question apparently is: ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘

• Rubio Discusses Global Challenges and Hints At the Never Asked Question (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Fox News Lara Trump for an extensive discussion on his role and responsibilities in the Trump administration. In the second segment, Rubio actually touched on something many have been curious about regarding his changed perspectives and positions. It is still annoying that no one has ever asked him directly, ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘ The two video segments and transcript are below:



[Transcript] – QUESTION: Secretary, great to have you back. Thank you so much.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Glad to be back. It’s been a while.

QUESTION: Yeah. There’s so much to talk about, but I want to start with Cuba.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.

QUESTION: This has been of particular interest to the State Department right now. You guys released a 100-page report on Cuba, calling it, “The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” And this report talks about the fact that Cuba’s goal essentially is to erase the United States from the Earth. It also details a Cuban spy network that’s been undermining American interests. How did we get to a place where Cuba has become so much of a threat – it feels like again – to the United States?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think for those who have followed the issue of Cuba, this is not unfamiliar to us. But to the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, nine and a half million people population. But people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower. If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them.

We had an ambassador, a U.S. ambassador, who ended up being a Cuban spy and was recently convicted. We’ve had them penetrate the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ana Belén Montes was one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system.

So – and then on the influence front, if you look all throughout Latin America, every communist left-wing insurgency that’s destabilized governments across the region, every single one of them over the last 40, 50 years has found its support, its help, in many cases its birth, from a Cuban influence operation. So, it was an important report just to highlight the role they play in our country, a very negative role.

QUESTION: The report also links Cuban influence to the rise in Antifa, the riots that we saw in 2020, as well as the surge of radical activism that we’ve seen all over these college campuses. To the average person, those things, I think, feel generally organic, but it turns out there are a lot of different powers – Cuba being one of them – that are influencing all of these things day to day.

SECRETARY RUBIO: It’s the same network of protesters around the country. They were the same people you saw on the streets burning things in 2020. They then flip it around and they become the pro-Hamas protesters, then they flip it around and within 48 hours of Maduro’s arrest have preprinted signs outside the courthouse demanding his release. And then they’re out there doing the ICE stuff, attacking ICE agents.

There’s nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network. And it’s a network they will weaponize against us, and they talk about it openly, about how they will use that network to pressure American policymakers – not just here in the United States, like Code Pink, but all over the world.

QUESTION: Critics of this report, of course, are saying, oh, well, these are scare tactics to potentially justify some U.S. military action against Cuba. It sounds like this is something we should take seriously, and this report sounds very real.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Everything in there is factual. And frankly, I don’t think they can dispute it. People can argue that we shouldn’t do with it, and I know there are plenty of people in American academia – and frankly in American press – that sympathize with the Cuban regime and have for a very long time. Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it is motivated by ideological affinity. There are plenty – there are enough people in key nodes of our society, including professors, but frankly, in the past we’ve seen people within our own government, that sympathize with the Cuban regime. It’s the way they get spies without paying them. But it doesn’t mean we can ignore this threat.

Put aside for a moment my history, the fact that I’m Cuban American, the fact that I grew up in Miami. This is 90 miles from our shores. A failed state 90 miles from our shores that happens to be aligned with adversaries to the United States is a national security threat to our country.

Read more …

“She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that.”

• What Does He Do on a Day Off? Marco Rubio Gets Personal (Sarah Anderson)

Marco Rubio appeared on Lara Trump’s Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump on Saturday night, and I’ll admit that I almost didn’t watch the entire interview. It started with his generic answers to the same old questions.


But Lara is, in my opinion, very good at what she does. When she interviews someone like our dear secretary of state, she doesn’t just ask about Iran and China and Venezuela, she asks him about, well, him. She wants to know about the person behind the news. I love that — it breaks up the monotony of geopolitical situations that he can’t really talk about in full publicly, and it gives us a little glimpse into how he’s handling all of these new-ish roles he’s taken on, after we’ve known him as Senator Rubio for so many years.

On Saturday night, he talked family, football, days off, and even that meme the internet just can’t seem to get enough of, and it was a nice refreshing change of pace, so I thought I’d share some of the details. Lara started by asking how he has changed through all of his many political seasons of life — senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state — and how he thinks the American people perceive him. He gave an answer that I think most of us who have reached middle age can relate to:

“You asked me if you’ve changed. I think everybody – you go through life, right? And as you go through life you learn new things, you see things you hadn’t seen before, you hear things you haven’t heard before. Certainly, I am a different person at 55 than I was at 25 or even 35 because I have 20 and 30 years of experience in between – in life and in work – that inform that.

I think at your core you always want to remain the same person, though, right? And that is what are your priorities in life and what are the values that sort of drive you to do what you do, and I hope that hasn’t changed. And by the way, the world changes too. There are things that are true today that weren’t true 10 years ago. So, I think that’s true for all of us, not just me.”

She also brought up his famous meme that I think everyone is familiar with at this point. As it turns out, Rubio says he hated the initial picture of him sitting on the sofa in the Oval Office, all slumped over, that inspired the meme. He said if you sit there without a pillow behind you, you sink. He said he doesn’t keep up with the meme that closely, but people love to show it to him, and he does think it’s funny.

On balancing life as the busiest man in the Donald Trump administration with being a husband and father of four, he said it’s actually not that difficult. His children are 26, 24, 21, and 18, and the youngest just graduated high school, so they’re off focusing on careers, furthering their education, and enjoying their own lives. He said because the kids are all grown up, it also makes it easier to spend more time with his wife. “So, it’s the second phase of that relationship, I guess, after all these years,” he said.

So, what does Secretary Rubio do when he finally goes home at night? She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that. He also said it’s good to take some time to do something to disconnect completely from his job, like watch a movie or a sporting event. But he also admits that the “world doesn’t wait for you” in this role, and that plans to do something as simple as watch a movie is often disrupted.

“It’s harder – it was a lot easier to do that when you’re a senator,” he said. “It’s much harder when you’re in this role and in this job, because the world isn’t going to stop and wait for you. Like, you may have made a plan tonight to watch a movie, but in the middle of that movie something blows up somewhere in the world, and you’ve got to know about it and you may have to do something about it. So, it’s harder, but it’s not forever, and it’s fulfilling to be in that role.”

Finally, Lara asked him what he would do if he could have a full week off without anyone having access to him. If you’re familiar with Rubio, his answer probably won’t surprise you. “If I had a full week off, I’d be wondering what was going on,” he said, proving why he’s exactly the right person for his job. “I’m being honest, and maybe that’ll change when I’m out of this job.”

But if he could stop the world for a minute and ensure nothing happens? “Well, my wife’s going to hate this answer, but I’d love to sit down and watch, like, every college football game starting at noon Eastern until one – when the West Coast games end at 2:00 a.m. our time Eastern. I’d love to be able to do that at least one weekend. I doubt I’ll be able to do that anytime soon.”

It’s the stuff football fans’ dreams are made of. Rubio is, of course, a huge Florida Gators and Miami Dolphins fan, and I hope he gets to watch at least a few games this fall.

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Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But let’s also not forget our past. You can’t very well bypass all Jewish lawyers in a place where half the lawyers are Jewish.

• In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again (Robert Spencer)

New York City’s Marxist Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani acted quickly, once he moved into Gracie Mansion, to demonstrate that his venomous anti-Israel campaign rhetoric was not just an appeal to the Democrat Party’s growing and aggressive hard-left faction. On his very first day in office, he revoked the city’s International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance framework for combating antisemitism. It’s easy to see why Mamdani would not have wanted to be committed to combating antisemitism: he was busy stirring it up. On July 21, Mamdani falsely accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal and carrying out a genocide of “Palestinians.”


Two days later, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” stabbed an identifiably Jewish man who was leaving Jewish services. Nor was that an isolated incident. The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that “Mamdani’s own police commissioner reported hate crimes up nearly 12% citywide, with 55% targeting Jews, who represent about 10% of the city’s population.” More recently, despite being mayor of the city with the second-largest Jewish population in the world, he has conspicuously left all Jewish lawyers off the city’s 18-member Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.

Jews comprise fully half of the city’s lawyers, but Mamdani didn’t see fit to appoint even one Jewish lawyer to the body that vets and recommends candidates for positions on the city’s courts. The systematic ignoring of the city’s Jewish lawyers will do nothing but contribute to their sidelining within their own profession. Algemeiner reported Tuesday that “a coalition of Jewish legal organizations condemned the appointments, arguing that the omission excludes one of New York’s largest religious and ethnic communities from an influential body responsible for shaping the city’s judiciary.”

The coalition also noted that Mamdani’s snubbing of the Jewish lawyers was just one aspect of “‘a troubling pattern’ that has left many Jewish New Yorkers feeling increasingly marginalized.” That pattern includes not only Mamdani’s rejection of “the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism,” but also “the omission of Jewish neighborhoods from an administration map highlighting immigrant enclaves.”

What’s next? Maybe organized boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. The BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement announced a week after Mamdani took office that it welcomed Mamdani’s “revocation of the anti-BDS Executive Order issued last month by the previous mayor.” The executive order that Mamdani revoked “prevented any mayoral agencies or appointees from doing business with vendors and organizations complying with international law by holding genocidal Israel accountable.” That is, the city was prevented from doing business with entities that boycotted Israel, but no longer.

There are precedents. On April 1, 1933, Adolf Hitler’s newly-minted National Socialist dictatorship in Germany ordered a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Service excluded Jews from positions as university professors and government officials. There quickly followed laws that barred Jews from serving as physicians and teachers, as well as, in a foreshadowing of Mamdani’s choices for the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, lawyers and judges.

Attorney Eli Albrecht wrote Wednesday that “lawyers need to know the holocaust did not begin with camps. It began when Jews were removed from institutions – above all, legal institutions. Judges stripped of their robes. Lawyers disbarred. Then, when law-groups were Judenrein, they codified laws that made discrimination systematic and ‘legal.’ First, you remove the Jews from the institutions. Then, Jews can be discriminated against without representation.” He declared: “In NYC, there is a concerted effort to disappear Jews from public life and leadership. No one on the Left is speaking out. If this discrimination was happening to any other group, the chorus would be deafening.”

Of course no one on the left is speaking out. Patriots and lovers of freedom, however, can and must do so. For in National Socialist Germany, the harassment and persecution of the Jews did not end with their being barred from certain professions; on the contrary, at that point, it was just beginning. If Mamdani is doing all this now, what will he be doing in five years, or ten? (Those who complacently think he will be voted out after one term should remember that socialism often arrives through the ballot box, but never, ever leaves that way.) And while he has started with the Jews, against whom will he turn next?

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Pardons don’t cover bankruptcy.

• Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill (Turley)

Hunter Biden is no Van Gogh. In addition to having both ears, Hunter’s work has generally been panned beyond an enabling media following. However, he claims he is also a starving artist. The problem appears to be that, as predicted years ago, his sales dried up in the influence-peddling market once his father left office. Now, his lawyers want him to cough up $17 million that he owes them. Hunter says that not only is he broke, but so is his family.


In a deposition in ongoing litigation with the law firm Winston Taylor, Hunter claimed an inability to pay the $17 million he owes his lawyers for representing him in criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and civil lawsuits. Hunter claimed under oath that “I don’t own anything of any value other than — and I don’t know the value of it — my paintings which I painted myself. So that’s it. And I don’t even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts.” He also added, “My family doesn’t have any money, and it’s not their debt anyway.”


The statement about his family is curious, since Joe and Jill Biden recently received numerous book contracts and were thought to be worth millions. However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Joe Biden is struggling with $800,000 in debt and, ironically, increased property taxes in his blue state of Delaware on his $2.7 million home. (Moving to Florida like many fleeing blue state taxes is not a viable option for the Bidens).

Worse yet, no one wants Biden to do speeches and appearances, cutting off a lucrative post-presidency income. Not only is Biden obviously diminished in his ability to give a speech, but many Democrats blame him for the reelection of Trump by clinging to power despite his obvious deteriorating mental and physical condition. Of course, the former president still rakes in more than $400,000 a year in government pensions. Yet, in the end, Hunter is correct. It is not their debt unless they signed as guarantors on any debt.

Hunter continues to be the darling of the media with podcasts and interviews, including some who have called for him to run for president. He has lived in mansions and luxurious hotels for much of his life. However, that lifestyle was subsidized by wealthy Democratic donors and friends. What is impressive is how Hunter could burn through millions accrued from alleged influence peddling and shady deals. Notably, Fox News reports that the law firm, which is known for representing Democratic figures, has tried to connect Biden with donors to help him cover his legal bills, without success. With his father out of power, no one is willing to bankroll his lifestyle or buy his art.

Gone are the former swaggering threats that Hunter could make to shake down foreign figures. There was a time when he only needed to pick up a phone and send a text message like the one to a Chinese businessman, openly threatening Joe Biden’s displeasure if money is not sent to them immediately. In the WhatsApp message, Hunter stated:

“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

No one is answering now. Hunter insisted that he is now virtually destitute: “I don’t have any assets. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a phone.” Even his recent dubious award of $1.7 million in a defamation case was immediately claimed by the law firm, though that award can and should be appealed.

Hunter has written extensively on his struggle with drugs and alcohol. It is a great achievement to have overcome those addictions. Yet, the accounts would be more compelling if he did not unleash a scorched-earth campaign against critics when he was sober. He sued or threatened to sue a wide array of people to try to muscle them into silence. I was one of those threatened with a defamation lawsuit by his friend and sponsor Kevin Morris for writing about their curious relationship.

Hunter gamed the system on his crimes and was ultimately rescued from prison only by his father breaking his repeated public promise not to pardon his son. Yet, Hunter is likely to live well as a ward of the privileged class. He remains the toast of the town for the left, a type of foul-mouthed prophet who claims to have been liberated by his own excesses. For those of us who have long been critics of his antics, it remains a bit too familiar. Hunter makes even being broke look like a grift.

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“..possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.”

• J.R.R. Tolkien, the Atomic Bomb, and the Perils of Power (Miltimore)

On Aug. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, instantly killing tens of thousands and marking the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare. Three days later, a second bomb, “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki. Within days, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end. For most Americans, the bombings were greeted with celebration. Polls at the time revealed that nearly 70 percent of Americans said the bombing was a “good thing,” while just 17 percent said it was a “bad thing.”


In some respects, this is no surprise. Thanks to the bomb, the war was over. Japan, the nation that had blindsided the United States at Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier, had finally been brought to its knees, forced to surrender unconditionally. Watching these events unfold from England, a professor of Anglo-Saxon literature saw something very different.

‘Utter Folly’
In 1945, J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Old English at Oxford and author of “The Hobbit” (1937), a book that would eventually become one of the most influential works of fantasy literature ever written. Having served as a British Army officer in the trenches of World War I, Tolkien understood firsthand the horrors of modern warfare. Perhaps because of this, he recoiled upon learning of a new weapon that could destroy entire cities. “The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned,” he wrote to his son Christopher. “The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world!”

Tolkien was no pacifist, and he recognized that U.S. President Harry Truman’s decision to drop this new superweapon might have a silver lining. “Japan ought to cave in,” he admitted. But even as he acknowledged the bomb’s immediate military value, Tolkien feared its long-term consequences. Humanity had crossed a threshold from which there would be no return. “Such explosives in men’s hands,” he wrote, “while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ’this will ensure peace.’”

On ‘Babel-Builders’
Today, discussions over the atomic bomb usually involve whether it was morally justified to drop it on Japan. Unlike in 1945, Americans are very much split on the matter. Recent polling shows 35 percent say the bombings were justified, while 31 percent say they were not. The fact that a full one-third of Americans say they’re not sure if the bombing was the right thing shows how morally complicated the matter is. (If you doubt this, consider that General Dwight Eisenhower and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy opposed dropping the bomb on moral grounds and because they doubted its military necessity.)

What is less often asked is whether the bomb should have been developed at all. The question is easy to dismiss. After all, Nazi Germany launched its own nuclear research program in April 1939. Had the Allies declined to pursue the bomb, they might have handed history’s most destructive weapon to Adolf Hitler. There is also a philosophical hurdle. Science has long been celebrated as the engine of human progress. To oppose a scientific breakthrough on ethical grounds has a whiff of Luddism—a kind of rejection of progress itself.

Tolkien, once again, saw things differently. Though admitting “we’re all in God’s hands” now, he offered a word of caution about humanity’s growing faith in its own power. “He does not look kindly on Babel-builders,” he told Christopher. By invoking the famous Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, in which God confused and scattered the nations for attempting to reach the heavens, Tolkien was warning against a perennial temptation: placing human ingenuity and knowledge above moral wisdom. The theme of man’s lust for knowledge and power would be developed in his next literary masterpiece.

‘An Allegory of Our Own Time’
In 1942, as the Manhattan Project was beginning in the United States, Tolkien was developing the core narrative of what would become “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of his “The Lord of the Rings” epic.Though the book would not be published until 1954, Tolkien spent much of the 1940s writing and revising the manuscript. The story follows a fellowship of nine companions who embark on a perilous quest to destroy the One Ring, a weapon of immense power that threatens to destroy all of Middle-earth.

The Ring is so powerful that no one—not even the heroes of the story—should possess it. Indeed, Tolkien’s wisest and bravest characters all reject it. The wizard Gandalf refuses the Ring when it is offered to him. The elf queen Galadriel does the same. Aragorn, whose ancestor was killed after being corrupted by the Ring, is wary of its power and never seeks it.

Meanwhile, those who desire the Ring or attempt to wield its power—Boromir, Sauron, and Gollum—are ultimately destroyed by it. The One Ring has rightly been interpreted as a metaphor for power; after all, Tolkien himself called it the “Ring of Power.” But in a 1947 letter to his publisher, he put a finer point on the idea. “You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like,” he wrote, “an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power.”

These words help explain why Tolkien viewed the atomic bomb with such horror. It was a weapon created to “defeat evil power” through overwhelming force. In Tolkien’s view, the danger was not simply the weapon itself, but the modern faith in power and the belief that it could be controlled by those who possessed it. Tolkien’s line about “Babel-builders” and “lunatic physicists” could give the impression that he rejected science. He did not. He was simply recognizing the limits of science. The fantasy writer, a devout Catholic, understood that even though scientists could unlock the power of the atom, they could not fix humanity.

By 1945, it had become apparent that moral wisdom and scientific progress do not necessarily advance at the same pace. If the Great War and the horrors of the Soviet Union in the 1930s had not made this clear, the military destruction of the 1940s and the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 did. Humanity had acquired unprecedented power without acquiring the corresponding wisdom to restrain it. For Tolkien, this was the great danger of the modern age. Man was learning to harness the forces of nature even as he slid comfortably toward its oldest sins: pride, envy, and the lust for power.

None of this is to say the Ring of Power is an allegory for nuclear weapons. It is not. Tolkien himself made that quite clear in a BBC interview in the 1960s.Yet a central lesson of his literary masterpiece is that some forms of power are simply too great for humans to possess. Perhaps, then, the greatest virtue is not seeking out people who can wield great power wisely, but in possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle August 3 2026

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  • August 3, 2026 at 9:45 am #246461
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
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    Edward Steichen Marlene Dietrich 1932 • Trump Says “Perimeters Of A Deal Reached” With Iran (ZH) • Zionist Trump Regime Looks for New Reasons to Escal
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 3 2026]

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