strait Archives - The Automatic Earth

The Terafab is going to become the largest and most valuable building on Earth by a long shot.

This is so much more than just another semiconductor fab.

It’s going to be @Tesla, @SpaceX, xAI, and Intel building what will become the most important AI manufacturing complex EVER… pic.twitter.com/NebcmBQOtY
— Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics) August 6, 2026

Wow. https://t.co/C5CEiUNOSG
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/2085559754965807444?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2085510570753556940?s=20

Both sides declare themselves the winner. As foreseen. Are they also both happy?

• Bessent: Today or Tomorrow the Strait will be Open (ZH)

Importantly, Reuters reports late in the day Friday that Washington plans to lift the naval blockade on Iranian ports once the Oman deal is finalized and announced, which Bessent earlier said could be as soon as ‘today or tomorrow’. If the US were to back down militarily in the Gulf, it would cede effective control of the vital waterway to the Iranians. Per Reuters: Progress is being made between Iran and Oman on the Strait of Hormuz and “we expect a deal soon,” a U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

Once a deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without impediments, the United States will lift its blockade of Iranian ports, the official said. “There is progress between Oman and Iran on the Strait, and we expect a deal soon,” the official said. “Once the deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without ` impediments, the United States will lift the blockade of Iranian ports.” Iran’s FM is declaring ‘victory’ saying that in the “face of the word’s most expensive military” his country’s forces demonstrated their might and capability…

Iran's Powerful Armed Forces have shown their readiness, capability, and might in face of the world's most expensive military.

When Muslims stand together, we can face every challenge by malicious outsiders head-on.

Time to rely only on ourselves and embrace true brotherhood.
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) August 7, 2026

Iran has announced that under the ‘finalized’ Oman-Iran scheme and ‘deal’ for management of the Hormuz Strait that “enemy countries” (read: US and Israel) may only transit the waterway after lifting sanctions and paying compensation for the war. While this was not issued by the Foreign Ministry or top leadership per se, it does appear to represent Tehran’s overall position, after on Thursday it first declared that US and Israeli-linked ships will not be allowed Hormuz transit under the Oman plan:
Tehran Mayor says Passing through the Strait of Hormuz is subject to the lifting of sanctions and the payment of compensation: “The countries that have attacked Iran will not have the right to use this strait until compensation is paid. Governments that freeze Iranian assets or continue to impose sanctions and threaten the nation will be deprived of this strategic boon.”
While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has appeared to back the Omani plan to reopen the strait, the US State Department has also newly warned on Friday that more ‘decisive action’ will be taken to cut off sources of Iran’s funding. Bessent has newly stated that… “I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.”
This is somewhat surprising, but as we described below, it seems a final Washington exit is indeed in motion, even if it leaves Iran with greater leverage in the region. Like Trump’s latest comments Thursday night, Bessent seems in ‘mission accomplished’ mode with this newly published interview…

Bessent on Iran:

We have them by the throat, and they've got 150–180% food inflation, not able to pay the troops.

I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.

Energy prices should come… pic.twitter.com/C1vGuQUIRM
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026

This really does sound like ‘it’s finally over’ talk…

Bessent on the Strait of Hormuz:

The strait is never going back to the way it was because the Iranians have used, or tried to use it, as a choke point.

What we are going to see over the next two years, the strait is going to become irrelevant.

It is going to become just… pic.twitter.com/LP8evMbeJP
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026

“I think it’s going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer. “I think we’re doing fine.”

• Trump’s Muted Response To Hormuz Deal (ZH)

President Trump’s latest Iran comments came Thursday night, after a prior day wherein Iran and Oman unveiled their ‘finalized’ Hormuz management scheme, which most notably includes a ban on all US and Israeli vessels in the energy transit waterway. As we reviewed earlier, the White House has appeared to genuinely be searching for an exit strategy, but this stipulation alone may be too hard a pill for Trump to swallow, if accurate – given that it obviously leaves Iran in de facto control of the strait. Many pundits have pointed out it even leaves Iran with more leverage and power in the region than before the launch of Operation Epic Fury.

But this is why Trump’s comments to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday evening are surprising, given that instead of reacting angrily and outright condemning the Iran-Oman plan, his reaction was somewhat muted and meager. Doves who see this war as disastrous and hope for quick exit will welcome the development. “I think it’s going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer,” the president said, while leaving his meaning ambiguous. Asserting once again that the US is involved in negotiations with Tehran (something the Iranians have been vehemently denying all along), Trump added that “I think we’re doing fine.”
The only thing Trump truly got angry about Thursday was related to the domestic side of the conflict, after US major media published several reports saying the Pentagon is perilously low on missiles and interceptors, which have been drained after nearly six months of war. He blasted ‘treasonous’ ‘fake reporting’ and even threatened to jail ‘leakers’ over the reports (the inherent contradiction says a lot here).But again, Trump’s penchant for raging against ‘dishonest’ and ‘evil’ Iranian leaders has been curiously absent over the last several days as the US bombs have fallen silent – after he called off planned ‘harder’ strikes over the weekend (or the last big TACO moment, among many prior).
This relative quiet at the White House comes even after Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf openly mocked the United States and Trump’s theatrics and constant changes of course on X. He wrote Thursday: “Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.” That’s theater diplomacy on loop. Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.
All of this change in Washington tone and posture suggests this could finally be the moment for a true offramp, as the US faces a ‘go big or get out’ realization, and as the prospect of slogging through months more of a developing quagmire becomes too politically and economically costly. This is potentially the declare ‘victory’ and get out moment. As former Congressman Ron Paul has put it: Just Walk Away!

Trump: I think the war with Iran will end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer.

Q: Have you reached a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz?

Trump: It’s sort of open right now. pic.twitter.com/J3lcPyuVwM
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 6, 2026

That guy in the photograph is the president. Who in Iran has no power. The Ayatollah does, but there’s no recent photos of him.

• The Iranian President’s Bizarre Meeting With the Supreme Leader (Athena Thorne)

As President Donald Trump continues to play Schrödinger’s Deal with Iran, those of us watching from the sidelines and wondering how long this will go on are also wondering something else: With whom exactly is the United States trying to make a deal? More to the point: Who is even running that country anymore? In Iran, the president is tasked with managing the country’s day-to-day operations, but he ultimately answers to the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah. Meanwhile, the Ayatollah is the ultimate head of state, and no deal can conceivably happen without his sign-off.

It is well known that Masoud Pezeshkian has served in the role of president for the past two years. Where things get fuzzy is trying to pin down who the Supreme Leader is these days and how much he is in control.
“One of the most interesting and/or odd things about Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion has been the speculation about who is leading Iran after the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” my venerable colleague Stephen Kruiser wrote back in March. “Once it was confirmed that his son Mojtaba would be succeeding him, rumors were running wild about the state of his health. No one was sure if he was all dead, half dead, a quarter dead, or fit as a fiddle and looking to relocate somewhere with fewer bombs. That’s still the case. It’s been quite a bizarre sideshow to the seriousness of the war.”
And to this day, no one has seen hide nor hair of the alleged Supreme Leader in public. I’m sure part of the reason for that is security, but still — he could at least release a video to assert himself. Perhaps he is grotesquely disfigured and hides himself away from the world’s cruel gaze, à la Phantom of the Opera. Maybe he’s nothing more than a brain in a jar hooked up to a gut sack. No one knows.
To this end, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made multiple demands to meet with Khamenei last spring. After he threatened to quit if he did not receive an audience, the Ayatollah relented, and a meeting took place in May. Pezeshkian later “told a gathering of trade association representatives that he had spent two and a half hours with the new leader ‘in a cordial atmosphere,'” reports Iran International.
But the outlet is now saying that the president’s characterization of the meeting is nothing like what actually took place. Based safely in London, Iran International claims that sources say the encounter was more like something out of a political crime thriller: The meeting itself was a concession extracted under pressure. Khamenei’s office agreed to it only after repeated requests from Pezeshkian and his threat to resign, the sources said, and the president was informed that, contrary to standard practice, he would not be received at the leader’s usual residence.
Instead, his security detail delivered him to an undisclosed location somewhere in Tehran. There he was taken from his own vehicle and seated in the back of a commercial car with tinted windows, where, apparently, Khamenei was already waiting. The spot was dark enough that the two men could not see each other, and Khamenei’s guards did not permit a handshake. The conversation was carried entirely by voice.
Due to the security risks Khamenei was facing, and after having (allegedly) narrowly escaped a targeted bombing with his life, one can excuse a certain level of paranoia from the Supreme Leader. But what was with the darkened interior and the prohibition of a handshake? Did his arms get blown off or something? Iran International’s sources said the Ayatollah’s elusive behavior “angered Pezeshkian, who regarded it as humiliating. According to individuals in the president’s office, he later asked whether the person beside him had in fact been the supreme leader, since he had only heard a voice in the dark.”
“It is unclear whether the remark was an expression of anger or genuine doubt,” Iran International notes. Further, “Pezeshkian has since requested a second meeting, this time at the leader’s residence. The request has so far been denied.” Sounds like we might have a “President” Joe Biden situation on our hands, where an incapacitated figurehead is propped up by a shadowy cabal that runs the country in his name. One wonders how the U.S. can possibly finalize an existential deal with a country in such a state of leadership crisis.

“Apparently, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is increasingly being dismissed as unrealistic. Even the regime’s most hardline officials seem to have lost hope regarding Kiev’s accession to the Western military alliance, considering that such a move does not serve NATO’s current strategic interests.”

• NATO Won’t Accept Ukraine. Promises Are Fairy Tales (Lucas Leiroz de Almeida)

In a recent statement, Valery Zaluzhny – Ukraine’s current ambassador to the UK, former head of the country’s armed forces, now widely considered Zelensky’s top rival – asserted that Kiev will never join the Atlantic defense bloc. According to him, promises of membership are merely “fairy tales” that do not reflect reality.

Zaluzhny stated that he is very familiar with NATO’s internal structures and understands how the bloc actually operates. According to him, promises regarding Ukraine’s entry into the bloc are nothing new. Over the course of 12 years working alongside alliance officials, Zaluzhny says he constantly heard such promises, yet saw no particular reason to believe they would materialize now.
While lamenting that the alliance will never truly accept Ukraine as a member, Zaluzhny criticizes the current situation of the Western bloc, asserting that NATO’s military doctrine is outdated, making the alliance strategically inferior to Russia. Zaluzhny believes it is urgent for NATO to undergo comprehensive military reform and revise its doctrine to align with contemporary realities. He believes Ukraine could contribute to this process but regrets that this will not be possible, given the alliance’s refusal to accept Ukraine as a member.
“I know NATO very well (…) or about 12 years, I personally worked to ensure that we adopted NATO standards, and every year I listened to fairy tales that we were about to join. Unfortunately, we will never join it (…) NATO will most likely remain in its current form and will spend another 12 years – just as Ukraine did – transitioning to the standards required to reach even half the level of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Zaluzhny, however, does not entirely rule out the possibility of Ukraine joining a Western military organization. While acknowledging NATO’s lack of interest in admitting Ukraine, he alleges that his country could eventually join a “European military security bloc.” This would only be possible, however, if EU nations and the UK agreed to move forward with creating a regional military alliance outside the NATO umbrella – something many analysts doubt will happen, given American influence over European decision-making.
In fact, there are some interesting points in Zaluzhny’s statement. He is correct in stating that Ukraine will never be accepted into NATO. The Kiev regime plays a very specific role in NATO’s war plans – precisely that of a proxy or external ally. NATO cannot include Ukraine as a member, as doing so would force the alliance to intervene directly in a war against Russia, which would obviously be a disaster, possibly even nuclear. In this sense, Ukraine’s role as a military proxy is only viable as long as the country remains outside the Western defense bloc.
He is also right to criticize NATO’s outdated strategy regarding Russia. In fact, NATO decision-makers have never moved beyond the military doctrines of the last century. This has been clearly reflected in the current disastrous anti-Russian military campaign, in which the Kiev regime, guided by NATO, is suffering substantial losses.
Zaluzhny, however, fails to point out how Ukraine is ignoring its own military tradition on the battlefield in favor of using precisely the same outdated NATO concepts. The military doctrine employed by Ukraine is not autonomous. Ukraine shares a military history with Russia rooted in their Soviet and imperial pasts. If the Ukrainians were following their own military doctrine, they would be using tactics similar to Russia’s -focused on preserving soldiers’ lives rather than conducting large-scale direct combat campaigns.
However, the Ukrainian armed forces follow NATO orders, which is why they use outdated warfare techniques unsuited to the reality of contemporary combat -characterized by high technology and the massive use of drones. So, in practice, Ukraine would have nothing to add to NATO regarding military doctrine, since the country already adopted NATO’s own doctrine when it agreed to act as a proxy.
A common argument used by proponents of Ukrainian accession is that the country could contribute to NATO with its real combat experience. In fact, the country has been facing Russia in a large-scale conflict for four years, gaining combat experience that no Western alliance nation possesses. The problem, however, is determining how much of the Ukrainian military apparatus will remain once the conflict ends. The regime has already lost nearly its entire original military contingent and is now relying on forced mobilization to keep its forces active. In this scenario, that experience may count for little, given that the soldiers involved in combat are mostly untrained men sent to certain death on the front lines.
If NATO didn’t want Ukraine before – when it had the second-largest army in Europe – it certainly won’t accept it now, when it is a failed state fighting with the help of its civilians snatched off the streets. The Ukrainian dream of membership seems increasingly unattainable.

“The US president reportedly told Republican donors “We need to elect JD [Vance],” despite publicly maintaining ambiguity..”

• Trump Makes Private Revelation About Successor – WaPo (RT)

US President Donald Trump has privately indicated that he wants Vice President JD Vance to succeed him in the White House, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. During a closed-door Republican donor meeting in the Oval Office roughly two weeks ago, Trump reportedly said, “at the end of the day, we need to elect JD.” The remark contrasts with Trump’s public refusal to endorse a 2028 successor. He has praised both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, suggesting they could even run on the same ticket.

The newspaper said that despite the apparent declaration of support, the president continued asking aides after the donor meeting which of the two would make the stronger presidential candidate. Several advisers also cautioned that Trump frequently tells different things to different people and could still change his mind. Trump has since dismissed the WaPo report, telling a journalist on Thursday that it was “way too early to even be thinking about” officially endorsing anyone, according to the New York Post.
Trump aides widely agree the president will delay formally endorsing a successor to avoid appearing to be a “lame duck,” WaPo wrote, adding that aides are only expecting an official endorsement after the 2026 midterm elections in November. Under the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, a president is limited to two elected terms, whether consecutive or non-consecutive. Trump, who returned to office last year after serving from 2017 to 2021, is therefore constitutionally barred from seeking another term in 2028, despite occasionally joking about the possibility at rallies and on social media.
Neither potential contender has announced plans to run. Vance has repeatedly said he remains focused on serving as vice president and will decide whether to seek the presidency only after the midterm elections. Rubio, meanwhile, has recently reduced his media appearances to avoid fueling speculation about his 2028 ambitions, according to WaPo.

“At the same time, Trump stood firm that he believed the GOP would come out on top..”

• Trump Says He Could Be Last Republican US President (TASS)

President Donald Trump warned that the Republican Party may never get another president into the White House if the Democrats take control of Congress.”And I’ll tell you what, if they [Democrats] get in, I may be the last Republican president,” he said in an interview with Punchbowl News. At the same time, Trump stood firm that he believed the GOP would come out on top, but said the Senate will have to “get smart” for that to happen. The US midterm elections will be held on November 3. One-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be up for election. Both chambers of the US legislature are currently controlled by the Republican Party.

It’s controversial because it’s Trump.

• US Appeals Court Halts Trump Ballroom Project, Supreme Court Next (BBC)

The Trump administration has been ordered to stop construction on President Donald Trump’s $400m (£297m) ballroom at the White House. A federal appeals court dealt the latest setback to the controversial project on Friday, testing Trump’s presidential authority and paving the way for a Supreme Court showdown on appeal.

“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” the panel’s majority said. The order upholds a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued after the administration tore down the East Wing last year to begin the project without congressional approval.

“Congress has not ceded unfettered authority to the Executive Branch to dramatically redesign, reshape, and reconstruct the White House , the People’s House, to fit a particular President’s desires,” the panel said. The three-judge panel, in a 2-1 decision, said: “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence.” “The President has no, and claims no, constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people,” the opinion said.
The administration appealed to the court after a federal judge twice blocked above-ground construction on the ballroom, while still allowing underground work to proceed.The ruling on Friday upholds that order blocking above-ground construction without congressional approval. The appeals court delayed implementation of its ruling for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court. Construction at the site where the East Wing previously stood was previously ordered to stop, but a court delayed the ruling allowing construction to continue while the appeals court considered briefs and heard arguments last month, according to the BBC’s US media partner CBS.
President Trump has asserted that the new ballroom is needed to “accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits”, and has also said that it is “vital for National Security”. He doubled down on the need for the space after an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April. The three-judge panel on Friday said that its ruling “has nothing at all to do with whether the proposed ballroom is desirable”, nor does it weigh in on whether the administration may ultimately construct the ballroom.
“What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court’s expeditious litigation without securing Congress’s authorization, as the Constitution and laws require,” the order said.= The National Trust for Historic Preservation celebrated the latest ruling, noting that no above-ground construction can take place “unless and until” Congress takes action. “The White House, a global landmark that symbolizes American identity and the ideals of democracy, belongs to the American people,” said Brent Leggs, President and CEO of the National Trust. “The National Trust for Historic Preservation and its partners are proud to defend this irreplaceable monument on behalf of all Americans.”

No gracious exit for her.

• Hillary Clinton Blasts Trump’s ‘Tackied Up’ White House Decor (CNN)

Hillary Clinton blasted President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the White House in an interview posted Friday, telling podcast host Kara Swisher that Trump’s “tackied up” decor is “reminiscent” of dictator Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Iraq. “It’s sad to me — it’s sad that it’s so tackied up, and it’s a reflection of, you know, his narcissistic personality and his need to feel important, including sticking gold embellishments all over the walls of the Oval Office,” the former secretary of state told Swisher on her “Pivot” podcast.

“This is a man who, his mind apparently goes to, ‘Where can I add more gold?’ instead of, ‘How do I get out of Iran without looking like the loser that I am?’” As first lady, Clinton herself oversaw renovations to the White House Blue Room, but has emerged as a fierce critic of Trump’s massive overhauls to the White House complex, posting, “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” shortly after the administration began demolishing the White House East Wing to make way for the president’s proposed ballroom last year.
“The next president is going to have a big decision. What do you do with a half-finished ballroom?” Clinton said in the interview, referring to it as a “carbuncle on the side of the White House.” Asked what she would do, Clinton replied: “I don’t know.” In a statement responding to her comments, White House spokesman Davis Ingle pointed back to the 2016 presidential election, when Clinton lost to Trump. “Hillary Clinton never had the opportunity to decorate the Oval Office as president because she suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of President Trump, which she has never recovered from,” he said.
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has sought to leave his own mark on the building, affixing gold detailing on the surfaces of Oval Office and throughout the West Wing. In December of last year, he unveiled the “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the White House Rose Garden colonnade, complete with plaques featuring politically-tinged dings against his predecessors — partisan barbs White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed he wrote himself.
And he’s been publicly preoccupied with renovation projects throughout the District of Columbia, including scandal-plagued efforts to refurbish the National Mall’s reflecting pool and erect a 250-foot “triumphal arch” across the Potomac River. Speaking with Swisher in Friday’s interview, Clinton joked she’d be willing to take on the role of “Secretary of Taking Down the Gold” after Trump leaves office. “Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Secretary of cleaning it up, fixing up,” she said.

Just about power. Raw.

• Democrats’ Anti-Trump Lawfare Was Never About the Law (Matt Margolis)

Long before Donald Trump took the oath of office for his second term — heck, before he was even reelected — Democrat state attorneys general were already building the machine designed to stop him. Records show that at least 22 Democrat attorneys general joined a coalition called the Project for Federal Accountability starting in April 2024, roughly seven months before Trump defeated Kamala Harris. Seven attorneys general signed the agreement on April 28, 2024. Thirteen more joined in May and June.

The pact was called “Privileged & Confidential Common Interest Agreement.” It was built to do exactly what it sounds like: Keep the states’ coordination hidden from the public and from anyone who might dare oppose them in court. The signers said they wanted to pursue their shared legal interests “while avoiding any waiver of the confidentiality of those privileged materials.” Translation: Total secrecy while colluding against a sitting president who hadn’t even taken office yet.
To me, the most significant part of this pact is that Biden was still in the race when the first signatures went on that agreement in April 2024. He wouldn’t drop out for nearly three months. The sitting Democrat president was telling the country he intended to serve another term, the party was acting like he was going to win, all while Democrat attorneys general were already plotting to stop Trump upon his inevitable return to office.
The coalition had already divided up legal research by topic, built a shared “brief bank” of pre-drafted briefs, and pored over the Project 2025 policy blueprint hunting for lawsuit targets. Trump hadn’t signed a bill. He hadn’t issued an executive order. He hadn’t taken any official action as president, because he wasn’t president yet. None of that mattered. The lawsuits were already being written. Since Trump’s second term began, Democrat attorneys general have sued his administration close to 100 times.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-Calif.) has taken part in 82 of those lawsuits. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D-Colo.) has joined at least 75. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown (D-Wash.) has joined 70. Bonta insists the coalition’s work is “apolitical.” Seriously? He also said, “If (Trump) doesn’t want to get sued, all he has to do is follow the law,” adding, “I don’t think our cases are likely to be dismissed… Trump shows no sign of slowing down, so we will continue to sue him.”
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D-Md.) claims the early coordination was reasonable preparation once Trump’s nomination looked inevitable, but this confirms that the strategy was always about resistance, not the rule of law.Even people outside the conservative media world find this strange. Retired Connecticut judge Thomas Moukawsher mocked the coalition’s chosen name: “‘Federal Accountability?’ That’s just a little strange.” Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican who now often votes for Democrats, called the secrecy “not normal at all.”
You think?
California alone has burned through $19 million in taxpayer money on this litigation crusade, with another $25 million already authorized. New Jersey tucked $1 million into its fiscal year 2026 budget just to fund two new staff positions dedicated to the coalition’s work. That’s right, taxpayers are literally footing the bill for a legal ambush that was planned before Trump even won the election. Imagine all the other things California could have wasted more money on. Democrats can claim all they want that this is about accountability and the rule of law, but it’s just blanket resistance. And if you live in a blue state, you’re paying for it.

“They were settler colonialists.”

• Israel’s Critics Have a History Problem (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re hearing a lot of charges since Oct. 7th that Israel has committed a litany of war crimes. Let’s examine them very carefully because I think they tell us more about the accuser than they do the accused. We’re told by a lot of representatives in our own Congress, mostly on the Democrat side, not all—Tucker Carlson, for example, Candace Owens, but also Zohran Mamdani and others have said that Israel is an apartheid state. In other words, it has racial enclaves.

But there’s nothing in the Israeli constitution that requires you to be Jewish. In fact, there’s 2 million Arabs living freely, voting freely inside Israel. In contrast, of the 22 member Arab nations, almost all of them require Islam as the national religion. And of the 30 Muslim countries, Arab and non-Arab alike, about 23 of them make it a crime to be an apostate from Islam. Does anybody ever say that these are apartheid states?
Do you really believe that if you were of a trans community, you could start a movement in Iran? Could you have a Mormon chapter on the West Bank? Could you build a new cathedral of Christian worship in Istanbul today under [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan? You think there’s a gay rights parade going on in Gaza? No, no, these are apartheid. They eliminate and marginalize communities. Let’s look at another charge that we hear: settler colonialist. This means that Israel, uh, were interlopers.
Let me ask you something. In modern-day Israel, we have archaeological and linguistic evidence that Jews were living there 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. People who spoke early Hebrew, who practiced the Jewish faith, and lived on the land that is now Israel. If you want to talk about settler colonials, where did the Arabs come from? They swept in from Asia into the Middle East and North Africa and, as settler colonialists, conquered Byzantine and earlier Roman territories that had been Western for 700 years.
The greatest church in Christendom was Hagia Sophia, built in the sixth century A.D. by the Emperor Justinian. It was the largest and most revered church in Christendom for 1,000 years. And yet, in the 15th century, settler colonialists under the sultan came in and conquered and settled and took over Asia Minor from the Byzantines. And they slapped minarets on and culturally appropriated a Christian church and turned it into a mosque. They were settler colonialists.
Mamdani’s family are settler colonials. They were part of a British imperial project at the turn of the 19th to 20th century that put settlers from other areas of the British Empire into Africa to help advance their colonial control of the Indigenous people. And even today, Mamdani’s 1% Indian community controls 65% of the gross domestic product of Uganda. Settler colonialist. I could go on, but this is a ridiculous charge to lodge against Israel when, of all of these settler colonial powers, it has the longest pedigree in one place.
Now we hear about ethnically cleansing, ethnic cleansing. We’re told that the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Gazans and often people in the West Bank. I don’t know quite what that means, but before I try to translate it, we do know there’s a lot of ethnic cleansers. Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has threatened to send missiles both into Athens and into Israel. His government, not his own, but the Turkish government, of which he is a continual successor, ethnically cleansed all of the Greeks from Northern Cyprus and occupied it, and then sent settler colonialists from Turkey. I haven’t heard anybody complain about that.
Is there a protest I missed at Columbia? Did Ilhan Omar forget that, or does she just give a pass to a fellow Muslim country? While Oct. 7th was transpiring, far away in Muslim Azerbaijan, they were ethnically cleansing 150,000 Armenians from their ancestral home of nearly 1,000 years in the Nagorno-Karabakh Corridor. I didn’t hear a word from Ilhan Omar. I didn’t hear a word from [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. I didn’t hear a word from Zohran Mamdani.
And then we come to genocide. Genocide. The Israelis, they say, committed genocide. And believe me, people who commit genocide, we know who they are, and they don’t vaccinate the targeted population. They don’t send food. They don’t allow medical doctors and suppliers to go into the targeted genocidal people.
But more importantly, when Israel was formed by 1950, there were 170,000 Arabs still in Israel. They comprised 12% of the population. Fast-forward to 2026. Guess what? Genocidal Israel saw the population of Arabs, who are now Israeli citizens, increase to 2 million, and the percentage of non-Jews in Israel who were Arab Muslims increased from 12% to 20%. Genocidal regimes don’t take the targeted victim and then increase the population, both in real numbers and percentages vis-à-vis their own demographics. They just don’t do that.
And if you talk about ethnic cleansing, Hasan Piker, a fierce podcaster and critic of Israel, was born in the United States, but he grew up in Turkey. His parents are Turkish immigrants. Turkey probably is the most genocidal regime of the last two centuries. It wiped out almost a million Armenians in the Armenian genocide. It went into Ionia in 1922 and destroyed, burned down, the Greek city of Smyrna, an ancient city that had a 2,500-year Greek pedigree, and then ethnically cleansed a million Greeks off the entire coast of Ionia. That’s genocidal.

“ . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” —El Gato Malo on Substack

One way, or another, we’re gonna find you, we’re [gonna] gitchya gitchya gitchya. . . .

“This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.”

• The Four Way Squeeze (James Howard Kunstler)

The days might still be long, but this is a dark season in our country’s politics. Everybody’s nervous and many are furious, and yet all that emotion goes nowhere, just eats you up while you watch and wait for signs that help is on the way. What would that help even look like? Maybe a concerted effort to bum-rush a whole lot of bad ideas out of American life and replace them with better ideas that are worth building a life around.

Of the two political parties that used to vie between the interests of property and of labor, there is almost nothing left — nothing coherent, anyway. Mr. Trump & Co. still stand outside a feckless Republican establishment that can only say “no.” That is bad enough, when it comes to vital matters like election reform and sound fiscal policy. But the President is methodically wearing them down with tactical work-arounds such as this week’s use of State Department visa control to prevent foreign visitors coming here just to drop birthright citizens.
Things will get super-serious when the president has to manage the government’s functional bankruptcy, the bond market crack-up under our impossible debt-burden, and all its knock-ons. It’s coming for sure, and will require a stringent reorganization of American finance, probably even of our money itself. That will be a moment when the nation understands what leadership really means, not just endless deception and fakery.
Speaking of which, you have the other party, the Democrats. The Dems, unmoored from the interests of labor (whatever is left of it), are now strictly just the party of bad ideas and crime. The party is also, at this juncture of history, caught in a gruesome four-way squeeze that could easily drag it into extinction. Let’s count them.
First, is the basic basket of ideas that comprise the party’s platform, readily identifiable for some years now as the “Woke” catalog. Virtually all of them are ideas that a majority of the public rejects as insane. A wide-open border. We tried that for four years under the fake president “Joe Biden.” Didn’t work out so well. Added many millions to the free everything dole that actual citizens resentfully have to pay for. Took jobs away from said citizens. Got a lot of (mostly) women murdered and raped. Let in Gawd knows how many foreign terrorists.
“Woke” also includes the DEI products of manufactured race animus and gender confusion, especially as applied in school from K all the way to PhD. Apart from the sheer hatred and idiocy these things generated, they also led to the scrapping of merit and excellence as organizing principles for civilization. Americans increasingly reject all of that.
The second squeeze point is the Democratic Party’s criminal portfolio. The Covid-19 operation was basically theirs. It killed and injured millions, wrecked the integrity of medicine, and brought on the deliberate perversion of our election procedure. It gave us fake President “Biden” and the autopen gang that ran him. Along the way, the party weaponized the law and produced one hoax after another: RussiaGate, Impeachment, J-6, the 2024 Trump trials — treason, sedition, deprivation of rights under color of law, obstruction of justice and much more. These crimes are a huge burden for the party and they are in the process of being adjudicated, and a lot of the party’s heroes will end up in prison.
The third squeeze is the party’s widespread and atrocious racketeering operation. The process of uncovering it has been going on since Jan 20, 2025, but still has a long way to go in terms of courtroom action. The Somali Learing Center in Minnesota, fake hospices by the hundreds in California, Medicaid fraud in state after state. It was generally allowed to go on by state officialdom. We await the eventual indictments of Governor Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Janet Mills and many other Democratic politicians.
The Democratic Party racketeering apparatus also included the money-laundering system that kicked back millions of dollars from a matrix of NGOs that washed taxpayer money into the party coffers. USAID was a major mechanism, and has been mostly shut down, but thousands of NGOs still exist and function as employment centers for young party “activists” who otherwise would have to work the espresso machines. A lot of that activism depends on funding from the likes of George Soros, the Tides Foundation, Bill Gates, Neville Roy Singham, and other criminally-tinged philanthropy outfits. Justice is coming for them now, too.
Which redounds directly to the fourth squeeze: the rise of communism and jihad as the Party’s new rallying cries while the other three squeezes work to put the party’s old guard out of business. Communism is the fad-du-jour among Democratic Party youth because the over-production of elites (i.e., college graduates) are increasingly closed out of cushy jobs in the besieged NGO matrix, threatened further by the advent of artificial intelligence, and have been trained-up by the lefty-left college faculties to fall in love with the utopian nostrums of Karl Marx.
Communism is the Party’s last resort and most of America will not buy it, no matter how heartfelt the youth faction appears these days. Americans believe in property rights. They want to own things. They don’t really enjoy being pushed around by kommissars. They want to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas.
As for jihad, it’s hard to imagine a less likely route to the hearts and minds of America. No matter how pissed off you are about Israel, jihad is not the answer to America’s problems. No, Dorothy, Kansas will not be joining the Ummah. You will not have to don the burka. Sharia will not replace English common-law. This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.
Personally, I don’t see how the Democratic Party as currently configured survives this four-way squeeze. If President Trump can succeed in starting to reindustrialize the country — even considering A-I and robots — there will still be a need for human labor and labor will seek some kind of political representation. Maybe they can find it in the hollowed out husk of the thing that used to be the Democratic Party. Otherwise, fuggeddabowdit. The party is toast.

Why does this have to be so hard?

• Sen. Cassidy Backs Todd Blanche For AG, Likely Saving Nomination (JTN)

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., on Friday announced he would support Todd Blanche for confirmation to the post of Attorney General. His support likely saves Blanche’s nomination, which has been on thin ice for weeks. Both GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have announced they will oppose him. Speculation had abounded that Cassidy may join them in an act of revenge for President Donald Trump backing his primary opponent. But Cassidy threw cold water on that prospect in remarks on the Senate floor.

“This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances.” he said. “All considered, I will vote for Mr. Blanche.””Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this. But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” he added. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump, and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”
Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas previously dropped their opposition to Blanche after he provided them with written assurances on the end of an abandoned “anti-weaponization fund.”

AfD and Marine Le Pen, and Europe is a whole different place. They’ll fight that.

• Germany Has Reached A New Low In Election Rigging (Amar)

Today’s Germany is a grim, unhappy place. Thirty-six years after West Germany’s take-over of the former East Germany (polite term: re-unification), which was supposed to herald a golden age of national fulfilment, citizens are in a very foul mood. According to Ipsos, one of Germany’s go-to pollsters, their morale is at a “historic nadir,” and they are “losing confidence about the country’s future.”

As of last month, fear of poverty and inequality was “clearly increasing,” with 37 percent of all respondents picking it as their number-one angst, followed by “migration” (31 percent), “inflation” (30 percent), worries over the healthcare system (26 percent) and “criminality and violence” (25 percent). Note that all top five anxieties focus on what is going wrong at home. That doesn’t mean, though, that Germans are optimistic about the world or Germany’s place in it: 24 percent of the Ipsos poll respondents fear “military conflicts between states.”
If the mood is sour, it’s very good reasons: Germany’s abysmally, unprecedentedly unpopular and embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is desperately trying to sell an absurd feel-good story about the German economy as an “anchor of stability.” But that only demonstrates how divorced from reality Germany’s rulers are: In the real Germany that their subjects must inhabit, industrial output is 17 percent below 2017. After the recent roll-out of a perfectly underwhelming “reform package,” business leaders have warned that much more is needed to prevent a “lost decade.” That would be, in effect, the second one in a row.
Meanwhile, Berlin is busy doing two things: cut down public spending on absolutely vital things such as education (next to inexpensive energy, the decisive resource for Germany’s prosperity already sacrificed to the proxy war against Russia) and raze the sorry remnants of social safety nets that have long been in tatters already.
That doesn’t mean Germany is not going into catastrophic debt. It is, as if there’s no tomorrow. The money is flowing in torrents. Just not for Germany’s citizens and tax payers but for Zelensky-regime Ukraine (to the tune of, officially, almost €100 billion and counting) and for an insane armament drive that signals a very unhealthy – if historically repetitive – urge to go to war with Russia. This year, €83 billion is earmarked for weapons; next year it will be €110 billion. And so on: €154 billion for 2028, €163 billion for 2029, and a grand crescendo with €184 billion in 2030.

This is the background of not only a severe national depression but also a search for alternatives. At this point at least, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), an anti-immigration party founded in 2013, is benefiting the most from this crisis. On the rise for roughly a decade now, its momentum has recently greatly accelerated.
A fresh poll for all of Germany has the AfD at 27 percent, outdistancing (again) all other parties, including those making up the radical-Centrist coalition currently in charge in Berlin (CDU – 21 percent, SPD – 12 percent). Perhaps even more importantly, the AfD may well win crucial regional elections in the key eastern Land of Saxony-Anhalt and looks set to do very well in two others – in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin – as well.
In sum, the AfD is probably on the verge of a historic breakthrough that will greatly weaken, maybe even ruin the traditional parties’ longstanding “firewall” strategy of freezing it out of political leadership positions no matter what the people say in elections, in effect half-disenfranchising its voters. This moment is likely to reset the whole German political system at the cost of the establishment parties which are still desperately defending their de facto exclusive hold over political offices, perks, and power.
So, what do you do when you are losing a (barely) fair fight? Easy, at least if you are part of Germany’s self-appointed guardians of democracy, civil society, and wholesome ‘values’ all around: You start playing even dirtier.
In the case of the threat the AfD poses to Germany’s establishment parties, the latter have always toyed with this option: Would it not be just oh-so-convenient to simply prohibit such a troublesome competitor under the pretext that it is so radical and dangerous it does not deserve a fair chance? The perverse dream of ‘saving’ what’s left of German democracy by abolishing the biggest opposition party is by no means dead. Some die-hard Centrist radicals, intriguingly including Germany’s militarist-in-chief minister of defense Boris Pistorius, can’t let go of it.
This has all been accompanied by a mainstream media cacophony of cries of “democracy in danger!” and “Nazis at the gates!” Crazy conspiracy theories included, such as the one recently spread – without being challenged – by a member of the co-ruling SPD party on a mainstream news channel: Let’s just blame the latest Islamist terror attack in Berlin on Russia trying to boost the AfD. In what alternative universe does that make any sense? Welcome to the often unhinged, notoriously shameless, and very ugly world of German mainstream discourse.
The problem with the let’s-just-prohibit-the-whole-lot approach is that having a party banned is, fortunately, very hard under German law. And although Berlin’s establishment parties don’t mind bending the rules to deploy nasty lawfare, they do want to be sure to win. If they try to prohibit the AfD and fail, the latter will only get even stronger, as everyone understands. Indeed, even prohibiting ‘merely’ a part of a party, say, a Land organization, is neither easy nor a sure bet.
But what if there were a way to kneecap the AfD without having to run that risk? What about, for instance, promising AfD candidates could be taken out and removed from elections without having to overcome the high legal hurdles that make full-fledged prohibition so scary? And that is where the Land of Lower Saxony (in the former West Germany and not to be confused with Saxony-Anhalt in the former East Germany) has taken on the role of trailblazer in democracy defense via democracy suppression.
Think of recent events there as a prototype or trial balloon. Based on a very recently passed, as it were, made-to-measure law, local election committees have begun to block AfD candidates from running by invoking especially produced reports from the Land branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz. This is unprecedented and scandalous, as critics are pointing out. In a ludicrously flimsy and absurdly unfair procedure that needs no courts – in this manner similar to EU sanctions-against-dissidents policy – German citizens are deprived of the passive franchise, the right to be elected.

SpaceX is building an AI data center for orbit, then reusing the same brain box on Earth.

Starmind AI1 packs NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, solar power and Starlink laser links into one orbital system.

On the ground, Elon says they can remove the solar wings and radiators… https://t.co/sOn9GlqkGx pic.twitter.com/K9yOSH9QSI
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 7, 2026

Chamath Palihapitiya on the Tesla-SpaceX merger: "I still don't like the fact that Tesla's over here – and as I've told you, that will get merged in. that thing will look very cheap in a few years"

this is him and Gavin Baker explaining how you underwrite SpaceX at $2 trillion,… https://t.co/xMbMZf57V0 pic.twitter.com/KEeyDE2lVG
— Сarm1ne (@carm1nee) August 6, 2026

Before Elon Musk became the world’s richest entrepreneur, he spent years teaching himself the disciplines behind the industries he wanted to enter.

He studied physics, engineering, manufacturing, software, and rocket science by reading textbooks, speaking with experts, and… pic.twitter.com/5xAfALLhHC
— X Ethan (@XEthanai) August 7, 2026

The Covid Pandemic was planned. Their tests were fake. Their mask science was fake. Their social distancing was fake. Their vaccine science was murderous and fake. Their Media was fake. Their CDC and FDA were fake.

ARREST THEM BOTH NOW pic.twitter.com/8Fjlehi1k6
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) August 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085485219931447561?s=20

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Debt Rattle April 6 2026

Apr 062026

April 6, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: Bulgaria, divisive, Harmeet Dhillon, idiocracy, Iran, mobilization, providence, strait, Strait of Hormuz, suicide ship, vaccine 62 Responses »

Paul Klee Hammamet with Its Mosque 1914 (feels awkward)

• Time for Europe to Defend Itself (J.B. Shurk)

• EU Acting Like ‘Suicide Ship’ By Keeping Russia Sanctions – Fico (RT)

• US Does Not Rely on Strait of Hormuz Oil, but Impact Still Hits Pump Prices (ET)

• Trump Tells Iran ‘Time Is Running Out’ — and Then It Does (Robert Spencer)

• ‘Open The F**kin’ Strait’: Trump Threatens To ‘Blow Everything Up’ (ZH)

• Trump’s Address to the Idiocracy (Alexander Dugin)

• Battle for Bulgaria: The EU Opens a New Front in its Election War (RT)

• Providence Destroys Mural to Murder Victim as too “Divisive” (Turley)

• Forced Mobilization Failing To Stop Ukraine’s Manpower Collapse (RT)

• Only Strength Matters (Alexander Dugin)

• Asst Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon Campaigns Hard to Replace Pam Bondi (CTH)

• Czech Government Imposes Fuel Price Cap and Cuts Diesel Tax (RMX)

• ICE Use the DMV as Bait to Lure Illegal Alien Truck Drivers? (Tim O’Brien)

• Pfizer Cancels COVID Vaccine Trial for Lack of Interest (JTN)

https://twitter.com/HerdImmunity12/status/2040179403410301369?s=20 https://twitter.com/triffic_stuff_/status/2040048587107688881?s=20

Elon Musk was asked what happens to people when the machines no longer need them.

He didn’t soften it.

Musk: “There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. These are not things I wish would happen. They probably will.”

Sit with that second sentence.

He is… pic.twitter.com/WmNzI4WztS
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 4, 2026

SHOCKING: Treason at the highest level…

DNI Tulsi Gabbard has once again stated that the Obama Regime manufactured the entire Russia Hoax to launch a treasonous coup against President Trump.

Obama's inner circle didn't just spy…they staged a silent overthrow. pic.twitter.com/8XA4z3EhnV
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 4, 2026

It’s outrageous how Britain’s deliberate push for war between Russia and Ukraine—advancing their new world order—draws far less outrage than Iran. The US has poured roughly $188 billion into Ukraine, yet we hear endless noise about Israel while Britain’s warmongering gets a free… pic.twitter.com/aUbUYX0ADf
— Star S.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@DominguezH31015) April 4, 2026

“Americans shouldn’t fight for a suicidal continent.”

• Time for Europe to Defend Itself (J.B. Shurk)

]Four years ago, the Biden administration was working with the United Kingdom and the European Commission to pay for diminutive comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s war with the Russian Federation over territories where supermajorities of the population identify as Russian. We were told that the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine “belonged” to Ukraine and that the only way to “preserve democracy” was to deny those people a democratic vote to join the Russian Federation. “Democracy” also apparently requires the installation of a Ukrainian dictator, a complete crackdown on an independent press, widespread censorship of public debate on social media, the denial of religious freedom, and a brutal campaign of press-ganging men into military service to die as cannon fodder for a corrupt Ukrainian regime that launders money from U.S. and European taxpayers into the bank accounts of the West’s political and financial elites.

Just as globalists in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and across Old (and increasingly Islamic) Europe turned the “Reign of COVID Terror” into an opportunity to bilk taxpayers, enrich elites, and grow the totalitarian national security State, the same globalist scum quickly turned the Ukraine conflict into another “emergency” requiring more taxes, censorship, and public sacrifice. All of a sudden, anything criticizing the official public policies of Western governments was labeled “Russian disinformation.” If you disagreed with whatever the West’s vaunted “experts” said, you were dismissed as “Putin’s puppet.” Pro tip for information warfare enthusiasts: When government authorities identify dissent as “propaganda,” that’s propaganda!
The COVID propaganda project gave us a chorus of World Economic Forum buffoons posing as national leaders all singing, “We must ‘Build Back Better.’” When that schtick got old — or, rather, when ordinary citizens across the West started to show signs of resistance against their imperial rulers — the West’s globalists turned Ukraine’s Chief Munchkin into a “freedom fighter” battling the pernicious authoritarianism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The same yahoos — Biden, Trudeau, Macron, Queen Ursula, and the rest of the WEF’s rump-kissing claque — who screeched like wounded cockatoos, “Build Back Better,” now all huffed in unison, “Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!” It never ceases to amaze me that the day after Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” protests against COVID “vaccine” mandates came to an end, the official launch of the new hit television drama, “WAR: Ukraine,” began.
It’s almost as if Western globalists yank us commoners along by the leash from one spectacular production of nonsense to the next (just to see how much money they can steal from our pockets when their hands aren’t busy groping small children). Some people in the U.S. and Europe were made to really care about a country that has long been considered so incorrigibly corrupt that other corrupt countries can’t help but blush. Lemmings who had been walking around with multiple paper masks over their faces to magically protect themselves from viruses that don’t fear masks all of a sudden waved Ukrainian flags with gusto as if they could identify Dwarf-King Zelenskyy’s money-pit-proto-nation on a map!
Nobody wanted to admit that the same übermenschen from sub rosa groups such as Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission — who have made a financial killing from “green energy” and mRNA “vaccines” over the years — had simply returned to their favorite investment of all: actual killing. War brings new taxes, new regulations, new forms of censorship, new military investment, and new ways to exploit asymmetric information for financial gains. In short, wars bring profits! And what better place for corrupt globalists to make tons of money than to take advantage of the corrupt swindlers putatively governing the traveling circus known as Ukraine!
The United Kingdom (still smarting from its misadventures in the Crimean War one hundred and seventy years ago) demanded that Russia hand back Crimea to its MI6-managed Ukrainian friends. Queen Ursula of the pan-European (and increasingly Islamic) empire demanded that Russia respect the right of Europeans to overthrow any Ukrainian governments that Brussels doesn’t like (see the U.S.-E.C.-organized 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, or what Western propagandists still shamelessly call the “Revolution of Dignity”). BlackRock and other multinational investment firms selflessly volunteered to help finance the war, purchase Ukraine’s assets on the cheap, and invest heavily in the subsequent reconstruction projects of a destroyed nation. Google and Facebook promised to censor all public debate averse to globalists’ interests as “Russian propaganda.”

Absolutely.

And they can’t stop now: Von der Leyen, Starmer, Macron etc., they all bet against Putin. And their people will pay a steep price.

The only normal people are in eastern Europe. That’s the next battleground.

• EU Acting Like ‘Suicide Ship’ By Keeping Russia Sanctions – Fico (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has urged the EU to lift the sanctions on energy exports from Russia and resume dialogue, comparing the bloc’s policies to a “suicide ship.”Since the beginning of the US-Israel war with Iran in late February, oil prices have risen by 60% and gas prices by 70% in the EU, according to European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen. The bloc previously experienced price hikes after deciding to phase out deliveries from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict. In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Fico blasted the EU for “ideological blindness and incompetence” and accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of exacerbating the crisis.

“I am not calling for anything else – only for a return to common sense. The whole EU, and especially the European Commission, are beginning to look like a suicide ship when it comes to energy security,” Fico wrote. He called on the EU to lift “the absurd sanctions” and take “vigorous steps” to restore flows via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline, which delivers Russian oil to the EU through Ukraine.Kiev, which has long tried to pressure Slovakia and neighboring Hungary to abandon energy supplies from Russia, claimed that the pipeline was rendered inoperable by a Russian strike. Zelensky said last month that Ukraine would repair it if the EU prevents Hungary and Slovakia from blocking a $104 billion loan to Kiev.
Earlier this week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that the bloc could face “one of the most severe economic crises in its history” unless the sanctions on Russian energy are lifted. The bloc’s energy commissioner, Dan Jorgensen, has ruled out the easing of sanctions, despite warning on Friday of a potential “long-lasting” energy shock that could force member states to ration fuel.

Asia.

• US Does Not Rely on Strait of Hormuz Oil, but Impact Still Hits Pump Prices (ET)

The Strait of Hormuz has been called the jugular vein of the world’s oil supply, and as Operation Epic Fury continues, Iran continues to have a chokehold on the critical supply route.

About one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas is typically shipped through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. But Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels have brought traffic through the strait to a virtual standstill since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28. In March, just 220 vessels transited the strait, according to data from maritime analytics platform Marine Traffic. Prior to the war, thousands of ships traversed the waterway each month. These actions have caused oil and gas prices to surge. Brent, a global benchmark for oil prices, has risen firmly above $100 a barrel overseas. The average gas price in the United States has surged past $4 per gallon.
President Donald Trump has threatened to launch strikes on Iran’s oil wells, power plants, and critical oil infrastructure on Kharg Island unless the strait is reopened. He delayed the strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure until April 6, pending talks with the regime. Here’s a look at how much oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz and where it goes. An average of 20 million barrels of oil and refined products flowed through the narrow gateway between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran each day in 2025. That’s roughly 25 percent of the world’s sea-borne oil trade, according to a February analysis from the International Energy Agency. The strait is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, with shipping lanes just two miles wide in each direction.

The vast majority of crude oil and condensate—a natural gas byproduct—went to Asia (91 percent), according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis based on Vortexa tanker-tracking data from the first half of 2025. Of those Asian nations, China and India absorbed about half of the crude moving through the strait—37 percent and 14 percent, respectively—followed by Japan and South Korea at 12 percent each. Sixteen percent went to other countries in Asia and Oceania. The United States and Europe remained marginal buyers, receiving just 3 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Roughly three-quarters of crude oil travel by tanker ship through the strait came from Saudi Arabia (38 percent), Iraq (22 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (14 percent). Iran shipped just 11 percent. Additionally, the strait accounts for nearly 20 percent of the global liquefied natural gas trade. Qatar, the world’s largest gas exporter after the United States, represents 93 percent of that volume. In 2025, Asia received almost 90 percent of the liquefied natural gas flowing through the strait. Europe received just over 10 percent. Of Asian countries, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan sourced almost two-thirds oztheir total liquefied natural gas supplies via the Strait of Hormuz last year.

The American people will not let them send ground troops. He’s got to win without them.

• Trump Tells Iran ‘Time Is Running Out’ — and Then It Does (Robert Spencer)

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump gave the surviving rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran another ultimatum: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”’This follows the president’s announcement on March 26: “As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time. Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Just a few hours after he issued the Saturday morning ultimatum, however, Trump wrote: “Many of Iran’s Military Leaders, who have led them poorly and unwisely, are terminated, along with much else, with this massive strike in Tehran! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” It was unclear whether this meant that the 48-hour ultimatum was still in place or not, but the “massive strike” certainly removed any lingering doubt that Trump was in earnest.
And so what will the rulers of the Islamic Republic do now? A great deal is riding on whether the rulers of Iran, whoever exactly they may be in the continued absence of the putative new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, decide to acquiesce to a deal with Trump. An agreement, any kind of agreement, between the mullahs and/or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the United States will not only end the present conflict. It will also ensure, at least for the immediate future, that the Islamic Republic will survive.
As much as its own people detest it, and as inhuman as it is toward them, the Islamic regime in Tehran has all the guns. The Iranian people, on the other hand, have neither weapons nor a leader, for anyone within Iran who dares to stand publicly against the regime is taking a tremendous risk, and anyone who looks as if he could emerge as the leader of a resistance movement is swiftly imprisoned and often killed.
Then there is the question of whether there is any real possibility that the Islamic Republic’s top dogs would honor the terms of an agreement with the United States even for a brief period. As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran explains, the Islamic concept of taqiyya, lying to deceive one’s enemies, is a particularly Shi’ite concept, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is a Shi’ite nation, although a startling 2020 survey showed that a majority of Iranians are so disgusted with Islam itself after 47 years of the Islamic Republic that they don’t consider themselves Muslim anymore.
The doctrine of taqiyya was formulated in the middle of the eighth century, when the Sunni caliph al-Mansur was persecuting the Shi’ites. Taqiyya allowed Shi’ites to pretend to be Sunnis in order to protect themselves from Sunnis who were killing Shi’ites.
This was necessary because Sunnis were in the majority almost everywhere, and would not infrequently take it upon themselves to cleanse the land of those whom they referred to as Rafidites, or rejecters: those who rejected the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman, the first three successors of Muhammad, all of whom were chosen over the man Shia believe Muhammad chose for the job, Ali Ibn Abi Talib. Until the conversion of Persia to Shi’ism, taqiyya was an indispensable tool for the very survival of the Shi’ites. Sunnis practice it as well, as it is based upon the Qur’an (3:28), but the Shi’ites raised it to the level of a precisely and elaborately articulated theological concept.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran.”

• ‘Open The F**kin’ Strait’: Trump Threatens To ‘Blow Everything Up’ (ZH)

Shortly after President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” the president spoke with Fox News reporter Trey Yingst for 15 minutes early Sunday. Trump provided Yingst with new details on the behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Iranians and what would happen if Iran does not reach a good-faith deal. Yingst said Trump told him, “If they don’t make a deal, and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”

The reporter went on to say that the president added that if there is no deal, bridges and power plants will go down all over the country. Yingst asked the president about the possibility of an agreement with the Iranians. The president said those negotiating on behalf of Tehran have been granted amnesty for now so they can continue the talks. The reporter noted that Trump thinks a deal can be reached by Monday. Trump said, “I think there’s a good chance tomorrow. They’re negotiating now.”

NEW:

"If they don't make a deal and fast, I'm considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil," President Trump told me.

President Trump added that he believes he'll be able to get a deal with Iran by tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/a7EDL6hQUJ
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) April 5, 2026

International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol told the Financial Times this weekend that governments must avoid panic hoarding and refrain from imposing fuel export bans as the Gulf energy shock ripples outward to Asia, Africa, Europe, and eventually reaches the US West Coast.”I urge all countries not to impose bans or restrictions on exports,” Fatih Birol emphasized in the interview. “It is the worst time when you look at the global oil markets. Their trade partners, their allies and their neighbors will suffer as a result.”
The FT noted that Birol was “careful not to name China directly,” but made very clear his warning was likely aimed at Beijing, which has already moved to restrict exports of critical refined products, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Birol said that “major countries in Asia who hold major refineries” should reconsider their current bans, adding, “If those countries continue to restrict or totally ban exports, the impact on the Asian markets will be dramatic.”
Birol’s hoarding warning in Asia comes shortly after the IEA’s coordinated release of 400 million barrels from emergency reserves. Such hoarding by major countries would directly undercut efforts to stabilize global energy markets. He also warned that if the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz persists, losses of crude and refined products in April could reach roughly double the levels seen in March.Early in the US-Iran conflict, energy economist Anas Alhajji joined UBS analysts on a call in which he warned of panic hoarding risks in the oil market. He said that he questioned back in January why the Trump administration was hoarding Venezuela’s oil after the Maduro raid, instead of bringing it to market.
Alhajji noted then, “I’m not talking about conspiracy theories. We were criticizing the Trump administration, companies, and trading houses that bought Venezuelan oil, and asking why they weren’t able to sell it to end users and why they were hoarding it. Now we know.” He was implying that this hoarding was in preparation for Operation Epic Fury.Asia has been hit hardest so far. JPMorgan’s top commodities expert warned about the falling dominoes of how the energy shock transmits from Asia, then spreads to Africa and Europe, before reaching the US, especially California, shortly thereafter.

“Unfortunately, we see that some countries are adding to their existing stocks during our coordinated oil stock release,” Birol said. “They are stocking up. This is not helpful. In my view, this is a time for all countries to prove they are responsible members of the international community.” Jeff Currie of Carlyle recently outlined the hoarding risks in a note titled “A Crude Awakening”: “The physical shortfall is the trigger; the behavioral response is the multiplier.”

Earlier on Easter morning, President Trump unleashed a fierce message on Truth Social: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” Is the pressure building on Trump from the rest of the world (and domestically) to end this ‘operation’? And/or are we getting closer to quagmire-inducing boots on the ground?

“We must rely on our own strength and actively support our real allies. There are no such allies in the West. None.”

• Only Strength Matters (Alexander Dugin)

In the current situation, Russia needs to act much more firmly. The enemy does not understand nuance, hints, or the refined language of diplomacy. They consistently read our politeness as weakness. That is how they see it—nothing more. And they are preparing for a full-scale, frontal war against us, one they will launch when they believe they are ready. The US and Israel are currently focused on their war with Iran and Shiite forces in the Middle East. But the EU, Britain, and the Democrats in the United States are oriented specifically towards a conflict with us. If we behave in ways they interpret as weakness, there will be no chance of avoiding war. Only strength matters. This is a moment for strength: direct, credible, visible, and unmistakable.

It is also essential to disabuse them of the notion that they will choose when to start the war while we simply wait and comply.We must act with clarity and resolve, and we must act now. In global politics, a true sovereign is the one who shapes events and initiates decisive processes, rather than fitting into those set in motion by others. After the geopolitical disaster of the 1990s—the collapse of the USSR—the West concluded that we had lost our sovereignty. They have treated us accordingly ever since. There is no reason to expect any consistent logic from Trump’s behavior. c

PCR: “Alexander Dugin on the clown emperor and the delusional war machine.”

“A war machine driven by decay and delusion “

• Trump’s Address to the Idiocracy (Alexander Dugin)

Trump delivered his address to the nation. It was brief. He appeared pitiful and broken. His cheeks sagged; his eyelids were swollen. He had clearly deteriorated. Yet at the same time, he threatened Iran with a continuation of the war. The timeline has shifted; now it is a matter of several years. A ground operation is more than likely, though Trump has not yet openly declared it. For now, using almost the exact same wording Hillary Clinton once used about Libya, he promised to “bomb Iran back into the Stone Age, to which it belongs.” It is difficult to say to which “age” the civilization of Jeffrey Epstein belongs, especially since in the West great epochs and periods of total decline seem to have been confused and rearranged.

Most of all, what we are seeing now resembles an idiocracy. Comments on Trump’s speech across social media are largely mocking, sarcastic, and negative, aside from desperate attempts by bots to soften the epic failure, repeating identical and crudely constructed praise. The overwhelming majority of Trump’s former supporters openly claim that “the old man has lost it” (“he’s gone”). Short videos comparing Trump to Boris Yeltsin—portraying Trump as a disgrace to America and Yeltsin as a disgrace to Russia—are appearing more and more frequently; in them, both seem to be dancing and gesticulating. At the same time, to give Trump his due, he does not drink alcohol. Only Diet Coke. His vices are of a different nature. Many in the United States are convinced that, having been caught in those very vices by Epstein and Israeli intelligence services, he became a victim of blackmail and therefore initiated the war with Iran, which he is now compelled to pursue against all odds, despite the American public’s complete lack of desire to fight.
Trump also stated that healthcare, the cost of living, and food security are not his concern. His concern is war. Such is this “president of the whole human world.” He was elected on promises that were strictly the opposite. In summary, Trump’s speech amounts to a complete political and psychological fiasco against the backdrop of an escalating major war. It increasingly resembles a Third World War. The United States (represented by Trump alone and the group of Zionist maniacs surrounding him) seeks to wage war for Israel against Iran, while European leaders aim their efforts against Russia. NATO is fractured, yet peace seems to have been forgotten by nearly all parts of the cracked—if not shattered—collective West.
Whether we want it or not, we too are participants in this world war—on our Ukrainian front. In a large-scale war, one must never underestimate the opponent, no matter how pitiful he may at times appear. One’s own strength must be increased rapidly and by any means. However degraded Trump himself may seem, the United States remains a powerful military force. And the European countries of NATO are still a fairly serious opponent. Therefore, for Russia, despite all our peaceful intentions, there is no other option but to fight—truly fight, not half-heartedly. Our enemies (if not these, then others) intend to wage war for a long time and with great ferocity, including against us. This cannot be ignored, and any talk or dreams of peace should be postponed to an indefinite future.
Peace or war, peace or war, peace or war? War!
Freedom or death, freedom or death, freedom or death? War!

— Egor Letov
(Translated from the Russian)

The EU conquers its own territory.

• Battle for Bulgaria: The EU Opens a New Front in its Election War (RT)

Though the Hungarian election is only a week away, another threat is already manifesting for the EU’s elite: This time in Bulgaria, where left-wing populist and former President Rumen Radev wants to shut off the money tap to Ukraine, and his opponents want Brussels’ censorship machine to save them. Here we go again.On April 19, Bulgarians will vote in the country’s eighth parliamentary election in five years. Called after the resignation of Rosen Zhelyazkov following street protests in November, the election pits centrist Boyko Borissov – a former prime minister – and his pro-EU GERB-SDS coalition against the emerging left-leaning Progressive Bulgaria coalition, headed by Radev.

Who is Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev?
Radev served as Bulgaria’s president from 2017 until his resignation this January. He frequently clashed with Borissov during the latter’s tenure as prime minister, accusing him of incompetence and corruption – allegations substantiated in 2020 when an image of Borissov lying half naked on a bed next to a pile of money and a handgun spread on social media.The Radev-Borissov rivalry would not concern Brussels if Radev wasn’t a vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine policy.
Radev has opposed the bloc’s “self-destructive” sanctions on Russia since 2022, views a Ukrainian victory as “impossible,” opposes military aid to Kiev, and has declared that “ending the war in Ukraine requires more diplomacy and negotiations with Russia.” For a country with four NATO military bases and a ten-year defense deal with Ukraine, the issue is critical for Kiev’s backers.With two weeks to go, Progressive Bulgaria is leading Borrisov’s GERB-SDS by ten points, according to a polling aggregate compiled by Politico. Faced with this outbreak of popular democracy that challenges its fundamental policy positions, the Bulgarian establishment has called for EU reinforcements.
Is the EU meddling in the Bulgarian election?
The playbook will be familiar to anyone following our ‘Battle for Hungary’ series, with one difference: Brussels’ censorship tools are being deployed in Budapest to oust the incumbent Viktor Orban; in Sofia, they’re being used to squash a rising anti-establishment political force. Last week, caretaker Bulgarian Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov requested that the EU activate its ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS), claiming that Russia is interfering against Borissov. Activated in Hungary last month, the RRS empowers EU-approved ‘fact-checkers’ to flag online content as ‘disinformation’ and request its removal from social media platforms such as TikTok and Meta.
Platforms that refuse to comply are liable to fines under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in 2022. The EU has activated the RRS in five elections since 2024 – in France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and non-EU member Moldova – and in every case, an investigation by the US House Judiciary Committee this year found that fact-checkers “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates and organizations. “Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content,” the committee noted.
An EU spokesperson told Politico this week that it was ready to take action in Bulgaria, “in particular via the Rapid Alert System for real-time information exchanges.” Not to be confused with the Rapid Response System, the Rapid Alert System allows the EU to compile information about supposed ‘disinformation campaigns’, so that more severe measures, including the RRS, can then be taken.
How the EU is outsourcing its dirty work – again
Gyurov’s government is already preparing the proof the EU needs. Last week, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry set up a temporary unit to “counter disinformation and combat hybrid threats,” which will be “advised” by former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev. Grozev, whose allegations of Russian poisoning plots were considered too outlandish by even Vladimir Zelensky’s officials, is a wanted man in Russia over his role in encouraging Russian fighter pilots to defect to Ukraine with promises of money and EU citizenship. According to the ministry, Grozev will “assist the organization with specific information exposing malicious influences,” which will then “be able to be addressed both at the national and European levels through mechanisms developed by the European Commission.”
If Grozev’s research is not enough, the Center for the Study of Democracy – an EU-funded think tank – has already published a report alleging that Bulgaria “faces sustained Russian information manipulation pressure,” and that certain “high-risk narrative pressure points” must be tackled. These include online content “framing leaders as corrupt,” “framing candidates as warmongers dragging Bulgaria toward conflict,” and “Promoting the claim that sanctions harm Bulgaria (and the EU) more than Russia.” The report explicitly calls for the activation of the RSS and the punishment of online platforms on which this content is posted.
Working hand in hand with the Bulgarian government, the EU is paying researchers to justify the use of its own censorship tools, in order to stifle legitimate political speech that harms its broader geopolitical agenda. This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the Hungarian election. There, the activation of the RSS was justified by a report alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin had dispatched a team of “political technologists” to Budapest to rig the election for Orban. The report was published by an EU-funded opposition journalist, and quoted anonymous EU spies. Tails are wagging dogs in the EU, and the “request” for Grozev’s involvement could easily be seen as another such case.

Shameless freaks. That image will haunt me for the rest of my days. But will I ban it from my view? This girl was seconds away from being brutally slaughtered when the picture was taken. And that’s too divisive? What part of it is?

• Providence Destroys Mural to Murder Victim as too “Divisive” (Turley)

John Adams once wrote: “America … the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant.” Unfortunately, this week, the “grand scene and design in Providence [R.I.]” “illuminated” rather than eliminated the ignorance of our times. Liberals in that city, including the mayor Brett Smiley, demanded the removal of a mural in the memory of Iryna Zarutska, a young woman murdered on a train. Unlike memorials to figures like George Floyd or others, a memorial to the young white woman was deemed triggering and “divisive.”

On Aug.22, Zarutska was stabbed to death in a random and unprovoked attack on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. Shocking surveillance video of the incident showed suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. allegedly stabbing Zarutska in the neck before walking away. Brown has a long record in the criminal justice system with more than 14 arrests and prison stints of five years.Iryna Zarutska pictured moments before her death cowering in her seat on a Charlotte commuter train The mural was set on the exterior of The Dark Lady, an LGBT bar in Providence. The bar immediately became the focus of a cancel campaign and eventually caved.
Providence’s Democrat Mayor Brett Smiley then joined the mob and denounced the mural to Zarutska, calling it “divisive” and saying that it “does not represent Providence.” He seemed to strike out at artist Ian Gaudreau and said that the city would “support local artists whose work brings us closer together rather than divide us.” Providence is not the only place where these memorials have been defaced or destroyed. In Chicago, a mural to Zarutska was defaced. Gaudreau lashed out at the campaign and the local politicians who destroyed his artwork as an attack on free expression. Smiley and other Democrats, however, piled on the artist and the work as an attack on minorities and a message of white victimization.

Smiley told WPRI that memorializing this young woman is an effort of right-wing billionaires, and it found its way to our community.” Smiley suggested the usual claim that “I support diverse opinions but just not this one”: “I didn’t stifle anyone’s speech, it was his decision whether to continue with it or to take it down, but it certainly wasn’t bringing us together as a community…so I don’t think we’re a stronger, more united community because of this mural, and so I thought the best thing to do was just to take it down.”
What is most striking is how hypocrites like Smiley actively fuel this rage while insisting that they are the voices of tolerance. He and other liberals in Providence cannot tolerate even the image of a murdered young woman in their city. This is a city that loves to repeat its motto, “What cheer, Netop,” the greeting from 1636 from early interactions with local Native Americans, meaning “Greeting Friend.” It seems the faux welcoming culture doesn’t extend to those with opposing views or different values.

Money laundering.

• Forced Mobilization Failing To Stop Ukraine’s Manpower Collapse (RT)

Ukraine’s military is sliding deeper into a manpower crisis, as a chronic shortage of volunteers forces authorities to rely on increasingly aggressive mobilization. Vladimir Zelensky’s vehement opposition to withdrawing troops from Donbass – which voted to join Russia in 2022 – remains a key roadblock in negotiations. Russia, and reportedly the US, is demanding that Kiev pull its forces out and open the way to a peace deal. But Zelensky, encouraged by his European backers, is choosing to continue fighting, apparently hoping that Ukraine can maintain its foothold in the region.

As warnings grow louder – including from within Ukraine – about the critical state of the army, teams of conscription officers have been unleashed to hunt down potential recruits. Violent confrontations repeatedly break out as people resist, and deaths have been reported both among the hunters and hunted. Meanwhile, morale among those sent to the front against their will is practically non-existent. Desertion has become a widespread phenomenon, reaching tens of thousands each month.
Many soldiers have spent years on the front lines with little or no rotation. With losses mounting, attention is turning to new sources of manpower. Officials are increasingly pushing to draft women and public campaigns have been launched with such an aim. However, critics say life on the front lines has brought nothing but abuse and misery for female personnel.

Trump needs arrests.

• Asst Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon Campaigns Hard to Replace Pam Bondi (CTH)

AAG Harmeet Dhillon, DOJ head of the Civil Rights Division, is campaigning hard to be the person President Trump and Susie Wiles select to replace Attorney General Pam Bondi. Mrs Dhillon has a significant personality and political trait-parallel with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and that likely explains why many of the alligator emojis are supporting her not-so-subtle bid to gain the position.

Only the first.

• Czech Government Imposes Fuel Price Cap and Cuts Diesel Tax (RMX)

The Czech government has moved to cap fuel prices and slash diesel taxes in an effort to curb rising costs due to the ongoing international energy crisis, announcing a system that will see the state set maximum daily prices for fuel across the country. Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the intervention follows concerns that fuel retailers were charging excessive margins, despite earlier pressure from the government to bring prices down voluntarily. Under the new system, the Ministry of Finance will determine a maximum fuel price each day, applying to all gas stations nationwide. Officials estimated that diesel, if the cap came into force on Thursday, would currently be capped at 46.43 Czech crowns per liter, or around €1.89.

“We monitored the margins and at the beginning of the conflict they were within the norm, but gradually they became excessive,” Babis said, adding that negotiations with distributors had only partially reduced prices. “We decided to intervene.” The government will also introduce a cap on retailer margins, setting the maximum allowable profit at 2.50 crowns (€0.10) per liter for both petrol and diesel.Alongside the price controls, ministers approved a targeted tax cut on diesel fuel. Excise duty will be reduced by 1.939 crowns per liter, equivalent to 2.35 crowns (€0.10) including VAT, in a move officials say is permitted under EU rules. The Ministry of Finance estimates the measure will cost the state budget around 1 billion crowns (€40.8 million).
Finance Minister Alena Schillerová said the combined approach of price caps and tax cuts was designed to immediately lower costs while preventing excessive pricing behavior in the market. “It is calculated as the average of wholesale indices from Cepro, Orlen, and MOL, plus a margin of 2.50 crowns and VAT,” she said, outlining how the daily maximum price will be set. The ministry will publish the price each weekday at 2 p.m. for the following day. Schillerová added that the margin cap was based on historical data adjusted for inflation, with the aim of eliminating what she described as disproportionately high pricing by retailers. The measures will formally take effect on April 8.

Joe Biden’s 10+ million illegals.

• ICE Uses the DMV as Bait to Lure Illegal Alien Truck Drivers (Tim O’Brien)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have dropped off the radar a little bit after things settled down in Minneapolis, but a flurry of arrests just outside Pittsburgh suggests that ICE is as active as ever and addressing a problem that’s been a long time coming. ICE arrested a reported 13 people at a driver’s license center in a quiet, rural location 40 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh on April 3.

According to WPXI-TV, the local East Franklin Police Department placed calls to ICE “after concerned citizens reported an abnormally large amount of individuals outside the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) driver licensing center in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.” The center, which is normally only open two days a week, was “overrun” by fighting-age young men from other countries applying for driver’s licenses and seeking other services. Witnesses said the center was filled with long lines.
https://twitter.com/ImMeme0/status/2040244230304510118
When ICE arrived, federal agents were able to arrest 13 illegal aliens from countries including Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. At least one person allegedly resisted arrest and reportedly assaulted a law enforcement officer. Local residents praised ICE for its quick response to the situation and for taking their calls seriously. Jason Koontz, a DHS spokesperson, said, “Residents thanked ICE for investigating their concerns and responding to their calls.” This was more than your usual roundup of illegal aliens. These individuals may have been involved in more illicit activity. Here is more from Koontz:
The West Kittanning Driver License Center was processing medical form updates for current holders of non-domiciled commercial learner’s permit or driver license holders, which resulted in a large number of customers at West Kittanning today. If you’re wondering what “non-domiciled” means, the U.S. Supreme Court spent a lot of time on that very word when it heard oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case. Non-domiciled people are individuals who don’t live here. Their home is in another country. So, a group of foreign nationals who likely speak little or no English show up unannounced in a sleepy little country town in Pennsylvania, and, if I’m reading this right, they needed to update their commercial learner’s permit — not their driver’s license — as part of the process of updating their medical forms?
PennDOT issued a statement of its own: Pennsylvania uses the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to verify legal presence for all non-domiciled commercial learner’s permit or driver license applicants. That federal system confirms immigration status in real-time. For non-domiciled commercial learner’s permits and driver licenses, we remain under a pause of issuing those documents, as directed by the United States Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Per the direction of FMCSA, no non-domiciled commercial learner’s permits or driver licenses were issued or reissued.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that Armstrong County Sheriff Frank Pitzer said when he forwarded information in the morning on the unusual activity at the driver’s license center, ICE did not give him any indication that it would follow up, visit the site, or arrest anyone. He said the federal agents showed up before 1:30 p.m., without any advance notice, and immediately commenced arresting the suspected illegals. The sheriff said some of the illegal aliens who were at the center when ICE arrived may have fled and may still be hiding in the area. As a result, local law enforcement is on the lookout for these stragglers.
Other reports are that this entire operation was a sting, organized by ICE. More to the point, ICE may have sent notices to commercial truck drivers that their licenses were expiring and instructed them to go to this specific Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office at the assigned date and time. Apparently, dozens of illegal aliens showed up, and ICE was in the shadows waiting for them. Sting or no sting, the end result is very encouraging, and I’m here for it.

Everyone was in on it. So no penalties. They’re all very busy trying to save face. And counting profits,.

• Pfizer Cancels COVID Vaccine Trial for Lack of Interest (JTN)

Five years after their wide deployment, first on a voluntary basis, then under threat of firing for nearly 100 million Americans at the direction of the White House, COVID-19 vaccines for at least low-risk groups may be on the way out amid higher regulatory requirements and indifference to the jabs by the vast majority of Americans. Pfizer and its COVID mRNA vaccine partner BioNTech abruptly pulled the plug on their trial for healthy 50-64 year-olds, telling trial investigators in a March 30 letter they were coming up short on the 25,000-30,000 enrollment needed to generate enough data to evaluate the jabs, Reuters reported, citing a letter it viewed.

Friday was the last day that Pfizer was scheduled to monitor trial participants for signs of COVID illness, the letter reportedly said. “Two sources from companies” that manage 9% of trial sites told the wire service that Pfizer told them in writing weeks earlier to stop recruitment. “This study is not ending as a result of any safety or benefit-risk concerns,” Pfizer and BioNTech told the wire service, citing their “inability to generate relevant post-marketing data” with lagging enrollment. They said they already told the Food and Drug Administration, which did not answer a query from Just the News, they were throwing in the towel.
Pfizer appears to see more dollar signs in the first serious vaccine candidate for Lyme disease since GSK’s vaccine reportedly crashed and burned in 2002 due to relatively low efficacy and strain coverage, no testing in children and widespread reports of serious adverse events. The drug maker is planning to seek regulatory approval with its partner Valneva for the Lyme vaccine despite admitting the trial missed its “primary endpoint” because not enough people got the tick-borne illness. Pfizer made the same big bet on its pricey COVID antiviral Paxlovid, which did no better than a placebo against “long COVID.”
Pfizer is also losing a purported ally in the Trump administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who before being fired last week was trying to tank clinical trial whistleblower Brook Jackson’s False Claims Act lawsuit against Pfizer for allegedly using fraudulent data to obtain emergency use authorization for its COVID vaccine and a related massive payout from taxpayers. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard arguments in December, is expected to rule in the case “any Friday now,” Jackson wrote on X Thursday. “You can’t certify a lie. So what is an FDA authorization built on fraud?”

ELON MUSK: “Our next product is Blindsight, which will enable those who have total loss of vision, including if they've lost their eyes or the optic nerve, or maybe have never seen even blind from birth, to be able to see again.” https://t.co/yQsjrJIdUt pic.twitter.com/I9xU3tFZJW
— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) April 4, 2026

Tesla is not a car company, it never was.

David Friedberg, scientist, billionaire investor, and one of the sharpest long-term thinkers in Silicon Valley just laid out the most important prediction about Tesla that almost nobody is talking about.

Tesla began as an electric car… pic.twitter.com/o60wF4uqbS
— Milk Road AI (@MilkRoadAI) April 4, 2026

True https://t.co/Us670hk97I
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2026

SpaceX now has over 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, which is honestly an absurd engineering achievement.

And no, they are not just up there freelancing and hoping for the best.

They stay separated because they are placed in organized orbital lanes, constantly tracked, and… pic.twitter.com/IsWZOyWAgQ
— Sovey (@SoveyX) April 4, 2026

Elon Musk just said aging is one of the most solvable problems in existence.

He also said solving it might be one of the most dangerous things we ever do.

No one in the longevity space is holding both of those thoughts at once.

Musk: “I’ve never seen someone with an old left… pic.twitter.com/TPBhyEoWg8
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 5, 2026

Asia Minor: An ancestral cradle of Hellenism for 3,000 years. From the Ionian philosophers and Byzantium to Smyrna and Pontus, the Greek presence shaped world civilization until the tragic displacement of 1922. One land, one identity, an eternal memory. We dont forget. pic.twitter.com/8wCwgCaDzd
— well-meaning (@FreshSummerWind) April 5, 2026

Even though this is from an older podcast, Jimmy Carr’s take still hits different:

“The Roman Empire didn’t fall. It became the Church.”

And the British Empire? According to Jimmy, it didn’t collapse either — it simply turned into a bank.

We handed the colonies back with a… pic.twitter.com/3ouK4KaMw4
— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 5, 2026

A hunter finds a deer trapped in a fence, struggling to breathe. What he does next is incredible! pic.twitter.com/JBsQL2Ekcw
— SULLY (@SULLY10X) April 4, 2026

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