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'Defend Israel Or The Homeland': Top US General Issues Stark Warning To Pentagon Brass

'Defend Israel Or The Homeland': Top US General Issues Stark Warning To Pentagon Brass

Via The Cradle

The highest-ranking US general in Europe informed the Pentagon this week that he does not have enough naval units to protect Israel against potential Iranian missile strikes, according to a report by the Washington Post on Saturday.

General Alexus Grynkewich, the head of US European Command (EUCOM), notified senior Pentagon officials in writing that without another navy destroyer, he will be forced to choose between defending the US "homeland" and defending Israel. Grynkewich's warning comes as US President Donald Trump continues to escalate the war on Iran.

Gen. Alex Grynkewich, source: US Air Force Senior Airman Spencer Perkins

The US Navy has shouldered a significant burden in waging the war, including responsibility for blockading Iranian ports in response to the Islamic Republic's closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

US naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean have long been part of Israel's defense strategy. They are equipped with radar systems and missile interceptors capable of countering Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.

EUCOM is responsible for protecting Israel from the Mediterranean and deterring any Russian ground incursion into NATO member states.

The US Navy has five destroyers deploying from Rota, Spain, with a sixth expected later this year. They face maintenance issues due to lengthy missions. The US is also reportedly experiencing a shortage of missile interceptors, which are costly to manufacture and hard to restock.

Pentagon assessments conducted earlier in the war showed that US forces have "shouldered the brunt of defending Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles."

Washington has used more of its defensive weapons, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and naval interceptors, to defend Israel from Iranian missile and drone attacks than Israel has used of its own interceptor stocks.

US inventories of Patriot missiles have now fallen below 1,000 and THAAD inventories to about 250, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Israel has not participated in the war on Iran since Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and ceasefire in mid-June. Trump resumed attacks on Iran three weeks ago.

WaPo: "A shortage of Navy destroyers, used to defend against Iranian ballistic missile attacks, will force the head of U.S. European Command to prioritize the U.S. homeland instead officials said."

Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel was content to remain out of the fighting and allow the US and its Gulf allies to fight the war on Tel Aviv's behalf.

"Israel has no interest in joining the campaign - the current situation is the best for us," Smotrich said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House last week and lobbied Trump to escalate the war by imposing a land blockade on Iran. According to a CBS News report on Friday, Washington and Tel Aviv are planning to significantly escalate the war of aggression by targeting Iran's vital energy infrastructure.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 11:40

Entitled Migrants Complain About Hospitality And Prices After Invading Spanish Territory

Entitled Migrants Complain About Hospitality And Prices After Invading Spanish Territory

One of the most egregious fantasies promoted by liberals over the past several decades is the worshipful image of the desperate and grateful third world asylum seeker.  We see it constantly in movies television and popular media; the narrative of the "huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..."  This narrative has become so ingrained in western culture that it is absolutely world shattering when people find out how entitled and arrogant most migrants really are.

The flood of over 60,000 Muslim migrants from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta has dashed a lot of progressive delusions in the past week, with migrants fresh from the beaches already looting businesses, raiding homes, attacking locals and setting fires.  European officials are reluctantly admitting that the invasion is a problem that must be corrected.   

The video evidence on social media is a crushing blow to the multicultural agenda, so much so that Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, complained about the optics of the images coming out of Ceuta on social media. 

Spanish officials have attacked the negative response of some European leaders as "selfish" and "prejudiced", stating that the European Union would be harmed by the "polarizing" rhetoric.  

But isn't this migrant horde exactly what European elites have been enabling for the past decade?  Yes, it is, but the Cueta incident is happening too quickly and gaining far too much public attention.  They usually prefer a "frog in a boiling pot" strategy over blatant barbarian pillaging plastered all over international news. 

But it gets much worse for the multicultural cabal, because interviews with these migrants are hitting the mainstream.  What these people have to say about their stay in Ceuta so far is mind blowing.  The entitlement is unprecedented.  Third worlders thought they were marching into a free buffet with easy access to amenities, jobs and westerners bowing at their feet. 

Instead, the illegals were met with closed businesses (for safety), prices they could not afford, no jobs and hostility from other migrants who came to Ceuta legally.  

People being beaten or killed (if the claims are true) is unfortunate, but then again, it seems to have worked.  Large numbers of migrants are reportedly leaving Ceuta on their own because they fear backlash from the locals.  There's an important lesson that could be learned her by populations across the western world:

If governments are not going to do their duty and secure national borders from invaders, then the public still has the power to make those invaders leave simply by making the lives of illegal migrants miserable.  If their experiences in the west are worse than their experiences in their home country, they will go back.

  

Of course, the entitlement of migrants is amplified by progressive leaders in the west.  Foreigners have been regaled with stories from western media about a land of plenty and a life of ease.  All they have to do is make the crossing and the streets will be paved with riches for the taking.  It is clear that the majority of migrants entering Ceuta were under the impression that they would be welcomed with open arms and lavished with subsidies.

Instead, the Spanish military is escorting thousands of them out of the enclave.  Or, at the very least, the military is making a good show of trying to remove the migrants from the area.  Meanwhile, the locals are doing the job that the government should have been doing from the beginning, which is making Ceuta so inhospitable to migrants that they will never want to go back.  

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 11:05

"Nothing Is 100%": CZ Warns Bitcoin Holders After $89 Million Coldcard Wallet Exploit

"Nothing Is 100%": CZ Warns Bitcoin Holders After $89 Million Coldcard Wallet Exploit

Update (1030ET): A third wave of thefts against Bitcoin wallets built on flawed Coldcard firmware ran through Saturday morning, lifting observed losses to roughly 1,367 BTC - close to $89 million - drained from 4,585 addresses since Thursday.

As Cyberkendra.com reports, the size is not the interesting part. The third wave is the first one designed to be hard to follow, and that shift tells self-custody holders more about what happens next than any dollar figure does.

Galaxy Research published the wave-three findings early Sunday. Between 12:23 UTC on July 31 and 06:42 UTC on August 1, across blocks 960,396 to 960,471, another 207.73 BTC left 1,912 addresses. That is roughly a tenth of a coin per victim.

Wave one, which opened at 01:10 UTC on July 30 and closed 41 minutes later, took 1,082.65 BTC from 1,195 addresses — nearly a full coin each.

Wave two, on July 31, collected just 76.16 BTC from 1,478 addresses.

Median losses tell the same story more bluntly: 0.270 BTC in wave one, 0.010 in wave two, 0.013 in wave three. The operator is now emptying wallets worth a few thousand dollars apiece and still finding enough of them to spend ten hours sweeping.

Waves one and two were easy to map because the attacker made them easy.

Both funneled coins through a handful of shared collector addresses into P2WPKH holding wallets (pay-to-witness-public-key-hash — plain single-key SegWit outputs, fully visible on chain).

Wave three abandoned that.

Each victim's coins went to their own destination, and the proceeds now sit in 293 separate P2WSH vaults (pay-to-witness-script-hash, a format that keeps its spending conditions hidden until the first time the coins move). The sweeper also batched an average of 6.37 victims per transaction, where wave one took exactly one at a time, and scanned only the default derivation path instead of testing several branches per seed. Even the fee constant changed — 30 sat/vB in wave one, 50 and 10 in wave two, roughly 200 then exactly 10 in wave three.

That is either the same crew rebuilding after being enumerated in public, or a second crew grinding the same broken key space on its own.

The falling average haul suggests the profitable end of the vulnerable key space is picked over. That is cold comfort. Wave three's median take of 0.013 BTC is the clearest evidence yet that no balance is now small enough to be beneath the scanner's notice — and the sweeping had not stopped three days in.

* * *

As Decrypt.co detailed earlier, Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao is warning crypto owners not to place blind faith in hardware wallets, following an exploit that drained tens of millions of dollars in Bitcoin from Coldcard devices.

In a Saturday post on X, Zhao cautioned that even hardware wallets can carry bugs, and that older wallets with long histories are not immune.

“Nothing is 100%,” he posted.

He suggested holders consider spreading their funds across several wallets as one way to reduce exposure, while acknowledging the approach carries its own trade-offs and that no setup is entirely foolproof.

CZ closed with his familiar refrain urging users to stay informed and keep their funds safe: “Stay SAFU!”

His comments followed the discovery of a flaw in Coldcard devices made by manufacturer Coinkite.

As Decrypt reported, a build error caused seeds on affected units to be drawn from a software fallback rather than the device's hardware random-number generator, leaving the private keys far easier to guess than intended.

The problem traced back to firmware shipped in March 2021, and updating the firmware does not fix a seed already created on a compromised device.

The scope of the theft has grown considerably since the first estimates.

Early reporting pegged losses at roughly 594 BTC, or about $38 million, drained from around 500 wallets.

According to a report from Galaxy Research, which mapped the flow of funds based on a pattern identified by engineers at Jack Dorsey’s Block, the toll is now put at 1,196 addresses drained for about 1,082.65 BTC, or roughly $70.2 million, in a 41-minute window on July 30.

That is nearly double the initial figure.

Galaxy said every sweep paid an identical hardcoded fee and left no change output, a signature it described as consistent with an automated tool spending keys it already held rather than owners moving their own funds.

“The pattern tells us these were all the same attacker — it does not capture the attack itself, which looks the same as if a coin owner chose to move coins,” Galaxy Research said, adding that Bitcoiners should move funds out of single-signature Coldcard addresses and into secure custody.

The victims spanned native SegWit and older address types, pointing to multi-path key scanning.

The stolen Bitcoin was consolidated within minutes into a handful of addresses and, per Galaxy, has not moved since.

Coinkite co-founder Rodolfo Novak said in an X post on Friday that the company takes responsibility for the firmware bug and has shipped emergency hotfixes.

Novak also warned that the update does not protect seeds generated on vulnerable firmware.

He advised users who generated seeds on vulnerable firmware to move their funds to a new seed.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 10:30

No, The Spanish Invaders Have Not All Just 'Gone Home'

No, The Spanish Invaders Have Not All Just 'Gone Home'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Spanish authorities and their leftist allies are pushing the line that the tens of thousands of migrants who stormed Ceuta have mostly "gone home." The claim is pure fantasy. Fresh video from the streets shows the city still under siege, with invaders assaulting facilities, smashing graves, clashing with locals, and turning a Spanish enclave into a no-go zone.

This is the same dangerous mass migration reality that open-borders ideologues keep denying, even as the evidence piles up in real time.

The official narrative landed hard on Friday. Spain's Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares declared that "the practical totality of those who entered Ceuta have already returned to Morocco." The Spanish Embassy in the UK amplified the message, insisting almost everyone was gone, that no one could reach the mainland without ID checks, and that Schengen integrity remained fully guaranteed.

The Guardia Civil's own association posted that Ceuta was "breathing again," with returns advancing little by little and normality returning thanks to security forces.

Locals on the ground immediately called it a lie. One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin. Video filmed that same afternoon showed streets still packed, nothing like the "most have left" story.

Just days earlier, we documented the initial invasion and the subsequent rampage through homes and streets.

The claim that the crisis simply evaporated overnight collapses under the weight of the footage still circulating.

While Madrid spun the returns, Moroccan migrants were filmed storming a public asylum centre in Ceuta. The CETI facility came under direct assault as the government continued insisting order had been restored.

Elsewhere, invaders smashed Christian graves and hurled the broken pieces at Spanish citizens. Locals fought back with whatever they could grab while police and military presence remained inadequate.

Knives came out in the open. Migrants stabbed one another in the streets while Spanish residents stayed locked indoors, prisoners in their own city of roughly 80,000 people now overrun.

Cars belonging to locals were attacked simply for driving past and showing dissatisfaction. Grocery stores had to be fenced off and guarded by police to stop looting by the hungry crowds.

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

A morning drive through the "conquered" enclave captured the new normal: streets transformed, Spanish life subordinated.

One clip captured the pure contempt: an invader brutally attacking a Spaniard. Another showed the broader pattern of violence and disorder that leftist outlets prefer to ignore.

A simple question cut through the spin: if these were genuine asylum seekers looking for safety and a better life, why the rampage, the attacks on civilians, the destruction of graves, and the open hostility?

A hospital worker described axes and sticks in the streets, people entering homes, shops boarded up, and police turning on protesting Spaniards while the border remained porous.

Estimates put the influx at 50,000 according to Interior, up to 60,000 according to Ceuta's own president, in a city of 84,000. Twenty-four bodies had already been recovered from the coast by that point. Sánchez visited for three hours, spoke alone without the local president, and left to shouts of resignation.

Spanish intelligence reportedly warned the government in advance, including details of rehearsals and coaches massing in the nearby Moroccan town of Castillejos. The warnings were ignored.

The fury was not confined to Ceuta. Thousands of Spaniards gathered outside PSOE headquarters in Madrid, chanting against Pedro Sánchez and rejecting the government's handling of the invasion.

Instead of securing the border, Sánchez went on the offensive against other European leaders. In a letter to EU heads of government he denounced those who had tightened controls as "selfish."

Italy suspended free movement under the Schengen agreement with Spain for a month. Meloni made clear that uncontrolled illegal migration threatens Europe's security and that Italy would not stand by. France ramped up checks on its Spanish border, planning a fivefold increase in officers.

Sánchez wrote: "In the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction." He demanded an emergency meeting of interior ministers. Spain's interior minister echoed the line, asking for "greater solidarity, more responsibility and less selfishness" while reminding critics of Lampedusa.

The European Commission confirmed no migrants had reached the mainland or the wider Schengen zone, yet the political fallout continued. At least 67 people died in the crossings according to Spanish figures released on Saturday. A 500-metre floating barrier was being installed at the Tarajal breakwater. Soldiers broadcast messages in Arabic telling the young men to go home.

The numbers and the images do not match the soothing government script. Ceuta's president estimated 60,000 entries. Returns were real, but thousands remained and the disorder persisted.

Footage kept arriving of assaults, desecration, violenace, and a city that had not simply returned to normal overnight. Leftist voices seized on the official talking points to deny the obvious: this was a coordinated mass breach that exposed the fragility of open-border policies and the willingness of socialist governments to prioritise ideology over their own citizens' safety.

When a government treats a sudden invasion of tens of thousands of military-age men as a temporary inconvenience that can be papered over with press releases, the people on the ground pay the price.

What is happening in Ceuta is the direct result of years of failed deterrence, amnesty incentives, and the refusal to treat borders as non-negotiable. Europe's more serious leaders are already acting. Sánchez prefers to lecture them for defending their own populations.

The footage keeps proving who is living in reality and who is not.

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Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 10:00

Water-System Hacks Hit 7 States This Week, FBI Warns, As Trump Shoots Down Iran Theory

Water-System Hacks Hit 7 States This Week, FBI Warns, As Trump Shoots Down Iran Theory

Cyberattacks on municipal water systems were reported in at least seven states this week, according to a joint public service announcement from the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency - and in some cases, the agencies say, the malicious activity actually degraded water operations. The feds declined to name the states.

A water tower in Plymouth, Minnesota, on Thursday after a cyberattack targeted the operating technology at more than 30 water systems across the state. (Ellen Schmidt/AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

The warning lands just days after we reported that a "coordinated cyberattack" struck more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota over July 26-27 - knocking the water plant in tiny Braham offline for a stretch, pushing Plymouth and South St. Paul onto manual operations, and prompting Maple Plain to declare a local state of emergency, according to Just The News.

The playbook, per federal officials, was crude but effective: attackers remotely accessed internet-facing operational technology, changed device IP addresses and passwords, and locked utility operators out of their own monitoring and control systems, NBC News reported. The PSA is now pleading with utilities to do the bare minimum - pull programmable logic controllers off the open internet and put them behind gateways and firewalls, use actual passwords, and restrict which devices are allowed to talk to one another.

(Yes - in the year 2026, a nontrivial share of the machines controlling America's drinking water are still sitting on the public internet, some with absurdly simple passwords.)

CISA followed Thursday with an advisory warning that Iranian-affiliated actors are going after U.S. critical infrastructure, water and wastewater systems included - an update to guidance the agency first pushed out in April, which we flagged in our earlier coverage. Some of the larger water-sector intrusions, the advisory notes, have produced boil-water notices and left plants grinding along in manual mode for extended stretches. CISA's top-line fix is the same one it has been repeating for years: cut direct internet access to control systems.

Except - Washington can't agree on who did it.

Multiple U.S. officials have told ABC News the Minnesota attacks may be linked to Iran, and investigators' preliminary assessment reportedly leans the same way - with the caveat that it could change. Meanwhile President Trump denied it. Speaking to reporters at Camp David on Friday, Trump dismissed the Iran theory - "Iran should be so lucky," he said - and instead pinned the blame on what he called Minnesota's grossly incompetent and corrupt leadership under Gov. Tim Walz, arguing Tehran has bigger problems than the Gopher State's pump stations.

Cybersecurity veteran Morgan Wright, founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases, told The Hill that Iran is the likely culprit, pointing to the CISA advisory as one tell. The U.S. may dominate on land and at sea, Wright argued, but cyberspace is the one domain where Tehran gets to punch above its weight class. Federal officials, for their part, caution that attribution requires careful technical analysis alongside broader threat intelligence - because otherwise it looks like the same nakedly transparent propaganda we've been fed for decades (duh).

That said - there is precedent as we detailed in our Minnesota coverage, if we're to believe the official stories. In November 2023, the IRGC-linked CyberAv3ngers seized control of a device at the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. In early 2024, the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn claimed attacks on water facilities in the U.S. and Poland, including a breach in Muleshoe, Texas that dumped tens of thousands of gallons of water. In October 2024, American Water - the largest regulated water utility in the country, serving more than 14 million people across 14 states and 18 military installations - shut down computer systems after a cyberattack. Beijing's Volt Typhoon has spent years quietly pre-positioning inside U.S. critical-infrastructure networks, per CISA. And just weeks ago, the Iranian MOIS-linked Handala persona claimed to have compromised California Water Service - which serves roughly 2 million customers - leaking 5 gigabytes of data, then vowed via Tehran's Press TV to keep hitting U.S. industrial control systems.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 09:45

Spain's Immigration Crisis: Ceuta & The Collapse Of Sánchez's Pro-Migration Experiment

Spain's Immigration Crisis: Ceuta & The Collapse Of Sánchez's Pro-Migration Experiment

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The official narrative highlights headline GDP contributions and demographic arguments while remaining silent about the stagnation of GDP per capita, productivity, net real wages, and the fiscal and institutional strain of absorbing huge irregular inflows through emergency regularizations instead of orderly, skills‑based migration. The EU allowed it because Sánchez sold it as a model when the time bomb was already obvious.

The Spanish government’s strategy is clear: to create a gigantic underclass dependent on public subsidies and captive as a future electorate. The massive inflow of illegal immigrants is the consequence of years of mass regularization policies, subsidy announcements, basic income plans, and a sustained pull factor.

Ceuta is facing its worst migration crisis in years, with thousands of irregular entries in barely a week and reception facilities completely overwhelmed. Centers for adults and minors are overflowing, local authorities speak openly of a humanitarian and social emergency, and the daily pressure on the border shows just how far the state has lost its capacity for anticipation and deterrence. This is not just a migration crisis. It is also a crisis of authority, planning, and institutional credibility.

To understand what Sánchez calls “the rocket,” today in Ceuta “GDP goes up,” but people in Ceuta are poorer and worse off.

More migration pressure, overwhelmed public services, greater dependence on public money, more debt, and higher future taxes, while Sánchez boasts about the figures and abandons the border.

The government uses the 0.7% quarterly and 2.7% year‑on‑year GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026 as if it were proof of strength, but aggregate growth is not prosperity. Spain is not growing; it is swelling and getting deeper into debt. The government relies on demographic expansion, artificially propped‑up domestic demand, rising public spending, and jobs in low‑productivity sectors.

Spain is growing in volume and getting poorer in quality. Aggregate GDP increases, but the net real income of its citizens deteriorates. The economy is doped with population and spending while efficiency, competitiveness, and per-capita well-being worsen.

On top of this comes inflation. The flash estimate for July, at 3.5%, once again puts Spain above the euro area average, which had eased to around 2.8%. This gap is not irrelevant. It means loss of competitiveness, more pressure on costs, further erosion of purchasing power, and greater difficulty in turning growth into real prosperity. Spain not only grows with low productivity but also with relatively high inflation. It is the worst combination for selling a supposed durable economic success.

The Spanish economy shows no structural leap in productivity, no decisive improvement in productive investment, and no solid convergence in GDP per capita with the most advanced economies of the euro area, where it remains 8 points below the average of a European Union that itself is not doing well, according to Eurostat.

The Ceuta crisis is a symbol of the complete failure of this model. A massive, irregular inflow of people generates, in the short term, a higher volume of measured activity because it triggers emergency spending, more budget mobilization, and more administrative needs. Statistically, that “pushes up GDP.” However, socially and economically the balance is devastating: it makes citizens poorer, worsens security, increases pressure on housing, healthcare, and education, and the cost is borne by taxpayers who already shoulder high debt, rising taxes, and a loss of net real purchasing power.

This is what “sanchismo” calls success: the numbers grow, and reality deteriorates.

Spain is not suffering border chaos by accident. It is the consequence of Sánchez’s mass regularizations and years of pull‑factor policies, a message to the world that entering illegally pays off.

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

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

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

Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, "Mars can wait. Humanity can't." 

Call that humanity?

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 09:20

UK High Court Moves To Ban Display Of English And British Flags

UK High Court Moves To Ban Display Of English And British Flags

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A Liberal Democrat council has secured a High Court injunction that effectively bans the unauthorised display of the St George's Cross and Union Flag on lampposts and public highways across an entire English county.

What began as a grassroots campaign to raise the colours of the nation has been declared a threat to community safety, with the full force of the courts now deployed against it.

Oxfordshire County Council, run by the Liberal Democrats, won its landmark case after months of legal action against the Raise the Colours campaign.

Justice Dexter Dias granted the order prohibiting unidentified persons from attaching England or Union flags to highway infrastructure or painting flag imagery on roads. Breach carries the risk of imprisonment, unlimited fines, or asset seizure.

Council leader Tim Bearder celebrated the outcome, stating "This is a welcome judgement. We're very pleased with the result," adding "This sets a legal precedent and will hopefully deter people in not just Oxfordshire but around the country from partaking in this criminal activity."

He described those involved as "very challenging people, not patriots."

The council claims the flags created highway safety risks, trespass, and obstruction. It spent roughly £80,000 removing them and a further £40,000 on legal fees, costs it now intends to recover.

Staff tasked with taking the flags down reportedly faced hostility, to the point that some were instructed to wear face coverings and check their vehicles for tracking devices after one worker's home address was published.

The judge noted that maintenance teams had been "working in fear" and that people directed by the council had been obstructed "to the extent that at times they have simply given up on the removal." He concluded there was "little prospect absent an injunction that it will stop."

The new order does not prevent flags on private property, and the council insists it flies both the Union Flag and St George's Cross at County Hall.

This is the same Oxfordshire authority that earlier issued formal stop notices branding the widespread installation of national flags an "act of intimidation and division."

The pattern is now familiar. English councils have repeatedly treated the national flag as a problem to be managed rather than a symbol to be celebrated. FOI requests previously revealed at least £70,000 spent removing Union Jacks and St George's Crosses from lampposts, with some local politicians openly calling the expenditure "money well spent" to combat supposed far-right agitation.

In Essex, staff were offered emotional support if they felt "discomforted" by the mere sight of the national flag in their communities.

A leaked government social cohesion strategy went further still, describing how the "extreme right has tried to turn symbols of pride into tools of hate," framing the Union Flag itself as a potential instrument of exclusion and intimidation.

The phenomenon has a name: vexillophobia - the irrational fear of the flag. Britain has reached the point where flying the St George's Cross is treated as a form of aggression while other political symbols face no such institutional hostility.

During the recent World Cup, English people were warned not to fly flags, the reasoning being that it could intimidate migrants and non-English people.

The selective nature of the discomfort is hard to miss. When rows of Pride flags lined streets in such density that even a prominent television presenter described them as "oppressive," the institutional response was silence or defence. National colours, by contrast, trigger injunctions, safety briefings, and high court orders.

Raise the Colours began as a simple act of public expression - covering Britain in its own flags. In Oxfordshire it has now been met with the full machinery of the state.

The High Court has drawn a line: the English flag may be flown on private property, but the public highway is a neutral zone where the nation's colours are treated as a potential hazard.

The precedent is set. Other councils are watching. The message to ordinary people who simply want to see their country's flag in public spaces is clear. In 2026 Britain, that desire is something the authorities feel compelled to police.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 08:10

A Brain That Can Swap Bodies: Google DeepMind Aims To Be The 'Android' Of Robotics

A Brain That Can Swap Bodies: Google DeepMind Aims To Be The 'Android' Of Robotics

Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini Robotics 2 on Wednesday, a suite of three AI models that gives humanoid and other robots whole-body control, sharper manipulation, and the ability to work together. The system can run locally on the robot itself and adapt to an entirely new machine body with a few hours of training data. DeepMind is pitching it as the "intelligence layer" for robots - the foundational operating system that every hardware maker builds on.

Rather than a single monolithic system, the company released three models across three access tiers:

  • Gemini Robotics 2: A vision-language-action model that turns what a robot sees and is told into motor commands. It can drive a full humanoid from feet to fingertips, as well as standard two-armed systems.
  • Gemini Robotics ER 2: An embodied-reasoning model that plans multi-step jobs over several minutes, recovers from failures, and lets multiple robots split a workflow between them.
  • Gemini Robotics On-Device 2: A lightweight version that runs directly on the hardware, for industrial settings where cloud connectivity is unreliable or unavailable.

DeepMind demonstrated a single model checkpoint controlling three physically distinct robots: an Apptronik Apollo 2 fitted with two different sets of hands, and a separate two-armed rig with a gripper. One model ran hardware it was never designed for.

Unlike its 2025 system, which handled only a robot's upper body, this version controls movement from the torso down through the legs, letting a humanoid walk, crouch, bend, and reach at once. In one demonstration, an Apollo 2 walked to a watering can and placed it on a lower shelf.

Success has been hit-or-miss, wit robots hitting roughly 68% accuracy picking objects from a table and 76% from a shelf, but only 46% from the floor. Multi-finger dexterity is still an unsolved problem, and simple grippers continue to outperform elaborate robotic hands. Movement needs to be faster and more reliable. This is a research release with a waitlist; nobody is putting it to work on a warehouse floor next quarter.

DeepMind says Gemini ER 2 its safest robotics model yet, based on benchmarks for adhering to safety constraints and avoiding humans, and it included an evaluation of whether a robot will refuse an unsafe instruction and defer to a human for help. The vision-language-action and on-device models are gated to more than 100 trusted testers and a handful of early partners; the reasoning model is in a more open preview.

The Bigger Bet

Alphabet, Nvidia, and a wave of Chinese tech firms are all racing to own the "physical AI" stack rather than any single robot - the same bet that made mobile operating systems so valuable. If humanoid machines ever become as common as laptops, whoever supplies the universal brain that transfers cleanly from one body to the next will own a toll booth on the entire industry.

As for DeepMind - so far it hasn't kicked any Chinese kids in the head, so that's a start. 

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/02/2026 - 07:35

McGlinchey: Trump's Damage To US Diplomacy Could Last A Generation

McGlinchey: Trump's Damage To US Diplomacy Could Last A Generation

By Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

As the US-Israel war on Iran grinds into its sixth month, it’s clear to all but the most intellectually-dishonest Trump loyalists and war-bent Israel-sympathizers that it’s been a spectacular failure.

A war of aggression that was supposed to precipitate a revolution has instead galvanized popular support of the Iranian government in defiance of the country’s tormentors, who’ve killed thousands of their fellow citizens and destroyed civilian infrastructure. A war that was launched to neutralize Israel’s principal rival seems certain to leave that rival far more geopolitically powerful than before, while driving Americans’ support for Israel to record lows.

Beyond unforgivably throwing away the lives of 18 American service members in an unconstitutional war launched on false pretenses, Trump’s blunder has depleted America’s arsenal and pushed the country more than $100 billion deeper into debt. Meanwhile, the longer Trump delays the inevitable consummation of his defeat, the greater the risk of an economic calamity that engulfs not only the United States but the entire world.

If that latter nightmare can be sidestepped, we’ll likely find that Trump has inflicted his most enduring damage on an intangible yet critical national asset: the ability of American diplomats to productively engage counterparts all over the world. From using negotiations as a ploy for surprise attacks to murdering heads of state and casually reneging on American commitments — including his own — Trump’s damage to US diplomacy will be evident for years. Of course, that’s not to suggest America’s foreign policy reputation was sparkling before Trump’s ascension to power — only that he and his team have managed to drag it down to new depths.

Trump’s collaboration with Israel to launch an unprovoked war on Iran is manifestly among the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the American republic. However, it’s important to appreciate that Trump first set this 2026 disaster in motion eight years ago: In May 2018, — spurred on by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and Trump’s Israel-first donors — Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA.

Also called the “Iran nuclear deal,” the July 2015 JCPOA was the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking negotiations over highly technical provisions, conducted by representatives of not only the United States and Iran but also China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from brutal economic sanctions. Among other things, the JCPOA required Iran to eliminate its medium-enriched uranium, slash its cache of low-enriched uranium by 98%, limit future enrichment to 3.67%, agree to even more external monitoring than it was already submitting to, and render its heavy-water reactor worthless by filling it with concrete.

Trump presents a memorandum reimposing sanctions on Iran after he withdrew from the nuclear deal at John Bolton's urging (Evan Vucci/AP)

Catering both to devoted Israel supporters and to Republicans who were eager to assume that a deal negotiated during the Obama administration must have been treasonous, Trump had repeatedly railed against the JCPOA throughout his 2016 campaign, declaring that his “number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” After being named national security advisor in April 2018, Bolton — who had long been pushing for war on Iran — quickly prodded Trump into making good on his promises to tear up the JCPOA, despite the fact that Iran was fully complying with the agreement.

“Trump’s move demonstrates that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its promises,” the Belfer Center’s Martin Malin said at the time. “It will heighten tensions in an already smoldering Middle East while giving fodder to hardliners and nuclear bomb advocates in Iran.”

After Trump’s withdrawal and the reinstatement of waived sanctions, Iran waited a year, but then began straying from its own commitments -- using elevated uranium enrichment as a lever to push for a new agreement and relief from suffocating sanctions.

Having long denied it was developing a nuclear weapon -- a claim repeatedly deemed truthful by the US intelligence community -- Iran returned to the negotiating table during Trump’s second term, once again ready to part with the uranium it had enriched to higher levels. Indeed, less than 48 hours before the United States and Israel attacked on Feb. 28, Iran offered concessions that included dilution of its 60%-enriched uranium, a multi-year pause on new enrichment, subsequent enrichment capped at 20%, and expanded IAEA oversight. UK national security advisor Jonathan Powell was reportedly surprised by the strength of the Iranian offer, seeing it as reason to hope war would be averted. His and others’ hopes were about to be dashed.

There are many facets of the Trump administration’s assault on diplomacy, but none more vulgar than using ongoing negotiations as a means of unleashing a surprise attack on a negotiating partner — an attack that includes the killing of that partner’s head of state.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration did to Iran in February. Having held a third round of talks in Geneva on Feb. 26, the two countries were set for what was described as technical-level discussions the following week. Instead, teaming up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump launched a massive war on Iran. In addition to killing more than 100 elementary-age schoolgirls and many other civilians and military conscripts, the opening attack killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his daughter, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

Rubio further diminished US credibility by attempting to characterize the surprise attack as somehow defensive. “We knew there was going to be Israeli action” which would “precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said. Observers were quick to note that, regardless of Israel’s status as a sovereign state, its dependency on Washington means Trump held de facto veto power over an Israeli strike, which makes the rest of Rubio’s rationale hollow.

February wasn’t the first time that insincere Trump administration diplomacy set up Iran for a surprise attack. In June 2025, the administration had completed five rounds of negotiations with Iran and scheduled a sixth for June 15. On June 13, Israel attacked Iran. It was no surprise to Trump, who boasted that Israel informed him in advance. On June 22, Trump joined the 12-Day war via Operation Midnight Hammer, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Beyond their fundamental immorality, these surprise attacks amid negotiations undermine long-term US interests by fostering distrust in everyone who witnessed such blatant American treachery. Following the start of all-out war on Feb 28, Washburn University law professor Ali Khan wrote about the consequences of turning negotiations into a “calculated ruse”:

“The breach of good faith signals worldwide that it is pointless to make any deal with someone who would do the opposite after creating an expectation or reliance for the other party. Iran or any other state would be highly reluctant to trust the Trump administration again in future negotiations.”

Note, one shouldn’t assume the world’s distrust will be so tightly associated with Trump that it will vanish when he leaves office. In Marco Rubio and JD Vance, his administration holds at least two potential successors to the Oval Office, to say nothing of senators, representatives and governors who’ve cheered on Trump’s misconduct and would be prone to emulating it. And don’t think for a moment that Democrats are immune to following unhealthy presidential precedents, whatever their commentary may be when those precedents are set by a Republican.

With his 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, Trump reneged on a deal made by another president, but Trump has repeatedly reneged on his own commitments too.

That’s the case with the June 17, 2026 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran, which Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles. Primarily brokered by Pakistan with help from several Middle Eastern states, the MOU has been described as an agreement to make an agreement. It comprises 14 points setting conditions for an immediate ceasefire and 60 days of negotiations for a lasting peace.

Trump quickly fell short of full compliance. “When you look at what’s happening from the Iranian point of view…the Iranians believe that the United States has not lived up to its part of the bargain,” University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer said in July.

There are several elements where Iran reasonably accused Trump of noncompliance, but we’ll examine three, starting with the most significant one of all. Point 5 covers what has replaced uranium as the core focus of the conflict — Iran’s selective blocking of traffic through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz:

5: “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.….[and] conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz...”

This point was widely understood to mean Iran would lift its blockade but still oversee and direct all traffic. When it exerted control of shipping traffic in March, Iran replaced the pre-war route that went down the center of the strait with one that guides traffic along Iran’s coast. However, after the MOU was signed, the Trump administration started instructing ships to use a different route, which passes through the territorial waters of Oman.

“We violated [the MOU] by setting up a southern corridor,” retired US Army Colonel Daniel Davis declared on his Deep Dive geopolitics podcast. “There’s nothing in the MOU that we signed that authorizes a southern corridor or America to enter into it and decide on our own how that’s going to be done. It’s just not there.” Davis, who returned from Afghanistan and blew the whistle in 2012 on civilian and military officials’ misleading of the public on how that war was progressing, suggested the US move in the strait was a deliberate provocation.

Deliberate or not, it was provocative indeed. After issuing radio warnings to ships attempting to use the southern route, Iran fired disabling shots at them. Trump then restarted his bombing of Iran, which prompted Iranian retaliation against American forces and the countries that host them. The two countries then began a long series of “tit for tat” strikes that continued into this week.

Then there’s Point 10 of the MOU, in which the Trump administration promised to issue sanctions waivers that would allow for unfettered Iranian exports of oil and petroleum. Trump revoked the waivers on July 7, pointing to Iran’s attacks on ships that didn’t submit to Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz… control that, again, the United States seemingly agreed to under Point 5.

Numerically reflecting its high importance to Iran, Point 1 of the MOU required the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts in Lebanon.” It focused not so much on Iran and the United States but more so “their allies” — the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia and the US-allied State of Israel. However, Israel continued its operations, including a level of comprehensive destruction of civilian infrastructure in Southern Lebanon that mirrors what the Israeli Defense Forces did to Gaza. One can make the argument that the United States wasn’t in a position to impose MOU terms on Israel, but if that’s truly the case, Trump shouldn’t have signed an MOU by which he essentially certified that he would.

Doubling down, the Trump administration even took action to legitimize the IDF’s presence in Lebanon. “[The MOU] said we had to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. We made no effort to do that,” said former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman. “In fact, we turned around and Marco Rubio went and…brokered an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel that they will jointly go after Hezbollah. So what is this? At a minimum, it’s not very smart.”

Critically, Trump’s behavior bolsters the credibility of hardliners in the Iranian government who’ve repeatedly argued that the United States cannot be trusted and shouldn’t be negotiated with. Moderates prevailed over skeptical hardliners when Iran opted to sign the JCPOA, again when it twice attempted to seek sanctions relief and avert war via negotiations only to be subjected to surprise attacks, and again with the June 17 signing of the MOU.

Trump's actions have undercut the credibility of moderate Iranian leaders like President Pezeshkian, who ran on a platform favoring engagement with the West

“The hardliners said ‘don’t sign it, you can’t trust the Americans’,” Mearsheimer recently told Chris Hedges. “But the moderates prevailed, and then the hardliners proved to be correct, so they’re now in the driver’s seat, as best we can tell…and those hardliners will push forward a tougher deal for Trump to swallow” whenever the next version of an MOU is pursued.

It’s not only adversaries of the US government that have been subjected to Trump’s sudden reversals on terms he himself agreed to. Just ask Saudi Arabia.

On July 22, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz ​bin Salman signed an agreement by which the kingdom would be able to build nuclear reactors and enrich uranium with US technology. Both governments published official announcements, and it was seen as a triumph for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The very next morning, Trump blindsided the Saudis and his own subordinates, using a social media post to retroactively add a huge requirement — there would be no nuclear deal unless Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, which entails recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, and the establishment of official diplomatic relations.

Such a move would run counter to Saudi Arabia’s long-running insistence that recognition of Israel is unthinkable without a firm plan for Palestinian statehood. Further, Trump’s demand for a Saudi embrace of Israel comes at a time when Muslims within the kingdom and throughout the region are outraged by Israel’s destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, making such a move perilous for the Saudi royals. Contrary to the agreement his energy secretary had signed, Trump also suddenly declared there would be no enrichment of nuclear material inside Saudi Arabia.

“You strike a deal, you sign it, you announce it, you brag about it, and within 24 hours you’re changing the terms in a fundamental way,” observed the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi on Deep Dive. “If that’s what you do to Saudi Arabia — a country that the United States has a very close relationship with…on top of that, the Trump family has very close business ties with — then what are you going to do with Iran? What is the shelf life of any American commitment under Trump to the Iranians in any agreement?”

Or to anyone else, for that matter. “We’ve convinced the entire world that we don’t know what we’re doing, and we can’t be trusted, and we don’t keep our word, and we don’t even stay consistent from one day to the next,” former ambassador Freeman recently told Davis. “So how can you deal with us? That’s the question everybody has out there.”

As Alastair Crooke sees it, US diplomacy may never be the same. Summing up the effects of Trump’s multi-front assault on trust in America, the former British intelligence agent, diplomat and founder of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum told Glenn Diesen, “The American ability to negotiate in the old-fashioned diplomatic idea, I think, is gone. I mean, we’re in a new era.”

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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 23:20

New Jersey Offers Taxpayer-Funded Legal Services To Noncitizens Improperly Registered To Vote

New Jersey Offers Taxpayer-Funded Legal Services To Noncitizens Improperly Registered To Vote

This week, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill revealed that more than 6,600 noncitizens ended up on its voter rolls, with nearly 400 of them casting ballots between June 2023 and June 2024.

Despite saying the situation is unacceptable and claiming that she is being proactive to fix it, her administration has also begun steering the same noncitizens toward taxpayer-funded legal help.

Sherrill promptly blamed the software vendor, IDEMIA, for the problem.

"Let me be clear: this entire situation is unacceptable," Sherrill said Tuesday. "It's unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error, it's unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed and it's unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability or took action when it happened years ago."

However, they dispute her characterization and have offered a different characterization of who was responsible.

"IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver's license or state-issued identification card," the company said in a statement. According to IDEMIA, New Jersey's own Division of Elections, the body charged with validating and adjudicating every registration IDEMIA passed along, is ultimately responsible.

MVC is even switching to a new vendor. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security reported that roughly 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote across four states - California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. New Jersey accounted for 35,152 of those registrations, more than five times the 6,600 figure Sherrill's administration has acknowledged. The gap suggests the state has disclosed only a portion of the problem, and it raises the question of how the smaller number became the official one. Note that DHS has not publicly detailed its methodology for the higher figure, and fact-checkers have treated the larger claims with caution.

New Jersey's website now tells noncitizens who were improperly registered to vote to contact the Division of Elections or their county's Commissioner of Registration to have their names removed.

"A recently discovered error in a vendor's software revealed that approximately 6,600 people were improperly registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024 after completing a transaction at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission," the page states. "These individuals indicated they were not United States citizens, and they did not attest to being eligible to vote during this transaction. But the software erroneously transmitted these individuals for voter registration processing regardless."

The same page points them, along with other affected residents, to legal resources through the Office of New Americans. Among those resources is pro bono legal representation through New Jersey's Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative, a state-funded program that provides defense against deportation proceedings.

That means New Jersey taxpayers are funding legal defense, through a deportation-focused program, for noncitizens who were registered to vote and, in hundreds of cases, actually voted. Federal law prohibits all noncitizens - whether unauthorized or lawfully present (such as green-card holders or temporary visa holders) - from voting in federal elections. The available public information confirms these individuals indicated they were noncitizens; it does not break down how many of the 6,600 (or of those who voted) lacked legal authorization to reside in the United States.

The Sherrill administration also indicated this week that it will not turn over the names of the noncitizens who were registered to vote to the Trump administration, citing privacy concerns.

Sherrill's account leaves the state with a tidy narrative: a defective vendor, a fix already underway, and a governor who inherited the mess. The DHS figures complicate that narrative considerably, and the state's own disclosures have not yet accounted for the difference between 6,600 and 35,152. Until they do, the full scope of noncitizen registration in New Jersey remains an open question.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 22:45

CCP Bans Sale Of Retired Military Equipment, Citing Security Risks

CCP Bans Sale Of Retired Military Equipment, Citing Security Risks

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

The Chinese regime's military and public security authorities have jointly issued an order banning the sale, assembly, and marketing of retired military equipment, citing "security risks to military secrets."

Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take part in military training at Pamir Mountains in Kashgar, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, on Jan. 4, 2021. STR/AFP via Getty Images

The Notice on Prohibiting Sales Activities Involving Retired or Scrapped Military Equipment was issued on July 28 by the Chinese regime's six central governmental departments, including the top defense command and decision-making body of the Chinese military - Central Military Commission's Logistics Support Department, Equipment Development Department, and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, along with the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The notice acknowledges that, in recent years, some vendors have openly sold - both online and offline - retired or scrapped military equipment containing sensitive information, resulting in "adverse effects" and creating "security risks." It also said one of the purposes of the ban is "to uphold the positive image of the people's military."

The notice stipulates that no entity or individual may sell retired or scrapped military equipment. Such equipment - as defined by the military - encompasses various types of hardware, ammunition, devices, related components, and materials that have been officially retired from service and designated for disposal as scrap.

The notice also prohibits any unit or individual from using dismantled parts of decommissioned equipment to produce, modify, and re-assemble them, and then sell them as imitations of military equipment that the public might believe was real. Commercial marketing and promotion of decommissioned and scrapped equipment and related imitations are also prohibited.

The official notice did not disclose the types, quantities, or sources of decommissioned equipment currently on the market, nor did it state whether any military information had been leaked.

Li Yuansong, a Chinese military equipment and memorabilia collector, told The Epoch Times that Chinese military-issued gear has long been collected by enthusiasts.

"Much of the Chinese weaponry is derived from technology dating back to the former Soviet era [1922-91]. While a small number of firearms produced after the 'Reform and Opening-up' incorporated Western technology, the majority remain updated versions of Soviet-based hardware," he said. "The craftsmanship is crude and hardly advanced. If Western weapons experts were to dismantle and analyze them, they would likely laugh about them.

"The real fear isn't so much about leaking secrets, but rather that foreigners might discover just how backward China's conventional weaponry actually is," Li said of the new ban.

Li Xiangyang, a Chinese military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that in recent years, individuals have been reselling military equipment online.

"Some components bear serial numbers, model designations, and signs of use. In the eyes of the authorities, these could reveal information regarding production batches, maintenance standards, and quality," Li said.

"Regulations dictate that many decommissioned items must be destroyed, with metal materials collected and melted down. This notice is primarily aimed at enforcing the Anti-Espionage Law, as the authorities do not want foreign entities to gain insight into the Chinese regime's military-industrial technology."

Su Pei, a China-based military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that the mention of upholding "the positive image of the people's military" in the ban notice shows that the Chinese regime is concerned about more than just so-called secret leaks, but also about hiding the backwardness of the Chinese weaponry.

"It also worries that individuals within the military might sell used military equipment through underground channels - goods that could ultimately be resold to foreign adversaries. Such incidents have already occurred in coastal regions," he said.

The notice does not prohibit the trading of all decommissioned and scrapped equipment. Exceptions are made for dual-use dismantled parts included in the public sales catalog of the China Rongtong Asset Management Group, as well as other equipment authorized for sale by the military. The China Rongtong Group is a ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centrally managed commercial state-owned sole proprietorship company, according to public information.

Su noted that the Chinese military has long operated in a "black box" environment, lacking external oversight regarding equipment procurement, decommissioning, and asset disposal, which leads to corruption.

People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take meteorological observation training in Jinan, Shandong Province of China, on May 29, 2016. Getty Images Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 22:10

Disease Caused By Cyclospora Parasite Now In 45 States: CDC

Disease Caused By Cyclospora Parasite Now In 45 States: CDC

A disease caused by a parasite called Cyclospora has been recorded in 45 states this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an update.

Delaware, Oregon, South Dakota, and Vermont have now logged cases of cyclosporiasis, the disease, the CDC said on July 28.

The CDC in its previous update had said 41 states had reported cases.

The number of confirmed cases across the 45 states since May 1 is up to 6,707, according to the CDC.

More than 11,500 other cases have been reported but are pending laboratory confirmation or “further investigation and analysis, such as ruling out international travel,” the CDC said.

The agency is not counting cases involving international travel or probable cases.

Patients have ranged in age from 1 to 98, with a median age of 44.

“We estimate a 6-week reporting lag between illness onset and case reporting to CDC, so we anticipate that case counts will continue to rise as data are received,” the CDC said.

As Zachary Steieber reports for The Epoch Times, cyclosporiasis typically appears in the summer, but the number of cases this year is much higher than normal. The main symptom of the disease is diarrhea.

Cyclospora is present in produce contaminated with feces.

Federal officials have said that the cases in nine states are linked to contaminated lettuce from Taylor Farms that was served at Taco Bell, while officials in North Carolina suspect parsley and cilantro as causes in addition to lettuce.

More than 400 of the people whose cases have been confirmed have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

A sign at a Taylor Farms facility in Salinas, Calif., on July 17, 2026. Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images

The Oregon Health Authority said in a statement that two Oregon residents recently developed cyclosporiasis cases after traveling to other states “involved in the recent nationwide recall of pre-shredded iceberg lettuce associated with the outbreak.” So far, authorities there said, the number of cases in the state is up to 23 this year, which is lower than the numbers reported in 2025 and 2024.

Officials in Delaware, South Dakota, and Vermont have not provided information on the cases in those states.

Diners Avoid Restaurants

Traffic is down at Taco Bell and other restaurants in recent weeks.

Foot traffic at Taco Bell dropped by 20.8 percent on Thursday, July 23, from the Thursday average between January 1 and July 6, according to data from Placer.ai.

Foot traffic was also down by 12.2 percent at salad chain Chopt; 1.4 percent at Chipotle Mexican Grill; and 3.1 percent at Panera Bread on July 23, compared to the prior six-month average for Thursdays, the analytics company said.

A Taco Bell fast food restaurant in Taylor, Mich., on July 14, 2026, Paul Sancya/AP Photo

Chipotle declined to comment on the decline, while Taco Bell, Chopt, and Panera Bread did not respond to requests for comment. Taco Bell has said it removed lettuce from Taylor Farms, which recalled the lettuce under direction from the Food and Drug Administration, from its restaurants as of July 17.

Paul Sellew, CEO and founder of Little Leaf Farms, which grows lettuce in the eastern United States, said worries about infections have driven down sales by double digits.

“The entire fresh produce category at retail is down,” Sellew said. “The consumer has been motivated by fear.”

According to market research firm NielsenIQ’s data, U.S. unit sales for fresh lettuce in the week ending July 18 were down 9 percent from a week earlier and 19 percent from two weeks before.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 21:00

Kamala Harris Moves To $8.5M Mansion In 94% White Neighborhood

Kamala Harris Moves To $8.5M Mansion In 94% White Neighborhood

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

Former Vice President Kamala Harris has long spoken about the importance of being surrounded by other black or minority Americans. But her new $8.5 million home is located in an exclusive Malibu neighborhood where the population is overwhelmingly white.

Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, purchased a 4,000-square-foot mansion in Point Dume, one of Malibu’s most exclusive coastal enclaves. Point Dume’s population is approximately 94% white and just 0.2% black, according to a Fox News report citing the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey.

As Fox News noted, Harris’ choice of neighborhood contrasts with remarks she made during her 2019 presidential campaign about attending a Historically Black College or University.

The twice-failed presidential candidate said in an interview with the Washington Post that attending Howard University “becomes about you understanding that there is a whole world of people who are like you.”

Harris added, “It was more, for me, about the numerosity than it was the diversity, I grew up in a community where there were many representations of diversity. Going to Howard, there were so many (Black people)! And they’re all in your age group, in your phase of life.”

Point Dume has long been known as one of Southern California’s most exclusive communities.

Politico described the neighborhood earlier this year as “a secluded idyll,” noting its surveillance cameras and that “the quiet feels carefully curated.”

The New York Post likewise described Point Dume as “one of Malibu’s most exclusive coastal enclaves.”

She will enjoy a “cliff-side retreat with sweeping ocean views,” the outlet noted.

Harris and Emhoff reportedly purchased the property in January 2026.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 20:25

Michigan Waves The White Flag On Child 'Conversion Therapy' Ban

Michigan Waves The White Flag On Child 'Conversion Therapy' Ban

Democrat-run Michigan just backed down after threatening therapists who use talk therapy to help children with 'gender dysphoria' accept their biology. 

Alex Brandon / AP

On Thursday, the state agreed to a permanent federal court order barring it from ever enforcing House Bill 4616 - the 2023 law, signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, that threatened licensed counselors with discipline for engaging in ordinary talk therapy with minors experiencing gender dysphoria. U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering signed off on the stipulated judgment, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the counselors who sued, wasted no time declaring victory according to the Daily Caller.

Interestingly, a year and a half earlier the same judge sided with the state.

Backstory

Whitmer signed HB 4616 and its companion bill in July 2023, making Michigan the 22nd state to bar mental health professionals from what the statute broadly defined as "conversion therapy" for minors - not just efforts to change sexual orientation, but any "efforts to change behavior or gender expression." At the time, Whitmer said Michigan was "banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy" and pitched the law as making the state more welcoming for LGBTQ kids.

Then the law met the constitution... Catholic Charities of Jackson, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties, joined by Lansing therapist Emily McJones of Little Flower Counseling, sued in 2024, arguing the ban was viewpoint discrimination dressed up as medical regulation. Judge Beckering initially sided with the state, denying a preliminary injunction in February 2025. The counselors appealed - and won.

Late last year, the Sixth Circuit reversed her, becoming the first federal appeals court in the country to block a statewide "conversion therapy" ban of this kind. Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote for the majority that the state's theory "faces strong headwinds as applied to counseling that consists solely of spoken words." Judge Rachel Bloomekatz, a Biden appointee, dissented, arguing the ban was likely constitutional because every major medical association treats "conversion therapy" as illegitimate care.

Then SCOTUS Weighed In

On March 31, the Court ruled 8-1 in Chiles v. Salazar that Colorado's nearly identical "conversion therapy" ban had to survive strict First Amendment scrutiny - a standard laws like it almost never clear. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion; Justice Elena Kagan concurred, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor; only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Buried in Gorsuch's opinion was a citation to the Sixth Circuit's Michigan ruling - the same case now forcing Whitmer's hand. The Trevor Project called the ruling a disappointing setback for LGBTQ+ youth mental health protections.

Michigan didn't fold right away. After Chiles came down, Attorney General Dana Nessel - the state's first openly gay AG - argued free speech doesn't give medical professionals license to harm their patients, and said her office would review the ruling before deciding on next steps. Whitmer vowed to keep protecting LGBTQ youth "as long as I'm governor." Four months and one dead legal theory later, the state signed the permanent order instead.

"Common Sense," Says Becket

Becket's Luke Goodrich, the counselors' lead attorney, called the outcome "a major victory for children, counselors, and common sense." He also argued - pointing to the roughly two dozen U.S. states and several European countries that have moved to restrict youth gender-transition medicine in recent years - that Michigan's ban was pushing kids toward medical intervention rather than away from it, and that the new order protects every licensed talk therapist in the state, not just his own clients.

It's Becket's second major win on this exact front this year. In February, its Mahmoud v. Taylor case - over Maryland parents' right to pull kids from classroom readings on gender transition and same-sex romance - ended in a $1.5 million settlement, as ZeroHedge reported at the time. The nonprofit hasn't lost a case at the Supreme Court since 2012.

As we noted back in April, Colorado didn't take its own 8-1 loss quietly - state lawmakers hit back with a bill making it easier to sue "conversion therapy" counselors and stripping away the usual time limit for filing those suits. Whether Michigan tries the same counterpunch, or just lets its ban die quietly, is still an open question. Either way, every other state running a similar law is standing on considerably thinner ice than it was four months ago.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 19:50

New Report Ranks California 35th Best State And Least Affordable

New Report Ranks California 35th Best State And Least Affordable

Authored by Dylan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

California, the most populous U.S. state and the one with the largest economy, ranked as the 35th best state in a new ranking published by U.S. News on July 28.

South Orange County communities near Laguna Beach, Calif., on Oct. 15, 2020. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Utah ranked as the best state, followed by South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.

The ranking was based on scores in eight categories such as education, healthcare, economy, and fiscal stability, and it was weighted by survey opinions.

Despite a median income of more than $100,000 compared to the national average of $81,600, California ranked last in the category of opportunity. This was partially because it ranked last in affordability, which was based on a cost-of-living index score and housing affordability index score.

The state's Department of Housing & Community Development considers a six-figure salary as low-income in many of its coastal hubs.

According to the income limits it set on June 23, $100,000 is classified as low in seven counties - San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and Orange.

Santa Cruz County has the highest cutoff for what's considered low-income at $122,200 for a single-person household.

California's Legislative Analyst's Office said a mid-tier house costs about $775,000 in the state, nearly double the national average of $398,771.

"California home prices continue to be much more expensive than the rest of the US," it said in its 2026 Housing Affordability Tracker.

Among all categories in U.S. News's ranking, the state's highest score was in healthcare at 7th place, including 6th in healthcare quality and 5th in public health.

Public health looked at infant mortality rate, mortality rate, obesity rate, smoking rate, suicide rate, and mental health.

The report states that 8.4 percent of California's population is without health insurance, compared to the national average of 11.3 percent. It added that its obesity rate is 29.1 percent compared to 34.2 percent nationally.

The state also ranked 25th in education but 6th in higher education, which assessed graduation rates as well as low debt at graduation and low tuition fees.

However, California's K-12 education ranked 41st, which was based on high school graduation rates, preschool enrollment, and test scores.

A separate report last month listed six California cities - Visalia, Bakersfield, Modesto, Fresno, Stockton, and Salinas - among the 10 least educated metropolitan areas in the United States.

The list looked at the share of adults at least 25 years old who have a high school diploma or higher, who have at least some college experience, who have a bachelor's degree or higher, and who have a graduate or professional degree.

While many Central Valley areas scored low, Silicon Valley's San Jose metro ranked as the fourth most educated, while the San Francisco metro ranked eighth.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 16:55

The State Where DOGE Is Actually Working

The State Where DOGE Is Actually Working

Authored by Noah Wall via The American Mind,

On July 14, the State Leadership Initiative was honored to host the Florida DOGE team and their tech partners, Vulcan, Echelon, and DigiBuild, for the Florida DOGE Showcase in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has become the leader for providing accountable and efficient governance to its citizens.

Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team's work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts - it also includes auditing university curriculum and state union programs and reining in rogue municipalities that had adopted woke-left policies.

Take Florida's SB 1134, which banned counties and municipalities from using government funds for discriminatory DEI programs and activities. Florida DOGE found that local governments were forcing employees to undergo "Transgender Humility" training, which included the use of a "wheel of power/privilege" that singled out certain ethnic groups as being worse than others. In some extreme cases, the team found that local governments were directing taxpayer dollars to immigration lawyers who represented criminal illegal aliens. All of this was identified by Florida DOGE and prohibited by law.

This ideological audit was most prevalent in universities, where the team examined over 74,000 syllabi and 100,000 research articles for left-wing ideological content. Funding for these DEI-related activities was effectively halted through SB 266 and SB 7044. While the federal DOGE program failed to codify reform through legislation, Florida DOGE succeeded.

Florida DOGE has proven it is the model to emulate. The next step is to provide the blueprint for bringing it to other states.

Enter the State DOGE Playbook, a collaborative effort between the State Leadership Initiative and the Florida DOGE team. This is a step-by-step guide to ensure that these reforms are not merely a temporary win for a single executive's tenure, but a long-term fundamental shift in how red states govern.

Instead of Elon Musk drawing from his own stable of engineers, Florida hired volunteers and tech-minded interns to leverage new technologies to conduct investigations and root out waste and ideological indoctrination previously unheard of at the state level. Many of Florida DOGE's accomplishments were secured with a team of only three full-time employees, supplemented by a staff Florida put together. SLI is proud to be part of this effort; we even sent two of our own to act as special government employees, at no cost to the state, to help identify shadow government organizations funded by the state, local governments, and universities.

All that's needed are a few liaisons for law enforcement and legislators, and the rest is bulk data analysis. Add to this that Florida DOGE implemented these reforms on just a six-figure budget. Rarely have government initiatives accomplished so much in such a cost-effective manner.

None of these accomplishments would've been possible without the power of new AI tools and data-analysis technologies provided by three partners: Echelon, Vulcan Technologies, and DigiBuild. While varying in scope, each was instrumental in identifying waste and abuse during the audits, leading to the most significant reforms in Florida.

Echelon was used to analyze spending and waste in the Lee County school district. Florida DOGE identified up to $80 million in potential savings through contract reviews and more than $8 million in savings by eliminating 170 unnecessary positions spanning 30 departments. Programs like this can restore public schools to their proper mission rather than serving as a patronage scheme for overeducated administrative staff.

Vulcan Technologies was utilized to conduct top-to-bottom payment transaction audits across the state. It was so effective that local governments throughout Florida are implementing it to find opportunities for savings. In a time when property taxes are a dominant issue among voters, AI and DOGE principles are bridging the gap, fulfilling the public's demand for making cuts and providing the services local governments owe their citizens.

Many other states have similar programs. Texas's Office of Regulatory Efficiency has generated over 400 reductions in administrative code, and Oklahoma's DOGE office has produced over $19 million in cuts. But Florida's success remains unparalleled, and SLI's State DOGE Playbook explains how to emulate its success.

Blue states across the country continue to bankrupt themselves by allowing endless fraud and overfunded programs that never deliver on their promises. It's not enough for red states to avoid these pitfalls - red states need to match Florida's pace and provide the governance their citizens deserve. With this playbook, there are no more excuses, only the will to act.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 16:20

"Pure Case Of Vandalism": Trump Rages As DoJ Drops Reflecting Pool Case Against Former Olympian

"Pure Case Of Vandalism": Trump Rages As DoJ Drops Reflecting Pool Case Against Former Olympian

Update (1245ET): President Trump has not taken kindly to the DoJ dropping their case against the former Olympian for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, exclaiming his displeasure in a post on X:

I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM...

...that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area.

There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!"

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, the Department of Justice dropped the case against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a court filing on July 31.

Former U.S. Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, was accused of vandalizing the landmark this summer by allegedly pulling up and tearing the protective liner at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool after a $14.7 million renovation.

According to Jacki Thrapp, reporting for The Epoch Times, court documents reveal that after Hearn was indicted, the Department of the Interior provided additional documents to prosecutors which showed that damage in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

According to Friday’s filing, the flawed installation happened during “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”

A defense expert inspected the pool when it was drained, to fix the damage, on July 17 with United States Attorney Jeanine Pirro and staffers and “immediately noted extensive damage.”

The discovery prompted them to dive deeper into installation documents, which showed there were “repeated failures of the lining during the installation process,” according to court docs.

“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” the 20-page filing by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said.

Hearn’s lawyers said in a statement that the case should have never been brought.

“Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong,” the statement read. “The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington on June 26, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The athlete, who previously owned a company that manufactured materials for vessels and competed in the Summer Olympics in 1992, 1996, and 2000, denied allegations that he intentionally tried to damage the pool.

Hearn previously said that he only reached into the water to inspect a section after he saw that the coating was already peeling.

The patriotic pool is nearly 2,030 feet long, 167 feet wide, and can be as deep as 30 inches at its center.

The Maryland-born competitor’s trial was expected to start on Sept. 28 in D.C. Superior Court before the case was dropped on Friday.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 15:45

Man Kidnaps Former Investment Partner, Stuffs Him In Trunk, Shoots Him, Then Gets Shot By Cops

Man Kidnaps Former Investment Partner, Stuffs Him In Trunk, Shoots Him, Then Gets Shot By Cops

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Two Chinese men have been identified as suspects in the shooting and kidnapping of a Chino Hills resident who was later found mortally wounded in the trunk of their vehicle after one suspect fired into it during a police stop, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a July 31 statement to The Epoch Times.

A home on the street in Chino Hills, Calif., where the shooting and kidnapping occurred. Zhao Ziting/The Epoch Times

The department identified the suspects as Bo Zhengfeng, 67, and Bo Jianquan, 66, both Irvine residents. The victim was identified as Shukur Aikebaer, 60, of Chino Hills.

The sheriff's department did not identify the suspects' citizenship.

Investigators said power to Aikebaer's home was interrupted on the night of July 29. When he went outside to inspect the electrical panel, the two men allegedly shot and kidnapped him.

Deputies later stopped the suspects' vehicle after a short pursuit. Bo Jianquan surrendered, but Bo Zhengfeng exited the vehicle, approached its open trunk, and fired into it, the department said.

Deputies then shot Bo Zhengfeng and discovered Aikebaer inside the trunk with a gunshot wound. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.

Gunshots and Screams Reported

Deputies were dispatched to the 2100 block of Monteverde Drive at about 10:14 p.m. after a caller reported hearing gunshots and someone screaming.

While deputies were responding, they spotted the suspects' vehicle traveling at high speed and attempted to stop it. The driver refused to yield, leading deputies on a short pursuit that ended in the 2400 block of Wandering Ridge Drive.

Deputies ordered both occupants out of the vehicle.

Bo Jianquan, the passenger, complied and was taken into custody. Bo Zhengfeng, the driver, did not comply, according to the department.

Bo Zhengfeng then shot Aikebaer, and deputies opened fire, striking him. Deputies attempted lifesaving measures on both wounded men. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

Bo Jianquan was not injured, and no deputies were injured.

Prior Business Relationship

The sheriff's department said Bo Zhengfeng and Aikebaer knew each other through a prior working relationship.

California corporate records show both men were connected to Panshi Inc., an investment company formed in 2018.

Bo Zhengfeng was listed as the company's chief executive and director. Aikebaer - under the name Aikebaer Abuduxukuer - was listed as secretary and registered agent.

Both were listed at the same Irvine address.

Public property records identify Aikebaer Abuduxukuer as the owner of the Chino Hills home where the kidnapping began. The age and address in those records match the victim identified by the sheriff's department.

Irvine Home Searched

Investigators later searched the Irvine home that Bo Zhengfeng shared with Bo Jianquan, according to the sheriff's department.

Public property records identify the address used by several of Bo Zhengfeng's companies as a home owned by Bo since 2018. Panshi Inc. records also listed the victim, under the name Aikebaer Abuduxukuer, at that address.

The search was carried out with assistance from the Irvine Police Department.

Bo Jianquan was booked at the West Valley Detention Center on suspicion of murder and kidnapping and was being held without bail.

The sheriff's inmate system listed his first court appearance for Aug. 3 at the Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse.

The sheriff's department said the investigation would be forwarded to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office for review and the filing of charges.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 15:10

Airspace Lockdown Looms: US Warns Americans Get Out Of Mideast As Iran Targets Kuwait Again

Airspace Lockdown Looms: US Warns Americans Get Out Of Mideast As Iran Targets Kuwait Again

There were no Friday night into Saturday morning US attacks on Iran, after President Trump warned he has given an order to hit Iran 'hard' - though didn't disclose a timeline. Friday reports in The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Axios strongly suggested that large US strikes would commence at some point this weekend, as the region remains on edge.

The only new and recent attacks have been more apparent Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday has confirmed Iran’s "continued aggression" against it after a drone attack earlier targeted "vital installations".

Kuwait City file image

The ministry called out the attacks as a "flagrant violation" of Kuwait’s sovereignty which reveal a "determination to persist in a hostile approach." It said the country reserves the right to “take all necessary measures” to protect its security and resources.

According to some details in The Wall Street Journal:

Iran fired a drone barrage into Kuwait on Saturday, hitting a U.S. ally following President Trump’s vow to intensify military strikes in a rapidly expanding Middle East war.

Kuwait said it shot down the Iranian volley, but the renewed fire added more tension to a region bracing for more conflict. Trump ordered the military to launch a fresh attack on Iran to bring Tehran to the negotiating table, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

U.S. embassies in the Middle East told Americans to consider departing the region. Airlines are extending flight cancellations to Arab Gulf states, which have spent decades building themselves up as international airport hubs. The U.S. warned airspaces may soon be closed. 

Ahead of likely reviewed US attacks on Iran, which could possibly involve Israel too, the US Department of State has re-issued an urgent travel warning for the entire Middle East region, saying "Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation."

"Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region," it said on X Saturday, adding that "Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world."

President Trump had made clear on Friday while at Camp David his view that the Iranians can't be trusted, are 'dishonorable' - and so he's not pursuing talks.

And then a late Friday CBS report sounded the alarm of more escalation, saying that "The United States and Israel are planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, with strikes possible throughout the weekend."

The report added, "There was some discussion about trying to conclude by the time financial markets open Monday because of concern about how the bombings will affect the U.S. and global economy, but an end point wasn't locked in."

Earlier this week there were reports of Trump exploding at his own advisors amid ongoing debates about how the crisis should be handled, and finding an exit strategy. Likely the word 'quagmire' can increasingly be heard around Washington. Trump officials have sought to bat down criticisms of getting the US stuck in another forever war in the Middle East.

"Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often," Trump said Friday at Camp David of the Iranians, putting his frustration on display later adding: "All they do is make me angry."

Also, key line from a recent WSJ report points to where things are likely headed: "Some U.S. officials believe Iran will continue to drag out negotiations, banking that Trump will abandon his war efforts in the long term in the face of mounting domestic political opposition."

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 14:35

Leopold Aschenbrenner's Short Seller Fairy Tale

Leopold Aschenbrenner's Short Seller Fairy Tale

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, stuffed like the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey with every trendy AI name you could throw a dart at, reportedly suffered one of the most spectacular drawdowns of recent memory, losing roughly 67% in July after a series of heavily leveraged bets went violently against it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the losses became severe enough to trigger margin calls, forcing the firm into emergency asset sales. Public positions were reportedly sold to Citadel to raise liquidity, and the fund even negotiated a multibillion-dollar sale of its prized Anthropic stake before apparently changing its mind the following morning.

It is, in every sense of the word, the kind of month that reminds people leverage is not just a way to make returns bigger…it’s a way to make your mistakes arrive all at once.

What’s remarkable isn’t that the fund blew up just weeks after everyone in the media started slobbering over Aschenbrenner as if he was some visionary for figuring out the “strategy” of buying crap featured daily on CNBC using leverage. Markets have been humbling overconfident investors since the Dutch were trading tulips. What’s remarkable is that, according to reports describing the investor letter, Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers for accelerating the collapse, likening the experience to a bank run:

Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers who targeted the firm’s positions for exacerbating the fund’s losses, the letter said. The letter compared Situational’s experience to a bank run. Aschenbrenner told investors that the firm had removed all leverage from the portfolio.

And that is where this story stops being about investing and starts becoming about accountability. There is perhaps no bigger bitch move in finance than levering yourself to the eyeballs into the most crowded, most euphoric, most narratively beloved sector on Earth, riding the momentum all the way to the top tick of a genuinely pornographic stock bubble, detonating your own portfolio when the inevitable correction arrives, and then looking around the room for someone else to blame.

That’s not what investors pay hedge fund fees for. They don’t wire you billions so you can discover, after the fact, that markets occasionally go down and that other participants are allowed to disagree with your positioning.

Let’s clear something up, because this myth refuses to die every goddamn market cycle: short sellers do not possess mystical powers to force stocks lower simply because they dislike them.

A short sale is not the financial equivalent of Voldemort casting a spell over the tape. A short seller borrows shares, sells them into the market, and eventually has to buy those same shares back. That’s the entire trade. If enough genuine buyers exist who are willing to absorb that selling pressure, the stock doesn’t go down, it goes up and the short seller gets obliterated. Ask me how I know.

We’ve watched this movie countless times. Tesla. GameStop. Nvidia. Countless biotech squeezes. The market has an extensive history of taking arrogant short sellers, introducing them to the concept of unlimited losses, and escorting them directly into bankruptcy.

The reason stocks collapse isn’t because shorts are somehow overpowering reality. Stocks collapse because the marginal buyer disappears. They collapse because valuations become impossible to justify. They collapse because the people who spent months insisting they would “buy every dip” suddenly become strangely unavailable once the dips become serious.

Shorts don’t create that dynamic. They participate in it. If they could simply dictate prices through force of will, every dedicated short seller would be richer than Warren Buffett, and every bubble in history would have ended before it began. Clearly that’s not how markets work.

What’s especially rich about blaming shorts is that leverage itself creates vastly more selling pressure than shorts ever could. Once your lenders start calling, you don’t get the luxury of diamond hands or inspirational letters about long-term conviction. Your positions get sold because they have to be sold. Every forced liquidation pushes prices lower, which triggers more margin calls, which produces more forced liquidations. It’s an ugly feedback loop that has existed for as long as people have borrowed money to speculate. That’s not market manipulation. That’s mathematics meeting risk management.

Or, in this case, mathematics meeting the complete absence of adequate risk management.

This wasn’t some unforeseeable meteor strike. AI stocks had become the most crowded trade in global markets. Valuations had detached from anything remotely resembling traditional fundamentals because everyone wanted exposure to “the future.” That doesn’t necessarily mean the companies are bad businesses. It does mean that expectations become impossibly high and positioning becomes dangerously one-sided. Every competent portfolio manager understands that crowded trades can reverse with astonishing violence precisely because everyone owns the same thing at the same time, often financed with borrowed money.

That’s supposed to be the point of risk management. You’re supposed to ask yourself, “What happens if I’m wrong?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if liquidity disappears?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if this correction is twice as bad as consensus expects?”

If the honest answer is, “My prime broker starts liquidating me,” then perhaps the position size deserved another look before the market did it for you.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the reported letter is the instinct to externalize responsibility. Every market participant, CEO, investor and analyst deals with short sellers. Every market participant deals with volatility. Every market participant deals with critics, momentum reversals, liquidity squeezes, and crowded positioning. Those aren’t extraordinary circumstances. They’re literally the job description.

Professional portfolio management is not about predicting a future where nobody ever sells your favorite stock. It’s about constructing a portfolio that survives the future where they do.

Blaming shorts after a catastrophic drawdown is a bit like blaming gravity after jumping off a roof. Gravity was never hiding its intentions. It has behaved exactly the same way every single day since the beginning of time. The only surprise is that someone apparently built an investment strategy around the assumption that this time it would be different.

Markets are ruthless teachers because they don’t care how compelling your narrative is, how luxurious your head of hair is, how much CNBC worships you, or how impressive your reputation has become. They don’t care whether you’ve become an AI celebrity, whether Silicon Valley hangs on your every word, or whether investors think you’ve cracked the code. They simply tally the gains and losses. When the leverage becomes excessive, the bill always arrives. Sometimes it arrives all at once.

Welcome to reality, young man.

--

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of all facts and figures included in this article though I made my best effort to get them right. I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, and encourage you to always double check, do your own research and speak to a licensed financial professional.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.

As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 11:40

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