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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Blue-State Socialism: You Wanted It, Now You Get It … Good And Hard

By on June 27th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/27/blue-state-socialism-you-wanted-it-now-you-get-it-good-and-hard/

Faced with the failure of their policies, far-left and outright socialist Democrats in blue-state America are doubling down. Whether it’s New York, California or midwestern leftist havens Minnesota and Illinois, the socialist model will bring only more failure and misery to its citizens. And, because they voted for it, they’ll get what they deserve.

We’re not gloating here. The Democratic Party was once a serious political group that based its popularity on appealing to centrist blue-collar working class Americans and moderate urban liberals. The extreme left was largely, though not entirely, marginalized.

Today, that’s sadly no longer true. Take California.

Los Angeles is run by Mayor Karen Bass, an unabashed follower of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, while California governor and presidential-wannabe Gavin Newsom and the California state legislature are both far left.

They’ve distinguished themselves by their inept response to last winter’s wildfires and this summer’s riots, which required federal intervention in the form of National Guard troops.

Under its leftist leadership, California is losing hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens, not to mention hundreds of its most innovative firms. All are fed up with the state’s insane DEI culture, heavy regulations, and super-high taxes.

But the real topic du jour is in New York City, The Democratic mayoral primary just delivered a radical democratic socialist, the global-intifada supporting Zohran Mamdani as the desired candidate. It wasn’t as if New Yorkers didn’t have a choice: Mamdani handily defeated the seasoned, centrist alternative, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in what Politico called a “stunning primary.”

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Why U.S. Intelligence Has Been So Wrong About Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program A leaked DIA report downplaying Iran strike damage is the latest example of politicized intel, aimed at undermining Trump and shielding Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. By Fred Fleitz

By on June 27th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/27/why-u-s-intelligence-has-been-so-wrong-about-irans-nuclear-weapons-program/

he recent Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment claiming that the U.S. bombing of Iran set the country’s nuclear weapons program back only a few months was irresponsible and probably intended to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy. This assessment was written to be leaked to the press and reflected a long pattern of politicized intelligence analysis to undermine Republican presidents.

The DIA assessment was not credible because a battle damage assessment of the bombing of Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites will be complicated and probably take weeks or months of intelligence collection and analysis by dozens of experts and other intelligence agencies. A low-confidence assessment, like the DIA analysis issued 24 hours after the bombings, was a fraud and an abuse of intelligence to produce a high-profile assessment that deliberately misrepresented the outcome of the U.S. attack and helped the president’s political adversaries use the bombings to hurt him politically. Not surprisingly, this assessment was quickly leaked to the press.

The DIA assessment followed similar efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies and the left to deny that Iran had a nuclear weapons program.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did an extraordinary interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation that hinged on the misleading way U.S. intelligence agencies have long framed Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Brennan demanded that Rubio tell her what intelligence the Trump administration had indicating that Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei ordered the construction of nuclear weapons. She claimed the U.S. Intelligence Community had not seen such intelligence and that this was a crucial element of its analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Rubio dismissed Brennan’s question as irrelevant because Iran’s extensive nuclear weapons-related work indicates it intends to make nuclear weapons. Rubio told Brennan, “We have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon, and that’s more than enough.” He cited nuclear weapons activities such as enriching uranium to 60%—a level with no peaceful purpose—and building a uranium enrichment facility deep inside a mountain.

Prior to 2007, the U.S. Intelligence Community had assessed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But in November 2007, fearing that President Bush might order an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was published by the National Intelligence Council that found Iran’s nuclear program was halted in 2003 and Iranian leaders had not made a decision to resume weaponization efforts and construct a nuclear weapon.

The NIE’s conclusion was a deceptive argument. It is true that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was slowed in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and some weapons activities were suspended. However, other critical nuclear weapons work was conducted in secret. Dual-use nuclear activities with plausible peaceful purposes were continued, such as uranium enrichment. In addition, Israel learned from documents it stole from Iran in 2018 on the Iranian nuclear weapons program that Tehran began an aggressive program in 2003 to deceive the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors about its covert nuclear weapons effort.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Globalist War on the Planet: Humanity, Nature, Wildlife ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part IV by Robert Williams

By on June 27th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21664/war-planet-humanity-nature-wildlife

The system that many global elites and governments are planning for us is the totalitarian Communist system of China: The government and the globalist elites — while they continue flying on their private jets between their various mansions — will decide your means of transport, how much energy you are allowed to consume to heat your home, drive your car, and even how much you will be allowed to eat and drink — not to mention going on holiday or other “leisure.” Oh, and you will not be allowed to complain about it, because that would be “hate speech.”

In 2013, Sir David Attenborough, the renowned nature expert and one of the greatest filmmakers ever, famously declared humanity a pestilence.

“We are a plague on the Earth,” he postulated. “It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so.” His recommendation was that the world needed a smaller population. “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde [of people].”

The idea that humanity itself is the problem has only been reinforced by a mainstream media that can tend to overheat (such as here and here).

Humanity requires the growing of food and livestock; it needs energy to make necessary consumer goods and cars, and to heat homes, which must be built in the first place. The World Economic Forum (WEF), however, would prefer you to “own nothing and be happy.” Whatever you need, it added reassuringly, can be delivered by drone.

“We need to eat less meat,” said Jane Goodall, famous anthropologist and UN “messenger of peace,” in an interview with climate high priest Al Gore at a WEF meeting in 2020. “We need to stop land being used for cattle and for growing grain for the billions of animals that we keep in our intensive farms.” She stressed that if only the world was less populous and instead had the population of 500 years ago, none of that would have been a problem.

As humanity does not seem to have plans to disappear voluntarily, the unelected UN, its Agenda 21, and agencies such as the WEF and other global “elites,” have apparently decided that, by 2030, life should be dismal and dystopian. After depriving you of the right to ownership, they will tell you what to eat. Meat will become “an occasional treat, not a staple, for the good of the environment and our health.” In addition, as a result of “climate change,” the West will have to accept taking in up to a billion migrants. There will be “a global price on carbon” to “help make fossil fuels history.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The toxic narcissism of Palestine Action This gang of bourgeois irritants sums up the religious mania of ‘Palestine solidarity’. Brendan O’Neill

By on June 26th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/25/the-toxic-narcissism-of-palestine-action/

Last month, Jews in London awoke to the sight of shattered glass. A local business, a Jewish business, had been savagely attacked by masked men in the dead of night. The vandals coated the walls in blood-coloured paint to remind residents of the blood-thirstiness of their homeland: Israel. Even the mezuzah, the small parchment scroll some Jews affix to their doorposts to remind them of their faith, was stained red in the frenzied assault. Who carried out this vile act that will have triggered the darkest historical memories among local Jews? Some neo-Nazi outfit? It was Palestine Action, the anti-Israel ‘direct action’ group that has suddenly become a cause célèbre of all of the worst people.

It was in Stamford Hill, a part of London with a large, lively community of Orthodox Jews. It was on 28 May. Three Palestine Action pricks high on the fumes of self-righteousness laid waste to a landlord business. In the kangaroo court of their own Israelophobic delirium, they’d found the business guilty of renting out premises to Elbit, the Israeli arms manufacturer. And they passed their sentence: violent destruction of the sinning premises. But the business said it wasn’t true. We have ‘no connection with Elbit’, said a spokesman. We need to talk about this, no? The possibility that a protest group gushed over by Sally Rooney and praised by every faux-radical arsehole on the internet smashed up a Jewish business with no justification whatsoever?

To my mind, it doesn’t matter if the business had links with Elbit (though I am more inclined to believe the business itself than the turbo-smug vandals that gutted it in the vain and risible belief that they were ‘helping Gaza’). The point is that Palestine Action visited on Stamford Hill a night of broken glass. It inflicted on a Jewish community the historical memory and moral injury of another Jewish business targeted for destruction. There will be Jews in Stamford Hill whose families came to the UK to escape the shattered glass of centuries of Jew-hating mania in Europe. And yet here it was again – those glinting shards on their streets, whispering: ‘Do you belong here?’

Palestine Action’s vandalism struck terror into the heart of Stamford Hill’s Jews. ‘For Jewish people it is very, very scary now’, said a local business-owner. Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood security organisation, lamented the return of ‘criminal harassment of Jewish-owned properties’. Who could look at the photographs of Orthodox Jews surveying the red-stained ruins of a local business and not feel sickened? So, my question for all those activists, novelists, luvvies and even MPs who are swarming social media to say ‘We are all Palestine Action’ – are you this?

Palestine Action is all over the news following UK home secretary Yvette Cooper’s promise to proscribe it as a terrorist organisation. Its incursion into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where activists sprayed red paint on two planes, was the last straw for the government. The activist class, the Guardian and human-rights groups are up in arms: it’s ‘unhinged’, they say, to proscribe a protest group. I agree. Like Luke Gittos, I think the banning of Palestine Action would set a terrible and authoritarian precedent. They’re posh irritants, not ISIS. Here’s the thing, though: while I’ll defend these people’s right to organise, I also want to explain how awful they are. They’re even worse than you might think.

The media handwringing over Palestine Action tends to focus on its destruction of property. That’s understandable. Its infiltration of an RAF base was a very serious matter. Its ghoulish splashing of red paint on the walls of every business judged to have consorted with the devil – Israel – is pompous in the extreme and grossly anti-social. I regularly cycle through Portman Square in London where there is always the fresh red paint of their sanctimonious rage on the walls of the investment firm, Invesco. (I pray for the day I’ll catch them in the act.) And yet let’s not forget the other things they do, things that frequently cross the line from protest into sheer immorality and the most despicable theatre.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The barbarians inside the gates Yascha Mounk on woke, Trump and the death of the university. VIDEO

By on June 26th, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSxdJttGkM

America’s Ivy League universities have long been hotbeds of censorship and intolerance. Unpopular views are deplatformed, unorthodox professors are cancelled and research prioritises PC fads over facts. Donald Trump has vowed to force universities to clean up their act – but is he helping on hurting? Here, Yascha Mounk – editor of Persuasion and author of The Identity Trap – argues that Trump’s campus diktats are only stoking a woke backlash. Free speech and reason are just as imperilled as ever, he says. The university could now be in its death throes. Watch, share and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Last Chance at the Bomb: A Hidden Race Behind the Calls for Ceasefire As Iran calls for a ceasefire, it’s not peace it seeks—but time to finish the bomb it’s been building in the shadows. By Ahmad Batebi

By on June 26th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/26/irans-last-chance-at-the-bomb-a-hidden-race-behind-the-calls-for-ceasefire/

As the world watches the escalating confrontation between Israel and Iran, Tehran seeks to project a posture of strength, insisting it will fire the final shot. Yet behind closed doors, the Islamic Republic is doing the opposite: quietly pushing for a ceasefire. Not for the sake of regional stability, and certainly not for the safety of its own people, but for one singular purpose: gaining the time it desperately needs to finalize its nuclear ambitions.

Recent U.S. strikes on three well-known nuclear sites—Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—were widely interpreted as major blows to Iran’s atomic infrastructure. But intelligence sources suggest otherwise. These facilities, long exposed and monitored, had already been emptied of their most sensitive material. The regime, fully aware of its security vulnerabilities, had preemptively moved its enriched uranium stockpiles to undisclosed underground locations beyond the reach of satellites, IAEA inspectors, or international oversight.

Within these hidden fortresses, Iran is now operating with renewed secrecy and efficiency, drawing closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. The technical knowledge, financial means, and ideological justification are all in place. What Tehran lacks is time, and a ceasefire would offer precisely that.

Interpreting recent shifts in Iran’s rhetoric or diplomatic tone as a sign of moderation would be a grave mistake. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, like the regime’s founder Ayatollah Khomeini, adheres to the Shiite doctrine of taqiyya, a religiously sanctioned practice of deceit in service of ideological goals. Under this doctrine, false assurances and strategic lies are not only permitted but encouraged when advancing the interests of the Islamic Revolution.

To believe that the Islamic Republic has abandoned its nuclear ambitions is to fall victim to the same diplomatic delusions that have haunted Western policymakers for decades. If Tehran is granted even a temporary pause in hostilities, it will use that reprieve to complete what it has long pursued in secret: a functioning nuclear weapon.

The regime’s post-conflict playbook is consistent. First, it brutally reasserts domestic control by rounding up dissenters and executing alleged collaborators, fostering fear and obedience. Then it accelerates its nuclear program under the justification of defensive necessity. Finally, it announces a strategic shift in defense policy, citing foreign aggression as the rationale for legitimizing its nuclear breakout.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In the End, Everyone Hated the Iranian Theocracy Trump and Israel dismantled Iran’s terror mystique in days—no nukes, no saviors, just a regime stewing in its own impotence as the world quietly moved on. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 26th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/26/in-the-end-everyone-hated-the-iranian-theocracy/

It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.

Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.

Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.

Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.

So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.

For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.

A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.

As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.

A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.

How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Anti-Israel Socialist Wins New York City’s Democratic Mayoral Primary A bleak future for New York City if Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor.

By on June 26th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/anti-israel-socialist-wins-new-york-citys-democratic-mayoral-primary/

New York City, the city I have lived in and loved for many years, is on the verge of a catastrophe. Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist and Israel hater, is the presumed winner of the June 24th Democratic primary for the position of New York City mayor. Normally, the winner of the Democratic primary wins the general election in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, which means that this socialist, 33-year-old state assemblyman is poised to become New York City’s next mayor. The odds of the unpopular current mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, or the GOP nominee and founder of the Guardian Angels Curtis Sliwa beating Mr. Mamdani in the general election are slim to none.

Zohran Mamdani’s platform is downright scary.

Crime will run rampant in the city under the leadership of Zohran Mamdani, who is anti-police. In the past, he has advocated defunding the police. His current platform uses euphemisms that would amount to essentially the same thing by prioritizing the creation of a new so-called “Department of Community Safety,” which will take “a public health approach to safety” instead of relying primarily on law enforcement officers to combat crime. Mr. Mamdani will have an enthusiastic ally, Alvin Bragg, the pro-criminal Manhattan District Attorney who won the primary vote for DA.

The city’s economy will crash under the leadership of this Marxist who touts city-owned grocery stores, fare-free buses, free childcare, a rent freeze, and other government handouts. All this largesse will come at the expense of already overburdened, successful taxpayers who are the engine of any vital economy, many of whom will leave the city behind for greener pastures.

As Margaret Thatcher wisely said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”

Jews in New York City will be even less safe than they are now with a mayor who sides with antisemites in refusing to acknowledge that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Zohran Mamdani also refused to condemn the antisemitic phrase “globalize the intifada” when given a chance. He claimed that the phrase spoke to “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” and he outrageously compared it to how the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis has been described.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Towards Jihadist Pogroms in Europe? by Drieu Godefridi

By on June 26th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21704/towards-jihadist-pogroms-in-europe

Europol reports indicate that Europe is now home to tens of thousands of radicalized individuals. The attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) demonstrate the feasibility of complex operations by small groups.

Will people who criticize Islam be dragged through the courts by a desperate regime, while those who outspokenly fantasize about murdering Jews are granted a blank check?

Is quoting Islamic law “inflammatory”? The answer is completely arbitrary. The European Court of Human Rights often upholds convictions if statements about Islam are deemed to disrupt “religious peace” or “target Muslims”. This subjective determination reflects a legal trend in Europe to prioritize “social cohesion” over freedom of speech, unlike the U.S. First Amendment.

“Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols — they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way.” — Qur’an 5:65.

“And He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive. And He bequeathed upon you their lands, their habitations, and their possessions, and a land you never trod. God is powerful over everything.” — Qur’an 33:26.

In such a cultural context, in this atmosphere of hatred, can it not be considered legitimate or even desirable, from that perspective, to participate in collective action against Jews?

Let us never forget that the vast majority of Muslims in Europe are peaceful and take no part in terrorist activity. But even if only 0.01% of Europe’s Muslims were to take up the cause and seek revenge for the supposed “genocide” committed by “the Jews”, this would still represent thousands of potential “jihadists”.

Europe in 2025 has been facing rising tensions linked to Islamist radicalization, These have been fueled by conflicts in the Middle East, jihadist propaganda on social networks and gaps in security coordination among countries.

Imagine a handful of individuals, mostly radicalized European Muslims, between the ages of 18 and 35, operating in major European cities such as Brussels, Paris or Berlin, and determined to avenge “the Palestinians”. This network decides to strike Jewish Europeans, massacre as many as possible, spread terror among Jews and non-Muslims – all “kuffars”, unbelievers in Allah — and to pit one community against another. They gather in unmonitored mosques, on encrypted internet forums or through recruiters in the Middle East. Together, to maximize the psychological and media impact, they plan a coordinated attack, inspired by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Their target: a high-profile public event, such as a cultural festival, a march against antisemitism, a pro-Israel rally, or a so-called “republican march”, as it is known in France. Their attack could be paired with a secondary target, such as a Jewish community center or synagogue, to remind the international community who the villain is supposed to be.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

ASRA NOMANI: Iran’s ideological foot soldiers wage proxy war in America Network of 93 groups with ties to Democratic organizations operates as proxy campaign for Islamic Republic even as peace talks advance

By on June 25th, 2025

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/asra-nomani-irans-ideological-foot-soldiers-wage-proxy-war-america

Even as President Donald Trump announces a “Complete and Total ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, there is a chant that is certain to echo for weeks to come: “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

That was the fierce battle cry of a young Palestinian American man from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, as he pumped his fist in the air in front of the White House on Sunday, with protesters waving flags of Iran and Palestine beside him.

A phalanx of young Iranian American girls stood nearby, watching intently, some of them chanting quietly along, others fidgeting with their head scarfs, tight around their faces in the sweltering 90-degree heat.

This scene – a disturbing portrait of youth absorbing radicalization – was one front in a national propaganda war that a network of 93 groups with an estimated $100 million in annual revenues has unleashed on America in a coordinated proxy campaign for the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to my latest reporting for the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative named for Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. I identify all of the groups by name in a Pearl Project database I am updating in real time to document the professional protest industry sowing chaos in America. You can be certain the list will keep growing even amid talk of peace in the Middle East.

Protesters supported Iran and called for a “global intifada” even as President Trump was engineering a ceasefire between Ireal and Iran. (Pearl Project)

This pro-Iran network includes socialist revolutionaries, Islamist activists, foreign-influenced nonprofits and even political operatives from Democratic groups including Indivisible Action, 50501 and Progressive Democrats of America — groups that have fused their interests to topple power in America and created a coalition running cover for America’s enemies. They are the red-green alliance that I call the Woke Army. They aren’t buying the ceasefire because war stokes their agendas.

About five of 10 of the groups are self-described Marxist, socialist, or communist, openly praising the Chinese Communist Party, Marx and Lenin. Another two of 10 of the groups are aligned with Islamist interests. The final three of 10 are socialist- and Islamist-adjacent groups, a disturbing place for Democratic groups to be. 

They do not disclose their donors, making them classic “dark money” groups.

Early Sunday, at a press conference with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Cain warned that “it would be a very bad idea for Iran or its proxies to attempt to attack American forces.” Most Americans assumed he meant military operations.

But the truth is: some of those proxies are already here. Not with bombs, but with bullhorns.

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