Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cyber attacks—usually involving ransomware—are making the news almost every day, and experts say artificial intelligence (AI) is being deployed to help the attackers find their targets more quickly.

Ransomware is a type of malicious software—or malware—that prevents a user from accessing their computer files, systems, or networks and demands they pay a ransom for their return, according to the FBI.

Among the dozens of ransomware attacks in the United States in July included incidents at Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital in Kansas, Ingram Micro, an IT company in California, and Cookeville Regional Medical Center in Tennessee.

The number of reported ransomware attacks worldwide in 2024 was 5,289, up 15 percent on the year before, according to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But those figures do not include the vast majority of attacks, which were not reported, according to Andy Jenkinson, a fellow of the Cyber Theory Institute and author of the book “Stuxnet to Sunburst: 20 Years of Digital Exploitation and Cyber Warfare.”

“Ransomware is huge. Ransoms are being paid left, right, and center. There are two types of ransomware attacks: one that becomes public and one that becomes covered up,” he told The Epoch Times.

PurpleSec, a U.S. cybersecurity company, estimates that the average cost of a ransomware attack has risen since 2019 from $761,106 to $5.14 million.

Ransoms Paid in Crypto

Jenkinson said ransoms are almost always paid in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are harder to trace than bank transfers.

Comparitech keeps a database of ransomware attacks around the world, and Jenkinson said cybercrime—including cyberscams that are carried out using stolen data—costs $32 billion a day globally.

A report last month by Sophos, based on a survey of cybersecurity leaders in 17 countries, found that nearly 50 percent of companies paid ransoms, and the median payment was $1 million.

Adnan Malik, a lawyer who is head of data protection at Barings Law in Manchester, England, told The Epoch Times that companies do not openly declare they have paid a ransom.

“They will try and brush it under the carpet. … They will try and disguise it as some other expense.”

Malik said that companies often haggled with ransomware attackers.

“Hackers will start with a very absurd amount, and it’s not uncommon for a demand in millions to be reduced to a couple of hundred thousand. It happens all the time,” he said.

James Babbage, the director general (Threats) at the UK’s National Crime Agency, told the BBC’s “Panorama” program recently that “it is the paying of ransoms which fuels this crime.”

“We would in general discourage victims from paying ransoms, but every victim needs to make their own choice,” Babbage said.

Paul Abbott was the director of a trucking company in England, KNP Logistics Group, which had to close down with the loss of 730 jobs in September 2023, as a direct result of a ransomware attack.

Abbott told The Epoch Times that a night shift worker first noticed a problem with the company’s computer systems and called in the IT support team, which initially didn’t think it was anything malicious.

He said they carried out a controlled shutdown restart and, “During the restart, they discovered a text file which was embedded into one of the servers that was a ransom note from the Akira group, and obviously the root cause of the issue became very clear at that point.”

Akira is one of the best-known ransomware groups. “It’s easy money for people that know what they’re doing,” Abbott said.

Enforcement Efforts

The British government announced on July 22 plans to ban ministries, state-owned agencies, schools, hospitals, and operators of critical national infrastructure from paying ransom demands to cyber-criminals.

Jenkinson said other issues need to be addressed first.

“Banning ransom payments without fixing the root vulnerabilities is like offering heart transplants to junk food addicts without changing their diet. The UK’s proposal risks driving cybercrime further underground while treating symptoms, not causes,” he said.

“Unless we tackle the insecure systems and poor cyber hygiene that enable these attacks, we’re applying plasters to a thousand cuts while leaving the knife untouched.”

Europol, the police force for the European Union, said it had taken part in a July 22 operation which led to the arrest, in Kyiv, Ukraine, of the alleged administrator of the XSS.is forum, which it said was one of the most influential Russian-speaking cybercrime platforms.

XSS, or cross-site scripting, is a common form of cyber-attack in which malicious scripts are injected into trusted websites to steal data or hijack user sessions.

Europol said the XSS forum had more than 50,000 registered users and was a “key marketplace for stolen data, hacking tools, and illicit services.”

In May last year, the U.S. State Department offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Dmitry Khoroshev, who it said was the administrator of the LockBit ransomware group.

The State Department said LockBit had carried out attacks on more than 2,500 victims around the world, including around 1,800 in the United States, and had obtained at least $150 million in ransom payments, in the form of digital currency.

Britain’s National Crime Agency said Khoroshev was known as LockBitSupp, and “provided ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) to a global network of hackers or ‘affiliates,’ supplying them with the tools and infrastructure to carry out attacks.”

Poor Data Infrastructure

Jenkinson said false narratives suggest cybercriminals were becoming “more sophisticated” and were all based in countries such as Russia and other former Soviet republics, which were beyond the reach of the law.

Malik agrees, saying that, in reality, “The hackers are good, but some of the systems that organizations have here are very poor.”

“By and large, most organizations have very poor data infrastructure, very poor systems that allow hackers entry into their system,” he said.

Jenkinson pointed to recent attacks perpetrated by Scattered Spider, a group of U.S. and UK hackers who were believed to include a number of teenagers.

In May, one of the alleged leaders of Scattered Spider, 23-year-old Tyler Buchanan, a British national, was extradited from Spain to the United States to face charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in California.

Read the rest here…

Russia on Monday made a formal declaration that it considers itself no longer bound by the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States.

The statement said the restrictions have “disappeared” and Russia “no longer considers itself bound” by it, according a Russian Foreign Ministry statement. The agreement banned ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500–5,500km.

However, this new declaration is largely symbolic anyway, given the INF Treaty already collapsed in 2019 when the US unilaterally withdrew while complaining of violations by Moscow. Also, Russia’s military has for years been using all kinds of missiles in Ukraine, including hypersonic weapons.

But Moscow all along said it was biding by the treaty’s terms, having imposed a self-moratorium. But this is no more…

“The Russian Foreign Ministry notes the disappearance of conditions for maintaining the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons and is authorized to state that Russia no longer considers itself bound by the corresponding self-imposed restrictions previously adopted,” the statement reads.

Last week President Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to deploy “closer to Russia” – citing threatening nuclear rhetoric of former Russian president Dimitry Medvedev.

The “actions of Western countries” are creating a “direct threat” to Russian security, the ministry statement said. A few specifics instances of the US already in effect violating the treaty were highlighted: 

• Last year the US deployed a Typhon missile launcher in the Philippines. 
• The US Army also fired Typhon during regional joint exercises with Australia.
• The Australian Army has  an American Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), in July, and it has a maximum range beyond 500km
• There’s been recent US missile activity in Denmark

Russian officials have long warned of an arms race being set off, harming global stability and security, if the US were to withdraw; but it fell on deaf ears and there’s merely one landmark treaty left between the superpowers: New START, which regulates nuclear weapons, and has to be renewed.

Russia NO LONGER bound by self-restrictions on deployment of intermediate and short-range missiles — Foreign Ministry

‘West’s build-up of destabilizing missile potentials create a direct threat to security of our country’

VIDEO: Russia’s Oreshnik hitting its targets pic.twitter.com/IVeaBN1VPZ

— RT (@RT_com) August 4, 2025

President Trump has recently expressed hope that New START treaty can be renegotiated and extended. At the moment, both sides seem open to this, and talks could start soon.

Amid all the latest nuclear-related rhetoric, more arrows from Medvedev…

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy.
This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) August 4, 2025

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has carried out a “migration policy castration of the EU member states,” German constitutional lawyer Prof. Markus C. Kerber warned following a landmark asylum ruling that critics say strips national governments of the ability to manage their own borders.

The ruling, handed down in Luxembourg on Friday, states that a third country may only be designated as a “safe country of origin” if it offers effective protection to all population groups — and that this designation must be based on transparent, public information accessible to asylum seekers and the courts. Otherwise, fast-track returns are invalid.

The judgment has major implications for national migration policies, particularly in countries like Italy and Austria that have drawn up their own lists of safe third countries. In the specific case reviewed, two Bangladeshi migrants had been transferred to Albania under Italy’s agreement to process asylum claims outside the EU. Their claims were dismissed on the grounds that Bangladesh was safe, but the Italian law did not cite any sources, which the European Court ruled was a violation of EU law.

Prof. Kerber, a Berlin-based constitutional expert, accused the Court of overreach.

“The strengthening of the judiciary by the ECJ for all cases of reviewing asylum applications leads to the castration of EU member states’ migration policy,” he said in an interview with Austrian media outlet, exxpress.

“The public will increasingly perceive the EU as an entity acting against its own citizens.”

He warned that the court was imposing an “overly bureaucratized procedure” that would make meaningful control over migration impossible. “Social systems are bursting,” Kerber said. “And the willingness of the majority of society to accept refugees is declining drastically.”

“What will happen if suddenly 3 million people from an unsafe country of origin appear at our border? Should we then accept them all?” he asked.

Kerber is a constitutional lawyer and professor of public finance and political economy at the Technical University of Berlin. He also serves as a visiting professor at Sciences Po in Paris and has been involved in several high-profile legal cases, including a 2008 challenge to the Lisbon Treaty before Germany’s Constitutional Court. He is the founder of the Berlin-based think tank Europolis, which advocates for market-based reforms within the European Union.

The Court’s ruling is also likely to undermine similar policies elsewhere in Europe. Austria’s safe country list includes nations such as Algeria, Morocco, Ghana, and Serbia, but legal experts warn these could now be challenged if minorities within those countries are found to be at risk. Going forward, all such designations must be based on current, verifiable, and publicly available data.

Andreas Rosenfelder, editor at Welt, called the ruling an act of “do-gooder justice” that sacrifices the rights of EU citizens in the name of universal morality. “This moralized judiciary would rather negotiate the injustices of the world than defend its own population,” he wrote. “If this impression continues to harden, then the citizens will choose a different Europe with a different judiciary.”

Responding to Friday’s ruling, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her outrage at the latest example of a supranational judiciary meddling in the domestic affairs of a member state.

Posting on social media, Meloni wrote, “The decision of the EU Court of Justice regarding the safe countries of origin for illegal migrants is surprising. Once again, the judiciary, this time at the European level, claims spaces that do not belong to it.

“This is a development that should concern everyone, including the political forces that today celebrate the ruling, because it further reduces the already limited margins of autonomy for governments and parliaments in shaping the normative and administrative direction of the migration phenomenon.

“The Court’s decision weakens policies aimed at countering mass illegal immigration and defending national borders. The Italian Government, for the 10 months remaining until the EU migration pact takes effect, will not cease to seek every possible solution, technical or normative, to protect the safety of citizens.”

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the ruling “another slap in the face to our country’s national sovereignty, yet another incentive for limitless landings, yet another confirmation not only of the uselessness but also of the harmfulness of European institutions of this kind, which are paid for by Italian citizens who, however, are constantly humiliated.”

Read more here…

By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

Which is worse, financial malfeasance or a flagrant lie to justify it?  Take your pick. Both are nothing short of astonishing when it comes to Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature Friday on a bill hiking benefits for two of Chicago’s pensions that already had been bled nearly dry.

A City of Chicago actuarial analysis of the bill says the change “would increase the city’s pension liabilities by more than $11 billion across the Police and Fire funds,” the Chicago Tribune reported, while dropping the funding levels of both down to less than 18%.

Those funds were already desperately underfunded, having had only 25% of the money necessary to pay out pension benefits for work already performed. They have the lowest funded ratios for local pension plans in the country.

They are so poorly funded that their combined unfunded liabilities are larger than 43 states — including New York, Michigan, and Florida, according to a recent study. If Chicago does nothing and lets its pension problem continue, then “Chicago becoming the next Detroit is not just a possibility — it’s inevitable.” That’s from an op-ed last week by a former chief financial officer of the city.

So, what does the state, which makes the law for city pensions, do about it? It expanded benefits while providing no funding source. Next year alone, Chicago will have to come up with an extra $60 million on its $1.5 billion pension tab in 2027, and that increase will grow to more than $753 million for 2055. That’s according to the city’s actuarial analysis, but the state didn’t even bother do its own actuarial analysis on the cost.

What possible excuse does the state have for the new law?

According to the bill’s sponsor and Pritzker, the benefit spike was needed to bring the city’s Tier 2 pensions into compliance with federal law that essentially requires benefits at least equal to what Social Security provides. Sen. Robert Martwick (D-Chicago) was the sponsor, and that claim of his was echoed by Pritzker when he signed the bill.

Here is what Pritzker’s spokesman said: “The legislation codifies adjustments the city of Chicago has been implementing over the years to tackle pension system challenges and represents a proactive step to prevent more significant financial or legal issues in the future.”

That’s unquestionably a reference to the alleged Tier 2 problem under federal law.

But it’s a big, fat lie to claim the pension spike was required by federal law. The supposed federal problem is just a subterfuge for another benefit increase.

Not one Illinois Tier 2 state or local pensioner has ever been identified whose benefits are too low under federal law. The problem has turned out to be a theoretical one that might arise in the future, but requires no action today beyond a minor, inexpensive safeguard.

That far less expensive alternative was already blessed by the state for its own pensions, which are much bigger than Chicago’s. In recent legislation the state authorized a $75 million reserve fund to cover any additional benefits that might be required for particular pensioners if their benefits ever fell short of federal requirements. Common sense prevailed, for once, as we wrote about that measure. We’ve long been calling for that measure or something similar, with articles here, here, here, here and here.

The availability of that far cheaper alternative is one reason why every major independent voice outside of Springfield said Pritzker should have vetoed the new law. The Civic Federation, Commercial Club, Better Government Association, Chicago Tribune editorial board all wanted a veto. Even Democratic Comptroller Susanna Mendoza criticized it, and  Chicago Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski said, “This is adding to the city’s burden at literally the worst possible time,” and she called the bill an unfunded mandate foisted on the city by state lawmakers.

That’s exactly what it is – an unfunded mandate foisted on the city.

In fairness, another rationale offered by the bill’s supporters is that it will set level benefits for the two Chicago pensions with other police and fire pensions downstate.

Yes, ideally, consistency would be nice, but that’s a luxury Chicago simply cannot afford. Somebody apparently needs a lecture on what “you have no money” means. For that, I have a suggestion. Pritzker and our lawmakers should be forced to watch this wonderful clip of a financial advisor trying to explain it to Walter Matthau’s character in A New Leaf. Like Pritzker, that character is a trust fund recipient.

Gov. Pritzker and you other lawmakers, please watch it closely. Maybe you’ll eventually get it.

Via Headline USA,

Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed that the Justice Department move forward with a probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, following the recent release of documents about collusion between the Obama administration and the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign.

Bondi has directed a prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury after referrals from the Trump administration’s top intelligence official, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

Fox News first reported the development.

It was not clear which former officials might be the target of any grand jury activity, where the grand jury that might ultimately hear evidence will be located or which prosecutors — whether career employees or political appointees — might be involved in pursuing the investigation.

It was also not clear what precise claims of misconduct Trump administration officials believe could form the basis of criminal charges, which a grand jury would have to sign off on for an indictment to be issued.

Grand Jury convening for the first time on the Russiagate Conspiracy.

Pam Bondi is already moving forward

Let’s see where this goes pic.twitter.com/9Udwj6YP4W

— TrashDiscourse (@TrashDiscourse) August 4, 2025

In one batch of documents released last month, Gabbard disclosed emails showing that senior Obama administration officials were aware in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to manipulate the votes in Trump’s favor.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also released a set of emails last week. 

The emails were part of a classified annex of a report issued in 2023 by John Durham, the special counsel who was appointed during the first Trump administration to hunt for any government misconduct during the Russia investigation.

According to the annex, an FBI informer identified as “TI” provided the bureau in 2016 with two intelligence reports, which described “confidential conversations” between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and two people at the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation: Leonard Bernardo and Jeffrey Goldstein.

The report said that then-President Barack Obama didn’t want Hillary’s scandal to taint his legacy.

Accordingly, “To solve the problem, the President puts pressure on FBI Director James Comey through Attorney General Lynch, however, so far without concrete results.”

The same report also said that Comey favored Republicans, and that the FBI didn’t have any evidence against Clinton—because she deleted her emails.

While the FBI informant’s intelligence wasn’t corroborated at the time, the FBI indeed closed its investigation into Clinton without recommending charges.

Republicans have particularly focused on a July 27, 2016, email in Durham’s newly declassified annex that claimed that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan during the heat of the campaign to link Trump with Russia.

Durham’s own report took pain to note that investigators had not corroborated the communications as authentic and said the best assessment was that the message was “a composites of several emails” the Russians had obtained from hacking.

Authored by Darren Taylor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

JOHANNESBURG—Thousands of Chinese citizens remain in Ghana to mine gold illegally, despite a crackdown by authorities in Africa’s largest producer of the precious metal, according to law enforcement agencies in the capital, Accra.

They say the illegal miners appear to be taking advantage of the record-high gold price, which hit $3,500 in April, with much of the illicit metal being smuggled back to China.

Organized crime groups, sometimes headed by what appear to be Chinese businesspeople, are flooding Ghana with sophisticated machinery to mine gold at scales never seen before in some areas, resulting in widespread environmental damage and fueling unemployment, according to one expert who recently spoke to The Epoch Times.

According to several analysts, Chinese involvement in illegal mining in Ghana and across Africa reveals Beijing’s real motive for its increasingly strong presence on the continent: to exploit Africa’s natural resources.

With Ghana’s police now often arresting Chinese citizens accused of stealing gold, relations between President John Mahama’s administration and Beijing are strained.

Ghanaian officials have said the Chinese regime isn’t doing enough to prevent its nationals from committing crimes in one of West Africa’s strongest economies.

But China’s ambassador in Ghana is accusing locals of “galamsey,” as it’s known in the region, or small-scale illegal gold mining, and of drawing Chinese workers to Africa.

“The Chinese who are getting arrested are migrant workers who have come here to make a living,” Chinese Ambassador Tong Defa told The Epoch Times.

Grace Ansah-Akrofi, director of the Ghana Police Service’s Public Affairs, has a different view.

“While there are cases like those mentioned by the ambassador, it’s a bit far-fetched to say that it’s Ghanaian masterminds who are importing Chinese to commit crimes,” she told The Epoch Times. “We have our own people who are desperate enough to commit crimes.

“Our criminals are not going to call on [the] Chinese to do their work. It doesn’t make sense.”

Enoch Aikins, a researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, traces the roots of Ghana’s galamsey crisis to a period between 2008 and 2013, when he said more than 50,000 Chinese entered the country to mine gold illegally.

“Ever since then, there has been a strong Chinese element in these kinds of crimes in Ghana; they originally came here because they knew the laws were lax, and they also bribed their way out of trouble,” Aikins told The Epoch Times.

“But now that things are tightening up and they find they are being pushed out of an industry that makes them rich, they are angry.”

In 2023, the government-mandated Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining released a report that implicated several government officials in illegal mining.

The Mahama administration says its Office of the Special Prosecutor is investigating information in the report.

Ghana is Africa’s biggest gold producer, and the sixth-largest in the world, reporting an output of 151 metric tons in 2024, according to information from the Ghana Gold Board obtained by The Epoch Times.

About a third of its production comes from artisanal mining, some of it illegal, said Aikins.

Demand for gold, seen as a stable investment in times of economic uncertainty, has recently reached unprecedented highs, and costs almost $3,300 per ounce as of Aug. 1.

On the back of this, Chinese companies are investing billions of dollars in Ghana’s gold sector, said government spokesperson Felix Ofosu.

“We are grateful for the Chinese contribution to our economy, but surely this doesn’t mean we ignore abuses committed by Chinese citizens,” he told The Epoch Times.

In June, the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) released a report detailing how foreign nationals, particularly from China and Burkina Faso, have introduced new technologies and machinery to Ghana that are increasing gold output while contributing to environmental harm.

The GI-TOC investigation said foreigners, including Chinese, are working in concert with traditional chiefs and political elites to “benefit from or enable illicit mining operations.”

“Criminal groups are allegedly engaging in gold smuggling and money laundering through casinos and other businesses,” said the independent policy research institute.

Ofosu said court cases and investigations have revealed that “Chinese criminals are the ones who finance locals and give them technical support” to facilitate illegal mining.

He pointed to the case of En “Aisha” Huang, known in Ghana as the “Galamsey Queen.”

Deported several times between 2018 and 2022, Huang kept returning “because she couldn’t resist the lure” of Ghana’s gold, said Ansah-Akrofi.

In December 2023, Huang was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison and ordered to pay a $4,000 fine for running an illegal gold mining syndicate.

James Boafo, an expert in the environmental effects of illegal mining at Ghana’s University of Cape Coast, told The Epoch Times that “China’s hand is far from hidden” in the “destruction” happening in his country.

“Machinery brought into Ghana from China is causing a lot of damage,” he said. “Ghana’s traditional small-scale miners use very basic tools to extract gold, so they can reach only shallow depths.

“But these days, illegal miners are able to go very deep in the earth, thanks to excavators and bulldozers supplied by Chinese partners.

“In Ghana, now we have many polluted rivers because of this. Our water quality is seriously degraded, and drinking it is a problem.”

He added that criminal operations use rivers to sift gold dust and nuggets from the sediment.

“This activity causes entire river systems, across many thousands of kilometres, to be muddy,” Boafo said. “Then the operators use toxic substances like lead and mercury to take the gold from the water. Whether they are Chinese or Africans, they just don’t care.”

He said illegal mining operations fronted by the Chinese are also threatening Ghana’s cocoa industry.

“They destroy lands and forests and plantations,” Boafo said.

Well-resourced Chinese citizens are outcompeting local artisanal miners, who are consequently falling into unemployment and poverty, he noted.

Professor Gladys Ansah, who has investigated illegal mining for the University of Ghana, said Mahama’s government “should not let up” in its arrests and prosecutions of illegal miners, no matter their nationalities.

“Over the years, we’ve had a lot of committees and programs focused on getting rid of this,” she told The Epoch Times. “But they weren’t so effective, partly because our government didn’t want to offend China; so the Chinese were treated with kid gloves.”

As far back as 2013, Ansah said, a joint task force of military and police arrested 4,500 Chinese miners.

“They weren’t prosecuted; they were deported, and we paid for it because a lot of them came back and many are still here,” she said.

South African foreign policy analyst, Sanusha Naidu, told The Epoch Times that Chinese links to illegal harvesting of metals and minerals are “cementing” a growing perception in the continent that Beijing’s “real motive for being in Africa in such a big way is to exploit natural resources, by whatever means possible.”

Authored by Monica O’Shea via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Labor and the Greens have blocked debate on legislation that would have provided a clear definition of a man and a woman in Australia.

Liberal Senator Alex Antic introduced the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Restoring Biological Definitions) Act 2025 at the end of the recent parliamentary session.

The bill (pdf) specifically repeals the definition of gender identity and omits every occurrence of the word “gender identity.”

In addition, the bill provides a clear definition for men and women and substitutes the word “different sex” with “the opposite sex.”

“Man means a member of the male sex irrespective of age. Woman means a member of the female sex irrespective of age,” the bill states.

Antic said the issue would not go away and described the situation as “absolutely unbelievable.”

“The Bill was designed to protect women’s sport and women’s spaces but Labor and the Greens wouldn’t allow it to pass into the second reading,” he said in a post to X.

Antic said the Bill’s aim was to restore the definitions of a man and a woman, which had been “deleted in 2013” by the Labor government.

“Yes, you heard that right, as presently enacted, the Sex Discrimination Act has no working understanding of what constitutes a man or a woman,” he told supporters on Aug. 1.

“My Bill also proposed to remove the concept of ‘gender identity’ from the Act altogether, which the Labor government added as a category of protected classes.”

Unbelievable scenes today as Labor and the Greens blocked the passage of the debate of my Sex Discrimination Amendment (Restoring Biological Definitions) Bill in the Senate.https://t.co/bw94wd94OU

— Senator Alex Antic (@SenatorAntic) July 31, 2025

Debate Halted

The bill was shot down before it was able to proceed to a second reading.

During parliament, Queensland Liberal Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate Paul Scarr pointed out that the Senate usually does not stop discussion at such an early stage.

“While the Senate has the opportunity to reject a bill at the first reading stage, in practice, the first reading is almost always passed without opposition and is regarded as a purely formal stage. The coalition support these normal procedures as we have with many Greens, Labor or crossbench bills that we strongly opposed,” he said (pdf).

At the first reading stage, the title of the bill is read out and a copy of the bill is read to members of parliament, with no debate. It is only at the second reading where debate takes place.

Minister for Women Katy Gallagher raised concerns debate on the legislation would hurt children who identified as trans.

“We do not agree with the Senate being a place where individual harm can be done to young people across this country. That is what would have happened had we allowed this bill to proceed in the normal course, and we won’t stand for it. Trans children deserve better from this chamber,” she said.

Australian Greens Whip Nick McKim said they would not allow the Senate to discuss the legislation.

“We know exactly what Senators Antic and [Matt] Canavan are up to here. They are introducing a bill that they want to use to provide a platform for transphobic people in our community to punch down on transgender Australians and, in particular, on trans kids,” he said.

“Well, as far as the Australian Greens are concerned, we are never, never going to vote in this place to allow you to create that platform.”

However, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts raised concerns that Labor and the Greens were controlling debate.

“What we’re seeing here is an example of control, and, always, beneath control there is fear. Of what are the Greens and their coalition partner, Labor, afraid?”

The Coalition supported the bill progressing for debate, but this was blocked by the Labor and Greens majority, with 25 in favour of the bill moving forward and 36 against.

Reuters reports that President Donald Trump has announced new restrictions barring federal disaster preparedness funds from going to states or cities that boycott Israeli companies, in a move which is sure to further divide Trump’s base, given it’s widely perceived even among many conservatives as flying in the face of America First.

Critics have long argued that Republicans have been placing the foreign nation Israel’s defense and funding needs ahead of American citizens’ well-being. This certainly constitutes more evidence that this is the case. Monday’s controversial order has resulted in an avalanche of online commentary and angry reaction.

To receive aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), states must now demonstrate and confirm that there’s no policy of severing business ties specifically with companies based in Israel.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s office has said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will enforce anti-discrimination laws. The US administration has long characterized the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as rooted in antisemitism. Critics have shot back that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not at all the same things.

This would impact at least $1.9 billion which FEMA distributes annually related to natural disaster and other relief. According to Responsible Statecraft:

To be eligible for $1.9 billion available in federal grants from FEMA for disaster preparation essentials, including emergency management salaries and rescue gear, U.S. states and cities must agree that they will not cut off “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies.”

In essence, signing a loyalty oath to another country.

Reuters tallies that at least 34 US states currently have laws that prohibit boycotts of Israeli firms. For example, Governor Greg Abbott, where recent Texas anti-BDS legislation gained significant media coverage, has stated that “anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies.” It seems Trump wants to see all 50 states adopt such legislation.

A move such as this – actually linking funds which would go to Americans caught in disasters and emergencies – to a litmus test of loyalty to a foreign power, is certainly unprecedented in American legal and FEMA history.

It’s getting lots of reaction on social media, in circles on the Right and the Left…

Denying American victims of natural disasters aid if they are insufficiently supportive of Israel. Absolute insanity https://t.co/VDGybhM3Py

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) August 4, 2025

Ah, great, more America First https://t.co/1JJNpccnX4

— Curt Mills (@CurtMills) August 4, 2025

This is a good way to create hate and resentment for their favored group. How do they not understand this?

— Rachael (@Rachael_wv) August 4, 2025

“Israel First” is trending on X in the US, with “America Last”. pic.twitter.com/Ci4Uq0KLUg

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) August 4, 2025

The Trump admin decision to withhold disaster relief funds is even more insane than I thought: It extends a ban on disaster funds from our tax dollars to anyone who refuses to deal with “Israeli companies” pic.twitter.com/xEM8YnKl4x

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) August 4, 2025

And this says it all as Trump’s conservative base is continuing to fragment over the support to Israel issue, and as the growing humanitarian disaster in Gaza continues to spiral, resulting in fiercer and more polarized reactions globally…

Authored by Josiah Lippincott via American Greatness,

Earlier this year, I was talking with a prominent libertarian economist on matters of fiscal and monetary policy. I noted that, in my view, the core problem in this unholy nexus was the Federal Reserve’s ongoing dominance over the nation’s money supply and financial industry.

It was critical, I said, that we dissolve the central bank. The inevitable consequence of credit expansion (money printing) is inflation and malinvestment. The very existence of the Federal Reserve robs savers of their purchasing power and occludes true market data, leading to investors pouring their limited resources into schemes that should not exist in a free market. In doing so, these investors did not place their funds into products that buyers actually want.

This inevitably leads to cycles of boom and bust that are ruinous for the common good.

I expected him to agree. After all, this was a libertarian economist; I assumed that ranting against the Fed, fiat money, and government interference would be his thing.

Instead, he simply shrugged. Getting rid of the Fed is impossible, he told me. We therefore had no choice but to make our peace with this system and try to make it work as well as we could.

“Impossible.” That word stood out to me.

Precision in language matters. When we use a word, we should know what it means. We should not say things cavalierly. Without clear language, there can be no clear thought.

If something is in fact impossible, then, of course, we should not spend time debating about it. It is impossible, for instance, to have the sum of the three angles of a triangle add up to any number other than 180 degrees. It is likewise impossible to drop a heavy weight from a height and expect it to float or for a human being to give birth to an oak tree.

These things are truly impossible. By the rules of logic in the world we inhabit, certain things cannot be otherwise. They simply are. These brute facts are not a subject of deliberation. Nothing is to be done about them.

We should be deeply wary, however, in assigning this status of immovable fact to things that, as it turns out, can be other than what they are.

Just because a thing is difficult to accomplish or unlikely does not make it impossible.

Political regimes can change. There are, for instance, many different kinds of governments on the earth, and they differ in crucial ways. Laws are made and unmade. People move. Governments come into being and are overthrown.

There was, for instance, a time in this nation’s history when the Federal Reserve did not exist. There may come a time when it will once again cease to be.

Congress brought the Federal Reserve into being by law. It could be undone by the same process. Human institutions do not possess the certitude and unchanging quality of the basic axioms at the heart of logical thinking. 2 + 2 has always and everywhere equaled 4, but the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. That government has not always existed everywhere and always.

Man has a nature. He always and everywhere has the same features. All men seek good things and avoid bad things. Men may disagree wildly about what those things are, but all of us are engaged in this fundamental pursuit. If a suicidal man thought he would be better off alive than dead, he would not kill himself.

Moreover, we see that human beings always give birth to human beings. We all need to sleep, eat, and defecate. Man is always and everywhere a being unto death. These are unchanging realities for us.

It is incorrect, however, to attribute an unchanging nature to things that are in fact changeable. I notice that on the American right, there is often a profound sense of pessimism and melancholy that stems from this error.

Many an influencer, activist, or commentator I have known will proclaim a given policy or campaign to be “impossible.” They will write it off as unfeasible with a wave of the hand. It cannot be done. Why even try?

This despairing view of reality has poisoned many great projects and prevented countless others from even getting off the ground. There are indeed many policy changes that are not wise to pursue or that require resources that would be better spent elsewhere.

Trade-offs and opportunity costs are simply part of life. They are unchanging features of human action. But to say that a thing comes at a price or is difficult is not the same as saying it is impossible.

Nor are crude references to statistics a substitute for thought. The odds of any given American becoming a billionaire are only 1 in 380,000, but those odds are not definitive statements about an individual’s ability to create a groundbreaking innovation (or utilize government regulations to monopolize a lucrative market).

At the end of the day, pointing to aggregates is not enough to understand the individuals that are part of the whole. Averages can be useful politically and can even help guide personal decisions. But an average isn’t everything. It isn’t the last word.

Precision in thought—knowledge of what we know and acknowledgment of what we don’t—is crucial for political life. Despair is a sin, and pessimism is not necessarily wisdom. You often can, it turns out, just do things. And you should!

As the American right moves forward in the coming years, we need to remind ourselves of this core truth. Real change, both for good and ill, is always possible. It is an error to presume to have knowledge that we really don’t have.

Both mindless optimism and free-falling pessimism are wrong. The latter is, among conservatives, more common than the former. It poses a greater spiritual danger. The temptation to sit on one’s hands, wishing and whining but never doing anything useful, is very powerful on the right. A whole legion of anklebiters, cranks, and dour-faced losers surrounds us.

These people are a spiritual dead end. There is nothing to be gained, in the end, from complaining or fantasizing about an apocalypse in which action will then and only then become possible. We live in this world, right here, right now. We should focus on that!

I don’t know, for instance, if we will succeed in my lifetime in eliminating the Federal Reserve. I am not certain that it should be the highest priority for conservatives in this moment. But I am certain that we cannot live in peace and freedom while the central bank burrows its way into every aspect of the American economy.

The right thing to do is to oppose tyranny wherever it is found. We should be honest, if only to ourselves, about what needs to be done. We should never pretend that slavery is preferable to liberty or defeat to victory.

We should fight. We should make a day of it. We should follow the words of Virgil’s Aeneid:

Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it!

In 2023, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes warned that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls, thanks to America’s reliance on rare earths and other materials which either come from, or are processed in, China. 

According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.“

“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”

“Think about the $500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative,” he said. 

Fast forward two years later – and China’s recent curbs on the export of critical minerals are rippling through the U.S. defense supply chain, slowing production schedules and sending manufacturers on a global search for scarce materials needed in everything from munitions to fighter jets.

(And of course, last month ZeroHedge premium subs were treated to “The Coming Rare Earth Revolution And How To Profit” – full of names that have exploded higher since publication…)

In short, amid a surge in U.S.-China trade tensions earlier this year, Beijing tightened its control over rare earth exports. Those shipments resumed after the Trump administration reached a set of trade concessions in June, however China has kept a firm hold on materials destined for defense use. Accounting for roughly 90 percent of the world’s rare earth output – and dominating the supply of other strategic minerals – China has also barred the sale of germanium, gallium and antimony to the United States since December. The three metals are essential for bullet hardening, night-vision optics and other military applications, the WSJ reports.

Some contractors warn that their reserves are running dangerously low. Bill Lynn, chief executive of Leonardo DRS, said Wednesday that his company’s supply of germanium has fallen to “safety stock” levels. The metal is used in infrared sensors for missiles and other systems. “In order to sustain timely product deliveries, material flow must improve in the second half” of 2025, he told investors. Leonardo DRS, a U.S. subsidiary of Italy’s Leonardo, is exploring alternative suppliers and possible substitutes.

For others, the bottleneck has already meant missed deadlines. One drone-parts maker supplying the U.S. military delayed orders by as much as two months while hunting for non-Chinese sources of magnets, which are produced from rare earth elements. Traders say prices for some materials have multiplied several times over; samarium, used in high-temperature magnets for jet engines, has been offered at 60 times its typical price.

The Pentagon has instructed defense contractors to phase out magnets containing Chinese minerals by 2027. While some firms have stockpiled magnets, most carry only months of supply for other critical materials. Smaller drone manufacturers — often startups with limited resources — are considered especially exposed.

Dak Hardwick, vice president of international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association, said the problem is discussed constantly within the industry. “I can tell you…we talk about this daily and our companies talk about it daily,” he said.

A recent analysis by defense software firm Govini found that more than 80,000 components used in U.S. weapons systems contain minerals now under Chinese export controls. Nearly all such supply chains depend on at least one Chinese source.

Western buyers say Chinese authorities have begun demanding detailed disclosures – including images of products and production lines – before approving shipments. In May, New Hampshire-based ePropelled received such requests from a Chinese magnet supplier, along with a list of questions about its customers and assurances the magnets would not be used for military purposes. “Of course we are not going to provide the Chinese government with that information,” said Chris Thompson, the firm’s vice president of global sales. When the company refused, shipments stopped, extending delivery times to twice their usual length.

The firm turned to suppliers in the United States, Europe, Japan and Taiwan, as well as to emerging producers Vulcan Elements in North Carolina and USA Rare Earth in Oklahoma. Those new sources are not expected to deliver until later this year and will need to develop non-Chinese supply chains of their own.

Washington has begun to respond. The Pentagon has invested in expanding domestic output, including a $14 million grant last year to a Canadian firm producing germanium substrates for defense satellites and a $400 million stake in MP Materials, which operates the largest rare-earth mine in the Americas. On an earnings call, Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet described the MP Materials deal as “groundbreaking” for securing magnets needed in F-35 fighters and cruise missiles.

Nicholas Myers, CEO of Massachusetts-based Phoenix Tailings, said large defense companies are now moving aggressively to secure their own mineral supplies. “They recognize that they’re just not going to get the magnets… unless they get involved,” he said.

Beijing’s hard line is also affecting shipments in transit. Earlier this year, United States Antimony Corporation attempted to route 55 metric tons of Australian-mined antimony to its Mexican smelter via the Chinese port of Ningbo, a process it had used before without incident. In April, Chinese customs officials held the cargo for three months, eventually releasing it only on the condition it be returned to Australia. When it arrived, company CEO Gary Evans said the seals had been broken. “The shipping company, everyone who was involved, they’d never seen this happen before,” he said.