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No, The Spanish Invaders Have Not All Just ‘Gone Home’

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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.

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 – 07:00

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

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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

Gunman Targets Tesla Supercharger And In-N-Out In Twin Falls, Killing Two

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Gunman Targets Tesla Supercharger And In-N-Out In Twin Falls, Killing Two

Two people are dead and five more are injured after a gunman opened fire at a Tesla charging station and an In-N-Out Burger in Idaho.

Fox News reports;

Multiple people are dead after a shooting at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho. Police say the suspected gunman is also dead following what authorities described as a “very chaotic” active shooter scene. Authorities are still working to identify the victims and notify their families before releasing the total number of fatalities. Several others were taken to the hospital with injuries. Investigators have not identified the suspect or released a possible motive.

Footage shows a civilian used his Second Amendment right to repel the shooter.

Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said the “threat to the community is over” during a press conference at 5:45 p.m. local time. He said the gunman was also killed. 

*Developing…

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 22:51

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

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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

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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

Collision Next Week: Spent SpaceX Rocket Set To Slam Into Moon

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Collision Next Week: Spent SpaceX Rocket Set To Slam Into Moon

A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage is forecast to slam into the moon near Einstein Crater early Wednesday morning, potentially producing the first impact plume observed from Earth against the lunar surface’s sunlit side.

William Jo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, and five co-authors posted a preprint to arXiv detailing the expected lunar impact of the spent upper stage rocket.

Using a high-resolution physics simulation, the researchers modeled what could happen when roughly 3,900 kilograms of hollow rocket hardware slams into the lunar surface:

On Aug. 5 at 06:34 UTC, a Falcon 9 upper stage (~3,900 kg) will strike the lunar surface at 2.43 km/s, yielding a potentially visible debris plume.

We present a study of the expected impact dynamics and resulting possibly observable debris field. The debris plume should reach roughly 15 to 20 km in altitude for the ejecta curtain and 75 to 100 km for the central ejecta spike, extend 183 km laterally from the impact point near the sunlit limb, and yield a peak dust column density above 10 km altitude of 6.08*10^7 m^-2.

Simulated I/F exceeds dark-sky background brightness by several orders of magnitude for the first few minutes after impact, reaching I/F = 1.27*10^-3 at the earliest resolved time (t = 5 s). Above 10 km, peak I/F reaches 1.33*10^-5, still several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark sky.

Jo and the other researchers hope the unplanned collision next week will provide insight into lunar geology and the risks posed by discarded rockets as the US, China, and private companies plan future moon bases.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 21:35

Disease Caused By Cyclospora Parasite Now In 45 States: CDC

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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

Russia Confirms It Has Attacked Over 80 Vessels In The Black Sea In July Alone

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Russia Confirms It Has Attacked Over 80 Vessels In The Black Sea In July Alone

We’ve been detailing the escalating ‘southern front’ war in the Black and Caspian Seas, as Russia and Ukraine take aim at each other’s maritime and energy and cargo transit and trade.

Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, such as at Odessa, had by and large not been focus of large-scale Russian strikes in the opening years of the war, but it seems this is fast changing.

Also, the cargo going in and out of places like Odessa is increasingly coming under fire, as Ukraine’s navy has been in turn targeting Russian vessels in the region, especially in the Sea of Azov.

On Saturday Russia’s defense ministry issued some new figures which confirm the greatly expanded scope of its maritime war on Ukrainian shipping.

Russian forces have hit more than 80 vessels believed involved in supplying the Ukrainian military in the month of July alone, state TASS writes based on official defense ministry data.

The report goes on to detail: “Among them were two dry cargo ships, a sea ferry transporting military cargo and a screening boat hit in overnight group strikes on July 12, according to the ministry.”

“On the same day, the ministry released footage that showed Geran-4 Seeker drones destroying a seiner converted to launch unmanned boats, a patrol boat, a ferry and a dry cargo ship,” the report adds.

“According to the ministry, Russian forces struck 24 seagoing vessels used by the Ukrainian military for supplies during the week of July 11-17, including 14 dry cargo ships and one tanker,” TASS continnues.

Moscow seeks to sever military supply routes and disrupt arms shipments bound for Ukraine, but this has also obviously resulted in damaged and sunken tankers, auxiliary vessels, and even deaths of civilian bystanders among international shipping crew.

Russia’s military has said that early last week it especially targeted key logistics hubs of Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Port of Mykolaiv (Nikolayev) – with the latter site seeing a docked cargo vessel receiving a direct strike.

Ukraine’s small but high-tech drone boats have gotten more advanced and difficult to defend against…

All of this comes after local authorities in Odessa had confirmed that a foreign-flagged cargo ship, which some reports have identified as the Guinea-Bissau-flagged Golden Leo, capsized and sank near the coast after taking heavy damage from a Russian attack in late July.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 08/01/2026 – 17:30

New Report Ranks California 35th Best State And Least Affordable

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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

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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

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