Unwittingly, that New York Times headline is a wondrous case of the self-solving mystery. You come here to understand the many social and political mysteries of the day. I will attempt to unravel this hairball.
Most obviously, the suspect, now dead, in Wednesday’s Minneapolis school shooting was not a “her.” He was a him, a 23-year-old male, Robert Westman, who had been pretending to be a female for some years since undergoing puberty, with the encouragement of his parents and the cultural leaders of his city, including Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, backed by the expressed principles of the national Democratic Party.
The essence of all that was a gigantic game of pretend, a broad and deliberate dissociation from reality for the purpose of maintaining a political racketeering operation, which is what the Democratic Party had become. Pretend that men can become women. Pretend that Covid vaccinations are safe and effective. Pretend that national borders don’t matter. Pretend that crime is not a social problem. Pretend that riots are mostly peaceful. Pretend that our elections are free and fair. Pretend that “Joe Biden” is president. Pretend that Ukraine is fighting for democracy. And so on. All pretend.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
08/30/2025 00:00 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Israel continues to increase the intensity of its strikes on Yemen: on August 28, the capital Sanaa was subjected to a fire raid, where a meeting of high-ranking Yemeni resistance leaders was allegedly taking place.
Officially, the Israeli operation was a response to the Houthis' bravado and their statements about the launch of serial production of the Palestine-2 ballistic missile with a multiple warhead (under the guise of which, according to experts, is hiding the advanced Iranian Khorramshahr missile).
This created a new level of security threat for Israel, which the IDF was quick to mitigate.
However, in reality, the significance of the operation is much higher.
The strike on Sanaa was de facto the first successful IDF air force operation in Yemen since 2023 and left the Houthis with a difficult choice: either weaken their internal support by “tightening the screws,” or continue to act as before, hoping that the Israelis were “just lucky.”
"A DROP OF LUCK"
The military operation, dubbed “A Drop of Fortune” by Defense Minister Israel Katz, began with a false approach by Israeli aircraft to the southern districts of the Yemeni capital, where there is not a single facility that could be considered a potential military infrastructure for Ansar Allah.
However, eyewitnesses report that after several strikes "on empty lots," the planes abruptly changed course and bombed the Hadda area south of Sana'a. The target of the strike was an "inconspicuous building," which was completely destroyed; clearing the rubble continued for several hours.
The Israeli General Staff did not make a secret of the event and stated that the target of the strike was a "secret meeting of the Houthi leadership." The high-ranking rebels allegedly watched a televised speech by the movement's leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, during the raid and did not expect to become the target of the strike themselves. "Surprise!"
Thus, among the potential targets eliminated are the Minister of Defense of Ansar Allah, Mohammed al-Atifi, and the Chief of the General Staff, Mohammed al-Ghamari. Both high-ranking officers, in one way or another, oversaw the national missile program and were involved in identifying targets for the retaliatory operation against Israel.
In addition, during the airstrike, the Prime Minister of the “Government of Change and Creation” (a collective body created by the Houthis to interact with other countries), Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahawi, was “highly likely” killed. The latter allegedly organized the fatal meeting.
It was also reported that along with the Houthis, several "guests" - Iranian (and, according to some sources, Palestinian) functionaries who had arrived in Sana'a to exchange relevant experience - were also injured in the IDF air strike. However, this remained at the level of rumors, which even representatives of the Israeli General Staff questioned.
Still, how very interesting.
Defense Minister Katz explicitly called the operation “the death of the firstborn,” thus making a reference to the biblical story and hinting at the imminent expansion of strike operations if the Houthis do not lay down their arms.
In the story of the Ten Plagues, the death of the firstborn was the final blow that persuaded Pharaoh to let the Jewish slaves go.
LOSS ANALYSIS
Despite the fact that the leadership of the Yemeni movement denies Israel's claims about the death of high-ranking officials, calling the incident "another series of strikes on civilian targets," there are a number of indirect signs indicating the effectiveness of the Israeli operation.
The first is a rapid change in the tone of local press publications.
Thus, already in the first hour after the Israeli strikes on Sanaa, local publications came out with articles about “swift retribution” for the deaths of resistance activists and especially the “peace minister” (as Houthi journalists sometimes called al-Rahawi for his contribution to the inter-Yemeni settlement).
However, after some time they re-released the same articles with edited headlines and without any mention of the names and regalia of those injured in the attack; the emphasis in the new versions of the texts was placed exclusively on the damage to the civilian population of Yemen from the airstrike.
Secondly, in the Arabic-language segment of the Internet, a couple of hours after the Israeli strike, several obituaries of young soldiers killed during the "aggression against civilians in Sana'a" appeared in the channels of pro-Houthi bloggers. Judging by their insignia, they could have served as adjutants to the dead Houthi commanders.
Finally, the Government of Change and Creation has cancelled all public and work events involving al-Rahawi for the next few weeks, indicating that even if the Houthi prime minister was not killed, he was at least seriously injured.
Good points all…
THE HUNT FOR ABDUL-MALIK
Meanwhile, for the top leadership of Ansar Allah, it is much more important to understand what factors helped the Israelis achieve their results.
So far, the Houthis have only paid attention to the fact that enemy aircraft have entered Yemen for the second time from the land side (and not from the sea, as the Israeli General Staff claims), through the airspace of Saudi Arabia - which, in the understanding of the Ansar Allah leadership, looks like a pretext for resuming shelling of the Saudi border area.
In Riyadh, they are not commenting on the accusation and are generally trying to ignore the beginning destabilization of Yemen.
The Saudis can’t be unhappy about it. Weren’t the Houthis shooting missiles at them a while ago?
The question of how exactly the Israelis were able to get so close to the Houthi leadership also remains open.
Katz and his associates at the General Staff claim that they have located senior Ansar Allah figures without the help of agents “on the ground” – relying solely on artificial intelligence and other advanced intelligence technologies – but this thesis is questionable.
To be fair, the Israelis are really good at advanced intelligence technologies…
Especially considering that Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies have tried to “enter” Yemen several times already, but failed. Locals consider such “false modesty” a sign of ongoing disinformation and an attempt to lull the vigilance of the Ansar Allah leadership.
There are 435,000 Yemenite Jews in Israel (and another 80,000 in America). In theory at least one ought to have a talent for spy craft in his ancestral homeland…
One should expect a serious increase in counterintelligence work by the Houthis, in particular, the search for “Tel Aviv agents” among the local Arab population.
For now, the main suspicions fall on the local intelligentsia, which traditionally maintains close ties with the Saudis and Emiratis, although the Houthi leadership is trying its best to avoid unnecessary repression and destabilization of society.
Eh? Since when do militant religious fanatics have any interest in avoiding repression while enforcing a totalitarian regime? Isn’t repression the entire point of the exercise?
It is tempting to write off Tel Aviv's success as "random luck" and close the matter.
If it can be tempting to be stupid, I suppose.
On the other hand, Ansar Allah understands that Israel’s military action against Yemen is far from the last.
Defeating the enemy in war is a process, I’ve heard.
The experience of other pro-Iranian forces has clearly shown that Tel Aviv will not rest until it reaches its leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. This means that each subsequent raid could be his last. And with this formulation of the issue, the possible discontent of certain layers of society no longer seems like a big problem.
The Russian writer is mourning the harm done to the pets of Russia’s client, Iran. Also, the poor man comes out of a propaganda-driven culture — skipping the uncomfortable bits is innate as well as terribly human.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov and Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] The new opportunities of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP) with its transformation into a “historical inquisition” are greeted with loud applause by the patriotic public.
“I believe that this is a mega-step towards ensuring the national security of the Ukrainian people for centuries to come,” Maksym Latsiba, an expert at the Ukrainian Independent Center for Political Research, enthusiastically writes on a social network
On August 21, 2025, 273 deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted for bill No. 13 273 "On the Fundamentals of the State Policy of National Memory of the Ukrainian People". For the sake of such an important matter, all factions united - deputies of the factions "Servant of the People", "Voice", "European Solidarity", "Batkivshchyna" cast their votes, and Speaker Stefanchuk promptly held the vote.
The former directors of the UINP are literally beaming: we, too, tried to raise the status of this government body, but failed, and then there was such a breakthrough, a “historic day.”
“And although the draft law initially developed in 2023 by the institute’s team did not contain a provision on removing it from the sphere of management of the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine directly under the government and granting it a special status, the people’s deputies decided that in the conditions of war and unprecedented threats from Muscovy, this must be done,” reports the former head of the institute, Anton Drobovich.
The new law (signed by Zelensky on August 29) is much tougher and more radical than the previous ones. So what's the rush and what's the point of all this?
The powers of the UINP now become comprehensive and “cross-cutting”.
At the legislative level, definitions are given to such concepts as “politics of memory”, “places of memory”, “Rashism”, “crimes against the Ukrainian people”, etc. If earlier these words were used as everyday or even invented jargon, now they are being introduced into official circulation.
The same “Rashism” is defined as a “hybrid totalitarian ideology that combines elements of Russian chauvinism, imperialism, communist and Nazi practices.” The current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is to be called a “war for the independence of Ukraine,” the countdown of which will begin on February 19, 2014.
The law of August 21 also introduces the concept of “historical anti-Ukrainian propaganda.”
This means "dissemination of knowingly false information about the history of Ukraine." For example, if a person says that in Soviet times everyone had normal jobs, people were given apartments for free, and life was good, then he can easily be declared an anti-Ukrainian propagandist and subjected to criminal prosecution.
After all, the law directly defines the goal of state policy as the fight against “obviously false information about the history of Ukraine for the purpose of public glorification or justification of imperialism and totalitarianism, the corresponding political regimes, and public denial of crimes against the Ukrainian people.”
And everything can be adapted to this interpretation.
Language, culture, and traditions are called elements of national security. Therefore, all the monuments that remain intact will be brought "in line with the laws on decolonization, decommunization, and the state language."
In practice, this means that if a monument to fallen Red Army soldiers contains inscriptions in Russian, Soviet symbols, or the words “Great Patriotic War,” then all of this must be removed.
The inscriptions must be in Ukrainian only and located “in the center”.
And since this is unrealistic to do, the monuments will simply be dismantled.
This is exactly what Anton Petrovsky, one of the neo-Nazi activists who closely cooperates with the Lviv City Council, says directly. And it is quite easy to guess what will happen to the famous Duke, one of the symbols of Odessa. After all, his monument has a plaque with the inscription:
"To Duke Emmanuel de Richelieu, who governed the Novorossiysk region from 1803 to 1814 and laid the foundation for the prosperity of Odessa. The residents of all classes of this city and the provinces of Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Taurida are grateful for his unforgettable labors."
Sedition is in almost every word.
The law provides for the end-to-end implementation of memory policy in the activities of museums and educational institutions, that is, to regulate it manually.
"The UINP now has the right to interfere in any issue of humanitarian tariffs, imposing the brand of "anti-Ukrainian propaganda". It will decide how much is allowed in scientific dialogue, in public rhetoric, in the principles of education and in matters of preserving monuments. Such power has not yet been in our constitution. Such power once existed in the Holy Inquisition," notes Olga Mikhailova, an expert at the National Institute of Strategic Studies.
In particular, the institute must now publish on its website a list of persons and events containing the symbols of “Russian imperial policy” and a list of “permitted” positions, constantly adjusting the register.
For example, such a person could be declared to be Vladimir Vysotsky, and the event could be the liberation of the Ukrainian SSR on October 26, 1944.
And various Ukrainian Nazi military formations, including the 12th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov"*, are already actively involved in reforming the school course "Defense of Ukraine". In particular, the well-known neo-Nazi, captain of "Azov" Roman Ponomarenko, the author of many books about various Nazi collaborators, the SS "Galicia" division and Banderites, is working on new school programs and textbooks.
According to the current director of the UINP, Alexander Alferov, the church - the OCU and the UGCC - should play an active role in preserving the national memory of Ukraine, especially in educating the youth.
And they are only too happy to try: a striking example here is the priest of the UGCC from the city of Gorodok in the Lviv region, Mykhailo Gredil. He, without embarrassment, wears Nazi symbols, created the modern Ukrainian Hitler Youth - the youth organization "Apostolic Chota".
Under his “sensitive” leadership, teenagers collect money for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, undergo paramilitary training, are engaged in the improvement of the graves of the UPA* and Galician SS men, and collect materials about them for publications.
And at the same time, from a young age they learn to fight against “everything Russian and Soviet” – to identify and destroy Russian-language literature, to identify those who communicate in Russian, listen to Russian music, or dare to be nostalgic for the Soviet Union.
The coordinates of future victims are passed on to the “big brothers” – fighters of Nazi formations and the SBU.
Renaming will also continue.
A mechanism is being created so that this process can be completed without asking the opinion of communities and local authorities - “by the way, Novomoskovsk and Chervonograd communities,” activists happily announce.
Probably, Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovograd regions will disappear from the map. And these same local authorities (including local government bodies) are offered to approve their own national memory programs - voluntarily-compulsorily.
And if a street, say, is named in honor of one of the new “heroes,” this can no longer be changed for 10 years.
Local councils are given six months to eliminate "symbols of Russian and Soviet imperial policy." If they fail, the heads of regional state administrations will step in.
Another innovation is that the awards introduced by the UPR and the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council (UGLC) are recognized as state awards of Ukraine.
What is especially interesting here is that the UGOS was created in July 1944 in the territory of the Starosambir district of the Lviv region, which at that time was under Nazi occupation. Almost all of its members were employees of the occupation regime or collaborated with the Nazis.
There were several reasons that necessitated the creation of the “Holy Inquisition”.
Of course, these are the sympathies of the electorate, primarily in Western Ukraine, in light of possible elections.
Secondly, huge amounts of money are allocated for renaming streets, demolishing monuments, writing new textbooks, etc.
In 2023 alone, 100 thousand hryvnias were spent on dismantling the structures of the complex for those killed in the Great Patriotic War in the village of Zashkiv (Lviv region)! And this is only one small village.
But the most important thing is to record “achievements” in the face of the threat of losing the war.
This idea was best expressed by the famous Ukrainian journalist and grant critic Otar Dovzhenko, who lives (of course) in Lviv :
“It feels like the window of opportunity for de-Russification of Ukraine and the return of the Ukrainian language and culture to their rightful place in the country/state may close in the coming years, if not months.
Since Russia knows very well the correct answer to the question “what’s the difference?” [one of the propaganda memes regarding the language. — Ed.] The demand to stop derussification and equalize the rights of the Russian and Ukrainian languages in public use will inevitably be in any package of peace agreements.”
The ideological authors of the tightening of the memory policy are afraid that the issues of the status of the Orthodox Church, the Russian language, cultural and historical issues will become a subject of bargaining in a difficult situation, which society will consider acceptable. And all the results of its more than ten-year rape by totalitarian ideology will go to waste - the Ukrainizers do not know how and do not want to compete for minds and hearts.
They want absolute power and enforcement of what they believe is right.
"Of course, it is difficult to predict whether this will be a year or five years, but if Ukraine does not collapse under Russian pressure and the war ends with a peace agreement, then this will definitely happen. That is why I now consider derussification to be the most important process in the rear (after supporting the military, of course).
"Everything that can be done in this direction now must be done without delay, without hesitation and unnecessary sentimentality. Everything that we manage to derussify is ours. There is no longer time for "gentle Ukrainization" and caring for God's dandelions, who are uncomfortable and do not want to use the Ukrainian language," Dovzhenko sums up.
Thus, the new law on the emergency powers of the Institute of National Memory is an internal recognition of failure and readiness to capitulate.
But to such a capitulation that the main result of this entire disgusting history of Ukraine after the Maidan - its transformation into a caricature of the Ukrainian people and an inadequate, screaming creature, sewn according to Galician patterns - remains unchanged within the borders that can be preserved as a result of the war.
Which was started precisely for the sake of the victory of crazy ideas that had no chance without blood and death.
[AmericanGreatness] Almost weekly in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, a sensational assault committed by an illegal migrant—often enjoying some sort of state support or with prior arrests for the same crime—surfaces.
Until recently, European politicians and the media sought to either ignore such news or accuse those who clamored for tighter borders, more police protection, and stiffer penalties of being "racists" or "xenophobes."
Until recently, that is.
Mass protests are now common in Britain against the Labour Party’s open borders policies and generous welfare entitlements for immigrants who arrive illegally and without authentic "political refugee" status.
Greek officials, also swamped by illegal immigration, now cite President Trump’s secure border policies as new models for their own.
The majority of European immigrants now come from majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet many arrivals seem angrier at their newfound liberal hosts than at the dictatorships they fled back home.
Europe’s immigration policies will not work in a multiethnic democracy.
Too many immigrants are arriving too quickly, without sufficient diversity, language fluency, skills, or familiarity with the customs and culture of their host nations. They often enter with separatist religious and cultural values antithetical to the very place they seek refuge.
Yet, there is no European plan of civic education to assimilate immigrants and teach them the rules, laws, and culture of their hosts.
It is then no surprise that what follows is ghettoization, resentment, and loud attacks on the very nation in which they seek sanctuary, denouncing it as decadent and godless.
In the past, Europe’s anemic military budgets, reliance on borrowed money, socialism, and a once-strong economy papered over these existential challenges of illegal immigration.
Or, as left-wing former chancellor Angela Merkel once inanely said of massive illegal influxes into Germany and Europe, "Wir schaffen das" ("We can do this").
But, of course, Merkel could not.
She offered zero plans on how to integrate, assimilate, and acculturate millions of Europe’s illegal aliens. Now, some 15 percent of Germany’s population are foreign nationals.
Unfortunately, the statist economies of high-cost Europe are stagnating.
Massive welfare outlays, coupled with a shrinking and aging native population—with a birth rate sinking below 1.4—are finally slowing economic growth.
Current German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put the dilemma bluntly: "The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford."
Yet the more socialism ossifies, the more popular culture still demands free benefits that a shrinking number of taxpayers can no longer provide.
The United States is finally taking the opposite approach of cracking down on illegal immigration, deregulating the economy, and unleashing high technology to fast-track new frontiers of artificial intelligence, robotics, cryptocurrency, and genetic engineering.
Often, Europe’s best and brightest—and frustrated—are migrating to greater opportunities and freedom in the U.S., further hampering European research and development.
Europe foolishly adopted a self-defeating energy policy to achieve net-zero emissions by subsidizing inefficient wind and solar power while ignoring or shutting down far cheaper natural gas, nuclear, and coal-powered electrical generation.
Meanwhile, China, grinning like a Cheshire cat and caring little about its carbon footprint, is eagerly exporting wind and solar systems to the suicidal West.
Yet China itself is busy building about two massive coal-fired plants a month, and the largest and most environmentally disruptive hydroelectric projects in the world.
No wonder average European electricity costs are even steeper than those in failing California. European consumers often cannot afford to turn their heaters and air conditioners on, while businesses cannot compete with industries abroad that enjoy far cheaper power.
Donald Trump has declared that the 80-year postwar order is calcified and that the US will no longer run huge trading deficits with European Union nations. Instead, it will demand symmetrical tariffs, further challenging past European mercantile profitability.
The days of Europe disarming and relying on the United States for defense are also over, given that Vladimir Putin, for the third time in 15 years, invaded a neighboring country.
Yet Ukraine is not Chechnya or Georgia, but instead on the doorstep of Europe.
So in panic, a perennially delinquent NATO is not only promising to spend the required 2 percent of GDP on defense but also increasing arms budgets to 5 percent of GDP, a higher rate even than that of the US.
No one knows how Europeans will afford such massive rearmament.
To do so would require opening up their economies, adopting far more flexible and traditional energy policies, securing their borders, ending illegal immigration, pruning the welfare state, increasing their fertility rates, and dropping the DEI salad bowl while re-embracing the melting pot of integration and acculturation.
We will soon see whether Europeans can adopt such needed reforms, or find the necessary medicine worse than their current crippling continental disease.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
08/30/2025 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
