Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Majid Rafizadeh • June 14, 2025 at 5:00 am
These empty threats [to Hamas in January and Iran in March], more than anything, seem to have reinforced Iran's belief that it could stall, maneuver, and harden its position while the U.S. scrambled, desperate for a leverage it appeared to have dropped. The U.S. appeared afraid of escalation. The U.S. seemed to want a deal more than Iran did. Iran's negotiators dragged their feet, demanded more concessions, and eventually made it unmistakably clear that they would not halt uranium enrichment. Khamenei, in a rare address, explicitly stated that uranium enrichment was Iran's "sovereign right" and "not subject to foreign dictates." Instead of walking away, Trump did something that most likely stunned even Iran's most skeptical officials -- he reached out to Russia. He asked Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran's closest global ally, to help mediate a deal. After drawing red lines and watching them crumble, after declaring enrichment a non-negotiable issue, the U.S. turned to Russia -- the same Russia that Iran is arming in the Ukraine conflict -- for help. For Iran, this was not just weakness. It was a full display of incompetence. In Tehran's calculus, this moment confirmed everything it had suspected: that the U.S. was willing to crawl, plead and negotiate on its knees to get Iran to... sign a piece of paper! They saw Trump's pivot to Putin as a validation of their strategy -- stall, resist, and wait for Washington to blink. Meanwhile, Israel had been sounding the alarm for years. Its intelligence services repeatedly uncovered secret Iranian sites, hidden stockpiles and covert operations.... Time had run out.
Pictured: Smoke rises from a location In Tehran, Iran that was targeted in Israel's wave of strikes, on the morning of June 13, 2025. (Photo by SAN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The Islamic Republic of Iran was no longer hiding its ambitions or disguising its defiance. It was openly confronting the United States, discarding every red line and ultimatum Washington drew in the sand. At the center of the regime's defiance lay one uncompromising reality: Iran would not stop enriching uranium. U.S. President Donald J. Trump made it clear: if Iran wanted a deal, enrichment had to stop. Period. Iran repeatedly came back with "no." Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his top nuclear negotiators declared again and again that enrichment was off the table. In fact, they escalated it. Iran's leaders mistook Trump's preference not to use crushing military force for a lack of resolve to stop them.
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by Nils A. Haug • June 13, 2025 at 5:00 am
The ANC's National Democratic Revolution strategy compels dominating the Judiciary; it reads: "judicial independence to be undermined, in part by vesting most appointments to the bench in an ANC-dominated Judicial Service Commission." It was therefore not unexpected that the Constitutional Court might rule in support of the slogan, "Kill the Boer". Sadly, what Ramaphosa actually intends, despite his grand terminology, is that there will be a redistribution of wealth and asset ownership in the form of either expropriation without compensation and/or a mandatory transfer of equity in businesses held by minorities to the black majority. NDR policies allow for this, and in fact the ANC Constitution mandates such actions.... A partial solution might be, as suggested by the commentator Rob Hersov, is that the US and other Western nations should bypass the ANC and instead support the Democratic Alliance (DA) -- the official opposition at one stage (now part of the coalition) and the 2nd largest political party. The DA is a centralist-conservative entity which runs the Western Cape Province – a state thriving in every way. Perhaps when it becomes known how successful the Western Cape under the DA has become, particularly with US and other outside investment, then demand for structural changes elsewhere might arise. In the interim, ominous dark clouds hang over the future of beautiful South Africa and its vibrant and amazing people.
Pictured: US President Donald Trump meets with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
There was a moment with a glimmer of hope for beleaguered South Africa. That moment appeared on May 21, 2025, with a meeting at the White House between US President Donald J. Trump and his South African counterpart, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The purpose of the meeting was to 'reset' the relationship between them after violently racist and anti-Western policies adopted by the largest political party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), which heads a coalition government, were criticised by President Trump.
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by Bassam Tawil • June 12, 2025 at 5:00 am
In all his speeches in Arabic since October 7, 2023, Abbas has very carefully avoided condemning the attack and the murder of a large number of Israelis and foreign nationals. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa, which regularly reports on Abbas's meetings, statements, and diplomatic events, also did not report about the letter, including Abbas's alleged condemnation of the October 7 massacres against Israel. If Abbas actually did condemn October 7 in his letter, he did so only to appease France and encourage it to recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinian public knows absolutely nothing about the letter or Abbas's supposed "condemnation." If France really wanted a condemnation of the October 7 atrocities, they should have asked Abbas to issue a statement in Arabic to his own people, and not send a letter (in French) to French President Emmanuel Macron. Such a statement should have been issued by Abbas's office in Ramallah, not the Élysée Palace in Paris. Macron and his government are.... are apparently trying to show the world that Abbas deserves a Palestinian state because he has purportedly "condemned" the Hamas-led massacres. Unfortunately, however, this is the same Abbas, however, who still pays salaries to families of convicted terrorists who murder Jews, and who consistently glorifies terrorists by calling them heroes and martyrs. France and the European Union are actually planning to reward the Islamist jihadists who slaughtered hundreds of Jews by giving them a terrorist state funded and armed by Iran's mullahs. This conference, to recognize a genocidal terrorist state, is evidently Macron's way of appeasing the Muslim jihadists who are now rioting on the streets of French cities. The same holds true for other European leaders: they are willing to sacrifice Jews to placate their Muslim communities.
France and the European Union are actually planning to reward the Islamist jihadists who slaughtered hundreds of Jews by giving them a terrorist state funded and armed by Iran's mullahs. Pictured: French President Emmanuel Macron meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas during the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 25, 2024. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
France claimed this month that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had condemned the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group. During the attack, Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, wounded thousands. They kidnapped another 251 people to the Gaza Strip, where 52 – dead and alive – remain in captivity. Paris said in a statement that the purported condemnation was included in a letter Abbas sent to France on the eve of a United Nations conference in New York, scheduled for this month, to push for recognizing the establishment of a Palestinian state. The conference is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. In his letter, Abbas also reportedly called on Hamas to immediately release all Israeli hostages it had kidnapped on October 7, 2023. He also reportedly pledged to hold general elections and reform the Palestinian Authority.
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by Con Coughlin • June 11, 2025 at 5:00 am
The findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency report, which are being discussed at this week's IAEA meeting in Vienna this week, should certainly leave the Trump administration in no doubt about the extent of the duplicity that has long characterised Tehran's dealings with the IAEA over its nuclear ambitions. The findings should also persuade Trump to adopt a more robust approach in his dealings with Iran. This is not warmongering; this is peace-mongering – to prevent Iran from creating even greater devastation later. Rather than persisting with his efforts to appease the ayatollahs, the publication of new damning evidence about Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons programme should persuade Trump that he has no serious option other than to confront Tehran over its deceitful nuclear activities, as well as its ballistic missile programme, also able to conventionally blackmail Iran's oil-rich Sunni neighbours, Europe and eventually possibly the US itself.
The findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency report, which are being discussed at this week's IAEA meeting in Vienna this week, should certainly leave the Trump administration in no doubt about the extent of the duplicity that has long characterised Tehran's dealings with the IAEA over its nuclear ambitions. Pictured: IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks at a press conference at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria on June 9, 2025. (Photo by Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)
Amid concerns that US President Donald J. Trump is backtracking on his pledge to confront Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, new evidence pointing to Iran's clandestine attempts to develop nuclear weapons should persuade the Trump administration to make the Iran threat one of its top priorities. The latest evidence that Tehran has spent the past few decades developing nuclear weapons has come in the form of a bombshell report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear activities. The IAEA has previously identified a number of glaring inconsistencies in Iran's official declarations about its nuclear programme, which have resulted in the imposition of Western sanctions.
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by Grégoire Canlorbe • June 10, 2025 at 5:00 am
The networks organizing the EU's migration policy wrap themselves in a humanitarian ambiguity that conceals their financial sources. [A] fractured Christianity, devastated by wars and the hatreds they develop and nurture, has always been an easy prey to jihadist aggressions.... This was particularly the case with the Islamization of the Byzantine Empire.... In the Eurabian context, the hatred and delegitimization of Israel provide a spiritual and theological weapon for the European trends of Islamophilia and anti-Semitism to abandon Judeo-Christianity and rally to Islam. The current war aims to replace Israel with Palestine, an entity that has never had historical existence and a creature forged by Christian anti-Semitism from the 1970s. As for the Muslims, the word and notion of Palestine is absent from the Quran; their war against Israel is based on the jihadi ideology, which requires that Islamic law rule the planet. None of the sacred Arab and Muslim texts mentions a geographical location in the biblical Hebrew territories, nor any historical episode that would justify a connection with land in today's Israel. Europe never condemned the military invasions by five Arab States that seized and colonized Jewish lands, according to both the Balfour and San Remo Declarations. There, their millenary old Jewish population were killed or expelled, their houses pillaged, their synagogues burned. Europe felt no need to provide help. It is true that just three years before, it was busy deporting Jews to the extermination camps spread over its territory. [T]he 1923 Lausanne Treaty.... legitimized a sovereign State for the Jewish people in their historic homeland with secure borders from Gaza to the Jordan River.... Those decisions ratified by the League of Nations are endorsed by its successor, the UN, and cannot be nullified. In Islam, Jews and Christians are cut from the same cloth. What is done to Jews is done to Christians as well, and vice versa.... This is the great lesson given to us by the knowledge of dhimmitude and, for this reason, forbidden. Yet we can see by our own eyes Europe collapsing....
"The networks organizing the EU's migration policy wrap themselves in a humanitarian ambiguity that conceals their financial sources." Pictured: Hundreds of illegal migrants wait to receive registration papers from the Red Cross on the Italian island of Lampedusa, on September 17, 2023. (Photo by Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP via Getty Images)
Bat Ye'or is an Egyptian-born British author and historian, who has focused on the history of religious minorities in the Muslim world and on the geopolitics of the European Union. She is known for introducing the West to the concept of dhimmitude [see below] and the concept of Eurabia. Canlorbe: Could you start by reminding us of the motivations of the networks that orchestrate the EU's migration policy and its anti-Israeli stance? Bat Ye'or: The motivations of the networks in these two areas — the EU's migration policy and anti-Zionism — are different but converge in their cumulative harmful effectiveness. This cumulative effect results from the deliberate policy of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to link their relations with EU countries at every level to a European anti-Israeli policy.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • June 9, 2025 at 5:00 am
Like most senior Hamas leaders, [Khalil] al-Hayya and his family members live outside the Gaza Strip, having fled the Gaza Strip before the October 7 attack on Israel. These Hamas leaders are leading safe, often resplendent lives in Qatar, Lebanon, Algeria, Turkey and other comfortable countries. Hamas, [these Palestinians] say, has decided to sacrifice tens of thousands of Palestinians to please its patrons in Qatar and Iran. "Khalil al-Hayya's statement of sacrificing Gaza isn't a slip of the tongue – it's the mask coming off. When he says Gaza 'offered itself as a sacrifice,' what he means is that the people of Gaza were handed over...to foreign capitals and thrones... Gaza wasn't 'offered'- it was 'traded.' Traded for relevance in Tehran, applause in Doha, and invitations to summits where men in suits congratulate themselves for their loyalty [to Iran and Qatar] while entire neighborhoods [in the Gaza Strip] are flattened. What al-Hayya revealed – with disturbing pride – is that Hamas has never seen Gaza as a society to build or protect, but as a tool to elevate themselves in the eyes of unelected monarchs and ideological overlords.... to secure long-term contracts of power and protection from the patrons they truly serve..... [f]or the Qatari ruling elite who fund the fire from a safe distance, then host the [Hamas] arsonists as statesmen. Hamas offers Gaza as a sacrifice ... because they know that a Gaza in ruins keeps them relevant, funded, and feared." — Hamza Howidy, a Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, June 6, 2025. "[O]ur lives have been stolen. People in Gaza... are furious. They're asking: how dare he (Khalil al-Hayya) speak in our name while he lives safely abroad with his family in Qatar? His words echo something even more horrifying once said by the late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh: 'We need the blood of children and women to awaken the spirit of revolution within us.' What kind of ideology is this? What twisted logic allows men living in comfort to turn the suffering of an entire people into a slogan? I can't describe how infuriated I feel right now. I want to smash my head against the wall." — "Alaa from Gaza," X, June 5, 2025 [Emphasis in the original].
"Khalil al-Hayya's statement of sacrificing Gaza isn't a slip of the tongue – it's the mask coming off. When he says Gaza 'offered itself as a sacrifice,' what he means is that the people of Gaza were handed over... Traded for relevance in Tehran, applause in Doha..." — Hamza Howidy, a Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate. Pictured: Al-Hayya speaks on Al Jazeera, in June 2025. (Image source: X.com/Osint613)
On the eve of the Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice), Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya -- in charge of the negotiations to release the hostages and reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel -- delivered a speech in which he said: "Gaza has offered itself as a sacrifice for the Muslim ummah [nation] and deserves its full support in return." Al-Hayya's statement triggered a wave of angry reactions and condemnations from many Palestinians, especially those from the Gaza Strip who have been facing death and destruction since October 7, 2023, when Hamas and thousands of "ordinary" Palestinians invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals. Another 251 people were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 55 – dead and alive – remain in captivity.
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by Amin Sharifi • June 8, 2025 at 5:00 am
Iran's ruling elite, bluntly, believes that both its survival and its mission depend on acquiring nuclear weapons. They saw what happened to Libya and Ukraine when their leaders gave up their nuclear weapons, and understood that this was not the way to go. The regime's goal is the bomb. Iran's Supreme Leader is not just a political figure, but is considered divine, with a legitimacy given not by man but by Allah. "And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged." — Qur'an 8:60 (Sahih International Translation). This verse is used by the IRGC not just as a call for defense, but as a religious endorsement of nuclear armament. In this view, nuclear weapons are not only permitted, but also necessary. They are both a shield against the regime's many enemies and a divine tool for the end-times struggle they believe is coming. Iran's leadership sees deception not as dishonorable, but as strategic. The Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, or religiously sanctioned deception, allows lying to infidels in the name of survival or victory. The regime's lack of response to Soleimani's killing revealed something essential: the mullahs understand only strength. Iran's nuclear program must be completely and permanently dismantled. Even if ideology were not part of the equation, Iran's corruption, mismanagement and incompetence would still make it unfit to operate any nuclear facility. Senior officials are appointed through favoritism, cronyism or family ties. Industry is collapsing. Accountability is nonexistent. The day we wake up to hear that Iran is about to use its nuclear bomb will be the day the world changes forever.
Iran's nuclear program must be completely and permanently dismantled. Even if ideology were not part of the equation, Iran's corruption, mismanagement and incompetence would still make it unfit to operate any nuclear facility. Senior officials are appointed through favoritism, cronyism or family ties. Industry is collapsing. Accountability is nonexistent. Pictured: The Isfahan uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan, Iran. (Photo by Getty Images)
Iran's ruling elite, bluntly, believes that both its survival and its mission depend on acquiring nuclear weapons. They saw what happened to Libya and Ukraine when their leaders gave up their nuclear weapons, and understood that this was not the way to go. To Iran's rulers, their nuclear program is not just a policy objective to protect the continuation of their regime, but the centerpiece of Iran's ideology and propaganda. Despite having some of the world's richest oil and gas reserves, the regime has accepted crushing sanctions and economic ruin, all under the excuse of pursuing nuclear power. The regime's goal is the bomb.
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by Amir Taheri • June 8, 2025 at 4:00 am
For Obama, giving the final nod [on the JCPOA Iran deal] was even made easier because the "accord" that Chatham House described as historic was a "non-paper agreement" which meant no one needed to sign anything; waving the shadow of the fountain pen was enough. The mullahs knew that the "agreement" drafted by Obama would have no impact on their ambitious plans to extend their theo-ideological empire as far as they could, and as long as they didn't hit something hard on the way. They also knew that Obama couldn't and wouldn't end sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. Tehran has succeeded to reduce the whole issue to one of the degree of enrichment of uranium that Iran would be allowed to retain. As long as Trump doesn't cite real issues, such as Iran's centrifuges, exporting revolution, promoting terrorism, seizing hostages, funding what is left of terrorist groups across the world, sending drones to Russia and cut-price oil to China, the mullahs will play the game around enriching the uranium they don't need.
Will they, won't they? This is the question that those interested in current talks between Tehran and Washington on Iran's nuclear program are darting around in the hope of getting a straight answer. Pictured: A combination of photos showing President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff (L) and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. (Photos by Evelyn Hockstein and Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images)
Will they, won't they? This is the question that those interested in current talks between Tehran and Washington on Iran's nuclear program are darting around in the hope of getting a straight answer. Public statements from both sides offer no clear answer. President Donald Trump seems confident that an accord that reflects his wishes is well on the way to conclusion. He is even musing about a golden age of prosperity that awaits Iranians once the accord is signed. Confident that his new diplomacy, let's call it diplo-business, will deliver what eight US presidents, including Trump in his first term, failed to do. "They [the Iranians] are negotiating intelligently," Trump says. You might say: we've been there, done that and bought the T-shirt! And you won't be wrong.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • June 7, 2025 at 5:00 am
Uh oh. US President Donald J, Trump has reportedly fired a "slew of pro-Israel officials in America First 'course correction,'" and that "Trump is looking for an Iran dove to take over as Middle East chief at National Security Council, while pushing for nuclear deal," according to Middle East Eye. Iran uses it centrifuges to enrich uranium to high levels. Highly enriched uranium is needed only for nuclear weapons. No highly enriched uranium, no nuclear bombs. Even one uranium-enrichment centrifuge in Iran's possession is a nuclear weapon waiting to happen. If the US Congress could please pass a bill as soon as possible preventing the US from allowing centrifuges in Iran, it would be an enormous benefit to US and global security. Meanwhile, America's enemies -- Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela -- are waiting to see if the US actually has any real backbone before deciding if it is safe for them to go on offense again. This is not warmongering — it is the last resort when diplomacy fails and survival is on the line. Israel and the US have every right to defend themselves – and the region – against a regime that openly seeks their extermination. Unfortunately, Trump has repeatedly given Iran reason to bet on that. First, Trump told Hamas in January that they had to deliver all the hostages or "all hell will break out." When Hamas did nothing of the kind, Trump's dramatic response was -- nothing. Even better, Trump seemed to "throw Israel under the bus." How perfect! Then, on March 7, Trump sent Khamenei a letter saying that Iran had two months to dismantle its nuclear program... Hmm. It is now June and Iran has been enriching more uranium than ever. No wonder Iran's regime assumes it is holding a royal straight flush. Iran's regime saw what happened to Libya's Muammar Qaddafi when he gave up his nuclear arsenal. Iran's regime saw what happened when Ukraine, thanks to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 – signed by Ukraine, Russia and the US – gave up its nuclear arsenal. The lesson they surely learned was: No nukes, no power. Iran will not voluntarily give up what it must see as its insurance policy for ruling Iran forever.
Iran uses it centrifuges to enrich uranium to high levels. Highly enriched uranium is needed only for nuclear weapons. No highly enriched uranium, no nuclear bombs. Even one uranium-enrichment centrifuge in Iran's possession is a nuclear weapon waiting to happen. Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on as a 'Qasem Soleimani' missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran, on September 21, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
Uh oh. US President Donald J, Trump has reportedly fired a "slew of pro-Israel officials in America First 'course correction,'" and that "Trump is looking for an Iran dove to take over as Middle East chief at National Security Council, while pushing for nuclear deal," according to Middle East Eye. The threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions, however, is no longer a distant concern — it is a rapidly escalating crisis with the most severe and immediate implications for Israel, the oil-rich Sunni Arab Gulf States, and North and South America. Trump appears to be scurrying to back down from "or there will be "all hell to pay," and is possibly on the verge of letting Iran keep its uranium-enrichment centrifuges. Not an option.
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by Lawrence Kadish • June 6, 2025 at 5:00 am
The success of the stunning Ukrainian attack on Russia's airbases needs to be a wake-up call regarding the threats America faces from enemies of freedom who have equal access to weapons that allow them to be cunning, calculating and deadly effective. Pictured: Ukrainian drones attack Tu-22 supersonic bombers at Belaya Airbase in Russian, on June 1, 2025. (Image source: Security Service of Ukraine via Wikipedia)
When Chinese entities began to buy up farmland near remote but strategic American military installations here in the United States, there were some of us who raised the question, Why? Those who did so were criticized, described as paranoid, Sinophobic, and hostile to Chinese investment in America. We might want to revisit that criticism. Pentagon experts are looking with deep concern at the extraordinary damage done to Russia's strategic bomber force in the wake of Ukraine's recent surprise drone attack. Engaging in what is called asymmetric warfare, Ukraine used flatbed trucks, carrying shipping containers filled with cheap attack drones, driving thousands of miles to get close enough to distant Russian airbases before launching the drones and destroying as much as a third of Russia's strategic bombers. Think David versus Goliath. But in this instance, David just had to sit outside of Goliath's yard to get the kill.
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The War on City-Dwellers
'Climate Change': Grift of the Century, Part III
by Robert Williams • June 5, 2025 at 5:00 am
The ostensible goal of the climate change project is to get to "net zero" carbon emissions by 2050. To do that, global leaders, led by the WEF and the UN, are apparently planning to radically transform the lives of everyone on the planet except their own. Their plan, officially launched as the UN "Agenda 21" in 1992, during the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and now renamed "Agenda 2030," -- still under the pretext of saving the planet -- sets in motion initiatives aimed at controlling every detail of people's lives. "On the surface, these 15-minute neigbourhoods might sound pleasant and convenient. But there is a coercive edge. The council plans to cut car use and traffic congestion by placing strict rules on car journeys. Under the new proposals, if any of Oxford's 150,000 residents drives outside of their designated district more than 100 days a year, he or she could be fined £70," according to the UK website Spiked. Furious residents went out to protest the measures -- to no avail. Popular demand, democratic inclusion and the free market play no role whatsoever. It reminds one of China -- which is no coincidence. The idea embedded within the concept of the 15-minute city is not a new one – it has been practiced in Communist China since 1949. Tracking people's mobility is – and remains – a way for self-appointed "elites" to efficiently control what they seem to regard as the "great unwashed (and incapable of making important decisions) masses." "The means of control [in China] have greatly evolved [into unparalleled surveillance].... No one pays with money anymore: over there, they pay with WeChat or Alipay, through their phone, which is very easily to control.... The Party's goal of controlling people hasn't changed, it's been updated." — Jean-Philippe Béja, Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research and the Center for International Studies and Research at Sciences-Po, forumviesmobiles.org, November 13, 2019. China...is using biometric scanners as checkpoints, meaning that neighborhoods can turn into prisons by only being accessible through facial scans. If the social credit score is too low, you may not be able to enter or leave. China increasingly... dependent on biometric scans.... Updates... the movements of its citizens, so that it knows where they are at all times. Similarly, the "City Brain" knows what they buy – cash is no longer used – when they take public transport and so on. Anonymity and the right to privacy has been completely abolished. [A]dding the magic words "carbon neutrality" keeps assuring many Westerners that they are saving the planet. So they keep on buying cheap China's goods and enriching China's military -- enabling it to replace the United States even faster as the world's leading superpower and at last to fulfill Chinese President Xi Jinping's dream of finally ruling the planet.
China has taken smart "15-minute cities" to the extreme. It is using biometric scanners as checkpoints, meaning that neighborhoods can turn into prisons by only being accessible through facial scans. If your "social credit" score is too low, you may not be able to enter or leave. Pictured: Surveillance cameras in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. (Photo by Getty Images)
Despite President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and UN executives and bureaucrats doubled down this year at the poorly attended WEF gathering in Davos -- could world leaders possibly be starting to catch on? -- and proclaimed that nothing can stop their radical transformation of the world in the name of "climate change." "We are already collaborating at a scale where no one can stop; not one country, not one leader making a decision, because it's just the right thing to do globally," announced Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All. "Anyone who steps back ... will create a vacuum that others will fill", said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • June 4, 2025 at 5:30 am
The leaders of the Iran-backed Hamas terror group do not seem to be in a rush to end the war with Israel: after all, they and their family members are not living in the Gaza Strip... Hamas's political leaders, billionaires funded by Iran's mullahs and the rulers of Qatar, live in several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon. They and their family members lead luxurious lives in these countries and do not have to worry about lack of food or medicine. Hamas leaders are in no rush to accept any deal because, unlike most of the residents of the Gaza Strip, they do not have to stand in line and risk being shot by Hamas terrorists for trying to receive food from a humanitarian organization. Moreover, the Hamas leadership will never accept any ceasefire without prior permission from the Iranian regime. The mullahs in Tehran also appear in no rush to end the war against Israel. They want the war to continue: it distracts attention from Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. For [Hamas's leaders], the No. 1 priority is to make sure that Hamas remains in power the day after the war For Hamas, "the end" (eliminating Israel) justifies "the means" (sacrificing Palestinians as "martyrs" in the jihad against Israel). Hamas staying in power would be great news for the Iranian regime, jihadis, and Islamist terror groups who consider the US the "Great Satan," and are committed to killing Americans, Christians, Jews and all other "infidels."
The leaders of Hamas do not seem to be in a rush to end the war with Israel: after all, they and their family members are not living in the Gaza Strip. Hamas's political leaders, billionaires funded by Iran and Qatar, live luxurious lives in several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon. They and their family members do not have to worry about lack of food or medicine. Pictured: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (then prime minister) poses beside Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and the late Ismail Haniyeh, in Ankara, Turkey on June 18, 2013. (Image source: Turkish Prime Minister Press Office/Yasin Bulbul/AFP via Getty Images)
The leaders of the Iran-backed Hamas terror group do not seem to be in a rush to end the war with Israel: after all, they and their family members are not living in the Gaza Strip, which has been turned into a war zone over the past 20 months. Hamas's political leaders, billionaires funded by Iran's mullahs and the rulers of Qatar, live in several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon. They and their family members lead luxurious lives in these countries and do not have to worry about lack of food or medicine. Most of Hamas's military commanders in the Gaza Strip have been hiding in tunnels since the beginning of the war, triggered by the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel. Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas's military commander, was recently killed in an Israeli airstrike, together with senior officials of the group, while he was hiding in a tunnel beneath a hospital in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
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by Lawrence Kadish • June 3, 2025 at 1:00 pm
Pictured: American astronaut David R Scott stands on the Moon's surface, beside the 'Falcon' Lunar Module, during the Apollo 15 mission on August 2, 1971. (Photo by James B. Irwin/Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The last visitors from the planet Earth departed the Moon in December of 1972. No one has returned to that distant destination, and yet there is now a Moon-mining startup that has signed contracts to excavate and return to Earth thousands of liters of an element called helium-3 that sits just beneath the lunar surface, starting in the year 2029. The company, Interlune, has entered into an agreement to provide this rare and expensive resource to Maybell Quantum, a company whose CEO Corban Tillemann-Dick "wants to use Interlune's helium-3 for his company's special refrigerators that cool quantum devices to near-absolute zero temperatures." Technicians say helium-3 has amazing properties, among them, the ability to supply incredibly efficient cooling to ultra-low temperatures.
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by Drieu Godefridi • June 3, 2025 at 5:00 am
Brussels, the self-proclaimed capital of the European Union, is no longer the beacon of a united Europe, but an advanced symptom of its disintegration. The normalization of radical Islamic and anti-Semitic discourse we are witnessing in Brussels is the result of 15 years of leaders abrogating their responsibility. Brussels, through its inability -- or unwillingness -- to make unpleasant but necessary choices, is setting itself up as the first potential locus of protracted European unrest. The Islamist Team Fouad Ahidar party embodies a new situation: a political Islam that no longer hides its identity. Instead, it advocates that a religious identity be the underpinning of national cohesion. This fragmentation reflects a profound breakdown in the social contract, between the old European society, which confines religion to the private sphere, and the "new Europeans" (Muslims), who want everything to be subject to their religious doctrine. Crime rates are rising everywhere in Brussels, particularly in an area in the spotlight for its frequent shootings: the Bruxelles-Midi Zone (Saint-Gilles, Forest, Anderlecht). Between 2022 and 2023, notes the newspaper L'Echo, robberies and extortion rose by 23%, robberies without weapons by 34%, pickpocketing by 27%, and armed robberies by a staggering 53%. The Brussels-Capital Region is not merely on the brink of bankruptcy; it is already at the bottom of a financial abyss. Jew-hatred, often marketed in unconvincing, transparent disguises as "anti-Zionism," flourishes in many other Islamic-centered and radical left-wing circles.... in Brussels, Jew-hatred enjoys almost total impunity. As of 2023, 74% of Brussels' population is of foreign background, compared to a European average of 10%.... This demographic transformation or "great replacement," far from being accompanied by an effective integration policy, has saturated Brussels -- overcrowded schools, overwhelmed hospitals, sorely inadequate housing -- and exacerbated communal tensions. In 2022, a report revealed that 35% of young people with an immigrant background in Brussels were living in households where nobody has a job -- a breeding ground for delinquency and radicalization. Brussels is not only a city in crisis, it is a city on the brink of implosion.
Pictured: The Brussels Federal Judicial Police display some of the 110 illegal firearms that were seized in a major operation, at a press conference in Brussels, on September 13, 2024. (Photo by Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)
Brussels, the self-proclaimed capital of the European Union, is no longer the beacon of a united Europe, but an advanced symptom of its disintegration. For the past 15 years, the signs of a deep crisis -- political paralysis, an explosion in crime, fiscal bankruptcy, the rise of Islamism and migratory engulfment -- have been piling up, heralding an inevitable tipping point. The normalization of radical Islamic and anti-Semitic discourse we are witnessing in Brussels is the result of 15 years of leaders abrogating their responsibility. Brussels, through its inability -- or unwillingness -- to make unpleasant but necessary choices, is setting itself up as the first potential locus of protracted European unrest. Even Politico recognizes the scale of the problem. The only question is: When will the Belgian state recognize the failure of a society that has given up on governing itself according to a common law? 1. Structural political paralysis
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • June 2, 2025 at 5:00 am
As talks between Washington and Tehran are underway to reach an agreement on Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, even if a deal is reached, unless it features "anywhere, anytime" inspections, to which Iran has never agreed, Iran will secretly continue to develop nuclear weapons and cheat, cheat, cheat. If such a deal is reached, Iran also is not going to stop its financial and military support for its terror proxies in the Middle East, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi militia in Yemen. Iran, in short, is not going to abandon its declared goal of obliterating the "Zionist entity" ("the Little Satan") or the United States ("the Great Satan"). If Trump is serious about preventing war and bloodshed in the Middle East, he must insist that any agreement with Iran's mullahs include no centrifuges or uranium enrichment of any kind, and no support for Tehran's terror proxies. If something could possibly go wrong, unfortunately it will -- leaving Trump with the legacy of delivering yet another laughably fake peace deal and of his presidency being that of another failed Barack Obama. Trump must also demand that Iran's leaders stop calling for the annihilation of Israel. The same is true for the leaders of Qatar, as well Qatar's personal insults against Trump himself. The Iranian regime is determined to continue supporting [terrorist leaders] to help them achieve their goal of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel. "Iran's openly stated goal is to destroy Israel, but the broader game is its perception of the United States as the 'Great Satan.' Iran's strategy involves orchestrating various terrorist groups in the Middle East, with multifaceted objectives. Firstly, it seeks to dominate the Islamic world in the region, asserting its influence over other nations. Simultaneously, it aims to strike at the credibility of the United States, a long-standing adversary in Iranian foreign policy." — Shishir Gupta, executive editor, Hindustan Times, April 27, 2023. The Trump administration would do well to take these issues into consideration before signing any agreement with Iran. Such an agreement, if reached, unfortunately will not mean that the Iranian regime has become America's friend. As long as the mullahs continue to wish for the destruction of Israel and America, and to back Islamist terror groups, they should be treated as dangerous enemies of both Israel and the US.
It is wrong and unrealistic to assume that Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his regime, if and when they sign a nuclear agreement with the Trump administration, would abandon their dream of destroying Israel and America. Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on as a 'Qasem Soleimani' missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran, on September 21, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
As talks between Washington and Tehran are underway to reach an agreement on Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, even if a deal is reached, unless it features "anywhere, anytime" inspections, to which Iran has never agreed, Iran will secretly continue to develop nuclear weapons and cheat, cheat, cheat. If such a deal is reached, Iran also is not going to stop its financial and military support for its terror proxies in the Middle East, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi militia in Yemen. Iran, in short, is not going to abandon its declared goal of obliterating the "Zionist entity" ("the Little Satan") or the United States ("the Great Satan"). US President Donald J. Trump said on May 28 that he believes his administration is "very close to a solution" with Iran on a nuclear agreement. "Right now, I think they want to make a deal," Trump said. "And if we can make a deal, I'd save a lot of lives."
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