[Breitbart] On Tuesday’s edition of Fox News’ “Will Cain Country,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Chris Rufo said that “the federal government simply doesn’t have enough resources, doesn’t have enough investigators, enough prosecutors, and enough researchers to get to the bottom” many fraud schemes and the federal government will “have to significantly scale up these efforts if they want to deter fraud in the future.”
While discussing fraud in California, Rufo said, [relevant remarks begin around 38:00] “[T]he problem for the federal government, for JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, is that there’s so much fraud, it’s going to be hard to actually unravel a lot of these schemes, because the federal government simply doesn’t have enough resources, doesn’t have enough investigators, enough prosecutors, and enough researchers to get to the bottom of it.”
He added, “I have been, frankly, disappointed with the pace, with the scale and scope of the federal counteractions against” Somali fraudsters, and said, “Federal prosecutors told us, kind of under shield of anonymity, that they simply didn’t have enough resources to prosecute all of the Somali fraud, they had only started to prosecute or investigate the very tip of the iceberg. And even in the cases where we did see prosecutions, convictions, jail time, in one case, recently, a Somali fraudster who stole millions of dollars from taxpayers was only sentenced to one year in prison. And so, if you are a fraudster, you’re going to think, 98, 99% of the time, I’m probably going to get away with the crime, and that 1% of the time where I might get caught, maybe I’ll serve a year, maybe two years in prison, but you’re still walking away with millions or tens of millions of dollars at the end of the day. And, so, the ugly reality, and this is a criticism, frankly, of the federal government right now, under President Trump, is that they’re going to have to significantly scale up these efforts if they want to deter fraud in the future.”
#3
Triage on the prosecutorial side for maximum effect for the smallest effort, rinse and repeat, while increasing DOGE and related efforts to cut the money flow going to people and projects who ought not be getting any. And see how much President Trump can bully Senate Republicans into downsizing the executive altogether, to whit:
[PJMedia] According to Scientific American, "Some of the steepest cuts would be made to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): the budgets of both would fall more than 50% in 2027 compared to their current levels.”
NIH will see cuts totaling 13%. Two of the only areas that have been spared are research projects centered on quantum information and artificial intelligence. The Trump administration said this is “to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge” in these key places. The White House wants to increase “applied research funding” in those areas at the Department of War (DOW) and the Energy Department, according to Alessandra Zimmermann of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Still, funding for research on basic quantum and AI at NSF will be cut by 37% (quantum) and 32% (AI). In general, the Trump administration seeks to cut the NSF budget by about 55%, from over $8 billion to $4 billion.
[JustTheNews] For years China has exploited U.S. sanctions on oil producers Russia, Venezuela and Iran to fuel its own growth and fill its strategic reserves at a steep discount. Trump may be putting an end to that windfall.
For years, China relied on exploiting U.S. sanctions to import steeply discounted oil from pariah states like Iran and Venezuela to fuel its economy and military buildup. Now, President Donald Trump’s interventions against both Caracas and Tehran have upended this lucrative arrangement.
China is suddenly confronted with a very different strategic calculus ahead of a key meeting with the American president in Beijing tentatively scheduled for next month. “I think it's really China that all of this is centered on a grand strategic calculus,” Brent Sadler of the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security told the Just the News, No Noise TV show, referring to the Iran war and intervention in Venezuela.
“Before [the Venezuela operation at] Christmas last year, China was the beneficiary of a lot of cheap oil in terms of trade that it dictated. Now over 20% of its oil that it imports, it's going to have to pay a fair market price, greatly higher than what it did before,” Sadler said. “[And], oh, by the way, their foe in D.C. is the one that controls it.”
Sadler said that these moves deliver a strong message to China ahead of the likely summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart.
CHINA EXPLOITED U.S. SANCTIONS TO IMPORT CHEAP OIL
Before the military operation against Iran and the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, China had exploited U.S. oil sanctions against both Iran and Venezuela to fill its strategic petroleum reserve at a discount and fuel its economy, which has been heavily dependent on foreign oil for decades.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recently found that by early 2026 China had stockpiled about 1.2 billion barrels–about 109 days’ worth of regular seaborne imports–of sanctioned oil at well-below market rates.
In 2025, China imported a total of 2.6 million barrels per day of sanctioned crude oil by sea: 1.4 million barrels per day from Russia, 852,000 from Iran, and 419,000 from Venezuela, according to a recent report from the House committee.
Before the war in Iran, imports of sanctioned barrels from these countries accounted for roughly 20% of China’s total oil imports. China was able to obtain oil from these countries–all of which were under U.S. sanctions for various reasons ranging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to Iran’s illicit nuclear program–at a steeply discounted price. The committee cites estimates that importing sanctioned oil saved China roughly $12 billion to $15 billion in 2024 alone.
“Western sanctions on Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crude were designed to reduce the revenue available to hostile governments. Instead of fully removing those barrels from the market, however, the measures pushed them toward a narrower set of buyers willing to absorb the legal and financial risks of the trade—foremost among them China,” the Select Committee on the CCP concluded.
“The result is a market in which sanctioned exporters increasingly rely on a limited number of purchasers, while Chinese refiners benefit from access to deeply discounted crude,” the committee added in the report.
CHINA USED THE “SHADOW FLEET” TO FILL A LARGE RESERVE
The congressional investigation found evidence that China’s exploitation of the sanctions regime ramped up in late 2025 and early 2026, aimed at obtaining cheap oil and generating leverage over the oil exporters.
Triggered by the U.S. enforcement actions against “shadow fleet” tankers in order to build pressure on Venezuela late last year, China exploited the subsequent decline in Russian crude oil prices. Russia relies heavily on the global shadow fleet to evade sanctions imposed by the U.S. following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
China also directly sponsors at least one fleet, known as the Protean Fleet, whose 56 supertankers amount to nearly 5% of the global shadow fleet.
“By the time Chinese buyers returned to the market, Russia had no leverage left to resist their terms,” the committee said of the Chinese strategy. Afterward, China ramped up imports from Russia at a steep discount, using the proceeds to fill its massive petroleum reserves.
The committee found the same pattern as Iranian crude oil prices declined after President Trump renewed his signature “maximum pressure” campaign against the regime after he returned to office last year, the report shows.
#1
For years, China relied on exploiting U.S. sanctions to import steeply discounted oil from pariah states like Iran and Venezuela to fuel its economy and military buildup.
So is it safe to say the sanctions helped China far more than they hurt Iran and Venezuela? So much for sanctions. And now, even though oil is more expensive for China, it is also more expensive for us. I'm not arguing against what Trump has done to Iran and Venezuela and, if it hurts China too, that's fine. My fear is that Trump will pay a price for it in the November mid-term elections for Congress.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/08/2026 13:08 Comments ||
Top||
Dunno how much money Tom Steyer is spending on this election but his ads are running relentlessly on television these days. Opponents say he is trying to buy the election and it's hard to argue against that point. I haven't seen any ads at all from any of his opponents. But he must be worried about Swalwell because he's started running attack ads about Swalwell's attendance record in Congress.
C'mon, Tom. Let's get down to the real dirt. It's likely to help Chad Bianco more than it helps you but we all wanna hear it.
Republican Steve Hilton, according to the Emerson College poll, is running second. The top two go on to the general election in November regardless of their party affiliation. That's what they call a "jungle primary". Democrats devised this plan to completely shut out Republicans in the general election but it could backfire on them if Chad Bianco somehow pulls ahead of Swalwell. Republicans are hoping that Hilton might have a real chance to go on and win in November because the Democrats are all a bunch of clowns.
Steyer is currently running at fourth. Of all the candidates, I fear Steyer the most because he is a full on freakin' nut case.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/08/2026 12:38 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Swalwell, Porter, and Steyer are the crabs pulling each other back into the boiling water. Watch the Oppo Research fly as the vote gets nearer. Steyer has more money than the other two clowns but they are all three unlikable assholes
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2026 13:17 Comments ||
Top||
[FoxNews] Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts.
[PJMedia] Before 9/11, how many Americans knew the meaning of the word jihad? Even now, twenty-five years later, how many Americans grasp that acts like the destruction of the Twin Towers, the Orlando Pulse club massacre, and the Boston Marathon bombing are, in fact, not the work of people who’ve hijacked or misunderstand Islam but, rather, of people who understand the dictates of the Koran perfectly and are determined to carry them out. Some of us have spent much of the last quarter-century trying to communicate to serious readers that Islam isn’t just another religion but, on the contrary, an ideology of conquest.
Any number of invaluable books, like Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad and The History of Jihad and Jamie Glazov’s Jihadist Psychopath, have stressed the centrality of jihad to the Islamic faith, have demonstrated the roots of jihad in Islamic scripture, have traced it back to the very founding of Islam, have elucidated its psychology, and have made it clear that jihad can take a variety of forms, with acts of terrorism being only one of them. But never before, so far as I’m aware, has any writer on the subject constructed such an elaborate taxonomy of jihad as has Aynaz Anni Cyrus in her captivating new book The Architecture of Jihad: Inside the Ideology, Law, and Global Strategy Driving Islam’s Multi-Front Expansion.
Cyrus, let it be said at the outset, is an elegant, no-nonsense scribe: short, succinct sentences, brief bullet points, snappy formulations, no shilly-shallying around, and not a trace of academic fustiness. Her constant aim is to convey every piece of vital information as clearly, crisply, and urgently as possible. And one of the first things we need to know is that all forms of jihad “are part of an integrated playbook: normalize, enshrine, educate, entrench.” She begins with the most familiar form – “combat jihad.” Combat is central to Islam; wherever there’s a genuinely Islamic government, violence is one of its key tools. Violence was indispensable in the quick early expansion of Muhammad’s empire far beyond the Arabian peninsula; in the religion’s first centuries, “[c]onquest evolved into a system.” And combat jihad, in the age of 9/11, Atocha, Bataclan, and the Manchester Arena, is alive and well.
The list:
financial jihad, including war spoils and the taxes levied on dhimmis: jizya and kharaj (on dhimmi-owned farmland)
migration jihad or hijrah
deception jihad
political jihad
missionary jihad or dawa
All of the above-mentioned forms of jihad have long histories. Not so “civilization jihad,” which involves the gradual transformation of an infidel society – morally, culturally, politically, and institutionally – “until the population no longer remembers where the original lines were drawn.” Let me explain: older non-Muslims, such as myself, who never saw a hijab in our youth, have since seen them proliferate, and therefore are intensely aware of how dramatically the West has changed; but young Western people around us have never known a world without hijabs, and are therefore far less capable of being worked up about them.
This kind of jihad, writes Cyrus, “thrives today for one reason: the modern West created the perfect environment for it”: once, “societies were fortified, identities were cohesive, and cultural boundaries were rigid”; now, “tolerance, diversity, inclusion, religious neutrality, and personal autonomy” make Islamic subversion easy. Confronted with Islamic cultural phenomena like hijabs, Western institutions “bend first out of politeness, then out of policy, and eventually out of fear of legal or social consequences.” So it is that while Islam used to conquer a society first and restructure it afterwards, today “restructuring comes first,” as exemplified by the introduction of halal-only menus in British hospitals and prisons, the removal of alcohol and pork from grocery stores in certain French and Belgian areas, and the creation of high-fashion hijabs by Nike and H&M (thereby “reframing a Sharia requirement as an empowerment symbol”).
“Civilization jihad” is particularly effective, observes Cyrus,
…because it does not demand surrender all at once. It asks for one accommodation, one exemption, one cultural adjustment at a time. By the time the pattern becomes visible, the norms of the host society have already shifted, and the original culture is treated as outdated, insensitive, or dangerous to social harmony.
Cyrus discusses other forms of current-day jihad, whose names speak largely for themselves. “Propaganda jihad,” which was perfected by the Muslim Brotherhood and which “has become the most aggressive and visible front in the 21st century,” controls perceptions of Islam by turning “lies into leverage, emotion into obedience, and confusion into compliance.” (One of its great accomplishments is the coinage of the word “Islamophobia.”) “Lawfare jihad” exploits Western law to weaken Western defenses. And “betrayal jihad” is unique in that it’s committed not by Muslims but by infidels. It’s “the jihad of useful allies, fearful officials, transactional leaders, guilt-driven activists, confused voters, and governments that reshape their own civilization to appease those who seek its decline. Civilization Jihad softened the ground. Propaganda Jihad shaped the narrative. Migration and Political Jihad built the leverage. Lawfare Jihad enforced the structure. Betrayal Jihad activates when those structures meet a population too intimidated to defend itself.” Cyrus sums up betrayal jihad succinctly: “when a civilization loses confidence, its people will protect the force they fear instead of the culture they inherit.”
#3
@1 The junior idiot from CT. He's making noises like he is going to run on an anti-Trump platform in 2028. And he isn't even the dumbest member of the Senate.
[SHANAKAANSLEMPERERA] How One Reservoir, One Strait, and Five Manufacturers Became the Hidden Operating System of Seven Global Industries
Very long. Grab yourself a beverage and snacks, dear Reader, then settle in your comfiest chair and ponder as you read. The opening paragraphs:
Three thousand metres beneath the floor of the Persian Gulf, in a formation of Triassic dolomite and Permian limestone that predates the existence of mammals, there sits a body of pressurised gas so vast that it contains roughly nineteen percent of the world’s discovered conventional gas reserves. The South Pars/North Dome field does not respect the maritime boundary that Iran and Qatar drew across its surface. Its four reservoir layers, designated K1 through K4 by petroleum geologists, span 9,700 square kilometres of continuous rock, and the hydrocarbons trapped within them migrate freely from zones of high pressure to zones of low pressure, indifferent to the flags planted on the seafloor above. For three decades, this geological indifference was an abstraction discussed in petroleum engineering journals and the occasional diplomatic communiqué. On March 18, 2026, when Israeli F-35s struck the Asaluyeh processing hub on the Iranian shoreline and Iranian ballistic missiles hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City hours later, the abstraction became the most consequential physical fact in the global economy. Both sides had struck the same reservoir. Both sides had detonated the hidden operating system of seven industries that, until that week, appeared to have nothing in common.
The following day, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States would, “with or without the help or consent of Israel,” destroy the South Pars gas field with force Iran had “never seen or witnessed before.” International human rights organisations condemned the statement, with Amnesty International characterising threats against civilian energy infrastructure as potentially unlawful under international humanitarian law. But the geological impossibility of the threat was more revealing than its legal implications. South Pars is a formation 2,750 metres below the seabed. It cannot be “blown up.” What can be destroyed is the surface infrastructure that processes its output, and the destruction of that infrastructure is precisely what has caused the cascading failure that is the subject of this analysis. The rhetoric confirmed what no government had previously stated publicly: the world’s most powerful military views this single geological formation as the pressure point of the global economy. What the rhetoric did not acknowledge is that the escalation has already occurred. The molecules have already stopped flowing. The cascade has already begun.
The markets understood the energy shock within hours. What they have not yet understood, and what this analysis will demonstrate across nine interconnected sections, is that the damage extends far beyond barrels of oil and cargoes of liquefied natural gas. The 2026 Iran war has exposed a concentration of industrial dependency so extreme that a single geological formation, processed through equipment manufactured by five companies, shipped through one 39-kilometre strait, simultaneously powers the production of the chips in your phone, the fertiliser in the fields that feed three billion people, the aluminium in your aircraft, the gas-to-liquids fuel in military jets, the petrochemicals in every plastic object within arm’s reach, and the desalinated water that keeps 100 million Gulf residents alive. No financial model, no supply chain risk assessment, no sovereign wealth fund stress test, and no central bank scenario analysis ever connected these dependencies into a single picture. The market priced each node independently, assigning near-zero probability to simultaneous failure. On February 28, 2026, that probability resolved to one.
This is not a story about oil. It is a story about molecules, about the five companies that can process them at cryogenic temperatures, about the insurance market that closed a strait before any navy could, and about the three forms of risk that the modern financial system is structurally incapable of pricing: duration measured in years of manufacturing queues, correlation hidden inside shared geological formations, and institutional learning that fades as soon as each crisis recedes. The last molecule of helium boiling off in a stranded container somewhere in the Gulf of Oman is not a metaphor. It is a physical fact with a measurable half-life. By the time the institutions responsible for pricing its scarcity finish arguing about whether this is temporary, the molecule will be gone.
Posted by: 3dc ||
04/08/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1792 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
The world's dependence on Middle East natural gas has been exposed. US is exporting lots, prices will go up. US supply is limited. Replacement hardware is years out. Lots of subsidiary problems - heat, manufacturing, food...
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/08/2026 19:12 Comments ||
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Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics
[ColonelCassad] The US has absolutely no need for NATO.
If you want to know, it all started with Greenland. I told them we wanted Greenland. They didn't want to give it to us. And I said, "Bye-bye." It's obvious we don't need them, because they haven't helped with this problem at all. (c) Trump
Meanwhile:
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - All restrictions have been lifted.
Restraint is over.
We will do something to the infrastructure of the US and its partners in such a way that America and its allies will be deprived of access to oil and gas in the region for many years.
US regional partners should also know that until today, based on the principles of good-neighborliness, we have shown significant restraint and taken into account certain considerations when choosing targets for retaliatory actions, but from now on all these restrictions have been lifted.
When you leave, extinguish everyone.Judging by everything, tonight and throughout tomorrow there will be a serious slaughter of Iranian and Gulf energy and refineries.
Tell oil at 100 bye-bye.
More:
🚨عاجـــــــــــــــل: تحذير من الحرس الثوري الإيراني في حال نفذت الولايات المتحدة تهديدها، سيتوسع البنك الإيراني المستهدف إلى ما وراء منطقة غرب آسيا، مع إضافة أنه سيتم إزالة جميع التحفظات:
"سنلحق أضراراً جسيمة بالبنية التحتية الأمريكية وشركائها لدرجة أن أمريكا وحلفاءها… pic.twitter.com/F0OH7It7Vd
— أحداث إيران بالعربية 🇮🇷 (@ahdathiiran) April 7, 2026
Translated Text:
🚨BREAKING: Warning from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
If the United States carries out its threat, the targeted Iranian bank will expand beyond the West Asia region, adding that all reservations will be removed:
"We will inflict severe damage on the American infrastructure and its partners to the extent that America and its allies will be deprived of oil and gas in the region for years!"
They informed America's partners in the region that up until today we have exercised restraint and acted as good neighbors, and for this reason we have chosen our targets carefully.
But now all these reservations have been canceled!
Posted by: badanov ||
04/08/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1761 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#4
I am not very sympathetic toward our NATO 'allies' who have navies that in theory can be deployed to the Persian Gulf, but have politicians who lack the spine to do something.
What about some of the rest of our allies like Poland, the Czech Republic, Japan, S. Korea and Australia, etc who for one reason or another lack the ability to help?
While Japan and S. Korea have capable navies, what they don't have is the logistical support ships to deploy some 6800 nautical miles away.
While they could probably use our logistical ships, that would just be a drain on our logistical support for no real gain.
The US is the only country that can deploy a significant force half way around the world and supply it.
#6
@6 They are and their equipment may look impressive, but how good are their people?
How good are they at damage control?
Are junior enlisted and junior officers encouraged to think for themselves and take action?
How reliable is their equipment in a real operational environment?
On 22 March 2026, the Malian government released more than 100 alleged jihadist prisoners in exchange for safe passage for fuel convoys.[1] The fuel crisis had brought the country to a standstill last year due to repeated attacks on fuel… pic.twitter.com/4khWaBdxNC
On 22 March 2026, the Malian government released more than 100 alleged jihadist prisoners in exchange for safe passage for fuel convoys.[1] The fuel crisis had brought the country to a standstill last year due to repeated attacks on fuel convoys en route to Mali by the Al-Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). The fuel blockade had resulted in a sudden surge in food prices and the closure of multiple fuel stations in the capital, Bamako.
By December 2025, fuel prices had surged above US$ 6 per litre in areas such as Ségou and Mopti, marking an increase of approximately 22 per cent since April 2025.[2] As a landlocked country, the growing pressures imposed by the fuel blockade were intended to stoke further tensions in a society rife with an incomplete transition to military rule, persistent ethnic violence, a worsening humanitarian crisis, and a fragmented counter-terror campaign.
Other parts of the African continent, including Nigeria and areas surrounding the Lake Chad region, have confronted sustained terror campaigns launched by violent extremist groups like Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS), or Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Islamic State in Central Africa Province (ISCAP), among others, despite sustained state pressure and military campaigns.
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.
