After discussing why crime statistics during the Biden-Harris Politburo interregnum were not trustworthy, the writer continues to the present:
[Federalist] Reducing crime is not complicated. Governments must make crime riskier by increasing arrests and convictions, imposing longer prison sentences, and allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. The news on each of those fronts has been encouraging.
FBI arrests surged in 2025, rising 184 percent over 2024 levels. Total FBI arrests — a broader category that includes many joint operations with state and local agencies — increased by 197 percent.
Voters also replaced several George Soros ...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true. Maybe both.... -backed prosecutors in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and the Socialist paradise of San Francisco ...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... with district attorneys who prosecute criminals more aggressively and seek tougher sentences. Across the country, President Trump’s U.S. attorneys have also pursued criminals far more aggressively than their predecessors. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Biden administration’s U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, that figure has fallen to just 4 percent.
Nor is it a coincidence that the record influx of illegal immigrants colonists during the Biden administration coincided with a sharp increase in violent mostly peaceful crime. It is equally unsurprising that crime has fallen as deportations have increased. Deportation records show that 70 percent of illegal immigrants colonists deported during the Trump administration had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the United States. Even those who avoid arrest understand that any contact with law enforcement could lead to deportation, giving them a strong incentive to stay off the police’s radar and avoid committing additional crimes.
Finally, the number of adults carrying concealed handguns has risen sharply, with the latest survey data showing a 5-percentage-point increase in concealed carry over the past year and a half.
More good news:
Obamacare Fraud Cut in Half This Year
July 13, 2026
[UnleashProsperity] The latest enrollment numbers from HHS are a good new/bad news story. The good news is Obamacare fraud is down sharply from 2025’s record 5.6 million people. The bad news is there are still an estimated 2.6 million improper enrollees in 2026.
A 43-year-old Trump-hating American woman named Jamey Carney decided to move to Ireland to escape the Bad Orange Man’s reign of terror, shack up with her Palestinian asylum seeker boyfriend,
…multi-linguistic Ahmad Alsaqer, 28 — last we heard he’d been arrested in his native Jordan…
and… well, that misadventure ended about as well as a sentence that begins “I thought the pitbull looked cute, so I petted it…” or “But I thought I could fly…” Spoiler Alert: Her Muslim dreamboat got mad at the uppity infidel and bludgeoned her to death. Who could’ve seen that coming except anybody with eyes? It’s kind of amazing how Darwinism results in a self-cleaning gene pool.
No, I would prefer that she had not been murdered by the semi-human, Third World savage she decided was a viable alternative to a nice, normal Western male, but my bandwidth of caring is necessarily limited. One can only genuinely care a finite amount; pretending to care endlessly and without limits is just moral posturing, of which there is far too much. That’s why one must carefully curate what he chooses to care about. Neither you nor I can possibly care about all the wrongs in the world, and we should not take some of that precious caring that would otherwise be devoted to someone who is not the architect of her own miserable fate and squander it on someone who is.
The point here is not the bad judgment of one dumb liberal woman from America. The point is the bad judgment of an enormous number of dumb liberal women from all over the West. These self-righteous crones are a pestilence, a plague upon Western society, a group of doggedly ignorant feminist/chauvinists playing out their personal psychodramas on the world stage whose antics, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to the fall of civilization.
Too extreme? Look around you at what’s going on. These creatures range from the ridiculous blue-haired faildaughters with gender studies degrees and a career in baristaing, to the gray-maned boomer women reeking of patchouli and sexual dissatisfaction at your local No Kings rally, to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who decided she needed to shut down Europe’s greatest economic power’s entire energy industry even as she was importing most of the Third World with utterly predictable rapey consequences. Just look at this lunatic who stands a significant chance of being a Senate nominee for a major political party. The patriarchy built a civilization; the mediocre matriarchy wants to tear it down out of guilt, boredom, and sexual frustration.
If you’re looking for policy that’s not just bad but civilization-shakingly bad, there’s a better-than-even chance there’ll be women-identifying women behind it. Orwell called it in "1984": “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” If it’s a bad idea, chances are there’s a chick behind it.
#6
Modern leftist women are proof that feminism is just about fucking your selfish life up as much as you can and then making everyone else suffer for it once you hit your final fertility wall and the only thing you have to look forward to is loneliness and cats.
#7
I propose that a voting requirement is enrollment in either the state or federal militia. Note well, that does not preclude any gender or race. It should however reduce those who play with no skin in the game.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Mikhail Kolovangin
[REGNUM] Shabir Ahmed has long been known in the UK as one of the facets of the so-called "grooming gangs" in northern English towns, from Rochdale to neighbouring agglomerations.
These exploitative groups have been preying on teenage girls for years, luring them through networks of acquaintances and then detaining them through systematic violence, while local authorities and police chose to ignore the scale of what was happening for fear of accusations of racism and Islamophobia.
DIDN'T SERVE HIS ENTIRE SENTENCE
A Pakistani migrant organised a sex trafficking network targeting teenage girls in the Manchester area (Rochdale and Oldham) in the late 2000s.
A gang of nine men systematically lured vulnerable girls, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, plied them with alcohol, drugged them, and then gang-raped them in apartments above pubs and rental properties.
The victims were girls starting from about 12 years of age, and the total number of victims, according to investigators and the press, reached several dozen.
Ahmed himself, in addition to leading the group, was found guilty of 30 counts of raping an underage girl over many years, effectively turning her into property for sexual use.
In 2012, a court in Liverpool sentenced him to a total of 22 years in prison, but due to the fact that the sentences were imposed concurrently and in accordance with the rules of early release, the criminal actually served only about 14 years and was released in the summer of 2026.
Throughout the trial, Ahmed denied guilt, calling the victims "prostitutes," and accusing the court of racism. The judge emphasized the extreme brutality of the crimes, the cynical treatment of the girls "as nothings," and the lack of any mitigating circumstances.
A SYMBOLIC MATTER
Ahmed's case is not just an isolated legal incident, but a distillation of the systemic crisis of British immigration and legal policy, the long-standing neglect of gangs of rapists, and the failed promise of state "toughness."
Indeed.
The sentencing of Ahmed, known to victims as Daddy, was seen in 2012–13 as evidence that the state had begun to respond to decades of crime.
Amid a national debate about gang violence and political responsibility for years of inaction, Ahmed's case has taken on symbolic significance.
His name was regularly cited in reports and investigations as an example of "institutional failure": police ignored reports, social services did not believe children, and politicians were wary of any decisions touching on ethnically sensitive issues.
In this context, the expectation that one of the scandal's most prominent symbols would be deported after being stripped of his citizenship was logical.
LEGAL TRAP
But it was here that an absurd layer of the British legal system was revealed: having stripped Ahmed of his British citizenship, the authorities discovered that they could not, in fact, deport him.
He remains a Pakistani citizen, but his status as an "old-timer" migrant falls under the protective provisions of the Immigration Act of 1971. This law, written during a different political era, enshrined special rights for those who arrived in the country before 1973 and lived in the country for at least five years before facing deportation.
The practical effect of these regulations today appears to defy common sense: the state recognizes the possibility of depriving a person of citizenship, but at the same time, through its own laws, blocks deportation from the country if that person belongs to the "old" generation of migrants.
Ahmed's victims were officially told that deportation was impossible for legal reasons – cementing the feeling that the rapist remains protected by a system they accuse of covering for him for years.
Not so much feeling as horrific fact, but go on…
Echoes of the 1970s today place the future cabinet in a politically awkward position: either recognize the inviolability of old legal principles, or revise the foundations of the migration regime under pressure from public anger.
In a situation where we are talking about a man who has become a symbol of the state’s failure, maintaining the old logic looks almost like political suicide for any party promising “decisive reforms.”
POLITICAL PRESSURE
Ahmed's story unfolds against a backdrop of changing political figures and their promises.
As early as 2022, one of the most prominent Labour politicians, Andy Burnham, publicly called on the government to do everything possible to deport members of rape gangs.
Against a backdrop of widespread reports of abuse – from Baroness Louise Casey's high-profile inquiries in Rotherham to national parliamentary reports – this stance seemed a natural response to public outrage.
But as Labour strengthened its position and prepared to form a government, they faced the reality that high-profile demands have legal consequences. Coming to power means taking responsibility for a long chain of decisions concerning immigration law and police and prosecutorial practices.
A potential cabinet that Burnham might join or lead finds itself caught between several incompatible objectives.
The first is to maintain commitment to legal principles and international obligations. The second is to satisfy the demand for firmness and restore the trust of victims. The third is to avoid triggering a long-term political and diplomatic crisis with partners and countries of origin of migrants.
The poor darlings — caught between doing what is right and what is expedient.
TRYING TO PLUG THE HOLE
When it became clear that existing legislation was effectively protecting Ahmed from deportation, the UK Home Office responded predictably: it began preparing changes aimed at closing this loophole in the 1971 law.
Interior Minister Shabana Mahmoud, one of the key champions of the new course, announced her intention to create a mechanism to deport a criminal, despite his special immigration status.
However, the domestic legal adjustments automatically brought foreign policy considerations to the forefront. Even if the British Parliament changes the law and removes domestic obstacles, the question remains: is Pakistan ready to accept Ahmed back?
Pakistan already offered to take him back if they also get some political opponents hiding out in England. But PM Sir Keir Starmer’s government was uninterested. Is it likely that the new guy thinks differently or is capable of actually negotiating the thing?
According to reports from Islamabad, the local authorities are far from willing to quietly accept the convicted rapist. Moreover, discussions of deportation are accompanied by counter-demands: Pakistan is hinting at the possibility of tying the admission of criminals to the extradition of political opponents who have found asylum in the UK.
See? Scroll down to the bottom for the link in the Rantburg archives.
In effect, a diplomatic bargaining game is taking shape around a single figure. London insists that the country of origin is obligated to accept its citizens who have committed serious crimes, while Islamabad is attempting to broaden the agenda to include political issues.
For the British side, this scenario appears unacceptable: the opposition in parliament is already demanding harsh pressure on Pakistan, including visa restrictions and a reduction in financial aid, if the republic continues to refuse to take back its citizens.
HARDNESS LIMITS
But even if the diplomatic conflict is temporarily resolved, the problem of victims' trust in the state does not disappear.
Government reports in recent years have openly acknowledged that the government has "shamefully failed" teenage girls,
…for just about two full generations, because the girls were just unprotected members of the native underclass, and so no concern to the nation’s rulers…
and that police and officials have allowed gangs to operate with virtual impunity for years.
The national investigation launched in the wake of high-profile scandals is accompanied by promises to find those who escaped justice and reopen hundreds of cases, but in practice, victims continue to see key figures released and remain in the country.
If Ahmed's deportation attempt fails, the British system will have to seek alternatives, from expanded surveillance to new restrictive measures.
Or someone will just kill him. This is why governments should make sure they enforce fair laws fairly — it protects the criminals from being summarily lynched.
But any such half-measure appears to the victims to be a repetition of the old model: replacing a clear solution with complex control schemes that few are willing to explain to the public. Thus, the story goes beyond a single criminal case and becomes a test of the state's effectiveness.
The question is no longer just whether Britain can deport one specific rapist, but how willing its institutions are to change laws, take diplomatic risks, and openly acknowledge that the old system of privilege and political correctness has sacrificed the safety of tens of thousands of children.
Insightful and wise. Go Regnum!
PROTECTING RIGHTS VERSUS PROTECTING SOCIETY
A separate layer of this story is the clash of two approaches: human rights and public safety.
In previous years, British courts, including the Supreme Court, have already demonstrated a willingness to broadly interpret the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In particular, the right to private and family life, even for those convicted of sexual crimes. The same legal structures that were once intended to protect citizens from arbitrary government decisions are now perceived as a shield for rapists, especially in the wake of high-profile "grooming gang" cases.
The Ahmed case brings these contradictions into sharp focus: if the state changes the law to circumvent old guarantees, where is the line drawn between a legitimate adjustment and a demonstrative political gesture aimed at an outraged voter?
And if we don't change it, then the reality remains, where victims officially receive the message: the person they consider a symbol of evil remains close by, because he is protected by historical legal structures.
This is becoming another front for British politics, with critics speaking of a "great institutional betrayal" in which elites have sacrificed children's safety for years in the name of tolerance and international commitment.
Support for revising the rules is growing, but any radical move risks setting a precedent that could then spread far beyond one category of crime.
Not to be confused with Senate pages. A United States Senate page is a high-school age teen serving the United States Senate in Washington, D.C. Pages are nominated by senators, usually from their home state, and perform a variety of tasks, such as delivering messages and legislative documents on the Senate floor and the various Capitol Hill offices. Pages are provided housing and attend a special page school at the Daniel Webster Senate Page Residence.
No fan of Gallego, but as currently being reported he wasn't married at the time, the staffers didn't work for him and so far, it appears to have been consensual. It doesn't speak well of his character, but lots of politicians, from both parties, lack character.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Ekaterina Lymarenko
[REGNUM] The search for missing persons was established in the Kursk region relatively recently, about a year ago. The unit the Regnum news agency correspondent spoke with has been working here for two years. They are rescuing both our soldiers and fallen civilians and Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters who breached the border here in 2024.
People join the unit for various reasons: some fought and received injuries that prevent them from participating in active combat, some are transferred from their units, and some young fighters join immediately after signing a contract.
"When you find your own, it's for the soul, but when you find VSSU officers, it's just work."
Today, a search party is heading to the location where, according to bomb disposal experts, the body of an elderly woman remains lying in a forest plantation.
The wake-up call is scheduled for three in the morning, and departure is at four. The early departure is simply explained: they need to make it to a new, unexplored settlement where the team will search for civilian bodies. They need to get there quickly so they can sneak in and return. The work time is reduced to just a couple of hours.
We race past the village at speed. The Ulan combat all-terrain vehicle has no windshield, replaced by a film that inflates at speed. Here and there, broken, multicolored fences with holes in them flash by: on some you can see the faded sign "People Live Here," on others a fresh one—"No Corpses."
At the wheel is a commander with the call sign "Krug "—an experienced soldier whose combat history took place not far from here, in the Darino area, and later in Kondratovka. He previously served in the Ukrainian army. But that was before 2013, and when the events leading up to the Maidan began in Ukraine, he left. He then left for the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) to fight for his own people.
The situation in the area where the search teams are currently working has changed rapidly in just the last two or three weeks. The Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region are now experimenting with drones powered by artificial intelligence, and the search team has already had a chance to experience firsthand how the Hornet attack UAV operates.
"Two weeks ago, we were driving along the 'road of life,' almost to the landing, when a soldier standing in a lancer 'in full view' radioed that we were being followed. I looked around: nothing. But it turned out he'd circled us and crashed into us head-on. We just managed to bail out."
The drone passed within half a meter—the Ukrainian Armed Forces aren't attacking the back seats, but the driver's seat. The commander says the Ukrainians know that search and rescue teams are working in these areas. And, of course, they're well aware that the soldiers are recovering everyone, including the bodies of fallen Ukrainian militants. But they still regularly hunt for their groups.
"But they never really spared their drones on us. In early April, four drones were dismantling one of our cars! We saw the 'birds' flying in, looking for us. They couldn't find us, and then, boom, they hit the car."
The squad's work is akin to detective work. Before going anywhere, it's necessary to assess and understand the battlefield situation. Before the search, the commander gives a brief briefing to the soldiers:
"We're working according to our usual pattern: we split into teams of five and move through the comb-like planting. A pile of junk, branches cut down by artillery, abandoned electronic warfare equipment—that's our area of expertise; they might be waiting for us there. And let's not forget the equipment. Remember how long that APC stood there? And for some reason I stopped and peered under its belly—and there it was. My brother was lying there. Waiting."
Both Krug and some of the fighters from the unit in these areas have personal recollections: they entered the Kursk region in 2024 and pushed the Ukrainian Armed Forces back to the border. Many of their comrades remained missing in action. Therefore, one can hear the following dialogue between them about the village where the search is to take place:
— I even remember how they cleared it out; we were the first to enter on motorbikes.
- Well, I saw your motorbikes already burned out, we cleared the mines there.
At the designated spot, a blue polka-dotted cloth is visible, and a red scarf is nearby. This matches the bomb disposal team's description. Only the bones remain of the body; everything else has rotted away. And one can't help but wonder how long she must have spent alone in this forest before the search party came for her.
The soldiers determine that the deceased appears to be an elderly woman, her body bent almost in half, as if she had lain down and curled up. There are also some oddities: the remains are headless. However, this could be explained simply—wild animals carried off the remains; that happens. The men, wearing special gloves, transfer the body to a prepared black bag, marking it, while muttering quietly:
" She must have run here, wanted to hide in the forest, but something overtook her here. Or maybe she had a heart attack. Anything can happen."
— It seems to me that the body could have simply been dumped here.
I distract Krug from examining the scraps of fabric, from which he is trying to figure out whether there was anyone else here.
— What's the difference for you between raising our fighters, civilians, or Ukrainians?
"It's a feeling of satisfaction. When you find your own, it's a joy, but when you find VSAS officers, it's just work. We often find them shot. You can always tell what happened by the chest injuries. They're usually buried near the surface—because our civilians did the burying. It's their testimony that's how we find them: once, seven bodies were found in a single grave. It's certainly a difficult experience when you're looking for just one, and then there are so many."
Krug interrupts his story, calling out to someone on the radio: "Why are you silent? Are you going for the million again?" He explains with an awkward smile: "That's what we mean by 'three hundred.' They're giving out a million there. You probably don't find it funny, excuse me, but we need humor around here. And exactly this kind of humor."
— Is it harder to raise civilians morally?
"Yes, the day before yesterday they raised a 93-year-old grandmother. She was a child during the last war, but didn't survive this one. She and her daughter ran out of the cellar, and then Baba Yaga flew at them. At some point, the daughter ran ahead, and Baba Yaga took her revenge on the grandmother. The daughter is devastated now, of course, crying: 'I abandoned my mother.' But I explained to her yesterday during the identification of the body: what good would it have done if you had stayed? They'd be raising the two of you now."
Since the search for missing persons here is relatively new, the system can't yet be called ideal: what seems logical in planning theory may prove pointless in practice. For example, a group always follows the coordinates from which the missing person last contacted their family. But this point is usually in the rear or on high ground: the soldier simply found a way to reach loved ones and then departed for what turned out to be their last mission.
In addition to their usual methods, the soldiers are also trying new ones, such as using specially trained dogs. A soldier with the call sign "Pechnik" is in charge of the dogs in the group ; his two charges, Dina and Shum, follow him closely. Shum searches for mines, and Dina is currently being trained to detect remains.
Although dogs are man's best friends, they are a source of ironic debate within the troop, whether they are truly useful or not, or whether Pechnik simply loves them. He becomes indignant when his friends are slandered:
— You saw Shum find a mine the day before yesterday, didn’t you?
"I didn't see anything. You found it, and he just sat down next to me," the commander egged him on.
- So it was he who gave me the signal, the head!
You can understand Stovemaker. He and Shum have been fighting together for five years now. As soon as he was ready to join the SVO, they gave him a puppy—they said, teach him to detect mines.
At first, the dog didn't quite understand what was required of him, treating the tasks like a game. He'd detect mines, but he'd bring them back to his owner in his mouth like a toy. It took a lot of effort to hold his mouth shut to prevent an accidental detonation. But they managed to train him out of it.
Shum accomplished his greatest feat in the fall of 2022 during the retreat from Krasny Liman. The unit was surrounded, and the only escape route was through a minefield. There were many wounded, making movement difficult. But the dog managed to lead the group around the mines, despite suffering a shrapnel wound himself.
"We were in the hospital together, in the same room. And the worst part was, the nurses brought him all sorts of treats, but not me! " Pechnik laughs. " He never shared his noise with me; I only got the injections. But we got the award together later."
MOM NATALIA
The soldiers are returning "home" to a nearby village after their search. When they first arrived and were looking for a place to stay, the village head advised them to contact Natalya Petrovna. She's over sixty, a strong, efficient woman. Before the Ukrainian Armed Forces arrived, she had a farm with nearly 90 cows, and she managed everything herself.
Her husband was killed by a Ukrainian drone, and both sons are now at the front, volunteers. They tell her they're serving behind the lines. And she tells them the village is safe. A typical Russian family. Now the soldiers call her "Mama Natalya," and she comes to see them off and make the sign of the cross as the Ulan departs.
"I asked what their missions were, and the commander answered so vaguely: 'Our missions are unpleasant.' I even tensed up. Try to guess what he was talking about. And then I found out they were searching for the dead. I even went and argued with him: 'How can you talk about your job like that? It's unpleasant! Look at you! You're bringing your loved ones home. What could be more important?'" That's how she now recalls meeting the search team.
Natalya Petrovna could have been considered a wealthy villager, but she gave all her houses that weren't damaged by shells to the military. Except for one house, which she built specifically for her son and his family. She didn't let anyone in there.
— And you wanted to save your son’s house, right?
Natalia throws up her hands and makes her eyes wide :
"What?! Absolutely not. The last thing I needed was to think about myself during a war. Come on, now you'll understand why I didn't give him to them."
So we're walking, and along the way she gives me a short tour. Waving her hand up the street, she shows me where her cows graze, to the left she points to a village reached by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and at the turn she says matter-of-factly:
"And here, my husband was killed by a drone. You know how the military hates civilians who stay in their homes until the last minute and don't evacuate. So, those stubborn civilians—Vasya and I. I felt sorry for the cows. Eighty-seven of them, I knew each one by name, and each one came running to me when I called. The drones kept flying through the village, and I was trying to figure out how to get through so I could milk the cow. But at the end of August, we finally decided to leave, like everyone else—for a couple of days. And then—a drone."
Natalya Petrovna suffered a concussion and was only able to return home six months later. She already knew that only three heifers from the herd of cows remained alive, the rest having been mutilated by shrapnel. Her dead cat and dog were waiting for her on the doorstep; they had died at their usual feeding place.
That's when Natalya decided to help the soldiers. She started with something simple—laundry. She hung the boys' washed socks and underwear on the radiator and set an alarm every two hours so she could wake up and turn the clothes over—she needed dry ones by morning. "One of the boys moved me to tears, even though I didn't know him yet. I came across these little black soldier socks with designs on them—boats and cars. I identified their owner—it turned out he was 19 years old."
At first, the sons dissuaded him from helping the military:
"'Don't take any chances, Mom, to hell with those soldiers, the Ukrainians will kill you for this,' my son Sasha told me," Natalya recalls. "It was such a storm in my soul. I said to him, 'How can this be, son? Are those peaceful old ladies helping you? Bringing you food? Really?! So there's nothing to it. I'm doing my job.' Everyone usually talks their sons out of war, but I was immediately proud of mine."
After the loss of her husband, she was prescribed serious sedatives, and then health problems began – hallucinations, insomnia, depression.
"A doctor from Voronezh, a student, only 21, cured me. He started giving me IVs and gradually weaning me off my medications. Honestly, I was surprised he'd taken such a liking to the old woman. And then he said I looked like his mother. He was from an orphanage, but before he went off to the front, he went and found his biological mother, and we talked. And here at war, I look exactly like her. It's such an irony, I was born in an orphanage too; my mother took me in when I was just 9, and I went to work as a milkmaid. And my son almost ended up in an orphanage, too."
Natalya Petrovna's firstborn, Sasha, was born weak and often ill. Her mother-in-law and first husband insisted on giving the child away. Natalya, young, succumbed to persuasion and pressure, and took her son to an orphanage. Two days later, she returned for him. The doctor greeted her and smiled: "I never registered him; I knew you'd come back. People like you always come back." Natalya went straight from the orphanage to the registry office, filed for divorce, and nursed her son back to health: he's now fighting in the war and is in good health.
We finally reach her son's house. A neat, one-story building, from a distance it might be mistaken for wood, but that's just the paint job. The house itself is solid brick, with a funny weathervane on the roof.
The views from here are, of course, stunning: the house sits on a hill, offering views for 30–40 kilometers. Indeed, the house itself is also visible from this vantage point.
"Now do you understand why I didn't let anyone in here? The guys were arguing with me, thinking I was keeping them out out of village greed. But I told them straight out: 'Then bring me some mines, I'll blow it up.' Their eyes widened. But I really did decide to plant mines in the four corners and blow the whole place to hell. So they'd see I didn't mind, but not at the cost of my own life. They'd just moved in then, they hadn't gotten used to it yet."
Natalya Petrovna walks around her property: she points out the bathhouse with a hole in the roof, the gazebo burned by a drone, and the gap in the fence where she barely managed to hide from the shelling.
Then we sit on the terrace, the evening fog spreads across the plain, Natalia lights a cigarette and continues talking:
"Before the war, I wasn't like that at all. I didn't connect with people; my whole life was work. And then, it was like something inside me flipped over. Even back then, when people were driving through our village to Sudzha, I knew there were Ukrainians there! I stretched a rope across the road and put up a sign saying why people weren't allowed there. And I went and stopped people myself, and they were also on their way to their cows! And yet, I still managed to save some."
Natalya, without finishing her cigarette, puts it out on the wall:
"That's enough. Just don't tell the boys I smoked. I promised them I'd quit, but I still haven't."
BRING A FRIEND HOME
That evening, the soldiers discuss plans for future searches. The squad's main objective now is to reach the nearby village of A. It's dangerous there, but for them, it's a matter of honor. A soldier with the call sign "Lesnik" (Forester) has gone missing there, along with his comrade Kran. They had fought together for four years, but then their paths diverged—Lesnik was transferred to search and rescue due to injuries, and Kran became a ground attack pilot.
Kran was a strong warrior and had found himself in difficult situations before. Although he hadn't fought in that peaceful life—he first ran a business, then became a bricklayer. And in 2022, he volunteered to defend his homeland. The forester says, "War called him."
There was an incident where Kran spent 45 days in Vovchansk, the only one in his group to survive and carry a wounded soldier. He later told his fellow soldiers that during a close-quarters firefight, the VSV soldiers offered to let him surrender and promised to keep him alive, shouting from the trench, "We need desperate men like you!"
He was also listed as missing in action then, but Lesnik sensed his friend would return. Then Kran's mother managed to contact the commander and learn how her son had disappeared. Then there was hope that he had survived and would return home.
But this time, Lesnik knows his friend won't return—he's been gone for nine months. And Krana's fellow soldiers said they thought they saw his position being covered.
— Is it difficult to look for someone you knew?
— It's hard to know that he's not at home.
The forester promised his friend's wife that he would definitely find him. Searchers, if they know someone is waiting for them, always search the coordinates provided until the very end. Soldiers recall an incident when they were searching for a commander. His fellow soldiers pointed out the spot where he was last seen alive—he had stayed at the point to cover his unit. But no matter how hard they searched, nothing happened. Then they thought to check a nearby pond, thinking he might have tried to hide there from the shelling. That's where they found him.
Unlike other units, search teams don't have their own special patches: after all, this type of near-military art usually contains either humor or references to military glory, and their work doesn't fit those definitions. But the soldiers themselves found patches that fit the meaning: "Cargo 200—We're Together."
To all questions about the feelings this kind of work evoked in them, the soldiers answered dryly, briefly, and without sentimentality; they had long since become accustomed to death. But as we were saying goodbye, the commander said thoughtfully, "You know, in a sense, we're raising ourselves."
This is the main meaning of their difficult work. They understand that the people they search for today could be anyone of them tomorrow. That's why they search as if they were searching for themselves. So that every missing person can return to where they are needed and find their final resting place.
Commentary by Russian military journalist is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] AI Manipulation and Narrative Control: If we can't verify what a model was trained on, we shouldn't trust its results where accuracy matters.
The Pentagon is improving its deepfake detection. DARPA's semantic forensics program, the Defense Innovation Division's contract to build a prototype deepfake detection system with Hive, and a growing suite of detection tools all point in the same direction. The Department of Defense has decided that combating disinformation is a deepfake detection problem.
But there's a catch. The detection tools funded by the Department of Defense were built for a world where adversaries create fake images, videos, and audio and then try to pass them off as genuine. Such a world exists.
Adversaries are poisoning the AI models that Department of Defense analysts, intelligence platforms, and policymakers rely on to distinguish the real from the fake. Therein lies the disconnect. The Pentagon is building a better mousetrap, while the mice are rewriting the house plans.
Detection tools detect synthetic content—images, videos, or audio generated by artificial intelligence—after they've been created. They do nothing about models that have been surreptitiously trained to favor certain narratives, downplay certain conflicts, or omit facts that a state actor would prefer the world forget. When a military analyst asks an AI assistant to summarize events in the South China Sea or analyze satellite imagery from the Middle East, the response may already have been shaped by an adversary's influence operation. No deepfake detector detects this.
This is why, over time, we will reach a situation where every country in its controlled network segment will engage in protectionism toward its own neural network models and pessimize/block the work of foreign neural network models (primarily from hostile countries), as these are ready-made tools for manipulation, influence, and narrative control.
Just as Wikipedia once played this role of "fact verification." "It's in Wikipedia," various figures would say with or without reason.
Now, however, we'll encounter alternatively gifted citizens who will a priori accept the output of a particular neural network model without critically evaluating it. Excellent clay for propaganda campaigns of influence and the social engineering of modern cognitive warfare.
[IsraelTimes] Times of Israel analysis shows sharp increase, despite Gaza truce, in strikes targeting those who participated in the massacre or held and abused hostages; 300 more have been captured
While driving in the central Israeli city of Rosh Ha’ayin in late June, eight months after being freed from captivity in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip, former hostage Rom Braslavski received a phone call from a military officer.
"We wanted to update you that Abu Yusef, Talal Abd al-Aal, was eliminated," the officer said to Braslavski, referring to a Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... commander who held and abused him during his two years in captivity by the terror group.
"You can’t be serious," Braslavski replied.
"I’m very serious. You have no idea how happy I am, how excited I am, for you," the officer said.
"Wow, I can’t believe it. Wait a second, I have to pull over for something like this," Braslavski said, bursting into tears. "Are you serious? You are 100% sure?"
As with other announcements of strikes in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces declared in an official statement released soon after that it had killed al-Aal, an Islamic Jihad commander who held hostages and commanded bully boyz as they invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, because he had "posed an immediate threat" to troops in the Strip.
The claim that it had struck al-Aal in self-defense rather than Dire Revenge meant that the killing was legitimate under the terms of the ongoing US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... , which limits Israeli operations to responding to violations of the truce, including by thwarting plans by terror operatives to attack troops.
An analysis by The Times of Israel has found that, despite the ceasefire, the IDF has in the past few months stepped up a large-scale retribution campaign with the avowed aim of hunting down and eliminating every single terrorist who took part in the October 7 massacre.
On that day, thousands of Gazooks poured into Israel, invading communities, music festivals, army posts and other locations, and massacring some 1,200 people and abducting 251 hostages in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel has created a list of all the Gazooks who were identified as having invaded Israeli territory on October 7, using a plethora of video and photographic evidence of the attack posted online by bully boyz on and after the attack, and running the footage through facial recognition software. Also on the list are all Hamas leaders involved in orchestrating the massacre, according to Israeli officials.
So far, of the estimated 5,000 bully boyz who participated in the October 7 attack or helped hold hostages, more than 2,700 have been confirmed by the military to have been killed — including 1,200 who were killed during the onslaught and those targeted in the Strip amid the war — The Times of Israel has learned.
Another 300 alleged perpetrators have been captured by Israel and await judgment by special military tribunals, which have yet to be set up. Those convicted of genocide will be eligible for the death penalty THE MUNICH OLYMPICS PRECEDENT
The effort to eliminate perpetrators of October 7 has been led by a unit in the Shin Bet security agency, named after the World War I-era Jewish underground spy organization Nili.
Israeli officials have invoked the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics as a precedent for the retribution campaign against the October 7 terrorists, pointing to the years-long and largely unsuccessful Mosssd ...sees all, knows all, gets 'em all in the end... -led effort to track down and eliminate anyone linked to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the Games.
"Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the [October 7] massacre — he signed his own death warrant," then-Mossad chief David Barnea said in 2024, at the funeral of former Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, who led the spy agency during and after the Munich attack. "The Mossad today, like 50 years ago, must hold to account the murderers who invaded the Gaza border area on October 7 — the planners and those who sent them."
The Nili unit was established immediately after the Hamas-led attack. It is made up of experienced intelligence personnel from the IDF and Shin Bet, both in the standing army and reserves, and their role is to carry out in-depth intelligence investigations regarding the bully boyz who invaded on October 7 and returned to Gaza, including efforts to determine their location, in order to strike them.
An IDF official said after the October 2025 ceasefire began that the Nili unit’s efforts would continue "even as time passes, until the last of [the bully boyz is killed]," and that they were being carried out "in accordance with the legal and operational framework."
The Shin Bet and IDF did not respond to requests to discuss the ongoing operation.
RAMPED UP STRIKES
The Times of Israel analyzed over 200 incidents of strikes in Gaza during the ceasefire, and found that since the war in Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... ended in April, the IDF ramped up its strikes on perpetrators of the October 7 onslaught, bully boyz who held hostages during the war, and other commanders in Hamas and the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad, with a clear spike seen in such strikes in June.
During the first few months of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect in October 2025, most of the IDF’s strikes in Gaza targeted individuals identified by the army as terror operatives or suspects claimed to have crossed the ceasefire line, approached forces and "posed an immediate threat."
Such incidents occurred nearly daily in October and November 2025, then slowed. By mid-2026, incidents of suspects being targeted after crossing the so-called Yellow Line, which divides areas controlled by the IDF and by Hamas, had become rare.
Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Sergeant Maloney wasn't buying it. It was just too pat. The whole thing smelled phony, kind of like a dead mackeral but without the scales... in recent months, strikes on October 7 terrorists, hostage-takers, terror commanders and infrastructure sites in the Hamas-run part of the Strip have been on the rise.
In April, a Times of Israel count found that Israeli strikes killed six October 7 bully boyz or those who held hostages, two terror commanders, and some 55 other operatives who "posed a threat" to troops in various circumstances — some after crossing the Yellow Line.
In May, the number of strikes on October 7 bully boyz and hostage-takers stayed the same at six, but the number of slain terror commanders rose to five, while strikes on other terror operatives dropped to around 35. The IDF also reported striking at least 12 weapons depots in Gaza during May.
A spike occurred in June, with the IDF reporting killing 13 October 7 terrorists, along with 15 terror group commanders and some 30 other operatives who it claimed had posed a threat.
Also in June, the military reported striking a Hamas tunnel system, rocket launchers, three weapon depots and the headquarters of the terror group’s naval police.
So far in July, the IDF has reported killing at least five October 7 terrorists, another eight terror commanders, and 21 more operatives working to restore Hamas infrastructure or advance attacks.
According to the IDF, of the estimated 5,000 bully boyz who entered Israel on October 7, more than 1,200 were killed in southern Israel during the onslaught.
Of the thousands that managed to return to Gaza, over 1,500 have been targeted and killed in Gaza during the past three years of war — largely due to efforts of the Nili unit — including top commanders in Hamas and other terror groups who commanded the massacre and abductions during the onslaught, according to Israeli security officials who spoke with The Times of Israel.
The military estimates that there are potentially over 2,000 more October 7 bully boyz still alive in the Strip.
In late May, after killing the fourth Hamas military wing chief named during the war, Mohammed Odeh, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israel was continuing to honor its pledge to "eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre."
"They are all marked for death wherever they are," he said.
#3
"...Israel was continuing to honor its pledge to "eliminate everyone who led the October 7 massacre. They are all marked for death wherever they are, he said. "
A laudable goal. God bless them.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
07/17/2026 5:55 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Close aide to Mohammed Deif who held hostages eliminated IDF and Shin Bet eliminated a Hamas terrorist who played a central role in holding Israeli hostages, filming release ceremonies and supporting senior Hamas leaders.
This report analyzes the structural evolution, strategic doctrine, and evaluation inventory of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) and its integration of “Red-Air” small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) training methodologies. Established in August 2025 to replace the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO), JIATF 401 operates as the central authority for counter-drone requirements, testing, acquisition, training, and threat analysis across military, federal, and domestic security environments1.
The speed, scale, and complexity of the small drone threat have outpaced traditional defense acquisition models, prompting the military to systematically reorganize its command structures1. In July 2026, JIATF 401 transitioned under the oversight of the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS), a centralized command structure reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary of Defense3. Concurrently, JIATF 401 formalized a new counter-UAS (C-UAS) doctrine via the July 2026 publication, Small Drones, Big Problems, prioritizing layered defense, non-kinetic mitigation, and physical protection over immediate kinetic intercepts6.
To validate emerging C-UAS platforms, JIATF 401 and affiliated commands, such as the Point Defense Battle Lab (PDBL), developed a specialized “Red-Air” adversary emulation program8. This program utilizes commercial and custom-built Group 1 and 2 UAS, notably platforms from Dracoe and DJI, equipped with automated flight software to simulate intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and one-way attack threat profiles11. Against this Red-Air inventory, JIATF 401 evaluates and fields acquisition portfolios. These include Perennial Autonomy’s kinetic interceptors (Bumblebee V2, Merops, Hornet) and AeroVironment’s AI-powered sensor architectures (Titan MS)14. Through operational assessments across sites like Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, and Camp Guernsey, the Department of War is demonstrating an accelerated acquisition cycle, transitioning battlefield technologies directly to domestic force protection elements2.
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.
...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964...
...sees all, knows all, gets 'em all in the end...
