Saturday, July 25, 2026

The Diversity Report #34

 A selection of articles showcasing the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion: 

    Nationwide, at least 1.5 million white-collar jobs are held by non-immigrant foreign contract workers, most of whom arrived via the H-1B program. The universities’ foreign scientists get their work permits via the controversial H-1B, J-1, and Optional Practical Training programs.

    The science sweatshops financially exclude roughly 50 percent of young American technology and science graduates. The Americans, unlike most foreign students from poor countries, need to get well-paid 9-to-5 jobs to pay off their college debt, live a normal life, get married, and have kids.

    One side result is large-scale discrimination against non-white Americans in favor of Asian migrants.

    Amid this replacement migration, foreigners on visas now comprise more than 40 percent of the PhD students in the hard sciences, and roughly 25 percent of students in “applied life sciences,” the Kratsios report says. This critical population includes many students from China and India who bring their own national loyalties and home-country economic ties with them. 

    An illegal alien released into the United States by the Biden administration is now accused of raping a 6-year-old girl at a daycare in Sacramento, California, a sanctuary jurisdiction.

    Last year, illegal alien Gokhan Bagci of Turkey was arrested by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer against Bagci that same day.

    According to police, in July 2025, Bagci was working at the Mather Childcare Center when he allegedly lured a 6-year-old girl into a closet pretending to play hide-and-seek with her. Once in the closet, police allege that Bagci sexually assaulted her.

    Following the sexual assault, police allege Bagci took the girl into a bathroom where he raped her. Police have said there may be more child victims. 

Javier Cereque-Perez, an illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE and FBI agents before being turned over to the Fishers Police Department to face two counts of attempted rape, one count of sexual misconduct with a minor, and one count of sexual battery. 

    Vasilios Papapitsios noticed a scaly, itchy rash on their buttocks after a shower on March 13, which raised alarm bells for the long-time STI awareness advocate. Papapitsios, a South Carolina resident who uses they/he pronouns, usually stays up to date on the latest on sexual health news. He had been reading about an emerging sexually transmitted illness (STI) just a few weeks prior: a fungal infection, with the largest known cluster of cases reported in Minneapolis in July 2025, colloquially called TMVII.

    "I just showed up [at my local health clinic] and said, 'I think I have a fungal infection that's a new STI,'" Papapitsios tells Them. "They didn't even know what I was talking about. My doctor had to look it up."

[snip]

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), TMVII is a fungal infection that can spread through sexual contact, but also by sharing towels and linens or any skin-to-skin touch. Patients and experts alike are concerned about the lack of response to TMVII, given that most of its cases have presented in men who have sex with men. The U.S. government has a track record of mishandling, ignoring, and actively cutting research funding of infectious diseases that disproportionately impact queer people. Coupled with the fact that it can take weeks to run a test for TMVII, some experts are concerned that the fungal infection has silently been spreading to epidemic proportions without intervention. 

Khalid Satary, 54, was cuffed in the Middle East on Monday after more than three years on the lam for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to defraud Medicare of over $547 million, the US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday. 

    Officials say Deepak Kumar, 31, illegally picked up the cargo in Pennsylvania on June 25, then drove off with the toxic compound.

    Tungsten oxide powder is used in armor-piercing bullets, ceramics, lasers, optical products, and high-tech windows, according to the New York Post.

    After the theft was reported to police, investigators used a Flock camera system to track Kumar’s semi and the vehicle was located in Indiana traveling on Interstate 70 near Greenfield.

Charles Eric Medina, 31, was arrested on manslaughter charges for fatally striking Rapp, a 26-year-old up-and-coming featherweight fighter, with his car while she was cycling with her boyfriend, Will Pollalis, in Brazos County, Texas, on Saturday.

    Fourth of July descended into mayhem across parts of Southern California as unruly crowds overwhelmed packed-out fireworks displays, looted stores, ignited fires and saw cops charge on horseback.

    The worst unrest erupted in Newport Beach, where Independence Day revelers poured into Orange County, choking traffic and triggering a police response as disorder spread near the pier.

    Authorities ultimately shut down businesses from the Newport Pier to Pacific Coast Highway as officers moved in to restore order.

    Hasan Piker, the leftist influencer, has millions of followers across Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms. And so it is not without interest that he has described Mao as “one of the great leaders of this world” and that, when challenged about this, he conceded that “there was a lot of f***ing excesses, let’s be real, but. . . .”

    Ah yes, there is always a “but.”

    The “but” in this case was that “the People’s Republic of China would not exist without Mao Zedong.”

    True enough. Then again there were tens of millions of Chinese who would have existed for quite a bit longer were it not for Mao or his republic. And many of those did not meet their deaths because of yet another catastrophic communist “reform,” but because they were, in one way or another, murdered.

 Reminder: Hasan Doğan Piker is the son of Turkish immigrants. 

    Questions are being raised over how the daughter of a congresswoman landed a $411,000-a-year council job over three other candidates who reportedly scored better than her in interviews. 

    Erica Lee Carter, 46, the daughter of late Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, was appointed as the Harris County Administrator earlier this year in a hotly contested hiring process with over 400 applicants. 

    The role is one of the best paid government jobs in Harris County, which covers over five million people including the city of Houston, with applications coming from CEOs and politicians across the country. 
 

    Civil rights groups in New York have released a report demanding reparations for black residents, arguing that decades of deliberate racial inequality must be amended. 

    The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) released a report last week titled, The Other New York: The Legacy of Slavery and the Case for Reparations Now. 

    Federal Medicaid czar Dr. Mehmet Oz said New York’s overblown $110 billion spending on medical bills is sickening — as he claimed Chinese crime syndicates are ripping off the Empire State.

    The TV doctor-turned-Trump administration official, blasted New York’s Medicaid program as rife with fraud in an interview Sunday as he outlined an alleged scheme that included millions of dollars in fraudulent medical bills.

    “Social safety net programs are being defrauded. They’re being hurt oftentimes by foreign governments or foreign-run criminal syndicate organizations,” Oz, administrator of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Sunday on 77 WABC ‘s the “Cats Roundtable” program. 

Friday, July 24, 2026

Gunman Walked Into LDS Church

The three videos below all pertain to an incident where a man, dressed all in black, walked into an LDS church somewhere in Utah with a revolver (unloaded as it turned out) and sat down in the foyer. The building was evacuated and police arrived and arrested the man without incident. If you just want the bare bones facts, I would recommend skipping the first two videos and go straight to the third video. 

    The first video is the host of the "Send Me" YouTube channel interviewing someone that was attending church when the incident occurred, and describes what happened.

    The second video is a follow-up to the first video, with the host of the "Send Me" channel explaining why he did not provide information as to the location where this incident occurred and why there weren't any news reports.

    The third video, from the Christian Warrior channel, provides commentary and analysis from someone who has helped train church security teams, albeit for other churches and not the LDS church; and, in fact, he is not affiliated with the LDS church. 

    As far as I can tell from my own interactions with other members, as well as comments I've read or heard, the Church's policy prohibiting the carrying of concealed carry weapons (unless a current LEO) seems to be largely ignored by those who regularly carry firearms. Individual bishops can try and organize a security team, but it would necessarily need to be current law enforcement officers per the policy. Not all congregations ("wards") have active LEOs; and some law enforcement organizations prohibit their officers or agents from participating in such teams. So, essentially you are on your own until police arrive, which is what the Church's active shooter training film basically tells you. 

    I understand why the Church has done this even if I disagree with the policy: many of the Church policies are driven by its risk management and legal departments. In this case, the Church faces less legal exposure by leaving the flock defenseless than if it permitted members to be armed or allowed security teams to be formed.

    But even if the Church did authorize teams, there are some practical considerations that would make it difficult to secure the buildings from someone getting in: that there is no single "main entrance". The typical LDS church building in the United States will have two "main" entrances on either side of the chapel and one or more "main" entrances at the rear of the building; and larger buildings will have additional entrances. For instance, up until recently I attended church at a building that had 8 entrances. Not all of these will be unlocked for activities during the week, but all will be unlocked on Sundays. 

    In addition to the aforementioned entrances, there will be one or more additional outside doors that will typically be locked--generally an outside door to the kitchen and possibly additional access or emergency exit doors depending on the design and layout of the building and code requirements.  

    These design considerations are because, on Sunday, there will typically be two or more wards (i.e., congregations) meeting in the same building plus people coming and going to other meetings for specific organizations (e.g., choir) or that have appointments with leaders. In short, the buildings are not designed for security; they are designed for easy ingress and egress.

 VIDEO: "EVACUATE! - Gunman in LDS Chapel"
Send Me (20 min.)

 

 VIDEO: "UPDATE - Gunman at the LDS Chapel"
Send Me (16 min.)

 

 VIDEO: "Armed Man Walked Into A Packed Church And Nobody Stopped Him"
Christian Warrior (19 min.)

Shilo Hendrix Found Guilty Of Using Racial Slur

MPR News reports: "Rochester jury finds woman who hurled racial slurs at a Black child on a playground guilty." Guilty of what? One count of disorderly conduct toward Sharmake Omar, the man who filmed her; but she was acquitted on a second charge of disorderly conduct for her conduct toward the kid that stole her baby's food. "She was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, was placed on probation and ordered to complete community service," the article relates. Since she isn't facing jail time unless she violates probation, it is doubtful she will appeal the case, which is probably what the judge is counting on since the conviction rests on very shaky Constitutional grounds as this article from FIRE explains: "Shiloh Hendrix’s conviction can’t be squared with the First Amendment."

    Unless the trial record contains some critical fact absent from public reporting, that conviction cannot stand under the First Amendment.

    The video merely shows a heated verbal exchange between Hendrix and Omar. No threats. No violence. Nothing beyond words. However much offense they caused, that simply does not justify the government imprisoning, fining, or otherwise punishing the speaker. A public argument does not become a crime because a speaker used a particular word.

    The jury reportedly was instructed on the quaint “fighting words” doctrine. Although still technically an exception to the First Amendment, the Supreme Court recently threw cold water on “fighting words,” observing it “has not upheld a conviction under the fighting-words doctrine in 80 years.” That case was 1942’s Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, involving a man who had choice words for a police officer. It’s a good thing the fighting-words exception has been sharply limited and arguably erased by the Court’s subsequent speech-protective decisions. Violent individuals shouldn’t have a veto over what others can say.

    Even if the “fighting words” doctrine still has a pulse, it’s very hard to see how it applies to Hendrix’s comments. The doctrine is, at most, confined to a tiny category of face-to-face insults that, under the circumstances, are likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction. But courts have made clear that even the most taboo racial slurs are not fighting words per se. And, as the video shows, Omar solicited Hendrix — who was walking away while carrying her child — to repeat the slur so he could capture it on video and shame her. She did so and then continued walking away. Nothing about the interaction suggests Hendrix’s words were likely to provoke an immediate violent response.

What this case is really about is punishing an uppity white woman. If the races had been reversed and she had been calling out "cracker" at a white kid, the prosecutor would have laughed at the mere suggestion that a criminal offense had occurred. 

    But perhaps the deeper lesson here is that we need to deport people like Omar. The kid's father obviously wasn't that upset about the incident. So why was Omar following a white woman around in a park and filming her? Had he been filming her before this incident? Or did he manufacture this whole incident in order to make money (he has raised over $40,000 on SpotFund)? 

Weekend Reading #66

 Some longer or more involved reading:

  • Up first is Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump.  Some of the links that caught my eye in particular:
    • Near the bottom is a link to an article called "Dark Arts for Good Guys: Break on Through to the other side," which is about how to ram a roadblock. The author of that blog did security and investigation work, including some that took him oversees. As such, he has a bunch of other articles on "dark arts" that cover topics useful if things go FUBAR. Here is a link to the page listing these other articles. He also just has a generally interesting blog, so check out other posts.
    • An article on starting a rucking exercise routine/training program. Probably a good idea for anyone who thinks they might need to bug out on foot.
    • A link to a video with tips on concealed carry in hot weather.
    • An article with some advice on using tactical pens for self-defense; but if this interests you, probably the better course is to simply read and follow Greg's advice in his comments concerning the article.
    • An article on why you should use "target depth training"--i.e., have your targets are varying distances. 
    • The second part in a series entitled "Defeating the Covert Accomplice" because robbers rarely work alone. 
    • For those willing to do some of their own basic gunsmithing work, an article on some simple upgrades and modifications for the AK you can do at home.
    • A couple articles warning about how you dress, the bumper stickers on your car, and more, can make you stand out as a gun owner--it's no different than how other types of clothing, hair styles, makeup, etc., can identify you as belonging to certain "tribes". 
  • In the event that you are in need of a chuckle or two, be sure to check out John Wilder's latest: "64 Or So Pieces Of Very Bad Advice." I can envision a leftist going down the list and thinking "sounds alright to me". 
  • "The DSA's Plan to Remake America"--The Everyman Commentary.  The DSA has released a manifesto which reads:

 “For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.”

The article explores what each of the elements of this communist wish-list entails, together with this warning:

    Our republic was created to tame the appetites of would-be autocrats, making tyranny unlikely, if not impossible to implement. Communists, by contrast, consolidate power.

    Lenin, for one, was notoriously unwilling to share power. He led a small faction of the Russian Social Democratic and Labor Party—Democratic Socialists’ presumed namesake—called Bolsheviks, or the majority. He labeled his opponents, usually in the majority, Mensheviks, as being those in the minority and it stuck. It’s not that his ideas weren’t attractive to the majority of socialists—they weren’t—but the future dictator deliberately cobbled together a cell of dedicated yes-men.

    Even after the coup, Lenin was unwilling to share power with fellow socialists which earned him criticism from old school Bolsheviks like Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev and the famed socialist writer Maxim Gorky. He survived an assassination attempt by the Socialist Revolutionary party member Fanny Kaplan who felt that the mastermind of the government takeover betrayed the revolution.

    After Lenin’s passing, Stalin placed his henchmen in local party cells and purged the opposition, starting with Lenin’s acolytes like Mikhail Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev and the sometimes acolyte Lev Trotsky. Successive waves of repressions followed. By these and other methods, the population of the Soviet Union was successfully terrorized into obedience.

Reading this about the DSA brings to mind the famous quote from Rafał Gan-Ganowicz, a Polish anti-communist activist, mercenary, and writer. When a journalist asked him what it felt like to take a human life, he replied: "I wouldn't know, I've only killed communists."

Thursday, July 23, 2026

VIDEO: China's Population Is Collapsing

China Uncensored's latest video returns to the topic of China's demographic collapse evidenced by the dramatic decline in the number of pre-schools and kindergartens, as well as some discussion of failed efforts by the CCP to increase birth rates. His thinking on why the Chinese refuse to have more children tracks my thoughts on the general decline in fertility rates: children have become a luxury that most young people can't or won't pay for. 

    On the other end, China is seeing deaths outpace births. The Rhodium Group published a paper earlier this year that predicts that China's population will decline by more than 60 million people in the next decade--roughly the population of France.  The report goes on to note that:

The headlines are bad, the regional breakdown is worse. The country’s most developed provinces are seeing falling populations, which will impact overall consumption and the future productivity of the labor force. The impact on household consumption is obvious, but the larger problem for Beijing may be the hit to social security funds. The fiscal subsidy to social security funds rose to a record 2.9 trillion yuan last year, or 10.1% of general budget spending, and appears set to rise in the future. 

It also states:

    The drop in China’s birth rate in the 2020s has been shocking, even in the context of continuous declines since 2018. The ratio of new births to total population reached only 0.563% last year, compared to 1.199% a decade ago in 2015. The total of 7.92 million new births for the full year was the lowest level since 7.57 million in 1939, when China’s population was closer to 400-500 million people.

    Admittedly, the number of women of child-bearing age has declined by 13% over the past decade to 213.7 million, but new births more than halved over the same interval. This reflects changes in behavior and preferences, as policy is now pro-natalist and has been far less restrictive since 2016, when the one-child policy was formally abandoned.

    Chinese citizens’ decisions to marry and have children later in life are the main reasons behind the collapse in new births. The average age of people married rose to 34 years old in 2024, from 32.4 in 2018. As a result, the number of marriages declined by 40% from 2018 levels to only 6.1 million in 2024 (Figure 2). The average age of women bearing children increased to 30.1 years old in 2024, from 28.4 in 2018. These trends correlate well with additional education and economic advancements in other countries, and these factors are likely having an effect in China as well.

    Another more recent factor that may be depressing births is the change in employment conditions. Alongside weaker economic growth, more workers have shifted to the gig economy, which does not provide security nor stable incomes. Additional discussions of potential AI-related job losses may be contributing to popular insecurity and uncertainty, which feed back into the birth rate as well. Social phenomena such as “lying flat,” “letting it rot,” or other societal trends developing within China’s youth also may be contributing to reductions in stable relationships and willingness to have children.

It doesn't help that China is an atheistic country as there is a strong correlation between religiosity and birth rates. (See also, "China’s Population Decline – The Impact on Business, the Economy, and Labor Markets" from China-Briefing). 

     China faces its own pension crises as well because of fewer workers to support a growing population of retirees. The Diplomat goes over this in a Feb. 11, 2026, article entitled "As China Ages, a Pension Crisis Looms." A key point:

    By 2040, roughly 402 million people in China are expected to be over the age of 60, more than a quarter of the population. By comparison, the total population of the United States is expected to reach around 379 million by that time. This shift marks a turning point for China, signaling the erosion of its long-standing advantage in abundant and affordable labor while presenting a formidable financial challenge in caring for an aging society. 

    These demographic pressures prompted China to begin a gradual adjustment of its statutory retirement age in 2025, the first such change in more than seven decades. The retirement age for men will gradually increase from 60 to 63 over a 15-year period while the retirement age for women will rise from 55 to 58, with adjustments varying by occupation. While delaying retirement may ease fiscal strain, it does little to alter the underlying demographic arithmetic driving the crisis. 

VIDEO: "China's Population is Collapsing"
China Uncensored (7 min.)

Some More Iranian War News

Israel To Sit Out The Rest Of The War?

Zero Hedge reported on some comments from Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich--the second most powerful cabinet member according to the article--with the article relating (bold in original):

    The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States," far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. "The current situation is the best one for us.”

[snip]

    In his latest remarks, Smotrich candidly acknowledged that Israel and the United States have different goals vis a vis Iran, but said America's continued military engagement furthers the Israeli agenda. “[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,” Smotrich said. 

    Disregarding the widespread victimization of innocents that the strategy entails, Smotrich said destruction of Iran's economy will help precipitate the Iranian government's collapse. "Currently, inflation in Iran is at 85 percent, food inflation of over 134 percent in a total of four months, and the Iranian rial is trading at an exchange rate of 1.9 million to the dollar - and it's going up." He then reiterated that "the current situation is good for us, and there's no point in pushing ourselves inward."  

That might work if the economic collapse was not clearly the result of outside agents; but, as Germany and Japan illustrated during WWII, economic woes will not spark a rebellion when there is a clear enemy to blame. 

    The article also recounts comments from an Israeli journalist opining that Israel staying out of the fight makes it less of a target for Iranian attacks, allowing daily life to continue and saving the country billions of shekels for air operations or interceptions of incoming missiles. 

    Larry C. Johnson at Sonar21 suggests another reason for Israel pulling back is because both of its oil refineries were damaged earlier in the conflict and now Israel faces a shortage of diesel and jet fuel; and any further damage to the refineries would severely limit Israel's ability to continue military operations in Gaza or Lebanon. And yet another source, quoting the Wall Street Journal, indicates that the U.S., under pressure from Arab states, asked Israel to sit out the war in hopes that doing so will keep Iran from striking more of the Arab states' energy infrastructure, and make it politically easier for those states to join in attacks against Iran. 

    I think this is a good example of the maxim "countries do not have friends, only interests". Israel's interests were to (i) destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, which the United States has pretty much already done for it; and (ii) eliminate the Palestinians, which is easier to do if (a) the United States is distracted with Iran and (b) Israel can concentrate its efforts on Gaza and Lebanon. Besides, it increasingly appears that we are moving toward having boots on the ground in Iran; and there was no way that Israel was ever going to be part of that effort if for no other reason then it would outrage Muslims around the world. The best we can hope for is a limited invasion to capture the territory adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, followed by an extended occupation of that territory by a coalition of Arab states. 

    The question that needs to be asked is what are the United States' interests? I would say that our interests are limited to keeping open the Gulf of Arabia and the Strait of Hormuz to the free transit of oil, which was the situation before the war but is now impossible because of the war. And the reason we are in this situation is because our leaders lost sight of our interests and/or believed that Israel's interests were the same as ours. 

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

NY Post: Ethiopian Immigrant Murders Three, Hates American System

The New York Post reports that Tsegaab Binessu has been arrested for murdering three of the staff at the apartment complex where he lived after the landlord refused to terminate his lease of a garage. But he also told investigators that he hated the American system for not allowing him to bring his wife and children to the U.S. from Ethiopia. "The prolonged immigration process, he said, led to his divorce and separation from his kids. He claimed he quit his job as a truck driver due to the stress of the situation, the document states." He also complained that he was treated unfairly because he was an immigrant and black. "When he was arrested, he had newly purchased camping gear, his US passport, his Social Security card, an empty handgun magazine and his permit to carry a weapon, according to the complaint."

He could have renounced his citizenship and gone back to Ethiopia at any time.  

I Want

 If you can't get an American 180, this might be the next best thing. 

VIDEO: "THE TIPPMANN FRT - THIS 22LR SHOOTS FAST!"
22plinkster (11 min.)

Hungary Shows What Happens When The Left Achieve Full Control

David Strom at Hot Air asks: "How's It Going in Hungary?" Not good. 

    The EU put a target on Orbán's back years ago, and in the recent election, they finally got their wish. The Prime Minister was voted out of office, and did exactly what you would expect of a non-authoritarian. He left office quietly and without fuss, acknowledged his loss, and vowed to campaign for a return to power. 

    So what are the great "defenders of democracy" doing to prevent that? 

Today, prosecutors arrived without prior notice at the data center hosting Fidesz’s servers, intending to seize the party’s entire communications system and databases. Nothing like this has happened in Hungary since the end of communism in 1990.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Hungary’s Brussels-backed liberal authoritarian Prime Minister intends to eliminate his democratic political opponents, crush all resistance to his arbitrary actions, and use the country’s law enforcement authorities as instruments to achieve that goal. 

 [snip]

    They are coming down like a ton of bricks on Orbán and his political party, following the now-familiar EU plan to subvert elections by canceling them if their candidates aren't likely to win, banning political parties, disqualifying candidates, and rigging the rules.  

So is there any meaningful difference between this and what the Soviet Union did to Hungary in 1956? 

The Diversity Report #34

 A selection of articles showcasing the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion:  " Trump’s Science Report: Visa Migrants ‘Sideline...