US-Iran Military Tit-For-Tat Escalation

Two US service members were killed and another went missing in action during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in Jordan on Friday; four others were evacuated to Jordanian hospitals.

The US launched fresh strikes on Iran overnight Saturday, hitting Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf and southern cities including Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, according to Iranian media.

Iran suspended its commitments under the interim deal with the US as both sides continued exchanging strikes on infrastructure and military targets.

Bahrain said it intercepted several Iranian aerial attacks on Sunday.

Jordan evacuated Aqaba's airport and seaport due to a specific and credible threat, with the US embassy advising Americans to avoid both locations.

Hormuz Chokepoint Tensions

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said four vessels attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz via an unauthorized route; two were stopped after accidents and two turned back.

Iran accused the ships of attempting to disrupt transit through the strait with "support from American terrorists" and said they had turned off their navigation systems.

Iran rushed out approximately $6 billion of oil during a brief truce with the US in mid-June to mid-July, with around 20 Iranian tankers arriving off Malaysia's east coast, with China as the likely ultimate destination, according to analysts, per the Wall Street Journal.

Regional Impact & Kuwait Strikes Crisis

Kuwait suffered some of its worst Iranian retaliatory attacks, with strikes on a vital oil facility causing significant damage and injuries, and a second power plant hit in as many days.

Kuwait airport suspended flights and Kuwait Airways rescheduled the majority of its flights following the attacks.

Iraq is using a large fleet of trucks to carry fuel through Syria to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, rapidly making Syria the Middle East's top export hub, accounting for more than a quarter of regional volumes.

Oil Market Woes

Renewed fighting is raising the risk of an oil price spike as global supply buffers have been worn thin, with emergency stockpile releases and reduced Chinese imports having previously helped avert a crisis when the Strait of Hormuz first closed in March.

Concerns over re-escalation of the war pushed oil prices sharply higher following Iran's heavy attacks on Kuwait.

Germany To Join French Nuclear Exercise, Deepening 'Counter-Russia' Deterrence

In the latest development related to what some analysts have called the 'new Cold War' and nuclear saber-rattling between Russia and the West, Germany and France are planning a major nuclear exercise later this year.

The atomic drills were announced Friday, after a joint top-level meeting of the French and German governments near Cologne. "Alongside this work on a shared doctrine, German conventional forces will this year take part in a nuclear exercise of the French military," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz unveiled.

He detailed while at a press event alongside French President Emmanuel Macron that a "strategic steering group" established by the leading European allies would continue looking at deterrence in the future, with an eye on Russia.

"This is complementary to our nuclear participation and deterrence within NATO, which we still hold to," he added. He also previewed "a maneuver in the autumn held on the initiative of France" - while speaking of the Ukraine war.

"We will clarify together what form exactly this participation will take," he said.

France is newly positioning itself at the forefront of nuclear deterrence for Europe, a role that the United States has long assumed, and currently still does.

According to some of Macron's statements at the same event: "Patriotism, yes; nationalism, never. At a time when Europe is rearming, to think that each of us separately accumulating capabilities is the way history is going is absurd." More details have been offered in the following:

Mr Macron and Mr Merz began the defence council at Nörvenich air base beside a French Rafale and a German Eurofighter – a symbolic backdrop after the aircraft designed to replace them was scrapped.

Nuclear deterrence offers one field where the strained partnership can still move forward.

German troops would play a conventional supporting role and would not control French weapons. Berlin will also help develop radar and space-based systems for detecting ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

Currently the United States and the UK, which both maintain nuclear arsenals, form the core of NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy. While France also possesses nuclear weapons, it does not yet participate on a leadership level in NATO's nuclear planning group. The US military also contributes F-35, refueling aircraft, and other support planes.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/germany-join-french-nuclear-exercise-deepening-counter-russia-deterrence

John Fetterman Suggests He May Leave Democratic Party Then Trashes Trump for Talking About 2020 Election, Says “No Evidence” of Illegal Voters

https://rumble.com/embed/v7as2vy/?pub=4

Ambassador Mike Waltz

@michaelgwaltz

Mayor Mamdani: here’s why your threat to arrest PM Netanyahu’s in NYC during UNGA is not going to happen:

1. The U.S. is not party to the Rome Statute that underlies the ICC,

2. The UN Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of gov’t,

3. head-of-state immunity applies, &

4. federal authority trumps any local mayor’s wishes.

This is pure political theater.

https://x.com/michaelgwaltz/status/2078567106602537195

collective punishment

collective punishment

US claims PA’s prisoner payments reform a con, dismissing audit that suggested otherwise

While external review found welfare payments now conditioned on financial status instead of prison sentence, State Department says it didn’t examine ‘clandestine bypass channels’

The US State Department on Sunday accused the Palestinian Authority of trying to “dupe” the international community into believing it ended a welfare system that incentivized attacks on Israelis, dismissing an external audit that suggested otherwise.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree in February 2025 ending the previous program, which conditioned payments to Palestinian security prisoners on the length of their sentence, and established a new system that tied all welfare stipends to recipients’ financial situation.

Initial skepticism in Washington over the announcement intensified when it was discovered the following November that a subsequent round of payments was made under the previous mechanism. Abbas fired his finance minister over the transgression, but Ramallah has failed to earn the Trump administration’s trust on the issue.

In an attempt to demonstrate its seriousness, the PA commissioned the prominent global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal to conduct an audit of its new welfare system being run out of the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI or “Tamkeen” in Arabic).

Earlier this month, the PA announced that the audit had confirmed that the reform of its welfare program is being properly implemented.

The US responded by calling on the PA to publicly release the audit. Last week, Ramallah released A&M’s summary of the audit, which confirmed Ramallah’s own description of the results.

The audit identified the batch of illicit payments under the previous system that was made in November 2025, but noted that the PA had informed A&M that those were for previously accrued obligations before the February 2025 reform was announced. The audit said additional documentation was still needed to independently verify that the old payment mechanisms have been permanently shut down.

Overall, though, the auditors concluded that the reform has largely succeeded in separating the new cash assistance program from the previous prisoner payment system, while recommending stronger documentation, automation and financial controls to ensure the separation remains permanent.

Asked for comment on the matter, a State Department spokesperson again offered a dismissive response.

“The review commissioned by the PA examined only the new social payments institution (“Tamkeen”) without looking into the various clandestine bypass channels that the PA built around it, under the international community’s radar,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Times of Israel.

“This review alone cannot serve as any proof that ‘pay-for-slay’ payments have stopped. It did not receive, nor examine, any evidence on the continuing payments to terrorists and their families, which are disguised as fake wages and pensions or simply handed in cash,” the State Department spokesperson said, suggesting that those are the methods that the PA is now using to pay the families of prisoners and slain attackers, albeit without providing evidence.

The Israeli government has made similar accusations.

“The PA is trying to mislead the international community that it met its commitment to end ‘pay-for-slay’ by presenting the A&M review as proof. The fact that the PA has not published the full review should be enough to raise suspicion that such disclosure would expose its deceit,” the statement continued. A source familiar with the matter said the remainder of the audit is largely technical, but said the PA has handed over the document in its entirety to the Trump administration.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-claims-pas-prisoner-payments-reform-a-con-dismissing-audit-that-suggests-otherwise/

Police Keep Losing Their Jobs For Using Flock Cameras To Stalk People

A license plate reader camera

A Flock Safety automated license plate recognition camera is mounted along a roadway in Altadena, California. Weston Hancock/SOPA Images/Sipa/AP

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Flock cameras—solar-powered, automated license plate readers, weighing less than 3 pounds and designed to be unobtrusive—can be found on 80,000 street corners throughout the country. The company behind the cameras built an $8.3 billion business empowering officers to track people’s movements. Nationwide, Flock cameras log billions of license plates each month. And now dozens of reports are emerging of police using the cameras not to solve crimes, but to stalk their partners and exes.

Over a two-month period in 2025, Milwaukee police officer Josue Ayala searched the license plate number of someone he was dating over 200 times, according to court documents. He also searched for his partner’s ex.

Another Milwaukee officer, Tehrangi Chapman, was assigned to investigate Ayala’s case. Ayala was charged with misconduct, resigned, and was sentenced to one year’s probation. Then, this week, Chapman too was charged with “misuse of GPS information.” While investigating Ayala, he allegedly engaged in the exact same misconduct, using the technology to track people in his own life.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, identified at least 24 similar cases nationwide of officers using automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras like Flock to stalk romantic interests over the past two years. Nearly all of those officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs.

This month alone, at least six new cases were reported in local media outlets. Beyond Chapman’s case in Wisconsin, officers in Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, California, and Georgia all lost their jobs due to alleged misuse of Flock cameras.

Advocates say it’s too easy to abuse automated license plate reader technology.

Flock cameras—solar-powered, automated license plate readers, weighing less than 3 pounds and designed to be unobtrusive—can be found on 80,000 street corners throughout the country. The company behind the cameras built an $8.3 billion business empowering officers to track people’s movements. Nationwide, Flock cameras log billions of license plates each month. And now dozens of reports are emerging of police using the cameras not to solve crimes, but to stalk their partners and exes.

Over a two-month period in 2025, Milwaukee police officer Josue Ayala searched the license plate number of someone he was dating over 200 times, according to court documents. He also searched for his partner’s ex.

Another Milwaukee officer, Tehrangi Chapman, was assigned to investigate Ayala’s case. Ayala was charged with misconduct, resigned, and was sentenced to one year’s probation. Then, this week, Chapman too was charged with “misuse of GPS information.” While investigating Ayala, he allegedly engaged in the exact same misconduct, using the technology to track people in his own life.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, identified at least 24 similar cases nationwide of officers using automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras like Flock to stalk romantic interests over the past two years. Nearly all of those officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/police-losing-jobs-flock-cameras-alprs/

FBI Hid What It Paid Twitter to Censor You Behind One Legal Word

Elon Musk's Twitter Files exposed FBI agents secretly steering Twitter's censorship decisions in 2022.

A new federal lawsuit says the FBI still will not admit how much that arrangement cost taxpayers.

The FBI's excuse for staying silent has a name, and it was never meant to protect anything like this.

NCLA's Motion Says the FBI Never Even Searched for the Records

The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a motion for summary judgment on June 30 in federal court in Washington.

The group wants a judge to force the FBI and the Justice Department to finally answer a Freedom of Information Act request from January 2023.

That request asked a simple question: how much did the FBI pay Twitter and similar companies to process the Bureau's censorship demands.

The FBI did not search for a single document.

Instead, it rejected the request outright, invoking a legal shield meant to protect law enforcement investigative techniques.

Attorneys wrote that the FBI has treated the request "as though it sought only one discrete category of records."

NCLA Litigation Counsel Casey Norman put it bluntly.

"That's not how FOIA works," Norman said.

The FBI's dodge is called a Glomar response, a legal maneuver where an agency refuses to confirm or deny records exist at all.

That tactic was designed decades ago to hide a sunken Soviet submarine from the Soviets themselves.

Now the FBI is using it to hide a Twitter invoice from the American public.

The Twitter Files Already Proved the Censorship Machine Was Real

This is not the Bureau's first rodeo with this exact question.

Journalist Matt Taibbi's Twitter Files releases in December 2022 showed FBI agents holding weekly meetings with Twitter's top trust and safety officials.

Twitter's own former Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, described those FBI sessions as a "government-industry sync," according to Reason's review of the Twitter Files.

FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sent Twitter's Roth a batch of documents the day before the New York Post published its Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020.

Twitter buried the Post's story within hours of it going live.

The Bureau had possessed and authenticated that laptop since December 2019.

Then-Rep. Jim Jordan demanded the FBI's payment records from that relationship back in December 2022, calling the arrangement a "permanent and ongoing surveillance operation."

Judicial Watch's own FOIA lawsuit put an exact number on the arrangement: the FBI paid Twitter $3,415,323 as reimbursement for time spent processing the Bureau's requests, according to an internal Twitter message uncovered in the Twitter Files.

That figure is what pushed lawmakers to pass the ELON Act, a one-year moratorium on Justice Department payments to social media companies.

https://pantsonfirenews.com/fbi-hid-what-it-paid-twitter-to-censor-you-behind-one-legal-word/

While the political circus distracts us, Flock builds the Digital Police State

While Americans remain transfixed by the political circus — cheering for their preferred party, jeering at the opposition, obsessing over every manufactured outrage and waiting for the next spectacle — the Surveillance State continues its steady march forward.

The government is watching.

It watches where you go, whom you meet, where you worship, what medical offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, what protests you join, what books you read, what websites you visit and what causes you support.

It watches through your phone, your car, your doorbell, your appliances, your purchases, your social media accounts and the cameras positioned along the roads you travel every day.

This is how freedom dies in the digital police state: not always through dramatic declarations of martial law or soldiers stationed on every street corner, but through the gradual construction of a technological dragnet — an electronic concentration camp — so pervasive that privacy becomes impossible and anonymity becomes suspicious.

Enter Flock Safety, a private surveillance technology company whose automated license plate readers have spread throughout thousands of American communities.

These cameras, which do much more than photograph license plates, represent the next evolution of the government’s public-private surveillance partnership.

They document the time and location of every passing vehicle and record identifying characteristics such as its make, model, color, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other distinctive features. That information can then be placed in a searchable database and used to retrace a vehicle’s movements over time.

Yet the real power — and the real danger — of Flock does not come from the cameras alone.

It comes from artificial intelligence.

A camera can photograph a car. Flock’s AI-powered platform can identify and categorize a vehicle, compare an observation with stored records, generate alerts, identify connections and help police reconstruct where that vehicle has been.

AI is what transforms a photograph into the building blocks for a suspect society.

With AI, every driver becomes a data point. Every data point becomes a pattern. And every pattern becomes a suspicion.

This is how ordinary movements become potentially suspect and subject to government scrutiny. It allows law enforcement agencies to search not only for a complete license plate number but also for partial plates and physical descriptions such as vehicle color, make, model, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other identifying characteristics.

A police officer might ask the system to locate every red pickup truck with a ladder rack seen near a protest, every vehicle that repeatedly visited a particular address, or every car observed traveling between two locations.

The artificial intelligence does the sorting. The database supplies the history.

The government receives a list of potential suspects.

This is no longer surveillance conducted by individual officers following particular leads. It is surveillance conducted at machine speed, across entire populations, with algorithms deciding whose movements merit further scrutiny.

Consider the scale of what is taking place.

License plate cameras now log approximately 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

Twenty billion.

That is not targeted policing. That is mass collection.

https://augustafreepress.com/news/while-the-political-circus-distracts-us-flock-builds-the-digital-police-state/

Hours after Iranian shrapnel lands in Israel, Zamir says IDF ready to strike back

IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the Sunday attack has shifted the military closer to war footing.

Hours after shrapnel from an Iranian ballistic missile, which had been fired at Jordan, ultimately landed in Israel just north of Eilat, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir threatened the Islamic Republic with a potential harsh counterstrike if the regime gets any closer to the Jewish state.

Speaking to IDF commanders in the West Bank, he said, "next to the continuous fighting against terror in Judea and Samaria, we are closely following the developments with Iran and maintaining a high level of readiness."

"We followed the attack on the area around Aqaba [Jordan] today, and our air defense apparatus is ready to defend the citizens of Israel," added Zamir. "We are ready to immediately return to war, and we will act with great power against anyone who harms us."

IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the Sunday attack had finally shifted the IDF close to war footing after weeks when Israel has felt outside of the primarily US-Iran conflict.

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, the IDF's Iron Dome was used to shoot down fragments of an Iranian ballistic missile fired at Jordan near the border with Israel after the US Aegis anti-missile system had already been used to shoot down the primary missile warhead.

As a result, interceptor fragments fell in an open area near, but not in, Eilat, and there were no casualties or damage caused, the IDF confirmed.

Until now, despite the ongoing lower-grade aerial exchanges between the US and Arab allies on one side, versus Iran on the other side, no aerial threats from the Islamic Republic had come near Israel in over three months.

No immediate sign of counterattack

Even this latest move was clearly aimed at Jordan, and not Israel, and there was no immediate sign that Jerusalem would respond with a counterattack.

However, minutes before the interception, the IDF issued a warning to southern areas near the border with Jordan that residents in that area should be ready to enter safe areas should fragments fall in Israel.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-902996

Mark Levin throws shade at JD Vance: "Little tiny Israel is trying to undermine the United States?!"

"Our greatest ally—fought next to us, shoulder to shoulder, at war—now they're our biggest enemy!"

https://x.com/infolibnews/status/2078663056591090144

>>24845478

https://youtu.be/dsCKfuVeau8