The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced on Friday that it is winding down operations as a result of President Donald Trump's major funding cuts.

The CPB attributed its closure to the $9 billion rescissions package that passed on July 24, which significantly slashes funding for public broadcasting, including PBS and NPR, which are expected to be largely impacted by CBP's closure. The majority of staff positions will be eliminated by Sept. 30, and a small transition team will remain through January 2026, CPB announced in a press release.

"The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package and the release of the Senate Appropriations Committee's FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-H) appropriations bill, which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades," the organization stated.

I used to think that people were pretty smart. Meaning if I were walking down the street, or through a crowded mall, I could be pretty certain that most people I ran into were at a certain level of intelligence.

What do they say? That the average IQ is 100? And when you start getting really low in IQ, the number of people who have that lower IQ gets smaller and fewer in number. It is like the classic bell curve. The middle of the bell curve is the number of people with an IQ of 100; outliers on either side get lower or higher.

That's what I used to think.

For whatever reason, it felt safer knowing that most people you "saw" were not utter morons. Even if you had interactions with people in stores, or per chance bumping into someone and exchanging words, it was not like you were on some distant planet trying to have a conversation with a humanoid alien (or lizardman) who had zero experience communicating with a real human.

Don't get me wrong. I use the phrase "utter moron" not out of disrespect for humans with low IQs. There was a time that psychologists actually used the terms "moron, imbecile, and idiot" officially to denote IQ levels. (Those with an IQ of 0 to 25, were called idiots, 26 to 50 were called imbeciles and 51 to 70 were called morons.) Of course, today these terms are considered offensive, so no longer used (except by insensitive dickwhacks like me). So, I don't mean it offensively (well, maybe in the context of this article it is meant offensively).

Something I didn't realize back then as well, is that what I was observing had little to do with IQ or intelligence. It was more about "common sense."

Sure, there are times where the degree of "common sense" is directly related to IQ or intelligence, but feeling safer around people with higher IQs really has never been a logical assumption. It was the "common sense factor"...CSF, rather than IQ, that made me feel more comfortable — an assumption, which back then was a plausible assumption, that most people had at least an average CSF.

So, life went on this way. Living among other humans, more or less the same as me. Ha.

Statistics illustrate the unprecedented purge of illegal alien workers

Any way you cut it, today's jobs report was ugly. Starting at the top, where the July print of just 73K missed most estimates...
... and when combined with the massive downward revision of May and June which removed nearly 260,000 jobs...

Violence is diplomacy — that is the essence of the Trumpian encounter with the world: do as I say, or else. Versions of this approach are easily noted in most of President Trump's public pronouncements. The most recent iteration, in response to Trump's bombing of Iran, was given by Vice President JD Vance at the Ohio Republican Party dinner in Lima, Ohio, on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. He later summarized it on X also.

Here is what he said: "What I call the Trump Doctrine is quite simple: Number one, you articulate a clear American interest and that's, in this case, that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Number two, you try to aggressively, diplomatically solve that problem. And number three, when you can't solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict."

The contradictions from one through to three are obvious: how can there be a clarity of "American interest" when the policy is "Israel First?" America has long given up being clear about what it wants, since it wants so many different things which negate one another. It wants to be the hegemon, but also the beacon of "liberty." Number two: suddenly "American interest" is now a "problem" that needs to "solved" by diplomacy, because other countries do not agree with the "American interest." Was it not Zelinsky, sitting in the White House, who asked Vance, "What do you mean by diplomacy?" In other words, that "American interest" mentioned in Number one is actually an American demand.

And then we quickly move on to Number three — when America fails at diplomacy, it loves to drop bombs. Bombing, it would appear is the last resort of the scoundrel, to update a famous phrase. What is the point of doing any diplomacy when the people you are trying to diplomatize already know that you are going to bomb them in the end? Iran found that out pretty darned quick — for they thought they were actually involved in diplomacy with Washington when Trump suddenly decided to drop some bombs all over Iran, thinking that this would be persuasive. So, how quickly does Washington move from the diplomatic table to the cockpit of a B2 bomber? In other words, how do bombs become diplomacy?

Vance then throws in the caveat that "you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict." So, we are supposed to believe that bombing a country flat and flying back home magically avoids a "protracted conflict?" A recent example — how long has America been bombing Yemen — and what has it accomplished? America just bombed Iran — and what has that accomplished? And, is there any need to mention the fact that Trump, in his first five months of his second term, has carried out 529 airstrikes against Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, and bombed 240 locations in these places — it is not known yet how many total civilians he has killed in the process. And whatever happened to Number two in all these cases? How did Trump move past diplomacy and get right to Number three with Iraq, Somalia and Yemen?

In other words, the world is viewed through simplistic Trumpian narratives and bombed accordingly.

It would seem that Vance is trying to lend coherence to a "foreign policy" that is no more than Trump's feelings. How such feelings, which are erratic at best, become a doctrine is beyond comprehension.

Israel is a deeply sick country which become monstrous. How is it that the descendants of the victims of Nazi atrocities feel that they can proudly film themselves carrying out similar atrocities? This is bitter fruit of cultivating the "Holocaust industry," in which Jewish victimhood has been made so sacrosanct that it has created an entire generation that feels that it can do whatever it wants, that crimes can never be committed by Israelis.

Genocides do not happen in a vacuum. At least, when the Nazis were carrying out their murderous plans, they had the "decency" of trying to hide all their crimes, so the world would never know. But such is not the case with Israelis when it comes to the genocide in Gaza. Rather, it is now commonplace for ordinary Israelis to film their enthusiasm for genocide, and post it all on social media — because (a) they do not see killing Palestinians as a crime, and (b) they wear genocide as a badge of honor, because they see it as yet another expression of their exalted victimhood.

For example, videos and images have circulated showing Israelis, including soldiers and settlers, holding barbecue parties near the Gaza border, while — obviously — Palestinians inside Gaza starve. Multiple sources confirm footage of these barbecues near Gaza, while those deemed to be "less human" face famine and widespread starvation.

What kind of satisfaction do these Israelis derive from such behavior? What has the Israeli mindset become that it can imagine that this kind of criminality will meet with approval of the world?

We are very close to the "deadline" Trump insolently laid down for Russia to negotiate terms with Ukraine. Where does the president of the United States get the authority to set "deadlines" - with ominous, hinted-at consequences - for other nations; in particular, those that have not attacked the United States?

It is not a question of authority; there is none such in that handsomely written old document that the government pretends defines and limits its powers. It is (and always has been) a question of power. When asserted it becomes authority. Trump, following the precedents set by so many of his predecessors - simply asserts his authority to do whatever he wants, because he has acquired the power to do it. He has this power for the same reason cops who abuse people have it: There is no authority to restrain them when they assert their power.

So they do what they want.

At any rate, Trump has told the leader of another nation - one with a nuclear arsenal - that there is a "deadline" for it to basically submit to being strong-armed by a foreign power's Maximum Leader (i.e., Trump). This is the sort of thing that sometimes leads to wars and in this instance, the war could very easily become a nuclear one.

Is Trump insane? Or just stupid? It could be that he is desperate.

The modern global order is driven less by diplomacy and more by ancient myths, militarized theology, and a gospel of endless war masquerading as divine and democratic duty.

There is an unspoken gospel driving global policy today, and it is not found in the dusty books of theologians or the calm chambers of diplomacy. It is a gospel cloaked in ancient scripture and printed in military-industrial budgets. It is a gospel of profit, divine mandate, and permanent conflict.

As Israeli bombs fall once more on Gaza and missiles murder Iranian scientists and poets — backed by ironclad American rhetoric and weapons — the world is witnessing more than a regional war. We are witnessing a revelation: the modern geopolitical order draws not just from resources and realpolitik but from myths older than any state and more potent than any weapon. In Ukraine, for instance, merciless fascism has taken hold of many and beneath the spires of some of the world's most ancient tabernacles. But the Ukraine-Russia affair threatens to obliterate Orthodox Christianity. And who would want to do that?

A judge dismissed a case against Tim Ballard, the founder and former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-human sex trafficking organization, in a case brought against him and OUR in 2023 by his former assistant, Celeste Borys, and her husband, Mike Borys.

Ballard won on procedural grounds after a Utah district court judge ruled Monday that the key evidence had been improperly obtained, ultimately dropping the case against both Ballard and OUR. The ruling did not address the underlying claims of sexual misconduct or how organization leadership may have enabled the alleged inappropriate behavior.

"Shortly after Mr. Ballard was given notice of this lawsuit, we became suspicious that someone had hacked into his private email and his Google Drive and stolen his documents and his private email communications," Alexis Federico, one of Ballard's attorneys, told reporters during a news conference.

Pro-Ukrainian hackers have claimed responsibility for a large-scale cyberattack on Aeroflot on Monday, alleging they have destroyed the Russian airline's internal IT infrastructure and brought operations to a halt.

Aeroflot has confirmed major technical issues but has not disclosed the full extent of the damage. The airline has canceled or delayed over 100 flights, with routes across Russia and several international destinations affected.

The hacker groups Silent Crow and Cyberpartisans BY have claimed they were inside Aeroflot's corporate network for over a year. They say they downloaded more than 20 terabytes of data, compromised all critical systems, and accessed employee computers, including those of top managers. They also claim to have destroyed around 7,000 physical and virtual servers.

In a statement, the hackers estimated that restoration could cost tens of millions of dollars and called the damage "strategic."

After months of secrecy from Labour, we expose where Israeli troops have trained in Britain during the Gaza genocide.

Israeli army officers have been allowed to study at a British military academy in central London throughout the Gaza genocide, Declassified can reveal.

At least two Israeli colonels have attended the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) since 2023.

One of the soldiers, thought to be Elad Edri, only graduated a fortnight ago.

Another officer, Yeftah Norkin, completed the course in July 2024 and almost immediately led the army's "Bang" division in Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Norkin, who comes from an influential military family, commanded a patrol company in Operation Cast Lead, Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza which killed hundreds of children.