August 6, 2026 Insider Report

When Media Move the Market

Tucker Carlson recently offered a provocative observation: Oil-futures trading is now dominated by algorithms rather than human traders, and governments no longer need to pressure individual speculators to move prices — they simply need to release calming or alarming headlines, which AI trading systems read as buy-or-sell signals. His formula: Whoever controls the narrative controls the machine, and therefore the price.

The influence of media on commodities trades has a long and well-documented history.

Nineteenth-century financier Jay Gould pioneered this style of manipulation, using newspapers he owned or influenced to plant favorable or damaging stories about companies he was cornering. What became known as “Black Friday” was his notorious 1869 attempt to corner the gold market following the Erie Railroad “Erie War.” Historians have treated Gould’s press manipulation as a defining feature of Gilded Age finance.

A more direct modern parallel is the Emulex hoax of August 2000. A 23-year-old former employee named Mark Jakob, sitting on nearly $100,000 in losses from shorting Emulex stock, faked a press release claiming the company’s CEO had resigned, so its earnings would be restated as a loss. Without double-checking, Bloomberg and other outlets picked up the story. In 16 minutes, Emulex lost $2.2 billion in market value before the hoax was discovered; Jakob was later sentenced to 44 months in prison for securities and wire fraud.

Not every media-driven crash is intentional, but the vulnerability is the same. In September 2008, a six-year-old Chicago Tribune article about United Airlines’ (UAL) 2002 bankruptcy resurfaced online without a date stamp, was mistaken for breaking news by an investment research firm, and was broadcast on Bloomberg terminals. Within minutes, UAL’s stock collapsed from roughly $12 to $3 a share; it recovered once the story was debunked. No fraud was ever alleged, but it shows how easily unverified information can move both automated and human traders.

Tucker Carlson’s accusation highlights the true nature of mainstream media as a cog in a much larger machine designed to do more than shape the culture and habits of the society, or to engage in social control by means of moving the Overton window. It’s also used by speculators to engage in scandal and innuendo to artificially depress asset prices so venture capitalists can pick up the stock for pennies on the dollar. Once one grasps the full picture, one immediately sees why the Establishment is hesitant to let the media slip from its control. — Rebecca Terrell

Report: Trump Admin Considers Withdrawing From UN Refugee Agency

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering withdrawing the United States from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the primary UN agency in charge of refugee-related matters.

According to a July 20 report by Reuters, the administration “has in recent weeks weighed cutting ties with the U.N. refugee agency, prompting a campaign by diplomats and U.N. officials to persuade the United States to maintain support.” The report noted that “a decision had been expected last week, but no announcement was made, suggesting that the lobbying effort may have helped delay or avert a move.”

The United States’ potential withdrawal from the UNHCR appears to have been triggered by the agency’s appointment of Tressa Rae Finerty, a U.S. diplomat who had been serving as the chargé d’affaires for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, as its deputy high commissioner. The Trump administration had supported another candidate more aligned with its agenda.

Reuters reported:

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih chose Finerty over Simon Hankinson, a U.S.-backed candidate and former foreign service officer who has accused the UNHCR of pursuing “a mass migration agenda.”

“If they wanted reform, a return to UNHCR’s original mission of helping actual refugees, and a careful inspection of budgets and spending, I was the guy,” [Hankinson] told Reuters, calling Finerty a “business as usual” candidate….

Andrew Veprek, Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, who has espoused anti-migration views, was involved in backing Hankinson’s candidacy, … sources said. The U.S. State Department declined to comment on his involvement.

A U.S. withdrawal from the UNHCR would deliver a massive blow to the globalist agency. In 2024, the United States provided more than $2 billion to the UNHCR, more than half of its total funding from governments. The agency is already in financial distress after Washington and other donors cut funding in 2025.

The Trump administration previously sidelined the UNHCR from the U.S. refugee-admissions process, set the refugee-admissions cap to the lowest-ever ceiling since the enaction of the Refugee Act of 1980, and formally rejected a UN review of the Global Compact on Migration.

In addition to exiting the UNHCR, migration experts are warning that the United States must withdraw from the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, a treaty that obligated the United States to comply with the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (which it hadn’t previously ratified), while also massively expanding the scope of the 1951 convention.

Writing at The Federalist, Todd Bensman, a journalist and former Department of Homeland Security official, noted:

Article 31 of the Convention obliged the United States to adopt as a human “right” the ability of migrants who can reach U.S. soil to claim asylum on five mainly government persecution grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion….

With dramatic reductions in the costs of transportation and communication, the world’s ineligible poor discovered they could use asylum to win permanent stays inside the United States (as well as European signatories to the Convention). This became the immigration speedway for ineligible millions since the 1990s.

Permanently ending this cycle of abuse must start with withdrawing from the treaty.

It is not clear whether the United States will ultimately withdraw from the UNHCR or the 1967 treaty. Reuters reported:

A State Department spokesperson said there have not been any changes to Washington’s engagement with UNHCR. “As with many other international organizations, we work with and through UNHCR when doing so is useful to advance U.S. foreign policy interests or save lives.”

“We will continue to evaluate the United States’ role in international organizations…” the spokesperson added, referring to a February 2025 Executive Order to review U.S. participation and funding.

Regardless of what steps the Trump administration takes next, its stance toward the UNHCR demonstrates that it is overly focused on trying to “reform” it. Instead of trying to “return to UNHCR’s original mission,” as Hankinson put it, the United States should withdraw from the globalist body — and the entire UN system — completely.

Additionally, the fact that the administration opposed the appointment of an incumbent U.S. diplomat to a top UNHCR position for not being aligned with its immigration agenda helps demonstrate the existence of a “Deep State” in the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Foreign Service, that consistently supports globalist policies.

Legislation in Congress, the DEFUND Act (H.R. 1498 and S. 669), would fully withdraw the United States from the UN, including the UNHCR and UN conventions. Encourage your U.S. representative and senators to co-sponsor and pass these bills. — Peter Rykowski

Daylight Saving Time May Soon Be Stable

On July 14, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) by a 308-117 vote, advancing a bill to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. States could opt out, but the federal government would standardize “spring forward” as the new normal year-round. Proponents tout more evening light, but should the federal government be manipulating fundamental aspects of human experience for convenience, revenue, or control?

Daylight saving time originated as government intervention. First widely implemented during World War I to squeeze more labor out of workers, it arbitrarily shifts clocks to suit bureaucratic or economic goals rather than natural solar cycles.

Government has been prioritizing revenue over biological reality for years. In the 1893 U.S. Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden, justices ruled that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruits. Botanically, a tomato is a fruit (i.e., it develops from the ovary of a flowering plant and contains seeds). However, the Tariff Act of 1883 imposed a 10-percent tax on imported foreign vegetables, while fruits could be imported tax-free. SCOTUS saw dollar signs and unanimously rejected indisputable truth.

Legal definitions follow suit. “Insanity” is a legal construct for criminal responsibility, distinct from clinical mental-illness diagnoses in psychiatry. A person can be mentally ill without qualifying as legally insane, and vice versa. The state creates its own standard for accountability, separate from authoritative psychiatric designations.

Additional examples abound. The government has redefined marriage, gender, and even vaccines through legislation and regulation. It declares certain substances safe or dangerous based on policy, not science. These acts assert the state’s power to construct social “truths” unmoored from actual baseline reality.

At root lies the legal fiction of the state as a “corporate person.” Corporate personhood — tracing to cases such as Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) and expanded in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) — treats artificial entities as rights-bearing “persons.” According to Anna Grzymala-Busse, in her book Sacred Foundations, nation-states borrowed the concept of fictive personhood from the Catholic Church. The Church first made the assertion that it had a separate existence and identity, over and above the people in it. “The notion of a fictive person,” writes Grzymala-Busse, “was first commonly used by the papacy as part of its eleventh-century quest for autonomy…. The fiction of a corporation was a useful one…. By 1250, English barons thought of themselves not only as members of a feudal hierarchy but also of a corporate entity.”

Universities today exist as fictive persons. For instance, Harvard is still Harvard — even if the entire staff and student body are different over the course of time. It has a separate identity over and above the individuals in it.

The modern decoupling of the state from the people inside it might be construed as dangerous, given the fact that a republic derives from the Latin res publica, meaning “the people’s thing.” Without the people, there is no state. It’s tantamount to naming something a “forest” that has no trees.

Likewise with corporate personhood. The assertion is that corporations should have the same rights as a human being, though notably without any of the same responsibilities. The German philosopher Georg Hegel famously said, “There are no rights without responsibilities, no responsibilities without rights.”

But this axiom has been turned on its head by a government that increasingly sees itself as decoupled not only from its own people, but from reality itself. This allows government to act as creator and arbiter, eroding natural rights, commonly understood definitions, and ordered liberty.

When the state manipulates clocks, classifications, or definitions to fit its purposes, it blurs the line between servant and master. Truly limited government respects objective reality and the common meaning of words — it doesn’t remake the dictionary (or alter space and time) to suit short-sighted policy objectives and evade accountability. — Rebecca Terrell

Trump Rejects UN Farm Declaration, Seeks UN “Free Speech” Declaration

The Trump administration rejected a UN agriculture declaration on July 23 because it promoted “divisive social policies.”

Politico reports:

On Thursday [July 23], Officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Paul Welcher repeated his government’s wish to “disassociate” itself from the U.N.’s Global Plan of Action for Sustainable Livestock Transformation at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s [FAO’s] COAG30 summit in Rome.

Multiple mentions of climate change, gender, equality and the U.N.’s sustainability goals “distract from the core tactical elements within the FAO’s mandate,” Welcher explained.

The plan, which is completely voluntary, was finally adopted by delegates on Friday [July 17]. It advises countries to address issues such as biodiversity, animal welfare, emissions and how to prevent the spread of disease.

Perhaps predictably for a mainstream media outlet, Politico subtly defended the declaration by noting that “the word gender only appears once” in it, even though the Trump administration’s objections were broader than just that topic.

A separate Politico report on July 19 noted that the administration “will use the upcoming U.N. General Assembly,” scheduled to occur in September, “to push a global ‘freedom of expression’ declaration.”

The outlet continues:

POLITICO has obtained a draft of the joint declaration that the U.S. has begun circulating among countries in the hope that it will be signed by heads of government at an event on the sidelines of the annual United Nations meeting in September.

The version of the document seen by POLITICO denounces “new laws” and “regulatory frameworks” that it says endanger free speech around the globe in “historically democratic countries.”

It is not clear to what extent the UN itself will be involved in adopting this proposed declaration.

The Trump administration’s proposal is in response to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, an EU law enacted in 2022 that regulates online platforms and threatens free speech online. The administration and Congress have previously criticized the law, with the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary describing it in a 2025 report as a “comprehensive digital censorship law.”

Although the Trump administration has been promoting conservative policies in these instances, it should focus on restoring U.S. sovereignty by getting out of the UN and other international organizations, instead of trying to work through the UN system. — Peter Rykowski

Houthis Expand Their Blockade Threat

The global economy runs through a small number of narrow channels. Two of them have been under simultaneous strain for different reasons, in different countries, but with the same basic lesson: Instability at a single strait or port city can ripple across the entire world’s supply chains.

On July 20, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement declared a full naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, warning shipowners that any vessel calling at Saudi ports on the Red Sea would be treated as a target.

The Houthis said it was retaliation for a Saudi strike on Sanaa Airport meant to block a plane returning Houthi mourners from the funeral of Iran’s assassinated supreme leader. Iranian leadership had reportedly urged the Houthis to close the nearby Bab el-Mandeb Strait if the United States struck Iran’s power grid — which Trump had threatened, and which Iran said the United States then did.

The Bab el-Mandeb choke point, just 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, sits at the mouth of the Red Sea and carries a large share of the world’s oil-tanker traffic. Saudi Arabia had been routing extra oil through the Red Sea specifically to work around the Strait of Hormuz disruption caused by the Iran war. This means that the kingdom’s backup route is itself now under threat.

Shipping data already show tankers reversing course rather than risk the passage, even though the Houthis have not yet attacked a vessel to enforce the threat.

Nearly 2,000 miles away, Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is entering what analysts call a new, more-dangerous phase. Following the RSF’s brutal capture of El Fasher last year — which international monitors have documented as involving ethnic-cleansing-level atrocities — the RSF has spent 16 months encircling El Obeid, a historic trading hub the UN warns could face the same fate. El Obeid is the commercial gateway for roughly 70 percent of the world’s gum arabic supply (a key ingredient in soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, and printing) and much of Sudan’s livestock export trade.

Meanwhile, the RSF’s long-range strike capability increasingly threatens Port Sudan itself, the country’s main outlet to the Red Sea — the same corridor the Houthi blockade now menaces from the opposite shore.

Though neither Yemen nor Sudan is a major economic power, what makes both crises globally significant is geography. The countries sit astride, or directly beside, choke points the rest of the world depends on and has no easy way to route around.

Meanwhile, there has been a notable surge in U.S. military logistics activity. Dozens of U.S. Air Force transport flights have been relocated from key European bases to the Middle East. This suggests significant logistical buildup in the region, and has drawn attention as a potential indicator of escalating strategic positioning by the United States, as a wider theater of conflict may be shaping up. — Rebecca Terrell

Congressional Republicans Push Amnesty for Illegal Farmworkers

Dozens of congressional Republicans have signed on to legislation that would provide amnesty to illegal aliens who work in agriculture.

H.R. 9535, titled the “Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026,” is sponsored by Representative Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, and co-sponsored by 55 representatives, 49 of whom are Republicans.

If enacted, H.R. 9535 would expand the H-2A agricultural visa program to allow visa holders to work year-round, rather than only seasonally or temporarily. Additionally, the bill would allow illegal migrants to apply for H-2A visas, effectively providing them with a form of amnesty.

Conservatives have expressed alarm about the bill. Politico reports:

Conservatives are savaging Republican-led legislation as a “betrayal” of the party’s immigration agenda, and mobilizing President Donald Trump’s base to tank a yearslong effort aimed at helping farmers.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, and the House Freedom Caucus’ bloc of hard-right lawmakers are piling on against [H.R. 9535].

Thompson currently holds a 58-percent Freedom Index score, indicating poor adherence to the U.S. Constitution and America’s founding principles.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter, Thompson stated, “With the border now secure, it is time to address these shortcomings and provide fair and legal pathways for all of agriculture to obtain workers when they are unable to find U.S. citizens willing to perform these noble but arduous tasks.”

However, as The New American has previously reported, although the Trump administration has taken extensive actions to combat mass migration, they have been enacted almost entirely via executive action, making them vulnerable to the whims of a future, pro-open-borders administration. Before even thinking about potential amnesty proposals, Congress must enact strong legislation repealing the Hart-Celler Act and other pro-mass-migration laws enacted over the last 80 years.

Urge your U.S. representative and senators to oppose H.R. 9535 and instead enact strong legislation cracking down on mass migration. — Peter Rykowski

N.Y. School Nixes Robot as Parents, Teachers Push Back

A school district in rural western New York has hit pause on plans to place a humanoid, AI-powered robot in a high-school classroom. Parents, teachers, and state regulators raised alarms that moved faster than the district’s rollout plan.

The Salamanca City Central School District had approved a $60,000 stationary humanoid robot from the company Realbotix. The robot, nicknamed “Sally” by students, has long dark hair and functioning arms and hands, though no legs. Superintendent Mark Beehler pitched the purchase as a way to close the opportunity gap for students in an isolated community, telling reporters that “Sally” could walk students through basic technical problems, such as programming a circuit board, and give them hands-on exposure to robotics and AI careers they’d otherwise have to travel hours to encounter.

The plan unraveled once word spread beyond the district. New York Focus, a nonprofit outlet covering state government, first reported on the pilot in late July, and the story quickly drew criticism from parents in the small community — located on the Seneca Nation of Indians reservation — who worried about how their children’s data would be collected and used by a private technology vendor.

The parents’ fears are not without merit. Big Tech is aggressively colonizing America’s classrooms to harvest data on developing minds. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple (via Woz ED) push AI tools, robots, and “personalized learning” platforms into schools. Channels such as Khan Academy pass kids’ data back up to Big Tech firms. Every interaction feeds profiles on students’ habits, knowledge gaps, and behaviors. Privacy safeguards often prove illusory as data flows to private vendors. This turns public schools into surveillance hubs.

The backlash intensified once it became public that Realbotix also manufactures hyper-realistic sex robots under a related product line. Melinda Person, president of the state teachers union, argued that “a robot built by a company associated with sex dolls has no business in our classrooms.” District officials and the company both maintained that the two product lines are operated separately, but the association proved difficult to overcome in the court of public opinion.

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa added her own concerns in a letter to the district, writing that, even after meeting with district officials, her department remained uneasy about a humanoid robot’s role in a classroom. The district has since confirmed, in a statement posted to Facebook, that the pilot is on hold while it works out “enhanced student data privacy agreements.”

The takeaway: A school board approved a $60,000 technology contract with a private vendor before parents, teachers, or the public had any real opportunity to weigh in. It took an independent news outlet, not the district itself, to reveal this news to the community it affects.

Local school boards remain the most direct point of leverage parents have over what enters their children’s classrooms. Salamanca’s pause shows that that leverage still works — when parents and teachers use it. — Rebecca Terrell

Immigration Invasion a Foretaste of Future Cataclysm, Warns Top War Correspondent

The mass-migration invasion tsunami from Africa and the Middle East overwhelming Spain and Europe right now is a foreshadowing of even greater engineered catastrophes to bring down Western civilization and replace the population, warned leading war correspondent and former Special Forces operator Michael Yon in this important interview by The New American senior editor Alex Newman.

Yon, who has traveled through more than 100 countries documenting the United Nations-backed immigration disaster, believes there is a major war on the horizon. In this interview on Behind the Deep State, he suggested that the death toll will likely be significant.

Perhaps even more importantly than sounding the alarm, Yon offered concrete steps people can take to try to protect themselves and their families from the coming chaos. Now is the time to act. To watch, click here.

Palantir’s Suppression of European Nationalism

Recently, Palantir CEO Alex Karp boasted of his company’s role in undermining the plight of law-abiding people to secure the blessings of freedom and self-determination in their countries. Karp said, “I think it’s fair to say we have crushed the rise of the right wing in Europe with our software…. The way you do that is you stop the terrorism, you stop the bad guys from doing bad things, and then you don’t get the far-right people rising up. If you don’t protect against terror, you get far-right people. So we have been very effective at helping our European partners stop terrorism and therefore stop the rise of the political extremes on the right.”

The statement, delivered with evident satisfaction, exemplifies elite intervention against nationalist movements. Far from isolated corporate overreach, it reflects a continuum of post-World War II strategies designed to maintain power in the hands of internationalist elites by keeping European populations divided, demoralized, and allergic to strong national identity.

After 1945, the United States and its allies faced the challenge of rebuilding a devastated continent while preventing any resurgence of the nationalism that posed a challenge to what economic historian Giovanni Arrighi called “British Free Trade Imperialism.”

The Marshall Plan provided economic leverage, but covert operations supplied the muscle. Operation Gladio, a NATO-backed network of “stay-behind” armies across Europe, exemplified this. Ostensibly created to counter Soviet invasion and communist electoral gains, Gladio evolved into a tool for manipulating politics. It involved false-flag terrorism, funding anti-communist groups, and rigging elections in Italy and elsewhere. Historians document its role in the “strategy of tension,” which sowed fear and discredited both extremes while centralizing power under Atlanticist institutions. The real aim extended beyond containing communism: It was to neuter sovereign nation-states, ensuring no new Hitler or Mussolini — and no independent European self-determination — could challenge Anglo-American leadership of the Western alliance.

NATO integration locked European defense policy to Washington. Cultural programs promoted cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and guilt over colonial and wartime histories, framing patriotism as proto-fascist. Economic globalization further eroded national cohesion, while intelligence agencies monitored and disrupted nationalist undercurrents.

Today, the methods have evolved but the objective remains: Suppress organic nationalism antithetical to supranational governance and global capital flows. Tech firms such as Palantir — with deep ties to intelligence communities — represent the new frontier. Using AI-driven data analytics, predictive policing, and social-media monitoring, these tools enable real-time identification and neutralization of “extremist” trends. Nationalist parties across Europe, initially surging on immigration, sovereignty, and economic discontent, have faced coordinated pressure: deplatforming, financial restrictions, lawfare, and ideological capture. Many have moderated or been encouraged to align with pro-Israel stances, diluting their appeal to core constituencies wary of foreign entanglements.

Strong, cohesive nation-states with robust identities resist external control — whether from Brussels technocrats, Washington strategists, or global markets. By keeping populations weak, turning citizens into “consumers,” and cultivating a lack of patriotism, elites preserve a manageable order. In the era after the fall of the Soviet Union, programs that were once anti-communist now target “populism” as the new existential threat. Karp’s admission fits this lineage: Modern “counter-extremism” is the updated Gladio, with algorithms replacing other forms of paramilitary coercion.

European voters sense this managerial containment. Nationalists must deal with the irony that globalist forces are silencing the voices of the people as they claim to be “fighting extremism in the name of defending democracy.” — Rebecca Terrell

From Spokane to Palisades: Arson Suspected in Some of America’s Most Destructive Fires

Police arrested a man they believe started at least one of three massive fires that have razed hundreds of homes in Spokane, Washington, over the last three days. The arrest fits into a long pattern of arson and destructive fires in this country.

The Spokane fires are considered among the most devastating in the history of the city. Three blazes are raging: the Autumn Lane Fire, the Old Trails Fire, and the Fairview Fire. As of August 4, the fires had burned more than 10,000 acres, destroyed more than 700 structures, and caused 60,000 people to evacuate their homes. More than 4,000 people from 12 states and even Australia are working together to contain the blazes.

Spokane, like much of the Mountain West, is no stranger to wildfires. The local climate is arid, and by August, it’s common for the region to be bone dry. But the recent fires suddenly exploded.

Authorities announced Monday evening that they arrested a 37-year-old convicted felon named Aaron Farinacci on suspicion that he started the Old Trails Fire, which has burned more than 3,600 acres. He is charged with first-degree arson and is being held on a $1 million bond.

Local officials said during a press conference that the suspect’s arrest happened after citizens reported suspicious behavior. According to local media,

concerned citizens notified authorities that they noticed a man who was bending down in the grass in the area around 12 p.m. [on August 1]. Witnesses told officials that Farinacci looked nervous, and later on saw smoke coming from the area where he was standing.

Police found the suspect four miles from where the Old Trails Fire started. They initially let him go, but arrested him later after the Department of Natural Resources, Crime Check, and police detectives “developed probable cause to arrest him for arson.” They arrested him at his home, where, apparently, they happened to find waterproof matches and a butane lighter.

This isn’t the first time the suspect might have had something to do with wildfires. Detectives learned that Farinacci “had been contacted by Spokane police and the Washington State Patrol last year for two separate fire investigations.”

As has become the norm, whenever a fire destroys so much infrastructure, there is widespread suspicion that foul play is at hand. As the allegations against Farinacci suggest, those suspicions have already been vindicated, at least partially. But what of the other two fires? Local reports say that “several fires exploded in size across Spokane County on Saturday afternoon.” Legacy media reports attribute this to a rare combination of extreme fire weather and especially dry fuels. “Widespread drought conditions, driven in large part by a historic 2026 snow drought, played a large role,” says one media outlet. This past winter was abnormally mild. There were also powerful winds in the area, which always fuel fire.

But the speed at which these fires spread has many people scratching their heads. For reference, the Upriver Fire in Spokane County started on June 16. It was contained eight days later, after it consumed 213 acres, destroyed 14 homes, and took one human life. The current fires exploded on Saturday, and after two days had already consumed nearly 8,000 acres.

All sorts of rumors have emerged regarding the source of the fires. People have suggested everything from arson to the use of directed-energy weapons to motivations tied to a moratorium on data centers the Spokane City Council approved a few weeks ago. While it’s true that the City Council quashed two data-center proposals when it passed the moratorium, there is little to support the suspicion that these fires may have something to do with that, nor is there proof that energy weapons were used.

The above is part of an article by Paul Dragu. To see the entire article at TheNewAmerican.com, click here.

Birth-control Pill May Diminish Fear Signals in Women

A 2023 study published in Frontiers in Endocrinology found that women using combined oral contraceptives exhibited reduced cortical thickness in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in fear processing and emotional regulation, compared to men and non-users. The study used MRI imaging and suggested potential deficits in emotion regulation during use, though effects appeared reversible after discontinuation.

This finding has sparked discussion about how hormonal contraception might subtly alter risk-assessment. In Western societies, many women — particularly those influenced by progressive ideals — display reduced historical wariness toward outsiders, prominently signaled by “Refugees Welcome” signs all over the West. This ahistorical xenophilia contrasts with traditional patterns in which communities, especially women, exhibited caution toward foreigners due to potential threats. Critics argue that modern conditioning, including widespread birth-control use (affecting more than 150 million women globally), may contribute by dampening innate fear responses.

Extreme cases reinforce the hypothesis. Tragic outcomes have befallen young Western women embarking on backpacking trips through high-risk Third World areas. Examples include Scandinavian women (such as Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland) raped and decapitated in Morocco, and Brenda Blainey in the U.K., who invited an Iranian migrant to come live with her in her home. He brutally murdered her. Consider also the case of Elisabeth Ross, who went to Greece to help migrants illegally cross into Europe. There she met an Afghan man, who murdered her and stuffed her in a suitcase. In Spain, left-wing activist Estibaliz Kortazar Errecatxo got off easier. After inviting an African asylum seeker to move in with her, he merely harassed her, changed the locks, and forced her out of her own property.

This behavioral shift away from wisdom and environmental awareness invites comparison to biological manipulation by parasites. Toxoplasma gondii, which infects roughly one-third of humans, famously alters rodent behavior: Infected mice lose their instinctive fear of cats, becoming more exploratory and reckless, increasing predation risk to complete the parasite’s life cycle. The effect extends beyond cat-specific fear to general-anxiety reduction and risk-taking in some studies. Similarly, certain flatworms and tapeworms infect fish, impairing normal predator avoidance and causing them to swim into open water and behave more boldly, culminating in their deaths.

Birth control’s synthetic hormones mimic aspects of pregnancy (a state of relative immunosuppression and behavioral change), potentially producing analogous “fear-blunting” without the protective context of actual reproduction. Unlike acute parasite manipulation, any pill-related effects are subtler, multifactorial, and reversible, per current evidence.

These observations raise questions about unintended social consequences of mass hormonal intervention. The overlap between altered neurobiology, ideological xenophilia, and elevated personal risks merits rigorous, unbiased study. Evolutionary psychology suggests that fear of out-groups increases survival; overriding it artificially or culturally carries risks. — Rebecca Terrell

The Ship of Fools Sails On

Plato did not need a poll to see us coming.

In Book VI of his Republic, he relates that Socrates asks us to picture a ship. The captain is bigger and stronger than any man aboard, but he is hard of hearing, dim of sight, and knows almost nothing of the sea. The crew knows less. They have never studied navigation, and they insist there is nothing to study. So, they brawl over the tiller. They flatter the captain, drug him, and take the helm by force. Then they break into the stores, drink the voyage away, and congratulate one another on their seamanship. The one man aboard who has troubled himself to learn the winds, the seasons, and the stars, the man who could actually bring them home, they dismiss as “a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing.”

That is not allegory. That is Election Day.

Statesmanship is an art. That was Plato’s point, and America’s Founders, who read him, built accordingly. Government by untrained appetite is not government at all. It is drift. So, they drew a chart. Enumerated powers. Divided sovereignty. A federal vessel of shallow draft, and states that were never cargo but the keel itself. James Madison did not trust the crew, and he did not trust the captain, either. He trusted the chart, and the machinery that forces men to consult it.

Original intent is the fixed star. It does not move because the weather turns, or because the sailors have voted that north is now wherever they happen to be pointing.

Notice what Plato’s mutineers never do: They never throw the chart overboard. That would be honest, and honesty is the one commodity they refuse to carry. Instead, they hold it up, squint, and announce that it lives and breathes, that its meaning grows, that the rocks it marks belong to a less-enlightened age. They stretch “commerce” until it swallows the coastline. They read “general welfare” as a blank warrant. The chart stays framed on the bulkhead while the hull grinds across everything it warned them about.

And the captain sleeps. Not because he is stupid — the American people are not stupid — but because he has been sedated. Bread was cheaper in the early Roman Empire, but the circuses have improved beyond measure. A man watching the show does not feel the list in the deck. The mutineers keep the passengers distracted so they never see the danger into which they are being steered.

Here is the part the modern mutineers hate: Plato’s remedy was not a better mutiny; it was knowledge. The pilot must know the sea, and the passengers must know enough to recognize a pilot when they see one. That is why an educated citizenry was the first line of defense in the Founders’ design, and why tyrants have always taken the schoolhouse before they take the arsenal.

The remedy: Learn the chart. Teach it to your children before somebody else teaches them that charts are oppressive. Hold your state legislature to its station — because the states were intended to be ballast and bulwark, not a friendly port for federal cargo nobody voted to load.

The crew can debate the rocks all night. The rocks are not on the ballot. — Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.