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Zelensky tours neo-Nazi units

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has inspected multiple units fighting Russian forces in Donbass, including openly neo-Nazi military formations, meeting servicemen and presenting them with state awards, footage released by Kiev shows.

The battlefield situation continues to deteriorate for Ukrainian forces in the southwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), where Kiev’s units are encircled at the city of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) and nearby Mirnograd (Dimitrov). Zelensky met with troops at multiple undisclosed locations, described by Ukrainian media as command points close to the frontline.

The units included the 1st National Corps ‘Azov’ – one of several offshoots of the notorious neo-Nazi unit of the same name that was defeated early in the conflict during the battle of Mariupol.

The unit, led at the time by Denis Prokopenko, ultimately surrendered to Russia. He was later exchanged and now leads the 1st Azov Corps.

Footage of the meeting with Azov, shared by Zelensky, features assorted neo-Nazi symbols, including the unit’s emblem – a stylized Wolfsangel rune – and a red-and-black flag associated with WWII-era Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.

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Catholic priest, 57, who pretended to be a 16-year-old skinhead to post in neo-Nazi chatrooms where he threatened to bomb mosques as part of a ‘sexual fetish’ is spared jail

A Catholic priest who posed as a 16-year-old skinhead in neo-Nazi chatrooms where he threatened to bomb mosques as part of his ‘sexual fetish’ has avoided jail. 

Father Mark Rowles, 57, posted under the name ‘skinheadlad1488’ in a racist chatroom called Aryan Reich Killers, where he wrote racist and offensive messages.

Rowles wrote several messages on Telegram, including one where he penned ‘bomb mosques’. 

The priest, who was based in St John Lloyd Catholic Church, in Cardiff, confessed to three counts of sending menacing or offensive messages using the Telegram app in May and June of 2024.  

On Thursday, Rowles was ordered to pay £199, carry out 150 hours of unpaid work, and was handed a three-year Criminal Behaviour Order.

The Catholic Church in Wales is understood to be undertaking a review into the matter, as a spokesperson confirmed the priest had been suspended and had not been in active ministry since the allegations emerged. 

A counter-terror probe into extreme right-wing activity online unearthed the 57-year-old’s actions, and he was later taken into custody. 

In one message, he used an extreme racial slur, adding: ‘They should all be strung up and shot.’ 

And when discussing the ethnicity of Londoners, he wrote: ‘A few bullets to their brains would help’ 

When he was arrested and interviewed by police, Rowles told officers he was not racist, but that he said he was lonely and had a ‘sexual fetish for role play’.

His profile picture showed a young white man with a face covering with a German flag and the words ‘right hand path always’, the court heard.

Prosecutor Rob Simkins said Rowles’ posts showed ‘hostility based on religion and race’.

Jacqui Seal, defending, said: ‘Clearly this is a disturbing case. Throughout his life in the Catholic Church he has never been the subject of a complaint or disciplinary action.

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Report: Trump Weighs Options for Launching a War With Venezuela

The Trump administration has developed a series of options for launching attacks on Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, as the US continues its military buildup in the region.

The report said that one option would involve bombing Venezuelan military facilities with the goal of collapsing military support for Maduro in hopes that it would get the Venezuelan leader to flee. But critics of the approach argue that it would likely have the opposite effect, rallying the military around its embattled leader.

The second option would be to send special operations forces, such as Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force, into Venezuela to kill or capture Maduro. Such an operation would put the US troops involved in the attack at serious risk since Maduro has the support of his military and a civilian militia that the Venezuelan government says has millions of members.

The third option would involve sending a much larger force into Venezuela to capture airfields and some of Venezuela’s infrastructure and oil fields. The Washington Examiner has reported that US military planners believe the forces in the region are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory.

The Times report said that President Trump is reluctant to back an operation that would put US troops at risk or come with the chance of failure, and for that reason, other plans are being developed that would involve naval drones and long-range weapons. A decision isn’t expected until the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, which just left the Mediterranean, arrives near Venezuela.

If Trump orders an attack on Venezuela, it would almost certainly lead to a full-blown war or a quick decapitation of the government, which would likely plunge the country into chaos. The Times report cited Trump aides who said far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

Trump aides said that the president has expressed reservations about attacking Venezuela and that he’s asking what the US could get out of it, with a focus on Venezuela’s vast oil resources. The push to launch a war in Venezuela is being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor.

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Comey’s Hidden Personal Notes on Russia Collusion Coup Are Found in FBI Secret Safe

Jim Comey is in trouble – big trouble.

His notes on the Russia collusion attempted coup of the Trump Administration were found in the Hoover Building in a secret safe in a secret building.

Jim Comey’s future just took a turn for the worse.

Svetlana Lokhova shared the following on X:

COMEY HID HIS NOTES ABOUT THE HILLARY PLAN TO TIE DONALD TRUMP TO RUSSIA IN THE SAFE IN THE SECRET ROOM IN THE HOOVER BUILDING

This is deliberate obstruction of Special Counsel Durham investigation by the FBI leadership.

The FBI leadership also hid hundreds of pages of Crossfire Hurricane documents and attempted to destroy them.

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Trump’s Tariff Power Grab

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the landmark case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which will determine whether President Trump can use an emergency declaration to unilaterally impose tariffs on foreign goods that Americans buy, as he did earlier this year.

Although the Constitution is pretty clear that only Congress has the power to tax, the Trump administration cited a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify the suite of tariffs it rolled out on April 2—what Trump called “Liberation Day.”

According to the president and his lawyers, the fact that the country has a trade deficit—that American consumers spend more on goods and services from foreign producers than American businesses make from sales to foreign consumers—is a national emergency.

Trump considered attending the hearing himself over the weekend. He eventually decided against it, but stressed to his followers on Truth Social that he views this case as “one of the most important in the history of the country.”

The president clearly wants his allies on the Supreme Court to understand that he would take a ruling against him very personally. And, based on their previous rulings, the Court’s Trump-friendly majority probably wants to again give a green light to Trump’s expansion of executive authority.

But that could prove difficult. To strike down several of Biden’s more blatant power grabs, this Court relied on the so-called “major questions doctrine,” which requires Congress to use plain and direct language to authorize sweeping economic actions by the executive branch. All that the 1977 law Trump is using to justify his tariffs authorizes him to impose are “regulations” on imports.

It would be transparently hypocritical for these justices to agree that “tariffs,” “taxes,” or “duties” can be implied by the word “regulations” when they just refused to grant that level of leniency to the previous administration.

Which isn’t to say it won’t happen. The idea that the Supreme Court, and the entire federal judiciary, are independent, non-political entities driven solely by a commitment to the letter of the law is, after all, a myth.

But it’s still a difficult position for Trump’s allies on the Court. And further, it’s more evidence that Trump has abandoned his promise to rein in the power of the federal bureaucracy.

As Ryan McMaken pointed out back in April, Trump claiming unilateral control over the power to levy taxes is not at all unprecedented. That’s the direction the federal government has been moving for well over a century, as more and more of Congress’s core powers get transferred to the White House and the executive agencies making up the administrative state.

Further, the executive branch using “emergencies” it declares to justify its own power grabs has been one of the primary ways the executive state has grown in general.

In recent years, crises like the 9/11 attacks, the collapse of the housing bubble, and the covid pandemic have been used to give the permanent federal bureaucracy significantly more control over our lives.

But there have been some bright spots on this front. One of them was the Supreme Court’s embrace of the major questions doctrine, which restricted the administrative state’s ability to interpret vague language in legislation in whichever way granted itself the most power. On top of that, last year, the Court overturned the so-called Chevron doctrine.

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US Drafts UN Resolution to End Sanctions on Syrian Leader

The United States has put forth a draft resolution within the U.N. Security Council meant to end sanctions on Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of the Islamist militant and political group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The proposal comes ahead of al-Sharaa’s anticipated meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, set for next Monday.

The Security Council has regularly approved travel exemptions for al-Sharaa this year, meaning the White House meeting does not hinge on the outcome of the U.S. proposal.

The draft resolution, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, also advocates for the repeal of sanctions against Syria’s Interior Minister Anas Khattab.

The U.N. sanctions include a travel ban, asset freeze, and arms embargo.

It is unclear when a vote on the draft could be held. At least nine of the 15 council constituents need to vote in favor of the proposal for it to be enacted. However, Russia, China, the United States, France, and the UK each hold a veto.

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Behind Democrats’ Sob Stories Is A Push For More Tax Dollars To Insurance Companies

Democrats like Sen. Amy Klobuchar are framing the fight over the government shutdown and a Republican refusal to keep funding health insurance subsidies as an attack on individuals.

Poor Bill and Shelly Gall — why are congressional Republicans being so mean to them?

The story Klobuchar links to does this remarkable thing, and read this carefully:

The Galls are among roughly 22 million ACA marketplace enrollees — about 92% of all enrollees — who face the prospect of higher premiums in 2026, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.

Democrats are pushing Republicans to extend the enhanced subsidies that make enrollees’ health premiums cheaper, as part of a deal to end the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1. Republicans have said they want to negotiate any extension of ACA subsidies outside of legislation that would reopen the government.

See the premise? Subsidies “make enrollees’ health premiums cheaper.”

They don’t. They make enrollees’ health premiums divided, splitting the cost between the person paying for the insurance and the taxpayers who fund the subsidy, but they flatly don’t make the premiums cheaper.

It’s like you go to the supermarket and buy filet mignon, and it only costs you a dollar — wow, filet mignon is so affordable now! — but the supermarket bills the federal government for $25 every time you make that purchase, and the government gets the $25 from you as taxes. The thing costs what it costs. Subsidies don’t make it cheaper. They just hide the expense at the point of purchase. Subsidies shift and obscure.

Klobuchar claimed, “Early retirees like Bill & Shelly will see their health insurance premiums increase nearly 300%—from $442 to $1,700 per month…” But the cost of their health insurance isn’t changing at all. What’s changing is who pays for it. And if Bill and Shelly pay taxes, they’re paying, at least in part, for their own subsidies. They’re taxed so that their taxes can be transferred to them as subsidies. What a remarkable game.

But then take it one more step.

Democrats frame the subsidy as a payment to Bill and Shelly, and don’t you want poor Bill and Shelly to have nice things? But the payment doesn’t go to Bill and Shelly. It goes to health insurance companies. It’s a subsidy to industry, allowing corporations to hide the cost of their product. It’s a federal gift to private corporations.

As the subsidies die (among other political changes), health insurance companies are talking about the market headwinds that they face: “trouble in the government-funded insurance sector.” The submarine warfare masked with photos of poor Bill and Shelly is over the explosive growth of health care spending as a share of GDP, and the attempt to hide it by paying for it in less-noticed ways. Here’s the big finish from a story this week about the poor recent performance of UnitedHealthcare stock:

Still, shares of UnitedHealthcare remain down some 35% in 2025 as the company struggles with rising medical costs and reimbursement cuts. And these pressures, in turn, reflect the deepest fault lines in the U.S. system, including a population that’s aging faster than the workforce paying for it, medical inflation that outpaces wage growth, and a financial model that assumes employers, taxpayers, and patients can endlessly absorb higher costs—even as the federal government shuts down amid an affordability fight.

The financial model assumes that taxpayers can keep paying more. The fight isn’t about Bill and Shelly. The fight is about a spectacularly unaffordable health care business model that relies on the federal treasury:

The federal government subsidizes health insurance for over 150 million Americans through various programs and tax benefits. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that in 2023, those costs and subsidies added up to $1.6 trillion, net of offsetting receipts, mainly from Medicare and Medicaid. A small portion of that spending — $91 billion, or 6 percent — goes toward subsidies for health insurance purchased through marketplaces established under the ACA and related spending.

The ACA subsidies are only $91 billion a year, though, so it’s practically nothing.

See also this 2023 CBO report, which projects explosive growth in federal health care costs over the next decade.

We’re not having a debate about giving money to Bill and Shelly so they can enjoy their early retirement. We’re having a debate about how much money the federal government — meaning you, if you pay taxes — is going to give to private corporations. Congressional Democrats are servicing their corporate clients.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”

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UK Man Arrested for Possessing Gunpowder Recipe

Here in the United States, we have a serious DIY culture. People will make their own anything if they think it’s cool enough. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, people build their own furniture, make their own clothes, make pottery, take up blacksmithing, or any number of activities that they could just pay for, but would rather do it themselves.

And we celebrate this.

Yes, that also includes people making their own guns and ammunition. I get that not everyone feels the same way we do about the right to keep and bear arms, but it seems the UK is even more down on it than I thought.

After all, some words on paper are too much for them, apparently.

A 49-year-old man from Leeds has been sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for possessing a handwritten recipe for gunpowder.

…

He will serve an additional four years on extended licence and will be subject to a Serious Crime Prevention Order for five years, along with terrorism notification requirements for ten years.

[Martin Paul] Gilleard admitted possessing information likely to be useful to someone committing or preparing an act of terrorism under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The document was discovered at his home during an intelligence-led search by West Yorkshire Police on May 28 and referred to Counter Terrorism Policing North East for investigation.

Now, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he did anything with the recipe. He just happened to have it.

As a result of those words on a piece of paper, though, he’s being treated like a terrorist in his home country, even as actual acts of terrorism keep being dismissed as nothing to be concerned about.

That entire country has lost its ever-loving mind, and that’s a shame because that’s where my roots are from, for the most part, and I’d love to visit someday. I just don’t know that I’d be safe there based on everything I see.

Especially since defending myself would be virtually impossible there.

And before anyone tries the “it can’t happen here” thing, remember that some states have tried making it illegal to possess 3D printer files for making your own firearm. That’s still just information that is harmless on its own. How long before some ninny here in the States tries to ban reloading your own ammo, followed by banning information pertaining to reloading?

We’re not as far away from something like this as we might like to believe.

That’s especially true as this was folded under anti-terrorism laws. The specter of terrorism has made our own lawmakers opt for some stupid things in the past, and to forget that freedom is and remains the guiding principle of this great nation, so it’s not hard to see this happening here.

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Frankenbeef: Liberals Cloned Meat Policy Lets “Freak Meat” Hit Shelves Unlabelled

Health Canada just approved cloned cattle and pork—and their offspring—for Canadian grocery shelves, no labels, no warnings, and no pre-market safety review.

Under a quietly updated policy, cloned meat is no longer considered a “novel food.” That means it bypasses the scientific review once required for new or genetically manipulated foods. There’s no rule requiring companies to tell consumers if their steak came from a cloned animal or its progeny. You’ll never know—unless you ask your farmer directly.

Health Canada insists the change is safe, saying cloned animals and their offspring are “no different” from naturally bred livestock. But Canadians have heard that line before—“safe and effective,” “trust the science,” and all the other slogans used to silence dissent during the COVID years.

So here we go again—a massive, uncontrolled experiment where the only test subjects are the people doing the eating. People should be able to make informed decisions about what goes into their bodies, from medicine to meat. 

They’re calling it innovation. We’re calling it Frankenbeef.

Health Canada’s move mirrors the pre–RFK Jr. era FDA stance.

All of this doesn’t make food cheaper. It makes it weirder.

And it makes us all unwitting versions of Laika, the Soviet space dog—strapped in, eyes wide, blasted into a brave new frontier against our will.

If you want out of this latest “trust the science” experiment, there’s only one way:
Get to know your local farmer personally. Buy from people you trust, and distrust bureaucrats who think your dinner plate should double as a science project.

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Thousands of Unexploded Bombs Dropped by Israel Have Turned Gaza into a Minefield

Mohammed Nour returned with his family from Khan Younis to Gaza City on October 13th, three days after the ceasefire went into effect, along with thousands of other Palestinians. “As soon as they announced the truce, we came back immediately,” Nour told Drop Site. “From the moment Gaza City opened, we were among the first to return, because of everything we had suffered in the south.”

The family set up a tent just behind Al-Shifa hospital in an area that—like much of the city— was filled with large mounds of rubble and debris following Israel’s concentrated aerial bombardment and shelling. “It was around 10 or 11 a.m. I told the kids, ‘Go bring some cardboard, some wood, and a bit of plastic so we can light a fire.’ We wanted to cook something for the kids to eat,” Nour said. “We had just arrived and had nothing to burn and light a fire.”

His 11-year old son, two nephews, and two other boys their age walked about 10 meters from the tent and began searching through the rubble. “As soon as one of the kids pulled a piece of wood, something exploded. The children were thrown into the air—all of them,” Nour said. “I suddenly saw people flying—I didn’t even realize they were our children. I ran toward them and found my son hanging on the fence, and my sister’s son and my brother’s son—all of them hanging there,” he added. “Their condition was terrible, terrible.”

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