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A Regional Crisis or a Protracted International Disorder?

On May 31, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised address in which he condemned Israel’s invasion and intensified attacks on southern Lebanon as a dangerous escalation, warning that a “scorched-earth policy” will never bring security to Tel Aviv: “Israel must understand that with its scorched-earth policy, collective punishment, and the bulldozing of villages and towns, it will gain neither security nor stability.”

As Salam said, this process is now advancing. “Israel is practicing mass displacement that amounts to collective punishment. It no longer targets only specific locations or areas, but has adopted a policy of comprehensive destruction of cities, towns, and all aspects of life within them.”

Tactical wins, strategic devastation

Israel’s Obliteration Doctrine is a lethal mix of scorched earth policy, collective punishment and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systematic use of artificial intelligence (AI), as I have demonstrated in The Obliteration Doctrine (2025) and The Fall of Israel (2024).

This doctrine often goes hand in hand with ecocide, which Israel has committed in Gaza and is committing in Lebanon. The net effect is ethnic cleansing and, given continued and unhindered escalation, genocidal atrocities.

Whether Prime Minister Netanyahu, former PM Naftali Bennett or former head of the Israeli defense forces Gadi Eisenkot will win the 2026 Israeli legislative election is effectively immaterial. With or without Netanyahu, the Obliteration Doctrine will prevail.

Netanyahu brought to power the most far-right Messianic government in Israeli history. Naftali Bennett is a millionaire politician and the ex-leader of a religious Zionist far-right party. Ironically, the more “moderate” of the three is the ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot who first tested the Obliteration Doctrine in Dahiya, a Shia enclave in Beirut in 2006.

The greatest threat to Israel’s long-term future is not external enemies alone, but the transformation of military escalation into a permanent governing principle. Once security policy becomes inseparable from territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing and perpetual warfare, the consequences extend far beyond the battlefield.

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Pentagon Cuts the Faith-Code Maze From 200-Plus to 31

The Pentagon just cut its list of religious affiliation codes for service members from over 200 down to 31. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the reform in March as part of a broader effort to refocus the Chaplain Corps.

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata later released the memo making the change official. The old system had sprawled into a giant administrative junk drawer, stuffed with codes many troops never used and chaplains didn’t need to serve the force. From Just the News:

Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata released the memo, stating the change will “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy,” according to Military.com.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata said. 

Hegseth said the previous system had grown to “well over 200 faith codes,” called it “impractical and unusable,” and noted many codes were never used at all. He also said 82% of religious service members use only six of the codes. From Religion News Service:

Hegseth has been explicit about his Christian faith. He worships at a church run by a self-described Christian nationalist and has held Christian worship services at the Pentagon. He has pushed social media messages that mix war preparations with Bible verses as well as official statements that champion a disputed, faith-focused version of U.S. history.

In 2017, during the first Trump administration, when the military expanded the number of recognized religious faiths it said it was doing so to provide “more accurate demographic data for religious groups,” to enable “better planning for religious support to the force” and to provide “a better assessment of the capabilities and requirements of each Military Service’s Chaplain Corps.”

The reform renames the old “faith and belief coding system” as “religious affiliation codes” and returns the list to a simpler purpose: providing chaplains clear information so they can support troops in line with their stated faith background and practice.

The new list keeps broad religious categories that cover the faith service members report most often. The list includes Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, agnostics, and major Christian groups such as Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and others.

The dropped codes include atheism, Asatru, Eckankar, New Age churches, paganism, spiritualism, Troth, Unitarian Universalism, and several Wiccan groups.

It’s time to cue the usual panic choir, warming up somewhere between “theocracy” and “how dare the database stop flattering my boutique label.”

There’s an argument that the change could make smaller faith groups less visible in the military system, where Hegseth’s chaplain reforms are part of a wider Christian emphasis at the Pentagon.

Those concerns deserve a hearing, but the policy doesn’t ban any service member from worshipping, seeking accommodation, speaking with a chaplain, or holding any belief.

A code list isn’t the First Amendment.

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Democrat Xavier Becerra Advances in California Governor’s Primary Race as Mail-in Ballots Flood In Two Days After Polls Close

Democrat Xavier Becerra, former Health and Human Services Secretary for Biden, advanced in the California governor’s primary race 48 hours after the polls closed on Thursday evening.

On Tuesday evening, Republican candidate Steve Hilton was in the lead shortly after the polls closed, and he is still holding on.

Two days later, and only 57% of the ballots have been counted in the California governor’s race.

Mail-in ballots pouring in after election night have favored Democrat Becerra and Tom Steyer.

Xavier Becerra currently has 1,468,875 votes at 26.04%

Steve Hilton still has a comfortable lead, holding on with 1,532,530 votes at 27.17%.

Democrat Tom Steyer has 1,139,578 votes at 20.18%

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War, Arrogance, and the Unraveling of US Power

The United States is not approaching collapse because it lacks power. It is approaching collapse because it has too often mistaken power for wisdom. Its armed forces remain unmatched in reach, its financial system remains central to global commerce, and its technology sector continues to shape the future. Yet these advantages can conceal a more dangerous condition: the erosion of judgment.

A superpower begins to decay when it treats coercion as strategy, military reach as political authority, and exemption from rules as evidence of strength. The result is not immediate collapse, but a cumulative weakening of legitimacy, fiscal discipline, institutional trust, and strategic clarity.

The war on Iran is the latest expression of this disorder. Washington and Israel possess overwhelming conventional capabilities, and early assessments show that Iran has suffered serious military damage. Nevertheless, the central question is not whether the United States can strike Iran; it is whether violence can produce a stable political outcome.

The conflict has already shifted from a narrow military campaign into a test of endurance, maritime pressure, domestic patience, and bargaining leverage. Iran’s ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates the difference between battlefield superiority and strategic control. A weaker state need not defeat a superpower outright. It need only raise the cost of victory beyond what that superpower’s public, economy, and allies are willing to bear.

This is the recurring failure of American interventionism. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Iran belong to a broader tradition in which Washington enters conflicts with maximal confidence and exits them with diminished credibility. The pattern is not simply a military error. It is a conceptual error: the assumption that destroying capacity is equivalent to creating order. The post-9/11 wars revealed how quickly punitive power becomes a strategic burden. Brown University’s Costs of War project has documented the enormous human, fiscal, and social consequences of that era. Iran risks extending the same logic into a still more dangerous regional environment.

The deeper problem is imperial overstretch. Paul Kennedy’s classic argument was not that great powers fall because they become poor, but because they allow external commitments to exceed the economic and political base that sustains them. That diagnosis remains relevant. The United States carries global military obligations, subsidizes allies, maintains vast overseas deployments, and finances repeated wars while its own fiscal position deteriorates. The Congressional Budget Office projects large deficits and rising public debt through 2036, with interest costs absorbing an expanding share of national resources. A republic cannot indefinitely combine imperial commitments with domestic under-investment and expect no internal consequence.

The moral contradiction is equally corrosive. At least until recently, the United States has claimed to defend sovereignty in Ukraine, oppose coercion in Asia, and uphold international law against rivals. Yet in the Middle East, it has often shielded allies from the very standards it invokes elsewhere. U.S. support for Israel amid the Gaza catastrophe, the wider regional war, and the confrontation with Iran have deepened the perception that American legality is selective. Human rights organizations have warned that continued military support amid alleged serious abuses risks complicity and weakens the credibility of the legal order Washington has traditionally claimed to defend. A power that applies law only to adversaries does not preserve order; it converts international law into a global power hierarchy.

U.S. economic policy now displays the same arrogance. Sanctions, tariffs, export controls, investment restrictions, and financial penalties have become routine instruments of U.S. statecraft. Used carefully, they can serve legitimate security purposes. Used excessively, they teach other states that dependence on U.S.-controlled systems is a vulnerability. RAND’s recent work argues that the boundary between economic security and economic statecraft has broken down, and that U.S. policy now needs clearer tests of purpose, economic soundness, legitimacy, and sustainability. Research on financial sanctions similarly notes that the overuse of dollar power can encourage hedging against the dollar-centered system. Coercion may deliver short-term compliance, but it can also lay the groundwork for long-term exit.

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Weingarten Blames Screens, Not Herself, For Falling Test Scores

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is sounding the alarm about the decade-long decline in student test scores, pointing to screens and devices as a culprit. She’s calling it a “call to action.”

She left out the part about how she helped cause the problem in the first place.

For two years during the COVID pandemic, Weingarten and the AFT fought aggressively to keep schools closed. In July 2020, as the Trump administration urged schools to reopen, Weingarten called the push “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel,” and threatened the possibility of safety strikes.

Internal emails later released by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee showed the AFT had access to draft guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control before it was made public, as well as proposed specific language that could trigger renewed closures.

Research published afterward confirmed what was already evident: Districts with stronger teachers unions were significantly less likely to reopen for in-person instruction, even after controlling for local COVID conditions.

So kids stayed home. They got on computer screens and stayed there for two years, cut off from teachers, friends, and anything resembling a normal childhood.

The consequences were not abstract. The National Assessment of Educational Progress recorded the largest declines in math and reading scores in its history. Reading results dropped to levels not seen since the early 1990s.

Researchers documented surging rates of anxiety, depression, and social developmental delays among children who spent critical years in isolation. The damage, experts say, will take a generation to undo.

In her book published last fall, Weingarten wrote that she “…led the AFT in developing a concrete plan to reopen schools as quickly and safely as possible.” That’s a remarkable claim given the documented record of what her union actually did.

Weingarten told Congress in 2023 there were “… things we really didn’t get right,” including the impact of prolonged closures. That acknowledgment was notable, but what followed it wasn’t accountability. It was a pivot.

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Scott Bessent Just Humiliated a Democrat Senator Over Jeffrey Epstein

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) walked into a budget hearing Wednesday thinking he could grandstand his way through an attack on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Instead, Wyden walked out looking like a fool.

The hearing was supposed to be about the federal budget, but Wyden, being a Democrat, had other plans. He opened with a broadside against President Donald Trump’s administration, accusing it of “widespread corruption” and personally dragging Bessent into it. He also wanted to make Jeffrey Epstein the issue, because it’s pretty much the only play Democrats have, and it’s not even a good one. He claimed that Bessent blocked congressional investigators from accessing Epstein’s financial records and participated in a cover-up lasting a year and a half.

“There’s no better example than the fact that there has been a cover-up of the massive file of Epstein’s financial records for a year and a half,” Wyden said. “This is part of the effort I’ve made, it’s the only one, to follow the money in the Epstein situation. And yet there’s been a denial of access to committee investigators and lying in public about their significance. That subject alone deserves its own hearing. Senate investigators are trying to figure out who paid Epstein for girls, and unfortunately, Secretary Bessent is involved in preventing that from happening.”

Strong words. Too bad they collapsed on contact with reality. As far as Epstein is concerned, the Trump administration has always been about transparency. The Trump administration released the Epstein files to the public, something the Biden administration refused to do. So the senator railing about cover-ups belongs to the party that actually kept those files buried for years.

Bessent wasn’t about to sit there and take it.

“I had hoped to keep this in terms of the economy — Senator Wyden has mendaciously slandered the Treasury building in an attempt to cover up his son having an investment meeting with Jeffrey Epstein to ask for funding,” Bessent said.

Wyden didn’t take it well.

“Let’s be clear here. Nobody is interested in the ramblings of a capo in the most corrupt regime in American history. We want to get some facts about this deal. That’s what we’re here for,” Wyden shot back.

And then Bessent went in for the kill. “And we would like to hear what Adam Wyden and Jeffrey Epstein talked about. Your son’s largest investment position was Rick’s Cabaret. So did your son and Jeffrey Epstein talk about pole dancing as he begged him for money using your limited credibility?” Bessent said.

The room went quiet. Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) turned to Wyden to check whether he had a response. He didn’t.

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‘Trade over Aid’: GOP Resolution Introduced to Phase Out U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Republican Reps. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) and Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) have introduced a resolution calling for the phased elimination of the $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel and its replacement with a partnership focused on trade, joint technology development, and strategic cooperation — a proposal endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The nonbinding resolution, introduced Wednesday, urges the United States and Israel to negotiate a memorandum of understanding before the current ten-year agreement expires in 2028. Under the proposal, direct military assistance would be gradually phased out and replaced by a framework centered on joint defense cooperation, co-development, co-production, and mutual investment.

The effort comes with Netanyahu’s backing.

Following a May 27 meeting in Jerusalem with Stutzman and Hamadeh, Netanyahu sent a June 1 letter expressing support for the initiative and embracing its broader vision of transitioning the U.S.-Israel relationship from one based on aid to one based on partnership.

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Kash Patel Unveils FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudsters” List as Officials Announce New Medicaid Fraud Indictments

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday that the FBI is launching a “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list as the Department of Justice investigates criminal fraud rings across the country.

Patel credited Vice President JD Vance, the chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, for the idea. “Mr. Vice President, thanks to your vision, we’re here to deliver, and you see it here today,” he said.

“I want all Americans to take a look at these most wanted individuals and look at the amounts, the 10s of millions and billions of dollars in fraud that they have decimated our societies from,” Patel continued, urging Americans to provide tips on the fraudsters’ whereabouts.

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Facial recognition watchlist made permanent in Christchurch supermarkets after trial

A Christchurch supermarket trial of facial recognition technology has been made permanent and extended to another store after showing measurable safety improvements.

After a three-month trial, Foodstuffs South Island has decided to keep the technology at New World St Martins and Pak’nSave Papanui and Moorhouse, while expanding it to New World Stanmore.

The initiative, which ran from October 2025 to January 2026, was designed to identify and manage individuals with a history of serious and harmful behaviour in stores.

Foodstuffs South Island retail head Kent Mahon said the results gave the co-operative confidence that the system could be deployed carefully and responsibly.

“The focus has always been on reducing harm. The trial showed we can do that while keeping accuracy high and respecting customer privacy,” Mahon said.

The facial recognition system scans images of everyone entering participating stores and compares them with a watchlist of known offenders.

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Murder charge dropped for Arkansas sheriff nominee who killed teen daughter’s rapist

A judge tossed a murder charge against an Arkansas sheriff nominee who was about to go on trial for killing his 14-year-old daughter’s rapist.

The case against Aaron Spencer was dismissed by a judge on Thursday afternoon after law enforcement lost a dash camera memory card that may have captured the fatal October 2024 shooting of 67-year-old Michael Fosler.

“The court finds that conduct by law enforcement was so egregious that dismissal of this case is warranted,” wrote Special Circuit Court Judge Ralph Wilson Jr.

The development comes just a few weeks before Spencer was slated to go to trial on a second-degree murder charge for allegedly gunning down Fosler on Oct. 8, 2024 after catching him driving off with his daughter — whom the sicko had already been charged with grooming and abusing.

Spencer woke up around 1 a.m. to find his then-13-year-old daughter had vanished. He soon found her in the passenger seat of the car Fosler was driving.

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