Iran planned to kill US President Donald Trump in a fresh plot unveiled by Israel, several US media outlets report. According to Israeli intelligence, the plan was “specific” and may explain why Trump chose to switch planes when leaving the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this week.

Israel shared intelligence with the United States this week about a new and “specific” plan by Iran to assassinate President Donald Trump, US media reported Thursday.

Among the key men involved in the American Revolution and the following periods, we find an oft-repeated concern that may seem foreign to us today—the threat of standing armies. This was a heritage of British legal thought and history, and it became an underappreciated part of American political thought and experience.

Why were peacetime standing armies viewed as such a threat?

The American Revolution and the Danger of Standing Armies

by Joshua Mawhorter

On the eve of this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, the bloc released a report titled ‘Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2025)’.

On the surface, the report shows a staggering increase in the level of defense spending by several NATO members over the course of the previous decade, with Lithuania leading the way with an increase of some 777%.

Scott Ritter: NATO is spending itself into oblivion

If bloc members continue to ramp up their spending, they will eat themselves from the inside, and Russia won’t have to lift a finger

In aggregate, NATO members, in seeking to meet the 2% GDP threshold for defense spending set by the US a decade ago, has seen a $1.364 trillion increase in the money invested in the militaries of the respective members over the past decade.

That’s a lot of money.

In August 1991, newly elected to the United States Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of Cuban origin, launched a fierce campaign to prevent Cuba from hosting the Pan American Games. She was unsuccessful, and the US delegation even visited Cuba. The following year, she wholeheartedly supported the Torricelli Act, which aimed to cripple the Cuban economy by taking advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There's a difference between those who pay for a ticket to see the show and those who hire the artist.

Pro-Israel supporters and Cuban-Americans: Marco Rubio and his investors

Hernando Calvo Ospina

Why Australia’s Gen Z is unlike any voting cohort before it and why every institution built for the old Australia is about to find out.

Every generation of Australians before this one was socialised by place. You grew up in a suburb, and that suburb came with an inheritance, a history: a local footy club, an RSL, a pub, a masthead your parents read at the kitchen table that belonged to your state or regional city.

Kosmos Samaras

There is a major problem with Quantum Mechanics. We know. It is mostly to do with relative randomness creating a relative determinism. This relative determinism is a flowing pattern of reality rather than a solid on and off. Matter is energy is matter…

Quantum mechanics is the mathematics of precise unpredictability. At this point we could associate this unpredictability with Pi. The reality of the circle exists, but our calculus goes into infinity beyond the decimal point in order to measure it. We accept non-finite values of the circle after having mathematically declared that the circle is a badly shaped square cut into a multigon. 

According to the Gemini AI, the most streamed event in history was the November 15, 2024 professional boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, which attracted an estimated global audience of just over 100 million, peaking at 65 million concurrent live viewers. I’ll admit I only vaguely remember anything about that sports event and until I glanced at the Wikipedia page wasn’t even sure which boxer had won.

Would a Billion People Watch the "High-Tech Duel" That Decided the Ukraine War?

RON UNZ

Eight persistent economic myths help protect vested interests, deepen inequality and accelerate environmental destruction. The economy must be rebuilt around wellbeing, sustainability and justice.

Australia and the world are facing existential and other major human-induced threats: climate change; destruction of our life support system, the natural environment; social breakdown due to increasing gaps in wealth, income and political power; a severe shortage of housing; inflation; and a high risk of nuclear war.

Mark Diesendorf

The funeral insurance industry has one design flaw it cannot fix: the customer who wins is the one who dies promptly. David Tyler reads the fine print.

This writer is turning 78 next month, but refuses to hear the final siren. But let’s talk death. Or rather, a business everyone is dying to get into.

You’ve seen the ads. Actors of a certain age, silver but sprightly, provident to a fault, ‘Doing The Right Thing’ by the grandkids with a few dollars a week. The soft piano. The kitchen bench. The promise that your family won’t be ‘burdened’.

Every time a house collapses in Gaza, it's not just walls and lives that fall. A photograph kept in a box, a letter written by a grandfather, a wedding program, a school map — proof that a family lived there — can also disappear. Wired magazine reported on July 6 how the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit is attempting to address this loss with a simple yet powerful idea: creating a digital archive that cannot be looted or erased.

How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its naval and aerospace forces launched a joint missile and drone operation in response to the latest US attack on southern Iran, IRNA reported.

"In an initial response to the aggression, the IRGC naval and aerospace forces conducted a joint operation and attacked 85 important US military facilities of the US Navy's 5th Fleet in the Salman port in Bahrain, as well as the Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait using drones and missiles," IRGC said in a statement, as quoted by the Fars news agency.

The IRGC said the US “blatantly violated the ceasefire” and undermined the Islamabad agreement by striking coastal bases and non-military stations in Hormozgan and Mahshahr.

The IRGC also said it shot down a US MQ-9 drone that attempted to interfere in the operation.

The longer we wait for revolution, the more weapons they’ll have in place to stop us.

                       Caitlin Johnstone

GUSNOTE: TOO LATE... THE SYSTEMS ALREADY HAVE ALL THE WEAPONS THEY NEED TO DEFEAT A REVOLUTION... EVEN IN THE DAYS OF THE MOST FAMOUS REVOLUTION — AND I MEAN 1848 — THE STATES WIN. THE BOURGEOIS HAVE HAD THE UPPER HAND... THE REVOLUTION STARTED IN 1917 IN RUSSIA ENDED UP WITH THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION AND THE PSEUDO-CAPITALISATION OF RUSSIA.

On the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, Ukraine and Russia seemed to be locked in a competition to see who can torch more of the opponent’s capital. Russia won.

On the night of July 7, Kiev launched over 430 UAVs at Moscow and the Moscow region – the biggest such attack in the past two years. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, over 95% of all Ukrainian drones launched that night were targeting the Russian capital. Russia shot down most of them well before they reached the capital, except 36, which were intercepted near Moscow.

Kiev lit the fuse – Russia lit up Kiev

Moscow deflected a huge UAV assault and dealt crushing strikes on Ukraine’s military production, exposing the mismatch in aims and effect.

By Nadezhda Romanenko

As Belgium responded to the corruption of Trump and Infantino in the best way possible by thumping the US soccer team, Andrew Brown sends birthday greetings to a foundering empire.

Dear America,

Happy 250th, mate.

Quarter of a millennium. Massive effort. Not many countries make it that far, and fewer still make it that far while holding a national debate about whether children deserve lunch.

You started with liberty. Then democracy. Then somewhere in the third act you flogged the lot to a private equity firm and kept the merchandise rights. Now you are three corporations in a trench coat, standing on an aircraft carrier,

screaming about freedom at a bloke who cannot afford an ambulance.