“Every weekday morning, Shilpi Chotrani rides her bicycle from her home in the Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción to Gibraltar. It’s a short journey but it means crossing an international border. A British Overseas Territory of around 40,000 inhabitants, Gibraltar has a border control for those entering and leaving. That means that during the morning and afternoon rush hours, when around 15,000 Spaniards who work in the territory cross the frontier, there can be long, time-consuming queues. … But from 15 July, it is scheduled to see a new development – the removal of the border, allowing freedom of movement between Spain and Gibraltar.” (07/13/26)
“Social media companies might soon be forced to remove the addictive features that keep teenagers online for hours on end — including the ubiquitous infinite scroll. Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat from Long Beach, initially introduced Assembly Bill 1709 in February as a proposal that would prohibit teenagers from using social media platforms that are designed to be dangerously addictive. But after deliberations over several hearings in the California Legislature between lawmakers, advocates and a prominent Big Tech lobby, all agreed that age-gating the internet could ultimately do more harm than good. So, last month, Lowenthal amended his bill to instead require the companies, including behemoths like Meta and Reddit, to come up with an alternative, less addictive feed for underage users. If the companies can’t abide, then kids under 16 will be unable to make accounts on their platforms.” (07/13/26)
“This week kicks off a 14-day sprint to choose the Democratic nominee in Maine, a race that could decide the U.S. Senate. When it became clear that Graham Platner wasn’t going to remain the nominee, I wrote that keeping the record number of Mainers who turned out for last month’s primary engaged and energized required a process that would allow them to participate, rather than a backroom affair. The Maine Democratic Party came up with something that I’m sure I can quibble with at the edges, but which recognizes that imperative and creates an organizing opportunity for the grassroots volunteers who really built the new kind of politics in the state. It’s a credit to state party chair Charlie Dingman, who so far has navigated a treacherous path pretty well.” (07/13/26)
“An appeals court ruled this week that the First Amendment’s freedom of speech principle protects the right of academics in Florida to discuss topics in class that some might view as discriminatory or even offensive. The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down Florida’s 2022 W.O.K.E. Act, which sought to define how professors at higher education institutions could teach or present what it called ‘divisive concepts’ of race and gender. Supporters of the law said it helped prevent teaching theories that could promote discrimination against students for actions ‘committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex’. Critics viewed it as an attempt to quash candid inquiry into historical and current debates around race and rights.” (07/10/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“John F Kennedy was correct when he said ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable’. That’s why police robots are being aggressively normalized today. The empire managers want to make sure violent revolution is impossible, too. The New York Times’[s] sports department The Athletic has a creepy new article out titled ‘The ‘Robodogs’ on World Cup patrol in Mexico’ about how wonderful and awesome it is that the international soccer tournament is being patrolled by surveillance robots. The article is functionally a PR piece for police robots, gushing about how ‘cute’ and ‘cool’ onlookers find the dystopian technology.” (07/11/26)
“Many moons ago, while serving in Congress, I heard a senior member of the GOP House leadership offer this assessment of the Democrats’ strategy on a particular issue: ‘The Democrats always overplay their hand’. Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, however, it seems less a case of the Democrat minority overplaying its hand than of revealing it. Everyone is well-versed in the historical fact that a president’s party usually loses seats in a midterm election. As this is President Trump’s second midterm election, early projections suggest it will prove as disastrous for the GOP as the first one was in 2018.” (07/11/26)
“Iran, Iraq, Irate. What a world! It couldn’t be much stranger, could it? And by the way, what is it about the Middle East? Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, it’s just never really ended, has it? Who cares that the region is halfway around the world from Washington, DC? Yes, the US fought Iraq there from 2003 to 2008. And recently, of course, President Donald Trump has gone after Iran. If you want to spread out just a bit more, you could toss in this country’s relatively brief war in Libya and its almost endless one this century in Afghanistan. And don’t blame me if I left something out. After all, I’m almost 82 years old and starting to forget a few things. I mean, Iran makes particular sense, right? After all, it’s a mere 6,000-odd miles from this country.” (07/11/26)
“Kudos to the State Department for putting the kibosh on city International Affairs Commissioner Ana María Archila’s bid to meet with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, even as America and Iran are at war — but the affair poses a challenge to Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Does he have the grit to break with the openly anti-American factions of the Democratic Socialists of America? Mamdani’s tried to downplay the disgraceful episode, insisting Archila had no clearance to do such outreach, yet he’s not firing her or imposing any discipline. Nor even saying outright how very wrong she was. Which raises the question of whether he prefers the theocratic regime in Tehran to the United States government.” (07/11/26)
“Are We Still at War? Yep. We’re back to where we were in early March; the U.S. is attacking targets in Iran, and Iran is attacking targets throughout the region, in Bahrain and Kuwait and Jordan, though those last ones were intercepted. Where international shipping was starting to revive, that now has ended, and I’d expect the reimposition of the blockade, following the U.S. revocation of Iran’s license to sell oil internationally. In retrospect, this was not a hard thing to predict. Donald Trump gets ornery when he doesn’t get his way, and there was no way to get his way in this war. Iran has asserted operational control of the Strait of Hormuz, with eventual fees inevitable, and it was only a matter of time before there would be tensions around that” (07/10/26)
“Well, it’s plain to those who know history and the eternal truths which God established to guide and direct man on this earth. The short answer is, humans have largely ignored many of those eternal truths, and when they do, ‘whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap’. There are rules that lead to individual and national greatness, and there are rules that end in personal and collective destruction. No person or country follows either set of rules 100 percent, but whichever set a person/nation is primarily devoted to will determine his/its ultimate fate. That fate is not inevitable if the person/nation changes course, but that doesn’t currently appear to be imminent in America. And that is very sad to see.” (07/12/26)
