Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quoted the Bible — specifically the Old Testament — on Tuesday during remarks on the progress of the war against Iran, leaving some to express concerns about Christian nationalism and his potentially executing a holy or religious war.

Noting that he had just returned from Dover Air Force Base to accept the dignified transfer of another service member killed in the Iran war, Hegseth said, “I’ll close with Scripture, drawing strength from Psalm 144.”

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,” he said. “He is my loving God and my fortress. My stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge. May the Lord grant unyielding strength and refuge to our warriors. Unbreakable protection to them in our homeland. And total victory over those who seek to harm them. Amen.”

The Pentagon released three sentences. Three sentences to explain how the most expensive, most sophisticated stealth fighter ever built ended up as a debris field three kilometers wide over Iranian airspace. No explanation of what the aircraft was doing there. No explanation of what brought it down. Just three sentences and a statement that the pilot was recovered.

That silence tells you more than the statement does.

Iran Used 1960s Radar to Down a $350M Stealth Jet — The Flaw Was There From Day One

In a time of global instability and mounting crises, Australia is being led by an unserious leadership class across politics, business and beyond.

Our times are serious. However, at leadership levels across Australia – in politics, business, the media, entertainment, sport, in the legal and medical professions, and in academe – the country is being led by unserious people.

Allan Patience

Prime numbers are weird, and they’ve fascinated researchers since ancient times. They’re integers that can only be divided by 1 and themselves, which means that in a way, they are the building blocks of mathematics — since they can be used to divide all other numbers. But their distribution seems really random. Buckle up, we’re in for a strange ride.

Researchers have found a pattern for prime numbers — and it resembles something from nature

We don't often think about mathematics as being beautiful, but perhaps we should.

by Mihai Andrei   September 21, 2018  in Mathematics, News

Police brutality, intimidation, harassment, free speech attacked. NSW Premier Chris Minns was groomed for Israel, writes Andrew Brown.

Chris Minns did not arrive at this moment by accident. He was built for it.

Groomed, captured, deployed. How the Israel lobby runs Chris Minns

by Andrew Brown

In 2003, before he held any significant office, Minns was selected for the AIJAC Rambam Israel Fellowship – an all-expenses-paid program with one purpose: take promising Australian political figures to Israel, immerse them, and bind them. 

Not bribe them. Bind them. 

Build the kind of loyalty that doesn’t need instructions because it has already become instinct.

It worked.

ONCE ONE IS RANDOMLY ASSIGNED A SURVIVABLE GENETIC CODE, ONE IS ALIVE. THE REACTIVITY TO THE ENVIRONMENT FACTORS OF THIS SINGLE LIFE ALLOWS IT TO LIVE UNTIL IT CAN TRANSMIT THE CODE AND THEN DIE. THIS IS LIFE.

As avid gardeners, you may have noticed that some "bugs" — insects, butterflies and moths are on their THIRD living cycle this summer in Sydney... Some birds, say magpies, are on their second cycle... Usually, under normal summer/winter conditions most insects and birds live on one cycle per annum.

Tonight on The Mother of All Talkshows, George Galloway goes live as the Iran war reaches a critical turning point. With Washington paralysed by indecision, Israel escalating, and Tehran refusing to back down, the question is no longer if — but how far this conflict will go.

Donald Trump’s strategy is unravelling in real time. A “simple” plan is colliding with a complex reality — and Iran remains unbowed. Is this the moment the US loses control of the Middle East? Are we witnessing the limits of American power?

Global crisis, real-time analysis:
– Day 26 of the Iran war: where the conflict stands now
– Trump’s indecision and the collapse of US strategy
– Israel’s role and the widening regional escalation
– Tehran’s response and the risk of a broader war
– The geopolitical stakes for Washington, Moscow and Beijing

The chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, opened the trial with words that remain the most authoritative statement of the principle that international law binds the powerful no less than the powerless.

“The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility,” Jackson declared.

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

American imperialism and the oppression of Iran

David North

The BBC has announced the appointment of former Google executive Matt Brittin as its new director-general, placing the UK’s state media outlet in the hands of a tech businessman with no media experience.

In a statement on Wednesday, BBC chairman Samir Shah said Brittin will take over the reins at the broadcaster in May, six months after outgoing director-general Tim Davie announced his resignation.

Brittin, who worked as Google’s EMEA president from 2014 to 2024, was chosen for his “deep experience of leading a high-profile and highly-complex organisation through transformation,” Shah said.

I wrote this white paper to lay bare the myths surrounding the war in Iran and to expose the master plan to restructure global trade routes in order to dominate world trade. This is a tectonic shift in the geopolitical structure of the world. Further, this is the master plan for global Technocracy, even down to making Gaza into the poster child for the technocratic state. If you cannot connect the dots here, then you will be left in the fog of delusion. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.

IMEC: Trump’s War With Iran Is About Global Trade. Period.

PATRICK WOOD

US President Donald Trump sent a peace plan to Iran as he voiced optimism Tuesday at ending nearly a month of a war, with Tehran announcing that it will let "non-hostile" oil vessels go through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.

French investigators raided the Paris offices of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild as part ‌of a corruption investigation into a diplomat named in documents linked to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the financial prosecutor’s ‌office said.

The name of Fabrice Aidan, a middle-ranking French diplomat who was seconded to the United Nations from 2006 to 2013 and later worked at the bank, appeared in more than 200 documents released by the US Justice Department.

These include emails he is alleged to have sent Epstein between 2010 and 2016 from ‌his personal and ‌UN accounts.

Some ⁠of the emails reviewed by Reuters show the transfer of UN Security Council ​briefings and other confidential documents to Epstein during that period.

Aidan has denied wrongdoing.

There’s a particular desperation that sets in when a power realizes it’s no longer steering events, only reacting to them. Such desperation does not mean the dramatic collapse of empire, but something worse: the slow recognition that you’ve become a spectator in your own neighborhood, your agency reduced to economic consumption and the careful curation of historical memory.

The Last Theater: Europe’s Wager on Strategic Relevance

Phil Butler

Europe has found itself in a situation where the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict is not only a foreign policy challenge, but also a test of its ability to preserve strategic agency in a changing world order.