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Prolific criminal shielded by sanctuary jurisdictions for nearly 50 years
Ukraine’s robot operators now kill for ‘e-points.’ Is the future of war a game?
In April 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense announced that ground robots had completed more than 9,000 frontline missions in the previous month. The number was offered without fanfare, embedded in a press release alongside procurement timelines and delivery metrics, as though the figure were perfectly ordinary, which by then it was. Nearly 24,500 missions in the first quarter of the year; 167 units using uncrewed ground vehicles, up from 67 the previous November. The ministry did not dwell on what this meant.
Ukrainian soldiers who complete verified missions using robots earn e-points through a digital platform that tracks, authenticates, and tallies their work. Those points can then be exchanged, through an online marketplace, for additional equipment. Orders reach frontline units in roughly 10 days. The whole apparatus, in its architecture and its assumptions about human motivation, looks less like a combat system and more like a loyalty program.
The state understands its soldiers as participants in a platform, and it is engineering their behavior accordingly.
The UGV itself is not a new idea. The Germans fielded the Goliath tracked mine in World War II, a remotely controlled demolition device that failed, in the end, because its control cable could be cut. The Soviets experimented with teletanks in the 1930s, aiming to spare soldiers from exposure that was otherwise certain to kill them. The problem of controlling a machine at distance through contested terrain, under fire, with limited bandwidth and imperfect video, is not a problem the 21st century invented. What the 21st century has done is make it cheap.
The ultimate cannon fodder
Ukraine’s UGVs are designed, above all, to be expendable. The country operates under mass artillery and persistent drone surveillance, which creates a specific engineering pressure that earlier Western robotics programs never faced. American explosive ordnance disposal robots in Iraq were conserved, repaired, and mourned in a way that revealed something about how their operators understood them. Ukraine’s systems are produced in the thousands, iterated rapidly, accepted as losses, and replaced like ammunition.
The substitution principle drives everything. The state’s explicit purpose, reiterated in every official channel, is to move the most dangerous tasks (ammunition resupply, casualty evacuation, mining and demining, certain forms of direct contact) away from human bodies and onto machines. The missions are logged. The ministry’s argument is that somewhere in those 9,000 March missions is a corresponding number of soldiers who did not die. The robot went; the human did not.
RELATED: The US military needs to adapt to modern warfare
The US military needs to adapt to modern warfareUSAF/Getty Images
What makes Ukraine’s system interesting, and practically consequential, is the way it distributes agency. A UGV mission is not performed by a soldier or a robot, but by a network: the operator watching a video feed, the encoder compressing that feed under bandwidth constraints that determine whether the latency is tolerable or fatal, the repair crew, the procurement pipeline, the verification interface that converts the mission into a data object, the points system that converts the data object into future capability.
The human is present throughout this chain and is, in some sense, responsible for it. However, responsibility, in this architecture, is not the same as when a soldier carries ammunition through a kill zone but is cast as clicking, uploading, or watching a screen.
This practice is not unique to Ukraine. Mediated violence is familiar from drone programs and earlier remote weapons systems. What Ukraine has done is extend the logic farther into the supply chain, the metrics, and the incentive design, making explicit what other militaries have left tacit. The gamification is structural. The state is acknowledging, through the design of the e-points system, that it understands its soldiers as participants in a platform, and it is engineering their behavior accordingly.
Us or them
The Ukrainian government is aware of the genuine tension in this design. Goodhart’s law holds that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. If points are awarded for confirmed hits, soldiers will pursue confirmed hits. Ukraine’s system tries to counteract this by assigning points also for evacuation missions, for the lifesaving work that does not produce the bright flash of verification. Whether this framework works, whether the incentive categories actually reshape behavior or merely sit alongside it, is an empirical question.
By early 2026, seven UGV models from six Ukrainian manufacturers were available for direct order through the DOT-Chain Defence marketplace. Foreign platforms have entered the ecosystem too: Estonian-built THeMIS vehicles, first delivered in 2022, were absorbed into Ukraine’s logistics environment alongside the domestically produced systems. NATO was also watching. Its UNITE initiative, announced in late 2025, proposed to scale prototyped battlefield innovations among alliance members, with unmanned ground systems explicitly named as a future focus.
Ukraine’s particular answer to a particular problem — how to fight at scale under conditions of acute manpower constraint — is becoming a transmissible model. The rapid iteration, the platform-mediated procurement, the tight loop between battlefield data and design revision are not incidental features of Ukraine’s approach. Other militaries, in more comfortable circumstances, studying this from a distance, may conclude that they want something like it.
What they would be acquiring is a way of knowing, a way of governing through metrics and incentives and interfaces, that treats war as a system to be optimized. The appeal is obvious. Systems can be improved. Metrics can be refined. Platforms can be updated. The facts that cannot be put into the system — the exhaustion, the fog — remain outside the data. They do not affect the point calculations. They do not appear in the quarterly mission totals, which continue to rise.
In March 2026, the machines completed 9,000 missions. The ministry reported this statistic as progress. It was surely also something else, something that does not yet have a name.
Tech
This brave 15-year-old fought cancer with all her heart — what Elon Musk and Jared Isaacman did will leave you in tears
On April 1, when Artemis II launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to embark on its historic 10-day lunar flyby, Glenn Beck was sitting in the audience section designated for people who work in the space program and journalists invited to attend the launch.
As he chatted with various scientists and fellow journalists, he noticed a husband and wife sitting among the group who were clearly not part of either world. He soon struck up a conversation with them and inquired about how they received an invitation.
“They started telling me a story that was as impressive as the rocket going off itself,” he says.
The story was about their 15-year daughter Olivia “Liv” Perrotto, who died of a rare and aggressive childhood cancer in January this year.
A bright, space-obsessed girl who dreamed of becoming an astronaut or fighter pilot, Liv’s illness didn’t quell her courage to pursue her passions.
“That 15-year-old lived more of a life than most of us could ever dream of,” says Glenn.
Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman are largely to thank for that.
On this heart-wrenching episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn shares a little-known story he says will “break your heart and then heal it right back up.”
“This is a story that neither [Musk nor Isaacman] … would tell you. They didn’t do it for the credit, and I didn’t ask [them] for permission to tell,” says Glenn, noting that it was Liv’s mother who “wanted the world to know what they did and what it meant.”
When Liv was just 10 years old, she was diagnosed with undifferentiated sarcoma — a rare and malignant cancer. Overnight, her life went from normal childhood circumstances to “chemo, radiation, surgeries, [and] clinical trials.”
“It was a really dark time until she heard about a SpaceX mission … called Inspiration 4. This one was commanded by a guy that most people didn’t know at the time named Jared Isaacman,” says Glenn.
“The crew of Inspiration 4 heard about this little girl with cancer, and Jared Isaacman paid to bring her and her family to the launch.”
“And this was the beginning of just a life-changing relationship,” he recounts.
Isaacman’s involvement with Liv didn’t conclude with her attendance at the Inspiration 4 launch. “He became committed to her care and to her dreams,” says Glenn. “Without anyone knowing, without anyone asking, much to the family’s surprise, this guy just threw himself in.”
A few months after the Inspiration 4 launch, Isaacman asked Liv to design a “zero-gravity indicator” for his next mission. She quickly sent in a sketch of a Shiba Inu dog in an astronaut suit named Asteroid.
The Polaris Dawn team, commanded by Isaacman, took Liv’s hand-drawn sketch and turned it into an actual plush toy that they brought with them on the mission. A video taken by the team captured Asteroid floating in the cabin as the crew reached microgravity.
“Nobody on that mission forgot about this little girl in Pennsylvania. They sent her a birthday cake on her birthday. They sent flowers to the hospital. They all got together on a Zoom call just days before she died,” says Glenn through tears.
“Jared chartered his own plane to fly Liv cross-country so she could get treatments, personally called St. Jude to review her case,” he continues.
But that was just the beginning.
Isaacman also took Liv “up in a fighter jet, which he flew,” and introduced her to Charlie Duke, William Shatner, and many other big names from the broader space community.
“The whole space world opened its arms to this little girl — somebody you’ve never heard of,” says Glenn, “and they didn’t do it for the press; they just did it because her passion was contagious, so full of love.”
Because of the kindness of Isaacman and others, “the space world was [Liv’s] world, not hospitals.”
One of Liv’s other dreams was to speak to Elon Musk. At a town hall event he hosted in October 2024, she briefly got the chance. Liv had just learned earlier that day that her cancer had returned aggressively, but that didn’t deter her from standing in line all night just to ask Musk when he planned to send kids to space.
After learning of her worsening condition, Musk planned a phone call with Liv in January 2026 so that she could ask him all her pressing questions. But the night he arranged to call her, Liv was too exhausted to carry on a conversation, so she requested that the call be moved to the next day. Musk agreed and immediately sent flowers and a kind note to the hospital.
Tragically, Liv passed before the call came.
“Both the notes and the flowers were put in this little girl’s casket,” says Glenn.
Liv’s legacy lives on through the courage she showed in the face of unimaginable pain, the Asteroid plush toy that now flies on SpaceX missions as the company’s official mascot, thanks to Elon Musk honoring her final wish, and the way her story continues to remind the world that acts of kindness and compassion are happening all around us — even when we can’t see them.
Liv’s mother published her own article about the life of her courageous daughter. You can read it on glennbeck.com.
To hear Glenn’s version of Liv’s beautiful story, grab your tissue box and watch the video above.
Want more from Glenn Beck?
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Artemis ii, Blaze media, Blazetv, Childhood cancer, Elon musk, Glenn beck, Inspiration 4 mission, Jared isaacman, Jared isaacman involvement, Liv perotto, Liv perrotto story, Nasa, Nasa kennedy space, Space community support, Spacex, The glenn beck program
7 females, 2 males accused of ganging up on, beating up train passenger in Chicago
Seven females and two males are accused of physically attacking one train passenger in Chicago last week, police said.
Police called the crime an aggravated battery.
‘If confronted by an assailant/offender, remain calm and never pursue. Press the emergency button and alert the transit attendant,’ police said.
The incident took place just after 9:30 p.m. last Tuesday in the 600 block of South State Street aboard a train in the Chicago Loop neighborhood, police said.
Police provided photos of the suspects. (Note: One of the suspects is shown twice — in the bottom far-right photos of the composite image next to the headline.)
Police also provided the following descriptions of each suspect:
Black male wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering and denim shortsBlack male wearing a black long-sleeved shirtBlack female wearing a blue T-shirt and blue shortsBlack female with red hair wearing a white topBlack female wearing a purple sweaterBlack female wearing a black flower-print sweaterBlack female wearing a black zip-up sweater and black shortsBlack female wearing a black hooded sweater and black pantsBlack female wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering and black pants
Police cautioned citizens to “be aware of your surroundings and remember your location, bus/train car number, route or train line, train car number, and direction of travel. If confronted by an assailant/offender, remain calm and never pursue. Press the emergency button and alert the transit attendant. Call 911 immediately, provide detailed description of location and assailant.”
Police added that those with any information about this incident should contact Public Transportation Detectives at 312-745-4447 or submit anonymous tips at CPDTIP.com and use reference RD #JK189284.
Police said another transit-related aggravated battery took place just after 4 p.m. Friday — this time on a CTA Red Line platform in the 1200 block of North Clark Street.
Image source: Chicago Police
Police said the victim — a 23-year-old female — was waiting on the train platform when one of the individuals pictured above pulled her to the ground by her hair, struck her on her face with a closed fist, and kicked her head and body.
Another one of the females pictured above assisted the other female by blocking bystander attempts to help the victim, police said.
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Chicago, Physical attack, Police, Suspects at large, Train, Aggravated battery, Crime
Democrats narrow field in California’s crowded gubernatorial race to avoid primary disaster
California’s crowded gubernatorial race is beginning to narrow, with former State Controller Betty Yee becoming the latest prominent Democrat to drop out, a sign that the party may be coalescing around a leading candidate to avoid disaster in the upcoming primary.
The California gubernatorial primary started with 61 official candidates in March, and approximately 20 have since dropped out.
‘I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field.’
While two Republican front-runners have emerged, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host and small-business owner Steve Hilton, Democrats have not yet rallied unified support behind any leading contenders for the upcoming election on June 2.
With Primary Election Day right around the corner, voters in the state will begin receiving mail-in ballots in two weeks.
California’s primary election operates on a nonpartisan basis, meaning all candidates are listed on the same ballot, and the two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
The nonpartisan election rules could spell trouble for Democrats if they cannot rally enough support behind a candidate to beat at least one of the top two Republicans competing to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has reached his term limit.
Chad Bianco. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images. Steve Hilton. Robin L Marshall/FilmMagic
Democrats began the race with eight high-profile candidates: former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, climate advocate and businessman Tom Steyer, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former California State Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, and former California State Controller Betty Yee.
The Democratic field narrowed when Swalwell announced last week that he was suspending his campaign for governor and resigning from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations.
On Monday, Yee became the latest Democrat to drop out of the race, citing low polling results. She told local CBS affiliate KOVR that the Democratic Party had “for whatever reason decided to put money into a poll that would narrow the field” and that the results showed that “experience and competence was not polling as high as we thought when I first started this race.”
“We’re in this new era where it’s kind of almost reality TV show mentality that people want,” Yee told the news outlet. “And, frankly, conflict sells. That’s what gets people’s attention. I’m not a flashy person. I don’t come with gimmicks. I even said and joked with my team one time, ‘Maybe I just need to bring like a folding stool and throw it off the stage just to get some attention.’ I mean, what’s it gonna take, right?”
Yee stated that she plans to endorse one of the remaining candidates soon.
The California Democratic Party’s poll showed voters leaning toward Republican candidates Hilton and Bianco. The highest-polling Democratic candidates were Becerra and Steyer. However, many of those surveyed stated they were still undecided.
RELATED: Republicans shine in first poll since Eric Swalwell stumbled out of California governor’s race
Betty Yee. ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP/Getty Images
Rusty Hicks, the chair of the California Democratic Party, compared the latest polling results to those from an April 7 poll.
Hicks stated that it showed Becerra had moved from 4% to 13%, with him “now tied for third with Tom Steyer.” He also noted that the undecided rate had fallen from 24% to 20%.
“All of these are positive signs for ensuring a strong Democrat moves into the General Election. But it is not enough and our work is not done,” he said.
Hicks addressed Yee’s decision to drop out of the race.
“Earlier today, we saw Betty Yee suspend her campaign. I commend her leadership and commitment to California. And I hope other candidates will consider her example,” Hicks added. “I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field.”
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Antonio villaraigosa, California, Chad bianco, Eric swalwell, Katie porter, News, Steve hilton, Tom steyer, Tony thurmond, Rusty hicks, Betty yee, California governor, California gubernatorial race, Politics
Connecticut Democrats take photo ID really seriously — just not for voting
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, like other Democratic officials in the Constitution State, including Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, thinks that requiring individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections is intolerable.
Lamont — flanked at a press conference late last month by Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, his Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, and others — stated about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, “I, for the life of me, can’t figure out why we’re doing this. What’s the rush? Seems to me that the SAVE Act is a solution looking for a problem.”
‘Diminishing faith in the system.’
The governor, speaking just one month after one of the individuals accused in the 2023 Bridgeport absentee ballot fraud case was sentenced to prison, added, “I don’t want to put up all these bureaucratic roadblocks that make it tougher.”
While loath to make it tougher for individuals to vote without valid identification, Lamont certainly does not oppose all “bureaucratic roadblocks” or legislation aimed at requiring photo ID to prevent fraud.
Lamont signed a law last month requiring bottle redemption centers in the state to obtain from any individual hoping to turn in over 1,000 containers the “person’s name, the license plate number of any vehicle used to transport the containers to such redemption center, a copy of such person’s driver’s license, the collection points of the empty containers, and the number of containers tendered.”
“In Connecticut, you have to show ID to recycle more than 1,000 bottles in one day,” Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) wrote in response to the passage of the legislation, “but not to cast a vote for the next leader of the free world.”
Libs of TikTok said, “Make it make sense.”
RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation
Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images
Republican Connecticut state Rep. Craig Fishbein said in a statement to Blaze News, “The hypocrisy and overt priorities of the Majority Democrats here are staggering.”
“While just last summer, Connecticut saw criminal convictions for voter fraud; they brought us in under the guise of an emergency session to pass this bottle bill, while continuing to ignore, or perhaps support additional voter fraud — thereby disenfranchising those voters who properly vote, and further diminishing faith in the system itself,” Fishbein added.
The editorial board of Connecticut’s Republican-American recently noted that “Connecticut Democrats’ solution to the bottle-deposit debacle reveals they agree that requiring ID is an effective anti-fraud measure. The question is why they pretend elections are the exception.”
The SAVE America Act, which would afford federal elections some semblance of a Connecticut bottle recycling standard of fraud protection, was passed in the House in a 218-213 vote on Feb. 11, then advanced to the U.S. Senate on April 10, but its fate is presently up in the air.
On Sunday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) alleged that “after two weeks in recess, John Thune is no longer considering the SAVE America Act.”
A congressional insider familiar with the bill’s process subsequently told the Federalist that the proposed legislation is “still the pending business in the Senate.”
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Bridgeport, Connecticut, John thune, Photo id, Richard blumenthal, Secretary of state, Us citizenship, Voter identification, Us senate, Save america act, Save, Voting, Election, Election fraud, Fraud, Ballot fraud, Election integrity, Politics
Trump gives Iran a final warning ahead of peace talks
President Donald Trump has warned Iran that the United States will swiftly resume the bombing campaign if they fail to strike a deal.
Talks are set to resume in Islamabad, Pakistan, between the Iranians and the American delegation led by Vice President JD Vance ahead of the ceasefire’s expiration on Wednesday. Trump announced the ceasefire earlier in April after threatening to destroy civilian infrastructure in Iran, infamously dubbing the operation “Power Plant Day” and “Bridge Day.”
‘They have to use common sense.’
“Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with,” Trump said in an interview Tuesday. “But we’re ready to go. I mean the military is raring to go. They are absolutely incredible.”
“We have the most powerful military in the world, and everybody knows it.”
RELATED: IDF soldier caught smashing Jesus statue with sledgehammer — officials and critics react
Elke Scholiers/Getty Images
Since the ceasefire was put into place almost two weeks ago, Trump has ordered the military to take control of the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to constrain Iran even further. Despite the United States’ many attempts to pressure Iran into making a deal, including the first round of negotiations that lasted 21 hours, a long-term agreement has not yet materialized.
“Iran can get themselves in a very good footing if they make a deal,” Trump said. “They can make themselves into a strong nation again, a wonderful nation again. They have incredible people.”
“But they have to use reason, and they have to use common sense.”
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Donald trump, Squawk box, Iran war, Islamabad, Jd vance, Jared kushner, Steve witkoff, Power plant day, Bridge day, Easter, Ceasefire, Peace talks, Iran, Irgc, Strait of hormuz, Politics
Gang of juvenile males chase college student into dorm, physically attack victim, go on rampage. It all happens around 3 a.m.
A gang of juvenile males chased a Temple University student into a dorm, physically attacked the victim, and went on a rampage that included property damage — and it all took place around 3 a.m. Sunday.
The assault occurred inside the Morgan Hall South dorm at Broad and Oxford Streets in North Philadelphia, WPVI-TV reported.
‘We’re here for the safety of our residents and our students. So, when anybody is victimized, it’s concerning to us. We take it very seriously.’
Temple University police released surveillance photos showing at least nine males in connection with the assault, the station said.
Police told WPVI the victim suffered minor injuries and declined medical treatment; officers are still looking into what led up to the attack.
Investigators told the station in a separate story that cellphone video shows suspects damaging property inside the dorm lobby; one individual is seen smashing a monitor at a security desk.
WPVI spoke with a student who said he used to live in the residence hall and received a campus alert about the attack.
“It puts the threat actually into perspective because, especially knowing as a college student your main priority is education, not really safety, but this happening is a little bit more in the forefront,” sophomore Emanuel Turner told WPVI.
Officials added to the station that they’re working with Philadelphia police and school district safety officials to identify those involved in the attack.
Temple Police Deputy Chief Gaetano Sava told WPVI that the incident is “concerning. Whenever our residents, I mean, we’re here for the safety of our residents and our students. So, when anybody is victimized, it’s concerning to us. We take it very seriously.”
Campus police said Temple and Philadelphia Police are enhancing patrols, and officials urge those with information about the incident to contact the PPD tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477) or Central Detectives at 215-686-3093. You also can contact Temple’s Investigations Unit at 215-204-6200 or Temple Police at 215-204-1234.
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Physical attack, Juvenile suspects, Philadelphia, Temple university, Dorm, Suspects at large, Philadelphia police, Temple university police, College student attacked, Crime
Yes, smart TVs are spying on you — and one state is finally fighting back
Smart TVs operating on behalf of foreign entities have alarming capabilities.
The TVs are capable of capturing screenshots of a user’s TV display every 500 milliseconds and sending that data back to their home country.
‘The days of Chinese tech companies spying on Americans’ televisions are over.’
Consumer data is then allegedly sold, in the same way online browsing data is, so companies can bolster their ad targeting capabilities. This not only puts sensitive user information at risk, but serves as a massive profit generator for TV manufacturers.
Until recently, there was no pushback against these major manufacturers, but in December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton lined up lawsuits against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, directly accusing them of spying.
Definitely not ‘spying’
Through its lawsuits, Texas secured an agreement from South Korean manufacturer Samsung in February to stop collecting “Automated Content Recognition” data without user consent.
The settlement also compelled Samsung to implement disclosures and consent screens that are easy to understand by the user.
RELATED: Texas sues five TV manufacturers for secretly ‘spying’ on owners
Paxton commended Samsung for its changes and said the company “promptly implement[ed] important safeguards for consumers,” while other smart TV companies have instead “chosen to illegally spy on Texans and act as digital invaders in their homes.”
Samsung rejected the idea that it was spying, however, and said the settlement “affirms what Samsung has said since this lawsuit was filed — Samsung TVs do not spy on consumers.”
“In fact, Samsung allows you to control your privacy — and change your privacy settings at any time,” the company added, per BleepingComputer.
The Texas AG also made some ground against Hisense, a Chinese manufacturer.
A first of its kind temporary restraining order was granted against Hisense, which stopped the company from using its ACR technology to collect, use, sell, share, disclose, or transfer Texans’ data.
RELATED: States should work with AI, not against it
Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images
“The days of Chinese tech companies spying on Americans’ televisions are over,” Paxton declared. He has since vowed to bring the other companies, including Chinese brand TCL Technology, to court for “illegally spying on Texans,” stating that legal actions will “move forward.”
Tech billionaire and defense contractor Palmer Luckey recently called the intrusions a “growing problem for American national security” with an unbelievable amount of “sensitive and classified” information getting collected by foreign nations.
“Users have no idea. Nobody expects that their TV or monitor is a surveillance tool,” Luckey wrote on X. “When I have joked that Smart TVs should be illegal, I am only half-joking.”
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China, Consumer data, Lawsuits, Return, Samsung, Smart tvs, Sony, Spying, Surveillance, Texas, Texas attorney general, User data, Tech
Amazon gives lame excuse for removing ‘offensive’ dystopian novel about mass migration ruining Europe
France was among the Western nations whose elites determined it worthwhile in the second half of the 20th century to open the floodgates to mass migration from the third world, especially from former colonies.
Award-winning French novelist and travel writer Jean Raspail foresaw the threat this demographic replacement posed to his nation and to Western civilization more broadly and dared — following the collapse of the Fourth Republic and amid the flight of Vietnamese “boat people” to Europe — to explore this threat in his controversial 1973 dystopian novel, “The Camp of the Saints.”
‘A ban by Amazon is a virtual ban of book sales and distribution.’
Both then and now, Raspail’s novel serves, on the one hand, to illuminate the folly of multiculturalist aspirations and allowing unassimilable hordes of culturally antipathetic foreigners into one’s nation and, on the other hand, to enrage those who are still pretending that unchecked mass migration is a laudable policy and that saying otherwise is “racist.”
Evidently, the book is still ruffling feathers. This time around, the novel has apparently prompted a negative reaction from the world’s largest company, Amazon.
The novel — characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “racist fantasy about an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees” — was first translated into English in 1975 and has been published several times since in the United States. Despite growing in relevance and popularity, supply couldn’t meet demand for the book in recent years, especially as the right-holders had reportedly refused to reprint it. A small publishing house stepped up, however, and managed to secure the rights.
RELATED: They’ll Build a Fire with Your Lovely Oak Door
The late French writer Jean Raspail; Micheline Pelletier/Sygma/Getty Images
Vauban Books, an imprint of Redoubt Press, published a new edition in September, generating significant waves and sales. After months of sales of the title on its platform, Amazon U.S. removed the paperback listing for the new edition on Friday.
Vauban Books editor in chief Ethan Rundell said in a statement on Sunday that his publishing house was “informed by Amazon that the book is in violation of the company’s ‘offensive content’ policy. Amazon has supplied no information as to which portions of the book are offensive nor to whom.”
After noting that Vauban had sold roughly 20,000 paperback copies of the book since first listing it for presale on Amazon last summer and that it nets an average rating of 4.8 stars, Rundell said, “It may be no coincidence that the listing was removed one day after New York Magazine published a critical article on Vice President Vance that referenced the book. This echoes a 2019 campaign that targeted Stephen Miller, leading the novel’s previous publisher to drop the title from its catalogue.”
Rundell noted that regardless of whether Amazon chooses to distribute the title, Vauban Books “remains committed to keeping the novel in print and accessible worldwide.”
Shortly after making the initial statement, Vauban Books announced that Amazon U.S. had also removed the hardcover edition of the novel.
There was a great deal of backlash over the book’s removal.
Nathan Pinkoski, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America who penned the introduction for the new edition, called the reported removal of the paperback option “an egregious act of censorship.”
“Amazon is committed to the burning of your fine oak doors,” wrote BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, referencing the following line from the novel, “Your universe has no meaning to them. [The invading migrants] will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
Former Idaho Solicitor General Theo Wold wrote, “Amazon just censored a book first published in 1973 that depicts the destruction of the west through third-world mass migration. I’m sure all the people who whine about ‘book bans’ when a school board prevents 6-year-olds from reading about gay sex will be just as upset.”
Jason Kenney, Canada’s former Conservative minister of immigration and former Alberta premier, tweeted, “This is outrageous. Amazon handles up to 80% of book distribution in North America. A ban by Amazon is a virtual ban of book sales and distribution. I have never read The Camp of the Saints (although I am now moved to do so,) so offer no judgement about its merits. But there is no denying that it is a widely read novel with a significant cultural impact on France, and around the world.”
It appears the backlash prompted Amazon to rethink things.
As of Monday morning, the paperback version of the novel is available again on Amazon.
When asked for comment about the novel’s removal, Amazon told Blaze News that an “error” was responsible for the paperback listing of the book’s temporary removal and that other formats were not affected.
An Amazon spokesperson told Blaze News, “We’ve resolved an error that briefly affected the availability of a paperback listing of The Camp of the Saints, and the title is now restored.”
Vauban Books stated after its title reappeared on the platform, “Amazon has still not offered an explanation as to why the novel was taken down. We have received NO explanation, much less apology, for the deletion of the paperback Friday and hardcover this morning.”
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Democrat melts down after Secretary Doug Burgum drops bombshell about NGOs during committee hearing
Democrats had a meltdown during a committee hearing while grilling Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on all of the programs he is attempting to shut down.
And no one was ready for his answer.
‘We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100% of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government.’
In a Monday House Committee Hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked for clarification on Burgum’s proposed “complete elimination” of some programs in the Fish and Wildlife Service, including some state and tribal wildlife grants.
Burgum replied with a shocking statistic about where some “nongovernmental organizations” get their money.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images
“There was a review done of the grants,” he said.
“And that is an area where there’s been substantial review. We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100% of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government.”
“And yet those organizations, we were the sole source of their revenue, but they would have a CEO making $650,000 and four $400,000 lobbyists,” Burgum continued.
DeLauro stammered in reply: “It would be very interesting because we can’t get any information. We may agree with you. Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut. … We just can’t take your word.”
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