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Politics Hawaiian Reparations Face a Serious Test The dysfunctions of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act are coming home to roost. “This is not a race issue,” said even Hawaiian Republican party leaders as they denounced a local white resident’s actions. But race is indeed the issue, and a new lawsuit seeks to challenge it. Hawaii, one of the most expensive states in America, basically gives away land, but only to people of the designated ethnicity—in this case those with at least 50 percent Native Hawaiian blood. This scheme functions as reparations. For those sidelined, it looks like the kind of reverse discrimination prohibited by the 14th Amendment. How does Hawaii get away with this? The 18th and 19th centuries were a pretty solid time for powerful white men. They could write a Constitution granting themselves inalienable rights while ensuring a grotesque global system of slavery prospered. They could march west taking whatever land they wanted, killing Native Americans or dumping them on reservations. They could use Chinese immigrants to do dangerous work building railroads and then exclude them from the U.S. by law. And in 1893, white sugarcane plantation owners from the mainland U.S., aided by U.S. Marines, forcibly took over the Hawaiian kingdom, granting themselves the rights to land and power as they saw fit. They later persuaded the U.S. government to annex Hawaii and then later make it a territory ruled by Washington, all without the input of the Hawaiian people. Locals were by and large impoverished in the process. Then in 1921 the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act was passed by the U.S. Congress as a form of reparations. The law set aside roughly 200,000 acres of Hawaiian land taken by the federal government to offer via 99-year, one-dollar-per-year leases to Native Hawaiians. It was the act’s goal to preserve the land for Native Hawaiian beneficiaries in perpetuity; you cannot even inherit the land from a Native Hawaiian leaseholder unless you also qualify racially. So the children of a 50-percent Hawaiian lease holder (i.e., perhaps 25 percent Native blood) get to keep the land, and whatever home, farm or factory the parent built on it, while their children at, say, 12.5 percent Native blood have to give the land back to the government after the parent’s death. The system is so designed to make sure that, while extended relatives of Native Hawaiians are cut off, the land eventually circulates back to whatever 50 percent Natives are left. It is possible Hawaiians will intermarry with other races in sufficient numbers that someday no 50-percenters will be left. No one has fully decided what happens then. The next problem came from the land itself. A complex bureaucracy was set up to administer the program, slowing any transfer to Native Hawaiians. In addition, in the early days, much of the land was not desirable. It was mostly far away from the few towns on the islands, and usually lacked water, sewer, electricity, and paved road access. As cities grew out to meet the once rural land, it became valuable to those who were interested in more than subsistence farming. The current waiting list for a piece of land has over 29,000 names. The person at the top of the list for Oahu has been waiting since 1979 for his chance to come up, according to a report from 2024. Worse yet, if someone on the list has children with the right amount of Native blood, they inherit his place on the list, meaning you can stay buried numerically on the list even after people once in front of you are literally dead. Meanwhile, new people continue to add their names. As to the value of the land as reparations for what the white people did to Hawaii in 1893—it’s questionable. Many of the Native Hawaiians on the list are poor. Native Hawaiians experience poverty at rates higher than many other groups in the state; they use SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps) at disproportionately high rates compared with their share of Hawaii’s population, such that about 29 percent of SNAP recipients in Hawaii are Native Hawaiian. At least 28 percent of the homeless population is Native Hawaiian. Poverty is also linked to forced, overcrowded, over-priced, rented multi-generational living conditions. The very people the land program were to make historical amends with cannot afford mortgages or to build houses on their nearly-free land. Lots of government programs have had to be created to try and make up for all this, but the end result is, despite good and generous albeit discriminatory intentions, a large number of Native Hawaiians have not been made right since 1893. Now comes a new challenge to the idea of reparations. A lawsuit filed in Honolulu questions the system, claiming the 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act is unconstitutional. It was filed this year on behalf of a white man who is not Native Hawaiian but is described in the lawsuit as a lifelong Hawaii resident. It’s the latest challenge to Native Hawaiian entitlements amid the Trump administration’s push-back against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.  “We are not just a race; we are beyond race,” one advocate said. “Like American Indians and Alaska Natives, we are political bodies with a trust relationship with the federal government.”  “We do not seek to take anything from anyone,” countered one lawyer who helped file the suit. “All we seek to do is to make sure that this program is available to everyone on equal footing, regardless of their blood quantum. So whether you are 100 percent Native Hawaiian or zero percent, a successful lawsuit would result in everyone having the same chance of qualifying.” The lawyer continued that he is confident the Supreme Court will ultimately agree government classifications based on ancestry or race are unconstitutional. The suit says, “This explicitly ancestry-based requirement establishes a permanent government mandate for state officials to engage in outright racial discrimination, perpetuates stereotypes, and limits housing opportunities for most Hawaii residents.” And with that we’re back to all the problems of modern reparations. Some 130 years after wrongdoing by the white plantation owners in Hawaii, the make-right things are going to people with no direct ties to past injustices, controlled by some discriminatory standard because one does have to draw a cut-off line somewhere. Likewise, current taxpayers and officials had no personal involvement in historical injustices such as slavery, segregation, or the overthrow of governments. Some argue reparations just end up deepening racial divisions by emphasizing historical grievances and assigning collective guilt based on at times dubious ancestry. They argue public policy should focus on building a shared future rather than trying to compensate for long past injustices. In the case of Hawaii, basically giving land to people who cannot really afford the costs of making a life out of it creates new problems. Modern discrimination just replaces past discrimination. How long should a government continue using racial classifications to remedy historical injustices when the intended beneficiaries still struggle and the promised benefits often remain out of reach? The post Hawaiian Reparations Face a Serious Test appeared first on The American Conservative.

The Iran War The Real Munitions Shortage Transcends the Iran War Americans have a right to know whether their government is wasting the military power they pay for. (Lockheed Martin) Frustrated by the lack of progress in his war with Iran, President Donald Trump is stuck in a cycle of threatened retaliation and retreat. Officially, Trump’s restraint is intended to give ongoing diplomatic talks space. Unofficially, however, Trump’s hesitancy to go all-in has a more troubling cause: warnings from the Pentagon about the sufficiency of U.S. missile stockpiles.  Reporting on such concerns, expressed to the president by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, has fed two widely disseminated narratives: First, that the United States has a “shortage” of the missiles necessary to continue fighting in the Middle East. Second, that this information was inappropriately leaked to the public and has compromised the U.S. bargaining position. Neither storyline is accurate, but understanding why they misstate the reality is vital to any conversation about the costs of the war in Iran for the United States. Let’s start with the idea that the United States has too few missiles to continue the war with Iran. This is certainly false.  Operation Epic Fury and the weeks of on-and-off strikes that followed did expend a massive number of weapons, including high-end precision missiles, ballistic missile interceptors, and a range of other cheaper offensive and defensive munitions. But stockpile constraints are not an issue for many, or even most, of the missiles in the U.S. arsenal.  For instance, the United States has tens of thousands of JDAMs and other “stand-in” munitions that can be dropped right over the target. These are inexpensive and relatively easy to manufacture. With Iranian air defenses degraded, CENTCOM could keep up its offensive operations for months or even years relying mostly on these weapons, though such a campaign would have diminishing returns and would not be risk free. There are more legitimate reasons to be concerned about the sufficiency of U.S. supplies of more sophisticated and longer-range munitions, including those needed to strike hard-to-reach and well-defended targets, and anti-ballistic missile interceptors, used to defend U.S. bases and assets. But even here, coverage is often misleading.  On the offensive side, there are worries about supplies of Tomahawk cruise missiles and the ground-launched PRSM, which the U.S. Army just started acquiring. The war has certainly depleted U.S. stores of these weapons. Because the PRSM is a new weapon, Operation Epic Fury likely burned through most if not all of what the United States had available. The campaign has also absorbed about a third of Tomahawk missiles so far, along with smaller quantities of other precision missiles like the JASSM and ATACMS. These numbers are substantial, especially given the short duration of the war. What has been expended will take several years at least to be replenished, but U.S. supplies are far from exhaustion. Even using only these higher-end munitions, the United States could continue striking Iran for some time if it chose to do so, and would probably run out of valuable targets before running out of missiles.  On the defensive side, the situation is more worrisome, especially when it comes to ballistic missile interceptors. Here, estimates suggest the United States has burned through 60 percent of prewar stockpiles, which were already depleted due to the 12-Day War last June and the large amounts of military aid given to Ukraine.  Still, with 800 or so Patriot missiles and 250 THAAD missiles, the United States could feasibly continue fighting for an extended period without accepting undue risk to U.S. forces in the region. This is especially true because Iran’s rate of ballistic missile launches has dropped substantially since the beginning of the war and could fall even further if the United States were to resume its strikes on Iran’s military infrastructure. These supplies could also be extended by prioritizing targets such as critical assets or bases with large numbers of personnel. The bottom line: While we should not exaggerate the strength of the U.S. military, we also should not overstate its weakness. The United States could keep fighting in the Middle East. It has the firepower to do so. But this doesn’t mean that it should or that the war has been consequence-free for U.S. national security. The actual munitions challenge facing the United States today is not about the Middle East or Iran. These are the proximate driver of pressure on U.S. stockpiles, but not its root cause. The real problem is that the United States has for years failed to prioritize its many military commitments or grapple with the reality of growing constraints on U.S. military power, believing that it could be everywhere and do everything without facing tradeoffs. Now, the bill for that gluttonous approach to foreign policy is coming due. Over the past six months, the Trump administration has chosen to invest a significant percentage of American military power, in the form of munitions and other assets, into a conflict in the Middle East in which no core American interests were at stake. In doing so, it has put at risk or even fatally compromised its ability to respond to challenges that might threaten those interests in a serious way in the future. It now seems almost silly, for example, to plan for a U.S. war with China over Taiwan or any other flashpoint in the near or medium term. China currently has over 3,000 ballistic missiles, more than four times the number of Patriot interceptors the United States has remaining. Moreover, in a war against China, the U.S. military would not be able to depend on JDAMs and similar munitions because China’s air defenses and missile capabilities are likely overwhelming. If the United States used up a third of its high-end precision munitions against Iran in a few weeks of war, then it is unlikely to have much staying power in a Pacific contingency.  To be sure, China is unlikely to invade Taiwan in the near term, and a U.S. war in Europe against Russia is even less probable. But, at least for now, the war in Iran has eliminated America’s margin of error and taken away its strategic flexibility. The U.S. could not enter either of these conflicts or others that might threaten its interests in a sustained way even if it wanted to.  This is the true “munitions shortage” that the United States faces today—a shortfall in the military power and readiness that would be required to defend the country in a truly existential crisis. Washington has plenty of weapons to keep fighting in Iran, but its costly blunder in the Middle East has already effectively ruled out U.S. participation in a range of other possible scenarios in which vital American interests would be at stake.  In this sense, it is too late to start a conversation about conserving weapons or combat power for future conflicts. That the United States will be more vulnerable going forward is now a foregone conclusion. The U.S. can reconstitute some of what it has lost, but it will also have to scale back its ends to match what is feasible given more limited means. The time to have had a serious discourse about whether a war in Iran was worth mortgaging U.S. national security was back in January. Even then, there were worries about military stockpiles and readiness. Officials inside the Trump administration publicly flagged concerns about U.S. weapons supplies when cutting aid to Ukraine. Under Biden and then Trump, the Pentagon has requested massive sums to expand the defense industrial base, arguing that munitions stockpiles needed to be replenished. This is why the faux outrage about the “leaking” of information regarding the depletion of U.S. military supplies is so bizarre and nefarious.  Information about the U.S. arsenal is widely available in the budget books that the Department of Defense submits to Congress and in congressional testimony. The accessibility of this information is a feature of the U.S. political system, not a bug. If Americans are being asked to pay more taxes or give up benefits to support more military spending, they deserve to know what this spending is for and how it protects them. They deserve to understand the opportunity costs of that spending, and they deserve a robust public debate before the United States uses the military power they pay for oceans away. Advocates of the Iran War have tried at every turn to circumvent this necessary public discussion, and the Trump administration, initially believing that the war could be won quickly and easily, hasn’t been honest with the American people about its costs, not simply in terms of dollars, but in terms of future limits on U.S. military power and their implications. As Congress debates giving the military $1.5 trillion next year, the American people should be asking questions about how the Pentagon plans to spend that money and whether those investments will make them safer or just feed new, damaging military adventures. Accurate updates on how the war in Iran is affecting the country’s future are not leaks, but a necessity and a right. The post The Real Munitions Shortage Transcends the Iran War appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Iran’s Leaders Now Doubt a Peace Deal Is Possible What I’ve learned from speaking with Iranian officials and analysts. Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images Last week, I was invited to join a program hosted by an independent Iranian media platform called Azad, which specializes in facilitating debates between policy experts in Iran and further abroad. My debate was with Majid Shakeri, who gained prominence as a foreign policy advisor to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (the current speaker of the country’s parliament) during Ghalibaf’s most recent presidential campaign. Shakeri was also part of the negotiating team that went to Islamabad earlier this year to hammer out the (now-moribund) MOU with the United States. These days, when you listen to Shakeri’s interviews, you will hear him insist that he holds no official position. But he remains influential. His worldview, which brings together—not always convincingly—the principles of a son of the revolution with the pragmatism of an academic economist, is ascendant in Tehran. It is a reflection of Iran’s intellectual environment, which retains significant space for public discussion of political, economic, and social issues, that I would be invited on to talk with Shakeri. It was also characteristically Iranian that the discussion lasted three hours. Our debate, at its core, was about how much pessimism is warranted on the war. Shakeri, like other Iranian analysts and officials I have spoken to in recent weeks, simply does not believe a deal with the Trump administration is possible. As a result, his prescriptions for Iranian policy are not focused on maximizing the potential for a diplomatic breakthrough. Instead, he is calling for proactive management of an ongoing U.S. threat. Interestingly, we were not miles apart in our understanding of the causes of the U.S.–Iran war or the nature of the crisis now unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. For many years, the divergence between Western and Iranian policy analysis reflected fundamental differences in worldview. But recently those differences in perspective have become less pronounced. Policy analysis in Iran has been fully professionalized, with think tanks, research institutes, and media platforms adopting the same kinds of methodologies and modalities as their Western counterparts. Moreover, the crises at hand have become more legible. Whereas analysis during the War on Terror leant itself to a significant degree of esotericism about ideologies and their impacts, the crisis unfolding in the Persian Gulf is a question of material realities, including stockpiles of missile interceptors and inventories of crude oil. It is easier for analysts to be objective when all they must do is count. And when it comes to diplomacy with the United States, Iranian analysts are often counting. They are counting the times the Trump administration has violated agreements, or interrupted negotiations with military attacks. They are counting the reasons a comprehensive agreement seems impossible to reach with this White House. First, at a technical level, the Trump administration was unable to execute even the most basic confidence-building measures of the MOU. After it was signed, no Iranian assets were released; while a waiver was initially issued to permit Iranian oil exports, it was never fully implemented and ended up being rescinded. Iranian leaders are also looking to other contexts. In Venezuela, where the administration has used its complete political control to make a full-court press for economic engagement with the U.S., reports indicate that American oil companies are struggling to make headway, even as Trump touts his big investment targets. Second, in the domain of politics, Iranian policy experts discern a growing rift between the Rubio and Vance camps and are concluding that the administration is inherently dysfunctional. As NBC recently reported, the president is “exasperated” because “there is no unity” among his top aides. During the Biden years, the issue was whether the president could defend his deal from political rivals in Congress. Now, the rivals are within the cabinet itself. Finally, at an individual level, there is a growing sense that Trump is too erratic to stick by his own deals. Even Saudi Arabia, the Mideast country with perhaps the greatest influence in the White House after Israel, could not protect its own recent nuclear deal from the President’s inconstancy. Facing the perceived inexperience and irrationality in Washington, policymakers in Tehran are struggling to find a way out of this crisis. Advocates for diplomacy have been forced to acknowledge that talks have a low chance of success, even as they insist that Iran cannot afford to sustain this war for much longer. For more hawkish figures like Shakeri, there is no strong, positive case for diplomatic engagement. They believe that Washington’s dysfunction will continue to manifest in the form of economic pressure and kinetic action against Iran—and it is therefore necessary to “win” the war before any discussion of new diplomatic understandings, whether with regional neighbors or the United States. Stuck between the U.S. and Iran are the regional countries, which have borne a huge cost during the last six months of fighting. But the war arguably would have been much worse were it not for the strength of regional diplomacy. As I insisted to Shakeri, Iran’s shift towards a more constructive “neighborhood policy,” a move that began seven years ago in response to Trump’s withdrawal from JCPOA and imposition of “maximum pressure” sanctions, prevented the outbreak of a full regional war. While Iran struck its Arab neighbors in retaliation for the American and Israeli attacks, regional countries have been able to forestall further escalation through direct dialogue with Tehran. In other words, the region has been trying to compensate for Washington’s strategic errors for the better part of a decade, and it is this compensatory approach that offers the best chance to bring the war to a close and restore security and stability in the Persian Gulf. Amid growing pessimism about what Washington can do to resolve this war diplomatically, perhaps there should be optimism that Trump can be convinced to step away from the crisis altogether. If he tries to do less, the negotiations underway between Iran and its regional neighbors will provide an opening for the United States to reduce its military and economic interventionism in the region. The Trump administration should rely on regional allies—especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—to advance their own interests in a manner that also addresses American concerns over potential Iranian hegemony. Shakeri insisted that Iran would not allow the Strait of Hormuz to reopen until it saw a definitive change in U.S. strategy—not just a shift in tactics. We might hope that he is wrong in that assessment, but I too am skeptical the crisis can be resolved in any other way. The post Iran’s Leaders Now Doubt a Peace Deal Is Possible appeared first on The American Conservative.

Remembered only as Salvador Dalí's muse, Gala was in reality the architect of his entire commercial empire — negotiating contracts, managing collectors, and living entirely on her own terms throughout their extraordinary marriage. The post Gala Dalí Ran Her Husband’s Empire and Took Lovers Openly appeared first on History Collection.

by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project: It is an anniversary that almost goes unacknowledged in today’s day and age. One that, at nearly a century old, is fading further into memory while the consequences of it have left lasting scars on human history. 81 years ago this week, on August 6th and 9th of […]

The country music icon is sharing heartbreaking new details about the violence she witnessed—and experienced—growing up, while reflecting on how those early years shaped her life. Continue reading…

A man has been arrested after U.S. Postal Inspectors discovered that he was stealing mail — including mail-in ballots — from people in Scottsdale, Arizona. The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Richard Anthony Ramos Jr. is from Stockton, CA. He was busted on July 21st with several unvoted mail-in ballots in his car. Now, he is facing felony charges, including two counts of third-degree burglary and one count of aggravated identity theft. A California man faces felony charges after U.S. Postal Inspectors caught him pulling stolen mail — including unvoted election ballots — from a collection box outside a Scottsdale post office. https://t.co/f4pay2IBut — ABC15 Arizona (@abc15) August 2, 2026 Ramos Jr. is accused of rigging a USPS collection with a cardboard box to trap outgoing mail, which he would then collect. We don’t know his motive for doing this, exactly, but investigators believe the scheme had been going on for months. ABC 15 Arizona reported further: Investigators say the scheme began as early as May 2026, when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service started receiving reports of stolen checks taken from the blue collection box in front of the Scottsdale Hopi Post Office. Postal inspectors say the suspect used USPS Priority and Express boxes as “traps,” stuffing them inside the collection box to prevent outgoing mail from dropping all the way down. The suspect would then return to retrieve the trap along with the accumulated mail. On June 30, a postal customer noticed his mail was getting stuck in the box. He peered inside and pulled out cardboard that had been stuffed in to block the mail. He contacted Scottsdale police, who notified postal inspectors according to court paperwork. In early July, the post office supervisor contacted a Postal Inspector to report that multiple traps had been found inside the collection box. On July 14, inspectors installed a camera and license plate reader at the location. On July 20, the post office supervisor contacted the Postal Inspector again to report that traps were found inside the collection box when a clerk collected mail at 9:30 a.m., noon, and 3:30 p.m. The clerk told inspectors she felt she was being watched and believed someone was stuffing the box immediately after she emptied it. Ramos was placed under arrest and told inspectors he was from California and had never been arrested, but declined to answer further questions. Ramos gave consent to search his vehicle and signed a USPIS consent form, the court records say. Inside, inspectors found USPS Priority boxes, Ramos’ cell phone, and U.S. mail — including 3 Maricopa County mail-in election ballots. This local news clip provided further coverage: !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=”https://rumble.com/embedJS/u4″+(arguments[1].video?’.’+arguments[1].video:”)+”/?url=”+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+”&args=”+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, “script”, “Rumble”); Rumble(“play”, {“video”:”v7bg2gg”,”div”:”rumble_v7bg2gg”}); What are your thoughts? TAP HERE TO ADD YOUR VOTE This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post BUSTED: California Man ARRESTED After Being Caught Stealing Mail-in Ballots in Arizona appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

The phrase “da capo” means “from the head” – and that’s exactly where Arthur Lee was coming from when he created Love’s second album, 1967’s Da Capo. We explored its progressive tendencies in 2018.In September 1966, Love went into RCA Studios on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard to record the follow-up to their self-titled debut album. The LA group employed Dave Hassinger, the same engineer as the Rolling Stones, but the record that emerged was light years away from mainstream contemporary rock. For Da Capo, lead singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Arthur Lee decided to sail uncharted territory. He confounded fans, record label Elektra and his own band in the process. Lee expanded the line-up from five musicians to seven, bringing in Tjay Cantrelli on saxophone and Michael Stuart on drums. They sounded more like a small orchestra than a garage band. Lead guitarist Johnny Echols had played with Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis, while rhythm guitarist and songwriter Bryan MacLean had learned everything he knew by association with The Byrds. It was a formidable crew.Da Capo means ‘from the head’ and Lee’s was very much at the creative controls. 7 And 7 Is, already out on 7-inch, was a ferocious shot across the bows. With its galloping pace, sustained drumming, harsh vocals and psychodramatic lyrics about Lee’s childhood, it tore up the book on what a hit single could be. The title is never heard during the song and its controlled chaos ends in a gunshot slowed down to sound like a bomb exploding.Stephanie Knows Who begins with similar urgency but softens into a jazzy free-for-all as guitars, sax and electric harpsichord all collide. Lee’s aggression contradicts the dreamlike romanticism of Orange Skies, all Moody Blues-style flute and lyrics about carnivals and cotton candy. Another ‘pretty’ acoustic guitar-dominated song, The Castle, inspired by the band’s communal residence, became the theme tune to BBC travel show Holiday. Perhaps it wasn’t that far a stretch of the imagination from Laurel Canyon debauchery to British teatime TV.Side one’s finale, She Comes In Colors, is an exquisite, delicate piece of psychedelia (the Rolling Stones' She's A Rainbow, which also features the line 'She comes in colours,’ came out the following year in 1967). The Love song was covered by Malcolm Young’s pre-AC/DC band, the UK-based (but Aussie by birth) Velvet Underground, although it was released the year before Malcolm joined.The most divisive aspect of Da Capo is Revelation, nearly 19 minutes long and taking up all of side two. The combination of electric harpsichord, John Lee Hooker-influenced blues jamming and a meandering melee of John Coltrane-style jazz honking inspired either devotion or derision. Only Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa had got away with anything similar.The imaginative intensity of Da Capo set in motion a seismic shift from the rock’n’roll framework, incorporating jazz, Latin, baroque, enigmatic lyrics and peculiar tempos. Most of Lee’s crew jumped ship soon after its release. Other musicians were watching from the shore, however, ready to undertake their own voyages of musical discovery.