GERMANY - We have been reporting since late last year on TGP about how Germany, besides being engaged in an overhaul of its armed forces, is also working to upgrade its intelligence capabilities to face the dangerous new world that we’re living in. So, today (12), the German cabinet approved new powers for its intelligence services to ‘hack communications and disrupt foreign adversaries’ ​operations’. Reuters reported: “The measures, which ‌have been under discussion for months, would allow both the BND, the foreign intelligence service, and the BfV, the domestic security service, broader authority to access digital communications, collect data and carry out active operations to thwart attacks. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the measures, which would incorporate artificial intelligence tools, would ‘revolutionize Germany’s security architecture’. ‘We are transforming our intelligence services into genuine secret services’, he ​told a news conference in Berlin, saying that for the first time, the agencies would ⁠be given operational powers.”

GERMANY - The return of the Stasi? As the Euro-Globalist failing leaders try to whip their countries into an anti-Russia Frenzy, Germany is trying to come out of this process as the country with the largest military and – it appears – the meanest intelligence services. In a move reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War, new legislation will allow spies from Germany’s foreign intelligence agency ‘to attack and sabotage enemies of the state’. The Telegraph reported: “Since its founding in 1956 in West Germany, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has only been permitted to gather and analyze intelligence. But a new law, drawn up by chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition, will give BND spies additional powers to launch cyber-attacks, carry out sabotage abroad and covertly enter the homes of enemies of the state.”

USA - The elites who run a large northern Dallas suburb have provoked national anger after ignoring the will of the people and submitting to political Islam. A brave Christian migrant who survived Sharia law in Iran walked straight up to the McKinney City Council and delivered a blistering, unfiltered warning that had the chamber erupting. Eddie Isa (also referred to as Eri Issa / Edwin Isagholi), an Iranian-born Christian and self-described “Sharia law survivor,” stood before the packed August 4, 2026, meeting and told the council exactly what soft Westerners refuse to hear. “I’m a Sharia law survivor from Iran,” he declared. “I’m TELLING YOU, this is a BAD idea, and you’re going to REGRET not listening to people like us who lived under Sharia law!”

USA - Police Chief Issa Shahin released a desperate video message urging residents to stay away from Tuesday’s August 18 city council meeting because “anti-Islam protesters,” including activists planning a “Christian Crusader March” to “Stop Islamification,” are expected to show up and exercise their First Amendment rights. “Please stay home,” Shahin said. Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin says individuals and organizations from outside the community may travel to the city for an anti-Islam demonstration. Police will deploy an “enhanced presence” and have prepared what the department describes as a comprehensive security plan. Shahin claims the expected demonstrators are coming to provoke residents, manufacture a confrontation and generate publicity. Dearborn has become ground zero for the demographic and cultural transformation of America. The city is now majority Arab and heavily Muslim. Outdoor Islamic calls to prayer blast through neighborhoods. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud previously told a Christian resident he was “not welcome” in the city.

USA - The Pentagon is pressing US arms makers to accelerate production as the ongoing war with Iran depletes critical weapons stockpiles, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing a Department of War memo to industry leaders. The memo, written by Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg and reportedly sent earlier this week, gives manufacturers 21 days to propose “significantly faster” and “more aggressive” delivery schedules, expanded production capacity, or both. “Years-long development cycles are not acceptable,” Feinberg wrote. “We must dramatically accelerate our program schedules and expand our production capacity now.”

IRAN - Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, laid out the country’s key demands for the US amid negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday. Iran and Oman are engaged in ongoing discussions around this key waterway, which carries a significant portion of the world’s oil supply and has been effectively closed during Iranian strikes in the Gulf region. In a message shared by state media, Zolghadr called on the US to end its naval blockade in the key waterway, lift sanctions on Iran and pay out war reparations. Additionally, the Iranian official demanded the US military withdraw from the country and cease attacks on Tehran’s allies. “The Supreme National Security Council will never give up, whether in war or in negotiations,” Zolghadr said in a translated statement reported by state media.

JAPAN - Tokyo is building a military and intelligence architecture very different from the one that defined its postwar era. The result is a changing equation. Japan remains much smaller than China in population, military expenditure, and overall military capacity. But it is becoming a considerably more capable, connected, and technologically sophisticated military power than before. For China, that means the strategic environment along its eastern periphery is changing. Japan is no longer simply the relatively constrained maritime power of the postwar decades. It is developing the intelligence, strike, industrial, and technological capabilities required to act earlier and farther from its territory, while remaining closely integrated with the US-led security system. In short, a more assertive Japan is redrawing the map of East Asian security – and Beijing knows it.

UK - When I saw the pictures of Angela Rayner vaping in a lilo, I warmed to her. Like most parents, Rayner said that she hopes her kids never take up the filthy habit. And again, I find myself warming to her attitude of “do as I say, not as I do” parenting. But the idea that precocious children should be allowed to tell off their parents for doing what parents choose to do is less attractive. If I had told my parents I thought their habits were disgusting, I’m not sure I would have liked their response. Contemporary parents seem to think that good parenting means being equal with your children. It might be a different story for Rayner, whose kids are almost all grown up, but the idea that your own babies should have an opinion on your decisions and choices as an adult is ludicrous. Today’s baby-led, gentle-parenting mantra seems to want family life to be dictated by those who don’t yet know their backside from their elbow. This lack of adult authority is rearing a nation of brats. Perhaps it’s time adults found their backbone, and told the kids to mind their own.

UK - A fifth of all British taxes will be needed to pay the interest on the national debt later this century if the Government does not change course, a think tank has warned. The UK’s finances are “unsustainable” on the current trajectory, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a Left-leaning organisation with alumni across Andy Burnham’s Government. Younger Britons and those born in the coming years face “a heavy burden” left to them by past and current politicians. Just over £1 in every £5 of taxes taken in the 2070s will be needed to pay debt interest. The national debt is already thought to have risen above £3 trillion, according to estimates from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a pressure group. Global debt investors charge Britain the highest interest rate in the G7 on its bonds, leaving the Government paying more than £100 billion per year in interest.

GERMANY - Germany’s economic growth risks being cut in half this year as heatwaves and drought leave water levels in the Rhine at record lows. Critical industries rely on the major river for the transport of metals, chemicals and fuel but they have found its waters increasingly difficult to navigate. The depth at the Kaub gauge, the shallowest part of the middle Rhine, has fallen as low as 15cm and could drop to just 5cm, down from more than 1.5m at this time last year. The low water level risks severing a vital route between Germany’s industrial heartlands and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Europe’s biggest port. Extra rail freight services have been laid on to supply steel producer ​Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann ⁠in ​Duisburg. Further east, Saxony has relaxed its restrictions on Sunday lorry deliveries because of low water levels in the Elbe.