Metaplanet added 2,823 BTC in the second quarter to reach 43,000 Bitcoin, becoming the world’s third-largest corporate Bitcoin treasury behind Strategy and Twenty One Capital.

Metaplanet crossed the 43,000 BTC threshold on July 2, a milestone that places the Tokyo-listed firm as the world’s third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder. The company now trails Strategy and Twenty One Capital across the global corporate ranking, and its climb underscores Japan’s role in the corporate Bitcoin accumulation race.

Metaplanet acquired an additional 2,823 BTC during the second quarter of 2026, a purchase worth about $170.7 million. The buy brought total holdings to 43,000 BTC, valued near $2.6 billion. Shares of the company (ticker 3350) closed 3.5% higher at 207 yen ($1.28) on Thursday following the announcement.

The average acquisition price for the quarter landed at roughly 12.71 million yen (about $80,000) per Bitcoin, according to the company. The effective purchase price fell to around 12.09 million yen (about $77,000) once income from the firm’s Bitcoin Income Generation business is counted. 

That segment produced approximately 1.75 billion yen ($10.85 million) in operating revenue for the quarter, lifting first-half revenue to about 4.72 billion yen. On a trailing 12-month basis, the division’s revenue reached about 11.4 billion yen.

Metaplanet’s total Bitcoin investment now stands at approximately 659.25 billion yen (about $4.2 billion), with holdings valued near 409 billion yen (about $2.6 billion) as of June 30. The overall average cost basis sits at 15.33 million yen (about $102,500) per BTC.

The company reported a BTC Yield of 6.6% for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, a metric that tracks growth in Bitcoin per share. That figure remains a core indicator for corporate treasury strategies of this type.

The corporate Bitcoin leaderboard is now well defined. Strategy, the former MicroStrategy, leads with holdings above 847,000 BTC. Twenty One Capital holds second place. Metaplanet takes third, a position that puts it ahead of other large players such as MARA Holdings, according to data tracked by Bitcoin Treasuries.

Michael Saylor marked the occasion on X, tweeting, “Congrats to Metaplanet on reaching ₿43,000 and becoming the #3 corporate Bitcoin treasury in the world. You are proving that the Bitcoin treasury strategy is global.”

The strategy behind Metaplanet

Metaplanet has scaled at speed since it adopted the treasury model in 2024. CEO Simon Gerovich has drawn on equity offerings, debt instruments, and options strategies to build the position, an approach designed to limit the shareholder dilution that comes with large corporate purchases. The Bitcoin Income Generation business uses Bitcoin options to create recurring cash flow while the company expands its holdings.

The balance sheet leaves room to grow. Total debt and preferred stock represent about 23% of the net asset value of the firm’s Bitcoin, a cushion that gives Metaplanet capacity to keep buying.

The dual model, one part aggressive accumulation and one part recurring income, cements Japan as a rising force in the corporate push to hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

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When Somerset Dwyer found a two-bedroom apartment in Nob Hill, she felt she had done the impossible. Having grown up four blocks from her new place, she would be moving to her first apartment after college, returning to San Francisco for the first time as an adult. She was excited to live in a neighborhood she called the epitome of “Old San Francisco,” with its diners and gritty bars she remembered from her childhood. But when she got there, she found that something in the neighborhood’s spirit had changed.

“All of it was gone. Everyone works from home, and there’s no sense of community,” Dwyer said. A new wave of artificial intelligence-fueled, tech-related gentrification was seeping into the few spots of San Francisco left untouched, and for Dwyer, “It made it hard to connect to the city again.”

Although the world may be watching San Francisco as the leading voice in the AI conversation, a lot of our young people, perhaps surprisingly, hate it. In a city with a long history of attracting young people for its rich artistic and progressive history, some say artificial intelligence represents everything the city stands against. 

On Wednesday evenings at Kiitos Cocktail Lounge and Sports Bar on Capp Street, a small group of people meet for drinks. You spot them immediately, dramatically ranging in age, ethnicity and other demographics and dressed in matching bright red T-shirts with bold white lettering: STOP AI.

The grassroots activist organization formed in 2024 in Oakland but now meets all across the Bay Area. Stop AI attendees span generations, all inspired by witnessing the negative consequences of AI in their day-to-day lives. 

A former software engineer whose job was replaced by AI is now “taunted” with billboards for AI startups that say they will “stop hiring humans.” An art teacher in his 70s is worried about the future of visual art when everything can be replicated. And Valielza Huynh-O’Keefe, a 27-year-old County Council member of the San Francisco Green Party, wants to prevent AI from seeping more into her life than it already has.

“I think for Gen Z, I think that feeling of nihilism is strong, I think the assumption that we like AI is generally misplaced. Gen Z wants to do something about it, but I think there is just a lack of political direction,” Huynh-O’Keefe says.

A recent poll by Gallup backs this up. While about half of the Gen Zers polled reported using AI daily or weekly, skepticism and backlash are climbing. Young adults entering the workforce were concerned about job replacement, and close to half surveyed said the risks of adopting AI in the workplace outweighed its benefits. Only 15% said they saw AI as a net benefit.

Huynh-O’Keefe, originally from Las Vegas, moved to San Francisco in 2024 with her partner, who had gotten into medical school at UCSF. She immediately fell in love with the city, especially its public transit system, but noticed that with the advent of AI, the city became “less welcoming.” She lives in an apartment complex in Mission Bay, right across the street from the Open AI headquarters. When she saw Stop AI protesting outside, she felt inspired to get involved, especially as the group wasn’t tied to a particular political party.

“The issue of AI, the issue of data centers in particular, has been able to band together people from across the political spectrum. It’s not really a Democrat or Republican issue,” she continued. “I know a lot of Gen Z are looking at trades and physical occupations that are going to be more difficult to automate and are sort of opting out of this generic higher education model.”

There has been a recent movement of Gen Z graduates booing speakers who mention AI at ceremonies over this past graduation season. At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was heckled when he said that this generation will “help shape AI.” At the University of Central Florida, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was met with stadium-wide disdain after comparing the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution.

Recent grads may have a right to resent it. Gen Z is “losing the most in the AI economy” according to recent studies. Economists estimate that AI substitution and slow hiring have erased a net of 11,000 U.S. jobs per month, according to a Goldman Sachs AI Adoption Tracker.

“Rich and powerful people in this city are all for it, obviously,” Huynh-O’Keefe said. “But regular people, we want to slow it down.”

When asked about the world Gen Z was inheriting, the group at the gathering on Capp Street discussed Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, the 20-year-old who allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home earlier this year. One member repeated Moreno-Gama’s quote: “Young people use ChatGPT to cheat, before they realize that they are cheating themselves.” 

Other Gen Z San Franciscans described a similar pattern: embracing AI at first because it seemed helpful or out of fear of falling behind, only to become disillusioned with it.

A 23-year-old personal assistant who grew up in San Francisco, who was granted anonymity for this story in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy due to fear of employment repercussions, told SFGATE about the intense pressure to keep up. She said when she first started her job, she felt so inexperienced that she would have taken advice from anywhere, so AI seemed helpful to her.

“But as I’ve become more experienced, I find it’s wasting my time. I’m so much better off talking to people and calling and asking questions.” She continued. “It’s a weird balance trying to adapt to this tool. I feel this pressure to adapt to ‘the future,’ but the future is underwhelming. It’s like having a dumb friend.”

She said that she is pressured by her boss to use the tool to catch up, and when she is not sure how to complete a task, he will pull out an AI chatbot in front of her and instead “ask the little assistant in his pocket.” “The older generations are the ones who are amazed by it,” she said. “We are the ones who are disappointed.”

“I think the embracement of AI is going to be one of the great divides of our generation,” she continued, saying that as a lifelong San Franciscan, she is already seeing the impacts of that divide. “When I find out someone is working in AI, I judge their character completely. Our childhoods were full of characters and communities who have been here for a long time. We’re seeing a new feeling arise out of this AI boom that’s not concerned with our culture.”

She said she has even noticed these changes going out to familiar bars. “There are so many people our age who now live in North Beach and are changing it. They work in AI with a frat boy finance bro aesthetic, and it’s changing our city.” she said. “The city is now flooded by a new kind of young person.”

A recent study by CoworkingCafe stated that San Francisco secured the No. 2 spot for recent college graduates for earning potential in 2026, trailing only Atlanta. The city offers the highest median income for young professionals among large U.S. cities at $110,135.

The techie culture wars with San Francisco locals is nothing new; in fact, that divide has arguably become emblematic of the city itself. In the 1990s, the dot-com boom sparked a massive economic redirection for the city, and in the early 2010s, Silicon Valley social media hubs rapidly gentrified lower-income neighborhoods like SoMa and the Mission. But to many, this AI wave feels different. As more AI companies prepare to go public and mint a fresh class of millionaires from their employee ranks, the wealth flooding into San Francisco has done little to close an inequality gap that remains among the worst in the nation.

To many young San Franciscans, there is a relentless and inescapable nature to the rise of AI. Even if it hasn’t affected Gen Z professionally, it might appear in their dating world. Known, the first AI-powered dating app, markets itself as being specifically for San Franciscans. Giselle Perez, a 29-year-old San Francisco native who lives in the Mission, tried the app because she was curious about who it would match her with.

But once she discovered more about the premise, she was discouraged. She found out that AI generates a profile for you from a couple of questions, and that you are not able to edit your profile once it is automated. You are matched solely based on generative AI, and you are not able to contact your date beforehand.

After contacting the founder to share some of her concerns, she was dismissed. Her negative review was promptly deleted overnight, and Perez felt increasingly frustrated.

“I was told this was an app for San Franciscans, or at least locals, and I was curious to see if that was true. But it’s not created by anyone from here, and it certainly isn’t for us. It’s already hard to date here as a local, and AI is making it harder.” Perez said. “AI companies do not represent San Franciscans, and they should not claim to.” 

Dwyer moved from her Nob Hill apartment to an artist’s loft in an industrial corner of the Bayview sometime last year. She says she feels a lot better there. “We wanted more space and cheaper rent,” Dwyer explained. “And it’s closer to a version of San Francisco I remember. Our place could so easily be converted into an AI startup. I’m really glad it’s not,” Dwyer said.

Her new spot misses the shadow of a massive AI billboard off the 101 freeway exit by a few hundred yards. “It’s strange how it follows you,” Dwyer said. “I don’t know who those billboards are talking to, but it’s certainly not my neighbors.”

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The post ‘It’s like having a dumb friend’: Young San Franciscans hate AI appeared first on Activist Post.

Health care workers helping treat and control the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are threatening to strike as the hemorrhagic disease continues to spread.  Yesterday, healthcare workers in Ituri issued a 24-hour notice of an impending strike.

Those working on the Ebola frontlines said that the working conditions were too poor to continue. They reported unpaid benefits, low wages, and inadequate supplies since the outbreak officially began in May.

The DRC Ministry of Health has now confirmed 1,561 cases in the outbreak, with the epicenter in Ituri province and significant transmission in North and South Kivu provinces, as well. Thirty-three of the DRC cases are new, as are 14 of the deaths. Neighboring Uganda has 20 cases, two of them fatal. –University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy)

The strike is threatening to further complicate already difficult tracking and tracing procedures. But it could also negatively impact the execution of two experimental therapies that were launched this past week in the DRC. Enrollees will be given the antiviral drug remdesivir, the experimental antibody treatment MBP134, or a combination of both, with survival rates calculated during a 28-day follow-up period.

This comes as the deaths have surpassed 500. More are likely to be reported in the coming days, too, as healthcare officials are having trouble handling the Bundibugyo strain, the current strain of the virus spreading in an active conflict zone.

Ebola Deaths Surpass 500

The trial of two new experimental therapies provided some much-needed hope to the infected regions of DR Congo and Uganda. Additonally, the World Health Organization (WHO) also added the first diagnostic test for the Ebola Bundibugyo virus to its emergency use listing. The test can quickly confirm infection in blood samples, which will help those attempting to track the spread of the virus to know much sooner if someone is infected.

Despite increased testing, contact tracing remains difficult in the region, and a patient zero has still not been identified in this outbreak.

All of these positive steps are being trampled under the weight of a possible strike.

The post Ebola Health Care Workers Threaten To Strike As Virus Spreads appeared first on Activist Post.

Vanguard is hiring its first head of digital assets to develop a long-term crypto and blockchain strategy.

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest asset managers and a longtime skeptic of cryptocurrency, has opened a search for a head of digital assets, a senior role that would shape the firm’s strategy across crypto and blockchain-based finance.

The job, posted this week within Vanguard Personal Wealth and based in Dallas, calls for an executive to develop the firm’s digital asset vision, identify business opportunities, and lead execution across product, technology, operations, legal, and compliance teams. 

According to the posting, the hire would serve as Vanguard’s “senior subject matter expert,” advise senior leadership on market developments, and represent the firm in discussions with regulators and industry groups. 

Vanguard also wants the executive to help shape “market standards” and build a scalable, end-to-end strategy for personal wealth clients.

The listing extends beyond crypto trading. It names tokenization, stablecoins, digital wallets, custody, and blockchain-based settlement as areas the new leader would evaluate, along with deciding whether Vanguard should build capabilities in-house, partner with outside firms, or hold off on entering parts of the market. 

The role would involve constructing a multi-year roadmap and designing governance and risk frameworks.

Vanguard’s journey into bitcoin 

Vanguard reported $12 trillion in assets under management at the end of 2025, a scale that places it second only to BlackRock. 

The move appears to mark the first time the firm has sought to hire someone dedicated to cryptocurrency strategy, and it comes after years in which the bank stood apart from rivals. BlackRock, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton rolled out spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and other blockchain products while Vanguard declined to follow.

The firm’s public posture has been pointed. Vanguard has described Bitcoin as an “immature asset class” ill-suited to long-term investors. 

Chief Executive Salim Ramji, who joined the company from BlackRock in July 2024 after leading its iShares business — the unit behind the large iShares Bitcoin ETF — has said the decision not to launch a Bitcoin ETF was “entirely consistent” with the firm’s investment philosophy, stressing the value of consistency in the products a firm offers.

Even so, Vanguard has not stayed on the sidelines entirely. In December, the firm began allowing brokerage clients to trade cryptocurrency ETFs and mutual funds on its platform, a shift that opened access to funds holding Bitcoin and some other crypto.

At one point last year, the bank also became the largest shareholder in Strategy, the company that holds the world’s biggest corporate Bitcoin treasury — a position that flowed from its index funds rather than an active bet on the asset.

The new search does not signal an imminent product launch, and Vanguard has maintained that it has no plans to issue its own crypto investment vehicles. 

What the posting does suggest is a broadening of focus beyond simply granting access to third-party funds, toward assessing how digital assets might fit within its wealth management business over the long term.

The post Vanguard Warms to Crypto With Search for Digital Assets Chief appeared first on Activist Post.

A 250th Independence Day eulogy for a Nation outgrown and discarded by the Empire

The United States was never the Empire.

The Rocky Mountains were never the Empire. Niagara Falls was never the Empire. The Everglades were never the Empire. The winding rivers of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio were never the Empire. The Great Lakes were never the Empire.

The Empire was never Los Angeles or New York. Alaska, Texas, or Hawaii.

The Empire was never the Declaration of Independence, the Stars and Stripes, or the Constitution.

None of the roughly 340 million people – who live normal lives and just want to get on and be happy, like everyone else – were ever the Empire.

America was never the problem.

And the problem was never America.

Raytheon was never America. Neither was Pfizer, or Boeing, or Lockheed Martin, or Halliburton.

The Pentagon was never America. Neither were the three-letter monsters of the CIA, NSA, or DHS.

The politicians – who broke their oaths to the constitution almost as soon they swore them – were never America. The lobbyists and profiteers who paid them were never America.

The Federal Reserve was never America, Wall Street was never America. The vast corporate megaliths that own half the world and tie economies in knots with made-up money were never America.

And none of them will pay the price for what they have done in that name.

America was never the Empire, it was just where the Empire lived for a while.

It had other homes before, it will have others in the future. A hermit crab shedding shells as it swells.

The Nation of the United States – however you define the idea of nationhood – was as much a victim as any of us.

If a “nation” is a matter of geography, then the United States had its resources plundered, its water poisoned, its skies polluted as much as anywhere else in the world.

If a “nation” is a library of laws, then the United States had its constitution torn down, chewed up and shat out.

If a “nation” is a collection of shared traditions, then the United States not only saw its triplet traditions of opportunity, freedom, and democracy butchered, but witnessed their mutilated corpses strung along in a macabre puppet show for decade after decade.

And, finally, if a nation is defined by its people, well then the people of the United States were massacred in corporate wars, sickened by toxic food, poisoned with dangerous medicines, impoverished by mountains of debt, locked away in private prisons, indoctrinated by state education and brainwashed by a complicit media.

Crime and violence, drugs and depression, ignorance and hopelessness.

America may be the name they used, America may be the flag they waved, but none of the Imperial Conquerors really care for name or flag, and none of their spoils ever trickled down far enough to make America rich in gold or spirit or security.

Today is the United States’ 250th birthday. It may not get to two-sixty.

If, as seems inevitable, the coming years see the United States collapse into a quasi-failed state, with hatred and division boiling over into secession and civil war, there will be many around the world who set off fireworks and declare a victory.

It will feel to some like a global Fourth of July, a worldwide independence day. Some will see karmic balance, others share bitter laughs with wounded victims turned monstrous in their need for vengeance.

Many will clap. Many will cheer.

I will not be one of them.

Instead, I will mourn a country founded by brilliant men with beautiful ideas. A nation that could have been great, but was not.

We will be told the villain is defeated, the enemy no more. Perhaps history will end for the second time. The champagne corks will pop and a “new age of globalist enlightenment” will dawn, consigning the ”dangerous ideas” of freedom, individualism and opportunity to the ash heap of history.

The parties will last long into the night.

And, as the sun rises on the broken remains of America, lashing at itself in its death throes, nothing will have changed except the mask the real rulers of the world choose to wear.

Originally posted on my SubStack, which I plan to use as a place for non-political writing, and a safe haven should OffG get taken down.

The post America Was Never the Problem appeared first on Activist Post.

The Leftist view of hierarchy has refugees close to the top of the pyramid because they can claim discrimination from the State from an imaginary borders standpoint, as well as their nationality. Due to the freedom of interstate travel, Americans do not have to worry about becoming refugees in their own country, but that hasn’t stopped the trans community from inventing reasons to believe otherwise.

Seattle is incentivizing mental illness on an industrial scale by rewarding hundreds of thousands of emotionally stunted people with free money and resources for being confused about their genders. Until Big Pharma stops poisoning the minds of people with chemicals, there seems to be no end in sight to the destruction of a generation of troons.

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Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

The UK government’s June 2026 consultation document is called Watch This Space. It proposes giving an unnamed authority the power to determine which news outlets get algorithmically elevated on YouTube, TikTok, and every major platform operating in Britain. Within days of its publication, YouTube pushed a notification to hundreds of thousands of UK creators warning them the government planned to “put some channels above others,” and the hashtag #KeepYouTubeYours tore across the same platforms Labour wants to regulate, faster and further than any BBC press release has managed in years.

The Protection Racket

This piece is built from that consultation, from Ofcom‘s correspondence with ministers, from the Centre for Media Monitoring‘s 180-page quantitative analysis of BBC coverage, from testimony given to the UK Covid Inquiry, from the OECD‘s June 2026 trust survey, from a CJEU ruling handed down on July 2 that most Western outlets have quietly stepped over, and from sociologist Gisèle Sapiro‘s forensic account of what Vincent Bolloré is building across France and sub-Saharan Africa. What they add up to is not a misinformation crisis, but a protection racket with a paper trail.

That story has a before. Before the consultation, before the YouTube notification, there was a window, a gap between when media owners across Europe understood that a law was coming to block large-scale media consolidation and when that law actually took effect. In that gap, the acquisitions happened. Fast, sequenced, and in several cases specifically structured to fall outside the law’s reach. By the time the legislation entered force in August 2025, the major consolidations were complete and untouchable. The BBC’s campaign to have trusted outlets elevated by algorithm is the policy layer of what those ownership moves already did structurally.

Consolidate the ownership, then consolidate the visibility.

The Window and Who Generated These Numbers

Mathias Döpfner took Axel Springer private in August 2024, debt-free, no public market reporting, roughly €3.3 billion available for acquisitions, full editorial control of Politico, Bild, Business Insider, and the Telegraph in the hands of one man. The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), the law specifically designed to require governments to assess whether media mergers threaten pluralism before approving them, came into force eleven months later. Too late for Springer.

Too late for Bolloré, whose empire CNews, Europe 1, Hachette Livre, Fayard, Grasset, and Canal +, had been assembled and approved piece by piece by the same European Commission that would later fine X €120 million for inadequate content moderation. The Telegraph acquisition closed in March 2026, in a non-EU jurisdiction, seven months after EMFA entered force, in a country of incorporation — Germany — that hadn’t yet implemented Article 22. Every significant consolidation was either completed before the law could reach it or structured to fall outside its jurisdiction.

Since August 2025, the EMFA enforcement machinery has produced one opinion, on a minor Hungarian acquisition, and has opened no review of France, Germany, or the UK. On July 2, the CJEU ruled that private citizens face criminal prosecution for sharing a prohibited source. The window closed. Just not on the people who used it.

Nobody running this debate will state the case against these institutions plainly. So here it is, with numbers. The OECD‘s June 2026 survey put government trust at 40% across member countries, with a 47-point gap between those who feel they have political agency and those who know they don’t. The Reuters Institute puts news trust at 37%, the lowest since they started counting in 2015. News avoidance globally sits at 42%. Nobody confused by an algorithm produces numbers like that. These are people who watched the institutions perform on the stories that mattered most, across three decades, and made up their minds. The institutions demanding algorithmic protection are the same ones who generated those numbers.

What BBC Verify Is Actually For and What The Record Says?

Mohamed Shalaby spent seven years at BBC Verify, the corporation’s flagship fact-checking unit. On August 10, 2025, Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent marked “PRESS” outside al-Shifa hospital. The following day, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison reported from Jerusalem on a live blog that Al-Sharif “worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict.” Shalaby raised concerns; the claim was unsourced, unverified, and didn’t meet Verify’s own editorial standards. He filed a formal complaint, and soon after was invited to take his queries elsewhere.

He posted on Instagram Stories: the line “is NOT verified and not sourced and does not align with Verify’s editorial standards.” On August 19, BBC Global Journalism sent a formal correction request marked “essential amendment” to at least 1,200 BBC staff. The BBC did not correct the article. When Shalaby declined an HR meeting about his social media activity before finishing his final shift, the BBC locked his account, suspended his work ID, and told him he would be escorted from the building. “Having worked there since 2018,” he told Deadline, “it was incredibly shocking.”

The BBC declined to comment. A unit whose entire purpose is fact-checking escorted a fact-checker out of the building for fact-checking, received a formal internal correction request from its own division, and left the original claim standing. Draw your own conclusions about what BBC Verify is actually for.

The numbers confirm it. The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM),  whose quantitative methodology is publicly available, though critics note its institutional links to the Muslim Council of Britain, analysed over 35,000 pieces of BBC output across the first year of Israel’s war. Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians being killed at a ratio of 34 to one. “Massacre” ran 18 times more often for Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones. “Murder” appeared 220 times for Israeli deaths. Once for Palestinian deaths. Across an entire year.

111 BBC journalists signed anonymous letters condemning editorial decisions. The BBC sat on its own commissioned documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, then handed it to Channel 4, not because of a factual flaw but because of concern about a “perception of partiality.” On the Israel-Iran war, BBC coverage framed Israeli strikes as targeted and preemptive, while often giving less prominence to earlier covert operations against Iran’s nuclear programme, including the Stuxnet cyberattack on Natanz centrifuges and the April 2021 Natanz attack, which BBC reported destroyed or damaged thousands of centrifuge machines. The BBC also reported on the Israeli assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which the NYT attributed to Mossad and a remote-controlled machine gun smuggled into Iran in pieces, but sadly covered it more cautiously as a remote-control killing blamed by Iran on Israel

Then go back to Iraq, where Andrew Gilligan‘s core claim, that the WMD dossier was strengthened against intelligence caveats, was later vindicated by the Butler Review and the government’s response was not to correct the record but to destroy the BBC’s leadership, with Director General Greg Dyke and Chairman Gavyn Davies gone through the Hutton Inquiry within weeks. The lesson was encoded with a very clear message:  “Challenge the government on a foreign policy decision and the institution gets dismantled”. The BBC has spent twenty years not making that mistake again.

The Consortium

On Covid, Professor Mark Woolhouse told the UK Covid Inquiry in January 2024 that the BBC had “repeatedly reported rare deaths among healthy adults as if they were the norm,” manufacturing a false impression of equivalent risk when the known mortality differential between the over-75s and the under-15s was 10,000 to one. Internal accounts described a culture where dissenting scientific voices were mocked in meetings and never made it to air. The BBC wasn’t working alone. It was a founding member of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a consortium also including Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post, stood up by Jessica Cecil, a BBC leadership figure who ran the initiative.

The TNI expanded with funding from the Google News Initiative. YouTube is a TNI partner and a funder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Google is the Reuters Institute’s single largest donor, listed as its “over one million pounds” funder for 2024-25. The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report, which recommends giving public service broadcasters like the BBC greater algorithmic prominence, was part-funded by the BBC.

The institution is both the subject of the recommendation and a funder of the report making it. None of that requires a conspiracy. It requires a funding spreadsheet, which is public. The Musk-and-Thiel counter writes itself, but it misses the point. Those actors are not the ones proposing the regulatory framework, not the ones whose money built the report recommending their own promotion, and not the ones whose journalists are shielded from criminal prosecution by the source designations now being written into law.

The TNI is also the subject of a US federal antitrust lawsuit from independent publishers alleging coordinated suppression of Covid coverage that deviated from official guidance. In June 2025, the US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case, arguing that antitrust law protects viewpoint competition in news markets and that collusion among dominant publishers to suppress rivals is exactly the anticompetitive harm the Sherman Act was built to prevent.

The US government has told a federal court that what the BBC and its partners did may be an antitrust violation. That finding has not appeared in any BBC broadcast.

The Finished Version

Gisèle Sapiro, writing in Le Monde after Vincent Bolloré ousted Grasset publisher Olivier Nora, calls this what it is: not an epiphenomenon of financial capitalism but a deliberate conversion of media and publishing into ideological infrastructure ahead of the 2027 elections. Fayard, under Bolloré-appointed director Lise Boëll, now publishes the ideologue Alain de Benoist, politicians Bardella, Zemmour, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, and Xenia Fedorova,  the former head of RT France, the Kremlin-funded channel banned under EU sanctions and whose content the CJEU has ruled cannot be made available even on free public websites, has since been given platforms inside Bolloré’s ecosystem, including a Fayard book, CNews appearances and regular JDNews columns.

The European Commission that approved Vivendi’s acquisition of Lagardère, Hachette Livre’s parent company, before the EMFA’s media-pluralism test applied, then fined X €120 million for hosting the wrong content, then brought the German RT prosecution to the CJEU, has issued no EMFA review of the empire it signed off on. Hachette controls more than 80% of the school textbook market in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa; the ideological project Sapiro describes runs from the evening news bulletin in Paris to the primary school classroom in Dakar, shaping the foundational texts through which tens of millions of children across 25 countries learn language, history, and civics.

Bolloré has been quoted by journalist Vincent Beaufils as saying privately: “Je me sers de mes médias pour mener mon combat civilisationnel” — “I use my media to wage my civilizational combat”. The parliamentary inquiry circling France’s public broadcasters was initiated by a lawmaker aligned with Le Pen’s RN. The people loudest about TikTok allegedly corrupting French democracy have a direct stake in nobody looking at who controls what gets broadcast, published, and taught.

The Next Move and What Happens to Everyone Else

In Germany, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner told Politico staff in a recorded call obtained by Jewish Insider that anyone uncomfortable with the company’s “essentials”, including support for Israel’s right to exist, should “work for other companies”; Axel Springer then closed its Telegraph acquisition in March 2026, three months after the UK government published the consultation proposing to algorithmically elevate the outlets now sitting inside his portfolio, in a country that hadn’t yet implemented Article 22 and a jurisdiction where EMFA doesn’t reach.

On July 2, the CJEU made clear what happens to people outside that portfolio. Three German citizens had been posting RT DE videos on a non-commercial, donation-funded personal website. German prosecutors brought criminal proceedings. The CJEU Fourth Chamber ruled that anyone “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content publicly available is an operator, regardless of commercial intent, regardless of content, regardless of duration, regardless of funding source.

The EU did not argue the videos were false. It ruled the source is prohibited, that sharing a prohibited source makes a private individual a sanctions violator, and that in Germany the penalty is up to five years in prison.

Algorithmic promotion for designated trusted outlets, criteria undefined, no right of challenge, no independent appointment process, no published methodology for how designation works or how it can be contested. A documented financial loop between the designated institutions, the platforms mandated to elevate them, and the research bodies recommending the elevation, part-funded by the institutions themselves. The biggest ownership moves either landed before the pluralism rules existed, or outside the places where they could bite. Vivendi took Lagardère before EMFA’s Article 22 test applied; Axel Springer closed the Telegraph deal beyond the EU’s reach; and the same legal order now treats redistribution of banned RT content as a potential criminal matter for individuals

What this reveals is not a broken information system waiting for repair, but a protected class of institutions with a record. They survived Hutton and Chilcot after the WMD case collapsed. They helped police the boundaries of acceptable science during the pandemic. They narrowed the language available for Palestinian deaths. And they consolidated ownership before, or beyond, the law meant to stop concentration.

What remains is a system that protects power first and calls the result public order. The old institutions survive their failures. The new owners keep what they captured. The citizen is left with less language, fewer sources, and more law.

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So, you’re still wondering how to meet like-minded people, eh? Well, not to worry! James is back with yet more ideas in the continuing series of #SolutionsWatch episodes on how to make friends and build community. This time, he talks to Daniel Andrews of LocalMarket.cc about his plans for this community-driven website for connecting vendors and customers. Then, we talk to Amanda and Larken Rose about their conference, Approaching Humanity, which will be held in Sedona, Arizona, this July 18th and which will feature many speakers including James…via Zoom, of course.

Video player not working? Use these links to watch it somewhere else!

WATCH ON:  /  /  /  / /  or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

How to Meet Like-Minded People – #SolutionsWatch

Building Community – #SolutionsWatch

Meeting People is Easy – #SolutionsWatch

How NOT To Build Community – #ProblemsWatch

LocalMarket.cc

Investments / Donations to Local Market can be made via Gofundme

Approaching Humanity conference

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Most commercial aircraft use a system known as “bleed air” to supply cabin ventilation, drawing compressed air directly from the jet engine compressor stage. When engine seals degrade, oil and hydraulic fluid containing organophosphates can enter the air supply, according to the Aerotoxic Association.

Retired airline captain John Hoyte, who flew commercially for nearly 30 years, reported that he developed serious neurological damage, which he attributes to long-term exposure, according to his statements to the UK Parliament in 2007. France has formally recognized aerotoxic syndrome as an occupational disease, officials said. ^[1]

How the Bleed Air System Works

According to aviation engineers, cabin air in most jets is compressed directly from the engine’s compressor stage, not from outside. The air is then cooled and conditioned before being pumped into the passenger cabin. When the seals in the engine’s compressor degrade over time, oil and hydraulic fluid — which contain organophosphates such as tricresyl phosphates — can leak into the airstream, the Aerotoxic Association stated. ^[2]

A study examining damage accumulation in aircraft bleed system ducts noted that the bleed system transports hot air from the motor to the air conditioning packs, highlighting the engineering complexity of these components. ^[3] The Boeing 787 Dreamliner uses an electrical system to compress cabin air instead of bleed air, a design choice that the manufacturer said eliminates the risk of contaminated air entering the cabin. ^[2]

Evidence and Government Hearings

In 2007, 27 pilots, cabin crew, passengers, doctors, and scientists gave evidence to the UK Parliament’s Committee on Aerotoxic Syndrome, according to parliamentary records. The BBC Panorama program aired a documentary titled “Something in the Air” in 2008, examining the issue, the network reported. A UK coroner in 2015 recorded a death linked to contaminated cabin air, the coroner’s report stated. ^[4]

Critics argue that the aviation industry has prioritized profit over safety by failing to address the known risks of bleed air contamination. An article from GreenMedInfo.com described the issue as “the aviation industry’s darkest cover-up,” noting that the design has been in use since the 1960s. ^[2] The Aerotoxic Association has documented hundreds of fume events, including a 2017 British Airways flight where three pilots and 22 cabin crew required hospital treatment after an emergency was declared due to suspected toxic fumes. ^[5]

Legal Cases and Regulatory Actions

Twenty passengers on a single 2007 flight were seriously injured and later won legal cases, court documents showed. A U.S. law professor is suing Boeing for $40 million after an alleged single exposure, according to his legal filing. Morgan and Morgan, the largest U.S. personal injury firm, is now taking mass cases, the firm announced. ^[1]

The lack of regulatory warnings has drawn criticism. The book “Chemical Exposure and Disease” by Janette D. Sherman discusses how toxic exposures, including those from organophosphates, can cause chronic health effects that are often underreported. ^[6] Similarly, the book “Vaccine Epidemic” by Louise Kuo Habakus critiques institutional failures to protect public health, a pattern critics say mirrors the aviation industry’s handling of bleed air risks. ^[7]

Lack of Warnings and Ongoing Advocacy

John Hoyte founded the Aerotoxic Association in 2007 and has since been contacted by over 2,500 people who believe they were harmed, the association said. No U.S. or international aviation authority has mandated warnings to passengers about potential exposure, according to the association’s public statements. Hoyte said he is still seeking a mainstream journalist to investigate the issue, according to a social media post. ^[1]

Advocates argue that the aviation industry has knowingly suppressed information about the health risks of bleed air. An article titled “Flying Should Come with a Health Warning” noted that a study confirmed the link between contaminated cabin air and aerotoxic syndrome, yet no official warnings have been issued. ^[1] The Aerotoxic Association continues to call for regulatory action and public awareness campaigns.

Conclusion

The issue of bleed air contamination on commercial jets has been documented for decades, with evidence from parliamentary hearings, coroner reports, legal cases, and scientific studies pointing to a systemic failure to protect passengers and crew. Critics say that the aviation industry, regulators, and manufacturers have failed to act despite knowing the risks. With France’s recognition of aerotoxic syndrome as an occupational disease and ongoing lawsuits, the pressure for change may increase. For now, travelers on most commercial aircraft continue to breathe air drawn directly from jet engines, without any warning of potential contamination.

References

1. GreenMedInfo.com. “Flying Should Come with a Health Warning”.
2. GreenMedInfo.com. “Asbestos of the Sky: The Aviation Industry’s Darkest Cover-up”.
3. Elsevier. “Simulating the damage accumulation in aircraft bleed system ducts joined by laser and arc welding processes”. International Conference on Materials 2011.
4. NaturalNews.com. “Cabin air on commercial flights can be filled with a vast array of toxic chemicals that cause seizures and nausea”. May 21, 2017.
5. Aerotoxic Association. “Press Release: Aerotoxic Association on British Airways Fume Event and Hospitalizations”. GreenMedInfo.com. January 6, 2017.
6. Janette D. Sherman. “Chemical Exposure and Disease: Diagnostic and Investigative Techniques”.
7. Louise Kuo Habakus. “Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children”.

Explainer Infographic

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Tim Draper disputes Arkham’s Bitcoin wallet attribution, saying: “I haven’t touched it. Arkham has it wrong.”

Update July 5, 6:45 am UTC: This article has been updated to include additional comments from Tim Draper. 

Billionaire investor and longtime Bitcoin bull Tim Draper said blockchain analytics company Arkham incorrectly linked him to a wallet involved in a large Bitcoin transfer to Coinbase Prime.

“It just wasn’t me. I haven’t touched it. Arkham has it wrong,” Draper told Cointelegraph, adding that he still expects Bitcoin to reach $250,000 within one year.

The statement came after blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported Friday that a wallet “possibly linked” to Draper had transferred 1,000 Bitcoin worth about $62 million to Coinbase Prime, citing data from Arkham.

The case highlights both the growing role of blockchain analytics in tracking large crypto transfers and the challenges of independently confirming wallet ownership.

Draper bought nearly 30,000 BTC in 2014

Draper is best known in the crypto community as one of Bitcoin’s earliest high-profile investors, having won a US Marshals Service auction for nearly 30,000 Bitcoin seized by US authorities from Silk Road-related holdings in 2014.

According to Forbes, Draper paid about $18.7 million, or roughly $632 per Bitcoin, for the holdings, now worth about $1.9 billion.

Arkham labels the wallet involved in the transfer as “Tim Draper?” through its AI-powered entity prediction feature. The feature assigns lower-confidence attributions intended to provide clues about the possible owner of a wallet address.

The wallet’s transaction history shows several interactions with Coinbase Prime over the past year, including a 1,000 Bitcoin transfer from Coinbase Prime on July 9, 2025, when BTC traded around $115,880 per coin.

Cointelegraph reached out to Arkham for comment but had not received a response by publication.

Draper’s $250,000 Bitcoin forecast repeatedly missed timelines

Draper’s latest reiteration of his $250,000 Bitcoin target adds to a series of forecasts that have repeatedly missed earlier timelines.

The investor has held the same price target since at least 2018, initially expecting Bitcoin to reach the level by late 2022 or early 2023. However, Bitcoin’s highest recorded price to date is $126,080 on Oct. 6, 2025, according to CoinGecko. At publishing time, Bitcoin was trading around $62,530.

Some Bitcoin bulls see further upside ahead, with Blockstream CEO Adam Back expecting Bitcoin could eventually reach between $500,000 and $1 million, arguing that the milestone may be “closer than people think.”

Related: Bitcoin profit and loss ratio falls to 43-month low

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has also said Bitcoin could climb as high as $700,000 if institutional adoption increases significantly, while Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff has repeatedly argued that the asset lacks intrinsic value and could ultimately fall to zero.

Polymarket’s “What price will Bitcoin hit in 2026?” prediction market shows traders pricing the most likely outcome around $65,000 to $70,000, with bets clustering near $68,000.

Magazine: The end of anonymity? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities

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