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A Liberal Democrat council has secured a High Court injunction that effectively bans the unauthorised display of the St George's Cross and Union Flag on lampposts and public highways across an entire English county.

What began as a grassroots campaign to raise the colours of the nation has been declared a threat to community safety, with the full force of the courts now deployed against it.

Oxfordshire County Council, run by the Liberal Democrats, won its landmark case after months of legal action against the Raise the Colours campaign.

High Court approves injunction to BAN Britons hanging Union and St George's flags on lampposts. https://t.co/jWvRfTdcjK

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 1, 2026

Justice Dexter Dias granted the order prohibiting unidentified persons from attaching England or Union flags to highway infrastructure or painting flag imagery on roads. Breach carries the risk of imprisonment, unlimited fines, or asset seizure.

Council leader Tim Bearder celebrated the outcome, stating "This is a welcome judgement. We're very pleased with the result," adding "This sets a legal precedent and will hopefully deter people in not just Oxfordshire but around the country from partaking in this criminal activity."

He described those involved as "very challenging people, not patriots."

The council claims the flags created highway safety risks, trespass, and obstruction. It spent roughly £80,000 removing them and a further £40,000 on legal fees, costs it now intends to recover.

Staff tasked with taking the flags down reportedly faced hostility, to the point that some were instructed to wear face coverings and check their vehicles for tracking devices after one worker's home address was published.

The judge noted that maintenance teams had been "working in fear" and that people directed by the council had been obstructed "to the extent that at times they have simply given up on the removal." He concluded there was "little prospect absent an injunction that it will stop."

The new order does not prevent flags on private property, and the council insists it flies both the Union Flag and St George's Cross at County Hall.

This is the same Oxfordshire authority that earlier issued formal stop notices branding the widespread installation of national flags an "act of intimidation and division."

The pattern is now familiar. English councils have repeatedly treated the national flag as a problem to be managed rather than a symbol to be celebrated. FOI requests previously revealed at least £70,000 spent removing Union Jacks and St George's Crosses from lampposts, with some local politicians openly calling the expenditure "money well spent" to combat supposed far-right agitation.

In Essex, staff were offered emotional support if they felt "discomforted" by the mere sight of the national flag in their communities.

A leaked government social cohesion strategy went further still, describing how the "extreme right has tried to turn symbols of pride into tools of hate," framing the Union Flag itself as a potential instrument of exclusion and intimidation.

The phenomenon has a name: vexillophobia - the irrational fear of the flag. Britain has reached the point where flying the St George's Cross is treated as a form of aggression while other political symbols face no such institutional hostility.

During the recent World Cup, English people were warned not to fly flags, the reasoning being that it could intimidate migrants and non-English people.

The selective nature of the discomfort is hard to miss. When rows of Pride flags lined streets in such density that even a prominent television presenter described them as "oppressive," the institutional response was silence or defence. National colours, by contrast, trigger injunctions, safety briefings, and high court orders.

Raise the Colours began as a simple act of public expression - covering Britain in its own flags. In Oxfordshire it has now been met with the full machinery of the state.

The High Court has drawn a line: the English flag may be flown on private property, but the public highway is a neutral zone where the nation's colours are treated as a potential hazard.

The precedent is set. Other councils are watching. The message to ordinary people who simply want to see their country's flag in public spaces is clear. In 2026 Britain, that desire is something the authorities feel compelled to police.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

By Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

As the US-Israel war on Iran grinds into its sixth month, it’s clear to all but the most intellectually-dishonest Trump loyalists and war-bent Israel-sympathizers that it’s been a spectacular failure.

A war of aggression that was supposed to precipitate a revolution has instead galvanized popular support of the Iranian government in defiance of the country’s tormentors, who’ve killed thousands of their fellow citizens and destroyed civilian infrastructure. A war that was launched to neutralize Israel’s principal rival seems certain to leave that rival far more geopolitically powerful than before, while driving Americans’ support for Israel to record lows.

Beyond unforgivably throwing away the lives of 18 American service members in an unconstitutional war launched on false pretenses, Trump’s blunder has depleted America’s arsenal and pushed the country more than $100 billion deeper into debt. Meanwhile, the longer Trump delays the inevitable consummation of his defeat, the greater the risk of an economic calamity that engulfs not only the United States but the entire world.

If that latter nightmare can be sidestepped, we’ll likely find that Trump has inflicted his most enduring damage on an intangible yet critical national asset: the ability of American diplomats to productively engage counterparts all over the world. From using negotiations as a ploy for surprise attacks to murdering heads of state and casually reneging on American commitments — including his own — Trump’s damage to US diplomacy will be evident for years. Of course, that’s not to suggest America’s foreign policy reputation was sparkling before Trump’s ascension to power — only that he and his team have managed to drag it down to new depths.

Trump’s collaboration with Israel to launch an unprovoked war on Iran is manifestly among the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the American republic. However, it’s important to appreciate that Trump first set this 2026 disaster in motion eight years ago: In May 2018, — spurred on by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and Trump’s Israel-first donors — Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA.

Also called the “Iran nuclear deal,” the July 2015 JCPOA was the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking negotiations over highly technical provisions, conducted by representatives of not only the United States and Iran but also China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from brutal economic sanctions. Among other things, the JCPOA required Iran to eliminate its medium-enriched uranium, slash its cache of low-enriched uranium by 98%, limit future enrichment to 3.67%, agree to even more external monitoring than it was already submitting to, and render its heavy-water reactor worthless by filling it with concrete.

Catering both to devoted Israel supporters and to Republicans who were eager to assume that a deal negotiated during the Obama administration must have been treasonous, Trump had repeatedly railed against the JCPOA throughout his 2016 campaign, declaring that his “number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” After being named national security advisor in April 2018, Bolton — who had long been pushing for war on Iran — quickly prodded Trump into making good on his promises to tear up the JCPOA, despite the fact that Iran was fully complying with the agreement.

“Trump’s move demonstrates that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its promises,” the Belfer Center’s Martin Malin said at the time. “It will heighten tensions in an already smoldering Middle East while giving fodder to hardliners and nuclear bomb advocates in Iran.”

After Trump’s withdrawal and the reinstatement of waived sanctions, Iran waited a year, but then began straying from its own commitments -- using elevated uranium enrichment as a lever to push for a new agreement and relief from suffocating sanctions.

Having long denied it was developing a nuclear weapon -- a claim repeatedly deemed truthful by the US intelligence community -- Iran returned to the negotiating table during Trump’s second term, once again ready to part with the uranium it had enriched to higher levels. Indeed, less than 48 hours before the United States and Israel attacked on Feb. 28, Iran offered concessions that included dilution of its 60%-enriched uranium, a multi-year pause on new enrichment, subsequent enrichment capped at 20%, and expanded IAEA oversight. UK national security advisor Jonathan Powell was reportedly surprised by the strength of the Iranian offer, seeing it as reason to hope war would be averted. His and others’ hopes were about to be dashed.

There are many facets of the Trump administration’s assault on diplomacy, but none more vulgar than using ongoing negotiations as a means of unleashing a surprise attack on a negotiating partner — an attack that includes the killing of that partner’s head of state.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration did to Iran in February. Having held a third round of talks in Geneva on Feb. 26, the two countries were set for what was described as technical-level discussions the following week. Instead, teaming up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump launched a massive war on Iran. In addition to killing more than 100 elementary-age schoolgirls and many other civilians and military conscripts, the opening attack killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his daughter, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

Rubio further diminished US credibility by attempting to characterize the surprise attack as somehow defensive. “We knew there was going to be Israeli action” which would “precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said. Observers were quick to note that, regardless of Israel’s status as a sovereign state, its dependency on Washington means Trump held de facto veto power over an Israeli strike, which makes the rest of Rubio’s rationale hollow.

Marco Rubio: "We went proactively in a defensive way" pic.twitter.com/i3XMjV0C9e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2026

February wasn’t the first time that insincere Trump administration diplomacy set up Iran for a surprise attack. In June 2025, the administration had completed five rounds of negotiations with Iran and scheduled a sixth for June 15. On June 13, Israel attacked Iran. It was no surprise to Trump, who boasted that Israel informed him in advance. On June 22, Trump joined the 12-Day war via Operation Midnight Hammer, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Beyond their fundamental immorality, these surprise attacks amid negotiations undermine long-term US interests by fostering distrust in everyone who witnessed such blatant American treachery. Following the start of all-out war on Feb 28, Washburn University law professor Ali Khan wrote about the consequences of turning negotiations into a “calculated ruse”:

“The breach of good faith signals worldwide that it is pointless to make any deal with someone who would do the opposite after creating an expectation or reliance for the other party. Iran or any other state would be highly reluctant to trust the Trump administration again in future negotiations.”

Note, one shouldn’t assume the world’s distrust will be so tightly associated with Trump that it will vanish when he leaves office. In Marco Rubio and JD Vance, his administration holds at least two potential successors to the Oval Office, to say nothing of senators, representatives and governors who’ve cheered on Trump’s misconduct and would be prone to emulating it. And don’t think for a moment that Democrats are immune to following unhealthy presidential precedents, whatever their commentary may be when those precedents are set by a Republican.

With his 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, Trump reneged on a deal made by another president, but Trump has repeatedly reneged on his own commitments too.

That’s the case with the June 17, 2026 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran, which Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles. Primarily brokered by Pakistan with help from several Middle Eastern states, the MOU has been described as an agreement to make an agreement. It comprises 14 points setting conditions for an immediate ceasefire and 60 days of negotiations for a lasting peace.

Trump quickly fell short of full compliance. “When you look at what’s happening from the Iranian point of view…the Iranians believe that the United States has not lived up to its part of the bargain,” University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer said in July.

There are several elements where Iran reasonably accused Trump of noncompliance, but we’ll examine three, starting with the most significant one of all. Point 5 covers what has replaced uranium as the core focus of the conflict — Iran’s selective blocking of traffic through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz:

5: “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.….[and] conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz...”

This point was widely understood to mean Iran would lift its blockade but still oversee and direct all traffic. When it exerted control of shipping traffic in March, Iran replaced the pre-war route that went down the center of the strait with one that guides traffic along Iran’s coast. However, after the MOU was signed, the Trump administration started instructing ships to use a different route, which passes through the territorial waters of Oman.

“We violated [the MOU] by setting up a southern corridor,” retired US Army Colonel Daniel Davis declared on his Deep Dive geopolitics podcast. “There’s nothing in the MOU that we signed that authorizes a southern corridor or America to enter into it and decide on our own how that’s going to be done. It’s just not there.” Davis, who returned from Afghanistan and blew the whistle in 2012 on civilian and military officials’ misleading of the public on how that war was progressing, suggested the US move in the strait was a deliberate provocation.

Deliberate or not, it was provocative indeed. After issuing radio warnings to ships attempting to use the southern route, Iran fired disabling shots at them. Trump then restarted his bombing of Iran, which prompted Iranian retaliation against American forces and the countries that host them. The two countries then began a long series of “tit for tat” strikes that continued into this week.

Then there’s Point 10 of the MOU, in which the Trump administration promised to issue sanctions waivers that would allow for unfettered Iranian exports of oil and petroleum. Trump revoked the waivers on July 7, pointing to Iran’s attacks on ships that didn’t submit to Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz… control that, again, the United States seemingly agreed to under Point 5.

Numerically reflecting its high importance to Iran, Point 1 of the MOU required the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts in Lebanon.” It focused not so much on Iran and the United States but more so “their allies” — the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia and the US-allied State of Israel. However, Israel continued its operations, including a level of comprehensive destruction of civilian infrastructure in Southern Lebanon that mirrors what the Israeli Defense Forces did to Gaza. One can make the argument that the United States wasn’t in a position to impose MOU terms on Israel, but if that’s truly the case, Trump shouldn’t have signed an MOU by which he essentially certified that he would.

Doubling down, the Trump administration even took action to legitimize the IDF’s presence in Lebanon. “[The MOU] said we had to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. We made no effort to do that,” said former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman. “In fact, we turned around and Marco Rubio went and…brokered an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel that they will jointly go after Hezbollah. So what is this? At a minimum, it’s not very smart.”

Critically, Trump’s behavior bolsters the credibility of hardliners in the Iranian government who’ve repeatedly argued that the United States cannot be trusted and shouldn’t be negotiated with. Moderates prevailed over skeptical hardliners when Iran opted to sign the JCPOA, again when it twice attempted to seek sanctions relief and avert war via negotiations only to be subjected to surprise attacks, and again with the June 17 signing of the MOU.

“The hardliners said ‘don’t sign it, you can’t trust the Americans’,” Mearsheimer recently told Chris Hedges. “But the moderates prevailed, and then the hardliners proved to be correct, so they’re now in the driver’s seat, as best we can tell…and those hardliners will push forward a tougher deal for Trump to swallow” whenever the next version of an MOU is pursued.

It’s not only adversaries of the US government that have been subjected to Trump’s sudden reversals on terms he himself agreed to. Just ask Saudi Arabia.

On July 22, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz ?bin Salman signed an agreement by which the kingdom would be able to build nuclear reactors and enrich uranium with US technology. Both governments published official announcements, and it was seen as a triumph for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The very next morning, Trump blindsided the Saudis and his own subordinates, using a social media post to retroactively add a huge requirement — there would be no nuclear deal unless Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, which entails recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, and the establishment of official diplomatic relations.

Such a move would run counter to Saudi Arabia’s long-running insistence that recognition of Israel is unthinkable without a firm plan for Palestinian statehood. Further, Trump’s demand for a Saudi embrace of Israel comes at a time when Muslims within the kingdom and throughout the region are outraged by Israel’s destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, making such a move perilous for the Saudi royals. Contrary to the agreement his energy secretary had signed, Trump also suddenly declared there would be no enrichment of nuclear material inside Saudi Arabia.

“You strike a deal, you sign it, you announce it, you brag about it, and within 24 hours you’re changing the terms in a fundamental way,” observed the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi on Deep Dive. “If that’s what you do to Saudi Arabia — a country that the United States has a very close relationship with…on top of that, the Trump family has very close business ties with — then what are you going to do with Iran? What is the shelf life of any American commitment under Trump to the Iranians in any agreement?”

Or to anyone else, for that matter. “We’ve convinced the entire world that we don’t know what we’re doing, and we can’t be trusted, and we don’t keep our word, and we don’t even stay consistent from one day to the next,” former ambassador Freeman recently told Davis. “So how can you deal with us? That’s the question everybody has out there.”

As Alastair Crooke sees it, US diplomacy may never be the same. Summing up the effects of Trump’s multi-front assault on trust in America, the former British intelligence agent, diplomat and founder of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum told Glenn Diesen, “The American ability to negotiate in the old-fashioned diplomatic idea, I think, is gone. I mean, we’re in a new era.”

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* * *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge

Two people are dead and five more are injured after a gunman opened fire at a Tesla charging station and an In-N-Out Burger in Idaho.

WATCH: Video reportedly shows one of the two believed suspects opening fire with what appears to be an AR-style rifle in a parking lot in Twin Falls, Idaho. No word on casualties. pic.twitter.com/eBo3zagILN

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 1, 2026

Fox News reports;

Multiple people are dead after a shooting at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho. Police say the suspected gunman is also dead following what authorities described as a "very chaotic" active shooter scene. Authorities are still working to identify the victims and notify their families before releasing the total number of fatalities. Several others were taken to the hospital with injuries. Investigators have not identified the suspect or released a possible motive.

BREAKING: Multiple people are dead after a shooting at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Police say the suspected gunman is also dead following what authorities described as a "very chaotic" active shooter scene.

Authorities are still working to identify the victims and… pic.twitter.com/TU9d0euiKP

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 2, 2026

Footage shows a civilian used his Second Amendment right to repel the shooter.

?? WOW! An absolute PATRIOT put his LIFE on the line and engaged the shooter at a Twin Falls, ID drive-thru

THIS is America ????

This man exited his car and returned fire to force an active shooter to retreat, undoubtably saving COUNTLESS lives

A TRUE HERO pic.twitter.com/F1v4vrK1Um

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 2, 2026

Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said the "threat to the community is over" during a press conference at 5:45 p.m. local time. He said the gunman was also killed. 

JUST IN: Police confirm the suspect in the Twin Falls, Idaho, shooting is deceased and the threat is no longer active. pic.twitter.com/YNHYeduxP7

— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) August 1, 2026

*Developing...

A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage is forecast to slam into the moon near Einstein Crater early Wednesday morning, potentially producing the first impact plume observed from Earth against the lunar surface's sunlit side.

William Jo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering, and five co-authors posted a preprint to arXiv detailing the expected lunar impact of the spent upper stage rocket.

Using a high-resolution physics simulation, the researchers modeled what could happen when roughly 3,900 kilograms of hollow rocket hardware slams into the lunar surface:

On Aug. 5 at 06:34 UTC, a Falcon 9 upper stage (~3,900 kg) will strike the lunar surface at 2.43 km/s, yielding a potentially visible debris plume.

We present a study of the expected impact dynamics and resulting possibly observable debris field. The debris plume should reach roughly 15 to 20 km in altitude for the ejecta curtain and 75 to 100 km for the central ejecta spike, extend 183 km laterally from the impact point near the sunlit limb, and yield a peak dust column density above 10 km altitude of 6.08*10^7 m^-2.

Simulated I/F exceeds dark-sky background brightness by several orders of magnitude for the first few minutes after impact, reaching I/F = 1.27*10^-3 at the earliest resolved time (t = 5 s). Above 10 km, peak I/F reaches 1.33*10^-5, still several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark sky.

NEWS ??: A Falcon 9 upper stage abandoned in orbit since Jan. 2025 will hit the Moon on August 5 at ~5,437 mph (8,750 km/h)

It's projected to carve out a 100-foot crater pic.twitter.com/20hOVAhsVv

— Latest in space (@latestinspace) July 29, 2026

Jo and the other researchers hope the unplanned collision next week will provide insight into lunar geology and the risks posed by discarded rockets as the US, China, and private companies plan future moon bases.