🇲🇦 🇪🇸 | Thousands have swum into Ceuta, the Spanish-controlled enclave on Morocco's northern coast. At least 60 people died, drowned or crushed against the breakwaters, according to provisional figures. Headlines described an invasion of Spain. But Ceuta sits on African soil. Portugal seized the city in 1415, Spain retained it, and when Morocco gained independence in 1956, Ceuta remained under Spanish rule. Those who made it did not land in Europe. They face eight kilometres of ten-metre fences, watchtowers and underground sensors. The reception camp behind the fences was built for 500 people; its facilities for minors stand at 2,400% capacity. The only route to mainland Spain is a ferry with passport checks. Spain deployed the army on 30 July. On the Moroccan side, security forces hold the line, backed by more than €1 billion in EU and Spanish funding.

🇯🇵 | Japan's streets are filling with protests again as PM Takaichi pushes the country toward remilitarization. And for anyone who knows what the helmets mean, the imagery is striking. The Specter and @Meekalefay dig into the often overlooked chapter of Japan's Zengakuren.

"My regime did not pull the plug on little infants." Iranian professor Mohammad Marandi hit back at the pro-Israeli talking points of US lawyer Alan Dershowitz during a heated debate on Piers Morgan Uncensored.

🇮🇳 | Communist flags burned at BJP march against India's viral "Cockroach Movement." Thousands of BJP supporters marched through Kolkata carrying bottles of cockroach spray, vowing to use it on India's student protesters. The student protesters call themselves cockroaches. The name came from BJP ministers, who described the country's jobless youth as "cockroaches" and "parasites of society." Within a day, student organizers turned the slur into a party: the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). The BJP is increasingly mobilizing its Hindutva right-wing support base against the ongoing student uprising. This follows weeks of extreme police violence unleashed by the ruling BJP against the student protests. At the march, communist flags were also burned and stamped on. BJP leaders blame the Left for the unrest. The CJP's core demand is an overhaul of an education system that millions of students see as rotten with corruption. The BJP governs most of India. But it is losing the country's Gen Z. The CJP's Instagram account has nearly 27 million followers, more than double the ruling party's.

🇵🇸 | "We are being exterminated." Cries of pain and rage continue to rise from the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces persist, with impunity, in violating the ceasefire. Several Israeli airstrikes have struck central and northern Gaza. The attacks killed at least one person and wounded twelve others. Among the targets hit were a mosque, a busy market, and tents sheltering hundreds of people. Nine months after the so-called ceasefire, Palestinians are still pulling civilians from beneath the rubble. They struggle to access food, water, and medicine, squeezed into an ever-shrinking strip of land under blockade and siege as the Yellow Line continues its advance. Doctors Without Borders has described the situation in Gaza as "violent enough to inflict daily suffering on Palestinians, yet quiet enough to avoid stirring international outrage." Meanwhile, as Israeli crimes continue across occupied Palestine, Israeli PM Netanyahu traveled to the US. His aircraft crossed the airspace of Greece, Italy, and France, all ICC member states, despite the Court's outstanding arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

🇹🇼 | "President Lai Ching-te, step down!" – Taiwan's food safety crisis has turned into a political standoff. The Kuomintang (KMT) is on the offensive, rallying hundreds of thousands in Taipei to bring down the DPP government. The rivalry between the KMT and the DPP has shaped Taiwanese politics for decades. The DPP holds to its separatist line, while the KMT wants closer cross-strait ties with the mainland. Leading that effort is KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun, known for her fiery speeches. Cheng won the KMT leadership in 2025 as a dark horse candidate running on a hardline cross-strait platform. In April 2026, she met Xi Jinping in Beijing, the first meeting between KMT and Communist Party leaders in more than a decade.

🇱🇧 | “They will not erase our identity!” Despite relentless shelling, bombing, demolitions, and incursions, Lebanese people continue to reaffirm their attachment to their land and their refusal to be displaced. Villages along the Litani River, which Israeli forces have sought to establish as the new boundary of their occupation, are slowly coming back to life. According to residents, a return to the river is possible today only "thanks to the fighters and the resilience of the people of southern Lebanon." Despite the latest ceasefire announcement, more than 375,000 people remain displaced from their villages, which are either still under Israeli occupation or have been bombed and demolished outright. The ongoing, widespread, and deliberate destruction of Lebanese towns and villages by Israeli forces, alongside mass displacement, could amount to war crimes, according to the UN. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government is set to continue US-mediated talks with Tel Aviv in Rome next week, even as Israeli PM Netanyahu has reiterated his refusal to withdraw from positions inside Lebanon. Israeli forces still hold the so-called "Yellow Line" in the south, which extends roughly 10 km inland and in places crosses the Litani.

🇹🇼 | 200,000 protest in Taipei demanding the resignation of the ruling US-backed DPP. What began as a food safety scandal over contaminated "toxic" cooking oil is becoming what some call the biggest existential crisis yet for Taiwan's DPP. The scandal is affecting all Taiwanese cities and nearly 2,000 schools and businesses. Protesters accuse the DPP of a "cover-up." The Specter was on the ground in Taipei, talking to protesters who made clear the discontent goes far beyond the current crisis. "The DPP deliberately creates division, glorifies Japanese colonization, vilifies mainland China, and denies their own ancestry," one protester told The Specter. About 60% of respondents in Taiwan support the protests, organized by the KMT opposition, according to the latest polls.

🇵🇭🇺🇸 | Filipinos are resisting the visit of Marco Rubio to the Philippines. The ASEAN Summit, Southeast Asia's most important international organization, is currently underway in Manila, Philippines. ASEAN was originally founded to "contain communism." BAYAN, one of the Philippines' most influential leftist mass movements, mobilized "to resist US military meddling" and for "genuine freedom and sovereignty." "Marco Rubio's visit to the Philippines brings intensified plunder of our resources and expansion of US military presence," BAYAN writes in a statement. Ahead of the summit, Rubio described Southeast Asia as the region where "the story of the 21st century will be written." During previous visits to ASEAN meetings, US War Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed for a near-endless militarization of US partners against China.

🇨🇳 | Wang Quanyin, believed to be China’s last living survivor of the “Long March,” has passed away. The Red Army veteran died early Wednesday. She turned 105 years old just earlier this month.

🇺🇸 | “Hegseth, you are a failure.” A new, heated clash between US officials lays bare the failures of the US war on Iran, as the Trump administration asks for almost $70bn in additional funding. The clash erupted at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing following revelations about the cost of the US-Israel war on Iran, now estimated at $37.5bn, a figure sharply higher than earlier projections. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the additional requested funding as an "urgent, necessary" injection, warning the military could face critical shortfalls without it. US forces have continued striking Iran for an 11th consecutive night since the collapse of a fragile ceasefire, with air defence systems activated across Tehran as explosions were reported over the Iranian capital. The renewed offensive is part of a war that Democratic Senator Gary Peters says President Trump has repeatedly declared "over," even as, in Peters's words, no objectives have been met and no long-term strategy exists to actually win it. In recent days, Iran has retaliated with strikes on US military and logistics bases across West Asia. CENTCOM confirmed the deaths of two US service members in a strike on Jordan, bringing the death toll since the war began in February to 17.

🇺🇸 🇸🇾 🇱🇧 | Trump suggests Syria could invade Lebanon to fight Hezbollah. “He [al-Sharaa] would like to come in and do something with Hezbollah. [...] I think it'd be very effective.”

🇮🇹 | Tear gas, water cannons and clashes at protests in Bologna on Monday night. 4,000 people had taken to the streets over the death of a Moroccan-born man in police custody. Police responded with batons, tear gas and water cannon. Clashes continued past midnight. Abderrahim Fakir, 42, died on Sunday in the working-class Pilastro district. Residents had called emergency services reporting a man in distress. Police arrived before medics, used irritant spray, then forced him face down and cuffed his wrists and ankles. Two officers held him in that position. Bystander video shows him shouting "Help, help, enough" for more than two minutes before falling silent. Paramedics were present and did not intervene. Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation into six people: two officers and four emergency responders. None have been formally named as suspects. Fakir arrived in Italy aged seven and lived there 35 years.

🇯🇵 | Japanese police officer caught applauding far-right protests in Osaka. The far-right Nihon Yamato Party had called for a protest in Osaka with relatively large turnout, demanding an escalated crackdown on immigration. Over the last decade, the far-right movement in Japan has risen from the fringes into the mainstream. Prime Minister Takaichi’s election last year saw the country’s far-right become increasingly influential. Nations victimized by Imperial Japan have criticized the country for never reckoning with its past after its defeat in WWII, or even, in many instances, embracing it. According to a 2025 NHK poll, only 35% of Japanese citizens now view the Pacific War during WWII as a war of aggression.

🇮🇳 | Nearly 200 people were injured during ongoing protests of India’s “Cockroach Movement.” Police cracked down on protesters trying to reach the Parliament building in New Delhi. Students, in particular, are swarming the streets to express their anger at the BJP-led government. The CJP started as an online satirical movement two months ago. It was founded in response to central government officials calling student activists and unemployed youth "cockroaches" and "parasites of society.” Now, the movement is proving capable of channeling widespread youth discontent into one of the largest street protests India has seen in recent years. One of the CJP's core demands is profound reform of India’s education system, which many see as corrupted. The party also demands the release of prominent political prisoners, such as Sonam Wangchuk. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remained silent on the protests.

🇯🇵🇨🇳 | Japan wants nukes? Tensions escalate further in East Asia as Japan expresses intentions to acquire nuclear weapons. "Japan will pay a heavy price," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian warned Tokyo, urging it to abandon the path of remilitarization. The Takaichi government is breaking a 70-year nuclear taboo, declaring that Tokyo can no longer avoid confronting the question of nuclear weapons. Japan's Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi openly weighed the option of stationing US nuclear assets at Japanese bases. The so-called "Three Non-Nuclear Principles" bind Tokyo to never producing, possessing, or permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons onto Japanese territory under any circumstances. The right-wing attacks against Japan's binding "pacifist" constitution are fueling tensions in East Asia, which have been escalating since the Takaichi government came to power. Analysts have repeatedly pointed out that Japan is taking the spearhead position in a new US doctrine in East Asia, making non-stop militarization of its allies in the region a policy to encircle China. Japan still faces strong domestic resistance to breaking with the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, as many Japanese citizens retain painful memories of the devastation caused by nuclear weapons.

🇲🇦🇮🇹 | “Enough, help!” screamed Abderrahim Fakir as Italian police pinned him to the ground in Bologna. He died in their restraint. Officers pepper-sprayed the 42-year-old Moroccan man, then held him facedown with his wrists behind his back until he lost consciousness in the working-class Pilastro neighborhood on Sunday. A resident filmed the scene. Fakir had come to the neighborhood to visit relatives. Police were called after he appeared to be “in a state of distress.” The video shows paramedics intervening only after he was unconscious, tied at wrists and ankles. Bologna's health authority is investigating the medical staff. During the night, thousands took to the streets of Bologna to protest police violence. The family calls the death “a state assassination.“ His sister stated: “They handcuffed him and he died.“ In 2020, far-right leader Matteo Salvini campaigned in these same streets, ringing doorbells in search of drug dealers. Today his movement defends the officers who held Fakir down.

🇺🇸 | Marco Rubio opened an ongoing international conference in the United States by announcing a quasi-new Red Scare. The US Secretary of State gathered officials from over 60 countries to strategize on combating Marxists, anti-capitalists, and other left-wing political movements. The Trump administration has been sharply escalating its anti-communist rhetoric in recent months. Critics are warning that the Trump administration is trying to offload international and domestic crises, as well as defeats for Western imperialism, with the resurrection of McCarthyite anti-communism. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s and throughout the Cold War, the US led a de facto worldwide war against communist movements, both openly and covertly, leading to bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities on a global scale.

🇮🇷 | Iranians React to "Kill Trump" Billboard in Central Tehran A towering billboard depicting US President Donald Trump lying in a coffin has been erected in Tehran's Enghelab Square. "This banner speaks for every Iranian," said one Tehran resident, adding that despite the differences that could be present among Iranians, they remain united in their desire "to seek vengeance against the US and Israel." Beside the depiction of Trump in a black coffin stands another banner in the square, this one directed at the late US Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunchly pro-Israel lawmaker who died just days earlier. It reads: "Your dream of victory will be buried with you."

🇯🇵🇹🇼🇨🇳 | Japan's Prime Minister Takaichi threatened to send soldiers to Taiwan. Coupled with the unprecedented re-militarization Japan is undergoing, these developments are "very dangerous," said Professor Yasukatsu Matsushima to us in an interview." If the Japanese government sends their military to Taiwan, it's kind of an invasion of China," Matsushima told us. Japan is part of the over 180 countries worldwide subscribing to the "One China Policy," Beijing's position that there is only one China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of it. Tokyo formally took this position in 1972 and never withdrew it. However, Prime Minister Takaichi's politics are speaking another language. When Takaichi openly discussed the possibilities of sending Japanese troops to Taiwan—meaning a possible direct conflict with China—the worst diplomatic rupture in decades followed. China warned Japan "not to play with fire" or risk "getting burned".