Very good video from Jon Elmer at Electronic Intifada going over resistance ops.

Four important points.

1. The resistance has developed a new IED specifically designed to be thrown into the top of enemy armored vehicles. The reason why the child-killing army sits with the vehicles hatch open is because the vehicle air conditioning units fail and the inside can heat up to 60C. It gets a lot hotter inside 🔻 once the mujahideen show up 😎

2. The resistance is still well supplied. The resistance has acces to an enormous amount of unexploded enemy ordinance which explains why they continue to have weapons and explosives despite the total siege. They wont run out of weapons anytime soon. "Return to Sender operations" the resistance calls them. They are also using captured tactical vests, automatic weapons, and other equipment from the child-killing occupation soldiers. Some of their recent operations included drone footage from the resistance which means they have their own operational drones.

3. The resistance carried out an enormous operation earlier this week where 20 resistance fighters emerged from a tunnel and denazified an iof forwarding operating base. "The occupation forces, according to their own army radio, didnt even realize what was happening until the resistance was already inside the base. We await video footage. This is only one of over a dozen operations this week. The resistance also carried out multiple video recorded operations in Khan Yunis which reveals that the iof absolutely does not have control of this region despite their claims. The resistance continues to punish the zionists. Multiple videos of resistance sniping zionist officers and sending them to hell.

4. My interpretation: the reason the occupation is having these recruitment crises is because they are getting smoked on the battlefield. Despite their maximalist rhetoric, its very clear that the zionists are nowhere close to winning in Gaza.

It looks like China banned some Nvidia hardware like the H20. Facebook is halting its AI investments and hiring. Research found that 95% of projects where companies tried to integrate AI into their businesses are a complete failure.

First cracks starting to show in the "AI" stupidity, or as we used to call it before the rebrand - machine learning.

Am I wrong in thinking that the recent pushes by the UK and the EU to censor the internet and compromise encryption is entirely because of the Ukraine war and Israel?

I think Europe realized that, in order to arm up and make their population willing to sacrifice themselves for the state (and for Israel), they need to establish absolute control over what people are discussing online. Essentially establishing the "totalitarian" system they keep projecting onto their geopolitical enemies.

I thought this twitter thread was interesting:

Why Washington wants Maduro out:

The U.S. campaign to break Venezuela isn’t about “restoring democracy.” It’s about shutting down a sovereign state that can disrupt oil flows, bypass the dollar, and host adversaries three hours from Miami.

Gulf Coast refineries are tuned to heavy sour crude, Venezuela’s specialty. After Trump revoked Chevron’s waiver in February 2025, Treasury granted a restricted license on July 30, following a July 24 Reuters report that authorizations were imminent.

The license bars proceeds from reaching the Maduro government. U.S. imports resumed on August 21 under those constraints. A sovereign Caracas that can meter Orinoco flows still wields a price lever, sanctions mute it, but don’t erase it.

Caracas has already tested non-dollar lifelines, oil-for-fuel swaps, yuan- and euro-denominated settlement, and off-ramps through third countries. In 2025, Venezuela has kept lobbying for BRICS+ association after Brazil’s 2024 veto.

If a sanctioned mid-tier petrostate can keep selling without the dollar, the sanctions machine loses aura. Breaking Maduro is message traffic to the rest of OPEC+ and BRICS-adjacent capitals: settle outside our rails and we will bankrupt your state or replace your cabinet.

The court-supervised auction of PDV Holding, CITGO’s parent, is deep into 2025 bidding and recommendations to satisfy $19B in creditor claims. Regime change would guarantee corporate custody of Orinoco Belt reserves and downstream infrastructure without legal friction. “Anti-corruption” becomes the solvent for ownership transfer.

Washington cannot tolerate an allied logistics node for adversaries a three-hour flight from Miami. Caracas has run refinery rehab, fuel swaps, and technical assistance with sanctioned states; it hosts political and commercial channels that punch through U.S. veto power.

The 2025 SOUTHCOM posture statement focuses on countering “malign influence” and notes the Guyana–Venezuela flashpoint. Overthrow Maduro, and you sever those corridors, re-impose inspection rights on ports and airfields, and re-install U.S. ISR reach across the Caribbean.

In February 2025, the U.S. designated Tren de Aragua a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In March, the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to remove suspected members without standard due process.

Roughly 250 Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador’s CECOT supermax under the program before courts curtailed it; reporting indicates El Salvador received around $20,000 per detainee per year.

In May, a declassified National Intelligence Council memo assessed the Maduro regime “probably does not” direct TdA’s operations in the U.S., a sharp split between intelligence and policy.

In May 2025, the International Court of Justice ordered Venezuela to refrain from holding elections in the disputed Essequibo region. ExxonMobil’s Stabroek expansion and U.S.–Guyana defense cooperation continue in parallel, insulating Guyana’s ramp from Venezuelan contestation.

The Arco Minero, gold, coltan, rare metals, gives Caracas hard-currency elasticity under sanctions. U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan gold date back to 2018–2019, and the UAE remains a major laundering hub per 2025 reporting. A friendly government would “formalize” the belt, which is code for foreign custody of extraction and export.

Venezuela still runs Telesur and state-backed media partnerships across Latin America. Overthrow resets the signal environment: licenses revoked, stations defunded, embassies realigned, and every future crisis reframed through Washington’s lens, no more competing broadcast from Caracas into the region.

If Venezuela can outlast 26 years of sanctions, sabotage, coup attempts, and still retain its oil lever, others learn the blueprint. If it falls, the lesson is simpler: nationalize at scale, and your cabinet gets replaced.

That is the real objective, code a rule into the system: sovereignty that interferes with U.S. energy, currency, or logistics lanes is a temporary condition.

That’s the stack. Energy discipline, dollar hegemony, asset capture, hemispheric denial, domestic optics, Esequibo insulation, mineral custody, narrative blackout, and exemplary punishment. Everything else is cover noise.

China’s youth unemployment hits 11-month high as army of graduates joins job hunt SCMP

China’s youth unemployment hit 17.8 per cent in July, the figure’s highest level since August 2024, as millions of degree holders seek work

China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July, as a record number of graduates enter an already shaky labour market.

The urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 per cent last month from 14.5 per cent in June, putting an end to four straight months of decline and marking the metric’s highest level since last August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.

The figures come as a record 12.2 million university students graduate this summer, with a majority of them joining a sizeable applicant pool that has had trouble finding open positions that meet their education and skill levels. In recent months, Beijing has launched a string of initiatives to aid graduates and other young people as they seek employment.

For instance, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is running a campaign from July to December to support jobless youth and college graduates with services such as career guidance sessions, referrals and training opportunities.

But unemployment among this age cohort remains high, fuelled by a mismatch between jobs and expectations in a challenging economic environment where domestic demand has yet to make up for shortfalls in traditional growth sectors like real estate.

“The market is quite rough,” said He Yue, a computer science graduate currently based in Beijing. After receiving her diploma from a university in Chongqing, she has spent over two months looking for a suitable job.

After sending in dozens of applications for media operations roles in the national capital – a field where she has prior experience – He has only received one offer, which failed to meet her salary expectations of 6,000 yuan (US$835) a month.

“The offer was only for a base pay of 4,000 to 5,000 yuan. After deducting living expenses such as rent, transport and meals, I’ll be left with around 1,500 yuan or less,” she said.

The role also required frequent overtime, which she said she was reluctant to take on at that wage level.

Unlike many of her friends who are planning to apply for postgraduate programmes, He said she would continue her job search, possibly shifting focus to positions in Hangzhou, China’s rising tech hub on the east coast.

Nearly 3.9 million people signed up for the postgraduate entrance exam this year, as many young Chinese are pursuing master’s degrees to gain a competitive edge amid cutthroat competition for entry-level positions. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for those aged 25 to 29, also excluding students, stood at 6.9 per cent in July, up from 6.7 per cent in June.

China’s overall urban jobless rate edged up to 5.2 per cent in July, after holding at 5 per cent for the two months prior.

Good article on the current job market for young people. It ain’t pretty.

As I have said before, 12 million new graduates joining the work force this summer adds even more pressure to the already intense competitive environment, and the irony being that this is probably the generation that received the best quality education of all time, only to graduate and couldn’t find work.

The deflationary spiral continues. We’ll see how long before the leadership figures out that they need to change course and abandon neoliberalism altogether (not very likely if we’re being honest).

Air employees have met their demands after a brief strike. No more unpaid work for airline employees ^[https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/8/19/air-canada-to-resume-operations-after-cabin-crew-strike-ends?traffic_source=rss]

The Canadian regime continues to violate human rights in the country. The Liberal junta which has held onto power for a supermajority of the country's existence has been denounced by international observers as constituting a one party state.

The unelected "Labour Control Board" has declared the striking of Flight Attendants illegal and seeks to force them back into unpaid indentured servitude. The union representing flight attendants has announced they will defy this order. It remains to be seen if the Canadian Secret Police will respond with the same violence seen in previous protests against illegal oil pipelines.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/air-canada-strike-illegal-1.7611447

I've never seen a clearer picture depicting the vassal relationship

After an insane few months, I finally had the rare combination of time+energy to write my Inside the Zohran Campaign Retrospective for anybody I lead on about it for so long.

Please enjoy!

Update: mods please don’t remove I was not around for the Zohran c/electoralism discourse

Someone made a website documenting ukrainian draft kidnappings. https://uadraftmuseum.ch/

U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel, as Trump expands control over private sector

The US military is creating target packages for lethal strikes on cartels in Mexico, sources tell me, aiming to be ready in mid-September.

The strikes could take place without the involvement or approval of the Mexican government.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/military-preparing-attacks-on-mexican

The DPRK recently released combat footage of its troops helping liberate parts of Russia’s Kursk oblast earlier this year: https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/08/22/1624007.html

Another clip of a DPRK anti-tank missile striking a Kiev regime military vehicle: https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/08/22/1624244.html

95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds

$30 billion spent proving water is wet, cool

Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned Friday after cabinet colleagues blocked his push for tougher sanctions against Israel, including a proposed boycott on products from illegal West Bank settlements. They argued such a boycott should only be taken at the European level. Some flatly opposed new measures.

Within hours, his entire party — the New Social Contract (NSC), including four other ministers — also quit, warning that Israel’s actions violate international law. Until now, Dutch action has been limited to symbolic entry bans on far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. A parliamentary majority also shot down a proposal to halt Israeli arms sales for the Dutch military yesterday.

https://archive.ph/rGhB1

Pentagon fires intelligence agency chief after Iran attack assessment

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the Pentagon's intelligence agency chief, just weeks after a White House rebuke of a review assessing the impact of American strikes on Iran. Lt Gen Jeffery Kruse will no longer serve as head of US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon said in a statement. Two other senior military commanders have also been ousted by the Pentagon. The defence department has not offered any immediate explanation on the firings.

In June, President Donald Trump had pushed back strongly on a leaked DIA report that found that attacks on Iran had set back its nuclear programme by months only. The White House declared the agency's assessment "flat out wrong". Trump had declared the nuclear sites in Iran "completely destroyed", and had accused the media of "an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history". Speaking at the Nato summit at the time, Hegseth had said that the report was made on "low intelligence" and that the FBI was probing the leak. Kruse's exit was first reported by the Washington Post.

The DIA is part of the Pentagon and specialises in military intelligence to support operations. It collects large amounts of technical intelligence, but is distinct from other agencies like the CIA. It is understood that Hegseth had also ordered the removal of the chief of US Naval reserves and the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, an anonymous source told Reuters on Friday. In a statement, US Senator Mark Warner warned that Kruse's sacking was a sign that Trump had a "dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country".

Trump has removed a number of officials whose analysis have been seen to be at odds with the president. In July, Trump said that he had ordered his team to dismiss Commissioner of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer "immediately", after a report showed that job growth had slowed. And in April, Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency, along with more than a dozen staff at the White House national security council. Hegseth has also pushed out a number of military officials at the Pentagon. In February, he fired Air Force General C Q Brown, who was dismissed along with five other admirals and generals.

After the Giant Rabbit that is threating Pokrovsk , a Middle sized Duck has now appered allready picking on the outcsierts of Konstantivka , while the Giant rabbit was stable for a while it was so because ukraine rushed all is units towards him , giving the Duck the chance to pick , if the Ducksightings are correct. thats kind of a big jump in the usuall script as its another giant ukrainian city and Logistic Hub about to be Contested. and there was nearly no forplay this time.

FBI raids home of John Bolton, former Trump national security advisor

As good a time as any to repost Tony Benn dunking on Bolton

🚨 The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared revealed that Bisan Fayad’s family was handed a body with her clothes and ID in January 2024, only to later learn she is still alive in zionist prisons and paralyzed from a spinal injury.

This incident reveals the occupation’s tampering with bodies and handing them over without proper identification.

The Center condemned the incident as a double crime of enforced disappearance and deception, saying it reflects the plight of hundreds of Palestinian families. Dozens of Gazans are held without knowledge of their fate. The Center called on the international community to act urgently to uncover their fate.

#FreeThemAll

https://t.me/PalestineResist

Palestinian prisoner and Hamas leader Hassan Salameh reveals shocking details of systematic abuse by zionist prison forces.

Salameh was severely beaten upon arrival at 'Ganot' prison, sustaining a head injury that bled for over two hours without medical attention. He reported that other isolated prisoners also suffered similar brutal assaults, particularly to the head.

Salameh, who participated in the First Intifada and became a leader in Hamas' military wing, was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to 48 life terms. "Israel" has consistently refused his release in prisoner exchange deals.

This new testimony comes amidst ongoing reports of repression, starvation, humiliation, and medical neglect in zionist prisons, with almost 11,000 prisons in zionist jails today.

https://t.me/PalestineResist

I have been on a small vacation with my wife's family so I've missed the COTW this week. It happens to be a relevant one for me somehow.

In the late 70s during the height of the Lebanese Civil War, my great aunt and her family left Lebanon to Abidjan, Ivory Coast. She was married to a Shia laborer from a village in the south. Her husband had relatives that already migrated to West Africa during the peak of Lebanese migration in the 20s and the 30s. So through good old familial connections and village networks that I'll never get being a Beiruti capital city guy, they put him in touch with some people that could help him get settled in Abidjan. In the end they made a decision to leave, and they got some papers (most of them were fake and bought for significant amounts of dollars back then) and made it to the Ivory Coast. They left Lebanon through the Syrian border and then took a flight to Libya, where they had to stay for a few days as flight schedules in the 70s were kinda weird. After Libya, they made another long stop in Morocco, then finally made it to Abidjan.

The Lebanese community in Côte d'Ivoire was already significant from the early migration, then grew a lot during the Civil War. Locals perhaps jokingly or not used to call Lebanese Ivorians "the Jews of Abidjan". The only interpretation is the antisemitic one, as Lebanese people dominated many big money industries in the country and ran many of the biggest wholesale networks and businesses that specialised in exporting stuff like Ivorian crops to France mostly through their networks in Dakar, Senegal. My great aunt's husband ran a small shop in the beginning, then started to import Syrian products and in the end ran a huge wholesale network for Middle Eastern goods in Abidjan. He passed away after a sudden heart attack in the early 90s, so I never met the man actually. My great aunt and two of her adult children returned then to Lebanon shortly after her husband's passing, but one of her sons actually stayed in Abidjan and until today commutes back and forth between Lebanon and Côte d'Ivoire. I don't know why, but I always find it funny every year when I see his children posting videos of Ashura mourning events in Abidjan. The whole concept of Lebanese people being super Shia in West Africa cracks me up for some reason, I'll never stop finding it almost absurd. It's worth noting that the Lebanese community in general, both Muslims and Christians in Africa are extremely insular and racist. They always just marry within the community, and whenever my great aunt comes up in conversation when I'm in Lebanon, everyone basically expresses this "Hajja Khadija might die of a heart attack if one of her grandchildren marries an n word...". This is not just the family in Lebanon overreacting about things, no, the whole community basically hates you if you marry a native Ivorian instead of a Lebanese person. It's very normal for Lebanese people in West Africa to travel back to their parents' or grandparents' village during the summer and go back to Africa with a spouse.

We end with a fun fact. Notorious Lebanese zombie, eternal Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri was actually born in Sierra Leone in the 1930s.

lol

5 Canadian soldiers suspended after Nazi salute video emerges

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/soldiers-hateful-conduct-nazi-salute-1.7612928

Merz calls for a ceasefire and ‘to put pressure on Russia’

The German chancellor said he would “like to see a ceasefire from the next meeting, which should be a trilateral meeting” with Ukraine, Russia and the U.S.

Yes, I'm sure the country winning the war will agree to a ceasefire so the opposition could put pressure on them

Genius-level strategic thinking

A Ukrainian man suspected to be one of the coordinators of undersea explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in 2022 was arrested in Italy on Thursday, authorities said.

This is due to an arrest warrant issued by Germany on Monday. Kind of insane it took three years to get an arrest, and the fact that the US is still denying all involvement.

Per https://apnews.com/article/germany-nord-stream-ukrainian-russia-arrest-italy-40f17315bcd585b48cd6f88028047307

the Pivot to Asia, except its Grandpa Simpson walking in, seeing thousands of PLA missiles pointed at him, and walking out https://archive.ph/RfUEf

Should America’s military plan for a retreat from the Pacific?

When America goes to war, it likes to be on the offensive. “Nobody ever defended anything successfully,” Gen. George S. Patton famously said. “There is only attack and attack and attack some more.” But for six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military retreated and retreated some more. The U.S. garrison in the Philippines, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, steadily retreated before the Japanese onslaught that culminated in the surrender at Bataan in May 1942. Isolated outposts at Wake Island and Guam fell, while the decimated and outnumbered U.S. fleet carefully stuck to hit-and-run as America mobilized for total war. Today, a U.S. Army officer has a warning: In the face of growing Chinese military power, America needs to relearn how to conduct a fighting retreat in the Pacific.

“Fading advantages in firepower, distributed forces, and the growing operational reach of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) require an expansion of operational thought,” wrote Maj. Patrick Smith in a recent essay for Military Review, an Army professional publication. “The joint force must consider methods of retrograde to shape advantages in time, space, and force.”

I fucking love tactical-speak, 's bits of it are barely even exaggerated, American cops and troops do genuinely talk like this. I'm expanding my operational thought dude, I'm fucking shaping my advantage in time and space!

Smith lists several factors that imperil America’s position in the Pacific. “Small constellations of U.S. elements — ashore and afloat — encircle the looming mass of mainland China,” he wrote. “Operating on tenuous exterior lines, they are vulnerable to defeat in detail by a prodigious array of standoff munitions or blockade.” Resupply is difficult within range of Chinese weapons, reserves of personnel and munitions are scarce, and “regional partners can quickly about-face on support to U.S. forces, making presence in some locales untenable.” Smith also worries that the U.S. lacks sufficient sealift, arguing that “glaring training shortfalls in crisis response, worsened by maintenance deficiencies, compromise U.S. capacity to conduct amphibious actions.”

...

Smith argues that the U.S. needs to relearn how to retreat. “Fighting withdrawals and delays will be sharpened arrows in the quiver of operational leaders campaigning in the early stages of a Pacific fight,” he wrote. “In those precarious moments, the joint force should prudently select positions from which it can absorb repeated blows while degrading enemy means.” Smith envisions a widely distributed joint force that would “confound the PLA with a targeting dilemma if it decides to switch to the offensive.” Deception operations would be key: “Similar to Grant’s illusory movements to confuse Lee, feints, demonstrations, and advances within and outside of theater may freeze enemy actions to create time and space for movement of friendly forces.” Adroit maneuvers, well-timed withdrawals and clever deception operations would exploit American strengths and Chinese weaknesses, Smith argued.

Y'know, somehow I don't think China's really planning on, like, chasing the USN around and seizing random Pacific islands. If the US retreats from the closest islands and thus loses the bases that they could most effectively strike China from... then, uh, that's pretty good for the Chinese? That'd be a pretty funny WW3 actually, the US retreats in order to bait PLAN into chasing them, and China just goes "uh, okay, cool!" and continues on as usual, with the war turning into just occasional skirmishes while Americans at home are going fucking insane from continuous seething (and then we all get nuked, which would be more the kind of funny). But yeah, this isn't an invasion of Russia (with the US in the role of Russia) - a fighting retreat only works if the enemy actually chases you so you can inflict casualties on them during the process, hence the fighting part.

The thing about distributing your forces is that you're buying their survival with the degradation of your own offensive capability - you need a certain degree of mass to actually attack effectively. We see the ground equivalent of this in Ukraine - with drones and omnipresent ISR, it's difficult to actually mass troops for an attack without them getting struck ahead of time, which in turn relegates combat to mostly small skirmishes, without any big-arrow moves that can make large gains. This was a factor in the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive, where they didn't have the sufficient mass of troops necessary to penetrate Russian defenses - and the persistent cope among Western commentators was that the Ukrainians just decided not to do that because they were dumb morons, rather than acknowledging that maybe they simply could not do that because of the circumstances of the modern battlefield. There's also examples of this going all the way back to WW2 - the German defense against the Normandy landings was stifled by Allied air superiority, forcing German mechanized troops to split up in smaller units and travel at night and across smaller roads in order to avoid being spotted and bombed, which slowed their repositioning to Normandy and caused them to arrive piecemeal rather than as whole coherent divisions, and thus be unable to counter-attack anywhere near as effectively.

And the same thing can play out with naval and air operations - if you're not sending in enough planes and missiles to actually overwhelm the enemy's air defenses, then you're not going to get anywhere. If you split up your fleets in smaller units so they can disperse and be less vulnerable, then each one of those new units won't be able to hit anywhere near as hard. And additionally, resupplying a distributed force becomes much more logistically complex - the resupplies themselves are also vulnerable and need protection. Again going back to WW2, the Allies started out with lots of small convoys over the Atlantic, but later shifted to a smaller number of much larger convoys which, by featuring a greater concentration of ships, were much more capable of defending themselves against German subs. Except if you've distributed your force, you don't have that option - you'll need lots of convoys (although these days air-supply is at least a lot more viable) to reach all the small units you've broken up your forces into.

... continued in comment ...

Young people who used the phrase "from the river to the sea" were acquitted in Estonia

• Eesti Inimõiguste Keskus, https://humanrights.ee/2025/08/lopplahendus-koik-valjendit-joest-mereni-kasutanud-noored-moisteti-oigeks/

I get the feeling that Russia's offer during the direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations in Istanbul a couple months ago was the true last chance for a compromise.

Seems like Russia really is stalling now. That's probably why Putin offered another bilateral meeting with Trump in Moscow (which was refused), and why he "offered" some concessions. Putin knows that Ukraine will never willingly give up the Donbass, which is a precondition for any deal, set in stone.

I'm still feeling confident in my prediction for a potentially war-ending Russian offensive within ~6 months. Meanwhile Ukraine and its backers are going to ramp up their long-range missile strikes on Russia (as shown by the reveal of their new Flamingo missile and alleged Sapsan production) in a desperate attempt to force Russia to come crawling back to the table. I suspect it won't work.

Good article by german centrist ghoul: Europe isn’t prepared for peace and Trump’s strategy is clear

Since it is now unlikely that Trump will change his mind and revert to the Biden-era policy of unconditional support for Ukraine, we are now left with two possible scenarios for how the war plays out.

In the first, Ukraine and Russia will agree to a peace deal, and the US and Europe will try their best to make the post-war security arrangement work. It is our baseline scenario, but it will be hard to pull off since the question of land is a particularly difficult one. The starting point of the talks would have to be the existing military situation — not Russia’s or Ukraine’s maximal demands — and would then need to be followed by detailed negotiations.

In the second scenario, the peace talks will go ahead but fail. Trump will then blame Zelensky and actively disengage from supporting Ukraine. Beware of extrapolating yesterday’s show of support: the smiles are deceptive. Trump wants to get out he has invested political capital into a peace process and he is not going to back down. America would withdraw — for real this time. The Europeans would be left having to support Ukraine and build a new security infrastructure without US support.

This is not really a viable financial or military option for European leaders. After all, their engagement would have to be major. The Ukraine-Russia frontline is, at the moment, about 1,200 kilometres. Nor does this include the rest of Ukraine’s de jure border to the north and east with Russia, and with Belarus. There have been some comparisons with the situation in Korea — but the demilitarised zone there is barely 250 kilometres in length.

Adequately securing such a large border on the Ukrainian side would take a huge amount of troops — one estimate suggests as many as 150,000 European soldiers. This is a far larger deployment than anyone else has envisaged. And even if they wanted to, European leaders don’t have the troops needed to provide genuine assurances to Kyiv.

But the big difficulty European leaders will face is how to deal with their war-crazed supporters back home. There has been a great deal of cheerleading and regime-change fanaticism in the European political and media space, with many recent headlines insisting that Russia must not be rewarded for its aggression. None of these authors, of course, has a military strategy for victory, because strategic thinking is not what educated Europeans do. They use the passive tense when they speak or write: something must be done, they intone. Rarely, if ever, do they say: “we will do this and are ready to make sacrifices to do so.”

The Russian cargo plane Ilyushin IL-76TD (registration RA-78765), sanctioned by the United States since 2023, which landed in Brazil last Sunday (August 10, 2025) and departed for Bolivia and Colombia on Wednesday (August 13, 2025), continues with unexplained trajectories. This weekend, the aircraft is in Havana, Cuba, after landing on Venezuela, among other destinations, evidence of an unusual mission shrouded in mystery.

The Brazilian government has not yet explained why the aircraft entered the country and remained for three days at the Brasília Air Base, and the Brazilian Air Force has declined to comment. There are also no details about the cargo or the crew. It is believed that this is merely a mission to supply ammunition to Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba by Russia, Brazil, and Colombia, especially given the aircraft's history of commonly transporting weapons to Venezuela and Cuba on routes that included North Korea and China.

• Telegram

US-made Patriot II missile exploded seconds after launch during a live-fire drill at Taiwan’s Jiupeng base

Reports of israel bombing Yemen from the Cradle:

Over 30 Israeli airstrikes on Yemen in around 10 minutes.

Update | Sanaa Government Health Ministry reports two killed and 35 injured in Israeli airstrikes on the capital.

death to israel

is now going to use AI to predict future crimes.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-07-30/javier-mileis-government-will-monitor-social-media-with-ai-to-predict-future-crimes.html

Sweden’s state pension fund investing in Israeli manufacturer of white phosphorus: Report

The Israeli military has repeatedly dropped internationally banned white phosphorus munitions in civilian areas in Gaza and Lebanon

https://t.me/thecradlemedia

Israhell government official who was arrested for csa was released and returned to apartheid

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/16/nevada-arrest-israeli-official

🚨 Journalist Islam Al-Koumi has ascended to martyrdom in an IOF artillery shelling on Al-Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip.

Glory to the martyrs.

https://t.me/PalestineResist

It looks like all the (not many to begin with) stories about the Netanyahu guy who was arrested for child sex crimes in Nevada are being extremely shadowbanned on Reddit. Not just on specific subreddits, but posting the story anywhere gets you zero engagement. We often see the US media report on stuff that happens, but they lie about it. It looks like some censorship order went out and there is a complete ban on any reporting at all.

You know the story going round atm 'Ghislaine Maxwell denies seeing 'inappropriate' conduct by Trump' she also said the same thing about Clinton, I wonder why that isn't being included in headlines and being buried in articles if reported at all?

Canada to remove many retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods: reports

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-removing-retaliatory-tariffs-1.7614909

Estonian authorities respond to a "fuck Israel" sign by bringing out the police, an ambulance and the fire department

The Estonian state news ERR reports: ^19/08/2025^

Vaiko Vaher, the operational manager of the Northern Prefecture, told Delfi that a patrol responded to the scene and the police repeatedly tried to convince the man to take down the poster himself, but the 51-year-old man refused to do so.

"The man tried to walk away from the conversation, and when the police asked him not to leave, the man became aggressive and pushed the police officer," Vaher said. "During the arrest, the man spat in the direction of the police officer."

Since the poster was on the second floor, the police asked the rescue board for help to remove the obscene poster with a ladder. The police also opened misdemeanor proceedings under the section on insulting a public official.

"Everyone can express their opinion, but it must be done peacefully, respectfully, and without using profanity,"

A video of what was happening on the spot also spread in the local social media group in Kalamaja, but the video has now been removed for unknown reasons.

Source: https://www.err.ee/1609774194/politsei-reageeris-suurte-joududega-iisraeli-vastasele-loosungile-aknal

James Dobson dead

Eyewitness reveals GHF contractors fire 'indiscriminately' at civilians in Gaza

US contractors hired to 'secure' aid distribution hubs 'boasted' about how many people they killed

https://t.me/thecradlemedia

Meanwhile, in the NAFO parallel universe:

(I unfortunately know self-proclaimed """leftists""" that take this channel seriously.)