U.S. leaves Iraq & bombs it again

• Trump said on Thursday he would resume a full-scale war against Iran unless the United States receives 100% of what it wants. "If we don't get 100% of what we want, absolutely," Trump told French LCI news channel, when asked whether he was considering resuming a full-scale war with Iran.

• Strait of Hormoz closed again: Iran announced due to the continued aggressive actions of US military forces in the region, passage through the Strait of Hormoz remains impossible. Once stability and calm are restored, all requests will be reviewed according to their order and schedule, and permits will gradually be issued.

• Al-Monitor:  American forces have begun withdrawing from their last position in the country, beside Erbil airport in the Kurdistan Region. Every Patriot anti-missile battery has already been removed and sent somewhere undisclosed. The bulk of the troops and their heavy equipment are gone. According to sources the pullout began last week, which means the air defences were being packed up before CENTCOM and Saudi Arabia struck seven Iraqi provinces on Wednesday and killed at least 20 members of Iraq's own security forces.  They cleared their people out first, then dropped the bombs, and left. [They likely bombed any hardware or facilities that might be useful to Iraq.]

• Telegraph: "Friedrich Merz is drawing up secret plans to prevent German pro-Kremlin 'traitor states' from obstructing Nato’s plans to defend against a Russian invasion. German officials fear the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could frustrate the movement of allied forces through two eastern states it is expected to win in September elections." European ‘democracy’ has deteriorated to such an extent that nations now routinely wage wars of sabotage against themselves, in order to preserve the globalist system of control their leaders are beholden to.

• Gevorg Mirzayan, associate professor of political science at Russian Academy of Sciences: "Yes, it will be a humiliating defeat – but hardly less humiliating than after Afghanistan and even more so Vietnam. Yes, the value of the US as an ally for the Middle Eastern monarchies will fall, but even after that, they will not look for any alternatives. Yes, Iran will remain nuclear – but it will be nuclear anyway. Yes, the departure will be a blow to Trump's rating - but if the US president, for example, is able to seize Cuba before the midterm elections, then he will win back all the rating losses. After all, for the American population, the capture of the Island of Freedom is much more important than some Middle Eastern stories. However, Trump dismisses this pragmatism. Not because he is stupid or stubborn, but because there is much more at stake in the Iranian campaign now than his personal status or even the Iranian atom. The stake in this campaign is the entire Western-centric world order. In the lid of the coffin, in which Iran is now hammering the third nail - after two Russian ones."

• Ukraine’s deadly attack on an Iranian cargo ship named Anna in the Caspian Sea was Vladimir Zenensky’s “gift” to Israel and the US, the former senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Kanani Moghaddam, told RT. The strike, which killed one Iranian sailor and injured another came three days before Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled to Washington for talks with US President Trump. “This shows that Zelensky, on the eve of his trip to America, wanted to give a gift to the Zionists and Trump, and thus took this action,” Moghaddam said.

• The Italian mafia is seeking to buy up some of the 800,000 firearms reportedly missing or stolen from Ukraine since 2022, including drones and other advanced arms, senior prosecutors have warned. The Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper reported that much of the arsenal consisted of European military supplies intended for Kiev. The outlet noted that European law enforcement authorities have struggled to track the flow of these arms, given that Western governments conceal the details of their extensive military shipments to Ukraine. The weapons have since reportedly ended up on the European black market and are now said to have attracted the attention of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, which would like to upgrade its arsenal with military-grade systems.

Ukrainian Secret Service HQ in Kiev

• Boeing is reluctant to share the technology used in the warheads it manufactures for the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor missiles which Ukraine and its Western supporters want to manufacture in Europe, German media outlet Die Welt has reported. Trump announced earlier this month that Ukraine would receive a license to produce the Patriot systems. Manufacturing was expected to be based in a European NATO country, potentially Germany, where the facilities would be considered safe from potential Russian attacks. Die Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner outlined several obstacles facing the initiative, including what he described as Boeing Defense’s unwillingness to transfer sensitive technology to foreign partners. 
• UK CND: Andy Burnham became the latest Prime Minister to visit BAE’s Barrow shipyard. Alongside new Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, he pledged the government’s commitment to weapons of mass destruction and announced the annual £8.4 billion for the replacement of Britain's Vanguard fleet, with the new nuclear-armed Dreadnought submarines. Burnham chose to promote war and nuclear weapons as good for the economy - announcing that thousands of apprenticeship roles will be created in the industry. Yet for the hundreds of billions poured into 'defence', it is notoriously jobs-poor. The government's own data shows that for the same level of spending, health and social care creates double the number of jobs.

• The Guardian: Russia has struck a factory of an American drone manufacturer in Kiev for the first time. During one of the recent attacks on Kiev, a facility of the American company, Terminal Autonomy was hit, where the AQ-400 Scythe and AQ-100 Bayonet combat UAVs were produced. These drones feature AI guidance: even if the connection is lost or the drone is subjected to Russian electronic warfare, it continues its flight and independently strikes the target.

• MSN: The Department of Homeland Security alerted employers this week that it had officially ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 Haitian immigrants, triggering mass layoffs that threaten to disrupt summer travel and destabilize an array of essential institutions and industries up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest. Nursing homes terminated hundreds of workers, including nursing assistants, dietary aides and housekeepers. At airports contractors terminated scores of Haitian workers, including janitors, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, according to union leaders at Service Employees International Union. At Florida schools, landscapers, bus drivers and other staff were fired. The tumult comes about a month after the US Supreme Court granted the Trump administration permission to cancel the humanitarian program, known as temporary protected status (TPS), potentially stripping permission to live and work in the US from as many as 1.3 million immigrants from Haiti, Syria and a dozen other countries. [Recent white immigrants from South Africa will not be sent away. Just people of color from 'suspicious nations'. The goal is to rid the US of as many people of color whose children would become US citizens. It's all about controlling elections in the years ahead as America changes from a predominately racist white nation to one of majority people of color.]

Trump's sons getting rich from dads moves

The President of Kazakhstan calls Donald Trump and the rest is a story about corruption....

The monsters of the darkness....

One of the chief settler organizers of the zionists is demanding that Gaza be for the chosen ones featured in this short video. 

Trump increasingly worried & angry as his war flops

• The Islander CENTCOM announced they lit up IRGC targets across Iran at 10pm Eastern last night: Here’s the official version. 'At precisely 10:00 PM EST on July 29, US Central Command claimed a series of precision strikes against dozens of IRGC sites inside Iran - command nodes, missile and drone facilities, coastal radar, and naval assets.' They say it was in response to Iranian ballistic missiles launched the previous day at US forces in the region. All those missiles, they insist, were intercepted. More than 50,000 American troops remain on high alert across the Middle East. Iran already told anyone paying attention that any further use of Gulf territory as a launchpad would be treated as participation. Kuwait has allowed itself to become one of those launchpads. If that continues, Kuwaiti soil may not remain sovereign for long. Tehran has the range, the inventory, and the political will to make that a reality. Hormuz is already running on Iranian forbearance. Bab el-Mandeb is under Yemeni control. Now the Empire is daring the region into a wider fire while its own interceptor stocks and strategic petroleum reserve both run critically low. Hello $150 oil! Iran will hit back. The only question is how many more 'precision' nights the Empire thinks it can afford before the cost arrives at the pump and at the bases that still believe the fairytale they are safe. 

• IRGC announced Iranian missile struck the Muwaffaq al Salti Air Base, in Jordan, targeting & destroying 3 US F-35 fighter jets & damaging 3 others. The attack also killed several US officers & technicians. This was in retaliation for the US bunker-buster bomb attack on residential homes in Qeshm that killed 3 family members and orphaned 2 children. Iranian Civil defense teams miraculously rescued the two children transporting them to a hospital. How was this a legitimate target? The war crimes keep piling up as the US becomes more desperate. 

• New York Times: Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal, and public figures have signed an open letter demanding the withdrawal of US forces from Jordan. They call the American presence a security, political, and economic risk pulling the country into a war it wants no part of. Most Jordanian outlets refuse to publish the letter, and organizers warn signatories could be jailed. 

• NBC News: Reports indicate that Trump is frustrated by the lack of progress in ending the war with Iran and by divisions within his administration over strategy. Some officials support continued military action, while others warn that prolonged strikes could deplete US weapons stockpiles and escalate the conflict. [As well as destroying the global economy and most of the western imperial nations who vainly refuse to accept the coming multi-lateral world.]

• Iran’s Army (Artesh) says it targeted: US military power generators; Navigation system; Administrative buildings; Logistical and support buildings at Sheikh Isa Air Base, Bahrain.
• The yellow line is 2026: Total US “Big 4” inventories from crude including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, gasoline, distillates and jet fuel have fallen off a cliff since spring. No other year on the chart, not even the worst stretches of 2022 (Ukraine war) comes close to this kind of sustained collapse. The Empire is burning through its last real buffer while two of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints answer to Iran and Yemen. Paper sanctions never stopped Russian nor Iranian barrels. Physical control of the straits is a different game entirely. When the cushion is gone, price is the only remaining signal. There is massive cost to waging an illegal war of terror and aggression on adversaries you vastly underestimate.

• Speaking to Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, Professor Mohammad Marandi in Iran said the UAE has committed “enormous injustices” against the Iranian people and has been complicit in the US assault on Iran and the killing of thousands of Iranians. He noted that the UAE is now seeking de-escalation, adding that Iran has been engaging with all countries hosting US bases, including the Emirates, with varying responses and levels of progress. Marandi stressed that if the US attacks Iran and escalates the war, Iran will retaliate, and countries hosting US bases “will not be forgiven.” He warned that if Washington targets Iran’s critical infrastructure, “Iran will retaliate against those countries that have hosted the Americans and have facilitated the aggression against Iran,” because without these countries, “the US cannot carry out aggression.”
• Stars & Stripes: Nearly 100 U.S. troops have been injured in the Iran war in the past two weeks, the Pentagon said following growing attacks on American service members in the Middle East. A large portion of the wounded are suffering from head trauma which has led some military health experts to worry that traumatic brain injuries - caused by damage to the brain that can impact thinking, movement and emotion - could become the signature injury of this war, as in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [As these severe injuries are increasing, Trump's Wall Street team are cutting the Veterans Administration budget as they begin to privatize the VA. When the injured troops return home the medical care for them will not be what it used to be.]

• There were 1,275 mosques in Gaza before October 2023. Israel has now completely destroyed 1,050 of them and partially damaged 191 others. That is not collateral damage. That is the systematic erasure of a civilization's spiritual architecture, one building at a time. Yesterday, Israeli jets added another name to the list. Al-Muttaqin Mosque in central Gaza City was struck and destroyed, along with the tents sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians who had gathered around it. These were not combatants. They were families who had already lost their homes to earlier strikes and were living under canvas near a house of worship. Both the mosque and the tents are now rubble. 

• The Trump administration wants to sell 2,840 acres of Ohio’s only national forest for oil and gas drilling. The Bureau of Land Management announced it will auction off land in Wayne National Forest for fracking, despite the protected forest being home to multiple endangered species. A month ago, this would've been illegal. But Trump just gutted the Endangered Species Act - clearing the way for Big Oil to take over Wayne National Forest. (Due to Washington's massive debt Trump wants to sell off as many of the nation's assets as possible to his Wall Street oligarchic buddies. They will likely reward Trump with a cut of the action as well.)

• Leo S. Lo, Dean of Libraries; Advisor to the Provost for AI Literacy; Professor of Education, University of Virginia: Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the water used to cool the data center’s servers and the water consumed at the power plants generating the electricity to run them.

• As recent conflicts consume weapons at a ferocious rate, America’s defense industrial base is becoming more prepared to sustain a major war, according to a new report. “The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, co-author of a study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis, told Defense News. Pistol Pete Hegseth has vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.” Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding 'competition and innovation' to the sector. Munitions contract obligations have risen 330% since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers. Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, 'the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the US and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.'

• Eric Arnow writes: The new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Mykhailo Drapatyi, stated that Russia as a nation have no right to exist, and that only “criminal elements” have lived in Donbas their entire lives. After his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Drapatoy was finally allowed to speak to journalists. During his first interview, the general stated that he did not consider Russians equal to Ukrainians. According to him, Russians had never been civilized for “thousands of years,” waging wars of conquest and attempting to build an empire. And their behavior hasn’t changed. The West’s 500 year implacable and relentless war against ‘The Rest’, is headed for a climax. It will not and cannot allow sovereignty of other nations. Indeed, it views itself as The Garden, despite the fact that Eurasian civilizations existed long before European and  the US were even founded. Somehow the US thinks it should determine what Iran should be. Iran was unified as a nation under the Median kingdom in the 7th century BC. Russia, for its part, goes back at least 1,000 years. The Mongols invaded in 1240, followed by Poles, Swedes [repeatedly], French, Germans, and even the English attacked Russia three times, and the US attacked once after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Wall Street plunder in the 1990s after the demise of the former Soviet Union.

• Ukraine (with full US-NATO-EU support) began the war on the Russian-ethnic parts of their own country in 2014 by attacking eastern Ukraine along the border with Russia. For years Moscow tried to settle it with the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements which France, Germany and Ukrainian leaders later admitted they signed just to buy time to build up Kiev's military so they could keep the killing going. It's been going on ever since. [Now in Kiev the people are spending alot of time in the underground. They should have realized that Russia's patience had obvious limits. Ukraine should surrender while they still have something to hold on to.]

Lubec, Maine protest coming Saturday

Our August statewide monthly protest will be held in the beautiful seaside town of Lubec here in Maine, at the Canadian border.

Quoddy Head State Park is next door to Lubec. One of the best parks in the state.

We've been doing these monthly events since early 2022 opposing endless war$.

We like moving them around the state in order to reach as many corners of Maine as possible. Especially in the summer lots of tourists see our signs and banners as well. 

Often times great activists feel isolated in these otherwise quiet corners of the state. But by holding events in these sometimes far-away places we connect with folks who can then feel part of the larger statewide movement. And they always have something special to add to the kettle!

It's putting solidarity into action! 

On September 12 we go to Wiscasset on US Hwy 1 at the bridge just across from the famous tourist trap Red's Eats (coincidentally owned by a family named Gagnon). We meet at 1:30 pm.

Join us when you can. 

Bruce 

Robert Barnes : What Trump's Inner Circle Tells Him

Lots of insider political gossip about Trump's info flow, decision making, the many failures he is now making.

Barnes knows Trump well. 

Why did U.S. & Saudis attack Iraq?

Elijah J. Magnier is a veteran war-zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specializes in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. 

His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria make his writings mandatory reading for those wishing to understand complicated affairs that are routinely misreported and propagandized in the Western press.

Magnier has covered many of the key wars and military clashes in the region, including the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iraq-Iran War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Gulf War of 1991, the 1992 – 1996 war in the former Yugoslavia, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and subsequent war and occupation, the second Lebanon War in 2006, as well as the more recent wars in both Libya and Syria. 

Having lived for many years in Lebanon, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, Elijah J. Magnier possesses unique insights into local cultural and tribal affairs, geopolitical realities and trends, and the history of a region that continues to pose challenges for both its residents and the world. 

History lesson: 12,000 Chinese workers built America’s Transcontinental RR

They stood at the foot of the mountains everyone else had already refused. The granite walls of the Sierra Nevada rose like a barrier meant to stop history itself, and for a time, they did. Early crews hired by the Central Pacific Railroad walked away, defeated by altitude, snow, and danger. 

Then the company turned to Chinese laborers already living in California. Fifty men were hired. They did not leave. Within a few years, more than 12,000 Chinese workers made up nearly the entire workforce, climbing into storms and ice for lower wages, paying for their own food, and sleeping in fragile camps while winter buried the mountains around them.

They were mocked as weak, yet they accomplished what others could not. Suspended in baskets over cliffs at Cape Horn, they drilled into solid stone, placing explosives by hand while the wind moved beneath their feet. Through Donner Summit, they carved tunnels through unyielding granite using black powder and muscle alone. 

Avalanches swept away camps. Explosions ended lives that records barely counted. In 1867, thousands of Chinese workers organized one of the largest labor strikes of the nineteenth century, demanding fair pay and humane hours. Supplies were cut off in response, hunger used as a weapon until survival forced them back to work. Still, on April 28, 1869, their crews laid ten miles of track in a single day—a feat that has never been surpassed.

When the final spike was driven at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, dignitaries gathered, speeches were given, and photographs captured the triumph of a nation joined coast to coast. 

The men who made that moment possible were asked to step aside before the cameras clicked. Their labor stretched across 1,776 miles, binding the US together while recognition passed them by, and even citizenship remained out of reach for decades. 

The railroad changed a continent, but the silence surrounding those workers lasted almost as long as the tracks themselves—and it leaves us wondering how many foundations of history were built by hands the world chose not to see. 

Narco Rubio publishes paranoid activist blacklist

The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's publication of a paranoid blacklist of antiwar American activists, and how he's exploiting it to make the case for a military invasion of Cuba. 

Trump & Bibi: What next?

• Boss Bibi giving fresh orders to everyone, including Rubio and Pistol Pete Hegseth. Also to Ukraine's drug addict puppet President Zelensky further down this post. Pretty clear who runs the show. (No sound in the videos but the picture tell the story.)

• Patrick Lawrence writes: What will the Trumpster do? This is the question on many minds just now. In brief, Trump is going to have to decide what it is he will lose and then figure out how to lose it — either a war, on one hand, or on the other the global economy, the American electorate, and the midterm elections. Accepting defeat in the Iran war will be a messy schmear the American public cannot read for what it is, and it will never be called a defeat. In my view we are in for some variant of “peace with honor”—another name for the other side’s victory, as coined after Vietnam’s triumph in 1975. When and how this is presented remains to be seen, but I do not see any alternative open to Trump. I have previously argued that Trump would continue aggressing against Iran because he has been so thoroughly a captive of the Israelis. For Trump it was Israel über alles, as I put it earlier in the war. But there now seems to be no more obliging the psychotic, war-obsessed Netanyahu and all the monied Zionists Trump has served until now. If he betrays them—and absent a crystal ball or a Ouija board I expect him to do so out of sheer self-interest—we will at that moment be witnessing the making of history.

• The seized Iranian “TOSKA” ship by the US Navy carried dialysis supplies and vital medical equipment for Iranian civilians. Before, the US claimed its blockade would not seize/stop ships that transported food or medical equipment, well that turned out to be an outright lie. Finally released.

• Yemen military: "Saudi Arabia, along with America, has begun bombing sites in Iraq. We condemn and denounce all this brutal aggression, and this aggression will not pass without a response."
• Brian Berletic: US pauses its attacks on Iran once again to begin rearming, reorganizing and eventually restarting hostilities at a time of its own choosing; The pause also cools off energy markets the US is deliberately disrupting and dismantling to its benefit – but in a way that doesn’t trigger a united front against US disruptions; The war on Iran is part of a wider war on multi-polarism the US continues to wage – if the war on multi-polarism continues, so will the war on Iran; US foreign policy is driven by unelected corporate-financier interests, not politicians, thus any analysis or solution based on the notion “politicians” instead of the largest corporations in the US are making decisions is destined to fail.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of “fomenting hate” following the mayor’s call for his arrest in relation to the war in Gaza. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu dismissed the ICC case against him as “bogus” and said he would still travel to New York despite Mamdani’s calls for his arrest. Accusing the mayor of “fomenting hate,” the Israeli leader said: “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers – Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone. But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”
• RT: Three-quarters of Poles have expressed a negative attitude toward Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, according to a recent poll. The disapproval comes amid an ongoing scandal over Kiev’s veneration of Nazi collaborators involved in the mass killing of Poles during World War II. Zelensky sparked outrage in Poland in May by giving an elite commando unit a “heroes of UPA” award referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting mostly Polish Catholic residents of what is now Western Ukraine, which resulted in over 100,000 deaths. He and other top officials declared that “no one will ever dictate to Ukrainians which heroes to honor.” 

• Al Mayadeen: The Israeli embassy in Canberra has publicly challenged proposed changes to the Australian Labour Party’s policy on Palestine, drawing attention to what appears to be an unusual attempt by a foreign government to influence an internal party debate, The Guardian reported. In a four-page statement released on Monday, the embassy criticized sections of Labour’s draft national platform ahead of the party’s conference in Adelaide this week. The proposed platform includes stronger language opposing the occupation and “annexation” of Palestinian territory, as well as Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The intervention is notable because the Labour platform is an internal party document debated and approved at the party’s national conference every three years. Foreign governments rarely issue detailed public objections to policies that remain under discussion within an Australian political party.

• Oregon Capital Chronicle: In a sign of the economic times, multibillion dollar grocers Walmart and Amazon have among the most listed employees on publicly funded health care, according to an analysis of Oregon Health Authority data. Not all employees at the companies qualify for employee-sponsored health care. “One in six of the most listed employers on Medicaid forms in Oregon was a major grocer and retailer,” the publication reported.
• Sovereignista: This week Bloody Bibi and Zelenski are both in Washington. Neither was welcomed on a red carpet or with senior US officials meeting them. With Trump, it will be like a rerun of a macabre and grotesque. Unfortunately it is a circus that we have to pay attention to. There is a trend of a coalescence of the Ukraine War (Ukraine hitting a Iranian carrier in the Caspian Sea) with the War on Iran and region. The Ukrainian soldiers in Iraq are not necessarily mercenaries but soldiers on the payroll, just the same as they are in West Africa in the Sahel. Ukraine is not only selling weapons to any shadow military group or drug cartel, but soldiers as well. War is indeed a racket. Iraq’s National Security Advisor, Qasim al-Aboudi, says that Ukrainian cells are active throughout Iraq, participating in false flag attacks. 'Ukrainian intelligence cells carry out attacks in Iraq and falsely attribute them to various factions. We arrested individuals and elements who confessed that they were working for Ukraine,' al-Aboudi said. The issue concerns attempts to internationalize the conflict with Russia as much as possible through attacks on an Iranian vessel and facilities of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. According to Ukraine’s allies, this is being presented as a global conflict that threatens their own interests, said Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council. He also expressed hope that Iran and Kazakhstan would find a way to respond, while not allowing themselves to be drawn into Kiev’s agenda. Dmitry Peskov stated 'Kiev’s terrorist activity is growing around the world, including Iraq, underscoring the importance of achieving the goals of Russia’s special military operation.'

• Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has denounced Europe’s military buildup and escalating confrontation with Russia, arguing that Western governments are steering the world toward catastrophe while arms manufacturers and political elites profit from perpetual war. Speaking Monday on The Sanchez Effect, Waters said calls for European NATO members to increase military spending to 5% of national GDP were “effing insane.” He questioned how Western leaders could even contemplate a direct conflict with Russia, given the Soviet Union’s decisive role and immense losses during World War II. “I often say to people, do you know who the Russian people are? They won the Second World War, for God’s sake. Twenty-five million of them died, saving the world for us,” he said. “And you want to have a war with them? How dumb.”  

• United Farm Workers Union (UFW): Last night we joined the ACLU and our other partners in asking the court to block ongoing federal immigration raids based on shocking newly disclosed records, body camera footage and sworn testimony from government officials. In a video cited in the filing, one agent said to another: “Yeah, just plug us in wherever you see some tonks…,” while other agents guessed whether people were “wet” simply based on appearance. “Tonks” is a derogatory and violent term understood to refer to the sound of a flashlight striking a migrant’s head. “Wet” is short for “wetback” and is a racist slur historically directed at Mexican and other Latino immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. “A year ago, farm workers across California were terrorized by brutal and unconstitutional raids based on racial and class profiling,” said Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers Union, a plaintiff. “Today, the fear left behind by those raids continues. Farm workers go to work afraid they may not come home, even as they put food on all of our tables. The workers who feed this country deserve so much better.” This motion asks the court to prohibit immigration agents from stopping or detaining people because they appear to be low-income or working class and Latino. The court has scheduled a hearing on the motion for September 24. [In coming years people of color will become the majority population in the US. Thus the racist Trump administration is doing all it can to ship people of color out of the country now, no matter their legal status.]

• Consortium News: In a wide-ranging conversation with Chris Hedges about her new book, Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America, Political scientist Marie Gottschalk traces how deregulation, mass incarceration, militarized policing, endless war, media consolidation, and bipartisan deference to corporate power converged to create the conditions for today’s authoritarian politics. The result, she argues, is a country where state violence at home and imperial violence abroad reinforce one another — and where Trump’s rise represents not a break from the American system, but its logical consequence. Marie Gottschalk’s Crime and No Punishment is about far more than crime. It is a sweeping examination of how the US built a political and economic order that punishes ordinary people while increasingly protecting the powerful.

• reddit: Nvidia chip founder Jensen Huang recently explained, the future of AI depends on continuous knowledge sharing between AI models. (Some people call this "LLM poisoning.") The idea is that they will then incorporate the "poisoned" framing into all the material they generate -- both as part of phony AI websites and as answers to queries -- so that these lies ultimately dominate our collective information space. When these two stories are read together one after another, a deeply disturbing pattern emerges. A rush is on to destroy the legacy of human culture and replace it with a fiction-filled, privatized digital twin that has been bought, paid for, and -- because of its digital nature -- is utterly controllable. This tactic is at the heart of colonialism's playbook.
• Edward Snowden’s Ominous Warning to the World: These Programs, Mass Surveillance is NOT about public safety.  It is not about terrorism. It is about power. It is about economic espionage.  It is about diplomatic manipulation. And it is about social influence. It is about understanding the actions of everyone in the world as carefully as they can, no matter who they are, no matter how innocent their life. But we see how these same technologies are being applied to create what they call the social credit system.

My gardens

These photos are from my two raised beds at the community garden about one mile from our home. I ride my bike there most days to care for them. It's my meditation place.

The two raised  beds are not next to one another, they are separated by about 3 or 4 other raised beds, but no big deal.

I am growing carrots, skunk beans, onions, lettuce, broccoli raab, corn, tomatoes, green peppers, beets, and kale.

Then at our apartment I have a kitchen garden in pots with cherry tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, basil, chives, (already picked peas), rosemary, collard greens and more carrots. Also some lovely roses.

(The flag in this video is not mine, it's our neighbor's pot.) 

Arrogant EU fools harm their own economies

Two Majors Reports:

The European Union believed it was a superpower when it imposed sanctions on 14 Chinese companies for doing business with Russia. China has now considered the matter and will cut off the EU's supply of rare earth elements. The EU received 50% of these elements from China.

Among those affected are European military companies, including the leading German military holding company Rheinmetall, the Czech truck manufacturer Tatra Trucks, the Italian electric motor manufacturer Lafert, the German materials manufacturer Sindlhauser Materials, and the French drone manufacturer Cavok UAS, among others. Many of these companies supply weapons to Ukraine.

The sale of dual-use goods from the EU to these 14 companies will be immediately prohibited. The transfer of such goods to foreign branches of these companies is also prohibited.

China stated that it has taken these measures in response to the 21st round of EU sanctions against Russia, which targeted 14 organizations from mainland China and Hong Kong. In a statement, a Chinese representative called the EU's actions "outrageous."

Brussels accuses China of producing many goods that the EU cannot produce cheaply, creating huge trade imbalances, and undermining local industry. The EU imposed sanctions on Russian raw materials independently.

As part of the 21st package of sanctions, the EU has added 15 Chinese companies and 11 companies from Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and India to its blacklist. 

Life in Palestine, Iraq, and Iran as U.S.-Israel kill, kill, kill

• In Gaza City, residents are extracting iron from the rubble of destroyed buildings, amid an ongoing crisis caused by the blockage of construction materials into the Strip. Many families rely on these salvaged iron rods to meet their daily needs whether for reinforcing tents or making furniture such as beds and tables. 

• Today a US MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down in the northern province of Babel, Iraq. 

• Iran’s MFA Spokesman says there are no negotiations with the US right now. Baghaei, in response to a question about communications between Iran-US, said: “Mediators may convey messages regarding current developments, but at present, we are not engaged in any negotiations with the American side."
• Netanyahu as reported in Israeli Media announced that Israel had a ‘request’ from the US to withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. He loudly proclaimed that he will refuse. All of this may be lies and he may just be spinning. An update fromTimes of Israel: Netanyahu’s plane to Washington delayed without explanation.

• The West Bank: According to Israeli media reports, attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank increased by 63% during the first half of this year, with 30 hate crimes committed by settlers. During those attacks, 140 Palestinians were injured and six were killed, compared to 82 injuries and no deaths in the second half of 2025. The surge has coincided with increasing political support for settlers, protection provided by the Israeli army, and the continued expansion of settler armament.

• “Iran war casualty count eclipses 600 as Pentagon quietly changes accounting.” If you believe their numbers...18 dead and 624 wounded. What is the real number of KIA? They already played games with the count last week. Numbers went down while the missiles kept coming. Then they “fixed” it. How many more names are still sitting in a folder somewhere because the optics are so bad? Remember that your sons and daughters are dying for Israel. 

• Several days ago more than 3,000 Temple Movement zionist activists entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount compound under heavy Israeli police protection to mark Tisha B’Av, a Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temples. Among them were far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset member Amit Halevi. Groups held collective prayers, sang, and displayed Israeli flags throughout the compound in blatant violation of the status quo. The mass entry followed a night in which Temple Movement activists harassed and assaulted Palestinian families living near Al-Aqsa. Israeli police had removed Muslim worshippers from the compound and barred others from entering for prayer. The forced removal and exclusion of Muslim worshippers during Jewish holidays is a relatively new and dangerous trend, underscoring the complete collapse of the status quo, under which Muslim worship rights take precedence over non-Muslim visitation. These events mark yet another state-backed escalation aimed at entrenching Israeli control over the holy compound and undermining Muslim religious rights. 

• Anti-war protesters gathered outside the main gates of RAF Fairford to call on the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to withdraw the use of UK military bases from the US’s war on Iran. So far, the UK has allowed the US to launch “defensive” operations from British bases hosting American personnel and aircraft. Demonstrators from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Fairford Action held signs and chanted outside the Gloucestershire military base on Saturday. The protesters say their action follows an attack on Iran by a US B-1 bomber stationed at RAF Fairford earlier last week, which led to Iran’s Foreign Ministry branding Britain as an “accomplice” in the US’s war. CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said: “New Prime Minister Andy Burnham needs to end Trump’s use of Fairford and Diego Garcia now. This is dragging Britain directly into Trump’s illegal war on Iran. Public opposition to the use of British bases to commit war crimes overseas is growing." 

• We’re calling for a national day of action on August 15th to oppose the US and South Korea’s Ulchi Freedom Shield war games in Korea. These US-led war games are paving the way for future conflict with China and threaten billions of working class people so the US can tighten its grip and line the pockets of billionaire war profiteers. Our opposition to Ulchi Freedom Shield is about more than Korea’s national liberation. These war games are exercises for US-led military forces, including those in Japan and the Philippines, to escalate regional tensions in order to advance the interests of empire and the weapons industry at the expense of working people. 

• The Guardian: Since the surreal scene at the 2024 presidential inauguration, when a row of big tech titans took their VIP seats and signaled their new alliance with Maga, the Trump administration has rolled out the red carpet for Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions and shareholder priorities. Washington has doled out billions in lucrative federal subsidies and contracts to the cash-rich sector, bloating an AI bubble that experts warn may imperil the entire economy while prohibiting any guardrails on the fast-moving technology.  Fortunately for all of us, an unlikely and unruly coalition has emerged to resist the AI takeover by taking aim at the industry’s core infrastructure. In 2025, about 48 data center projects worth an estimated $156bn were blocked or stalled by local opposition. By all measures, 2026 is shaping up to be an even bigger year for the AI resistance. 

• Saudi Arabia’s vast oil exports now increasingly depend on a single narrow escape route – the Suez Canal, as conflict in the Strait of Hormuz and now the Red Sea continues to redraw global energy flows, the WSJ reports. For Asia-bound cargoes, the detour adds 20-30 days, raising freight and insurance costs.  The problem is that the Suez Canal is too shallow for fully laden oil tankers. To pass, a tanker must discharge roughly half its cargo, pump it through the Sumed pipeline across Egypt, and reload on the other side - or split the cargo between two smaller Suezmax tankers.  The Suez Canal is also too narrow for modern tankers. 
• The Islander: Ukraine sent long range drones deep into the Caspian and struck vessels running between Iran and Russia. One of them was Iranian. FM Abbas Araghchi came out hard: what the “freeloader in Kiev” did “CANNOT GO UNANSWERED.” He called the attack a blatant UN Charter violation carried out at Israel’s behest to pull Europe deeper into the war. An Iranian sailor is dead. Tehran is no longer prepared to stay one step removed from the war in Ukraine. This was not clever strategy. It was Zelensky’s latest act of desperation, a high-risk throw to court favor with Trump by showing Kiev can hit Iranian interests and the wider multipolar supply chain when American patience is running out. [Ukraine is proving to be the global imperial hired gun to fight wars against Russia, Mali, Syria, Iraq and now Iran. Zelensky and his inner criminal circle pocket the profits.]

• Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine: Three women tried to prevent a “Ukrainian patriot” from receiving a TCC body snatcher issued death sentence. Their efforts were unsuccessful after one woman was doused by pepper spray. Another had her foot run over by the TCC meat wagon. Meanwhile the final one was apparently shot. Notice it is the women who primarily attempt to rescue those being grabbed for the front lines.