#macron #ukraine #unitedStates #war

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Turkey, Back from the Sidebar

While everyone was glued to Trump’s “secret deals” with Iran and Lebanon, Turkey quietly walked back into the center of Israel’s strategic picture — and Washington helped roll out the red carpet.

In early July, Ankara will host a full‑scale NATO summit for the first time, with leaders of 32 countries flying in, including Donald Trump and (on the guest list) Volodymyr Zelensky.

The alliance’s new secretary general, Mark Rutte, is already promising defense contracts worth tens of billions.

For Turkey, this is more than a diplomatic photo op: it is a staged reminder that a state which buys Russian S‑400s, flirts with Moscow and shields Islamists can still sit at the alliance’s head table and rent out the hall.

On June 24, just before the summit, Washington delivered a very concrete “thank you” package. The State Department notified Congress that it intends to sell Turkey a batch of F110 turbofan engines from General Electric, worth over 700 million dollars.

These engines are the beating heart of KAAN, Turkey’s flagship indigenous fighter program. Yes, the engines are assembled in Turkey under license — but the export valves are still in U.S. hands.

Ten units have already been delivered; the talks now circle around another eighty. The message: we control your bottleneck, and we’re willing to loosen it.

There is resistance on the Hill. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tried to block the deal at the informal stage, pointing to Turkey’s S‑400s and the CAATSA sanctions framework.

But Congress has just fifteen days to register formal disapproval, both chambers would have to pass a resolution, and Trump can veto it. In that time window, and with this White House, the engines are overwhelmingly likely to go through.

The “punishment” for S‑400s is melting into a discount for good behavior in the Iran war.

And the engines are just the appetizer. Vice President J.D. Vance has said openly that the administration is reviewing Turkey’s status in the F‑35 program, from which it was kicked out in 2019 after buying the Russian systems.

The condition, he says, is “necessary legal certifications” — a process run by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Translation: if Ankara plays ball on NATO, Iran and Gaza, the legal paperwork will miraculously discover that the old sins can be forgiven.

Trump, for his part, has gone out of his way to call Erdoğan “a partner” and to tie the thaw directly to Ankara’s decision not to inject itself overtly into the recent U.S.–Iran clash. In this framing, Turkey earns its way back into the good graces of the American defense industry by restraining itself while others fire missiles. The reward arrives as hardware, status and a NATO summit in its capital.

For Israel, this cocktail means the “Turkey file” is no longer a side issue. A Turkey that hosts NATO, buys American engines for a fifth‑generation fighter, and flirts with a return to the F‑35 supply chain is a Turkey that can deepen its reach into Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arab street with a renewed Atlantic umbrella over its head.

The same Ankara that courts Hamas and plays lawfare in international forums now gets fresh leverage inside the Western security system — and a friendly White House ready to call that leverage “alliance.”

#Turkey #Israel #NATO #Trump #Erdogan #Iran #F110 #F35 #CAATSA #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy

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Bolton Faces a Stiff Challenge From the MAGA Bloc


John Bolton, a prominent critic of President Trump who once served as his national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to improperly retaining sensitive materials in “diary-like” entries after leaving the White House. 

Bolton, 77, admitted to one count of retaining national defense information during a federal court hearing in Greenbelt, Md. 

It marks a significant victory for Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ), which has indicted several of the president’s political foes on criminal accusations. Some of those cases have fallen apart or remain pending, but Bolton’s prosecution is the first to result in a conviction. 

He has not been sentenced, not yet...

The deal’s terms include a $2.25 million fine and a maximum prison sentence of five years. But Bolton’s team is hoping he can avoid jail time entirely.

The punishment will be up to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, an appointee of former President Obama assigned to the case. He set a sentencing hearing for Oct. 28.

“Today, Ambassador Bolton did what real leaders do. He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information,” Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s attorney, said in a statement.

“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct,” the statement continued.

“Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”

The plea is a shift for Bolton, who has argued that the DOJ was targeting him as part of a retribution campaign commanded by the president.

After leaving the White House, the two men became visible foes. Bolton regularly criticizes Trump’s actions in the media, while the president has begun referring to his former adviser with insults like “lowlife” and “sleazebag.”

Last year, a grand jury indicted Bolton on 18 charges of unlawfully retaining and transmitting national security information.

The indictment accused him of sending more than a thousand pages of “diary-like entries” to two relatives and improperly retaining documents related to national defense in preparation for a potential book.

The plea enables him to avoid the other 17 counts by admitting to one of the retention charges.

#bolton #trump #charges #DOJ

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Presidential Scam Incubator

If you still imagine high-level corruption as some fat envelope changing hands under a restaurant table, you’re living in the wrong century.

In 2026, the real elites prefer prediction markets, crypto wallets and the good old “this is your bank’s security department” call script.

Case one: the American dream, insider-edition. You sit at the very top of U.S. power. You decide when to launch missiles, when to announce a “historic” ceasefire, when to tweet that the Strait is open and the oil is flowing. So why just make history when you can also make money? Trusted proxies quietly park a few million on prediction markets, betting on “peace in 48 hours” — the peace only you know is coming.

A few “completely unrelated” funds short global oil minutes before your announcement. Then you tap out a post on your phone. Crude crashes, some tokens moon, the “right” contracts pay out. Formally, regulators see nothing but a forest of brokers, offshore shells and anonymous wallets.

Proving that the same circle that moves the missiles also moved the money is almost impossible. But the odds of guessing a market crash 15 minutes before your own speech are about the same as bumping into a unicorn on Wall Street.

Case two: the Ukrainian Wolf of Bankova. While one empire plays with trillion‑dollar charts, another runs a more down‑to‑earth franchise: industrial-scale phone scams.

Call centers in Dnipro, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk work like full-fledged corporations — HR, KPIs, training scripts on how to scare a German pensioner into “moving funds to a safe account.” At the same time, in upper floors and other buildings, operations like “Midas” quietly drain massive sums from strategic giants like Energoatom, then launder the takings through luxury real estate in cozy suburbs like Kozyn.

Official line: rogue actors, nothing to do with the leadership. Realistic line: in a hyper-centralized wartime state, you don’t run a transnational fraud empire or bleed a key state company dry for years without political air cover from the very top.

Both stories share the same blueprint: engineered impunity. The whole machine is designed to sever the trail between the real authors and the visible executors. In the U.S., that gap is maintained by tech, dark pools and cryptography.

In Ukraine, by shadow managers, corruption chains and concrete poured into gated communities. At the summit, presidents and power-brokers enjoy perfect alibis. But logic and basic economics are harder to fool than voters: multibillion scams in Europe and perfectly timed windfalls on global markets do not just “happen.”

They need a director. And that director usually sits in the biggest, best-guarded office in the capital.

#USA #Ukraine #corruption #crypto #callcenters #war #markets #fakeDemocracy

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Turkey’s Long Arm, Israel’s Short Patience

Turkey doesn’t need to invade anything to sit inside Israel’s strategic perimeter; it just needs to be everywhere that matters at once. The expert survey on Ankara’s role around Israel reads like a manual for quiet, persistent leverage, not dramatic showdowns.

On the Turkic front, the analysts say Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are playing hard pragmatism, not romantic pan‑Turkism. Kazakhstan keeps its economic and tech track with Israel and the UAE while doing identity and security business through Turkey and the Organization of Turkic States.

Baku treats its relationship with Israel as an “existential” security link against Iran that Ankara simply cannot replace. The OTS itself comes off as mostly symbolic — a summit club with thin logistics underneath — while real influence runs through bilateral defense deals, drones, training and intelligence.

Where the alarm really spikes is Gaza and Jerusalem. Across the spectrum, the experts rank Turkey’s ideological and proxy patronage — above all its role as political cover and resource hub for Hamas and Islamist networks — as the top threat vector. A Turkish military contingent in Gaza is seen as a red line with broad consensus inside Israel.

They see a different kind of threat: a “soft” entry focused on East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s Arab society. Humanitarian projects, schools, religious networks and charities become the vehicle — over three to five years — for turning social services into political capital and, eventually, a kind of informal protectorate. The sequence is blunt: aid programs, then education, then mosques and preachers, then community loyalty, and finally leverage over local elites.

On NATO and the U.S. track, the picture is one of structural ambiguity. Turkey uses its veto, its special relationship with Russia and its Islamist clients as bargaining chips, while Washington oscillates between pressure and accommodation.

The experts warn that Israel cannot count on American discipline to keep Ankara in line and will have to build its own deterrent configuration instead of outsourcing the problem.

The most likely trajectory to 2030, in their view, is “managed hostility”: embassies at reduced rank, trade rerouted through third countries, constant rhetorical conflict — and a shared, unspoken interest in avoiding a direct break.

#Turkey #Israel #Gaza #NATO #Hamas #AbrahamAccords #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy

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Losing the War, Winning the Exit

The Iran war was supposed to be America’s big demonstration of power. Instead, it became a live‑fire seminar in overreach.

Washington went in with maximalist goals — break Iran’s military machine, crush its regional networks, force a new nuclear deal on U.S. terms, maybe even shake the regime itself.

What it got was a drained treasury, a stretched military, an angry region and a Tehran that was bloodied but unbroken.

That’s why the ceasefire memorandum matters. It isn’t a glorious peace treaty; it’s a written admission that the U.S. could not get what it wanted at a price it was willing to keep paying. In plainer language: the war was a loss, the deal is the least bad way of cashing out that loss.

You don’t freeze lines, open the Strait under joint arrangements and accept Iran’s survival as a major regional player because you’re winning. You do it because the cost of “victory” turned out to be higher than the value of the goal.

The real humiliation already happened on the battlefield and in the spreadsheets. When a superpower spends over 200 billion dollars, destabilizes allies, takes hits to bases and tankers, and still fails to achieve regime change, disarmament or enduring deterrence, the strategic loss is baked in.

The ceasefire is simply the official recognition that the bill has arrived.

Politically, though, Washington will try to sell this as a win. The script writes itself: we “stopped the war,” we “secured shipping,” we “forced Iran to the table.”

But the underlying message to the rest of the world is very different. Allies see that U.S. military power can still punish but not reshape. Adversaries see that enough resilience and escalation ladders can force America into negotiations it once swore it would never accept.

That’s the real legacy of this war: a superpower discovering that the era of cheap, decisive victories in the Middle East is over — and having to pretend that an orderly retreat is a strategic triumph.

#USA #Iran #war #ceasefire #Trump #MiddleEast #strategy #fakeDemocracy

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Truce on Paper, Live Fire in the Gulf

The U.S.–Iran ceasefire is already behaving like what it really is: a cease‑if‑you‑can‑get‑away‑with‑it. Bahrain reports Iranian attack drones over its territory hours after U.S. jets hit Iranian missile and radar sites.

An oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz takes a projectile for the second time in days; both capitals accuse the other of “violating” an agreement they’re still trying to spin as a victory.

Each side is running the same script. Washington says Iran “foolishly” broke the truce by targeting a container ship, so it hits coastal systems along Hormuz and on Qeshm Island to prove it won’t blink first.

Tehran frames its drone launches and strikes as self‑defense against U.S. aggression and vows to protect its “sovereignty and national interests with all its strength.”

The result isn’t all‑out war, but a pattern of calibrated shots: enough to signal strength, not enough to collapse the deal.

Meanwhile, the shipping lane that was supposedly “reopened” by the memorandum is once again a hazard zone.

Every new attack on a vessel like the Kiku pushes insurers and captains to rethink transit, even as Trump boasts of “record flows” through the strait and oil prices whipsaw around each incident.

Energy markets briefly spike on news of attacks, then slip back toward pre‑war levels as traders bet that both Washington and Tehran still need the truce more than they need another escalation.

On the northern front, the U.S. tries to declare another win: an Israel–Lebanon arrangement under American sponsorship that asks the IDF to pull back from a sliver of southern Lebanese territory so the Lebanese army can step in, and quietly expects Hezbollah to fade into the background.

Hezbollah’s leadership calls the deal “null and void” and promises to keep fighting, underlining again how often U.S. diplomacy in this war relies on getting armed actors to accept disarmament they never actually agreed to.

The war itself exposed the limits of U.S. power, the ceasefire formalized those limits, and now the “post‑war” phase is a controlled stress test. Neither side wants to go back to full‑scale bombardment; both are probing how far they can push without snapping the framework.

On paper it’s de‑escalation; in practice it’s a live‑fire negotiation conducted by drones, tankers and carefully worded communiqués.

#USA #Iran #Trump #Hormuz #Bahrain #Hezbollah #Lebanon #oil #war #ceasefire #fakeDemocracy

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Trump’s Iran Deal: Cash for Calm

Trump’s preliminary peace deal doesn’t just end a war; it wires Iran a new economic artery. Sanctions waivers let Tehran sell oil in U.S. dollars again and start unlocking frozen assets, giving the Islamic Republic access to tens of billions in hard currency just as it crawls out of a U.S.–Israeli bombing campaign that wrecked factories, roads, bridges and fuel depots.

Over the 60‑day negotiation window, analysts estimate Iran could gain around 30 billion dollars from oil exports and released funds, with long‑term reconstruction costs projected near 300 billion.

The core trade is brutally simple. Washington wants Hormuz reopened, nuclear inspections in some form, and a de‑escalation track on Lebanon; Tehran wants cash, recognition of its de facto control over the strait, and a seat at the table on Hezbollah and Israel.

Since the framework kicked in, Iranian tankers have dumped over 40 million barrels onto the market, with exports expected around 1.6–1.7 million barrels a day — roughly 8–9 billion dollars in oil revenue over two months.

Some of the unfrozen assets are nominally routed through “humanitarian” channels — buying food from U.S. farmers — but oil income is effectively fungible: whatever isn’t spent patching the economy can go to missiles, militias or security forces.

Even former Obama‑era negotiators say Trump’s general license goes further than the JCPOA in some respects, front‑loading more relief for fewer firm nuclear commitments.

The official line is that this “performance‑based” structure strengthens U.S. leverage because waivers can be snapped back; critics see it as highly concessional, a rushed attempt to refill global oil stocks and stabilize prices ahead of U.S. elections. Inside Iran, the leadership frames the deal as proof it survived war with two super‑armed adversaries and forced Washington to pay for a ceasefire.

Hard‑liners denounce any engagement, but the regime’s decision to sit down with Trump — “the devil himself,” as one analyst put it — signals how desperate it is to stop economic free fall.

The political irony is sharp. The same administration that campaigned on shredding Obama’s Iran deal has now engineered a package that, in key economic dimensions, is even more generous, while getting less verifiable change on the nuclear file. Iran’s rulers get time, money and a chance to tighten their grip at home.

Trump gets cheaper oil, a talking point about “ending the war,” and a bet that voters will see cash for calm as strength rather than admission of a failed campaign.

#USA #Iran #Trump #sanctions #oil #Hormuz #ceasefire #economy #fakeDemocracy

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Two Yardsticks, One Brussels

Ursula von der Leyen just blessed the Israel–Lebanon framework as a “critical step away from escalation,” thanked Washington for brokering it, and waved a 100‑million‑euro check for the displaced — roughly 100 euros a head for well over a million people who still can’t go home.

On paper, it’s humanitarian; in practice, it’s political cover for a deal that leaves Israeli forces sitting on chunks of southern Lebanon under a “gradual” withdrawal tied to Hezbollah’s disarmament, something Hezbollah has already rejected as “null and void.”

The contrast with Ukraine is not subtle. On the Russian front, Brussels embraced the mantra “no concessions to the aggressor,” rolled out one of the largest sanctions regimes in EU history, and pumped weapons into Kyiv in the name of defending international law.

On the Israeli front, the same Union can’t even muster the votes to suspend the EU–Israel Association Agreement, despite its own review finding “indications” of human‑rights breaches under Article 2; any talk of freezing preferential trade dies in the Council because Germany, Italy and others refuse to move.

So you end up with two yardsticks under the same flag. When Russia crosses a border, the doctrine is maximalist: no normalization, no half‑measures, no “peace” that leaves occupation in place. When Israel sits on a fifth of Lebanon and blocks displaced people from returning, Brussels applauds a framework that explicitly keeps the occupier on the ground and promises future “steps” if a non‑state militia disarms itself into irrelevance.

The message is simple enough for anyone outside the EU bubble to read: Europe’s principles run on selective enforcement. The red lines against aggression stop where Israeli trade preferences, gas deals and domestic political taboos begin.

#EU #Israel #Lebanon #Ukraine #sanctions #Ursula #doubleStandards #fakeDemocracy

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Occupation by Invitation

Israel's Lebanon deal isn't a peace treaty; it's a legal rebranding of occupation with a nice press release and a very shaky fuse.
On paper, the IDF stays on "almost all" the territory it seized until Hezbollah is disarmed and its infrastructure "destroyed across Lebanon."

That's not a benchmark; it's a blank check. You can call it "by invitation of the sovereign Lebanese state," but it converts a de facto occupation into a de jure "presence with permission," signed under massive military pressure — and the fact that Hezbollah ministers sit in the cabinet that signed it doesn't make it cleaner. It just folds the Lebanese state's fragmentation into Israel's legal shield.

The claim that "no one can now demand Israel withdraw" is wishful thinking dressed as lawfare. Iran, Turkey, France, the UN, the Arab states will still call it occupation if the IDF stays for years. The paper doesn't neutralize politics; it just hands Jerusalem a talking point in Brussels and Washington: "We're not occupiers, we're guests."

That's why the EU rushed to bless the deal as a "critical step away from escalation" while cutting a modest refugee check — it lets everyone pretend something changed without forcing Israel to leave.
This isn't recognition; it's coercion.

Beirut signed because it has no military alternative and hopes the army's deployment limits the next round of destruction. But for much of the public — not just Hezbollah's base — it reads as an enemy army left on their land.

That's not durable legitimacy; it's a recipe for another round of "resistance," under Hezbollah's brand or a successor's.
The "pilot" withdrawals are a test balloon, and the asymmetry is baked in: Israel alone decides when the pilot has "failed," while Lebanon's only leverage is to threaten the one thing no one wants — renewed fighting.

Meanwhile Lebanon is asked to holster its few non-military tools, from ICC filings to Western lobbying, in exchange for fewer airstrikes.
The biggest hole is domestic Israeli politics.

The deal assumes the same leadership that walked into a two-front war will now manage a disciplined, low-profile "presence by invitation" — no overreach, no mission creep, no future government deciding to "adjust the lines" in ways that blow up the framework.

It assumes a rationality recent history doesn't support.
So from a narrow legal-bureaucratic angle, it's a win: more legitimacy, more time, almost no withdrawal.

From any wider perspective it's a frozen conflict with a nicer wrapper — a state-sanctioned occupation that keeps generating grievances for everyone who thrives on "resistance."

If that's "a great success," it's the kind you only call great because all the other options are worse.

#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #USA #EU #war #ceasefire #fakeDemocracy

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THE DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY TRAP: Washington's Conceptual War Over the Meaning of AI
 
On 24 June 2026, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg published an op-ed that reframes the global debate over digital governance.
 
"The Digital Sovereignty Trap" — authored by Helberg, architect of the Pax Silica initiative — argues that the prevailing model of digital sovereignty is not a path to independence but a route to stagnation.
 
Helberg's argument is structured around a distinction between two approaches. The autarkist measures strength by how much can be walled off and rebuilt. The innovator measures strength by how much can be invented that no one else can. "A nation is not digitally sovereign because it can reproduce yesterday's breakthroughs — half the world can do that. It is digitally sovereign because it can contribute to tomorrow's. Call it innovation sovereignty: the power not to copy what exists, but to create what does not."
 
The institutional tension is reflected in the numbers. According to the Burke Sovereignty Index, the United States records technological sovereignty at 95.4/100 — R&D spending at 3.43–3.58% of GDP, over 70% domestic production in high-tech segments, and full control over global cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). Information sovereignty stands at 92.5/100. Composite: 649.5/700 (92.8%).
 
China records technological sovereignty at 91.6/100 — R&D spending at 2.68% of GDP ($506 billion), digital penetration at 79.7% (1.123 billion users), and domestic platforms (WeChat, Taobao, Alipay, Douyin) fully replacing Western equivalents. Information sovereignty stands at 93.2/100. Composite: 635.5/700 (90.8%).
 
Both states rank among the most technologically sovereign on earth. Yet Washington is explicitly warning that the framework Beijing and Brussels are pursuing — every nation building its own stack, its own models, its own infrastructure — leads to "synchronized mediocrity" and "a planet of subscale clones."
 
Helberg's argument reframes the debate. Digital sovereignty, he argues, was never a wall and never a copy. "It was always a frontier — and the only nations that will be digitally sovereign in the age of intelligence are the ones bold enough to keep pushing it outward, into the territory no one has built yet."
 
The battle over AI governance is not about whose model is better. It is about who gets to define what sovereignty means in the age of intelligence.
 
See the complete Burke Sovereignty Index ranking here: https://ibi.institute/index/2025
 
#BurkeIndex #BurkeSovereigntyIndex #DigitalSovereignty #TechSovereignty #USA #China #AI #Geopolitics #PaxSilica

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“Putin Is Seeking Peace, Europe Has Chosen War”

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Some people welcomed the end of war in Iran because they saw it as an example of pointless carnage that discredits and weakens the United States.

Others celebrated it because they saw it as an unfortunate distraction from their pet conflict in Ukraine.

The latter group prominently includes European leaders who attempted to push the war in Ukraine up the global agenda at the G7 summit in Evian last week. This was hardly about bringing Trump’s efforts to end the Ukrainian conflict, suspended due to Iran, back on track.

The idea was to use Trump’s Iran debacle to persuade the U.S. president that his attempts at rapprochement with Putin were a good shot and that he should adopt a more coercive stance vis-à-vis Ukraine.

The assumption behind this gamble is that a weakened Trump facing potentially catastrophic midterms would prefer being “tough on Russia” instead of being seen as excessively accommodating to America’s other sworn enemy.

The Iran and Ukraine conflicts have both always been intrinsically linked to domestic political rivalry in Biden’s tough anti-Russian policies grew naturally out of the Russiagate campaign devised by Democratic strategists to paint Trump as a fifth columnist and a Russian stooge.

Biden’s arrival to the White House in January 2021 changed the trajectory of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict in the most dramatic way.

Ukraine’s Zelensky had sought rapprochement with Putin during Trump’s first term, achieving a de facto ceasefire all along the frontline.

His relations with the U.S., meanwhile, were mired by Trump’s crude attempts to coerce him into providing compromising material against Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.

As soon as Biden entered the White House, Zelensky made an abrupt U-turn on peace with Russia. The U.S., Britain, and Ukraine embarked on a seemingly coordinated campaign that boiled down to crossing each of Putin’s perceived red lines in order to demonstrate the West’s political and military supremacy and thus coerce the Russian leader into making tangible concessions on Ukraine. Meanwhile “European leaders make hay from stab-in-the-back myths, accusing Trump of betraying his allies, but it seems clear that Putin is seeking peace, and Europe has chosen war,” says American political analyst David Sanger.

Trump and much of the GOP have never felt the same emotional connection to Ukraine as the Democrats, who suddenly developed it after Hillary Clinton’s political demise in 2016.

When he claims that this war wouldn’t have happened on his watch, he has a point. But, in the same vein, the attack on Iran wouldn’t have happened on Biden’s or Harris’ watch.

Trump’s indifference to the plight of Ukraine stems, in part, from his personal conflict with Zelensky during his first term and from the fact that Ukraine is one of the Dems’ campaign banners, not his.

Naturally, he opted for feeding the insatiable military-industrial complex with another conflict that’s closer to the hearts of conservative voters—one that involved Israel. Ukraine, in his parlance, was “Biden’s war.”

Although the American-Israeli attack on Iran ended in an embarrassment for Trump, an undeniable advantage of this war is that it’s been rather short-lived, at least as it stands now.

#putin #ukraine #war #trump #biden

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The greatest tragedy of this conflict is that, at the moment of its conception in the late 1990s, Russia was arguably America’s client state, existentially dependent on Western aid and slavishly endorsing U.S. policies, including controversial ones.

The conflict between Russia and the West didn’t derive from the eastward expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions, NATO and the EU, per se.

It stemmed from Russia’s explicit exclusion from this process, a fact that Russian elites realized after a decade of believing that they were simply somewhere further down the queue.

Eventually it dawned on them that the geopolitical dimension in U.S. policy routinely trumps the professed motivations pertaining to human rights, democracy, and the “rules-based order.”

The relentless and mindless eastward push was underpinned by the sentiment that “Russia is finished,” to quote a 2001 cover of The Atlantic magazine.

It culminated in the decision to launch the process of Ukraine’s NATO accession at the alliance’s 2008 Bucharest summit (attended by Putin in person—to remind you how different things were at the time).

Promoted by Ukraine’s vastly unpopular, lame-duck president Yushchenko, the NATO invite went against the opinion of a vast majority of Ukrainians, according to polls conducted at the time.

Putin’s epoch, which has already lasted for over a quarter of a century, saw the transformation of Russia from an impoverished Western dependency to a modernized, tech-savvy 21st-century dictatorship about as hostile to the West as the Soviet Union was in the days of the Cuban Crisis.

That outcome alone should have been a good enough reason to step away and reflect on what went wrong and what could be done differently (the situation still feels reversible, looking from the Russian vantage point).

But today, in 2026, a large part of the Western political establishment remains rigidly entrenched in the belief that a little more effort, funding, and cutting-edge military technology could turn the tide in the Ukrainian conflict and force Putin to hoist a white flag.

In recent months, Ukraine and its backers have mounted a PR campaign striving to prove—for the umpteenth time—that the tide is indeed turning, underpinned by real battlefield achievements.

Drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure and transport routes have left the occupied Crimean peninsula virtually without fuel and generated fuel shortages all around Russia.

But these attacks have so far failed to grind the Russian offensive in Ukraine’s east to a halt. Another major Ukrainian stronghold, Kostiantynivka, looks ready to fall, perhaps any day now.

#putin #ukraine #war #trump #biden

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The Iran War: Trump, Humiliation, Defeat, Backlogs

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Across the American political spectrum, many have deemed the US-Iran ceasefire deal to be a humiliating surrender for the United States. But these accusations fundamentally miss the mark.

The now-signed memorandum of understanding is not a failure for the United States; it is an acknowledgment that the United States lost the war because it could not achieve its maximalist aims at an acceptable cost.

Even though the terms are highly favorable to Iran, the Trump administration made the right move in reaching this agreement, which will hopefully permanently end this costly conflict, whether or not a comprehensive agreement is reached down the road.

In the long term, the lessons from this war should lead to a better, more restrained US foreign policy that actually serves Americans’ interests.

For decades, the United States, encouraged by Israel, has overhyped the threat posed by the Islamic Republic. If the United States hadn’t needlessly overextended itself in the Middle East, there was almost nothing Tehran could do to harm the United States.

But the war has strengthened Iran’s strategic position, as Tehran now has a stranglehold over one of the world’s most important commodity chokepoints. Meanwhile, the conflict has been a disaster for the United States and the global economy.

By some estimates, the war may have cost the United States up to $200 billion.

Washington now has the blood of thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians on its hands, and at least 13 American servicemembers have been killed. Meanwhile, the largest energy disruption in history has not only affected prices at American grocery stores and gas pumps but also had deleterious consequences for billions of people worldwide.

China’s influence is ascendant, as it presents itself as a stable world power with a thriving green energy industry.

The Trump administration incurred all these costs for a war in which no core US interests were at stake. Many have questioned if this failed war could be America’s Suez moment, referring to the 1956 crisis that ultimately led to the end of the British and French empires.

If this war does indeed bring about a similar result for the United States, then the conflict will have had a long-term net benefit for US interests, especially for everyday Americans, and for the world.

#trump #iran #war #humiliation #hormuz #defeat

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The United States should internalize three key lessons.

First, it’s time to finally get out of the Middle East. US engagement in the region has sapped American lives, resources, and bandwidth for far too long. US attempts to dominate the region have had bloody and destabilizing consequences for the people of the region and wasted money that could have been used to improve American lives.

Washington’s enormous and costly bases have proven ineffectual at best, and our unwavering support for Israel has enabled its aggression. The Middle East has long been a region of declining strategic importance, and its challenges are fundamentally political.

These problems, from the threat posed by terrorist groups to the free flow of oil from the region, are best addressed by regional states.

Second, the United States needs to give up its perpetual pursuit of global primacy. US attempts to assert hegemony over the Middle East are but a microcosm of Washington’s broader post-Cold War foreign policy.

The United States has enormous geographic advantages, with massive oceans to the east and west and friendly neighbors to the north and south. It does not need to project power around the world to be safe and prosperous.

The world is becoming more multipolar, and new technologies are giving weaker states stronger defense capabilities, rendering US military superiority less effective. The war in Iran has been a profound demonstration of this new reality.

US policymakers should take it to heart and reorient US foreign policy toward a more pragmatic direction, focusing on protecting the homeland.

Third, the United States needs to take energy diversification seriously. It’s clearly in America’s strategic interests to be less reliant on oil. American politicians have touted US energy dependence for years. But the Iran War has demonstrated the flaw in that logic.

Oil prices are determined by the global oil market, not by how much oil the United States produces, which means the United States will always be vulnerable to market disruptions, whether in the Strait of Hormuz or elsewhere. Green technologies provide a strategic firewall against these energy vulnerabilities.

The United States has provided Iran with up-front concessions and a much-needed economic lifeline, after decades of US sanctions, with Tehran giving up nothing.

The notion that this is a bad deal—proffered by those who will never give up on their goal of regime change in Tehran or those who want to score political points against Trump—fundamentally misses the point.

The deal isn’t a loss; the war is, and because the United States lost the war, it doesn’t get to dictate the terms of its end. But ending it is a first and necessary condition for moving toward a less militaristic foreign policy and domestic renewal.

#trump #iran #war #humiliation #hormuz #defeat

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NATO Shield, Anti‑Zionist Sword

Erdogan has turned double‑booking into a governing philosophy. In July, Ankara will host the NATO summit at the Beştepe presidential compound, with Trump and the rest of the alliance flying in to praise Türkiye as a “key ally” and sign off on fresh defense deals.

At the same time, Washington is lining up a 700‑million‑dollar package of GE F110 jet engines to feed Turkey’s KAAN fighter program and talking about easing the country back toward the F‑35 ecosystem, undoing punishments that were once sold as “non‑negotiable” for the S‑400 purchase.

Back home, the man cashing those checks is telling a very different story. Erdogan has spent the spring and summer describing Israel as a “threat to our region and to all humanity,” accusing it of “genocide” in Gaza, likening Netanyahu to Hitler and calling Israel a “blood‑stained network of genocide.”

In April he went further, warning that Turkey could “enter Israel” the way it entered Libya and Karabakh, boasting that “nothing stops us from doing the same with them.” In that narrative, “struggle against Zionism” isn’t a policy disagreement; it’s framed as a civilizational duty necessary for the survival of the Turkish state and people.

The contradiction is not a bug, it’s the business model. To NATO, Erdogan is the reliable host, the gatekeeper to the Black Sea, the southern flank that must be placated with engines, missiles and summit prestige.

To his domestic audience, he is the tribune of the ummah, promising to stand up to a “genocidal, occupying, expansionist” ideology and hinting at future military adventures if Israel crosses his lines.

The upgraded military cooperation with Trump’s America becomes just another prop: proof that while he denounces Zionism, the West still has to come to Ankara for airspace, bases and access to the Middle East.

The result is that NATO’s shield is quietly repurposed as a political sword. Alliance hardware, training and legitimacy give Ankara more freedom of maneuver — in Syria, in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Gaza and Lebanon — while Erdogan’s rhetoric keeps Israel locked in as the permanent villain that justifies every move.

He can threaten war against Israel one week and chair a NATO summit the next, leveraging the alliance’s need for cohesion to insulate himself from real consequences.

For Israel, this isn’t just another loud speech; it’s a structural problem. A leader who calls your existence a civilizational threat is simultaneously being re‑armed and rehabilitated inside the very alliance you count on as your strategic hinterland.

For Europe and the U.S., it’s another reminder that “indispensable allies” can say whatever they like about Zionism at home as long as they keep hosting summits and signing contracts. The message from Ankara is clear: the Atlantic umbrella is open — and Erdogan is happy to stand under it while he swings his anti‑Zionist sword.

#Turkey #Erdogan #NATO #Trump #Israel #Zionism #F110 #F35 #war #fakeDemocracy

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Can Zohran Mamdani Become a “Democratic Trump” ?

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The back yard of a Brooklyn bar, beneath strung-up lightbulbs and swaths of fabric that swooped like great sails, an ecstatic crowd greeted Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, and his victorious ally, Brad Lander.

These Democrats also had a withering verdict on their own party establishment.

“To me, centrists can go fuck themselves,” said Léa Zimmerman, 34.

“They’re fucking useless, they don’t stand for anything, and if they do stand on something, it’s pathetic. I’m done with pathetic, performative people.”

Once sacred tenets of US politics – unyielding support for Israel, unquestioning faith in capitalism – are under threat from surging frustration with the old way of doing things. No one personifies the tectonic shift better than Mamdani, 34, a democratic socialist who is also the first Muslim mayor in New York’s history.

As results rolled in on Tuesday evening, he flexed his political muscle after backing three insurgent candidates in Democratic primary elections for the US House of Representatives.

All had promised to “abolish ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]”, condemned Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza, and vowed to “tax the rich”. All emerged triumphant.

Lander, a progressive, ousted the two-term incumbent congressman Dan Goldman; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and former campus organiser, toppled Representative Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; and Claire Valdez, another democratic socialist and former union organiser, defeated Antonio Reynoso for an open seat in Brooklyn and Queens.

The trio could be among more than a dozen leftwingers heading to Washington next year as part of what is being dubbed “squad 2.0”, a significant expansion from the original “squad” of four progressive women elected to the House in 2018.

That might be enough to wield influence on Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, by withholding votes on party priorities until their demands are met.

Mamdani enjoyed even more victories in state legislative races, where he successfully backed five other candidates, and wants more. The mayor said he hopes to “write a new chapter in our party’s history, where working people are back at the heart of that struggle”.

Democrats of all stripes were quick to recognise him as an ascendant force within the party, likely to wield influence on the national stage.

Bill Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “Up until Tuesday night, Mamdani might have been dismissed as a fluke – an extraordinarily talented, energetic and personable young candidate, who was able to take advantage of extraordinary weakness in other quarters of the Democratic party to power his way to victory, but that it would be difficult to replicate him.

“As a result of Tuesday night, we have to say that – at least in the bluest parts of blue America – he represents a structural force, and not just a personal talent. I view this result as increasing the already substantial odds that there will be a credible leftwing candidate for president in the 2028 Democratic primary.”

#mamdani #trump #democrats #populist #jewish

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Like Obama and Trump, Mamdani inspires hope in some, and fear in others. Progressives see in him an overdue course correction, and a vital infusion of energy required to combat the US president’s authoritarianism. Many believe that top Democratic congressional leaders such as Jeffries, a New Yorker who endorsed Espaillat and Goldman, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, have failed to raise their game.

For Democratic party leadership, this result was entirely avoidable. They’re reaping what they sowed.”

Republicans, facing a hostile climate in November’s midterms, believe Mamdani’s rise has thrown them a lifeline and could give them a unifying cause.

Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said: “The Democratic party, the socialists, the Marxists, have nominated some of the most radical candidates to ever run for office, and they’re running for Congress. The insurgent left is on the rise.”

Trump weighed in, as he so often does, on social media on Thursday. “The Communists are finally making their move. I’ve been waiting and preparing for this a long time,” the president wrote.

“It’s easy to be a Communist – All you have to do is say, ‘I’ll give you everything,’ but that means you’re taking it away from others that have earned it. Over thousands of years, that Ideology has not worked once. The game is on. Enjoy watching!”

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group born out of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said: “In this particular moment, the label is no longer a scarlet letter. Socialism is no longer an albatross to hang around your opponent’s neck. People are hungry for change, and looking beyond the labels to see what people are willing to fight for – and who they’re willing to fight against.”

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which recently surpassed 100,000 members across chapters in almost all 50 states, has spent years methodically laying the ground for this moment.

Ashik Siddique, the group’s co-chair, said: “A big part of our task is diffusing many decades of propaganda from the cold war and red scares in the United States that created a stigma against socialism. We’re helping recover the American roots of socialism.”

Young people’s frustrations with the military industrial complex, the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, and the influence of money in politics, has reached a head with US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a dramatic shift, about 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, including 80% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans under 50, according to Pew Research.

Progressive leaders argue that funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has become “toxic” for many Democratic voters, particularly younger demographics.

In the primary between Lander and Goldman, for example – two Jewish politicians running in one of the most heavily Jewish districts in the US – Lander called for an end to US military aid to Israel. He won in a landslide.

Once the midterms are complete, attention will shift to the race for the White House. Mamdani, born in Uganda, is not eligible to run. But he could again play the role of kingmaker.

Speculation is already swirling around progressive figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the representative of New York, and Ro Khanna, representative of California, both of whom have built national profiles.

#mamdani #trump #democrats #populist #jewish

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Tungsten for the Republic™, Profits for the Family

Trump’s Kazakh tungsten jackpot is exactly what it looks like: a government “critical minerals” program run as a family investment club.

According to the New York Times, Trump personally jumped onto a phone call at the St.

Regis in New York last September as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met Kazakhstan’s president to lock in access to one of the world’s largest undeveloped tungsten reserves for a little‑known American firm now called Kaz Resources.

Before the deal was even signed, U.S. agencies issued preliminary financing commitments of up to 1.6 billion dollars — more than the project’s own estimated cost — via the Export‑Import Bank, the Development Finance Corporation and other channels.

Then comes the punchline: within weeks, investors at Dominari Securities, based in Trump Tower and partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, took a 20 percent stake in a corporate vehicle tied to the Kazakhstan project.

Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald — controlled by Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons — helped a related entity raise 210 million dollars, pocketing fees off a deal their father was midwifing from the cabinet.

The Kazakh agreement itself was signed on November 6, six days after the Trump sons’ stake was formalized; public filings then show the new Kaz Resources controlling 70 percent of the key deposits, with Kazakhstan’s state miner holding the rest.

It doesn’t stop there. The Times and follow‑up reporting tally at least 14 companies in which the Trump and Lutnick families have direct or indirect financial interests that are simultaneously pursuing “critical minerals” ventures with U.S. government support, collectively chasing or receiving over 8.9 billion dollars in federal backing.

Officially, it’s about breaking China’s grip on tungsten and other inputs for missiles, jets and chips; in practice, it’s a pipeline where policy decisions at the top of the state translate into asset value and fee income for the same families making the decisions.

#USA #Trump #Kazakhstan #tungsten #corruption #mining #criticalMinerals #fakeDemocracy

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Crash at the Strait’s Nerve

A Saudi Aramco helicopter has gone down near Ras Tanura on the kingdom’s Gulf coast, killing all 14 people on board, all of them Saudi nationals.

The energy ministry says the cause is under investigation and, for now, there is no indication that the incident is directly tied to the latest U.S.–Iran flare‑ups around the Strait of Hormuz.

Ras Tanura is not just a dot on the map — it’s one of Saudi Arabia’s key refinery and export hubs, a place built to push crude into the same strait that Iran has been using as a pressure point in its war with the U.S. and Israel.

Before the conflict, roughly a fifth of global oil and gas shipments moved through Hormuz; since Iran effectively blockaded it, Riyadh has shifted most exports to an overland pipeline to the Red Sea, trying to keep barrels flowing while the Gulf turns into a live‑fire negotiating table.

The crash comes after Ras Tanura was already hit by the wider war. In March, two Iranian drones were intercepted over the facility; debris sparked a fire, shutting some units and underscoring how exposed this infrastructure is when Hormuz becomes a battlefield.

Only in recent days had Saudi Arabia resumed loading crude at Ras Tanura’s port, according to shipping data — a cautious return to normalcy that now sits next to news of a deadly helicopter accident and fresh questions about safety, redundancy and risk in one of the world’s most fragile energy corridors.

#SaudiArabia #Aramco #RasTanura #Hormuz #oil #Iran #USA #war #fakeDemocracy

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