it is something Trump understands but Ukraine, the Europeans and the hawks in Washington simply refuse to accept: However long the fighting may drag pointlessly on, Ukraine is the vanquished in this war; Russia the victor.
No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia.
Zelensky’s intent as he made plans to see Trump Monday was to persuade him to pull him back from the frightening idea of a peace agreement
SCHEERPOST, Patrick Lawrence: August 19, 2025,
No, the Trump–Putin summit at a joint-forces military base in Anchorage last Friday did not produce an agreement on a ceasefire in Ukraine. President Trump made no reference to “severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin did not consent to such an accord. Nothing was said about new sanctions against Russia and nothing about sanctions against nations that trade with Russia. Trump appears not to have mentioned those nuclear-armed submarines he ordered to “appropriate regions” a couple of weeks ago, and Putin seems not to have asked about them.
No, there was no such talk at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson. After not quite three hours behind closed doors with the Russian president, Trump departed Anchorage ahead of schedule, dropping the thought that he and Putin might linger so that Volodymyr Zelensky, president of the autocratic Ukrainian regime, could join them for further talks.
How yesterday, how swiftly passé all that early coverage proves but three days after Trump returned to Washington and Putin to Moscow. As of follow-on talks at the White House Monday with Zelensky and a swarm of European leaders, Trump seems to have rendered a ceasefire utterly beside the point in favor of an agreement he is fashioning with Putin that, if it comes to be — and we must stay with “if” for now — will prove stunningly concrete. Trump is after an enduring peace now — this as a subset of a new era in U.S.–Russian relations. Pull this off and he will improve his place in the history texts by magnitudes.
We do not know, and may never know, precisely what the two leaders said to one another behind closed doors as their interpreters and their foreign ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio, sat beside them. But it did not take long for Trump to start unpacking the plan he and Putin began to fashion during their talks. In post-summit interviews and social media posts, and in his encounters with Zelensky and his European sponsors at the White House Monday, Trump has made it plain as rain that an awful lot of something was discussed at a summit where nothing was reported to get done.
Within hours of the summit, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that he and Putin were near an agreement on an exchange of territories between Russia and Ukraine and that there would be security guarantees for the latter after the cessation of hostilities. “There are points that we negotiated and those points that we largely have agreed on,” Trump told Sean Hannity.
There is no telling how close or far Washington, Moscow, Kiev and (to the extent they matter) the Europeans may be from a comprehensive settlement. “Largely” covers an infinitude of near misses and failures, and Donald Trump is, after all, Donald Trump. But I read in this quick pencil-sketch a suggestion of the give-and-take dynamic between Trump and Putin: Russia will get some of the land it has fought for these past three years, which, if you look at a map, amounts to a security guarantee against the aggressions of viscerally Russophobic Ukrainians; the United States and the Western powers will cease arming the Kiev regime — another kind of guarantee. The Ukrainians will give up land but get security guarantees of their own.
Does this strike you as an unbalanced proposition? It should. Implicit in it is something Trump understands but Ukraine, the Europeans and the hawks in Washington simply refuse to accept: However long the fighting may drag pointlessly on, Ukraine is the vanquished in this war; Russia the victor.
We have had a slow roll of revelations since the Fox News interview. Reuters reported a day after the summit that Trump told Zelensky during a post-summit telephone call that it was time to “make a deal” with Moscow, which must include ceding some land to Russian sovereignty. “Russia is a very big power, and you’re not,” Trump reportedly told the Ukrainian president. Reuters said it reflected Putin’s demand in Anchorage that the Kiev regime recognize Russian sovereignty over all of the Donbas, the eastern regions of Ukraine that Russia formally annexed in September 2022 and parts of which, but not all, are under Russian military control.
Later Saturday came the big one, or a big one, as the post-summit situation is nothing if not kinetic. “It was determined by all,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform, “that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which oftentimes do not hold up.”
“A mere ceasefire.” Wow. So much for that. A peace agreement instead of a ceasefire, cap “P” and cap “A,” if you please. Wow times 10. This is a major, major departure from the demands long advanced by all of the Western powers and Ukraine — an implicit rejection, this is to say, of the prevalent anti–Russian orthodoxy. No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia. It is with this statement, then, that Trump signaled his determination to chart new territory.
Zelensky’s intent as he made plans to see Trump Monday was to persuade him to pull him back from the frightening idea of a peace agreement and reinvest in the demand for a ceasefire. This was also what the crew from across the Atlantic had in mind. Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz: The British, French and German leaders were there. So were Mark Rutte, the NATO sec-gen, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Hawks all, this crowd. They arrived, as news reports indicated, in a state somewhere between alarm and panic.
Trump appears to have heard these people out on the ceasefire question, as was to be expected. But there is no indication that the thought went much beyond hypothetical notions of what might be discussed in an also hypothetical summit between Zelensky and Putin. And there is every indication Trump holds to his early post-summit disclosures, of which there is now more yet-to-be-confirmed detail, notably in the land-for-guarantees line and what Trump has meant in his mentions of “land swaps.”………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………….. The “centrist” leadership in Washington and the European capitals has refused to listen to Moscow for many years now; the media that publish the bulletins of these trans–Atlantic elites routinely make the case that anything Putin says is by definition the opposite of true and that listening to the Russians on any topic is beyond all the fence posts, irretrievably out-of-bounds. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of Trump’s transgression against this background.
Trump’s second sin is his evident embrace of reality. And reality, like listening, has also been off-limits for the centrist elites and those clerking for them in media on both sides of the Atlantic. This has been so at last since the U.S.–cultivated coup that brought the current regime of crooks and neo–Nazis to power 11 years ago. Those dwelling in the Kingdom of Pretend have carried on for months as if the Kiev regime can set the terms for any kind of settlement and Moscow will have no choice but to accept them. “Ukraine is also determined not to let Russia set the terms and structure of future peace talks,” The Times reported from Kiev in a pre-summit curtain raiser.
Not to let Russia…?
……………………………………………….. To say Trump aligned with Putin, or got played or otherwise capitulated, is another way, a simpleton’s or cynic’s way, of denying or veiling reality. In my read, Trump listened to Putin’s case and has concluded, Yes, he is right. This is the ultimate reality long at issue and long unsayable. Trump has done no less and no more than speak this truth at last. The rest is rubbish.
Let us sin along with Trump, then, if we haven’t already. Let us all look past the mountain ranges of propaganda, cognitive warfare, perception management and what have you and say what Trump is now saying: It is time to acknowledge forthrightly that Putin is right about the war and its causes, about the Biden regime’s purposeful provocations, about the larger questions of which it is merely a subset and about how most sensibly to negotiate a lasting settlement in the borderlands between Europe and Russia and altogether between West and East. https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/19/patrick-lawrence-that-big-beautiful-summit-in-alaska/
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”
The Dwarfs had to slink away. Will they, at long last, tell Zelensky they cannot back up their rhetoric with the needed arms and financial support?
I shall not make the de-rigueur disclaimer lest anyone infer that I think President Donald Trump is Snow White. Nor do I feel a need to assure readers that I am not “in Putin’s pocket.” In the tradition of a “current intelligence” analyst, I shall simply “call ‘em like I see ‘em.” And there are lots of dots to put together.
It has been clear since the Alaska summit that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have come to an overall agreement on Ukraine and that it is now being fleshed out in plain sight. And both are acutely aware of the many forces wishing to sabotage moves toward a negotiated settlement.
They have agreed to call it “Biden’s war” and then to conduct themselves as though they have bigger fish to fry – first and foremost improving U.S.-Russia relations.
Why have so many observers been unable to grasp the significance of this key sentence in the first paragraph of the readout from the Aug. 6 Putin-Witkoff meeting – the meeting that set these hopeful events in train?
“Once again, it was noted that Russia-US relations could be placed on a totally different, mutually beneficial footing, which would be in stark contrast with the way these relations have evolved in recent years.” (Emphasis added.)
(Pardon the pedantry, but it is not widely known that the Kremlin’s Russian-to-English translator erred in using the subjunctive could. The word in the Russian readout is stronger; it means can – the indicative, not the subjunctive mood.) This is, well, indicative.
The shared, overriding objective to improve bilateral ties came through clearly both at the summit on Friday and at the “March of the Gnomes” on Monday when seven European leaders arrived at the White House to back Volodymyr Zelensky (no offense to garden gnomes – or dwarfs).
Enroute Alaska
On Air Force One, Trump told Fox’s Bret Baier, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.” Nyet, was Putin’s answer.
Perhaps the president thought he could work his persuasive powers on Putin one-on-one and change his mind. More likely, Trump knew his gambit had zero prospect of success, and merely wanted to be able to tell the foot-draggers later that he had thrown one last Hail Mary pass, but in vain.
Just a few hours later Trump wrote on truthsocial:
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”
The New York Times and other media were quick to point out that Trump was “siding with Putin.”
Maps … and Charts
While Putin used the Alaska summit to make clear Russia’s core interests on Ukraine and to argue that he had no option other than to invade, it is a safe bet that he also showed Trump a map depicting the “order of battle;” that is, the disposition of forces along the contact line and in reserve.
This morning Trump hinted that Russia should be allowed to hold onto the territory it has occupied in Ukraine, a concept so far anathema to Zelensky and most of the European leaders.
THE Map
“The Ukrainian soldiers were brave as hell because it’s fighting a force that’s much, much bigger and clearly much more powerful,” Trump said of the Russian military … “And you know, it’s not like they’ve stopped. If you, I assume you’ve all seen the map, you know, a big chunk of territory is taken, and that territory has been taken.
“Now they’re talking about Donbas. But Donbas, right now, as you know, is 79 percent owned and controlled by Russia,” Trump added. “So they understand that.”
Zelensky and the Seven Dwarfs
The Dwarfs had to slink away. Will they, at long last, tell Zelensky they cannot back up their rhetoric with the needed arms and financial support? It will take a while, but in the end they will have to do so.
The end is near.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Electricite de France SA will likely cut nuclear power production in northern parts of the country this week because of forecast shallow waters on the Meuse River.
Low flows may affect output from the Chooz plant located near the Belgian border starting Friday, according to a company statement.
“The Meuse is quite far north for this sort of restriction, so it’s notable for that reason,” said William Peck, senior power analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. “But given the weather forecasts and the time of year, I don’t think we’ll see a major ongoing issue or much additional upside risk from it.”
The country’s atomic power plants have been disrupted recently amid weather-related pressures. A heat wave forced several reactors to curb output because the river water used to cool them became too warm.
In addition, four reactors were shut down after a swarm of jellyfish clogged the filter drums. Their growing numbers can be linked to climate change.
Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America
Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship.……………………………………………..
Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish émigrés and Israeli operatives without “any clearances” from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by historian Jefferson Morley as “a leading architect of America’s strategic relationship with Israel,” detailing Angleton’s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel’s theft of US nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.
Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his “most important” task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.
According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev’s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted “practically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.” Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced “500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish” who “knew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.”
Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the “release” of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.
The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by US intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that the US provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel’s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.
Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel’s Mossad as Angleton’s “primary source” of information, confirm that the CIA’s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency – and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with US interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.
Other newly declassified files from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.
A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel’s founders. Over a dozen references to “Israel,” “Tel Aviv,” or descriptions of figures as “Jewish,” which were scrubbed from the 2018 release, can now be viewed on the National Archives site.
The documents reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.
Those documents also reveal that Angleton’s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald’s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton’s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America
Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship. The scene of the crime was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, a uranium processing facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania owned by a Zionist financier named David Lowenthal. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro, a fellow Zionist hired by Lowenthal to run the plant, illegally diverted hundreds of kilograms of nuclear fissile material to Israel. Posing as a scientist, the notorious Mossad spy Rafi Eitan visited NUMEC three years later to continue the heist.
As Jefferson Morley documented in his biography of Angleton, “The Ghost,” the late CIA counterintelligence chief made sure the CIA looked the other way as Israel constructed its first nuclear weapon out of the stolen fissile material. According to Morley, “Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.”
A 1977 investigation by the US Government Accountability Office found that the CIA withheld information about the NUMEC nuclear theft from the FBI and Department of Energy, and “found that certain key individuals had not been contacted by the FBI almost 2 years into the FBI’s current investigation.”
The latest batch of Church Committee files add new detail about Angleton’s compromising of US national security to benefit Israel, and his attempts to cover up his betrayal.
During his testimony before the Committee, Angleton was pressed about media reports alleging that he and his counterintelligence unit provided Israel with technical support for constructing nuclear weapons. He strenuously denied the charges, insisting the CIA had never played any role in providing Tel Aviv with nuclear materials. However, when questioned about whether “Israeli intelligence efforts” were ever conducted in the US “aimed at acquiring… nuclear technology,” Angleton equivocated………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/15/cias-angleton-israeli-spy-ring-files/
As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also use water indirectly, through the water required to produce the electricity to power the facility. The amount of water used to produce electricity increases dramatically when the source is fossil fuels compared with solar or wind………………………….
Our analysis of public records, government documents and sustainability reports compiled by top data center companies has found that technology companies don’t always reveal how much water their data centers use. In a forthcoming Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal article, we walk through our methods and findings using these resources to uncover the water demands of data centers.
In general, corporate sustainability reports offered the most access and detail – including that in 2024, one data center in Iowa consumed 1 billion (3.8 billion liters) gallons of water – enough to supply all of Iowa’s residential water for five days.
In some data centers, the water is used up in the cooling process. In an evaporative cooling system, pumps push cold water through pipes in the data center. The cold water absorbs the heat produced by the data center servers, turning into steam that is vented out of the facility. This system requires a constant supply of cold water………………………………………………………………………….
Sustainability reports offer a valuable glimpse into data center water use. But because the reports are voluntary, different companies report different statistics in ways that make them hard to combine or compare. Importantly, these disclosures do not consistently include the indirect water consumption from their electricity use, which the Lawrence Berkeley Lab estimated was 12 times greater than the direct use for cooling in 2023. Our estimates highlighting specific water consumption reports are all related to cooling.
Amazon releases annual sustainability reports, but those documents do not disclose how much water the company uses. Microsoft provides data on its water demands for its overall operations, but does not break down water use for its data centers. Meta does that breakdown, but only in a companywide aggregate figure. Google provides individual figures for each data center.
In general, the five companies we analyzed that do disclose water usage show a general trend of increasing direct water use each year. Researchers attribute this trend to data centers.
A closer look at Google and Meta
To take a deeper look, we focused on Google and Meta, as they provide some of the most detailed reports of data center water use.
Data centers make up significant proportions of both companies’ water use. In 2023, Meta consumed 813 million gallons of water globally (3.1 billion liters) – 95% of which, 776 million gallons (2.9 billion liters), was used by data centers…………………………………………………………………………………
Given society’s growing interest in AI, the data center industry will likely continue its rapid expansion. But without a consistent and transparent way to track water consumption over time, the public and government officials will be making decisions about locations, regulations and sustainability without complete information on how these massive companies’ hot and thirsty buildings will affect their communities and their environments.
Walmart has recalled some of its shrimp products in the US after radioactive material was detected in a shipment of seafood.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned the public not to eat frozen shrimp sold under Walmart’s Great Value label, as it could have been exposed to a dangerous isotope in shipping containers.
One sample of breaded shrimp tested positive for the substance, the FDA said, but this positive sample “did not enter US commerce”.
Consumers in 13 US states where the shrimp products are sold have been advised to throw any recently bought products among three batches……………………………………
The recalled shrimp was sold at Walmart locations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia, and shoppers in those states were advised to be cautious.
It came from an Indonesian supplier that has since had a number of shipping containers denied entry to the US, the FDA said.
One shipment tested positive for Caesium-137, the radioactive form of the periodic element Caesium.
The amount contained in the tested shipment held by the FDA was not enough to pose acute harm to consumers, exposure over time could pose an elevated risk of cancer by damaging living cells in the body, said officials from the agency.
Caesium-137 is made through nuclear reactions and is present in trace amounts in soil, food and air worldwide. It is one of the principal sources of radiation around Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.
The troupe arrived to “daddy’s” DC office for their official dressing down. If nothing else, we must marvel at the fact that the meeting produced some of the most remarkable political optics, perhaps, in history:
Has there ever been anything like this? The entire pantheon of the European ruling class reduced to sniveling children in their school principal’s office. No one can deny that Trump has succeeded in veritably ‘breaking Europe over his knee’. There is no coming back from this turning point moment, the optics simply cannot be redeemed.
But even snide ridicule aside, objectively speaking, we must point to how absolutely defeated and low-energy the delegation looked……………
Hands in pockets, looks of mild confusion or disinterest, vacant eyes, and that bizarre ‘dead-space’ atmosphere like a “TV tuned to a dead station” (hat tip Mr. Gibson). It’s clear that no one wants to be there, and everyone knows the artificial charade looks and feels forced. The real punchline comes at the 1:00 mark where it becomes eminently obvious the entire hollow exercise is nothing more than an ego-stroke for the cunning Ringmaster himself, as he bids his abject pupils to veer their gaze at the carefully-situated artwork presiding over the gilded humiliation ritual.
Volumes could be written on the implications of such a low point in European influence. But we’ll suffice with concluding that it’s clear the matter of the Ukrainian conflict’s resolution is of such existential importance to the behind-the-scenes cabal which writes the Euro-puppets’ orders, that this cabal is willing to risk everything, including politically sacrificing its “compradors” posing as elected leaders.
It’s pointless to even granularize it, but there were many small moments of humiliation in the meeting: from Trump’s seeming non-recognition of Finland’s president—unable to find him despite his sitting directly across from him—to Trump humbling Ursula, who came armed with a prescripted spiel about Russians kidnapping Ukrainian children; Trump slapped her silent by pointing out they had convened to talk about something else entirely, i.e. your propaganda is irrelevant and unwanted here.
It should also be noted that Trump did not greet a single one of the European messengers personally as they arrived, having a chaperone escort them like children from the White House playground instead. It was in sharp contrast to the pomp and ceremony of the Putin visit. This, of course, is by design, with Trump effectively showing the craven European compradors their subordinate place as part of his slow restructuring of the world order; Trump respects only power—mealy and servile leaders repulse him and earn his boot-print on their foreheads.
So what did the meeting actually accomplish, other than raising Trump’s prestige and smothering inconvenient media narratives from the news cycle?
What we saw was another rehash of the same routine as in Alaska: talks are held, major “progress” announced, yet no concrete details or evidence is provided. In this case, the big achievement is said to be the agreement on a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, followed by a “trilat” as Trump calls it. The problem is, there is zero evidence the Russian side has agreed to any such thing.
Firstly, press outlets blared that Trump “phoned Putin” in the midst of his meeting with the Europeans—Trump himself promptly shot this down:
I post this example to again illustrate just how much disinfo noise is clogging the airwaves around this issue. And this contextualizes the remainder of the analysis, surrounding what Russia may or may not have agreed to. You see, just as easily as mainstream outlets lied about Trump’s call, they may be doing so about the now-circulating claims that Putin has “agreed to” meet with Zelensky.
The Russians have been playing things extremely close to their chests, even more than usual. It appears they have adopted a strategy of deliberate strategic ambiguity in order to give Trump the license he needs to play his game against the Europeans—and Ukraine—while the Russians sit back and watch.
In this case, in confirming Trump’s attempt to get Putin and Zelensky to sit down together, Putin aide Ushakov very subtly modified the language to state that Putin and Trump discussed raising the level of “negotiators” and mentioned the possibility of Russia studying this proposal—as I wrote on X:
An interestingly evasive word-salad as non-answer in customary “Politburo-speak”. He doesn’t really confirm anything other than Trump and Putin discussed “raising the level of negotiators” between Russia and Ukraine (specifically omitting what level that would be). And in fact, he didn’t even say raising the level itself was discussed but rather the possibility of “studying” this proposal. It seems Russia for now continues to play strategic ambiguity to give Trump the arm space he needs to “work” on the Europeans and Zelensky.
In this case, in confirming Trump’s attempt to get Putin and Zelensky to sit down together, Putin aide Ushakov very subtly modified the language to state that Putin and Trump discussed raising the level of “negotiators” and mentioned the possibility of Russia studying this proposal—as I wrote on X:
An interestingly evasive word-salad as non-answer in customary “Politburo-speak”. He doesn’t really confirm anything other than Trump and Putin discussed “raising the level of negotiators” between Russia and Ukraine (specifically omitting what level that would be). And in fact, he didn’t even say raising the level itself was discussed but rather the possibility of “studying” this proposal. It seems Russia for now continues to play strategic ambiguity to give Trump the arm space he needs to “work” on the Europeans and Zelensky.
Can a play influence public perception of our shared atomic history enough to shift the conversation away from a presumed nuclear “renaissance” and into a more critical, life-protective examination of what this technology is and could do to us all?
Playwright and podcaster Libbe HaLevy believes it can. She spent 13 years researching and writing that play—Atomic Bill and the Payment Due—which will have its premiere staged reading on September 9th as a featured presentation of the 50th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College in Ohio.
For 14 years, HaLevy has hosted the podcast Nuclear Hotseat, aired on 20 Pacifica affiliate radio stations throughout the United States and, as its website (NuclearHotseat.com) says, has been tuned into and downloaded by audiences in over 124 countries around the world.
It was while working on a 2012 episode focusing on the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico that she became aware of journalistic irregularities around that event that piqued her interest.
The play is “a true story about media manipulation at the dawn of the Atomic Age and the New York Timesreporter who sold his soul to get the story.”
That reporter is William Laurence, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter at the Times. In 1945, General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, arranged with Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and Edwin James, its managing editor, to have Laurence secretly inserted into the Manhattan Project. He was the only journalist embedded in the crash program to build the first atomic bombs– a position he relished.
Before World War II broke out and the splitting of the atom first occurred, Laurence wrote in the Times about how atomic energy could for mankind “return the Earth to the Eden he had lost.” He witnessed the Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945, and wrote the Manhattan Project press release that was distributed afterwards, which claimed only that an ammunition dump exploded and no one was hurt. He had arranged a seat on the Enola Gay for its dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but missed getting on—a bitter disappointment. But he did fly on an airplane that followed the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. When the war ended, he wrote articles in the Times glorifying the Manhattan Project and for many years promoted nuclear energy in his stories— ignoring the lethal impacts of radioactivity.
Israel apologists always attack anti-Zionists by saying “Zionism just means self-determination for Jews! If you hate Zionism then you hate Jews!”
No, that’s not what Zionism means. Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That’s what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things.
There is simply no argument to the contrary. This is indisputably what Zionism looks like. There is no other alternate reality iteration of Zionism you can point to where genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and nonstop violence and abuse are not happening. This is the only way Zionism looks. The Zionist experiment has been run, and these are the results.
Trying to argue that Zionism doesn’t mean genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and nonstop violence and abuse is exactly the same as trying to argue that Nazism doesn’t mean all the things that happened when the Nazism experiment was run. Nazism means all the things that happened under Nazism. You can’t legitimately tell me “No, actually, Nazism just means a safe and prosperous homeland for the German people.” We’ve seen what Nazism looks like, and we’ve seen what Zionism looks like. To argue otherwise is to argue with reality.
It’s just so obnoxious how Israel supporters are like “Zionism means these nice things and nice words, so if you’re against Zionism you’re against the nice things and nice words!” No, asshole, that’s not how it works. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own reality.
Israel is what it does. Zionism is what it does. You can’t separate them from their actions. The debate about the true nature of these things has been settled by the reality of what is happening.
It doesn’t matter if you believe Israel just wants to live in peace. It doesn’t matter if you believe Zionism is just the idea that Jews deserve self-determination. Reality says you’re wrong. Reality says Israel and Zionism mean nonstop violence and abuse. Reality says Israel and Zionism necessarily entail genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Because that’s the reality on the ground.
Them’s the facts. If you disagree with them, you are objectively wrong.
I saw a clip of ABC host Patricia Karvelas raking Netanyahu policy advisor Ophir Falk over the coals for his denialism of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and the thought occurred to me that Israel really has lost the normies. All the mainstream western empire loyalists who dutifully toe the imperial line under normal circumstances are dropping away, one by one.
The fact that Israel has managed to alienate western liberals is so funny, because they’d be Israel’s biggest cheerleaders if they were given the tiniest bit of justification for that position.
So much about Israel fits in perfectly with western liberal mythology. A US-aligned capitalist democracy run by a plucky religious minority who survived horrific persecution, which embraces secular progressive values and reinforces the dominant western narratives about the wonderful things the US-led order has been able to accomplish since its triumphant glorious victory in the second world war. All Israel had to do was give them something, anything, and they’d still think Israel is the greatest thing in the world. They just needed an excuse — even a very meager one.
But Israel couldn’t even give them that. Genocide, racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and expansionism were just too important to its driving ideology. The Zionist project simply could not continue without going mask-off at some point, so now they’ve lost all the mainstream moderate liberals and pretty much everyone besides the “killing Muslims is good” far right extremists and the “we have to support Israel because God commands it” Christian Zionists.
Eventually all the contradictions had to come out into the light.
The Israeli press are pushing the narrative that if people in Gaza are suffering so bad they should leave, which is precisely the narrative I said we’d soon be hearing from Israel in facilitation of its longstanding ethnic cleansing agenda.
“Western governments are beginning to speak out against the mass atrocity in Gaza, far too little and far too late. We can expect Israel and the United States to respond to this outcry by saying that Palestinians need to be evacuated out of Gaza as quickly as possible in order to rescue them from this deliberately manufactured humanitarian crisis. We can expect them to denounce anyone who opposes this ethnic cleansing operation as evil monsters who want to starve the poor Palestinians.”
The Jerusalem Post has just published an opinion piece titled “Gaza humanitarian crisis should expedite Trump’s relocation plan,” subtitled “Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal.”
The article’s author, Gol Kalev, complains that “the Gazans” are being “denied the basic human right to flee a war” by the mean, nasty Europeans who just want to accuse Israel of war crimes and atrocities.
“They are needed under the rubble in Gaza — not just by Hamas, who uses them as human shields, but also by Europe and its proxies, who use them as pawns in their age-old opposition to the Jewish state, and as a proxy assault on America,” Kalev writes, arguing that public frustration “should not be directed at Israel, but at those standing in the way of Trump’s relocation plan, including European leaders.”
“Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal — which could lead to safety and prosperity for Gazans, and peace for the entire region,” writes Kalev. “The public message must be clear: Let the Gazans be free — let them flee.”
Just as I said they would do, they’re disguising a naked ethnic cleansing operation as humanitarianism and denouncing anyone who wants to provide Palestinians with a massive relief effort in their historic homeland as an uncaring monster. We can expect to see more of this messaging going forward.
Anyone who tells you they support Israel for religious reasons is telling you to stop trying to reason with them. They’re saying their position is not based on facts, evidence, logic or morality, but their blind faith in a collection of made up stories. So there’s nothing you could possibly say to them that would change their mind or convince them that they are wrong.
Trying to debate or reason with such a person would be the same as trying to convince someone that there is no God. It’s an entirely unfalsifiable position about which no argument can be made using facts and evidence.
Someone like Mike Huckabee is never telling the truth or saying what he really thinks is going on when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, he’s just making whatever mouth noises he needs to make to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy and secure his eternal reward. Such people have no place in the conversation. They should be completely excluded from the debate, because they are not actually participating in it. They’re just lying and manipulating for reasons that have nothing to do with truth or morality.
President Trump said on Monday that he was working on arranging a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, comments that came after a day of hosting the Ukrainian leader and several European officials at the White House.
“At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelensky,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Trump said that once Putin and Zelensky meet, he would join them for a three-way talk. “After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself,” he wrote.
Yury Ushakov, an aide to Putin, said that during the call with Trump, the Russian leader “expressed support for direct negotiations between the delegations of Russia and Ukraine.”
Trump said that one topic of discussion with Zelensky and European leaders on Monday was the potential security guarantees Ukraine would receive from Western nations as part of a peace deal, which will likely be a major sticking point in negotiations with Russia.
“During the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America,” he said.
European leaders, led by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, are calling for a troop deployment to Ukraine to uphold any potential peace deal. When asked if the US would send troops to Ukraine, Trump didn’t rule out the idea.
But Russia has made clear that it’s strongly opposed to the idea of the deployment of troops from NATO countries to Ukraine, a position it reiterated on Monday. “We reiterate our repeatedly expressed position that we deny any scenarios that envisage the deployment of a military contingent to Ukraine with the participation of Nato states, which could lead to an uncontrollable escalation of the conflict with unpredictable consequences,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The other major sticking point is the issue of territory. Russia has reportedly offered to end the war if Ukraine withdraws from the Donbas region and the lines are frozen in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, but Zelensky continues to publicly reject the idea of ceding territory.
Zelensky has received strong backing from the European leaders who joined him in Washington and held talks with them to coordinate their position ahead of the meetings with Trump. According to a press release from Zelensky’s office, he and the Europeans “stressed their firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the unacceptability of changing internationally recognized state borders by force.”
The statement said they also “welcomed the readiness of the United States to participate in guaranteeing security for Ukraine” and that “one of the key issues in the negotiations with President Trump will be the joint participation of the United States and Europe in creating the future security architecture for Ukraine and, consequently, for the entire European continent.”
Zelensky was joined in Washington by Starmer, Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
The Australian Government risks breaking international law, splashing billions in public money on Israel weapons deals. A Stephanie Tran analysis.
The Australian government has funnelled $2.5 billion of taxpayer funds to Israeli arms manufacturers over the past two decades via government contracts.
An analysis of Austender data shows that since 2004, the Australian government has signed dozens of deals with Israel’s largest defence companies, making them some of the country’s most significant foreign suppliers of arms.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The true sum is certainly much higher, as the government is not required to disclose subcontracting arrangements, such as the $900 million deal between Elbit Systems and South Korean firm Hanwha to supply the Australian Army with armoured vehicles.
The breakdown of the funds is as follows:
$1.92 billion to Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries Elistra Electronic System Ltd, Universal Avionics Systems, Geospectrum Technologies and Ferranti Technologies
$307 million to Israel Aerospace Industries and its subsidiaries, Elta Systems and Elta Electronics industry
$180 million to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, its subsidiary Pearson Engineering and a joint venture with Australian company Varley Group, “Varley Rafael”
$10 million to Israel Military Industries, also known as IMI Systems. (Note: IMI Systems was acquired by Elbit Systems in 2018)
$870,000 to Plassan
$210,00 to Rada Electronic Industries
Breaking international law
Lara Khider, Senior Lawyer at the Australian Centre for International Justice, said the contracts place Australia at risk of breaching its international legal obligations.
“States have been put on notice that Israel may be committing internationally wrongful acts in relation to its military and other operations in Gaza and through its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory,” Khider said, citing multiple International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings in the South Africa v Israel genocide case and its advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
“On this basis, States have an obligation to cease aid and assistance to Israel in relation to the commission of these acts. Otherwise, States may be deemed complicit in internationally wrongful conduct.”
She said the ICJ was unequivocal that all states must avoid trade or economic dealings that entrench Israel’s unlawful presence in occupied Palestinian territory and refrain from aiding or assisting its maintenance. Under the Arms Trade Treaty, to which Australia is a signatory, governments are required to block weapons transfers if there is an overriding risk they would be used to commit serious violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Australian Centre for International Justice has called for a two-way arms embargo “as a bare minimum” to ensure Australia does not contribute directly or indirectly to violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Department of Defence did not respond – does it ever?
The Department of Defence did not respond to a request for comment regarding whether it would cancel its existing contracts and refrain from entering into new contracts for the procurement of arms from Israeli defence companies in light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Greg Barns SC, a spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, said continuing the contracts undermines Australia’s moral and legal credibility.
“Australia has an obligation to comply with all of the international agreements, treaties and covenants to which it is a signatory. That any Australian government would allow the supply of defence equipment to a country committing war crimes and genocide is morally reprehensible and a clear breach of international law,” Barns said. “This reduces Australia’s standing globally in terms of adherence to the rule of law.”
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