The Peace POTUS

News Flash: Trump lies. A lot.

Jerks Of A Feather

"The good news" is that Bibi Netan-fuckin'-yahu is making it harder for American politicians to stay cozy with AIPAC, the same as Trump is making it impossible for American politicians to stay cozy with the GOP.

Everything else is nothing but fucked up and bad.

I can call the Israeli government assholes without being anti-semitic, just as I can call my own government fascistic without being anti-American.

In fact, by criticizing governments for doing shitty things "in the name of the people", I'm telling them they're acting against the best interests of those people, and they need to get back to looking after their citizens instead of bolstering their own power and lining their pockets.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, leading scholars’ association says

Israel’s foreign ministry called the resolution “disgraceful,” but it added to a growing chorus from rights groups concluding that Israel is committing genocide.

Israel’s nearly two-year military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left swaths of the enclave in rubble, meets “the legal definition of genocide,” the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars said in a resolution passed by the group’s members Sunday.

The resolution, by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, added to a growing chorus from human rights organizations and academics concluding that Israel is committing genocide, a crime outlined in a 1948 convention and defined by acts intended to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, in a message posted on X, called the resolution “disgraceful,” and said it was based on an unverified “campaign of lies” by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel’s government has reacted angrily to any suggestion its military campaign amounts to genocide, a crime defined in the aftermath of the Nazis’ systematic murder campaign against Jews during the Holocaust.

The resolution states that the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas against Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and prompted the Israeli military campaign in Gaza “constitutes international crimes.” But it also concludes that Israel’s response violates all five conditions set out in the 1948 convention, including “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to Emily Sample, a member of the association’s executive board.

Any one of the conditions would be sufficient for a finding of genocide.

The association has roughly 500 members. A large majority — 86 percent — of members who voted on the resolution approved it, Sample said. “We were very surprised at the level of consensus there was,” she said, adding that the board had refrained from issuing statements on the question of whether Israel’s conduct amounted to genocide, as it has in other conflicts, given the fraught debate over the issue.

The resolution accused Israel of carrying out “indiscriminate and deliberate” attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, deliberately attacking medical and aid workers as well as journalists, forcibly displacing the enclave’s entire population multiple times and killing or injuring more than 50,000 children.

“This destruction of a substantial part of a group constitutes genocide,” the association concluded, of the attacks on Gaza’s children.

More than 63,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel has repeatedly said it does not intentionally target uninvolved civilians and accuses Hamas of fighting from populated areas. Throughout the war, Israel has barred independent human rights groups and journalists from traveling to Gaza. Palestinian journalists in the enclave have been killed in numbers unprecedented for media workers in a modern conflict — the vast majority in Israeli air or drone attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The resolution nodded to the growing number of organizations finding Israel is committing genocide, among them Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, along with United Nations experts. The International Court of Justice is hearing a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is violating international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts.

Sample said the timing of the association’s resolution — long after the war started, on the eve of the second anniversary of the conflict — may have owed to a fear of “personal and professional consequences.” Members of the association had lost jobs in the United States and been denied visas to travel there for speaking out, she said.

For scholars, “coming out against a genocide like this was difficult to weigh personally,” she said.

In Israel, where there has been broad support for the military offensive, but splits among academics regarding the nature of the war, the small number of Israeli experts who specialize in genocide studies nearly all agree that Israel’s actions amount to genocide, said Shmuel Lederman, an Israeli genocide scholar and political theorist at the Open University and University of Haifa.

In recent months, particularly after Israel announced a near-total blockade of humanitarian aid in March, more of Israel’s academics, particularly international law experts, began to consider the genocide label, Lederman said. After famine was declared in parts of Gaza last month by the global authority on hunger, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked assertions that Israel’s role in the famine bolstered the case for genocide.

“If we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon,” he told Israeli reporters in August.

“What we’ve been seeing is since late March, because of the starvation, the declaration of ethnic cleansing as an official aim, it’s not just genocide scholars — there seems to be a broader and broader agreement with legal scholars that we are seeing [genocide],” said Lederman, who recalled that he personally reached a similar conclusion in the spring of 2024.

“The bottom line is, there is a reason why so many people in this field of study agree. It’s very hard to be a genocide scholar and not say it’s a genocide,” he said.

Ukraine

60,000 Dead In Gaza

18,500 were children.

This is one of the wars Trump said he'd stop with a phone call the first day.

He's 190 days behind schedule now.

Some were killed in their beds. Others while playing. Many were buried before they learned to walk.

Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one child per hour during the war. “Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council this month.

When asked about the death toll among children, the Israel Defense Forces said it “does not target children or other uninvolved civilians. The IDF takes extensive precautionary measures to prevent harm to civilians. The IDF operates in compliance with international law.”

Israel says its aim is to eliminate Hamas after the militant group attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Thirty-eight children were killed and about three dozen were taken hostage. Hamas continues to hold about 22 hostages and the bodies of 27 others.

To assemble its list of fatalities, the Gaza Health Ministry uses hospital and morgue records, as well as vetted reports from victims’ families and reliable media. Tracking and identifying the dead has become increasingly difficult amid the breakdown of the enclave’s medical system.

Though it is impossible to capture every death, Gaza’s Health Ministry is doing “unusually high-quality real-time casualty recording,” said Michael Spagat, an economics professor at the University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, an international charity focused on documenting the casualties of armed conflict.

“They are trying to be really careful and rigorous and are constantly trying to improve the list,” he said.

A peer-reviewed study published January in the Lancet said an analysis of different casualty records suggests that the official death toll could be a significant undercount.

The Washington Post analyzed the ministry’s list released on July 15 and sorted the names by age.

Before 1st birthday  953
1 year old           943
2 years old          972
3 years old          899
4 years old          868
5 years old          985

6 years old          924

7 years old          967

8 years old          895

9 years old          921

10 years old         907

11 years old         976

12 years old       1,001

13 years old       1,084

14 years old       1,132

15 years old       1,064

16 years old       1,212

17 years old       1,218

Moween Shuheiber, 6, dreamed of being a pediatrician for children injured in war. Other days he wanted to be a businessman with a luxury car. Loved ones saw him as mature and thoughtful. He was killed in a November 2023 strike on an apartment building that killed more than 30 people, his cousin Adham Shuheiber said.

“I think he breathed his last while covering his ears,” said his cousin Malak Shuheiber. “Because that’s what he did every time he heard the sounds of planes.”

Tens of thousands more children have suffered life-altering injuries.

Samer Attar, an American surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza on several medical missions, says he has seen young bodies charred beyond recognition. Others had missing limbs or massive head trauma — wounds he described as “physically disabling and emotionally scarring.”

In early April, at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Attar recalled dozens of patients on the floor after an attack. The hospital had long since run out of beds. He described seeing a 10-year-old patient take her last gasp as blood poured from her mouth and nostrils. A young boy had his skull and abdomen partly ripped open. Two of his brothers were there next to him, begging doctors to help.

“I grabbed one brother’s hand and gave him the child’s hand. I took his other brother’s hand and put it on his heart, and just said, ‘I’m sorry he’s going to die. Just wait here until he passes,’” Attar remembered telling them before moving on to the next patient.

As Israel hits Gaza with airstrikes, it has also restricted — and at times completely blocked — the United Nations and other aid organizations from delivering food, water and medical supplies. Hunger is soaring. More than 147 people, including 88 children, have died of malnutrition across Gaza, the Health Ministry said.

Most of the living have been corralled into the south of the Gaza Strip, where aid is now mostly distributed by American contractors inside military zones. Israeli soldiers positioned nearby have repeatedly opened fire on desperate families seeking aid, witnesses have told The Post. The IDF has said it fired “warning shots” to prevent “suspects from approaching.” It added that after reports of harm to civilians at aid points, the Israeli military issued instructions “following lessons learned” to forces in the field.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food, the U.N. human rights office said on July 22.

On July 13, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowd lining up to fill water containers in central Gaza. Ten people, most of them children, were killed.

The Israeli military called it a “technical error” with a munition that caused it to fall “dozens of meters from the target.”

Thirsty children “returned to their homes as lifeless corpses,” said Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area and witnessed the aftermath.

WaPo goes on to list all the names of kids who've been killed in Israel's "war against Hamas", which has turned into an attempted genocide.

The List

(it's pretty gruesome)

About Last Night

We should call the failed ceasefire Operation Desert Stormy.

It was extremely brief, Trump's package was inadequate for the task, and he's trying to keep people from talking about it.

Paraphrasing Papa

no matter how necessary

we believe it to be

no matter how we justify it

or rationalize it

war is always a crime

Cooler Heads?

There's nothing that says Iran provoked the US directly. Yes, they're duking it out with our good buddy Israel, but Bibi's not exactly teetering, unless there's big pushback domestically (which I don't know about, and I haven't spent much time looking into).

What I'm pretty sure about is that there's been plenty of pressure from Tel Aviv, and from Mike Huckabee at our embassy in Jerusalem.

And most of the regular people in the world would agree that we need to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

But the deal was in place for Iran to forego their nuclear ambitions - or at least to postpone or redirect their program - and that's what Trump scuttled in his first term.

So now we have Trump making us look like asshole bullies, giving Tehran the chance to look smarter and cooler by going proportional.

Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

Iran says missile attack matched number of US bombs, signaling likely desire to de-escalate

Iran said its missile attack on Al Udeid air base in Qatar matched the number of bombs dropped by the United States on Iranian nuclear sites this weekend, signaling Iran’s likely desire to deescalate, AP reports.

Iran made the announcement on Monday night in a statement from its Supreme National Security Council after the attack, which Qatar said caused no injuries.

Iran also said it targeted the base because it was outside of populated areas.

Iran gave advanced warning of attack to Qatar - reports

Iran coordinated its strikes on US bases in Qatar with Qatari officials in advance in a bid to minimize casualties, the New York Times is reporting, citing three Iranian officials.

Reuters is also reporting that Iran gave advanced warning to Qatar, prompting air space closure earlier, citing a source familiar with the matter.

In his statement in my last post, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari confirmed there had been no casualties and said: “The base had been evacuated earlier, following established security and precautionary measures, given the tensions in the region.”

Qatar condemns Iranian attack on US base and says no casualties reported

Here’s more on that Qatari response.

Qatar has condemned Iran’s attack on the Al Udeid air base and said that “Qatar reserves the right to respond directly in a manner equivalent with the nature and scale of this brazen aggression, in line with international law”.

In a post on X the Qatari foreign affairs ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari added that “Qatar’s air defenses successfully thwarted the attack and intercepted the Iranian missiles” and there had been no casualties.

He said Qatar had warned of the dangers of Israeli escalation in the region and called for “the immediate cessation of all military actions and for a serious return to the negotiating table and dialogue”.

Here's a novel idea:

Everybody stop fucking

with each other

Let's just try that for a while - see how it goes.

Overheard

Sending out thoughts and prayers

to all the AlphaBros

who woke up this morning

with sudden-onset bones spurs.

Iran

These fuckin' idiots are talking like it's all over, and everything's just peachy.

"We knocked the shit out of 'em, and that's it - piece of cake - call the writers and let's get on to the next episode."

You think the Iranians won't be looking for a little get-back? Every American everywhere is a target again. And it's not unreasonable to think they won't have plenty of sympathizers - even among countries that have always been on our side.

The US has been a very good and helpful ally. But with Trump constantly rattling sabers and shit-talking everybody, I'm not going to be surprised if we find out somewhere down the road that some of our best good buddies have already decided to walk away.

Is anybody not picking up some really strong late Roman Empire vibes here?



Following strikes on Iran, these U.S. bases could become targets

A number of U.S. military sites in the Middle East could face reprisals.

Iran vowed swift retaliation Saturday following the U.S. military’s strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. “Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target,” a commentator on Iranian state media said.

In the days and weeks leading up to the attack, Iranian leaders had repeatedly warned of reprisal were a strike to occur. “All U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them,” Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said on June 11.

Here are some of the U.S. bases and troop deployments in the region that could come under attack.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East.

Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops, the largest U.S. deployment in the country. Iran and its proxies have in recent years attacked it repeatedly.

After the U.S. assassinated top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran fired 16 missiles at bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq. Eleven landed at al-Asad, wounding dozens of U.S. troops and gouging deep craters in an attack that authorities said was intended to kill. Iran also launched missiles at a military base in Irbil, in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, during that attack.

The Trump administration said this month that it was reducing the U.S. military presence in Syria from eight bases to one: Tanf, located strategically in southern Syria near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders. Details on the timing are vague.

A January 2024 drone strike on Tower 22, a U.S. outpost in Jordan 12 miles south of Tanf, killed three American soldiers and injured dozens more, the worst attack on the U.S. military since the 2021 fall of Kabul.

Major U.S. military deployments in the Persian Gulf include Naval Support Activity Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet and home to some 8,300 American sailors, and the Qatari-owned al-Udeid Air Base, which boasts the largest U.S. contingent in the Middle East. Al-Udeid, 20 miles southwest of Doha, is a forward command post for U.S. Central Command and can house more than 10,000 troops.

Other Persian Gulf installations housing U.S. troops include Camp Buehring and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, home to the Air Force’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Iranian officials warned the Qataris this week — before the U.S. strike — that American bases in the gulf would be legitimate targets in retaliation for an American attack, according to a European official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive communications.

U.S. embassies and diplomatic compounds in the region could similarly become targets. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and family members from missions in Iraq and Israel.

Militants funded by Tehran could also threaten U.S. personnel and interests in the region.

“Operational plans have been established for that purpose,” Abu Ali al-Askari, a security official with the Iranian-backed, Iraqi-based Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, warned Thursday. “Undoubtedly, American bases throughout the region will become akin to duck-hunting grounds … not to mention the unforeseen surprises that may await its aircraft in the skies.”

Asked about preparations to head off potential Iranian reprisals, the Pentagon press office on Thursday directed The Washington Post to a Monday statement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing the “deployment of additional capabilities” to the Middle East. “Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth wrote on X.

“American Forces are maintaining their defensive posture & that has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Monday, which the Pentagon press office also pointed to.

Air France and KLM canceled flights in and out of Dubai International Airport late Wednesday. The Air France press office cited “the security situation in the region.” It did not indicate when flights would resume.

Could Iran strike the United States?

While Iran possesses a diverse array of ballistic and cruise missiles, none of its arsenal, including missiles in development, could come close to reaching the United States, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies missile defense project. Iran’s air force does not have the range to reach the United States. That’s why reprisals on forces deployed in the region would be the primary U.S. concern.

81 Years Ago

"...all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable..."

-- The American Declaration Of Independence - Thomas Jefferson

In the face of threats and dangers that are meant to intimidate and conquer, the seemingly tiny, insignificant, individual people who decide to stand up and stand together have proven over and over that a certain invincibility is possible - it's just not something you get from yourself alone.

I'm just one guy - one voice - one vote. And besides, what's in it for me?

06JUN44

Today's Today

Pod Save America

On Trump's fucked up flip-floppy trade "policies".

Auctioning access

Polling

DOGE

etc

A Revoltin' Development

Maybe Xi sent them to Ukraine to observe the Russians, and learn how not to fight a 21st-century war.

But China has a lot more guys to waste, so maybe they're just looking at how the Russians are doing it, and that way they can boost their estimates as to the number of wasteable people they'll need to storm the beaches of Taiwan.

China is sending soldiers to Ukraine to prepare for a Taiwan invasion

A former Western intelligence official told Reuters that approximately 200 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Two current U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirm that there are more than a hundred of them.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number at 155. His forces have recently captured two of them.

Reuters reports that the U.S. government believes these soldiers are mercenaries and apparently have no “direct link” with the Chinese government. Whether this view is correct or not, Washington and other governments should impose severe costs upon China for permitting its nationals to enter the battle against Ukraine.

As an initial matter, China’s regime is in fact sending soldiers to that Eastern European country. Reuters reports that “Chinese military officers have, with Beijing’s approval, been touring close to Russia’s frontlines to draw lessons and tactics from the war.” The former Western intelligence official told the news service that these officers “are absolutely there under approval.”

“The Communist Party craves first-hand experience of the battlefield in Ukraine to inform its People’s Liberation Army for its future wars,” Richard Fisher of the Washington, D.C. area-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me late last week. “For the PLA, the Ukraine battlefield offers the most livid and brutal evolution of the revolutionary and see-saw battle between unmanned weapons and electronic warfare defenses arrayed against them.”

“If the PLA can grasp and expand on the lessons of the Ukraine battlefield, it can vastly increase its chances of a rapid blitzkrieg victory in Taiwan,” says Fisher.

It is also likely that the Chinese officers are doing more than observing and reporting back to China. They may also be giving advice to their Russian counterparts. China, after all, has been backing Russia’s war effort from the beginning.

China almost certainly greenlighted the invasion with its 5,300-word joint statement issued by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022, just 20 days before the Russian attack. Putin might have invaded earlier, but he evidently acceded to Chinese wishes and waited until after the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics to hit the former Soviet republic.

China has during the war supported Putin almost across the board. For instance, Beijing has purchased Russian oil sanctioned by the United Kingdom, U.S. and the European Union, opened its financial and banking systems to Russia’s institutions under sanction, provided military intelligence and diplomatic and propaganda support and sold both dual-use items and, according to some sources, weapons.

Given Beijing’s support to both Moscow and Pyongyang, it is unlikely that North Korea could have joined the war on Russia’s side without China’s approval.

With regard to the mercenaries, Beijing probably both knew and approved of their participation in the war.

“It is unlikely that these soldiers would have been permitted to travel to Russia without the full consent of the Xi regime,” Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank told me.

“Xi runs a near-total surveillance state and pays special attention to the interactions of its nationals with close partners such as Russia,” Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat stationed in Beijing, said. “A couple hundred military-age Chinese men leaving the country to fight in a foreign war is certainly something Beijing would know about.”

There are, for instance, bound to be Ministry of State Security agents monitoring visa applications for Russia.

The presence of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine is reminiscent of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” who went to fight United Nations troops in North Korea beginning in 1950.

“China sending in an initial small cohort to join the Russians is consistent with Chinese Communist strategy to initially create plausible deniability and then a veneer of legitimacy for a gradual build-up of those at the front lines,” says Burton. “This will almost certainly be accompanied by the gradual introduction of sophisticated Chinese offensive weaponry,” he added.

Burton is also concerned that Russia, indebted to China because of the support in Ukraine, will not be able to say no when China demands that Moscow send forces to help it invade Taiwan or another neighbor.

The Chinese and Russian militaries regularly hold joint drills in East Asia. Therefore, the Pentagon should assume that these two powers, along with North Korea, will fight together during the next war. 

So China probably sees great advantage in Chinese troops, even if just mercenaries, fighting in Ukraine.  

The U.S. and other countries have imposed almost no costs on China for its extensive support for the Russian war effort. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Beijing now thinks it can, with impunity, send soldiers to fight in Europe. 

A Quote

The thing about all the power - it isn't the big decisions that weigh heavily.

Hell, you can decide to invade Russia at dinner - choose Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details. The small stuff.

It's easy to gamble a million lives. What's hard is to see how it can hurt one single person. And if you can't keep that straight, you'll lose your humanity.

Awakening

Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday, March 4, 2025.

President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history.

The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

Just Couldn't Stay Away

The War Is Here Now

That scene in the Oval Office yesterday was a declaration of division.

Putin gets Europe. Xi gets the Pacific. And we get the western hemisphere.

That was fiery and staged, and it had no substance other than what had been more or less rehearsed - it was the public announcement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.

We are The New Axis.

And there's no reason for me right now to believe it will end any differently, except for the number of dead.

THE TYRANTS HAVE EMBRACED

How Great We Aren't

We love to puff ourselves up and pretend the mighty US military can never be whupped. And while that may be true now (and no, it isn't - everybody can get beat), we've been in so many scraps, big and small, just in the 236 years of our current state of existence, that we're kinda prone to skip over the "little ones" so we can brag about how we're undefeated.

Don't get me wrong. I'm plenty proud of the skills and the courage of Americans who've stepped up and served - the ones who fought and bled and died, and the ones who watched and waited.

But once in a while, historical reality walks up and spits on my shoes in order to remind me that the badassery of "the enemy" is not to be dismissed.

Little Turtle's War & St Clair's Defeat

Overall USA record:

• 89 wins
• 14 losses
• 16 ties
• 6 ongoing - TBD

Today's Today

06-AUG-1945

Hashem Al-Ghaili

Drones

Here's one scary-as-fuck video from Simon Whistler.

And don't get too comfortable, thinking we're OK because we're such good buddies with those Ukrainian fellers - people are already marrying drones with AI, and tech does not stay in one place for long, so we can expect plenty of trouble from the assholes who will surely be jumping all over that shit for nefarious purposes.