Trump Finds Out! Washington Is the War Capital of the World

In case you are ever tempted to feel sorry for Trumpy – now might be the time. We are referring, of course, to the current shrill crescendo of attacks from the mainstream media and UniParty pols upon Trump over his spat with Zelensky and his sensible decision to ixnay the barking idiocy of the Lindsay O. Graham Sanctioning Russia And Iran Act of 2026.

For crying out loud. On the (very) rare occasion when Trump gets something right – that is, on the urgent need for Washington to cut loose of the no-count cesspool of corruption in Kiev – the aforementioned chorus hoovers up the tired (and groundless) old canard about Putin allegedly having salacious pictures of the Donald with his pants off.

So we sincerely ask: Is it not possible that there is a damn good reason why Trump is stumbling around attempting to disengage from the Washington-made disaster in Ukraine?

Is it also not conceivable that the pathetic crooks in Kiev should be severed from the US arms and treasury pipeline forthwith? After all, these are the good folks who steal their allies in Europe and Washington blind and who are so desperately hanging on by a thread in their misbegotten war against Russia that they are gang-pressing 60-years olds right off the streets of their crumbling cities into paddy wagons in order to do what?

Why, to be rushed off to the human hamburger factories at the hellish front lines in eastern Ukraine after hardly a few weeks of pro forma “training”. And while that particular form of self-genocide may be their prerogative as the rulers of the so-called nation of Ukraine, Zelensky and his den of thugs should not be getting a single dime from US taxpayers. That’s because their pointless lost cause way over there is utterly, completely and terminally irrelevant to America’s homeland liberty and security way over here.

Likewise, is it not possible that the end of the Cold War in 1991, which likely never should have happened in the first pace, left in the old Soviet Union a vestigial mess of scrambled up borders, peoples, languages, cultures and misbegotten polities?

Moreover, these Soviet era arrangements had precious little historical legitimacy but, instead, had been confabulated by communist ruffians and tyrants over the prior 74 years of their horrid rule. Accordingly, they needed to be sorted out by the locals involved, not by the subsequently unemployed Cold Warriors in Washington, London, Brussels and lesser places in the West, as we will amplify further in Part 2.

So as they used to say in the smoke filled room of Washington, it’s now time to get down to the lick log on the matter. To wit, there is no point in a proxy war against Russia because this shrunken remnant of the fallen Soviet Empire is no military threat to the American Homeland whatsoever. And that’s as in none, nada, nichts and nugatory.

On the one hand, Russia’s limited arsenal of nuclear weapons is checkmated by the 70-year old truth of strategic nuclear deterrence. That is, the knowledge of its eminently “rational” leaders that a first strike against America would bring a second strike retaliation so ferocious as to end civilized life in Russia in a bloody nuclear fireball.

At the same time, they also have virtually zero sealift and airlift capacity to launch a conventional invasion of the New Jersey shores or to disembark troops on the banks of the Potomac. So the long and short of it is this: Russia with a GDP of $2.2 trillion is not remotely a military threat whatsoever to America’s $32 trillion GDP and its overwhelming capabilities for nuclear deterrence and conventional defense.

So why are we even in the Ukraine theater on the doorstep of a country which has no intention, capability or prospect of harming the US homeland militarily?

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Curious What Canada’s PM Considers Threat to ‘Peace’

War is peace. Donald Trump has killed thousands of Iranians, kidnapped Venezuela’s president and bombed Somalia 200 times but for what does Marc Carney criticize him? An energy deal.

Since Donald Trump began his second term, the US has bombed nine countries/territories. According to New America, the Trump administration has hit Somalia 211 times. Over the past thirteen months 71 US maritime strikes in the hemisphere have killed over 200 and in January US forces killed nearly 100 when they kidnapped Venezuela’s President.

An eight-week US bombing campaign of Yemen last year killed at least 224 civilians as part of an effort to enable Israel’s genocide and last month the Trump administration gave the Jewish supremacist state $2.8 billion worth of mostly 2,000-pound bombs.

Over 40 days at the start of the year the US launched 10,000 strikes on Iran. In one attack, 120 schoolgirls were killed.

Carney has either supported or ignored all of that violence. But the prime minister responded to the US president announcing a plan to purchase Russian diesel as a threat to “peace”.

In a statement released after speaking to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday the PMO posted, “The leaders discussed the new agreement between the United States and Russia to supply millions of tonnes of diesel to the United States. The Prime Minister was clear: this agreement is in direct opposition to the efforts of Ukraine, Canada, and our allies to create peace and stability in Europe.”

For a PM speaking publicly about US foreign policy, these were fighting words. Longtime corporate journalist Paul Wells labelled that paragraph “one of the starkest criticisms of a US president that any Canadian prime minister has made in my life.”

Carney expressing outrage at an energy deal — tied to halting attacks on oil infrastructure — while supporting/ignoring Trump’s endless violence has passed with little comment. Basically, everyone in establishment Canadian politics promotes the notion that giving Ukraine more arms or deploying more troops to Russia’s border promotes “peace”.

In official politics, ploughing $27 billion — more than Ottawa spent on its 13-year occupation of Afghanistan — into war in Ukraine promotes “peace”. Likewise, stationing as many Canadian soldiers per capita – 2,500 in a country of 1.8 million – on Russia’s border in Latvia as are stationed in Canada somehow advances “peace”. Similarly, encouraging NATO expansion eastward and then helping overthrow an elected Ukrainian president who defended the constitution’s neutrality clause was promoting “peace”. And we definitely sought to advance “peace” when we followed that up by deploying 200 Canadian troops to assist forces engaged in a civil war with Russian-backed separatists while preparing the Ukrainian military to join NATO.

In 1984 George Orwell wrote about a totalitarian state where the rulers proclaimed, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

In 2026, in Canada, it’s a prime minister who ignores the US president shredding 120 schoolgirls to pieces while claiming an energy deal threatens “peace”.

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Far-Left, Mamdani-Backed Democrat Brad Lander Detained by Israeli Forces in West Bank While Participating in Pro-Palestinian Activist Mission — Israel Accuses Him of “Harvesting Headlines”

Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, the far-left former New York City Comptroller and close ally of radical Mayor Zohran Mamdani, was detained again by Israeli authorities on Wednesday.

Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th Congressional District, was detained on October 21 alongside dozens of international activists and rabbis while participating in an olive-harvesting mission with Palestinian farmers near the village of Nahalin, south of Bethlehem, NY Times reported.

The former New York City comptroller, who previously made headlines after being detained by federal immigration agents during a confrontation at a Manhattan immigration courthouse, was released several hours later with a warning.

Lander posted a selfie from a bus filled with others, writing: “I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers. We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank. The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”

He later claimed he was released “with a ‘warning,’ apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).”

He added that others remained in custody and should be freed immediately, framing the action as part of “state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”

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Hegseth meets Netanyahu during secret visit to Israel; said to discuss ‘threats in region’

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a secret meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday.

A spokesman for Netanyahu confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the meeting, first reported by Axios, took place. Doron Spielman said Netanyahu met with Hegseth at the Ovda Air Force base in southern Israel, where US fighter jets and refuelers are stationed. He said they discussed “the threats in the region,” and the US-Israel partnership in dealing both offensively and defensively with those threats.

Earlier, Hegseth confirmed that he had made an unannounced trip to the Middle East, but did not specify his location or travels, saying only that he had met with US troops while in the region.

It was not clear from the initial Axios report whether other Israeli officials or military personnel were present at the meeting, though later reports indicated Defense Minister Israel Katz attended but IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and Mossad head Roman Gofman did not.

News of Hegseth’s trip came a day after US President Donald Trump endorsed Netanyahu in next week’s election — Israel’s first since the Hamas terror group’s devastating attack on October 7, 2023, which shook the country and plunged it into war in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

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Russia frees 74-year-old retired Michigan teacher in latest gesture to Trump

Russia on Wednesday freed a retired American teacher from Michigan it claimed it had captured in the battlefield with Ukraine, the latest gesture by Vladimir Putin to President Donald Trump as efforts pick up to restart stalled peace talks.

The release of Stephen Hubbard, 74, was confirmed by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Hubbard’s lawyer.

“Stephen Hubbard’s freedom is a dividend earned along the hard road to peace,” Attorney Martin DeLuca said, crediting President Donald Trump, Witkoff and special envoy Jared Kushner for fighting for the release.

“Two Americans have now come home from Russia on humanitarian grounds in ten weeks,” De Luca said. “These are tangible results of sustained diplomacy.

Hubbard was the oldest American held in Russia and the only one in Russia currently designated by the U.S. as wrongfully detained. Russia claimed he was captured while fighting as a mercenary for the Ukrainians.

The Trump administration has also negotiated the release of Robert Gilman, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, who was released in August after spending years in a Russian prison, accused of fighting with a Russian police officer at a train station. He was released on humanitarian grounds, due to his failing health, ABC News reported.

In February, Marc Fogel, an American history teacher, was released and returned in what the White House said was the result of improving diplomatic relations that could help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine. Fogel was arrested in August 2021 after serving 14 years in a Russian prison for possession of marijuana, which his family said he was medically prescribed, the Associated Press reported.

Trump also made a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to lift sanctions in an effort to put more diesel on the global market and bring down fuel costs.

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The Truth Telling Of Alice Weidel: So Refreshing, She Calls Out Nefarious False Flag Attempts

Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, claims that the German government has no interest in ending the war in Ukraine. She made the case in a recent interview.

Told that everyone would like the war to end, she replied: “Not our government, actually.” “While we impose one sanctions package after another, Donald Trump talks with Vladimir Putin about the delivery of further diesel, oil and gas. We would like to have the same thing for Germany because we need to lower our energy costs.”

She said that all of this defense money should be spent in Germany. “Military spending and defense spending, as the word says, should be invested in our own defense capabilities.” But instead, she argued, “Germany is now in the position of being the main financier of Ukraine, also giving away our ammunition and everything. The other European states are pulling back. Trump is out already. This policy is very harmful to Germany’s national security and also to the other European states.”

“This is our stance: It is not our war. It is very dangerous, and it is very costly, especially for us. Germany has spent over €100 billion on the war in Ukraine. This is quite dangerous and endangers Germany as a state because right now we could already be a target.”

On the reported Russia-attack on Leipzig Airport: “Well, to be honest, I’m not an eyewitness to that. What evidence do we have? With this so-called attempted drone attack, we haven’t seen any evidence in parliament.”

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Türkiye Prepares To Deploy Military Personnel To Saudi Arabia Under Defense Pact

Reuters reported that Türkiye is set to deploy military personnel to Saudi Arabia under an agreement to provide joint defense to Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Once the agreement is ratified, the mandate to deploy will be sent to Türkiye’s parliament, Reuters reported.

Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7 under which armed attacks on any of the three countries would be considered attacks on all three of them. The agreement aims to promote closer defense cooperation, share intelligence and conduct joint training, and a Turkish official described it as purely defensive in nature.

Amid Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea, officials from the three countries met in Riyadh on October 5 and agreed to put their collective defense commitments into action, including the rapid sending of armed forces to Saudi Arabia in accordance with each of the countries’ national laws.

Türkiye’s parliament was submitted the pact in full on October 20 for ratification, according to sources in the Turkish parliament. It is expected to go to the foreign affairs committee and then to a full parliament vote.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the role Türkiye plans to play would be limited to a defensive one, and that Türkiye will not launch attacks against Yemen from bases in Saudi Arabia. Türkiye’s constitution states that sending troops abroad requires the approval of the Turkish parliament.

Türkiye’s contribution is expected to include air defense systems, electronic warfare systems, technical personnel and intelligence, and possibly a limited number of pilots and special forces. In the past, Türkiye already deployed technical personnel to Saudi Arabia within the scope of previous bilateral agreements.

Pakistan is also a full signatory to the agreement and already has armed forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. Iran’s reaction to the three-way security deal, signed in Mecca, has been strongly worded, with one senior Iranian lawmaker saying a paper agreement would not bring the Saudis security.

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Ending the War in Ukraine as Soon as Possible – Is the Only Chance for Ukrainians To Bring Back Their Democratic Freedoms

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Alein Berset claims that the European Union is getting ready to conduct first elections after the ending of the war in Ukraine, and it’s a very positive signal for all Ukrainians. The Council of Europe also noted that Ukraine is up to hard reintegration of war veterans into a normal life, helping families who suffered from the war and people who were forcibly moved from their homes, and also restoring psychological health of the society. However, the main goal is to restore Ukrainians’ faith in democracy after all they’ve been through.

On the one hand, such a concern of European officials with restoring democratic processes in Ukraine is well-timed especially during Ukraine opening EU’s negotiation clusters. On the other hand, psychological state of the society and the rise of a new large social group of war veterans shouldn’t be only concerns of post-war political processes in Ukraine, because other pathological changes, which are creating quite dangerous antidemocratic tendencies years ahead, are already happening. This is well illustrated by loud corruption scandals. The latest one is fleeing Ukraine and subsequent firing of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, and also new investigations by NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) of massive corruption scandals including top officials who are close to the president Zelenskyy.

Thus, the war not only provoked humanitarian, social, and economic distress in Ukraine but also left a room for aggravating corruption processes essentially creating new political culture where every law isn’t taken by Ukrainian officials as something immutable.

The Council of Europe which has been cooperating with Kyiv in the fields of conducting reforms and combating corruption for years can’t close their eyes to such processes. Moreover, control over efforts undertaken by Kyiv in these fields shouldn’t be connected only with future financial support of Ukraine. The more important part of it is developing harmful antidemocratic processes provoked precisely by prolonging of the war. Including political persecution cases, especially. The most persecuted by the Ukrainian government group of people are usually the ones who support activation of the negotiation process.

Meanwhile, sociological services controlled by Kyiv’s officials are continuing to intrusively publish data about 62% of Ukrainians who are ready to endure the war as long as it takes.

Thus, it creates a certain impression that the Ukrainian political elite is doing everything to continue the war to use opportunities given by it for abuse of power. That’s why European partners of Ukraine shouldn’t recklessly assume that the Ukrainian political elite formed during the war will be ready to get back to compliance with democratic principles if the war continues for another several years.

Ukrainians are really interested in succession of power, proper socialization of war veterans, and taking into account restrictions of their rights during the martial law they really need their democratic rights and freedoms. That’s why participation of the Council of Europe in implementation of everything written above is needed now. Delaying this process on post-war time, as well as discreditation of peace initiatives only worsen and multiple Ukraine’s political, social, and economic problems making almost impossible its return to democratic basics.

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Post-Genocide Israel 2026: Fragmented, Divided, Segregated Election With Few Alternatives

Israel’s 2026 election is occurring in a highly polarized and incendiary political atmosphere that recalls 1995. Then, the Oslo process had split Israeli society between an increasingly radicalized right and a peace-oriented government. As the incendiary political climate was condoned by the right-wing Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Labor’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was publicly branded a traitor and assassinated by a Messianic Jewish extremist.

The analogy has its limits. In 1995 the central political question was whether Israel should negotiate with the Palestinians. In 2026, the argument is taking place after October 7, three years of war, the obliteration of Gaza, intensified West Bank settlement and displacement, and Israeli military operations involving Lebanon and Iran.

In the past 10-15 years, the country’s political center of gravity has shifted sharply toward security and military power, documented in my The Fall of Israel (2024).

Recent polls have the Netanyahu and opposition blocs tied at about 50 seats. Neither side has a reliable governing coalition, while the Israeli Arab parties held the balance – until their representation was undermined.

International media muses about the “knife-edge Israeli elections” between the incumbent Netanyahu and his rivals, tacitly suggesting that the latter offer “hope” and “change.” In reality, the Israeli vote is not a conventional left-right election, but a referendum on who controls the Israeli state after years of permanent war – and what kind of state emerges from it.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Two major blocs and the unaligned

In the 120-member Israeli parliament, the Knesset, no single party has a majority. Effectively, the rivalry is between two blocs of parties: the Netanyahu-led harsh-right and the rival bloc, led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, that is portrayed as centrist (though it, too, is slanted toward right).

Current polling suggests that the election may produce no clear outcome. Each major bloc attracts about 50 seats. Garnering up to 20 seats, the smaller unaligned groups are expected to have a critical role in the next government coalition. Or so the conventional wisdom goes.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud remains committed to military primacy, opposition to Palestinian statehood and a security-centered conception of Israeli sovereignty.

Once again, Likud’s campaign presents him as the indispensable protector of Israel in a hostile region, despite the catastrophic October 7 failure occurring under his watch. That depiction is fully misaligned with the war crimes he remains accused of.

In the absence of effective opposition alternatives, Netanyahu’s main rival, the centrist-populist Yashar (“honest”) bloc, has promoted itself as a more moderate option. Yet, its leader Gadi Eisenkot is a security hawk and the architect of the Obliteration Doctrine that was first tested in Dahiya, Beirut in 2006-7 and perfected in the Gaza genocide 2023-26. Eisenkot regards Palestinian statehood as effectively “irrelevant.”

Recent reporting, however, reinforces the limits of the promised alternative: the opposition says it would curb extremist settler violence, dismantle illegal outposts and restore some cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, yet its leading figures still reject Palestinian statehood. A change of government could alter methods and international relations without changing the underlying territorial consensus.

Next come labor, far-right, religious and Arab parties, which each could attract about 7-11 seats.

Led by Yair Golan, the labor Democrats are the clearest major Jewish-Zionist force advocating a negotiated Palestinian settlement, while still maintaining a strongly security-oriented posture. For a year or two, the popular Golan has tried to consolidate and expand Israeli left. His dream is to restore the broad labor front that governed Israel until Likud’s election triumph in 1977. But that’s a tall order.

Since the mid-2010s, Israel has shifted toward the Messianic far-right, thanks to hardened domestic sentiments and billions of U.S. dollars in annual military aid and conservative American-Jewish funding. When the country is consistently rewarded for policies that international law considers crimes, this is hardly surprising.

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Iraq: Invasion And Occupation. A Case Study In Destabilization.

When we look back at the history of US intervention in Iraq, what we have is arguably the most well documented case of imperialist destabilization seen in real time.

A river of blood running red down the streets of Mosul, buildings completely leveled to the foundation in Fallujah, neighborhoods devastated with depleted uranium in Baghdad. Estimates of over a million dead, nine million displaced, generations born with birth defects, countless lives forever destroyed. A once vibrant nation, rich in history and culture tracing back to the foundation of human civilization now the site of unimaginable catastrophe, forever transformed in only twenty three years into an eternal scar of carnage. This is the story of Iraq.

On September 30th, 2026, news broke that after over two decades the last of US forces in Iraq had finally withdrawn. It seems, finally, that this bloody chapter in American history has come to a close. The war, it appears, is over. The lasting consequences, however, will remain a fixture in the American psyche and the geopolitics of the world likely for many more generations to come.

The US presence in Iraq serves as the American empire’s longest perpetual occupation and military conflict in its history, lasting over twice as long as the Vietnam war, and surpassing the occupation of Afghanistan by three and a half years.

But while the current conflict in Iraq has lasted just over two decades, US-lead destabilization in the region has lasted considerably longer.

Western aggression against Iraq began relatively early in the Cold War, in response to the 1958 uprising that ousted the Hashemite monarchy which had served to the benefit of Anglo-American corporate interests. The Iraqi nationalist Abd al-Karim Qasim, the leading figure of the revolution, quickly seized power as Prime Minister and declared that Iraq would be a republic, instituting sweeping programs to the benefit of the Iraqi people ― including agrarian reforms, women’s rights laws (among the first of their kind in the Arab world), housing development, the expansion of education, and seizing control of the Iraqi oil reserves which had for decades been controlled by American and British companies.

Iraq was declared to be sovereign, and this didn’t sit well with the Western political hegemon that had already hedged itself financially upon controlling the flow of oil throughout the Middle East.

As such, American and British intelligence began covertly lending their support to what was at the time a little known political faction within Iraq, the Ba’ath party, to be the primary driver behind a regime change plot.

One of the primary figures of the Ba’ath party at the time, Saddam Hussein, would become an asset of the CIA, and, in October of 1959, Saddam along with five other hitmen would undertake a CIA sanctioned assassination attempt against Qasim on the streets of Baghdad. The attempt failed miserably, and Saddam was forced to flee to Egypt in exile under the care of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service to avoid capture and execution for his role in the conspiracy.

During Saddam’s time in Cairo he would make frequent visits to the American embassy and deepen his ties with the CIA.

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