Trump Says No Talks Scheduled With Iran, Israel Massacres Six People in Gaza Strike, and More

"Europe is building a new payment system because it has learned that financial dependence can become political submission. Wero, a bank-backed service spreading through several European markets, is the most visible part of that effort. Its expansion is traceable, but much of its scale has been inherited through the closure or migration of payment services people already used; its rules remain largely in private hands, and some of the foreign dependencies Europe claims to be escaping still sit beneath the European name."

21st Century Wire

Europe’s New Payment Masters: The Banks Preparing for a Post-Visa Europe - 21st Century Wire

Freddie Ponton | Wero challenges American networks while cash remains the citizens last defence against digital exclusion.

Got a (very) old 32-bit computer lying around and you didn't get rid of it yet for whatever reason? Good on you. Sparky Linux has decided not to give up on the aging architecture.

ZDNET

Sparky Linux just restored 32-bit support - why that still matters

Got an old 32-bit computer lying around? Don't throw it away - Sparky Linux has decided not to give up on the aging architecture.

#linux #32-bit

Meanwhile China holds the World Humanoid Robot Games 2026...

Israeli occupation forces detonate the public water reservoir in Mansouri, south Lebanon, which supplies the town with water. Obviously a crime against humanity. Does that still mean anything? 😞 (Source: The Cradle)

Kushner, Netanyahu Agree Israel Will Continue Gaza Strikes, Trump Threatens To Bomb Oman, and More

"Much of the public debate surrounding AUKUS has focused narrowly on defence procurement, tactical utility and the operational feasibility of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. While these technical critiques remain relevant, they do not address the broader structural question facing the nation: What kind of nation does Australia intend to be in the 21st century, and how will it exercise sovereign agency within its immediate geographic region?"

Positive Peace or Permanent Dependency? Australia's Real Choice

Submission to the Inquiry Concerning AUKUS and Australia's Strategic Future

😳

❗️BREAKING❗️: Pictures of newest US aircraft carrier leaked...

"The Great Wall was not built in a press conference. The canal system that fed the Tang dynasty was not announced with a signing ceremony. And the financial infrastructure that China is now constructing beneath the surface of global trade will not arrive with a dramatic rupture or a single decisive moment."

China Racing To Establish An Alternative To The Dollar System

Anyone who has spent meaningful time in China, particularly the last two decades, comes to understand that the most consequential changes in this c...

On 29 August, Icelanders will decide whether their country should reopen negotiations to join the European Union.

21st Century Wire

Iceland’s EU Referendum and the Battle for the Arctic Gate - 21st Century Wire

Freddie Ponton | Brussels and NATO pursue deeper control as Iceland’s sovereign people prepare to decide their own future.

Great song, great video 😎

Gavin de Becker took a deep dive on the Joe Rogan podcast into how Zelensky became what he became. Gonzalo Lira laid it out years before and was killed in Ukraine. May he rest in peace. So much has happened since then.

A refreshing message from Caitlin Johnstone. Have a nice week. 😏 Life in the 2020s comes with so much dissonance and dysphoria because everyone knows this civilization is doomed, but it’s not being acknowledged by any of our mainstream institutions. We can all see everything getting worse and worse before our eyes in real time, but our government officials don’t talk about it. Our mass media outlets don’t report on it. Our education systems don’t recognize it. There’s a giant elephant in the room with us at all times, and normal people are acutely aware of it, but the talking heads keep speaking as though everything’s going to keep ticking along normally into the foreseeable future. We can all see the summers heating up. We can all see that there are fewer insects and less wildlife around than when we were young. We can all see that the western empire is on borrowed time. We can all see that younger generations are having much more difficulty affording housing and life expenses than their parents and grandparents. We can all see that technology has stagnated as capitalism’s innovation-for-profit model hits the limit of how far it can carry us as a species. We can all see the apps, search engines, social media platforms and tech services getting shittier and shittier year by year. We can all see AI making everything worse and turning everyone into cognitive infants who can’t do anything for themselves while consistently failing to deliver what its proponents say it will deliver. We can all see the people around us getting dumber, crazier and more miserable as we are pushed into dystopian conditions where everyone gets more and more alienated and must pay a monthly fee for the experience of connection. We can all see that state authoritarianism is escalating in proportion to public discontent with the status quo. We all know we’re in a completely unsustainable situation. We all know we are riding a bus with disintegrating wheels. But it doesn’t get acknowledged by anyone at the top. The news reports are still about the latest celebrity gossip and whether the economy arrow is pointing up or down. The movies and shows are still about wacky and witty characters for whom capitalism is working perfectly fine. The politicians are still talking about culture war issues and the Evil Dictator of the Day. It is taken as a given that our grandchildren will be living in more or less the same kind of world we are living in, when we all know there’s no way this is true. The wheels on the bus are coming off, boys and girls. The ride is near its end. I’m not saying we’re all going to die, I’m just saying this civilization as it presently exists cannot possibly be sustained. Immensely drastic changes are coming up around the bend whether we like it or not, either by a deliberate transformation or by some cataclysmic event occurring against our will. Life in the 2020s feels so spiritually dissonant because we all know this is the case, but all the sources we’ve been trained to look to for information and context are acting like everything’s perfectly fine. They’re painting a cheery picture over reality while every normal person is staring at the giant black cracks that keep appearing in the paint job. Which tells you all you need to know about the competency of the people who are steering the bus. The people in charge are just going to keep driving this thing into the ground until there’s nothing left to save. If there’s going to be a world-saving revolution, it’s going to come from we ordinary people who are willing to acknowledge reality, not from the oligarchs and empire managers presently steering things who have been blinded by the pursuit of profit and power. We either find some way to get their hands off the steering wheel and take control, or we find ourselves confronting the future horrors they’ve been discouraging us from thinking about while they drive us to our doom.

There's continuity in Palestine but not in the New York Times...😒 https://www.nytimes.com/1945/05/17/archives/jewish-terrorists-accused-in-palestine.html

"For fifteen years the United States kept its Combat Logistics Force at a roughly constant size while cutting its most capable replenishment ships, aging out its oilers, and delaying their replacements — all while asking the fleet to sustain longer deployments in more distant and more contested waters."

The Tail That Couldn’t Keep Up: How the US Navy Ran Its Own Sailors Short on Food and Soap

"Coal has made the Chinese economy what it is today. It provided all the cheap electricity and high heat needed to turn a poor agrarian economy of the mid 20th century into the high-tech, highly industrialized nation we know today. Without it’s massive domestic coal industry China could not have possibly made ‘the great leap forward’ let alone turning itself into the manufacturing hub of the world."

Coal: The Next Chokepoint

How 'peak coal' could become China's Achilles' heel

"The fighters directly addressed the new commander-in-chief Mikhailo Drapaty, complaining that the lack of rotations, food and water is forcing them to drink urine to survive’. The platoon commander says that he and his troops have been fighting in the Zaporizhzhia oblast area since April, even though they were promised monthly rotations. Sometimes his soldiers have to go without food and drinking water for three to seven days. They also lack medications. Dehydration has caused some soldiers to become semi-conscious."

A pissing war

August war development. Rapid worsening on Dobropillia/Druzhkivka directions.

"There is a single sentence in a 2025 defense-industry study that ought to end a certain kind of complacency in Washington. Researchers at Govini, a firm that maps the Pentagon’s supply chains, found that more than 80,000 parts across roughly 1,900 weapon systems incorporate just five processed minerals — and that the global supply of all five is dominated by China. The conclusion, in the report’s own words: nearly 78% of all Department of War (DoW) weapon systems are potentially affected. Renaming the department the “Department of War” changes the letterhead, not the arithmetic. Nearly four out of five American weapon systems depend, somewhere in their supply chain, on materials controlled by the country they are most likely to be used against."

A Dependency Decades in the Making: How Washington Let Five Minerals — and China — Take the US Arsenal Hostage

From the popular series 'Your tax money at work'... "Money for Nothing: Despite being paid $533 million, General Dynamics did not produce a single usable shell at its new factory — and has not been held publicly accountable."

ProPublica

Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing

General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. ...