No fewer than 180 of the refugees, or 56 percent, received welfare benefits during the 10-year span. That figure peaked at 189 in 2016. The post Denmark made a a special exception to let in hundreds of Palestinian refugees. Here’s what happened appeared first on World Israel News.

No fewer than 180 of the refugees, or 56 percent, received welfare benefits during the 10-year span. That figure peaked at 189 in 2016. The post Denmark made a a special exception to let in hundreds of Palestinian refugees. Here’s what happened appeared first on World Israel News.

Iranian historian Mohammad Hossein Rajabi Davani said in an interview that Iranians want nuclear weapons to deter the U.S. like North Korea and branded cooperation with the 'treacherous' IAEA a betrayal. The post WATCH: Iranian historian urges leaders to pursue nuclear weapons to deter the US appeared first on World Israel News.

Iranian historian Mohammad Hossein Rajabi Davani said in an interview that Iranians want nuclear weapons to deter the U.S. like North Korea and branded cooperation with the 'treacherous' IAEA a betrayal. The post WATCH: Iranian historian urges leaders to pursue nuclear weapons to deter the US appeared first on World Israel News.

A 19-year-old Louisiana man, Connor Lyons, has been indicted on charges of second-degree murder for allegedly stabbing his mother, a respected local teacher, while she was asleep. The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in Caddo Parish on Wednesday. In addition to the murder charge, Lyons was also indicted for allegedly assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, according to the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office. The case came to the attention of ... Read more

Popular British tabloid under fire after it uses photograph of Gaza child suffering from genetic disorder to back false claims of starvation in the coastal enclave. The post Israel rails against UK paper for ‘spreading Hamas propaganda’ with false starvation claims appeared first on World Israel News.

Popular British tabloid under fire after it uses photograph of Gaza child suffering from genetic disorder to back false claims of starvation in the coastal enclave. The post Israel rails against UK paper for ‘spreading Hamas propaganda’ with false starvation claims appeared first on World Israel News.

Houthi missile attack on Israel which struck home in central Israel carried banned cluster warhead, Israel announces, prompting IDF to carry out major strikes on Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital city. The post IDF bombs presidential palace in Yemen after Houthis use cluster warhead in missile attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Houthi missile attack on Israel which struck home in central Israel carried banned cluster warhead, Israel announces, prompting IDF to carry out major strikes on Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital city. The post IDF bombs presidential palace in Yemen after Houthis use cluster warhead in missile attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Republican congresswoman who has accused Israel of genocide and refused to back resolution condemning antisemitic attacks publicly promotes false claim that Trump-appointed judge has banned burning the Israeli flag. The post Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green spreads anti-Israel flag hoax appeared first on World Israel News.

Republican congresswoman who has accused Israel of genocide and refused to back resolution condemning antisemitic attacks publicly promotes false claim that Trump-appointed judge has banned burning the Israeli flag. The post Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green spreads anti-Israel flag hoax appeared first on World Israel News.

The Scandinavian carrier had stopped flying to Israel in 2016. The post Scandinavian Airlines returning to Israel in October appeared first on World Israel News.

The Scandinavian carrier had stopped flying to Israel in 2016. The post Scandinavian Airlines returning to Israel in October appeared first on World Israel News.

He claims that he didn’t understand the historical significance of the swastika symbol that Adolf Hitler used to represent the Nazi Party. The post Yankees draft player who drew swastika on Jewish student’s door appeared first on World Israel News.

He claims that he didn’t understand the historical significance of the swastika symbol that Adolf Hitler used to represent the Nazi Party. The post Yankees draft player who drew swastika on Jewish student’s door appeared first on World Israel News.

In an awkward bid to prove his manliness, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor, was pressed into a weightlifting stunt he first refused—later managing just two assisted reps at 135 pounds. The post WATCH: Mamdani struggles to lift 135 lb weight during Men’s Day in NY appeared first on World Israel News.

In an awkward bid to prove his manliness, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor, was pressed into a weightlifting stunt he first refused—later managing just two assisted reps at 135 pounds. The post WATCH: Mamdani struggles to lift 135 lb weight during Men’s Day in NY appeared first on World Israel News.

The Israeli embassy has attempted to resolve the issue with the French Foreign Ministry, but to date France has not renewed El Al security team visas. The post Paris sides with extremists, endangers Israeli travelers appeared first on World Israel News.

The Israeli embassy has attempted to resolve the issue with the French Foreign Ministry, but to date France has not renewed El Al security team visas. The post Paris sides with extremists, endangers Israeli travelers appeared first on World Israel News.

'Extremism, hate, and violent gore are just a click away for many children, making it urgent for schools and parents to implement safeguard,' said Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter extremism and intelligence at ADL. The post Gore websites, antisemitic propaganda radicalized school shooters, new ADL report finds appeared first on World Israel News.

'Extremism, hate, and violent gore are just a click away for many children, making it urgent for schools and parents to implement safeguard,' said Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter extremism and intelligence at ADL. The post Gore websites, antisemitic propaganda radicalized school shooters, new ADL report finds appeared first on World Israel News.

Contradicting claims by President Trump, Israel reportedly estimates that 20 of the 50 hostages held in Gaza are still alive, though one or two are likely in life-threatening condition. The post 1-2 hostages in danger of dying, Israel fears – report appeared first on World Israel News.

Contradicting claims by President Trump, Israel reportedly estimates that 20 of the 50 hostages held in Gaza are still alive, though one or two are likely in life-threatening condition. The post 1-2 hostages in danger of dying, Israel fears – report appeared first on World Israel News.

Aerial footage shows a Hamas cell lying in ambush for an incoming aid convoy—until an IDF airstrike obliterates the terrorists, sparing civilians standing just meters away. The post WATCH: Precision strike eliminates Hamas terror cell ambushing humanitarian aid trucks appeared first on World Israel News.

Aerial footage shows a Hamas cell lying in ambush for an incoming aid convoy—until an IDF airstrike obliterates the terrorists, sparing civilians standing just meters away. The post WATCH: Precision strike eliminates Hamas terror cell ambushing humanitarian aid trucks appeared first on World Israel News.

The political siege of Russia’s tiny Balkan ally, the Republic of Srpska, an autonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, is gaining momentum. On Monday, 18 August 2025, two significant developments took place. The first is that the Constitutional Court of … The post Republic of Srpska in the Crosshairs Again. Stephen Karganovic appeared first on Global Research.

The group took credit for releasing a horde of maggots and other insects inside the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., during Netanyahu’s July 2024 stay. The post Cotton to IRS: Investigate terrorist-supporting Palestinian Youth Movement appeared first on World Israel News.

The group took credit for releasing a horde of maggots and other insects inside the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., during Netanyahu’s July 2024 stay. The post Cotton to IRS: Investigate terrorist-supporting Palestinian Youth Movement appeared first on World Israel News.

He then suggested that fewer than 20 hostages remain alive in Gaza captivity, apparently contradicting the official Israeli assessment. The post Trump: Hostages would be safer if IDF ‘went in fast’ appeared first on World Israel News.

He then suggested that fewer than 20 hostages remain alive in Gaza captivity, apparently contradicting the official Israeli assessment. The post Trump: Hostages would be safer if IDF ‘went in fast’ appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF is gearing up for its final push into Gaza City, aiming to topple Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages. The post WATCH: IDF soldiers pray and chant before entering Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF is gearing up for its final push into Gaza City, aiming to topple Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages. The post WATCH: IDF soldiers pray and chant before entering Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

Upon attainment of the goals, the government would dissolve and call an election. The post Benny Gantz urges time-limited national unity government to further chances of hostage deal appeared first on World Israel News.

Upon attainment of the goals, the government would dissolve and call an election. The post Benny Gantz urges time-limited national unity government to further chances of hostage deal appeared first on World Israel News.

The bookshops in Lal Chowk, in Srinagar — the summer capital of India-administered Kashmir — had been, as usual, places of quiet and repose. But on August 7, police officers started raiding stores, pulling titles from shelves and questioning sellers. By then, the news had already spread online: the Jammu and Kashmir administration had banned

On August 5, 2025, the Nobel Prize-winning interim head of Bangladesh’s transitional government announced in a televised address that the upcoming parliamentary elections would be held in February 2026, before the start of Ramadan, with the aim of sending a … The post Elections in Bangladesh in February 2026—The Trojan Horse of Democracy appeared first on Global Research.

It is a curious feeling to see a government, let alone any politician, suddenly find their banished backbones and retired principles. The spine, on being discovered, adds a certain structural integrity to arguments otherwise lacking force and credibility. The recent … The post Cancelling the Ethnic Cleansers: Australia Revokes Simcha Rothman’s Visa. Binoy Kampmark appeared first on Global Research.

Hector Reyna had a hunch he was being duped. One of hundreds of immigrant workers hired to disinfect New York’s subways at the height of the pandemic, the forty-eight-year-old from the Dominican Republic couldn’t ignore such a stark disparity between extraordinary needs of the moment and the low pay. “I always asked myself the question,” he said. ​“Why so

The sharp-eyed reporters at Apollo News caught this nugget in the flood of post-summit media coverage yesterday The post Ursula Von Der Leyen Told to Leave Room During Multilateral Talks at Trump’s Washington Summit – Not a “Leader” nor an “Elected Head of State” appeared first on Global Research.

The mass distress in Sudan and South Sudan shows no signs of diminishing. The latest reports say that on top of the acute crisis of hunger affecting most people, a serious cholera outbreak has brought high risks, spreading to refugee … The post Acute Famine, Cholera Outbreak: The Extremely Tragic Experiences of Sudan and South Sudan appeared first on Global Research.

Steve Witkoff’s claim that Putin allegedly agreed to the US offering Ukraine “Article 5-like protection” during the Anchorage Summit, which Trump repeated during his White House Summit with Zelensky and a handful of European leaders, raises the question of what … The post Which Western Security Guarantees for Ukraine Might be Acceptable to Putin? appeared first on Global Research.

A Missouri resident tragically lost their life after contracting a rare and deadly brain infection caused by the Naegleria fowleri amoeba, according to a recent announcement by the state’s health officials. The individual, an adult from Missouri, passed away on Tuesday in a hospital located in the St. Louis area, as reported by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). The DHSS confirmed on August 13 that the patient had been infected with ... Read more

A late-night home invasion attempt in East Houston turned deadly when two men, impersonating police officers, were killed in a shootout. The homeowners defended their property, located in the 4800 block of Bellnol, with gunfire. The sound of gunshots echoed through the neighborhood around 11 p.m., startling residents. The intruders, disguised with masks, bulletproof vests, and fake badges, tried to force their way into the home. The homeowners, however, fought back, fatally injuring both men. ... Read more

A devastating event unfolded at a dairy farm in Colorado on Thursday, leading to the loss of six lives. Emergency services were called to the scene at Prospect Valley Dairy in Keenesburg around 6 p.m., following reports of individuals trapped in a confined area. Despite the swift response from the Southeast Weld Fire Protection District, the rescue team was unable to save the six men trapped in the restricted section of the farm. The fire ... Read more

A British Airways flight attendant was discovered in an airplane bathroom, unclothed and under the influence of drugs while on duty. The 41-year-old attendant, Haden Pentecost, was found to have methamphetamine and amphetamines in his system during a flight from California to London. Pentecost has since been dismissed from his position with British Airways. Pentecost’s behavior during the flight was erratic, with reports of him sweating, babbling, and appearing agitated. His inability to assist with ... Read more

A tragic accident occurred on Friday afternoon when a tour bus en route to New York City veered off the road and rolled into a ditch along Interstate 90 in Pembroke, upstate New York. The accident resulted in the death of five passengers, including a possible minor, and left dozens injured, according to local authorities. The bus, operated by M&Y Tour Inc, was carrying 54 passengers when it lost control around 12:30 p.m. The vehicle ... Read more

Anche se non è stato lui direttamente a provocare la guerra tra Russia e Ucraina – preparata e attuata tramite la NATO dalle Amministrazioni Obama e Biden – Donald Trump, in quanto presidente degli Stati Uniti, è al comando della … The post I Paladini dell’Occidente appeared first on Global Research.

A railway bridge under construction in China’s Qinghai province tragically collapsed, resulting in the death of at least 12 workers and leaving four unaccounted for, according to state media. The incident occurred when a steel cable broke during a tensioning operation around 3 a.m. on Friday, causing a large section of the bridge to fall into the Yellow River below. Images released by the official Xinhua News Agency reveal a significant portion of the bridge’s ... Read more

The number of KIA (killed in action) in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict has long been a point of contention on all sides. The post Close to Two Million Ukrainian Soldiers Dead, Leaked Data Shows appeared first on Global Research.

The first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidential term began — as did so many events that defined his first four years in office — with a nationwide search for categories. How best to describe the mass firings of civil servants, the impoundment of billions in congressionally appropriated funds, the disappearances and arbitrary detentions,

For years, the country’s rich and famous have used a little-known Federal Aviation Administration program to shield their private jets’ flight records from public view — among them Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and Steven Spielberg. Now this decades-old program has a new client: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass

According to the Syrian state media, a US-led coalition has captured a senior member of the ISIS group in Atmeh, in the province of Idlib. The exact identity of the man has yet to be disclosed, but many believe it … The post US-Led Coalition Commandos Capture and Kill Terrorists in Idlib appeared first on Global Research.

Lindsey Graham says God will 'curse' US if it stops supporting Israel. The post God Is Not Blessing America For Supporting Israel; He Is Cursing America For Supporting Israel appeared first on Global Research.

In recent remarks, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should first meet one-on-one before considering a trilateral summit involving himself. At first glance, this suggestion might sound like an effort at … The post Illusions of Power: Trump’s Proposal and the Reality of the Ukraine Conflict. Ruel F. Pepa appeared first on Global Research.

Apparently, the Ukrainian army's only "ability" is to "kill," without any relevant tactical or strategic planning. The post ‘Killing Russians’ a Reason to Join NATO – Ukrainian Diplomat appeared first on Global Research.

The Kiev regime’s deep-rooted connection with Ukrainian WWII-era Nazi organizations is an axiom at this point. Denying this is simply pointless, as many of its soldiers unashamedly display Nazi insignia, while the state-sponsored promotion of the cult of Nazi … The post Neo-Nazi Units Kill Retreating Ukrainian Soldiers, Forcing Them to Switch Sides appeared first on Global Research.

Visiting his Scottish summer palace at Turnberry last month, Donald Trump invited local, UK, and European dignitaries to pay their respects. During a round of golf, Scottish First Minister John Swinney was required to rise and accept the emperor’s plaudits that he was “a very special guy” before taking his seat on cue, halfway up

The world of entertainment mourns the loss of acclaimed actress Loni Anderson, who passed away at 79. Anderson, celebrated for her role in the TV series “WKRP in Cincinnati,” died nearly three weeks ago, but the cause of her death was only recently disclosed. According to her death certificate, which was made public on Friday, Anderson fell victim to a rare and aggressive cancer known as metastatic uterine leiomyosarcoma. Leiomyosarcoma is a type of cancer ... Read more

The Kiev regime's desperation is so great that authorities are already adopting a discourse of freezing the front line, abandoning the rhetoric of fully recovering lost territories. The post Ukraine Expands Concessions, but Peace Still a Long Way off appeared first on Global Research.

A recent incident at Boston Logan International Airport’s JetBlue terminal has left passengers and social media users stunned. A man was seen disrobing in the terminal, initially stripping down to his red underwear. The spectacle, which took place in Terminal C, quickly escalated as the man continued to undress. The incident was captured on video and has since been widely shared on social media platforms. The footage shows the man lying on the floor in ... Read more

An Ohio-based daycare worker is facing charges of child endangerment after allegedly using painter’s tape to bind a one-year-old girl’s eyes, hands, and feet, leaving her face down under a blanket unattended. The 23-year-old woman, Katelyn Strohacker, was employed at Over the Rainbow Children’s Center in Pataskala at the time of the incident on July 21. According to the criminal complaint filed in Licking County last week, Strohacker is accused of using the tape as ... Read more

More Ghastly Decisions by the Trump Administration? Dr. Philip Giraldi By Philip Giraldi, August 21, 2025 It must be Good News Week judging by the stories generated by the Trump regime and its supporting cast of neocons, with good … The post Selected Articles: More Ghastly Decisions by the Trump Administration? appeared first on Global Research.

On May 5 this year, two days after the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) federal election landslide victory, tens of thousands of Queensland unionists marched through Brisbane’s streets to celebrate the state’s Labour Day. The mood was relatively jubilant and the bright, subtropical autumn weather seemed to promise a hopeful spring for organized labor. One unionist

… The post Remembering Those Great Efforts of Saving Himalayan Forests in Tehri Garhwal appeared first on Global Research.

[This article was first published by GR in July 2022.] Eight decades ago, the Asia-Pacific War officially began on the morning of Sunday 7 December 1941, with Japan’s military attack on the American-controlled Pearl Harbor naval base at Oahu, Hawaii. … The post An Overview of the Asia-Pacific War 80 Years Ago, Japan Headed for Total Defeat appeared first on Global Research.

One week after his presidential victory in 2024, Donald Trump promised that the United States would soon have “the cleanest air and water on the planet.” In the very same sentence, he vowed to deregulate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and “unleash the power of American business.” To critical observers, it was always obvious which

As openDemocracy readers discuss whether we need a stronger financial sector, we’d love to hear your thoughts

Oklahoma just announced a new fifty-question assessment model for teachers designed to “[keep] away woke indoctrinators” from the state’s schools. That test — which includes questions related to “undoing the damage of gender ideology” — was developed by Prager University, a right-wing, pro-capitalist propaganda machine that aspires to become a force in American education. Now

In the midst of Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed crackdown on antisemitism, one key fact seems to have been overlooked: the antisemitism is coming from inside the house — the White House, to be specific. The Trump administration has gone to extraordinary lengths in what it has sold to the public as a battle against antisemitism and

Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris Refuse Trump’s “Three Way Summit”. New Weapons Scream: ‘No Peace Deal!’ Drago Bosnic, August 19, 2025 EU Preparing Regime Change in Hungary? Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, August 15, 2025 Australia Abruptly Shuts Down COVID … The post This Week’s Most Popular Articles appeared first on Global Research.

… The post “On Prayer” by German Spiritual Author Bô Yin Râ. Part I appeared first on Global Research.

… The post 80 Years Since the Last World War: How Long to the Next? appeared first on Global Research.

Romania’s recent elections saw surging support for “ultranationalist” candidates — especially after a breakthrough for the eccentric Călin Georgescu. The December 2024 cancellation of the initial first-round results over claims of Russian interference soon plunged the race into turmoil, heightening the sense of mounting pressure on the country’s institutions. The eventual rerun this May handed

… The post Malaysian Socialist: ‘Socialism provides the framework to unite our struggles’ appeared first on Global Research.

In 1900, the American naval historian and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) wrote a series of articles that were later collected into a book titled The Problem of Asia. In Mahan’s time, the problem of Asia was the growing power of Russia and the unstable “debatable and debated ground” which stretched from the islands offshore of East Asia to the Middle East—roughly between 30degrees and 40 degrees north latitude.This broader central Asian belt today includes the South China Sea, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, all of China, much of India, Pakistan, the Bay of Bengal, Afghanistan, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, Iran, the oil-rich Caspian Sea basin, the Red Sea, the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Levant, and modern-day Turkey. It roughly tracks the Asian geography of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Today, China, not Russia, is the problem of Asia. In Mahan’s time, the geopolitical struggle over this Asian region (the “great game”) was waged by Great Britain and Russia. Today, the geopolitical struggle over this region is waged by the United States and China. And this new great game will determine the global balance of power into the foreseeable future.  China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, using economic leverage to further its geopolitical ambitions. Those ambitions include the unfinished business of the Communist Revolution of 1949, i.e., gaining control of Taiwan, which the U.S. prevented by inserting the 7th Fleet between China and Taiwan at the beginning of the Korean War in the summer of 1950. China’s goals entail nothing less than what they see as full redemption from the “century of humiliation” (1839–1949) through the attainment of super power status by 2049. President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream,” described by Michael Pillsbury in The Hundred-Year Marathon as “a resurgent China that would reclaim its rightful place atop the global hierarchy,” could soon be a reality. In Mahan’s time, Russia competed with Western powers to gain influence in a decrepit Chinese empire. Today, China has joined with Russia in a “strategic partnership” that threatens to disturb the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia. Mahan understood that effective political control over key segments of Eurasia would threaten Britain’s global preeminence. The resources of Eurasia could transform its dominant land power into the world’s dominant sea power. This was also the assessment of Mahan’s British counterpart, Sir Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947), who famously argued that the key to geopolitical dominance would ultimately be control over the interior of Eurasia, stretching from Eastern Europe to China. Today’s great game includes land power, sea power, air power, space power, cyber power, and artificial intelligence (AI) power.  The geography of the contest has greatly expanded. In Mahan’s time, the conflict was limited to central Asia. Today, China’s Belt and Road Initiative reaches into Europe, Africa, and in parts of the Western Hemisphere, including the Panama Canal. The Arctic Ocean is also up for grabs, which is one reason why President Trump wants Greenland and talks of Canada as the 51st state. The great geopolitical thinker Robert Kaplan has noted that the melting Arctic Ocean has for the first time made Mackinder’s concept of the Eurasian-African “World-Island” a geographical and geopolitical reality.   In 1900, Mahan wrote that the geopolitical conditions in the central Asian belt “render[ed] the problem of Asia . . . at once perplexing and imminent.” Mahan noted that Britain and Russia had “zones of power” in Asia and would seek to acquire “new positions” to expand their respective power. Mahan urged U.S. leaders to maintain our naval predominance in the Western Hemisphere, control the Central American isthmus to construct a strategic canal, and establish an effective naval force in the western Pacific. He also urged the formation of alliances with smaller Asian powers, including Japan, to counterbalance Russia.  Today, the need for more naval power in the western Pacific is obvious given China’s growth in naval power and its huge lead in shipbuilding capacity. As in 1900, U.S. control of an isthmian canal is imperative to our ability to transfer warships from the Caribbean to Asia. And today the need for allies in the region is as great or greater than it was in 1900.  It turns out that the group of conservative “Asia-firsters” of the 1940s and 1950s were way ahead of their time. Men like Sen. Robert Taft, former President Herbert Hoover, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Ambassador William Bullitt, publisher Henry Luce, Alfred Kohlberg, Ambassador Joseph Grew, Sen. William Knowland, and others, feared that Communist China would one day pose a greater threat to the United States than the Soviet Union did. They supported the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek in China’s civil war, and blamed the Truman administration for “losing” China by ending assistance to our World War II ally. Gen. MacArthur presciently noted that “The decision to withhold previously pledged support [to Chiang’s regime] was one of the greatest mistakes ever made in our history . . . Its consequences will be felt for centuries, and its ultimate disastrous effects on the fortunes of the free world are still to be unfolded.” MacArthur believed that America’s long-term destiny was as a Pacific and Asiatic power.  President Trump’s moves to consolidate American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and his real “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific are Mahanian. So, too, are Trump’s trade deals and tariff negotiations, which are designed to reinvigorate our military-industrial base. Science and technology have made the “new” problem of Asia more dangerous today than in Mahan’s time. And it’s not going away any time soon. The old great game lasted for more than half a century. The new one may last even longer. 

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Chicago earlier this month, I was in desperate search of relief from the heat. The single air-conditioning unit in my third-floor apartment bedroom was not cutting it: I needed to submerge my body in cold water, fast. I could have hauled it over to Lake Michigan, but biking for

Relations between China and India are as old as the Asian giants themselves. The two neighboring countries have had their ups and downs, including low-intensity conflicts over several border areas. The unresolved delineation is primarily the result of British … The post Two Asian Giants: China and India Strengthen Ties amid US Pressure and Trade Wars. appeared first on Global Research.

Is Russia an agent of destabilization in Africa or a lifeline for nations seeking sovereignty? The post U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle appeared first on Global Research.

Trump’s Plan to Invade Venezuela and Abduct “Narcoterrorist” Maduro. Kurt Nimmo By Kurt Nimmo, August 21, 2025 The Trump administration, through its attorney general Pam Bondi, announced on August 7 it has doubled a reward—from $25 million to $50 … The post Selected Articles: Trump’s Plan to Invade Venezuela and Abduct “Narcoterrorist” Maduro appeared first on Global Research.

Donald Trump was still just a landlord and TV bully when Steve Bannon, later to become the president’s on-and-off-again demagogue in chief, announced himself a pitiless enemy of the administrative state. Self-dramatizing as he is, Bannon’s words carried an undeniable frisson: “I am a Leninist and Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that is

As President Trump attempts to sway Zelenskyy and the European leaders on a Peace Deal, he is sending war troops to Venezuela. As a result, 1.4 million militia military have been ordered to stand ready. The supposed purpose is the … The post Venezuela: A Fentanyl Diversion for Coup. The Battle for Oil. U.S. Troops Stand Ready: Helena Glass appeared first on Global Research.

Our taxi stops as close to the presidential palace as possible. We get out and join the queue. We hand our passports to the guards at the first check point. We then have to pass through several security stations, the gravity and solemnity rising with each. At long last, we are inside the halls, close

Liz Pelly, a New York–based writer, has reported on the impact of tech companies on the music industry for nearly a decade. This year, One Signal Publishers released Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, a book that sheds light on the inner workings of Spotify and the highly

New paper reveals stark gender inequalities with the Seasonal Worker Scheme, which government recently renewed

For the last year or so, federal district court judges in the Fifth Circuit have been enjoining the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing unfair labor practice charges against employers in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I’ve written a couple of pieces about this including this one in September of last year. These decisions are all

A year into the Labour government's tenure how have they lived up to their pledges to tackle misogyny and improve the lives of women across the country?

Bernie Sanders has spent much of the last eight months touring the deepest red parts of the country. Earlier this month, for example, he held a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he told a packed room that West Virginia is a “working-class state” that should stop electing politicians who serve “the billionaires.” That simple

Taxpayer payouts for historic child sex abuse paint ‘stark and worrying picture’ for Ministry of Defence, lawyers say

Poverty and cautions trap women in sex work – good policies could resolve this. But politicians don't want to know

Last year, July 4 was a day of celebration in British politics for almost everyone but the Tories. At the general election held on that date, Labour won a commanding 411 parliamentary seats and returned to power after 14 years in opposition. The Liberal Democrats acquired their highest ever seat share. Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK claimed the third largest vote share (but only five seats). Landslides, however, seldom end when polls close. Capturing Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s landslides, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty uses the double-curve of the letter S to suggest that political fortunes, “swing both ways.” Landslides begin and end unexpectedly. Their routes are unpredictable. In six years, the Conservatives have gone from almost inevitable to almost extinct. A year ago, Starmer was hailed for the centrism for which he is now vilified. To discern direction in this churn, it is helpful to examine the events of 1906: the first landslide election of the twentieth century, and the last triumph of the Liberal Party. The causes and consequences of 1906 illuminate why the Conservatives lost so badly in 2024 and how they could recover, why Labour’s success is shallow and its position precarious, and why a fissiparous politics of many parties may be the new normal.  The 1906 and 2024 landslides were shaped by countervailing landslides five years earlier. In 1900 and 2019, the Conservatives enjoyed a unifying cause. In 1900, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and his Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain (father of later Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain) made the election a referendum on the Boer War. In 2019, “get Brexit done” was Johnson’s cri de coeur. Both issues divided the opposition and damaged its credibility. “Gladstonian” Liberals like David Lloyd George (PM from 1916-22) denounced the Boer War. “Liberal Imperialists” like H.H. Asquith (PM from 1908-1916) supported it. Divided, the Liberals could not be trusted to defend the empire. Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist who shifted Labour left from its recent pro-Europe, pro-business Blairite history, led a party whose MPs supported “Remain” but whose working-class Northern England heartland voted “Leave” in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Divided, Labour could not be trusted to negotiate post-Brexit Anglo-European relations, and voters overwhelmingly opted for “get Brexit done” Boris Johnson instead. By 1906 and 2024, the Boers were defeated and Brexit was done and the salient issues were dividing the Conservatives instead of their electoral opponents. Joseph Chamberlain broke with Salisbury’s successor (and nephew) as Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, over the latter’s ambivalence on tariffs. Farage, considered an outsider much the same way Joseph Chamberlain was, assailed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over his vacillating on immigration while offering a stridently anti-immigration message himself. In 1906 and 2024, Liberals and Labour could portray longstanding Conservative governments as synonymous with an economically sluggish status quo and contrast Conservative dissensus with their apparent unity and stability. In both cases, the result was a Conservative wipeout.  In 1906, the Conservatives lost 246 seats while in 2024 they lost 251 seats. Nonetheless, the Conservatives regained 110 seats in the next election in 1910, holding two fewer than the Liberals. In 1918 they won another 108 seats to gain a majority, although they depended on Lloyd George’s “Coalition Liberals” to govern. Issues like increased taxation, industrial strikes, Irish upheaval, and the First World War energized Conservatives but divided Liberals. Embellishing their populist nationalism, the Conservatives rebranded as the “Unionists” in 1911 and replaced the emollient, aristocratic, Balfour with the confrontational, middle class, Andrew Bonar Law. Bonar Law and his equally bourgeois successor as Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, aimed their appeals to the working and middle classes. Styling himself publicly a “plain man of the common people,” Baldwin, claimed (privately) to “voice what is in the minds of the dumb millions of this country.” Today’s Conservatives could also stage a quick recovery by merging with Reform or co-opting its grievances and by elevating a populist firebrand like Farage or Johnson. Such a transformation would be comparable to the high-toned Cecil-Balfour clan ceding leadership to suburbanites like Bonar Law and Baldwin. Then and now, the insurgent can revive the established, and the established can legitimize the insurgent. Emulating the Unionist reimagining of 1911, a new name and branding could facilitate the merger. Following Bonar Law and Baldwin in fusing nationalist and economic populism could be the Conservatives’ path forward. With his promise of socioeconomic “leveling up,” this combination helped Johnson breach Labour’s “Red Wall” of Northern English seats in 2019. Farage’s present calls to nationalize the steel industry and his refusal to criticize striking sanitation workers in Birmingham are similar tactics. Despite leading Labour to victory in 2024, Starmer now faces a swift decline in popularity, raising questions about the durability of his mandate. Similarly, when the Liberals won their greatest victory in 1906, winning 397 seats and what would be their last parliamentary majority, it seemed that the Liberal party and their individual-rights oriented form of politics was ascendant. Instead, across 20th-century Europe, class-oriented parties of right and left supplanted liberal ones. Grounded in ideas of individual freedom rather than class interests, the Liberals could appeal to many but secure the support of few. The Liberals enacted social welfare legislation in 1909-1910, but their working class support was eroded by Labour’s more ambitious welfare agenda. Liberal governments deployed troops against domestic strikes and Russian Bolsheviks, but the middle and upper classes saw the Tories as a stronger bulwark against communism. Today Labour runs the same risk of falling between stools. Starmer promised both fiscal discipline and economic growth, but has only antagonized supporters with abortive attempts at social welfare retrenchment. “Blue Labour” proposals to tack right on social issues and left on economic ones risks the appearance of insincerity with all constituencies. Labour suffered losses to the Greens and left-wing independents in 2024. Disenchanted progressive voters may abandon Labour en masse next election. For voters concerned with fiscal rectitude, the Conservatives, heirs to former British finance minister George Osborne’s “austerity” economics under David Cameron, are a safer harbor. For voters animated by national sovereignty, Reform is the clear choice, while voters interested in reintegrating with Europe will support the Liberal Democrats. In struggling to be acceptable to everyone, Labour could end up appealing to almost no one. The aftermath of 1906 also suggests that 2024 could herald parliamentary fragmentation. In 1906, 90 percent of the electorate voted Liberal or Conservative. Labor’s emergence that year with 5 percent of the vote presaged change. In the four elections of the 1920s, at least three parties received more than 10 percent of the vote. A two-party binary only reemerged in 1931. In 2017, Labor and the Conservatives took 80 percent of the vote. That proportion fell to 66 percent in 2024. More Britons voted Reform, LibDem, and Green combined than Labor or Conservative separately. Recent polling showed 26 percent support for Reform, 23 percent for Labor, 18 percent for the Conservatives, 15 percent for the LibDems, and 10 percent for the Greens. No matter the century, landslides are best interpreted not as one party’s success in one election, but as periods of instability in which soaring victories, crushing defeats, and unthinkable results become plausible. Outlandish outcomes like a Farage premiership, Reform-Conservative fusion, or Labour extinction should be acknowledged and analyzed. A mushrooming of parliamentary parties is a strong possibility. Britain may not love coalitions, but today, as in 1906, it may have to learn to endure them, at least until Britain can decide once again what it stands for.

After Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral primary, conservatives dusted off their favorite insult: socialism is just “free stuff,” and Mamdani only won because that’s what he promised. (See here and here.) Donald Trump Jr, echoing his dad, sneered that no amount of “free stuff” will fix the city. Yes, Mamdani’s program

Only weeks after the tech industry tried and failed to convince federal lawmakers to shield artificial intelligence companies from regulation, a bipartisan group of pro-business lawmakers is spearheading state legislation that would prohibit consumers from suing businesses whose AI potentially violates consumer protection laws. In recent years, companies have been accused of using AI technologies

It’s famously hard to find an apartment in New York City. Andrew Cuomo has floated a plan to make it harder. The disgraced ex-governor and current mayoral candidate has proposed banning middle-income tenants from rent-stabilized apartments. Specifically, under Cuomo’s proposal, prospective tenants wouldn’t be allowed to rent a rent-stabilized unit unless they could prove that

On August 1, former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe was sentenced to twelve years of house arrest, making history as the first head of state in modern Colombia to face a criminal conviction. In a country long defined by entrenched impunity for its political elite, this landmark ruling has shaken the foundations of Colombian politics and

Recently, there was a campaign to stop the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, from their performance at Seattle’s annual “Seafair,” for being “too loud,” causing pollution, and triggering war trauma. Being from Seattle, I have fond memories of watching, but mostly hearing the roar of the F-18’s. While such performances may seem unremarkable, the truth is that they are of incredible importance — not just for the sake of military preparedness, but also as a source of intense psychological terror for our enemies, something illuminated by Book V of Virgil’s Aeneid.  While the first half of the Aeneid is more akin to Homer’s Odyssey, with a long series of dangerous run-ins with supernatural Mediterranean beings, the latter half shifts to the Trojans’ campaign to settle in Italy. There, they engage in a brutal conflict with the native Italic tribes, ultimately securing a union with the Latins through Aeneas’s marriage to Princess Lavinia, laying the foundation for the future Roman people as descended from both Troy and Italy.  The pivotal scene between these two halves is Book V, the funeral games held in Sicily in honor of Anchises, Aeneas’s father, whom Aeneas carried out of burning Troy in Book I. The games include contests of rowing, running, boxing, and archery, and conclude with the equestrian drill:  “Next came the youthful horse, to close the show,The pride of Troy, and ornaments of war.Before the games, their arms they laid aside,And in bright cohorts march’d, a comely tide.Their shining reins they hold, in trim array,Then ride in circles, and their ranks display;With measured steps advance, retreat, and wheel,Now fronting, now in column, now in file.With mutual wounds they mock a mimic fight,In counter-march, they meet, retreat, unite;So dolphins, in the deep, engage in play,And swim in circles in the foaming sea.So Labrinth, the Cretan maze, they tread”Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by John Dryden. Book V, 545–603. The practiced, studied maneuvers, on horseback no less, of the Trojan youth are not so different from those of the Blue Angels today. And, just as in antiquity, the process of planning and executing wargames is as complicated and potentially dangerous as anything outside of real war, and that’s the point. Sadly, we constantly hear about American soldiers dying or being injured in the course of training exercises. This is often due to incompetence, but the more unpalatable truth is that keeping a fighting force of over a million people in reasonable shape to go to war is just intrinsically very dangerous.  But this is why wargames are so important: being able to successfully conduct extremely complicated drills with minimal issues, especially with the best, most expensive equipment (for the Trojans, horses, for us, fighter jets) is how a nation signals martial prowess, at home and abroad. Picturing the beauty and grace of those equites, one can’t help but feel awe at their splendid maneuvers and the organizational capacity human societies become possessed of only when facing war or some great struggle. A warship only functions according to the combination of hundreds of sailors performing in perfect concert, all within an embodiment of modern naval science; how much more amazing then is the harmonious cooperation of an entire fleet.  While displays of military capability like the Blue Angels are entertaining, their real purpose is to inspire fear and therefore deterrence in our enemies. Well-ordered columns advancing in synchronous, rehearsed lockstep may evoke wonder in children at how such a body of individuals, a corps, could function together so seamlessly; yet, ultimately, the point of such performances is to elicit intense dread at the thought of the decisive, coordinated violence such assemblages exist to inflict, deterring conflicts before they begin.  The truth is that, even if a government spends billions not just on cutting-edge military tech but also the human capital necessary for modern combined operations, that does not necessarily mean anything. Nations like Saudi Arabia may possess advanced avionics, but that is not the same as mastering the operational complexity they demand. Yet, when I watch the Blue Angels “mock a mimic fight” as “they meet, retreat, [and] unite,” engaged in play “like dolphins, in the deep,” their maneuvers “so Labrinth,” like King Minos’ “Cretan maze,” I know that the US military, for all its issues, is certainly capable of making good on threats to kill people and break things. As a kid, I watched the Blue Angels and experienced what Edmund Burke described as the beautiful elements on display: those of harmony, practiced synchronicity, symmetry, and gracefulness. But today, when I recall the roar of those jets and their zero-margin-for-error aerobatics, my reaction is much closer to feelings Burke would associate with the sublime: horrible awe at our capacity to scientifically engineer and technically master such destructive machines and pity for those who must face them. As Burke writes in The Sublime and Beautiful (1757), experiences of the sublime result from terrified awe at some unbelievably powerful phenomenon. Examples include thunder, the vastness of the ocean, a tempestuous storm, and cannon fire, but in all cases “terror… is the ruling principle of the sublime.”  Today, as in antiquity, any display of supreme military might is bound to convey a sense of sublime terror; that was how I felt watching B-2 bombers fly over the White House on July 4th, less than two weeks after the June 22nd strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. That war and preparations for war can be so awe-inspiring in ways both terrible and beautiful reflects the ambiguity of human conflict as something horrible yet at times morally necessary. It’s difficult to hold in tension admiration for all the positive things associated with the military, including self-sacrificial patriotism and service, with the terrible tragedy that these things are necessary because of our fallen, sinful state. As St. Augustine argued in The City of God, this is indicative of the “now and not yet” nature of this world: militarism qua militarism, the pagan libido dominandi, is categorically unacceptable, and yet Christians are still at times called to be righteous defenders and avengers of the innocent.  And yet, while it is true that competent and even fear-inducing militaries on the side of justice can play a redemptive role in our fallen world, we must remember that we are ultimately not called upon to trust in B-2 bombers, but in the Lord: “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,And rely on horses,Who trust in chariots because they are many,And in horsemen because they are very strong,But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel,Nor seek the Lord!”    Isaiah 31:1 Amen.

Workers on the front lines of climate change are treated as expendable. This is morally bankrupt and unsustainable

While there are many reasons to be for or against the current administration’s tariffs, this impulse to invoke Reagan to criticize Trump can obscure significant overlap in each president’s strategic use of trade as a geopolitical tool. Revisiting the 1985 United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) can illuminate these likenesses and convey several helpful lessons for policymakers today. As a refresher, this agreement not only comprised the economic dimension of Reagan’s strategic integration of Israel into US defense planning but also marked the first bilateral free trade deal in US history. The initial idea was proposed in November 1983, formal negotiations began in January 1984, the pact was signed in April 1985, and it went into effect June 11, 1985. The FTA removed import fees on certain key goods, with all bilateral trade between the United States and Israel (including the Palestinian territories) becoming duty-free by 1995. Covering major sectors like agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing, the FTA overcame the resistance of US Arab allies and US domestic producers to become a template for future free trade agreements such as those with Canada and Jordan. While the FTA and the trade agreements currently being negotiated by the Trump administration obviously take opposite stances on the question of tariffs, there are two key similarities in the strategic rationale informing them worth highlighting. First, both the FTA and Trump’s deals are fundamentally driven by geopolitical calculations instead of purely economic considerations. Although Reagan is popularly known as an arch-conservative on questions of economic policy—Milton Friedman did serve as one of his advisors, after all—the 1985 FTA with Israel was motivated less by an adherence to free trade doctrine and more by fear that Israel’s economic woes were jeopardizing its military capacities. One economic study at the time aptly summarized Israel’s problems, noting that the inflation rate “hit 50% per annum in 1975 after the 1973 Yom Kippur War; was reduced to 30-40% by 1977; by the end of 1979 it was around 130% where it remained until the end of 1983; at the end of 1984 the price level was 5.5 times a year earlier.” Moreover, because Israeli debt was close to 80 percent of GDP, the government could hardly hope to stimulate a deficit-financed recovery on its own. In this context, the Reagan administration feared the Israeli economy might hamper its ability to remain militarily effective. Although Trump’s policies are quite different, both his and Reagan’s FTA with Israel represent the primacy of geopolitical considerations in trade strategy. The Trump White House explicitly claims that its tariffs are meant to bolster US manufacturing in sectors vital to defense such as energy, aerospace, and steel. Reagan, in similar fashion, employed U.S. trade policy to prevent a crucial ally in a vital region from becoming too weak to contribute to American defense posture. Second, both the FTA and Trump’s deals have been initiated as a response to US aid flows. As Andrew Pierre observed in 1982, US assistance and credits covered nearly half of the Israeli defense budget, which meant “the Israeli economy is very much dependent on the infusion of money from abroad.” The hope within the Reagan administration was that the FTA would enable Israel to transition to an export-driven economy, thus reducing the need for American aid. In similar fashion, Trump’s trade negotiations have occurred alongside his push for NATO allies to increase their defense spending to the levels needed to deter Russian or Chinese aggression. In this case, the aim is to reduce allied dependence on the US military to protect the continent and promote the long-sought chimera of European self-reliance on matters of defense. In each case—the 1985 FTA and Trump’s dealings with Europe—the goal of US trade policy has been to cut the amount of US resources needed by allies and raise their contributions to collective security. This dynamic means that Trump and Reagan both effectively deployed trade as a tool to force allies to commence with domestic reforms they would otherwise not pursue. For Israel, signing the FTA meant giving up its state-led economic structure in favor of a capitalist free market system. One casualty of this transition was Israel’s goal of developing its own fighter jet, the Lavi, signaling an acceptance of reliance on American-made weaponry that gives Washington powerful leverage over Israeli security policy. In the case of NATO allies, the promise to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP will necessarily entail cuts to other areas of government spending. Although generous European safety nets are already straining under the weight of the demographic crisis, to reach even 3 or 4 percent will demand hard choices; as John Letzing of the World Economic Forum shows, this transition requires NATO countries to “effectively retool their economies for this new reality.” Ultimately, recognizing that both Reagan and Trump wielded trade policy not as an end in itself but as a strategic lever to bolster defense and compel allied burden‑sharing offers a corrective lens through which to evaluate today’s debates over tariffs, free trade, and national security. Critics of Trump’s trade agenda often invoke the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the Republican icon of free markets. For example, Daniel C. Peterson at Patheos contrasts Reagan’s April 1987 radio address on free and fair trade to Trump’s “totally arbitrary tariff regime.” The Independent cites Reagan’s 1988 speech about the impending US-Canada Free Trade Agreement to the same effect. Many other commentators have made this comparison, including the Chinese embassy and a former Reagan advisor. While there are many reasons to be for or against the current administration’s tariffs, this impulse to invoke Reagan to criticize Trump can obscure significant overlap in each president’s strategic use of trade as a geopolitical tool. Revisiting the 1985 United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) can illuminate these likenesses and convey several helpful lessons for policymakers today. As a refresher, this agreement not only comprised the economic dimension of Reagan’s strategic integration of Israel into US defense planning but also marked the first bilateral free trade deal in US history. The initial idea was proposed in November 1983, formal negotiations began in January 1984, the pact was signed in April 1985, and it went into effect June 11, 1985. The FTA removed import fees on certain key goods, with all bilateral trade between the United States and Israel (including the Palestinian territories) becoming duty-free by 1995. Covering major sectors like agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing, the FTA overcame the resistance of US Arab allies and US domestic producers to become a template for future free trade agreements such as those with Canada and Jordan. While the FTA and the trade agreements currently being negotiated by the Trump administration obviously take opposite stances on the question of tariffs, there are two key similarities in the strategic rationale informing them worth highlighting. First, both the FTA and Trump’s deals are fundamentally driven by geopolitical calculations instead of purely economic considerations. Although Reagan is popularly known as an arch-conservative on questions of economic policy—Milton Friedman did serve as one of his advisors, after all—the 1985 FTA with Israel was motivated less by an adherence to free trade doctrine and more by fear that Israel’s economic woes were jeopardizing its military capacities. One economic study at the time aptly summarized Israel’s problems, noting that the inflation rate “hit 50% per annum in 1975 after the 1973 Yom Kippur War; was reduced to 30-40% by 1977; by the end of 1979 it was around 130% where it remained until the end of 1983; at the end of 1984 the price level was 5.5 times a year earlier.” Moreover, because Israeli debt was close to 80 percent of GDP, the government could hardly hope to stimulate a deficit-financed recovery on its own. In this context, the Reagan administration feared the Israeli economy might hamper its ability to remain militarily effective. Although Trump’s policies are quite different, both his and Reagan’s FTA with Israel represent the primacy of geopolitical considerations in trade strategy. The Trump White House explicitly claims that its tariffs are meant to bolster US manufacturing in sectors vital to defense such as energy, aerospace, and steel. Reagan, in similar fashion, employed U.S. trade policy to prevent a crucial ally in a vital region from becoming too weak to contribute to American defense posture. Second, both the FTA and Trump’s deals have been initiated as a response to US aid flows. As Andrew Pierre observed in 1982, US assistance and credits covered nearly half of the Israeli defense budget, which meant “the Israeli economy is very much dependent on the infusion of money from abroad.” The hope within the Reagan administration was that the FTA would enable Israel to transition to an export-driven economy, thus reducing the need for American aid. In similar fashion, Trump’s trade negotiations have occurred alongside his push for NATO allies to increase their defense spending to the levels needed to deter Russian or Chinese aggression. In this case, the aim is to reduce allied dependence on the US military to protect the continent and promote the long-sought chimera of European self-reliance on matters of defense. In each case—the 1985 FTA and Trump’s dealings with Europe—the goal of US trade policy has been to cut the amount of US resources needed by allies and raise their contributions to collective security. This dynamic means that Trump and Reagan both effectively deployed trade as a tool to force allies to commence with domestic reforms they would otherwise not pursue. For Israel, signing the FTA meant giving up its state-led economic structure in favor of a capitalist free market system. One casualty of this transition was Israel’s goal of developing its own fighter jet, the Lavi, signaling an acceptance of reliance on American-made weaponry that gives Washington powerful leverage over Israeli security policy. In the case of NATO allies, the promise to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP will necessarily entail cuts to other areas of government spending. Although generous European safety nets are already straining under the weight of the demographic crisis, to reach even 3 or 4 percent will demand hard choices; as John Letzing of the World Economic Forum shows, this transition requires NATO countries to “effectively retool their economies for this new reality.” Ultimately, recognizing that both Reagan and Trump wielded trade policy not as an end in itself but as a strategic lever to bolster defense and compel allied burden‑sharing offers a corrective lens through which to evaluate today’s debates over tariffs, free trade, and national security.

Iran poses an existential threat to Iraq’s sovereignty and the survival of Christians and other religious minorities in the region. Decades of war, unrest and widespread persecution have devastated Iraqi Christian communities, now comprising just 1% of Iraq’s total population. This crisis is perpetuated by the Iranian regime’s Axis of Resistance and its increasingly potent influence over the Iraqi government. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Tehran has pursued a deliberate, multifaceted campaign to infiltrate Iraq’s political landscape, often at the expense of Iraq’s religious minorities. Recent developments, specifically the Trump Administration’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, have left the regime weakened and increasingly focused on Iraq as one of its last footholds in the region. The Babylon Brigades, established and backed by Tehran under the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), as well as its political offshoot, the Babylon Movement, embody Iran’s exploitation of Iraq’s religious minorities to advance their malign agenda. Founded in 2014 by US-sanctioned human rights abuser Rayan al-Kildani, these groups are nominally Christian, yet depend on the support of Iraqi Shi’a and are not representative of Christian values or interests. Strategically centered in the Nineveh Plains, Iraq’s only Christian-majority region, al-Kildani has forcibly submerged the authentically-Christian Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU) into his militia. Kildani has further consolidated his authority by silencing the political voices of Iraqi Christians. Article 49 of Iraq’s Constitution allocates a certain number of seats to religious minorities in the Council of Representatives (COR), with five currently reserved for Christian candidates. However, Iraqi election law permits anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, to vote for these seats, allowing for unchecked manipulation of the system. Through this loophole, al-Kildani and his Babylon Movement have effectively hijacked nearly all Christian-designated seats at varying levels of government in federal Iraq. With the next parliamentary elections scheduled for November of this year, urgent action must be taken to ensure equal and fair representation for minority communities. Al-Kildani is seemingly preparing to continue his exploitation of Iraqi Christians, reportedly having ordered NPU members to collect at least twenty-five voting cards from Nineveh Plains residents so they may be used to cast votes for Babylon Movement candidates. Kildani has expanded his influence with impunity. Despite ongoing abuses and blatant electoral fraud, al-Kildani has never been prosecuted by Iraqi courts. Media outlets even refrain from publishing negative press about Kildani, signaling the fear he has instilled in the population. The Iraqi government must hold al-Kildani and his supporters accountable to the fullest extent of the law and implement reforms to secure representation of Iraq’s religious minorities. This Iranian-backed infiltration has extended beyond political exploitation. In July of 2023, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashad revoked an order recognizing Cardinal Sako as patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church— Iraq’s largest Christian denomination. This reportedly came just one day after the president met with al-Kildani. Recognizing the rising influence of Kildani in the Chaldean church, Cardinal Sako fled to Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Months later, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shi’a al-Sudani invited Cardinal Sako back to Baghdad after a concerted diplomatic effort by the U.S. government. More recently, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Prime Minister al-Sudani, discussing a bill currently pending in the COR that aims to institutionalize the PMF by establishing a more clearly defined structure for the organization. As emphasized by the Secretary of State, this legislation would only further integrate the PMF into Iraq’s security apparatus and deepen Iran’s influence, as well as directly contradict U.S. government efforts to facilitate the dismantling of the PMF. Refusing to eradicate the PMF would cement U.S. opposition to the Iraqi federal government’s embrace of Iranian influence, damaging Washington-Baghdad relations and further diminishing Iraq’s national sovereignty. The United States has been presented with a historic opportunity to undermine Iran’s power and influence following the strategic defeat of the regime’s proxies and regional allies. Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, was significantly weakened following the assassination of its leader and other top-ranking officials. Months later, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria effectively ended the close partnership between Tehran and Damascus, as well as the ability for Iran to utilize Syria as a land bridge to the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, Washington’s April 2025 airstrikes on Yemen’s Ras Isa port have cut off a crucial oil supply to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in control of the country. The Trump Administration’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last month signal a further decline of the regime’s scope and dominance. In the wake of these events, Iraq has become Tehran’s most viable avenue for maintaining its influence. Effectively resisting Iran’s encroachment into Iraq is now critical to securing regional stability. The Trump Administration should continue to pursue diplomatic efforts with Iraqi government officials, specifically with those who have previously expressed support for religious minority groups and incentivize them to meet these commitments. Building strong ties and demonstrating the benefits of U.S. partnership will continue to push the population further from Iran. Additionally, President Trump should ensure U.S. troops remain in Iraq, especially in the Kurdistan region, to act as a counterweight against the PMF, and Washington must continue to put pressure on the Iraqi government to dismantle the PMF in its entirety. Members of Congress should support legislation aiming to strengthen an independent Iraq from Iran, specifically Representative Joe Wilson’s Free Iraq from Iran Act, which will give the Trump administration additional leverage to pursue the dismantling of the PMF. Finally, U.S. government officials should call out al-Kildani by name, reprimanding his abuses of Iraqi Christians and electoral processes. If the United States fails to adequately intervene, al-Kildani and other Iranian-backed forces will continue their destructive, extremist objectives— posing a threat not only to Iraqi Christians but to the stability of the entire region. Defending international religious freedom is a cornerstone of U.S. morality and foreign policy. Simultaneously, countering Iran’s entrenchment into Iraq is essential for containing and derailing the regime as a whole. Washington must prioritize both of these obligations before Tehran’s grip tightens beyond reversal.

On April 12, 1945, the day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, World War II had persisted for over five and a half years.  V-E Day (May 8) and V-J Day (August 14-15) were not known in advance; nor were these victories guaranteed.  In Europe, the hard-fought Battle of the Bulge had been costly, Adolf Hitler still lived, and the battle for Berlin was yet to come.  In Asia, the Battle of Okinawa raged in its second full week, and the Japanese showed no sign of relenting.  Americans and many others around the world mourned the death of FDR, the longest-serving U.S. president and the international champion of freedom and democracy against tyranny.  It seemed no one could fill his shoes.   It fell to President Harry S. Truman to both finish and win the second great war of the twentieth century.  The man from Missouri was a study in contrasts from his predecessor: the Midwest rather than the East Coast, small-town public school and no college degree rather than elite boarding school and Harvard, Baptist rather than Episcopalian, a mix of hardscrabble and modest means rather than easy privilege, and fast walker rather than dashing sailor.  Short and plain-spoken, the former U.S. senator and vice president of only 82 days did not look or sound like Roosevelt.  Whatever he was or would be, the new president was not FDR. Truman was antitotalitarian, as he had made clear since the time of America’s prewar neutrality and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that kicked off the invasion of Poland.  As a senator and then as president, he advocated strength-based policies to establish and defend liberty and democracy against tyranny.  His views were grounded not only in his religious faith and experience—including as a field artillery captain in the Meuse–Argonne offensive of World War I, the first great war of the twentieth century—but also in his lifelong autodidactic study of history, strategy, and biography (Truman was the last president not to attend college).   FDR himself had little to do with Truman’s thoughts, since he only met alone twice with his vice president after their January 1945 inauguration and did not disclose specifics about wartime strategy.  Truman was not fully briefed about the Manhattan Project until about two weeks into his presidency.  His crash course in presidential diplomacy and military power confirmed for him that politics starts with the moral character of the regime.  In Truman’s opinion, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union were illegitimate, tyrannical regimes that repressed, indoctrinated, and enslaved their own peoples and wanted the same for the rest of the world.   The new president forged his own path in world affairs.  Truman did not want it to be true that a new kind of war was emerging from World War II, let alone before that latter conflict was won.  But he sensed it was so.  Daily briefings from his new advisors, especially Admiral William Leahy, confirmed his judgment.  He hoped that all the Allies—particularly the Soviet Union—would honor their wartime conference commitments, including free elections for every liberated country in Europe.  He held two crucial ends in mind and strategy: first, finishing and winning World War II; second and almost as important, recognizing and addressing the new conflict that derived from both world wars—a struggle that would not be popularly called the Cold War until 1947. In Europe, Truman followed the advice of his generals—starting with General George C. Marshall, whom British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill would crown as the “organizer of victory” in World War II and Truman would deem “the great one of the age.”  With Roosevelt’s approval, Marshall and General Dwight D. Eisenhower—the mastermind of D-Day and more—had defined the “single objective” as “quick and complete victory” in accord with the occupation agreements reached by the European Advisory Commission in 1944.  Just as FDR died, Eisenhower made the decision to stop at the Elbe River and let the Soviets liberate Berlin, in order to avoid the further loss of American lives.  When Churchill implored the new president to advance east to Berlin, Truman stood by the agreement between Roosevelt and Marshall and, by default, supported Eisenhower’s tactical decision.  Truman soon regretted his decision and later wrote: “We were about 150 miles east of the border of the occupation zone line agreed to at Yalta.  I felt that agreements made in the war to keep Russia fighting should be kept and I kept them to the letter.  Perhaps they should not have been adhered to so quickly.”   In the Pacific, Truman assessed the complicated geostrategy and vast resources required to counter, let alone prevail over, Japan.  It was commonly anticipated that casualties from the planned Allied invasion (Operation Downfall) of the Japanese home islands would run into the millions on both sides.  How to end the war was ultimately Truman’s decision.  Out of prudence, he ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Among other compelling reasons, Marshall had advised him at the Potsdam Conference in July that the bomb, if it worked, would save a quarter of a million American lives and probably millions more Japanese.  As Truman stated in an authorized account toward the end of his presidency, “I then agreed to the use of the atomic bomb if Japan did not yield.  I had reached a decision after long and careful thought.  It was not an easy decision to make.  I did not like the weapon.  But I had no qualms if in the long run millions of lives could be saved.  The rest is history.”  Dropping the bombs resulted in heavy Japanese losses at one time—between 78,000 and 100,000 were killed at Hiroshima and between 60,000 and 70,000 at Nagasaki—but Truman already knew that over 100,000 Japanese armed forces had died in the Okinawa campaign, and he had never cared for the strategy of repeated incendiary raids.  He determined that ending the war immediately was the just course.   Truman’s goal was a just peace.  While he hoped surrender would come after one atomic bomb, he was prepared to use the second bomb quickly to convince the Japanese that the United States had a stockpile of weapons.  His strategy worked.  After Nagasaki—not Hiroshima—came Japan’s surrender.  Truman interpreted Tokyo’s message as meeting the Potsdam Declaration’s terms of unconditional surrender because the emperor would be subject to the Allied supreme commander.  This prudent solution ensured Imperial Japan’s surrender—with the emperor remaining as titular head of state—in such a way that Truman could present as both unconditional and acceptable to both sides. The brewing Cold War was ever present.  In between V-E and V-J Days, Truman cabled back and forth between Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Churchill in an attempt to prevent the USSR from taking more territory, directed his presidential advisor to convey American disapproval of Soviet actions (especially in Poland) at a Moscow meeting with Stalin, and made several comments about the need for the postwar economic rehabilitation of Europe.  Before the Potsdam Conference from mid-July to early August of 1945, though, Truman thought certain actions were impermissible against an official ally that pledged to fulfill its wartime commitments. Before his departure for Potsdam, Truman was informed of the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals, which reinforced for him that the Communists were as bad as the Nazis.  While at the conference, he decided that the United States needed the Soviet Union to help defeat the Japanese, but he determined that the Kremlin must not take control in Japan as it was in the process of doing in Eastern and Central Europe.  Like the rest of the world, he bid farewell to Churchill and greeted Clement Atlee as the new British prime minister.  Truman’s experience at Potsdam disabused him of any notion of Stalin’s goodwill, even being then unaware of Soviet espionage on the Manhattan Project.   A man of freedom and peace, Truman was a resolute antitotalitarian.  The new president helped to bring the Allies to victory in the last great war.  But he realized before World War II ended that a new kind of war was upon him—and the entire free world.  The new president was forced to turn his attention to the Cold War, rooted in the revolutionary antagonisms of Marxism and the successful additions of Leninism, forever entwined with both now-old world wars of the twentieth century.  On this 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the free world should be grateful to Harry Truman for his principled strength in winning the second great war and identifying the ideological threat and devising the strategy to fight the third great war, which—decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union—continues to cast its shadow over this century.

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This August marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in Asia and the Pacific. President Harry Truman’s decision to use these weapons remains one of the most controversial decisions of the war. A number of military commanders at the time, including Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, claimed that it was unnecessary, as Japan was about to surrender regardless. Some of the most vehement critics of the atomic bombings were Christian thinkers; for example, in one of his television broadcasts Bishop Fulton Sheen called it “our national sin.” “When we dropped the bomb,” he continued, “we dropped it not only on the Japanese–we dropped it on ourselves, in the sense that we killed something in our moral consciousness.” On the Protestant side, the Federal Council of Churches in March 1946 issued a statement labeling use of the bomb “morally indefensible” and “unnecessary for winning the war”. Japan, after all, was an “already virtually beaten foe” so to use such a weapon against its civilian population opened the United States to “judgment before God and the conscience of humankind.” With due respect to these critics, none of them had access to the information that Harry Truman had in the summer of 1945. Contrary to the claims that Japan was on the verge of surrender, there was nothing resembling a formal peace offer coming from Tokyo. Even though its empire had been largely rolled back and its navy obliterated, the generals and admirals who dominated Japan’s government regarded such a surrender as dishonorable. Only the personal intervention of the emperor himself could overcome the resistance of the Army and Navy–and the emperor almost never involved himself directly with political or military decisions. Thus the war would go on, and as long as it did thousands were dying by the day, both in Japan and on the Asian continent, from fighting, starvation, and disease. Historian Richard Frank has referred to this ongoing disaster as a “slow-motion Hiroshima.” Truman’s critics claim that Tokyo was ready to talk peace, and as evidence for this they often point to the existence of peace feelers from some Japanese diplomats. Significantly, however, these sources were not based in Japan, but rather were diplomats in neutral countries in no way authorized to speak officially for the Japanese government. In Tokyo, the cabinet itself was genuinely hoping for peace, but only on terms that the Army and Navy regarded as “honorable.” Specifically this meant that they would not accept any agreement that would alter Japan’s kokutai, a term that translates roughly as “national polity” or “national essence.” Defined narrowly, this could mean simply that Japan could not accept the removal of the emperor; more broadly it could mean a refusal to consider any change at all to the political status quo. Moreover, the military men who dominated the cabinet also insisted that there be no postwar occupation of Japan, and that any investigations into war crimes be handled by the Japanese government itself. Critics claim that Truman had alternatives other than use of the atomic bombs, but hastily rejected them. Yet when we consider each of the alternatives, it is clear that they had serious flaws.  The most likely alternative was a U.S. invasion of the home islands, starting with Kyushu, the southernmost of the islands. Indeed, preparations were already underway for such an operation, since the atomic bomb was not successfully tested until July. It was understood, however, that an invasion would be extremely costly. Even on tiny, relatively worthless islands such as Tarawa and Saipan, Japanese forces had shown themselves willing to fight to the death and so their defense of the home islands could be expected to be only more fanatical. In a meeting on June 18, 1945, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff William D. Leahy suggested that casualties in the battle of Okinawa be used to project how many U.S. troops would be killed or wounded in an invasion of Kyushu. On Okinawa 35 percent of the forces engaged had become casualties. Given that 750,000 men were expected to take part in the Kyushu landings, that would mean losses of 250,000 killed or seriously injured. (By way of comparison, the United States had suffered only around 400,000 total casualties in both the European and the Pacific Theater up to this point.) This leaves aside the massive numbers of Japanese, including civilians, who would be killed in such an operation. And, of course, Kyushu was only one of four home islands, all of which might have to be invaded in order to bring about a surrender. Another possibility was to take advantage of the fact that the U.S. Navy had almost complete control of the sea lanes surrounding Japan, and the U.S. Army Air Force almost totally dominated the skies above the home islands. Why not, then, utilize a blockade instead of risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, use a combination of conventional bombing and blockade to induce a Japanese surrender? The problem here is that there was no guarantee it would work, and the European theater suggested that it would not. German cities had been pounded by Allied bombers for two years, yet the Nazi regime did not surrender until Berlin was occupied by the Soviet Army. And even if it might work, there was no telling how long it would take. If the goal was to minimize loss of civilian lives, then this would have been the least desirable option. The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10 killed at least 100,000, the vast majority of them civilians. Tens or hundreds of thousands more would likely have died of starvation or disease from the ongoing effects of the naval blockade. Continuing this strategy would have undoubtedly resulted in far more civilian deaths than the 250,000 who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a direct result of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito intervened against the wishes of the generals and admirals to end the war. The results of the bombings were indeed dreadful, but they also represented the quickest and least costly road to peace. The most realistic alternatives, such as an invasion of the home islands, or a continuation of conventional bombing and blockade, would likely have resulted in even more deaths than the atomic bombings caused. Truman’s critics, therefore, are wrong. In ordering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki he made the best possible decision based on the information available to him. It was a tragedy that so many had to die for Japan to surrender, but unfortunately there was no better option.

Should we really celebrate military victory over Japan eighty years ago? After all, the war that we, the British, fought was an imperial war—a war in defence of the British Empire. And it was ended by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing up to 200,000 people, most of them civilians. How can we celebrate VJ Day? For Christian pacifists, of course, the answer is clear: followers of Jesus cannot celebrate any war in any way, and certainly not this one. Since any deliberate killing of a human being is morally wrong, war is wrong in spades. But if the answer is adamantly clear, the implications are very disturbing. For if war is always wrong, then Britain should never have used armed force to resist Nazi Germany, no matter imperial Japan—with fatal consequences for the Jews, the Slavs, the liberals, the gays, the gypsies, and, not least, non-Fascist Christians. For what—other than war—would have stopped the horrifying triumph of massively murderous Nazism in Europe? The noble witness of innocent non-violence? Hardly. The historical evidence is that the kind of people who ran the likes of Auschwitz, were not at all shamed into repentance by the face of vulnerable innocence; on the contrary, it excited their lust for cruelty. It’s in the face of this dilemma—how to protect the innocent, while being faithful to Jesus—that, starting with St Augustine of Hippo in the early 400s AD, Christian thinking about ‘just [or justified] war’ was born.  In brief, the thinking can be distilled into three points. First, Christians may not fight while motivated by vengeance, but they may fight out of love for the innocent.  Next, Christians may intend, not to exterminate an unjust enemy, but only to force him to stop fighting, thereby securing a just peace.  In the course of so doing, finally, Christians must never intend to kill non-combatant civilians, but they may risk killing them, if that can’t be avoided and if the risks are minimized. With that in mind, let’s return to the war against Japan. Can we celebrate it? The first thing to say is that celebration doesn’t have to be pure; it needn’t be unadulterated. Eighty years ago, my father (aged 32) and my mother (aged 25) rejoiced at the end of the war against Japan. But my mother also grieved the loss of her youngest brother, Jack, who had flown out from Chittagong over the jungles of Burma in late 1944 and was never heard of again. For a long time after the war, Mum and her family hoped that Jack would turn up in some returned batch of prisoners of war, but he never did. He vanished at the age of 22. So, grief and lamentation over the terrible costs of war are certainly appropriate here, too.  Even—and Christian love requires this—lamentation over the terrible costs of war to the enemy. If ever you find yourself in the centre of Tokyo, make your way to the north-west corner of the Imperial Gardens, and turn left. A few minutes will bring you to the Yasukuni-jinja, Japan’s most controversial site. This is the national shrine to the war-dead, whose two and half million resident “glorious souls” include fourteen Class A war criminals. A hundred yards to the right of the main shrine stands a museum, the Yushukan. Upon entering it, the visitor immediately encounters a locomotive. (I’ll come back to that shortly.) As he moves further into the museum, he finds himself in a series of rooms, whose walls are covered by the photographs of Japanese soldiers from the Second World War. Most of them look about 18 years old. And if you know much about the war in South-East Asia, you’ll know that many of them will have suffered grievously, some of them starving to death. It’s impossible not to be moved.  So, we can and should lament the terrible costs of war, both to us and to our then Japanese enemies. But can we also celebrate our victory over them? The first of the two obstacles standing in our way is that Britain’s war against Japan was a war in defence of the British Empire. And for those who assume that empire is always evil, that makes celebration on this day impossible.  But empires, I submit, are not always and equally evil. Surely, it must stand to the humanitarian credit of the British Empire that it was among the first states in the history of the world to abolish slavery, and that it then used its imperial power to suppress it worldwide for a century and a half. And surely it stands to its credit that, from May 1940 when France fell, to June 1941 when the Soviet Union was invaded, the British Empire offered the genocidal Nazi regime the only military resistance—with the sole exception of Greece. By contrast, the Japanese Empire had no just claim to any comparable humanitarian character. Yes, the Yushukan Museum claims that Japan’s imperial expansion in the 1930s and ‘40s was in fact a war of liberation, waged on behalf of subjugated Asian peoples, against Western colonial domination. And yet what the museum demurely describes as ‘the Chinese incident’ is known outside Japan as ‘the Rape of Nanking’, when in 1937-8 Japanese troops are reckoned to have slaughtered about 300,000 Chinese civilians. So much, for Imperial Japan’s solidarity with Asian peoples. And then there’s that locomotive in the museum’s entrance. When a Briton or Australian of a certain age puts together Japan, Second World War, and train, he immediately adduces one thing only: the ‘Burma Railway’. This is the railway that was hacked through the Burmese jungle by Allied prisoners-of-war and Asian labourers, who were treated as slave labour and perished in their tens of thousands. Over 12,000 Britons and Australians died—about one in five of the POWs—alongside 150,000 Asians. No one who has viewed BBC 4’s showing of the tv dramatization of Richard Flanagan’s fact-based novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and has managed to keep watching the harrowing fourth episode in which a sick Australian POW is beaten to death, can doubt the shameless brutality of the Japanese Empire. Certainly, most of the British Raj’s Indian subjects didn’t doubt it. Which is why, although 43,000 Indian POWs did sign up to fight for the Japanese, 2.5 million fellow Indians fought in British uniform.   So, no, the fact that the war against Japan was in defence of the British Empire should not stop us celebrating today. But what about the dropping of those atomic bombs?  Vengeance had nothing to do with it. The overriding motive of the US government was the desire to save lives by bringing the war to a swift end, through forcing the Japanese government to surrender. Two weeks before the first bomb was dropped, President Truman wrote: “My object is to save as many American lives as possible but I also have a humane feeling for the women and children of Japan.”  The problem facing the president and his colleagues was that, even as the Japanese were forced back onto their home territory, they showed no sign of giving up the fight. Truman’s military advisors estimated that the invasion of the Japanese mainland in November would cost up to 1 million casualties (dead and wounded).  Therefore, the US government decided to use atomic bombs to intimidate the Japanese into surrender. The possibility of a ‘demonstration’ drop onto some sparsely populated desert or island was considered, but it was rejected as likely to be ineffective. So, the decision was made to bomb cities. In deciding which cities to bomb, was the size of the population a consideration? No, the focus was on military and economic objectives. Hiroshima was known as a ‘military city’ by the Japanese themselves. It housed the army HQ for forces defending Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan, which was the first target of US invasion. Nagasaki was a port town with munitions factories. Tragically, precise targeting was not an option. Due to technological limitations and persistent cloud-cover, American attempts at the precision-bombing of factories and industrial targets in Japan had failed. Moreover, those sites were often widely dispersed in residential districts. Therefore, Truman’s Target Committee decided to aim at Hiroshima’s city-centre, because there was a prominent bridge there that would be easiest to spot from 30,000 feet. The result was the killing of 140,000 people, mostly civilians. Was a second bomb necessary? Sadly, yes. The atomic explosion in Hiroshima failed to persuade Japan’s government to surrender. So, three days later, on 9 August, another US bombing mission took to the air. Its intended target was in fact Kokura, whose centre hosted an enormous arsenal. In the event, however, Kokura was obscured by cloud-cover, so the bomber proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki. For reasons that remain unclear—the city wasn’t hidden by cloud—it dropped its bomb over two miles from the city-centre and hit a Mitsubishi armaments plant, killing 40,000 people.  Even after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese war minister, General Korechika Anami, was still arguing in favour of fighting on to the bitter end. “We will find life out of death”, he said. “Wouldn’t it be beautiful?” Fortunately, his counsel didn’t prevail and eighty years ago today, on 15 August, the Japanese government finally decided to surrender.  The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was not an act of vengeance; it sought to save lives and secure peace. And it targeted military and industrial targets. However, a combination of their residential location, technological limits, and the weather made massive civilian casualties unavoidable. That was dreadfully, awfully tragic, but it wasn’t immoral. So, yes, we can and should celebrate the 80th anniversary of VJ Day with a “full heart”, albeit lamenting the terrible costs on both sides. That day was indeed one that proclaimed liberty to the captives—not only the British and Australian POWs, and the American GIs gripped by fear at the prospect of having to charge up Japanese beaches right into machine-gun fire, but also the Chinese, Koreans, Indians, and Thais suffering under brutal Japanese rule, when, as our First Canticle intoned, “cruel men … furiously rose up in wrath, to make of them their prey”.  Thank God Almighty, for their deliverance.  And thank God for all those, like uncle Jack, who delivered them, sacrificing their todays for our tomorrows. Amen.

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When idealists and realists describe the achievement of the post-WWII international order, they are usually talking about different things. For those operating from the idealist conceptual framework, there is much to lament about the current state of global affairs. But for realists, 80 years since America’s in the Second World War, there’s reason for a bit of celebration and even optimism – something realists are not often known for. From the Wilsonian (idealist) school of thought, the “rules-based order” is all but gone. After two world wars and the introduction of atomic warfare, nations were supposed to peacefully cooperate through internationally-recognized rules and norms developed and held together by consensus. The United Nations was supposed to succeed where the League of Nations had failed as the neutral arbiter among nations. The organization, founded in 1945, boasts that “it remains the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity.” Alas, the UN has not quite figured out how to get authoritarian countries who reject Western values to abide by the rules.  Besides Russia’s ongoing machinations to subjugate Eastern Europe, the Kremlin is also engaged in terrorism in European countries supporting Ukraine’s defense, such as the UK, Germany, the Baltics, and the Netherlands. Russia is still using chemical weapons, the only class of weapons banned after World War 2. It violated the Open Skies and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prompted President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from both during his first term. Moscow remains in noncompliance with its obligations under the New START Treaty, the last bilateral nuclear arms treaty the United States has with Russia.  The Chinese Communist Party helps North Korea and Russia evade sanctions by supporting their illicit activities and engages in forced technology transfer (theft), constant cyber-attacks against other nations, both private and government entities. The CCP, led by Xi Jinping, has no intention of supporting, let alone abiding by, the “rules” of the international system set by Western nations; rather, it seeks to supplant this order with one that benefits the CCP at the expense of free societies.  Commercial sea lanes, which international law requires be open and peaceful, are anything but. China and Russia cut undersea cables across geographies. China and Russia violate the exclusive economic zones of other nations, for former in the South China Sea and the latter in the Baltic and Artic. Russia has even violated the national air spaces of multiple nations just in the last two months. America’s adversaries have weaponized outer space as well — a global common area that the rules-based order insists should remain peaceful and for all nations to share responsibly. International organizations like the World Health Organizations that are meant to prevent global disease and mitigate health risks have been transparently co-opted by the Chinese government.  For Wilsonian idealists, who believed all international conflict could ultimately be ended or minimized through such high-minded institutions, there is little to celebrate in 2025.  But for realists, there is much to be pleased with and plenty to motivate American policymakers to restore our hard-earned successes of the post-WWII order our predecessors built.   First, it’s important to assess expectations and what that “order” does and doesn’t entail from a realist perspective. Realists, including Christian Realists, do not believe in an “end of history,” or at least not this side of Heaven. There has never been a peaceful international order motivated purely by the selflessness and altruism of a community of nations. There is no global consensus toward surrendering national sovereignty to a transnational governing body. Realists understand that sovereign nations will always act in accordance with their perceived interests and nations have disparate values, cultures, and willingness to take on degrees of risk.  Even so, for the Realist, the post-WWII international system has brought about enormous blessings, to Americans specifically and humanity in general. But the good it has brought, though remarkable, is far more modest than the idealist’s grand visions. The international system we know today developed only through the United States’ combination of moral authority and military/economic preponderance following WWII.  Before WWII, there were 17 democracies while today and there are 88. This was achieved primarily by the United States unapologetically pushing other nations to embrace democracy as the system of government most in accordance with human dignity as created in the image dei: the image of God.  There has been peace and enormously prosperous trade relative to all of the years that proceeded with it. And the number of human casualties in war is dramatically fewer than all of recorded history. That lack of war and relative peace has been described as the Pax Americana—the American Peace.  That American Peace has been possible through our allies in NATO, Asia, and Israel in the Middle East. American grand strategy has relied on these alliances so that the United States to project power abroad, share and receive intelligence, and combine efforts to thwart shared adversaries. Importantly, the United States also sought to discourage nuclear proliferation by encouraging nations to eschew their own nuclear weapons in exchange for US nuclear guarantees.  Today, there is much work to be done 80 years after the end of the Second World War to defend, restore, and strengthen the Pax Americana. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are collaborating to displace the US-led international order in favor of a multipolar world of tyrannical rogue states run amok. Our enemies understand that this is only possible by weakening the system of alliances that gives the US so much leverage over global events.  President Trump’s successful NATO Summit this summer, which heralded significant ally investments in American weapons, was an encouraging sign that the alliance can still be effective. The recklessly permissive migration practices in Europe must end and the defense industrial bases of European nations must receive real and sustained investments. Likewise, the United States will continue to shore up Ukraine’s defense through the provision of American weapons in an effort to induce Russia to end the war and conclude that expanding it would not be worth the cost.  The United States’ support for Israel’s defensive war against Iran and its proxies also portends well for a restoration of American-backed effective “rule” enforcement. Iran has been threatening genocide against America’s ally for decades. By backing Israel against Iran, including striking its nuclear program, the United States is also backstopping the global stigma against the sin of antisemitism that led to the horrors of the Holocaust. The strike also upheld nuclear nonproliferation norms, which could have a deterrent effect on other countries considering acquiring nuclear weapons.  80 years after the end of WWII, the world remains a violent place in need of American global leadership. Not only has the principle of national sovereignty defined by geographic borders not disappeared, it has been forcefully reaffirmed by the United States. The United States is reassessing which international organizations no longer serve their original purpose and are either defunding or adapting them (the WHO and USAID.) The threats from China and Russia to the American-led postwar order will endure. But with moral clarity, and a determination to outmaneuver its enemies, the United States can defend, restore, and strengthen the Pax. 

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The Second World War ended four generations ago. We are as far from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1945 victory in the Second World War as he was from Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1865, and both men died in April of their final year of conflict, leaving to their successors to sort out the peace they promised to the American people. To remember Pearl Harbor, we must accept that we can no longer simply recall it. It is now like the recollection of Fort Sumter was for the men who stormed Normandy. History does not play favorites and everything that is not deliberately passed down will be forgotten. This forgetting is not an exclusively American failure; it is the natural passage of time. But its repair demands something of us. When memory passes into the afterlife, the convictions of the living must take its place.  The American people urgently tried to avoid both wars, but once in the conflict the electorate of 1864 and 1944 chose to stay the course and complete the task. This is remarkable because other countries such as Britain, suspended elections for the duration of the war as a sign of unity. The American system was stronger. Lincoln and FDR, men whose leadership could rightly be called indispensable to the national emergencies, submitted themselves to the electorate. The American system has been built on the idea that no man is above civil audit, even during the greatest of emergencies the people must have the free and open choice of their leaders. It was an imperfect system. Many American soldiers, coming from poll-tax states that disenfranchised the poor of all racial categories, fell in Europe having never been able to cast votes in their republic. And yet their campaign against the Axis sparked hope for a expanded liberty at home in opposition to the monstrous vision of America’s enemies.  The Second World War was a new birth of freedom for Americans for whom the promises of the country were an unpaid debt. While we often think of the conflict in terms of race and racialism, we might better think of the conflict as one of unifying sacrifice across the American family, for the American nation is ultimately a federation of families. Black families in the South and inner city, Native tribal families on the reservations, and even maligned immigrants like the Italian and Japanese Americans who faced persecution because their ancestry traced back to enemy countries. These families gave their sons and a few of their daughters not simply to defeat the Axis but to ensure they would have the benefits of a free society after the victory was won. The New Deal liberal-nationalism of President Roosevelt created hope for a stronger, fairer America, and the bottom rungs of the greatest generation fought for their right to ascend. The war demanded everything from these families, yet they accepted in the knowledge that American freedom, however imperfect, was worth perfecting rather than abandoning. America’s traditionally Protestant classical-liberalism was, even with its faults, better than the alternatives. Earlier this year I visited Normandy and remain struck by the contrast between the graves of the fallen on both sides—between the honor of victory for a righteous cause and the double shame of losing the war while fighting on the side of wickedness. Standing among the German graves, you feel the weight of choices. Each stone marker represents not just a life lost, but a life wasted in service of evil. The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer tells a different story: here rests the mortal remains of Americans who crossed an ocean to die for strangers’ freedom, and their own. Their graves face west, toward the homeland and families they would never see again. The legacy of the Second World War was previously the American-led postwar order and the atomic age, but as the world continues to spin and the distance between 1945 and our time lengthens, we must build a new legacy to honor the forefathers of 1945. We must determine to be realists about the place of honor, integrity and transcendent morality in establishing national power and stability. And we must be resolved to embrace that same integrity in the ruthless pursuit of the public good and moral order through the defeat of wicked men and ideas.  This is not about nostalgia for a simpler time for there was nothing simple about global war across the Pacific and the Atlantic, the Great Depression, or domestic injustice of the Jim Crow system. Rather, it is about recognizing that each generation must choose its own relationship to the principles that previous generations died to preserve. The men who stormed beaches, seized command of the skies, and fought their way across oceans, did not do so for us to slip into a comfortable docility of passive resignation. Rather, it was for our capacity to be active, empowered citizens of a great republic, alive to the urgency of our times as they were to theirs.   Christian realism does not seek perfect justice on this side of eternity. Nor does it shrink from doing what it can to pursue peace and good order in the temporal world. A lesson of the Second World War is not that the arc of history bends towards justice of its own accord, but that we must prudentially do our part to shape history, to compel the victory of righteousness over evil. We must intentionally choose to learn what we, as a society, can no longer remember from experience because to forget is to lose the wisdom of history. 

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Corbynism cut through with the public in 2017. To do so again, his new party must show it's not just a protest vote

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Suspect in recent assassination of Minnesota lawmaker reportedly previously delivered anti-LGBTIQ sermons in the Congo

openDemocracy readers debate whether making voting mandatory would improve politics

Migrants denied right to work turn to exploitative delivery apps to earn cash, but the government is cracking down

Simply insisting people vote in elections run by a system they rightly distrust will not improve British politics

The UK government’s failed rematching scheme shows ministers fundamentally misunderstand the reality of care work

The ataman (head) of the “All-Russian Cossack Society,” Nikolai Doluda, addressed a meeting of the Atamans’ Council, in Krasnodar Krai, on February 4, and instructed those gathered that “the time has come when the Cossacks are once again becoming a stronghold and reliable shield of Russia, a guarantor of unity and protection of its national interests” (Vsko.ru, February 4). The … The post As Ukraine Crisis Simmers, Russian Cossack Movement Tightens Integration With Military Reserves appeared first on Jamestown.

Judi Bola Sbobet Bonus New Member Poker QQ Idn Poker Slot Dana PKV Games PKV Games Idn Poker Mix Parlay Mix Parlay BandarQQ PKV Games Over the last several years, Ukraine’s leaders have expressed grave concern over the dangers posed to regional energy security by Russia’s Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline. From Germany and, more broadly, from Europe, the … The post The Many Faces of Nord Stream Two appeared first on Jamestown.

Judi Bola Sbobet Bonus New Member Poker QQ Idn Poker Slot Dana PKV Games PKV Games Idn Poker Mix Parlay Mix Parlay BandarQQ PKV Games On July 28, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians celebrated the 1,033rd anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus—a remarkable annual event for Ukrainian history and another reason for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political speculations. After the Ecumenical … The post Religion as a Hybrid War Weapon to Achieve Russia’s Geopolitical Goals appeared first on Jamestown.

On May 25, just ahead of the 103rd anniversary of the First Georgian Republic’s (1918–1921) independence, Georgian protesters paralyzed the streets of the capital city of Tbilisi in the largest rally to date against the Namakhvani Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) project (Civil.ge, May 25, 26). Relatively small demonstrations against the planned dam, by locals organized under the banner “Guardians of … The post Namakhvani HPP: Georgian Hydropower Between Energy Security and Geopolitics appeared first on Jamestown.

Judi Bola Sbobet Bonus New Member Poker QQ Idn Poker Slot Dana PKV Games PKV Games Idn Poker Mix Parlay Mix Parlay BandarQQ PKV Games The Russian Cossack movement is emerging as one of the key social pillars supporting the regime, and increasingly it is taking on the mold of Kuban Cossackdom, found in the southern part of the country. … The post All Russian Cossacks Increasingly Resemble Krasnodar Movement appeared first on Jamestown.

On April 21, Vasily Piskarev, the head of the State Duma’s commission to investigate the facts of interference in the internal affairs of Russia, announced that his body was preparing legislative initiatives to combat foreign interference in Russia, including in its elections, by non-profits and non-governmental organizations (NGO). Piskarev said that “insults against Russia” will receive a “worthy response, including … The post Russia Cracks Down on ‘Foreign Threats’ appeared first on Jamestown.

On February 20, Ruslan Ablyakimov was walking in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, with two friends when he was stopped by six young men who proceeded to beat him. “Where did you come here from?” they asked, “You are from Moscow, right? What are you doing here?” Before the men left Ablyakimov, they told him, “You have until tomorrow to … The post Alexei Navalny’s Support in the North Caucasus: More About Corruption Than Navalny appeared first on Jamestown.

The foreign and security policy expert communities in Georgia (Neweurope.eu, November 17) as well as both the outgoing and candidate Lithuanian defense ministers (LRT, November 16, 19) have called for a permanent presence of United States military forces in their respective countries. These calls indicate a hope that the incoming administration of President-elect Joseph Biden will bring greater attention to … The post Georgia, Lithuania Call for Permanent US Troop Presences appeared first on Jamestown.

In the first week of August, cellphones across Russia lit up with surprising text messages. They came from different numbers, but each said the same thing in Russian: “The US State Department is offering up to $10 million for information about interference in the US elections. If you have information, contact rfj.tips/bngc.” The State Department confirmed the messages were authentic … The post US Messaging to Russian Citizens: Time to Step It Up? appeared first on Jamestown.

Recent comments by former vice president of the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia Valery Arshba indicate a split between the older political elite and the current administration of President Aslan Bzhania (Gazeta-ra.info, October 19; Civil.ge, October 23). Arshba called for the breakaway republic to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus, “without losing [its] sovereignty.” Arshba himself has a … The post Former Abkhazian Separatist Official Calls for Joining Russia-Belarus Union State appeared first on Jamestown.