New Chinese drones scramble naval power in Pacific, and maybe everywhere else
Inside China Business | August 17, 2025
India Cancels Offshore Wind Tender–Due To Lack Of Interest
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 13, 2025
Now India is losing interest in offshore wind.
Renewablesnow report:
The Indian government has cancelled the process to allocate sea-bed lease rights for a total of 4,500 MW of offshore wind projects, it was announced on Tuesday.
While SECI itself did not state a reason for the decision in its announcement, The Economic Times quoted two sources as saying that there was a lack of interest among project developers. …
This follows Trump’s US move away from offshore wind and the lack of bidders at Germany’s offshore auction last week.
Meanwhile Orsted have had to launch a massive $9.4 billion Share Rights Issue, largely because of huge losses on offshore wind projects.
It seems that it is only the UK where anybody wants to build wind farms at sea, but only because of the obscene subsidies on offer.
American Nun: Hamas is a resistance movement, and Christians suffer under occupation

Palestinian Information Center – August 17, 2025
WEST BANK – An American nun said that Israeli policies have made the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims “extremely difficult,” due to restrictions on movement, land confiscation, and settlement construction. She also stressed that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is a resistance movement that defends its people and land.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, who has lived since 1996 in the Palestinian town of Bethany in the occupied West Bank, appeared in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on a popular US television program, sparking wide controversy after she spoke about her two-decade-long experience in the occupied Palestinian territories.
She affirmed that Christians there face suffering similar to that experienced by Muslims under Israeli occupation.
She added that the number of Palestinian Christians has significantly declined since the Nakba in 1948 due to restrictions and displacement, emphasizing that “the problem is not religious but national,” as Christians face the same discrimination because of their Palestinian identity.
The nun criticized what she described as the “blind support” of some Christian Zionists in the United States for Israel, saying they ignore the suffering of Palestinian Christians and justify settlement expansion and land confiscation.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos also pointed out that churches and Christian institutions in the West Bank and Gaza have been bombed and destroyed, considering this part of a systematic targeting of Palestinians.
She explained that Palestinian Christians live in natural cohesion with Muslims, citing the example of Christian schools in Bethlehem and Jerusalem where the majority of students are Muslims, stressing that coexistence is the prevailing feature of Palestinian society.
The interview, titled “This is How Christians Live in the Holy Land,” received over 12 million views and was considered one of the most prominent episodes shedding light on the conditions of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims under occupation, and the violence and restrictions they face from settlers and Israeli authorities.
Israel excluded from upcoming Bari trade fair in Italy
MEMO | August 17, 2025
Organizers of the upcoming Fiera del Levante, an annual international trade exhibition scheduled to take place in Italy’s Bari city from Sept. 13 to 21, have decided not to invite Israel due to concerns raised by the city mayor about the Gaza situation, local media reported on Sunday, Anadolu reports.
According to Italian news agency ANSA, the fair’s organizing body confirmed the decision, following an appeal by Bari Mayor Vito Leccese, who on July 1 had called “not to let Israel participate in the fair activities within the Bari exhibition district, both institutional and economic.”
“For a commonality of ethical and political views, the Nuova Fiera del Levante has from the outset expressed a clear distancing from the atrocities of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and has supported, becoming its promoter, the initiative to propose the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to the children of Gaza,” the fair organizer body said in a statement.
The note explained that the initiative, launched by the Latiano-based foundation L’isola che non c’e, seeks to nominate children in Gaza for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
The fair described the proposal as “a moral appeal to the international community to recognize the right to peace and life for every child, everywhere in the world.”
Israeli daily reveals Mossad-MKO collaboration during aggression against Iran
Press TV – August 17, 2025
An Israeli newspaper has revealed collaboration between the Mossad spy agency and the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist cult during the recent illegal aggression against Iran.
In a blog in Times of Israel, US-based freelance journalist Julian Rennell said the Mossad-MKO collaboration, which dates back to at least 2002, reached “new levels of sophistication” over the course of the 12-day Israeli-US assault against Iran.
The MKO’s “operational elements” had established “team houses in Tehran, where they built launchers and handheld mortars” and conducted “propaganda and information-gathering activities” in support of Israeli objectives, he said.
The notorious terror group provided targeting data for high-value assassinations in Iran and “precise coordinates” of critical infrastructure during the June’s aggression.
Rennell also quoted US officials as saying that the MKO has been “financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service” to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.
He further cited Tehran’s Criminal Court as documenting how MKO operatives coordinated with Israeli intelligence by gathering data on traffic flow near Kermanshah’s Farabi Hospital and passing it to the Tel Aviv regime for a deadly strike.
Meanwhile, he referred to remarks by an Iranian judge, who confirmed “active cooperation” between MKO terrorists and Israeli operatives, particularly in identifying and targeting Iranian nuclear scientists.
Rennell urged Israel to “formalize” its relationship with the MKO and move beyond covert cooperation to strategic partnership regardless of significant backlash, both among Iranians and internationally.
The MKO – the most despised group among ordinary Iranians – has a dismal history of perpetrating heinous attacks against Iranian civilians and officials, killing around 12,000 people since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
MKO members spent many years in Iraq, where they were hosted and armed by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They sided with Saddam during the 1980-88 imposed war against Iran.
MKO terrorists, who are now based in Albania, enjoy freedom of activity in the US and Europe.
A top Iranian criminal court has held 36 hearings on crimes of MKO members. It will hold more trial sessions for the case.
Trump-Zelensky Talks: Europe’s Backdoor Play for Arms Industry’s Interests?

Sputnik – 17.08.2025
The German government announced on Sunday that Chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Washington, joining Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders for talks with US President Donald Trump.
Volodymyr Zelensky is flying to Washington to meet Donald Trump mainly to negotiate the possibility of retaining power, Polish political analyst Mateusz Piskorski told Sputnik.
During his upcoming talks with Trump, Zelensky wants to obtain potential personal security guarantees and to preserve his ability to continue ruling Ukraine for some time, Piskorski pointed out.
“If a full-fledged peace agreement on Ukraine is clinched, Zelensky will most likely be forced to organize elections, in which he has no real chance of winning,” the analyst emphasized.
He suggested that Zelensky will behave more cautiously than he did during his last meeting with Trump at the White House in late February.
European leaders who will reportedly accompany Zelensky, including Macron and Scholz, as well as NATO chief Rutte, will call for continuation of the Ukraine conflict as their interests are linked to the defense-industrial complex of France, Germany, and the UK, according to Piskorski.
In Germany, right after the announcement of the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska, the stock market and value of major German companies like Rheinmetall dropped by several percent — reportedly as much as 10%, the analyst concluded.
The Delicate Exit
By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 16, 2025
My coalescing sense of the underwhelming Alaska Chats is that Russia has not materially varied from its longstanding terms.
Trump rolled into town with his “stealth” flyover, imagining he was the one giving an audience to Putin.
From start to finish it was perfectly evident to any discerning observer that it was just the opposite, and that Putin was there to repeat and to emphasize Russia’s apparently inviolable terms.
As I understand it, the Russians have said they will implement a conditional temporary ceasefire in the south while NATO/AFU forces withdraw from Donetsk.
No one has said anything about ending the Special Military Operation, nor of the disposition of territories.
In essence, the Russians are saying:
“We’ll temporarily stop destroying you on the southern part of the line of contact while you retreat from the northern part, and then we’ll demand you also withdraw from the southern part, and lay down your arms.”
I cannot understand how so many people seem to doubt the resolve of the Russians to continue fighting western forces for years to come pursuant to their clearly enunciated objectives.
In each successive year of this war, Russian strength has augmented across the spectrum. Russia is not only outproducing the combined west by several multiples, but their military hardware is now indisputably superior in most key categories.
The only exit route for the US/NATO is capitulation, which in this instance entails withdrawing NATO military presence to the 1997 borders, as stipulated in the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997.
How they opt to frame that capitulation is up to them.
As I noted in my February 2024 analysis of the Tucker Carlson interview of Vladimir Putin:
Tucker Carlson: Do you think it is too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?
Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.
Up until now there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. Now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition. It is never going to happen.
It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.
That both Tucker Carlson and others have failed to correctly interpret Putin’s words is incomprehensible to me. So permit me to paraphrase them in language that is perhaps more understandable to the dimwitted and disingenuous people in the west who continue to misrepresent them:
“We offered them an early out, and they rejected it in favor of an appeal to arms in order to inflict what they imagined would be a severe strategic defeat against Russia on the field of battle. But their reach greatly exceeded their grasp. They cannot defeat us. Now let them seek a delicate exit from the mess they’ve gotten themselves into — but we will achieve our objectives.”
No matter how the would-be masters of empire try to spin defeat into victory, most everyone around the world will still know the score. And it is this disabused illusion of imperial military supremacy that will rapidly accelerate its inexorable decline.
