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Israeli airstrike destroys water desalination plant in northern Gaza

MEMO | August 25, 2026

Israeli warplanes struck and destroyed a water desalination plant in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of northern Gaza City on Monday, injuring several civilians, according to Palestinian local sources.

The facility provided potable water to thousands of families and displaced Palestinians in Sheikh Radwan and surrounding areas. Local sources said its destruction would further exacerbate water shortages affecting residents of the Gaza Strip.

The strike comes despite a ceasefire agreement that has been in effect since October 10, 2025, amid continuing Israeli military operations in the territory.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israeli forces have committed 4,379 violations of the ceasefire since it took effect. The office said those actions have killed 1,286 Palestinians, wounded 4,257 and resulted in the arrest of 180 others. The figures could not be independently verified.

Palestinian authorities have repeatedly warned that damage to water and sanitation infrastructure, combined with restrictions on fuel and essential supplies, has severely reduced access to safe drinking water across Gaza.

The latest strike comes amid continuing disputes over implementation of subsequent phases of the ceasefire agreement, including Israeli military withdrawal, the disarmament of Hamas, reconstruction and humanitarian access.

Palestinian authorities say Israeli restrictions continue to limit the quantities of food, medicine, medical equipment and shelter materials entering Gaza, while continuing airstrikes and other military operations have caused further casualties.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli airstrike destroys water desalination plant in northern Gaza

Iran Channels Demands on MoU and Strait of Hormuz to US Through Pakistan

Sputnik – 25.08.2026

Iran has conveyed its conditions regarding the memorandum and the Strait of Hormuz to the United States through Pakistan, Iranian media reported, citing an informed source.

“Contrary to reports by some media outlets that Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir carried a message containing US threats during his visit to Iran, the trip was aimed at creating space for negotiations and conveying Iran’s conditions and position to the American side,” the source told Tasnim.

According to the source, Tehran’s demands included the US returning to compliance with the memorandum on ending the conflict, signed in mid-June, as well as implementing provisions related to Iran’s rules for navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US and Israel began strikes on targets in Iran on February 28, after which Tehran responded with its own attacks. In mid-June, Iran and the US signed a memorandum on ending hostilities, but later resumed strikes against each other. The conflict remains unresolved, although active fighting has stopped and Washington is relying on economic pressure.

Media previously reported, citing an unnamed senior source, that the US had offered to end the blockade of Iran and lift sanctions in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on Iran Channels Demands on MoU and Strait of Hormuz to US Through Pakistan

After 6 months of war, why aren’t oil prices even higher?

By Sam Fraser | Responsible Statecraft | August 25, 2026

For decades, the potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been considered the ultimate doomsday scenario for global oil markets. So, when Iran effectively closed the Strait earlier this year in response to the joint U.S.-Israeli assault, many analysts warned that oil prices could skyrocket to record highs.

The logic was straightforward. Prior to the war, about 20% of the global oil supply transited the Strait. A loss of supply on this scale could easily have pushed oil prices to $150 or even $200 per barrel — but it didn’t. Instead, prices peaked around $120 per barrel in April and have largely stayed below $100 since June.

To understand the dynamics that have so far prevented an even higher price spike, and to get a sense of where oil supply and prices may be headed as the conflict drags on, I spoke with Rory Johnston, a leading oil markets analyst and the author of the Commodity Context blog. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Sam Fraser: Let’s talk about why we haven’t seen the $150-200 per barrel oil prices that you warned about early in the war. You’ve pointed to a few reasons, including China’s massive import cuts. As we understand it, what has China done with their oil imports and how have they managed it?

Rory Johnston: It’s a bit of a mystery. At this stage, what we know for sure is that China reduced its crude oil imports by over five million barrels a day, roughly 45% of their total pre-war import appetite. For China, there’s two endpoints of that crude oil balance: into a refinery or into storage. We know that China had been building up a massive volume of strategic reserves prior to the war.

Essentially half of the 5 million barrels a day reduction can be explained roughly by reductions in refining runs in China. The remainder is a question of balancing in and out of stockpiles. Some of it would’ve been likely a drawdown of less visible or underground stockpiles. And the other portion of it is the halting of that prior pace of stockpile building. The main debate is how much each of these factors is contributing. If, let’s say, 80% of that remainder is a halt to prior purchases that were building strategic stocks, that is a bearish outcome for oil prices because it means that Beijing doesn’t need to replace those volumes anytime soon. But if they are aggressively drawing down less visible strategic stocks right now, that’s a much more bullish interpretation because it means they can’t keep going on forever and they’re going to need to replace those stockpiles.

On the refined product side, they cut refining runs by about 2.5 to 3 million barrels a day. What are they doing with that prior flow of diesel, jet fuel, et cetera? And that’s where we start to get even more speculative. Above-ground storage tanks for refined products don’t have floating roofs. We can’t independently verify their fill.

It comes down to the apparent consumption and the apparent available supply of these fuels within China. For gasoline and diesel, each of those supplies have apparently fallen by about 20%, which is a stark reduction. There’s no evidence that people in China are just driving a fifth less. If they aren’t actually cutting back that much on consumption, where is the fuel coming from? Prior to the war, we suspected that China was also building strategic reserves of refined fuels. Again, we can’t verify that, but if they had built that up, they could be drawing it down. We’re then faced with that same question as in crude oil, how much of this is a cessation of prior stock building and how much of this is the drawdown of existing stock?

For reference, the last moment we saw anything like this in terms of apparent consumption collapse was COVID zero in 2022 when the country was entirely locked down.

Fraser: So we can say that stockpiles of refined products must exist, but we have no insight into their size or how much is being drawn down or how sustainable those drawdowns would be?

Johnston: Correct. There are mixed estimates, but I think they are at best estimates. It’s funny, I think in some ways the lack of verifiable data allows people to speak very confidently about what’s happening in China, because there’s no data to rebut virtually any argument. That’s just allowing people to run with it without any kind of real pushback.

Fraser: How have we seen the Chinese buying patterns change since the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding and since it collapsed?

Johnston: What we saw following the MOU was a surge of exiting cargoes from Hormuz. The vast majority of that seems to have routed towards China. What we saw was that, at the very bottom, Chinese crude oil imports fell to around 6 million barrels a day in June. And then those spiked back up to more than 10 million barrels a day in July, or at least that was the high point in July. Roughly a month later, those imports are back down around six. You’ve seen a rollover back to where we stood pre-MOU.

Fraser: Do we know how long this import suppression can continue?

Johnston:. Let’s say this has been entirely a drawdown of stocks, which seems implausible. Even then, they have more than a billion barrels of crude oil stocks that we know about for sure. If they want to support the market to their maximum ability, they can do that for months further. But in doing so, they would deplete the entirety of the energy security blanket they’ve spent almost two decades constructing.

Fraser: Let’s move on to the strategic petroleum reserve releases by the U.S. and other partners. To what degree have those been instrumental in keeping prices from going a lot higher?

Johnston: It’s part of the suite that the world has kind of engaged in to blunt those effects. This is the largest release of strategic stocks on record. Depending on the exact month you’re talking about, it has potentially been over 3 million barrels a day of incremental supply coming from OECD SPRs. Without that, the market would’ve been much tighter and we likely wouldn’t have experienced the same relief even with China’s import cut at the same time.

Fraser: Last week the U.S. SPR dipped under 300 million barrels. There’s a lot of discussion of what the physical limits on those stockpiles are given that they’re stored in salt caverns. They need a certain amount of fill to maintain structural integrity. Are we anywhere close to pushing up against the U.S. ability to continue drawing down from those stockpiles?

Johnston: I do not believe we are. I think that you have probably at least another 200 million barrels that can be readily drawn down. With the required fill level, absolutely it would be a massive issue if you just drew it down and left a vacuum in there. It would implode on itself. But they don’t do that. They one-to-one replace a barrel of crude oil extracted with a barrel of saturated brine. So theoretically it should maintain the same fill. The issue for SPRs is not necessarily fill level, but number of refill and empty cycles. It’s the actual up-and-down motion that disturbs and further erodes the walls and structural integrity.

I think that the SPR caverns can get below 100 million barrels of fill before we run into any issues.

Fraser: So if we continued the current rate of drawdown, that would take us well into next year.

Johnston: Correct.

Fraser: Over the course of the war, Trump or someone in his administration will make a statement about how diplomacy is progressing or about how much oil is coming out of the strait. And even if those are quickly disproven, there is a downward impact on prices. So why do these traders keep listening to Trump? Has there been a change in the reaction of markets over the course of this war?

Johnston: You definitely get smaller drawdowns to these kinds of jawboning attempts today than you would have, say, in March and April, where there are multiple days that you saw $15 to $20 per barrel reductions in the span of a day.

When you look at the history of oil, there’s a tendency on these geopolitical events to overdo it. That’s a natural kind of fear-driven phenomenon. In some ways Trump has short-circuited that normal behavior in oil markets. Because while you’re right that it’s never coming true, the price action is coming true. At the end of the day, for prices to go higher, you need traders to bid higher. And if they bid higher and they get blown out of the water and they lose their jobs, they’re going to be replaced by someone that doesn’t bid higher on geopolitical risk. It has successfully arrested the upside volatility. But if we keep getting tighter, markets will continue to respond higher; we just won’t get those runaway phenomena that we would’ve seen historically.

Fraser: Since the start of the war, we’ve seen Saudi Arabia and the UAE successfully use pipelines as an alternative route to get oil out of the Gulf. How much oil are those getting out at this point? And has the Houthi blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea had a meaningful effect on this?

Johnston: The total volume coming out of Emirates at Fujairah and then the west coast of Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea rose to about 6-7 million barrels. It was about 2-3 million before, so that was an incremental change of 4-5 million barrels.

To your question with the Houthis, it has absolutely been having an effect. As soon as they started attacking Saudi ships, the entire Red Sea fleet went dark. Everyone turned off their transponders, making it much harder to verify flows out of Saudi Arabia. Verifiable transits of Saudi tankers through the Bab al-Mandab have gone functionally to zero. They still are probably getting some out, but we’re also seeing evidence of flows north into the Mediterranean. Pre-war flows here were around a million barrels a day, give or take. That’s jumped over the past week or two to around 2.5 million barrels a day, presumed Saudi flow.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve also seen Saudi Arabia begin loading tankers in the Gulf again, which they hadn’t done since the collapse of the MOU. And the question is, does Riyadh know something? Is something big going to break in the Hormuz negotiations? Or are they being forced back into the Gulf? You’re seeing reports now that they are participating in the Emirati-led shuttle trade, ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman. It seems likely that some of that is displaced barrels coming back from the Red Sea. So Saudi Arabia is needing to diversify away from its diversification. There’s a poetic side to it.

Fraser: Pulling all these factors together, where are we left in terms of a kind of global supply shortage? And what kinds of price impacts can we expect if that persists over the next few months?

Johnston: It’s very hard to estimate global balance right now. My bet would be 2-4 million barrels a day undersupplied on a global basis.

The rub on top of that is that we now have a parallel crisis that’s emerging on the refining side of the slate. So even if we’ve sorted out what was happening on the crude oil side, we have the Ukrainian hammering of Russian refineries, the attacks in the Black Sea, the reduction in U.S. exports now that stocks have drawn down, and China is not exporting refined products either. All together this further tightens global refined product markets.

If this persists and we keep drawing down crude oil stocks, the crude oil price is going to keep rising. On top of that, we could see refined product prices independently going higher. So that’s just an amplification. For consumers, it’s refined product prices and not crude oil that are going to drive those economic issues.

Fraser: So even though these factors we’ve discussed have kept oil prices down so far, and the biggest of these can persist for a while, we could still be looking at those extremely elevated prices by a few months from now.

Johnston: Easily. We’re already feeling it. Refined prices are already at demand-destructive levels. It’s just a question of whether they are at sufficiently demand-destructive levels. It’s the same fundamental concern I would’ve had back in April, playing out on a much longer timeline and now more on the product side than the entire oil complex.

Sam Fraser is a writer based in New York City. He holds a Master’s in International Finance and Economic Policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where his studies focused on the changing global trade system. Previously, Sam worked as Senior Communications Associate and Publications Manager at the Quincy Institute.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on After 6 months of war, why aren’t oil prices even higher?

Sanctioning the Dollar Iran Already Left: Why Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” Is Toothless

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | August 24, 2026 

There was one sentence in Scott Bessent’s Monday sanctions announcement that gave the whole game away. Anyone who launders money for the Iranian regime, the Treasury Secretary warned, “will be removed from the US dollar system.” He meant it as a threat of annihilation. It is, instead, a confession of the policy’s central weakness. The entire architecture of what Bessent has branded “Operation Economic Outcast” rests on a single assumption — that Iran and its trading partners need the U.S. dollar. They increasingly do not. And a threat to bar someone from the dollar system means nothing to a trade that has already walked out of it and into the Chinese yuan.

What Bessent actually announced

Strip away the “economic D-Day” theatrics and the substance is a secondary-sanctions framework: the United States threatens to punish any country or entity that refuses to sever economic ties with Iran, expands the categories of activity exposed to those secondary sanctions into five new fields — digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping — and designates roughly sixty individuals, entities, and vessels tied to nuclear and missile procurement, cyber operations, and oil smuggling. The mechanism of pain, in every case, is the same: exclusion from the dollar-based financial system that Washington polices through its control of dollar clearing, SWIFT messaging, and correspondent banking.

That is a devastating weapon against anyone who lives inside the dollar system. It is close to irrelevant against those who have deliberately built their most important trade outside it. And Iran’s lifeline — the oil trade with China — is now largely outside it.

The trade that runs on yuan

Follow the barrels. China is now the buyer of over 80 percent of Iran’s seaborne crude exports. Iran is shipping somewhere around 1.65 to 1.8 million barrels a day, almost all of it to the independent “teapot” refiners of Shandong, moved by a shadow fleet of more than 350 tankers using ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia, Singapore, and the Sea of Oman, the cargoes routinely rebranded as Malaysian or Omani. And critically, the money for it increasingly does not move in dollars. Payment flows in yuan, routed through small Chinese banks and Hong Kong trading shells, settled in a growing volume of renminbi that bypasses the dollar clearing system entirely.

The plumbing for this is China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, CIPS — the settlement network the People’s Bank of China launched in 2015 precisely to clear cross-border yuan transactions without touching the Western financial architecture. Its use has surged in lockstep with the war. CIPS processed on the order of $214 billion in March 2026, hit a single-day record of 1.22 trillion yuan — roughly $178 billion — across nearly 42,000 transactions, and saw its average daily value jump about 50 percent from February to March, a spike analysts tied directly to the Iran conflict and rising yuan demand in oil trade. More than five thousand institutions are now connected. These channels allow settlement without any intermediary US bank in the chain — which is the entire point.

Nor is this confined to China. Even Indian refiners buying rare cargoes of Iranian oil have settled the payments in yuan, routed through the Shanghai branch of an Indian bank, because Iran wants a currency that sidesteps the dollar sanctions channel. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has reportedly begun demanding yuan or cryptocurrency for oil transactions outright. When Bessent adds “digital assets” and “gold” to his sanctions categories, he is chasing evasion routes Iran is already using by design, through a shadow system purpose-built to be untraceable.

You cannot freeze a yuan payment out of a dollar system it never enters. That is not a loophole in Bessent’s plan. It is the plan’s foundation, missing.

The market already delivered its verdict

The most eloquent judgment on these sanctions came not from a pundit but from the oil market itself. If traders believed Bessent’s “economic onslaught” would actually choke off Iranian barrels, crude would have spiked on the announcement. It did the opposite. Brent fell about 2.3 percent on August 24, sliding below $92, as investors concluded the measures were unlikely to remove Iranian oil from the market. A sanctions package advertised as an economic D-Day was met by the market marking the price of oil down. The traders who move real money on real supply read the announcement for exactly what it was: sound and fury aimed at a target the dollar can no longer reach.

The one tooth Bessent won’t bare

There is precisely one measure that could actually bite the yuan trade: sanctioning the major Chinese banks and the CIPS architecture that clear it — cutting large Chinese financial institutions out of the dollar system and forcing Beijing to choose. And that is the step Bessent, once again, announced but did not take. He warned that at least one major financial institution could face sanctions this week, and said China would not be exempt. A threat, not an action — the same threat that has hovered over this campaign for months and never descends, because executing it means a financial rupture with Beijing on the eve of a planned Trump-Xi meeting, and an oil-price shock Washington cannot afford heading into the midterms.

And even if he pulled that trigger, the trade is engineered to survive it. The yuan payments already move through small Chinese banks and Hong Kong front companies precisely so that the large, dollar-exposed institutions stay clean and the flow continues if a big bank is hit. The system was designed by people who assumed Washington would eventually come for it. Bessent is threatening to breach a wall its builders reinforced years ago.

Ten years of sanctions, and a larger economy

Step back from Monday’s announcement and ask the longer question: what has a decade of sanctions actually done to the size of Iran’s economy? Measured properly, it has grown.

The measure matters, because there are two ways to size an economy and here they tell opposite stories. In nominal dollars — the plane on which sanctions operate — Iran looks devastated: its dollar GDP is around $300 billion in 2026, and dollar income per head has been falling fast, because the rial has been pulverized and everything Iranian looks cheap when priced in a currency Iranians increasingly cannot obtain. But nominal-dollar GDP largely measures the exchange rate, not the economy. Measured by purchasing power parity — which values what Iran actually produces at the prices Iranians actually pay, stripping out the collapsed currency — Iran’s GDP has risen from roughly $1.4 trillion in 2015, when the JCPOA-era sanctions architecture was in force, to about $2.18 trillion in 2026, by the IMF’s reckoning the world’s twenty-third-largest economy. That is an expansion of more than fifty percent over the same decade of “maximum pressure” that was supposed to break it.

The caveat belongs in plain sight, not buried: part of that gain is simply more Iranians — the population has grown by roughly a sixth since 2015 — so per-capita output has risen far more modestly, and none of it means Iranian households feel richer, with inflation running near forty percent and the currency in ruins. Growth of the economy is not prosperity for the family. But that is a different claim from the one that matters for sanctions policy. A pressure campaign that can wreck a currency and still not shrink real output is a campaign that produces hardship without submission. Iran has now demonstrated exactly that across two sanctions architectures — the JCPOA snapback and its “maximum pressure” successors — and ten years of data. Bessent is adding a chapter to a book whose ending is already written.

The honest limits

This is a dollar bypass, not the death of the dollar. The greenback still makes up around 57 percent of global foreign-exchange reserves against roughly 2 percent for the yuan, and only a low single-digit share of cross-border trade settles in renminbi; CIPS remains far smaller than the SWIFT-and-CHIPS system it shadows. The claim here is narrow and it is enough: a determined seller like Iran, with a willing Chinese counterparty, can route its oil revenue around the dollar — not that the world has.

Nor are the sanctions literally costless to Tehran. The friction of operating in the shadows is real: Iran sells its crude at discounts of $14 to $17 a barrel below Brent, up from $8 in 2023, precisely because sanctions raise the risk and complexity of buying it; its fiscal break-even sits far above the price it actually realizes, and the rial has lost most of its value. Bessent’s measures will add a little more friction at the margin — another turn of the screw on the discount, another few front companies to replace.

But friction is not a chokehold, and a poorer Iran is not a compliant one. The sanctions make Iran’s oil cheaper and its economy more strained; they do not, and cannot, sever the yuan-denominated artery to China that keeps the oil flowing and the regime funded. That artery is the thing Bessent promised to cut, and it is the one thing his announcement does not touch.

Bessent has threatened to expel Iran and its partners from a financial system Iran has spent years leaving. The dollar guillotine is real, and it still falls with terrible force on anyone standing beneath it — but Iran’s oil trade stepped off the block and into the yuan, and every fresh round of dollar-weaponization only sharpens the incentive for others to follow. The measures announced Monday will generate headlines, a few dozen designations, and a marginal widening of the discount China already enjoys on Iranian crude. What they will not do is the thing they were sold to do: collapse Iran’s options and force it to heel. You cannot sever a lifeline that no longer runs through your hands. Bessent is standing guard at a door Iran walked out of a long time ago, threatening to lock it.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Sanctioning the Dollar Iran Already Left: Why Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” Is Toothless

CA ATTACKS JOURNALISM, THE CLANCY CONTROVERSY & MRNA’s CANCER CURE?

The Download | August 24, 2026

This week on The Download, California’s latest attempt to police journalism raises new questions about who gets to define misinformation. As the Lindsay Clancy trial reaches its final arguments, Jefferey asks whether another powerful player is escaping scrutiny. Then, an undercover investigation reveals how quickly a complaint about ADHD can open the door to a staggering menu of psychiatric drugs.

Plus, Moderna’s new mRNA cancer-vaccine “breakthrough” faces questions beyond the glowing headlines, ‘Face the Nation’ moderator Margaret Brennan’s COVID-mandate narrative collides with her own record, and Jefferey issues a major call to action as Secretary Kennedy seeks public input on federal vaccine recommendations.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Comments Off on CA ATTACKS JOURNALISM, THE CLANCY CONTROVERSY & MRNA’s CANCER CURE?

Newsom Signs Content Takedown Law Following Nick Shirley Investigations

The precedent is that a legislature can keep inventing new categories of people entitled to content removals

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 24, 2026

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that critics say is designed to silence citizen journalists like Nick Shirley and let taxpayer-funded organizations, some of them suspected of fraud, remove documentation of their activities from the internet.

The law, which was signed on Saturday and goes into effect on October 1, 2027, is officially there to protect the privacy of employees and volunteers working in organizations serving immigrants, but the way it does it is by giving them the power to demand that their images and personal information be deleted from the internet, based on a claim of “reasonable fear.”

No police report or court approval is needed for this, only the claim. There is no exemption for journalists or journalism.

The bill, which was authored by Democrat Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, was dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” by those opposing it, as it is seen as a direct attack on his work.

Shirley has been investigating and documenting alleged fraud in programs meant to help immigrants, and has had millions of views on X for his videos, including one showing empty buildings in Minnesota registered as daycares that he said were used to defraud the system of $110 million.

The new law in California will apply to all organizations providing legal representation, advocacy, case management, humanitarian relief, translation, counseling, and healthcare to immigrants. It also sets up an address confidentiality program, modeled on California’s Safe at Home program.

Those who don’t comply with the demands for content removal can be fined $10,000 and also face civil and criminal liability and imprisonment.

Shirley responded to the signing of the bill into law by saying that it was created only after he exposed fraud in immigrant communities, and accused Newsom and California politicians of showing their true face as “corrupt politicians” who, “when the fraud is exposed, create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.”

He also said that the law makes “immigration support service providers” a protected class in California, and noted that thanks to this, if he films a hospice “with no patients that are receiving millions through Medicaid,” the owner can prevent him from publishing the footage, and if he does anyway, he could get a huge fine.

August 25, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Comments Off on Newsom Signs Content Takedown Law Following Nick Shirley Investigations

Dozens of ex-lawmakers, staff landed at military firms since 2015

By Julian Cooper | Responsible Statecraft | August 24, 2026

In the last decade, 31 former members of Congress and top staff have left Capitol Hill and joined the military-industrial complex as lobbyists or contractors, according to a new report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The 21 lawmakers named in the report served on either the House or Senate Armed Services Committee, the legislative bodies that set the Pentagon’s annual policies through the annual National Defense Authorization Act. In addition, the report names 10 former senior committee staffers who transitioned to working as weapons industry government liaisons or lobbyists.

These 31 former officials represent a snapshot of the military-industrial complex’s “revolving door,” through which ex-policymakers transition from setting the Pentagon’s agenda in Congress to cashing in on those same policies in the private sector. “That report we published is the most direct explanation we’ve ever seen of why the defense budget always goes up,” said John Mecklin, the author of the report and former editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The report highlighted a variety of potential ethics conflicts, focusing in particular on the growing path between Congress and Silicon Valley defense tech startups.

Chris Vieson, the former staff director of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), was appointed earlier this year to the National Commission on the Future of the Navy, established to advise Congress on everything “from shipbuilding and acquisition to maintenance and repair, workforce, training, and modernization.” Vieson is also an active registered lobbyist for two defense startups: Saronic Inc., a manufacturer of unmanned maritime vehicles; and watercraft builder Whiskey Project Group. Previously, Vieson worked as a lobbyist for Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm gaining influence in the Pentagon and pushing AI integration.

According to its executive director, the National Commission on the Future of the Navy aims to modernize the Navy to prepare for conflict with China and Iran. As part of this goal, the Commission will “test emerging ideas such as a hybrid fleet and expanded use of unmanned systems.” Vieson’s lobbying client, Saronic Inc., is one manufacturer of such unmanned systems.

While the revolving-door phenomenon is not new, the report captures the increasing influence of a new generation of Silicon Valley military firms. Former HASC member Mike Gallagher and staffer Jeff Miller have taken up jobs as an executive and a lobbyist, respectively, for Palantir. Former Republican staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Christian D. Brose is now the Chief Strategy Officer for Anduril, an autonomous weapons startup valued at $61 billion in its latest round of fundraising.

According to Mecklin, Congress is eager to let Silicon Valley officials into their bureaucracy. “It takes the Pentagon many, many years to acquire a new defense system like a fighter plane. With a high-tech system, you just can’t wait that long,” he said. “So they found a way around the complicated acquisition processes of the Defense Department.”

Likewise, Silicon Valley weapons startups that wish to challenge prime contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are desperate to hire former politicians. “If you’re a company that wants to get into defense contracting, it’s highly beneficial to hire people that understand the process of federal appropriations in the defense sector,” Mecklin explained.

The Bulletin’s revolving-door report also details a who’s-who of top congressional stock traders. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who has served on HASC since 2015, has been trading GE Aerospace stock via his spouse since 2023. Scott’s trades this year violated the STOCK Act, a bill passed in 2012 to curb insider trading. That makes Scott one of seven Armed Services Committee members to violate the STOCK Act this year, generally for failing to disclose trades within 45 days, as the law mandates.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) is another HASC member who has benefited from military contractor stocks. In December 2025, she disclosed her husband’s $100,000-$250,000 purchase of stock in Elon Musk’s xAI, which merged with SpaceX soon after in February. McClain’s husband’s xAI shares were converted into SpaceX shares months before the company’s historic IPO in June. McClain previously violated the STOCK Act for her delayed disclosure of a trade worth up to $450,000 in Palantir stock.

The report also makes note of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) trading stock for prime defense contractor Lockheed Martin and aerospace manufacturer Honeywell. Tuberville, one of the most active stock traders in Congress, has served on SASC since 2021. When President Donald Trump faced criticism this spring for his own portfolio of weapons stocks, Tuberville told a reporter for MeidasTouch, “I do the same thing.”

Mecklin believes that laws like the STOCK Act are insufficient to curb members of Congress cashing in on defense spending. “The way you really stem this kind of behavior is to have inspectors general and law enforcement agencies that are on the lookout for them. Occasionally, take up one of these egregious cases and just prosecute it,” said Mecklin.

“Unless you have a system that actually scares these people so they cut it out, it’s going to continue.”

Julian Cooper is a Chicago-based journalist, an editorial intern for The Progressive, and a research intern for the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy program.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | | Comments Off on Dozens of ex-lawmakers, staff landed at military firms since 2015

Israel subjecting Russian historian to brutal interrogation – lawyer

RT | August 24, 2026

Russian-Israeli historian Artyom Kirpichenok has been subjected to brutal treatment while in Shin Bet custody, including interrogations lasting up to 24 hours, sleep deprivation, prolonged handcuffing, and threats, according to his lawyer.

Kirpichenok, 51, disappeared on August 2 shortly after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport from Yerevan. His whereabouts remained unknown for nearly three weeks before his supporters revealed that he was being held at a detention facility in Petah Tikva.

His lawyer, Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz, was finally allowed to meet with him for around an hour on Sunday after repeatedly seeking access, according to Nika Dubrovsky, a Russian-born artist and writer campaigning for his release.

Citing Lebedinskaya-Katz, Dubrovsky said Kirpichenok has faced interrogation sessions lasting 18 to 24 hours while deprived of sleep. He is allegedly being kept handcuffed and hunched over on an iron stool fixed to the floor, with three or four interrogators standing behind him “shouting, threatening, and applying constant pressure.” He has also allegedly been threatened with life imprisonment.

Kirpichenok is in “tolerable physical condition” and has no immediate health complaints, but is “exhausted, tormented and deeply depressed,” Dubrovsky wrote on X on Monday.

”He understands that his friends have not abandoned him. He is holding on and sends his greetings to everyone,” she wrote. Kirpichenok also asked that no one come to Israel.

The allegations have not been independently verified. However, international human rights groups previously documented sleep deprivation and painful restraint during Shin Bet interrogations. Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against deliberately using prolonged sleep deprivation to break suspects.

Kirpichenok is being held underground with the lights on around the clock and denied books and writing materials, Dubrovsky cited his lawyer as saying. A gag order remains in force, and the defense has yet to receive the case files or details of the accusations.

Kirpichenok, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen and Middle East expert, is known for criticizing Israel’s policies toward Iran and Palestine. Moscow sought information from the Israeli authorities following his disappearance and said it is closely monitoring the case.

Kirpichenok recently worked with media outlets and civic organizations in Türkiye and Iran and frequently traveled to Iran. Israeli citizens are generally prohibited from traveling to countries they are at war with. Dubrovsky, however, said the trips now appear to be of little interest to investigators.

Born in Russia, Kirpichenok moved to Israel in the 1990s, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces before returning to Russia. He later became a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its military campaign in Gaza, describing Israel as a Western “colonial project” in his recent book ‘Israel: The Road to Catastrophe’.

The Israeli authorities have yet to publicly disclose any charges against him.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Comments Off on Israel subjecting Russian historian to brutal interrogation – lawyer

Israel blocks 2 Swedish European parliamentarians from entering country

MEMO | August 24, 2026

Two Swedish members of the European Parliament say they were prevented from travelling to Israel on Sunday, despite holding entry permits and supporting documentation, Anadolu reports.

Left-wing MEPs Jonas Sjostedt and Hanna Gedin were stopped as they were preparing to board a flight from Athens to Tel Aviv.

They had planned to travel on to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where they were due to meet representatives of the NGO Save the Children, visit refugee camps, and speak to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.

The two MEPs said they wanted to hear testimonies about what they described as deteriorating conditions and apartheid in the West Bank.

Sjostedt, of Sweden’s Left Party, said they had been barred for political reasons because of their criticism of Israel and their calls for Israeli government ministers to be brought before the International Criminal Court.

“Israel is increasingly preventing people from entering the country, even members of parliament,” he said in a statement.

Gedin said it is unacceptable for Israel to prevent elected European officials from seeing conditions on the ground and meeting people affected by them while Israeli politicians continued to travel freely in Europe.

The Left group in the European Parliament said it had informed the EP President’s Office about the incident.

It described the refusal of entry as an attack on the institutions of the EU.

The incident comes as the Left group says ethnic cleansing in Palestine is continuing and amid concerns over negotiations by the European Commission on the sharing of biometric and personal data with Israeli security services.

Israel continues to block agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies, shelter materials, and prefabricated homes from entering Gaza, where around 2.4 million Palestinians live, including 2.15 million displaced people, under catastrophic conditions.

Ongoing Israeli violations of the ceasefire have killed 1,286 Palestinians and injured 4,257 others as of Sunday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The ministry also said the overall toll from Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023 had risen to 73,420 killed and 174,369 injured.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Comments Off on Israel blocks 2 Swedish European parliamentarians from entering country

Israel seizes 1,152 more dunums as West Bank villages are turned into closed military zones

Palestinian Information Center – August 24, 2026

WEST BANK – Israeli occupation authorities have escalated settlement activity in the West Bank by issuing military orders to seize hundreds of dunums of Palestinian land, alongside settler sieges and forced displacement carried out under army protection.

The measures reflect clear coordination between the army and settler militias to empty large areas for settlement expansion.

Last Tuesday, Israeli forces issued a military order to seize around 1,152 dunums of land belonging to the towns of Sinjil, Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya and Qaryut, north of Ramallah.

The order aims to expand the Karmi Oz settlement and strengthen geographic links between settlements and outposts located between Nablus and Ramallah.

According to a report on settlement activity, the targeted land is spread across several areas in the three towns. The decision comes as part of Israeli government measures issued since 2023 to legalize settlement outposts, most notably Givat Harel and Givat Haroeh.

At the same time, settler attacks continue across West Bank villages, accompanied by sieges, restrictions and forced displacement under the protection of Israeli occupation forces.

The attacks have been concentrated in Jalud and Qusra, south of Nablus, Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah, and Khallat Al-Hummus in Masafer Yatta.

In Jalud, Mahmoud Al-Tubasi and his family were forced to evacuate their home after a two-month siege that included blocking the road and cutting off water and electricity. Armed settlers later stormed the home and threatened to kill or burn the family.

In Qusra, families in the Ras Al-Ain area have faced siege and attacks since the beginning of the year amid attempts to establish a new settlement outpost.

The escalation peaked on August 9, when settlers reinstalled their tents, blocked roads with stones and cut off electricity and water to the families.

Israeli forces then turned the area into a closed military zone, forced families to evacuate their homes and converted around 16 houses in Jabal Ras Al-Ain into military barracks and observation posts.

Israeli forces also imposed a curfew, closed shops and prevented Palestinian and international activists from reaching the besieged families with aid.

The report said these measures are taking place amid international silence, while the Israeli government continues to use claims of “military purposes” and the “legalization of outposts” as cover to seize more land and connect settlements to one another.

Experts opined that the ultimate goal is to fragment the West Bank and undermine any possibility of establishing a geographically contiguous Palestinian state by turning villages into besieged enclaves that can be controlled and emptied of their residents.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel seizes 1,152 more dunums as West Bank villages are turned into closed military zones

Gaza survivors recount executions and abuse in militia-controlled areas east of Yellow Line

MEMO | August 24, 2026

Palestinians who say they escaped areas controlled by Israeli- backed armed militias east of the so-called Yellow Line in the Gaza Strip have recounted severe abuses, including extrajudicial killings, physical mistreatment, drug distribution and exploitation of civilians, according to testimonies collected by Quds Press.

The accounts describe tightly controlled areas where residents faced restrictions on movement and could leave only with authorization from militia members. Quds Press described the groups as receiving backing from the Israeli military.

One survivor, identified only as Ahmed, 31, said he escaped with his two brothers after eight months in an area controlled by a militia allegedly headed by Shawqi Abu Nassira.

Ahmed said that narcotics, including hashish and a substance he identified as “Rotana,” were widely distributed. He also said that people attempting to escape or refusing orders faced summary execution and accused militia members of abusing and exploiting children and girls.

Another survivor, identified as Abu Ramzi, said he was drawn into the area after responding to a social media advertisement offering street-cleaning work purportedly connected to international organizations.

According to his account, he and others were collected near Al-Samar roundabout, at the entrance to Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, and transported east, where masked men took them to an interrogation facility he said was operated by the Israeli military.

Abu Ramzi alleged that interrogators sought detailed information about detainees’ relatives and people employed by Gaza’s governing authorities. He further added that detainees who hesitated to answer were subjected to physical abuse, including being struck on their fingers with a hammer.

He said that during a subsequent Israeli military movement toward the Yellow Line, militia members withdrew and Israeli forces ordered the detainees to assemble. According to his testimony, they were handcuffed and instructed to walk westward without looking back.

Separately, Al-Hares, a platform affiliated with Hamas-run security authorities in Gaza, has warned residents that armed groups operating in these areas allegedly use offers of food, cigarettes and employment to attract civilians. It accused the groups of seeking to use civilians to facilitate their movements and urged Palestinians to avoid them.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Comments Off on Gaza survivors recount executions and abuse in militia-controlled areas east of Yellow Line

US unveils ‘economic onslaught’ against Iran

RT | August 24, 2026

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced new sanctions against Iran, and threatened to boot any country dealing financially with Tehran out of the US dollar system, in a bid to make Iran an “economic outcast.”

The new sanctions target nearly 60 entities, individuals, and vessels in multiple jurisdictions that allegedly trade in “illicit nuclear and missile technology” with Iran, aid Iran’s “cyber operations,” and move Iranian oil, the US Treasury Department said in a statement on Monday. More than a third of the sanctioned entities and individuals – 21 – are based in China.

The Treasury also said it had identified digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping as areas for potential secondary sanctions.

Speaking at a press conference later on Monday, Bessent went further, announcing the beginning of “Operation Economic Outcast,” which he described as “an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe.”

Bessent explained that the US would penalize any country refusing to sever its economic ties with Tehran. “Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the US dollar system,” he said, adding “the clock just started ticking.”

Iran exports goods to 147 countries, and imports from 114, according to the most recent data from the World Bank. Asked how the US intends to force three quarters of the world’s nations to cease trade with Iran, Bessent said that US President Donald Trump phoned multiple world leaders over the weekend “with specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran, and that every country had been given “a defined timeline” to comply with his demands.

Bessent refused to share any more details, telling reporters that “we’re not going to name names,” nor was he “going to set timelines.” Pressed on whether Washington expected China – which is Iran’s largest trading partner – to abide by the sanctions regime, Bessent did not give a definitive answer.

“We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy. And we are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are,” he replied, adding “no-one is above the reach of US sanctions.”

Bessent’s threats were shrugged off in Tehran. “Americans know that no one buys their bombast,” senior Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X after the treasury secretary’s press conference.

“The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries,”he explained. “Iran’s trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don’t take these statements into account anywhere.”

Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned on Sunday that “not a single drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz” if the Gulf states join the US’ economic pressure campaign. If US President Donald Trump “wants to do something, we will retaliate in a seismic manner,” Rezaei added.

Last week, Trump threatened to inflict what he called “Economic D-Day” on Iran, after a 60-day window for negotiating peace with Tehran expired with no breakthrough. Trump ruled out a return to negotiations, but Pakistani Chief of Defense Forces Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Monday in an attempt to revive the talks.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on US unveils ‘economic onslaught’ against Iran

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