Yemen imposes naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in tit-for-tat move
Press TV – July 20, 2026
Yemen has declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, with the country’s military spokesman stressing that it will come into effect immediately.
In a statement on Monday, Yemeni armed forces spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree announced “a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘siege for siege,’” adding that “it will come into force from the moment this statement is issued.”
According to the statement, the blockade was imposed in response to Saudi Arabia’s continued “unjust and oppressive siege on our dear people for nearly 12 years, plundering our resources and imposing a comprehensive blockade on [the country’s] ports and airports by land, sea, and air” as well as the recent attacks on the Sana’a International Airport.
The spokesman affirmed the Yemeni armed forces’ “complete readiness for all options,” warning that “any foolish act” by Riyadh will be met with a “harsh” response.
The statement hailed the steadfastness of the Yemeni nation and its participation in million-strong demonstrations in support of the Sana’a government, saying “we assure them that we will spare no effort in restoring their plundered rights and ending the unjust siege against them, regardless of the results and repercussions.”
Tensions flared earlier this month when Saudi Arabia tried to prevent the return of an Iranian plane carrying a delegation of Yemeni officials, who had traveled to Tehran for the funeral of Iran’s martyred Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. The plane was diverted after the Sana’a airport was bombed and landed safely in the city of Hudaydah.
Yemen prepared to enter all-out war: Official
Meanwhile, Hizam al-Assad, a senior member of Ansarullah’s political bureau, warned that Yemen is prepared to escalate to all-out war if the 11-year siege of Yemen is not lifted.
He said it is unacceptable for Riyadh to continue exporting oil and purchasing weapons to bomb and blockade Yemen while the Yemeni people remain silent.
“We are today facing a difficult dilemma: either we die of starvation, or we reclaim our right by resorting to force,” al-Assad said in remarks cited by Al-Mayadeen.
Al-Assad warned that Yemen’s armed forces are ready to target Saudi oil facilities, refineries, and export ports with missiles and drones if the blockade continues.
He said that Saudi Arabia bears responsibility for the environmental consequences of burning oil wells, pipelines, and petrochemical plants.
On Sunday, Abdullah al-Nu’ami, another member of Ansarullah’s political bureau, said Saudi Arabia is full of “valuable targets” within reach of Yemen’s armed forces. He added that the region is on the brink of explosion and Saudi Arabia is aware of that fact.
Ansarullah official says aggression against Iran and the blockade on Yemen is pushing the region toward a major blast.
The official said Ansarullah is studying its options and is prepared to pay the highest price to lift the blockade. He warned that if the United States joins Saudi Arabia in a war against Yemen, it will find itself in a predicament.
“We are ready to pay the highest price to lift the blockade, and the region is on the brink of explosion, and Saudi Arabia is aware of this,” al-Nu’ami told Al-Mayadeen.
Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched the blockade on Yemen as part of a full-scale war on March 26, 2015, with military, political, and logistical support from the United States and other Western states.
The war has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis, while consistently falling short of its main objective of restoring power to Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly regime.
The government had fled the country amid a power struggle, prompting Ansarullah, Yemen’s popular resistance movement, to start running state affairs.
Following a fragile UN-brokered ceasefire in 2022, the United States, Britain, and the Israeli regime waged many rounds of wholesale aggression against Yemen.
The attacks sought to cripple Sana’a’s capability to stage solidarity strikes against Israeli targets in response to Tel Aviv’s war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
Russia Continues to Pound Ukraine
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | July 19, 2026
While the Western media continues to hype Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia as incredible military achievements that are sapping Russia’s will to fight, the reality is that Russia continues an unrelenting bombing and missile campaign that is destroying critical Ukrainian assets and infrastructure from Kyiv to Odessa.
On July 18–19, 2026 (primarily overnight into July 19), Russia conducted a major combined missile and drone attack, with Kyiv as the primary target. This was described as one of the largest ballistic missile assaults on the capital since the start of the war in February 2022. Reports indicate more than 40 ballistic missiles (including Iskander-M, S-400, and possibly Zircon hypersonic types), plus guided air-launched missiles (Kh-59/69) and others, destroyed targets across Kyiv. Multiple waves targeted Kyiv over roughly 30–60 minutes. In addition, Russia launched over 90–125 Shahed-type, Gerbera, Italmas, and decoy drones launched from various directions.
The previous day, July 17-18, Russia launched seven missiles and 90 drones on the Odesa Oblast. The missile mix was two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two Onyx anti-ship missiles, and three Kh-59/69 air-to-surface missiles, alongside the 90 drones of various types. This attack has effectively closed the ports at Odessa and Nykolaiv and marks Russia’s a complete break with the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which was brokered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkish President Erdoğan in the summer of 2022.
After the February 2022 invasion, Russia’s navy blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Ukraine mined its own coastal approaches to deter an amphibious assault. Between them, roughly 20+ million tonnes of grain were trapped in silos, unable to move — Ukraine being one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil. Global wheat prices spiked, and the countries most exposed were food-import-dependent states in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen among them). The UN framed it explicitly as a hunger-crisis intervention, not a favor to Ukraine’s economy.
Alongside the BSGI, the UN signed a separate three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Russia, committing to help facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports to world markets. This is the piece often forgotten… Russian food and fertilizer were never formally under Western sanctions, but Moscow argued that secondary effects — sanctions on banks (including SWIFT cutoffs), shipping insurance, and port access — were choking its own agricultural exports. This MoU was Russia’s price for allowing Ukrainian grain out and, despite Moscow’s persistent complaint that the UN failed to deliver on it, Russia did not enforce a blockade until now.
Although Russia finally withdrew from the BGSI on 17 July 2023, declaring the initiative dead and its Black Sea guarantees void, Russia did not move to impose a full blockade on Odessa nor did it routinely attack grain ships entering and leaving Odessa. The ports in Odessa and Nykolaiv were able to conduct normal trade activities, notwithstanding occasional Russian attack on the Odessa port and grain infrastructure.
Now the situation is completely different. Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, announced two weeks ago that Russia was at war with Ukraine and its NATO allies. This was a clear shift from describing the fight with Ukraine as a Special Military Operation. The intense and varied attacks by Russia since July 6 on Kyiv and other key cities still held by Ukraine, marks a decisive shift by Russia in how it will manage the war with Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.
US violations of MoU prove American president’s signature ‘worthless’: Khamenei
Iran Has No Reason To Trust The United States In Future Negotiations
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | July 18, 2026
Yesterday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a statement saying , “The signature of the U.S. President is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility”.
“The repeated breaches of the agreement by the Great Satan [the US] regarding the MOU signed by the Presidents of Iran and the US have once again laid bare a fundamental truth: the signature of the US President is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility,” the Iranian leader said in a statement.
And who could possibly blame him for coming to this conclusion?
The United States has shown time and time again that they have no interest in negotiating with Iran in good faith.
Iran signed the JCPOA with the United States in 2015, which the U.S. soon unilaterally pulled out of in 2018 at the behest of the Israel lobby.
Benjamin Netanyahu was so opposed to the deal that he flew to the U.S. congress to give a speech denouncing the deal in hopes it would block it.
This did not work, but he soon used his massive influence over the United States to have it sabotaged.
Trump himself admitted in a speech in front of the Israeli Knesset that he “terminated the Iran nuclear deal” at the behest of his Zionist donors Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, boasting that they “were very responsible for so much” of his policy.
A released FBI interview with Charles C. Johnson, – a former close associate of Steve Bannon- said that Bannon who was then White House strategist, worked with “the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and Sheldon Adelson” to remove H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser because of “policy disagreements about Iran”, referring to the Iran deal.
H.R. McMaster wrote in his memoir that in 2017 he “successfully lobbied the president to recertify the agreement over the next two 90-day deadlines as required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act”.
After H.R. McMaster was replaced by John Bolton as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, Steve Bannon admitted directly in released text messages with Jeffrey Epstein that “Bolton is only doing what Sheldon Adelson tells him to do– I got John the job, but he will not cross Sheldon”.
The Trump administration engaged in fake negotiations with Iran in June of last year to serve as a cover for a surprise U.S./Israeli bombing launched on the country.
Dennis Ross, who served as a senior official on Middle East issues during Democratic and Republican administrations, boasted to the Wall Street Journal, “There is no question that the Witkoff mission was a major contributor to the surprise, The Iranians would have assumed that Israel would not attack while the talks were under way and a meeting was about to take place”, which were soon followed by U.S. strikes.
The U.S. again pretended to engage in diplomacy with Iran prior to the full-scale war launched in February of this year.
The final straw for Iran ever having any trust in the U.S. again was the sabotage of the MoU by the United States, which was signed by the United States and Iran on June 18th.
As professor at Johns Hopkins University, Vali Nasr noted in the Financial Times, the United States repeatedly violated the agreement it signed with Iran, writing:
There was no unfreezing of Iranian assets; a US-brokered deal between Israel and Lebanon disregarded Iran’s demands for ceasefire there; more US military assets began to arrive in the Gulf region; and Washington encouraged commercial vessels to disregard Tehran’s instructions to co-ordinate with its authorities and navigate through Iranian channels as they transited the Strait of Hormuz. Some ships then passed through channels close to the Omani shoreline instead. Washington expected that this would weaken Iran’s claim of control of the strait and ability to enforce it.
Each of these on its own may not have been major violations of the MoU, but together they represented a concerted effort to erode the leverage Iran had gained during the war and reflected in the ceasefire agreement.
After Iran responded to the U.S. violations of the MoU in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. began bombing Iran again, escalating on Friday, dropping bombs on critical Iranian civilian infrastructure.
As analyst Trita Parsi noted, Trump “appears to have concluded that Tehran’s hard line in the negotiations stemmed from the United States not hitting Iran hard enough during the 38-day war. Seemingly indifferent to the costs for the GCC states, the global economy, inflation and the American cost of living—not to mention the risk to U.S. troops—he is gambling that a few more weeks of war will degrade Iran’s ability to close the Strait and force Tehran into a more accommodating negotiating position.”
But Iran will not back down to U.S. demands after repeated U.S. war crimes committed against Iranian civilian infrastructure. As Vali Nasr noted, “Iran will therefore seek to absorb U.S. military pressure and intensify its attacks on U.S. military targets and energy and civilian infrastructure across the Gulf. Its aim is to signal that the war will not remain at the level of Washington’s choosing. In the meantime, Tehran will accept the inevitable economic hardship that another US naval blockade will entail, believing that its own pressure on the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz — and potentially the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea — will force Trump to blink first”.
After Iran continues to hit U.S. military and economic assets in response to U.S. escalations, and after Oil and gas prices go up and inflation rises, the U.S. will no doubt attempt to negotiate with Iran again. The question is, why would Iran have even a skeptical level of trust left in the U.S. to negotiate in good faith?
US strikes kill 38 across Iran, destroy Chabahar port control tower, bridges
Press TV – July 17, 2026
Criminal attacks by the terrorist US Army targeted civilian infrastructure across several Iranian provinces overnight and into Friday, including the destruction of the maritime control tower at Chabahar’s Shahid Kalantari Port, killing eight people and injuring 20 others.
The attacks from late Thursday into early on Friday primarily struck the provinces of Hormozgan, Bushehr, Sistan and Baluchestan, Khuzestan and Lorestan, media reports said.
The latest strikes follow US President Donald Trump’s threats to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants amid international community’s silence on war crimes committed by the US.
With temperatures soaring to 50 degrees Celsius in southern Iran, the Energy Ministry called on citizens to conserve electricity, conceding that US airstrikes have inflicted damage on power facilities and strained the national grid.
It said those areas “are currently experiencing extreme heat and attacks on power infrastructure.”
At least 38 killed, more than 400 injured
Iran’s Health Ministry announced on Friday that 38 people have been killed and more than 400 injured in criminal US attacks by Friday morning.
The ministry said the attacks killed three women and injured 22 others. One person under the age of 18 was killed and nine others were injured. It added that 47 people remain hospitalized.
Chabahar port control tower destroyed
The maritime control tower at Shahid Kalantari Port in Chabahar was struck for the third time by US warplanes on Friday morning and was completely destroyed.
Despite the destruction, the port’s berths, cargo-handling equipment and operational infrastructure were not damaged, and no casualties were reported.
IRNA said technical and operational teams immediately began damage assessments, secured the area and evaluated conditions for resuming port operations. Cargo loading and unloading at the port are expected to restart shortly after safety inspections are completed.
Chabahar holds immense strategic significance as Iran’s only deep-water port with direct access to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz entirely.
This makes it a critical alternative trade route for Iran, particularly as the US has reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and largely closed the Strait of Hormuz.
The port is also a key trade gateway for Afghanistan and Central Asia, developed in close collaboration with India, which has invested heavily in the facility as a route bypassing Pakistan.
By targeting the control tower, commercial berths, and a warehouse in Chabahar, US strikes aim to effectively paralyze a route Iran is relying on to maintain trade while the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked.
Deadly attacks on Hormozgan
Hormozgan Province sustained the heaviest casualties.
Six bridges in Khamir County were hit during the early hours of Friday, damaging key transport routes linking Bandar Abbas, Bandar Khamir and Lar, as well as roads through Latidan, Kahorestan, Keshar and Maru village.
Provincial authorities urged residents to avoid the affected roads, use alternative routes and keep access clear for emergency, police and firefighting teams.
According to the Hormozgan Governor’s Office, seven people were killed and nine others injured in the bridge attacks.
Traffic on the Bandar Abbas-Lar highway through Bandar Khamir has partially resumed, although authorities continued to advise against unnecessary travel.
Separately, one person was killed and eight others injured after terrorist US forces struck the Allah Akbar Hill residential neighborhood in Bandar Abbas.
In another strike, a railway branch station in Bandar Abbas was hit shortly after midnight. Two people were injured and transferred to medical centers. Provincial authorities said the station is located away from residential areas and suffered only limited damage to its infrastructure.
The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the country’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital.
While other routes still are open, the terrorist US strikes appear to expand further, clearing aiming to disrupt the movement of goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.
Bushehr struck again
Bushehr came under two US attack within hours, according to Governor Mohammad Mozaffari.
He said one person was injured and that emergency and medical personnel were responding while authorities continued to investigate the incident.
Attacks near Ahvaz
In Khuzestan Province, Deputy Governor Valiollah Hayati said terrorist American forces attacked areas around the city of Ahvaz on Thursday night.
He said the dimensions of the attack remain under investigation and that further details, including any damage, would be announced later.
The latest attack follows earlier US strikes near Ahvaz that forced the evacuation of Shahid Baghaei Hospital as a precaution. Tehran slammed the attack as a “cowardly war crime”.
Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences said the hospital was temporarily taken out of service.
Strike in Lorestan
In western Iran, Lorestan Deputy Governor Saeed Pourali said US forces attacked an area in the Veysian district of Chegeni County on Friday. No further details were immediately released.
Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed “until further notice” and at least until “the end of US interference in the region.”
Tehran has responded to the US attacks by targeting American military bases and equipment across the region. On Friday, Iranian forces launched salvos of missiles and drones against US assets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, and Oman.
Intl shipping firms shun US-controlled Hormuz corridor over failure to protect vessels
The Cradle | July 16, 2026
International shipping companies are avoiding crossing the Strait of Hormuz through the US-controlled alternative corridor that runs along the Omani coastline due to fears of Iranian strikes, sources told Reuters on 16 July.
After a series of Iranian strikes on ships attempting to bypass the Iranian-designated shipping channels as mandated in the Iran–US memorandum of understanding (MoU), shipping companies are reassessing the safety and viability of US military escort through the strait.
“The US doesn’t seem to have any control over the situation,” one shipping source said, noting that their firm chose to avoid the strait altogether out of concern for crew safety as security conditions worsen.
“Iran’s continued ability to target ships sailing through the Omani route means the Trump administration’s proposed solution to keep ships moving is unlikely to work,” said Torbjorn Solvedt, principal West Asia analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.
Following the resumption of US attacks on Iran and the reimposition of the US blockade on Iranian ports and shipping routes, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed to a near-complete halt.
Kpler data shows only seven vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on the first day of the renewed US naval blockade, down from 13 the previous day.
Just prior to the reimposition of the US blockade, Kpler reported 21 monitored transits through the Strait of Hormuz on 14 July, with vessels favoring the Iranian-approved route as the Omani corridor saw no crossings at all.
The firm also verified three additional attacks off Oman, bringing the confirmed toll to 56 incidents and 17 seafarer deaths.
More than 200 non-Iranian vessels applied for Iranian transit permits and insurance coverage in the three weeks between the signing of the Iran-US MoU and the resumption of the war, according to figures released by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) on Tuesday.
The authority approved 79 percent of requests, with tankers making up the largest share at 41 percent, and China and India each accounting for roughly a fifth of outbound destinations – figures that cover Iran-approved crossings only, excluding the US-escorted Omani route.
China to ‘firmly defend’ its companies against US tariffs on Russian energy buyers
RT | July 16, 2026
China has vowed to protect its companies from proposed US tariffs targeting buyers of Russian energy, warning Washington that economic coercion and unilateral sanctions would ultimately backfire.
Speaking on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian responded to legislation introduced in the US Senate that would authorize tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas, including China.
“China firmly opposes unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council, and will take necessary measures to firmly defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses and citizens,” Lin said.
“Practicing double standards and resorting to coercion and pressuring will eventually prove to be self-defeating,” he added.
The revised sanctions bill was introduced on Tuesday by the US Senate. It is an update to legislation originally proposed by the late Russia hawk Senator Lindsey Graham, who died of heart complications on Saturday.
If enacted, the measure would authorize US President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on goods imported from the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas. China and India would be among the countries most heavily affected.
The proposal comes less than two months after Washington and Beijing signed a trade framework designed to ease months of tariff tensions following a trade war in which the US imposed duties of up to 145% on Chinese imports, while China responded with tariffs of up to 125% on American goods.
During the dispute, Beijing also restricted exports of rare earth minerals critical to US high-tech and defense industries, disrupting supply chains and forcing some American manufacturers to suspend production.
US Reinstates Naval Blockade of Iran – Trump
Sputnik – 13.07.2026
WASHINGTON – The United States is reinstating the blockade of Iranian ports, US President Donald Trump said on Monday.
“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Trump also said that the United States will become a “guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz and receive a reimbursement equal to 20% of cargo shipped through the waterway.
“All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Why is the Selective Service war gaming a ‘special skills’ draft?
A military mobilization exercise offers clues about who might be drafted for what sort of conflict
By Edward Hasbrouck | Responsible Statecraft | July 8, 2026
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request show that the Selective Service recently gamed out what a military draft would look like in a future war. It would not resemble the one the nation lived through 55 years ago for the Vietnam War or the contingency plans in current standby Selective Service regulations. Instead, those with “special skills” would be conscripted first.
This is the opposite of what the Selective Service says in its promotional materials, that “if a draft is authorized, individuals are selected through a random lottery” from among all young men regardless of their occupation or current skills.
According to the January 2026 military mobilization exercise, the first wave of draftees could include “computer network technicians, electronics technicians, aerospace engineers, divers, welders, gas turbine engine mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, longshoremen, steel workers / pipefitters, radar / communications technicians, fiber optic technicians, mariners, aviation structural mechanics, cyber security specialists, robotics operators and technicians, air traffic controllers, logistics specialists, [and] linguists.”
A retired Army officer who spoke with RS suggested these kinds of skills indicate “the skill set required to expand (the) Navy, both manning ships and shore support, plus airfield operations.”
Officially, the Selective Service claims that a draft would be activated only in the event of a “national emergency.” This euphemistic language suggests a natural disaster or defense against invasion of the United States — what the chair of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS) posed as the “Red Dawn scenario”.
But the January exercise followed a much different course — an escalation to war, presumably with China over Taiwan, leading to full mobilization and then the draft.
In this scenario Washington intervenes militarily after Country A (China) blockades Country B (Taiwan) and the U.S. tries to break the blockade. The war escalates to “U.S. air attacks” on “Country A homeland.” A national emergency is declared and a draft is activated after full mobilization and retaliatory “kinetic strikes” by Country A on U.S. bases in Alaska and Hawaii. The first wave draft is declared shortly after. This scenario is very similar to the one envisioned recently in RS by Doug Bandow for how a U.S. attempt to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan might escalate.
A provision in the NDAA for FY2022 required the Department of Defense conduct an exercise that would “include the processes of the Selective Service System in preparation for induction of personnel into the armed forces” by the end of FY2023. That exercise still hasn’t been conducted, but the SSS engaged in the above exercise in preparation for it. Multiple scenarios were considered in the SSS exercise, but only one was released in response to my FOIA request.
The lottery has long been considered central to the fairness of a draft. Many Americans would likely draw a line between a draft to mobilize against an unprovoked invasion of the United States and one to backfill military ranks in war started with China on behalf of another country 8,000 miles away.
All of this comes as the SSS is preparing to replace the failed system of self-registration with an automated system (also likely to fail) under which the SSS will try to identify and locate potential draftees by using existing databases from other Federal agencies.
Proposed regulations for “automatic” draft registration have been held up in review by the White House for more than three months, running down the clock for the SSS to complete the notice-and-comment administrative proceedings required before the change in the registration law takes effect on December 18, 2026.
I suspect the White House has realized that visible moves toward an unpopular draft in the middle of an unpopular war with Iran will fan the flames of opposition to its war policies. Meanwhile, the SSS has maintained radio silence since the “automatic” registration law was enacted, not issuing any statements or responding to any inquiries from journalists for more than six months.
Meanwhile, the idea for a “special skills” draft has been a controversial one ever since it was conceived of by the SSS in the early 1990s.
Aside from the SSS mandate to maintain readiness for the general draft, U.S. law mandates a parallel plan for a draft of “persons qualified for practice or employment in a health care occupation.” Proposed regulations for the Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS), to include men and women up to their 45th birthday in 57 occupational categories from dietitians and physical therapists to dental assistants and medical equipment repair specialists, were published in 1989. The SSS has maintained contingency plans ever since for activation of the HCPDS.
Congress has never seriously debated a special-skills draft other than for health care workers. But despite the lack of any Congressional authorization for planning and preparation for a broader special-skills draft, it has been under discussion by the Pentagon and the SSS for many years.
In 2004, a spokesperson for the SSS said that, “Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam. But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft.”
Negative public reaction quickly prompted the Acting Director of the SSS to walk back the significance of this planning: “Today’s discussions about a broader special-skills draft are a practical outgrowth of normal contingency planning and are conceptual only.”
When the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) was established in 2016, part of its mandate from Congress was to consider “the feasibility and advisability of modifying the military selective service process in order to obtain… individuals with skills (such as medical, dental, and nursing skills, language skills, cyber skills, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills) for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex.”
The option of a special-skills draft modeled on the HCPDS was discussed but voted down by the NCMNPS. In closed-door meetings, one NCMNPS member noted that “it would be less politically feasible to set up a separate skills draft” than a draft that impacted all young men equally, and another opined that a special-skills draft would not be “fair and equitable.”
The continued prominence of a special-skills draft in SSS war games, despite the absence of a legal basis for it and its rejection by the NCMNPS, is indicative of the disconnect between what the SSS says and what it is doing, as well as between SSS fantasies and the real obstacles to a draft.
We all should be concerned about what sort of draft and what sort of war the SSS is preparing for. The time to consider whether we want a draft, and whether current contingency plans could feasibly be activated, is before the nation is committed to a war that would require a draft.
Yet there were no hearings or debate before Congress rubber-stamped the SSS proposal for “automatic” registration. Congress has never considered whether a special-skills draft would be feasible or fair. There’s been no audit of the accuracy or completeness of the SSS registration database since 1982.
Even supporters of a draft should be concerned about reliance on unworkable plans. It’s time for Congressional oversight hearings on whether the SSS is making realistic plans for national defense, or just trying to justify its continued existence in the face of proposals to abolish the agency.
Edward Hasbrouck is the editor and publisher of Resisters.info, the most comprehensive independent source of information about the draft and draft registration in the U.S. since 1980.
EU’s Break With Russian Energy Cost €3 Trillion
Sputnik – 07.07.2026
Total economic losses for EU countries due to the refusal to buy Russian energy could amount to approximately 3 trillion euros ($3.4 trillion), the Russian Permanent Mission to the EU said.
“The total losses for European countries from the refusal to buy Russian energy, according to some estimates, amount to approximately 3 trillion euros,” the mission told a Russian newspaper.
European companies and ordinary citizens have fully felt the consequences of Brussels’ policy of severing ties with Russia, it said. This has manifested itself in the form of sharp price hikes, high energy prices, declining living standards, and the closure and relocation of industrial enterprises outside the EU.
Russia has repeatedly stressed that the country would cope with the sanctions pressure that the West had begun to exert on Russia several years ago and continued to escalate. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said that the policy of containing and weakening Russia was a long-term Western strategy, and that sanctions had dealt a serious blow to the entire global economy.
EU to spend €2.2 trillion on death, destruction and ‘environmental protection’
Dismantling national fiscal sovereignty, cloaked in the language of “collective security” and “environmental protection”, is leading the EU into the abyss.
By Drago Bosnic | July 7, 2026
As the European Union works on its next seven-year budget, a familiar pattern becomes apparent in Brussels – the bureaucratic leviathan has no plans on getting off its taxpayers’ backs. On the contrary, it keeps demanding more and it’s only a matter of time before these demands “break the camel’s back”. However, the unelected bureaucratic dictatorship’s fiscal megalomania is still nothing in comparison to what it plans to do with the money taken from the aforementioned taxpayers. Namely, Ursula von der Leyen and her entourage are pushing for a financial framework that, according to German economist and journalist Thomas Kolbe, amounts to nothing less than a formally “legalized” €2.2 trillion wealth-transfer machine.
In his latest analysis published by Zero Hedge, Kolbe masterfully dissects how this project is not merely about military spending or climate redistribution. His spot-on report points to the systematic construction of the EU as a bureaucratic superstate with little to no public oversight, funded by perpetual debt and imposed upon the increasingly weary taxpayers of member states, with Germany once again shouldering the heaviest burden. Kolbe’s central thesis is that this fiscal push arrives at the most precarious of economic moments. He warns that “across the world, public debt levels are approaching dangerous flood marks”, with total liabilities now exceeding 95% of global GDP. In his view, a reckoning is imminent.
“It is therefore only a matter of time before bond markets bring the debt party to an end, pushing interest rates – and with them debt-servicing costs – to levels governments can no longer afford,” he argues.
All this is the logical consequence of decades of political irresponsibility and contempt for the very concept of fiscal prudence. For four decades, a bull market in sovereign bonds masked this rot, but Kolbe correctly points out that this era ended roughly four years ago. Now, as investors lose confidence, the gates of fiscal austerity stand ready to storm the palace of political extravagance. Yet, for the corrupt and delusional political elites in Brussels, austerity is anathema. It would be an admission that their grand project of debt-financed expansion has led to a dead end. Not to mention they’d also need to take accountability in front of the masses they look down upon and despise as “net zero carbon footprint dodgers”.
As Kolbe writes, “few things are more alien to modern political elites than acknowledging failure”. Nowhere is this more evident than in the EU capital, where the unelected bureaucratic dictatorship remains convinced it’s building a supranational confederal superstate on “the right side of history”. Instead of retrenchment, we are witnessing the opposite – a proposed budget of over €2 trillion, designed to fund the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, a massive EU militarization program and the enormous subsidy complex of the troubled bloc’s controversial “Green Deal”. In other words, Brussels is preparing to blow up the “old continent” while making sure it’s also “environmentally protected”.
Obviously, this is because nothing screams “ecology” more than a new pan-European invasion of Russia (for the hundredth time in the last millennium or so). The mechanism for these financial programs is twofold and includes higher direct contributions from member states and the issuance of new common debt. The financial implications for German taxpayers are staggering. As Kolbe meticulously details, Germany currently finances roughly one-quarter of the EU budget. Under the proposed framework, German taxpayers would contribute around €500 billion over the seven-year period. Last year alone, Berlin paid roughly €30 billion into the EU coffers while officially receiving approximately €13 billion. The gap is a direct subsidy to Brussels’ greed.
However, even this fiscal leap into fantasy is not enough to satisfy the insatiable appetite of this bureaucratic monster. Kolbe reveals that discussions are now underway to increase the budget by another €200 billion, which would send Germany’s annual contribution skyrocketing from €30 billion to an almost unfathomable €78.6 billion. This 162% increase is driving a permanent structural transformation. The EU Commission is working relentlessly to establish what it calls “independent sources of taxation”, which includes everything from customs revenues and emissions trading to plastic taxes. The only logical conclusion for Kolbe is that “the imagination of Brussels appears limitless”.
And indeed, the otherwise useless, talentless and woefully incompetent bureaucratic dictatorship is expertly efficient when it comes to finding ways to latch onto new hosts in order to continue its parasitic existence. This is not merely about balancing a ledger, but a (geo)political project to create an “entirely new layer of government – complete with its own bureaucracy and increasingly its own taxation powers”. Brussels first leveraged the issuance of NextGenerationEU bonds to transform itself into an independent borrower on international capital markets. Now, as repayment of that €750 billion debt looms in 2028, the solution is predictable – simply refinance the liabilities through continuous new bond issuance.
This financial loop is as parasitic as you could possibly imagine. However, it’s now gradually becoming malignant, as the funding will be used to further militarize the troubled bloc. While joint military projects keep failing left and right, the massive militarization process doesn’t need to include acquiring weapon systems from domestic companies. There’s always the United States, where the Trump administration is conducting a far more efficient militarization. Any surplus that Washington DC can sell to its vassals and satellite states formally under Brussels is a great source of revenue for the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC). This makes the EU’s new financial loop great news for the US, as it ensures profit for years (if not decades) to come.
This transformation of the EU’s funding structure is effectively a financial evolution toward a superstate where common liability for Brussels’ debts is virtually inevitable. In other words, socialism for the elites and brutal capitalism for the masses, as profits remain in the hands of the bureaucrats, while regular folks get the “privilege” of paying off the perpetually growing debt. Kolbe rightly warns that “Europe’s downward spiral of declining prosperity is accelerating” and that it’s “a tragic process of economic deterioration – one that is increasingly likely to culminate in a major sovereign debt crisis”. Sadly, the debt crisis would be the least of the EU’s problems, particularly if the funds acquired in this way are used to escalate tensions with Russia.
In other words, EU taxpayers (particularly Germans) are not only paying exorbitant taxes that effectively impoverish them (not to mention the skyrocketing energy prices that are the direct result of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict), but are also financing their own inevitable doom through militarization and preparation for a new Barbarossa-style invasion of Russia. Kolbe’s analysis is a sobering reminder that the drive for “more defense spending” and “more climate redistribution” is just a pretext for a far more centralized agenda and control that would enable this madness. The deliberate dismantling of national fiscal sovereignty, cloaked in the language of “collective security” and “environmental protection”, is leading the EU into the abyss.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Canada unveils new pipeline plan to cut US oil dependence
Al Mayadeen | July 3, 2026
Canada has moved forward with plans for a major new oil pipeline aimed at reducing its reliance on the United States and positioning itself as a supplier to Asian energy markets.
Alberta has formally submitted proposals to the federal Major Projects Office for a pipeline exceeding 1,000 kilometers, intended to carry as much as one million barrels of crude per day to the British Columbia coast, with construction slated to begin by September 2027.
Prime Minister Mark Carney described the initiative as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the country, announcing that the new line would largely trace the path of the existing Trans Mountain corridor.
The project would be built by Trans Mountain Corp, a federal Crown corporation, in partnership with Pembina Pipeline Corp.
Billions in investment
Carney tied the pipeline to a broader economic strategy, projecting that Thursday’s announcements would spur more than C$200 billion (US$141 billion) in fresh investment.
Alongside the pipeline, the plan includes nearly tripling Canada’s liquefied natural gas capacity through five new terminals over the next ten years, as well as a C$10 billion upgrade to the Port of Vancouver.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith further called for the province’s oil production to double and for the pipeline to be operational by 2035.
Washington’s shadow looms over decision
The push comes as Canada seeks to loosen its economic dependence on Washington.
The US currently absorbs about three-quarters of Canadian exports and roughly 60 percent of its oil imports, some 4 million barrels a day, nearly all of it drawn from Alberta’s oil sands, among the largest crude reserves in the world.
Carney has vowed to double Canada’s non-US trade as President Donald Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 100 percent on Canadian goods and repeated calls for Canada to become the “51st state.”
Trump also declined this week to commit to a long-term renewal of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he signed in his first term.
Environmental groups
Environmental groups and First Nations communities welcomed Carney’s decision to preserve an existing tanker ban along BC’s northern coast, with Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett calling it “a good day” for efforts to prevent oil spills.
Carney, a former UN climate envoy, has also acknowledged that the fossil-fuel-driven strategy will push Canada’s emissions higher, distancing his government from predecessor Justin Trudeau’s more restrictive approach to the oil sector.
Industry groups, meanwhile, argue that regulatory hurdles and an uncompetitive tax structure continue to discourage investment.
The plan also unfolds against a backdrop of internal strain, with Alberta’s separatist movement gaining traction and a referendum vote on independence set for October 19.
Trump threats fuel patriotism among Canadians
Trump’s confrontational posture toward Canada appears to be reshaping how Canadians see themselves. A new Politico poll found that 52 percent of Canadians now describe themselves as very proud of their nationality, up sharply from 34 percent in December 2024.
Analysts link the surge to Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada and his tariff measures targeting Canadian exports, including a 25 percent tariff imposed by executive order in February 2025 that triggered retaliatory measures from Ottawa.
Those tariffs were later struck down by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose them was unconstitutional.
Even so, the poll suggests the rise in patriotic sentiment has not translated into a sense of national unity, with most respondents saying Canada remains internally divided.
Vessel runs aground after deviating From Iran-designated Hormuz route
Al Mayadeen | July 1, 2026
A cargo vessel ran aground in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday while traveling a route not approved by Iran’s naval authorities, Iran’s IRIB reports.
The ship was identified as a foreign container ship, but the report didn’t provide any further details on the matter.
IRIB’s report seems to underscore Iran’s geographical control over the strategic waterway, through which a fifth of all oil and gas passes.
According to HormuzTracker, the Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted, showing little to no passage through the key waterway.
This confirms a total halt in detected commercial navigation activity, with no crude oil tankers, LNG carriers, bulk carriers, or container ships recorded moving through the Strait.
Transit through the Strait fell sharply following waves of US aggression against Iran and subsequent hostile rhetoric from Washington. Trackers showed that between June 24 and June 28, vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz fell from a high of 74 to 22.
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Book Review
Breaking the Spell
The Holocaust: Myth and Reality, Overview of the book by Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom
BY ANTONY C. BLACK • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 17, 2022
Heresy In the 21st Century
Never in my long journalistic career have I ever hesitated to put pen to paper – until now. Indeed, I have delayed writing this overview of Dr. Kollerstrom’s remarkable book for going on six years.[1] Up until now no subject had been too controversial, too sensitive, too beyond the pale as to warrant more than a passing moment’s consideration of consequences. But this is different. In some sixteen countries in Europe one can be put in prison for doing what I am doing now, or even for expressing ‘holocaust denialism’ on social media. In Germany some fifteen thousand people are tried each year for Thought Crime, i.e., for so-called ‘right-wing extremism’. Here in North America it is somewhat better; one merely risks losing one’s job, friends and family – and possibly being blacklisted as a writer from virtually every venue one might have formerly been associated with. No small potatoes.
Dr. Kollerstrom, himself, stumbled rather more naively into this punitive quagmire in 2008 when, after merely reviewing a scientific paper analyzing samples taken from the walls of the alleged ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz, – a paper authored by one Germar Rudolf, a young scientist working at the time at the Max Planck Institute – he found himself summarily dismissed from his erstwhile position as historian and philosopher of science at University College, London (UCL), “the sole member of staff…ever to have been expelled for ideological reasons”. As he recounts,
“I became ethically damned, thrown out of polite, decent groups, banned from forums and denounced in newspapers…..I felt as if some Mark of Cain had been branded onto my forehead. I had done something so awful that we could not even discuss the matter. The Medieval crime of Heresy was back alive and well…”
Heresy, of course, implicates the notion of taboo, and what a society makes taboo is what it feels to be sacred, and what is sacred is beyond question. When dealing with the ‘Holocaust’, then, we are, Kollerstrom assures us, dealing not with historical science, but, essentially, with a religion; the Holo-religion. And as the author repeatedly points out, “There can be no science where doubt is prohibited.” … continue
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- Farce Of The Week: Germany’s Weather Site Donnerwetter.de Attempts To Measure The Rhine River’s Temperature!
- Analysis: Robert Koch Institute’s Heat Death Model Is “A Joke”… Deaths “Assumed” To Be Due To Heat
- New Research Finds Increasing CO2 Induces Cooling In The Lower Atmosphere Over The Arctic
- Germany’s Industrial Suicide… Grid Agency Prepares Secret Power Rationing Plans Amid Electric Power Bottlenecks
- ECMWF Models Throwing Cold Water On Extreme Germany Heat Wave Forecast Next Week
- Greenland’s Ice Sheet Was Supposed To Be Rapidly Melting Away. It Hasn’t Been.
- Global Temperature Trend Has Cooled Over The Past 6500 Years, Scientists Have Found
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