Donald Trump's Truth Social War Stats

US President Donald Trump published the post immediately below on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, July 21, 2026: 

He captioned the visual data by writing, “These are the real facts. REPORT THEM!” to push back against congressional critics regarding the costs and objectives of the current Middle East operations.

He has been roundly denounced for the post because he belittled the deaths of service members in the listed conflicts. 

Former supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene said Trump was “bragging about killing 18 US soldiers”. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the president a “disgusting Little Man”, while commentator Brian Krassenstein said Trump was minimizing “18 soldiers [who] have died from his stupid Iran war”. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the post “beneath contempt”, and Senator Chris Van Hollen said Trump was “downplaying” the loss of American lives. 

On Wednesday, Trump courted controversy once again when he appeared to dismiss the conflict, referring to it as a "skirmish".

It shouldn't come as a surprise. He's a deviant. A degenerate. A sicko. 👿👿👿

Companionship Is A Silent Power

A 24-year-old cancer patient in Foshan, China opens a delivery app and orders two hours of human company. Just someone to sit by her bed and talk.

How comforting the presence of another human being can be. 

Since the crippling of US military sites and the demolition of radars in the Middle East due to Iranian attacks, there has been heavy rainfall in parts of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. 

A large dam in Iran’s Paveh region has overflowed again after seven years. Due to heavy rainfall, this dam with a capacity of about 400 million cubic meters is now completely full and water has started overflowing. 

Meanwhile, Iraq’s largest Darbandikhan Dam has also reached 100% capacity, forcing its gates to be opened. After many years, this dam has again reached its full capacity. 

There are stories that the weather in that region was controlled using cloud seeding radars located in the Middle East, especially in the UAE. Others say that high-powered phased-array radar systems emit extremely powerful electromagnetic beams in UHF and X-band frequencies, which disrupt the normal flow of the atmosphere. But now that the radars have been destroyed, the weather is starting to return to its normal state. 

As a result, Tehran in Iran, which had been affected by drought for years, has seen heavy rainfall and the temperature has dropped by about 5 degrees Celsius. 

Whether this is a conspiracy theory or not, just as the weather is slowly returning to normal – if America completely withdraws from the Middle East, perhaps long-term stability and an environment of peace will return to the region.

UK Special Forces Resign En Masse Over War Crimes Probe

Soldiers from the UK’s elite SAS force are resigning in significant numbers over fears of prosecution following human rights investigations into alleged war crimes, British media reports. 

The probe largely focuses on British special forces operations in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2013, as well as missions in Syria and Northern Ireland. 

A public inquiry is examining claims that troops carried out extrajudicial killings during night raids, including the shooting of detainees and unarmed civilians, and whether evidence was falsified and senior officers failed to investigate or concealed wrongdoing. 

Members of 22 SAS, the British Army’s elite special forces unit, have applied for “premature voluntary release”, multiple outlets reported on Monday, citing insiders. The exact number of departures has not been disclosed, though at least two squadrons (D and G) are understood to have been affected. 

“Morale is s**t at the moment”, one insider was quoted as saying. Another source described “considerable disquiet” within the regiment. 

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams told LBC radio on Tuesday the growing number of departures from 22 SAS was driven by concerns among serving troops that actions during operations could later lead to investigations or potential arrest under human rights law. 

Last month, it was revealed that 242 special forces troops, including 120 serving personnel, were being pursued by lawyers as part of human rights inquiries, according to a memo shared with SAS and Special Reconnaissance Regiment associations. The investigation, which some within the regiment have labeled a “witch hunt”, examines UK secret operations, with troops facing legal sanctions if they fail to comply, the memo said. 

In 2022, a BBC Panorama investigation identified 54 people shot dead in suspicious circumstances by one SAS unit during a six-month tour of Helmand province, with unarmed Afghan men allegedly “routinely shot dead in cold blood” and weapons planted on them.

An inquiry heard in December that the director of UK Special Forces made a “conscious decision” to cover up potential war crimes in Afghanistan, according to the Morning Star. A UKSF officer identified as N1466 said the director “knew what was happening on the ground” and sought to “cover this up”. 

In one incident presented to the inquiry, special forces fired into a mosquito net until there was no movement, only to later find women and children, according to inquiry documents. The shooting was allegedly covered up and the soldier awarded. 

A review prepared for the inquiry found a Royal Military Police investigation into alleged unlawful killings was undermined by delays and poor resourcing, according to Action on Armed Violence. Operation Northmoor, the main investigation, began only in March 2014 despite concerns emerging as early as 2011, and was closed in July 2019 in what the review described as an “inappropriate and premature” decision, leaving key lines of inquiry unexamined.

The Global Hegemon That Is The Militaristic US

The United States is a global hegemon that proudly wears its hyper-militarism like a badge of honor. Best characterized as being bellicose, belligerent and brazenly confrontational. 

Indeed, the combative country has a hubristic history of military interventions and an indefatigable involvement in color revolutions and regime change, whether overtly or covertly. 

The same jingoistic country maintains a vast worldwide network of between 750 to 800 military base sites in at least 80 countries and territories to enable power projection and facilitate its military's global strategic objective of imperial and imperious domination. 

In this century alone, already ten countries have been at the receiving end of US aggression:

If you haven't already noticed, trigger-happy Donald Trump is involved in every one of them!

[Note: The above doesn't include the "proxy" war in Ukraine between the US and Russia – an admission made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself to Fox News on March 05, 2025].

Among the roster of hawkish US presidents, one is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2009 (i.e., Barack Obama!) and another (Trump lah, who else!) who literally begged for the award in 2025! (He didn't get it though – but the "unfit" winner still presented it to him, even if it means breaking the rules).

["Unfit" because she exhorted the US of A to attack her own country, i.e., Venezuela, so that she can be installed as president].

American foreign policy, after all, is engineered to maintain absolute global dominance, willingly triggering conflicts to ensure that both allies and adversaries recognize the US military as the undisputed numero uno!

The world will be in a better place if the US ceases to exist. Just saying.

UK's Epic Hypocrisy

Epic hypocrisy! The two faces of the UK government. 

Julian Assange was locked up for years in Belmarsh, a high-security UK prison. He was said to have published through WikiLeaks, disclosed documents about potential US war crimes, including the "Collateral Murder" video showing a helicopter attack on civilians, and evidence of torture and illegal detentions. As well as the inner workings of US foreign policy and military operations, providing a "shadow history" of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Many press freedom groups, including the ACLU and Amnesty International, argued that his actions constituted core investigative journalism, and that the prosecution was an attempt to silence the exposure of state criminality.

Then there's the anti-China media mogul, Jimmy Lai, who was paid by the US to create chaos and incite violence in Hong Kong. And hailed as a hero by the UK government. His trial was open to the public and media to give full transparency, so there could be no doubt he's had a fair trial.  

The case lasted 156 days, there's 855 pages of court transcript proving his guilt beyond doubt. The most damning evidence was Lai's phone messages proving him to be a traitor who brought terror and fear to Hong Kong. 

The harsh reality is that truth does not matter to 'Anti-China' US and UK. 

Liverpool faced a club on their fourth manager of the season, with Nottingham Forest the opposition in the Premier League yesterday. 

And they beat the West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire-based side 1-0, thanks to a 97th minute goal from midfielder Alexis Mac Allister in a chaotic finish. 

The win allowed the Reds to move to 45 points, level with fourth-placed Chelsea and fifth-placed Manchester United.

Canadian Army Prep for a Potential US Invasion

Canadian media outlet The Globe & Mail uncovered that the Canadian military has been modeling what an American invasion might look like. 

Of course, modeling isn't the same as having a battle plan – nonetheless, it points out that Canada cannot stop a southern invasion. In fact, within hours, American military superiority would crush any resistance.

However, occupying Canada becomes the real problem. Canada is massive. No nation has the numbers to dominate and hold it sustainably. Even if the government surrendered, military and civilian resistance could disappear into the wilderness or rural areas where hunting them down would prove difficult. 

The CAF model suggests Canadian forces could continue fighting using 'unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics'. 

Sound familiar? Think Taliban in Afghanistan or Vietcong in the 1960s and 1970s. Hit-and-run attacks, IEDs, blending into the civilian population – tactics that proved nightmarish to counter. You can't measure success or predict where the next ambush comes from. 

With NATO countries sending troops to Denmark's colony, that is Greenland, to counter Donald Trump's annexation threats, other formerly friendly nations are reconsidering what to do if America comes knocking.

Malaysia's Sivasangari Subramaniam kept the country's hopes alive at the Tournament of Champions 2026 after producing a gritty comeback to reach the quarter-finals in New York. 

The fifth seed overturned a two-game deficit to shut the door for homester Amanda Sobhy, winning 6-11, 7-11, 11-9, 11-9, 11-4 in a thrilling 55-minute second-round clash on Sunday.

The Kedah-born player will next take on fourth seed Olivia Weaver,

20 Things You Need to Know About the Protests in Iran

20 things you really must know about the supposedly popular protests in Iran that broke out on December 28, 2025!

1. Allegations of “mass casualties” among Iran protesters are not dependable. They come from a group called Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Center for Human Rights in Iran are NOT in Iran. They are in New York, USA. 

2. Are they an Iranian group? No. They are financed by the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC and related bodies, specializing in disinformation. 

3. They are run by the people of Iran? No. The chairperson is Minky Worden, an American woman who ran anti-China campaigns for many years. She tried to get the Beijing winter Olympics renamed the genocide Olympics and cancelled. She failed. 

4. Worden worked closely with the Hong Kong "pro-democracy" movement (also NED-funded) and her husband was on the board of Apple Daily and had a contract with the Pentagon. Yes, the US regime-change operations around the world are THAT incestuous. 

5. The other main source of unbelievable tales of massive protests and huge numbers of deaths in Iran are coming from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). This is also a NED-funded, US-based disinformation outlet. 

Iranians Have Become Less Anti-government 

6. Having said that, protest groups against the Iranian government do exist, but they are not large. Western groups including the NED-funded media, and the Persian service of Voice of America, have spent years cultivating anti-government groups. But Trump’s bombing campaigns, and Israel’s shocking behavior in Gaza, has meant Iranians have become very notably LESS anti-government, not more. This is important. 

7. The loudest and most prominent Iranian “protest leader” quoted in the west is Masih Alinejad, a women who was salaried by NED for years, and currently works for the US Agency for Global Media. 

8. Which part of Iran does she live in? No part of Iran. She lives in the US. 

9. What’s her professional background? Propaganda. Her job was and is to push pro-US anti-Iran propaganda through various media services. Despite this, she is quoted in the media as if she is a reliable source of news from the people of Iran. 

10. Press reports show that between 2015 and 2022 alone, Masih Alinejad received $628,000 in funding from NED and related groups. And yes, this regime-change campaigner received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

11. Remember Mahsa Jina Amini, a woman said to have been beaten to death by Iran police for wearing her hijab wrongly? Masih Alinejad pushed that tale, but it was debunked by a security video, which showed that no one was standing near her when she collapsed through a medical issue. 

12. A 2009 Brookings policy paper "Which Path to Persia?" goes into detail about how the US can take control of Iran, by creating mobs attacking government facilities, which can be labelled a “popular uprising” by the media, or by fostering division and putting puppet leaders in control. Variations of this US game plan have been used multiple times around the world. 

Women's Rights in the Forefront

13. Why is so much of the US propaganda about Iran based on alleged violations of women’s rights? Because similar US disinformation operations in other places, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, showed that women’s rights made western audiences angrier faster than weaponization of the usual western “Big Three” propaganda lines: Democracy, freedom and human rights. 

14. Is the “strictly hijabs only” tale true? No. In general, women in Iran do prefer to dress modestly in Islamic fashion, but it’s far more relaxed and tolerant that the US propagandists pretend. Think of the religious dress codes of Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, where most people dress modestly and religiously, but the atmosphere is tolerant and reasonable. 

15. What about the atrocity stories of ill-treated women? They are invented and circulated by US and Israeli sources: the US has long had an atrocity fabrication department (see AB Abram’s research for numerous examples of their work worldwide). 

Infiltration 

16. Academic studies apparently “proving” that most Iranians want a US-allied leadership appear in The Journal of Democracy – which is not a real academic publication, but a NED magazine. 

17. NED operatives have spent years in Iran, funding scholars and journalists to build up a stranglehold in many educational, civic and media groups, just as they did in Hong Kong, and have done in many places. 

18. A widely quoted group from Iranian politics are the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. They are also not Iranian. They are funded by NED and the executive director is American activist Kenneth R Timmerman. 

Hope for the Future 

19. Iranians are smart. They know about NED and nickname them “National Enemy of Democracy”. 

20. Western mainstream media reports (BBC, Guardian, Reuters, etc) absolutely CANNOT be trusted. They have a long history of downplaying, or, more usually, completely hiding the western manipulation processes that create regime change. 

If you support the people of Iran, you need to know all this. The world needs to stand with Iran and tell the US that we've had enough.

Donald Trump Adds Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base To His Wishlist

US President Donald Trump had intimated his desire to annex Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal and absorb Canada as the 51st state – and now, he wants back Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. 

“We should have never given it up”, Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. 

"We're trying to get it back", Trump said of Bagram during a news conference a day earlier alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that capped a whirlwind state visit to the United Kingdom. 

Taking aim at the Biden administration's fraught withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as a "total disaster", Trump criticized the decision to relinquish Bagram airfield, which quickly fell under the control of the Taliban as they swept back into power in 2021. 

[Note: About an hour's drive north of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, Bagram served for years as a crucial hub in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At its peak around 2012, the sprawling complex saw more than 100,000 US troops pass through its compound]. 

"We gave it to them for nothing", bemoaned Trump, who has long criticized the Biden administration's handling of the retreat from Afghanistan. "We want that base back", he affirmed.

And he made clear at least one motivating factor for his interest in reclaiming Bagram, noting its proximity to rival superpower China. “It’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons”, Trump said during his comments Thursday.

Needless to say, Zakir Jalaly, an Afghan Foreign Ministry official, wrote on X on Thursday that the people of Afghanistan would reject the return of American troops.

Undeterred, Trump threatened on Truth Social on Saturday: “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!! President DJT”.

For sure, he's not going to regain the facility but I would like to suggest to Trump to demand instead the return of the former US colony, i.e., the Philippines!! 

After all, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr just loves being America's lapdog!!🐕 And so, he might as well surrender his country to Trump!! 

😆😆😆😆

It's been a long, long time since I attended a KEPENTAS meeting. 

But on Friday, I went. It helped that the venue was at Sunway Mentari in Bandar Sunway, Subang Jaya. The topic explored was "Ucapan Penghormatan" (in English, it'll be a tribute speech) and the session was conducted by Roslan Hassan. 

As was the practice, after the mini-"lecture", members were expected to present a speech where we were allotted 7-10 minutes. Yes, I spoke and if you want to know, I infused it with a wee bit of wry wit.  👩🪳

As was the norm, every presentation was accompanied by an open evaluation.

From Department of Defense to Department of War

It is no surprise that the Trump administration are cultivating and promoting a "warrior ethos" within the Pentagon. The US is, after all, a warmongering nation. 

If you don't already know, the country has been involved in conflicts for most of its history, though not necessarily a "non-stop" war in the conventional sense; however, the period since the Vietnam War (1955–1975) has seen continuous US military engagements. Examples include the First Gulf War (1990–1991), the Somali Civil War (1992–present), the Kosovo War (1998-1999), the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021), and the Iraq War (2003–2011). Not to mention that the US is still presently waging a proxy war in Ukraine.

In this year itself, the US even joined Israel to go against Iran. In an operation called "Midnight Hammer", on June 22, the US deployed B-2 stealth bombers with the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), also known as a "bunker buster", to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. In fact, 125 aircraft were involved, including refueling and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft. 

Israel's strikes on Iran came against the backdrop of its ongoing war in Gaza and a broader escalation of its military actions across the region, including Israeli military activity in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and the occupied West Bank. And the US is complicit because it is a primary supplier of weaponry to the Zionist regime, much as it does for the [Z]elensky regime in Kiev.   

And so, on Friday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War, reverting to the agency’s former namesake which came into being way back in 1789. 

I certainly agree with him because the name change is more “appropriate”, given the US propensity to wage war, whether overtly or covertly. 

The said order authorizes the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Defense and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War”, “Department of War”, and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch, according to a White House fact sheet. 

The order also instructs Pete Hegseth (now the "secretary of war") to propose both legislative and executive actions to make the name permanently US Department of War.

World No. 8 Sivasangari Subramaniam's bid to defend her London Squash Classic crown came to an end in the semi-finals after falling to Egypt's Amina Orfi. 

The Malaysian battled for 68 minutes before going down 11-7, 11-7, 7-11, 11-5 yesterday. It was the 26-year-old's fourth defeat in five meetings with 18-year-old Amina, a three-time world junior champion.

Harimau Malaya Pull Out of CAFA Cup

I just read the disappointing news this morning. After weeks of hype, Harimau Malaya's debut at the CAFA Nations Cup has been called off, with the national team pulling out due to logistical hurdles and player availability issues. 

World No. 125 Malaysia were drawn in Group B alongside Asian giants Iran (No. 18), Tajikistan (No. 104) and Afghanistan (No. 161). The matches were scheduled to take place in Tajikistan from August 29-September 08. But with the tournament set just outside the official FIFA international window (September 01-09), the national team struggled to secure key players, particularly those based overseas in Spain, Argentina and Colombia. 

Clubs are not obliged to release players outside the window. 

"With the matches being played in Tajikistan, logistical operations become very difficult," said national coach Peter Cklamovski (left) on Wednesday. "It's a difficult scenario for our players to get there and be ready to go. I'll never want to compromise the players. I want us at full strength". 

Malaysia had planned to use the tournament as part of their long-term development strategy, and Cklamovski admitted he had lofty ambitions. 

"I wanted to go into this tournament to win it", he declared. "But once the fixtures were released a few days ago, it became clear that it would be tough. We have to respect the clubs". 

Besides player availability, the tight schedule and travel logistics posed major challenges, especially with FIFA's newly enforced 72-hour recovery rule between games. Long-haul flights, rising costs and preparation issues only compounded the problem. 

"We've got players in Spain, Colombia, Argentina. It's difficult to get them there", said Cklamovski. "Then there's the impact on the budget – all that effort to arrive under-strength. It just doesn't make sense". 

He insists the decision to withdraw was the right one. 

"It's a smart call. What's more important now is to use the September window wisely and focus on October and November, especially with big matches coming up against Laos and Nepal (in the Asian Cup qualifiers)". 

While the withdrawal may come as a letdown for fans eager to see Harimau Malaya tested, the FA of Malaysia and Cklamovski believe it is a necessary step in the push for long-term progress. 

Malaysian women's doubles Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan made a confident start at the Japan Open by beating reigning European champions Gabriela Stoeva-Stefani Stoeva in the opening round on Wednesday. 

The world No. 3 needed just 31 minutes to dispatch the world No. 16 Bulgarian sisters 21-16, 21-14. 

The duo will next face either Taiwan's Hsieh Pei Shan-Hung En Tzu or the United States' Francesca Corbett-Jennie Gai in the second round.

Malaysia Gets Invite to CAFA Nations Cup 2025

It is good news to read that Malaysia is able to secure an invite to participate in the Central Asian Football Association (CAFA) Nations Cup (August 26-September 09), which offers a rare opportunity for Harimau Malaya to play world class teams outside Southeast Asia. 

And it's a big plus because the national side get to prove themselves against more physical and tactically advanced footballing countries. 

The tournament experience would be the best preparation before they take on Laos in the 2027 Asian Cup third-round qualifiers in October. 

At the PSA Squash Tour Finals (June 23-27, 2025) in Toronto, Canada, in Round One, it was not the dream start Sivasangari Subramaniam had hoped for. 

The world No. 8 gave a good account of herself but eventually went down 11-9, 11-9 to American world No. 4 Olivia Weaver in a Group B match on Monday. 

It was her seventh defeat to Weaver in eight meetings. 

Sivasangari will face world No. 14 Fayrouz Aboelkheir in her second group match today – a must-win clash for both players to keep their semi-final hopes alive.

Powerful NATO

Mark Rutte, NATO's Secretary General is the kind of man who thinks very highly of himself. 

At a press conference ahead of the NATO Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, he had boasted that the NATO "defensive alliance" are more powerful than both the Roman Empire and Napoleonic Empire. 

Of course, outside of the West, NATO are essentially the US, and a collection of vassal states that willingly submit to Washington’s hegemony. 

And don't forget that NATO destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yugoslavia. Also, we can add Ukraine to the list too. 

While Rutte (right) may be comical in overstating his own importance, when he is just a puppet that has to jump whenever Washington says, make no mistake, NATO are an aggressive, expansionist and hyper-militarist organisation.  

And the fact of the matter is, NATO aren't really about defense and they never were.

At the British Open Squash 2025 yesterday, Sivasangari Subramaniam couldn't get past her quarter-final opponent Amina Orfi. The Egyptian beat her 3-1: 11-2, 4-11, 11-7, 11-9 in 59 minutes. 

It was world No. 5 Amina's fourth win over Sivasangari in five meetings

Australia Strips Medals From Afghanistan War Commanders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australia has moved to strip senior military officers of their distinguished service medals over alleged war crimes committed on their watch in Afghanistan.

 

The announcement on Thursday comes after the 2020 Brereton Report found credible evidence that Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in Afghanistan were involved in the unlawful killing of 39 prisoners and civilians. [Refer my post "Soldier Depiction Angers Australia" published December 01, 2020 for background story].

 

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles (left) told parliament the decision was made in keeping with the report’s 143 recommendations, including a number related to “command accountability”.

 

“My decisions on this matter are consistent with the findings and recommendations of the Brereton Report. In accordance with obligations owed to individuals involved, including under the Privacy Act, I am prohibited from disclosing the details and outcomes”, Marles said.

 

While Marles did not name the officers who had been stripped of their awards or specify the number of those affected, local media reported that the move related to fewer than 10 personnel. 

 

Marles also said that the Office of the Special Investigator was looking into the possibility of prosecuting some ADF personnel but those inquiries would “take years to complete”.

 

Major General Paul Brereton’s four-year inquiry did not find evidence that military top brass had knowledge of alleged war crimes.

 

The former judge, however, found that “troop, squadron and task group commanders bear moral command responsibility and accountability for what happened under their command and control”. 

 

Methinks, justice has not been fully served.

 

In March last year, a decorated former Special Air Service Regiment soldier Oliver Schulz (right) was charged with murdering a civilian in Uruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan in May 2012, becoming the first serving or former ADF member to be charged with a war crime-related murder.

 

That killing was revealed in March 2020 by the ABC's Four Corners program, which broadcast footage showing Schulz shooting Dad Mohammad while the Afghan man lay on the ground.

 

The Four Corners program, Killing Field, broadcast explosive footage taken from a helmet camera worn by the dog handler from Schulz's patrol. It showed an SAS dog mauling the Afghani in a field, before the dog was called off and Schulz was seen training his weapon on the man. 

 

[Only one soldier is culpable?]

Julian Assange is Free After US Plea Deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (right) was released from a UK prison and making his way back to his home country Australia after his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States ended in a plea deal. 

 

Assange has spent the past five years in UK’s high-security Belmarsh prison and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, trying to avoid arrest that could have led to life imprisonment. 

 

On Monday, the fifty-two-year-old agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge related to his alleged role in one of the largest US government breaches of classified materials after his whistleblowing website published nearly half a million secret military documents relating to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 

The plea deal caps a long-running legal saga, allowing Assange to avoid prison in the US and return to Australia as a free man – but not until he has made a court appearance in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, at 09:00 AM on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday), where he will be sentenced to 62 months of the time already served.

 

Public interest journalism is no crime, and the USA and UK erred big time in pursuing after him. Anyway, his No.1 priority is to get his life back together again.

 

Ferdinand Marcos Jr Warns China

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Philippines provokes China in the South China Sea and its president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr daringly warns China! He's thinking the US is providing the military muscle for him to confront China!

 

Let's hope for his country's sake, "Bongbong" remembers Vietnam, Afghanistan and soon-to-be Ukraine.

 

A follow-up on my June 02 post "Down But Not Out" regarding Donald Trump's re-election fund-raising.

 

Campaign officials have declared that the former US president (left) and the Republican National Committee had raised $141 million in May, a hefty haul apparently boosted by Trump's conviction in his hush money trial. 

 

His campaign noted in a press release on Monday that $53 million – more than a third of the total – was contributed in the 24 hours after a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

 

The tally – which Trump’s team announced before being required to under campaign finance rules and is yet to be confirmed by official filings – is nearly double the $76 million fundraising total announced for April. 

 

The presumptive Republican nominee’s team said the colossal collection was driven by more than two million donations averaging $70.27, with one-quarter of donors contributing to Trump’s race against US President Joe Biden for the first time.

 

Trump’s campaign added that the booty reflected an outpouring of support for the presidential hopeful over a verdict that had “outraged and motivated Americans from every walk of life”.

Israeli Hands Get More Blood-soaked As More Palestinians Are Butchered

The death toll surges, soars and spirals. 

 

At least 23,469 Palestinians have been killed and 59,604 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 07, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. And about 7,000 people remain missing under the rubble and are presumed dead. 

 

In the most recent 24-hour reporting period, Israeli forces carried out 10 mass killings in the Gaza Strip, causing 112 deaths and 194 injuries, the ministry added.

 

Israeli hands get more blood-soaked as more Palestinians are butchered.

 

 

The killing of civilians in Gaza is at a scale unprecedented in recent history, as Israel continues to pound the besieged coastal enclave more than three months into the war. 

 

UK-based charity Oxfam said on Thursday that the daily death toll of Palestinians in Israel’s war on Gaza – claimed to be at an average rate of 250 people a day – surpasses that of any other major conflict in the twenty-first century, while survivors remain at high risk due to hunger, diseases and cold, as well as ongoing Israeli bombardments.

 

For comparison, the charity provided a list of average deaths per day in other conflicts since the turn of the century: 96.5 in Syria, 51.6 in Sudan, 50.8 in Iraq, 43.9 in Ukraine, 23.8 in Afghanistan, and 15.8 in Yemen. 

 

Oxfam said the crisis is further compounded by Israel’s restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, where only 10 percent of weekly food aid that is needed gets in. This poses a serious risk of starvation for those who survive the relentless bombardment, they said.