Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Amnesty International of siding with “terrorists” after the organization condemned the Ukrainian military for placing weapons in civilian areas in violation of humanitarian law.

“Today we saw a report by Amnesty International, which unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday evening. 

“If someone makes a report that puts the aggressor and the victim on the same level, this cannot be tolerated,”he said, repeating three times that “Ukraine is a victim,” and adding that “anyone who doubts this is an accomplice of Russia – a terrorist country – and a terrorist themselves and a participant in the killings.”'

This is the way the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) ends, over and over again: not with a bang, but a whimper.

Two Hellfire R9-X missiles launched from a MQ9 Reaper drone on the balcony of a house in Kabul. The target was Ayman Al-Zawahiri with a $25 million bounty on his head. The once invisible leader of ‘historic’ Al-Qaeda since 2011, is finally terminated.

All of us who spent years of our lives, especially throughout the 2000s, writing about and tracking Al-Zawahiri know how US ‘intel’ played every trick in the book – and outside the book – to find him. Well, he never exposed himself on the balcony of a house, much less in Kabul.

Another disposable asset

BY PEPE ESCOBAR.

Kate Middleton won a sailing race with Great Britain during a visit to the British SailGP Team during the Commonwealth Games.

The Duchess of Cambridge took part in a special one-off friendly victory over New Zealand, watched by thousands in Plymouth.

Kate was also teaching young people about sustainability on the visit earlier today.

She raced alongside Olympic gold medallist Sir Ben Ainslie on the GB team’s F50 catamaran in the event.

Sir Ben said: ‘She’s a really good sailor in her own right, she has sailed with me on foiling boats as well and we’re expecting a little bit of extra help.’

Screaming and kicking, the West is being brought to heel. Colonialism, superiority, currency manipulations via deceitful world banking organisations, enrichment of the rich, control of various populations, wars and hypocritical conducts are being gamed down — slowly. 

Is it for the best? We have created history with a few goals in mind, yet the thrust of our information is geared to hide the ultimate goals with moralistic fudge. We want to own everything.

The war in Ukraine is not really about Ukraine—it is not about Ukraine’s sacrosanct borders which have been supposedly violated by Russia. And it is most certainly not about the vaunted “defense of democracy,” as we constantly hear screamed in our ears by the media and by a broad panoply of American (and European) political and cultural leaders, from Nancy Pelosi to Lindsey Graham to Boris Johnson.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Tuesday that the fighting in Donbass was “hell,” claiming that Kiev’s military remained heavily outgunned and even outnumbered by Russia and appealing to the US and its allies for even more weapons such as the HIMARS rocket launchers.

In a five-minute address to Ukrainians, Zelensky thanked US President Joe Biden and NATO for sending the rocket artillery, calling it “very effective” and vowing to inflict “more painful losses”on the Russians, whom he described as a “horde” of invaders.

“The word ‘HIMARS’ has become almost synonymous with the word ‘justice’ for our country,” Zelensky said.

Pentagon Wiped Jan. 6 Texts From Phones Belonging to Top Military Generals, Court Docs Reveal

News that texts between high-level generals can’t be located come as Democrats seek to portray the post-office deletion of messages from a number of influential Trump administration officials’ phones as a conspiracy headed up by the former president–but the DoJ says it’s standard practice.

Text messages exchanged among top US military generals during the January 6 Capitol riot were wiped by the Department of Defense (DoD), newly released court filings have revealed.

Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe. That role continued to be the raison d’etre of the organization until communist governments themselves collapsed in both Russia and in the Eastern European states that collectively made up the Warsaw Pact during the 1990s. After that point, NATO no longer had any reason to exist at all as the alleged military threat posed by the Kremlin and its allies vanished virtually overnight.

New $500 million scoping plans for the Powerhouse at Ultimo have been condemned as an attempt to transform the museum into an entertainment centre by the overwhelming majority of public submissions.

Only six of 104 public submissions backed the concept plans for the 2.4-hectare site that potentially allow for a new public square, entrance, and a multistorey annex on the museum’s Harris Street forecourt.

The International Council of Museums made one of the 91 objections lodged with the Department of Planning: “This looks to be the removal rather than the redevelopment of a Museum,” its vice chair Alex Marsden said.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her visit to Taiwan in “no way contradicts” Washington’s long-standing policy on the self-governed island after touching down in Taipei on Tuesday, despite stark warnings from China.

"Our Congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant Democracy," Pelosi said in a statement after landing. 

The US official said her discussions with Taiwan's leaders would focus on "reaffirming our support for our partner and on promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region."

It Wasn't Me: Soros Denies Causing US Violent Crime Spike While Pursuing Defunding Police Initiative

The 91-year-old billionaire philanthropist has been discreetly funding a revolution in criminal justice reform for the past few years, giving tens of millions of dollars to progressive candidates in district attorney contests around the nation as movements to eliminate bail and defund the police rage on.

Liberal billionaire George Soros denied claims that his long campaign to elect liberal prosecutors has caused crime waves in some of the biggest cities in America.

One of the outstanding features of Western media is its ability to have a collective memory loss. This was never more apparent than the current response to Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. To listen to Western politicians expostulating on the current war one is effectively being persuaded by them to forget about Western invasions into the affairs of foreign countries over the past 60 or 70 years.

The oft-repeated western claim of Russia’s isolation as a pariah state is starting to wear thin.

While the Trans-Atlantic community may loyally follow the directive to cut ties with Russia – despite the economic backlash on their own citizens – other nations, including most of Asia and Africa, don’t appear to be taking this call very seriously.

On 19 July, Russian President Vladimir Putin conducted a successful trilateral meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts in Tehran which demonstrated a degree of coherence in foreign policy agendas among the three strategic powers (including one relatively renegade NATO member).

BY Matthew Ehret

Are we being lied to about the origins of the pandemic?

Even in the days when people used to read TIME to stay informed, it was always worth applying the home-base test. If the magazine got facts about where you lived wrong, what else in the magazine could you believe? In Pearls & Irritations (27 July) Nury Vittachi provided insights from a Twitter post people in Hong Kong the times responded to a question posted as to when they stopped trusting Western media’s ‘constant lies’.

BY Dr ALISON BROINOWSKI

The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world’s geopolitical chessboard. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the chances of a military confrontation between China and the United States have spiked upward. 

Long combustible over Taiwan, the tensions between Beijing and Washington are now close to ablaze, due to Pelosi’s desire to be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Despite the alarms her travel plans have set off, President Biden has responded timidly — even while much of the establishment wants to see the trip canceled.