Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.

The Pentagon spent $4 trillion over 5 years. Contractors got 54% of it.
Advocates of higher military spending often say its to 'support the troops.' Not exactly.

WILLIAM HARTUNG

JUL 10, 2025

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky hailed Monday’s negotiations with US President Donald Trump as the best meeting they have ever had.

Zelensky met with Trump at the White House, alongside several leaders from Western Europe. The summit came three days after Trump held his first face-to-face meeting since 2019 with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

Although no breakthroughs were announced, the parties described the discussions as a positive step toward achieving peace between Ukraine and Russia.

“I would like to thank President Trump for this meeting. It was the best meeting we have had, which is very important,” Zelensky told reporters outside the White House.

Following his meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky, US President Donald Trump declared that there are decent odds of finally ending the Ukrainian conflict.

He added that:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Zelensky want to resolve the Ukrainian conflict

European leaders also want peace in the region

Zelensky did not give a clear answer whether he is ready for territorial concessions

An immediate ceasefire is not necessary to resolve the conflict 

Today’s meeting with Zelensky and European leaders is not final

Ukraine will receive “very good” security but its NATO aspirations haven’t been discussed yet

NATO will have to foot the bill for the US weapons for Ukraine

It’s been a 60-year quest to take Timor’s oil and gas. An invasion didn’t get it. Spying didn’t get it. So now Australia is waiting them out. Former senator Rex Patrick reports from the streets of Dili.
In 1969, Australia granted five exploration permits for petroleum over parts of the seabed in the Timor Sea that lay closer to the coast of Portuguese Timor than to the coast of Australia. Portugal formally protested, but events overtook things.

Waiting them out. Australia’s Greater Sunrise Gas heist
by Rex Patrick

If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. A code of conduct for a writers’ festival?

Yet that was the requirement asked of authors if they wanted, after having been invited, to take part in one section of the Bendigo Writers Festival. Understandably, many refused and did not attend.

Warwick McFadyen

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky could bring the fighting with Russia to a halt “immediately” by agreeing to a settlement that rules out NATO membership and entails territorial concessions, US President Donald Trump has said.

Zelensky has been summoned to the White House for a meeting on Monday to discuss the potential peace proposal. According to reports, the plan could involve Kiev giving up its remaining positions in Donbass while freezing battle lines elsewhere in exchange for a halt to hostilities. Zelensky has previously rejected such terms. 

Zelensky “can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network on Sunday.

CovertAction Magazine co-founder Philip Agee was one of the best known whistleblowers of the 1970s, writing a tell-all book exposing CIA crimes and the influence of multi-national corporations in driving illegal covert operations.

After the book’s publication, Agee was retaliated against by the CIA, which forced him to live the remainder of his life on the run in Europe.

Whistleblowers today continue to face serious retribution for exposing malfeasance in government agencies and private corporations and are ruined financially by prolonged legal battles.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and several Western European leaders are due in Washington on Monday for talks with US President Donald Trump.

The visit comes after Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, in their first face-to-face talks since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Both leaders voiced cautious optimism that the discussions could help move towards a resolution of the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

Zelensky announced in a post on X on Saturday that he would be traveling to the US capital on Monday, with Trump confirming the meeting on his Truth Social platform later in the day.

On March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian intelligence officer turned British defector was allegedly poisoned with Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England, along with his 33-year-old daughter Yulia.

The two were admitted to a hospital after they were allegedly found unconscious on a public bench in the center of Salisbury by the chief nursing officer for the British army and her daughter.

Skripal Poisoning Was Among More Successful British MI6 Deception Operations
By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Within three to four weeks, Yulia and Sergei were said to have regained consciousness and the ability to speak and were taken to a secure location.

The Trump-Putin encounter in Anchorage has angered some, disappointed others and baffled many more. Yet it has told us much about the state of the war in Ukraine, and the obstacles to the ending of hostilities.

Anyone wishing to make sense of the event would not have been helped by Trump’s proverbial incoherence and self-promotion. Nor was the banal coverage on offer in much of the Western mainstream media any more helpful.

Joseph Camilleri

The Republican budget measure that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law ... contains a provision that analysts say will allow private jet owners to write off the full cost of their aircraft in the first year of purchase, a boon to the ultra-rich that comes as millions of people are set to lose healthcare under the same legislation.

News reports about Schwarzenegger's father, Gustav, Nazi links first surfaced in 1990, at which time Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization he had long supported, to research his father's past.

The German, UK and French governments want to decide on Sunday whose representative will accompany Volodymyr Zelensky during his visit to Washington on August 18, the German newspaper Bild reported, citing government sources.

CNN, citing sources, announced on Saturday that US Vice President JD Vance, who had previously clashed with Zelensky, would attend the August 18 meeting, while European officials expect one European leader to join the Trump-Zelensky talks in the White House, although it remained unclear who exactly. According to Politico, it could be Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

According to the publication, Trump allowed Zelensky to take European politicians with him, but there is no official invitation.

There is a hypothetical alternative version of the 12-minute joint press conference between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump where the leaders announced they had in fact reached an agreement and it was one that bargained away parts of a country not permitted entry to the negotiating room. 

It was what Volodymyr Zelenskyy had feared and what made the world nervous as Putin was welcomed to US soil with a red carpet and a ride in the presidential limousine.  

Donald Trump may have been outplayed in Alaska, but let's remember Vladimir Putin is the problem
By Emily Clark

Ten years ago ...., the people of Greece voted decisively in a referendum to reject the austerity program that the European Union wanted to impose on them. Yet the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, soon accepted a deal that was even more punitive.

Yanis Varoufakis on the Legacy of Greece’s Oxi Referendum

AN INTERVIEW WITH YANIS VAROUFAKIS