A significant focus of BALTOPS every year is the demonstration of NATO mine hunting capabilities, and this year the U.S. Navy continues to use the exercise as an opportunity to test emerging technology, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa Public Affairs said June 14.

In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle's effectiveness in operational scenarios.

Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68.

The Taliban have signed a provisional agreement with Russia to supply gasoline, diesel, gas, and wheat to Afghanistan, acting Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters.

The announcement marks the first major international economic deal by the Taliban with a foreign government beyond its borders since the group came to power following the US's chaotic withdrawal from the country in August 2021.

No country, including Russia, has formally recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, although Russia is one of several countries that has maintained its embassy in the capital Kabul.

At a moment when Washington continues what's essentially an endless arms and financial aid pipeline to Ukraine, and as some defense officials express concerns over the Pentagon's own dwindling stockpiles, one country says it's giving up on arming Kyiv.

New Zealand, which is one of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing partners which includes the US, now says it can no longer keep up with supplying what Ukraine is asking for without depleting its stockpiles.

"The New Zealand government has expanded sanctions on key Russians, but cannot provide further military assistance as it has nothing Ukraine wants," The Canberra Times reports Tuesday.

Russian-hating Polish PM pays tribute to culprit.
Increasingly, it is relatively easy to put two and two together and figure out who is behind certain cui bono operations. The latest case in point is the "mysterious" Nordstream 1 and 2 massive gas leaks.

As of this writing, the corporate propaganda media has not blamed Russia for the dangerous leaks, but they will probably get around to it sooner before later.

Meanwhile, here is blue check Radek Sikorski, a member of the European Parliament for Poland, expressing his gratitude on Twitter:


Now why would Mr. Sikorski post such a thing? Because he's a Russian-hating neocon, a former resident fellow of the organized war crime outfit, the American Enterprise Institute. He was also the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a "nonpartisan" organization determined to push NATO right up to all exposed sides of Russia.

It's tempting to interpret the Italian electoral results this past Sunday as voters merrily hurling a bowl of lush papardelle with wild boar ragu over the collective bland faces of the toxic unelected Euro-oligarchy sitting in Brussels.

Well, it's complicated.

Italy's electoral system is all about coalitions. The center-right Meloni-Berlusconi-Salvini troika is bound to amass a substantial majority in both the Parliament's Lower House and the Senate. Giorgia Meloni leads Fratelli d'Italia ("Brothers of Italy"). The notorious Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi leads Forza Italia. And Matteo Salvini leads La Lega.

The established cliché across Italy's cafes is that Giorgia becoming Prime Minister was a shoo-in: after all she's "blonde, blue eyes, petite, sprightly and endearing". And an expert communicator to boot. Quite the opposite of Goldman Sachs partner and former uber-ECB enforcer Mario Draghi, who looks like one of those bloodied emperors of Rome's decadence. During his Prime Ministerial reign, he was widely derided - apart from woke/finance circles - as the leader of "Draghistan".

On the financial front that otherworldly entity, the Goddess of the Market, the post-truth equivalent of the Delphi Oracle, bets that PM Giorgia will insist on the same old strategy: debt-funded fiscal stimulus, which will turn into a blowout in Italian debt (already huge, at 150% of GDP). All that plus a further collapse of the euro.

So the big question now is who's going to be Italy's new Finance Minister. Giorgia's party has no one with the requisite competence for it. So the preferred candidate shall be "approved" by the usual suspects as a sort of enforcer of "Draghistan lite". Draghi, by the way, already said he's "ready to collaborate".

Marvels of gastronomy apart, life in the EU's third largest economy is a drag. Long-term growth prospects are like a mirage in the Sahara. Italy is extremely vulnerable when it comes to the financial markets. So a bond market a-go-go selloff in the horizon is practically a given.

In case of a - nearly inevitable - financial catfight cage match between Team Giorgia and Christine "look at my new Hermes scarf" Lagarde at the ECB, the European Central Bank will "forget" to buy Italian bonds and then, Auguri! Welcome to a new round of EU sovereign debt crisis.

On the campaign trail, sprightly Giorgia incessantly pledged to keep the massive debt under control. That was coupled with the requisite message to placate the woke crypto-"Left" and its neoliberal banking owners: we support NATO and sending weapons to Ukraine. In fact everyone - from Giorgia to Salvini - supports the weaponizing, having signed a letter during the previous legislature, in effect until the end of 2022.

Leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark have attended a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe, a key stage in the drive to wean Poland and Europe off Russian gas.

The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to Poland. It is the centrepiece of a Polish strategy to diversify away from Russia that began years before Moscow's February invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis.

The flows from Norway along with supplies via liquefied gas terminals are central to Poland's plan. The country was cut off from Russian gas supplies in April, allegedly for refusing to pay in roubles.

The unprecedented damage done to the Nord Stream pipelines Monday night was certainly an act of sabotage exactly as Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Russia suspect, though nobody can agree on who carried out this ecological terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea. Kiev, however, predictably blamed Russia for destroying its own pipeline in a remix of its earlier conspiracy theory alleging that Russia regularly bombs the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant that's also under its control. That ridiculous scenario can therefore reasonably be ruled out, especially since Moscow could just keep the tap turned off for technical reasons without risking getting caught sabotaging its own pipelines in NATO-controlled waters.

The Ukrainian conflict is turning into a war between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Each side is convinced that the other one wants its loss. And fear is a bad advisor. Peace can only be preserved if each side recognizes its mistakes. This must be a radical change, because today neither Western discourse nor Russian actions correspond to reality.

No political leader wants a war on his territory. When they do, it is usually out of fear. Each side fears the other, rightly or wrongly. Of course, there are always a few elements that push for a cataclysm, but they are fanatical and in the minority.

This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves. Russia is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the West wants to destroy it, while the West is identically convinced that Russia is conducting an imperialist campaign and will eventually destroy its freedoms. In the shadows, a very small group, the Straussians, want confrontation.

This is not to say that World War III is just around the corner. But if no political leader radically changes his or her foreign policy, we are walking directly into the unknown and must prepare for absolute chaos.

To clear up misunderstandings, we must listen to the narratives of both sides.

People are only ready to sacrifice so much 'for Ukraine' before they realize their leaders don't care about them

Brussels overlords and assorted EU leaders, taking turns at the UN General Assembly podium beating the Western war-drums against Russia — all in the interest of "peace," neglect to ascertain what the average European actually wants.

Contrary to their leaders' desires, the average European is only willing to personally give up so much "for Ukraine" — whatever that means, since it's pretty obvious that the people of Ukraine aren't benefiting from the current state of perpetual conflict the EU and the US are enabling, either.

It's one thing for the average EU citizen to get behind lofty values, voiced from high above the daily struggles if it doesn't cost them anything. Or at least if the waters are sufficiently muddied that citizens can't easily connect the dots from their wallet to their leaders' relentless spending. Selling this seemingly endless conflict in Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt country, as a defense of "democracy," only works until it means choosing between paying your own bills and paying for all the blank cheques that you're writing to Kyiv.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern lashed out at "disinformation" and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

"But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

"This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

"We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties - rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges."