As Google and Amazon employees fight back against the tech giants' Israeli military contract, college graduates have also joined the resistance.

Amid Israel's assault on Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem in May 2021, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google signed a $1.22 billion contract to provide cloud technology to Israel's public sector and its military, known as Project Nimbus.

In response, Google and Amazon workers formed a coalition opposing Project Nimbus as well as strategizing against the technology's implementation.

While just over a year old, Google and Amazon have not addressed the Workers Against Nimbus and #NoTechForApartheid campaigns publicly, but the activist network has had success in cutting the corporations' power — even if only slightly.

Describing how it makes them hopeful to see that kind of community support, an anonymous Amazon employee told MintPress News:

"The students who are graduating from university and who have applied to Amazon and Google are turning down all of these interview requests. They're specifically telling Amazon and Google, 'We're not going to these interviews because of Project Nimbus.'''

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on August 4 urged a gathering of U.S conservatives in Texas to join forces with Hungarian conservatives in 2024 to take back institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals.

Orban said Hungary and his government were "under the siege of progressive liberals" whom he accused of seeking to separate Western civilization from its Christian roots, while his government's pro-family policies, anti-immigration stance, and rejection of gender ideology resist those efforts.

Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Orban said:

"This war is a culture war. We have to revitalize our churches, our families, our universities, and our community institutions."

Orban also said the United States needs a strong leader to negotiate a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

"Only a strong leader can negotiate peace. We need a strong America with a strong leader."

Amnesty has stuck by its report that Ukrainian forces endangered civilians

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."'

Sparks flew on Tuesday night as Nancy Pelosi commenced her highly publicized trip to Taiwan, proclaiming a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism and effectively poking her fingers into Beijing's eyes. It goes without saying that China was furious, yet amidst the social media storm which precluded the visit, a bizarre atmosphere of disappointment arose afterwards among some, who decried Beijing's response as "weak" for having not physically intervened to block Pelosi's flight. Twitter was awash with "hot takes" demanding Pelosi's plane be intercepted and declaring that China's "bluff" had been called.

This rush for an "on the moment narrative" and expectations being out of control naturally overlooked the fact that Beijing immediately declared afterwards a daunting set of military exercises to be undertaken across the next few days, set in Taiwan's own territorial waters, with some designated spots even being as little as 12 miles away from the coast. These exercises have effectively closed parts of Taiwan's airspace. China initiated a growing series of sanctions against the island which has involved the blacklisting of over 100 food companies, as well as a ban on fish imports and the sale of natural sand (critical for semiconductor production).

Biden administration energy adviser Amos Hochstein claimed Wednesday that it is "just factually not true" to claim that gas prices were increasing before the invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, despite the fact that the prices had increased by over a dollar per gallon from the day Biden took office to the day of Russia's military intervention.

Hochstein made the comment during an interview with Fox News.

Watch:

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says we are at war with the Deep State globalists that want nothing short of total control over all of mankind. Central bankers want a financial system that is a lawless criminal control syndicate where it's legal for them to do whatever they want. It is simply a choice between tyranny and sovereignty, freedom or slavery. We start with the foundational building block of tyranny, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that global bankers want to install in the financial system.

CAF says,

"It's not a currency. That's what you need to understand. What we are talking about is a control system that is going to be implemented in a global coup d'état, and we are in the middle of a global coup d'état. That's what is happening right now. Essentially, if you look at the central bankers, the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and all the central bankers are trying to create a system where they are completely free of the laws of nation states and governments. In other words, they are inserting sovereign immunity from all laws and literally trying to create a civilization under the law where they are free to do whatever they want, including, as we know — genocide."

In March of this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping chastised US President Joe Biden on Ukraine, noting that "it took two hands to clap" (a reference to the role played by the US in fomenting the Russia-Ukraine crisis), and declaring "He who tied the bell to the Tiger must take it off," a Chinese aphorism which basically said it was up to the US to fix the problems it was responsible for instigating.

During that same conversation, President Xi likewise took his American counterpart to task for statements made by US officials - including Biden himself - which suggested that the United States was drifting away from its historical commitment to the 'One China' policy regarding Taiwan that had underpinned US-Sino relations for decades. Xi noted that the "direct cause" of the current strain on relations is that "some people on the US side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by us."

The US, Xi added, has failed to deliver on virtually all of its promises to China regarding the avoidance of conflict, simultaneously promulgating deep-seated notions of China as an "imagined enemy" while sending the wrong signal to "Taiwan independence" forces, something Xi characterized as "very dangerous." Continuation of such a policy direction would, the president noted, have a "disruptive impact" on China-US relations.

The US has no right to single out Pyongyang when speaking about nuclear threats, since the country is in fact the "main offender in nuclear proliferation," North Korea's permanent mission to the United Nations said in a statement published Wednesday.

It came in response to comments by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday at the 10th Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), currently underway at the UN Headquarters.

Blinken said during the conference:

"Pyongyang "continues to expand its unlawful nuclear programme" and "is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test."

As quoted by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the statement reads:

"Given the fact that the US is the main offender in nuclear proliferation, the fact that it is making allegations about anyone's 'nuclear threats' is the peak of audacity."

China's largest-ever military exercises encircling Taiwan kicked off Thursday, in a show of force straddling vital international shipping lanes after a visit to the island by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi left Taiwan Wednesday after a trip that defied a series of stark threats from Beijing, which views the self-ruled island as its territory.

Second in line to the presidency, Pelosi was the highest-profile elected US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. She said her presence made it "unequivocally clear" that the United States would "not abandon" a democratic ally like Taiwan. It sparked a furious reaction from Beijing, which vowed "punishment" and announced military drills in the seas around Taiwan — some of the world's busiest waterways.

The exercises, which began around 12 pm (0400 GMT), involve "live-firing", according to state media.

In May, Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, held up a vote on a bill which sought to approve some $40 billion in aid for Ukraine. Paul wanted language inserted into the bill, without a vote, that would have an inspector general scrutinize the new spending.

"This would be the inspector general that's been overseeing the waste in Afghanistan," Paul said, "and has done a great job."

While senators on both sides of the aisle bristled at Paul's delay tactics, Christopher Tremoglie, a commentary fellow for The Washington Examiner, questioned the fact that

"[w]hile much attention has been placed on Paul holding up the aid legislation, the more important issue is why are so many senators against ensuring that billions of taxpayer dollars aren't being misused?"

One of the senators who took umbrage over Paul's actions was the senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. Speaking from the floor of the Senate chamber, the senior senator from New York declared that

"it is repugnant that one member of the other side, the junior senator from Kentucky, chose to make a show and obstruct Ukraine funding."

Schumer added that Paul's actions served to "strengthen [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's hand."