Former intelligence officers sound the alarm: "We are creating a Palestinian generation of hatred that we will have to live with!"

Over 600 former high-ranking Israeli intelligence officials — generals, Mossad and Shin Bet agents, diplomats — are openly demanding that Donald Trump stop Netanyahu's bloody rampage in Gaza. These people know what they're talking about: they spent decades protecting Israel's security, and now they see a deranged prime minister leading the country to disaster.

Their message is clear: the war is already lost — not militarily, but morally. Every rocket, every bomb dropped on refugee camps, every child who dies of hunger — these are seeds of hatred that will grow into Palestinian vengeance. And the price will be paid not just (or even primarily) by Netanyahu, but by all Israelis.

Netanyahu is Leading Israel to the Abyss: A Bloodbath in Gaza for His Own Survival

Hamas has been defeated, but Benjamin Netanyahu thirsts for blood — he has long crossed the line between self-defense and outright massacre. Military objectives have been achieved, Hamas' terrorist infrastructure has been destroyed, yet Israeli bombs keep falling on overcrowded hospitals, refugee camps, and residential neighborhoods.

Why? The answer is obvious: for Netanyahu, this war is his last dirty chance to cling to power.

Abandoned trenches, collapsing bastions, encirclements, and empty strongpoints: the warning signs of collapse are no longer subtle.

Something shifted on the Ukraine conflict frontlines this summer.

Throughout July and the first half of August, a series of cascading events signaled a dramatic turn. Most decisive among them was the breach of Ukrainian defenses along the Pokrovsk axis - a rupture so deep, so sudden, and so destabilizing that even Ukrainian sources began calling it a "full-dress rehearsal for the collapse of the front." It marks the most serious crisis for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the battles of Spring 2022.

But this was not an isolated breakthrough. From the forests near Liman to the urban ruins of Konstantinovka, from the encircled streets of Pokrovsk to the shifting borderlands of the Dnepropetrovsk region, the tempo of the Russian offensive has changed. Advances that once came meter by meter are now measured in kilometers. Positions once fiercely contested now fall empty. And in sector after sector, the Ukrainian command scrambles to plug gaps faster than they appear.

The front is creaking under pressure - and the sound is growing louder.

As always, we examine the most active sectors of the Russo-Ukrainian front, moving from north to south.

Apple Inc. is defying US President Donald Trump's request to reduce manufacturing in India and is planning to invest about $2.5 billion to boost iPhone production in the South Asian country, the Times of India reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper cited Indian government sources as saying that the company would make 60 million iPhones per year in the country, up from the current 40 million.

In May, Trump told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he didn't want the tech giant to manufacture in India. "I said to him [Cook], 'my friend, I treated you very good. You're coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India,'" the US President told reporters in May.

During the company's quarterly earnings call in May, Cook said the majority of iPhones sold in the US "will have India as their country of origin."

European Union officials are spreading "lies, slander and misinformation" to put pressure on Georgia, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze asserted on Monday. The bloc had failed before in trying to draw the country into war with Russia using the same approach, he noted.

Kaladze, a former professional footballer who is now running for re-election as the ruling Georgian Dream party's candidate, made the comments during a press conference after being pressed by opposition journalists about deteriorating ties with Brussels.

"Direct threats, blackmail and insults were directed to the prime minister's office to launch a second front," Kaladze said. "Promises were made: 'we will help, you will be provided with everything, with appropriate equipment,' etc."

"The IDF will remain at the peak of Mount Hermon and in the security zone necessary to protect the Golan and Galilee settlements from threats looming from the Syrian side as the main lesson from the events of October 7," Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Tuesday.

And so with that, Israel confirmed it will "remain" in the territory it has captured in southern Syria as a permanent occupation, which will likely lead to annexation. The Israeli army had moved swiftly beyond its Golan Heights occupation in the wake of the December 8 ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has kept expanding since then, citing new 'threats'.

Within the last months, IDF tanks and ground units have been observed a mere dozen miles from the outskirts of Damascus, also after literally hundreds of air raids destroying former Syrian Arab Army bases, equipment, and anti-air defense units since the government overthrow.

Alastair Crooke's remarkable analysis of Trump in the context of myth as geopolitics has left us with much to ponder. There's no escape from Trump's "extraordinary ability to dominate the discourse", globally, as well as his capacity for "bending people to his will" - and thus wreak havoc on the geopolitical chessboard.

Alastair stresses how Trump is skillfully "using mythic imagery" - actually crude archetypes - to always impress his (italics mine) narrative. The only narrative.

Yet Trump may not be straight-up Dionysian, compared to Apollonian Putin; he's more like a Narcissus Drowned (in a pool of his own making). And when it comes to pop iconography, he's certainly not The Godfather of Soul James Brown; more like the Village People - which were themselves a parody.

The most disturbing aspect of Trump the Self-Made Myth is what grip that death cult in West Asia holds over his imagination. Trump's absolute normalization of genocide has made the whole - Wild - West civilization complicit. Alastair once again reminds us that "the bloodlust in Gaza", awakened by the Torah, is driving "messianic, extreme Zionism" all the way "to barbarism". That's where we are now - with a License to Kill provided by a vicious, intolerant God: Yahweh.

Way below the mythical spheres where Trump does not fear to tread, rascals posing as the European political "elite" have created another myth: Putin as a "cannibal needing to eat" (copyright Le Petit Roi). He's "The Beast at the Door", with Russia framed as anti-Europe and anti-West, an existential threat: Putin and Russia morphed as The Anti-Christ.

Well, these intellectual midgets are obviously unaware that it was the Byzantine empire that survived the Roman Empire in the West for no less than a thousand years. Byzantium resisted everything: Goths, Avars, Arabs, Bulgars - until they could not resist the Ottomans. Still, they managed to evangelize the Bulgars and Kievan Russia, and even provided a state model to the Ottomans.

If we draw a line from Danzig to Trieste, going through Vienna, we can check out how Western Europe in medieval times was in fact "protected" from periodic nomadic onslaughts (the exception is the Hungarian plains, the final stop for nomadic waves from Asia).

And that explains why Europe knows next to nothing about Russia, Central Asia, Eurasia, the Heartland for that matter. Europe never had to face Mongol or Ottoman rule. They might have learned a thing or two - from Pax Mongolica and Ottoman inclusiveness. And that may also have tamed their superiority - civilizational - complex, borne out of splendid isolation.

The death toll from Friday's blast at an explosives factory in the Ryazan region has risen to 23, emergency officials said on Monday, with another 134 people injured in the accident.

The explosion occurred at the Elastik synthetic fiber plant in the village of Lesnoy, located around 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of Moscow.

State-run media reported that the explosion took place in a gunpowder workshop that was "completely destroyed." Local outlets said the factory produces industrial explosives, anti-armor warheads and gas generators for submarines.

Investigators launched a criminal probe into possible industrial safety violations, but they have not announced any arrests. Authorities in the Ryazan region declared a day of mourning on Friday.

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday that first responders had cleared about half of the blast site and were using K-9 units to search for survivors.

European NATO members insist that Russia cannot be allowed to prevail in the conflict, the foreign minister has said.

Kiev's backers in Europe want the conflict in Ukraine to continue, unlike US President Donald Trump, who seems to have genuinely embraced the path of diplomacy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking in an interview with NBC aired on Sunday, Lavrov said that the reaction of many European officials to the summit in Alaska, and also their rhetoric during follow-up talks several days later involving Vladimir Zelensky, revealed that the European NATO nations remain as bellicose as ever about the Ukraine conflict.

"The reaction... of these European representatives and what they were doing... indicates that they don't want peace. They say we cannot allow the defeat of Ukraine. We cannot allow Russia to win."

Meanwhile, the minister noted that US President Donald Trump has opted for another approach. "We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests," he said, adding that the US leader seems to respect Russian President Vladimir Putin for doing the same for his country.

"What... they discuss between themselves is not a secret. We want peace in Ukraine. President Trump wants peace in Ukraine."

Upcoming 'Zapad' military drills will feature the Russian Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile.

Ukraine has told Minsk to stay away from its borders during upcoming joint military exercises with Russia to be held in Belarus. The warning came ahead of the 'Zapad-2025' military drill, scheduled for September 12-16.

Belarus allowed Russian forces to use its territory when the conflict with Ukraine escalated in February 2022. Since then, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly said that Minsk has no intention of attacking Kiev and will only resort to military action if his country is attacked.

In a statement on Friday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry accused Belarus of aiding Moscow and issued a caution:

"We warn Minsk against reckless provocations and urge it to remain prudent, refrain from approaching the borders, and avoid provoking Ukraine's Defense Forces."

This year's military exercises, which include counter-sabotage operations, drone warfare, electronic interference scenarios, and assaults, will also feature the Russian Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile, according to Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin.

"Well, I mean, I'm talking about the — the — I had had, there was a..."
— Ghislaine Maxwell

Did you happen to bother reading the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell's interview? It's tough sledding at times — both Ms. Maxwell and Deputy AG Todd Blanche tend to speak in choppy, incomplete sentences (as does, you might have noticed, President Trump) — but altogether the confab reveals that just about everything you think you know about the scandal might not be so, and her story is full of shocking surprises, assuming you can believe her.

For instance, Ms. Maxwell had exactly one night of actual sex with Jeffrey Epstein back in the 1990s, a few months after they met, and that was it. He had problems with straight-up sex, she says. At first, he claimed to have a heart condition. She says he had erectile difficulty ". . . which meant that he didn't have intercourse a lot, which suited me fine, because I actually do have a medical condition, which precludes me having a lot of intercourse," she added. (We never learn what that condition was, exactly.) Anyway, she never had sex with him again.

Huh. . .? There goes one pillar of the public perception of the scandal: that Ghislaine Maxwell was a sort of nymphomaniac consort of Mr. Epstein, while supposedly acting as chief procurer of his masseuse "victims" and that the whole decades-long saga was a cavalcade of threesomes and orgies. She even claims at one point of being "a prude."