Or how (not) to speak and write about the Ukraine War and the Gaza Genocide.

It is a fact that I often write and occasionally speak about two important events of our very dark times: the Ukraine War and the Gaza Genocide. This is not the place to go into long, self-searching, navel-gazing elaborations why this pattern has emerged. I have made it, obviously, but I did not deliberately choose it.

Only so much: Unlike some who stake silly claims, I happen to be a genuine expert on Russia as well as Ukraine, trained well and long and, no minor point, in full command of both languages. That's just the way things have turned out. On Palestine and "Israel" I cannot claim to be an expert. While doing my best to be well-informed (and not disinformed), I have no special training; I do not know Hebrew and my Arabic is, to my greatest regret, below rudimentary. Yet I am human, and genocide concerns all humans entirely.

And here we are, the mostly powerless bystanders of the Gaza Genocide. We can protest and struggle, but we know that we do not command what stopping the "Israeli" monsters of mass murder and sadism would take: an army to save their Palestinian (and many other) victims, defeat them totally (just like their kin, the German Nazis of yore), and abolish their rotten fascist state. And the many of us who do not participate in direct action, such as the heroes of Palestine Action, for instance, in the future, for the rest of our lives, we will certainly have to remember how little we did, not how much.

That little must, however, be done. And while doing it as best we can, an urgent question has appeared now. Let's put it like this, in very rough outline: When Joe "Genocide" Biden led the US - the mightiest and the decisive Western co-perpetrator state of the Gaza Genocide - things were absolutely horrible (as they are now), but they were simpler in one regard. The demon - and I choose this word deliberately as a lapsed-ish Roman-Catholic who faults the Church for not having excommunicated the vile, perverse slaughterer - Joe Biden did nothing that anyone intellectually and morally sane could possibly welcome. (Please note that I am not writing "nothing mitigating" because one cannot "mitigate" for the crime of genocide.)

Moscow had no preference for either candidate in the 2016 US presidential election, the American intel chief has said

Russia did not favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 US presidential election and the administration of then-President Barack Obama was well aware of that, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has said.

Since mid-July, Gabbard has released multiple documents which allegedly expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia and delegitimize his first election win.

During an appearance on the Hannity program on Fox News on Tuesday, Gabbard insisted that "the intelligence community assessed in the months leading up to that 2016 election that, yes, Russia was trying to interfere in our election by sowing discord and chaos, but stating over and over again that Russia did not appear to have any preference for one candidate over the other."

The plan aims to enlarge an Israeli settlement by building thousands of new apartments in the West Bank. Critics say this would essentially split the Palestinian territory and make any two-state solution untenable.

An Israeli planning committee on Wednesday gave final approval to a controversial plan allowing new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The plan calls for development in an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, known as E1. Israel's government would build nearly 3,500 new apartments to enlarge the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, which lies next to E1.

"I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighborhood," the mayor of Maale Adumim, Guy Yifrach, said in a statement.

Lawmakers are divided on the plan, which would eliminate hundreds of roles and save the ODNI more than $700 million annually.

As part of the changes, the agency will trim down the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which collects and analyzes data on foreign influence operations seeking to undermine U.S. democracy. ODNI says that the National Intelligence Council and National Counterintelligence and Security Center already carry out this work, and describes the FMIC as having been "used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition."

The FMIC has historically worked closely with the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which was shuttered earlier this year over accusations of censorship.

Israel's military says it will call up 60,000 reservists and lengthen the service of an additional 20,000 reservists.

Israel will call up 60,000 reservists in the coming weeks as it pushes forward with a plan to seize Gaza City, the military has said, even as mediators pursue efforts to secure a ceasefire in the 22-month war.

The military said on Wednesday that Defence Minister Israel Katz approved plans to begin operations in some of Gaza's most densely populated areas, and that it would call up 60,000 reservists and lengthen the service of an additional 20,000 reservists.

The announcement comes as human rights groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could worsen in Gaza, where most residents have been displaced multiple times, neighbourhoods lie in ruins, and starvation deaths continue to rise amid the threat of widescale famine.

For several days now, the center of global attention — especially in the media — has been the U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15 of this year. The meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump has become the biggest sensation in international relations this year.

It marks a major milestone in the normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington, a process that began after Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States.

Recall that before this, the Biden administration spoke of isolating the Kremlin, inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, and supplying Ukraine with vast amounts of money and weapons. Trump, even during his election campaign, acknowledged the impossibility of Ukraine joining NATO and admitted the likelihood of Kyiv losing a number of territories.

The French president has repeated his call for Western peacekeepers in the country, despite Moscow's warnings.

European forces should take part in future peacekeeping operations in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists on Monday. The proposal has repeatedly been rejected by Moscow as unacceptable and dangerous.

Macron made the comments in Washington after a White House summit on Monday with US President Donald Trump, Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, and several European leaders, who met to discuss possible terms for ending the conflict.

Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Macron said:

"Ukraine must have a "strong army" and that Western Europe "will need to help Ukraine with boots on the ground. We will need peacekeeping operations which allies of Ukraine are willing to supply."

• Former UN official Richard Falk warns in Istanbul that failure to act against Israel's Gaza offensive would mark 'historic failure of humanity'
• Citing lessons from Vietnam War, Falk argues that public mobilization can make 'unlikely initiatives' realistic in stopping Gaza's destruction
• Falk praises Türkiye's stance on Gaza, while warning that 'emergency responses are necessary' to prevent catastrophe for besieged population

ISTANBUL

The Gaza Tribunal on Monday called for an urgent international armed intervention to stop what it described as Israel's "most lethal phase of genocide" in Gaza, warning that failure to act would mark "an historic failure of humanity."

At a press conference held in Istanbul, the president of the independent tribunal, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at the US' Princeton University and the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories (2008-2014), urged governments to bypass the Security Council and empower the UN General Assembly to authorize armed intervention.

The recent military conflict between Iran on one side and the U.S. and Israel on the other was not just another episode in the series of Middle Eastern confrontations.

This event marked the beginning of an entirely new stage in regional politics, as the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have finally realized the impossibility of relying on external security guarantees. Instead of the old model based on their support from Western allies, they must now form their own regional order, in which Iran will play a key role.

This conflict clearly demonstrated that neither the U.S. nor its European partners are capable or willing to ensure real stability in the region. Military bases, air defense systems, and diplomatic declarations proved ineffective in the face of direct confrontation. In this context, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Sultanate of Oman — face a difficult but inevitable task: to create a new security system based not on confrontation but on cooperation involving all regional actors.

The casualties are allegedly detailed in a digital card index of the country's armed forces obtained by Russian hackers

Ukraine has allegedly lost more than 1.7 million troops killed and missing, multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday, citing a digital card index reportedly from the country's armed forces.

Russian hacking groups have claimed to have obtained the information by gaining access to the personal computers and local networks of the Ukrainian General Staff. The database is said to include the full names of deceased soldiers, descriptions of the circumstances and places of their death or disappearance, personal data, next of kin, and photos.

The entries suggest that since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Kiev's forces have lost a total of 1,721,000 servicemen. 118.5 thousand were apparently killed in 2022, 405.4 thousand in 2023, 595 thousand in 2024 and a record 621 thousand in 2025.