Trump's budget bill allocates billions for ice-capable vessels as Washington plays catch-up with Moscow in the region.

The US plans to invest billions in expanding its icebreaker fleet for which funding was included in President Donald Trump's budget bill approved by Congress on Thursday.

Trump previously admitted that the US lags behind Russia, which has the world's largest and most advanced fleet of ice-capable vessels.

Washington has of late sought to increase its influence in the Arctic. Vice President J.D. Vance stated in March that the government needs to "ensure that America is leading" in the region due to the presence of Russia and China.

Trump's so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill' includes funding through 2029 for ice-capable vessels. The US Coast Guard will receive nearly $25 billion to buy 16 new icebreakers and ten light and medium icebreaking cutters, among other equipment, according to Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska.

Sullivan described the allocation as the largest investment in Coast Guard history and a "game-changer."

Commentator and podcast host Tucker Carlson has announced that he will interview Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian weeks after the U.S. struck the country's nuclear facilities.

Carlson, who has built one of the world's largest online shows since his departure from Fox News over two years ago, posted a preview of the interview on the X platform.

"We know we'll be criticized for doing this interview," Carlson said. "Why did we do it anyway?

"Well, we did it because we were just at war with Iran 10 days ago, and maybe again."

"And so, our view, which has remained consistent over time, is that American citizens have the constitutional right and the God-given right to all the information they can gather about matters that affect them," he added.

In recent times, it has become apparent that the European elites - by which I mean politicians, as well as the heads of large international organizations such as NATO or the European Union (EU) - are making increasingly absurd and insulting statements. They seem detached from reality, having completely lost touch with their populations. Certain Western media outlets further amplify these bizarre pronouncements, reporting them uncritically without challenging their leaders' behavior or providing meaningful analysis.

Before delving deeper, let's examine some recent examples of the "strange" conduct exhibited by Western politicians, elites, and media.

The most glaring example is NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the former Dutch Prime Minister (who held office for 13 years). His behavior during the NATO summit on June 24-25 - hosted for the first time in The Hague - was so peculiar that Dutch media described it as a spectacle. The event plunged The Hague, and nearly the entire country, into a quasi-lockdown.

The Western world seemed to hold its breath as U.S. President Trump arrived in The Hague. While no one knelt before him, Rutte attempted what he called a "charm offensive." According to Western media citing psychologists, Trump's unpredictability supposedly requires excessive flattery to sway him.

But Rutte went too far, making himself and the Netherlands look ridiculous by referring to Trump as "Daddy" during discussions on Iran and Israel. In reality, the U.S. focused solely on Iran and Israel at the summit, leaving Ukraine to the Europeans. Rutte portrayed Trump as a paternal figure maintaining "world peace," even proposing - alongside others - that Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, Rutte himself, as NATO's chief, appears to have abandoned diplomacy, preferring instead to leave that to the Russians.

As representative of the Global South, the group serves as both centrifugal and centripetal force in shaping a new world order.
Throughout history, shifts in the world order — whether marked by instability, chaos or realignment — have typically been driven by the dynamics shaped by the rise of emerging powers and the resistance from established ones. Today, we are witnessing a dynamic process marked by mutual challenges, constraints, dependencies and accommodations between dominant and emerging powers. BRICS, a representative of the Global South, is increasingly asserting itself economically, politically and diplomatically in this changing landscape.

Since it was formed, BRICS has advocated multilateralism and international cooperation grounded in the principles of fairness and inclusion. The existing Western-led institutions, along with their governing norms, increasingly reflect an outdated order at a time when industrial production, financial dominance and military superiority are concentrated in the hands of the G7 countries.

The recent landscape of global governance has been characterized by the declining effectiveness of the traditional Western-led multilateral institutions in addressing the major global challenges. The erratic and unstable policy of the United States under Donald Trump's second term as president has further weakened the prospects for global governance and meaningful international cooperation. In this context, the 2025 BRICS summit in Brazil in July will confront the urgent need to offer responses and alternatives to the deepening crisis of the global order.

Worldwide consensus exists today that these great transformations have reshaped the terrain and parameters of social, economic and political relations at both national and global levels. However, there is ongoing debate over whether these changes merely reflect a functional redistribution of comparative advantages within the current world order, or if they signal deeper structural shifts — a "paradigm shift" — requiring a redefinition of the institutions, systems, norms and values that underpin the existing global structure.

For Macron and all the NATO states to do that would be to admit their culpability for creating the biggest war in Europe since the Second World War.

NATO started the conflict in Ukraine, but Russia will end it on its terms, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart this week in a wake-up call.

It's always refreshing and necessary to bring reality into a conversation, assuming, of course, that the purpose of the dialogue is genuinely to resolve a problem.

France's Emmanuel Macron requested the phone call with Putin this week. It was the first time the two leaders had spoken in nearly three years. The long absence was due to Moscow claiming that Macron breached diplomatic protocol after the last phone call in 2022 by leaking details to the media.

In any case, Putin showed magnanimity and a willingness to engage diplomatically by taking the call this week from Macron. The two leaders talked for over two hours.

After a few insults and some light humiliation, Trump convinced Europe to bankroll his war machine - to the tune of 5% GDP.

Fresh off dropping an "F bomb" on both Iran and Israel for blowing up the only ceasefire in history ever announced exclusively on his social media feed, US President Donald Trump hopped on his jet and headed straight to the NATO summit. Everyone wondered what mood he'd land in after crossing the Atlantic.

Apparently not feeling like rolling the dice, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wrote him a love letter in advance, suggesting that the scariest weapon of mass destruction for NATO is the American president's mouth.

Rutte gushed:

"You are flying into another big success in The Hague. It was not easy but we've got them all signed onto five percent! Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done. Europe is going to pay in a BIG way - as they should - and it will be your win."

Hard to believe this guy was once the prime minister of the Netherlands. Oh, President Trump, way to really stick it to Europe! What a wonderful thing you've just done to make almost all of Europe subsidize the American military industrial complex to the tune of 5% of their GDP!

Rafael Grossi's role, whether intentional or not, in the possible outbreak of a global nuclear war has now been proven. Was he manipulated by data from the artificial intelligence (AI) software his agency uses, or did he deliberately lie?

Beyond the Kabuki-style staging of the 12-day war between the Israel-EU duo and Iran (which I mentioned on June 22 when reporting the evacuation of the three Iranian nuclear sites [ 1 ] ), there is a foul loser: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), headed by the loquacious and self-confessed Argentinian Rafael Grossi.

A day earlier, Iran had disclosed data from Palantir's Mosaic algorithm [ 2 ] on the joint perfidy of Grossi and Israel: the fact that the IAEA director had transmitted data from inspections of Iranian nuclear power plants to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to facilitate the precision of its bombing raids.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SL) has denounced Grossi's obscene, not to say pornographic, bias [ 3 ] , which sullies the principles of neutrality of the IAEA, once impeccable and firmly attached to the UN. Lavrov states bluntly that the IAEA disclosed sensitive information to Israel to facilitate the targeted bombing of Iran's peaceful civilian nuclear power plants.

Other incandescent articles against the indecent Rafael Grossi were published in Russia Today [ 4 ] and Tehran Times [ 5 ] .

"I can negotiate with a man who wants to make money. I can't negotiate with a communist who wants to kill me."
— Josh Lippincott on "X"

O, Norman Rockwell, where are you when we really need you? Forgive us, Emma Lazarus, our second thoughts about those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . the wretched refuse of your teeming shore(s). That was then and this is now. O, beautiful for spacious skies (but, why so many contrails criss-crossing overhead from the New York Island to the gulf stream waters?). O, land of tattooed grandmas, hostages of the tiny screens, the sexually confounded, the illiterate and innumerate, the lawless and the feckless, brainwashed youth marinated in Marx, the deranged, befuddled, the bought-off, the bug-eyed and bewildered, the lame, the halt, the addicts, grifters, hustlers, porn-stars, drugstore cowboys, alpha dogs, beta boys, shrieking Karens, and sundry victims of future-shock — whither, this hallowed experiment in nationhood?

Wouldn't you like to know? In the meantime, husk that corn and flip them burgers! Turn them wieners! Mash your guacamole, pop another frostie, pass the Jack, lock-and-load, and mind those hovering drones! It is the 249^th birthday of what remains of our country! Respect and thanks, ye ancestors!

Iran is once again turning to its historic partner: China. In ancient times, the Persian capital of Persepolis was adorned with Chinese statues, while Farsi replaced Mandarin along the Silk Road. Today, Tehran is buying Chinese fighter jets after their victory over US F-35s and French Rafales in India.

After the 12-day war between Israel and the United States against Iran, the smoke of conflict is clearing. Two railway lines contributed in a multifactorial way to the attack of Israel and the United States against Iran, at work during the "first global disinformation war". [1] Positions are becoming clearer, in particular those of China and Russia, which are not reported, or even boycotted, by the West.

After their initial smooth diplomatic tone, the Chinese media are now expressing their displeasure, as evidenced by Xin Ping's incendiary opinion in the Global Times: "The crisis in the Middle East is a global catastrophe fueled by the hypocrisy of the United States."[2]

Russia, which has significantly improved its bilateral relations with Trump, has been very cautious in the new Middle East war, while it is more preoccupied with the final blow to be delivered to the regime of the Khazarian comedian [3] Zelensky, and with its efforts not to fan the flames of a global nuclear war from the border countries. [4] The most worrying thing is the concept used by firefighters: superfires, which occur when two distant fires converge.

European Union member states should step up financial backing for Ukraine's defense industry to scale up arms and ammunition production, filling the gap left by halted US military aid.

The call came from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Copenhagen during the official launch of Denmark's EU Council Presidency on July 3, as reported by European Pravda correspondent.

"If there are any gaps in weapons supplies, I believe we must fill them," Frederiksen said. "Over a year ago, we established a model to support defense production directly inside Ukraine. It's working very well."