Observation:

The most important historical divide may be 1945. James Polk acted before the United Nations Charter. The United States has since helped establish an international legal order that prohibits force against another nation’s political independence and recognizes the right of peoples to control their own natural resources.

Trump’s abandonment of the usual “fig leaf” therefore does more than expose an ulterior motive. It lays bare a possible return to the older principle that a sufficiently powerful nation may use force and then take what it wants. An agreement obtained afterward does not, by itself, establish that the Venezuelan people freely consented to surrender control of their resources.

Excerpt:

Ulterior motives have been a through line of U.S. foreign policy for centuries. James Polk sent troops into disputed territory near the Rio Grande in 1846, then used their defeat as a pretext to forcibly annex part of Mexico in fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. More recently, the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq can’t be separated from that country’s abundant oil reserves. But in most of those earlier cases, presidents at least hid behind principle. The current commander in chief, who once argued that Bush’s main mistake in Iraq was failing to seize Iraqi oil for profit, has largely dispensed with fig leaves. “You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said of Iraq during the 2016 election. “We’re reimbursing ourselves.” Sounds familiar.

Observations:

The film introduces four fundamental measures of a society’s political health: (1) respect for individuals and groups, (2) the distribution of political power, (3) economic distribution, and (4) access to independent information and the ability to evaluate it critically. By assessing these factors, Despotism delivers an unambiguous message: societies in which respect is restricted, political power is concentrated, wealth and economic opportunity become concentrated, and control of information narrows are moving toward despotic government.

Despotism was produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in collaboration with Yale political scientist Harold D. Lasswell, who served as a consultant on the company’s educational films and was later described as having written and appeared in Despotism.

Despotism was not dashed off as wartime propaganda. According to a March 1946 Time account, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films assembled a panel of twelve scholarly advisers headed by Lasswell. The group spent about 20 months and 100 conferences working out how democracy and despotism could be defined and recognized in practice, surveying political thought “from Plato to Harry Truman.” Their goal was to reduce a difficult political-science problem to observable characteristics that junior-high and high-school students could understand: the distribution of power and respect, together with the economic and informational conditions that tend to support either democracy or despotism.

Lasswell himself addressed the scientific character and responsibilities of political science in his 1956 presidential address. He situated political science explicitly in relation to the physical and biological sciences and engineering. Later in the paper, he described a central task of political science as both historical and scientific: identifying patterns through time and developing and testing propositions about relationships among human predispositions, environments, institutions, and behavior. He also emphasized an inventive and evaluative task in which political knowledge is used to examine possible courses of action and their consequences (Lasswell, 1956).

https://archive.is/20260828094744/https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-ballroom-2677780692/

Excerpts:

...the accelerated/manic construction schedule of the current ballroom/bunker points to a desire to use it around the midterms and make sure it’s at least habitable on some level by possibly November, or year’s end at the latest.

...our president isn’t rushing to finish a shiny new bunker because he’s concerned that future generations should have it as an option. It is always, as ever, only about him.

Lead Lines:

Ukraine has intelligence that Russia is planning new ground offensives against Kyiv and Chernihiv — while Moscow ramps up drone strikes on Ukrainian cities.

Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told reporters that Russian military chiefs have been tasked by the Kremlin’s political leaders with planning and preparing for attacks on the two cities, according to intelligence received and verified by Ukraine.

"Liberty carries the Declaration of Independence in her hand. Artist’s rendering of the tablet held in the Statue of Liberty’s left arm, inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, July 4, 1776. The statue was created in France to commemorate the centennial of American independence and was formally accepted by the United States as such. The date on the tablet is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the revolutionary principle that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Standing at the entrance to New York Harbor, Liberty subsequently became an equally powerful symbol of welcome to generations of immigrants who came to participate in the American experiment."

Observation:

As fewer and fewer Americans consent to the governance of this administration, explaining that governance becomes politically less successful. When greater public understanding of what government is actually doing produces greater opposition rather than greater support, persuasion becomes less useful and the incentive shifts toward distraction, grievance, and spectacle. At the same time, the effective base of consent grows narrower, from governing with majority support to governing through an increasingly committed minority. Seen this way, the drift toward authoritarianism is also a progressive contraction of consent: as the consent of the governed diminishes, maintaining power increasingly depends on finding ways to govern without it. That is especially consequential in the United States, because consent of the governed is not a peripheral democratic preference. It is the foundational premise of the entire American Revolutionary experiment.

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-210099967?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16 https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-209969905?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16

Excerpt:

“Instead of assuring voters, they end up raising more questions and sometimes showing the liability that this entire administration has across the board. It’s hard to point to a good spokesman or even a high point in this administration right now, and certainly the polls reflect it,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first administration. “So I’m just not sure that sending every Cabinet member and their mother out on the campaign trail is going to help. Instead of solving a problem, you end up creating divisions.”

Diminishing the knowing consent of the governed.

Observation

From a functional perspective, intent need not be known directly. What matters is the relationship between conduct and its predictable consequences. If the Supreme Court repeatedly takes actions that impair free and fair elections, and continues to do so after those consequences have been explicitly identified, the resulting harm becomes increasingly difficult to characterize as accidental. Such actions do more than disrupt election administration. They impair the ability of Americans to understand, choose, and thereby knowingly consent to the government that exercises authority over them. Free and fair elections are not merely administrative procedures. They are the principal mechanism through which the consent of the governed is expressed.

Justice Jackson closes the functional loop. Like an engineer within a design team warning that a bridge will fail under a foreseeable load, she has identified for the Court the likely consequences of its own course of action. The majority need not privately intend those consequences for them to become part of the functional meaning of its behavior. Once the Court has been placed on notice, continued actions that produce the same impairment can no longer plausibly be treated as consequences it did not understand. The Court has been warned that its decisions may impair not only the administration of elections, but the ability of Americans to freely choose, and therefore knowingly consent to, the government that exercises power over them.

Excerpts:

So it is with our Supreme Court, which ruled on Monday to allow Donald Trump to move forward with one of his own illegal schemes. In an emergency decision, issued through the shadow docket, the Republican supermajority gave Trump permission to limit voting by mail in the upcoming midterm elections. In doing this, the six GOP justices well understand that the president is trying to give himself the ability to manipulate the vote. They’re not confused by his plan. They’re not being obtuse. They’re simply aiding and abetting Trump’s assault on democratic self-government.

The Republican justices are not taking their eye off the ball. Again, they know exactly what Trump is doing. They are helping him do it, on purpose, with a full and complete understanding of the likely results. They are situationally aware, and they support the situation Trump is causing.

Excerpt:

...the timing is troubling. While the alliance trains less, North Korea is gaining something more valuable: battlefield experience in Russia’s war against Ukraine. This is hardly the moment for the alliance to ease up.

Observation:

Trust takes decades to build and can be destroyed much faster. One of America's greatest exports has been confidence in America itself: confidence that its institutions, technologies, contracts and alliances would remain dependable across changes of government. We may now be watching that extraordinarily valuable national asset depreciate.

Lead Lines:

China plans to drop Windows earlier than planned in favor of Linux for some government bodies. The move comes as part of China's broader push to reduce dependence on foreign products and services, especially those of US origin.

Excerpt:

The Economics of Interception

There is also a fundamental difference between destroying missiles while concentrated and intercepting them individually after launch.

An air-defense interceptor generally engages one incoming target.

A strike on a storage facility can produce secondary explosions that destroy many weapons simultaneously.

The Tikhoretsk strike illustrates the potential asymmetry. Ukraine did not need to place one attacking drone against every North Korean artillery shell or rocket stored there. Once fire reached ammunition stocks, the ammunition itself contributed to destruction of the facility.

Observation:

This administration increasingly appears to treat support for U.S. adventurism as a test of loyalty. Oman’s usefulness as an intermediary is recast as disloyalty because it continues speaking with Iran, while South Korea is punished for declining to join the Iran war. Defensive alliances become something very different when protection is conditioned on participation in wars initiated by their dominant member. The Atlantic | Associated Press on South Korea

Excerpt:

Defense articles are only made-to-order, regardless of whether they are for domestic or foreign sales. New orders from partner countries do not take away from US stocks and only help the efficacy of the domestic defense industrial base.

This is especially important as Gulf partners on the front lines of the war with Iran struggle to replenish air defense munitions while preparing for the risk of prolonged Iranian attacks. By accelerating arms sales, Washington can also further demonstrate its role as security “integrator” in the Gulf, helping reinforce US-Gulf security partnerships at a critical time.

Excerpts:

May the United States take a person who is living freely under American supervision and deliberately transfer him into potentially indefinite foreign maximum-security confinement, without a new judicial determination authorizing that deprivation of liberty?

It is in the selfish interest of the United States to send people away with as much goodwill toward the United States as circumstances permit.

Why are we paying to imprison a plumber when we could be helping put the plumber back to work?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/magazine/deportation-immigrants-prison-eswatini.html

He Was Deported to a Country He’d Never Heard Of. He May Never Go Free.

archive link:

https://archive.is/bjRnJ

Excerpts:

He hadn’t set foot outside the United States since he was 12, when he arrived on a fishing boat as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba with his mother, a sister and her infant daughter. As a teenager, he joined a Miami gang, and in his 20s, he took a plea deal after being charged with attempted murder for shooting a rival gangster in the leg. That would have been grounds to deport him had he been from almost any other country. But Cuba wasn’t cooperating with the United States on deportations, so Mosquera was allowed to stay, provided he checked in with the authorities each year. He built a new life for himself, becoming a specialty plumber and a born-again Christian; he married and had four daughters.

Then one day in June of last year, Mosquera, who is 59, went to renew his work permit at an immigration office. The appointment was usually short; Mosquera had borrowed the company truck so that he could head to a job when he was done. But it didn’t turn out that way. An immigration official told him that his time in America was up. With President Trump now back in office, Mosquera knew these were not empty words. But if the United States couldn’t send him to Cuba, where would he go?

They were transferred to a military cargo plane at a U.S. air base in the East African nation Djibouti, and more than a day later, the five men landed in Eswatini. Before they could make sense of the situation, they were forced inside a metal cage that was fitted onto a transport truck and driven to the Matsapha Correctional Complex, Eswatini’s maximum-security prison. In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security had called Mosquera and the four other men “depraved monsters” who were “so uniquely barbaric their home countries refuse to take them back.” Now they were met by dozens of guards wielding large sticks.

That was more than a year ago. Mosquera still sits in that same maximum-security prison with nowhere to go. No charges against him. No way to appeal his predicament. No sign that he will ever be freed. Cuba has not signaled any willingness to take him, and Mosquera says he has no desire to go there. Eswatini will not release him from prison, even though he served his time in the United States and committed no crime in Africa.

Mosquera is one of a growing number of people whom the Trump administration has put into a global administrative limbo. For more than a year, it has been offering millions of dollars — often without disclosing the payments — to foreign governments to take immigrants the United States was having trouble deporting to their countries of origin. This includes not only people with criminal pasts like Mosquera but also deportees who were under court protections not to be returned to their homelands because they faced threats there.

Excerpt:

Strategically, I believe we are in the most perilous hour of the modern era, and it is peril of our own president’s making. Donald Trump’s real National Security Strategy has been to get revenge against countries that criticize him, to advance his own self interests, and to build bridges to dictators with whom he can work once he leaves office. The great dealmaker has sold us out to the most dangerous nations on earth.

Excellent visualization of a very disturbing global reality.

Exclusive: Analysis shows 55% of accounts were located overseas – and seven of 12 most-read posts came from US

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal.

Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function.

One in six (16.8%) came from the US, 4.5% from Ireland, and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK.

Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America.

The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain.

Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content.

Read more…

Abstract

Russia’s ballistic missile campaign against Ukraine has become substantially more dangerous, although monthly launch totals do not form a continuously rising curve. The more important development is the convergence of several trends. Russia’s 2026 ballistic missile launch rate has risen above the 2025 baseline, with repeated large salvos and a reported wartime monthly record in July. Russian production appears sufficient to replace substantial numbers of missiles as they are fired, while North Korea is providing an additional reservoir of ballistic missiles and may contribute further launch capacity (Balmforth, 2026; Bielieskov, 2026; Reuters, 2026; Welsch, 2026c, 2026g).

At the same time, Ukraine’s supply of the specialized interceptors needed to defeat ballistic missiles has fallen sharply. The prolonged Iran war has depleted U.S. and allied Patriot and THAAD inventories, while expansion of Western interceptor production will require years to reach planned capacity (Dysa, 2026; Lockheed Martin, 2026a, 2026b; Youssef & Lemire, 2026).

Taken together, these developments support describing the campaign as a ballistic blitz. The defining feature is not a continuously increasing number of launches. It is a widening imbalance between Russia’s ability to generate and replace ballistic attacks and Ukraine’s ability to intercept them and replace the interceptors expended in doing so.

Several technologies can partly reduce dependence on Patriot, including the Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG and Aster 30, THAAD, Arrow, David’s Sling, and potentially a land-based architecture using the U.S. Navy’s SM-6. Systems such as Germany’s IRIS-T can contribute indirectly by assuming cruise-missile, aircraft, and drone missions, preserving scarce anti-ballistic interceptors for the threats that require them. Licensed production, allied co-production, and Ukraine’s emerging FREYJA program may ultimately be as important as obtaining additional existing batteries.

The evidence indicates that the present ballistic threat has not reached its endpoint.

More is on the horizon.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-cannot-defeat-putins-ballistic-blitz-by-defensive-measures-alone/

Excerpts:

The recent surge in missile attacks comes as Ukraine runs short of air defense ammunition, leaving the country virtually defenseless against the Kremlin’s ballistic blitz. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly aims to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability and bomb the country into submission.

Ukraine’s only effective protection against Russian ballistic missiles is the US-made Patriot air defense system. However, the country’s Patriot interceptor missile stocks have now been almost entirely depleted, while Kyiv’s efforts to secure fresh supplies are currently failing.

Possibilities:

The situation is increasingly dire. Some measures that could reduce the destruction and, above all, protect civilian lives:

• Move civilian life underground. Rapidly expand permanent underground shelters into usable living areas, schools, clinics, communications centers, and other essential services.

• Harden and disperse civilian infrastructure. Protect and duplicate power, water, heating, communications, hospitals, and emergency services so that individual strikes do less harm.

• Create extensive decoy or "ghost" targets. Give Russian targeting systems large numbers of convincing false military, industrial, radar, storage, and infrastructure targets on which to waste expensive missiles.

• Confuse missile targeting and guidance. Use electronic warfare, camouflage, obscuration, decoys, altered visual signatures, relocation, and other defensive deception so that even missiles penetrating air defenses are increasingly likely to strike the wrong place.

• Move essential production underground or disperse it. Defense production, repair facilities, ammunition storage, and communications should become progressively harder to locate and destroy.

• Expand direct European defense of Ukrainian airspace. European fighters could intercept drones and cruise missiles, while European ground-based systems help defend against more difficult threats.

• Reserve scarce Patriot-class interceptors for ballistic missiles. Use aircraft, electronic warfare, guns, and less expensive systems against drones and cruise missiles whenever possible.

• Find and destroy ballistic missiles before launch. Concentrate allied satellite, airborne, signals, and Ukrainian reconnaissance capabilities on launchers, missile concentrations, storage, and supporting infrastructure.

• Target the vulnerabilities of the North Korean missile supply. Imported missiles, their limited launchers, transport routes, storage, support equipment, and personnel may be more vulnerable before they disperse.

• Deny Russian forces advanced communications while preserving Ukrainian access. Systems such as Starlink should remain unavailable to Russian forces while authenticated Ukrainian military use is protected and, where possible, expanded.

• Deny Russia access to foreign satellite technology and services, civilian as well as military. Suspend commercial satellite communications, imagery, navigation support, terminals, components, technical services, and related foreign-provided capabilities available inside Russia. Close third-country channels used to circumvent these restrictions. This would constitute a major technological sanction intended to increase the economic and operational cost of continuing the war.

• Reduce future Russian missile production. Tighten restrictions on electronics, machine tools, guidance components, and third-country supply routes supporting missile manufacture.

The central principle should be simple: protect the people first, make real targets harder to destroy, create many false targets, confuse enemy targeting, destroy missiles before they fly, and intercept what remains.

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/shortage-weapons-shaping-war-iran/688201/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCoqFny3RfN3D6aJA2m_zuDq0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpts:

The U.S. raced to develop cheaper ways to tackle the Iranian-supplied drones that Russia deployed, and has made some progress. But the stores of interceptors such as Patriots and THAADs were rapidly expended. “There are no good alternatives for stopping ballistic missiles,” .... “Without these defensive missiles, attacking missiles will land unopposed. That is what is happening in Ukraine.”

Before Russia’s invasion, the U.S. produced roughly 300 Patriot missiles a year, half of which went to allies. Production has since doubled, but badly trails wartime demand.

Had the Iran war been over in a matter of several weeks, as the administration initially predicted, the U.S. munitions problem would not be so dire. “The real problem is that there is no long-term strategy—and we can’t plan around that.”

Tensions flared in Spain's Ceuta enclave as a far-right anti-immigration march sparked counter-protests from local residents. Demonstrators opposed the rally, while police maintained a heavy presence to prevent violence. The unrest comes amid a worsening migrant crisis along the Morocco-Ceuta border.

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/google-earth-ai-images/688145/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCom6x8CCOCs25eaK1ZEMrEuA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

"Google Earth was a boon for researchers—and then came the deepfakes."

Observation:

Unfortunately another level of disinformation unentangling when looking an news etc.

Google Earth was once a means of examining the Earth as it could be observed, although its images were necessarily assembled and processed. By introducing generative imagery into that same trusted environment, Google blurred the boundary between observing the world and inventing one. The danger is not merely that fabricated events can be made to appear real. It is that genuine evidence can now be dismissed as fabrication. Reality is therefore hidden twice: first beneath plausible constructions, and again beneath the resulting doubt about whether authentic images can still be believed.

Constructed reality does not defeat knowledge by proving it false. It overwhelms knowledge by making fabrication cheaper, faster, more vivid, and more abundant than verification.

Trade data shows the government's enforcement of a law targeting Uyghur forced labor has shrunk dramatically since 2024.

That balancing act is now running up against another plank of Trump’s trade agenda, however.

Last week, the White House imposed double-digit tariffs on 60 trading partners after conducting a quickfire investigation that concluded their governments were not doing enough to prevent forced labor in their supply chains.

Foreign governments and legal experts, however, have questioned the legitimacy of the Trumpadministration’s probe, which was launched in March shortly after the Supreme Court struck down global tariffs the president imposed in 2025 under a different law. Administration officials made clear even before the court’s ruling that they were preparing options to rebuild those tariffs under different legal authorities, should they lose the case. The final order, issued last week, set duties at between 10 and 12.5 percent on major U.S. trading partners.

In a July 27 statement, China’s Ministry of Commerce accused the U.S. of having “manipulated” the issue of forced labor to push forward with ”unilateralist and protectionist behavior.” And the Chinese Embassy strongly denied allegations that it has committed genocide against its Uyghur minority.

“China firmly opposes the wrongful practice of the United States using human rights as a pretext to smear other countries, interfere in their internal affairs, suppress their companies, and contain their development,” the Chinese Embassy said in a statement. “Through industrial development, vocational skills training, and employment services, Xinjiang has helped people of all ethnic groups secure stable employment, increase their incomes, and improve their lives.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also noted in a post on X that his country has ratified several international labor treaties that the United States is not party to. And while the European Union noted the 10 percent rate respected the trade deal the two sides struck last year, some officials rejected the premise, insisting the bloc already backs strict bans on goods made with forced labor.

Two groups of businesses have already sued in federal trade court, arguing the administration set the tariff rates first and then crafted the forced labor findings to justify them.

Legal experts are split on whether the challenge will succeed. But the slowdown in enforcement of one of the United States’ own forced labor laws is not likely to bolster the businesses’ arguments, according to Kathleen Claussen, a professor at Georgetown Law. She pointed out there is nothing in the Section 301 statute that says the U.S. can only target trade practices the U.S. does not engage in.