Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“American taxpayers have been throwing blood and treasure at South Korea for most of a century even as it has become an economic powerhouse that competes with US producers, and that commitment also feeds into US entanglement in every regional argument involving not just the Koreas, but China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, etc. It’s a raw deal for America.” (08/18/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Chaos in Foreign Policy.” (08/18/26)
Source: CNN
“Ukraine’s ousted Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for wartime elections in a bombshell address on Tuesday, arguing the nation faced a crisis of governance, in the biggest internal challenge to President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia’s invasion. Fedorov’s call, delivered in a video address posted on YouTube, is the first such demand by a major Ukrainian political figure since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections during wartime.” [editor’s note: That last sentence is a lie. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits holding elections during periods of martial law, which is an optional status that the president has to request, and the legislature grant, extensions of every six month. There might be reasons not to hold elections, but not holding them is a choice – TLK] (08/18/26)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/europe/ukraine-ousted-defense-minister-fedorov-elections-latam-intl
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ron Paul
“Last week we heard that US sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships in the Middle East were being fed food that, from photos that surfaced in the media, looked worse than what you would feed a dog. Parents and spouses of service members risked disciplinary action against their loved ones to highlight to the US Navy Secretary and to the media the revolting conditions aboard the carrier, which has been at sea with no port of call for a record period of time. … the best way to support the troops is to bring them home. Never has that message been clearer than today.” (08/18/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2026/08/17/support-the-troops-bring-them-home/
Source: KVUE News
“Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott to compel the extradition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent arrested on charges connected to Operation Metro Surge. Christian Castro faces four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in Minnesota …. Castro was arrested in Harlingen, Texas, in May and booked into the Cameron County Jail. Ellison said Gov. Tim Walz asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in early June to extradite Castro to Minnesota, but he has yet to be extradited. According to Ellison, Walz’s request triggered a mandatory obligation for Gov. Abbott to issue a governor’s rendition warrant to Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Trevino, initiating the transfer of Castro back to Minnesota to face justice.” (08/18/26)
Source: Cobden Centre
by Tim Price
“The world changed profoundly just four years ago. In February 2022, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West immobilised roughly $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves. At the end of the month, both the EU and the US froze Russian central bank assets in Europe and the US. This may go down in history as one of the biggest unforced geopolitical errors of the 21st Century. So far. When, like the US, you have official national debts of $40 trillion that will never be paid except in devalued money, it looks almost churlish to remind generous foreign strangers that their holdings of your ‘assets’ can be voided on a whim. But that’s what they did. The decision triggered an understandable exodus of foreign sovereign capital out of the US Treasury bond market and into a stateless asset that is nobody’s liability: gold. That exodus is continuing, and the increasingly farcical Iran conflict isn’t helping.” (08/18/26)
Source: New York Times
“[American buyers of goods from] Canada got a three-day reprieve on damaging new American tariffs against billions of goods, with President Trump claiming that a deal was close but Prime Minister Mark Carney saying only that substantial progress had been made. Mr. Trump announced the delay on imposing 50 percent tariffs in a social media post on Tuesday night, roughly 90 minutes before the midnight deadline. The White House issued a proclamation saying Canada had agreed to make certain trade concessions, and the extra days were needed to finalize those provisions.” (08/18/26)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/world/canada/tariffs-trade-trump-carney.html
Source: The UnPopulist
by Nathan Law
“The only Chinese Nobel Peace Prize awardee, Liu Xiaobo, whose books I learned a lot from, famously said, ‘I don’t have enemies.’ He did not hate people who hold different opinions, or even those who enabled the brutalities of the Chinese Communist regime. He fought against the regime, and the ideologies that enabled the violence. In the face of the illiberal waves, I want to re-conceptualize the idea to address the challenge that we all face. The enemy is not the political opposition. The enemy is apathy. It’s the state where people don’t care, live in their half-baked stereotypes about the world, and stop thinking deeply about anything.” (08/18/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/liberal-democracy-is-not-self-sustaining
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that no talks with Iran are underway and none are scheduled, as he posted a map showing the Strait of Hormuz as a new American territory in a fresh jibe at Tehran. Trump has been pressing his threat to claim sovereignty over the crucial energy waterway as the nearly six-month-old Iran war grinds on with little sign of resolution. Trump’s envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner had said on Monday that the United States and Iran were having ‘very positive and active conversations,’ but the president denied that was the case. … Iran says it will not reopen the strait until Washington meets a sweeping list of demands including ending the US blockade of Iran’s ports, lifting oil sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets and paying war damages.” (08/18/26)
Source: The Hill
by Gleb Tsipursky
“The headline from a new modeling experiment by Econtime Consultants claims flexible work arrangements can raise one’s ‘effective’ salary by 56 percent. That number may sound startling, even inflated, until you picture the actual worker behind it: a 39-year-old programmer with one or two children, a mortgage or other debt, a demanding job, and a calendar where every recovered hour matters. The flexible work value in an IT worker’s life does not come from abstract corporate generosity. It comes from fewer rushed mornings, fewer lost evenings, fewer unpaid hours trapped in transit, and more control over the fragile border between work and everything else. … The most important aspect of the study is conceptual: It asks leaders to stop treating salary as the only form of compensation that matters. A paycheck tells workers what they earn. It does not tell them what the job costs them.” (08/18/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/6033665-economic-value-personal-time-salary/