In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone’s Wyatt Reed, Wafiq Safa, a senior Hezbollah official and former head of Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit, discusses Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel in Southern Lebanon, and provides new details on resistance operations, its intelligence capacity, and how he believes it has forced Israel into a costly stalemate that exposes the limits of Israeli military power.

Hezbollah leader to The Grayzone — Israel-First Trump ‘turned America into a joke’

Safa argues that any US-backed attempt to disarm Hezbollah would be illegitimate and could trigger civil war, noting that Hezbollah sees itself as part of a broader regional front that includes Iran and other anti-Israel forces.

Just four days after a drone attack killed 21 people in Starobelsk, CNN aired a promotional segment about Ukrainian drone operations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

The video was filmed by CNN correspondent Nick Walsh, who has been charged in absentia in Russia for involvement in the incursion into Kursk region, with a unit that claimed to have launched 200 drones at Russia, including recent attack on Stavropol, Zakharova noted.

Ukraine Hires CNN to Film Drone Strike Operations - Russian MFA Spokeswoman

This week, as UK Labour’s destructive leadership contest intensified, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair staged a remarkable intervention in which he single-handedly sought to save the party from political oblivion.

Blair’s dramatic intrusion into Labour politics took the form of a 5,600 word essay – in which he denounced Keir Starmer, criticized leadership contenders Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting, and, more importantly, set out a radical political manifesto that he believes the Labour Party must adopt if it wishes to remain a viable force in UK politics.

Tony Blair emerges a fake ‘savior’ of UK’s Labour Party

As the party implodes under inept leadership, the former PM has come up with his own ten commandments – which will only poison it further

By Graham Hryce

Changing voting patterns are no longer a reaction to short-term events, they are a rebellion against inequality, says Kos Samaris.

Our MRP polling doesn’t show a swing. It shows a sorting. And it has its roots in the end of Australia’s long post-war boom.

For most of human history, children lived as their parents did. And their parents before them.

Kos Samaras

Tucker Carlson recently confessed: “I’ll be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.” How can one not feel sorry and ashamed today for having believed in Trump? I’ll be honest: although I hold no responsibility in Trump’s election, I feel ashamed for having placed any hope in him.

If you’ve watched a footy game on TV, flicked through a newspaper, listened to a radio or glimpsed the games and social channels that contemporary adolescents are glued to, you’ll know how pervasive and inescapable gambling has become in Australia today.

The federal government is suing Wall Street giant 3M Company for more than $2 billion in an unprecedented legal claim for damages over the contamination of dozens of communities across Australia with toxic “forever chemicals”.

Announcing the action in the Federal Court of Australia on Thursday, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland accused the global chemicals maker of withholding and making false statements about the long-term environmental impacts of its firefighting foam containing the per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAS).

“Let me be clear, this is the largest legal claim ever brought by the Commonwealth,” Rowland told reporters in Canberra.

The chemicals were used for decades at Defence bases across Australia, and have contaminated homes, drinking water, food supplies and vast tracts of land across the country.

The compromise reached between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on August 15 has still not materialized in Ukraine. The obstacles are not those the United States anticipated. Ukraine is not cooperating, while Germany and the United Kingdom want war.

The Obstacles to Peace in Europe Are Not What We Think*

by Thierry Meyssan

President Donald Trump acknowledged to his counterpart Xi Jinping that he was his equal. Since World War II, every American president has considered himself superior to others because he was the most powerful and the richest.

Conversely, from a Chinese perspective, Xi Jinping considers himself the equal not only of Donald Trump, but of each of his counterparts. A Chinese person does not believe that having greater resources makes you superior.

The media campaign against the Federal Budget is unprecedented, not for its vehemence but it’s uniformity across Murdoch and Nine Entertainment organs. Michael Pascoe fears for the future.

Peter Tonagh, the chairman of Nine Entertainment, is a former CEO of News Corp Australia. He is one of the four Nine board members who have Murdoch links. One of the remaining two was a senior advisor to Simon Birmingham when he was a Liberal Cabinet minister.

There’s a bit of that Liberal connection around the top ranks of Nine. The company’s director of communications and public affairs was a senior press secretary for  Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The Australian Financial Review’s editor-in-chief, James Chessell, was a press secretary for Treasurer Joe Hockey.

The US dollar emerged as the world’s reserve currency in the aftermath of World War II, becoming the main currency for international goods and coming to account for the majority of the world’s primary reserve currency.

Since Bretton Woods, “King Dollar” has seen off numerous challenges, from the rise of the euro to the suspension of gold convertibility in 1971, only to emerge more powerful than before.

In 1974, agreements between the US and Saudi Arabia led to the creation of the petrodollar system, under which the world’s oil is traded in US dollars in exchange for US protection of producers and their trade routes.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Wednesday she wants to implement a freeze on the country's consumption tax on food products "as soon as possible," despite concerns over the nation's fiscal health amid the ongoing Middle East crisis.

Japan PM vows to curb debt issuance as gov't eyes extra budget

During a one-on-one parliamentary debate with opposition party leaders, Takaichi also said the government will do its utmost to limit debt issuance to support the public, as her government plans to draft a supplementary budget amid concerns the crisis could have a prolonged economic impact.

You see very few blue-above-yellow banners on front lawns and porches these days, and those that remain are always bleached pale by sun and rain. I like the ones the winds have frayed so they droop like worn-out kitchen rags. 

Flying a Ukrainian flag such that your neighbors knew of your brave commitment to democracy, liberty, “values” and all that was for a long time the ne plus ultra in the virtue-signaling line.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Cokehead of Kiev, Exposed

Let all the delusions and illusions of the past five years — or 12, if you begin your count with the U.S.–sponsored coup in Kiev back in 2014 — finally fade like the flags.

“Friedrich Merz is Roman Catholic. He is deeply rooted in the Catholic faith […] and sees his faith as a calling to work for peace and freedom.” – This is what Google AI displays when you enter the keywords “Catholic” and “Friedrich Merz”.

Is the German chancellor provoking a war with Russia?

by Karl-Jürgen Müller

Ding Xuexiang, the first-ranked vice premier of the People's Republic of China, still carries a formal title he earned before politics arrived: professor-level senior engineer, granted after fourteen years working on forging and pressing technology at the Shanghai Research Institute of Materials. The designation appears in his official biography. In the governance culture that produced him, it is meant to be noticed.

China is Run by Engineers. America is Run by Lawyers.

An engineer is taught, from the first thermodynamics homework set, that the world is a system, that the system has constraints, that the constraints are non-negotiable...

by Dolapo Omoleme