Israeli FM accuses Turkish counterpart of ‘lies and blood libels’ against Israel

Israeli FM accuses Turkish counterpart of ‘lies and blood libels’ against Israel

Joshua Marks

 Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday accused his Turkish counterpart of spreading “lies and blood libels” against the  Jewish state after Hakan Fidan called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “criminal” who must be stopped

Speaking at a gathering on the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement in Istanbul earlier in the day, Fidan said that “this criminal, Netanyahu, who takes pleasure in shedding Palestinian blood and Muslim blood, must now be stopped.”

He also accused the Israeli premier of pursuing a “genocidal and occupying approach” and said that “the international system must fight against the threat posed by Netanyahu.”

Responding in a post on X, Sa’ar wrote that Fidan “continues … to spread lies and blood libels against Israel,” in the service of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Rejecting Fidan’s genocide accusation, Sa’ar said that “it is the Turkish regime that hosts and supports the Hamas terrorist organization, which committed a genocidal massacre against Israelis on Oct. 7,” referring to the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Erdoğan’s regime invades other countries, suppresses and imprisons opposition leaders, and arrests judges and journalists — with yet another journalist arrested just today,” Sa’ar continued.

“To divert attention from all of this, it resorts to the oldest trick in the antisemitic playbook: making false accusations against  Jews and the Jewish state,” he wrote.

The remarks marked the latest escalation in an ongoing war of words between Jerusalem and Ankara. 

Jerusalem on Saturday condemned Erdoğan for antisemitic incitement after he branded Zionism a “genocidal ideology,” invoked the Holocaust in attacks on the Jewish state and urged Muslim countries to unite against Israel.

On Friday, Erdoğan said that Israel’s government was attempting to destabilize the region and claimed that “the genocidal ideology known as Zionism targets everyone who defends humanitarian values.”

Referring to Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Erdoğan said that civilians had paid the price for international inaction against “Hitler, Pol Pot and other crazed oppressors.”

“Millions of people from various origins and faiths were subjected to genocide in Hitler’s concentration camps and Pol Pot’s killing fields,” he said. “Humanity, unfortunately, just stood idly by and watched what unfolded. The same mistake is being repeated today in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon,” he continued. “The world is failing to adequately react to the genocidal network’s lawless policies that recognize no principles, values and limits.”

The Turkish leader also urged Muslim countries not to rely on outside powers.

“I believe that it must now be understood that we as Muslims cannot achieve anything by pinning our hopes on others,” said Erdoğan. “We have to be strong and deterrent, defending our rights together and building peace and security in our region together.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in response on Saturday that Erdoğan was seeking “new heights of wild incitement against the Jewish state in an attempt to divert attention from his actions against his own people and across the region.

The ministry accused the Turkish leader of imprisoning political opponents, supporting the Hamas terrorist organization and invading neighboring countries.

“Like the worst antisemites in history, Erdoğan seeks to deflect attention from his own disgraceful actions by spreading false blood libels,” the ministry said.

The Shocking Truth About Water-Guzzling Hyperscale Data Centers

The Shocking Truth About Water-Guzzling Hyperscale Data Centers

Mike Adams

We are witnessing one of the most breathtaking acts of public deception in modern history, and it centers on the simple claim that artificial intelligence data centers don't consume water. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently stood before the public and declared that data centers don't use water. This is not just inaccurate; it is a dangerous, deliberate lie designed to obscure the true environmental catastrophe of the AI buildout.

As I detailed in my own coverage of the data center boom, these facilities are not the clean, ethereal 'clouds' the industry wants you to believe -- they are industrial parasites that consume the very resources we need to survive.

What makes Lutnick's claim so infuriating is its sheer audacity. Just a year ago, he was singing a completely different tune, acknowledging that these facilities demand immense volumes of water to cool their machinery. The contradiction isn't a slip of the tongue; it is a calculated pivot designed to fast-track a corporate takeover of our energy grid and water supply.

Lutnick and Trump, among others, are running a top-down misinformation campaign, and those of us who have been sounding the alarm about Big Tech's predatory expansion are now being proven right. The stakes have never been higher, as local communities are forced to sacrifice their most vital resources at the altar of Silicon Valley's delusions of grandeur.

The Direct Impact: Billions of Gallons Vanishing Into Cooling Towers

Let’s move beyond political spin and look at the hard, unassailable numbers that the Commerce Secretary refuses to acknowledge. The water consumption figures released by the tech giants themselves reveal a shocking reality. Google admitted to consuming 7.7 billion gallons in 2024, while Amazon's AWS division guzzled another 2.5 billion gallons. To put that in perspective, a typical data center will use about 300,000 gallons of water per day, but hyperscale facilities -- the ones being rushed into construction across the country -- can drain upwards of 5 million gallons daily (each). This isn't subtle resource management; it is encroaching on limited local water resources, given that roughly 40% of new data centers are being built in high stress or extreme stress water resource regions.

The bulk of this water vanishes into massive open-loop evaporative cooling systems, where it is simply vented off into the atmosphere to dissipate heat. This means the water is permanently lost from the local hydrological cycle, torn away from the aquifers and rivers that communities, farmers, and ecosystems depend on. As I've investigated in the data center wars, this consumption is not merely hypothetical; it is accelerating the transformation of fertile lands into parched deserts.

When water options are being taken away from citizens to supply the whims of server farms, we are crossing a moral boundary that no technological advancement can justify. The water they take today is the water our children will need to drink tomorrow. But it won't be there for them. Entire regions of the USA will collapse from groundwater depletion within one generation.

While the water flowing directly into cooling towers is staggering, it represents only a fraction of the true water consumption incurred by the AI industry. The hidden drain is the water required to generate the colossal amounts of electricity these facilities demand. In 2023, the power plants serving U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 211 billion gallons of water to cool their own operations. That is over ten times the volume of the direct cooling water mentioned earlier -- water that is being burned off in thermoelectric power generation (mostly using hydrocarbons) just to keep the algorithms running.

To ignore this connection is either a display of profound ignorance or a calculated act of fraud. Anyone assessing the environmental footprint of AI must account for the water used by coal, nuclear, and especially natural gas plants (gas turbines) that power these facilities. I reported on a new natural gas-powered AI data center in Pennsylvania, which shows that many of these gas turbines also require water for injection and cooling, further compounding the issue.

When we see that every gigawatt of AI "innovation" relies on the evaporation of precious water, the promise of a "cloud" becomes a tornado of resource extraction, leaving behind dry wells and broken communities in its wake.

Industry defenders often retreat to a familiar talking point: that newer "closed-loop" systems don't actually consume water. But this is a myth designed to obscure a toxic secret. Even in closed-loop systems, water must be periodically purged to manage the "cycles of concentration." As water pulls elements from circulation pipes and fittings, the dissolved minerals and chemicals become more and more concentrated. To keep the system from scaling up and corroding, that deadly brine -- called blowdown -- must be discharged and replaced with fresh water.

This blowdown is not clean water. It is a chemical cocktail laced with corrosion inhibitors, heavy metals, nitrites, and in many cases, PFAS "forever chemicals" that are used to protect the sensitive equipment. These poisons are routinely dumped into municipal sewers, local rivers, and even aquifers. As I have written before regarding data centers and the toxic alliance fueling a public health crisis, there is virtually no federal oversight or requirement for transparency on these discharges. This lack of regulation makes hyperscale data centers a major point-source polluter, free to contaminate the waterways of rural America without consequence.

We are allowing these corporations to turn our public water supplies into private toxic waste dumps, and the silence from the EPA is deafening.

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America’s Fading Hegemony and the New World Order

America’s Fading Hegemony and the New World Order

Doug Casey

The U.S. today is a very different country than it was in 1946. At the end of World War 2, it was by far the most financially, economically, industrially, and militarily powerful country in the world. It was a culturally, religiously, and ethnically aligned, and a genuine middle-class society. Now none of those things are true.

The U.S. has devolved into a bankrupt multicultural domestic empire. The Government’s $40 trillion—and rapidly growing—debt can never be paid off. The dollar is an irredeemable fiat unit. US welfare benefits are drawing immigrants who are at odds in every way to the existing population. It’s no longer the country which promotes individualism, free minds and free markets. Rather, it’s been captured by a gigantic regulatory bureaucracy which requires permission for most everything, while taking roughly 40% of the GDP directly and indirectly. The military is well-equipped, at gigantic expense, to fight 20th C wars, but totally ill-equipped to fight the kind of wars the US is provoking everywhere.

I’d say the US decline has more-or-less mirrored that of Rome. If you use that analogy, we’re moving into a time similar to Rome’s mid-3rd century—a time of foreign wars, civil wars, wholesale bankruptcy, and societal chaos.

The bright side is that certain areas of technology are still advancing rapidly—at the moment. But we’re at the peak of the biggest financial bubble in history, and it’s tech-driven. When it pops, the consequences will be widespread and serious. AI data centers will remain, but mostly used to monitor the population.

So, yes, the era of US hegemony is coming to an end.

Large-scale formal war has been a feature of human existence for at least 5,000 years, starting with the rise of cities. As humans have become vastly richer, wars have become vastly more deadly. Everybody seems aware of that except for the posturing non-entities who run NATO and the EU.

When Einstein was asked what weapons he thought World War 3 would be fought with, he said he didn’t know. He was only sure that World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones.

Everyone is justifiably afraid of nuclear weapons. But in today’s world, where computers control everything, a cyber war could be nearly as deadly. And a biological war could be deadlier than either. I’ve discussed those possibilities in the past. Recently it’s occurred to me that mass migration could be as destructive as any of the other three alternatives. Don’t believe me? I urge you to read Jean Raspail’s “The Camp of the Saints.” It’s ultra non PC, funny, scary, well-written, and accurate.

And there are other varieties of war lurking. AI, drones, and robots together mean the world of the Terminator has arrived. As Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: “It’s just one damn thing after another. It’s always something.”

What should you do about it? We can’t control what today’s MegaStates, or the Deep States behind them, will do. Being politically involved in “our democracy,” hoping to make a change by voting, is someplace between laughably counterproductive and criminally stupid.

Instead, do your best to insulate yourself from these things. I’ve got a lot more general thoughts on my YouTube channel, and specific suggestions at Contrarian Insider and CrisisInvesting.com.

Editor’s Note: The decline of US power has serious implications for the dollar, financial markets, and the wealth of ordinary investors.

A government carrying roughly $40 trillion in debt has fewer good options when the next major crisis arrives. History shows that heavily indebted governments often turn to currency debasement, financial repression, capital controls, and other measures that shift the cost of the crisis onto savers and investors.

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Russia Sees No Path to Peace in West’s Ukraine Strategy

Putin’s EEF Speech Shows Russia Sees No Path to Peace in West’s Ukraine Strategy – Expert

Sputnik

The West is not interested in Ukraine’s security and well-being, but rather in continuing the war against Russia and inflicting maximum damage on it, ideally leading to its strategic defeat, Dmitry Suslov of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy told Sputnik commenting on President Putin’s remarks at the 2026 EEF in Vladivostok. 

Putin's statements at the Eastern Economic Forum ( EEF) suggest that the West, which is not interested in ending the conflict, doesn’t care about Ukraine, its development, security, or its future - something only Russia can guarantee, Suslov, who is also deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, pointed out.

Putin’s remarks also reflect Russia's disappointment with the results of the peace talks on Ukraine which involved Western representatives, including the US, not to mention Russia’s frustration with the position taken by Europe, according to him.

"In this regard, reaching an agreement with the West on the terms of a conflict settlement will indeed be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Ukraine, in turn, is interested in its own survival as a state and in creating conditions for its security and future development," Suslov noted.

He recalled that Russia had "negative experiences with negotiations and the West's role in the Ukraine conflict in general, which includes the breakdown of the Istanbul agreements, and Europe's desire to continue and escalate the war instead of ending it on terms acceptable to Russia." 

"It is Russia and Ukraine that must negotiate with each other. And this, incidentally, also closely correlates with Putin's words in Bishkek [at the SCO summit] — about why we're not eliminating Ukraine's top leadership, but are still leaving them a chance for serious negotiations to begin between the two sides," the expert said.

Despite all this, Russia remains committed to restoring full relations with the United States — a position Putin reaffirmed in his remarks at the 2026 EEF.

The Nations Are Ramping Up For War:

Japan and Germany are forgetting the lessons of 1945

RT

By Ladislav Zemánek

Japan’s surrender ended a catastrophic war in Asia and the Pacific. Germany’s defeat ended an equally catastrophic war in Europe. In both cases, military power had ceased to be merely an instrument of state policy and had become a force shaping policy itself. Countries were destroyed and tens of millions were dead as a consequence.

After the war, Japan was forced to embraced a high degree of military self-restraint, symbolized by Article 9 of its constitution and by the deliberately defensive character of its armed forces. Germany followed a different path but reached a similar conclusion: Military power requires strict limits and could not be treated as the normal measure of national strength.

Neither country ended up completely defenseless. Both retained armed forces and entered alliance structures. But for decades, there was an underlying recognition that more weapons did not necessarily mean more security.

Today, that recognition is fading. Japan is undertaking its most extensive military buildup since World War II. Germany is carrying out the most consequential rearmament of its postwar history. Both are increasing military spending, expanding defense-industrial capacity, acquiring more powerful strike capabilities, and deepening strategic cooperation. More ominously, both are reassessing their relationship with nuclear weapons.

The justification is simple. The Japanese are told to fear China. The Germans are told to fear Russia.

But what if these threats are being systematically inflated – and politically manufactured? What if the preparations supposedly intended to prevent war are making a larger war increasingly likely?

Japan is expanding its defense budget, strengthening its naval and air capabilities, acquiring long-range missiles, and developing what it calls “counterstrike capabilities.” It is strengthening its military infrastructure and integrating more closely into wider regional military planning. All of this is still framed as defensive measures, but that doesn’t change the fact that Japan is becoming a powerful military actor.

The relentlessly repeated justification is that China is growing stronger, therefore Japan must rearm. China is expanding its naval forces, therefore Japan must expand its own. China possesses increasingly sophisticated missiles, therefore Japan requires long-range strike capabilities.

But this narrative usually omits the strategic environment from which China’s own military policies emerge.

China is not surrounded by Chinese military bases. Instead, it faces a dense US-centered network of bases, alliances, intelligence systems, and military partnerships operating along its maritime periphery. US forces are stationed in Japan and elsewhere across the region. Japan is expanding its own military role and acquiring new offensive-range capabilities. Beijing’s response to this environment is then cited as proof that the original buildup was necessary, creating a vicious cycle of artificial reasoning.

China, like any major power, does pursue its own interests and take part in the global competition for influence. But the idea that China is simply a disguised aggressor waiting for an opportunity to attack Japan ignores both the elementary logic of power politics and Chinese strategic culture.

Why would China deliberately initiate a major war against Japan, knowing that this could bring it into direct conflict with the US and its allies? The more plausible scenario is the opposite, that China will increasingly prepare for a conflict because it sees one being prepared against it.

Germany is undergoing a parallel transformation. The army is expanding, military procurement is accelerating, arms production is being encouraged, and Germany is openly aspiring to a much larger role in EU military security.

The entire project rests upon a single dominant assumption: Russia is preparing to threaten Europe, and Europe must therefore prepare for war with Russia. Every day, the Europeans are being told that Russia intends to attack Germany or conquer Europe. These claims are absurd.

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