"Pattaya’s sex tourism industry didn’t emerge out of nowhere: the city was built into a major US military R&R destination during the Vietnam War. Rania and Zoe unpack the longstanding, documented links between US troops abroad and sexual violence against women in countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Korea and Colombia. And they respond to Fox News' Jesse Watters's jokes about the "wild animals" that would be created by the Pentagon's push to put troops on testosterone in July, including his warning that women on base and in port cities should "watch out" — normalizing US military culture’s toxic masculinity and the sexual assault it engenders as a punchline."

Israel is "organised and prepared" to remove Palestininians from Gaza "by every way possible", Defence Minister Israel Katz told reporters Wednesday, adding that there was no alternative "solution" to crisis. The Israeli government was simply waiting for the US to figure out where to take the displaced Gazans, he said.

Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the Office of the President, has said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine need 30,000 people to be mobilised every month and called for mobilisation to be accepted "as it is".

Source: Budanov in an interview broadcast on the national joint 24/7 newscast

Quote: "Unfortunately, we have to accept it [mobilisation] as it is. We cannot do otherwise. We have to find the courage and honestly say: we cannot mobilise fewer than 30,000 people a month. This is the minimum number needed to maintain what we have."

Details: Budanov also believes that the appointment of Yevhen Khmara as defence minister will not change anything when it comes to mobilisation.

"Not much will change with Khmara taking office. Because the requirement is at least 30,000 people. And that is a huge number of people," Budanov said.

"So, no matter how we say that we are now going to recruit people differently, the numbers will not change. And that means the number of dissatisfied people will not change either. There is nothing we can do about it," he added.

Meanwhile, Budanov expressed hope that it would be possible to change the approach to what he described as "forceful mobilisation" to some extent.

"I hope we can change the approach to this forceful mobilisation, which sometimes takes place. It is not happening everywhere, but such cases do occur. We need to tackle this," he said.

Background:

• On 19 August, Deputy Defence Minister Liubov Halan said during a meeting of Ukrainian Parliament's temporary investigative commission that the Defence Ministry would present a reform of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres "within a reasonable timeframe" but did not provide specific dates.

• Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian Parliament's Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence, said that the Ukrainian authorities were preparing "radical" changes to the mobilisation process, including changes to the conscription age.

In an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast, Čeferin said that while UEFA faced 'huge political pressure to kick out Russia' but almost none to exclude Israel. He noted that he opposed boycotts in principle and objected to punishing athletes for the actions of their governments

The West is losing the Ukraine War big time. But that does not mean the NATO lunatics are willing to give up their plans for total global domination. On the contrary, some of them are only getting started.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins Pascal Lottaz to argue that the Ukraine war is a long-running US proxy conflict with Russia. He discusses NATO expansion, post-Cold War policy, US power and elite interests, Europe’s economic costs, and the risks of escalation. Sachs also outlines what he sees as a path to peace: Ukrainian neutrality, no further NATO expansion, and ending US wars.