Israeli attacks push Lebanon deeper into economic crisis(VIDEO)

More than a fifth of all farmland in the conflict zone has been damaged, according to the country’s Agriculture Ministry

Published 16 Aug, 2026 16:58 | Updated 16 Aug, 2026

Lebanese families are struggling to make ends meet as the country’s long-running financial crisis deepens amid Israeli attacks that have devastated homes and farmland, RT correspondent Steve Sweeney reports from Beirut.

Gasoline prices soared by around 25% in February, while food and rent costs spiked by around 20% last year, adding pressure in a countrywhere more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates.

Many Lebanese are alsograppling with unpaid wages, Sweeney reports.

“If the economic situation continues as it is, I’m telling you, there will be a social explosion.

People will turn against one another because when hunger strikes, boundaries disappear,” a local taxi driver told RT.

Lebanon is “living on borrowed time,” dependent on international decisions and aid for basic necessities, added.

Lebanon’s economic crisis dates back to its 2019 financial collapse. Its economy hascome under further strain from Israel’s war and continuing occupation of parts of the south of the country.

About 56,000 hectares (138,000 acres) of agricultural land had been damaged by Israeli attacks as of early May, according to Lebanon’s Agriculture Ministry.

The areas directly affected amounted to around 22% of all agricultural land located in the conflict-affected parts of southern Lebanon, it said.

IDF have reportedly deliberately ignited wildfires in woodland, farmland, and olive grovesin southern Lebanon since the June 17 ceasefire with Hezbollah.

https://www.rt.com/news/644307-israeli-attacks-lebanon-economic-crisis/

Ukraine leadhship is the same as Israel leadership. Both countries have their Mafia. Neither country cares who dies!

WATCH Ukrainian press gang tear-gas crowd trying to save man from conscription

The incident reportedly took place in Odessa amid growing public outrage over how Kiev’s ‘busification’ officers snatch men off the streets

Published 16 Aug, 2026 13:57 | Updated

Ukrainian conscriptionofficers reportedly sprayed civilians with tear gas in Odessa after they tried to stop a press gang from seizing a man for military service.

According to the Novosti Odessa Telegram channel,several people approached a vehicle carrying draft officers during an alleged attempt at ‘busification’ – a pejorative term denoting a practice whereby draft officers snatch military-age menin public and drag them into vans to take them to conscription centers, often using violence against those who resist.

A video posted online by the outlet showsseveral people trying to pull away a young man whom the press gang was presumably after, while pushing the draft officers back into their vehicle. The officers then appear to spray tear gas at the crowd before hastily driving off amid expletives and angry shouts of “get out of here.”

The outlet said the incident took place on Saturday evening in a busy residential neighborhood roughly midwaybetween the city center and Odessa’s Black Sea port.

Kiev hasincreasingly relied on violently enforced conscription amid battlefield losses and Russian advances, with reports of ‘busification’ emerging almost daily.

The campaign has fueled tensions across Ukrainian society, with multiple reports of draft officers brawling with relatives and passersby trying to free would-be conscripts from press gang vans.

While officials insist mobilization is unavoidable in the conflict with Russia,many citizens see the system as rife with state-sanctioned corruptionand as disproportionately targeting the poor.

Recruits and their families have also accused authorities ofsystematic abuse, ignoring exemptions and drafting men medically unfit for service. Meanwhile, military-age men have resorted to various means to avoid the draft, from fleeing the country illegally to setting military recruitment offices on fire or hiding in their homes for months.

Saturday’s incident is not the first reported case of draft officers using tear gas on civilians. Earlier this month,a video purportedly showed a press gang assaulting a young couple in a taxi and repeatedly spraying them with what appeared to be tear gas while trying to drag the man from the vehicle. In late June, a press gang reportedlyused tear gas on a 12-year-old girlcaught up in an attack on a vehicle carrying draft officers.

Some Ukrainian officials have grown increasingly critical of how the forced conscription is being carried out. Kiev’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets, recently blamed abuses on systemic Defense Ministry failures that had fostered a culture of impunity. In a Telegram post on Saturday, he cited the case of a Ukrainian scientist and archaeologist who was forcibly conscripted despite being entitled to a draft deferment, the documents for which were still being processed.

Lubinets called the situation “outrageous,” saying that “blind busification” and mobilization “for the sake of a tick must be eradicated.”

Moscow has argued that growing public resistance to forced conscription shows that theUkrainian government has lost its legitimacy and can only survive through increasingly authoritarian measures. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recently described the situation as “absolute lawlessness.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/644302-press-gang-ukraine-tear-gas/

(I don’t think Zelensky is going to be able to flee, because the horrors he and they have done is horrendous against their own citizens)

Russian satellite captures stunning view of total solar eclipse (VIDEO)

The rare celestial event, visible across much of Europe and northwestern Russia, was caught on camera from orbit

Published 16 Aug, 2026 15:15

Striking footage of this week’s total solar eclipse filmed from Russia’s Arktika-M satellite has been released, showing the Moon’s shadow sweeping across Earth.

Russian space corporation Roscosmos shared the video on Telegram, giving viewers a glimpse of the eclipse from hundreds of kilometers above Earth.

Roscosmos also shared another view from orbit, publishing four photographs taken by cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov from the International Space Station, around 400 km above Earth. The images show the Moon progressively ‘eating’ into the Sun from different sides.

The total eclipse occurred on August 12, with the path of totality stretching from Greenland and Iceland across the Atlantic to parts of Spain, Portugal, and northern Russia. A partial eclipse was visible across much of Europe, North America, and northwest Africa.

Total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months, but any given location can wait centuries to experience one.

The next total solar eclipse is due on August 2, 2027, when totality will pass across southern Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen, according to the US National Solar Observatory.

https://www.rt.com/russia/644306-roscosmos-satellite-solar-eclipse-video/

“You know what else separates people from their jobs? Rampant shoplifting. Our nearest pharmacy closed due to unchecked shoplifting. All of those employees lost their jobs. Now all the elderly people in my neighborhood have lost their closest pharmacy. Last year I witnessed a guy clear out every toothbrush and every tube of toothpaste at my local CVS. He wasn’t doing that for his oral health. He was doing it to resell,” another user commented.

Meanwhile, Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) are warning that socialist ideas are gaining traction among young people across America, their comments coming as the November midterms approach, Breitbart News reported Friday:

Malliotakis argued that socialist systems begin by gradually expanding government power through measures such as price controls and restrictions on individual freedoms.

“It is sort of the baby steps where they begin to implement changes. They begin to take away freedoms. They begin to ration things, to implement price controls that are very destructive to the economy,” she said.

…

Tenney described her own experiences in Yugoslavia, saying she saw dramatic changes from her time there in the 1980s to what she has seen since. She recalled experiencing shortages while living there.

“There wasn’t anything on the shelves,” Tenney said. “I mean, you had to wait in line for bread, and everybody just figured that was part of it.”…

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/08/16/watch-nyc-socialist-lawmaker-claims-stealing-for-biological-need-should-not-be-illegal/