[IsrelTimes] Hamas confirms Qutaiba al-Shalabi and Mohammed Nazal carried out attack; defense minister says Gaza lessons being applied in West Bank amid major Jenin operation
Two Paleostinian button men killed by troops near the West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday night were among the perpetrators of a deadly terror shooting attack in the village of al-Funduq earlier this month, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service said Thursday morning.
Their elimination came amid an ongoing major counterterrorism raid in the Jenin refugee camp.
The Paleostinian terror group Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... took responsibility for the January 6 attack and also said that Qutaiba al-Shalabi and Mohammed Nazal, who were slain in the Wadi Burqin area, carried out the shooting that killed three Israelis.
The IDF said that troops of the Duvdevan commando unit, Shin Bet agents, and other soldiers surrounded a building in Wadi Burqin where the button men were holed up, and carried out a tactic known as "pressure cooker," which involves escalating the volume of fire against a building to flush suspects out.
After an exchange of fire that lasted some four hours, two button men behind the al-Funduq shooting were killed. One IDF soldier was moderately hurt, the military said.
While Hamas claimed the two button men as its members, the IDF and Shin Bet said they were members of the allied Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... terror group.
The IDF added that several suspects who assisted in carrying out the deadly terror shooting were also detained amid an ongoing raid in the Jenin area.
At least three button men carried out the January shooting in al-Funduq, killing off-duty police officer Master Sgt. Elad Yaakov Winkelstein and civilians Rachel Cohen and Aliza Raiz.
The Shin Bet was investigating whether one of the suspects detained at the scene of the exchange of fire in Wadi Burqin was the third gunman in the al-Funduq shooting, or if the perpetrator was still on the lam.
Separately, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that forces were applying lessons learned in the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... as the operation continued in Jenin, which the military said was aimed at countering Iranian-backed terror groups in the volatile West Bank city.
A senior IDF officer in the West Bank division told news hounds on Thursday that Operation Iron Wall was launched to neutralize the so-called Jenin Battalion, made up of operatives affiliated with terror groups such as Hamas and Paleostinian Islamic Jihad.
Previous raids on Jenin in the past year did not specify such a goal, the officer said.
Operation Iron Wall is the third major IDF incursion in less than two years into Jenin, a longtime major stronghold of terror groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which said its forces were fighting Israeli troops.
Hundreds of troops, including several special forces units, Border Police officers and other IDF units, backed by drones and helicopters, have been operating in the Jenin camp since Tuesday morning. The officer said troops were scanning homes, capturing weapons, and eliminating terror operatives.
As the raid began, Paleostinian Authority security forces pulled out of the Jenin refugee camp after having conducted a weeks-long operation to try to reassert control over the area from terror groups.
According to Paleostinian media and Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, PA forces were still operating in and around the city of Jenin itself, and detaining terror operatives fleeing the army’s action.
Residents reported constant gunfire and explosions and Paleostinian Authority health services reported at least 10 people killed on Tuesday. The senior IDF officer said Thursday that in all, 13 Paleostinian button men had been killed in the raid so far.
Katz said the Jenin raid marked a shift in the military’s security plan in the West Bank and was "the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza."
"We will not allow the arms of the Iranian regime and radical Sunni Islam to endanger the lives of settlers and establish a terrorist front east of the state of Israel," he said in a statement.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza is a response to the October 7, 2023, invasion by thousands of forces of Evil led by Hamas that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Terrorists also kidnapped 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza. The war has left much of the coastal enclave in ruins after 15 months of bombardment.
The Jenin operation began two days after the launch of a ceasefire deal in Gaza that will see some of the hostages held by forces of Evil in Gaza released after 15 months of captivity. Israel will also free nearly a thousand Paleostinian security prisoners held in Israel, and its troops have pulled back from their positions in many areas of the enclave.
The military has said that terrorists’ increasing use of roadside kabooms and other improvised bombs was a particular focus of the Jenin operation, which included armored bulldozers tearing up roads in the refugee camp adjacent to the city.
The IDF said Wednesday it instructed Paleostinians at a hospital in Jenin to remain inside the medical center for several hours as troops cleared suspected improvised bombs planted in the area by terror operatives.
"Following concerns of IEDs on roads near the Jenin hospital, security forces operated in the area overnight to neutralize the IEDs," the military said in response to a query.
"As a result, those staying at the hospital were asked to remain inside it to maintain their safety. After the forces’ activity in the area, exit from the hospital was made possible through organized and safe routes," the IDF said.
The IDF said troops did not enter the hospital and were not surrounding other medical centers in Jenin.
As the operation continued, some 2,000 Paleostinians left their homes in the camp, a crowded township for descendants of Paleostinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around Israel’s creation. "Thank God, we were at home, we went out and asked an ambulance to take us out," said a woman who gave her name as Um Mohammad.
CHECKPOINT CHOKES
Before the raid, roadblocks and checkpoints had been thrown up across the West Bank.
The security cabinet ordered the IDF to establish dozens of additional checkpoints throughout the West Bank during the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire, which has led to mass traffic jams for Paleostinians throughout the territory, the Haaretz newspaper reported Wednesday.
The move requires the army to stop and search every single Paleostinian vehicle passing through the checkpoints and was directed due to fears of potential unrest, given the release of Paleostinian security prisoners, including murderers, as part of the Gaza hostage deal. However,
there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... Haaretz reported, the checkpoints could themselves spark unrest in the territory, with Paleostinians now often unable to enter and exit their villages.
One resident of the Ramallah area told Haaretz that she waited for three hours in traffic in order to get home and was unable to pick up her children from school.
"There was never a situation like this — not even at the beginning of the war," she said.
Another resident of a village outside Ramallah claimed it now takes eight hours to return home from the city.
"What’s the reason for this? We don’t know. It’s a pressure cooker. It’s unbelievable. Going from Ramallah to the village is like going from one country to another," he told Haaretz.
According to the Paleostinian Authority, there are currently 900 checkpoints throughout the West Bank.
[WashingtonExaminer] Hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher, who were released from Hamas custody on Sunday, reported that they had been held in a U.N. refugee camp at some point during their captivity, according to Israel’s Channel 13. Details were not given as to what camps they were held in, when, or for how long.
The revelation is the latest blow to the position of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which has faced attacks against its credibility throughout the war in Gaza.
[IsraelTimes] US President Donald Trump’s administration fires the independent inspectors general of more than a dozen major government agencies, US media reports.
The agencies include the departments of defense, state, transportation, veterans affairs, housing and urban development, interior, and energy, Washington Post says, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The New York Times says the purge affected 17 agencies but spared the Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
The Post says the firings “appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire the inspectors general.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reports.
An inspector general is an independent position that conducts audits, investigations and inspectors into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse. They can be removed by the president or the agency head, depending on who nominated or appointed them.
Most of those dismissed were appointees from Trump’s 2017-2021 first term, the Post reporting, saying those affected had been notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated effective immediately.
For example, Michael Missal, the inspector general at the Veterans Affairs Department, oversaw multiple investigations of how the Biden administration handled the agency’s troubled effort to build a massive electronic health records system for veterans’ medical information. Among other conclusions, the reports showed that veterans had been put at risk as their prescriptions were lost in the system. The project has been paused for months.
Mark Greenblatt, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was fired Friday, released a lengthy investigation in 2021 concluding that when the U.S. Park Police led law enforcement officers into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters outside Lafayette Square during the first Trump administration, they did so as part of a plan made days earlier to build a fence around the park to protect officers — not to facilitate the visit minutes later by the president to a nearby church.
...
Among those apparently spared Friday was Joseph V. Cuffari Jr., the embattled inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. A Trump appointee, Cuffari was found in October by an independent panel of watchdogs to have misled the Senate during his nomination process and committed other misconduct during his five years in office.
[IsraelTimes] United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls for the “immediate and unconditional” release of all aid staff held in Yemen, after the Iran-backed Houthi rebels detained another seven UN employees.
“Their continued arbitrary detention is unacceptable,” Guterres says in a statement, adding that the UN is working to secure the release of those being held.
The Houthis have detained dozens of staff from the UN and other humanitarian organizations, most since the middle of last year.
Guterres says the “continued targeting of UN personnel and its partners negatively impacts our ability to assist millions of people in need in Yemen.”
The detentions come after US President Donald Trump ordered the Houthis to be placed back on the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, which will trigger a review of UN agencies and other NGOs working in Yemen that receive US funding.
[IsraelTimes] Man allegedly was in contact with terror group’s handler abroad who has recruited others in the past, met with operatives in Jenin, took photos in Jenin holding a gun
A resident of East Jerusalem was arrested last month on suspicion of having been in contact with members of Hezbollah and various other terror groups, the Israel Police and Shin Bet said in a joint statement Thursday.
The suspect, a 32-year-old from the predominantly Paleostinian neighborhood of Issawiya, was arrested on December 25 and handed to the Shin Bet for questioning.
He was not named in the statement.
It was the latest in a series of cases where Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... or its Lebanese proxy terror group Hezbollah have worked to recruit Israeli residents for espionage or to carry out attacks.
Over the course of the investigation, the police and Shin Bet said the suspect revealed that he had been in frequent contact with Hezbollah operatives over several years, and was part of an online Hezbollah-affiliated group calling itself the "Resistance® Axis."
Among those he contacted was a Hezbollah operative abroad who had previously recruited other East Jerusalem residents to assist the terror group, the security bodies said, adding that several of the operative’s past recruitees have been apprehended and indicted by Israel in recent months.
Though the statement did not name the Hezbollah contact abroad, described as female, a previous similar case identified a woman using the name "Dania."
The suspect was in contact with some of the recruited operatives in East Jerusalem and shared with them information about "sensitive sites" that he had photographed, the statement said.
The suspect has also visited Jenin, in the West Bank, to meet with terror operatives from other groups. The statement added that while there, the suspect posed for photographs alongside weapons belonging to the groups.
An indictment is expected to be filed against him in the near future, it added.
I agree — it would be very nice. Not likely, I suspect, which is that whole reality thingy intruding, but nice if it were to happen that way.
[IsraelTimes] US president reportedly set to tap Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff as Iran point man, signaling turn away from ‘maximum pressure’ policy of 1st term: ‘Certainly somebody I would use’
US President Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons... on Thursday said he hopes the Iranian nuclear crisis can be solved without Israel having to carry out a military strike against the Islamic Theocratic RepublicThe remarks came after it was reported that Trump is planning to name his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as his point man on Iran, signaling the new administration’s resolve to address Tehran’s nuclear program diplomatically rather than militarily.
"I’m not going to answer that," Trump first replied when asked by news hounds in the Oval Office whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, adding that he would be holding meetings with various bigwigs on the matter shortly.
"Hopefully that can be worked out without having to worry about it. It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step," Trump continued.
"Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... will hopefully make a deal, and if they don’t make a deal that’s okay too," he said.
Offering two possibilities. The second one is likely to be uncomfortable.
His administration has signaled in recent days that it wants to try and reach a diplomatic agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program, rather than carrying out a military strike.
There had been some in Israel who assumed that Trump’s return to the White House would lead to the US backing an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites or even carrying out such an attack itself.
Trump had criticized his predecessor Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier... for publicly telling Israel not to strike Iranian oil and nuclear sites in retaliation for Tehran’s ballistic missile attack last year. Trump had argued that Biden shouldn’t be publicly telegraphing Israel’s next move.
Senior Trump officials were earlier quoted by Channel 12 news as saying the new US president "doesn’t want to kick off his term with a war," is interested in a "firm deal" to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear arms, and assesses that "the Iranians will run to the negotiating table under his leadership."
WITKOFF ’CERTAINLY SOMEBODY I WOULD USE’
Trump on Thursday also addressed the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... hostage release and ceasefire deal he helped finalize, saying it "should hold."
The comments appeared to soften ones he made earlier in the week, when he said he was not confident that the agreement would hold.
Asked to elaborate on those comments, Trump told news hounds, "It’s a very tricky place."
Trump credited his envoy Witkoff for securing the agreement that had been elusive for months. Noting that "both sides" liked Witkoff, Trump said, "That deal would have never been made without Steve."
"The deal should hold, but if it doesn’t there will be a lot of problems," Trump warned.
Trump was also asked whether he’ll want Witkoff to be negotiating directly with Iran, amid the reports that he was planning to have him handle US diplomacy with Tehran.
"No, but he’s certainly somebody I would use," Trump said.
The Financial Times had reported that Witkoff, known for his central role bringing the Gaza ceasefire deal to a conclusion, will oversee efforts to tackle Iran’s nuclear ambitions as part of a broader attempt to curb conflicts in the region, adding that the ceasefire agreement will remain Witkoff’s main focus.
News of Witkoff’s tentative appointment came as Trump revoked the security detail of two prominent Iran hawks from his previous administration: former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom were considered under threat by Iran.
Pompeo and Hook were the public faces of the US "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign against Iran after Trump in 2018 withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. The deal, signed in 2015, offered relief on sanctions in exchange for Iran’s drastically limiting its nuclear program.
In response to Trump’s withdrawal, Tehran, which is sworn to destroy Israel, has breached the deal in several ways, including by accelerating its uranium enrichment to levels that are unfeasible for civilian use.
Mohammad Javad Zarif ...former Persian foreign minister, Mouthpiece of Mullahs, good friend of John Kerry and similar exemplars of Merkin values... , a top Iranian official who was Tehran’s lead negotiator on the 2015 deal, said Wednesday that he hopes "this time around, a ’Trump 2’ will be more serious, more focused, more realistic."
Though Trump has publicly vowed to resume "maximum pressure" on Iran, the Financial Times said that the US president and his aides have indicated in meetings that they want to keep the door open to diplomacy with the Islamic Theocratic RepublicAccording to the newspaper, some Trump officials have told foreign counterparts that they expect Witkoff to check whether diplomacy with Iran was possible.
However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome... US officials cited by the newspaper said that Trump’s approach to Iran in his second term, and Witkoff’s mandate vis-a-vis the Islamic Theocratic Republic, were not yet settled.
A senior Republican staffer in the US Congress, quoted by the Financial Times, expressed frustration at Witkoff’s appointment, saying the new Iran point man was not hawkish enough.
"He’s already lifting pressure on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and in the process abandoning American hostages and endangering Israel," said the aide — though the White House on Thursday re-designated the Houthis as a terror group.
"He keeps saying he knows what Trump wants, but he doesn’t understand what Trump believes," the aide added.
The Financial Times noted that two of Trump’s appointments — Michael DiMino, the Pentagon’s new top Middle East official, and Elbridge Colby, nominated for under-secretary of defense for policy — have expressed skepticism over the use of military force to thwart Iran’s nuclear program.
A more robust approach, meanwhile, has been advocated by Trump’s designated national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration... The top diplomat, who was confirmed on Wednesday, said in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later in the day that "he looks forward to addressing the threats posed by Iran and pursuing opportunities for peace," according to a State Department readout.
IRAN HAWKS POMPEO AND HOOK LOSE SECURITY DETAIL
A congressional staffer and a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered... to discuss personal security details, confirmed Thursday that Trump had revoked Pompeo and Hook’s security details.
Neither source could offer an explanation. They said Pompeo and Hook were told of the loss of protection on Wednesday and that it took effect at 11 p.m. that night.
A day earlier, Trump had revoked the security clearance and Secret Service protection from John Bolton, another Iran hawk who was fired as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term.
Bolton, who has been targeted for liquidation for Iran, later wrote a book whose publication the White House unsuccessfully sought to block on grounds that it disclosed national security information.
Trump had soured on Pompeo some months ago, saying publicly that he would play no role in his new administration. In a social media post this week, Trump also fired Hook from his presidentially appointed position on the board of the Wilson Center, a think tank.
A representative for Pompeo did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and Hook has not responded to multiple voice and text messages from the AP since Bolton was stripped of his protection on Tuesday.
The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... first reported on the loss of protections.
The Biden administration’s State Department had provided and then systematically renewed round-the-clock protection by the Diplomatic Security Service for Pompeo and Hook since January 21, 2021, when they left office along with Trump. The last such authorization was on October 21.
Iran has blamed both for the killing of Iran Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.
According to a March 2022 report to Congress, the State Department said it was paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to Pompeo and Hook. But later determinations did not give a dollar amount.
In those notifications, the State Department told politicians that threats against Pompeo and Hook remain "serious and credible" and continue to warrant government-provided security details.
Biden administration officials briefed Trump officials earlier this month about the ongoing threat posed by Iran to Pompeo, Hook, Bolton and others and why the administration had extended the security details for them, according to a former senior Biden administration official familiar with the matter.
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the private briefing, said Trump administration officials are "well aware" of the "active threats" against the former government officials and called the move "highly irresponsible."
[KhaamaPress] The Taliban ...Arabic for students... claims that members of ISIS and other "destabilizing" groups, with the "indirect support of certain factions," have established themselves in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and some tribal regions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistain.
In its annual security report published on Wednesday, January 22, the Central Commission for Security and Purging of the Taliban accused Pakistain of supporting ISIS.
The report states that the "plot of sedition and destabilization-(ISIS)" has been completely suppressed in Afghanistan; however, some leaders of these groups, with indirect support from Pakistain, have begun reorganizing themselves.
According to the report, "many commanders, heads of important branches, planners, and executors of major attacks, as well as hundreds of their members (mostly ISIS), have either been killed or arrested." Meanwhile,
...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... "some of the leaders and members of this group, who fled to neighboring countries after being suppressed, have once again begun reorganizing with the tolerance, leniency, and indirect support of certain factions."
Although ISIS is not directly named in this report, the Taliban officials usually refer to ISIS and other opposing groups as "destabilizing projects" or "plots."
In its report, the Commission accuses neighboring countries of providing indirect support for terrorism, further stating that fleeing ISIS leaders have "established themselves in Balochistan and some tribal regions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistain, where training camps were set up, financial assistance was provided, and conditions were made favorable for recruitment and propaganda from various countries around the world."
The Taliban claims to have credible information showing that these groups "are transferring newly recruited forces from several Asian and European countries to their centers in Balochistan and the tribal areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa through Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
and Islamabad airports."
The report has raised concerns about the growing threat, warning that "there is a high likelihood that in the coming months, these individuals may be used to carry out attacks in various countries in the region and globally."
Pakistain has not yet responded to the Taliban’s report, though earlier, the federal government of Pakistain had leveled similar accusations against the Taliban, leading to border tensions and warlike rhetoric.
[ToloNews] The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, which has been operating in Afghanistan for over 40 years, announced the complete cessation of its activities in the country.
The organization said that it has closed all its offices in Afghanistan and will henceforth operate from outside the country as "Solidarity Committee for Afghanistan."
In a statement, the committee said: "SCA no longer implements activities in Afghanistan and our offices have closed. Outside Afghanistan we now operate under the name of Solidarity Committee for Afghanistan."
This comes after the Islamic Emirate suspended the operations of Swedish organizations in Afghanistan in July last year in response to the burning of a copy of the Holy Koran by a Swedish citizen.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan mainly focused on providing aid to women, children, and people with disabilities.
Although officials of the Islamic Emirate have not yet commented on the suspension of the Swedish Committee’s activities in Afghanistan, some experts say that humanitarian assistance from organizations like the Swedish Committee benefits Afghanistan. They suggest that the Islamic Emirate should adopt a suitable mechanism to allow such organizations to continue their operations.
Economic analyst Shakir Yaqubi said: "If the Islamic Emirate reviews its strict policies or restrictions imposed on international organizations in Afghanistan, this could naturally enhance Afghanistan's international credibility and attract other international organizations to the country."
Another economic expert, Lal Zazai, said: "It is necessary to establish a mechanism through mutual agreement to align the goals of the Afghan government with those of the Swedish government."
According to information provided by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, the organization operated in 16 provinces of the country in 2023 with approximately 7,000 Afghan employees.
The Islamic Emirate suspended the activities of the Swedish Committee in Afghanistan earlier this year in response to the burning of the Koran in Sweden.
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian reports say Hamas executed six Gazans in Rafah accused of spying for Israel, shot 17 people in the feet for raising prices
Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... operatives reportedly executed several alleged "collaborators" in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Thursday, and a video shared by the popular online media channel Gaza Now showed Hamas button men firing at the men lying on the ground.
Gaza Now, which boasts 1.7 million followers on Telegram, published a video showing more than a dozen Hamas operatives, many of them in uniform, opening fire on three men.
The video was captioned "The moment of punishing the agents of the Zionist occupation who caused the killing of thousands of our Paleostinian people in Gaza."
The graphic video could not immediately be verified.
It came after Paleostinian reports were cited by the Kan public broadcaster Thursday that the terror group had executed six Paleostinians in southern Gaza’s Rafah on suspicion of spying for Israel, and that 17 other Paleostinians, among them merchants, were shot in the feet for allegedly raising prices.
Hamas did not issue an official confirmation of the reports, but the terror group’s police chief told Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... i network Al Jazeera that the group will "beat with an iron fist anyone who does harm to security and order in Gaza."
Hamas has regularly issued death sentence ...the barbaric practice of sentencing a murderer to be punished for as long as his/her/its victim is dead... s for people it says were found guilty of "collaboration" with Israel, executing dozens of Paleostinians in recent years.
Under Paleostinian law, a death sentence requires the approval of the president of the Paleostinian Authority which is headquartered in the West Bank, but Hamas ignores this.
The terror group, which remains the only civil authority in Gaza, has moved to reassert control across the territory since a ceasefire with Israel went into effect last Sunday, after more than fifteen months of war sparked by the terror group’s October 7, 2023 cross-border onslaught in Israel, when thousands of bully boyz killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
[IsraelTimes] Several vessels receive ‘radio challenges,’ which British military unit reports are likely linked to ongoing naval exercises that the Guards launched after Israeli strikes
A warning went out to seafarers in the Persian Gulf on Friday over what appeared to be attempts by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to compel ships to enter Iranian waters, probably explained by the paramilitary’s ongoing naval exercises.
A notice from the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations says that there have been "several incidents involving VHF radio challenges to vessels."
"It is assessed that these are most likely part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ large-scale exercise, Great Prophet XVIII," UKMTO said.
Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has been engaged in an extraordinary two-month-long military exercise across the country after being twice hit by Israel in retaliation for two separate ballistic missile attacks launched by Tehran
Naval units from the IRGC were indeed conducting operations in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz on Friday as part of the exercise, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Earlier, the UKMTO reported an incident involving a vessel 86 nautical miles northeast of Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... . The ship, which was approached by a small military craft flashing a green laser and urged to enter Iranian territorial waters, proceeded to its next port of call.
The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Joint Maritime Information Center, part of a 46-nation naval partnership, said on Friday it had investigated and found there was a possible connection between the incident reported by UKMTO and the Great Prophet 19 exercise.
While Iran has a history of harassing and impounding vessels, it hasn’t directly launched many such attacks recently. Instead, the Iran-backed Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... rebels have been attacking ships since November 2023.
Iranian media has reported a likely IRGC exercise in the Persian Gulf coming this weekend as well.
[IsraelTimes] Netanyahu declares Lebanon ‘has not fully enforced’ terms of November deal, which calls for Lebanese army to deploy south of Litani River as Israel withdraws, Hezbollah pulls north
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel will not complete its full withdrawal from southern Leb ...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration.... by the 60-day deadline set under the ceasefire deal with the Hezbollah terror group.
Under the terms of the November 27 truce agreement that ended the fighting started by Hezbollah, the Israel Defense Forces is required to cede all of its positions in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese Armed Forces by January 26. At the same time, Hezbollah is required to retreat north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the border with Israel.
In the first public confirmation of such a delay, following weeks of speculation, Netanyahu’s office declared in a statement that "the IDF’s withdrawal process is conditional," citing what he said are Lebanon’s and Hezbollah’s obligations under the agreement, though the Iran-backed terrorist organization is not a party to the deal signed between Jerusalem and Beirut.
Netanyahu said that since Lebanon "has not yet fully enforced" its obligations under the ceasefire, "the phased withdrawal process will continue, in full coordination with the United States." The original 60-day deadline was slated for Sunday, January 26.
The prime minister said that the terms of the deal were worded "with the understanding that the withdrawal process may continue beyond 60 days."
The deal’s text says that the withdrawal process "should not exceed 60 days."
In recent weeks, however, Israel assessed that the Lebanese army has deployed too slowly across the region, delaying the IDF’s withdrawal as a result. Israeli soldiers are continuing to find Hezbollah weapons caches in areas covered by the truce, and army officials have reportedly said that Lebanon’s army is in some locations helping Hezbollah.
The Haaretz daily similarly reported Thursday that the US and La Belle France were discussing the requested extension with Israeli and Lebanese officials. The source assessed that La Belle France saw no issue with granting the extension, so long as the other parties were in agreement.
Despite a Hebrew media report suggesting otherwise, the Trump administration on Friday called for a "short, temporary extension" to the 60-day deadline, backing Israel’s stance.
"President Trump is committed to ensuring Israeli citizens can safely return to their homes in northern Israel, while also supporting President Aoun and the new Lebanese government," White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement. "All parties share the goal of ensuring Hezbollah does not have the ability to threaten the Lebanese people or their neighbors. To achieve these goals, a short, temporary ceasefire extension is urgently needed."
"We are pleased that the IDF has started the withdrawal from the central regions, and we continue to work closely with our regional partners to finalize the extension," he added.
The IDF is currently deployed to several villages in southern Lebanon, mostly in the eastern sector. The Lebanese Armed Forces have deployed to villages in the western sector in recent weeks as the IDF has withdrawn.
The Israeli military is preparing for the possibility of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terror group warned Thursday that it would not accept the IDF staying in southern Lebanon beyond the 60-day limit.
Hours after Netanyahu’s announcement Friday, the IDF said that in recent days it carried out strikes in southern Lebanon to "remove threats," and troops have also demolished Hezbollah weapon depots and observation posts.
"The IDF is continuing to operate in accordance with the ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon," the military said. "The IDF remains deployed in southern Lebanon, continues to monitor Hezbollah’s attempts to return to southern Lebanon, and will operate against any threat posed to IDF troops and the State of Israel."
[IsraelTimes] Legislation would create crime of ‘masked intimidation,’ partially in response to anti-Israel protests and antisemitic hate crimes
Legislation that would crack down on masking, a priority for some Jewish groups, was introduced to the New York State legislature on Thursday, after the start of the state legislative session at the beginning of the year.
The legislation, if passed, would establish the crime of "masked harassment" when a person conceals their face "for the primary purpose of menacing or harassing."
Anti-masking legislation was introduced to the state legislature last summer, near the end of the state government’s legislative session, but failed to make it through the legislative process before the session ended. The bill introduced on Thursday differs from the legislation from last year.
State Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, one of the bill’s sponsors, told The Times of Israel he aims to pass the legislation by the end of the next session in June, while acknowledging that there will likely be opposition.
"People generally don’t wear masks for good reasons. We want this to happen this year. There’s going to be opposition, there’s no question," said Dinowitz, a Jewish politician from Assembly District 81 in the Bronx.
"People who wear masks do it for two reasons. One is for intimidation purposes, and two is they want to hide their identity," he said.
"New York state currently faces a new era of masked harassment and intimidation. Individuals who are targeting others with violence and intimidation are using masks and other face coverings as a tool to place their targets in fear of physical harm," the bill says.
The legislation includes exemptions for holidays, celebrations or costumes; physical safety, such as a welder wearing a protective mask; masks for weather, such as for winter sports; artistic or theatrical events; gas masks or protective gear for emergencies or drills; face coverings for religious purposes; and medical masks.
The bill is significantly different from the legislation introduced last year. That bill banned "concealment of identity in a lawful assembly, unlawful assembly, or riot," and had a more narrow set of exemptions. The new legislation does not mention public gatherings.
The new law would make masked harassment a violation, a non-criminal offense, and if the harassment takes place in conjunction with discrimination, it would become a misdemeanor, Dinowitz said.
The legislation would not "affect one particular ethnic group," Dinowitz said, while highlighting harassment against Jews since the start of the war.
"In the past year and three months, but even before then, Jewish people have been probably the largest target of hateful demonstrations and this is meant to combat that, but as I said, it applies to everybody," he said.
Masking has become a divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... focal point in the debate over anti-Israel activism and protests in New York. Some Jewish groups have said agitators conceal their identities to intimidate and harass others, and that masking hinders prosecution for crimes including hate offenses and vandalism. Supporters of masking, including some leftist Jewish organizations, said the ban introduced last year would infringe on civil liberties and pose a health risk.
Jewish and Black community groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP, formed a coalition called UnMaskHateNY last year to support anti-masking legislation. The group announced the effort at a presser in June outside Columbia University, which has been rocked by anti-Israel protests since the start of the Israel-Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... war.
On Tuesday, the first day of class for the spring semester, several masked protesters disrupted a class on Israel’s modern history led by an Israeli professor.
At other anti-Israel protests in New York, demonstrators often conceal their faces, including while committing antisemitic crimes.
"New legislation introduced today will bring back and strengthen a law prohibiting masked intimidation," UnMaskHateNY said in a Thursday statement. "The law pledges to finally protect New Yorkers from unchecked harassment and violence as masks and face coverings have been exploited to subject innocent New Yorkers to threats, violence and intimidation."
The ADL, The UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ...Soros-owned and operated Manhattan DA. Putting vicious and blood-thirsty criminals in jail only makes them unhappy, and they've led such hard lives after all... also backed the legislation.
"This proposed legislation will bring back and strengthen a law prohibiting masked intimidation, not masks, which remain a critical public health tool. Under this law, you can wear a mask for lawful reasons, but not to hide your identity while committing another crime," Bragg said.
A group called Jews for Mask Rights came out against the measure, calling it ineffective and dangerous.
"This vague, subjective ’intent/intimidation’ language makes anyone a potential target. It’s a recipe for unnecessary harm and escalation," the group told The Times of Israel. "Amid the chaos of the current administration and escalating public health threats, this bill strips away fundamental rights, making everyone less safe."
The leftist Jews for Economic and Racial Justice is also opposed the new version of the bill, saying it was "not a serious approach" and focused on legal penalties, instead of more systemic change to combat hatred.
"New Yorkers — especially Jews and all minority groups vulnerable to acts of hate violence — deserve real solutions to the very real and serious issues of harassment and bias incidents," JFREJ told The Times of Israel. "That takes funding and investment in the kinds of programs we know address (a) violence, and (b) hate — but those are not as flashy as hate crimes legislation, and they take time to implement and yield results."
Dinowitz dismissed opposition to the bill as "nonsense," saying there were appropriate exemptions for health, safety and religious concerns, and that it would not infringe on protesters’ rights.
"If anybody has lost a job during the past year or more because of their activities, it might have been because they’ve done something that was particularly egregious, not because they were exercising their First Amendment rights," he said, citing anti-Israel activists who were punished for tearing down posters of Israeli hostages.
"We’ve got to have appropriate laws in effect to both, on the one hand, protect people’s right to participate in protests, but on the other hand, make sure that nobody is infringing on anybody else’s rights or engaging in any hate or discrimination," he said.
New York State had an anti-masking law dating back to the 1800s that was scrapped in 2020, during the COVID pandemic, to help stem the spread of the virus.
That's why. Good to know.
Long Island’s conservative-leaning Nassau County passed a masking ban in response to anti-Israel protests in August. That measure was led by Mazi Pilip, an American-Israeli Republican politician.
Oh? How do American intelligence numbers compare to what Israel’s intelligence services hve discovered?
[IsraelTimes] Sources acknowledge Palestinian terror group’s success in enlisting new members but say many of the recruits are young and untrained; Israel estimates some 20,000 terrorists killed "We need more flaming hoops!"
The Paleostinian terror group Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... has recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 members since the start of its war with Israel, according to two congressional sources briefed on US intelligence, suggesting the Iran-backed fighters could remain a persistent threat to Israel.
The intelligence indicates a similar number of Hamas fighters have been killed during that period, the sources said. The latest official US estimates have not been previously reported.
Hamas and Israel began a ceasefire on Sunday after 15 months of a conflict that began with the terror group’s devastating attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip and inflamed the Middle East.
The sources briefed on the intelligence, which was included in a series of updates from US intelligence agencies in the final weeks of the Biden administration, said that while Hamas has successfully recruited new members, many are young and untrained and are being used for simple security purposes.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
On January 14, then-president Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created ... by the — you know — you know, the thing... ’s secretary of state Antony Blinken ...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm... said the United States believed Hamas had recruited almost as many fighters as it had lost in the Paleostinian enclave, cautioning that this was a "recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war."
He did not provide further details about the assessment, but Israeli figures have put the total terrorist corpse count in Gaza at around 20,000.
"Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas snuffies regroup and reemerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void," Blinken said.
Asked for comment, a Hamas official said he was checking with the relevant parties in the group. Hamas armed wing front man Abu Obeida said in July that the terrorist organization had been able to recruit thousands of new fighters.
In the days since the ceasefire, Hamas has shown itself to be deeply entrenched in Gaza despite Israel’s vow to destroy the terror group. The territory’s Hamas-run administration has moved quickly to reimpose security measures and to begin restoring basic services to parts of the enclave, much of which has been reduced to wasteland in the fighting.
Since the start of the war, American officials have not said publicly how many fighters Washington believes Hamas has lost, only noting that the group has been significantly degraded and has likely lost thousands.
WARNINGS OF A CONTINUED THREAT
US officials have issued similar warnings since the Hamas-led terror onslaught against Israel in October 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 251 taken hostage. More than 46,000 people have been killed in the Israeli assault that followed, according to Hamas health authorities, whose unverified figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
At a congressional hearing in March 2024, then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines said that the war in Gaza would have a "generational impact on terrorism" and that the crisis had already "galvanized violence by a range of actors around the world."
Gathering exact data on Hamas is notoriously difficult because of a lack of verifiable intelligence from inside Gaza and because the terror group’s recruitment and training efforts are fluid. But official US figures show that prior to October 7, 2023, Hamas had anywhere between 20,000 and 25,000 fighters.
Asked on Wednesday about Blinken’s comments, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon acknowledged Hamas’s recruitment efforts but played down the threat.
"We know that Hamas recruits youngsters," Danon said. "But even if they recruit youngsters, they don’t have the weapons or the training facilities. So basically, yes, you can incite those youngsters against Israel, but they cannot become a terrorist, because you cannot equip them with weapons or rockets."
Following the ceasefire, Israeli troops have begun to move back from some of their positions inside Gaza. The second phase of the ceasefire deal could bring about a permanent end to the fighting.
The terms of that phase still need to be negotiated.
In his resignation speech on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, said Hamas had been severely damaged and that most of the group’s military commanders had been killed. But he said Hamas had not been eliminated and the Israel Defense Forces would continue to fight to further dismantle the terror organization.
One of the most difficult issues involved in negotiating the next phases is postwar Gaza’s governance. Some Israeli officials say they won’t accept Hamas staying in power. Hamas so far has not given ground.
Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... ’s national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Sunday that Hamas will never govern Gaza and if it reneges on the deal, Washington will support Israel "in doing what it has to do."
[IsraelTimes] After House approves sanctions bill, source says the court is backing up digital files over fears that Microsoft could stop working with it, and paying salaries 3 months in advance
The International Criminal Court has taken measures to shield staff from possible US sanctions, paying salaries three months in advance, as it braces for financial restrictions that could cripple the war crimes tribunal, two sources said on Friday.
The US House of Representatives voted this month to punish the court for issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister over the military campaign against Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... , which started the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... with its devastating invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The court also issued arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction... and Mohammad Deif, all of whom have since been killed, though the warrant for the latter remains standing as the terror group has yet to confirm his death.
The bill would impose sanctions on any foreigner who investigates, arrests, detains or prosecutes US citizens, or those of allied countries that are not members of the court. That includes Israel, which is not a formal ally of the United States.
While the exact scope of the sanctions and the targets are still unclear, the court is preparing for major financial fallout, the sources, who spoke to Rooters on condition of anonymity, said.
One of the sources said evidence was being backed up due to fears US tech giant Microsoft would have to stop working with the court.
The ICC told Rooters in an email it would not comment on any internal measures that may have been taken to protect the organization and its staff.
The bill’s sponsors said they wanted a vote as soon as possible, which could be next week, but politicians have been busy confirming officials for new US President Donald Trump ...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down... ’s administration.
It will be the second time the court has faced US retaliation as a result of its work. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.
Any banks with ties to the United States, or who conduct transactions in dollars, are expected to have to comply with the sanctions, severely limiting the ICC’s ability to carry out financial transactions.
The 125-member ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression against the territory of member states or by their nationals. The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.
In December, the court’s president, Judge Tomoko Akane, warned that sanctions would "rapidly undermine the court’s operations in all situations and cases, and jeopardize its very existence."
#2
Why is our US government acting in the interests of a foreign country?
Hurting ourselves with stupid, one-sided trade deals is one thing but defending war criminals is another level.
[IsraelTimes] Hamas says it will release Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy; all four were abducted when terrorists stormed IDF’s Nahal Oz surveillance base on Oct. 7, 2023
Israel on Friday evening confirmed the names of four female Israeli hostages who are set to be released by Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... on Saturday, after 477 days in captivity, in the second exchange under a ceasefire deal with the terror group that came into effect on Sunday.
The four hostages, whose names were submitted by Hamas late on Friday afternoon, are Liri Albag, 19, Daniella Gilboa, 20, Karina Ariev, 20, and Naama Levy, 20.
The four are among seven female soldiers kidnapped from the IDF surveillance unit at the Nahal Oz army base during the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023.
One of the kidnapped surveillance soldiers was later rescued alive, and the body of a second one was recovered after she was murdered in captivity.
Of the five remaining surveillance soldiers that were taken hostage, Agam Berger, 21, is the only one not included on the list that Hamas released Friday.
The list of the four soldiers is in partial violation of the ceasefire agreement, which states that female civilians are to be released first, then female soldiers, followed by the elderly and then those who are deemed extremely ill. Israel, however, agreed to receive the four hostages, deciding the breach was not grave enough to collapse the deal.
Outside of the five surveillance soldiers, there are two female civilian hostages from the original list of 33 who are slated to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire deal: Arbel Yehud, 29, and Shiri Silberman Bibas, 33. Bibas’s two sons Ariel and baby Kfir, and her husband Yarden, are also on the list of 33 to be freed.
Israel had conveyed to Hamas that it expected Yehud — who is thought to be held by fellow terror group Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... — to be released this weekend. However,
some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... she was not named by Hamas on Friday. Yehud had been on the list to be released in the only previous hostage-truce deal, in November 2023, but the deal collapsed before the final scheduled group of releases.
Details about the four girls can be read at the link.
[IsraelTimes] State Department to conduct review to ensure funding aligns with Trump’s ‘foreign policy agenda’; humanitarian food programs and military assistance to Egypt also won’t be impacted
The State Department on Friday froze new funding for almost all US foreign assistance, making exceptions to allow humanitarian food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt to continue.
The sweeping order threatened a quick halt to countless projects globally aiding health, education, development, job training and other efforts by the United States, the largest provider of foreign aid. It appears to begin enforcement of a pledge to eliminate aid programs that President Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... judges not to be in US interests.
The order — sent in a cable to US embassies worldwide and obtained by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named — prohibits new government spending, which appears to limit programs to running only as long as they have cash on hand.
Some leading aid organizations on Friday were interpreting the directive as an immediate stop-work order for US-funded aid work globally, a senior aid organization official said. Many would likely cease operations immediately so as not to incur more costs, the official said.
The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The State Department during the freeze will conduct a review of which of the thousands of US aid and development programs can continue. Its order spells out the execution of the aid-freezing executive order Trump signed on Monday.
Friday’s order especially disappointed humanitarian officials by not including any exemptions sparing health clinics and other health programs worldwide from the new funding freeze.
The freeze was necessary to ensure that "appropriations are not duplicated, are effective, and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy," the global cable stated.
Within the next month, standards for a review of all foreign assistance are expected to be set to ensure that it is "aligned with President Trump’s foreign policy agenda."
Within three months, the government-wide review is expected to be completed with a subsequent report to be produced for Secretary of State Marco Rubio ...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration... to make recommendations to the president.
#2
Foreign aid to Israel and Egypt, annually in the billions of $ were set by treaty during the Kissinger years. They have served the purpose of maintaining peace between two former belligerants.
#4
Jimmy *SPIT* Carter's brilliant solution to the middle east problem that was never ours in the first place. Bribe Egypt with billions.
And then, for reasons that are still unclear to everyone, Israel had to get a similar bribe.
If these programs are so critical, let Europe and other nations who think they're important step in and cough up the cash. We have a border and North Carolina to attend to. We're broke from printing money to hand to Ukraine.
#6
And then, for reasons that are still unclear to everyone, Israel had to get a similar bribe.
This followed the Yom Kippur War, which Israel won overwhelmingly, and in fact General Ariel Sharon was well on his way to overrunning Cairo when he was stopped. If Egypt were the only one to get an American payoff in addition to getting the Sinai back from Israel in the usual land-for-peace trade Israel used to offer, the world would agree with Egypt that Israel had lost after all, and the rest of the surrounding nations would recalculate in favour of having America hand them similar wins against the hated Zionist entity in their midst.
As it is, Egypt gets money and arms, but Israel gets enough more that she maintains military superiority. Or at least that’s how I’ve always understood it.
[IsraelTimes] One shot shows Sinwar on battlefield, another shows him in an apartment, looking at a map; terror group confirms deaths of top officials months after Israel said they were killed
The Al Jazeera network on Friday aired unseen footage purporting to show slain Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... leader Yahya Sinwar during different points of the war in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip, some four months after he was killed in a firefight with Israeli troops in the southern city of Rafah.
In one shot published in the report, Sinwar can be seen walking through a battleground with a walking stick, wearing a military vest, and with a blanket covering his body so he cannot be identified from afar.
The footage shows the Hebrew word "north" graffitied on the wall where Sinwar briefly resided, indicating that Israel Defense Forces soldiers had operated in that home before the terror leader arrived there.
Another shot shows Sinwar wearing a polo shirt, walking through a residential apartment and at one point kneeling on the floor with another man, pointing at a map spread out in front of them.
In the report, the Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... i channel also showed what it said was the order Sinwar signed to begin the terror group’s October 7, 2023 onslaught at 6:30 a.m. that day.
They had the footage and said nothing so that they could get footage of the invasion. Such lovely people, all.
The massacre, which sparked over 15 months of war in Gaza, saw some 3,000 Hamas-led bandidosmurderous Moslems burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Israel has long accused Al Jazeera of cooperating closely with Hamas and says that its news hounds in Gaza are operatives of Paleostinian terror groups.
If proof were needed, this proves it even more.
In October, the IDF published documents captured in Gaza that it said proved direct communication and cooperation between the Qatari network and Hamas, as well as documents showing that six active Al Jazeera news hounds were members of terror groups.
The outlet has fiercely denied No, no! Certainly not! Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera is banned from broadcasting from Israel and was recently also suspended by the Paleostinian Authority against the backdrop of the Qatari-based network’s critical coverage of Ramallah’s recent crackdown on terror groups in the West Bank.
Meanwhile,
...back at the dirigible, Cynthia backed into the galley, the barbecue fork held in front of her. Jack! she called. Where the hell are you?... the owner of the house where IDF forces purportedly killed Sinwar said on Friday that his ruined apartment in Rafah has become a macabre tourist attraction for admirers of the terror chief since a fragile hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect on Sunday.
Ashraf Abu Taha said he returned to the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah late on the night of October 17, shortly after Sinwar’s death, to find the ruins of his house mobbed by journalists and residents hoping to get a glimpse of the chair where Israeli drone footage showed Sinwar had been sitting in his final moments.
"I came at 11 o’clock. I was late, and I found people gathered with the journalists, almost thousands. I wondered what was happening. I found that they had come to take photos in the house," Abu Taha said.
In the video, shot right before IDF troops killed him and flattened part of the building, Sinwar — badly maimed, covered in dust and wrapped in a Paleostinian keffiyeh — hurled an object toward the drone. Israelis called it a sign of his weakness but Paleostinians have hailed it a final show of defiance against the more powerful Israeli army.
The chair on which he died has become somewhat of a Paleostinian nationalist symbol, Abu Taha suggested. He and his son have placed the seat and a vest they say was Sinwar’s on top of the ruins of their home.
"People are now saying the neighborhood is not Tal al-Sultan anymore, but it’s Tal al-Sinwar," he said, referring to the name of his neighborhood.
Also Friday, meanwhile, Hamas acknowledged that an Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... last summer eliminated Rawhi Mushtaha, Gaza’s de facto prime minister, along with another top official.
The Israel Defense Forces announced in October 2024 that Mushtaha had been killed in an airstrike on a tunnel in northern Gaza three months earlier, along with Hamas officials Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio in Hamas’s political bureau, and Sami Odeh, the head of Hamas’s "general security mechanism."
The Hamas statement on Friday confirmed the deaths of Mushtaha and Odeh only.
Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas and return the hostages taken on October 7, 2023, saw the military target many of Hamas’s leaders including the shadowy head of its military wing Muhammad Deif in a Gaza airstrike, political chief Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction... in a kaboom in Tehran, both in July last year.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 46,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,000 bandidosmurderous Moslems inside Israel on October 7.
[IsraelTimes] UN envoy Danny Danon officially updates Guterres after Knesset passed legislation last year; UNRWA chief Lazzarini has said agency will ‘stay and deliver’ services where possible
UNRWA, the UN agency for Paleostinian refugees, must end operations and leave all its "premises" in Jerusalem by January 30, Israel’s UN ambassador said Friday, affirming timelines set out in controversial legislation passed last year.
Despite widespread international opposition, Israeli politicians in October passed two bills that essentially bar the UN agency from operating in Israel, and severely curtail its activities in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... and the West Bank.
Without coordination with Israel, it will be almost impossible for UNRWA to work in Gaza or the West Bank, since Jerusalem would no longer be issuing entrance permits to those territories or allowing coordination with the IDF. Israel also currently controls access to Gaza from Egypt, with Israeli forces deployed along the border between them.
The agency has faced criticism from Israel that has escalated since the war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... ’s October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel, including claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly assault.
Israel alleges that more than 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.
Israeli ambassador Danny Danon wrote to United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... chief António Guterres ...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years... on Friday, "UNRWA is required to cease its operations in Jerusalem and evacuate all premises in which it operates in the city no later than 30 January 2025."
UNRWA — short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Paleostine Refugees in the Near East — provides education, health care and aid to millions of Paleostinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... and Syria. It is considered the backbone of humanitarian operations for Paleostinians.
While East Jerusalem has long been an administrative hub for the agency, it also runs schools and health clinics in the sector.
Israel has also passed a law that prohibits contact between Israeli officials and UNRWA, but its parliament has not banned UNRWA from operating in Gaza or the West Bank.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said earlier this month that the agency planned to "stay and deliver" services in areas where it can operate.
But having "no bureaucratic or operational relation," with Israel "makes your operational environment even more challenging," he said.
In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and button men hiding out in UNRWA schools.
BREAKING: New proposed bill in Mississippi would pay $1,000 to bounty hunters for each successful deportation of an illegal that they help facilitate pic.twitter.com/Q312LDoR5W
[X] NEW: Border Czar Tom Homan responds to Catholic outcry over Trump’s deportation operation, calls out the Pope for living behind massive 30 foot walls.
Homan told the Pope to fix the Catholic church before he starts criticizing the United States.
"They have a wall around the Vatican. And if you illegally enter the Vatican, the crime is serious. You'll be charged with a serious crime. Be jailed."
"So he can protect the Vatican where he lives. He can build a wall where he lives, but American people are not allowed that."
"The Pope ought to stick to the Catholic church and fix that. That's a mess."
[AND Substack] New Secret Service Director Sean Curran cleaned house on Friday. Ten senior officials in the agency were told to resign, retire, or face being reassigned. Curran is one of the Secret Service agents who surrounded Trump following the Butler assassination attempt. He is a career Secret Service agent with extensive experience in the Presidential Protective Division.
Curran’s action in making immediate changes to senior leadership in the Secret Service shows decisiveness. It also shows he understands the fundamental challenge that will face all of Trump’s appointees to positions heading law enforcement and intelligence agencies. A leadership change at the top will in and of itself fix nothing. These agencies have to be taken down to the studs and rebuilt.
We have a crisis of competency. The Secret Service demonstrated this to the entire world in Butler. An emotionally disturbed young man with a commonly available rifle and no training of any kind secured an elevated firing position within easy range of the stage on which Trump was speaking — in broad daylight — and nobody did anything about it until after he had come within a hair’s breadth of killing the man who is now President.
Did DEI initiatives play a role in that? Without question. Were there personnel on-site effectively masquerading as Secret Service who had no business being there? Certainly. But the list of failures on the part of the Secret Service on that one day alone is almost endless. A team of randomly selected local men from the surrounding area could have done a better job of protecting Trump than his "protective detail" did.
I suspect a team of middle aged, suburban housewives with the usual exposure to American popular culture (novels, tv shows, movies) could have done a better job.
You don’t get to the point where such catastrophic failures are possible without years of rot. Standards have fallen. People who have no business doing so are serving on details. Training has been so diluted as to be virtually meaningless. During the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life, the Secret Service agent who discovered the would-be shooter fired 6 times from five feet away and could not hit his target. Is there a more basic skill for a member of a protective detail than the use of his firearm?
#2
Curran’s assignment to Trump’s detail likely meant that he was outside the power structure of the organization. The assignment probably wasn’t a punishment, but I surmise that he wasn’t connected to powerful people like Cheatle was. If he was being punished, he would have been assigned Hillary or Michelle.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 13:33
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary on Saturday, putting the South Dakota governor in charge of a sprawling agency that is essential to national security and President Donald Trump's plans to clamp down on illegal immigration.
Republicans kept the Senate working Saturday to install the latest member of Trump's national security team. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was confirmed in a dramatic tie-breaking vote Friday night, joining Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The Senate will next vote Monday evening on Scott Bessent's confirmation as treasury secretary.
Noem, a Trump ally who is in her second term as governor, received some support from Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when it voted 13-2 to advance her nomination earlier in the week. Republicans, who already hold the votes necessary to confirm her, have also expressed confidence in her determination to lead border security and immigration enforcement.
"Fixing this crisis and restoring respect for the rule of law is one of President Trump and Republicans' top priorities," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Friday. "And it's going to require a decisive and committed leader at the Department of Homeland Security. I believe Kristi has everything it takes to undertake this task."
[REMIX] Facing losses, huge debts, and layoffs, Gazprom is now turning to Russian citizens to help it out of its financial woes, writes "Rzeczpospolita."
Gazprom’s management is reportedly demanding that the Kremlin raise gas prices threefold on the domestic market.
Alexey Sakharov, head of Gazprom’s strategic department, spoke about the company’s difficult situation: "The current level of regulated wholesale gas prices in Russia does not ensure the creation of financial resources in sufficient quantities to make the necessary capital investments in the maintenance and development of gas infrastructure in the interests of Russian customers. And this cannot but affect the reliability of gas supplies in the long term," he warned during a meeting of the Council of Experts in the State Duma.
Sakharov argued that the price of gas for Russians must rise to a level that will allow Gazprom to provide gas to all regions and implement investment projects. The company will also have to triple the tariffs for gas transmission for independent producers.
[PM] A Florida Democrat official has been arrested on federal child sex crime charges. Matthew A. Inman, 39, of Orlando, the treasurer of the Orange County Democratic Party, was taken into custody after allegedly sending child sexual abuse material to an undercover law enforcement officer. He expressed interest in boys as young as nine, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the Department of Justice.
According to the complaint, Inman received and saved several videos of adults sexually abusing children on his phone between August and October 2024. He traveled to Las Vegas in October 2024 and began chatting online with an undercover law enforcement officer masquerading as the father of a 9-year-old boy, expressing a desire to meet and sexually assault the alleged child.
The FBI seized Inman's electronic devices while executing a search warrant on his residence. Authorities said Inman allegedly attempted to delete the evidence from his phone, and hid in the attic of his house during the raid, per the release.
Ngo scoop: Matthew A. Inman, the treasurer for the Orange County Democratic Party @OrangeDemsFL in Orlando, Fla., has been federally arrested on child s—x crime charges.
Now what about Pfizer?
[BBC] Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family who controlled it have agreed to pay up to $7.4bn (£6bn) to settle claims regarding its powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin.
The deal represents an increase of more than $1bn on a previous settlement that was rejected in 2024 by the US Supreme Court, according to news agencies AP and Reuters.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Sacklers agreed to pay up to $6.5bn and Purdue to pay $900m.
Oxycontin, often an entryway into harder drugs like heroin, has been blamed for supercharging the deadly opioid crisis in America, and generated billions of dollars for the Sackler family.
The New York Attorney General's office said the agreement would fund support for opioid addiction treatment and prevention across the US.
"We are extremely pleased that a new agreement has been reached that will deliver billions of dollars to compensate victims, abate the opioid crisis, and deliver treatment and overdose rescue medicines that will save lives," Purdue said in a statement.
The deal still needs court approval, and some of the details are yet to be ironed out, but AP said it is among the largest settlements reached in a series of lawsuits by local, state, Native American tribal governments and others seeking to hold companies responsible for the deadly epidemic.
Under President Donald Trump, the federal government is not expected to oppose the new deal, according to AP.
Connecticut attorney General William Tong told Reuters that the settlement would help provide closure to victims of the opioid crisis.
"It's not just about the money," Tong said. "There is not enough money in the world to make it right."
Under the previous rejected plan from last year, the Sacklers would have been granted immunity from lawsuits in exchange for a payment of $6bn.
The current court order blocking lawsuits against Sackler family members is set to expire on Friday, AP said, but a US bankruptcy court judge has been asked to keep it in place throughout February pending final details.
One woman, who has been in recovery for 17 years after becoming addicted to the painkiller following a back injury, praised the deal.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Kara Trainor said: "Everything in my life is shaped by a company that put profits over human lives".
Purdue became a household name in the US as the maker and promoter of OxyContin - a prescription painkiller it promoted as safe, despite being aware it was both highly addictive and widely abused.
Since 1999, a few years after the drug became available, deaths from opioid overdoses surged to tens of thousands annually.
Court filings allege the Sackler family was long aware of the legal risks, and withdrew some $11bn from the company in the decade before its bankruptcy. They stashed much of the money overseas, while using some of it to pay company taxes, making recovery difficult.
[BBC] World leaders, the bosses of the world's biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.
On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.
"Nothing will stand in our way", he declared, as he vowed to end America's "decline".
Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.
While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.
Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.
"Your prerogative" he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of "debanking" many of his conservative supporters.
He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.
In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.
Two worlds colliding, as the 'America First' President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.
It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.
The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.
As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.
Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.
There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.
This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia's war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.
Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.
The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.
The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.
Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President's love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.
But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.
In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.
The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.
The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.
Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.
Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.
Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.
But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.
Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate "wins" for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.
It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.
There is no sign of that happening.
The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar - had top seats at the inauguration this week.
While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.
One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek's high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.
Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump's tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.
Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden's massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.
President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.
[BBC] Train stations were once the centrepieces of many US cities. After decades of neglect, many places are now reviving them in new, creative ways.
The trains don't stop at Union Pacific Depot anymore. So a hotel, the Asher Adams, was built within the former train station in Salt Lake City, Utah, and opened in October 2024. Refreshed with white and gilt detailing and long wooden benches interspersed with plush seats, the resulting space pulls a bit of a mind trick: are you lingering in a lobby or waiting for a train to arrive?
The Asher Adams is just one of a spate of recently restored train stations across the US that are being reclaimed as hotels, restaurants, museums and more.
From the late 1800s through the 1920s, many of the US's railway barons built grand train stations. These palaces not only testify to the "golden age of American railroading", but serve as a reminder of how the rapid growth of rail travel following the US Civil War helped settle the US West and transform the once-largely rural nation to a coast-to-coast collection of cities. As automobiles and, later, planes became more fashionable than trains, many of these railways consolidated or stopped running, leaving these once-bustling centrepieces of urban life empty.
#1
Too bad. Civilized nations have trains. Trains are far more comfortable than airplanes, especially if you only have a couple hundred miles to go. You get to breathe real air instead of recycled airplane air that is full of unhealthy germs. Ordinary seats on just about any train are bigger and more comfortable than airplane seats. You get to watch the scenery from the windows. You don't have the stress that is always found at airports.
Sure, if you're going from LA to New York, you want an airplane. But if you're only going from LA to San Francisco or LA to Las Vegas, a train would be a lot better...if only we had such a train.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 12:59
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#2
Civilized nations have trains
And when they brought them to the third world, the delivers were damned as 'Colonialist'.
The move risks cutting off billions of dollars of life-saving assistance. The United States is the largest single donor of aid globally - in fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion in assistance.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Argentina's president Javier Milei has used his speech to the World Economic Forum to slam 'woke ideology' and condemn Western governments and institutions as being 'colonized' by it.
The Argentine premier took aim at the WEF as he denounced it for promoting 'deeply wrong' ideas around gender ideology, feminism, climate change, mass migration and left-leaning politics in general.
He also singled out the United Kingdom in his wide-ranging speech, implying that it is 'imprisoning citizens for revealing aberrant, truly appalling crimes committed by Muslim migrants that the government wants to hide'.
The rambling speech went on for half an hour and covered topics from the role of the European Union to terror attacks and abortion - but had one recurring theme throughout - the eradication of so-called 'wokeism'.
The 54-year-old argued that what he called the 'woke mind virus' - a term he did not define - is an 'epidemic that must be cured and the cancer that must be eradicated.'
The libertarian leader praised other leaders he sees as likeminded, such as Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele.
'Slowly an international alliance has been formed of all those nations that want to be free and that believe in the ideas of freedom,' he said.
Turning his sights on the Davos conference which he was addressing, Milei said: 'I must say, forums like this one have been protagonists and promoters of the sinister agenda of 'wokeism' that is doing so much harm to the West.'
He told the audience of global business and political A-listers: 'If we want to change, if we want to truly defend the rights of citizens, we first have to start by telling them the truth.
'And the truth is that there is something deeply wrong with the ideas that have been promoted in forums like this one.'
He said 'the mental virus of woke ideology' was 'the great epidemic of our time that must be cured. It is the cancer that must be removed'.
Among other things, he hit out at what he called 'invented' quotas created under the guise of diversity, which he claimed undermine the 'excellence' of public and educational institutions.
His comments on this come after his American ally Trump made good on a campaign pledge to sever diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government and as Mark Zuckerberg's Meta announced the end of such programmes at the company.
Milei also said 'wokeism' was to blame for turning migration policies from those which focused on attracting foreign talent to ones which promote mass migration - 'not by national interest but by guilt.'
He described 'images of hordes of immigrants abusing, raping or killing European citizens' and declared that people did not question this for fear of being 'branded a racist'.
Taking aim at feminist beliefs, he claimed that women are valued more than men and also labelled abortion a 'bloody and murderous agenda'.
He hit out at the use of gender blockers in children, describing it as 'criminal ideology' and saying their victimhood is covered up in 'accusations of homophobia or transphobia and other inventions.'
'In its most extreme versions gender ideology constitutes simply as child abuse,' he argued.
'This is what Wokeism is all about. It is the result of the inversion of Western values,' Milei declared.
'Each of the pillars of our civilization was changed by a distorted version of itself through the introduction of various mechanisms of cultural succession,' he continued.
He concluded his lengthy speech by calling for the restoration of the Western values he felt had been lost.
'Today, just like 215 years ago, Argentina has broken its chains and invites — as our anthem says — all mortals of the world to hear the sacred cry: 'freedom, freedom, freedom',' Milei said.
'May the forces of Heaven be with us. Thank you all very much and long live freedom, dammit!'
[FoxNews] When many were fleeing the California wildfires, Randy Savvy jumped into action and drove into the fires to save endangered horses.
Savvy, founder of the youth advocacy nonprofit group, the Compton Cowboys, has been pivotal in rescuing horses as the California wildfires continue to ravage the state. The organization, whose motto is "Streets raised us. Horses saved us," has been part of a growing coalition to rescue forgotten livestock amid the devastation.
"My first instinct was ‘how do I help?’" he told Fox News Digital. "It's how I am and how I was raised."
He shared that, shortly after offering to help, his phone began to "blow up like crazy." People needed help, and Savvy was there to offer it.
"I rescued six horses the first night," he shared. "The horse community got active so fast to protect those horses."
Savvy drove into a restricted area in Calabasas after a woman called for a helping hand to retrieve her horse.
"All you could see was orange," Savvy said. "I came from Compton to Calabasas, and it took about an hour and a half to get there, and she was ready. And we got those horses loaded up.
"She was so emotional. And I will never forget this."
[FoxNews] Trump signed executive orders to end EV mandates, climate standards
The global climate movement is already feeling the sting of the "Trump effect" after green energy policies were a target of President Donald Trump's first executive orders, according to energy experts who reacted to the president's first week in office.
Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States Monday, signing numerous executive orders aimed at unraveling former President Joe Biden's climate agenda.
"President Trump has not wasted any time to undo Biden’s many climate policies designed to make energy more expensive and less affordable. America and the world can look forward to a brighter future because of the actions that President Trump has started on his first day in office," Myron Ebell, chairman of the American Lands Council, said in a statement.
But Ebell added that "it’s going to be a long, hard fight because of ferocious opposition" from climate groups.
This week, Trump signed an executive order to ax the U.S. climate standards, which aimed to reduce emissions 61-66% by 2035.
Additionally, the president ended the electric vehicle (EV) mandate and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, a legally binding treaty among more than 190 parties committed to international cooperation on climate change.
"President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords is a victory for American workers and families, rejecting policies that prioritize the Chinese Communist Party’s interests over our own," said Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute and a former Texas state representative.
Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress plan on going even deeper on reversing green energy policies enacted over the past four years. Republicans in the House have already introduced legislation to block Biden's climate standards on household appliances
#3
Interesting thought experiment:
What would week 1 of a Harris presidency looked like?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 20:14
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#4
Global Warming/Climate Change is the biggest science scam since the Piltdown Man. Even now, people of the future are laughing at us, the same way we snicker at that Lysenko business and marvel about how things can go so wrong.
The Science is never settled. Feel free to mock anyone telling you otherwise. Especially if it is your government. They are trying to sell you something.
[FOX] Elon Musk’s sense of humor is out of this world.
Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts confused it with an asteroid earlier this month.
A day after the astronomers with the Minor Planet Center registered 2018 CN41, it was deleted on Jan. 3 when they revealed that it was in fact Musk’s roadster.
[NewsMax] Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass' approval rating has tanked in the aftermath of the wildfires that destroyed parts of the city, according to a new independent poll released Friday. One indicator showed "opportunity for new leadership."
The poll, sponsored by Los Angeles-based media firm Madison McQueen, shows that 54% of likely L.A. voters disapprove of Bass' handling of the fires, with 37% approving.
Further, Bass trails fellow Democrat Rick Caruso, whom she defeated in the 2022 mayoral election, by 7 points — 43% to 36% — in a hypothetical rematch in 2026, according to the poll.
"Rather than follow predictable partisan patterns, voters in L.A. are fed up with failure and are demanding more competence from their elected officials," said Owen Brennan, co-founder of Madison McQueen. "Clearly, there is an opportunity for new leadership, new ideas, and new direction for Los Angeles."
Bass is facing intense scrutiny on a number of fronts, most notably for being in Ghana when the fires broke out despite warnings that high winds were coming. Further, fire hydrants ran out of water, the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty when the Palisades Fire broke out, and more than half the city's fire trucks sat idle in disrepair, thanks to Bass' budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department that left it short of mechanics to fix them.
#4
There are California wildfires every year. If they threaten Merced, Fresno, or Copperopolis, not a problem. Bass and Newsom let it burn up the bedroom communities of LA through their own incompetence. They cut maintenance funding for fire stations and delayed basic repairs to reservoir tarps for years. Both of them are so toasted that Kelloggs wants to slather them in frosting and give them a fruit filling enema.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 12:07
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[TCW] ONE of the most infuriating things in politics is when leaders accuse voters of ’misinformation’ while simultaneously hiding information from them.
You see it all the time. On mass immigration. On crime. And, as we’ve recently been reminded, on the rape-gangs scandal.
Such is the disdain and contempt with which politicians and civil servants treat ordinary people that rather than be transparent, open, and honest about the information they have, they either conceal it or refuse to collect it.
Some days ago, for example, the Home Office refused to publish information about the number of utterly depraved rape-gang members who have been deported, a policy that was first advocated here.
At the same time, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government have refused to hold a national inquiry into the shocking rape gangs which would yield crucial new information about what is a truly national scandal, especially in areas that have so far escaped scrutiny, no doubt because Labour MPs are terrified about what such an inquiry might find has been going on (is still going on?) in many Labour-held areas.
What all this reflects is a concerted attempt by the elite class, by the British state, to conceal information and data which might challenge or completely undermine what we might call the ’Officially Approved Narrative’. The narrative which tells you mass immigration is only ever positive, multiculturalism is working just fine, and the people who are imposing these things on everybody else know exactly what they’re doing.
But do they? Do they really? No, suggests a damning new study, the first major investigation of immigration and crime which has tracked down crucial information.
Based on freedom-of-information requests submitted to dozens of police authorities, many of which were sitting on lots of information but refusing to release it, the findings, compiled by the Centre for Migration Control, make grim reading.
Look away now if you are of the ’diversity is our strength’ mindset. Here are the key findings which underline what is really happening on Britain’s streets:
Foreign nationals in Britain are more than three times as likely to be arrested for sexual offences as British citizens;
9,055 foreign nationals were arrested for sexual offences in the first ten months of last year across England and Wales;
This works out at a rate of 164.6 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 48 per 100,000 for British people, in other words three and a half times more;
In London, foreign nationals account for two-thirds(67 per cent) of all sex offence arrests.
For all crimes, foreign nationals were arrested at twice the rateof Brits;
Overall, more than 131,000 foreign nationals were arrested in the first ten months of last year;
While foreigners make up 9 per cent of the population, they account for 16.1 per cent of the total number of arrests;
Albanians were the most likely to be arrested, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalians. There were 48 nationalities with a higher arrest rate per 1,000 of their populations than British suspects;
Weighted for their respective populations, Albanians had the highest arrest rate at 209.8 arrests per 1,000 of their population followed by Afghans (106.9), Iraqis (92.9), Algerians (72.7), Moroccans (70) and Somalis (64.6). The rate for British suspects was just 12.
We are writing to give you an update regarding the status of Tom's pardon situation. Please read the information below written by Tom's awesome attorney, David (Dave) W. Fischer.
To the loyal supporters of Tom and Sharon Caldwell:
Tom has not been pardoned. On Monday, President Trump issued blanket pardons for virtually all previously convicted J6 defendants, ordered the Department of Justice to seek dismissal in all pending J6 cases, and "commuted" the sentences for 14 defendants, including Tom. The commutation ended all prison time for these remaining 14 defendants, all of whom were tried either in the two Oath Keeper trials or the Proud Boys trial. As Tom was just sentenced to time-served (53 days) and a $100 fine, the President's commutation has no impact other than to prevent the Government from appealing Tom's sentence (in federal court, the prosecution has the right to appeal a sentence as being too lenient).
We are unsure as to why Tom was not pardoned, as he is first among equals in deserving such relief. My surmise is that President Trump wants the appeals process to play out with the hope that an appellate court rules that there was no "seditious conspiracy" that took place on J6. Another surmise is that President Trump plans to pardon the remaining defendants, but did not do so in an effort to stem negative news coverage on the first day of his term. I seriously doubt that the President or his legal team have fully studied Tom's case.
Accordingly, I will be filing an appeal on Tom's behalf next week to challenge his technical conviction as to the felony of evidence tampering. Tom's "crime" was literally deleting a Facebook thread with another J6er. Tom's judge characterized our request to grant judgment of acquittal on this charge as a "close case." In other words, the Government's evidence was very weak, but strong enough that a "rational jury"—made up of D.C. progressives--could vote "guilty." That's why he punished Tom less severely than a speeder in traffic court. Also, I will be organizing a media blitz next week to get Tom's story back in the news so that President Trump is aware that Tom deserves a pardon.
In short, the legal fight for Tom and Sharon is not close to being resolved. In addition to the appeal, the Caldwells are facing separate civil suits filed by Soros-linked progressive law firms. We are dealing with evil people. Once again thank you for your prayers and financial support.
Dave David W. Fischer, Esq. , Fischer & Putzi, P.A, Empire Towers, Suite #1007, 7310 Ritchie Hwy,. Glen Burnie, MD 21061
Thank you for sticking with us! We will prevail. Sharon & Tom Caldwell
Note to Mods. This is an email sent to me from Caldwell's attorney. I linked the site for Caldwell because there is no other link. The saveourfarm site has a request for donations. I know this is not permitted on Rburg. Please edit as necessary.
We occasionally allow it for extraordinary causes, my dear. Thank you for your delicacy in asking for permission. And now excuse me while I go explore the linked website.
— tw for the moderators
Posted by: The Walking Unvaxed ||
01/25/2025
08:40 ||
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[11162 views]
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#3
Ref #1: The American people need to know the truth. Discovery must proceed regardless of the pardons. I doubt all the rats managed to get pardons and sworn testimony under oath must pass the burden of truth, pardon or no pardon.
#4
All these evil judges and bureaucrats remind me of the two elders 13.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 12:23
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#5
All judges serve based on "good behavior". Deliberately ignoring a legal pardon by the President of the United States is not "good behavior". Those judges who think they are more important than the President and don't have to follow the lawful orders coming from the office should be immediately dismissed. It would go a long way toward correcting judicial overreach.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/25/2025 18:08
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#6
Two elders in Daniel 13.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 20:18
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[YouTube] White Englishman from UK Independence Party (Tim Coney ?) disrupting Socialist Worker Party events with a bullhorn, Great Britain News reporter challenges Green Peace office about one of their direct actions at a private home.
[LA Times] Los Angeles is being investigated, pilloried and derided over the horrific loss of life and property in the 2025 fires. Certainly, Mayor Karen Bass, the City Council and the county Board of Supervisors, and many of their recent predecessors, have not convinced the world that L.A. is a governable city.
Fire preparedness isn’t the only problem. In recent years, Los Angeles has been losing residents right and left. Census data show that its poverty rate is among the highest in the state, and that it’s in the top 10 nationwide. South L.A., roughly the area between the 10 Freeway south to the city boundary, locale of two of the worst riots in U.S. history, is now poorer in relation to the rest of Los Angeles than it was before those upheavals — the Watts riots, in 1965, and the Rodney King unrest in 1992. The city and county of Los Angeles has the second-highest unhoused population in the U.S., behind New York, and yet L.A. builds far less new housing than almost every other large "metro." It has a deepening budget hole.
The news is far better if you look at smaller cities in the county: Downey, Lakewood, South Gate, Cerritos, Bellflower and Paramount. As you drive through downtown neighborhoods toward these southeastern suburbs, you’re likely to encounter broken pavement, battered buildings, empty storefronts and sidewalks crowded with vendors and food stalls reminiscent of the developing world. But just past the city limits, the reality changes.
#1
...If the Usual Suspects there don't get their heads out muy pronto, the big finish will be the '28 Olympics - billions programmed for it, likely massive scars remaining from the fire (and likely little or NO rebuilding), the Unhoused(TM), and nightmarish crime levels mean people will pretty much stay away...and all of that while GOV Hairgel is fighting for a Presidential nomination.
#2
The Olympics are just another California money laundering enterprise. They will lose money, but a bunch of favored folks will make bank through the process.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 12:30
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#4
Too many LA voters get their news from TV or the LA Times, if they get any news at all. Recent indications are that the LA Times owner wants an unbiased approach in his newsroom. We'll see.
I won't argue whether LA can be properly governed or not but it is certainly not being properly governed by Mayor Bass. Rick Caruso is waiting in the wings and a movement to recall Bass is underway. We'll see.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 14:20
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#5
Just on general observation, I really suspect there is a maximum size population in which you can attain reasonable city government, after which it does become unmanageable.
#2
Very much enjoyed watching that POS mayor get her mic yanked practically mid diatribe. The game has changed and it's glorious to watch Dems not know what to do.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/25/2025 10:20
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#3
If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd have an obvious explanation for the strange insistence of California's bureaucracy to legally ban property owners from going to their property for weeks and months (@ 3:00+).
The bureaucracy would unofficially lure squatters to the area, who would erect irregular shantytowns over the next weeks and months.
The police would enforce the emergency powers bans on owners but wouldn't act against the squatters.
The owners would sell their de facto expropriated land to connected developers.
The connected developers would construct climate friendly high density housing, or whatever the bureaucracy wanted.
But since I's not a conspiracy theorist I don't actually have any explanation for their strange insistence.
</sarc>
#4
Trump is requiring two things:
1. Open up the water
2. Voter ID
The politicians could claim that they are getting a shakedown, but eventually, the recalls will roll them up and Trump will make the same deal with their replacements.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 11:57
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#4, Super Hose, they need the money. They've squandered all of their money on high speed rail to nowhere and luxury apartments for hobos. Trump is putting the squeeze on them. If they don't make the deal with Trump, voters will turn on them. But if they implement Voter ID, it'll be a lot harder for them to rig elections and they'll end up losing their jobs anyway. This is gonna be fun...for some of us anyway.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 13:34
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[Red State] In an interview with Russian state television Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised U.S. President Donald Trump, calling him a "clever and pragmatic man," and signaled a willingness to negotiate on a variety of issues.
He also seemingly agreed with Trump that the war in Ukraine might not have ever started if Trump had stayed in office in 2020 and Joe Biden hadn’t come along to royally screw things up.
"We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current U.S. president," Putin said. "I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided."
Putin’s statement was his bluntest endorsement yet of Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election.
Two things come to mind about the above statement—1) Putin is trying to suck up to Trump, and 2) He’s certainly not above trying to sow division in the United States and knows very well that the 2020 election still causes emotions to run high.
[Federalist] On his first day in office, President Trump did the country a great service by issuing an executive order rejecting birthright citizenship as a requirement of the 14th Amendment.
Whether Trump’s order will withstand the legal challenges remains to be seen (a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the order on Thursday). But the challenges themselves will force a reckoning on this issue, perhaps even at the Supreme Court.
Such a reckoning is overdue. For far too long we have accepted without question the outlandish idea that every single person born on U.S. soil automatically becomes an American citizen, and that the 14th Amendment somehow mandates this suicidal policy.
I’m not going to do a deep dive into the legal arguments for why the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause doesn’t grant automatic citizenship to everyone born on U.S. soil (for that, see here, here, here, here, here, and here). Suffice to say, it wasn’t until about the middle of the 20th century, amid massive upheavals in American life, that the notion of "birthright citizenship" was adopted — over and against how we had understood the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause since it was adopted in 1868.
Briefly, the legal argument is this: to acquire citizenship, the 14th Amendment requires a person to be born in the United States and be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which means you owe your total allegiance to the United States alone and not some foreign power. In other words, the children of illegal immigrants, or those here on a temporary basis, were not American citizens. That’s what the drafters of the 14th Amendment said at the time and that’s how the Supreme Court understood it when ruling on 14th Amendment-related cases in the decades following ratification.
#1
"the 14th Amendment requires a person to be born in the United States and be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which means you owe your total allegiance to the United States alone and not some foreign power."
Nop it doesn't mean that. If this were so the framers wouldn't have to specifically mention diplomats and their families in the category of aliens who'd be excluded. All aliens would be included, and status of "illegal immigrant" did not exist back then.
And yes, my daughter, who is a U.S. citizen, just sent me this: This interpretation would also exclude ALL (lawful) aliens in the U.S. It would even excluse U.S. citizens with double nationality (which she has), as there's some allegiance to foreign nations involved.
It would even exclude naturalized American citizens who come from countries that don't allow you to renounce citizenship (i.e. Argentina).
My daughter has read up on the framing of the 14th Amendment and she would give you an earful if you were to discuss this with her. If you want I can give you details.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/25/2025 9:03
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#2
She sounds like a delight to parent, European Conservative, and a benefit to whichever of her countries she ends up settling in when she’s grown.
All this argument is healthy mental exercise while we await the result of President Trump’s executive order — and probably a subsequent law passed by Congress after the Supreme Court rules against the EO as being an inadequate tool for the purpose.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the end it will indeed require amending the 14th Amendment to get the Supreme Court to agree, and possibly it will take years to accomplish, to be finally consummated sometime in President JD Vance’s second term, or President Barron Trump’s. ;-)
If so, at least the process is being started, because this is as important to resolve as Roe v. Wade, which also went untouched for generations until President Trump got the ball rolling.
#6
We lived, worked and employed people in the U.S. for quite some years. Legally, of course.
"subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which means you owe your total allegiance to the United States alone and not some foreign power.
From what I've read about the history of the 14A, that was a dissenting view. I'll have more on that subject later (my daughter sent me some sckientific research on this), starting with the Virginia citizenship statute of 1783 that said that "all free persons born within the territory of this Commonwealth shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth."
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/25/2025 11:40
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#7
We lived, worked and employed people in the U.S. for quite some years. Legally, of course.
#8
We seriously considered to stay and already had a path to citizenship. Then a business opportunity came up in Germany which was to good to ignore, and here we are.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/25/2025 11:48
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#13
The EO will be struck down. Although there can be much debate about the intentions of the folks who enacted the 14th Amendment, there shouldn’t be much debate about the fact that the framers knew that situations would change and the Constitution should have an amendment process. In the current situation we have poor pregnant illegals invading our countries to birth citizens that immediately go on welfare. We also have rich pregnant foreigners visiting our country temporarily for the purposes of creating dual citizens that not or may not share American values. How many Soros’s and Bin Ladin’s qualify for US citizenship?
Unfortunately, Congress is broken so the Amendment will have have to go to the states. More than likely, Trump already has one drafted. I expect to see it on ballots this fall.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 12:44
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#14
"The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/25/2025 13:07
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#15
There are enough Trump supporters in every state to get it on the ballot for the fall. It will be ratified by at those 31 immediately which starts the clock. Don’t assume that states like New Hampshire and Virginia won’t vote for it as well. If there is a Hamas style attack in the US in the meantime, it will pass unanimously. Also, only motivated people vote in off year elections. MAGA folks are highly motivated by immigration issues.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 13:28
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#16
Don’t assume that states like New Hampshire and Virginia won’t vote for it as well.
Voters, unlike politicians, rely on common sense.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 14:10
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#17
So are the Latinos who work above the table and Blacks who may not necessarily be Go Trump! but understand that this massive illegal influx directly negatively impacts their financial prospects. Basically, the Turnstile Jumpers. It is the same grocery aisle of those who hire out handicapped people to get the fast track at amusement parks with the connection I pay for it.
According to The Law, if I want to buy a new pair of shoes for my children it is considered optional, but if I don't pay my taxes which pays for Anchor Babies, I get my door kicked down. That is immoral.
[Zero] The Trump State Department on Friday halted spending on almost all foreign aid grants for 90 days, which also appears to apply to funding for military assistance to Ukraine, Politico reports.
The guidance, issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was sent to all diplomatic and consular posts, and orders all department staffers to issue "stop-work orders" on nearly all "existing foreign assistance awards."
It appears to go further than President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which instructed the department to pause foreign aid grants for 90 days pending review by the secretary. It had not been clear from the president’s order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid.
The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance. -Politico
Rubio also outlined the Trump administration's stance on spending, saying "Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions," Rubio wrote. The questions: Does the action make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?
The new order reportedly shocked State Department officials.
[Unz] The future of humanity is being decided as we speak. And it is not being decided on a battlefield in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East or the Taiwan Strait, but in the data centers and research facilities where technology experts create "the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of Artificial Intelligence." This is a full-blown, scorched-earth free-for-all that has already racked up a number of casualties though you wouldn’t know it from reading the headlines which typically ignore recent ’cataclysmic’ developments. But when President Trump announced the launching of a $500 billion AI infrastructure project (Stargate) on Tuesday just hours after China had released its DeepSeek R1—which "outperforms its rivals in advanced coding, math, and general knowledge capabilities"—it became painfully obvious that the battle for the future ’is on’ in a big way. And this is not a battle that either side can afford to lose. Here’s how technology expert Adam Button summed it up:
Imagine we’re back in 2017 and the iPhone X was just released. It was selling $999 and Apple was crushing sales and building a wide moat around its ecosystem.
Now imagine, just days later, another company introduced a phone and platform that was equal in every way if not better and the price was just $30.
That’s what unfolded in the AI space today. China’s DeepSeek released an opensource model that works on par with OpenAI’s latest models but costs a tiny fraction to operate. Moreover, you can even download it and run it free (or the cost of your electricity) for yourself.
#2
I don’t do TikTok because I’m not keen to let CCP programmers root around my devices and information at the behest of their CCP masters. I wouldn’t play with a CCP artificial intelligence for the same reason. Since I’m not clever enough to harden my stuff against them, I prefer just to stay away. I avoid Android devices for similar reasons, which may be shutting the barn door after the horse escape, but it I’m at least not giving up without a fight.
[Bureau of Investigative Journalism] Journalists including a TBIJ reporter have won an appeal to name the judges who oversaw the family court proceedings relating to the care of Sara Sharif before she was murdered.
Bottom line is a habitually violent Pakistani father, a mentally disabled mother, a girl child with learning disabilities who had been physically and mentally abused and/or neglected her entire ten years of life, and a child services system that took her and her older brother from their mother and gave them to the father despite his record. Many reports that the girl was abused over the years, but she was left in the home where Dad ended up murdering her with the help of his current wife.
The landmark ruling, handed down by three court of appeal judges, represents a defence of open justice and a recognition of the media’s role in scrutinising decisions made by the courts.
It comes ahead of new transparency rules being rolled out across family courts in England and Wales after the success of a two-year reporting pilot.
The ban on naming the judges was imposed by Mr Justice Williams at a high court hearing in December. The judge permitted the release of dozens of documents relating to the welfare of 10-year-old Sara, who was placed in the care of her father and stepmother. They were jailed for her murder last month.
However, he also said the media could not name three circuit judges who had overseen the family proceedings — as well as other third parties including social workers guardians — due to the risk of harm from a "virtual lynch mob".
At an appeal hearing earlier this month, it was argued that this "unprecedented" order could not be justified.
On Friday, the court of appeal ruled that anonymising the judges was "misguided" and that Williams made the order without any legal basis.
In a judgment, master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos wrote: "In the circumstances of this case, the judge had no jurisdiction to anonymise the historic judges either on 9 December 2024 or thereafter. He was wrong to do so."
The ban will be lifted in seven days, giving the judges time to prepare themselves and for any protective measures to be put in place.
[FoxBusinessNews] If passed, the legislation would create the Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program
Matthew Barton, a Mississippi district attorney, is proposing a bill that would pay bounty hunters for assistance in deporting illegal immigrants.
Under the terms of House Bill 1484, the state would create the Mississippi Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program, which would pay a $1,000 reward to registered bounty hunters for each successful deportation they facilitate.
"This legislation is about keeping Mississippi communities safe," said Republican state Rep. Justin Keen, who authored the bill.
"We’ve seen firsthand the danger posed by bad actors and violent criminals who enter this country illegally, like the innocent life of Laken Riley," he added. "President Trump’s administration has made it clear that deporting illegal immigrants is a priority, and we are proud to do our part here in Mississippi to help support his agenda and protect our citizens."
Funding for the proposed program would come from the general assembly and be administered by the state treasurer.
The intention, Keen said, is to encourage collaboration between law enforcement and private citizens in identifying illegal immigrants in the state. It would also alleviate financial burdens on Mississippi taxpayers, who bear the costs of illegal immigration, a press release states.
The bill comes as the Trump administration continues to tout tougher policies to combat illegal migration into the United States, as well as crime. Federal immigration authorities have made hundreds of arrests this week of illegal immigrants with criminal histories.
"When President Trump took office this week, he immediately recognized the emergency at our borders, rolling out executive orders to combat illegal immigration and cartels," DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton said in a statement. "This legislation builds upon that foundation, empowering local leaders and communities to support federal efforts in protecting our citizens."
"Legal immigration is a cornerstone of America, and we must ensure that our borders are secure and that the safety of Mississippians comes first," Barton continued
#2
I can already see the STAGED scenario.
Where the Open Borders type film a video acting like Bounty Hunters. They post a staged video of a detention of a Hispanic looking female and baby. Then release her and her baby per the video written script, after she proves they are US Citizens.
[FoxNews] 80 people have been killed and around 36,000 more displaced in the past week
Colombia’s president issued a decree Friday giving him emergency powers to restore order in a coca-growing region bordering Venezuela that has been wracked in recent days by a deadly turf war among dissident rebel groups.
President Gustavo Petro's decree, which can be extended, gives him 90 days to impose curfews, restrict traffic and take other steps that would normally violate Colombians' civil rights or require congressional approval.
It is the first time in more than a decade that a Colombian president has used such an extreme measure and underscores the seriousness of the current conflict in a country that for decades was paralyzed by political violence.
However, it applies only to the rural Catatumbo region near the border with Venezuela, where the Colombian state has struggled for decades to gain a foothold. In the past week, at least 80 people have been killed and an estimated 36,000 more displaced as fighting intensifies between the National Liberation Army, or ELN,
… Marxist-Leninist liberation theology guerrilla group established in Columbia in the 1960s that expanded into Venezuela. In Columbia they’re a revolutionary narco gang with political aspirations (I know, right?) fighting for territory against other narco gangs, while in neighbouring Venezuela they’re a paramilitary supporting the Maduro government. It is currently estimated to be about 6,000 members …
and holdouts from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Petro's conservative opponents have criticized the move, accusing the former guerrilla of riding roughshod over the constitution. But some activists have celebrated it, saying they are hopeful the move translates into better infrastructure, health care and schools in the traditionally lawless region.
"Why are the armed groups here? Because the last government hasn't made investments. They've abandoned us," Jaime Botero, an activist in the town of Tibu, told The Associated Press.
Earlier this week Petro reactivated arrest orders against 31 top ELN commanders that had been suspended as part of an effort to woo the the Cuban revolution-inspired insurgency into a peace deal to end its 60 year war against the state. Petro also suspended all peace talks, which have advanced slowly since he took office in 2022.
The ELN has traditionally dominated in Catatumbo but has been losing ground to holdouts from the FARC, a guerrilla group that largely disbanded after signing a peace deal in 2016 with the government.
The current conflict is spilling across the border into Venezuela, where some of those fleeing the violence have sought refuge.
The current whereabouts of the ELN peace negotiators is unknown. But Cuba's government this week said they are not there, leading some to speculate they may be hiding in Venezuela, which is one of the sponsors of Petro's peace initiative with the ELN.
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 22.41 The Verkhovna Rada's profile committee, after detaining generals and officers suspected of negligence due to which the enemy was able to seize part of the Kharkiv region, recalled combat immunity and the exemption of military personnel from criminal liability during martial law. This is stated in a message published on Facebook by the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence.
22.23 Russian "shahids" have thousands of foreign components. Their supply must be stopped. This was stated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his video address published on Facebook, commenting on the shelling of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.
21:45 The Russian army is preparing a massive shelling of Kherson and its suburbs on January 25. This was stated by the head of the Kherson OVA Oleksandr Prokudin on his Telegram channel on Friday, January 24.
20:03 Russian troops in the Kursk region, despite their numerical superiority, are retreating from their positions under pressure from the Defense Forces. This was reported by the head of the Central Dispatch Center Andrey Kovalenko on Friday, January 24.
In fact, at present, the Russian-Korean forces retain an advantage in the number of personnel, but due to the terrain features, as well as the loss of equipment and people, the enemy's pace of movement was slowed and the original plans were disrupted.
19:28 Russians continue their assaults in the Kharkiv region to gain control over Borova, as well as break through to Oskol and create a bridgehead for a further offensive in the direction of Kharkiv. This was reported by the deputy commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, Maksim Zhorin, in Telegram on Friday, January 24.
19:09 Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that about 450 thousand people signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry in 2024, and more than 40 thousand Russians joined volunteer formations. This was reported by Russian media on Friday, January 24.
Recently, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrsky, reported that the total losses of Russian troops in 2024 amounted to more than 434 thousand personnel .
None of them are going to father any more babies, to Russia’s detriment.
18:39 Russian troops are attacking Kharkov with drones on the evening of January 24, one hit has been recorded, preliminarily, in the private sector of the Osnovyansky district of the city. This was reported by Mayor Igor Terekhov on Friday, January 24.
17.33 In the Sumy region, three people were injured as a result of an attack by Russian drones on civilian vehicles.
During the day, the occupiers attacked, according to preliminary data, two vehicles with civilians moving through the territory of the Miropol community of the Sumy district with FPV drones. As a result of the attack, the driver of the car was injured.
The Russians subsequently attacked another vehicle with a drone, injuring two civilian men.
16:41 China welcomes US President Donald Trump's intentions to end the "Ukrainian crisis." This was stated by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning at a briefing. She assured that Beijing will continue to provide assistance on the path to negotiations and is ready to maintain contact with any party.
16:10 Law enforcement officers conducted more than a thousand simultaneous searches throughout Ukraine in order to block channels for the illegal sale and storage of weapons and ammunition. The National Police seized more than 800 weapons and 57 kg of explosives. 67 suspects were detained.
15.50 The Security Service's military counterintelligence exposed an FSB agent who wanted to launch a missile strike by the Russian Federation on one of Ukraine's military institutes. The enemy's henchman turned out to be a cadet who studied at the institution and collaborated with the Russians for the promise of a monetary reward. The traitor was detained when she tried to escape from a restricted facility.
15.41 Drones attacked and damaged an aircraft repair plant in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh Oblast. The Russians said that "the roof of one of the workshops and the boiler room" were damaged by "falling debris," and there were no casualties.
15:30 Russia has no right to issue ultimatums to NATO and demand that it cancel the promise made in Bucharest regarding Ukraine's accession to the Alliance. This was written by the spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Georgiy Tykhyi, on the social network H.
Earlier today, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that Ukraine's potential membership in NATO allegedly "prevents the achievement of peace in Ukraine and, in a broader sense, the creation of any security architecture."
15:22 On the occasion of Foreign Intelligence Day of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky presented the military with state awards and the flag of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and also awarded them the military rank of brigadier general. This was reported by the press service of the head of state.
14.59 Three Viber channel administrators who were obstructing mobilization were exposed in Lviv Oblast. This was reported by the SBU press service. The group members were distributing information online about the locations where draft notices would be served to conscripts.
14.31 The bodies of 757 fallen defenders have been returned to Ukraine as a result of repatriation activities. This was reported by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Law enforcement investigators, together with expert institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will establish the identities of the deceased as soon as possible.
14.23 The Russian army is trying to encircle Pokrovsk from the south and north, but the occupiers' plans are failing. The hostile plan is still far from being realized. This was reported by Viktor Tregubov, a representative of the Khortitsa operational-strategic group of troops, on Friday, January 24.
13:55 Journalists and volunteers have established 1,964 new names of Russian soldiers killed during the war of conquest in Ukraine in two weeks. Their total number has reached 90,019, the BBC reports . Currently, the largest number of Russian citizens killed in the war against Ukraine has been recorded in Bashkortostan - 3,932 people.
13:18 The Ukrainian Airborne Assault Troops showed the destruction of a column of Russian equipment in the Kursk region. The footage shows the work of units of the 82nd separate Bukovina Airborne Assault Brigade.
12:09 Russian troops shelled the village of Zelenovka in the Kherson region on the night of January 24, as a result of which several trucks were destroyed, private houses and electrical networks were damaged. This was reported by the head of the Kherson GVA Roman Mrochko on Friday, January 24.
11:59 A 30-year-old volunteer from Austria has died in the battles for Ukraine. This was reported by the local publication Östrerreich, citing the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
The first to report the death of the Austrian volunteer was his Ukrainian girlfriend in a post on Instagram. She posted a photo of the deceased Richard S., who was supposed to have celebrated his 30th birthday just two weeks ago.
It is noted that the Austrian volunteer died during a drone attack.
10:55 The strategic plant Kremniy EL in the Russian city of Bryansk has suspended operations after a drone attack. This was reported by TASS with reference to the press service of the enterprise on Friday, January 24.
10:32 The aggressor country Russia would not have been able to fight if the ability of Russian allies to assist this terror had been truly limited. President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote this on Facebook, reacting to the night attack of Russian drones on the Kiev region. Houses were damaged in Brovary and Glevakha. The death toll has risen to three people. The rescue operation has been completed.
9:33 On the night of January 24, air defense forces shot down 25 attack drones in the Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytsky and Lviv regions.
As a result of the attacks in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, there are casualties and fatalities. Apartment buildings, private houses and cars were damaged.
9:12 In the Lviv region, as a result of falling debris from a downed Russian Shahed drone, a residential building and a car were damaged. This was reported by the head of the Lviv OVA Maksym Kozytsky. According to him, this night the Lviv region was attacked by four enemy combat drones. Air defense soldiers and mobile fire groups worked 100%. All enemy targets were destroyed.
8:48 Over the past 24 hours, aviation, missile forces and artillery of the Defense Forces hit 19 areas of concentration of personnel, weapons, military equipment and two artillery systems of the Russians. This was reported on January 24 by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Over the past 24 hours, 125 combat clashes between the Defense Forces of Ukraine and the Russian invaders were recorded on the front.
8:19 On the night of January 24, the Russians shelled the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region 5 times. Enterprises, residential buildings, a store and power lines were damaged. This was reported by the head of the OVA Serhiy Lysak.
7:50 Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed 1,500 Russian occupiers. The total combat losses of the enemy from 02/24/22 to 01/24/25 were approximately 826,820 people. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
7:23 On the night of January 24, 121 drones attacked 11 regions of Russia, Moscow and occupied Crimea . All drones were allegedly destroyed. This was reported by the Russian Defense Ministry. It is noted that the air defense allegedly shot down 37 drones over the Bryansk region, 20 over the Ryazan region, 17 each over the Kursk and Saratov regions, seven over the territory of the Rostov region, six each over the territory of the Moscow and Belgorod regions, three over the territory of the Voronezh region, two each over the territory of the Tula, Lipetsk and Oryol regions. One over Moscow. Another over occupied Crimea.
The fear of long-range stealth cruise missile attacks targeting missile site entrances necessitates the construction of robust layers of defense. Here, for instance, 2 Iranian missile sites are equipped with effective passive defense layers. Each entrance is protected by a 1/9 pic.twitter.com/SY4Zz7ARsd
Text:
The fear of long-range stealth cruise missile attacks targeting missile site entrances necessitates the construction of robust layers of defense.
Here, for instance, two Iranian missile sites are equipped with effective passive defense layers. Each entrance is protected by a 5-meter-thick reinforced concrete gate, with an additional 5-meter-thick reinforced concrete barrier in front of it, resulting in a total of 10 meters of reinforced concrete protecting the main entry points.
The additional layer might also serve as a shock obstacle to less accurate but super strong shock waves from bunker buster bombs. Another strategy to defend against such attacks on missile or other underground site entrances can be observed in this sat image.
Here in Iran, long & fortified entrance extensions have been constructed to protect the main entrances, providing an additional layer of security and resilience! Note, that there are further protective measures inside entrances!
The importance of such heavily hardened defense layers becomes clear when examining the performance of American stealth cruise missiles, such as the JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) with penetrating capability. These missiles have demonstrated the ability to penetrate and destroy fortifications & entrances even at angles as steep as 90 degrees.
Among the most significant conventional threats to Iranian ground installations, such stealth cruise missiles pose a particular danger to the entrances of Iranian missile sites.
However, Iranians have implemented measures to rapidly clear and reopen damaged entrances when necessary. Above-ground installations, however, face a great threat, prompting Iran to relocate many critical assets underground.
The stealth capabilities of cruise missiles allow them to operate at high altitudes, maximizing their range without expending energy through low-altitude maneuvers Their warheads, typically weighing at least 450 kilograms, are highly explosive and paired with advanced fusing technology, ensuring devastating effectiveness against targeted structures.
Posted by: badanov ||
01/25/2025
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[11147 views]
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#1
Iranians have implemented measures to rapidly clear and reopen damaged entrances
What have they done to harden the air exchange systems?
Syria's Ministry of Communications reports remnants of the Assad regime disrupted internet in Damascus and its countryside by cutting two fiber optic lines.
Services were quickly restored, and citizens are urged to report any sabotage attempts.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] According to the findings of sociologists studying public opinion, one of the most Russophobic countries is, oddly enough, Sweden. It is the Swedes who are the most bloodthirsty towards Russians, demanding that the war continue until the last Ukrainian. In Russia, such information can cause confusion.
Most of us know Sweden only a few stereotypes: wealthy comfort, fat "social life", Carlson and Pippi Longstocking, wall bars, Swedish tables
...I think that might mean a smorgasbord…
and the Swedish family. However, Swedish Russophobia did not arise out of nowhere. It has a long tradition and is based on a long-standing historical trauma.
Simply put, Sweden cannot forgive Russia for the fact that several centuries ago the Russians decisively and ruthlessly broke up the Swedish Empire.
BLOODTHIRSTY MOODS
In January 2025, a survey was conducted on behalf of the Swedish TV channel TV4 news service, in which over a thousand people took part; they tried to form a sample taking into account all the main strata of Swedish society.
The question was simple: should the fighting in Ukraine be stopped through immediate negotiations?
75% of respondents spoke out against negotiations and expressed a desire to see “Ukraine’s victory.” For this, they are ready to wait – even if the conflict continues for a long time.
The most bloodthirsty of all (85%) are young Swedish women: the strongest support for the Kyiv regime is observed among women aged 18 to 34. This is a well-known phenomenon - always and everywhere the most militant are those who personally do not face the fate of ending up in the trenches under any circumstances.
The TV channel published the words of some of the women interviewed.
"I can only hope that they can continue to fight. I would like this to be the end of the terrible Putin. He is working to destroy the world," says Heather Persson.
However, a number of Swedish women did speak out in favor of peace. “I think the most important thing is to save as many lives as possible, and then to achieve that you have to make some compromises,” said Charlene Smith.
But overall, only 25% of the total number of Swedes surveyed expressed a desire to see peace talks in the near future. Where does such belligerence come from?
"THE CHOICE OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE"
The origins of Swedish Russophobia – in the original sense of the word, that is, fear of Russians – can be traced very well.
Sweden was once a powerful empire, and the Baltic Sea was effectively a "Swedish lake." The country had been moving toward this for several centuries: the Swedes demonstrated good endurance over the long haul, consistently defeating other contenders for regional dominance - Denmark, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, pre-Petrine Russia (it is worth recalling, for example, the results of the Livonian War and the Time of Troubles).
And everything was going well for Sweden until their regional empire fell into the teeth of the “Russian bear,” the giant renewed by Peter the Great, who slowly crumbled it and reduced the formerly powerful state to the level of a second-rate country.
It is very important in the context of the current situation to remember that the decisive battle between Peter I and the Swedish King Charles XII, who enjoyed a reputation as the best European commander at that time, took place precisely on the territory of Ukraine.
No less important is the fact that the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa, having committed an act of treason against Peter, defected to the banner of Charles, presenting himself to him as a full-fledged representative of Ukraine. In fact, only a few thousand people followed Mazepa, but, according to today's propagandists, this means nothing. They write about the "historical choice of the Ukrainian people", about "fighting elbow to elbow with a common enemy" - such narratives are now in great demand both in Sweden and in the territories controlled by the Kiev regime.
As is well known, the outcome of the Northern War was catastrophic for Sweden.
The fighting began with the defeat of Russian troops near Narva, and towards the end of the war, Russian troops landed on Swedish soil in the immediate vicinity of Stockholm.
Faced with disaster, the Swedes agreed to recognize Peter's victory, and on August 30, 1721, a peace treaty was signed in the city of Nystad, ending the 21-year war. This treaty preserved Russia's conquests in the Baltics and today's Leningrad Region. Peter I agreed to return only Finland to the Swedes, which, incidentally, was originally captured as a future "bargaining chip."
ATTEMPTS AT REVENGE
Sweden emerged from the Northern War practically half destroyed.
The Swedes lost a huge number of young men and most of their empire. Sweden was reduced from being a great power to a minor one.
It is not surprising that revanchist sentiments began to grow stronger in Stockholm, especially since after Peter’s death the Russian Empire entered a period of political instability.
The Swedes considered that the right moment for revenge had come in the summer of 1741, when the infant Ivan VI nominally ruled Russia, but his mother, the inexperienced regent Anna Leopoldovna, was in charge. In starting this war, Stockholm aimed to win back everything lost in the Northern War, and also to seize, if possible, the lands between Lake Ladoga and the White Sea.
However, this war also turned into a series of defeats for Sweden - largely due to the efforts of the now half-forgotten Russian Field Marshal Peter Lassi In 1719, he personally participated in the landing on the Swedish coast and was now preparing new landings. But in Stockholm, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, they went for peace. Sweden, which initially intended to profit from Russian lands, itself was forced to give Russia a solid piece of Finland.
The Swedes made another attempt at revenge in 1788 - King Gustav III dreamed of the laurels of Charles XII and the return of what was lost. He believed that victory would be easy, since the main forces of Russia under the command of Grigory Potemkin were distracted by the war with the Ottoman Empire.
Gustav sent Catherine II an ultimatum, demanding that she give up not only the Baltic conquests of Peter the Great, but also return to the Turks the territories that Russia had conquered from them, including Crimea! However, the war again brought the Swedes a series of bitter defeats - the only "consolation pill" for them was the defeat of the Russian rowing fleet at Rochensalm. As a result, in 1790, the parties concluded a peace treaty, according to which they remained with their own.
The last war in Swedish history took place in 1808-09, and as a result, Russia took almost half of the Swedes' then territory, Finland.
One of the culminating moments of that war was the landing in March 1809 of a detachment led by the famous hussar, Major General Yakov Kulnev, who crossed the South Kvarken Strait with his units on the ice to the coast of Sweden. Approaching the shore, Kulnev overthrew the Swedish detachment, which had tried to prevent the Russians from leaving the ice. For the first time since the time of Peter the Great, Russian soldiers came to Sweden again. Less than a hundred miles remained to Stockholm.
As Kulnev's immediate superior, Prince Pyotr Bagration, reported to the command, the rapid arrival of the Russians in Sweden horrified the coastal inhabitants. "The telegraph signal about this terrified the capital of the Vandals." The report paints a "picture of widespread confusion and fear." The sortie turned out to be a shock for the Swedes, a deep psychological shock. They were once again convinced that if the Russian bear wanted to, he could get them at any moment.
PROPAGANDA PUMPING
Having learned this lesson, the Swedes, after concluding a disastrous peace treaty in 1809, proclaimed a policy of eternal neutrality – which they adhered to, albeit with certain reservations, for more than two hundred years. The fear of a gigantic Russia, which had reduced the former Swedish Empire to the status of a small country, was ingrained in their flesh and blood, holding the Swedes back from new adventures.
This injection of fear proved to be very powerful.
Stockholm even managed to refrain from joining the anti-Russian coalition that Great Britain and France had put together on the eve of the Crimean War.
Recently, as is known, the Swedes joined NATO. Thus, the state was officially removed from its neutral status.
But the psychological trauma received during the numerous Russo-Swedish wars has not gone away - especially since it is carefully fueled by Swedish historians and propagandists.
In order to understand the current mood of Swedish society, it is enough to familiarize yourself with the content of their news sites.
Currently, the following types of headlines predominate: “Convicted spy confesses to collaborating with Russian special services,” “Swedish Koran arsonist accused of links to Wagner PMC,” “Belarusian nuns in Sweden accused of collecting money for the Russian army,” etc.
They constantly write about omnipresent intelligence agents and saboteurs, creating the illusion among the population that Russia is waging a "hybrid war" against Sweden. Even the Orthodox Church has recently been suspected of espionage.
It is characteristic that this did not start recently, but a long time ago.
One of the most popular themes in Swedish popular culture is Soviet and later Russian submarines, which allegedly secretly violate the borders of Swedish waters to carry out some sinister missions.
A typical example: in the autumn of 2014, the Swedish Navy "registered a radio transmission of an unidentified underwater object" from its territorial waters. A large-scale operation to search for the mysterious submarine began - military ships, helicopters and several units of the ground forces were involved.
A "sensation" was thrown out that the strategic nuclear-powered missile-carrying submarine Dmitry Donskoy was allegedly in distress off the coast of Sweden, and the Russian authorities, of course, were "concealing" it. Rumors were spread about mysterious objects lying on the seabed, about dents left in the ground by the submarine's hull, about a diver allegedly seen by someone who immediately climbed into the submarine...
The combination of long-standing historical traumas, bitter memories of lost battles, lost territories and Russian landings synergize with a paranoid fear of Russian "spies" and "saboteurs". All together, ordinary Swedes hate Russia, wish for its defeat and disintegration.
So they really got the impression that "Ukraine is fighting for us." Moreover, the Swedes are seriously afraid that if "Ukraine surrenders," then "we will be next."
The seriousness of this fear is demonstrated by the fact that Sweden is already searching for grave sites in which to bury tens of thousands of war victims. Considering the mental state of the average Swede, who is daily fed the poison of hatred towards Russia through the media, his desire to fight to the last Ukrainian should not be surprising.
#5
The USA, as defender of the rules-based international order, has the responsibility to defend borders, including Taiwan, South Korea, NATO, Ukraine and especially Israel.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/25/2025 11:53
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#11
^ Defense Sect'y Hegseth: "Hit what you shoot at"?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/25/2025 12:09
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#12
It's a border war. We'd better face reality.
It's been a border war for decades. It's just that Trump is the first president who doesn't pretend otherwise.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 12:22
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#13
The USA, as defender of the rules-based international order, has the responsibility to defend borders, including Taiwan, South Korea, NATO, Ukraine and especially Israel.
By whose authority? Our own? Might makes right? You know damn well that people in other countries hate us for just that attitude.
We've tried being the world's cop. You take a cop on the beat in any American city or town and that cop is getting paid. He might not be happy with his salary but at least he gets something for his service. America has never been paid for the services we have attempted to provide. We're the ones who always pay in the form of blood and treasure. Then the people we try to help end up hating us and kicking us in the shins. We've meddled in the affairs of all kinds of countries all over the world and it usually only makes things worse, creates even bigger problems. We need to let other people worry about their problems and start taking care of our own.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 12:30
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#14
From the Halls of Montezuma…
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 12:54
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#15
And they are praying the cartels shoot at them. Would be short, bloody and a very bad ending for cartel members.
Nigerian army has killed a top commander of a bandit network and 31 bandits in a military operation in the violence-ridden northwest region.
In a statement, the country's Defence Headquarters (DHQ) said the army killed bandit leader Bello Turji's second-in-command, Aminu Kanawa,… pic.twitter.com/wNWdt4dQjZ
… Aminu Kanawa, and 31 terrorists and wounded some of Turji's close allies, including his younger brother, in the Fansan Yamma operation.
Bello Turji is known for carrying out numerous attacks and killing civilians and security forces in the north-western parts of the country, particularly in Zamfara and Sokoto states.
[PJMedia] Update 9:50 p.m.: JD Vance broke the tie with his yes vote moments ago, making Hegseth's confirmation official.
Original story:
Pete Hegseth will have enough votes to become Secretary of Defense, which is a tremendous victory for Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... . The vote was 50-50, and Vice President JD Vance is expected to break the tie.
All eyes were on the votes by Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), as Sens. Lisa Daddy, can I be a senator? Murkowski ... representing K Street ... (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) had previously indicated they were going to vote against Hegseth. McConnell voted no, but Tillis ultimately decided to vote for Hegseth's confirmation. Alaskan Snow Blower Murky and Droopy Dog need to be slapped back into line. The Turtle just needs to retire or die
"From the beginning, I have been clear about my position: if President Trump’s nominees were reported favorably out of the relevant committees, I would support their confirmation on the Senate floor absent new material information about their qualifications," Tillis said in a statement posted to X. "Once Pete Hegseth’s nomination was sent to the floor by my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I conducted my own due diligence, including asking tough questions of Pete and I appreciated his candor and openness in answering them."
Tillis continued, "Pete has a unique perspective as a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is unquestionably passionate about modernizing our military and supporting the brave patriots like himself who serve our nation. I will support his confirmation and look forward to working with him to rebuild our military and advance President Trump’s peace through strength agenda."
Back in 2017, then Vice President Mike Pence had to break the tie to confirm Betsy DeVos as Trump’s education secretary. It was the first time a vice president had cast the tie-breaking vote for a cabinet nomination. Vance's vote will be the second in U.S. history.
Hegseth advanced from the Armed Services Committee by the narrowest margin, a 14-13 party-line vote. On the Senate floor, cloture was invoked at 51-49, barely avoiding a situation where Vice President JD Vance would’ve had to cast the deciding vote.
Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... fought aggressively against Hegseth’s nomination, taking issue with his views on women in combat and raising questions about alleged alcohol abuse and misconduct, even resorting to dusting off their playbook from the Kavanaugh hearings when, earlier this week, senators received an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law alleging behavior that he purportedly made his second wife fear for her safety. However,
denial ain't just a river in Egypt... even Hegseth’s ex-wife says these allegations are not true.
Samantha Deering, Hegseth’s ex-wife, told NBC News, which first reported on the accusations, that the allegations were false.
"First and foremost, I have not and will not comment on my marriage to Pete Hegseth. I do not have representatives speaking on my behalf, nor have I ever asked anyone to share or speak about the details of my marriage on my behalf, whether it be a news hound, a committee member, a transition team member, etc.," she wrote.
"I do not believe your information to be accurate, and I have cc’d my lawyer," she added.
#4
Gratz to Pete Hegseth on his appt to Legatus Legio MAGA.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/25/2025 10:22
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#5
Thune is facilitating some of these early wins. His donors will want him to knife Kash, Tulsi and RFK Jr. Those votes are Bastogne for me. Any Republican that balks at any of those folks need to go. Trump took out all the IGs except two last night.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 11:49
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#7
Those that voted no for him voted "yes" for that stupid DEI Supreme who admitted under oath that she didn't know what a woman is. That's where we're at.
#8
Trump said yesterday that somebody invited Adam Schiff, California's new junior senator, to come along on his trip to Los Angeles. Schiff declined saying he had to participate in senate confirmation votes but his vote failed to keep Hegseth or Noem from being confirmed. Too bad. Schiff could have flown with Trump anyway...awkward as that might have been.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/25/2025 13:52
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#9
On J.D. Vance breaking the tie to get him confirmed: "It's not the first time the headline reads - 'junior enlisted Marine bails out junior Army officer.'" lol
[NY Post] Dr. Anthony Fauci had his taxpayer-funded security detail pulled, President Trump confirmed during a press conference Friday.
“I think when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off, and you know, you can’t have them forever,” Trump told a reporter at a hurricane response briefing in Asheville, NC.
“We took some off other people too,” he noted, apparently referring to former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“They can hire their own security too. … I can give them some good numbers of very good security people,” Trump added. “Fauci made a lot of money. They all did.”
Asked if he would feel “partially responsible if something were to happen” to Fauci or Bolton, Trump responded: “Certainly I would not take responsibility.”
Fauci, who is still facing threats over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has hired personal security since having the government detail revoked on Thursday, according to CNN.
The longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has been accused of funneling taxpayer money oversees for dangerous gain-of-function research — including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where many believe SARS‑CoV‑2 leaked to kick off a worldwide pandemic.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had requested security for Fauci back in 2020 due to the death threats he was receiving for the role he played in advising the government during the pandemic.
He did not have Secret Service protection and was instead being protected by federal marshals, and then a private security contractor for which the government was paying, per the New York Times.
While some are outraged at the idea that Trump is stripping Fauci of his security detail, the truth is that he hasn’t left Fauci a sitting duck to security threats. As Trump pointed out, he’s got plenty of money, and Fauci has been using his own private security detail for months now.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer getting a taxpayer-funded security detail and SUVs after the U.S. Marshals Service quietly dropped his nearly two-year $15 million deal,” the Daily Mail reported back in December.
Despite retiring from his $480,000-a-year government job in December 2022, the nation's top COVID doctor received a security detail for almost two years.
Dr. Fauci, who has an estimated $11 million net worth, was constantly surrounded by U.S. Marshals at the time whether he was at home or going to TV studios to film interviews.
That cost taxpayers $15 million in total, a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Marshals and the Department of Health and Human Services obtained by DailyMail.com first revealed.
That taxpayer-funded security arrangement quietly ended on September 30, 2024, the documents show, days before the election.
Fauci’s taxpayer-funded security detail ended during Biden’s presidency, not Trump’s. No one cried foul back when this was first reported.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/25/2025
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NEW: Intense fighting erupted near the al-Jili oil refinery, north of Khartoum, as Sudan’s army advanced on the strategic facility in a multipronged offensive against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Kalashnikov Concern will present its newest belt-fed light machine gun RPL-7 for the first time at the IDEX 2025 international arms exhibition in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi. This was reported on January 24 by the company's press service.
The machine gun uses standard 7.62 mm cartridges with a 57-N-231 steel core, as well as cartridges with a T-45 or T-45M tracer bullet. It is designed to defeat enemy manpower and unarmored vehicles. Uses a variant of the 7.62x39 AK cartridge, meaning it won't have much range. Presumably it is a replacement for the old RPK light machine gun.
The RPL-7 can be equipped with optical and night sights, a target designator, a flashlight and a number of other devices. Its design allows shooting with the left or right hand.
The machine gun is supplied with a low-noise shooting device. The RPL-7 sighting range is 800 m. The weight of the weapon without ammunition and components does not exceed 5.5 kg, the length is no more than 1100 mm. The cartridge box holds 80 rounds, the concern's Telegram channel says.
IDEX 2025 will take place from 17 to 21 February.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, Kalashnikov will also present a new small and medium-class kamikaze drone KUB-2-E at the exhibition in Abu Dhabi. Its maneuverability and optics allow it to strike the enemy, including when the object changes location. The UAV can be used at night, and it operates at temperatures from -40 °C to +50 °C.
In November 2024, Kalashnikov announced the completion of tests of the promising small-sized AM-17 assault rifle. It was developed by order of the Russian Ministry of Defense, taking into account modern requirements for small arms. The main feature of the assault rifle was the use of high-strength polymer materials, which made it possible to make the weapon small-sized.
[PUBLISH.TWITTER] Follow up to this story from two days ago.
The FBI arrested a Seattle woman accused of shooting a Border Patrol agent to death on Monday.
Teresa Youngblut, 21, had been under "periodic surveillance" before the killing and was found in possession of black tactical gear, ammunition, and weapons, according to an FBI… pic.twitter.com/ZTU5dMXjZw
She has been charged in the death of Border Patrol agent David Maland, 44. The incident occurred in Vermont.
According to the FBI, Maland initiated an immigration traffic stop, pulling over Youngblut, who immediately exited the vehicle and opened fire, killing Maland.
A German national, identified as Felix Baukholt, was a passenger in the vehicle. He reached for his gun, but was shot in a shootout involving other officers before he could open fire, per court documents.
An investigation into Youngblut and Baukholt was initiated after a hotel employee reported to police that they had been carrying firearms while wearing black tactical gear outside the property, according to the affidavit.
The pair was then placed under "periodic surveillance."
Two hours before the shooting, investigators observed Baukholt exit a Walmart with two packages of aluminum foil. He was then seen wrapping unidentifiable objects while in the passenger seat of the vehicle.
The FBI conducted a search of the car after the shootout and found cellphones wrapped in foil, a ballistic helming, night-vision goggles, ammunition, and respirators.
Additionally, a package of shooting range targets, radios, and travel and lodging information were also recovered.
According to social media, Youngblut is a computer science student at the University of Washington.
Red State has key details missing from the above odd tale:
Bauckholt's still live LinkedIn profile says he worked in the New York office of Tower Research Capital, the high frequency trading firm. Tower Research didn't respond to a request to comment on Bauckholt's recent employment status, but the alleged expiry of his visa suggests he may no longer have been working there.
Tower Research Capital is a high frequency market maker and prop trading firm that operates high speed trading strategies. US government data suggests that two people at Tower Research have had H1B visas renewed this year: a head of data on a base salary of $350k and a quant trader on a base salary of $165k. It has 1,200 employees in total.
Bauckholt's LinkedIn profile says he joined Tower in October 2021 after two years at Radix Trading. He also completed a Jane Street internship in 2018. Jane Street interns now earn around $20k a month.
Bauckholt graduated from Canada's university of Waterloo with a bachelor's in mathematics. In 2014 and 2015 he appears to have won gold and bronze prizes respectively in the International Mathematics Olympiad.
What drew attention was that they acted strange, and "they appeared to be dressed in all-black tactical style clothing with protective equipment, with the woman, later identified as Youngblut, carrying an apparent firearm in an exposed-carry holster."
Based on that encounter, Vermont State Police and Homeland Security Investigations personnel tried to initiate a “consensual conversation,” but neither wanted to go along with that ploy. They told the police they were in the area looking for land to buy.
The encounter was sufficiently out of the ordinary to draw surveillance because on Sunday, January 19, they were spotted walking in Newport, VT, and Youngblut was packing.
This is how the shootout unfolded.
"On January 20, 2025, at approximately 3:00 pm, an on-duty, uniformed United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent initiated a stop of a blue 2015 Toyota Prius Hatchback with [a] North Carolina license plate... to conduct an immigration inspection as it was driving southbound on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont," read an FBI criminal complaint obtained by Fox News.
"The registered owner of the vehicle, Felix Baukholt, a citizen of Germany, appeared to have an expired visa in a Department of Homeland Security database. Youngblut was driving the Prius, and Baukholt was the lone passenger in the Prius," it continued.
"Between approximately 3:00 pm and 3:15 pm, agents reported gunshots at the scene," the affidavit said. "Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Cameron Thompson was notified of the incident and responded to the scene of the stop, arriving at approximately 3:35 pm. He spoke with two of the Border Patrol Agents involved in the incident. They described that both Baukholt and Youngblut possessed firearms and that Youngblut drew and fired a handgun toward at least one of the uniformed Border Patrol Agents without warning when outside the driver's side of the Prius."
"Baukholt then attempted to draw a firearm. At least one Border Patrol Agent fired at Youngblut and Baukholt with his service weapon," the affidavit also said. "The exchange of gunfire resulted in Border Patrol Agent Maland, Youngblut, and Baukholt all sustaining gunshot wounds. Baukholt was declared deceased at the scene as a result of his injuries."
Maland also died after being taken to a local hospital for emergency care, while Youngblut is currently receiving care at a facility in New Hampshire, according to the affidavit.
The "immigration stop" took place while the vehicle was headed away from the Canadian border, so it is starting to look like a pretext as several Border Patrol agents were involved.
According to the affidavit, agents had secured a .40-caliber Glock 23 “on or near” Youngblut after the shootout, while a .380-caliber M&P Shield firearm was secured “on or near Baukholt after the incident.”
The affidavit said the evidence is “consistent with Youngblut having fired the .40-caliber Glock 23 at least twice from the driver’s side of the Prius, one or more Border Patrol Agents returning fire with at least seven 9-millimeter shots, and then agents clearing the Glock 23 40-caliber and M&P Shield .380-caliber pistols, resulting in the described casings and cartridges being on the ground.”
The inventory from the affidavit indicates that Youngblut fired at least two times, but there is no evidence that Baulkholt fired.
What does it all mean?
It seems that Youngblut was the leader of the two. She had the real gun, and she initiated the firefight. I'm sure her being from Washington is not related, but when you hear "all-black tactical style clothing with protective equipment" in connection with that state, it is hard not to think of Antifa. How did Baulkholt get sucked into the plot? The guy was a math genius earning a boatload of money until it seems he got fired and his visa was suspended.
If one were looking for a plausible scenario, it would be that the pair planned some sort of one-way mission against the Border Patrol station to make an anti-Trump statement, but your guess is as good as mine.
#2
Between that and Red State’s suggestion that this was meant to be an Antifa action, SteveS, one really wonders what plan the Border Patrolmen interrupted.
#3
This will just be the beginning for the Canadian border. I recommend deploying the 10th Mountain there instead of to the Mexican border. Just give the Marines the Southern border. They sing songs about invading Mexico. It is their jam.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 11:36
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[NYPOST] Border czar Tom Homan had a simple message for the Haitian gangster who defiantly yelled ''F—k Trump, Biden forever!'' and how he was ''not going back to Haiti'' when he was picked up during immigration raids. He's got a face and attitude meant for a pickaxe handle
''Well, he's wrong. He's going back to Haiti, I can tell you that,'' Homan told Fox News' ''The Will Cain Show'' with a smile as he was played the now-viral clip.
The Haitian migrant, who reportedly has at least 17 recent convictions, was one of eight notable arrests federal immigration officers made in Boston, including multiple MS-13 gang members as well as murder and rape suspects, Fox News first reported.
The point has been made by others but just consider for a second that ICE is snatching up all these animals within 72 hours of Trump taking office.
Meaning Biden knew exactly where all these people were and they let these barbarians stay here to prey on you.
[NYPOST] A "one man scourge" with a lengthy rap sheet was busted this week in connection to nearly 20 heists across Manhattan — all allegedly committed in the few months since he was released from prison on parole, sources said.
Tony Scott, 38, got out of state lockup in September after serving around six years for several burglary convictions — but apparently couldn’t give up his old, bad ways, authorities said.
Scott allegedly launched into his new robbery spree just over a month later — going on to steal electronics and other loot from 19 businesses all on the southern end of the borough, according to police and law-enforcement sources.
"He was a one man scourge — he was hitting every neighborhood in lower Manhattan — the Village, Financial District, Chinatown, Gramercy Park, Midtown," a Manhattan cop told The Post. "Every precinct was looking for him."
He is also a suspect in several other burglaries, sources said.
It came despite a warrant for Scott’s arrest being issued Nov. 8 by the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, a front man said.
The warrant was issued after it was determined that Scott had absconded from "community supervision" — an offense which usually entails failure to stay in touch with a parole officer or notify them of a change of address, the rep said.
Scott was granted parole and released on Sept. 30 from state prison, where he had been held since August of 2018 in connection to seven burglaries, according to the sources and public records.
He also served time for five burglaries in 2012, sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/25/2025
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] The political crisis in Israel, triggered by the deal with the Palestinian movement Hamas, is gaining momentum.
Stung by the "betrayal of the authorities," the leader of the "Yiddish Power" party
…English speakers would translate Otzma Yehudit as Jewish Power….
and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir resigned and left the coalition. Along with him, other ministers from "Yiddish Power" vacated their posts - Amichai Eliyahu (Minister of Heritage) and Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Minister of Negev, Galilee and National Resilience).
The appointment of successors has been delayed, which seems to have come as a surprise even to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He was forced not only to look for a trusted person willing to accept vacant portfolios during the transition period, but also to try to restore the weakening parliamentary advantage under time pressure.
Bibi is a political logroller par excellence. If anyone can find replacements to cobble together another coalition, he’ll pull it off again.
The resignation of Ben-Gvir's supporters has shaken Netanyahu's allied parties.
The coalition members saw a chance to strengthen their positions in the government by regaining control over previously lost departments. Among the first to express such an intention was Shas party leader Aryeh Deri, who had previously ceded the Ministry of Negev, Galilee and National Resilience to Ben-Gvir's supporters as part of the coalition agreements.
Tikva Hadasha and Religious Zionism also expressed a desire to intercept the vacant portfolios.
At the same time, the Prime Minister himself was clearly not in the mood to engage in political charity.
In the first days after the resignation of the Minister of National Security, Netanyahu tried to appoint trusted party members to the post. In particular, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Israel Katz received offers. However, both refused to combine the posts under plausible pretexts.
It was also not possible to reach an agreement with the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Avi Dichter.
Although he was positioned as the "number one candidate" for the post of Minister of National Security, he did not dare to take on the additional burden. In addition, Dichter's constant calls to convene a commission to investigate the reasons for the successful Hamas invasion are causing concern among Netanyahu's "inner circle". The appointment was withdrawn.
Most Likud members, including the prime minister himself, would prefer to leave the vacant portfolios in the hands of the prime minister himself (Israeli law allows for this possibility).
However, Netanyahu's past turbulent political life played a cruel joke on him: due to the "Deri-Pinhasi precedent" (a ban on holding certain positions due to criminal prosecution), the current prime minister cannot apply for "sensitive posts," which include the Ministry of National Security.
As a result, after almost a week of heated debate, the parties finally reached a consensus.
All vacant portfolios went to Chaim Katz, the Likud Minister of Tourism (not to be confused with Israel Katz, the Minister of Defense. — Ed.).
This is far from the first time in Israel's history that several positions have been combined; however, in most cases, it was an emergency and the number of positions did not exceed two.
In fact, Katz became the unofficial record holder in Israeli politics for the number of positions held simultaneously.
However, in order not to once again emphasize the shift in the center of gravity towards the prime minister’s Likud, Netanyahu made a Solomonic decision.
According to his order, Katz will serve as acting minister for only the next three months. By the end of that period, the coalition must decide on candidates for permanent ministers.
Katz's appointment to three new positions at once, as well as his three-month term of office, quite transparently hints that Netanyahu has not abandoned hope of returning Ben-Gvir and his supporters to the coalition. Especially since the latter is in no hurry to get closer to the opposition forces and, out of habit, torpedoes their legislative initiatives.
In addition, Ben-Gvir leaves a window of opportunity to restore relations with Netanyahu.
The condition for his return, judging by the latest statements, is a more rigorous defense by the cabinet of ministers of the right to expand settlement expansion in the West Bank, as well as to maintain a presence in Gaza (at least symbolic). The former minister and his fellow party members also expect that Netanyahu will “show toughness” during the upcoming tour to the United States and will be able to disrupt the “protracted triumph” of Hamas.
The prime minister has been given three months to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of Israeli “hawks”.
In reality, however, Netanyahu has much less time. The squabbles with "Jewish Power" must be resolved before the first stage of the agreement with Hamas expires, that is, before the beginning of March. Otherwise, new lines of division will be added to the existing ones, provoked by the exodus of other "hawkish" parties.
Thus, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (leader of the Religious Zionism party), who is quite close in his views to Ben-Gvir, remained in the government only after Netanyahu’s “ironclad promises” to limit the truce with Hamas to only the stage of exchanging hostages and not to withdraw the remaining forces from Gaza.
If the prime minister does not keep his word, Smotrich's party will also leave the coalition. The government will lose mandates that are necessary not only to gain an advantage over the parliamentary opposition, but also to ensure its own legitimacy.
And this will make early elections inevitable, which will be the end of the political career of Netanyahu and his closest supporters.
Text taken from the Telegram Channel of darpaandcia
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] US Pushes for AI-Based Global Financial Control
On December 18, 2024, DARPA published a notice of the launch of the A3ML (Anticipatory and Adaptive Anti-Money Laundering) program, and on February 20, 2025, they plan to hold a presentation day for potential project participants.
According to them, the goal of the program is "to completely eliminate the ability to launder money on a global scale."
DARPA plans to achieve this by replacing existing manual analysis methods with next-generation algorithmic solutions. The agency openly admits the ineffectiveness of current anti-money laundering methods, despite all the efforts being made.
The documents say that half of the North Korean nuclear program is funded through money laundering schemes, and Chinese underground banking structures are closely linked to the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.
Technically, the program involves creating complex algorithms that will:
1. Track all money transfers worldwide
2. Automatically find strange money transfer patterns, such as when they "go in circles" or unexpectedly split into small parts
3. Predict new ways of laundering money
4. Create "digital dossiers" on suspicious transactions in a format that other computer systems can quickly understand and use
The program must learn to work without direct exchange of confidential data between participants, which indicates plans to create a distributed system of global financial monitoring.
The program will have both open and closed parts. Only US citizens with the highest level of clearance to classified information (TS/SCI) are allowed to the closed session, which indicates the use of particularly sensitive intelligence.
Of course, this is not about "fighting money laundering", but about establishing a new global system for monitoring and controlling financial flows, with the option of influencing them.
[X] The Trump administration has commenced deportation flights, utilizing military aircraft to transport individuals who have entered the United States illegally back to their home countries. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the start of these operations, which include using Air Force C-17 and C-130 planes stationed in Texas and California to facilitate the deportations. This move is part of a broader policy to enforce immigration laws, targeting those who have been detained by Customs and Border Protection.
Deported with just the clothes on their backs, and greeted by the policia.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/25/2025
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Top|| File under: Migrants/Illegal Immigrants
#1
Surprise!!!!!
Mexico refusing to allow deportation flights to land.
I guess they don't care about their people, just the needed $$$$$ they send back home. Needed Money that supports Mexico's economy and rich.
BTW: Mexico's Elite and various Officials must be having a fit.
Trump securing the borders has caused a major disruption of the Cartels Drug flow.
#10
About that Mexico flight: Hot Air has an update that the State Department claims it’s merely a paperwork issue. Mexico accepted four flights last week, after all.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/25/2025
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I have a question. The Shahid drones weren't kamikaze's? You expected them back?
(Personally, if I lauched a drone with a 15lb warhead, I would be happy if it didn't come back. Safer that way.)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/25/2025 9:28
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#2
And as to underwater kamikazes, they've been around for a good while now.
Everybody else calls them torpedos.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/25/2025 9:30
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#3
Boat - or ship- explodes before contact. Yet another Iran fake weapon.
Trump has signed an executive order that allows the deportation of foreign students who express support for terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis.
Should foreigners who burn the American flag and express hatred for America also be deported? pic.twitter.com/HjVAGEXvJ6
Zionist organization Betar is compiling lists of foreign students in the U.S. who have supported Hamas or joined anti-Israel protests, aiming for their deportation under Trump’s proposed policies.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] In 2024, about 450 thousand people signed a contract for military service in the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces. This was announced on January 24 by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev.
During a meeting of the relevant interdepartmental commission, the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council proposed summing up the results of 2024 and discussing measures to maintain the current rate of military recruitment.
"The task that was set before us by the country's president last year has been fulfilled. About 450,000 people have signed a contract for military service. In addition, more than 40,000 of our citizens have joined volunteer formations and gone to the special military operation zone," he said.
As reported by Regnum News Agency, on December 16, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an expanded meeting of the military department board that over 1,000 people signed contracts with the Defense Ministry every day this year. The flow of volunteers signing contracts for military service does not stop, the head of state added.
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, who took part in the meeting, specified that on average more than 1,200 people sign contracts every day. According to him, it is necessary not to lose the momentum of this process.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/25/2025 9:42
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#2
In the US there were 225,000 enlistees in the armed forces during FY2024. The estimated US population in January 2025 is 343m vs 143m for the Russians. They are getting more than 4 times the volunteers per capita. And yeah . . . most of them are still alive
Transgender women will now serve their sentences in men's prisons, and medical services related to gender transition will no longer be available in correctional facilities.
… the U.S. would officially recognize only two genders — male and female. Today, it was also revealed that the State Department has stopped processing applications for gender changes in passports and issuing passports with "X" as the gender marker.
#5
Surely we still are paying. This is but one head of the hydra. The next head will be state’s using Federal funding for the same purpose. Then there will be NGO grants. USAID is probably also doing some shady stuff that they would like us not to know about.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/25/2025 11:42
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#6
Simply follow the ☺PHYSICAL☺ Science and start treating the mentally ill.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Machine gunner of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Oleksandr Gusak, who killed three captured Russian soldiers in the Kursk region, will appear in court. This was announced on January 24 bythe press service of the Investigative Committee of Russia on its Telegram channel.
It is noted that the investigation has completed the investigation and sent the case to court against the Ukrainian soldier of the 82nd separate airborne assault brigade, accused of committing a terrorist act. It was established that Gusak illegally crossed the Russian border in the Kursk region and shot three unarmed Russian soldiers with a machine gun.
"During the military operations, Gusak was detained by servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The criminal case with the indictment was sent to the 2nd Western District Military Court for consideration on the merits," the statement said.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on September 19, captured Ukrainian militant Gusak confessed to shooting three captured Russian soldiers. According to the prisoner, the commander promised to shoot him himself if he did not shoot the prisoners.
On November 2, the Investigative Committee began an investigation into the death of Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces near Kursk. It is noted that a photograph of the dead Russian soldiers had appeared on social media earlier, one of whom had his hands tied behind his back.
Russian military personnel have discovered the bodies of Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) soldiers at positions abandoned by the enemy in the Kharkiv region, who were chained and left to die by their own commanders. This was reported on January 24 by the Telegram channel Severny Veter.
The post notes that the dead Ukrainian soldiers were found in one of the rooms of the enemy fortification, which was taken under control by units of the "North" group. The authors suggested that in this way, the Ukrainian Armed Forces officers are trying to intimidate the fighters and show them what awaits them if they refuse to follow orders.
“The officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are driving soldiers to slaughter, but there are too many refusers - that’s why Ukrainian neo-Nazis are organizing public executions to force the rank and file to go on another ‘meat assault’,” concluded the Telegram channel “Northern Wind.”
It is specified that traces of torture were found on the bodies of the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 15, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian publication Censor.net Yuriy Butusov stated that about a thousand soldiers from the 155th Anna Kievskaya Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, trained in France, deserted after arriving at the front line. He explained that the desertion was due to the fact that this brigade was recruited from forcibly mobilized soldiers who were poorly trained.
On December 26, former Ukrainian military medic and current fighter of the Maksym Krivonos volunteer detachment Volodymyr Koshelek, call sign Historian, said that the Ukrainian military does not support the regime of Volodymyr Zelensky, refusing to carry out the tasks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces command. According to him, Ukrainians are aware of what is happening in the country, but are afraid to talk about it, as they are intimidated and "driven into a corner."
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] Trump is talking nonsense about hypersonic weapons.
- The Russians have hypersonic weapons, we don't.
- Because under Obama they stole... Russia stole the designs...
- From us?
- From us. One very bad person (Editor's note: a radish)
Radish? What does that mean in this context?
Forget it, TW. It's Russia. Who knows what it means other than calling an individual a radish is a bad thing?
gave them the designs. And they were ours! I gave the order to create hypersonic weapons and now we are even creating turbo-hypersonic weapons, which are even more advanced. And soon we will have them.
True, Russia has already created it and has it. Because they stole it during the Obama administration. Not under Biden, but specifically under Obama. Under Biden, they most likely stole various things as well, but we will find out about that. And so... having stolen our hypersonic technology, they created hypersonic missiles!
That is why the US has still not been able to put hypersonic missiles into service. Because they stole all the designs. The Russians stole them. That is why it has taken so long.
Because of Petrov and Boshirov.
In fact, Russian scientists simply creatively improved on the Soviet backlog of developments and were able to bring Russia to first place in the world in hypersonics, and we have long been talking not about prototypes, but about fully tested and put into service hypersonic systems. Unlike the United States, which is still stuck at the testing stage. Petrov and Boshirov is a reference to the two Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom Russians say were wrongly accused in the Skripal poisoning. It must be understood that China also stole the designs. And Iran. And the DPRK. And the Houthis.
It isn't a true hypersonic. It is a ballistic missile fired horizontally. The forming definition is the missile is hypersonic when it hits and can maneuver. The Russian ones cannot do either.
#2
A lot of the treasonous scam that handed over to the Russians how to do hypersonic weapons happened in the tail end of the Clinton administration. There’s been a 25 year conspiracy of silence about that. I don’t know if Obama had a venture in this area but he had others. ( Hence the 2014 in Fauci’s pardon).
#3
Kaddish for a Radish, or, Through the Cooking Class
"Putin's new hypersonics!"
"Don't shoot!"
"Like a coconut, only a root,"
Says Obama, who'd know,
"Was my spook, long ago,
That took all the old Communist loot!"
Linked article is available only through a VPN.
[EngMilRu] From 18 to 24 January 2025, the Russian Armed Forces have carried out eight group strikes by high-precision weapons and attack unmanned aerial vehicles, which have hit critical gas and power infrastructure facilities that support the work of the Ukrainian defence industry as well as targets of the Ukrainian defence industry.
In addition, weapons depots, infrastructure of military airfields, assembly workshop, storage areas of strike drones, and temporary deployment areas of Ukrainian armed groups were hit.
Over the past week, units of the Sever Group of Forces continued to eliminate AFU formations on the territory of Kursk region.
Aviation and drone strikes, and artillery fire hit manpower and hardware of a tank brigade, a heavy mechanised brigade, four mechanised brigades, two air assault brigades of the AFU, a naval infantry brigade, and three territorial defence brigades.
In Kharkov direction, Russian units hit formations of an AFU motorised infantry brigade and a national guard brigade.
During the week, in the area of responsibility of the Sever Group of Forces, the enemy suffered losses of up to 2,300 troops, 15 tanks, including two U.S.-made Abrams tanks, 69 armoured fighting vehicles, including a U.S.-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. Russian troops destroyed 127 motor vehicles, 34 field artillery guns, including a U.S.-made 155mm M-777 howitzer.
The Zapad Group of Forces liberated Novoyegorovka of the Lugansk People's Republic and Zapadnoye of Kharkov region.
Russian units hit manpower and hardware of four mechanised brigades, two airmobile brigades, a jaeger brigade, a mountain assault brigade, an assault brigade of the AFU, a territorial defence brigade, and a national guard brigade.
The AFU losses amounted to more than 3,260 troops, five tanks, 35 armoured fighting vehicles, including ten M-113 armoured personnel carriers, two U.S.-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and 71 motor vehicles. Forty-nine field artillery guns, including 15 manufactured by NATO countries, three electronic warfare stations, and eight ammunition depots were eliminated.
Units of the Yug Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Strikes were delivered at formations of three mechanised brigades, two assault brigades, a motorised infantry brigade, and an airmobile brigade of the AFU, and a national guard brigade.
The AFU losses in this direction during the week amounted to up to 1,680 troops, seven armoured fighting vehicles, including U.S.-made M-113 and HMMWV armoured fighting vehicles, 21 motor vehicles, 17 field artillery guns, including five western-made artillery guns. Three electronic warfare stations and 13 ammunition depots were neutralised.
The Tsentr Group of Forces' units continued advancing into the depths of enemy defences and liberated Petropavlovka, Vozdvizhenka, Volkovo, Solenoye, Timofeyevka, and Shevchenko (Donetsk People's Republic).
Russian troops engaged units of a heavy mechanised brigade, seven mechanised brigades, a motorised infantry brigade of the AFU, two national guard brigades, three territorial defence brigades, and the Lyut Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian National Police.
The losses of Ukrainian formations amounted to more than 4,050 troops, two tanks, 28 armoured fighting vehicles, including seven U.S.-made M-113 armoured personnel carriers, a Finnish-made Pasi armoured personnel carrier, a French-made VAB armoured vehicle, and a U.S. HMMWV armoured fighting vehicle. Forty six motor vehicles and 26 field artillery guns were eliminated.
The Vostok Group of Forces has liberated Vremevka (Donetsk People's Republic).
Four mechanised brigades, an air assault brigade of the AFU, a marine brigade, three territorial defence brigades, and a national guard brigade were defeated.
The AFU losses amounted to more than 1,070 troops, seven tanks, ten armoured fighting vehicles, including a U.S.-made MaxxPro armoured fighting vehicle, 14 motor vehicles, and 18 field artillery guns, including eight manufactured by NATO countries.
The Dnepr Group of Forces engaged manpower and hardware of a mechanised brigade, three coastal defence brigades of the AFU, two naval infantry brigades, a territorial defence brigade, and a national guard brigade.
The AFU losses amounted to more than 455 troops, an armoured fighting vehicle, 46 motor vehicles, six field artillery guns, seven electronic warfare stations, and six ammunition depots.
Over the past week, air defence systems have shot down five French-made Hammer guided bombs, 17 U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS shells, 752 fixed-wng unmanned aerial vehicles, including 218 within the past 24 hours and 174 of them outside the special military operation zone.
Over the past week, 17 Ukrainian servicemen have surrendered on the line of contact.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 41,395 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,829 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,510 MLRS combat vehicles, 20,913 field artillery guns and mortars, and 30,758 units of support military vehicles have been neutralised.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the operation to neutralise an enemy group, which broke into the territory of Kursk region.
During the offensive, the Sever Group of Forces inflicted fire damage on units of a tank brigade, a heavy mechanised brigade, four mechanised brigades, two air assault brigades, a naval infantry brigade, and three territorial defence brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine close to Viktorovka, Zazulevka, Zaoleshenka, Lebedevka, Malaya Loknya, Makhnovka, Melovoy, Nikolayevka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Rubanshchina, Sudzha, Sverdlikovo, Staraya Sorochina, and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye. One AFU counter-attack was repelled.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, and Artillery engaged AFU manpower and hardware close to Bogdanovka, Viktorovka, Guyevo, Kazachya Loknya, Pervy Knyazhy, Kruglenkoye, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Melovoy, Mirny, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Sverdlikovo, Starya Sorochina, Sudzha, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, Yuzhny, Basovka, Belovody, Veselovka, Vodolagi, Zhuravka, Miropolye, and Yunakovka in Sumy region.
Over the past 24 hours, the AFU losses amounted to more than 190 troops, three tanks, including a U.S.-made Abrams tank, three armoured personnel carriers, five armoured fighting vehicles, six motor vehicles, a U.S.-made M-777 howitzer, two mortars, an electronic warfare station as well as six UAV control posts, and an ammunition depot.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 54,460 troops, 318 tanks, 237 infantry fighting vehicles, 183 armoured personnel carriers, 1,613 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,602 motor vehicles, 388 artillery guns, 44 MLRS launchers, including 13 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 16 anti-aircraft missile launchers, eight transport-loading vehicles, 99 EW stations, 14 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 32 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, nine armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 20:30 Captured serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine told, who learned about the destruction of his brigade after arriving in Poland after training
"They sent us to Poland. We went through basic training - how to shoot a machine gun, throw a grenade, bury an anti-tank mine. There were Polish instructors for two weeks and Czech instructors for two weeks, they taught us medicine. We communicated with the Polish instructors through people who simply knew Polish. We communicated with the Czechs through their medic, who knew Ukrainian well," the prisoner said.
After returning, Svechkin learned that his brigade no longer existed; it had been destroyed.
19:50 Novopavlovskoye direction: liberation of Solenoy and attack on Udachny, –map.
The offensive of Russian troops in the Pokrovsk area is developing not only on the city itself, but also on the border of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Over the past few days, the Russian Armed Forces have liberated Solenoye and also expanded the zone of control in the fields to the south in the direction of Novopavlovka, after which the new direction of the front was named.
19:20 An FPV drone operator of the Sever group of forces destroyed a heavy UAV Baba Yaga of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border area of the Kursk region, –video.
19:10 Servicemen of the Vostok group continue to break into the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Velyka Novosilka, –video.
Servicemen from the "East" military group installed the Russian flag on one of the buildings recaptured from the enemy in the center of the settlement.
18:05 Drone drivers of the "North" blew up a dugout where Ukrainian militants hid an electronic warfare station
An FPV drone crew from the Sever group destroyed a camouflaged bunker containing an electronic warfare station of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border area of the Kursk region.
16:10 Hoisting the flag of the assault detachment of the 5th tank brigade in the area of the stadium in Velyka Novosyolka, –video.
15:00 Another car with Ukrainian Armed Forces militants became the prey of our drone operators
A crew of FPV drones from the Rubicon center destroyed a vehicle transporting Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel. Footage from the border area of Kursk Oblast.
14:18 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces in the counter-terrorist operation zone.
14:00 Military Police Unit discovered cache of enemy weapons in the DPR
Military police officers from the Southern Group of Forces discovered a cache of weapons and ammunition left behind by Ukrainian nationalists during their retreat.
Military police personnel responded promptly and seized weapons and ammunition from the cache, having first cordoned off the danger zone.
Our fighter was crossing open terrain and was caught by a Ukrainian FPV drone. The Russian soldier was not going to give up, trying to shoot down the device with a small arm.
After the drone changed its trajectory, the attack aircraft moved to cover, but it was there that the enemy FPV tried to attack it again. Having shifted the machine gun in his hands, the Russian soldier hit the approaching attack drone with the butt, which abruptly went into the ground, causing minimal damage to our soldier.
The stormtrooper is recovering, slightly cut by shrapnel.
13:21 On frames- an American Abrams tank disabled by a direct hit from a Lancet loitering munition near the village of Viktorovka in the Kursk region.
13:16 Russian army is moving forward south of Udachny.
13:00 RF Armed ForcesreleasedNikolayevo-Daryino, and also advanced near Malaya Loknya, Sverdlikovo and Nikolskoye.
12:03 Kursk region. Attack aircraft of the Russian Armed Forcescame into the northern outskirts of the Nikolsky farm.
10:52 For completing this combat mission, the commander of the road and bridge construction unit with the call sign "Asod" awarded the Order of Courage. His family is waiting for him at home: his parents, wife and two daughters, one of whom was born during the SVO. Big greetings from their dad from the front!
10:45 American M2A2 ODS-SA Bradley IFV of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a barbecue was destroyed in the Kursk direction, –video.
10:10 Crews of the 122mm BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket systems of the combined arms army of the West group of forces destroyed combat armored vehicles, strongholds and concentrations of Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower.
9:35 In the Belgorod district, three munitions were fired during three artillery attacks and attacks were carried out using nine drones, Six of which were shot down by the air defense system, at the settlements of Malinovka and Oktyabrsky, the villages of Otradnoye, Petrovka, Repnoye, Tolokonnoye, Ustinka, Cheremoshnoye and the farm Tserkovny. A civilian was wounded. The man is in a moderate conditionhospitalizedto Belgorod City Hospital No. 2. Two cars and a power line were damaged.
In the Borisov district, the village of Tsapovka was shelled with 16 rounds of ammunition. There were no consequences.
Five drones were shot down over the Valuysky municipal district. There were no casualties or damage.
In the Volokonovsky district, the villages of Konovalovo and Tishanka were shelled with five rounds and attacked by two UAVs. A private home was damaged.
In the Grayvoronsky municipal district, 23 munitions were fired during eight attacks in the city of Grayvoron, the Bezymeno, Zarechye-Pervoye, Kozinka, Novostroyevka-Pervaya and Spodaryushino sklads, and 11 drone attacks were recorded, two of which were shot down. 13 private houses, a car and a power line were damaged. In addition, outbuildings were destroyed on the territory of one of the households.
Two drones were shot down by the air defense system over the Ivnyansky district. No consequences.
In the Krasnoyarsk region, the settlements of Krasnaya Yaruga and Prilesye, the villages of Vyazovoe, Grafovka, Demidovka, Ilek-Penkovka, Kolotilovka and Popovka were subjected to five attacks, during which 33 munitions were fired, and 19 drone strikes were carried out, four of which were shot down. Two private houses and an outbuilding were damaged.
Six drones were shot down by the air defense system over the Rakityansky district. There were no consequences.
In the Shebekinsky municipal district, the city of Shebekino, the villages of Belyanka, Voznesenovka, Sereda, the farms of Maryino, Mukhin and Pankov were shelled, during which one shell was fired, and nine drones were attacked, six of which were shot down. The building of an agricultural enterprise was damaged.
9:25 The joint operation of our motorized riflemen, tank crews and marines of the "Vostok" group to liberate Velikaya Novosyolka continues. The assault aircraft of the 5th Tank Brigade showed the development of the offensive in the encircled settlement: the fighters take control of the enemy positions, clearing buildings one after another, destroying the infantry and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The Russian flag is already flying in the center of the settlement,video.
9:10 The Russian Armed Forces destroyed a Ukrainian tank in the Kursk region. The first drone managed to set the tank on fire, and the second one finally stopped it, –video.
8:50 Russian Ministry of Defense:
In the period from 06.00 to 07.00 Moscow time, air defense systems on duty destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory of the Leningrad region.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
...Arabic for 
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
...every time you hear the phrase 
[NY Post] Dr. Anthony Fauci had his taxpayer-funded security detail pulled, President Trump confirmed during a press conference Friday.
[NYPOST] Border czar Tom Homan had a simple message for the Haitian gangster who defiantly yelled ''F—k Trump, Biden forever!'' and how he was ''not going back to Haiti'' when he was picked up during immigration raids.
