And another Big Turban bites the dust. No doubt which one is toes up will be revealed later today.
[IsraelTimes] An Israeli airstrike without a prior evacuation warning destroyed a three-story building in Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, according to Lebanese media.
Lebanese media report that several people were moderately wounded in the incident.
#1
Why bother with evacuation warnings? Israel should just publicly say to the Lebanese "When you see somebody from Hezbollah anywhere .. tell us where and get the hell out of the area."
Nuff said.
[IsraelTimes] Israeli troops operating in south Lebanon have encountered large amounts of Russian weaponry in the use of Hezbollah, in numbers greater than the military had expected, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the paper, much of the weaponry apparently reached the terror group from Syria’s military, which has been supplied by Russia for years.
Makes sense — both are clients of Iran.
Hezbollah’s cache of modern, sophisticated weaponry far exceeded prior military estimates in both quantity and capability, the Journal says, bolstering the group’s ability to strike and kill Israeli soldiers.
#1
Rods from God could make such a mess of any route from the Ruskies sea port, at the Syrian city of Tartus, to anywhere in Leb.
Just saying... like if the US State Dept and Pentagon actually had balls: a functioning Rods From God could be quickly put in place with something BIG like even the current Test Forms of StarShip...
[PJMedia] Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) is still refusing to concede defeat after losing to Republican Dave McCormick. Despite the News Agency that Dare Not be Named, DecisionDeskHQ, and other outlets calling the race for McCormick, Team Casey is actively trying to overturn the result.
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... aren't even trying to hide their willingness to break the law to alter election results. Just last week, in Bucks County, the county commissioners voted 2-1 to ignore the advice of their legal counsel and defy a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on how ballots should be counted. Democrat commissioners Robert Harvie Jr. and Diane Marseglia approved counting 124 improperly signed ballots, fully aware that their actions were illegal. This was no accident — it was a deliberate act of defiance.
"I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want," Marseglia said. "So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it."
While they've managed to count a few illegal votes here and there, marginally chipping away at McCormick's lead, Casey remains without a path to victory. Now, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has stepped in, siding with the McCormick campaign to stop rogue counties from counting illegal ballots in an attempt to overturn the results of the election.
"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled that undated or misdated mail-in and absentee ballots 'shall not be counted' by any of the state’s boards of elections — including in the handful of counties where Democratic officials already voted to defy the high court’s previous rulings on the matter in the middle of a high-stakes U.S. Senate race that’s headed to a recount," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "State and national Republican leaders have pledged to fight what they describe as a brazen betrayal of public trust by Pennsylvania Democratic election officials as the heated race between Sen.-elect David McCormick and incumbent Sen. Bob Casey plays out in court."
Democrats, including Mr. Casey’s campaign attorneys, say the defiance is grounded in protecting voters’ rights according to the state constitution. Republicans blast it as electioneering on Mr. Casey’s behalf, and pledged Monday to pursue legal action against local officials who’ve openly defied the state’s highest court. The McCormick campaign, Republican National Committee and state GOP have asked the state Supreme Court to block the counties from counting the deficient ballots.
The Supreme Court answered late Monday afternoon in a 4-3 decision, saying the counties in question "shall comply with the prior rulings of this court in which we have clarified that mail-in and absentee ballots that fail to comply with the [dating requirements] SHALL NOT BE COUNTED" for the purposes of the 2024 election.
"Elections need rules and they must be applied consistently," Pennsylvania GOP Chair Lawrence Tabas told news hounds on Monday.
The court also reaffirmed on Nov. 1 that no changes to election laws can be made during the election. Justice P. Kevin Brobson criticized local election officials for overstepping their authority by ignoring the Election Code, stressing that they must enforce, not reinterpret, the laws.
Tabas urged Gov. Josh Shapiro to push counties like Bucks, Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Centre to follow the law and disqualify undated ballots, as most counties have already done.
This is a huge victory for Senator-elect McCormick. It's time for Casey to concede.
#1
The normal, simple solution would be to arrest PA County commissioners and others for felony civil rights violations and for ignoring the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.
But it seems that does not happen to Democrats in Democrat run governments.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/19/2024 6:24
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#3
Actually applying the law for most criminal offenses would deter more than just this sh*t, Frank.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/19/2024 7:04
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#4
Since they were already ignoring a PA Supreme Court finding, I'm not sure what this accomplishes. The courts have no direct police powers or instruments, they have to rely on local, state or federal law enforcement. And if those groups fail to act, what power do the courts actually have?
#6
It is what the 2A is for. When you shut down all 'civil' means of redress, you leave only one other avenue of redress.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
[SudanTribune] Clashes between the Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... ese army and its allies against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted again on Sunday in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, as the paramilitary group continued its assault on villages in the Kutum locality, residents and military sources said.
The fighting in El Fasher, which has intensified over the past two weeks, underscores the RSF’s attempts to seize control of the city, one of the region’s last remaining strongholds of the central government.
Residents reported heavy artillery exchanges from the early morning, followed by direct confrontations in the southeastern part of the city. A military source confirmed that army warplanes conducted Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s targeting RSF positions in the east.
"RSF artillery has been pounding the army’s Sixth Infantry Division headquarters and surrounding areas, as well as northern and western neighbourhoods and the airport," one resident said, adding that civilian casualties and significant damage to homes were reported.
The Sixth Infantry Division claimed in a statement that its forces had advanced in the southeast, capturing several RSF positions and inflicting heavy losses.
Meanwhile,
...back at the shouting match, Bart was wondering if fisticuffs would be appropriate at this point... at least four people were killed and dozens injured in overnight attacks by the RSF and allied militias on villages in Kutum locality, according to Abbas Mohammed Adam, a local activist.
"They attacked Amrai and Boya villages on Saturday night, killing four people and wounding more than 10," Adam said. "Both villages were burned, livestock were stolen, and residents were forced to flee into the forests."
Since mid-October, the RSF and allied militias have been accused of carrying out scorched-earth tactics against villages predominantly inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group in Kutum, burning more than 45 villages and displacing thousands of residents.
[SudanTribune] Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... ’s army said it shot down several drones launched by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) targeting Atbara International Airport in River Nile state early on Monday.
Witnesses reported hearing drones flying over the town of al-Fadlab near Atbara around 4:45 a.m. and seeing army anti-aircraft units engaging them.
The River Nile state security committee, comprising military and civilian officials, said in a statement that the RSF carried out a "failed attempt ...Curses! Foiled again!... " to attack the airport.
The committee said air defences intercepted and downed the drones before they reached the airport, adding that the situation in Atbara was "secure and stable."
This marks the second drone attack on Atbara since the conflict in Sudan erupted. A previous drone attack last April targeted a gathering of an army-supporting militia, killing 15 people.
Atbara Airport recently underwent renovations and expansion, including upgrades to its runway and passenger terminals, to prepare for domestic and international flights.
The attack comes amid intensified fighting between the army and the RSF across Sudan. The RSF has increasingly relied on drones to target army positions and civilian infrastructure.
In July, RSF drones attacked government buildings in Ad-Damir, the capital of River Nile state. The army base in Shendi, also in River Nile state, has been hit by multiple drone attacks this year.
#1
RSF attack on Atbara is farthest north. Attacks possibly cut off railroad from Port Sudan to Government forces located north of Khartoum. This action, plus RSF attacks on El Fasher and Kutum, indicate all is not going well for putative government now operating from Port Sudan. As expected, Europe and White House are calling for cease fire. They should butt out. Sudanese doing what they do best.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 6:18
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[Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... Tribune] At least five people were killed and several others maimed when a mosque in Omdurman was hit by shelling on Sunday night, with Sudan’s army blaming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the attack.
The shelling occurred during evening prayers at a mosque in the northern rural area of Omdurman, the Khartoum state media office said. "Five non-combatants were killed, and others were maimed," the statement said, adding that children were among the maimed.
The incident marks the latest in a series of attacks on civilian areas attributed to the RSF, which has been battling the Sudanese army since April.
Heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy... also raged across Khartoum state on Monday, with the army and the RSF exchanging artillery fire in the capital and its twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri. Witnesses reported intense shelling in residential areas.
In El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, residents said festivities between the army and the RSF intensified overnight, with artillery fire hitting civilian neighbourhoods. Witnesses also reported Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s by army warplanes targeting RSF positions.
Atbara Airport recently underwent renovations and expansion, including upgrades to its runway and passenger terminals, to prepare for domestic and international flights.
The fighting in El Fasher has escalated in recent weeks as the RSF seeks to gain control of the city, a key government stronghold.
The conflict in Sudan has triggered a severe humanitarian crisis, with millions displaced and facing acute shortages of food and essential supplies.
[Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... Tribune] South Darfur’s acting governor dismissed 70 tribal leaders on Sunday, accusing them of supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and directing legal action against them for alleged involvement in the destruction of cities across Sudan.
Governor Bashir Mursal said the leaders were involved in mobilizing fighters, harbouring mercenaries from neighbouring countries, and inciting attacks on infrastructure in South Darfur and other states, including the capital Khartoum.
"It was decided to dismiss 70 omdas and sheikhs in South Darfur state for their support and bias towards the Rapid Support Forces," Mursal said in a decree seen by Sudan Tribune.
He accused the dismissed leaders of playing a key role in the RSF’s recruitment efforts, alleging they mobilized fighters from their tribes to be sent to conflict zones in Khartoum, El Fasher in North Darfur, and other areas.
Mursal also held the group responsible for "systematic killings" in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, as well as looting, rape, and the deaths of thousands within their communities. He called for them to be prosecuted.
The dismissals, which target leaders from various tribes, including the Fur, Masalit, and Rizeigat, follow Mursal’s earlier decision on November 9 to sack seven other tribal leaders for their alleged RSF affiliations.
#1
An interesting report. It is often impossible to separate the beligerants without a scorecard. Here it is implied the Fur (an Islamic African tribe) is working in concert with its usual enemy the Rizayqat (an Arab cattle nomad tribe). This would be a strong indication that the various tribes in Darfur just might want to coalesce and form a break-away and multi-ethnic Republic. But first they will have to take the capital, El Fashr.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 6:27
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#2
After which, one imagines, they will fall to fighting among themselves, yes?
[IsraelTimes] United Nations officials don’t specify who carried out the weekend ambush on humanitarian convoy; Hamas says it killed more than 20 ‘gang members involved in looting’
Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Paleostinians were violent mostly peacefully looted on November 16 after entering 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... in one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the enclave, where hunger is deepening, two UN agencies told Rooters on Monday.
The convoy transporting food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Program was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom border crossing, said Louise Wateridge, UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer.
Ninety-eight of the 109 trucks in the convoy were raided and some of the transporters were maimed during the incident, she said, without detailing who carried out the ambush.
…but we’d all be shocked if it wasn’t Hamas, probably using their UNRWA staffers on the inside.
"This ... highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza," she told Rooters.
"The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive."
UN front man Stephane Dujarric said there was "severe damage to the trucks and in some cases, total loss of cargo on the trucks," calling the incident the worst instance of looting in Gaza "in terms of volume."
The Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... -controlled Gaza interior ministry said over 20 "gang members" involved in looting aid trucks were killed during an operation carried out by Hamas security forces in coordination with tribal committees.
"More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees," the ministry said in a statement.
"Today’s security operation will not be the last," it said, adding that "the phenomenon of truck thefts... has severely impacted society and led to signs of famine in southern Gaza."
You can see the signs if you squint really, really hard and then add Mr. Magoo glasses. Really.
The statement called the operation "the beginning of a broad security campaign that has been long planned and will expand to include everyone involved in the theft of aid trucks," who Hamas threatened to treat with "an iron fist."
A WFP spokesperson confirmed the looting and said that many routes in Gaza were currently impassable due to security issues.
The Israeli military has said that attacking and stealing aid is an ongoing problem, especially in southern Gaza. COGAT, the military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said convoys are attacked by Hamas bandidosfaceless myrmidons and known crime families. The military did not have an immediate response to the weekend’s attack.
An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of the war, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was UN distribution challenges.
A UN aid official said on Friday that access for aid to Gaza had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the Israeli-besieged north of the enclave all but impossible amid the ongoing war sparked by Hamas’s devastating October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel.
[National Pulse] Democrat-aligned New York Judge Juan Merchan is moving to adjourn his court without handing down a sentence for President-elect Donald J. Trump over his guilty verdict on 34 courts of business records fraud. However, the verdict and sentencing have been thrown into limbo by the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling regarding presidential immunity as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case was in part reliant on documents and testimony from Trump’s White House staff.
Merchan’s decision means that while Trump will not be sentenced in the near future, he could still receive a prison sentence after leaving office in four years. Additionally, adjourning before sentencing means that the President-elect has yet to be convicted of any crimes.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/19/2024
12:11 ||
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[11165 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
Disbarment is the minimum acceptable for all these clowns.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/19/2024 12:22
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#5
Since he was "convicted" ina NYC kangaroo trial, but NOT sentenced, apparently he can't appeal yet. He should F Bragg/NYC and Hochul over to make this painful
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/19/2024 21:28
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[NY Post] Russia accused Ukraine of firing a barrage of US-made long-range missiles for the first time to attack its Bryansk region Tuesday — in a major escalation on the 1,000th day of war.
Russian air defense systems intercepted five of the missiles and damaged one in the early morning attack, Russian news agencies reported, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.
The debris from one missile fell on a military facility in the region, causing a fire but no widespread damage or casualties, the ministry added.
It comes after Ukraine confirmed it had struck a large Russian weapons facility near the town of Karachev, around 70 miles from its border, but stopped short of specifying what missile was used.
However, an unidentified defense source told RBC-Ukraine that it was a US-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which lame-duck President Biden recently gave Ukraine permission to use, sparking threats of World War III.
"Indeed, for the first time, we used ATACMS to strike Russian territory," the source said.
"The strike was carried out against a facility in the Bryansk region, and it was successfully hit."
Footage posted online showed the fiery explosion closely followed by a huge plume of smoke.
The attack was followed by 12 secondary explosions and detonations in the area of the strike, the Ukrainian military’s general staff said in a statement on the Telegram app.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/19/2024
11:05 ||
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[11145 views]
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"The new document, which replaces the previous iteration outlined in 2020, allows Putin's strategic forces to deploy their devastating weapons if Russia or Belarus is threatened by a non-nuclear nation supported by a nuclear power."
#3
Putin is ready to start a nuclear war.
Pulverize Russia if they so much as breathe a nuke.
Send 300 megatons of love back to them and make Chernobyl look like a picnic.
[AbrahamLincolnOnline] "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln - November 19, 1863 From the 'Bliss Copy'
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/19/2024
10:44 ||
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#1
Thanks Mullah
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
11/19/2024 12:27
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[OilPrice] With JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warning Washington that China and Russia are seeking to dismantle the Western world, and “World War III has already begun”, access to critical metals that serve as the fuel of America’s military has become the most urgent issue of our time.
Critical metals will determine superpower status and global domination.
China is winning because it controls the bulk of the world’s critical metals, from mining to refining. Washington has been slow to discover domestic or friendly resources, at a time when the U.S. Army desperately needs them.
I was under the impression that the EPA regulations made mining in the US much more expensive because it’s dangerous, dirty work. I wonder how the recent Supreme Court ruling severely restricting bureaucratic regulation creation will play out here…
So, when a North American junior miner emerges as the owner of key critical metals properties in Europe and North America that could provide a new supply of one of these critical metals, the Western world sees hope.
The critical metal that is now poised to make or break a global superpower is antimony, and the miner is Military Metals (CSE:MILI; OTC:MILIF)--a little-known company that just put itself on the critical metals map through some smart strategic acquisitions.
Antimony (Sb), a critical metalloid, is a key element of the American war machine, essential for communication equipment, night vision goggles, explosives, ammunition, nuclear weapons, submarines, warships, optics, laser sighting and more, according to U.S. Army Major General (retired) James Marks.
Not only does China control nearly half of the world’s antimony production, but it also cut off antimony exports to the U.S. beginning in September this year.
THE U.S. ARMY IS NOW DESPERATE FOR ANTIMONY
China produces an astonishing ~70% of the world’s rare earth minerals and controls nearly 50% of the global antimony supply.
While China was pushing ahead at full speed, America was napping instead of discovering and developing new critical metals reserves.
Then, at the height of the trade war, China threatened to restrict the export of some rare earth minerals. It made good on that threat this year, and last: First, with Germanium and Gallium in 2023, and then with antimony in September this year.
Now, the U.S. Army has found itself short on an essential element of its military production line, just as war beckons from Europe to the Middle East. And it will need large amounts of antimony to succeed with a new push to ramp up production of artillery shells at newly launched manufacturing facilities after years of destocking.
Meanwhile, American manufacturers use more than 50 million pounds of antimony each year for fireproofing compounds, batteries, ammunition, electronics, specialty glass, and other products, according to MetalTech.
Now, it’s past time for America to stake its claims on critical metals reserves, and Military Metals (CSE:MILI; OTC:MILIF) is helping to do just that.
NEW ANTIMONY RESOURCES FOR THE COMING CRITICAL DEMAND SURGE
Military Metals is on an antimony acquisition binge that’s taken it as far away as EU-member Slovakia and Nova Scotia in Canada.
It’s planning to help retell the American antimony story by exploring new and re-developing historical venues that could chip away at China’s control over what is essentially a “military metal”.
Military Metals recently announced that it has purchased one of Europe’s largest antimony deposits in Slovakia. In the heart of Central Europe, it’s a promising Soviet-era resource with an initial discovery from the 1950s and prior development in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s already seen two phases of exploration, including drilling and Adit excavation.
At the Trojarova Antimony Project, which could turn Slovakia into a European critical minerals hub, Military Metals says that underground development of this historical resource, funded by the Slovakian government, was shuttered in the 90s “prior to reaching the richest part of the deposit”.
Back then, with the Cold War winding down, and antimony already having served its purpose as the hero of World War II, the motivation just wasn’t there.
Today, the situation is very different, and EU’S Trojarova project--with a historical resource of over 61,000 tons of antimony worth around $ 2 billion in situ value at today’s spot prices—could now become a military kingmaker.
But Military Metals isn’t concentrating all of its effects on a single continent: it’s also making huge moves back in North America, in Canada’s famous WWI antimony mine in Nova Scotia.
Military Metals is sitting on a recently acquired historical antimony/gold play, the West Gore Antimony Project—Canada’s biggest past producing antimony mine and a key supplier to the Allied Forces in WWI.
It's an impressive historical resource, with historical drilling results demonstrating over 7 meters of 10.6 gpt gold and 3.4% antimony.
[ZeroHedge] Hundreds of millions of people globally have become diabetic over the past 30 years, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to call for “urgent action” to deal with the health crisis.
The number of adults living with diabetes worldwide has more than quadrupled since 1990, the WHO said in a Nov. 13 statement citing the results of a recent study it supported. An estimated 828 million adults were living with the condition worldwide in 2022, an increase of 630 million from 1990.
The lowest prevalence of diabetes was in “Western Europe and East Africa for both sexes, and in Japan and Canada for women.” The highest prevalence was in Polynesia and Micronesia, certain nations in the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Middle East, as well as Pakistan and Malaysia.
In total, 14 percent of the world’s adults had diabetes in 2022, double the seven percent 30 years back.
“We have seen an alarming rise in diabetes over the past three decades, which reflects the increase in obesity, compounded by the impacts of the marketing of unhealthy food, a lack of physical activity, and economic hardship,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“To bring the global diabetes epidemic under control, countries must urgently take action. This starts with enacting policies that support healthy diets and physical activity, and, most importantly, health systems that provide prevention, early detection, and treatment.”
Nearly 450 million adults aged 30 and above with diabetes remained untreated in 2022. This represented 59 percent of all adults who have the condition, a 3.5-fold jump. Ninety percent of untreated adults were living in low- and middle-income countries.
According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 38 million Americans were living with diabetes in 2021, which was roughly one in 10 individuals. One in five didn’t know they had the condition. Nearly 100 million, or more than one in three Americans, suffered from pre-diabetes.
A bipartisan group of senators in June announced legislation aimed at improving the early detection and screening of type 1 diabetes, titled “Strengthening Collective Resources for Encouraging Education Needed (SCREEN) for Type 1 Diabetes Act.”
Early identification “can prevent life-threatening conditions like diabetic ketoacidosis and potentially allow for the use of therapeutics to delay the clinical onset of the condition, helping to improve patients’ quality of life and reliance on insulin,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
DIABETES BURDEN IN AMERICA
A report from the American Diabetes Association last year found that the country’s annual cost of the illness was nearly $413 billion in 2022, which included more than $306 billion in direct medical costs.
Out of every $4 in health care spending in the United States, $1 was used for people diagnosed with diabetes, it said.
“In addition to its enormous physical and health burden, diabetes also carries an untenable cost burden that is often disproportionately borne by vulnerable and underserved communities,” said Charles Henderson, CEO of the organization.
He pointed out that the medical costs for such people have risen by 35 percent over the previous decade. “Reducing the cost of diabetes is essential to improving the lives of all people with diabetes.”
Several studies have shown that certain lifestyle adjustments can go a long way in managing the condition. For instance, a large-scale study involving around 103,000 adults who were followed up for over a seven-year period found that the time of eating breakfast could influence diabetes risk.
Individuals who ate their breakfast after 9 a.m. were found to have a 59 percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who regularly ate breakfast before 8 a.m.
Another study found that intermittent fasting may help control blood sugar better than popular diabetes medications.
This month, a group of senators wrote a letter to senate leaders, seeking reauthorization for the Special Diabetes Program (SDP). Funding for the nearly three-decade-old program is set to expire by the end of the year.
SDP funds research on the prevention and cure of type 1 diabetes. “Research funded by the SDP is leading directly to the development of new insights and therapies that are improving the lives of those with diabetes and accelerating progress toward curing and preventing the disease,” the lawmakers wrote.
#2
RFK Jr did state that he wants "Corn Syrup" taken out of COKE and replaced with "Cane Sugar".
One should note that "Corn Syrup" is a by product of processing corn to make Gasohol.
Gasohol is that stupid EPA demanded diluent of US cars fuel that ADMs (that big company based in Illinois) lobbies for with so many $ over the past 4 decades or more.
[FoxNews] FEC filings show organizations run by Al Sharpton and Roland Martin received payments from the Harris campaign ahead of their interviews with the Democratic candidate
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign reportedly gave large amounts of money to organizations run by media figures in the weeks before sitting down for interviews with them.
FEC filings, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, show the Harris campaign gave two $250,000 donations to Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit organization in September and October.
Harris sat down for a friendly interview with the MSNBC host on October 20, in which he asked her what she wanted her legacy to be, 50 years from now.
Sharpton wasn't the only media ally that received a payment from the campaign to his organization ahead of their sit-down interview, a bombshell New York Times report revealed.
And even that wasn’t enough to drag her over the finish line. The New York Times must be furious, if they’re reporting it now.
The campaign also gave a $350,000 payment to Nu Vision Media on September 9, according to FEC filings first reported by the Times.
Nu Vision Media is a media company run by journalist Roland Martin. Martin spent roughly 30 minutes interviewing Harris on his streaming program in October.
The former CNN contributor told the Times the payment was for advertising.
"It should have been a hell of a lot more," he said, according to the report. "More should have been spent on Black-owned media."
It would have done no good — the voters were already gone.
According to the Free Beacon, the Harris campaign gave $5.4 million to Black and Latino advocacy groups in her effort to add more of these voters to her coalition.
News of these expenditures comes as the Harris campaign faces increasing scrutiny over its $1.5 billion spending spree during her short presidential campaign.
The Times report also found that star-studded election eve rallies cost the campaign over $10 million. While the singers were not paid, the support staff was, the report said.
The campaign also made two $500,000 payments to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions on Oct. 15, a month after Winfrey's town hall with Harris and weeks before the pair appeared at a Harris Philadelphia rally, FEC filings show.
The full price of the event with Winfrey was closer to $2.5 million, Harris allies told the Times.
A Harpo Productions spokesperson acknowledged to Variety that the company took money from the campaign but claimed it was for "production costs."
The Harris campaign did not immediately return a request for comment to Fox News Digital.
[JustTheNews] The request, which Biden sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, includes $40 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, and billions more for other federal agencies, including the Small Business Administration.
President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress for an additional $100 billion in disaster relief aid, in order to help Americans recover from multiple fires and hurricanes that have plagued the country in recent months.
The southeast has been struggling with the aftermaths of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, while communities on the West Coast have struggled with a heavy fire season.
The request, which Biden sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, includes $40 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, and billions more for other federal agencies, including the Small Business Administration, which is reportedly out of cash amid a surge in disaster loan requests, per Politico.
“From rebuilding homes and reopening critical infrastructure, such as schools and roads — to supporting the Nation’s farmers and ranchers and ensuring access to healthcare services — impacted communities await your response. There can be no delay,” Biden wrote in a letter to Johnson.
“I urge the Congress to act quickly to pass a supplemental funding package to assist communities impacted by these hurricanes — and every other disaster since the Congress last passed a comprehensive disaster package in 2022 — so that the people, families, businesses, and communities affected have the support they need to respond, recover, and rebuild responsibly," he added.
The request also includes funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Agriculture.
Johnson said on Monday that lawmakers will “go to work” on evaluating the aid requests. Congress is also working to avoid a government shutdown by Dec. 20.
"We’re going to make sure we deliver for the hurricane victims and the people that have suffered from that,” Johnson promised.
What guarantee is there that FEMA will go back and succor all the Trump supporters who were deliberately skipped on the first pass? It seems to me that this can wait a few more weeks until the next Congressional session and the next president can weigh in.
#2
Augusta Ga./ Richmond Co. just passed the
1 MILLION Cubic/Ft. of fallen trees and stumps collected, They have filled up several Baseball or Soccer fields already.
After 45+ days cleanup is only maybe 15% done.
OBTW: the $750 FEMA check won't even pay to have 1 tree to be cut up and removed from a private yard.
The starting rate is $800 a tree, and $300 a stump.
The storm even took out some gigantic Pre-Civil War Oaks.
[NASASPACEFLIGHT] After an almost perfect Flight 5 only one month ago, SpaceX is poised to set a turnaround record for Starship and fly Flight 6 no earlier than Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 4 p.m. CST. For Flight 6, SpaceX aims to conduct an in-space relight objective to Ship 31’s flight, with a landing in daylight. Booster 13 will also attempt a return to launch site catch to follow up on the milestone achieved during Flight 5.
[Breitbart] President Joe Biden has 62 days left in office but it’s almost as if he has checked out already. The U.S. commander in chief was nowhere to be seen Monday as he missed the traditional gathering of world leaders at the final Group of 20 (G20) summit of his presidency, a group photo no-show officials simply attributed to timing.
The 81-year-old and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instead wandered up after the official picture has been taken, as other world leaders milled about chatting after having smiled and warmly held hands for the picture, AP reports.
The timing left Chinese President Xi Jinping front and center among the rows of leaders posed against blue skies and blue water in Rio de Janeiro. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stood, less visible, in a back row.
Biden and Trudeau arrived together at the designated spot for the photo, standing and looking around for a time before the realisation set in they had missed their chance.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was also absent from the traditional set piece photo and the three then had their own huddle in front of the cameras.
A few days earlier Biden had drawn attention to himself when he appeared to wander off alone into an Amazon rainforest after making a speech on climate change in Brazil at the COP29 summit.
The Guardian reports U.S. officials denied Biden missed the photo – officially for the launch of the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s alliance to curb world hunger – to avoid appearing alongside Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
President Vladimir Putin was conspicuously absent from the Rio summit. His arrest is sought by the international criminal court over the Ukraine war.
[JustTheNews] Vladimir Putin has cut off exports of Russian uranium to the United States, exploiting a dangerous dependence cemented by Obama-era deals.
The U.S. nuclear energy sector’s dependence on Russian uranium created during a failed Obama-era reset with Moscow is coming back to bite Americans as the Kremlin moves to block future exports of the vital fuel.
Vladimir Putin’s new restrictions on uranium exports to the U.S., announced last week, come as the country’s war in Ukraine continues to heighten tensions with the United States and the West. His announcement created an immediate impact, as uranium prices soared and worries grew that American utilities might have trouble meeting electric demand next year.
It's the latest fallout from a series of foreign policy decisions crafted by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton that inexplicably strengthened Putin's ability to wage economic warfare with energy supplies such as natural gas and uranium.
"Everything the Democrats have done has emboldened Russia and their ability to actually leverage their dirty gas production," Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Monday night. Tenney's House district is home to New York's remaining nuclear power reactors.
Enriched uranium is a vital component of nuclear power plants in the United States, which account for a fifth of electricity production across the nation. The United States is also almost entirely dependent on imports to acquire enriched uranium. Last year, the United States imported more than a quarter of its enriched fuel from Russia even as relations have deteriorated during the Ukraine war.
But the current dependence on Russia was a long time in the making, cemented by several deals signed by the Clinton and Obama administrations that hooked the United States on Moscow's uranium supply, according to the 2020 book “Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies, and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties.”
“[The] United States used to produce its own nuclear materials for bombs and then for nuclear energy, and it was the Clinton administration they made this deal with the Russians way back in the 90s to purchase all of this down blended material from, you know, the decommission nuclear warheads from Russia,” Seamus Bruner, co-author of the book, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. “That got us addicted to Russia's supply,” he said, explaining that it led to a cratering of domestic supply.
Two deals, which took place during Obama’s vaunted "Russian Reset" that began in 2009, cemented the United States’ dependence on Russia nuclear fuel, Bruner said.
“[The] Obama administration certainly wasn't friendly. They made the famous deals with Russia, the [123 Agreement]; everybody remembers the uranium one deal, which was about nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons,” Bruner said.
“And so now we're in this tough spot. Now we do have domestic producers, who are, you know, producing uranium for our energy needs, but there are no way, there's no way they're going to catch up.”
As part of the flurry of diplomacy between the former Cold War rivals, the Obama administration penned the new 123 Agreement with the Kremlin, which was designed to increase cooperation on civil nuclear energy and further commercial opportunities between the two economies. The administration also signed new arms control and technology cooperation agreements as part of the diplomatic push.
The deal led to billions of dollars in contracts for U.S. utilities to buy Russian uranium to power their nuclear reactors.
Around the same time the agreements were taking shape, however, Putin’s state-controlled nuclear company, Rosatom, was making moves to corner the global supply.
The Russian company’s efforts to acquire a Canadian company, Uranium One, became a scandal for the Obama administration because it saw the virtual elimination of U.S. domestic production of uranium and raised corruption concerns about some of its chief officials.
“The the Uranium One deal was about shuttering our domestic mines, we had all of these uranium mines across…the Rocky Mountains…and closer towards the west, Midwest, that shut down the domestic production there, which was a boon to Putin, who had purchased, in addition to the mines in the United States, a bunch of mines in Kazakhstan,” Bruner said.
“And those are where he's able to pull out a ton of uranium and enrich it for civilian purposes, ostensibly, and and then sell it back to us at a premium.”
Before the Russian takeover, Uranium One was a Canadian company that mined Uranium around the world, with assets in Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Its facilities in Wyoming, Utah, and other states accounted for approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity at the time, necessitating a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to approve an acquisition by the Russia state-backed company.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on that committee and had a prominent role in shaping the administration’s foreign policy. The acquisition became a scandal that plagued her 2016 presidential campaign after investigative author Peter Schweizer and his Government Accountability Institute found nine Uranium One shareholders funneled $145 million into the Clinton Foundation before the deal was set to be considered.
The acquisition was subsequently approved, though Clinton’s team has repeatedly denied that the secretary had a major role in approving the sale.
Both Congress and President Biden, who had a front row seat to the reset, at least appeared to recognize the danger caused by the past missteps, but could do little to wean the U.S. off Russia’s supply before now.
Shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Congress passed and Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act ostensibly to free the U.S. nuclear industry from dependence on Russia. Yet, the law only requires an end to U.S. imports of nuclear fuel from Russia completely by 2028, providing a waiver system in the intervening years.
“It was a terrible decision to make us dependent on on imports of uranium from Russia,” former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Fleitz said the waiver system established by the law revealed how underdeveloped the United States’ domestic uranium production is, something Putin eagerly exploited last week.
“But utilities could ask for waivers, with the understanding it will take a long time for us to establish domestic sources of your reactor grade uranium,” Fleitz said. “The Russians knew that, and they're going to cut this off, and our reactors will have no where to go to get uranium.”
#1
India: 'Massive' uranium find in Indian state
BBC ^ | July 19 2011 | BBC
India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh may have one of the largest reserves of uranium in the world, the country's chief nuclear officer says.
Studies show Tummalapalle in Kadapa district has a reserve of 150,000 tonnes of the mineral, Atomic Energy Commission chief S Banerjee said.
India has estimated reserves of about 175,000 tonnes of uranium. ... Mr Banerjee said that studies at Tummalapalle have shown that the area "had a confirmed reserve of 49,000 tonnes and recent surveys indicate that this figure could go up even threefold" and become one of the world's largest uranium reserves.
And then silence.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 10:16
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#2
The Market for the One Energy Source That’s a Menace to Civilization Is Absolutely Mind-Boggling
By Armin Rosen, November 08, 2015
Also published by Business Insider
"Uranium isn’t like other commodities for one very simple reason: It’s impossible to vaporize an entire city with a single petroleum- or coal-based weapon that’s smaller than a two-seat car.
What makes uranium so promising as a source of energy is also what makes it a potential menace to civilization.
Uranium is compact, easy to transport, inexpensive [!!], plentiful, and radioactive. A few hundred pounds of uranium can cleanly and cheaply power a civilian nuclear reactor — or it can be used to create an unimaginably powerful weapon.
The material’s trade is governed under a unique international regulatory system, as well as through stringent country-level controls."
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 10:38
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[Washington Examiner] More than 1,100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border but just 24 miles north of Mexico’s border with Guatemala, a gleaming new mall is set to be completed next month that will become just one node in a vast network of over a hundred facilities across Central and South America, all designed to make it easier for migrants to enter the United States.
This mass migration infrastructure is being built and paid for by the United Nations, foreign governments, international nongovernmental organizations, and American taxpayers.
In Tapachula, a city in the Mexican state of Chiapas just north of Guatemala, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is building a 75,000-square-foot migrant aid center on land donated by the Mexican government. Once completed, the facility will house employees from UNHCR, the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, the U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund, and dozens of other NGOs, all dedicated to helping migrants transit to the U.S.
The facility was commissioned to "respond comprehensively to the needs of people who arrive in Mexico ... migrant refugees who travel together from all continents, and arrive in Tapachula in need of a response or attention," Giovanni Lepri, Mexico’s representative to UNHCR told reporters when the project was first announced.
A SERVICE TO MIGRANTS
In addition to providing migrants with food, transportation vouchers, and cash cards, the migrant aid center and many others like it will also provide logistical tips on how to safely reach the U.S. and even legal advice on how best to enter.
When asked how she could justify her organization essentially helping migrants break the laws of another country, an employee of the Cadena NGO told Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, "As an organization, we’re not here to judge. We’re just here to provide a service."
Cadena, other NGOs, and the U.N. are providing migrants with services often paid for by U.S. taxpayers. According to Bensman, UNHCR received $1.9 billion from the Biden administration in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023 after receiving just $377 million from the Trump administration in 2019.
In addition to its new facility in Tapachula, UNHCR and IOM plan to spend an additional $1.6 billion in 17 Latin American countries through a network of over 200 NGOs for its 2024 Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan, which aims to assist over 2.2 million migrants in search of "a country and community that accepts them, offers stability, effective protection, and opportunity for a life lived with dignity."
The report singles out the opening of "Safe Mobility Offices by the United States Government in some countries of the region" as a development that will have "a positive and stabilizing impact" on migrants "by providing them with options for a regular pathway to the United States."
#4
Once America’s borders are closed tight against illegals in late January, will all this organization go on vacation for the next four years — or longer, depending on the results of the 2028 election — or will they openly weaponize the hopeful masses they worked so diligently to create?
#5
...a gleaming new mall is set to be completed next month that will become just one node in a vast network of over a hundred facilities across Central and South America
[RailFreight] The challenges on the Russian railway network keep growing bigger. A toxic mix of trade reorientation, staff and locomotive shortages, and network cluttering have strained Russian Railways’ (RZD) operations, and now it is putting a hold on container traffic to Moscow.
RZD has introduced a ban on container traffic destined for terminals in the Moscow region, which will be in force from 12 to 21 November. The measure concerns the Selyatino and Elektrougli terminals, where there is an overflow of containers, according to the Moscow Times citing RZD documents. Trains are now waiting approximately one thousand kilometres away, between the cities of Perm and Kirov.
Much like the freight terminals, the railway network in the Moscow region is also overloaded. As a result, delays in container deliveries have been growing bigger and have become increasingly common. A month-long waiting time is now considered good, and a two-month delay is no longer considered to be an exception.
EVER-GROWING PROBLEMS
Russia has been struggling with an ever-increasing amount of problems on its railway network. Above all, RZD has a locomotive shortage as a result of a lack of maintenance capacities. There are not enough spare parts due to sanctions, but there is also insufficient qualified personnel to provide maintenance services. Another persistent problem is the driver shortage, which has now run in the thousands: according to RZD itself, it needs 2,500 more drivers to meet its demand. The shortages are taking a toll on RZD’s ability to transport freight around the country.
Those issues are amplified by Russia’s trade reorientation towards the east. It now seeks to export and import more goods to and from China, for which it needs to cover much larger distances, and therefore more locomotives and staff. There is also a commodity type imbalance, with containers coming into the country and raw materials leaving it.
As a consequence, containers are accumulating around the country. They are not being sent back with Russian products for Chinese customers, because China does not buy enough Russian products typically carried in containers. Now, there are so many stranded containers that the Selyatino and Elektrougli terminals cannot accept more. Similarly, Russia’s Far East is riddled with empty wagons that were used to carry raw materials to China for exports.
100,000 WAGONS OFF THE RUSSIAN RAILWAYS
In order to declutter the railway network, RZD wants to remove hindering empty wagons. It announced that it wants to take no less than 100,000 wagons off the railways. Shippers do not seem to be amused by that measure, because, they more and more often run into a deficit of wagons to load their products, according to the Moscow Times. Supposedly, 35 to 40 per cent of all freight in west Siberia (Russia’s main coal mining region) remained unloaded by the middle of October, if destined for central Russia.
Operators complain that RZD is intentionally reducing loading plans by a quarter and is introducing unprecedented limitations on returning empty wagons to the Far East.
#1
if anyone is asking whether Russia could solve their problem by sending more freight by truck, the answer is
not enough drivers, not enough trucks, not enough cargo handling capacity and the roads aren't very good either
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/19/2024 9:12
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#2
Between the need to increase freight movement to support the military, and damage to the lines, and decreased capacity relating Ukraine ops., Russian rail has moved into the red zone.
The Russian rail system never had much slack in the the operation. It now has less than zero.
Empty cars are piling up, not being sent back, so the notional return with load won't happen. This is what happened in California a few years ago.
Good pile up at ports of entry, but can't go anywhere, because there's no way to load them all.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/19/2024 9:28
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One would think the US Secret Service vetted its people better?
But then a person could also ask:
Are we looking at a governmental process for cultivating new shooter types, or drawing out and identifying future violent radicals for use? (eg. Thomas Matthew Crooks)
Either way, it makes a person wonder IF there is a hidden 5th Column already close to Trump, Vance, other MAGA officials, and their families?
[JusticeReport] The agent—previously identified as 30-year-old [X *] —is attempting to leverage his position as a federal employee to remove evidence of his activities by falsely accusing the Justice Report of leaking privileged “medical information” and details about his significant other to the public.
* Name deleted here to protect the agent until the official arrest report is published, on the assumption that there will be an arrest after January 20th.
#1
There was a time when this type of stuff would show up in the background check process and be handled. Perhaps that process should be examined. I think it went bad when Brennen didn’t get filtered out.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/19/2024 7:58
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#2
TW - I put his name there so it would go into Rantburg's "THUG DATABASE" with the "Highlighting Type" I used.
So deleting it was okay as he's in the Thug Database now.
[IsraelTimes] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “the only thing that Hamas wants is a deal that ends the war and for the IDF to leave the Strip in order to return to power,” according to Israel National News. “I am not ready to allow that under any circumstance.”
He continues to insist that Hamas “sees the pressure on Israel”
…all credit to the Biden-Harris administration, whoever they are…
and therefore believes that it can hold out for a better deal, according to the report.
The security establishment has warned that such a positions is a likely death sentence for the hostages.
The security establishment should remember their glory days when what they did and thought was known only to themselves and their civilian masters. This arguing in the news media is both unprofessional and unwise, as it makes them look petty and incompetent and the nation look weak and divided.
Netanyahu says he gave instructions that by Thursday he is to have on his desk a plan for replacing Hamas in the distribution of humanitarian aid, says the outlet.
“We’ve struck Hamas militarily, but we haven’t harmed their ruling capabilities enough,” says Netanyahu according to Channel 12.
Members of the committee tell the outlet that Netanyahu that does not believe that an agreement in Lebanon will be effective, and therefore Israel is insisting on freedom of action against Hezbollah, according to Channel 12. Netanyahu tells the lawmakers that those demands are not being supported by the mediating countries, according to the report.
He tells the group that Israel’s decision to refrain from attacking “certain targets” in Iran in response to ballistic missile attacks was not made because of an American ultimatum, according to the Knesset readout of the meeting.
Netanyahu tells the lawmakers that efforts to reach a hostage deal with Hamas are still taking place.
Netanyahu says Israel is still looking to close deals to release a small number of hostages, and that Israel is offering money and safe passage for Gaza who release hostages they are holding.
He tells the lawmakers that Hamas continues to insist that the IDF withdraw fully and that Hamas remain the ruler of the Gaza Strip, and that he will not accept those terms.
Netanyahu notes that Israel has made significant progress in destroying Hamas’s military, but only “partial progress” in destroying its ruling capacity, especially the distribution of humanitarian aid.
[IsraelTimes] PM confirms that a ‘specific component’ in Iran’s nuclear program was hit in last month’s strikes, in Knesset speech repeatedly interrupted by family members of hostages
Speaking nearly two weeks after the US election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly criticized the Biden administration’s judgment and policies at major junctions in Israel’s ongoing war against Iran and its proxies.
“The US had reservations and suggested that we not enter Gaza,” said Netanyahu in the Knesset plenum on Monday. “It had reservations about entering Gaza City, Khan Younis, and, most critically, strongly opposed entry into Rafah.”
Administration officials had publicly urged Israel to calibrate its Rafah offensive to minimize civilian harm.
“President Biden told me that if we go in, we will be alone,” Netanyahu said. “He also said that he would stop shipments of important weapons to us. And so he did. A few days later, [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken appeared and repeated the same things and I told him — we will fight with our nails.”
The US withheld a single shipment of 2,000-lb bombs, allowing all other weapon transfers to continue.
Netanyahu also criticized US positions after Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel: “Again, we were told by our friend that there is no need to respond. And I said that sitting and not reacting is not acceptable, and we responded.”
‘SPECIFIC COMPONENT’ IN IRAN NUKE PROGRAM HIT
The prime minister said that the Israeli response last month took out air defense batteries and “inflicted real damage on Iran’s ballistic missile production capability,” as well as targeting its nuclear program.
“It’s not a secret, it has been published,” Netanyahu said. “There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack.”
However, Netanyahu added that Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon has not been blocked. “We’ve delayed it… but it has progressed” over the past few years, he said. Iran has “advanced its enrichment; it still has a long way to go in other areas.” The imperative to stop Iran’s march to the bomb “is on us,” he said.
Israel’s April strike on Iran, Netanyahu said, took out one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran. In October, Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries and caused serious damage to Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce solid fuel, which is used in long-range ballistic missiles.
Last week, the Axios news site revealed that Israel destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin during last month’s attack on Iran.
Addressing attempts to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be put down on paper.”
Rather, he said, “We will be compelled to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks… even after a ceasefire,” to keep it from rebuilding.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached, and stressed: “We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6, 2023.”
HOPES FOR PROGRESS ON HOSTAGES
Netanyahu’s address was interrupted repeatedly by opposition lawmakers and by protesters in the gallery who laid out posters with the faces of hostages held in Gaza. Some were ejected by Knesset security.
Netanyahu told the Knesset plenum that he had met with aides and members of security services until 3 a.m. a night earlier to discuss new ways to get hostages home.
“To date, we have brought back 154,” he said. “117 alive, and another 37, unfortunately, no longer alive.”
He argued that senior US officials agree that maximum pressure must be applied on Hamas so that it will back off its “unrealistic” demands for a deal.
One challenge of the war that we won’t give up on, he said, is “how to extract from those murderers, from Hamas, how to extract from those tunnels, the rest of our hostages… Victory includes freeing the hostages. And we will achieve it as well,” he said.
“We will bring home dozens more hostages, I hope in the near future.”
He said the focus now is on harming Hamas’s ability to rule Gaza — a claim he has made for months.
“I asked the IDF to come up with an orderly plan to eradicate the governmental capacity, which is related to the denial of their ability to distribute humanitarian aid,” he said. “We want to ensure that the humanitarian aid is not looted by Hamas and others.”
‘THE PUBLIC IS NOT STUPID’
As he has done repeatedly in recent weeks, Netanyahu blasted the “countless leaks from the cabinet and the negotiating team.”
“The leaks seriously harm the chance of obtaining a deal for the release of hostages, they delay the release of our hostages,” he said.
While Netanyahu did not refer to the ongoing investigation of the alleged theft of IDF intelligence documents and the suspected leak of one of the documents by his former aide Eli Feldstein — who has been in detention for three weeks — he implied that there is a discriminatory focus in what the law enforcement authorities choose to investigate.
“I have called time after time for the phenomenon [of leaks from the cabinet and negotiating team] to be investigated,” he said. “I asked, how can it be that leaks that cause immense damage to the State of Israel are not investigated? I was told: You need to send a letter. So I sent a letter, setting out a range of terrible, criminal leaks, that do tremendous harm to Israel.”
He continued, “And yet, as of this moment, nobody has been investigated and nobody has been arrested [for those leaks]. Nobody’s life has been ruined,” he says, another implied reference to the ongoing detention of Feldstein. “Everybody understands what’s going on here. Nobody is stupid. The public is not stupid… The people are not stupid.”
His cabinet initially planned to launch an attack against Hezbollah in October, he says, but had to move up the planning “when our special means was about to be revealed.”
“From the moment I learned that this was about to be revealed, I decided that it was necessary to act immediately,” he claims. “There were those who argued that the US should be informed ahead of time. I argued that the US should not be informed because this could lead to either resistance or a leak, which is the same thing. A leak would have immediately demonstrated the effectiveness of the move. I denied it outright — and we acted.”
Netanyahu says that in the subsequent operations, 70-80 percent of Hezbollah rocket and missile capabilities were destroyed.
He also speaks about his deliberations ahead of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: “A legitimate argument arose that such an action could lead to the expansion of the campaign.”
“There was a completely legitimate debate, and there was also a second demand,” he continues. “The demand was to update and coordinate this attack with the US. Again, with all due respect to our friends in the US, I rejected it outright.”
He says that the debate over whether to strike Nasrallah continued on his September flight to New York ahead of his speech to the UN.
“Two hours later, I called the defense minister and IDF chief of staff, and said that we had to eliminate the man. When we landed in New York, we convened the [security cabinet]. There was almost an absolute majority. One person argued differently, but the entire cabinet got behind it, and we made the decision, it was carried out — and the rest is known.”
Netanyahu says Israel has destroyed all four of Iran’s S-300 batteries
[IsraelTimes] In his speech to the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at length about the results of Israel’s two strikes on Iran, in response to ballistic missile and drone attacks in April and in October.
In response to the April attack, Israel destroyed one of the four S-300 air defense batteries around Tehran, he says.
In the second strike in late October, Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries, he says. Israel struck other air defense systems, and Iran’s missile production capabilities, he continues.
He also confirms an Axios report that the Israeli strikes destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in the Parchin military complex, outside of Tehran. “There is a certain element of the nuclear program that was damaged in this attack.”
Netanyahu says he has spoken about stopping Iran’s nuclear program recently with both US President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.
[Jpost] 'There are areas where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly homosexual or lesbians to be more attentive,' says Barbara Slowik.
Berlin Police Chief Barbara Slowik has issued a warning to Jews and LGBTQ+ individuals to exercise caution in certain areas of the German capital amid rising antisemitism and hate crimes. Speaking to the press, Slowik emphasized the need for vigilance in the wake of recent events, particularly following the attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.
"There are no so-called no-go areas, meaning areas that are too dangerous to enter," Slowik stated, as reported by Die Zeit. "However, there are areas, and we must be honest at this stage, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly homosexual or lesbians to be more attentive," she added, emphasizing the importance of caution in public spaces.
Slowik explained, "Unfortunately, there are certain neighborhoods where predominantly Arab-descended people live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups," and where "open anti-Semitism is articulated there against people of Jewish faith and origin.”
Highlighting the tensions in certain neighborhoods, Slowik explained, "Unfortunately, there are certain neighborhoods where predominantly Arab-descended people live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups," and where "open anti-Semitism is articulated there against people of Jewish faith and origin," according to Der Standard - Archäologie. She stressed that her intention was not to stigmatize any community, stating, "I do not want to 'defame' any particular group of people as perpetrators," as reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung.
While the police chief did not specify the exact areas of concern, she linked the increase in antisemitic incidents to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. "This understandably increases the fear within the community of becoming a target of an attack," Slowik noted, adding, "That fear and concern remain, I can understand," as reported by Die Zeit.
Since October 7, 2023, the Berlin police have initiated over 6,200 investigations related to antisemitism and incitement to hatred, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. A significant portion of these cases involves hate postings on the internet, property damage, and propaganda offenses. "Of the 1,300 investigations regarding violent crimes, it is mostly about attacks or resistance against police officers at demonstrations," Slowik indicated.
Despite the rise in reported incidents, direct violent crimes against Jewish individuals remain relatively low. "Fortunately, the violent crimes against Jewish people are low, but without question, every act is one too many," Slowik emphasized, as noted by Die Zeit. She acknowledged the heightened sense of insecurity within the Jewish-Israeli community, stating, "People from the Jewish-Israeli community in Berlin perceive the total number of anti-Semitic crimes, which raises their fear of becoming targets of attacks," according to Der Standard - Archäologie.
In her remarks, Slowik also underscored the complexity of the situation, acknowledging the diverse backgrounds of the city's residents. "I do not want to 'defame' any particular group of people as perpetrators," she stated, emphasizing the importance of not generalizing or assigning blame to entire communities.
Other incidents in Berlin include a football fan being attacked for wearing a scarf with a Star of David on it, a petrol bomb attack on a synagogue shortly after the Oct 7 massacres in southern Israel, and a couple being attacked in a fast-food outlet for speaking Hebrew.
On the day of the Hamas massacres, men handed out sweets in celebration in the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukolln, an incident that shocked Germany and led to deep anxiety over whether the recent waves of migration had made Jewish life less safe.
Neukolln, also famous for its LGBT nightlife, is the Berlin district with the highest Arab population. The two communities have coexisted for years, although there have been several incidents of gay couples being physically assaulted in recent years.
Earlier this month, a large majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, voted for a new resolution against anti-Semitism that mentioned migration from the Middle East as a factor. The resolution, drafted by the Greens, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, warned of an “alarming extent of anti-Semitism based on migration from countries where anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel are widespread due to state indoctrination”.
The resolution could lead to refugees having their asylum status taken away if they are found guilty of committing anti-Semitic crimes.
The migration debate flared again in the summer amid fears of a rise in terrorism, but is likely to play second fiddle to Germany’s stagnating economy in the upcoming election. The hard-Right Alternative for Germany has cited the protection of the country’s Jewish minority as a reason to push through a much tougher policy of mass deportations of refugees back to countries such as Syria.
#3
The hard-Right Alternative for Germany has cited the protection of the country’s Jewish minority as a reason to push through a much tougher policy of mass deportations of refugees back to countries such as Syria.
That isn't true anymore. The AFD has Corbynized itself over the past 2-3 years. Many of their leading politicians are increasingly pro Erdogan, Qatar, Iran, Russia and their adjuncts like Hezbollah and Hamas.
[IsraelTimes] Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar blasts Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema for saying on a panel that she regrets using the word "pogrom" to describe violence against Israeli soccer fans earlier this month.
"The statement made by the Mayor of Amsterdam is utterly unacceptable," writes Sa’ar on X. "The failure that occurred on that night must not be compounded by a further grave failure: a cover-up."
"Hundreds of Israeli fans who came to watch a football match were pursued and attacked, targeted by a mob asking for their passports to check if they were citizens of the Jewish state," says Sa’ar. "There is no other word for this than a pogrom."
The day after the game between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv, Halsema said in a presser that "boys on scooters crisscrossed the city looking for Israeli football fans. It was a hit-and-run. I understand very well that this brings back the memory of pogroms."
Yesterday, she accused Israel of using the word as "propaganda."
"I have seen how the word ’pogrom’ became very political, propaganda, in fact," she said. "The Israeli government speaks of a Paleostinian pogrom on the streets of Amsterdam, Dutch politicians use the word ’pogrom’ to discriminate against Moroccan residents, Moslems. That is not what I meant and that is not what I wanted."
"The application of the term ’pogrom’ was not an Israeli invention," Sa’ar fires back. It was used by Dutch politicians who recognized the severity and antisemitic nature of the incident."
"We will never again accept the persecution of Jews on the soil of Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... or anywhere else!"
Geert Wilders is celebrating today's major victory, announcing that Prime Minister Dick Schoof has confirmed the Public Prosecution Service can now prosecute those responsible for the “Jew Hunt” in Amsterdam as terrorists. This means that upon conviction, these jihadis can be… pic.twitter.com/0hG9M7Zw56
…these jihadis can be stripped of their Dutch citizenship, and no new law is required. But it gets even better. The government is now considering adding antisemitism as a direct, specific reason to revoke nationality. (Jihadis across the Netherlands are panicking) Wilders calls this “fantastic news,” as it directly supports his unwavering push for harsher consequences—including deportation and revocation of citizenship of dual nationals —for those hunting Jews in the Netherlands.
Above Geert Wilders Demands Removal of Dutch Passports for Moroccan 'Jew-Hunting' Rioters: 'This is Terror, Plain and Simple'
Linked article is available only through a VPN
[EngMilRu] The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
In Kharkov direction, the units of the Sever Group of Forces have defeated units of the AFU 57th Mechanised Infantry Brigade and the 5th Border Detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine near Volchansk, Basovo, and Kazachya Lopan (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses were up to 50 troops and two motor vehicles.
-- The units of the Zapad Group of Forces have improved the tactical situation and inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of 28th, 60th, 63rd, 67th, 116th Mechanised brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 119th Territorial Defence Brigade near Zagryzovo, Kupyansk, Glushkovka (Kharkov region), Krasny Liman and Torskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).
Three counterattacks launched by assault detachments of the 14th Mechanised Brigade of the AFU and the 1st National Guard Brigade have been repelled.
The AFU losses were up to 450 troops, one armoured fighting vehicle, six motor vehicles, one Polish-made 155mm Krab self-propelled artillery system, one Bogdana 155mm self-propelled artillery system, one U.S.-made 155mm M-198 howitzer, two U.S.-made 105mm M-119 guns, one Gvozdika 2S1 122mm self-propelled artillery system, and one D-30 122mm howitzer. Two Anklav-N electronic warfare stations and two field ammunition depots have been eliminated.
The units of the Yug Group of Forces have improved the situation along the front line, defeated units of the 54th Mechanised Brigade, the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade, the 81st Airmobile Brigade, the 79th Air Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the 124th Territorial Defence Brigade near Seversk, Dronovka, Andreyevka, Annovka, Dachnoye, and Kurakhovo (Donetsk People's Republic).
Two counterattacks of the AFU 46th Airmobile Brigade's assault detachments have been repelled.
The AFU losses were up to 695 troops, two tanks, two armoured personnel carriers, one armoured fighting vehicle, 12 motor vehicles, one 152mm Msta-B howitzer, four 152mm D-20 guns, one 122mm D-30 howitzer, and two 105mm U.S.-made M-119 guns. Two electronic warfare stations and six field ammunition depots have been eliminated.
As a result of active and decisive actions, the units of the Tsentr Group of Forces have liberated Novoalekseyevka (Donetsk People's Republic).
Russian troops have launched strikes on manpower and hardware of AFU 54th, 100th mechanised brigades, the 142nd Infantry Brigade, the 116th Territorial Defence Brigade close to Dzerzhinsk, Voznesenka, and Ukrainka (Donetsk People's Republic).
In addition, 11 counterattacks of AFU 23rd, 51st mechanised brigades, 71st, 152nd Jaeger brigades, and the Lyut Brigade of the National Police of Ukraine have been repelled.
The AFU losses were more than 500 troops, one M-113 armoured personnel carrier, one U.S.-made 155mm M-777 howitzer, one pick-up truck, one Polish-made 155mm Krab self-propelled artillery system, two 152mm D-20 howitzers, one 122mm 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled artillery system, two 122mm D-30 howitzers, and two 100mm Rapira anti-tank guns.
The units of the Vostok Group of Forces have occupied more advantageous lines and positions, defeated the units of the 33rd Mechanised Brigade, the 37th Naval Infantry Brigade, 123rd and 129th Territorial Defence brigades close to Zelyonoye Pole, Ulakly, Konstantinopol, and Velikaya Novosyolka (Donetsk People's Republic).
One counter-attack launched by the units of the AFU 32nd Mechanised Brigade has been repelled. The AFU losses were up to 135 troops, one armoured fighting vehicle, two motor vehicles, one 152mm 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system, one 155mm M-777 howitzer, and one U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS launcher.
The units of the Dnepr Group of Forces have engaged manpower and hardware of 31st, 110th, 118th Mechanised brigades, 103rd, and 126th Territorial Defence brigades close to Malaya Tokmachka, Novodanilovka (Zaporozhye region), Blakitnoye, Olgovka, and Nikolskoye (Kherson region).
The AFU losses were up to 70 troops, four motor vehicles, six electronic warfare stations, and one U.S.-made AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery radar. One field ammunition depot has been destroyed.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have delivered strikes at infrastructure of military airfields, power objects ensuring operation of the Ukrainian defence industry, unmanned aerial vehicle operator training areas and storage facilities as well as engaged manpower clusters and military hardware in 135 areas.
-- Air defence facilities have shot down four French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs, four U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectiles, and 106 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
-- In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 36,174 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,369 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,490 MLRS combat vehicles, 18,125 field artillery guns and mortars, and 28,492 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.
The units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of 41st, 47th, 115th Mechanised brigades, 82nd, 95th Air Assault brigades, the 36th Naval Infantry Brigade, 117th, 129th Territorial Defence brigades of the AFU near Aleksandriya, Daryino, Leonidovo, Novaya Sorochina, Novoivanovka, Plyokhovo, and Sverdlikovo.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation and artillery inflicted fire damage on AFU manpower and hardware close to Bogdanovka, Guyevo, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Loknya, Martynovka, Mikhaylovka, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevka, Nikolsky, Orlovka, Pogrebki, Russkoye Porechnoye, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, Basovka, and Zhuravka (Sumy region).
During the day, the AFU losses were 420 troops, two U.S.-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, one German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicle, four armoured fighting vehicles, four motor vehicles, one German-made 155mm PzH-2000 self-propelled artillery system, one 152mm 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system, one 152mm D-20 gun, and three 122 mm D-30 howitzers. In addition, 24 AFU servicemen surrendered.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses were more than 33,670 troops, 213 tanks, 140 infantry fighting vehicles, 115 armoured personnel carriers, 1,175 armoured fighting vehicles, 958 motor vehicles, 291 artillery guns, 40 MLRS launchers, including 11 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport-loading vehicles, 66 EW stations, 13 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 27 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, six armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
[CNN] Two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been suddenly disrupted, according to local telecommunications companies, amid fresh warnings of possible Russian interference with global undersea infrastructure.
A communications cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut on Sunday morning around 10:00 a.m. local time, a spokesperson from telecommunications company Telia Lithuania confirmed to CNN.
The company’s monitoring systems could tell there was a cut due to the traffic disruption, and that the cause was likely physical damage to the cable itself, Telia Lithuania spokesperson Audrius Stasiulaitis told CNN. “We can confirm that the internet traffic disruption was not caused by equipment failure but by physical damage to the fiber optic cable.”
Another cable linking Finland and Germany was also disrupted, according to Cinia, the state-controlled Finnish company that runs the link. The C-Lion cable – the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe – spans nearly 1,200 kilometers (730 miles), alongside other key pieces of infrastructure, including gas pipelines and power cables.
The area that was disrupted along the Finnish-German cable is roughly 60 to 65 miles away from the Lithuanian-Swedish cable that was cut, a CNN analysis of the undersea routes shows.
It is unclear what exactly caused the fault in the C-Lion cable – Cinia said in a statement that it is still investigating the issue. A physical inspection has not yet been conducted, Reuters reported citing the company’s chief executive Ari-Jussi Knaapila, who told a press conference on Monday that the sudden outage implied that the cable was cut by an outside force.
The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement on Monday evening that they were “deeply concerned” about the severed C-Lion cable, and raised the possibility of “hybrid warfare.”
“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway,” the statement said. “Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors.”
FEARS OF UNDERSEA SABOTAGE
The incidents come just weeks after the United States warned that it had detected increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables. Two US officials told CNN in September that the US believed Russia was now more likely to carry out potential sabotage operations on these critical pieces of infrastructure.
The warning came after a joint investigation by the public broadcasters of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, which reported in April 2023 that Russia had a fleet of suspected spy ships operating in Nordic waters as part of a program of potential sabotage of underwater cables and wind farms in the region.
The extent of the disruption caused by Cinia’s C-Lion fault revealed Monday is unclear. The most important data flows are usually routed through several different cables, to avoid overreliance on a single link.
A repair vessel is ready to go to the site of the fault, Cinia said in a statement Monday evening. It said it did not know how long repairs would take, but added it typically takes between five and 15 days for submarine cables.
Lithuanian state media was first to report the cut between Lithuania and Sweden, and quoted Telia Lithuania’s chief technology officer Andrius Šemeškevičius saying that the cable handled roughly a third of Lithuania’s internet capacity. Capacity has been restored since the disruption.
The cable is operated by Arelion, a Swedish telecommunications company. Martin Sjögren, a spokesperson for the company, confirmed the damage to the BCS East-West link and said that the company is in contact with Sweden’s military and civil authorities about the incident. The cable had connected Gotland, Sweden and Šventoji, Lithuania, he said.
[IsraelTimes] The only alternative to the UN Palestinian agency’s work in Gaza is to allow Israel to run services there, its chief tells reporters, repeating calls for countries to resist an Israeli ban on the organization.
Philippe Lazzarini,
…the hateful, venal ass who runs UNRWA with malice aforethought…
UNRWA commissioner-general, is in Geneva for a strategy meeting with donors, after it was banned by Israel from operating there last month in what he said is one of the darkest moments in the agency’s history.
“I have drawn the attention of the member states that now the clock is ticking…. We have to stop or prevent the implementation of this bill,” he tells reporters, saying there is no alternative to the agency’s services in Gaza besides allowing Israel to take them over.
Israel has worked to blackball the agency after repeated revelations of its ties to Hamas.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] Intense military action by Russian armed forces has forced the Ukrainian government to evacuate thousands of people from frontline areas.
In October, the Russian military significantly increased its use of loitering munitions and long-range drones, carrying out more than 1,900 strikes.
At least 183 civilians, including nine children, were killed in Russian attacks in Ukraine in October this year. Another 903 people were injured. About 45% of those killed were over 60 years old, according to a report by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU).
According to the HRMMU, from the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine (24 February 2022) to the end of October 2024, 12,162 civilians were killed and 26,919 were injured.
"The overall number of civilian casualties is likely underestimated in cities where there was prolonged, intense fighting at the start of the Russian armed attack in 2022, such as Mariupol, Lysychansk, Popasna and Severodonetsk," the report notes.
In addition, in October, the Russian military significantly increased its use of loitering munitions and long-range drones, carrying out more than 1,900 strikes.
"As a result of the strikes or falling debris, six civilians were killed and 21 people were injured," the document says.
The UN notes that 80% of civilian casualties in October occurred in areas close to the front line due to shelling, airstrikes, MLRS attacks and short-range drones. The Kherson, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions suffered the most.
The report also notes that 94% of all casualties and 96% of destruction of educational and medical institutions occurred in territories controlled by the Ukrainian government.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine operates on the basis of an agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the OHCHR dated 31 July 2014.
Let us recall that in the summer of 2024, 45% more civilians were injured (2,685 people) than in the spring of the same year.
Let us add that on November 18, Russia launched a ballistic attack on Odessa from the temporarily occupied Crimea. The aftermath of the enemy strike is currently being eliminated, and the fight for the lives of the wounded continues in hospitals.
[Ynet] National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Monday of orchestrating politically motivated investigations against him, escalating his ongoing clash with the judiciary.
According to Ben-Gvir, a deputy in the attorney general’s office visited the police’s Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit months ago to initiate a probe into his firearm distribution initiative. When investigators reportedly found no grounds for an inquiry, Ben-Gvir claimed Baharav-Miara demanded a more aggressive approach, allegedly instructing her deputies to "find something" against him.
The Attorney General denied the accusations, calling them baseless and unsupported by evidence. "There is no truth to these claims," Baharav-Miara said in a statement.
In a social media post following his remarks, Ben-Gvir challenged Baharav-Miara to take a lie detector test. "Gali, let’s you and I go to a polygraph," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Ben-Gvir accused the attorney general of weaponizing investigations against politicians, alleging that her actions amount to a "targeted assassination" of his political career. He further claimed she aims to undermine the government and democracy itself, pointing to past investigations of officials close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as evidence.
"She allowed the previous government to do whatever it wanted," Ben-Gvir said. "As a government, we have no choice but to dismiss her. She is persecuting us."
Baharav-Miara, who has frequently clashed with Ben-Gvir and other members of Netanyahu’s coalition, has faced repeated calls for her removal amid accusations of overreach. However, her office insists its actions are strictly professional and impartial. And we believe her - don't we?
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich launched a scathing attack on the attorney general, accusing her of consistently undermining the government’s agenda. "The hostile conduct led by the attorney general is designed to challenge the government at every turn," Smotrich said during a Cabinet meeting.
He cited an incident where Baharav-Miara opposed a government decision to limit the tenure of legal advisers to seven years—a policy established in 2009. "As always, she fights decisions to serve her personal interests, protecting her friends and funneling millions of shekels into their pockets at the expense of Israeli citizens," Smotrich claimed.
Smotrich called on Baharav-Miara to resign, accusing her of abusing her authority for political purposes. "If you have a shred of integrity, step down as attorney general, take off your judicial robes and pursue your political battles in a democratic manner from Kaplan Street," he said, referring to weekly anti-government protests in Tel Aviv. "Only then can we prevent the erosion of public trust in the justice system and stop the deepening divide among the people."
A senior government official told Ynet that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had previously resisted efforts to remove Baharav-Miara from her post, may now be reconsidering.
"Something has changed," the official said. Netanyahu is reportedly emboldened by recent military successes in Gaza and the change of administration in the United States. He also noted the relative calm following the controversial dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant earlier this month.
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Russian diplomats presented materials with evidence of Ukraine’s genocide in Donbass to the International Court of Justice. This was reported on November 18 on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The corresponding statement was made as part of an interstate investigation initiated by Kiev in February 2022 with the intention of accusing Russia of “abusing” the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and demanding that the special operation be stopped.
The document has 522 pages.
"Kiev's plans failed - the International Court of Justice rejected the accusations concerning Russia's alleged violation of the Convention. As a result, only the question of whether there is evidence of genocide committed by Ukraine itself remains under consideration," the media release said.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and national battalions under the leadership of the Kyiv regime show signs of genocidal intent - the intention, under the pretext of fighting "terrorism" and "separatism", to liquidate the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Donbass, civilians of the DPR and LPR, parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and, in general, the inhabitants of the region as a national group.
The neo-Nazi nature of the Ukrainian authorities, their reliance on the criminal ideology of bloody Ukrainian nationalist movements and the Third Reich, has also been revealed.
Taking into account the evidence, Moscow submitted a counter-memorandum to the court, which contains evidence of more than 140 episodes of deliberate destruction of the civilian population of Donbass by the Kyiv regime.
The Russian side also made claims against the Kyiv regime related to such violations of the Convention as complicity, incitement to genocide and failure to take measures to prevent and punish it.
Ukraine will have to respond to the counter-memorandum. The final decision will be made upon completion of all procedures and after oral hearings in The Hague, the Russian Foreign Ministry concluded.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, Kiev is openly recruiting mercenaries from terrorist organizations, without hiding its ties to them, said Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Igor Zubov on October 14 at the 12th session of the Conference of States Parties to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in Vienna.
Political scientist, member of the board of the Russian Association of Political Science, head of EISI projects Vladimir Shapovalov emphasized that the genocide of the Soviet people is the largest crime in the history of mankind, and the West is trying to rewrite history. Russia is facing a large-scale campaign to falsify history and distort historical truth, which is actively carried out by Western countries, he recalled.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 23:58 Official summary of the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC from 00:00 11/18/2024 to 00:00 11/19/2024.
A total of 9 cases of armed attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces were recorded by the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC over the past 24 hours.
There were reports of ten civilians being injured.
DAMAGED:
One minibus,
Three civil infrastructure facilities.
Nine artillery attacks in the Gorlovka direction.
A total of 33 units of various ammunition were fired.
21:41 Filigree precision: Airborne anti-tank crew destroyed UAV control center.
A Kornet ATGM crew from the airborne artillery unit of the Dnepr group of forces destroyed an enemy UAV control point on the coast of the Dnieper estuary in the Ochakov area by launching a guided missile from the coast of the Kinburn Spit.
20:35 As a result of successful actions by the units of the Center group of forces released the settlement of Novoalekseevka in the Donetsk People's Republic.
19:51 Destruction of Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower by an FPV drone crew of the North troop group in the border area of the Kursk region –video.
18:38 "Thirty" destroyed enemy mortar.
Kakhovka direction. During another flight over the right bank of the Dnieper, the UAV operator identified the position of an enemy mortar, the coordinates were immediately transmitted to the artillerymen. With well-aimed shots, the D-30 howitzer crew destroyed the identified mortar crew.
17:43 Su-35S crews provided air cover for bomber and attack aircraft, as well as army aviation helicopters, during air strikes against armored vehicles and personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border areas of the Kursk region –video.
16:42 Destruction of a Ukrainian Armed Forces pickup truck.
The military personnel of the reconnaissance unit of the North group of troops in the Khar'kov region used UAVs revealed a pickup truck of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in a wooded area. The detected target was quickly destroyed by the FPV drone crew of the North Forces Group.
12:41 220mm BM-21 "Hurricane" at enemy positions.
Crews of the Uragan MLRS of the Vostok group of forces destroyed accumulation of Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment in the South Donetsk direction of the Northern Military District.
Reconnaissance of enemy targets and adjustment of rocket artillery fire is carried out using Orlan unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with modern optics, thermal imagers and cameras with infrared illumination.
11:35 Calculations of the Testing Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies of the Russian Ministry of Defense "Rubicon" struck using FPV drones, armored vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk direction.
10:54 Mi-28NM crews as part of a mixed tactical group carried out an air strike with air missiles against armored vehicles and enemy personnel in the border area of the Kursk region –video.
09:52 Improving skills: pontoon bridge unit conducted river crossing installation training
While fulfilling the standards for equipping a crossing in the rear area of the special operation, servicemen of the "West" troop group repelled an attack by simulated sabotage and reconnaissance groups that were trying to disrupt the movement of a column of military equipment.
The equipment, having arrived at the place of the ferry installation, dropped the pontoon links into the water. The servicemen quickly assembled the ferry and connected the pontoons together, which allowed the transfer of automobile equipment.
09:23 Footage from the enemy side.
Another destroyed Ukrainian self-propelled gun 2S22 "Bogdana" on the Tatra T815-7 base somewhere on the front —video.
08:51 Telegram channel «WarGonzo»:
Frontline report for the morning of 11/18/2024
- Zaporizhzhya Front. The fighting continues to be mostly positional in nature, however, increased activity of the RF Armed Forces is noted in several areas.
- Donetsk Front. Russian troops continue to develop the offensive in several directions. Fighting continues in the eastern part of Kurakhovo. Also, Russian troops continue to take the city in a semi-ring, advancing from the north and south of the settlement. There are more tactical successes. In the Pokrovsk direction, there are also more advances in the area of ??the settlement of Grigorovka.
- Chasov-Yar direction. Fighting continues within the city limits of Chasov-Yar, as well as on the flanks, where the Russian Armed Forces are trying to improve their positions.
- Kursk region. Without any major changes. Heavy head-on combat continues with active use of long-range weapons.
08:00 Telegram channel «Fisherman»:
Chronicle of the special military operation for November 16-17, 2024
– Russian troops have launched a combined attack on Ukrainian Armed Forces facilities in almost all regions of the so-called Ukraine. Power outages are occurring in the Rivne, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, with the most widespread problems being reported in the Odessa region. The enemy has struck an industrial enterprise in Izhevsk with a drone for the first time.– In the Kursk direction, Russian troops are fighting in the Korenevsky and Sudzhansky districts. In the latter, according to some reports, Ukrainian formations are surrounded in a forest area.
– In the Pokrovsk direction, the Russian Armed Forces have consolidated their position in Yuryevka and are advancing on Petrovka from neighboring Grigorovka.
– In the Kurakhovsky direction, Russian troops have liberated Voznesenka, are fighting in Berestki, and have also gained a foothold in the center of Trudovoye.
– In the Vrem'yevsk direction, fighting continues on the northern outskirts of Makarovka, which Ukrainian formations are trying to cling to.
[IsraelTimes] The US Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that would block arms sales to Israel, backed by politicians who say Israel is obstructing aid shipments desperately needed by Paleostinian civilians 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... The "resolutions of disapproval" were filed by Senator Bernie Sanders
...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being an Independent socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around... , an independent who caucuses with 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... . Strong bipartisan support for Israel means the resolutions are not expected to pass, but backers hope they will encourage Israel’s government and President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. We get to suffer the consequences... ’s administration to do more.
"This war has been conducted almost entirely with American weapons and $18 billion in US taxpayer dollars. Israel has dropped US-provided 2,000-pound bombs into crowded neighborhoods, killed hundreds of civilians to take out a handful of Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... fighters, and made little effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants," Sanders says in a statement.
"These actions are immoral and illegal," he says.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen on Monday says he supported the joint resolutions of disapproval, as did Democratic Senator Elizabeth Being Native American has been part of my story since the day I was born Warren ...The Great White Squaw, Lizzie is the Dem Senatrix from Massachussetts. She traces her noble lineage all the way back to Big Chief Spouting Bull. She has high cheekbones that stretch all the way to the top of her head. It has been alleged that she speaks with forked tongue but she denies that. She had a DNA test to prove her lineage and it turns out she's colorless... last week.
US law gives Congress the right to stop major foreign weapons sales by passing resolutions of disapproval. Although no such resolution has both passed Congress and survived a presidential veto, the law requires the Senate to vote if a resolution is filed. Such resolutions have at times led to angry debates, embarrassing to past presidents.
#3
Pure antisemitism. Without these hundreds of tons of bombs, Isreal cannot make the rubble in Gaza bounce. There won't be anywhere left to live soon. Bye bye Hamas!Then bring in the bulldozers to level the place. Gone forever.
America openly playing the anti-Israel bully for as long as Joe Biden lives in the White House.
[IsraelTimes] The Israeli security cabinet voted last week to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza to 250 trucks per day, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reveals during a press briefing.
The US sent Israel a letter demanding a series of steps to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, warning that failure to adopt those measures risks placing Israel out of compliance with US law, which bars the transfer of weapons to countries that block humanitarian aid from civilians.
One of the letter’s demands was for Israel to increase the amount of aid to 350 trucks a day.
While Israel fell short of this and other demands, the US said it had made enough progress in meeting them to maintain compliance with US law. The decision came days after the election of Donald Trump, who would likely have reversed any US decision to withhold weapons from Israel.
Miller says that Netanyahu also instructed Defense Minister Israel Katz to make every effort to ensure that Israel meets the 350 truck benchmark.
Israel has also removed 30 items from its list of “dual-use items” that are banned from entering Gaza, as requested by the US in its letter to Israel, Miller says.
Israel also expanded the Muwasi humanitarian zone by 25%, Miller adds.
The IDF is also implementing a UN plan to prepare for winter, which includes repairing roads, facilitating the entry of winter-specific aid and vaccinations for winter specific diseases, Miller says.
This series of steps are revealed for the first time by the US, apparently because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to avoid criticism from its hardline supporters. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners have opposed such measures to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, arguing that aid should be withheld in order to pressure Hamas to release the hostages.
[IsraelTimes] Canadian authorities have foiled an Iranian attempt to assassinate renowned Jewish jurist Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and attorney general, the Globe and Mail reports.
Citing an anonymous source, the report says Cotler was informed in late October that he faced imminent threat of liquidation within 48 hours from Iranian agents.
The source said Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been tracking two suspects, but could not say if they were tossed into the calaboose or had left the country.
The source tells the paper that Cotler was informed last week that the threat had now been significantly lowered, without giving further details.
Cotler is recognized as an expert on matters of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice. He has close ties to Israel.
According to the report, Cotler has been under 24/7 RCMP protection since the October 7, 2023, Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... massacre in Israel that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
The measures include armed guards and armored vehicles.
The report notes that Cotler has raised the ire of the regime in Tehran since 2008 over his efforts to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared a terrorist organization.
The report also says that the threats could be linked to a Tehran plot to kidnap and assassinate an Iranian-American journalist in New York.
That’d be Ms Masih Alinejad, whom agents of Iran would dearly love to kidnap.
Cotler was told by the FBI that his name came up in its probe, the report says.
In an in-depth interview with The Times of Israel earlier this year, Cotler decried the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against both Hamas and Israeli leaders as “a false moral and legal equivalence.”
Cotler, a longtime supporter of the ICC, served as a special adviser to the Canadian foreign minister on the court in the late 1990s before it was established, and later headed the Canadian delegation of non-governmental organizations when the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding charter, was adopted in 1998.
However, the court’s activity in regards to Israel over the past year “undermines the ICC as a court of last resort and as a court of limited jurisdiction,” Cotler told The Times of Israel.
“Because the ICC, which I have been a longtime supporter of and remain a supporter of, is being prejudiced in this way, it ends up regrettably prejudicing not only the international justice system in singling out the Israeli leadership, but also contributes to the overall weaponization of international law and international institutions,” he said.
[IsraelTimes] The Biden administration has sanctioned Amana, the settlement movement’s main development organization.
While the impact of the move was likely blunted by this month’s election of 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... , who may well reverse such sanctions,
…seems likely…
it still sends a signal to other Western countries that have followed the US in imposing similar sanctions against Israeli gunnies in the West Bank for the past year.
What signal? “Indulge yourself until President Trump or the local populists replacing you reverse it” Apres mois, le deluge only works if you never want to get back into power.
Amana has maintained ties with individuals and outposts that have already been sanctioned by the US for perpetrating violence in the West Bank, the Treasury Department says in its announcement.
The Biden administration considered targeting Amana for months, given that barring American companies from any financial interaction with the organization could severely hamper the settler development arm’s ability to operate. In recent months, settler leaders had been lobbying the Israeli government to try and thwart the move.
An Amana subsidiary, Binyanei Bar Amana, along with a smaller outpost construction firm, Eyal Harei Yehuda, were also designated by the Treasury Department, together with three individuals.
In total, 17 individuals and 16 entities have been sanctioned through an executive order signed by US 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... last February, which allowed the US to target those destabilizing the West Bank amid mounting frustration over Israel’s failure to crack down on settler violence.
[IsraelTimes] Prison service says ‘wardens found something’ in prisoner’s cell; reports say it was a rubber strip that the suspect could have used to hang himself
The American president, as head of the executive branch of government, has the ultimate authority to classify or release information and documents. Everyone below him acts on what is ultimately his responsibility and permission. This was the error the Justice Department made in raiding his formally approved storage lock-up for the copies of documents he chose to keep there. In contrast, for the two decades Joe Biden kept classified documents in open bins in his unlocked garage as a US senator and vice president, he did not have the statutory right to do so. As prime minister and chief executive of the Israeli government, doesn’t Bibi Netanyahu have the right to see anything produced by government functionaries, even if they are cranky generals who don’t like him even a little bit?
Eli Feldstein, a former front man and aide to Prime Minister Netanyahu who is a central suspect in the Prime Minister’s Office leaks affair, was put under suicide prevention watch in prison on Monday.
"Wardens found something in the cell of a security prisoner held in a jail in the south that necessitated, in accordance with the instructions of the prison commander, his immediate transfer to a cell where he could be monitored to prevent a suicide," the service said in a statement, without naming the prisoner.
Hebrew media identified Feldstein as the prisoner who was transferred, and reported that prison guards found a rubber strip in the cell that he could have used to hang himself.
On Sunday, the State Attorney’s Office informed the court that it intends to indict Feldstein and another key suspect in the affair.
Feldstein and the other suspect, whose name has not been released for publication, are suspected of transferring classified information to harm the state, collecting classified material to harm the state, and conspiring to commit a crime, among other charges.
Feldstein is suspected of leaking a classified document to the German newspaper Bild in order to change the public discourse over the fate of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... 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... ; have Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar blamed for the impasse in hostage release negotiations; and imply that protests demanding the release the hostages were playing into Hamas’s hands.
According to the information released Sunday by Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court judge Menachem Mizrahi, the IDF initiated an investigation into a possible leak after the publication of the Bild report due to the highly sensitive nature of the document.
After initial checks by the army’s information security department, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi himself requested that the Shin Bet domestic security agency open its own, secret investigation in parallel to help identify those behind the leak.
The identification of the main alleged culprit, the noncommissioned officer reservist, led the Sherlocks to three other suspects involved in the leak — two IDF reserve officers, and a career NCO — and eventually to Feldstein as well.
Over the course of the investigation, "a grave leak axis was exposed" which began with the reservist NCO, "who decided of his own accord to remove a top secret and sensitive document from the IDF’s authority in order to pass it to the political rank," the court said.
The court noted that the Bild report came just after the murder of the hostages and the subsequent protests against the government "and as part of a desire to change the public discourse and direct the finger of blame at [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar."
Investigators believe that the leak of the document had the potential to do severe damage to national security, the court disclosed, while the IDF came to the conclusion that the leak harmed the war aim of freeing the hostages, as well as the operations of the IDF and the Shin Bet security service in Gaza.
A lawyer for Feldstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the information released by the court.
Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case. A gag order still applies to aspects of the case.
Thus far, Netanyahu has not been implicated directly in the scandal that has landed Feldstein behind bars, but Kan suggests that the premier may have even directed the aide to leak the classified intelligence in order to skew the public debate regarding a hostage deal in his favor.
Kan says that Netanyahu expressed interest in the document that Feldstein brought to his attention.
[IsraelTimes] Hezbollah in a rare acknowledgement says four members were killed in yesterday’s Israeli airstrike on Beirut targeting Mohammad Afif, the head of the terror group’s media relations.
The four, named as Musa Haidar, Mahmoud al-Sharqawi, Hilal Termos, and Hussein Ramadan, were killed alongside Afif in the strike on the offices of the Syrian Ba’ath Party in central Beirut, according to Hezbollah.
They were all members of Hezbollah’s media relations department, which Afif headed.
Hezbollah on its official channels largely stopped updating on members slain in Israeli strikes since Israel began a new offensive against the terror group in September.
Officially, the terror group has named 521 members killed by Israel amid the fighting. The IDF estimates this number to be around 3,000.
[IsraelTimes] Victim, 41, declared dead after being pulled from 3-story building in Shfar’am; Beirut shuts schools; UN peacekeepers report attack, likely by ‘non-state member actors’
A woman was killed and at least 17 people were maimed in several rocket barrages fired by Hezbollah on Monday, as the terror group launched more than 100 rockets at northern Israel and one missile at the country’s center throughout the day.
The woman, identified as Safaa Awad, 41, was killed and 10 others maimed in the evening by a rocket that hit a three-story building in the northern town of Shfar’am after five projectiles were fired by Hezbollah at the Galilee. Medics said the woman was trapped inside the building and recovered by rescue services, but declared dead shortly afterward. The other people were lightly hurt by broken glass, according to first responders. The Magen David Adom emergency service said the woman was inside a "protected space" at the time of the attack. It was unclear if MDA was referring to a bomb shelter or some other kind of protected area in the building.
The Israel Defense Forces said interceptor missiles were launched to counter the attack, and it was investigating the impact.
Also on Monday night, five people were maimed, including one seriously, in the Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan area, following a Hezbollah missile attack on central Israel, medics said. MDA said it took a 54-year-old woman at death's door, another person in moderate condition, and three others in good condition to Beilinson Hospital. The victims were all hit by shrapnel, according to the emergency service.
The IDF said one missile was fired from Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. 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. 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? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... in the attack, which was intercepted by air defenses. Fragments from the interception impacted between the two Tel Aviv suburbs, causing a fire and extensive damage to surrounding buildings and vehicles.
Earlier Monday, two people were maimed in separate rocket barrages targeting northern Israel, as the IDF continued to strike sites belonging to the terror group in Lebanon and Beirut shut down its schools. A 34-year-old man was lightly maimed by the blast of a rocket impact in the Western Galilee during one Hezbollah volley, medics reported. MDA said the man was taken to Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. In a separate barrage, MDA said a 65-year-old woman was hit in the neck by shrapnel as rockets struck the area of Fassuta, a Christian Arab village. She was also taken to the hospital in Nahariya.
Another person was treated for acute anxiety, MDA added.
According to the IDF, many of the 100-plus rockets were intercepted or fell in open areas. Some of the rockets impacted in towns, causing damage to a building in the border city of Kiryat Shmona and a chicken coop in Margaliot, a moshav.
In addition to the rocket attacks, the IDF said Monday that it had shot down three drones launched from Lebanon at northern Israel.
Overnight and throughout the morning rocket sirens sporadically went off in Kiryat Shmona, the coastal city of Nahariya, and other communities in the Galilee Panhandle near the border with Lebanon.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported new strikes early Monday on locations around south Lebanon, long a stronghold of Hezbollah. Local media said jets hit the Nabatieh area, which the IDF also attacked earlier this week. It came after a relatively rare night in which the IDF did not carry out strikes.
On Monday evening, Lebanese media reported an Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... in central Beirut. At least four people were killed and 18 others were maimed, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The strike was reported in the Zuqaq al-Blat district, outside of Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in southern Beirut.
Meanwhile,
...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter wished he had thought to pack sun block... schools in Beirut were closed after Israeli strikes on the Lebanese capital the day before killed six people, according to local authorities, who do not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah fighters. The IDF said it killed Hezbollah’s front man, Mohammed Afif, the latest in a string of top figures in the group slain in the war. Hezbollah confirmed his death and later said four other members of its media office were killed alongside him.
Sunday’s strikes hit districts of central Beirut that had so far been spared. The strikes prompted the education ministry to shut schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area for two days.
Dozens of Hezbollah launchers and rockets were located and destroyed by reservists of the 226th Paratroopers Brigade during recent operations in southern Lebanon, the IDF said Monday.
The military said the reserve brigade has been operating in an area from which Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets at Israel in the past year. The troops located several multiple-rocket launchers and mortar positions, along with caches of rockets and other equipment. They also located a tunnel system dug into a mountain in the area. Inside the tunnel, the troops found weapons, equipment, and food used by Hezbollah operatives, according to the IDF.
Caught between the two warring sides, UN peacekeepers reported Sunday that they were attacked, with minor damage caused but no injuries. In a post to social media platform X, the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... Interim Force in Lebanon wrote that on Saturday a patrol involving French and Finnish peacekeepers in the village of Bedias encountered "a denial of freedom of movement from a group of individuals with at least one of them armed."
The patrol continued but an hour later, when it reached the village of Maarakeh, it was fired at about 40 times from the rear, "likely from non-state actor members."
The patrol reached the safety of a UNIFIL base in Deir Kifa, where it found some of its vehicles had been struck by bullets, though there were no injuries.
"It is unacceptable that UNIFIL peacekeepers while conducting Security Council-mandated tasks, are routinely targeted," UNIFIL said. "It is the responsibility of Lebanese authorities to ensure that UNIFIL peacekeepers can carry out their mandated tasks without fear or threats."
Nonetheless, it urged "all actors to ongoing hostilities... to avoid actions putting UN peacekeepers in danger." The peacekeepers have on previous occasions suffered deaths or injuries due to the fighting but have rejected an Israeli plea that they leave south Lebanon.
According to a Lebanese political source, US envoy Amos Hochstein was set to travel to the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday for talks on a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel. However,
man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... a diplomatic official clarified to The Times of Israel that as of Sunday night, no final decision had been made on Hochstein coming to the region, adding that a decision would be made based on progress in ceasefire talks.
Talk of another visit by Hochstein followed reports in Lebanese media that a positive response to the ceasefire proposal had been submitted. The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported over the weekend that Hezbollah’s Iranian backers had sent messages to the group saying that they supported an end to war.
[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reported late Sunday that an explosive-laden cycle of violence detonated to their forces in Hasaka city, northeast Syria (Rojava), resulting in the injury of three of their members. It blamed the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) for the blast.
The incident occurred on a highway between Hasaka city and the Abyad area. Three SDF members sustained minor injuries, according to a statement from the US-backed force that also revealed that an ISIS "jacket wallah" was riding the cycle of violence involved in the attack.
The assault came days after the SDF ended a week-long operation inside the notorious al-Hol camp in the same city. Around 40,000 people, mostly families of ISIS fighters, are held in the camp. Nearly 80 ISIS suspects were captured in the mission.
That’s a lot. Good job, guys!
The SDF said they also discovered "a woman’s body tortured and murdered in the camp, based on the confessions of an involved woman."
”She borrowed my foundation without asking, and didn’t put the cap back on. It’s all dried out now — everyone knows that calls for a killing.”
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Mikhail Zakharov
[REGNUM] On the evening of November 17, the American newspaper The New York Times, citing sources, reported that outgoing US President Joe Biden had given the Kiev regime permission to use ATACMS tactical missiles to strike Russian territory. However, the White House officially declined to comment on this.
As The New York Times reported, Biden's decision is related to "the presence of North Korean forces in the Kursk region," which "has caused the need to strengthen the defense of the Ukrainian military." At the same time, Reuters, also citing unnamed sources, reported that the Ukrainian Armed Forces could launch the first strike with long-range missiles "in the coming days."
Almost immediately, the French newspaper Le Figaro rushed to write that France and Britain, following the US, lifted restrictions on Ukraine's strikes on Russia with SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles. But already on Monday morning, November 18, the newspaper removed from its text the information that Paris and London had lifted their veto.
Experts and world media are confident that Biden's decision will lead to an escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, but will not radically improve Kiev's position. Thus, the CNN television company noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are unlikely to achieve significant success due to their lack of weapons. In turn, US Senator Mike Lee said that the situation creates the preconditions for the start of World War III.
WHAT WEAPONS WERE “UNBLOCKED” FOR UKRAINE
ATACMS are ground-launched tactical ballistic missiles designed and manufactured by the American corporation Lockheed Martin. They can be launched from multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), including the M142 HIMARS and the heavier M270 MLRS.
The Pentagon is in no hurry to disclose which modifications of ATACMS were transferred to Ukraine, but in the new versions the missiles can attack targets at a distance of up to 300 kilometers. Thus, western Russian regions and regional centers, including Kursk and Voronezh, may be in their strike zone.
As for the Anglo-French SCALP/Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, they have a longer range and can cover a distance of more than 500 kilometers. However, military expert Vasily Dandykin notes, NATO weapons are unlikely to affect the course of a special military operation for two reasons. Firstly, the Ukrainian Armed Forces simply have very few such missiles, and secondly, Russian air defense is able to professionally shoot them down.
In a conversation with the Regnum news agency, Dandykin recalled that our air defense forces are already familiar with Western missiles; the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired them at Crimea and Sevastopol, but most were shot down.
“We know how to fight NATO missiles,” says the expert.
HAPPY CHOIR AND TAME "OPPOSITION"
Despite the fact that there is no official confirmation of permission to fire long-range missiles deep into Russia, American satellites are already wildly rejoicing. Volodymyr Zelensky called this a key point of the so-called plan for Ukraine's victory. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock considered Biden's possible decision "extremely important at this moment." And Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda even declared that a decisive moment had arrived in Ukraine's fight against the "aggressor."
It is noteworthy that on the same day, November 17, when information about Biden's decision appeared, an "anti-war march" was held in Berlin, organized by the "opposition" that had left Russia and various foreign agents. Among the slogans at the march was a request to transfer Western missiles to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Obviously, this is not a simple coincidence, but a planned move by the Biden administration, which is using the "opposition".
At the same time, even in Washington, the news about permission for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to strike at Russian territories caused a mixed reaction.
The same New York Times article voiced concerns that Ukraine's use of American ATACMS missiles could provoke Moscow to respond with force against Washington and its allies.
BIDEN'S LEGACY FOR TRUMP
With his decision, Biden is trying to hit not only Russia, but also President-elect Donald Trump — this is a popular opinion in the United States. The outgoing head of state is complicating the situation for the new administration, said billionaire David Sachs.
" President Trump has a clear mandate to end the war in Ukraine. What is Biden doing in his last two months in office? Massively escalating it," Sachs wrote on social media.
In a commentary for IA Regnum, international political scientist and professor at St. Petersburg State University Stanislav Tkachenko also notes that the Democrats, who are losing power, are making Trump’s life miserable.
“If Kamala Harris had won the election, there would have been no decision,” says Tkachenko, clarifying that Biden decided to take this step “out of diplomatic and foreign policy irresponsibility.”
Unsurprisingly, there was a flurry of criticism from Republicans. Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk warned that Russia would “respond in kind,” agreeing with the assertion that “American liberals love war.” And Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. went so far as to call those who allowed Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory imbeciles. In his opinion, such a move by the current presidential administration was dictated by the desire of the US military-industrial complex to make money, spitting on people’s lives.
RUSSIA'S REACTION
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, recalled that President Vladimir Putin had previously spoken out about strikes on Russian territory by American long-range weapons. On September 12, the head of state noted that this would mean direct participation of the United States and other NATO countries in the war in Ukraine.
“And something very important, perhaps key: flight assignments for these missile systems, in essence, can only be entered by military personnel from NATO countries… We are talking about making a decision whether NATO countries are directly participating in a military conflict or not,” Putin said.
A month and a half later, on October 27, the president added: The Defense Ministry is studying various possible responses if Ukraine starts using Western long-range weapons to strike deep into the country. Putin also expressed hope that his warnings to the West about such actions had been heard.
In turn, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Viktor Bondarev, stated on November 18 that the routes of military supplies for the Ukrainian army are known to the Russian Armed Forces, and the missiles will be a legitimate target for Russia.
“In any case, Russia has enough advanced means to repel attacks from any type of weapons, including long-range ones,” Bondarev added.
Overall, the situation remains in limbo. There is no official confirmation of Biden's decision, Western officials are holding a pause. Apparently, to see Moscow's reaction and decide whether to allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to strike deep into our country or not.
However, a calm reaction should not relax them - Russia has something to respond with. And not necessarily with regard to Ukraine, notes Stanislav Tkachenko: the issue may also include NATO military bases in third countries.
#1
So if I understand correctly, it's OK for Russia to invade another country and pulverize it with missiles and drones for years, but it ain't fair if the Ukes return the favor. And by the way, it's all the US's fault. Please correct me if I got something wrong.
#4
All Russia is going to do is bloviate. They don't dare use nukes cause 1. Bad things will happen. 2. They might not actually go off. And that looks WAY WORSE. So they will scream and rant and wave their little fists around but at the end of the day, they will do butkis.
"Ukraine: A non-nation bombarded!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, were you awarded--"
"He's flesh of my flesh!
Neo-Nazi secesh!"
"Papa?"
"Office, please, he's retarded!"
"And she's cuckoo for Poopoo Puffs!"
"Okay, ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to release the brat and remove the Red Army from the ground."
"Shit. Can't we work this out diplomatically? How about some nookie?"
[ShabelleMedia] Abdinasir Mohammed Hassan, an operative for the holy warrior group al-Shabaab ... the personification of Somali state failure... , was apprehended by Somali security forces in Mogadishu, according to a statement from the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA).
Hassan, known for his role in inspecting the group’s vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), was implicated in the recent bombing at the SYL hotel near Villa Somalia.
NISA detailed that Hassan’s arrest came during a targeted operation aimed at disrupting al-Shabaab’s capacity to launch attacks. "This arrest signifies our unwavering commitment to eliminate those who threaten the peace and security of our nation," the agency stated.
The SYL hotel attack, which Hassan is believed to have facilitated, underscores the persistent threat posed by al-Shabaab in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
The arrest is part of ongoing efforts by Somali forces, with support from international partners, to dismantle the operational capabilities of the holy warrior group, NISA added.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] 1. As I wrote at the beginning of the SVO, we cannot avoid a remake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
2. I have also written and continue to write since the beginning of the war - anything that lies below the threshold of using nuclear weapons can and will be used in Ukraine.
3. Warmongers do not accept their defeat so easily. Both in the war in Ukraine and in the recent elections in the USA.
So nothing unexpected is happening.
It would be surprising if this did not happen before the end of the war.
We are simply waiting to see what the response will be. And we are studying civil defense measures. Cruise and ballistic missiles have already flown in to our Sevastopol more than once.
The United States has given the Kiev regime permission to strike 300 km deep into Russian territory, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said on November 18.
"The US administration has authorized the use of its missiles up to 300 km deep into Russian territory. This is not very far, but this is the decision of the US administration. Why they made this decision now and not earlier, I do not know," Borrell said at a press conference following a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
He also stated that the heads of the foreign ministries of the EU countries have not made a decision to lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike deep into Russian territory and that each EU member country can make such a decision independently.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on November 17, the American newspaper The New York Times, citing informed sources, reported that outgoing US President Joseph Biden had for the first time authorized Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory. Following this, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote that the French and British authorities had made a similar decision.
On September 13, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the discussions on allowing the Ukrainian Armed Forces to use precision weapons for strikes deep into Russia a substitution of concepts. In reality, NATO countries are discussing whether they will directly participate in a conflict with Russia, the president emphasized. He noted that Russia will make decisions based on the threats that will arise for it.
On November 18, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stated that Russia's response to the Kiev regime's use of long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russian territory would be adequate and tangible. The use of long-range missiles by Kiev would mean direct participation in the conflict by the United States and its satellites and would change the very essence of the conflict, Zakharova emphasized.
The situation remains in limbo for now, there is no official confirmation of Biden's decision, officials are holding a pause, apparently in order to see Moscow's reaction and make a decision, Regnum News Agency columnist Mikhail Zakharov noted earlier in his article.
[ShabelleMedia] A vehicle carrying civilians struck a landmine in the Doonka area between Wanlaweyn and Afgooye districts in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region, resulting in the death of three passengers and injury to another, according to local authorities.
The incident occurred on Monday as the car was traveling from Afgooye. The explosion not only claimed lives but also inflicted significant damage to the vehicle involved.
Details regarding the type of explosive used suggest it was a landmine, commonly employed in the region by murderous Moslem groups. However,
facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... no group has yet grabbed credit for this particular attack.
The Lower Shabelle region has been a frequent target of al-Shabaab ... the personification of Somali state failure... , an Islamist Death Eater group that often engages in attacks against both civilian and military targets, including those associated with the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS).
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] Ukrainian Armed Forces are holding back Russian offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The Russian invaders are most actively advancing in the Kurakhovsky direction. Currently, 17 battles are ongoing there.
Since the beginning of the current day, 87 combat clashes have occurred on the front in nine directions. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a report as of 16:00 on Monday, November 18.
Thus, in the Kharkov direction, the Russians carried out three assaults in the Volchansk area.
In the Kupyansk direction, the enemy attacked seven times in the areas of Kruglyakovka and Lozovoye. Two combat clashes are still ongoing.
In the Liman direction, the invading army carried out two attacks near Novolyubovka and Belogorovka. One combat clash continues.
In the Toretsk direction, the enemy attempted to penetrate the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ defense in the Toretsk area.
In the Pokrovsky direction, the Russians carried out 17 assaults in the areas of Mirolyubovka, Promenya, Lisovka, Petrovka, Pustynka and Novoalekseyevka. The defense forces repelled 10 enemy attacks, seven combat clashes are still ongoing.
In the Kurakhovsky direction, the enemy advanced 23 times near the settlements of Berestki, Solntsevka, Voznesenka, Dalnee, Elizavetovka, Yekaterinovka and Antonovka. Six attempts by the occupiers to advance have already been repelled.
In the Vremivsky direction, 12 attacks occurred near Trudovoye, Razdolnoye, Makarovka, Rivne and Novodarovka. Seven clashes are ongoing.
In the Dnieper direction, the enemy attacked unsuccessfully six times.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are also conducting an operation in the Kursk region. Since the beginning of the day, Russian aircraft have carried out 15 strikes (21 UAB) on their own territory. 10 enemy attacks have been repelled. The fighting continues.
Let us recall that on November 18, more than 1,500 Russians were "minused" at the front in one day . The total losses of the aggressor country Russia since the beginning of the war have exceeded 720 thousand people killed and wounded.
[ShabelleMedia] Federalism, once presented as a mechanism to bring order and inclusivity to Somalia, is increasingly being viewed as a tool for destabilization. The very system designed to stabilize a fractured nation is now seen by many as a mechanism for fostering division, disintegration, and chaos. Behind the scenes, shadowy figures and their handlers appear to be exploiting federalism to destabilize Somalia, with a clear focus on its general elections as a trigger point. Destabilized Somalia - Is there any other kind?
Those who initially devised federalism as Somalia’s political framework are now among its strongest sponsors, raising questions about their true intentions. The aim seems evident to exploit federalism’s flaws and vulnerabilities to perpetuate fragmentation and weaken Somalia’s illusory sovereignty. This tactic not only undermines national unity but also jeopardizes decades of effort to rebuild and reconcile.
The greatest risk lies in the manipulation of Somalia’s electoral process. By targeting the general elections, these external and internal actors seek to exploit Somalia’s fragile political environment, pitting regions and clans against one another. The resulting instability serves their agenda of a weakened, disunited Somalia unable to assert its illusory sovereignty or chart its own future.
However,
denial ain't just a river in Egypt... Somalia’s salvation lies within the collective power of its people. If Somalis unite and focus on their areas of expertise, they can redirect the course of federalism toward a framework that supports national unity and development. This requires a national awakening an acknowledgment that division benefits only those seeking to destabilize the country, while unity strengthens Somalia’s prospects for peace and progress.
The derailment of federalism does not have to be Somalia’s fate. With unity, vigilance, and strategic planning, the Somali people can reclaim federalism as a tool for strengthening national identity and fostering sustainable development. Together, they can thwart the agendas of those seeking to disintegrate Somalia and put the nation back on the path to stability and prosperity.
To counter these destabilizing forces, Somalis must prioritize:
1. A National Dialogue: Open and inclusive discussions on the shortcomings of federalism, identifying areas of reform to better align with the country’s interests.
2. Electoral Integrity: Safeguarding the electoral process against external manipulation and ensuring free, fair, and transparent elections.
3. Grassroots Mobilization: Encouraging citizens to actively participate in local and national governance, ensuring their voices shape Somalia’s future.
4. National Expertise: Leveraging Somalia’s vast human capital by empowering individuals to contribute to nation-building within their areas of expertise.
The theory is sound. It’ll work beautifully in a country that isn’t Somalia.
[HodhodYemenNews] The terrorist organization of al-Qaeda has announced the execution of a member of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) factions in Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... province, southern Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... Media outlets loyal to the STC quoted the so-called "Al-Malahem Foundation" affiliated with the organization as saying that the death sentence ...the barbaric practice of sentencing a murderer to be punished for as long as his/her/its victim is dead... was carried out against the recruit in the "Al-Amaliq" factions, Wahb Ahmed Omar Salem Jawas, on charges of communicating with the STC factions in Abyan.
It explained that "Jawas" reported the movements of the organization’s members, which led to the implementation of an ambush and their killing at one of the points in Abyan.
Political observers accuse 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 Frational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... of using "terrorism" through the Islah Party, one of the STC partners in the government loyal to the Saudi-led coalition, as a pressure card in all political stages.
Al-Qaeda has been targeting the Transitional factions in Mعdiyah, Abyan, since the "Siham al-Sharq" operation to control Islah camps loyal to Saudi Arabia in August 2022.
[KhaamaPress] Pak police reported that a blast near a mosque in Azam Warsak, South Wazoo, resulted in the death of one person and injuries to six others. Among the injured was Maulana Shahzada Khan Turabi, the mosque’s imam and a big shot of Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...the political wing of the Pak Taliban... Earlier, a military intelligence-related account on the social media platform X shared a video of the earth-shattering kaboom near the mosque, identifying it as a deliberate attack by "Khawarij"
… Khawarij (Kharijites ) are heretics, often used to describe Wahhabis and hence Al Qaeda and ISIS-linked jihadis. Given that Al Qaeda is a long-term partner of the Afghan Talibs, at least, the military intelligence-related social media account probably means ISIS-K…
targeting the mosque in South Waziristan.
According to the note shared alongside the video, Maulana Shahzada Khan, a big shot of Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam and the mosque’s preacher, was the intended target of the attack.
The account also confirmed the death of at least one person and reported injuries to three others, including Maulana Turabi.
Hospital officials stated that the condition of the injured is critical, with an urgent need for blood donations.
So far, no group has grabbed credit for the incident. Various hard boy factions, including ISIS and Tehrik-e-Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... Pakistain (TTP), operate in the area.
The escalation of insecurity and hard boy attacks in Pakistain has raised alarm, particularly in regions like South Waziristan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where hard boy factions have intensified their operations.
The resurgence of hard boy activities has not only endangered lives but also disrupted social and political stability, especially in border areas.
[Rudaw] The Syrian army claimed on Monday that it downed 15 drones trying to harm its bases in three key cities in the last couple of days without blaming any party.
"Units of our armed forces operating in the countryside of Aleppo, Idlib and Latakia shot down 15 drones that were launched by armed terrorist organizations during the past two days with the aim of attacking army points, surrounding safe villages and towns," the state-owned SANA cited a defence ministry statement as saying.
The ministry did not blame any country or group for the actions.
Israel is blamed for hundreds of Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on regime-controlled areas in Syria through its more than a decade-long civil war, often targeting pro-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... militias, such as Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. 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. 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? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... ’s Hezbollah group that supports the Syrian army.
The strikes have increased since October 7 of last year, when Paleostinian Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, which retaliated by invading 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... . The conflict has now spread to Lebanon.
Israel rarely confirms strikes attributed to it in Syria, but has warned repeatedly that it will not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold in the country.
[CJ Hopkins] Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there was born a global-capitalist empire. It was the first global empire in the history of empires. It dominated the entire planet.
No one knew what to call the empire, because there had never been anything like it in history. It had no external adversaries, so it had nothing left to do but "clear and hold," i.e., neutralize internal resistance and consolidate its domination of the planet.
So that is what it set about doing.
It did this first in the territories of its final ideological adversary, an empire called the Soviet Union, the ideology of which was known as "Communism."
This was known as the "Post-Cold-War Era."
It did this next in the Greater Middle East, where people were still trying to live their lives according to a religion known as "Islam."
This was known as the "Global War on Terror."
The Global War on Terror was originally intended to go on forever, and it would have, and it will, but it had to be temporarily suspended, and rebranded, because something unexpected happened.
One day, in the Summer of 2016 — theretofore officially "The Summer of Fear" — the global-capitalist empire noticed that a new form of resistance to its domination of the entire planet had risen up, not in the former Soviet Union, or the Greater Middle East, but throughout the West, right in the very heart of the empire.
And so the War on Terror was suspended, and the War on Populism began.
The War on Populism raged for four years, and culminated in the rollout of the New Normal, officially known as "the Covid pandemic."
For over two years, i.e., from March 2020 to approximately December 2022, the global-capitalist empire morphed into a new form of totalitarianism, a global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, which was not like any other previous form of totalitarianism.
This period was the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich.
The transition to the New Normal Reich was broadcast throughout the global empire. The message was unmistakeably clear. From now on, there would be a "New Normal." It would be like a permanent state of war, a permanent state of civil war. And so, from now on everyone would need to pledge their allegiance to the New Normal Reich, and follow orders, or be labelled an "extremist," a "science denier," a "conspiracy theorist," or some other type of seditious deviant.
The vast majority of the citizens of the West understood the message, followed orders, and pledged allegiance to the New Normal Reich. But a sizeable minority did not. The global-capitalist empire needed to neutralize this sizeable minority.
The majority of this sizeable minority was comprised of conservative, libertarian, and other basically right-leaning people. It contained a few old-school left-leaning people, but they were a minority within a minority, and so they weren’t really a factor when it came to neutralizing the larger minority, which the empire promptly set about doing.
THE FREE-SPEECH TWITTER PSYOP
In October 2022, Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire military contractor, electric car salesman, and transhumanism enthusiast, and a coterie of serious global-capitalist entities and individuals purchased the social media platform known as Twitter, Inc. for 44 billion US dollars.
Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters grinning like a chimpanzee and carrying a bathroom sink, and the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP began.
During the War on Populism and the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal Reich, Twitter, Inc., and every other social-media platform and mass-media outlet in the Western world, had been functioning as the empire’s Ministry of Truth, disseminating official New Normal propaganda, censoring dissent, and unpersoning anyone challenging the empire’s official narratives. And thus, it provided the perfect stage for the PSYOP the empire was about to conduct.
Musk reinstated a number of prominent, primarily conservative Twitter accounts that had been deplatformed for "posting misinformation" about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the "Covid vaccines," and for posting "incitement" and "glorification of violence," and bigotry and other such offensive content, among them, the account of Donald Trump, and tens of thousands of Trump supporters.
As Elon had promised, "the bird was freed"! Elon acolytes and grateful garden-variety Trumpians and other right-leaning persons poured onto Twitter to thank their savior for reversing the company’s target demographic, thus saving America from "Cultural Marxism," and "Communism," and the "Woke Mind Virus."
The PSYOP continued with a textbook limited hangout known as the "Twitter Files." Musk let a few carefully selected journalists run a few searches at Twitter HQ, which exposed how the former staff of Twitter had been collaborating with elements of the Biden administration (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire) to censor and deplatform people — mostly those in the new "red" target demographic — and was part of some strictly-USA-operated "Censorship Industrial Complex," which was absolutely not a global operation, and had nothing to do with any global-capitalist empire, or a "New Normal Reich," because all the censorship and "shadowbanning" — which was all in the past now that Elon was in charge — was the work of a cabal of deep-state libtard bureaucrats, who were all a bunch of "Commies."
These revelations in the "Twitter Files" prompted Republicans in the US Congress to hold a series of subcommittee hearings into the possibly unconstitutional behavior of the Biden administration and its libtard proxies (i.e., not the global-capitalist empire), which had forced Twitter, Inc., and the other totally helpless Internet corporations to "shadowban" and censor Americans (i.e., not everyone else all throughout the empire that these corporations were also censoring in a clearly coordinated fashion).
And then, right on cue, once the story had been framed within a US-centric "red/blue" narrative, Musk shut the "Twitter Files" limited hangout down, i.e., before it could do any damage to the global-capitalist empire itself.
For the next two years, Elon and his cronies inundated their new target-demographic with "Free-Speech-Twitter" propaganda, sentimental Elon Musk-hagiography, and a never-ending series of PR-stunts. Twitter was officially rebranded as "X." Musk went to war with Brazil’s Darth Vader, and Thierry Breton, and assorted other "Commies." Twitter users were besieged with memes of Elon dressed up as Captain Free-Speech America. Et cetera.
And so the Musk Cult was born.
Meanwhile, X is continuing to censor and "visibility-filter" content at the behest of governments throughout the empire, as well as in furtherance of its own objectives.
If you think that fact has had a negative impact on the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP, on the contrary, the Musk Cult has only grown broader and stronger. Like any other cult, it is impervious to facts. All that matters is loyalty to the cult, and the leader of the cult, and the cult’s official narrative. You can direct Musk cultists to the Twitter Safety pages where "visibility filtering" is explained, and cite countless examples of Musk’s hypocrisy, and it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Like every other successful cult leader, Elon is beyond reproach, incapable of sin, a god made flesh.
But deifying Elon was not the primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP.
The primary objective of the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP was to harness, corral, and establish control over the majority of the sizeable minority of people who refused to follow orders and pledge allegiance to the New Normal Reich when it was rolled out during the "Covid pandemic." These people needed to be herded into a manipulable mass and redirected away from the global-capitalist empire and into a harmless cul-de-sac where they could scream and shout at the empire’s designated scapegoats to their heart’s content. The Musk Cult was just a means of herding and leading them into this cul-de-sac.
"Free-Speech Twitter" is this cul-de-sac, and is a microcosm of a larger cul-de-sac.
Which brings us to the second PSYOP.
THE AMERICA MADE GREAT AGAIN PSYOP
One of the most effective ways to neutralize an opponent is to let them win. This is especially true when you’re dealing with an opponent you can never entirely defeat.
What you do is, you lure your opponent into a battle you can afford to lose, because you need to actually lose the battle, and let your opponent actually win, i.e., not just trick them into thinking they have won, because... well, your opponent isn’t stupid.
This battle that you lure your opponent into and let them win will be a battle over a territory within a territory, but which your opponent believes is "the territory." You can afford to lose control of this territory within a territory because you control the territory it exists within, and because your opponent doesn’t know that.
The trick is getting your opponent to believe that, by winning this battle, they have won "the war," and that they now control "the territory," and have destroyed you, or have otherwise removed you from power, when, actually, all that your opponent has destroyed or removed from power is a corporeal decoy, a material incarnation of an invisible, immaterial adversary, an adversary they do not know exists, or which they refuse to acknowledge the existence of... assuming, of course, that is what you are.
At which point, you have neutralized your opponent.
For example, say you’re a global empire, a supranational global-capitalist empire, and say your opponent is a populist insurgency, a potentially revolutionary mass, that you need to distract from contemplating your supranational, invisible, immaterial nature, and from the fact that the governments of nation-states are essentially administrative components of this invisible immaterial empire that you are, and thus it doesn’t really matter to you which political party administers these nation-states or who the leaders of these parties are, because they can’t really do much damage to you, because all they control are the material territories within the immaterial territory you control, which predetermines the context and the scope of their actions, and the parameters of their imaginations, and... OK, you probably see where this is going.
Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. So let me try to simplify it.
There is no "America" to make great again. "America" is a simulation. It is a map of a territory that does not exist. It is a dream within a dream in a film that no one can see because everyone is watching. It is a brand name for an imaginary product.
OK, that didn’t make it any simpler, did it? Let me try this one more time.
We are living in a global-capitalist empire. One big global-capitalist empire. We have been for the last thirty-something years. All of us. Americans. Canadians. The British. The French. Australians. Germans. Russians. Israelis. Palestinians. Iranians. All of us.
The global-capitalist empire is not a cabal of powerful individuals. It is a system. And that system is evolving. Metamorphosing. Transmogrifying. Evolving into a new form of totalitarianism. A global-capitalist form of totalitarianism.
It is the system, and not its servants, that is driving... driving this systemic evolution. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, or Macron, or Starmer, or Netanyahu, or Gates, or Bezos, or Soros, or any other political "leader" or powerful figure knows what they are doing. They serve the system, as the system requires, each according to their specific role and scope of action within the system.
Elon Musk did not "save free speech" or "rescue Twitter" from a "Woke Mind Virus." He purchased a corporation and rebranded its product for new market demographic. In so doing, he corralled and neutralized most of the conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system... which is what the system needed to happen. It makes no difference whether Elon Musk understood his role. He played it perfectly. He is continuing to play it perfectly.
The Musk Cult is growing. Its apostles are preaching the Gospel of Elon throughout the empire, paving the road to The Privatization of Everything! Verily, it is the dawn of a golden age of "Freedom" ruled by global corporations and beneficent oligarchs!
However, before that golden age can begin, America must be made great again! And so the Free-Speech Twitter PSYOP has to be repeated on the macro-level. The same conservative populist resistance to the evolution of the global-capitalist system that Musk corralled and neutralized needs to be corralled and neutralized everywhere... not just in America, everywhere, all throughout the West and the rest of the empire.
Once it is corralled, and neutralized, and whipped up into a frenzy over "Wokeness," "Cultural Marxism," and "Communism," it can be unleashed on the remnants of the dying age of nation-states, national sovereignty, constitutions, and so on, which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take extreme measures to "defend democracy," which will prompt the Other Global Powers That Be to take more extreme measures to "Rescue the Republic," which will prompt the Global Powers That Be to take even more extreme extreme measures to "defend democracy from fascism" and... OK, this time, I do think you see where this is going.
Or, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. But I don’t think I can make it any simpler. And I don’t see any way to stop it or fix it. It isn’t an error to be corrected. It is the organic evolution of a system... a supranational system evolving into a new totalitarian form.
So, there you have it, a tale of two PSYOPS. I’m sorry that it isn’t as comforting as a story about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their global-capitalist investors, and their subsidiaries, agents, and assigns, are going to "make America great again."
If it’s any consolation, one thing is certain... whatever happens, it won’t be boring.
#3
Hole in the theory: Musk has had a Cult Hero Status since the founding of Pay Pal, confirmed and made larger with his TESLA, proven with SpaceX and then made much larger with the hopes he has made for Mar colonization and Space Mining with StarShip.
Direct translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Igor Ivanenko
[REGNUM] Next Sunday, Romanians will vote for the president of the republic. A week later, elections will be held for the country's bicameral parliament. And then, a week later, there will be an almost inevitable second round of voting for the head of state.
Among the candidates for the presidential post, the highest rating is given to the Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Marcel Ciolacu. His political force is also likely to receive the largest parliamentary faction.
However, these starting positions do not guarantee victory for the Social Democrats.
For example, in 2004 and 2014, the SDP candidates won the first round of the presidential elections by a significant margin. However, in both cases, they failed to take the post of head of state, since other political forces consolidated around their opponents.
The reason for this is the perception of the PSD as the successor of the Romanian Communist Party and the corresponding attitude towards it on the part of liberal and national-conservative forces. Of great importance was also the opposition from foreign centers of influence, which feared the victory in Bucharest of too independent politicians capable of reviving the multi-vector diplomacy of Nicolae Ceausescu.
For Colaku to win the current elections, it is very important that a competitor who cannot unite the diverse protest electorate against the Social Democrat makes it to the second round.
The leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Unification of Romanians (AUR), Gheorghe Simion, fits this parameter best. By Romanian standards, AUR is a “Eurosceptic” party, which, on the one hand, takes it outside the mainstream, and on the other, makes it very popular among voters.
Simion's political force declares the restoration of Romania's state sovereignty, which was effectively lost in the EU, traditional values, support for Romanians living abroad, and, conversely, curtailment of support for Ukraine. The party leader himself has a rating that allows him to get to the second round.
By the way, according to a recent poll commissioned by Newsweek-Romania, only 35% of the country's citizens support the current policy of official Bucharest towards Russia, while 34% condemn it.
The very likely fact that Simion will make it to the finals of the presidential race will largely mean that Çolak will be able to lift the long-standing curse on the left, whose representatives have been unable to occupy the Cotroceni Palace, where the residence of the heads of state is located, for two decades. Because it is difficult to imagine that Simion will be supported by liberal circles or the European bureaucracy, even in defiance of Çolak.
The opponents of the SDP understand this very well. That is why several days ago, Simion was accused, with reference to the Ukrainian special services, of alleged contacts with a Russian GRU agent. The accusation was voiced by the head of the joint commission of the chambers of the Romanian parliament for the control of the special services, Ioan Kirteș. At the same time, he is a member of the National Liberal Party (NLP), whose leader also has a high chance of making it to the second round of the presidential elections.
The current leader of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, by the way, comes from the NLP and during the last two election campaigns brilliantly played out a strategy of mobilizing the liberal and conservative electorate against the “heirs” of Ceausescu.
Is it any wonder that Social Democrat Ciolacu has come out strongly in defense of nationalist Simion and demanded the senator's resignation for spreading false information? Moreover, the Prime Minister has stated that there is no evidence of Russian interference in the Romanian elections.
On November 16, Cholaku published a letter from the Security Service of Ukraine on the reasons for denying entry to the AUR leader into the territory of this state. It says nothing about his connections with the GRU.
By and large, he is only charged with “discrediting Ukraine in the international arena and promoting unionist ideas.” The latter refers to Simion’s statements about the revival of Greater Romania, including Northern Bukovina with its center in the now Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi.
For Simion, this scandal became an excellent PR campaign in the run-up to the upcoming elections, especially since about a quarter of voters have not yet decided who to vote for in the first round.
By helping the Eurosceptic nationalists, the PSD is also trying to expand its room for manoeuvre when creating a government coalition in the new parliament. Although the most likely outcome is the re-establishment of an alliance between the PSD and the PNL, the representative AUR faction could allow the Social Democrats to retain control of the executive branch even without the Liberals. This means that the positions of Ciolaku’s allies in the negotiations for ministerial portfolios will be strengthened.
However, this same strategy also poses a hidden threat to the SDP.
The fact is that the positions of Eurosceptics are especially strong in the east of Romania, in the region of historical Moldova with its center in Iasi.
This same region, along with historical Wallachia, is also an electoral "fiefdom" for the Social Democrats. In this regard, there is a danger that the SDP, having helped the AUR in achieving tactical goals in the presidential elections, may lose parliamentary mandates, which will go to the nationalists who are gaining popularity.
The nearest future will show who will become the new head of Romania and how the seats in its parliament will be distributed. The success of AUR, and especially its entry into the government coalition, may become an unpleasant surprise for Kyiv politicians.
However, in any case, it is unlikely that a game involving Ukrainian special services against the leader of Romanian Eurosceptics will add popularity to official Kyiv among Romanians. In terms of support for their eastern neighbor, they are already the most skeptical nation in the EU.
[IsraelTimes] The US warns Turkey against hosting Hamas leaders, after an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel over the weekend that the terror group’s senior officials based in Doha fled last week to Ankara.
Turkey has not denied that Hamas officials are now in the country, but has insisted that it is not opening an office for them.
The US says it asked Qatar to oust Hamas leaders, arguing that the terror group has refused to substantively engage in negotiations for months.
Qatar has denied taking this step due to US pressure, but has admitted to halting its mediating role.
Asked during a press briefing about The Times of Israel’s reporting on Hamas officials moving to Turkey, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says Washington does not “believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organization should be living comfortably anywhere,” including NATO allies such as Turkey.
Miller notes that some Hamas officials, such as Khaled Meshaal, are under US indictment and should be turned over to the United States.
“We will make clear to the government of Turkey, as we have made clear to every country in the world, that there can be no more business as usual with Hamas,” he adds.
[IsraelTimes] Reports that Palestinian terror group Hamas’s office has moved to Turkey do not reflect the truth, a Turkish diplomatic source says, adding members of the group visited the country from time to time.
Doha said last week it had told Hamas and Israel it will halt its efforts to mediate a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal until they show willingness and seriousness.
Turkey has fiercely criticized Israel over its offensives in Gaza and in Lebanon and does not deem Hamas a terrorist organization. Some Hamas political officials regularly visit Turkey.
The denials come after an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel yesterday that senior members of Hamas’s abroad leadership left Qatar last week for Turkey.
The Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, downplayed the significance of the move for the terror group, stressing that Hamas’s leadership abroad already spends much of its time in Turkey when they are not holding meetings in Qatar.
#1
A remembrance of things past:
Turkey, the Global
Muslim Brotherhood,
and the Gaza Flotilla
Steven G. Merley (2011)
Abstract: This report presents the results of an investigation into the role played by the
Global Muslim Brotherhood and its Turkish allies in the May 2010 Gaza flotilla.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 6:58
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Turkey never let the 4th ID transit Turkey in the Iraq Attack. Bush didn't have the BALLS to kick them out of NATO then.
They are not our allies NO MATTER what their supporter in STATE or the PENTAGON think.
#4
"They're just visiting." And fleas and tick are 'just visiting'.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/19/2024 9:13
Comments ||
Top||
#5
3dc,above, is correct. We are still based at Incirlik in Turkey, although there is no real need for it. We have 'almost' closed our base down on countless occasions, but inevitably we don't want to hurt the Turks' feelings.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/19/2024 9:51
Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] Britain says state-owned Iran Air and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines to face asset freeze and restrictions for supplying weapons for war against Ukraine.
The United Kingdom imposed sanctions against Iran’s national airline and shipping carrier on Monday, measures it said were taken in response to Iran’s transfer of ballistic missiles and military supplies to Russia.
The state-owned 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... Air and Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) will face an asset freeze for its role in supplying weapons to Russia for use on the battlefield against Ukraine, Britannia said.
"Iran’s attempts to undermine global security are dangerous and unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said. "We reiterate our call on Iran to cease its support for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine."
The sanctions will further restrict Iran Air’s direct commercial air services to and from the UK.
Britannia also sanctioned the Russian Port Olya-3 cargo ship, which delivered the weapons, and said it would not be allowed to enter any UK port.
Iran Air has been designated for sanctions several times over the past year, including measures imposed by the US, UK, Germany La Belle France and the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... . The airline is fully banned from operating at EU airports, and other measures have been taken to restrict the airline’s ability to fly through European airspace.
In September, the United States accused Iran of supplying ballistic missiles to Russia, calling it a "dramatic escalation."
US 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... told news hounds that "Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles," and that the "supply of Iranian missiles enables Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets that are further from the front line."
"This development and the growing cooperation between Russia and Iran threatens European security and demonstrates how Iran’s destabilizing influence reaches far beyond the Middle East," Blinken said.
Blinken said Iran has trained dozens of Russian military personnel to use its Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles (121 km).
Iran has previously supplied Shahed drones used by Russia in Ukraine, but has denied providing Russia with ballistic missiles.
The Kremlin hasn’t explicitly rejected the accusation, and has said that Russia was cooperating with Iran including on "the most sensitive" areas.
[YouTube] The brave men + women of the Third Fire Company of Ñuñoa went to work to put out the flames engulfing a burning house in Santiago, Chile. With a GoPro filming, the firefighting team arrived on scene, rolled out the hose, + sprung into action, as seen in fireman Joseth Abel Espinosa's POV. While the house was lost, thankfully nobody was injured as a result. We thank our first responders + everyday heroes for their selfless actions day in + day out.
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.
...every time you hear the phrase 
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
[FoxNews] FEC filings show organizations run by Al Sharpton and Roland Martin received payments from the Harris campaign ahead of their interviews with the Democratic candidate
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[IsraelTimes] The IDF says troops foiled an attempted car-ramming attack in the southern West Bank this morning.
[Ynet] National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Monday of orchestrating politically motivated investigations against him, escalating his ongoing clash with the judiciary. 
[IsraelTimes] The US Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that would 
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
[IsraelTimes] Canadian authorities have foiled an Iranian attempt to assassinate renowned Jewish jurist 
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...46th president of the U.S. 
..always the voice of sweet reason...
[IsraelTimes] Hezbollah in a rare acknowledgement says four members were killed in yesterday’s Israeli airstrike on Beirut targeting 
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. 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. 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? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
... the personification of Somali state failure...
... the personification of Somali state failure...
[ShabelleMedia] Federalism, once presented as a mechanism to bring order and inclusivity to Somalia, is increasingly being viewed as a tool for destabilization. The very system designed to stabilize a fractured nation is now seen by many as a mechanism for fostering division, disintegration, and chaos. Behind the scenes, shadowy figures and their handlers appear to be exploiting federalism to destabilize Somalia, with a clear focus on its general elections as a trigger point.
...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 Frational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
[Rudaw] The Syrian army claimed on Monday that it downed 15 drones trying to harm its bases in three key cities in the last couple of days without blaming any party.
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
[CJ Hopkins] Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, there was born a global-capitalist empire. It was the first global empire in the history of empires. It dominated the entire planet.
[IsraelTimes] The US warns Turkey against hosting Hamas leaders, after an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel over the weekend that the terror group’s senior officials based in Doha fled last week to Ankara.
[IsraelTimes] Britain says state-owned Iran Air and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines to face asset freeze and restrictions for supplying weapons for war against Ukraine.
...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...
