[IsraelTimes] Syrian caretaker Prime Minister Mohammad al-Bashir tells Al Jazeera TV that Syria has very low foreign currency reserves.
Current and former Syrian officials have told Reuters that the dollar reserves have been nearly depleted because Bashar al-Assad’s government increasingly used them to fund food, fuel and its war effort.
The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves amount to just around $200 million in cash, one of the sources tells Reuters, while another says the US dollar reserves are “in the hundreds of millions.”
[IsraelTimes] Israeli troops have been operating in several Syrian villages beyond the buffer zone in southern Syria in the past day, according to local media.
The Daraa 24 outlet yesterday reported that IDF soldiers entered the village of Ma’ariya, a few hundred meters east of the buffer zone in the southern Golan Heights, and questioned locals.
The outlet says that today IDF tanks entered the town of Saidah, also on the edge of the buffer zone.
There is no immediate comment from the IDF on the actions.
The IDF has said that its deployment to the buffer zone and strategic positions in the area is a defensive and temporary measure amid the situation in Syria, and it would remain there until it clears up. The military has also acknowledged operating beyond the buffer zone in several areas.
[IsraelTimes] Unverified videos circulating on social media show Paleostinian button men in Jenin acknowledging their connections to the Islamic Theocratic Republic of 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... and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> , and pledging their commitment to Tehran’s objective of exporting the Islamic Revolution.
"From here, from Paleostine, from the Jenin Battalion, from the free and honorable people of Paleostine, we send our greetings to the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran, to Imam Ali Khamenei, and we will soon establish the state of the Imam Mahdi," a masked gunman says in one of the videos.
That figure is mostly revered in the Shiite Islam that is practiced in Iran, and is less relevant to the Sunni Islam practiced in the Paleostinian territories, raising questions about the authenticity of the videos, with some critics of the PA claiming that the clips have been fabricated by the PA as part of its propaganda against rival factions.
Over the past days, Paleostinian Authority security forces have been engaged in a crackdown on terror groups in Jenin, and on Saturday killed the local leader of Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... , Yazid Jaysa.
On Sunday, the US reportedly asked Israel to approve the urgent delivery of military assistance to the PA as it attempts to restore order in Jenin. Some have viewed the PA’s ongoing crackdown on armed factions in Jenin as an attempt by Ramallah to prove it can assert military control over West Bank territories under its jurisdiction, in preparation for a role it seeks to play in the future governance of the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip.
Since at least 2022, Iran has inundated the West Bank with arms, smuggling them across the border from Jordan to foment unrest with Israel, according to a report published in April by The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... .
The Islamic Theocratic Republic has long provided financial support to Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... and the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad terror groups as part of its Axis of Resistance® against Israel, which has suffered heavy blows after the decimation of the military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah in Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... and the fall of the Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria.o
313 by itself refers to the 313 men in Shia Twelvers belief that will rise to fight alongside elMahdi upon his reappearance - There was a compilation video of their irgc supporting statements by YaffaNews, am attaching here: pic.twitter.com/ORxY7HZOFK
… That's what the PA raids and operation in Jenin are all about – the United States has asked Israel to approve a shipment of ammunition, vests, helmets, night vision equipment, small arms, and vehicles to PA forces who are woefully and inadequately equipped to fulfill this critical and dangerous task. Palestinians being in charge of their own security is a superior option to the Israeli military conducting raids and inflaming tensions that fuel a vicious cycle.
The IRGC has stood up ideological fighters who are repeating Shia religious slogans and explicitly praising Tehran, all while forming a highly suspicious fighting formation that they’re calling “Brigade 313” – a religiously-inspired name that has appeared in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere. These are not “resistance” fighters as clueless “pro-Palestine” imbeciles are claiming: this is something entirely new and unprecedented. These are agents of chaos that the Islamic Republic is hoping will bring about the collapse of the PA and trigger a massive Israeli counterattack, which would trigger more violence in a desperate bid to save the destroyed “Axis of Resistance.”
The United States and its allies must do all that’s possible to empower the PA and its forces and allow for an organic counterterrorism operation against PIJ, Hamas, and other thugs and gangsters. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of a Palestinian-led security architecture that serves the interests and needs of all, something that could be a framework for future security in the Gaza Strip.
[IsraelTimes] The IDF says it carried out a drone strike in southern Lebanon earlier today, targeting a Hezbollah operative who was violating the ceasefire agreement, after he was spotted loading up a vehicle with weapons.
The drone strike was carried out to “remove a threat,” the military says.
[IsraelTimes] The IDF says it carried out a drone strike in southern Lebanon earlier today, targeting a Hezbollah operative who was violating the ceasefire agreement, after he was spotted loading up a vehicle with weapons.
The drone strike was carried out to “remove a threat,” the military says.
[IsraelTimes] ‘We really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,’ says top prosecutor after visit to mass grave; says more than 100,000 people disappeared, tortured to death
An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run "machinery of death" under toppled leader Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Leveler of Latakia... , and he estimated that more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
Speaking after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former US war crimes ambassador on the lam Stephen Rapp told Rooters: "We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine.
"I don’t have much doubt about those kinds of numbers, given what we’ve seen in these mass graves."
"When you talk about this kind of organized killing by the state and its organs, we really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis," said Rapp, who led prosecutions at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone war crimes tribunals.
"From the secret police who disappeared people from their streets and homes, to the jailers and interrogators who starved and tortured them to death, to the truck drivers and bulldozer drivers who hid their bodies, thousands of people were working in this system of killing," Rapp said.
Syrian residents living near a former military base, where one of the sites was located, and a cemetery, used to hide bodies from detention sites, described seeing a steady stream of refrigeration trucks delivering bodies, which were dumped into long trenches that had been dug with bulldozers.
In Qutayfah, people declined to speak on camera or use their names for fear of the retribution, saying they were not yet sure the area was safe after Assad’s fall.
"This is the place of horrors," one said on Tuesday.
Inside a site enclosed with cement walls, three children played near a Russian-made military satellite vehicle. The soil was flat and levelled, with straight long marks where the bodies were buried.
Satellite imagery analyzed by Rooters showed large-scale digging began at the location between 2012 and 2014 and continued up until 2022. Multiple satellite images taken by Maxar during that time showed a digger and large trenches visible at the site, along with three or four large trucks.
Omar Hujeirati, a former anti-Assad protest leader who lives near the Najha cemetery, said he suspected that several of his missing family members may be in the grave.
He believes at least some of those taken, including two sons and four brothers, were detained for protesting against Assad’s government.
"That was my sin, what made them take my family," he said, a long, exposed trench behind him where the bodies were apparently buried.
He said those responsible must be held accountable in a clear judicial process or people would take matters into their own hands.
"We want our rights, according to Syrian law, and not by some behind-the-scenes process. These massacres and slaughterhouses of death are unacceptable to anyone with humanity," he said. "We want reputable organizations to come so this isn’t covered up."
[IsraelTimes] Video from inside Syria shows crateloads of weapons and ammunition being loaded into trucks; IDF soldier says some contain ‘chemical warfare material’
Syrian villagers on the border with Israel have been collecting weapons and ammunition left in the area by the army and handing them over to the Israel Defense Forces, Channel 12 reported Monday.
In a video broadcast by the channel, hundreds of crates containing ammunition and weapons could be seen gathered and then loaded onto trucks.
According to the report, rebels who swept out the Assad regime last week are also helping in the operation.
The weapons apparently come from Syrian army bases and outposts where soldiers abandoned their positions amid the rebel takeover. Some were also leftovers from the years of civil war in Syria, the report said.
IDF soldiers at the scene explained that some of the weapons contained "chemical warfare material." These included hand grenades they said contained CS gas, commonly used as tear gas. One soldier said there were crateloads of such grenades. They cause irritation and must not be touched directly, he said.
Israel entered a United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... -patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights hours after the rebels took Damascus. Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a temporary defensive move that would last only until it could guarantee security along the frontier.
The Channel 12 report said that that security officials are seeking to establish cooperation with residents of border villages in the buffer, who in the past have worked with Israeli security to prevent hostile actors from entering the area. The threat of such hostile force could be a factor in the IDF’s activities in creating a line of defense in the buffer zone for residents on the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights, while it is still able to, Channel 12 said.
Haaretz reported that the IDF says there has been contact with the Syrian Druze, including meetings during which a request was made to gather weapons that were looted from abandoned Syrian army sites.
However,
if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning... according to that report, villagers on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights have asked the new Syrian regime and other Arab countries to push Israel out of the area and were concerned over how long the Israeli military would remain.
Possibly both statements are true, as the violagers try to thread the needle of current IDF presence and future rule by Hayat Tahrir al Sham.
Meanwhile,
...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout Montefiore's foot was still stuck and the hound had completely soaked his uniform with slobber... the Ynet outlet cited Russia’s state-owned Sputnik network as saying an IDF helicopter landed near a Syrian military facility on Monday and dropped off soldiers who entered the site. The soldiers remained for about 20 minutes before leaving and flying south, the report said.
Sputnik has been denounced by some as a Russian disinformation outfit.
Israel launched a major campaign after the fall of the Assad regime on December 8 to destroy the Syrian military’s strategic military capabilities, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements. Targets have included chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented... sites, missiles, air defenses, and air force and navy targets.
[IsraelTimes] Erdler Israel Amoyal, 23, allegedly carried out surveillance, vandalism tasks; searched internet for bomb-making instructions, proposed targeting Jerusalem light rail’s system
An Israeli resident of Jerusalem was arrested for carrying out missions on behalf of 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... and planning a terror attack, the Shin Bet security agency and Israel Police said Tuesday, the latest in a series of plots involving citizens allegedly recruited by Iran that security agencies say have been foiled in recent months.
The suspect, Erdler Israel Amoyal, 23, was detained in November over suspicions he was "committing security offenses related to contact with intelligence officials of the Iranian regime and carrying out security missions in Israel under their direction, for financial gain," according to the Shin Bet.
The announcement came a little over a week after police said a man in the north of the country was arrested on suspicion of carrying out acts of vandalism on behalf of Iran.
The latest investigation found that since October, Amoyal was in contact with Iranian intelligence elements via social media. The Shin Bet said he was first in contact with a profile using the handle "Arianna," who later transferred him to "John," who became his handler.
According to the investigation, Amoyal was aware that John was an Iranian operative, but he still agreed to carry out surveillance and other missions, including photographing various addresses and spraying graffiti.
The Shin Bet said Amoyal took photos of a paper with the words "Making Peace" in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, graffitied the word "Sinwar" in Tel Aviv, and took photos of several houses and streets in Netanya and Jerusalem.
Amoyal purchased a GoPro camera to film his actions, and sent footage to his handler John, the agency said. He also edited a video of a car burning, the Shin Bet said, although it was unclear if he carried out the act.
In addition, Amoyal allegedly searched social media to purchase a firearm and silencer, along with materials to manufacture a bomb. The Shin Bet said he watched instructional videos on how to build an bomb, in order to carry out a terror attack in Israel.
Amoyal was also asked to recruit others to carry out missions for Iran, especially people with criminal backgrounds, the agency said.
According to the Shin Bet, Amoyal offered his handler to torch a police cruiser and shut down power to the Jerusalem light rail. He filmed various areas of the rail in an attempt to locate the power components, and sent the footage to John, the agency said.
Amoyal was rewarded with cryptocurrency for his actions, the Shin Bet said.
An indictment is expected to be filed against Amoyal in the coming days.
The Shin Bet said the case again "shows the efforts made by Iranian intelligence to draft Israeli citizens for the purpose of espionage and terror in Israel, and the readiness of Israeli citizens to carry out the missions under Iranian direction, knowing the identity of the handlers, all for financial gain."
Police said in the statement that "spying for an enemy state, at a time of war, and in general, is a serious and dangerous offense that amounts to treason against the state."
Since September, Israeli authorities have announced arrests in seven separate cases involving individuals or cells suspected of spying or plotting attacks on behalf of Iran. In some, Tehran tried to trick Israelis online into carrying out missions on its behalf. In other cases, individuals are alleged to have knowingly operated on its behalf for monetary gain.
[IsraelTimes] Defense minister says Israel to retain security control of Strip post-war and maintain freedom for the military to act like it has in the West Bank
Two Israeli reserve soldiers were killed in southern 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 military announced Tuesday, as Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would control security in the Strip after the war.
The slain troops were named as Maj. (res.) Moshiko (Maxim) Rozenwald, 35, and Sgt. First Class. (res.) Alexander Anosov, 26. Both served in the Combat Engineering Corps’ 7107th Battalion and were both from the central city of Modiin. Rozenwald was a company commander and Anosov was a squad commander.
According to an initial Israel Defense Forces probe, the two soldiers were killed and two others were moderately injured after a building they were in, in the Rafah area, collapsed on Monday afternoon. The military has assessed that the unstable building, which was already heavily damaged by IDF activity in the area, collapsed due to the movement of tanks on a route close to it.
No explosives or Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... terror group booby-traps were identified in the area, the probe found.
It took hours for rescue forces to recover their bodies from under the rubble.
Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Don Calamari's lawyer was getting even redder in the face... after three months of fighting in southern Leb ...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 IDF’s 98th Division was being redeployed to Gaza, the military said on Monday. The elite formation of paratrooper and commando units completed its operations in Lebanon on Wednesday last week, and was now readying for future missions in Gaza.
Their return to the enclave comes several weeks after Israel entered a ceasefire in Lebanon with the Hezbollah terror group, and more than fourteen months into the ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, which started the war on October 7, 2023, when it attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Also Tuesday, the military said a tunnel in northern Gaza’s Jabalia used by a Hamas cell in an attack that killed three soldiers in October was recently discovered and destroyed. In the attack on October 10, three reserve soldiers of the 460th Brigade were killed by a roadside kaboom.
The IDF said soldiers of the Givati Brigade located the tunnel shaft where the cell had been holed up, which connected to a 500-meter-long underground passage. Combat engineers then demolished the tunnel.
Katz on Tuesday said Israel would maintain security control of Gaza after the war, pushing back on an earlier TV report.
"Once we defeat Hamas’s military power and ruling power in Gaza, Israel will control security in Gaza with full freedom to act, just as in Judea and Samaria," he said in a statement, using the biblical name for the West Bank.
"We will not allow any terrorist activity against Israeli communities and citizens from Gaza. We will not allow a return to the pre-October 7 reality."
Katz made the comment after Channel 12 news reported that he told a senior US official in recent days that "Israel doesn’t want either military rule or civil rule over the residents" of Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said midday Tuesday that Israeli strikes across the enclave had killed at least 14 Paleostinians so far that day.
Medics said a strike in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City killed at least eight people from the same family, destroying a building and damaging nearby houses. Rescuers recovered the bodies of eight people, including two women and four children from under the rubble, the ministry said. Among the dead were a father and his three children, and the children’s grandmother, according to a casualty list obtained by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Four other people were killed in two separate Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in the city and in the town of Beit Lahiya north of the enclave, medics added.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper in the direction of al-Mawasi, designated a humanitarian zone. Heavy fire from tanks rolling into the area forced dozens of families sheltering there to flee northwards towards Khan Younis. The IDF did not issue any new evacuation warnings to civilians in the designated humanitarian zone, however, and there have been no other indications that troops are pushing into the Mawasi area.
The World Health Organization said Monday that a humanitarian team finally reached one of northern Gaza’s only functioning hospitals over the weekend to deliver fuel, food and medicines, and found "appalling" conditions. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that after multiple attempts, the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... health agency and partners reached Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya "two days ago, amid hostilities and explosions in the vicinity of the hospital during the mission."
The team, he said, had "delivered 5,000 liters of fuel, food and medicines, and transferred three patients and six companions to al-Shifa," the Paleostinian territory’s main hospital, which has been the site of several battles between Hamas operatives and Israeli soldiers.
Kamal Adwan is one of the last operational medical facilities in the north of the war-ravaged territory, with the WHO warning earlier this month that it was operating at a "minimum" level. The agency said efforts to deliver desperately needed supplies have been repeatedly hampered.
Note the passive voice, dear Reader. Had it been the IDF, the accusation would have been direct, suggesting the fault lies with either Hamas or miscellaneous Gazans.
As fighting continued in Gaza, mediated talks continued between Israel and Hamas for a hostage-ceasefire deal. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Hamas had given in to an Israeli demand that the IDF remain in Gaza temporarily, after having previously refused to release any more hostages unless Israel agrees to a full withdrawal from the enclave and an end to the war, which the government has refused.
Hamas has survived an unrelenting Israeli military campaign, but its military infrastructure has been effectively dismantled, and the support it had been receiving from the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” has all but dissipated over the past two months amid dizzying developments in Lebanon and Syria.
But that doesn’t mean Hamas will be prepared to accept a deal on any terms, the Arab diplomat clarified, adding that the group now has a lot less to lose and is still holding 100 hostages who won’t be released in full unless Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire.
Contrary to reporting in American and Arabic press, though, progress in the talks has not extended to Hamas’s transfer of a long-sought list to the mediators consisting of the names of hostages it is prepared to release in the ceasefire’s first stage, the two Arab diplomats said.
Israel has sought the release of at least 33 hostages during this phase, while Hamas has maintained that it doesn’t have that number of living captives who fall into the “humanitarian” categories of women, elderly and sick captives, an Israeli official said.
With these hurdles still standing in the way, the second Arab diplomat said Biden officials’ privately shared desires to secure an agreement this week were unlikely to be actualized.
And even with a list from Hamas, it is unclear whether either side is prepared to move or compromise on the nature of the ceasefire, the four sources said.
Documents filed in court have revealed details about the motive behind the deadly shooting at Georgia's Fort Eisenhower over the weekend.
Saturday's shooting triggered a lockdown at the U.S. Army base for hours and ended with an Army reservist dead and a soldier in custody.
Officials say the shooting came after the suspected gunman found another man in the bed of his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child. His ex-girlfriend? Clearly she was well rid of him. And possibly he of her, too. But he has no business reacting so once they’re no longer an item.
MERIWETHER COUNTY, Ga. - Court documents reveal new details about a shooting at Georgia's Fort Eisenhower that triggered a lockdown and ended with one man dead and another in custody.
Natravien Landry, 25, appeared in court before a federal magistrate judge in Augusta on Monday. He’s charged with a killing Saturday morning at a home on Fort Eisenhower, where Landry served in a Georgia National Guard transportation unit.
[JustTheNews] The Pentagon is funding alternatives to meat protein, which includes using fungi for food for U.S. service members as part of the White House’s sustainable bioeconomy agenda.
The Department of Defense is focusing on investments into fungi protein as an alternative to animal protein, after initially seeking to fund lab-grown meat earlier this year in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. Critics have pushed back on such initiatives, arguing that they are negatively affecting the military.
In November, the DOD announced that it had given 34 awards totaling over $60 million to bioindustrial firms under the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP). $1.38 million was given to The Fynder Group “to plan a bioproduction facility for fungi-based proteins that can be incorporated into military ready-to-eat meals.”
The program is part of President Joe Biden's Executive Order 14081, "Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy," which is “aimed at bolstering America's bioeconomic strengths while helping the Department achieve advanced defense capabilities,” according to the DOD.
The projects that were awarded funding from the DOD program “will be eligible to receive follow-on ‘build’ awards providing access to up to $100 million to construct U.S.-based bioindustrial manufacturing facilities,” the DOD announcement added.
FUNGI-BASED PROTEINS
In August, as part of the DBIMP, the DOD awarded nearly $1.5 million to The Better Meat Company, which “harness[es] the amazing power of fermentation to make delicious, clean mycoprotein ingredients for food companies to use as the basis of their hybrid and fully animal-free meats.”
“The Better Meat Company, based in West Sacramento, California, was awarded $1.48 million to plan a bioproduction facility for mycoprotein ingredients that are shelf-stable, have high protein and fiber contents, and can be dehydrated,” according to the DOD.
To make the meat alternatives, the company explains that they “feed starchy foods to microscopic fungi and allow them to naturally turn into the meatiest animal-free protein on the planet.”
The CEO of The Better Meat Company is Paul Shapiro, who has donated to Democratic candidates’ campaigns, according to records from the Federal Election Commission. Most recently, Shapiro donated to Virginia Delegate Dan Helmer’s primary campaign for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District this past February and California Sen. Adam Schiff’s campaign in October and November 2023.
The Better Meat Company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
In June, public-private company BioMADE announced that it was seeking “Innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at and/or transport to DoD operational environments are solicited.
“These could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilizing one carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein,” which is lab-grown meat.
BioMADE, which is a Manufacturing Innovation Institute sponsored by the DOD, announced last year that it had received more than $500 million from the Pentagon.
Following the June announcement, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Center for the Environment and Welfare (CEW) pushed back on the DOD funding lab-grown meat experiments for the military, causing the Pentagon to reverse course.
“After weeks of engaging with Congress and speaking out against this plan, we are thrilled to have DoD confirmation that lab-grown protein is not on the menu for our nation’s servicemembers,” NCBA President Mark Eisele said in a statement in July. “These men and women make the greatest sacrifices every day in service to our country and they deserve high-quality, nutritious, and wholesome food like real beef grown by American farmers and ranchers.”
"FAKE MEAT"
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who is a retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act in June that would have prohibited the DOD from funding research and development of lab-grown meat for military rations, often called MRE's. However, the amendment was rejected.
“Last week, I proposed an NDAA amendment to cut all DOD funding for fake meat,” Bacon posted on X in June. “Nebraska is the Beef State, leading in red meat production. Our farmers and ranchers can feed our military, we don’t need this petri dish protein. The military needs to fund weapons not fake meat.”
A Pentagon spokesperson told Just the News on Wednesday, "DoD is not funding the manufacture of cultivated meat. There is no cultivated meat in military rations nor plans to feed troops cultivated meat. This research involves plant protein-based mycoprotein ingredients that are shelf-stable, have high protein and fiber contents, and can be dehydrated.
"The ability of the U.S. military to project power entails an equally imposing logistical chain to maintain stocks of food, water, medicines, fuel, and other supplies critical to troops and equipment. That chain gets stretched to extremes when the military is called upon to rapidly deploy anywhere in the world and sustain operations without the benefit of fixed infrastructure. Accordingly, DoD is actively investigating ways critical supplies are procured in addition to creating systems that can rapidly produce materials, including food onsite, when and where they are needed. In its research to produce food onsite, DoD is working closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure all relevant guidelines are adhered to and regulatory standards are met."
#2
How are we going to provide protein in a sustainable manner for long duration missions in space? The research is a good idea that may take decades to come up with something edible.
[Breitbart] “Our rifles will be pointed at the U.S. government and the Zionist entity,” declared the speaker at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in New York, as he described American “imperialists” as the “number one terrorists,” and expressed solidarity with Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, Iran, and other members of the “Axis of Resistance.”
The pro-Palestinian Bronx Anti-War Coalition, a self-described “working-class, BIPOC-led, anti-imperialist” group, organized a rally on Sunday in New York City’s Union Square to express solidarity with the “Axis of Resistance,” which the group identified as Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Yemen, and the Iraqi “resistance.”
More Antifa allied with Iran proxies. How many of the cadres are drawing two paychecks as a result? Once ultimately from Progressive groups like Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation, and then again from the IRGC and Communist China….
At the event, a speaker donning a keffiyeh issued sharp proclamations, including: “Stop pointing fingers at each other. Our fingers, our pens, our rifles will be pointed at the U.S. government, the Zionist entity, and nobody else.”
The rally featured chants repeated by the crowd, calling out “U.S. imperialists” as the “number one terrorists” and voicing unity with regional terror movements.
Participants were seen waving flags representing the Palestinians; Iran, the leading state sponsor of terror; Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias hold significant influence; Lebanon, home to Hezbollah; Syria under Assad’s regime, notorious for brutal crackdowns during its civil war; and Yemen, where the Houthi rebels align with Iran.
These were seen alongside Hezbollah’s yellow flag, a known emblem of armed resistance and Islamic terror.
Hezbollah, which has actively sought to expand its influence beyond the Middle East, is designated a terrorist organization by more than a dozen countries and international entities, including major Western nations, members of the European Union, and most Arab League member states, due to its involvement in terrorist activities against American, French, Israeli, and other targets.
Former President Donald Trump has denounced Hezbollah, stating, “No terrorist group other than al-Qaeda has more American blood on its hands.” Meanwhile, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has called for the elimination of “all of Hezbollah’s leadership” while insisting that the United States “should let Israel win” against Tehran’s key terrorist proxy in the region.
The event also emphasized anti-sectarianism, with the speaker urging the crowd to “rise above religious differences” and focus on a shared cause.
The “anti-capitalism” Bronx Anti-War Coalition amplified their message on social media, sharing a video of Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida denouncing sectarianism, as well as a speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassam streamed from Iran’s Press TV.
In response, critics took to social media to express outrage over the rally’s rhetoric.
“The day will come when these Palestine ‘activists’ inevitably execute a massive terror attack in NYC. And once they do, don’t say we didn’t warn you,” wrote journalist Eitan Fischberger.
“Hey @RealTomHoman, here are some prime deportation candidates!” wrote conservative commentator Dave Rubin.
“It’s never been about Israel, it’s always been about destroying Western civilization,” wrote activist Eyal Yakoby.
“Is the FBI asleep?” asked one social media user.
“Pro-Palestine = Anti-America,” wrote another.
The matter comes as the trend of anti-American sentiment at pro-Palestinian events continues to grow.
According to world-renowned military historian and professor Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, Hamas’s “death cult” relies on “useful Western idiots” to support the Palestinian cause, which has “fused with the leftwing DEI industry.”
In addition, he predicted over a year ago that pro-Palestinian protests and support for Hamas in the U.S. have alienated many Americans and would all but ensure a tough conservative president in 2024.
[FoxNews] A South African national who illegally entered the U.S. landed a "positive match" on the terrorist watchlist leading to his "swift" arrest in New York City.
According to U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, the unidentified South African national was initially detained in Texas for criminal trespassing, but was released.
A Texas Department of Public Safety official confirmed to Fox News that the migrant was first arrested on a ranch near Eagle Pass in September, then they turned him over to federal border patrol who released him.
His arrest, alongside 36 other illegal migrants, was documented and shared on social media by Lt. Chris Olivarez, the spokesperson for the Texas DPS. Olivarez said that among the group were special interest illegal immigrants from Turkey, Pakistan, India and Vietnam.
Owens said that a further investigation revealed a "positive match on the terrorist watchlist."
A number of jihadi groups make their home in South Africa. It would have been nice to know which one claims him.
The positive identification of the suspect being involved in terrorism led to a swift mutli-agency effort to arrest the individual in Brooklyn, New York. It is unclear how or when the suspect arrived in New York City.
"Thanks to the coordination of multiple agencies, this potential threat was located, taken into custody, and is now pending removal," he said.
#4
As reported by Breitbart Texas, the migrant was identified by Texas Department of Public Safety troopers as Umar Farooq Ashraf, a South African citizen. The alert from the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database identified the man as the possible spouse or child of a known or suspected terrorist.
[PM] "American companies must return to using merit—not the desire to check a DEI box—to select the most skilled and qualified employees."
American Airlines (AA) will no longer be recruiting and hiring based on the dictates of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. The company admitted that the policy is a violation of federal laws that protect equal access to employment, America First Legal announced Tuesday.
The US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) informed America First Legal about the decision. "American companies must return to using merit—not the desire to check a DEI box—to select the most skilled and qualified employees. American Airlines’ agreement with the OFCCP is AFL’s latest victory in our fight to put illegal discrimination on the no-fly list," said Will Scolinos, America First Legal Counsel
The decision came as a result of a complaint filed by AFL against AA with the OFCCP, which accused the company of not complying with federal law even though the airline does a massive amount of business with the federal government and has been the beneficiary of $140 million in federal contracts since 2008. In order to qualify for those contracts, AA had to promise to adhere to the Executive Order 11246 that prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, or employee training based of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It has failed to do so and has embraced discrimination based on race and sex in its hiring practices, Cadet Academy program and promotional activity.
On Dec. 13, 2024, the OFCCP began investigating AFL’s complaint by interviewing AA representatives and assessing the company’s record as per the instructions of 41 CFR §60-1.24 (c) (2). That investigation found clear evidence that the airline had failed to uphold the equal opportunity component, necessitating a compliance conference to initiate remedial action. Following the intervention, AA affirmed it had been in violation of laws banning discrimination based on race or gender when hiring or promoting its business and agreed to cease that contravention.
AFL has also asked for like investigations to occur at United Airlines and Southwest Airlines. The OFCCP has subsequently informed AFL that these airlines have agreed to abolish their discriminatory and illegal recruitment and hiring policies that establish quotas linked to the race and the sex of people who respond.
American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines together control about 50 percent of airline traffic in the US. AFL promised to pursue illegal DEI practices wherever companies are enjoying the benefits of federal contracts but not adhering to federal laws against discrimination. A US federal court recently quashed NASDAQ’s DEI mandates aimed at the boards of member companies, reflecting an increasing trend against woke policies being promoted in America’s corporate world.
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 21:20 Germany is ready to send its peacekeepers to Ukraine, but only on condition that Russia agrees to such a mission. This was stated by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
20:33 The North Atlantic Alliance has taken over the coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the United States of America. This concerns the launch of the NATO Security Assistance and Training Centre for Ukraine (NSATU).
19:50 German concern Rheinmetall has received an order to supply Ukraine with another 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles as part of military aid. The delivery of the batch of combat vehicles is scheduled for the first half of 2025.
18.44 The Polish authorities are preparing the 46th tranche of aid for Ukraine. It will be provided in January. This was stated by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a press conference in Lviv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
17:34 In the occupied Vasilyevka of the Zaporizhia region, Russian soldiers were killed in a fire in the basement of an apartment building . It is still unknown what caused the fire.
16.55 Since the beginning of the current day, 88 combat clashes have occurred on the front, more than a third of which were in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a report as of 16.00.
16:25 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not need any intermediaries to maintain contacts with US President-elect Donald Trump. The Ukrainian leader said this at a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.
15.55 Russian troops are carrying out intensive offensive actions in the territory of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, actively using units of the DPRK army. This was reported by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Syrsky.
"For the third day, the enemy has been conducting intensive offensive actions in the Kursk region, actively using units of the DPRK army. North Korean mercenaries have already suffered heavy losses," he said.
15.47 The SBU military counterintelligence neutralized the agent network of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (known as the GRU). The spies were reconnoitering air defense positions and trying to locate secret military airfields with F-16 aircraft.
15.25 In most cases, the construction of fortifications in the third line of defense has been successfully completed. This was reported by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
"This year, the government allocated more than 37 billion hryvnias for the creation and construction of fortifications in the third line of defense. The work was carried out and coordinated by regional military administrations. Most of them have been successfully completed," said the head of the Cabinet of Ministers.
As a result, one person was killed by Russian troops in Belozerka, and another was hospitalized with injuries. This was reported by the press service of the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday, December 17.
13:31 President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Lviv, where he visited the Field of Mars and paid his respects to the fallen defenders of Ukraine.
12:37 On Tuesday night, the Russians launched 31 Shahed-type attack drones and other types of drones at Ukraine. Almost all of them were destroyed or lost, the Ukrainian Air Force reported .
12:13 The commander of the 211th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleh Poberezhnyuk, has been placed under suspicion. He involved four subordinates in the construction of his own house in the Khmelnytsky region instead of their service in the combat zone.
11:08 As a result of the attack of Russian drones on Kiev, the fall of UAV fragments was recorded in the Solomensky, Pechersky, Dniprovsky, and Goloseevsky districts of the city. This was reported by the Kyiv State Aviation Administration.
11:01 Ukraine's Western allies must fulfill their promises of military aid, given Russia's intentions to seize a critical mine in the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, Bloomberg reported .
10:52 The bombing of the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, in Moscow was a special operation by the SBU. This was reported by Interfax-Ukraine, citing sources in the special service.
9:28 Russian assault units have carried out a series of attacks on Ukrainian positions in the eastern direction over the past 24 hours. Given this, some of them have become impossible to hold, OSGV Khortytsia reported .
8:59 The partisans are actively countering the plans of the Russian troops to advance in the Zaporizhia direction. In October, an agent of the ATESH movement, operating as part of the Russian Vostok group, transmitted data on the location of the enemy command post and personnel in the region.
7:57 ISW notes that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has stated that a change in the Ukrainian government is allegedly a prerequisite for negotiations with Russia. He also distorts Ukrainian legislation and questions the legitimacy of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
7:26 An explosion occurred on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow on Tuesday morning, December 17. As a result of the explosion, two Russians were killed : the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant.
[Townhall] President-elect Donald J. Trump further solidified his position as a defender of the working class this week. Mr. Trump met with leaders of the Longshoreman’s Association, and it was an experience that the top officials of this labor union couldn’t have imagined. Its vice president, Dennis Daggett, posted on Facebook that the meeting was nothing short of historic in his mind.
“I have never seen a Republican take up the mantle for working-class people,” he wrote.
It’s a statement that has to make Democrats sick (via NY Post):
🚨 Statement from Int'l Longshoremen's Association EVP Dennis Daggett on his meeting with President Trump:
"In over 25 years of working in Washington, I have never seen a Republican take up the mantle for working-class people. President-elect Trump proved me wrong yesterday." pic.twitter.com/X8sw8xcSSZ
A top labor union leader breathlessly praised President-elect Donald Trump for proving him wrong and showing that a Republican can champion the working class.
Dennis Daggett, the executive vice president of the International Longshoreman’s Association — the union that shut down ports with a strike earlier this year — said his recent meeting with Trump was “an experience I never imagined in my wildest dreams.”
[…]
Following that meeting, Trump took on one of their top grievances — automation.
“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the meeting.
“The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen. Foreign companies have made a fortune in the U.S. by giving them access to our markets.”
In October, ILA went on strike for about three days before reaching a temporary deal that extended contracts until Jan. 15, buying time for more negotiations.
There’s a reason why 60 percent of Teamsters members backed Trump, which led to the weak sauce announcement that the major union wouldn’t endorse any candidate this year. Still, Trump and the GOP will likely continue to be viewed as America’s champion among the working class as Democrats continue to mock, denigrate, and dismiss these voters who happen to number in the tens of millions. It’s political idiocy, as there are not enough college-educated snobs to win national elections.
[IsraelTimes] In heated meeting, woman recounts harassment in captivity, urges far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to agree to end war; he flatly refuses, denies responsibility for Oct. 7, says war must go on indefinitely
Presumably the would-be killers were ISIS or ISIS-inspired.
[Rudaw] Iraqi security forces foiled two liquidation attempts targeting Pope Francis
...Argentine liberation theologist, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was elected pope in 2013. Rather than setting up shop in Avignon, where he belongs, the first Jesuit Pope chose to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse instead of the papal apartments. That was to show how humble he is. He is big on climate change, against consumerism, and in favor of throwing a blanket over homosexual activity within the clergy. He's not real sure about the Resurrection, about Christ's divinity, and a few other things that would have gotten him burned at the stake a few hundred years ago, but he's hot for a certain South American Earth Mother Goddess... during his historic trip to the country three years ago, the pontiff says in his forthcoming biography as reported by the Italian media on Tuesday.
In the book, set to be released next month, the pope describes warnings from British intelligence about the plots, including one involving "a woman packed with explosives, a young kamikaze, was heading to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... to blow herself up during the papal visit," and another where "a van had also set off at full speed with the same intent," as detailed in an excerpt published by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
The incidents occurred in Mosul, the former stronghold where 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) declared its caliphate in 2014, leaving the city devastated after its defeat in 2017.
In March 2021, Pope Francis made a historic visit to Iraq, becoming the first pontiff to visit the country. The trip included stops in Baghdad, Mosul, and Najaf, where he met Iraq's highest Shiite authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The pope concluded his visit by holding a Holy Mass in Erbil, delivering messages of peace and coexistence.
In Mosul, the Pope held prayers for victims of ISIS and visited other significant Christian sites in the city.
"One of the world’s oldest cities," Vatican News cited the pontiff as saying, "Overflowing with history and traditions, which had seen different civilizations come and go and was a symbol of peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures in one country - Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Turks, Christians, Syriacs - appeared to my eyes as a field of rubble after three years of occupation by the Islamic State, which had chosen it as its stronghold."
Iraqi authorities have not commented on the two liquidation attempts.
[Rudaw] Iraq’s interior ministry on Monday denied that Maher al-Assad, the brother of ousted Syrian President Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama... , is in the country.
The latest report we have, from four days ago, quotes Rami Abdurrhaman, who does the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as claiming Mr. al Assad had arrived in Russia.
"The news on social media about the presence of Maher al-Assad, the brother of former Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, inside Iraqi territory is false," Miqdad Miri, the spokesperson for the Iraqi interior ministry told state media.
Several outlets on Monday reported that Maher al-Assad fled Syria and now resides in Iraq, particularly in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province, claiming that he is hosted by Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Bafel Talabani.
Kurdistan Region authorities have not commented on the matter.
On Saturday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which govern northeast Syria (Rojava), denied rumors of allowing Maher al-Assad’s passage through its territory into Iraq. The SDF called the claim "completely false and comes in the context of incitement against our forces and people in northern and eastern Syria."
The SDF enjoys good relations with the PUK.
The Assad family fled Syria after a lightning rebel offensive spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) brought down the Syrian regime, ending over 50 years of Baathist rule.
Following the fall of Damascus, Russian forces evacuated Assad, and his family from Syria and granted them asylum in Moscow.
In his first message after the collapse of the regime, Assad said on Monday that his departure from the country was not planned and that Russia had arranged his evacuation to Moscow, from a military base in Latakia, where he was overseeing the operations.
Assad said in his message that the country has fallen "in the hands of terrorists."
[RedState] James O’Keefe dropped an undercover video on Monday in which one of President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. The man who made Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter look competent, if only by comparison.... 's National Security Council advisors explains that the cognitively declining president is far worse off than the public knows.
The video should not be shocking — given the countless number of times we've seen Biden's brain malfunction, the confused president shake hands with the air or wander around aimless on a stage after he finishes speaking, and other clear signs that his dementia is rapidly progressing — but it is.
National Security Council (NSC) advisor Henry Appel spoke frankly about the current state of Biden's deteriorating state, unaware that he was being filmed. Appel began with a shocking statement (emphasis, mine).
"Joe Biden is, like, dead. Not literally. Like, he, like, can’t say a sentence," admits Henry Appel, advisor at the National Security Council (NSC), about the current state of the President’s health. Appel, who works in the Intelligence Programs Directorate, noted his team’s responsibility for providing senior policymakers with top secrets, stating, "We give all of the senior policymakers all of the secrets."
He went on to describe Biden’s deteriorating communication skills as a concern, adding, "[Biden] can’t say a sentence." Recalling a phone call in which the President struggled to understand the simple phrase, "novel phenomenon," Appel shared "He [Biden] was just like, ’What do you mean, like a book?’ when my boss [Jake Sullivan] used the word ’novel.’"
It gets worse.
SHOCKING UNDERCOVER VIDEO: ‘Joe Biden is Dead;’ National Security Council Advisor Inside the White House Details Biden "Can't Say a Sentence."
Henry Appel, a former spy who currently works at the Intelligence Programs Directorate for the NSC, reveals: 'We’re concerned about… pic.twitter.com/jLjifP0jm1
"We're trauma-bonded... there were a lot of tears."
Appel recounted another disturbing phone call he had with Biden.
Appel didn’t stop there; he also recounted an exchange from a call with Biden, revealing, "I picked up the phone and said, ’Hello, Mr. President’... and he asked for Jake [Sullivan]. After a brief exchange, Biden called me back 10 seconds later asking again, ’Is Jake there?’" Appel told Biden, "No, he’s traveling with you," adding, "He’s on the same trip that you are."
The above passage was chilling to me when I first read it.
We lost my mom to Alzheimer's some years ago. It first hit me that something was terribly wrong while I was in my car on a business trip. She called several times in rapid succession, each time saying "Mary?" when I picked up the phone. "No, Mom, this is Michael," I responded each time. Mary was my brother's wife's mom. We lost my mom several months after she made those confused calls to me.
As I said at the top, this video shouldn't be chilling, but it is. Joe The Big Guy Biden is the sitting president of the United States. He figuratively has his finger on the nuclear button. He is handing out pardons to people, including his son Hunter, like they're going out of style, not to mention that the pardon of Hunter and multiple other undeserving recipients makes a mockery of justice.
[Rudaw] The United States on Monday backed The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member, but not the most reliable... in going after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) while reaffirming support for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against 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).
"We understand Turkiye’s legitimate right to go after a designated terrorist organization which the United States continues — considers a terrorist organization as well," US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a press briefing on Monday.
"We have designated the PKK and we respect their [Turkey’s] right to go after that organization," he added.
Miller also indirectly urged Turkey to refrain from launching an operation against Kurdish forces in Syria. Ankara considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the SDF, as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.
"We have made clear to all of the parties that we have engaged on this issue, that it is — Syria is in such a fragile state right now that we don’t want to see any party take an action to pursue their own unilateral interests over the broader interests of the Syrian people; that this is a time to increase stability, not to further devolve into sectarian fighting," Miller said.
"The SDF does incredibly important work to — in the counter-ISIS coalition, a coalition of which Turkiye of course is a member," he added.
This comes amid reports of Turkey preparing to launch an operation into Rojava.
The SDF on Monday announced that US-led mediation efforts to reach a "permanent truce" with Turkey over Manbij city had fallen off, accusing the latter of evasion to accept key points for reaching an agreement.
"The US-led mediation efforts to declare a permanent truce in the Manbij and Kobani regions were unsuccessful due to Turkey's approach in dealing with the mediation efforts and its evasion to accept key points," SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said on X.
The points, according to Shami, included "the transfer of remaining Manbij Military Council fighters and civilians wishing to move to safer areas within north and eastern Syria, as well as the resolution of the issue concerning the transfer of Suleiman Shah's remains to their former location."
Turkey-backed opposition militia groups launched an offensive against the SDF in the northwestern region of Shahba late last month, controlling it days later. They also took over Manbij city earlier this week which Kurdish fighters had liberated from the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2016.
The development comes amid historic changes in Syria as a coalition of militia groups led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) ousted Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... last week.
The Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkey-backed militia group, has said that their attempt to take Manbij is part of the code-named Operation Dawn of Freedom, which was launched late last month in Tal Rifaat, forcing the SDF-linked fighters to withdraw from the town.
[JPost] Grinders gonna grind meat.
North Korea has suffered several hundred casualties while fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region, a US military official said on Tuesday.
Asked about what ranks the North Korean casualties included, the military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was from lower-level troops to "very near to the top."
Posted by: Frank G ||
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[PJMedia] I seem to be writing a series on our interesting times, starting with the implications of the fall of Bashar al-Assad and followed by talking about the discovery of the Assad Ba’ath regime’s archives.
I wish I could be smug about my predictions coming true, but honestly, fascists are too predictable. They always seem to have a secret service to keep the populace under control, and they always seem to become more and more abusive as their efforts to make the populace just behave fail, as the populace doesn’t want to behave.
Honestly, fascism would be so much simpler if it weren’t for all the people.
So now that al-Assad has ridden off into the Russian sunset, we are starting to discover some of the details, that honestly — well, as I said, I wish I could be smug about it, but I can’t.
A lot of stuff is coming out now.
First of all is the opening of Sednaya, al-Assad's concentration camp.
I assumed what we’d find out would be bad, but I didn’t really know how bad. It really is comparable to Auschwitz and Dachau. Many thousands were killed by their captors. Was there some sort of prize for making yourself a 21st-century Hitler?
While “May you live in interesting times” isn’t really a Chinese curse, it’s a curse nonetheless. Maybe I’ve grown cynical in my old age, but this is what real fascists are like. What were we facing in the alternate timeline in which Kamala won?
#3
Yes, Sednaya is where the Assads locked of the perps who committed minimum security criminal stuff.
They say, no good deed goes unpunished. Spare a terrorists' lives, not good enough. You'll still be accused of war crimes for improper accommodations. Allowing the terrorist to take another breath, will not be recognized.
[HOTAIR] At Mar-A-Lago yesterday, Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... introduced Howard Lutnick, his pick to run the Commerce Department, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who has pledged a $100 billion dollar investment in a tech-focused project that could see the hiring of 100,000 new American jobs. After Trump's comments on the economic future he foresees once he officially takes office on January 20th, he did something the American President has not been able to do for four years - conduct a presser where the questions and questioners were not pre-selected by a very nervous White House Press Office.
Trump's appearance lasted a little over an hour, with the the last 40 minutes or so consisting of back and forth with the traveling press corps. And despite media's attempt to focus on the stuff they believe to be topics to bait Trump into saying something crazy, the President-Elect was thoughtful, forthcoming where he could, and non-committal where it made sense to be so. Normalcy is right around the corner.
The plurality of questions focused on vaccines, trying to pin Trump down on whether or not his nominee to run the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., would ban all vaccines. Here's one exchange on whether he's worried that RFK, Jr. will be too radical on vaccines.
Posted by: Fred ||
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They are insane. Trump is choosing not to join their delusion.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
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"Provocative therapy" provokes the deluded to the point where the light dawns and they ask, "Do you think I'm crazy?"
[IsraelTimes] IAEA’s Grossi cautions negotiators hoping for another pact will need to formulate fresh technical guidelines conforming to ‘new reality’ of Iran becoming a nuclear threshold state
The UN’s top atomic regulator said this week that there was little point in trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, with 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... already practically a nuclear threshold state.
That will make President Barack Obama and his team happy that at least they accomplished one of the goals of his presidency.
The comments by ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi in Italia on Monday underlined growing frustration by the UN monitor toward Iran, which has blown past stockpile limits set by the landmark pact and spurned inspections since Washington abandoned the deal in 2018.
Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was only permitted to enrich uranium to 3.68 percent purity, a level consistent with civilian uses of nuclear technology that Iran claims are its only pursuit, capping its stockpile at 300 kilograms.
But the thing was designed to stymie any attempt to enforce it, had Iran ever intended to abide by it. And the entire world shrieked in disbelieving anger when Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu stood in front of the UN General Assembly and revealed exactly what Iran had been hiding from the IAEA in terms of their nuclear bomb development program. And thereafter only Israel’s assassination program and the Bibi-George W. Bush computer sabotage group slowed development as much as it has, while the world continued to pooh-pooh Israel’s existential concerns.
But according to an IAEA report handed to member states and leaked to the press earlier this month, Iran has begun dramatically expanding its production of uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels, collecting enough material for several bombs already.
"The philosophy of the original accord with Iran can be used, but that agreement is no longer useful," Grossi told Italian news agency ANSA on the sidelines of a meeting at the foreign ministry in Rome.
It never was useful. It never was intended to be, written as it was by a team more interested in managing the decline to a world ruled by “moderate” Islamists instead of “radical” Islamists.
He added that Iran had "developed much stronger capabilities" regarding various aspects of its nuclear program.
"It has uranium at 60% — 90% is military grade — and is thus practically at the same level as nuclear-armed states," Grossi said.
Sealed in 2015 following years of tightrope negotiations between Iran and the US, UK, Germany, La Belle France, China and Russia, the JCPOA was hailed by its boosters as a watershed opportunity to curb Iran’s rogue nuclear activities, with world powers agreeing to lift sanctions that had crippled the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s economy.
The fools did indeed hail it.
According to the IAEA at the time, before the accord, Iran had amassed just over 200 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20% purity, and around 10,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium at levels of 5% purity or lower.
Under the deal, Iran was forced to reduce its stockpile by some 98%, and shut down over half of its centrifuges, according to officials.
But the accord was pilloried by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who alleged that Tehran had hoodwinked the world and was continuing to covertly pursue a nuclear weapon to be used against Israel.
Not just alleged, but proved using Iran’s own documentation stolen from Iran’s own archive warehouse.
With other US allies in the Gulf also suspicious of dealing with Iran, then-president Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... pulled Washington out of the accord in 2018, and failed to deliver on a promise to renegotiate a better deal.
No deal was already an improvement, as American hands were no longer tied in terms of retaliation.
Attempts by US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... ’s administration to negotiate an American return to the pact fell apart in mid-2023, and Trump’s impending return to the White House has punctured hopes for reviving the deal.
The hope was false. Not that it mattered, given that Iran had never abided by the original Obama deal, and would have continued not abiding by anything “successfully” negotiated.
Iran has steadily ramped up enrichment activity since the US left the deal and reimposed sanctions, rolling out advanced new centrifuges and issuing warnings that it could speed up the process even further.
In a report in early December, the Office of the United States Director of National Intelligence warned that "Iran now has enough fissile material to make more than a dozen nuclear weapons," but said it had not yet decided to break out to a bomb.
Iran is not thought to have begun work needed to build and deploy a nuclear weapon, a move which, if detected, would likely invite a harsh Western response. But the sheer size of its stockpile and the fact that 60% purity is just a short technical step away from the 90% needed for a bomb, have served to heighten tensions, with Israel rumored to be mulling military action aimed at destroying key nuclear sites.
In its report earlier this month, the IAEA warned that Tehran likely had enough material to build four bombs. Grossi said at the time that Iran was set to begin producing 60%-enriched uranium at eight or more times the current rate.
He told ANSA Monday that given Iran’s "new reality," the international community would need to rethink the technical steps of a denuclearization agreement with Tehran.
"We must reformulate the agreement," Grossi said. "This is a complex process whereby the European countries and the US, Russia, and China will have to sit at the table with [the IAEA] to define a system that serves the new Iranian reality."
Negotiators gotta negotiate, I suppose, no matter how pointless or self-destructive.
The UK, La Belle France, and Germany have already expressed hopes of convening talks with Iran before October 2025, when some parts of the deal are set to expire, including its endorsement from the UN Security Council.
They clearly still want to surrender to Iran, for some unfathomable reason.
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says both its space program and nuclear activities are for purely civilian purposes. However,
ars longa, vita brevis... US intelligence agencies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003, and continued to develop its nuclear program beyond civilian necessity. Israel contends that the Islamic Theocratic Republic never truly abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
Q.E.D.
Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction. Over the past year, it has twice fired massive barrages of missiles at Israel, which has vowed to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel has struck key Iranian military facilities in retaliation for both attacks, which came in the context of a multifront war opened by Iranian terror proxies on the Jewish state.
On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Israeli strikes in October had severely curtailed Iran’s ability to produce ballistic missiles, which Israel fears could be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
#1
Given the missile defense that Israel now has and assuming further improvements, any Iran nuke missile would likely be shot down outside the borders of Israel. Thus it would land and contaminate Jordan or Iraq or Syria.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/18/2024 13:54
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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Official records show the army has been developing and testing 'counterterrorism' drones in New Jersey for years, amid claims of a government cover-up.
A 2018 defense contract awarded $50 million to a private robotics company to develop craft capable of creating 3D maps of urban areas for a 'counter weapons of mass destruction' program.
The contract was given out by the Army's Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which is located at the Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway, New Jersey, where mystery drones were first reported last month.
Meanwhile, documents show the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an air restriction alert on November 21 prohibiting flights over the Picatinny base for 'special security reasons' through December 26.
The White House has claimed the drone sightings - which coincidentally began on November 18 - are not a foreign adversary, pose no threat and are not part of a US military operation.
Retired CIA Intelligence Officer Rudy Ridolfi told DailyMail.com: 'This FAA notice shows US drone testing is happening in the area. It's a warning for others to stay out of the area during those dates.
'While the nature of the testing isn't specified, it's most likely the testing of payloads related to reconnaissance.'
But Matt Sloane, founder of drone consulting firm AI Skyfire, told DailyMail.com that the sightings could be 'a contractor developing these drones for DoD [the Department of Defense].'
The DoD can deny claims of third-party technologies if the drones were placed on a secure tech list for contract disclosures, which means the government is applying special restrictions to the information.
The restrictions are added when technologies protect national security or to keep advanced systems hidden from hostile nations, and the developer holds primary liability if the government is not operating the drones, Ridolfi explained.
A Picatinny Arsenal spokesperson told DailyMail.com: 'We can confirm that they are not the result of any Picatinny Arsenal or DEVCOM Armaments Center (formerly ARDEC) directed actions.'
The government contract was awarded to Maryland-based company Robotics Research.
The FAA alert could signal signal that the contract had approval to test drones in a public area.
'They could have been testing them in a different place on a military installation and now it was time to move the testing out to a public area,' Sloane said.
'The military has in various places around the country that are out of the way of prying eyes. Maybe it was just time to graduate that testing to the public.'
While large swaths of New Jersey are seeing drones, the White House has noted that there are more than one million drones lawfully registered in the US and many of the sightings could be hobby crafts, airplanes and even stars.
Sloane highlighted a similar drone mystery that hit Colorado from 2019 to 2020 when swarms of aerial vehicles fill the sky like the current situation in New Jersey.
Local reports at the time suggested the drones were 'a secretive Air Force program intended to keep prying eyes away from nuclear missile silos,' which are in Cheyenne.
Air Force Global Strike Command, based in Louisiana, confirmed that it conducts counter-drone exercises out of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, where it is based.
The drones were described to have 'flashing or steady white, red or green lights.'
The story echoes the current situation in New Jersey - residents and local officials were demanding answers.
The drones in Colorado were also rumored to be sniffing for missing radioactive material, which has been a theory in the Garden State.
'I think (at the extreme) this could be a search operation [in New Jersey], said Ridolfi.
'One argument against that (to some degree) is the vast bulk of the sightings are at night. If it really was a national security issue, they'd be running around the clock.'
Sloane said the drones being tested by a government contractor could feature any type of attachment.
'There's cameras, gas detectors, radiation detectors,' he said.
The FAA flight restriction alert last month states the temporary ban is due to national defense and security reasons, prohibiting other aerial vehicles flying within a two-mile radius and below 2,000 feet.
However, exceptions include operations supporting national defense, law enforcement, firefighting, search and rescue, disaster response, event support, and commercial operations with a valid statement of work.
When asked about the FAA's restriction over the base, a spokesperson for the agency said they were unaware of the alert.
Picatinny Arsenal, located in Morris County, develops advanced conventional weapon systems and ammunition and has supplied Ukraine with weapons for its fight against Russia.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] An interactive map has revealed hundreds of sightings of mysterious drones and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) throughout the Northeast.
Since mid-November, the region has been plagued by an ongoing, unexplained drone 'invasion.' The unidentified aircraft have been reported in multiple states, prompting a federal investigation that has yet to yield any answers.
'FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks with approximately 100 leads generated,' according to a joint statement from the agency and several other federal bureaus released Tuesday.
The map, created by the commercial UFO sightings alert network Enigma Labs, compiles reports from residents of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and other states made during November and December.
#6
I like the idea of a drone catcher. Catch one these drones over NJ or elsewhere and offer to return to sender if they will come forward and ask for it back.
[FoxNews] NCAA prez suggests onus on female athletes to use other facilities if uncomfortable sharing with trans players. Charlie Baker calls notion that biological males have physical advantages over females 'debatable' before changing answer.
NCAA President Charlie Baker sent a message to women's college athletes who are uncomfortable sharing locker rooms with transgender athletes on Tuesday, putting the responsibility for their own safety squarely on the women themselves.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over legalized sports gambling, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., questioned Baker about the NCAA's policies that have allowed trans athletes to compete on women's teams. Hawley confronted Baker about the NCAA policy that states "transgender student athletes should be able to use the locker room, shower and toilet facilities in accordance with their gender identity."
Baker, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, responded by insisting other athletes have the option to find other accommodations if they're uncomfortable with it.
"Everybody else should have an opportunity to use other facilities if they wish to do so," Baker said.
Baker added that NCAA guidelines give the institutions and organizations that host college sporting events, who he referred to as "locals," the option to accommodate athletes however they see fit.
"I believe our guidelines give people optionality in how they choose to use their facilities," Baker said. "We told the local folks who hosted our tournaments that they need to make accommodations for the people who are playing."
Baker also refused to initially agree with the notion that biological males have physical advantages over female athletes. When asked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., if trans athletes are at an advantage, Baker said the idea was debatable.
"There's not a lot of research on it, but it's certainly debatable," Baker said.
Kennedy posed the question a second time, asking if Baker didn't think that "a biological male has an advantage every time competing against a biological female."
The NCAA president changed his answer, saying, "I think the way you defined it, yes, I would agree with you."
When Baker was pressed about why he and the NCAA have not taken action to amend policies to prevent trans inclusion in women's sports, he repeatedly cited federal law and recent rulings of federal courts that have enabled it. Kennedy loudly encouraged Baker to do something about it anyway.
"Why don't you go to Amazon and buy a spine online and take a stand?" Kennedy yelled at Baker. Love that quote!
[NYPOST] The left can't stop hitching its narrative to bogus stories.
Late last week, Crystal Mangum — the accuser at the center of the notorious Duke lacrosse rape hoax — admitted for the first time that she lied about being brutally assaulted by David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann at a party in 2006.
From prison, where she's serving time for murdering her boyfriend in 2011, Mangum asked for the three men's forgiveness: ''I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn't, and that was wrong.''
She's not the only one who should be groveling: At the time of the trial, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann were mercilessly dragged through the mud by rabid progressives with an ax to grind.
The players had the audacity to be well-off, white and male: The media responded like sharks to a bucket of chum, framing the young men as vicious, racist, misogynistic monsters.
Duke professor Houston ...a city in Texas, named after Sam Houston, who would drop deader than he is now if he could see how it turned out... A. Baker, Jr. decried the ''drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us.''
#4
She said she was raped atop a broken glass tabletop. Yet she had no scratches or cuts. It was obvious shit from the start. I would've hoped Nifong would've exited the earth by his own hand
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/18/2024 11:35
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#5
I lived in Raleigh during this hoax. The lacrosse players were lucky that their families had enough money to hire good lawyers. Also, Mike Nifong's behavior in prosecuting this case was so egregious that the governor appointed a special prosecutor to handle the case. Nifong was later disbarred for his conduct.
[JPost] "Quit calling us out for our disgusting behaviour"
Irish President Michael D. Higgins said that Israeli accusations of deep-rooted Irish antisemitism were "deep slander" and accused Israel of seeking to build settlements in Egypt in statements to the press on Tuesday.
How utterly stupid. Egypt never revoked the law passed back in the 1950s making it illegal for Jewish males over the age of 18 to live in the country, which is why the historically vigorous Jewish community there that dates back to 650 BC (almost a century before the fall of the First Temple) is now reduced to under twenty elderly females — three in Cairo and the rest in Alexandria. What use would it be to Israel to have settlements there without any men?
Higgins's statements come after the Israeli Foreign Ministry closed the embassy in Ireland because of "actions and antisemitic rhetoric used by Ireland against Israel."
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said in a Sunday statement that went with the announcement that he believes these actions delegitimized and demonized the Jewish state. "Ireland has crossed every red line in its relations with Israel," he said.
Higgins told Irish media on Tuesday that he was deeply concerned about Sa'ar's accusations, and felt as if they were intended to harm Ireland.
Why would Israel bother? Ireland has absolutely nothing that Israel wants or needs, beyond a sentimental connection for the thousands of Irish Jews who settled in Israel in the 1950s.
"I take it as very serious business to actually brand a people,
“…but I’m going to do it anyway, because they’re icky Jooooooos…”
because in fact they disagree with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who's in breach of so many bits of international law and has breached the sovereignty of three of his neighbors in relation to Lebanon, Syria... and would in fact to have a settlement in Egypt," Higgins said to Irish media, as seen in a video from RTE News on X/Twitter.
In a new English-language statement, Sa’ar says: “Once an antisemitic liar — always an antisemitic liar,” going on to defend Israel’s actions on all three fronts.
“From Lebanese territory, Israel’s sovereignty was breached for over a year,” he says. “For no reason and unprovoked, Hezbollah joined Hamas on October 8th [2023] and since then fired tens of thousands of missiles, rockets and drones at Israeli citizens and communities. Israel did what any country would — it defended itself against a brutal aggressor.”
On Syria, Sa’ar says: “While Assad’s regime disintegrated, armed groups entered the buffer zone and attacked UNDOF forces, in violation of the Disengagement Agreement from 1974. Israel temporarily entered a few limited points to prevent the threat of radical Islamists against its citizens and communities. Israel will not wait for another [onslaught nresembling what Hamas did on] October 7th [2023] on any of its borders.”
And regarding the Egypt settlement claim, he says: “Higgins invented the claim that Israel seeks to form settlements there. In the context of our peace agreement with Egypt, Israel withdrew from a huge area — all of the Sinai desert, and uprooted all of its communities there. This peace agreement has been maintained since 1979.”
Concluding his combative statement, Sa’ar brings up Ireland’s failure to join the Allies in fighting Nazi Germany in World War II.
“Let us not forget that Ireland was at best neutral during World War II. At that time, the free world was fighting Hitler’s axis while Ireland sat on the side and did nothing.”
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/18/2024
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[11145 views]
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#2
So were all the numerous news reports about Irish leaders speaking out against Israel, lies?
Or is it because Ireland, which many Irish leaders sided with Hitler against the UK in WWII, also misjudged this political word game, and now need to crawl out from under the facts by xfering blame?
#6
“Deep slander” I was unaware that there was a slander gradient.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 12:35
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#7
The so called "Irish" these days piss me off. Most of their government isn't Irish. And they've been the sulky teenage for the past 3 centuries. It's they grew up. Or maybe they need Grandpa Buff to re-landscape them so they can start over.
#8
Even though I am of Irish descent (several generations ago so not a strong bond), I fully support Israel’s decision. The Irish government is repugnant. They should be shunned. And they are actively destroying their country with massive immigration. So screw em.
#9
I assume the cheat system put in place to get Ireland to join the EU was also used to stack their government with EU Autocrats and WEF Globalists. Smash the ethno-states and all that.
[Straight Arrow News] The British Royal Navy’s operational capacity has reached a historic low, with only two of its six advanced Type 45 destroyers available for deployment, according to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense. The other four destroyers are undergoing extensive repairs and maintenance at Portsmouth. The number of Admirals in the Navy massively outnumbers the number of ships. Says all you need to know.
#5
The Argentinians are coming out of bankruptcy. Could they be coming for the Malvinas again?
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/18/2024 17:13
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#6
Not likely, Mr. Bobby. They keep turning budgets in the black and accumulating chits, they can just purchase them back from the bankrupt British Socialist/Immigrants
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/18/2024 19:16
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#7
One for each carrier, makes for a kind of sparse carrier battle group though!
[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday said it is ready to propose the establishment of a buffer zone in Kobane city after a US-brokered ceasefire with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... was extended for a few days.
"Reaffirming our unwavering commitment to achieving a comprehensive ceasefire across Syria, we announce our readiness to propose the establishment of a demilitarized zone in the city of Kobani, with the redistribution of security forces under US supervision and presence," SDF chief Mazloum Abdi said in a post on X.
"This initiative aims to address Ottoman Turkish security concerns and ensure the long-term stability of the region," he added.
While rebels, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS), had joined forces to topple Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama... ’s regime late last month, Turkey-backed opposition militia groups launched an offensive against the SDF in the northwestern region of Shahba, controlling it days later. They also took over Manbij city earlier this week which Kurdish fighters had liberated from ISIS in 2016.
Most parts of the country have seen a rare stability in recent days, except for Kurdish-held areas where a coalition of militia groups, who call themselves the Syrian National Army (SNA),
…the ragtag paramilitary made up of Turkic jihadis and Moslem Brotherhood types plus ISIS remnants seeking refuge after the fall of the caliphate, united under the command of the Turkish army to control the territory of Turkey’s intrusion across the Syrian border and attack nearby Kurds whenever convenient…
have intensified their attacks.
The US brokered a four-day ceasefire between the SDF and Turkey last week.
US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told news hounds on Tuesday that the ceasefire has been extended.
"It is extended through the end of the week, and we will obviously look to see that ceasefire extended as far as possible in the future. It came about through our ongoing diplomatic work with the SDF and with the government of Turkey," he said, adding that the initial agreement was brokered through their "diplomatic engagements" last week.
[IsraelTimes] US officials are concerned Turkey may be planning to invade Syrian territory held by Kurdish forces, citing a troop buildup near the border, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Turkey backs Islamist Sunnis that have led the rebel forces that ousted Bashar al-Assad, but views Kurdish groups and the Syrian Democratic Forces, which control northeast Syria, as an extension of the banned PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) that has fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.
“If Turkey proceeds with its invasion, the consequences will be catastrophic,” one Kurdish official tells The Journal.
[KhaamaPress] Pak security officials have announced that Abdul Ghafar Baloch, a local leader of a political party in the country, was killed in a shooting by unidentified button men.
Pak media reported on Saturday, December 14, that the attack took place on the evening of Friday, December 13, in the "Chatikan" area of the Panjgur city.
According to the reports, Abdul Ghafar Baloch was targeted while exiting a mosque after performing the afternoon prayer. He was shot by armed motorcyclists.
Officials stated that Abdul Ghafar Baloch died at the scene after being struck by multiple bullets, and the "attackers" fled the area after the shooting.
No group has yet grabbed credit for the attack.
Pak security officials have initiated an investigation into the incident and emphasized that the body of the national party leader was handed over to his family after a forensic examination.
This comes amid a rise in terrorist attacks across various regions of Pakistain, particularly in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in recent months.
Recently, the National Assembly of Pakistain stated that, over the past ten months, at least 924 people have been killed in 1,566 terrorist incidents across the country.
It is also noted that the Pak military has increased its counter-terrorism operations, especially in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and border districts adjacent to Afghanistan, in recent months.
[IsraelTimes] Paragon’s Graphite phone-hacking software targets data backed up to the cloud; is deployed by government bodies in the US and Israel; firm is backed by former premier Ehud Barak
[BREITBART] On Monday, during his hosting duties on CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... 's ''Newsroom,'' Ace Newshound Jim Acosta ...CNN's showboating White House correspondent... called on media outlets to ''stand firm'' against President-elect Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... 's efforts to use the legal system to hold the press accountable.
Acosta told CNN contributor Brian Stelter the media should not have to worry ''about this sort of stuff.'' Fortunately only 7 viewers saw this
''I just wonder, Brian, what this is going to mean for news organizations, for tech companies?'' Acosta said. ''We're going to talk about the implications for tech companies in a moment, but it seems to me that there's a lot of this bending the knee going on. And I'm sure the folks over at ABC will say that that's just not the case, but I just feel and I wonder how you feel about that aspect of all of this.'' Good idea. You can always rely on the advice of a halfwit.
[KhaamaPress] On Thursday, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... ’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya reported that 981 undocumented refugees were arrested across various cities during a joint operation conducted by the country’s security forces.
The operation, which aimed at identifying and detaining illegal migrants colonists, also led to the arrest of 31 individuals, including nine foreign nationals, on charges of human trafficking.
Yerlikaya further stated on social media that 366,838 individuals were questioned during the operation, which involved more than 28,000 security personnel and covered over 15,250 locations. This large-scale operation is part of Turkey’s ongoing efforts to manage and control undocumented migration.
The detained refugees were transferred to detention centers, and the process for their deportation has begun. While the nationality of the detainees was not disclosed, the majority of refugees in Turkey come from Afghanistan and Syria, both of which are experiencing severe socio-political turmoil.
Turkey has implemented an ongoing nationwide operation, "Kalkan," to identify and arrest undocumented refugees. The 35th round of this operation took place on Thursday, December 12, across various cities. These measures are aimed at addressing the increasing number of refugees arriving in the country, particularly from Afghanistan and Syria.
The situation for Afghan refugees in neighboring countries, particularly in Turkey, is increasingly dire. Many Afghans flee their home country due to security concerns, economic hardship, and the ongoing conflict exacerbated by the Taliban ...Arabic for students... ’s return to power.
However,
there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened... upon arriving in neighboring countries like Turkey, they face a precarious existence marked by detention, deportation, and limited rights.
While Turkey has been a significant host for refugees, its recent crackdown on undocumented migrants colonists, including those fleeing Afghanistan, is creating further uncertainty and fear for those seeking safety.
The forced deportations, coupled with harsh living conditions, have resulted in a tragic cycle for many Afghan refugees who seek a better life but instead find themselves in dire situations in foreign lands.
[RedState] Federal prosecutors have charged two Iranian men, including a dual Iranian-American citizen, for their involvement in a dronezap that killed three U.S. soldiers and injured dozens of others earlier this year.
The strike, which occurred on January 28, marked a significant escalation of tensions in the Middle East and underscored concerns over the illegal transfer of sensitive American technology to adversarial nations.
DETAILS OF THE ARRESTS AND CHARGES
The two individuals charged are Mohammad Mahdi Sadeghi, a Massachusetts resident and dual citizen of 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... and the United States, and Mohammad Abedini, an Iranian national currently in jug in Italia. Sadeghi was arrested in Natick, Massachusetts, while Abedini was apprehended by Italian authorities, who are now processing his extradition to the United States.
Federal prosecutors allege that Sadeghi and Abedini played key roles in exporting sensitive American navigation technology to Iran, violating U.S. export control laws. Abedini faces additional charges of conspiring to provide material support to Iran. Officials state that this technology was used in the drone responsible for the fatal attack on U.S. forces.
U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy of the District of Massachusetts emphasized the gravity of the situation:"We often cite hypothetical risks when discussing the dangers of American technology falling into dangerous hands. Unfortunately, in this situation, we are not speculating."
The FBI traced the drone’s navigation system to an Iranian company operated by Abedini. Authorities say Abedini relied on technology illicitly funneled from the United States with the help of Sadeghi. According to prosecutors, the pair circumvented U.S. laws through a front company in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... to deliver the critical components to Iran.
THE ATTACK AND ITS VICTIMS
The January 28 dronezap targeted "Tower 22," a small logistics base in northeast Jordan near the Syrian and Iraqi borders. The attack resulted in the deaths of three Army reservists and injuries to 47 others.
The fallen soldiers, all residents of Georgia, were identified as:
Sgt. William Jerome Rivers (46), an Army Reserve interior electrician.
Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders (24), a horizontal construction engineer.
Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett (23), also a horizontal construction engineer.
All three soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, based in Fort Moore, Georgia. They were deployed as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition’s mission to combat ISIS in the region.
IRAN’S ALLEGED ROLE AND U.S. RESPONSE
U.S. officials have attributed the strike to the Islamic Resistance® in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias, including Kataib Hezbollah. The strike, reportedly coordinated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), escalated tensions between Iran and the United States during a volatile period following the October 2023 Israel-Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... conflict.
Evidence presented by U.S. intelligence suggests that the drone used in the attack was mistaken for an American drone expected to return to the base at the same time. This critical lapse resulted in the drone crashing into the soldiers’ living quarters.
In response, the U.S. military launched retaliatory strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Iraq and Syria. These strikes targeted IRGC Quds Force assets, intelligence centers, and facilities storing unmanned aerial vehicles, rockets, and missile systems.
ESCALATING RISKS FOR U.S. FORCES
The January dronezap marked the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in the region since the escalation of violence last year. It also highlights the growing risks posed by Iran-backed militias, which continue to exploit technology to threaten American military personnel.
At the time, the Biden administration linked the attack to backlash over U.S. support for Israel during its conflict with Hamas. This broader geopolitical tension continues to shape U.S. military operations and foreign policy in the region.
#5
Something seems wrong with any country that would permit foreign nationals messing with their own elections. But we already know that.
Seems to me the only time a country has thoroughly rejected foreign interference is Egypt kicking out Obama's 'NGOs' from the Sisi election. Argentina, maybe, in a more discreet way?
Of course, UK Agents interfering in the US elections just happened, and happened before, but they were invited by internal power movers.
Fact is, foreign interference in a power transfer is the norm, whether an election or a contested throne/dictatorship.
[KhaamaPress] The Thailand Immigration Office at Phuket International Airport recently apprehended three men and one woman from Afghanistan on charges of possessing fake Kazakh passports.
These individuals intended to pass through the passport control using the counterfeit documents but were identified and arrested before they could proceed.
The Immigration Office released a photo of the four detainees, stating that they were arrested on December 10 at 8:50 AM local time. The individuals were taken into custody for further legal procedures.
In a similar case in August of this year, officers at Phuket Immigration also arrested another Afghan national for possessing fake passports. This highlights the ongoing issue of fraudulent documentation and attempts to illegally enter countries through deceptive means.
BREAKING: A federal judge has ruled for Derek Chauvin and ordered that George Floyd's heart tumor must be tested to determine if it played a role in his death
The information about the heart tumor was not presented to Chauvin in the trialpic.twitter.com/FeHBuyRgqw
[PJMEDIA] It's been nearly two weeks since UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in midtown Manhattan. Thankfully, his alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, 26, was captured after someone recognized him at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa.
While the evidence all appears to confirm Mangione is the killer, in a lot of ways, it just doesn't make sense why this kid, who grew up privileged and went to an Ivy League school and everything, would be driven to murder.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams ...Hizonner da Mare of Noo Yawk. As a Manchurian candidate, Hizonner was all in favor of law and order and that kind of stuff. Once in office, a bunch of his friends found cushy jobs with the city, the windows kept getting broken, and Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg remained right where he was. Most people comfort themselves with the thought that he's not Bill di Blasio but that's pretty small comfort with kids who actually go to school getting bumped off while standing in front of them. But he's a Dem, so the rubes will vote for him next election too, so he's what they deserve... has something to say on that issue that the 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... won't be happy about. Adams bluntly described a disturbing trend he's witnessed among young people in America. Speaking candidly about the radicalization of youth, he addressed the troubling case of Mangione, drawing a direct line between the shooter's upbringing and the toxic influence of the education system that led to his violent mostly peaceful actions.
Adams was quick to point out that Mangione's background doesn't fit the typical profile of someone prone to radicalization. ''Ivy League, grew up in an affluent household,'' he said, emphasizing the disconnect between the shooter's privileged life and his eventual descent into hatred.
''His manifesto clearly is showing some signs of hating,'' Adams continued, underscoring that even those with seemingly ideal circumstances can be consumed by a dangerous ideology.
The mayor then turned his focus to the broader problem at hand: the radicalization of America's youth. ''Our children are being radicalized,'' Adams stated, ''I said this over and over again, and everybody's like, you know, 'What are you talking about, Eric?''' His frustration with the lack of attention to the issue was clear, but his message was undeniable. This isn't just a fringe problem; it's becoming a mainstream crisis.
[IsraelTimes] Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the leader of the Islamist group that toppled Bashar al-Assad in Syria, said Monday that Syria will not be used as a launchpad for attacks against Israel and that he is committed to the 1974 agreement that established a demilitarized zone in Syrian territory as a buffer between the two countries...
Speaking to foreign journalists, the Islamist leader said his nascent government intends to overhaul Syria’s constitution and institutions, but said it will take time, and that the country is not yet ready for elections due to remaining disorder, some 13 years after civil war broke out amid the 2011 Arab Spring.
"People have big ambitions, but today we must think realistically, because Syria has many problems, and they won't be solved with a magic wand," Julani said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "It needs patience."
He also emphasized the need for unity in a country home to different ethnic minority groups and religions, while speaking to members of the country's Druze community, which makes up about 3 percent of Syria's prewar population.
Jolani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in place of his nom de guerre, fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion.
He later set up the al-Qaeda subsidiary in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, which for a period was allied with the Islamic State terror group.
However, Jolani later broke with and fought against both jihadist organizations and eventually rebranded Al-Nusra as the Islamist HTS.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/18/2024
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#1
"Jolani later broke with and fought against both jihadist organizations and eventually rebranded Al-Nusra as the Islamist HTS."
By golly he is reformed. Praise Jesus.
I think Al-Nusra was sponsored by Obama's CIA. And they rebranded to HTS when Erdogan's Turkey started their sponsorship of the group.
[CBSnews] A Virginia man has died after a bear in a tree shot by one of his hunting partners fell on him, state wildlife officials said.
The incident occurred Dec. 9 in Lunenburg County, which is between Richmond and Danville, Virginia's Department of Wildlife Resources said in a statement. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you.
A hunting group was following the bear when it ran up the tree, the department said. As the group retreated from the tree, a hunter shot the bear. The animal fell onto another hunter who was standing about 10 feet from the bottom of the tree.
The department identified the man as Lester C. Harvey, 58, of Phenix, Virginia. A member of the group rendered first aid before Harvey was rushed to two different hospitals.
Presumably sequentially rather than simultaneously, poor man.
He died from his injuries Friday, the wildlife department stated.
An obituary for Harvey, a married father of five with eight grandchildren, said he was a self-employed contractor and avid outdoorsman. His funeral is scheduled for Thursday, according to his obituary.
#5
You can shoot a bear but you can’t shoot gravity.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 12:08
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"Burg teaching point: Whenever possible, hunt alone." What about the recent incident when a hunter fired once at a bear, had his gun jam and the bear killed him? Another hunter might have saved the day.
[BREITBART] The U.S. Navy has awarded actor Tom Cruise with its top civilian award for helping to boost the naval service with his hit Top Gun movies.
Cruise was awarded the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award on Tuesday for ''outstanding contributions to the Navy and the Marine Corps'' with his Top Gun movies.
Cruise was awarded the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award on Tuesday for “outstanding contributions to the Navy and the Marine Corps” with his Top Gun series and other movies, according to Stars & Stripes. Good idea. I think Richard Gere oughta get one too, for starring in the prototype. And Debra Winger. And the other gal, the one with the bewbs, that caused Goose to hang himself...
Posted by: Fred ||
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[NYPOST] A bill that would choke off funding for terror-supporting nonprofits has stalled in Congress — amid the lies of its potential targets.
The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, HR 9495, passed the House last month.
Critics have labeled the legislation a ''nonprofit killer,'' intentionally misleading both the public and politicians about its specifics in an effort to derail it.
One of its loudest opponents is the Council on American-Islamic Relations ... the Moslem Brüderbund's American arm ... , which has painted the legislation as ''nefarious'' and warned it will do catastrophic harm to charities. CAIR claims the bill strips nonprofits of due process.
In reality, the legislation's due process safeguards, including formal notifications, response periods and judicial reviews, are designed to prevent arbitrary or unjust actions against innocent charities.
HR 9495 would allow the secretary of the treasury to designate organizations as ''terrorist-supporting'' if they knowingly provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations — and to strip such groups of their valuable tax-exempt status.
[ZeroHedge] Back in August, many were surprised by the accuracy of our forecast, when we predicted that in its annual revision, the Biden Bureau of Labor Statistics would revise jobs for the April 2023-March 2024 period by "up to 1 million", something which we said would mean that all job report "beats" recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US labor market is in far worse shape than the admin would admit.
The final results, as everyone knows by now, was a shocking 818K revision lower, just as the Philadelphia Fed had predicted 6 months prior, in March, when it calculated correctly that the Biden Department of Goalseeking Propaganda had overstated payrolls by "at least 800,000."
The answer ended up 818,000 for the 12 month period ended March 31 (or about 68,000 per month) and the implied sharp deterioration to the job market was the main scapegoat used by the Fed to launch its easing cycle with a jumbo 50bps rate cut (now that "suddenly" the economic golden age pushed by the Biden propaganda regime, and trillions in debt, had just collapsed).
We mention all of this up because on Friday, the Philly Fed served up its latest shocker: not only did the Biden admin lie again, but the collapse in the labor market that had been covered up for much of the past year and was only exposed with the annual benchmark revision, extended into the second quarter.
"Estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the employment changes from March through June 2024 were significantly different" - read lower - "in 27 states compared with preliminary state estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics (CES)", the Philly Fed said on December 12.
"According to the early benchmark (EB) estimates conducted by the Phily Fed, employment was lower in 25 states, higher in two states, and lesser changes in the remaining 23 states and the District of Columbia."
Translation: 23 states unchanged, 1 revised higher... and 25 lower. The breakdown is shown below.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
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#1
Something to think about .
Did Biden lie, or was he fed lies?
Or did the WH press release originate from his handlers, which have been lying to us since day 1.
BTW: Some of us down here in Mid-east are kicking around the Idea of asking the county commission to rename our county "Ukraine".
#4
ZeroHedge takes a really dark view. Negative revisions to the job numbers have happened before even under Republican Presidents (e.g. March 2018-March 2019.
In an economy as dynamic and complex as the USA, metrics are difficult.
With respect to the economy, YES, the economy isn't as good as it could be and YES, inflation is still a problem. However, GDP and employment are both rising and have been for a while (on a quarterly basis, maybe not month to month).
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/18/2024 12:51
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President Joe Biden appears to be struggling with the prospect of retiring from public life, according to a report published Tuesday. unable to perform routine activities of daily life. FIFY.
[PUBLISH.TWITTER] Like George Floyd and that poor schizophrenic Daniel Penny did not strangle on the NYC subway? How very odd.
Portland — @kevinvdahlgren was speaking to a homeless man when he suddenly dropped over and appeared to overdose on camera. Dahlgren then gave him Narcan and called 911. pic.twitter.com/32QIJrTcoB
[THEGATEWAYPUNDIT] The Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released a second report on the events surrounding January 6 as well his investigation into the weaponized J6 Committee on Tuesday.
''This interim report reveals that there was not just one single cause for what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6; but it was a series of intelligence, security, and leadership failures at several levels and numerous entities,'' Loudermilk said.
Loudermilk's report outlined criminal recommendations against J6 Committee co-chair Liz Cheney for witness tampering based on her communication with J6 'star witness' Cassidy Hutchinson.
The Committee's Top Findings:
1. Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with ''star witness'' Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson's attorney's knowledge.
2. Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication.
3. Cassidy Hutchinson's most outrageous claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee had knowledge that her claims were false when they publicly promoted her.
President Trump did not attack his Secret Service Detail at any time on January 6.
President Trump did not have intelligence indicating violence on the morning of January 6.
Cassidy Hutchinson falsely claimed to have drafted a handwritten note for President Trump on January 6.
Representative Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson baselessly attempted to disbar Hutchinson's former attorney.
4. Former Representative Liz Cheney used the January 6 Select Committee as a tool to attack President Trump, at the cost of investigative integrity and Capitol security.
5. The January 6 Select Committee was improperly constituted and lacked authority.
6. The January 6 Select Committee neglected or withheld evidence from its Final Report and deleted voluminous records it should have preserved.
7. The Department of Defense scapegoated the Washington D.C. National Guard to distract blame from big shotship.
As previously reported, Loudermilk obtained January 6 'star witness' Cassidy Hutchinson's Signal messages which revealed she was directly communicating with J6 Vice Chair Liz Cheney in 2022.
Liz Cheney was communicating with Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson's attorney's knowledge — knowing this is unethical.
''In the months prior to Hutchinson's explosive private and public testimony, Cheney communicated with Hutchinson, both directly and through an intermediary—Alyssa Farah Griffin—while Hutchinson was represented by her attorney, Stefan Passantino. The Select Committee conducted six transcribed interviews of Hutchinson in total. Passantino represented Hutchinson for the first three interviews,'' the Oversight Committee said.
It's also concentrated on too few major bases, multiple single points of failure.
With its many missions, the U.S. Army is hard-pressed to meet the requirements of the National Defense Strategy at its current authorized end strength. A major part of the problem is that the Army is awash in staffs, many of which did not exist during World War II, or even in the 1990s. After 9/11, the Army Staff grew by 60 percent, while headquarters and staffs Army-wide ballooned. All of these headquarters consume resources withheld from the warfighting Army. Nor can it be shown that Army functions are being executed more effectively or efficiently because multiple large headquarters have been created to run them.
A case in point is the Army Installation Management Command, or IMC, created in 2006 and chartered to “reduce bureaucracy, apply a uniform business structure to manage U.S. Army installations, sustain the environment and enhance the well-being of the military community.” IMC is headed by a lieutenant general, with a major general as deputy and brigadier general as chief of staff. IMC includes a workforce of 30,000 soldiers and 70,000 civilians. Formerly, Army installations were managed by garrison commanders reporting to local commanding generals, with an Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installation Management. In theory, centralizing the installation management function promised common standards and greater expertise. In practice, results have fallen far short, with the Army experiencing a “crisis” in installation management in recent years.
Another compelling example is the Army Acquisition Corps, created in 1989 and today employing 1,600 commissioned officers plus many more senior civilians. Since its creation, the Army has failed badly with major program acquisitions, squandering billions on programs like the Crusader Field Artillery System, the Future Combat System, the Ground Combat Vehicle, the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter and the XM1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery system, among others. No major Army program has been successfully fielded since the 1980s, a trend described by one Secretary of the Army as a “tale of failure.” In 2018, the Army doubled down by creating Futures Command, adding another large 4-star headquarters to supervise an existing, labyrinthine set of acquisition headquarters which includes the Army Futures and Concepts Center, the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command and its associated battle labs, the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command; and the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, among others. Despite this massive infrastructure, the Army has not improved performance in this key sphere.
Growth in staff size and the proliferation of unneeded headquarters is accompanied by a strong tendency to “over-officer” the force, one factor in the explosion of personnel costs since 9/11. In 2024, one in six soldiers is a commissioned officer (a 21 percent increase since 2000). About one-third of the Army's personnel budget goes to officer pay and allowances. Between 1965 and 2018, the number of general and flag officers in the U.S. military as a percentage of the total force increased by 46 percent; of 4-stars by 114 percent; and of 3-stars by 149 percent. Such deliberate rank-inflation and over-staffing contributes to a bureaucratic culture that demands constant reporting from junior commanders, so much so that one authoritative Army War College study found a “suffocating amount of mandatory requirements” they are “literally unable to complete…forcing them to resort to dishonesty evasion.” Almost certainly, this environment contributes to an exodus of young officers who are frustrated by crushing administrative burdens they cannot reconcile with their duty to train their soldiers for war.
#1
A lot of staff is because someone is unwilling to make command decisions and seeks CYAWP. It's sustained by an institution that is unwilling to punish failure or outright violation of the UCMJ by officers.
#2
“…enhance the well- being…..”??
Tell that to the troops around the country whose eating facilities are shut down with fast food or commissary their only options. Not all have wheels.
#6
All government entities turn into jobs programs.
That was one argument for the draft in the 50s, to remove a good number of young men from the labor market for 2 years in order to play with the employment statistics. Unfortunately, when you have a hammer, everything starts to looks like a nail (foreign inventions).
[BREITBART] reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... Mayor Brandon Johnson ...Hizzonner da Mare of Chicago. He was elected in April 2023 to replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot and immediately set about out-Richtering her. A member of the Democratic Party (naturally), Johnson previously worked as a social studies teacher in the city's stellar public schools system. He helped organize the 2012 teachers strike. Prior to becoming Da Mare, he served on the Cook County Board of Boodling Commissioners from 2018 to 2023... spoke Saturday for the first time in response to Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... 's plans to ramp up deportation operations in Chicago, and delivered a diatribe filled with left-wing talking points but little else.
The self-described ''progressive'' Democrat mayor appeared on CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... host Victor Blackwell's ''First of All'' podcast on Saturday, but despite being asked over and over about whether or not he would block Trump's deportation efforts, Johnson refused to answer and instead spewed a constant stream of anti-Trump talking points and liberal doggerel.
Blackwell opened his podcast asking the mayor, ''Let's start here your reaction to Homan saying he's going to come after you if you stand in his way.''
''Well, you know, unfortunately — first of all, good morning and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to the people of the globe,'' the mayor began. ''Look the president elect and the former president of the United States of America, Trump, has demonstrated an incredible disdain for people, and my responsibility as Mayor of the City of Chicago is to invest in people, to protect people, and connect them to the resources that are ultimately needed in order to build not just a better, stronger, safer Chicago, but to build in the economy that's sustainable,'' Johnson said while working to avoid the question.
He’s right: that is his job. He should try doing it.
''You know, this President has shown disdain towards not just immigrants colonists, but lovers of public education. He is dead set on abolishing the entire education department. As a former public school teacher, as a product of public education, as someone who sends my children to public schools; working people around this country want public education to work,'' Johnson said, continuing with his anti-Trump talking points.
One needn’t be a public education professional to want public education to work. How has he improved Chicago’s public education outcomes as mayor?
''He has shown an incredible animus towards public housing. Public Housing has been the way in which families have found true stability, their ability to experience a human right. He has demonstrated contempt towards vouchers, which would ultimately make it hard for families to access affordable homes. We built 3600 affordable homes in the city of Chicago since I've been in office,'' the left-wing mayor said, patting himself on the back.
How many native Chicago voters are now living in those homes?
''He's also shown a great deal of evilness towards the Department of the Environment. He doesn't believe in science. Twenty percent of the world's fresh water is right here in the city of Chicago.
It’s called Lake Michigan, suggesting it belongs to more than just the city of Chicago.
We can build a green, blue economy to create real, sustainable opportunities for people.
So why haven’t you?
And so he has not just shown animus towards immigrants colonists. He has shown a great deal of animus towards working people across the city of Chicago,
…so much animus that they voted for him…
and it is my responsibility, and is my joy, to protect all residents of this beloved city,'' he said, still avoiding Blackwell's actual question.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/18/2024 8:00
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#3
and it is my responsibility, and is my joy, to protect all residents of this beloved city,'' he said
Which he has failed to do, time and time again, yet has the time, energy, and enthusiasm to encourage illegal aliens to further clutter his dirty crime ridden domain.
And when he runs for re-election, his constituents will either vote for him again or vote for someone else just like him. Learning from one's mistakes just isn't in the cards for "progressives".
Trying desperately to stay relevant, poor thing, after the big Democrat donors — for the record — declared her dead politically following her burning through $2billion of their money to accomplish absolutely nothing in November.
[BREITBART] Failed presidential candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong called for an ''assault weapons'' ban Monday night, hours after a 15-year-old allegedly killed two people with a handgun. ...which is not an assault weapon...
Breitbart News noted the shooting occurred at Madison, Wisconsin's, Abundant Life Christian School (ALCS), where a 15-year-old girl allegedly opened fire just before 11:00 a.m., killing a teacher and another student. The 15-year-old then apparently took her own life.
Harris responded to the incident by posting a statement to X from herself and her husband, which said, in part, ''Congress and state legislatures must make background checks universal, pass red flag and safe storage laws, and ban assault weapons.''
She added, ''These commonsense solutions will save lives and make our children and communities safer.''
Harris did not mention that Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, has all the laws she is pushing, yet California led the nation in ''active shooter incidents'' in 2021 and 2023.
Ironically, also on Monday, President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier... responded to the Madison handgun attack by pushing an ''assault weapons'' ban as well
Did anyone actually see him say that? Because it seems likely that at this point he no longer knows what those two words together actually mean.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Then ban pizza cutters and Jarts. No wait, Jarts are already banned.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 11:40
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It’s always good to have your paperwork and life in order, no matter what happens — or doesn’t — after that. And living elsewhere for a few years really puts things into perspective; I recommend three to five years, as anything less isn’t long enough to take the shine off preconceptions.
[BREITBART] Hollywood LGBTQ stars and other elites are reportedly in a state of panic over the incoming second Trump administration, with some having already fled the country or are considering doing so in the near future.
''It's keeping me up at night [worrying] for myself and the wider community, especially the transgender community,''Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women in Film, told TheWrap. ''There were more guardrails last time: [Trump] didn't have the House, Senate and judiciary.''
''I think there will be a much bigger exodus from America this time around,'' screenwriter Brent Hartinger, who left the country in 2017 after Trump was elected the first time, told the outlet.
The Wrap's story comes as President-elect Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... has named openly gay appointees to his coming administration, including Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary. He also named Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence, to the role of the Presidential Envoy for Special Missions.
Trump has consistently stated that he doesn't oppose same-sex marriage and has even hosted gay weddings at Mar-a-Lago.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Where will they go: Canuckistan is ripe for revolution, EU in collapse due to death of German industry?
#3
Bye. Don't forget to give up your US citizenship.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/18/2024 9:02
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#4
Should have left the kids alone.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
12/18/2024 10:06
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#5
Where will they go? Howzabout Mars? I hear it is nice there this time of year, although you might want to bring some oxygen, just in case. And a blanket.
All we need to do is convince them that the Earth is doomed, plagued by environmental catastrophe, over-population, climate change, resource depletion, and Donald Trump. Should be an easy sell.
#6
Soon there will be a rumor that the drones are equipped with gaydar and are mapping things out. Then the hysteria will really begin. It’s as if our society has loaded stupid syrup into all the Big Gulp dispensers in gas stations.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 11:48
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#7
The bottom of the Marianas Trench has plenty of room for them.
#9
HomsWood or HamaWood? The rebels are offering tax breaks
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/18/2024 12:36
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#10
G@ys and Lrspi@ns, these are Diddycrats, serial pdrasts, using you as human shields. They are not your allies, they are in fact hurting your image by association. Best they be pointed out before their millstone becomes yours.
[DAILYSIGNAL] On Dec. 11, ABC News' Jay O'Brien reported false information about Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... 's pick for U.S. secretary of education, on ''ABC News Live Prime.''
In the first minute of an eight-minute overview, O'Brien stated that McMahon has no formal education training and little experience:
''If she receives Senate confirmation, McMahon, who has no formal teaching training and little experience in education, will be tasked with setting policies for the nation's schools.''
This is patently false.
While receiving a bachelor's degree in French at East Carolina University in the late 1960s, McMahon earned a teaching certificate after completing a teacher preparation program at the school. This information has been available publicly for years, reported in outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today, was confirmed in a Hartford newspaper in 2011, and has been listed in official statements from East Carolina University.
The most recent data from National Center for Education Statistics on educator qualifications reported that at least 8% of public schoolteachers in the United States had a teaching certificate instead of a bachelor's degree in education.
Additionally, teacher transition programs, in which non-education career individuals obtain a certificate to teach their skillset in schools, are common in the United States. Almost 20% of teachers enter the education field in this way, and are not described as ''unqualified'' or ''untrained'' by any state department of public education or public instruction.
ABC News did not include this information in its coverage.
O'Brien then doubled down on his claim of McMahon's ''lack of qualifications,'' by clipping a speech from the leader of the nation's largest teachers union, National Education Association President Becky Pringle.
Posted by: Fred ||
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McMahon has no formal education training
In my experience - and I taught (as a sub) in several Israeli high schools - nobody with a degree in Education is competent in the subject they're supposed to teach.
#4
What if her policy is to shut down her department? Does she need a teaching background for that?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 11:55
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#5
^^^^^
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/18/2024 12:38
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#6
Sue ABC again and keep doing it until they get it right. About credentials: It has been said before, that you could choose the first 100 people off the street and they would do a better job than any of the entrenched bureacrats in Washington.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] In Moscow, as a result of a terrorist attack on Ryazansky Prospekt, the head of the NBC protection troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, was killed. As a result of the explosion, Kirillov and his assistant died on the spot, the entrance to the building was significantly damaged.
It is important to note that Kirillov was known as the person whose name is associated with the systematic process of exposing American biolabs in Ukraine. This topic was raised back in the mid-2010s, and after the start of the SVO, these facts were revealed as documents and materials came into the possession of Russian troops, which not only confirmed the previously made conclusions, but also revealed an even more serious scale of Western countries' involvement in the deployment of a network of biolabs in Ukraine.
Among the revealed facts voiced by Kirillov were experiments on people (both civilians and military), experiments with dangerous pathogens, collection of biomaterials necessary for research on the creation of targeted bioweapons, etc.
The materials of the work that Kirillov presented to the general public were also released at the international level, including at the UN. The same China, relying on these materials, demanded the closure of American biolabs located in Ukraine and a number of other countries.
Ultimately, as a result of Kirillov's work, Victoria Nuland was forced to admit the presence of a network of biolabs in Ukraine, although she tried to evade questions about the military purpose of these facilities.
So Kirillov is, of course, not just “another general”, but a rather significant figure, whose activities gave our foreign policy serious arguments perceived at the international level.
Of course, after the terrorist attack, several versions will be considered, including the Ukrainian trace. But it cannot be ruled out that the Ukrainian trace here may only be a cover for the actions of Western intelligence agencies, which could have worked with the hands of their Ukrainian proxies. The “suspicion” that the SBU voiced to Kirillov the day before may also be just a screen, a cover for the activity of Western intelligence agencies.
One way or another, all the circumstances of the incident will have to be established by the investigation. Well, the question of retaliatory measures is already the prerogative of the military-political leadership of the country.
(c) specially for RT
More from regnum.ru Pentagon denies US involvement in General Kirillov's death
The United States did not assist in the activities that killed the chief of the radiation, chemical and biological defense forces (RCBZ), Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov. This was stated by Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder on December 17.
"We had no prior knowledge of this operation. We do not support or facilitate this type of activity," a US Defense Department spokesman responded at a briefing.
Earlier in the day, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller made a similar statement.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, the comments of the American authorities about their non-involvement in the murder of the head of the Russian Armed Forces' NBC Protection Troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, are ridiculous, since the United States created and sponsors the Kiev regime, responded the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, on December 17. The proof is there - Washington has never condemned a single terrorist act or planned murder committed by the Kiev regime, the diplomat emphasized.
The UN also commented on Kirillov's death, calling on "all parties" to show restraint and not directly condemn the terrorist attack.
Igor Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov died as a result of an explosion that occurred early in the morning of December 17 near the entrance to the residential complex "Sreda" on Ryazansky Prospekt in the southeast of Moscow. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case under Articles 105, 205 and 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder, terrorist act, illegal circulation of weapons and ammunition).
Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev noted that those who ordered the terrorist attack against Kirillov themselves confirmed their involvement in his murder. He specified that this concerns the military-political leadership of Ukraine.
Even more from regnum.ru US claims of non-involvement in Kirillov's murder are ridiculous - Zakharova
The comments of the American authorities about their non-involvement in the murder of the head of the Russian Armed Forces' NBC Protection Troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, are ridiculous, since the United States created and sponsors the Kiev regime. This opinion was expressed to RIA Novosti on December 17 by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, in response to the statement by the representative of the US State Department, Matthew Miller, that the United States has nothing to do with the terrorist attack in Moscow.
"It's funny to listen to those who created the Kiev regime, sponsor it, give it money and supply weapons without control, declaring their pseudo-innocence. The proof is there - Washington has never condemned a single terrorist attack or planned murder committed by the Kiev regime," Maria Zakharova summed up.
At the same time, the UN commented on Kirillov’s death, calling on “all parties” to show restraint and not directly condemn the terrorist attack.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, in Zakharova’s opinion, the murder of Igor Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov was the result of the West’s approval of Kiev’s crimes.
The bomb explosion that killed Kirillov and his assistant occurred early in the morning of December 17.The explosive device was planted in an electric scooter, its power was more than 1 kg of TNT.
A criminal case has been opened on the fact of the explosion. The investigation is being conducted under three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: murder, terrorist act and illegal circulation of weapons and ammunition.
The investigation suspects the Ukrainian special services of involvement in the murder. The Reuters agency, citing a source in the SBU, also reported that the terrorist attack was organized by the Ukrainian special service.
The murder of the head of the NBC protection troops is equivalent to Kiev declaring a terrorist war on Russia, journalist Petr Akopov noted in his article for the Regnum news agency. Those who ordered the murder, the military-political leadership of Ukraine, must be destroyed, said Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Likhtarik
[REGNUM] Speaking at his first press conference after his victory at the Mar-a-Lago residence on December 16, US President-elect Donald Trump made more resonant statements revealing his position on the Ukrainian case.
For example, he criticized the Biden administration's decision to allow Ukraine to launch long-range strikes on Russian territory, stressed that it could take a century to restore what was destroyed, and expressed his belief in the need for a deal to end the nearly three-year war. And at the same time, he admitted that he did not invite Volodymyr Zelensky to his inauguration in January.
But before analyzing the statements on Ukraine, it is necessary to make a number of important observations.
First, Trump’s negotiating style (apparently borrowed from his business experience) suggests that he sets his own framework for his negotiating partner’s theses and tries not to let him out of this framework in the future.
Let's explain this using a specific situation: he reported receiving signals from Kiev about the desire to reach a settlement of the conflict with Russia. As we understand, this is not a completely correct interpretation of either Zelensky's position, expressed by him at a meeting in September, when the Republican was still a presidential candidate, or the messages of the delegation of the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andriy Yermak , who recently visited Washington to meet with Trump's inner circle.
Official Kyiv is indeed asking for help in "achieving a just peace" from the "collective West" and from the new US president in particular. But by "just peace" they mean a return to the borders of February 2022 (until recently - to the borders of 1991), as a tool for achieving it - military and financial assistance, and the mechanism for guaranteeing post-conflict security - Kyiv's membership in NATO.
Trump, however, without a second thought, separated Kyiv's goals and means, taking on the former, but with his own tools. And as the president-elect stated at that same press conference, he has already made "a little progress" in the settlement and is "working hard" to end the conflict.
The second important point is that the White House team is now a close-knit group of people who are absolutely loyal to their leader. They act in a completely coordinated manner (at least because until January 20, 2025, appointments to all posts except for the White House Chief of Staff are de facto, not de jure). And the disclosure of a number of nuances of Trump's position, for one political reason or another, is taken on by his associates.
Thus, the future presidential adviser on national security Michael Walz in an interview with CBS News repeated his thesis from the time of the discussion of the aid package for Ukraine in Congress earlier this year that “a blank check (unlimited aid) is not a strategy.”
Moreover, in the same interview he posed a purely American question point-blank: " What does success look like in accordance with our interests? How do we end the conflict?" The word "we" is key here - obviously, "success in accordance with Ukrainian interests" is not on the agenda of Trump's team at all.
And the third point. Trump's team, in this case acting within the framework of the good old American political tradition, states its position and/or launches "trial balloons" through "leaks" in the press.
On the day of the press conference in Mar-a-Lago, American military expert Ryan Menon expressed the opinion in a column for The New York Times that Trump is unlikely to agree to provide Ukraine with security guarantees from the United States, and Kiev will not consider any coalition without the participation of the Americans to be reliable.
The expert points out that the president-elect “is seeking not only to end the conflict without making any promises to protect Ukraine, but also to reduce America’s security commitments in Europe as a whole.” Menon also believes that Kiev’s admission to NATO is unrealistic.
As for the last thesis, it can be found in direct form among Trump’s closest allies: Vice President-elect J.D. Vance , nominees for the positions: Secretary of State Marco Rubio , National Security Advisor Michael Walz , Senior Advisor for Trade and Industry Peter Navarro , and US Ambassador to Beijing David Pardue .
The key moment in switching from Europe to China is closing the “Ukrainian case”, and as quickly as possible.
Thus, at the time of the press appearance, Trump's positions on various aspects of his vision for the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict were already quite clearly defined and he added only a few strokes to this picture. Again, acting in his usual manner.
Most importantly, the US President-elect called on Zelensky to prepare for an agreement to end the conflict. This message was “paired” with Trump’s statement that he might reconsider the decision of the current President Joe Biden to authorize long-range missile strikes deep into Russia.
According to him, the United States should not have allowed Ukraine to carry out such strikes, the decision was again called "bad and stupid." And the other day, Trump gave a similar assessment in an interview with Time magazine, specifying that Zelensky made this decision with Biden's approval:
"I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening when Zelensky decided, with the approval, I assume, of the president (Biden. - Ed.), to start firing missiles at Russia. I think that's a serious escalation. I think that's a stupid decision."
As we can see, Trump is demonstrating a willingness to act with respect to Kyiv using the American version of the carrot and stick method, where the "carrot" is the absence of a "stick". And his most significant reaction was the absence of even a hint of a positive answer to the question of whether Ukraine should cede part of its territory to Russia?
Trump responded that he would let them know after his first meeting with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, but added that “ there is not a single [whole] building there (in the territories that have been transferred to the Russian Federation. — Ed.) , and people will not return there,” and that it could take a hundred years to restore the destroyed cities. Translated into common language, this means: let the territories be restored and maintained by the one who actually owns them. That is, Russia.
It was a fortunate coincidence that on December 16, White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby made a statement that, in the opinion of the Biden administration, Zelensky should himself determine the terms of negotiations to end the conflict. But Kiev understands perfectly well that everything they say about their terms of participation in the negotiations under Biden could be used against them by Trump on January 20.
And in the current situation, one of the most adequate Ukrainian experts, economist Alexey Kushch, recommends that the government take the geopolitical product called “the world named after Trump” even for five years – that is, for the period of his term, after which the situation will change.
"Right now, either the key existential risk of the existence of Western civilization in the 21st century or the track of a safe future for the next 30 years is being formed. In the first case, the Baltic-Black Sea arc will literally become "bloodlands", in the second, it will plunge into a geopolitical sleep for 30 years. Now there is a key struggle for the basic Eurasian vector of inter-civilization movement of goods, services, investments and technologies. It will pass either to the south of the Black Sea or to the north. This explains the development of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and Ukraine," the expert notes.
In any case, with peace, Ukraine will find itself in a better place and in a better condition in 2030 than during the war. And what choice the Kiev authorities will make will be clear in the coming weeks.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] Just a month ago, the Ukrainian "Unified Telethon" was filled with the voices of journalists ringing with pride as they talked about the training of a fully equipped and well-coordinated brigade for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in France. The 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade named after Anna Kievskaya was created back in May 2024, but it did not actually exist until September. In the fall, 2,300 infantrymen and artillerymen went to train with the French, while tank crews were studying in Poland.
Personally, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Ukrainians in October, shook their hands, and was proud. The Elysee Palace announced that the 155th, pompously named after the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise , who was married to the French King Henry I , would be fully equipped and “ready for war” “in a few months.” Everything that was issued to it on the spot — artillery, armored vehicles, and so on — was to go to Ukraine in one package.
But the brigade showed up to fight, and now they call it "zombie" or "paper". On December 7, People's Deputy Maryana Bezuglaya said that upon arrival, the personnel were divided between other brigades and sent to the front without combat coordination. Because initially no one needed it in this form and it was created for show from people gathered from all over the country - to knock weapons out of the French.
“And now this brigade is being taken apart like donor organs for other brigades,” one of the “Frenchmen” told Bezugloy.
According to an old Ukrainian tradition, "victory" smoothly turned into "betrayal". It would seem, why shoot yourself in the foot so obviously, when you can take and use a valuable gift for its intended purpose? But the situation simply does not allow otherwise.
CHAMPAGNE WITHOUT BUBBLES
The first experience of training and equipping a tactical unit within the framework of the EU military training mission for Ukraine was considered a super success. Task Force Champagne, which received the Ukrainian guests, began training with zeal: comfortable trenches filled with large rubble were built in the field, cartridges for reliable AK-47 assault rifles were distributed to everyone, self-propelled guns and heavy mortars were rolled in.
Everything had to be as serious as possible: after all, the majority of those who came to France had never held a weapon in their hands and had not received military training at home.
A French officer commenting on the process for the Kyiv press noted that the training included "infantry and armored combat, engineering warfare with the involvement of sappers." The Ukrainians were taught to defend themselves from air attacks using Mistral MANPADS, fire anti-tank missiles, and operate long-range artillery.
With the only caveat that the host country only has experience of what the speaker in a neat black beret called “external operations” – in Yugoslavia, Africa, Afghanistan. “We have this experience, combat experience, but only in the context of expeditionary warfare, that is, war abroad. We have no experience of equal combat between two armies with modern weapons. We are learning this together with the Ukrainians,” an anonymous foreign military officer with the rank of colonel frankly admitted on camera.
In other words, they couldn't give anything really useful to the Ukrainian mobilized troops in two months, and it would be stupid to count on real "combat coordination." In this war, no one stands at checkpoints or goes in marching columns to punish disobedient natives in slippers.
However, those who were required to do so radiated a carefully measured optimism.
“French partners have provided our soldiers not only with high-quality combined arms and specialized training, but also with modern equipment and weapons: armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery units, trucks, situational awareness systems and other necessary equipment,” said Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov .
The brigade reported that the French side actively helped it in providing a “high level of combat training” and modernizing weapons, which significantly strengthens the Ukrainian Armed Forces. “Thanks to international partners such as France, the Ukrainian army is becoming stronger and more prepared for the challenges of modern times,” the brigade noted, boasting of beautiful certificates confirming that everything is just tip-top. One newspaper from Rivne (the unit is considered to be from Rivne) even threatened the “orcs” that they would soon feel the formidable power of the 155th on their own skin.
But then she came back to turn the tide of hostilities and... turned the tide herself.
PAPER TIGERS
Problems with the combat readiness of the Anna Kievskaya began already at the end of November, even before she returned home. According to the documents, the unit is fully armed with armored vehicles and artillery by the French government, it is armed with Leopard tanks, an entire division of the latest 155-mm self-propelled howitzers Caesar, long-range 120-mm rifled mortars MO-120-RT61, a full set of light armored vehicles. But there was not a single drone.
Therefore, an urgent collection for drones and electronic warfare systems was immediately announced for one of the "important operational reserves of the country". For some reason, there were no funds in the state budget either, although for ten months of 2024, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Digital Development contracted 1.6 million UAVs of various types for a total of more than UAH 114 billion, and another UAH 32.33 billion has already been spent on the next year (a total of UAH 48 billion has been allocated for these purposes).
Therefore, the problem was quickly shifted to the citizens. And three days ago they were thanked for helping with chemical heating pads and bandages - for some reason they forgot to put them in as well. It is warm in France and no one was injured.
Secondly, it turned out that the personnel had only been partially trained by the French - the brigade had been brought up to 4.5 thousand people, meaning that only half were in Champagne. The rest were ordinary mobilized people caught on the street, lacking any motivation and not even having traveled abroad for free. They ran away at the first opportunity.
"They literally crammed several thousand people from the street into the brigade - these busified people, dressed them in uniform, said that this was a brigade, put a competent commander there, but did not give him time to form a team. As a result, a large number went to the Special Operations Department. Many hundreds, more than a thousand, immediately went home upon arrival. And the responsibility was placed on the brigade commander and he was removed from his post. Absolutely stupid and without any logic," Ukraine's chief military journalist Yuriy Butusov ranted on his channel on December 14.
Who, just recently (when he announced that very same collection of money), called these people “motivated and devoted to Ukraine.”
After one colonel was fired and another was put in his place, chaos began in the brigade - this is if you believe the eternally agitated Bezuglya. "Provision is minimal: officers are calling for the purchase of necessary equipment (cars, electronic warfare, drones, etc.) at their own expense or through volunteers. ... Soldiers are not allowed to go on annual leave, regardless of the length of service," said Maryana.
On social media, she reports horrifying details: specialists in the Milan and Mistral missile systems have been scattered among different units, other parts of the brigade are also scattered, and the leadership says that if someone doesn’t like something, they can go to the Special Operations Department. In fact, the same thing is happening to the 155th as to other new “zombie brigades.”
They are endlessly created for reporting: people are driven there, but the management structures are not coordinated. Then the unit is simply torn to pieces, seconded to others, sending the majority to stormtroopers, with the exception of staff officers.
Due to widespread corruption, low discipline, and lack of motivation, the shortage of people in the combat units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is chronic. Therefore, with the formal number of servicemen of all the Ukrainian Defense Forces at 1.1 million, only 15% of the total number are at the front - this figure was voiced by People's Deputy Anna Skorokhod .
"All rear units - the TCC security companies, the TCCs themselves, the security of bridges and infrastructure facilities, financial and supply units at all levels - from the commander's headquarters to the brigade headquarters, the staff of military educational institutions - are fully staffed, there is not a single vacancy. To get a job in the rear unit, you need to either be a relative or friend of the commander, or pay money - from two to three thousand dollars, or give half of your salary every month," an unnamed major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tells the publication "Strana".
“Dead souls”, who on paper are at the front, in reality, having paid the commander, sit in the rear.
At the same time, Zelensky, the Ukrainian Armed Forces Command, and other representatives of the military-political leadership constantly say that the Russian army has a multiple advantage in manpower. Based on this, there are calls to intensify mobilization, including by lowering the lower age limit. Or even conscripting women.
So the fate of the pretentious French brigade is not at all surprising.
The funding was provided by the European Union - the French successfully spent the money and are not responsible for anything further. The VSEU soldiers did not receive any real benefit from their training, except perhaps experience in servicing some weapons systems, but these specialists are rare and do not affect the general background. As a combat unit, the new brigade is nothing - that is why they decided to use it as a donor for the fighting units, dragging people and equipment to where they are needed immediately.
But everyone is happy - except, of course, those who were unlucky enough to end up under the hammer for the sake of a pretty picture on TV.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 23:57 Official summary of the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC from 00:00 12/17/2024 to 00:00 12/18/2024.
Seven facts 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 no reports of civilian casualties.
DAMAGED:
No damage to residential buildings or civil infrastructure facilities was recorded.
Seven artillery attacks in the Gorlovka direction.
A total of 19 units of various ammunition were produced.
21:20 Air defense systems on duty destroyed an enemy UAV over the territory of the Voronezh region — Russian Defense Ministry.
20:57 The Russian Ministry of Defense published frames of destruction of a camouflaged position of a 122mm D-30 howitzer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by an FPV drone crew of the North group of forces in the Khar'kov region.
19:07 RF Armed Forces released the villages of Russkoye Porechnoye and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye in the Kursk region.
18:59 At 17:50 Moscow time, a Ukrainian aircraft-type UAV was destroyed over the territory of the Belgorod region, the Ministry of Defense reported.
18:15 Hit on the concentration of militants in the border area of the Kursk region
Having waited for the right moment, the operator of a combat UAV with a system for dropping ammunition destroyed the enemy’s manpower in cover.
18:06 Footage of forced mobilization in Krivoy Rog.
17:02 Settlement of Konstantinopolskoye in the DPR crossed over under the control of the Russian Army.
16:57 From 13:30 to 16:00 Moscow time, attempts by the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist attacks using aircraft-type UAVs against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation were thwarted.
Two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed by air defense systems on duty over the territories of the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
16:42 Advancement of the Russian Armed Forces:
- in the Kurakhovsky direction, Russian fighters are less than four kilometers away from the Konstantinopol-Kurakhovo highway. The road is being hit by artillery and drones.
– in the Krasnoarmeysk direction, the Russian Armed Forces advanced south of the city of Krasnoarmeysk and began fighting for Novovasilyevka.
– Dzerzhinsky direction: Russian military personnel continue to advance in city blocks.
16:09 Army aviation crews supported the offensive of our attack aircraft in the border area of ??the Kursk region.
15:50 The Russian Armed Forces entered the settlement of Novovasilevka in the DPR.
15:47 The number of deserters among the Ukrainian military in some periods exceeded the number of those killed and wounded, an unnamed commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
15:39 The liberation of Annovka will allow the use of Russian units previously occupied there in nearby Kurakhovo, where fighting with the Ukrainian Armed Forces continues, Vladimir Rogov reported.
15:12 Russian combat UAV crew disrupts mining of Ukrainian Armed Forces road in Khar'kov region –video.
14:45 Footage of storming of Novy Komar north of Velikaya Novosyolka. Fierce fighting has been going on for several weeks for the village. Russian units are breaking into the village, which is of vital importance for controlling the road north of Velikaya Novosyolka.
14:22 Enemy reports: "in the Pokrovsk direction, the Russian Armed Forces, relying on the held settlement of Shevchenko, have resumed the offensive on the settlement of Peschanoye and in the area of ??Dachenskoye. Fighting has also intensified in the area south of the settlement of Lysovka."
14:09 The Russian army has made significant advances in the Kursk region. In particular, to the west of the settlement of Kruglen'koye, the Krucheny Les, the Mochilny Log gully, and the Novoivanovskaya gully have come under the control of the Russian Armed Forces.
13:54 OTRK Iskander struck a concentration of Ukrainian military personnel in the village of Guevo, Kursk region.
13:47 The Russian Armed Forces have advanced towards the villages of Ulakly and Konstantinopol in the Kurakhovo region. With the fall of one of these villages, the main supply route for the Kurakhovo group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be cut off.
13:20 Ivanovo paratroopers, supported by an armored group, stormed the Ukrainian Armed Forces stronghold in Chasov Yar –video.
13:11 Internationally wanted Georgian mercenary Georgiy Gelashvili, who took part in the fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was reported by the DPR prosecutor's office.
13:04 Strikes are being carried out on Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in Zhitomir.
12:50 More than 100 civilians from Selidovo in the DPR died due to shootings by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This was reported by the chairman of the International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Grigoriev.
12:44 The situation for the enemy along the entire section of the front from Krasnoarmeysk to Velikaya Novosyolka remains very difficult and poses the following threats to the enemy:
– Breakthrough of the front of the defending group and the exit of troops/forces of the RF Armed Forces to the flank and rear of the defensive lines in the Zaporozhye direction;
- Encirclement of the Kurakhovskaya group;
– Coverage of Pokrovsk and Mirnograd.
The enemy is moving reserves, trying to stabilize this section of the front, but it only succeeds periodically in specific local areas for short periods of time.
Russian Armed Forces continue to push through the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and advance in a general direction to the west, war correspondent Yuri Kotenok reported.
12:35 The Russian army has liberated Annovka in the DPR, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
12:12 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces near Novotroitskoye and Shevchenko –map.
Despite counterattacks in the Shevchenko area, the enemy failed to stabilize the situation. The situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces south of Krasnoarmeysk continues to systematically deteriorate.
11:55 Ramzan Kadyrov reported destruction of dugouts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Krasnolimansk direction.
11:36 120mm mortar crews of the naval infantry of the North Forces Group hit strongholds and concentrations of Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower in the border region of Kursk Oblast. Objective control data confirmed the destruction of targets.
11:15 Russian Armed Forces launched a second series of strikes on enemy targets in Kyiv
11:07 Latvian mercenary Krists Ancans, who fought on the Ukrainian side, in absentiasentencedin the DPR to 14 years in prison, the regional prosecutor's office reported.
11:02 The Russian Armed Forces carried out strikes on Ukrainian Armed Forces facilities in Kyiv.
10:54 In the Boguslav direction came counterattacks by two enemy assault groups in the area of the settlement of Lozovaya. Up to 27 Ukrainian Armed Forces militants were destroyed, including several seriously wounded who requested evacuation, eliminated by their own UAV operators.
10:40 In the morning, the enemy acknowledges the continuing advance of the Russian Armed Forces to the south of Kurakhovo, where the remnants of the “Uspenovsky pocket” are being eliminated, as well as the serious advance of Russian forces in the Kursk region in the direction of Kruglenkoye –map.
10:10 UAV operators of the 36th Army of the Vostok group in the area of Velikaya Novosyolka destroyed enemy vehicles, disrupting the rotation and supply of equipment to positions.
09:42 The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked six districts of the Belgorod Region, using 59 munitions and 22 drones. One person was injured, said the head of the region, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
09:36 The criminal Kiev regime continues to shell the civilian infrastructure of the settlements on the left bank of the Kherson region. Yesterday, during the day, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired from barrel artillery:
– Six rounds in the village of Novaya Kakhovka;
– Three rounds in the village of Golaya Pristan;
– Three rounds in the village of Staraya Zburyevka;
– Four rounds to the settlement of Tavriysk;
– Two rounds to the settlement of Dnepryany;
- Three rounds to the village of Levo Sagi.
During the night, the Kiev regime continued to shell civilian infrastructure in the villages of Vasilevka, Kakhovka, Dnepryany, Solontsy, and Aleshky, firing a total of 21 rounds from cannon artillery. Civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure are being clarified.
09:25 Kyiv-controlled media are spreading fakes about the capture of the Kolesnikovsky forest in the Khar'kov region by units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, military expert Andrey Marochko reported.
09:10 Russian troops have reached the outskirts of the village of Storozhevoe to the south of Velikaya Novosyolka in the DPR, Vladimir Rogov reported.
09:07 Ukrainian commanders ordered "not to stand on ceremony" with civilians of the Kursk region and, if necessary, to shoot them. This was reported by captive Dmitry Verbitsky. He was previously convicted of looting. According to him, if the opportunity arose, the Ukrainian Armed Forces searched for food and anything valuable in destroyed buildings and residential buildings.
08:54 The Russian Armed Forces carried out strikes on Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in the Nikolaev, Khar'kov and Cherkasy regions.
08:38 152mm Giatsint-S guns defeated the camouflaged Krab and AS-90 self-propelled guns destroyed the UAV control point from which the Ukrainian Armed Forces militants launched the Leleka-100 and Fury drones. Enemy manpower concentrations were also destroyed.
08:16 Mi-28NM helicopter of the North group of forces destroyed missiles, a strong point and military vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border area of the Kursk region. This was reported by the Russian Defense Ministry.
08:11 Liquidated mercenaries in the SVO zone:
– Nilsson Norbay Garcia Navarro was born on August 24, 1997 in Colombia
– Michael Pohl, nicknamed Odin, was born on May 25, 1990 in Ehingen, Germany.
08:08 Russian troops have consolidated their positions along the Oskol River, eight kilometers in the Kupyansk direction, and the troops have built a defense there, Andrey Marochko reported.
08:04 The Ukrainian Armed Forces in Dzerzhinsk, DPR, shot at civilians as if they were in a shooting range, said a victim who managed to escape –video.
08:02 Air defense systems destroyed a Ukrainian UAV over the territory of the Belgorod region overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
08:00 Russian troops have driven the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of Zelenovka, south of Kurakhovo, and a cleanup operation is underway, Vladimir Rogov reported.
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 Sever Group of Forces' units inflicted fire damage on armed formations of one mechanised brigade, one territorial defence brigade of the AFU, and one border detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine close to Aleksandrovka, Sinelnikovo, and Volchansk (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 70 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, five motor vehicles, and one 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Zapad Group of Forces' units improved the tactical situation and delivered strikes at manpower and hardware of three mechanised brigades, one jaeger brigade, one airmobile brigade, one airborne brigade of the AFU, and one territorial defence brigade near Dvurechnaya, Kupyansk, Zagryzovo, Lozovaya (Kharkov region), Novoyegorovka (Lugansk People's Republic), Torskoye (Donetsk People's Republic), and Serebryansky forestry. One counter-attack of an AFU assault detachment was repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to more than 520 troops, three pickup trucks, one 122mm Gvozdika self-propelled artillery system, four 122mm D-30 howitzers, and one ammunition depot.
As a result of decisive actions, units of the Yug Group of Forces liberated Annovka (Donetsk People's Republic).
Losses were inflicted on formations of three mechanised brigades, one motorised infantry brigade, one airmobile brigade, one assault brigade of the AFU, and two territorial defence brigades near Seversk, Zvanovka, Stupochki, Uspenovka, Ostrovskoye, and Kurakhovo (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 330 troops, two armoured personnel carriers, including one U.S.-made Stryker and one U.S.-made M113 armoured personnel carriers, four Kozak armoured fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, one 122mm D-30 howitzer, one U.S.-made 105mm M-119 gun, and one UK-made 105mm L-119 UK-made gun.
One electronic warfare station and one ammunition depot were neutralised.
The Tsentr Group of Forces' units captured more advantageous lines and positions and inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of one heavy mechanised brigade, five mechanised brigades, one motorised infantry brigade, one infantry brigade, one assault battalion of the AFU, one naval infantry brigade, and one territorial defence brigade close to Dzerzhinsk, Shcherbinovka, Novoolenovka, Krasnoarmeysk, Shevchenko, Novopustynka, Novoukrainka, and Krasnoye (Donetsk People's Republic). In addition, 11 AFU counter-attacks were repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 425 troops, one infantry fighting vehicle, two armoured personnel carriers, including one U.S.-made M-113 armoured personnel carrier, one U.S.-made HMMWV armoured fighting vehicle, one U.S.-made 155mm M-777 howitzer, five motor vehicles, two 152mm Msta-B howitzers, two 152mm D-20 howitzers, and one 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Vostok Group of Forces' units continued advancing into the depth of the enemy's defence and inflicted losses on formations of two mechanised brigades, one assault battalion of the AFU, and two territorial defence brigades close to Temirovka, Velikaya Novoselka, Gulay Pole, and Novy Komar (Donetsk People's Republic). Four enemy counter-attacks were repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 205 troops, one tank, five motor vehicles, one 152mm 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system, one 122mm D-30 howitzer, one U.S.-made HMMWV armoured fighting vehicle, two U.S.-made MaxxPro armoured fighting vehicles, and one U.S.-made 155mm Paladin self-propelled artillery system.
The Dnepr Group of Forces' units engaged manpower and hardware of one mechanised brigade, one infantry brigade, one mountain assault brigade of the AFU, and two territorial defence brigades near Novoandreyevka, Lobkovoye (Zaporozhye region), Sadovoye, and Ingulets (Kherson region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 75 Ukrainian troops, five motor vehicles, one electronic warfare station, and one ammunition depot.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have engaged AFU manpower and hardware clusters in 142 areas.
Air defence systems have shot down one U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectile and 49 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 650 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 37,867 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,827 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,501 MLRS combat vehicles, 19,738 field artillery guns and mortars, and 29,286 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.
In the course of offensive operations, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of six mechanised brigades, one tank brigade, three air assault brigades, one naval infantry brigade, and two territorial defence brigades of the AFU near Guyevo, Leonidovo, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Maryevka, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Novoivanovka, Pogrebki, Russkoye Porechnoye, Sverdlikovo, and Staraya Sorochina.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation and artillery inflicted fire damage on AFU manpower and hardware close to Aleksandriya, Kolmakov, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Makhnovka, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye as well as Belovody, Zhuravka, and Pavlovka in Sumy region.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 260 troops, three armoured fighting vehicles, five motor vehicles, one Croatian-made RAK-SA-12 multiple rocket launcher, two 122mm D-30 howitzers, and one electronic warfare station.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 41,660 troops, 242 tanks, 182 infantry fighting vehicles, 126 armoured personnel carriers, 1,279 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,150 motor vehicles, 316 artillery guns, 41 MLRS launchers, including 11 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport-loading vehicles, 75 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.
[NYPOST] Staffers at the Los Angeles Times say the newspaper's billionaire owner is demanding that the editorial board ''take a break from writing about'' President-elect Donald Trump ...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat The Smartest Woman in the World in the general election. Then he beat Kamala while dodging bullets... , according to a report.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the physician and entrepreneur who bought the Times in 2018, has rankled staffers at the paper with his ''meddling'' in editorial matters, which has become ''more pervasive than previously realized,'' media news hound Oliver Darcy writes in his Status newsletter.
The South Africa-born Soon-Shiong is reported to have taken ''a number of previously unreported steps'' designed to rein in Trump-related commentary.
Last week, the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported that Soon-Shiong blocked his newspaper from publishing an editorial that argued the Senate should follow its traditional process for confirming cabinet picks rather than allow Trump to make recess appointments.
The editorial, which bore the headline ''Donald Trump's cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate's confirmation process should be,'' did not run, according to the New York Times.
But Soon-Shiong's hands-on involvement in the editorial decisions of his newspaper has been ''much broader in scope'' than spiking the op-ed, according to Status.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/18/2024
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#1
History recalls Pulitzer, Hearst, and other moguls who not only bought newspapers but ran them.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
12/18/2024 6:12
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#2
They have far more local problems that they refuse to address [cause all the power to address them is held by the Donks].
#3
What's the point of being owner of a newspaper if you can't meddle in editorial matters all you want? And if the staffers don't like it, they can take a hike.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/18/2024 12:35
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#4
What? Is he supposed to sit quietly in his office and let the commie staffers run the paper into the ground?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/18/2024 12:36
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#5
Dummy should have bought a social media platform.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/18/2024 12:38
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[NYPOST] A convicted bank robber freed early from federal prison on a ''compassionate release'' program is heading back to the slammer for the same crime for which he was originally sent away.
Markham David Bond was found guilty by a federal jury in Los Angeles on Thursday on one count of interference with commerce by robbery, one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, according to the US Department of Justice.
Bond, 61, robbed a Brinks courier at gunpoint in a Chase bank parking lot near LAX on Aug. 18, 2023.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/18/2024
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#1
Wonder if he just wanted to go back to a more stable environment? After having seen what Biden and the DC Swamp has turned the US into.
#3
I figured it was a Chicago thing, like spring shootings. You see a 'Wet Floor' sign so you have a fight.
"Look, Dude, a wet floor sign! Care to have a go?"
"Put 'em up!"
*Biff*Smack*Ow*
"Is this a private fight or can anyone get in?"
And just like that, it was another evening at the Baggage Claim.
#9
Genius. "Look for it on your friendly family pharm@cy's shelves between Beebo's Placebo and Dr. Algore's Patented Elephant Repellent!" [close-up: hands grabbing vials of Poot-Shoot... as Otto Parts decants gen3ric vodka in storeroom]
"The planet has cancer..." [woke crowing]
"But I have a vaccine!" [cue woeing]
Oncologist future:
"Is hopeless. Nurse, suture."
...
"Your tumor was already growing."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
Leveler of Latakia...
...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 
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
[Yahoo] The Brief
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
...46th president of the U.S. The man who made Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter look competent, if only by comparison....
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
...46th president of the U.S. 
...a city in Texas, named after Sam Houston, who would drop deader than he is now if he could see how it turned out...
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
...Arabic for 
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...Hizonner da Mare of Noo Yawk. As a Manchurian candidate, Hizonner was all in favor of law and order and that kind of stuff. Once in office, a bunch of his friends found cushy jobs with the city, the windows kept getting broken, and Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg remained right where he was. Most people comfort themselves with the thought that he's not Bill di Blasio but that's pretty small comfort with kids who actually go to school getting bumped off while standing in front of them. But he's a Dem, so the rubes will vote for him next election too, so he's what they deserve...
[THEGATEWAYPUNDIT] The Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman 
...Hizzonner da Mare of Chicago. He was elected in April 2023 to replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot and immediately set about out-Richtering her. A member of the Democratic Party (naturally), Johnson previously worked as a social studies teacher in the city's stellar public schools system. He helped organize the 2012 teachers strike. Prior to becoming Da Mare, he served on the Cook County Board of 
[DAILYSIGNAL] On Dec. 11, ABC News' Jay O'Brien reported false information about 
...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat 
