[IsraelTimes] No immediate comment from military; Beirut says 24 killed in Israeli strike Tuesday targeting what IDF said were Hezbollah vehicles moving weapons in violation of truce
Five people were maimed in an Israeli dronezap in the southern Lebanese town of Majdal Selm on Wednesday, the Lebanese health ministry said.
The Israel Defense Forces had no immediate comment on the matter.
In a separate Israeli Air Force strike Tuesday night, the IDF targeted what it said were vehicles belonging to the Hezbollah terror group that were being used to transfer weapons near southern 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?... ’s Nabatieh, which would constitute a ceasefire violation on the part of the terror group.
The Lebanese health ministry said 24 people were maimed in that strike, which came amid IDF warnings against civilians returning to villages in southern Lebanon, where Israel has said it will remain until February 18.
Israel had been due to withdraw by January 26, but said it could not do so as the Lebanese army had not yet deployed in those areas, and the US and Lebanon announced Sunday that the deadline had been extended.
Following the Tuesday strike, senior Hezbollah official Mohammad Raad said that the Lebanese people have a "sacred and legitimate right" to resist Israeli attacks, and said this right should be exercised at the time and place deemed necessary to protect the country’s security.
Under the November ceasefire brokered by the US, however, Hezbollah must pull back north of the Litani River — some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Israel — while Israel is entitled to strike threats it considers imminent, and to forward less imminent threats to a monitoring committee comprising representatives of Lebanon, Israel, La Belle France, the United States and UNIFIL.
[IsraelTimes] Australian city’s Jewish community on edge after police — who kept the incident secret until it was leaked — say they’re probing possible connections to recent antisemitic attacks
Police in Sydney found a trailer containing explosives, with "some indication" it may have been intended to blow up a synagogue, Australian media reported on Wednesday.
The trailer was discovered on January 19 in Dural, a suburb some 36 kilometers (22 miles) northwest of the center of Sydney, New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson said.
"That caravan contained an amount of explosives and some indication that those explosives might be used in some form of antisemitic attack," he told a news conference.
"Investigations over the last ten days have progressed — however, there is a lot to do," he said, explaining police have made "made arrests on the periphery of this job."
Hudson did not disclose how many arrests were made or what the charges were, if any.
He did say, however, that police "believe there is some connection between some of the targets we’ve charged under Strike Force Pearl" — the NSW initiative, launched last month, to address antisemitic hate crimes — "and this particular investigation."
"We are still looking for assistance in relation to anyone who saw that caravan parked on the road from December 7," Hudson said, noting it "was parked in a hazardous position prior to it being moved by a local resident."
Addressing concern in the community about potential attacks, the deputy police commissioner said, "We believe that we have contained, appropriately, this current threat."
New South Wales police kept the discovery secret for nine days before it was leaked to the media.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said over 100 officers were investigating the incident, under a joint counter-terrorism operation involving state and federal police.
"This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event. There is only one way of calling it out, and that is terrorism," he said.
PUB FIRES TRIVIA HOST AFTER NAZI JOKES, ’ZIONIST’ COMMENTS
Also this week, a Sydney pub fired a trivia host, after he made a series of offensive Nazi jokes and then responded by mocking a Jewish couple that complained and lashed out online against "Zionists."
During a trivia night last Wednesday at the Iron Duke Hotel, Jarred Keane also reportedly performed a Nazi salute.
The jokes were prompted by a question — it was not clear from the report who posed it — about billionaire Elon Musk’s Nazi-salute-like gesture at US President Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... ’s inauguration earlier this month, according to Sky News.
One attendee, Jonathan Sankey, grandson of Auschwitz survivor and Sydney Jewish Museum founding member Olga Horak, recorded part of the event, and later confronted Keane about the jokes. In audio of the confrontation, the comedian is heard apologizing.
Keane later took to Instagram, however, and ridiculed the complaint, saying, "I was like, ’yeah, I know. The Nazis are bad. Like, I’m not saying they’re good," but "these guys are, like, in their twenties. I’m like, oh I’m sorry I brought up something that happened to your great-grandparents."
Jarred Keane is a wannabe comedian. He thinks it's funny to laugh at the Holocaust. He thinks the horrors of six million civilians being shot, gassed, tortured and dehumanised is a joke.
In another video, Keane ranted against "Zionists," calling them "disgusting people" who are "not welcome" at his events, and used explicit language to describe them. He further claimed that his trivia nights were fun "unless you’re a conservative or a Zionist" and accused Israel of genocide.
Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected allegations of genocide during its war against the Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... terror group in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... The Iron Duke Hotel confirmed Keane had been dismissed and distanced itself from his statements, saying in a letter shared with Sky News that "the hotel does not share the views expressed by Jarred on social media" and "disapprove[s] of Jarred’s use of the topic of Nazism... to evoke humour, in light of current domestic and international events."
SURGE IN ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
Australia has seen a surge in antisemitic activities since the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which started the war in Gaza.
The number of anti-Jewish incidents in Australia quadrupled in the year after the attack, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
These have included several arson attacks on synagogues and community centers in Sydney and Melbourne and the repeated spraying of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti on properties or vehicles in areas with large Jewish populations. Last month also saw a neo-Nazi ...adherents of a philosophy that was seen even at the time as pure evil, which makes them either consciously purely evil, or attention-seeking ratbags. Pick one, or both.... rally at the Melbourne parliament.
In December 2024, New South Wales launched Strike Force Pearl, whose team includes counter-terrorism and special tactics officers, to investigate antisemitic hate crimes in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, following an arson attack on the Adass Synagogue.
Australia’s federal police also launched Operation Avalite to investigate the surge in antisemitic crimes that has followed the Hamas attack in Israel.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to adopt tougher measures to protect the country’s Jewish community, but there has been no noticeable decline in incidents yet.
[IsraelTimes] Israel has yet to name the 110 prisoners who will be freed in return for 3 female hostages, though public broadcaster says 33 of them are serving life terms for deadly attacks
Israel is expected to free a number of high-profile turbans in exchange for the three Israeli hostages slated for release on Thursday — Arbel Yehoud, Agam Berger, and Gadi Mozes.
Among the 110 prisoners to be released are prominent terror convicts Zakaria Zubeidi, Mahmoud Atallah and Ahmed Barghouti, according to multiple media reports.
Zubeidi, who will return home to the West Bank, organized dozens of attacks during the Second Intifada while heading the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades in Jenin. He was one of six prisoners who briefly beat feet from Gilboa prison in 2021, before being recaptured.
Atallah, who is serving a life sentence for murdering a Paleostinian woman suspected of collaborating with Israel, will be released to Nablus. He was indicted last September for repeatedly sexually assaulting female guards at Gilboa Prison.
Barghouti, a senior military official in Fatah, received 13 life sentences for carrying out a series of terror attacks during the Second Intifada that killed 12 Israelis. He will be deported abroad via Egypt.
Authorities have yet to give official information on the prisoners to be set freed on Thursday and Saturday, though the Kan public broadcaster said 33 of them are serving life terms for deadly attacks, 47 are serving long prison terms, and the remaining 30 are women and minors.
The Haaretz daily reported that among the other prisoners set to be released are Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... operative Mohammed Abu Warda, who is serving 48 life sentences for criminal masterminding multiple terror attacks, including a 1996 bombing on a bus in Jerusalem that killed 45 people; and 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... member Sami Jaradat, who was responsible for a 2003 bombing at a restaurant in Haifa that killed 21 people.
Both Abu Warda and Jaradat are expected to be sent to 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 or Egypt.
The newspaper said that Ammar Mardi, a Jordanian member of Fatah involved in the 2001 killing of Yuri Gushchin near Ramallah, will be freed after refusing to board a bus to Gaza during the release of prisoners last weekend, though it remains unclear where he will go.
According to an Israel Prisons Service spokesperson, the prisoners will be transported to two main reception points, Ofer and Ktzi’ot prisons, before being released home or deported.
After the three Israeli hostages are confirmed to have returned, prisoners headed for the West Bank will be escorted by the Red Thingy to a release point, and those being deported or released into Gaza will be escorted by the special Prison Service units to the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
No prisoners will be exchanged for the five Thai hostages who are also due to be freed, since they are being released under a separate agreement between Hamas and Thailand.
Thursday’s exchange is part of the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas that took effect on January 19, under which 50 prisoners are released for every soldier and 30 for each civilian. Israel freed 90 prisoners in return for three civilian hostages early last week, followed by 200 additional inmates — including 121 serving life sentences for terrorism — in exchange for four female soldiers on Saturday.
During the 42-day period, 33 Israeli captives held in Gaza are expected to be released in return for 1,904 Paleostinian security prisoners, including 737 serving life terms. The other 1,167 are Paleostinians detained during the IDF’s ground offensive who did not participate in the Hamas-led October 7 massacre that started the Gaza war.
Talks have yet to begin on the deal’s second stage, in which Hamas is expected to release young, relatively healthy male hostages, including soldiers, for whom the terrorist organization is likely to demand Israel pay a heavier price.
*UPDATE*
BREAKING: Israel ordered the buses carrying the released terrorists from today’s exchange to turn around and get back to prison.
The move is in response to the savage images from the release of the hostages that were nearly lynched by those monsters.
[IsraelTimes] Protesters outside Oheb Shalom congregation call passersby ‘baby killers,’ spray-paint ‘Terrorists This Way’; officials line up to condemn act
Anti-Israel protesters graffitied the property of a New Jersey synagogue on Sunday that was hosting a talk by an Israeli soldier, drawing condemnation from local officials.
On Sunday morning, anti-Israel demonstrators gathered in front of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, New Jersey, to protest a talk by members of the Israeli Air Force’s search-and-rescue unit.
According to a statement by South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum, the protesters graffitied the driveway with the phrase "Terrorists This Way," and drew an arrow that pointed toward the synagogue.
Rabbi Abigail Treu, who leads the Conservative congregation, wrote in a statement that protesters called passersby "baby killers." She wrote that a neighbor had cleaned off the graffiti and thanked police for their response.
Collum wrote that police are investigating the incident as a bias crime.
"This act of intolerance is deeply disturbing and has no place in our community," the mayor wrote. "We must come together, united in our commitment to stand against hate, bigotry, and discrimination in all forms. This is not just an attack on one group; it is an attack on the values that bind us all as neighbors."
South Orange, NJ — vile antisemites are harassing members of Oheb Shalom synagogue during Hebrew School hours, yelling at parents that they are raising baby killers.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who represents the area, also condemned the incident.
"Although we must ensure space for First Amendment activities, going onto private property and spray painting "murderous Moslems this way" is not only a crime, but is contrary to the values we share as a diverse community," she wrote. "We should all work together to make sure people are allowed to worship without fear."
In her statement, the rabbi said that the search-and-rescue unit had rescued civilians around the world, including in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... . She added that the synagogue works to create space for a range of perspectives, including on Israel.
"People who stand outside our building, calling us terrorists, making us feel threatened or on the defensive as we undertake the peaceful work of joining in local community, do not have a place here," she wrote. "Not at Oheb, and I know not at our neighboring synagogue partners, either. Our tent is a large one, but it has walls."
[IsraelTimes] Hamas denounces drone attack in town of Tamun, which comes amid major Israeli counterterrorism operation in the area
The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday evening carried out a dronezap in the northern West Bank, with the Paleostinian Authority reporting at least 10 people were killed.
The strike in the town of Tamun targeted a cell of armed terror operatives, according to the military, which said it would later provide further details.
Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... issued a statement condemning the strike, which came amid a major counterterrorism offensive in the northern West Bank that Israel launched amid the hostage release and ceasefire deal with 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... -ruling terror group.
"The escalating crimes of the fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... occupation in the West Bank and its continued policy of liquidations against our heroic resistance fighters and mujahideen... are a reaffirmation of the occupation’s criminal approach against our people and a failed attempt ...Curses! Foiled again!... to break our valiant resistance," said Hamas.
The ongoing IDF offensive, dubbed Operation Iron Wall, has primarily focused on the city and refugee camp of Jenin but on Monday expanded to Tulkarem.
Visiting Jenin earlier Wednesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed the IDF would remain in the camp even after the military operation there, "to ensure the terror does not return." His visit came hours after the PA health ministry reported two Paleostinians were killed there overnight by Israeli forces.
Next time don’t start a war with Israel. And especially don’t start with endless atrocities.Really, the Israelis have been quite, quite restrained, given such egregious Gazan provocations.
[IsraelTimes] Hamas claims hundreds of thousands have gone back to northern Gaza, as many residents complain about lack of food, water, power and shelter
The joy of thousands of Palestinian families who made it back home to north Gaza amid the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is turning to despair as the cold reality of uninhabitable, bombed-out homes and dire shortages of basic supplies sets in.
Many have begun complaining about a lack of running water that forces them to line up for hours to fill plastic containers for drinking or cleaning. With most homes now heaps of rubble as far as the eye can see, returnees have scoured whatever useful items remain from their property to erect makeshift tents. Take it up with your Masters - Hamas
At night, residential districts laid to waste by Israeli airstrikes and shelling during the fighting with Hamas sink into darkness for lack of electricity or fuel to operate standby generators.
“There is nothing, no life, no water, no food, no drink, nothing for living. Life is very, very hard. There is no Jabalia camp,” Hisham El-Err said on Wednesday, standing by the ruins of his multi-story house in the biggest and mostly densely populated of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps.
His extended family is now huddling in tents, which offer scant protection from Gaza’s mid-winter chill.
Permission for displaced Gazans to return to the north of the enclave was a key demand by Hamas in the ceasefire that halted the fifteen-month war it started on October 7, 2023, when it led thousands of terrorists to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 who were taken as hostages. Movement from south Gaza to the north began to be allowed on Monday.
By late on Tuesday, Gaza’s Hamas authorities said most of the 650,000 people displaced from the north by the war had re-entered Gaza City and the north edge of the enclave from areas to the south where fighting was less intense and destructive.
Many of those returning, often laden with what personal possessions they still had after months of being shunted around as battlegrounds shifted, had trekked 20 kilometers (12 miles) or more along the coastal highway.
Fahad Abu Jalhoum returned with his family to Jabalia from the al-Mawasi area in south Gaza but the destruction they found was so pervasive they had been forced to go back south.
“It’s just ghosts without souls (in the north),” Abu Jalhoum told Reuters back in Al Mawasi. “We all missed the north but when I went there I was shocked. So I returned to (the south) until we get relief from God.”
HAMAS, ISRAEL, SPAR OVER PACE OF AID DELIVERIES
A Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity said smaller amounts of fuel, cooking gas, and tents had been brought into Gaza than what had been agreed in ceasefire negotiations, which Israel strongly denied.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the initial need for tents at 135,000, but the Hamas official said only around 2,000 had gotten in since the deal took effect on January 19.
He also said work to rehabilitate hospitals and bakeries knocked out by the fighting had not begun and urged mediators to ensure more aid flows in, adding that dissatisfaction among armed groups could affect the truce.
A spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military agency that liaises with the Palestinians, said that tens of thousands of tents have entered Gaza since the ceasefire and that gas and fuel are being delivered daily in keeping with agreements.
Under the deal, 33 hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are to be freed in the first six weeks of the ceasefire in exchange for over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of them serving life sentences in Israel for deadly terror attacks.
Seven hostages and 290 prisoners have so far been exchanged. Three more hostages are to be swapped for dozens of Palestinian prisoners on Thursday.
In addition, five Thai hostages will be freed Thursday by Hamas, Israeli officials confirmed.
A second stage of the deal, due to begin by February 4, is meant to open the way to the release of over 60 other hostages, including men of military age, and a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.
If that succeeds, a formal end to the fighting could follow along with talks on the monumental challenge of reconstructing Gaza, now widely demolished in a war that killed almost 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose unverified figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
In Jabalia, Khamis Amara returned to the ruins of his house to dig for the bodies of his father and brother, among the roughly 10,000 people missing and feared dead in Gaza, according to the local civil emergency service.
“I was once under the rubble with my father and brother, just as they still are. But I made it out,” Amara said.
“Life here is unbearable. Honestly, it’s all a lie. Those in the south should just stay there — it’s better for them.”
#1
as many residents complain about lack of food, water, power and shelter
The combined territory of Arab states is 2000 times the territory of Israel - given the oil income, there should be plenty of food, water, and shelter.
#2
“There is nothing, no life, no water, no food, no drink, nothing for living. Life is very, very hard.
That kinda sucks, but at least you showed the Juice what's what, right?
the ruins of his multi-story house in the biggest and mostly densely populated of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps
Maybe I'm old school, but when I think of refugee camps, I think of tents, porta-johns, and families lined up for food, not multi-story houses with electricity and running water. Is it possible that UNRWA is just a long running grift?
[IsraelTimes] Despite family being slated for release in first stage of ceasefire, mother and two young boys, Ariel and Kfir, remain in captivity in Gaza, with grave concern for their lives
Israel has demanded that Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... clarify the condition of hostages Shiri Bibas and her two small boys, Ariel and Kfir, whom the Paleostinian terror group is holding in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip, Hebrew media reported Wednesday.
The three are set to be returned to Israel in the ongoing first phase of the ceasefire and hostage deal that halted the war started by Hamas in October 2023.
While living women and kiddies were supposed to be freed first under the deal, bodies are to be handed over later in the deal. Fears for the fate of the Bibas trio have grown, as Hamas has not returned them among the first hostages released. Husband and father Yarden Bibas, who was kidnapped separately to Gaza, is slated to be released later in the deal’s first phase.
Hamas has said that 18 of the 26 hostages yet to be returned under the current phase are alive, without offering specifics on the condition of individuals, and that eight are dead.
The Bibas family members are among the highest-profile hostages still held in Gaza. Ariel, 5, and Kfir, who turned 2 earlier this month, are the only children left there, after a November 2023 deal that saw the release of more than 100 of the 251 people seized in the attack by Hamas bandidosturbans the previous month, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, on the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
At the time, Hamas said the children had been killed along with their mother. Israel said it was investigating that "cruel" claim, but did not confirm it, and the IDF has since said that it has no intelligence to confirm their status.
There have been no signs of life from the boys since the day of their abduction, when they and their mother, Shiri, became an early face of the violence. A video that emerged of Shiri carrying her children as she was taken away by the bandidosturbans quickly gained attention due to her visible distress, the children’s bright red hair, and Kfir’s young age — at 10 months old, the youngest Israeli kidnapped by Hamas.
After announcing their death in November 2023, Hamas released a video showing Yarden, their father, who had been told his family was dead. In February 2024, the IDF found more footage from surveillance cameras in Khan Younis of Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel’s abduction.
The government is now said to be demanding a clear answer on the matter, in order to provide it to their family, multiple outlets reported.
[IsraelTimes] Israelis applying for a tourist visa are being asked about the dates of their service, the locations of their bases, and whether they have ‘been involved in war crimes’
New Zealand’s government immigration authority has begun to require Israelis applying for a visa to report details of their military service as a condition for entry, and at least one person has been denied admission after doing so, The Times of Israel has learned.
Israelis of reserve service age who applied for tourist visas to New Zealand have been asked to report whether they had served in the Israel Defense Forces — as almost all Israeli citizens are required to do — and whether they are active reservists. Those who answered affirmatively were required to complete detailed questionnaires about their military service.
In the first questionnaire, visa applicants were asked about the dates of their military service, the location of their bases, the corps and units in which they served, the military camps where they were stationed, their rank, details of their roles, and their military ID number.
In the second questionnaire, they were asked:
“Have you been associated with any intelligence service or group, or law enforcement agency?”
“Have you been associated with any group or organization that has used or promoted violence or human rights abuses to further their aims?”
“Have you committed or been involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or human rights abuses?”
Those who can’t disclose details of their military service due to security concerns are not exempt from filling out the questionnaire; as a result, they are unable to complete it and obtain a visa.
At least one soldier who served in Gaza during the ongoing war against Hamas has been denied entry to New Zealand. He said that this was a direct result of his answers to the questionnaire, while noting that he said he had not been involved in war crimes in Gaza.
Australia has been operating a similar policy, and at least two Israelis have been denied entry as a result.
New Zealand’s Immigration Authority (INZ), reached for comment, did not deny the details of this report, but said that serving in the current war did not automatically disqualify Israelis from entering the country.
“INZ understands the difficult situation this crisis is causing for many and has great sympathy for those separated from their loved ones during this stressful time,” the authority told The Times of Israel, in response to a query.
“A visitor visa can be declined for a number of reasons, and it is difficult for us to comment on why a person’s application was declined without the details of their application. Immigration instructions do not prevent individuals who have served in this conflict from applying for or being granted a visitor visa,” the response said.
“Since the conflict between Israel and Hamas started, INZ has put in place processes to ensure consistency and priority allocation for any applications received for people living in these locations. Palestinian and Israeli nationals can apply for any visa category they meet the requirements for,” it said.
“We will continue to prioritize the processing of applications for people impacted by the conflict. However, all applicants must meet the relevant immigration requirements to be granted a visa. Exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis,” it added.
The authority’s response also noted the following statistics: “As of 14 January 2025, we have received 944 applications from Israeli nationals across both temporary and residence visa applications. Of those received, 809 have been approved, 37 declined, 69 [are] in progress and the remainder have been withdrawn.”
During the same period, the authority saw 259 applications from Palestinian passport holders, of which 177 were approved, 53 declined, 21 are in progress and the remainder have been withdrawn, it added.
The statement did not specify the start date for the period covered by these statistics.
An analysis of INZ statistical data indicates that the rejection rate for Israeli visa applications to New Zealand during the war has been approximately four percent. This is not unusually high compared to previous years or the rejection rates for citizens of other developed countries.
About a month ago, Australia’s Sky News revealed that Australia presents a similar questionnaire to Israelis applying for entry and has rejected applications from Israelis who served in Gaza and sought to visit a relative. Additionally, former justice minister Ayelet Shaked was denied entry to Australia in November 2024, reportedly because she might “incite discord.”
[Yahoo] Iran has ordered its proxy forces across the Middle East to exercise caution as the Islamic Theocratic Republic fears an existential threat following Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... ’s return to the White House, The Telegraph has learned.
Officials have told commanders of Iran-backed militias to avoid provocative actions that could escalate regional tensions.
Commanders have also been instructed to maintain defensive positions while avoiding any actions that could be interpreted as aggressive by US forces or regional allies.
"Forces and allies in the region have been instructed to act with caution as [the regime] feels an existential threat with Trump’s return," one senior Iranian official told The Telegraph from Tehran.
"In Iraq and Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , forces have been told not to target any American assets, and if they do, they are explicitly warned against using Iranian weapons," the official added.
"They have been told to keep defensive positions for a while and to avoid any actions that might provoke the Americans."
"The fall of Assad has intensified fears [in the regime]," the official said. "There are now fears they may not be able to hold onto the country after witnessing what happened to Assad, which no one here expected."
"A large-scale operation is underway to identify and arrest Israeli spies and infiltrators and there are concerns that they may have infiltrated high-ranking offices."
Don’t forget the spy squirrels, guys. And the herons! The spy herons are a key vector, donchaknow.
Iran’s vice president acknowledged successful Israeli infiltrations last week and blamed the impact of international sanctions for the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s vulnerability to Israel.
Mr Trump’s return was another major blow to Tehran. He has discussed bringing back his "maximum pressure" campaign and when asked about military strikes against Iran, he said: "Anything can happen."
"We’ve got to stop some wars, there are some stupid things going on," Mr Trump said on the day of his inauguration.
"Israel would’ve never been hit on Oct 7," he added. "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... was broke. Anyone that bought oil from Iran ... China passed, everybody passed."
The team Mr Trump has chosen for his second term, including his secretary of state, is expected to take tougher actions against Iran.
The Biden administration had also warned Mr Trump that Iran may pursue building a nuclear bomb after being weakened by conflicts in the Middle East.
Iran is much weaker domestically than eight years ago when Mr Trump first came into power, with its legitimacy at its lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution following the 2022 protests.
"There have been extensive discussions about Trump and the available options to counter any possible strike on Iran," the Iranian official said.
"The main topic of discussion has been how to avoid starting a war with him and how to prevent him from starting one with us.
"He has been making threats, and they are being taken seriously here, as they already know him," he added.
The official explained that talks about acquiring the S-400 air defence system from Russia have also intensified. Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, pushed for the defence system delivery to Iran during his meeting with Putin last week, The Telegraph understands.
A brilliant idea, though the Syrians couldn’t get anything useful out of their S- systems unless the Russian technicians were the ones running it. I think the conclusion was that Islam and air defenses just don’t mix well. Still, maybe it’s actual an Arab problem — or a Sunni one — and you Iranian Shiites won’t have the same negative effect on the machines.
Islamic Theocratic Republic officials have also softened their rhetoric about striking Israel in retaliation for their attacks in October on Iranian military sites since Mr Trump’s election victory.
A foreign ministry said this week that it hopes the new Trump administration adopts a "realistic" foreign policy "based on international law and respect for the interests and desires of the nations of the region, including the Iranian nation".
And who knows? Perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
However,
a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... senior Iranian officials have expressed objections to engaging in talks with the US. Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister, warned against talks with the Trump administration, arguing such negotiations could disadvantage Tehran.
"If calls for negotiations dominate us, we will lose," Khatib said this week, accusing the US of pressuring Iran under "imposed negotiations".
Yep.
said the US will likely intensify pressure through "attractive offers, enticements, and threats", amid expectations.
That does seem to be his style.
Iranian media remains split too. Reformist outlets suggest potential diplomatic openings, while hardline publications reject engagement.
The ultimate responsibility for deciding whether Iran will talk with the Trump administration or not rests with Khamenei.
Meanwhile,
...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase... ordinary Iranians grappling with 50 per cent inflation and mounting economic hardships express hope that Mr Trump would bring an end to the regime.
"People are struggling to afford basic necessities, with many unable to buy meat because it’s too expensive," one Tehran resident said.
"Many see Trump as a hope and believe he might rescue them from this situation — any alternative feels better than the current situation," he added.
Analysts say Khamenei faces four difficult years ahead that could reshape the region.
They believe the supreme leader must either lift his ban on talks with Washington or risk an all-out war with the US amid growing domestic and international pressure.
The Iranian rial plunged to a record low this week, with the US dollar surpassing 840,000 rials and one pound approaching 1 million rials, which is expected to drive up the prices of essential goods even further.
#1
There are major psychological differences between Iranians and Arabs (Iranians didn't spend thousands of years scavangering on the outskirts of civilization).
#4
Iran has ordered its proxy forces across the Middle East to exercise caution as the Islamic Theocratic Republic fears an existential threat following Donald Trump
[IsraelTimes] Knesset has barred operation of UN agency, which administers schools, medical clinics, other services for descendants of Palestinian refugees, over employees’ involvement in terror.
[Garowe] Security forces in Somalia's northeastern state of Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... initiated a crackdown against undocumented foreigners, most of them who are believed to be fighting for the IS-Somalia faction, whose presence in the Bari region has stirred insecurity concerns.
On Sunday, the forces captured eight fighters allied to ISIS in the state, with six of them believed to be imported muscle. For the last two weeks, Puntland forces have liberated strategic locations within the Bari region, as the operation gets into the final stretch.
In Bosaso, the capital of the Bari region, the number of detainees has reached 300, most of whom are foreigners, and investigations are underway. The security operation is ongoing in the city, with an active contribution from the public, who are reporting individuals they suspect.
The Ministry of Interior has issued a directive targeting undocumented foreigners, with illegal immigrants colonists banned from accessing the state. The IS-Somalia bully boyz are accused of destabilizing the northern state.
Among the entities targeted in the crackdown include telecommunications with all service providers cautioned against issuance of SIM cards to people without identification documents. Unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated, the ministry said.
The crackdown also targets drifters, who are now barred from occupying public spaces such as mosques, streets, and commercial centers. Also, foreigners running small businesses in Puntland have been put on notice, with those without proper registration asked to follow protocols.
A total of 15 bully boyz have been killed in Bari region with several drones also recovered in the processes. A Yemini national is among those killed last week after he was caught planting an Improvised Explosive Device, targeting Security forces.
Recently, the State Department published a report in which ISIS bully boyz in Somalia were termed as 'dangerous and well organized". The US warned that if actions are not taken, the group’s influence could escalate, further fuelling insecurity in northern Somalia.
Puntland is one of the safest states in Somalia, with minimal presence of terror groups. In southern regions, al-Shabaab ... the personification of Somali state failure... dominates in most of the states, with the government struggling to secure strategic towns, even with the help of foreign forces.
[Garowe] The Finnish government could initiate mass deportation of Somalia asylum seekers, it has emerged, in one of the actions that could lead to heated debates among members of the community and various human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. groups.
Last week, Meri Rantanen, the Finnish minister of interior, held sessions with Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre over anticipated deportations, but critics insist that the move is tied to the Finns Party's political agenda ahead of the April municipal and county elections.
Somalia's Interior Minister Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail also attended the meeting where security and readmission arrangements were discussed. Rantanen argues that her country is interested in establishing effective return mechanisms for Somalis denied residency in Finland.
"Finland appreciates the long-standing cooperation with Somalia. Establishing return arrangements is essential to the partnership," Rantanen stated. She also emphasized Somalia’s critical role in counter-terrorism efforts, recognizing the work of Somali security authorities in stabilizing the region.
In recent months, Finland stopped bilateral development aid to Somalia which was critical in recovery and state-building in the country. The Finnish government has linked future funding decisions to progress on deportation agreements.
However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package... critics argue this conditionality politicizes humanitarian aid, leveraging it to secure deportation commitments. UN special representative James Swan also attended the meeting along with EU officials, an indication that Finland wants to align deportation policies with the European framework.
The Finns Party, of which Rantanen is a member, has long advocated stricter immigration policies. Finance Minister Riikka Purra, the party’s chairperson, praised the trip as a step toward resolving issues of undocumented migrants colonists.
Others say the decisions are geared towards exploiting the Somali community for electoral purposes. There are about 200 undocumented Somalis in Finland, raising questions about the motive given that the number cannot tilt political equations.
A Somali asylum seeker in Finland, Ali Hassan, shared his concerns about potential deportation. After eight years in Finland and several rejected asylum applications, Hassan said the uncertainty has been overwhelming. "I’ve built a life here with my family. I fear returning to Somalia, where threats from groups like al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... could put us in danger," he said.
Somali authorities have yet to issue an official statement on the visit but have acknowledged their limited resources for reintegrating deportees. Somalia relies heavily on remittances from its diaspora, which contribute an estimated $1.3 billion annually to the economy.
[Garowe] The Somali government has hired a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm with ties to former U.S. President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... to prevent the potential withdrawal of American troops from Somalia.
In late November 2024, Somalia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Dahir Hassan Arab, signed a one-year, $600,000 contract with BGR Group, founded by prominent Republican figures, including former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. The firm’s team also includes Tom Locke, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI.
Trump pulled the U.S. military out of Somalia at the end of his term. His successor, 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.... , reversed the decision and sent troops back to the country in 2022.
The Somali government is now seeking continued military support from the U.S., which it believes is vital in its fight against bad boy groups operating within its borders. Somalia’s leaders hope BGR Group can help ensure this support continues.
BGR Group is known for its connections to Republican Party figures and its lobbying efforts for international clients seeking influence in Washington.
#4
^ That assumes that 'Somalia' is more than international borders drawn on a world map! It is educational to see a Tribal/Ethnic Map of 'Somalia': the NW third by Djibouti is composed of two Clans, the elbow is largely one clan and the rest is a dog's breakfast of clans that hate each other centered on Mogadishu. Splitting 'Somalia' into three states would be much more practical.
#5
Strangely enough. the Italians actually controlled it. Given how many governments the Italians have had since the end of WW2, they were probably use to the chaos of the place.
[IsraelTimes] Mosssd ...... chief David Barnea reportedly told families of Israeli hostages on Monday evening that the use of bulldozers to clear wreckage in the Gaza Strip could make it impossible to recover some slain captives’ bodies.
Speaking to the families, Barnea said, “It’s awful. It could cause more cases like Ron Arad,” referring to an Israeli Air Force officer who was captured in Lebanon in 1986 and, in the absence of intelligence about his condition or location, was declared dead in 2008.
“We have a responsibility to bring everyone home,” he added, according to a Channel 12 report Tuesday.
During the meeting, Barnea also reportedly told the families that the list of 33 hostages to be freed in the deal’s first stage was prepared after the end of the hostage-ceasefire deal in November 2023 — despite the fact that circumstances have certainly changed for many of the captives since then.
Those included fell into the “humanitarian” categories of women, children, female soldiers, the elderly, and the sick, the latter of whom was determined by a medical panel.
The Times of Israel is liveblogging today’s events here. No doubt the Jerusalem Post, Ynet, Israel National News and others are doing the same, but I stopped to post this just before rushing out of the house.
[IsraelTimes] Yehoud, 29, and Mozes, 80, forced to walk through mob with gunmen in lengthy, chaotic handover at which the 5 Thais also freed; furious Israel delays Palestinian prisoner releases
Eight hostages abducted during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel were released by Palestinian terror groups on Thursday under an ongoing ceasefire deal with Hamas, returning to Israel after 482 days in captivity in Gaza. Seven of them were freed in a long, chaotic process in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that prompted fury in Israel.
The three Israelis are IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80. The Thai nationals are Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakham, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak.
Yehoud, Mozes and the five Thais were released in an uncontrolled and dangerous handover early Thursday afternoon, outside the destroyed home of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, surrounded by hundreds of masked gunmen and large, seething crowds.
The two Israeli civilians were forced to walk through the crowds, with gunmen at their side, from the vehicles that delivered them and, later, to the Red Cross vehicles, in protracted, chaotic scenes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the chaotic handover was unacceptable, in a statement immediately after the release. “I view with great severity the shocking scenes during the release of our hostages,” said Netanyahu. “This is further proof of the unimaginable cruelty of the Hamas terrorist organization.”
Israel delayed the slated release of Palestinian prisoners in protest of the chaotic handover, with Netanyahu’s office saying it would not proceed “until the safe passage of our hostages can be guaranteed in the next releases.”
It later said it had received a guarantee from mediators that the scenes of chaos would not be repeated, and reports indicated that the Palestinian prisoner release would proceed in late afternoon.
Berger and the Thai hostages were held by the Hamas terror group, while Yehoud and Mozes were held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Berger, an Israel Defense Forces surveillance soldier, was abducted from the military’s Nahal Oz base, while Yehoud and Mozes were both taken from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Mozes is the first male Israeli hostage to be freed in the current deal, which provides for 33 hostages to be released in exchange for up to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Living hostages are being released first. Eight of the 33 are understood by Israel to be dead.
The Thai hostages were among 31 foreign nationals kidnapped in the Hamas attack who were working in Israel, many of them as farmhands in Israel’s agricultural heartland near the Gaza border, reportedly including some on Nir Oz.
AGAM BERGER’S RELEASE
Previously, seven hostages — four soldiers and three civilians, all women — were released in two batches since the accord with Hamas came into effect last Sunday. Berger was kidnapped along with the four other soldiers and held together with them by Hamas until they were released on Saturday.
She was released on Thursday morning in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, at a ceremony similar to the one her comrades had to endure five days ago, surrounded by masked Hamas gunmen.
She too was dressed in olive garb meant to look like an IDF uniform and given a Hamas “gift bag” and framed certificate. She waved to the crowd of Gazans gathered in front of the stage before being led by armed men to the Red Cross representatives.
Prior to her release, Red Cross representatives were seen on the stage signing documents.
The Red Cross transported the freed hostage soldier to IDF and Shin Bet forces inside Gaza, after which she was escorted out of the Strip to a military facility near the border to reunite with her parents and undergo initial assessments by doctors and mental health officers.
She emerged from a Red Cross vehicle at the IDF facility no longer wearing the fake military uniform she was forced by Hamas to don for the handover. Video released by the military showed her embracing an IDF medical officer before getting into another vehicle to exit the Strip.
The IDF also released images of Berger reuniting with her parents, Shlomi and Merav, at the military facility. From there, she was helicoptered along with her parents to the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva.
Shortly after her release, Berger’s family released a statement expressing gratitude to security forces and the public.
“We want to thank the security forces and all the people of Israel for their support and prayers. Now Agam and our family can begin the healing process,” the family said in a statement after the IDF announced that Berger had been reunited with her family.
Berger, from central Israel’s Holon, had arrived at the Nahal Oz base just two days before the October 7 onslaught. She only had time that morning to call her father, Shlomi, and tell him she was under fire.
She was identified later that day in a Hamas Telegram video, in which she was seen being led to a car, still dressed in her pajamas.
Berger is one of seven female soldiers who were abducted from the base.
One of the abducted surveillance soldiers, Ori Megidish, was later rescued alive, and the body of a second one, Noa Marciano, was recovered after she was murdered in captivity.
FORMER HOSTAGE SOLDIERS CELEBRATE THEIR FRIEND’S RELEASE
The other four soldiers — Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag — have requested to stay in the hospital for a few more days to be with Berger as she begins her recovery.
The four reportedly told friends and relatives that it was very hard to leave Berger behind in captivity and at least one of them asked to be allowed to remain with Berger rather than be released.
The young women watched on Thursday morning as their friend and comrade was released from Hamas captivity and reunited with her shortly after she arrived at Rabin Medical Center.
Dr. Lena Koren Feldman, director of Rabin Medical Center, said that when the four former hostages saw Berger being released, “there were screams of joy and great excitement.”
“Her return marks an essential step in their collective healing,” Feldman said.
At Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostages Square, hundreds of people gathered ahead of the releases on Thursday morning, cheering as they watched live footage of Berger’s release on a big screen.
Many in the crowd wore braids in their hair as a tribute to Berger, who braided the hair of fellow female hostages, including children released during a weeklong truce with Hamas in November 2023.
Family members and friends also gathered at Berger’s home in Holon to celebrate her return to Israel, cheering, rejoicing and singing as images showed her being released by Hamas.
Many of the happy family members waved Israeli flags, and danced with a Torah scroll brought into the home.
“This is the happiest moment of my life,” one of the relatives told Channel 12 news. “Now we can breathe again.”
“She is a hero,” said another, as images show her being paraded on the stage in Jabalia. “She is on her feet walking.”
SEVEN RELEASED AT CHAOTIC HANDOVER IN KHAN YOUNIS
Yehoud, Mozes and the five Thai nationals arrived in a large convoy that moved slowly through the crowds in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, with dozens of armed and masked gunmen riding on the back of the trucks. Other vehicles bore heavy machine guns. Many waved Hamas and Islamic Jihad flags in the air.
They were led through a raucous crowd of surging Palestinians holding cameras to film the spectacle, surrounded by masked gunmen, and eventually transferred to the Red Cross.
Netanyahu said he “demands the negotiators ensure that such horrific scenes do not occur again, and to guarantee the safety of our hostages.”
“Whoever dares to harm our hostages — will pay.”
Channel 12 news reported that Israel was in contact with the hostage-ceasefire deal mediators during the tense handover to complain about the terrifying and inhumane conditions to which the abductees were being subjected.
The seven were escorted across the border out of Gaza by Israeli special forces, after being handed over to them by the Red Cross. Like Berger, they were to undergo initial checkups at an IDF facility near the border.
Yehoud and Mozes were to meet with their family members at the IDF facility, while the five Thai nationals were to meet Thai officials.
Channel 12 reported that Mozes was being taken to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital.
Earlier on Thursday morning, PIJ issued a propaganda video showing Yehoud and Mozes, both kidnapped from Nir Oz on October 7, embracing ahead of their release. It was unclear when exactly the video was filmed.
Al Jazeera reported that the reunion was the first time Yehoud saw a fellow hostage since she was kidnapped over 15 months ago.
Mozes’s partner, Efrat Katz, was killed during the October 7 onslaught, apparently by IDF fire. Her daughter Doron Katz-Asher was kidnapped along with her granddaughters Raz, then aged 5, and Aviv, then 2. The surviving three were released in a hostage deal in November 2023.
On Wednesday, the Mozes family said it had “received with great excitement the wonderful news of our beloved Gadi’s return.”
Yehoud was kidnapped from Nir Oz along with her partner Ariel Cunio, who is still held hostage in Gaza. She grew up on the Gaza-adjacent kibbutz, where her family has been living for three generations.
She was initially supposed to be released in last weekend’s exchange, as she is a civilian, but Hamas instead released the four surveillance soldiers.
Her fate was briefly a major sticking point in the deal’s implementation, with Israel blocking the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza on Sunday. Under the ceasefire and hostage release deal, the terror group was required to prioritize the release of civilian women.
The extra batch of hostages released Thursday — in addition to three others who are set to go free on Saturday — was added to the schedule after a dispute over Hamas’s failure to release Yehoud in the previous group was resolved early Monday.
But Hamas accused Israel on Wednesday of jeopardizing the deal by holding up aid deliveries, an allegation Israel promptly dismissed as “fake news.”
The truce deal has allowed truckloads of aid into Gaza, where the war has created a long-running humanitarian crisis.
COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, called this “totally fake news.”
Between Sunday and Wednesday afternoon, “3,000 trucks entered Gaza,” a spokesman said. “The agreement says it should be 4,200 in seven days.”
As the full text of the agreement — mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States — has not been made public, the terms could not be verified.
There has been no official statement on how Thursday’s releases, which were not on the original schedule, will affect the timetable of future releases. Saturday’s scheduled release of three more hostages remains unchanged.
FIVE THAI HOSTAGES RELEASED OUTSIDE OF TRUCE DEAL
A special area was being set up at the hospital in central Israel to receive the freed Thai hostages, and Hebrew media reported that Thai restaurants in Tel Aviv were preparing to provide them with familiar food upon their return.
Tens of thousands of laborers from Southeast Asia were working in Israel when the Hamas attack unfolded. Thai nationals were by far the largest group and the most heavily affected.
During the November 2023 ceasefire-hostage deal, 24 Thai hostages were released.
The hostages were among 251 Israelis and foreigners kidnapped on October 7, 2023, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, amid rampant acts of brutality and overt targeting of civilians.
In exchange for the three Israeli hostages freed on Thursday, Israel will free 110 Palestinian security prisoners — 30 for each civilian, and 50 for Berger including 30 terrorists serving life sentences. The 30 inmates released in exchange for Mozes include three who are serving life sentences.
A total of 33 so-called “humanitarian hostages” are set to be released from Gaza in the initial 42-day phase of the deal with Hamas, with fighting stopped in the Strip.
As those hostages — women, children, elderly people, and sick people — are gradually released, Israel is to release some 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners, including more than a hundred serving life sentences for deadly terror attacks.
The three-phase deal’s later stages are subject to negotiations with the stated goal of reaching a “sustainable calm” in the enclave, alongside the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, the release of more Palestinian security prisoners, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
Hamas has shown that it is willing and able to impose its will on Gazans ruthlessly and using deadly force.
The "chaotic scenes", during a transaction of vital importance, unfolded precisely how Hamas (and the state sponsors behind Hamas) wanted them to unfold.
The axis Iran-Qatar-Russia is testing the Trump administration.
[eugyppius: a plague chronicle] I don’t have the energy to write you a proper post, mainly because I spent all day watching debate in the German Bundestag. I cannot, however, let this moment pass in silence:
Just over an hour ago, an anti-migration resolution proposed by the centre-right CDU passed the Bundestag with the support of Alternative fur Deutschland. The vote was 348 in favour and 345 against, with 10 abstentions.
The cordon sanitaire — on life support since Sunday — came down for the very first time. It was an epochal moment. Although the resolution itself is a non-binding measure, the centre-right CDU and CSU have achieved a parliamentary outcome with AfD votes, and that has never happened before. As Green Party Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck said in his speech today, "If you vote with the AfD on this very important issue, on what issue won’t you vote with the AfD?" That is the crux of the matter. This vote suggests that the Influx Limitation Act, up for a vote on Friday, will also pass the Bundestag (if not the Bundesrat), once again with a majority made by the AfD. If we are lucky the cordon sanitaire will come down not once, but twice in the same week.
After today’s vote, the left side of parliament broke out in jeering and booing; SPD representatives became particularly hysterical after their leader, Rolf Mutzenich, lamented that the Union had "abandoned the political middle." That is good. The left have become just a little less powerful, and the events set in motion this afternoon threaten to marginalise them ever further in the years to come.
There will of course be no coalition between the CDU and the populist opposition after this election. The present CDU leadership, including their Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz, are committed enemies of the AfD, however happy they may be to cast themselves as anti-migration hardliners. It is even possible that the CDU throw their weight behind schemes to ban the AfD after the elections in an effort to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
[Breitbart] Swedish and Latvian authorities are investigating alleged sabotage in the Baltic which the Bulgarian operator insists was a simple accident during heavy weather.
A data cable carrying internet traffic between Latvia and Sweden was put out of action on Sunday evening, just the latest incidence of alleged sabotage against European interests since Russia began its invasion re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022. NATO and the European Union say such attacks are part of a ‘Hybrid’ war against the West so called because the strikes often defy definite proof of intent, or even culprit.
A Swedish warship and coastguards were dispatched after the cable break was detected and troops boarded a Bulgarian-operated, Maltese-flagged bulk carrier the VEZHEN, which was on passage carrying fertiliser from Russia to South America. The ship is presently impounded in Swedish waters.
The real ownership of the massive ships that carry world trade is often obscure, and this ship is no different. While early reports stated the VEZHEN is Bulgarian-owned, Finnish media now asserts it is merely operated by Bulgaria, and is actually Chinese-owned.
In common with other such claimed hybrid warfare attacks in the Baltic in recent months it is asserted the VEZHEN dragged its anchor on the sea bed, snagging the internet cable and snapping it. The Latvian cable operator reported while it would slow down internet traffic between the two countries, there were redundancies in place and no outages had been reported.
The Bulgarian shipping company that owns the impounded ship Navibulgar insists the damage was an innocent accident caused by a storm blowing through the Baltic, and that it was not a “malicious act”. The Associated Press reports their spokesman said: “I hope that the investigators will quickly establish that this is not a matter of any intentional action, but a technical incident due to bad weather, and that the ship will be released”.
Newspaper Aftonbladet cites new images of VEZHEN captured by a Swedish journalist which show one of the ship’s giant anchors is missing one of its horns, which appears to have been snapped clean off, suggesting it may indeed have been dragged on the sea bed some distance.
Breitbart London has reported at length on the sudden rash of damage to undersea cables and pipelines in the three years of Russia’s war against Ukraine, from the bombing of the Nord Stream pipes in the first days of the conflict to the anchor-draggers of the past year. NATO has stood up a new task force in the Baltic to monitor sabotage and to discourage attacks after a Russian-linked ship dragged its anchor 60 miles through the area on Christmas Day, damaging cables as it went.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] An anti-Islam activist who sparked outrage across Muslim countries for burning the Koran has been shot dead in Sweden during a livestream on TikTok. Salwan Momika, 38, was ruthlessly gunned down in an apartment in the city of Sodertalje on Wednesday night.
Swedish media reported that Momika was streaming live on TikTok at the time he was shot. A video seen by MailOnline showed police picking up a phone and ending a livestream that appeared to be from Momika's TikTok account.
The Iraqi refugee was notorious for staging public demonstrations where he burnt and destroyed the Islamic holy book - a stunt that enraged Muslims around the world.
A Stockholm court was due to rule on Thursday whether Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protest in 2023, and his co-protester Salwan Najem, were guilty of inciting ethnic hatred. According to the charge sheet, the duo had desecrated and burned the Koran and had also made derogatory remarks about Muslims.
It postponed the ruling to February 3, saying that 'because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed'.
Najem tweeted this morning: 'I'm next'.
Police said they rushed to the scene, where they found Momika suffering from gun wounds. He was rushed to hospital and was later confirmed dead.
Tabloid Aftonbladet reported that the shooter was able to enter the building through the roof.
Five people have been arrested in connection to Momika's death, police said on their website. They did not say if the shooter was among those detained.
Momika first sparked global anger in June 2023 when he set a Koran on fire and stomped on the holy book outside Stockholm's main mosque, with several Muslim countries condemning Sweden for allowing the Iraqi man to perform the act during the Eid al-Adha holiday and the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Burning the Koran is seen by Muslims as a blasphemous act because they consider it the literal word of God.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE joined in the chorus of condemnation, with the US also calling the protest 'disrespectful and hurtful'.
Dozens of Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in response to Momika's stunt, with videos showing an angry mob breaking through an iron gate and climbing on top of the compound.
The demonstrators also distributed leaflets that carried messages in Arabic and English that said: 'Our constitution is the Koran. Our leader is Al-Sadr'.
'Yes, yes to the Koran,' was also scrawled on the gate leading to the embassy, according to the photographer.
Momika later pulled a similar stunt, in which he burned the Koran outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm.
The activist received a string of death threats as a result.
for muslim mums who have considered leaving when the ummah ain't enuf
Transitioning Muslims, rejoice!
You're stunning and brave, so give voice
To your need to be free
From Mohammedan Me,
And remember: "My Book and my Choice!"
Private property. ["A Koran of their own!" "To love as they please!"] Reproductive freedom. Love marriage,,, for adults, even. Shirkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your isnads!
"Mohammedans -- may I be blunt? --
Are My whole that is not in the front,
So dark even China
At midnight is finer,
So stupid..." [sets fire to their stunt]
#8
Be nervous about that last one if I weren't already dead. ;)
Anyway, having read the article... alternate headline:
Sabrina "the cunning 'STUNT'" Penty, Mail news hound who's just about twenty,
Caught scratching the itch,
That Mohammedan witch,
Of her grooming gang Paks, but got PLENTY!
Seriously, unbribed scribe? "Stunt" times three? What, then, shall we call the hidebound institutionalized solicitation of premeditated jabbery and stabbery over many centuries by a billion or two mischievous Mohammedans?
[FoxNews] Authorities seized a cache of 34 illegal guns allegedly belonging to the suspected gang
Ten alleged members and associates of the bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) have been indicted in a massive arms and drugs-running operation spanning at least six states and prosecutors said they had plans to expand on an international level to Colombia.
In New York City on Wednesday, police said that one of the accused violent migrant gangbangers broke an NYPD officer’s arm after he got into a scuffle during his arrest.
Authorities seized a cache of 34 illegal guns, including AR-15 assault rifles and a Glock 9mm with a trigger modification making it an automatic, tied to the suspects, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said.
Katz said the TDA gang members were also peddling deadly drugs including pink cocaine, a designer street drug that includes a mixture of ketamine, MDMA and ecstasy.
All ten are migrants – including two women – are from Venezuela and entered the country illegally via the southern border, police said.
This subset of the gang was spearheaded by two Venezuelan nationals who came to New York City two years ago and established a gun-running crew that was also comprised of other foreign nationals.
Enyerbert Blanco, 24, the alleged ringleader, has been in custody in Florida since October after being charged in connection with a human trafficking case involving a 15-year-old girl, Katz said.
"We allege that as members and associates, they trafficked weapons and made money in furtherance of TdA’s agenda and as they seek to establish themselves in New York City, we are individually dismantling them," Katz said.
Katz said the investigation, dubbed Operation Train Derail, began more than a year ago and was carried out by her office and the NYPD.
Five of the 10 are charged with two counts of criminal sale of a firearm and face up to 25 years in jail if they are convicted.
The remainder are variously indicted on firearm possession charges and other crimes. They face a maximum of 15 years in prison. All ten of them are charged with conspiracy to possess and sell illegal firearms in New York City.
Four are now in custody in New York City, while four others are behind bars outside the state, including two in Texas and two in Florida. The others are still on the loose. Their illicit operation also spanned Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Colorado, Katz said.
Katz didn’t say whether ICE would be deporting the suspects, insisting she was treating the operation as a gun-running case.
[Washington Examiner] 9 p.m. EST - Dozens of people are feared dead after a passenger plane traveling from Kansas collided with a military helicopter near Reagan Airport in Arlington, Virginia, and plunged into the Potomac River.
American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a helicopter, which the Federal Aviation Administration revealed was a military Black Hawk Sikorsky H-60. A webcam video from the Kennedy Center captured the incident.
WEBCAM AT THE KENNEDY CENTER CAUGHT AN EXPLOSION MID-AIR ACROSS THE POTOMAC. HTTPS://T.CO/V75SXITPH6 PIC.TWITTER.COM/HINYDHBYS5
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) January 30, 2025
"I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport. May God Bless their souls," President Donald Trump said in a statement. "Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arrive."
We can only imagine how various the Political Special Interest Groups will try to play this sad disaster for the benefit of their various self-serving agendas.
#6
Facts in hand: AA Bombadier regional jet, 60 aboard + 4 crew (coming back from ice skating event in Wichita) all presumed lost
H-60 Sikorsky Blackhawk on training flight, 3 aboard. all presumed lost
Landing path of the the airliner takes it over Ft Belvior, then the Potomac
All went down in the river, water is 36 degrees
There is dashcam video of the collision from someone coming in the gat at Ft Belvior
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1884812906333622495
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2025 8:49
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#7
one site showed the paths of the aircraft - looks like they turned into each other. I have to admit I question why the helo didn't/couldn't avoid the airliner. Also unworthy of me but I'd be interested to learn the helo pilot/copilot names.
#8
Libs of TikTok
@libsoftiktok
·
4h
U.S. figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas just a few days ago.
Team USA figure skaters and coaches were reportedly on the flight from Kansas to D.C. which crashed
#15
Admittedly, I don't know much about aviation. But after watching Anguper's video at #1, I just have to ask: Can't those helicopter pilots see where they're going?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/30/2025 13:08
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#16
Were the helicopter pilot's actions deliberate? The question must be asked.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/30/2025 13:10
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#17
Night Vision Goggles (NVG's) limit visibility in build-up areas where interference from numerous ground lites are present.
#18
Just my $0.02, FWIW: I think the Blackhawk pilot saw the plane ahead and thought that was the plane he was supposed to avoid/follow. Tragic, but human error
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2025 13:20
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#19
#17 and #18, again, I don't know but, if so, why train with such technology in the flight path of a busy commercial airport?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/30/2025 13:23
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#20
/\ Very likely indeed. Also very likely that the tower's instruction were NOT adequate. (blinding flash of the tragically obvious)
[CBSNEWS] A 911 call led Coral Gables police to intercept two vans transporting 26 migrants colonists Tuesday morning in what authorities believe is the second human smuggling operation within city limits in less than two weeks.
Two alleged smugglers, along with 26 Chinese migrants colonists — nine women and 17 men — were taken into custody, Coral Gables Police Chief Edward James Hudak Jr. said in a presser.
"We believe they came by boat, they came through a secluded area in the southern end of Coral Gables," Hudak Jr. said. "They're coming up through a canal area that leads to a private marina."
The alleged smugglers were of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent and were carrying a firearm, police said.
According to Coral Gables Police, the incident took place at approximately 8:03 a.m. near Old Cutler Road and SW 120th St., when authorities received a 911 call about two white vans possibly transporting migrants colonists.
The 26 Chinese migrants colonists were allegedly discovered while traveling in the vans, with each vehicle carrying 13 migrants colonists, police said. The migrants colonists were later loaded onto county trolleys by federal agents, aerial images showed.
Hudak Jr. said they believe this was a smuggling operation and not a human trafficking case.
"There was documentation, there was currency, this is not something where people were against their will," Hudak Jr. said. "There was also evidence impounded, including a firearm that is being processed and will be turned over to HSI. We are very concerned that a firearm was recovered because, in the end, we are concerned about our officers' safety and the public's safety."
This is a major, yet forgotten region of WWII between the Soviet Union and Germany.
[Regnum] Norway intends to strengthen its military presence in the Finnmark region, which borders Russia, the country's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said on January 29.
"Now NATO's line is to protect every inch of territory. After that we need to strengthen our presence in Finnmark, so we are now creating a brigade," he told the VG newspaper.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister also answered a journalist's question about revising the ban on military activity near the borders with Russia. He noted that Oslo intends to consider the relevant changes "within the framework of the principles of reassurance and deterrence."
Earlier, Newsweek reported that a landing operations center had been created in Norway to strengthen counteraction to Russia in the Arctic. The center is located in the Norwegian municipality of Sørreise. Its specialists will train military personnel from the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, the authors of the article specified.
The Russian side has previously expressed concern about the build-up of NATO forces in Europe. The Kremlin has previously noted that Moscow does not threaten anyone, but will not ignore actions that pose a potential threat to its interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia has no reason to fight with the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Rather mess with USA than Russia? Time for US to leave NATO?
[ZeroHedge] In a very unexpected development Denmark is now working directly with Russia's Gazprom to do environmental mitigation on the damaged Nord Stream pipelines, in the wake of the multiple underwater blasts that took them offline on September 26, 2022 - leading to years of accusations against Moscow and a Russia-West tit-for-tat.
Denmark's energy agency has granted Nord Stream 2 AG (which is under Gazprom) permission to engage in preservation work on Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea. The agency described that there remain serious safety risks after the natural gas pipeline was filled with seawater and the remnants of natural gas.
"The work aims to preserve the damaged pipeline by installing customized plugs at each of the open pipe ends to prevent further gas blow-out and the introduction of oxygenated seawater," Denmark's energy agency said.
The $11 billion pipeline project to pump Russian gas to Germany was hugely contentious for years, with Washington opposing it, before it was blown up in a 'mysterious' sabotage operation.
The Western mainstream media has since backed off its repeat accusations that Moscow must have blown up its own vital pipeline, in light of revelations and a recent consensus that it was either a team of Ukrainian specialists on a 'rogue' yacht or else a major CIA op with help from the US Navy.
While Scandinavian countries were once leading the accusations and investigations against Moscow related to the sabotage, suddenly Denmark appears to be working with 'pariah' Russia. All of this is happening as Washington still has far-reaching sanctions on Russia as well as the NS2 Russian operator, Gazprom's Nord Stream 2 AG.
"The damaged line of NS2 is estimated to still contain approximately 9-10 million cubic meters of natural gas, while the intact line remains filled with gas, the Danish agency said," Reuters notes. "The United States in December issued further sanctions on the operator and other Russian entities saying it considers Nord Stream 2 a Russian geopolitical project and opposes efforts to revive it," the report adds.
This has raised the crucial question of whether the Russian entity's supposed environmental mitigation efforts are but cover to eventually revive the controversial project.
This brings up other questions of context and timing. After all, the Danish government is currently locked in a very public battle and war of words with the new Trump administration over Greenland's sovereignty. Is the tiny NATO country of Denmark in search of any and all possible leverage?
[Breitbart] President Donald Trump’s new homeland security chief, Kristi Noem, has canceled the Democrats’ last-minute amnesty extension to 600,000 economic migrants from Venezuela, according to the New York Times.
The faster return of the Venezuelans to their home country will supercharge pressure for domestic political and economic reform, and it will cut off the migrants’ remittances that help the country’s Cuban-backed dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
The amnesty shift also suggests that Trump plans a pro-freedom foreign policy that can reinvigorate poor countries and boost beneficial U.S. exports to those countries.
In 2021 and 2023, President Joe Biden’s pro-migration czar, Alejandro Mayorkas, granted “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) to two groups of 600,000 Venezuelans who had moved illegally into the United States after 2018.
The status for the 2023 population will formally expire in April 2025. The status for the 2021 population will expire in September 2025. The migrants will lose their work permits and can be repatriated when their status expires.
But on January 10, the Cuban-born Mayorkas announced he would extend the status by 18 months, starting January 17.
The extension would have continued the Venezuelan TPS amnesty until late 2026. That schedule would have forced Trump’s deputies to extend or cancel the TPS status in the run-up to the November 2026 midterm election.
The New York Times reported:
Ms. Noem’s decision finds fault with the move by Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary under Mr. Biden, to extend the protections for Venezuelans in the final month of Mr. Biden’s term. The agency generally must decide at regular intervals whether the protections should be extended before they expire. The notice argued that Mr. Mayorkas made his move too early and said the extension should not remain in effect “given the exceedingly brief period” since it was issued on Jan. 17.
A Homeland Security Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, argued that the last-minute extension by the Biden administration appeared to be a way to tie the hands of Trump officials.
The renewable TPS grants 18-month work permits and legal protections to favored nationalities.
Mayorkas used the program to help many groups of migrants to anchor themselves in U.S. society. For example, Mayorkas granted the TPS to roughly 300,000 Haitian migrants. Many also took jobs and housing in Springfield, Ohio, inflicting massive pocketbook penalties on ordinary Americans.
Mayorkas’ welcome for the Haitian migrants also accelerated the political and security crash in their homeland.
Breitbart News reported on December 11:
The latest Congressional Research Service report finds that more than one million foreign nationals remain in the U.S. thanks to TPS. In addition, nationals from Hong Kong, Palestine, Lebanon, and Liberia remain in the U.S. through Deferred Enforced Departure (DED).When Biden took office in late January 2021, fewer than 320,000 migrants were in the U.S. as a result of securing TPS.
Today, 17 countries have TPS designations: Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.
[Breitbart] A report from ABC7 in 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... reported that a magistrate judge ordered the release of a Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south... n man who was arrested in a targeted enforcement operation over the weekend.
Over the weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers, along with other federal agencies, carried out a targeted enforcement operation, Breitbart News reported. The actions were overseen by brass hats of the Trump administration, including Border Czar Tom Homan.
According to the report from ABC7, law enforcement officials placed Edward Martinez-Cermeno, 24, into custody on Sunday for illegally entering the United States near Eagle Pass, Texas in 2023.
The article states that Martinez-Cermeno, a Venezuelan national, made his way to Chicago and lived with his girlfriend’s parents.
Martinez-Cermeno appeared before a judge in Chicago on Tuesday. The article does not identify the court or judge who heard the matter. Breitbart Texas contacted ICE for additional information about the case and the court.
The judge reportedly ordered ICE to release the Venezuelan man from custody, saying that immigration officials did not have the "legal paperwork necessary for detaining and deporting him."
Martinez-Cermeno has a pending criminal charge after Chicago police arrested him in January 2024 for felony retail theft, ABC7 reported. A court issued an arrest warrant for the man after he failed to appear for a court hearing.
The ABC7 report explains that this case was not mentioned during the magistrate hearing. The judge reportedly only addressed the federal charge of "improper entry by an alien."
Federal prosecutors told the judge that ICE officers filed an immigration detainer against the defendant. The prosecutor told the judge that ICE would likely take Martinez-Cermeno into custody if he were released.
The judge allegedly responded, saying this would be "legally unacceptable," explaining that ICE did not have a "proper judicial warrant" to detain him. The judge said the detainer is only a "civil request."
With an impeachment and a US Senate trial along the way, this outcome is very unlikely.
[Regnum] According to American laws, an assassination attempt on the Russian president could result in the accused being executed in the electric chair, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday, January 29.
At a plenary session of the lower house of parliament, he commented on statements by journalist Tucker Carlson about the possible participation of former US President Joseph Biden and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in discussing the assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin.
"This is a crime. Let them prove that this is a country of democracy. Let Biden go to the electric chair with Blinken, then the whole world will see - this is democracy. And if they keep silent, drag it out, well then don't open your mouth and don't teach anyone," Volodin said.
He also responded that such information should be taken seriously and given an immediate and firm response. OK
As reported by the Regnum news agency, Carlson had previously spoken about the US administration's attempts to kill the Russian president and called these attempts "madness." He placed special responsibility on Blinken, who, according to Carlson, effectively ran the US state in the last months of Biden's rule and did everything to speed up the start of a war between Russia and the US.
Carlson did not provide evidence of the US administration's intentions to kill the Russian president, and it is better not to trust unsubstantiated information, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists. At the same time, he noted that the special services are constantly taking all necessary measures to ensure public safety and the safety of persons under state protection, and first and foremost the president.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] Perhaps no missile strike has caused Ukraine as much damage as Donald Trump's decision to suspend funding for all USAID projects due to the need to "align these programs with his foreign policy goals."
The freeze on US foreign aid programs concerns, of course, not only Ukraine, but it was there that the news from overseas caused real panic and a state close to severe depression. After all, it was this country that was one of the largest "testing grounds" for the activities of US grant programs that distributed money for a wide variety of needs.
Since the beginning of 2022 alone, according to the official website of the US Agency for International Development, it has provided Ukraine with $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and more than $30 billion in direct budget support.
"With the closure of the USAID Ukraine program, we will lose support for schools, universities, hospitals, frontline towns with humanitarian problems. I won't even mention the entire layer of cultural content, free media and anti-corruption editorial boards. They all moved the country forward. Now they are under threat," journalist Yanina Sokolova * wrings her hands.
However, she is, of course, not worried about schools, but about the fact that now there is no one left to engage in “development of democracy and freedom of speech,” which for many years was the main task of grantors. As the director of the Institute of Mass Information (one of the champions of “freedom of speech”) Oksana Romanyuk stated, “almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived thanks to grants.” That is, they were controlled by the West through a financial collar and worked within the framework of the prescribed agenda.
Obviously, it is worth immediately recalling that it was precisely these media that played a leading role first in destabilizing the political situation during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, full of endless street protests. It was then that “Ukrainska Pravda” arose from the dollar mass, whose first editor-in-chief Georgiy Gongadze was allegedly killed by order of the authorities, and his severed head was never found, thus the “Ukraine without Kuchma” campaign appeared, and eventually the “orange revolution”.
The coming to power of the pro-American Viktor Yushchenko became a golden time for grant-eaters, who effectively began to dictate the agenda on any issue. At the same time, hundreds of programs were launched to shape public opinion in the direction needed by the United States, as well as by global liberal globalism.
An interesting feature of the creation of the "net" was the opening of regional media, which kept local elites in suspense, as they could do nothing with these angry bees - there was no one to put pressure on, and it was scary. For example, in Donetsk, the publication "Ostrov" constantly sucked the blood of "Yanukovych's team", which was headed by long-time correspondent of Radio Liberty Sergei Garmash (who was always embarrassed by his real name Peteshov). Subsequently, he was even included in the Trilateral Contact Group at the Minsk talks - as a person tested in the struggle.
It is not at all surprising that when the hour struck, all the Donetsk “grant eaters” unanimously supported the Maidan and the civil war that followed, covered up by the name “Anti-terrorist operation”.
After all, grants were received not only by the media, but also by public organizations fighting corruption, developing democracy and civil society at the local level, various cultural and educational projects, etc. As a rule, all of them, one way or another, worked within the framework of “patriotic” ideas – to denigrate the Soviet past, to prove the uselessness of any ties with Russia, to promote the “Ukrainian idea,” the language, “European values” – in general, the whole standard set of a “freedom fighter.”
There were even guys in Kyiv on a grant from the Soros Foundation who fought against nuclear energy, promoting the “green agenda”, with quite understandable vested interests behind them.
And now UP informs readers that "access to materials on Ukrainska Pravda may soon become paid. But we believe that quality content should be available to everyone, so we will not introduce restrictions until the very end. Support us so that we can continue working without restrictions."
Among the same sufferers are the “Hromadske Television” that grew up on the support of the second Maidan in 2014, and the same radio, “Detector Media”, which systematically engaged in the persecution of dissidents, “Slidstvo Info”, the “Ukraїner” project, which deliberately sows hatred under the guise of cultural research, the “anti-corruptionists” from Bihus info. The latter are even trying to challenge Ukrainian society, offering to find out whether it really needs the work of these honest and incorruptible guys who expose the sores of corruption.
They have three months left to wait, after which, perhaps, not all of them will survive. Therefore, on January 27-28, almost all Ukrainian grant-recipient media published similar appeals to their readers asking them to buy a paid subscription, since the free ride is over. Which, from the point of view of the tasks of influencing Ukrainian society, at first glance, does not seem very logical.
However, if you look at what 112 active projects worth $7 billion through USAID are doing, broken down by year, Trump's decision looks much more logical.
The Zelensky family has always been one of the largest recipients of USAID grants.
Here is the first striking example: $297 million for communications for three years - a solid sum, more than the budget of the first Avatar film. However, this money is spent on all sorts of nonsense, such as supporting the creation of a talk show on the YouTube platform with an almost indecent name, where two tongue-tied girls with speech defects have "candid conversations." Or the promotion of the musical group TVORCHI, which has created one musical composition in all this time, but travels all over the country on "charity tours."
Grants were given for the creation of some murals, the development of electronic music, the identification of “fakes of Russian propaganda,” the filming of a reality show “about the restoration of cultural spaces in frontline settlements and recently liberated areas,” some incomprehensible “veteran programs.” Even for a documentary with the participation of “star chefs” exploring the culinary traditions of Ukraine — how grandmothers in Volyn villages bake cabbage on firewood.
Or here: the global development and education organization IREX oversees the project “National Identity of Ukraine through Youth,” designed until 2027 and aimed at “forming in young people a sense of personal responsibility for the democratic European future of Ukraine by further mobilizing youth leadership around the value concept of Ukrainian identity.”
In short, it's pure money laundering.
People's Deputy from "Servants of the People" Maryan Zablotsky is indignant that once 100 thousand dollars were spent on developing and introducing one paragraph into a bill regulating the agricultural sector. And there are tons of such projects.
"Problem number one: almost all of them boil down to endless round tables and conferences, and therefore are talentless and meaningless. Problem number two, the main one: most of these funds remain in the US itself as net profit of private companies implementing these grants," he writes on his social network page, warmly welcoming the decision of the new US State Department head Mark Rubio and hinting at friendship with him.
In that quote, he was specifically referring to Chemonics International Inc., a major Washington-based consulting firm that oversees projects to improve the “sustainability of Ukrainian democracy,” support decentralization, and strengthen the justice system. Some of these were planned through 2026.
But at the same time, the MP politically correctly avoids such funny nuances that the family of Volodymyr Zelensky has long and tightly sucked from the American budget. For example, USAID gave money to the first lady's project "All-Ukrainian mental health program on the initiative of Olena Zelenskaya" and all her humanitarian initiatives in schools. But, more importantly, the American agency financed the development and implementation of the "Diia" application in 2020 through the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, which is now used by 20 million people.
On the one hand, it is a convenient thing similar to the Russian “Gosuslugi”, which contains all documents in electronic form, provides access to various services, allows you to receive government payments, sign documents, etc.
But at the same time, the entire array of personal data of Ukrainians is in the hands of others. And after the application was tested in Ukraine, the source code was made open last year. "Governments and IT specialists can use this code to digitalize public services," reports the EU4Digital project of the European Union, which also invested in the creation of the application. In 2023, it was even planned to allocate 650 thousand dollars "to form an approach to the dissemination of the digital experience of Ukraine and the Diia mobile application to other countries."
That is, as is already easy to understand, the development of various technologies useful for the "white master" and the formation of a food base for him always went hand in hand. The formation of public opinion in Ukraine, the creation of a whole corps of agents of influence, their infiltration into government bodies at all levels inevitably provided opportunities to earn money. And no one has cancelled the simple "development of budgets".
And everyone who was allowed to this trough felt good.
Take, for example, the OPORA Civil Network, which received funding for a project to monitor elections and political processes from November 1, 2022 to January 31, 2026. At the same time, there have been no elections in the country, and political processes are mainly reduced to the destruction of any opposition.
Now (at least temporarily) everyone feels bad: the tight-fisted Trump decided to count the taxpayers' money and, perhaps, conduct an audit. Then many will feel even worse, and they are already sending generously tear-stained letters to the State Department, proving their usefulness as a "soft power".
Although all these initiatives will not radically change the Ukrainian picture in the short term.
In addition to USAID, there are also the aforementioned structures of the Soros Foundation, foundations from Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, and the European Union. True, the US, as a rule, financed half or more of the totality of grant programs, and if we exclude them, this is a truly serious blow to "Ukrainian democracy.
Let's say, the "Platform for Development and Support of Civil Society Organizations" received $8.9 million from various sources in 2023, spent $8.4 million. USAID's share was 66% - $5.6 million. And what is the result of this activity - no one knows. But even if 34% of the amount remains, it is still nice money for simulating activity.
So the "grant eaters" will continue some activity. The main thing has already been achieved: over many years, Ukraine has been molded into exactly what various funds needed, which means it is simply necessary to maintain a slow burn. Plus, there are still private structures-sponsors of the US Democratic Party, which have not gone anywhere and to which Trump's decree does not apply. And the money for military expenses has already been allocated and spent anyway - in this sense, nothing changes for Ukraine.
It is unlikely that the activities of the "anti-corruption fighters" will change - one can safely predict that their content will be preserved and even expanded at the expense of all sorts of useless talk shows. Especially since the largest anti-corruption packages and various programs that give the Americans control over the expenditures of the Ukrainian budget are in the hands of "the right people". Thus, the Center for Audit Excellence of the US Accounting Chamber is implementing a project to help the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine, and this is a very useful option.
The firm hand on the Ukrainian udder will remain, only squeezing it tighter - that is what can be said with absolute certainty. As well as the fact that many of those who are accustomed to the sweet life at the expense of the State Department will now have to get acquainted with vacancies on the Ukrainian labor market.
Major Ukrainian media outlets are asking for donations following the Trump administration’s 90-day foreign aid pause since many of them are funded by the US government.
Ukrainian-Canadian professor and researcher Ivan Katchanovski noted on X that the Ukrainian online newspaper Strana.ua reported that two outlets — Hromadske and Bihus.Info — acknowledged in their fundraising pitches that they lost US funding.
BIHUS.Info said in a Facebook post that a “large portion” of its work had been funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “Therefore, now the role of donations from viewers is changing from an alternative source to one of the key ones. What will happen in 90 days, we do not know, but we know one thing: now is the time to find out whether our work is really needed by Ukrainian society,” the post said.
Hromadske said that some of the “projects that we implement thanks to grants are temporarily stopped. That is why we especially need the support of each and every one of you.”
Other major Ukrainian outlets, including Ukrainska Pravda and Detector Media, also began asking for donations following the pause in US foreign aid but did not explicitly name that as the reason they’re fundraising.
Katchanovski, author of the book “The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine,” said many of the US-funded media outlets whitewashed the Ukrainian far-right and smeared opponents as pro-Russia.
“Major Ukrainian media outlets financed by the US and other Western governments, such as Ukrainska Pravda & Detector Media, propagated the war to the last Ukrainian, glorified & whitewashed neo-Nazi-led Azov, the OUN, and the UPA, & smeared anyone who opposed this as Russian agents paid by Kremlin,” Katchanovski wrote on X.
The New York Times reported that several humanitarian organizations in Ukraine have had to shut down due to the Trump administration’s foreign aid pause. US officials at the US Embassy in Ukraine are asking for exemptions for humanitarian operations in the country, but so far, the only known exemptions are for military aid to Israel and Egypt under the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program.
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine is provided by the Pentagon, and that does not appear to be affected by the State Department’s pause. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
Before leaving office, President Biden approved a huge amount of military aid for Ukraine, and there’s no sign those shipments have been frozen.
[FoxNews] A Guatemalan man was pulled over for speeding in Tennessee before the pursuit began.
An illegal immigrant from Guatemala is accused of firing at a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper multiple times after a traffic stop turned into a dangerous pursuit, according to court documents.
Tennessee authorities initially pulled Eugenio Abraham Solis Klarks over Jan. 12 around 6:30 p.m. in Lenoir City for speeding and asked if he had any ID. A source familiar with the matter confirmed to Fox News Digital the suspect was living illegally in the United States from Guatemala.
Upon being pulled over, Klarks allegedly presented a Guatemalan consular ID card. And when authorities began to issue a citation, he apparently fled, "leading officers on a high-speed pursuit into Knox County," court records state.
"The Defendant eventually lost control of his vehicle on Watt Road. When the first trooper approached his vehicle, the Defendant exited the vehicle holding an assault rifle, raised the weapon, and aimed at the trooper," court documents state. "The defendant was struck during the exchange of gunfire. Multiple firearms were recovered from the Defendant's vehicle."
Klarks' vehicle was apparently spotted in Macon, Georgia, and Indianapolis before the shooting.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has since filed an immigration detainer against the suspect, who is in custody at the Knox County Jail. He is charged with evading arrest but may be facing more charges in the future.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and other Republican state politicians are considering a bill that would establish a "centralized immigration enforcement division" within the state's Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security to crack down on illegal immigration and crimes like the Jan. 12 shooting.
The bill is part of the governor's immigration agenda that the Tennessee legislature will consider during a special session this week.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov and Leonid Blonsky
[REGNUM] On January 29, 1863, a Prussian delegation sent by Otto von Bismarck arrived in Warsaw : Prussia was deeply disturbed by the Polish rebellion against the Russian Empire and wanted to clarify its scale. And at the same time, to coordinate joint actions against the Polish rebels. On February 5, the delegation was already in St. Petersburg and met personally with Emperor Alexander II, but, in fact, this did not affect anything.
The Polish national uprising that began with a surprise attack on Russian garrisons on January 22, 1863, forever became a vivid example of how essentially unresolved, frivolously pushed aside problems always “shoot up.” Especially when they are based on such a grievance as the Poles had, having lost their ancient statehood as a result of three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
It all started in the era of Alexander II "the Liberator" not at all immediately, the flame of the "Polish question" smoldered for quite a long time, gradually flaring up due to the complacent connivance of the authorities. Until it flared up into a full-fledged armed struggle, which lasted for almost a year and a half (until June 1864), reached the Kyiv province and took the lives of about 35 thousand people.
One of the consequences of these events was the adoption of the now famous Valuev Circular, which was not an "act of destruction of the Ukrainian language," but rather a counteraction to the rebels' attempts to attract the Little Russian peasantry to their side. But far more important was the experience of creating a "secret state" and an inspiring example for the next generation of revolutionaries.
The leaders of the Polish state, after the restoration of independence in 1918, repeatedly turned to the historical understanding of the January Uprising, giving it special significance in the formulation of their geopolitical doctrines.
The idea of a Polish empire (even if not directly expressed) played a significant role in them, the leading and guiding role of Poland in Europe, and most importantly, the image of a sinister enemy in the person of Russia, which must be destroyed from within and divided into small states. By and large, this concept is still alive today, determining policy already in the 21st century.
FROM GOODNESS TO EXPLOSION
It all began, of course, with a general relaxation and the crumbling freedoms with which Alexander II tried to bring peace and prosperity to his empire, beginning with the abolition of serfdom. During his visit to Warsaw in May 1856, the Tsar addressed the Polish nobility with a promise to give Poland everything that could be useful to it, “everything that my father promised to grant it and actually granted it.”
"Stick to reality, forming one whole with the empire, and abandon all dreams of independence as impossible to realize... It depends on you to facilitate the solution of the problem. You must help me in my work. You alone will bear the responsibility if my intentions meet any chimerical obstacles along the way. In order to prove to you my readiness to ease the lot of all the guilty, I will tell you that I have just signed an amnesty: I allow all emigrants who wish to do so to return to Poland," Nikolai Berg, the first military correspondent in Russia, translator and author of "Notes on Polish Conspiracies and Uprisings," quotes the emperor's very naive speech.
Alexander II offered Poland a peaceful development within the empire
In this case, what was meant was, first of all, the participants of the previous rebellion that took place in November 1830, when the Russian army had to take Warsaw by force. Then the actual autonomy of the Polish Kingdom, guaranteed by the constitution of 1815, was abolished - an appointed Russian viceroy began to rule.
But those who returned from Siberia or European countries, of course, were not at all inclined to “live in peace and prosperity,” just like all the bearers of the idea of Polish independence.
Numerous interest groups, among which was the organization of officers of Polish origin in St. Petersburg, received a powerful impetus in the development of political ideas, which were increasingly seeking an outlet in the public space. Complete connivance in the opening of a Polish printing house and the publication of Polish newspapers in the Russian capital, the transformation of Sunday schools into an agitation network provided a basis for the dissemination of propaganda "to raise the spirit of the people."
Street protests in Warsaw began with breaking windows, tearing down signs in Russian, intimidating Russian residents of the city, and petty mischief, to which teenagers were recruited. The first serious test of strength was the demonstration of the "Academicians" circle, Warsaw students, on the anniversary of the November Uprising, with songs, recitations, distribution of portraits of old heroes of Poland - and, ultimately, a memorial service for the Poles killed in 1830-31 with the singing of patriotic hymns.
The authorities did not react to all this, which inspired the conspirators. Just as they were inspired by Russian liberal circles with their "underground literature".
Subsequently, the revolutionary nobles would be sung by the Soviet authorities as fighters against tsarism: the allies of the Polish separatists in the destruction of the autocratic Russian state were representatives of the underground organizations "Land and Freedom" and "Committee of Russian Officers in Poland". They were sympathized with by Mikhail Bakunin, Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogarev, who published the newspaper "Kolokol" in London; the disgraced Nikolai Chernyshevsky spoke out for the separation of Poland.
The technologies also coincided: the future scenario of the Russian revolutionaries envisaged the use of the social expectations of the peasantry, caused by the liberation reform of 1861, to organize an anti-state rebellion with the aim of realizing the ideas of utopian socialism, social equality and federalism.
To set the lower classes against the upper classes and thereby provoke the Russian peasantry to mass violence against the Russian nobility, landowners and officials, that is, to unleash a fratricidal civil war - these ideas were by no means born of the Bolsheviks.
BATTLE FOR THE EMPIRE
The main political goal of the uprising eventually became not just independence, but the restoration of an independent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the borders of 1772. According to the famous Slavic scholar Alexander Hilferding, “to recapture Western Russia was the main, essential task of the entire Polish movement from the very beginning. The fulcrum was Warsaw, but the goal was Vilna and Kiev.”
The trigger for the uprising that spread across the North-West and South-West regions of Russia was the recruitment campaign for the Russian Imperial Army. The draft dodgers left Warsaw and formed the first insurgent units (around thirty in total, with a total of up to 6,000 people). However, a far greater danger was posed by a ramified and powerful underground organization with its center in Warsaw, supported and directed by influential Polish emigration in Western Europe.
Representatives of the national Polish movement created a network of local authorities, organized underground press, police, courts, post office and treasury institutions that collected funds for the uprising. The Roman Catholic clergy, relying on the sympathy of the papal throne, played an energetic, mobilizing role.
The political and religious mobilization of the rebels took place under the slogans of patriotism, defense of the Catholic faith, aggressive Russophobia and bribing social promises. Underground propaganda and religious sermons of priests inflamed political and religious hatred in all classes of society towards the "Muscovite" and "schismatic", which meant Russia, the Great Russians and Orthodoxy.
An internal political enemy, supported from outside, armed, ideologically and religiously motivated, cruel, purposeful and organized, rose up against the state.
"Simple independence is not enough for him. He wants dominance; it is not enough for him to free himself from foreign domination, he wants the destruction of his triumphant enemy. It is not enough for him to be a Pole; he wants the Russian to become a Pole or to retreat beyond the Ural Mountains. He renounces his kinship with us, turns history into a phantom, and in place of today's mighty Russia there must be a mighty Poland along Kiev, along Smolensk, from the Baltic to the Black Sea," noted the famous Russian public figure and journalist of that time, Mikhail Katkov.
The rebellious państwo podziemne sought to involve all classes of Polish society in the armed struggle with the aim of giving the uprising national significance. Państwo podziemne is a reference to the Polish underground in WWII, but instead being applied to the war between Russia and Poland.
However, neither in the Kingdom of Poland nor in the Western region of Russia did it acquire a large-scale, truly national character.
First of all, because the peasantry did not side with the rebels.
In the Western Territory of Russia, the rebels' support was the small Polish irredenta, consisting of the nobility, gentry, priests and their Catholic peasant and bourgeois flock. It was intended to overcome the narrowness of the class-clerical base of the uprising with the help of the Western Russian peasant population, the absolute majority of which were Orthodox Belarusians and Little Russians.
However, they did not understand the vague ideas of the uprising, and only about 20% of those who supported the rebellion throughout the territory it covered were from the peasant class: this is why literature was printed for Ukrainians in a more or less understandable "simple language". And in the territory of the South-Western region (in the Volyn, Podolsk and Kyiv provinces) only 35 clashes between regular troops and the rebels took place.
A RESERVE FOR THE FUTURE
At the peak of the uprising, the number of participants, both direct and indirect, on the territory of Right-Bank Ukraine hardly exceeded 3,000 people. The Czech historian and political figure František Palacký wrote about it as follows:
“Those Little Russians who, perhaps, are now fighting together with the Poles against the Russians, are not fighting under the Little Russian banners for the political independence of Little Rus', but, like the Poles, for the restoration of old Poland.”
For the Orthodox population of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the victory of the Polish uprising meant the transformation of the region into a "home" colony of the restored Polish state, the return of slavery and the defeat of the Russian Orthodox Church. After all, one of the slogans of the rebels was the restoration of the union, abolished in Russia by the decisions of the Polotsk Council of 1839.
The events in Lithuania and Belarus were much more large-scale (which then led to corresponding repressions). But this time it was not possible to provoke an all-Russian peasant revolt aimed at destroying state institutions of power and governance and destroying public order.
Most importantly, the claim to “imperial borders” was a decisive factor in the reluctance of Britain and France (primarily) to support the rebels – it was a violation of the “rules-based order.”
The head of the British Foreign Office, Lord John Russell, addressed the Polish National Government in the House of Lords with the following words: "What kind of Poland do you wish to restore? Should we include Poznan and Galicia in it? If so, then we will provoke the resistance of Prussia and Austria, and what then - a European war? Nothing can be more alien to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government; they will limit themselves to the ideas that the dignity of England demands of them."
Thus, France was effectively left harnessed to the Polish cart alone and, of course, did not want to pull it. And the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Prince Alexander Gorchakov, only wound up his European colleagues with carefully calibrated formulations, reporting that “the rebels do not demand amnesty, nor autonomy, nor more or less broad representation. … Their goal is dominion over the provinces in which the vast majority of the population is Russian… in a word, the expansion of Poland’s borders to the two seas.”
And, in general, he was absolutely right: the Poles created all their problems with their own hands - including, of course, the three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But they still did not calm down.
The actual creator of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) and its first leader, Józef Piłsudski, devoted an entire study to the January Uprising. During his own revolutionary-terrorist activities, he was inspired by the structure of the National Government of that time. From there, the dictator derived the enduring idea of Poland “from river to river” and the dismemberment of Russia into many small states through internal strife and civil war.
In fact, on the British side, Pilsudski's friend, one of the fathers of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, proposed at the same time the creation of an anti-Russian political bloc in Europe, which would also include Georgia and Azerbaijan. Which would mean a reliable blockade of Russia from world trade, control over which has always been in the English interests.
So if you look closely at current events, you can clearly see in them everything that already happened in our history more than 160 years ago.
[JustTheNews] The executive order explicitly notes that the policy aims to achieve what was left unfinished by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative that critics dubbed Star Wars.
Just hours after Pete Hegseth was sworn in as the country's Defense secretary, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to begin the process of implementing a “next-generation missile defense” system for the U.S. aiming to complete the comprehensive project originally envisioned by President Reagan at the height of the Cold War.
Trump dubbed the missile defense system – which the order says would be designed to protect the U.S. homeland from ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other new aerial threats – the "U.S. Iron Dome" after the highly successful Israeli conventional missile defense system.
The executive order explicitly notes that the policy aims to achieve what was left unfinished by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative – which critics dubbed "Star Wars" after the 1977 pop-culture film of that name – which endeavored to create a space-based defense shield against Soviet missiles. Ultimately the intuitive fizzled out as scientists estimated the technology wouldn’t be ready for decades and the end of the Cold War reduced the urgency of the threat.
But now, the old Soviet Union superpower has been replaced by China and Russia, which possess sizable nuclear arsenals and are currently in stiff competition with the United States.
The Trump administration in the order specifically identified the threats from these “peer and near-peer adversaries” as the primary driver of a comprehensive missile defense system, which marks a major shift in policy documents from the first Trump, then Biden administration, which focused on using missile defense technologies to prevent attacks from smaller threats, namely North Korea and Iran.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” the executive order reads.
It continues, “Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.”
The shift to focus on the nuclear threats posed by China and Russia comes as both countries have developed more advanced weapons and have expanded their arsenals while also becoming close partners. This presents a hard problem for the U.S. to solve with the traditional nuclear deterrence doctrine that endured until the previous Biden administration.
“During the Cold War the United States had one nuclear peer to deter, the United States now faces two – Russia and China. This is a much harder problem and the United States has to make big adaptations to the programs we have to deter both countries simultaneously,” Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow and director of the Keystone Defense Initiative at the Hudson Institute, told Just the News.
“We must outsmart and out-innovate China in particular and no area is more important than in the protection of the American homeland. Both of those actors, plus North Korea (and Iran is a threshold nuclear state with a space launch program that could be leveraged for a long-range missile program) could coerce the United States with ballistic or cruise missiles if they believe the United States is vulnerable to them,” Heinrichs also said.
She continued, “By building a layered homeland missile defense system, the United States complicates the adversaries’ calculations and makes it harder for them to plan an attack on the United States with even a handful of missiles.”
President Trump, appearing to recognize the need for modernization and new ways of deterring attacks from adversaries, directs the Pentagon in the executive order to develop a plan within 60 days for implementing the “next-generation missile shield.”
The requirements outlined by the executive order are sweeping.
The plans are to include defense-against-missile systems, the deployment of tracking lasers, development of space-based interceptors, development of new methods to intercept threats pre-launch and securing the supply chains for these new defense systems.
This marks a major shift from the policy of the Biden administration, which in its 2022 National Defense Strategy unequivocally stated that the United States' existing missile defense systems “neither intended for, nor capable of, defeating large and sophisticated ICBM, air-, or sea-launched ballistic missile threats from Russia and the PRC.”
It was exactly for this kind of simple, common sense action — with a huge impact —that we voted for him. Thank God we beat the margin of cheating this time.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] President Donald Trump is ordering the deportation of foreign students who took part in pro-Hamas protests on college campuses as he launches a wide-ranging crackdown on anti-Semitism.
A new executive order will target resident aliens - including students with visas - who broke laws during demonstrations in the wake of the October 7th attacks in Israel. Trump said he would instruct his Justice Department to 'aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews.'
He added: 'To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice...we will find you, and we will deport you.
'I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.'
It was the latest in a slew of orders Trump has signed since becoming president as he looks to fulfill his campaign promises.
Many universities, particularly Columbia University in New York City, became the site of pro-Palestinian protests last year during the Israel-Hamas war. The students involved made radical demands that their schools sever financial ties to Israel and that the U.S. end its military support for its longtime ally.
Trump's latest order, first reported by the New York Post, gives leaders of government agencies and departments 60 days to provide the White House with recommendations on how to identify anti-Semitic threats.
It comes as Trump invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House next week as the first foreign leader to visit in his second term.
The U.S. is pushing Israel and Hamas to keep its ceasefire in place. Talks about the ceasefire's more difficult second phase, which aims to end the war, begin next Monday.
Trump's latest executive order, due to be signed on Wednesday, is his second focusing on anti-Semitism.
He signed another executive order last week calling for the removal of foreign visa holders who 'advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.'
During a rally in New Jersey last May, Trump promised: 'When I am president we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals. And if you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism to our campuses we will immediately deport you.'
He also tackled the issue in his first term.
In 2019, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal officials to expand the interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to include 'discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism.' That added anti-Semitism to the list of prohibited behavior for programs that get federal funding. During the college campus protests some Republicans wanted to use that order to take away federal funding from universities that defended the demonstrations as free speech.
Republicans denounced the protests during the 2024 election campaign as an example of liberal bias at elite universities. Several House committees, led by Republicans, investigated federal funding to colleges and threatened to withhold research grants and other government support. Ultimately, they issued a report calling for more to be done to address anti-Semitism.
Since the ceasefire announcement between Israel and Hamas, college protests have subsided.
The controversy over the protests led to a slew of university presidents - including Harvard's - to resign.
At a high-profile Congressional hearing last year, many Ivy league presidents struggled to answer whether 'calling for the genocide of Jews' would violate each university's code of conduct. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who Trump nominated to be ambassador to the U.N., posed the question. She later said it became the highest-viewed congressional hearing in history.
[PJMEDIA] The Portland police chief is brazenly defying federal authorities and refusing to cooperate with Donald Trump ...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down... and Tom Homan's plan for deporting illegal alien criminals. Sounds as if it's time for the feds to investigate and perhaps arrest the police chief.
Portland police chief Bob Day issued a community letter on Jan. 28, proudly affirming Portland's unconstitutional sanctuary city policies, announcing his determination to flout federal law enforcement arresting criminal illegal aliens, and therefore publicizing as much as possible his corruption and illegal activities. Considering that ICE is currently focused on deporting the most dangerous illegal alien criminals, including murderers and child rapists, this begs the question why Day is so desperate to protect such evil people.
Day began by announcing he was communicating with ''culturally specific advisory councils that represent many of our immigrant families.'' Woke alert! Completely ignoring the American citizens who have been robbed, harassed, raped, killed, or put out of work by illegal aliens, whom we fund with our taxpayer dollars, he expressed all his sympathy for those illegals.
''It is paramount to recognize the fear and uncertainty this creates in our immigrant communities,'' he pontificated. ''I want everyone to feel safe and protected, which is why it is important to understand that the Portland Police Bureau does not engage in immigration enforcement as outlined in PPB Directive 810.10. Simply put, we have no legal authority to do so.''
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 19:11 Advance of Russian Armed Forces near Kotlino. 18:34 Servicemen of the "Southern" group of troops are checking road sections and adjacent territories in the Chasov-Yarsky direction.
Sappers are working to detect and defuse explosive devices, including anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, planted by Ukrainian militants.
18:32 Search and rescue team members on a Mi-8PSG helicopter accompany army aviation crews performing combat missions in the border areas of the Kursk region.
18:30 Advance of Russian Armed Forces near Novoandreyevka.
18:03 In the period from 15.25 to 16.45 Moscow time, air defense systems on duty destroyed three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles: two UAVs over the territory of the Belgorod region and one over the territory of the Kursk region.
18:00 RF Armed Forces advanced near Yantarny and Slavyanka.
17:30 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces near Velikaya Novoselka.
17:16 First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Leonid Gornin checked organization of financial support for the troops of the Southern Military District
The heads of financial and economic departments, personnel departments and commanders of military units reported on the organization of financial and banking support for units, including those participating in the special operation.
Leonid Gornin drew the special attention of the district command to the prompt resolution of issues related to providing military personnel and their family members with monetary allowances and all types of additional payments.
The deputy head of the Russian military department also presented state awards to servicemen who demonstrated courage and heroism while carrying out combat missions in the SVO zone.
“We are getting closer to our Victory every day thanks to the feats you are performing,” noted Leonid Gornin.
16:16 The Russian army has taken up new positions in the southeast of Chasov Yar –MAP.
16:14 Around 15:10 Moscow time, air defense systems on duty destroyed two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory of the Belgorod region.
15:52 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces in the southeast of Dachny, Kurakhovskoye direction –MAP.
15:11 Reconnaissance, adjustment, video recording.
Calculation of unmanned aerial systems Supercam S350 Novorossiysk paratroopers corrected airborne artillery fire on a Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle in the Orekhov direction in the Zaporizhia region.
Supercam S350 also recorded the destruction of an infantry fighting vehicle with a crew and troops for the rotation of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel on the combat contact line.
14:38 "Lancet" turned the enemy self-propelled gun into a pile of metal.
Accurate hit by loitering munition destroyed a 122mm 2S1 self-propelled gun "Gvozdika" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces camouflaged in a forest belt in the area of the settlement of Burlatskoye in the Vrem'evsky direction.
13:04 “The enemy is afraid when we work.”
Snipers of the Vostok group, having destroyed the enemy’s manpower, supported assault groups of motorized rifle units and ensured their advance in the South Donetsk direction.
12:48 In the period from 10.05 to 11.40 Moscow time, air defense systems on duty destroyed two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territories of Kursk and Murmansk regions.
12:44 Using FPV attack drones destroyed M-113 armored personnel carrier and Spartan armored personnel carrier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of Petrovskoye/Grekovka settlement, Luhansk region.
11:55 Fighting is underway for the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka highway, testifies Deep State Enemy Resource Map
Over the past 24 hours, the grey zone has expanded onto the highway, and the advancement of the Russian Armed Forces to the east has also been indicated.
In addition, Russian troops advanced in several areas from Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) to Kurakhovo.
The enemy also recognizes the success of the Russian army in Velikaya Novoselka.
11:44 Krasnoarmeyskoye direction
The crew of the Strela-10 air defense missile system of the Center group, covering the advance of Russian units,destroyedEnemy UAV.
10:47 Powerful salvoes of 122mm BM-21 Grads.
Calculations of the MLRS "Grad" of the group of forces "West" continue to apply precise strikes on fortifications, military equipment and concentrations of Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower in the area of ??the special operation.
10:41 FPV drone operators of the 39th Separate Motorized Rifle Bbrigade of the Southern group of troops, in the area of the village of Dachnoye destroyed American Armored Fighting Vehicle "Humvee" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
10:20 Burned down the position of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
By artillery fire destroyed mortar position of a 120mm mortar 2B11 of Ukrainian nationalists in the area of the settlement of Novolyubovka, LPR.
10:10 Calculation of FPV drones of the Rubicon Center struck combat armored vehicle of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk direction.
10:08 RF Armed Forces are applying strikes on enemy targets in Kyiv
Geranium drones circle above the city and the region.
07:25 During the past night, air defense systems on duty intercepted and destroyed 104 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles:
47 over the territory of the Kursk region,
27 over the territory of the Bryansk region,
11 over the territory of the Smolensk region,
Seven over the territory of the Tver region,
Four over the territory of the Belgorod region,
Three over the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region,
Three over the territory of the Kaluga region,
One over the territory of the Rostov region and
One over the territory of the Leningrad region.
06:34 Attack drones confidently approach targets.
UAV units of the Dnepr group are destroying objects and personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by strike drones in the Kakhovka direction. This time, the crew of unmanned aerial vehicles identified and destroyed an enemy stronghold on the right bank of the Dnieper.
05:10 "The enemy did not have time to come to his senses." The crews of T-72B3M tanks of the "North" group of forces, supporting our assault units, destroyed dugouts, strongholds and observation posts with Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower in the border area of Kursk Oblast.
[Breitbart] French police announced on Monday the arrest of 37 people as a result of a large-scale anti-child pornography operation in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Grand Est regions.
According to the French newspaper La Dépêche, the operation, which began in November, seized over a million picture and video files of child pornography from computers, tablets, smartphones, and even cameras.
During four of the raids in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Grand Est departments, weapons and narcotics were also discovered by the police.
The National Gendarmerie, a French police force tasked — among its other roles — with combatting cybercrime, said that 32 of the 37 suspects have already been convicted.
All suspects were accused of “broadcasting or downloading videos and images of a child pornography nature”.
A total of 270 gendarmes, including 36 cybercrime specialist investigators, took place in the raids.
A similar operation was conducted in March of 2023 when 17 people were arrested on suspicion of downloading and distributing child pornography in the Grand Est region.
More recently, an international operation led to the arrests of 95 people in France in December in connection to a cross-border child pornography ring.
Police seized hundreds of devices with an estimated 375,000 photos and 156,000 videos of child pornography, or around 217 terabytes of data.
Those arrested last month included a youth organisation director, a sports instructor, and a deputy mayor.
Last year, France increased penalties for hosting child pornography on the internet. The Sécurité et Régulation de l’Espace Numérique (SREN) law mandated that websites remove child porn content within 24 hours of being notified by the police or gendarmerie or face up to a year in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros.
#1
1 year in prison for the organizers and probation for all the participants. That’s a pretty light punishment as compared to wearing a millstone FlavAFlav style on your deep sea dive.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/30/2025 6:42
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#2
Good chance that the people busted helped write the laws.
[NYPOST] The number of Russians signing up to fight in Ukraine at Moscow recruitment centers have dropped 80% over the last six months, according to a new report.
Instead, more and more foreigners are signing up in exchange for the enlistment payout of nearly $20,000.
Recruitment centers in the Russian capital are seeing about 40 applicants a day, a significant drop from the summer frenzy when more than 200 recruits signed up each day, the local Verstka magazine reports.
Patriotic young Russians were energized in part by the Ukrainian counter-invasion of the Kursk region of Russia.
''In August, we could barely cope. People came en masse, 200-250 people a day,'' a source from the Moscow mayor's office told the magazine.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2025
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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 hit units of a motorised infantry brigade and an assault brigade of the AFU near Liptsy and Volchansk (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 30 troops, an armoured fighting vehicle, a motor vehicle, and two field artillery guns.
The Zapad Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Russian units engaged manpower and materiel of a tank brigade, a mechanised brigade, an assault brigade of the AFU, and a national guard brigade close to Topoli, Lozovaya, Zeleny Gai (Kharkov region), and Grigorovka (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 320 troops, a tank, three armoured fighting vehicles, including two U.S.-made M-113 armoured personnel carriers, eight motor vehicles, six field artillery guns, including two Western-made artillery pieces, and two Nota electronic warfare stations. Three ammunition depots were destroyed.
The Yug Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and positions. Russian units hit formations of two mechanised brigades of the AFU and two territorial defence brigades close to Verkhnekamenskoye, Yantarnoye, Orekhovo-Vasilevka, and Chasov Yar (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 220 troops, three armoured fighting vehicles, five motor vehicles, and two field artillery guns.
The Tsentr Group of Forces liberated Novoyelizavetovka (Donetsk People's Republic) as a result of active operations.
Russian troops engaged manpower and materiel of three mechanised brigades, a jaeger brigade of the AFU, and a national guard brigade close to Andreyevka, Novopavlovka, Udachnoye, Shcherbinovka, and Tarasovka (Donetsk People's Republic).
The enemy's losses amounted to up to 520 troops, a tank, seven armoured fighting vehicles, including two U.S.-made M-113 armoured personnel carriers, seven motor vehicles, five field artillery guns, and a U.S. AN/TPQ-37 counter-battery radar.
The Vostok Group of Forces continued advancing to the depth of the enemy's defences. A mechanised brigade of the AFU, a naval infantry brigade, and a territorial defence brigade were hit near Razliv and Konstantinopol (Donetsk People's Republic).
The enemy sustained losses of more than 135 troops, a tank, and four field artillery guns, including a Western-made gun.
The units of the Dnepr Group of Forces engaged manpower and hardware of a mechanised brigade and a territorial defence brigade close to Malaya Tokmachka (Zaporozhye region) and Antonovka (Kherson region).
The AFU lost more than 50 troops and four motor vehicles.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, strike UAVs, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have engaged the infrastructure of military airfields, drone and uncrewed surface vehicles manufacturing workshops, depots, and assembly sites as well as clusters of enemy manpower and hardware in 156 areas.
Air defence systems shot down 165 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 41,800 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,887 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,510 MLRS combat vehicles, 21,041 field artillery guns and mortars, and 30,878 units of support military vehicles have been neutralised.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the operation to neutralise AFU formations on the territory of Kursk region.
During the offensive, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted damage on formations of one tank brigade, one heavy mechanised brigade, four mechanised brigades, two air assault brigades, one naval infantry brigade, and three territorial defence brigades of the AFU close to Gogolevka, Goncharovka, Guyevo, Zaoleshenka, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Malaya Loknya, Makhnovka, Nikolayevka, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Rubanshchina, Sverdlikovo, Sudzha, and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye. Eight hostile counter-attacks were repelled.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, and Artillery engaged AFU manpower and hardware close to Viktorovka, Goncharovka, Guyevo, Zazulevka, Kazachya Loknya, Kositsa, Kruglenkoye, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Melovoy, Nikolayevka, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Oleshnya, Sverdlikovo, Sudzha, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, Yuzhny, Basovka, Belovody, Veselovka, Vodolagi, Zhuravka, and Obody in Sumy region.
Over the past 24 hours, the AFU losses amounted to more than 420 troops, three tanks, seven armoured fighting vehicles, 29 motor vehicles as well as seven UAV control posts and an ammunition depot. One AFU serviceman surrendered.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 55,900 troops, 325 tanks, 239 infantry fighting vehicles, 184 armoured personnel carriers, 1,649 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,639 motor vehicles, 392 artillery guns, 44 MLRS launchers, including 13 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 16 anti-aircraft missile launchers, eight transport-loading vehicles, 103 EW stations, 14 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 32 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, nine armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] In South Sudan, 18 people were killed in a plane crash, Miraya radio reported on January 29.
“18 people were killed, three more were injured and are in critical condition,” the radio station said in a post on social media.
The incident occurred when the aircraft took off from the Unity oil field. There were 21 passengers on board, 16 of whom died. Two pilots also died in the incident. Information about the causes of the disaster has not been provided.
Third World mechanics’ skills comes to mind.
On December 29, a Jeju Air plane crashed into a fence while attempting to land at Muan Airport. The accident killed 167 people. There were 181 people on board.
Earlier, Regnum news agency reported that nine people, including four soldiers, were killed in the crash of a civilian transport plane at Port Sudan airport. The military statement specified that the plane crashed due to a "technical malfunction" during takeoff.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] The Ukrainian Defense Forces also continue to conduct operations in the Kursk direction.
The occupiers once tried to push their way into the Kozachoya Lopana direct on Kharkovsky.
The enemy continues to actively attack the Pokrovsk direction. In total, 152 combat clashes occurred on the front over the past 24 hours, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Thursday evening, January 29.
In the Kharkov direction, the occupiers once tried to advance in the direction of Kazachya Lopan.
In the Kupyansk direction, the enemy attacked 10 times near Petrovpavlovka, Novoosinovoye, Kolesnikovka, Zagryzovoye and Lozovaya.
In the Liman direction, enemy troops attacked in the areas of the settlements of Novoegorovka, Kopanki, Makeyevka, Novolyubovka, Torskoye, Yampolevka and Zelenaya Dolina. The defenders repelled 26 attacks.
In the Seversky direction, the Russians stormed the Verkhnekamensky district six times.
In the Kramatorsk direction, the Ukrainian Armed Forces repelled 10 attempts by the invaders to advance forward in the areas of Novomarkovoye, Vremenny Yar and Stupochki.
In the Toretsk direction, the occupiers attacked the Krymsk and Toretsk regions 15 times.
In the Pokrovsky direction, Russians 67 times in the areas of the settlements of Vodyanoye Vtoroye, Elizavetovka, Mirolyubovka, Lisovka, Vozrozhdenie, Zverevoye, Kotlino, Udachnoye, Kotlyarovka, Andreyevka, Dachnoye and Ulakli.
In the Novopavlovsk direction, the invaders carried out six attacks near the settlements of Konstantinopol, Razliv, Razdolnoye and Novoocheretovatoye.
The Ukrainian Defense Forces also continue to conduct an operation in the Kursk direction. Today, Ukrainian soldiers repelled seven attacks by the invading army in this direction, one battle continues, the enemy's aviation carried out 19 air strikes on its own territory, dropping 35 KAB.
Let us recall that Russian journalists have established the names of 88,055 Russian military personnel who have died since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. It was noted that journalists have received between 45% and 65% of all the dead.
Let us add that British intelligence reported that the losses of Russian troops in the aggression against Ukraine in 2024 amounted to 429,660 killed and wounded, which is more than in 2022 and 2023.
[JustTheNews] "Temporary protected status" or TPS is given to foreign citizens who cannot go back to their home country due to war or natural disasters.
The Trump administration has reportedly revoked the "temporary protected status" for thousands of Venezuelans that are currently in the U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday revoked the extension of deportation protections for over 600,000 Venezuelans, according to The New York Times, which cited a copy of the decision.
President Joe Biden extended "temporary protected status" for 18 months for Venezuelans just before President Donald Trump took office Jan. 20.
"Temporary protected status" or TPS is given to foreign citizens who cannot go back to their home country due to war or natural disasters.
Trump requested TPS designations be reviewed in an executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion."
Under Biden, citizens from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela were granted TPS, according to news reports.
The Department of Homeland Security under Biden cited "severe humanitarian emergency the country continues to face due to political and economic crises under the inhumane Maduro regime," for granting TPS to Venezuelans.
#4
El Salvador? Why El Salvador? After they rounded up all the criminals and gangsters, its as safe as ever. In fact, the only reason to leave and not want to go back is if...oooohhh, I see now.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ivan Runev
[REGNUM] At the end of January, a series of criminal cases related to sexual acts against minors were opened in Russia.
The victims are natives of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, living in our country and having citizenship. The suspects are their fellow countrymen, who after moving to Russia brought here their "traditions", including intimate relations with underage girls. Now the foreign citizens are facing long prison terms.
Today, according to the law in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, you can marry from the age of 18. But in remote villages, where customs often prevail over the law, early marriages are still common. According to ancient customs, parents can marry off their daughters as early as 13-14, and in some cases, as early as 12. At the same time, girls do not even know who will become their husband - the marriage issue is decided by families.
The authorities of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are trying to eradicate “child marriages”, but some natives of these countries still perceive them as the norm and a guide to action.
PORN WITH A 15 YEAR OLD
The first high-profile story occurred in Khimki, Moscow Region. In mid-January, law enforcement officers established that 20-year-old Tajik citizen Sunnatullo M. was producing and distributing pornographic materials with the participation of 15-year-old compatriot Madina R. ( name changed ).
The victim, a schoolgirl, is a native of Tajikistan, permanently resides in Khimki and has Russian citizenship. The suspect, Sunnatullo, is a citizen of Tajikistan and has temporary registration in Moscow. The man works as an excavator operator in one of the largest Russian companies in the field of housing construction and development.
The incident took place back in July 2024, but it only became known now. Police detained Sunnatullo on suspicion of indecent assault (Part 1 of Article 135 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - up to three years in prison) against a 15-year-old girl.
The investigation established that a citizen of Tajikistan filmed porn with Madina, after which he sent the videos via messenger and published them on social networks.
On January 16, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened another criminal case against the suspect under Part 1 of Article 242.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - production and circulation of materials with pornographic images of minors. Under this charge, the man faces up to eight years in prison.
MOVIES WITH A SEQUEL
On January 4, a police department in Moscow received a report that an adult man had committed sexual acts against 14-year-old Zulfiya I. ( name changed ). The girl is a native of Tajikistan and received Russian citizenship in November 2023. She lives in Moscow and is an 8th-grader at one of the capital's schools.
Law enforcement officers identified and detained the suspect. He turned out to be 20-year-old unemployed native of Tajikistan Shokhjakhon H. He has a residence permit in Russia until 2027, registered in the Moscow region.
The victim said that last October, a man saw her on the street and approached her. The schoolgirl was embarrassed and wanted to leave, but he was persistent. The girl told Shokhjakhon that she was only 14 years old, but this did not bother him: the man persuaded Zulfiya to give him her phone number. The next two weeks, the man wrote and called the girl, trying to get closer.
On October 15, Shokhdzhakhon invited Zulfiya to come to his home to "watch a movie." The schoolgirl was hesitant, but the man managed to persuade her. Zulfiya arrived at one of the apartment buildings on Dmitrovskoe Highway in Moscow. Shokhdzhakhon met her, led her into the apartment, locked the door and turned on the TV. After that, the man began to openly harass the girl and took off her clothes.
“The detainee committed sexual acts against the schoolgirl without using violence,” a source in law enforcement agencies told IA Regnum.
Apparently, the girl was simply afraid and could not say “no” to an adult, persistent man – hence the wording “without the use of violence.”
The man was detained. On January 17, investigators opened a criminal case against Shokhdzhakhon under the articles on indecent acts against a person under the age of sixteen (Part 1 of Article 135 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and on sexual intercourse and other acts of a sexual nature with a person under the age of sixteen (Part 1 of Article 134 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Shokhdzhakhon faces up to three and up to four years of imprisonment, respectively.
DRIVEN TO SUICIDE ATTEMPT
On January 19, the police of St. Petersburg received a message from doctors at a children's psychiatric hospital. The doctors reported that a 15-year-old native of Uzbekistan, Gulnara U. ( name changed ), had been urgently delivered to them. The girl had been hospitalized in one of the psychiatric departments after a suicide attempt, with a diagnosis of "Acute stress reaction."
As a source in law enforcement agencies told IA Regnum, the girl told doctors that the day before she had entered into intimate relations with three adult men. Again, as in the case of 14-year-old Zulfiya, formally everything happened without the use of physical violence. But after what happened, the girl experienced severe stress and attempted to commit suicide. Fortunately, the child was saved. Doctors are currently working with her.
Law enforcement officers identified three suspects who had persuaded the girl to have intimate relations. They turned out to be Gulnara's fellow countrymen, citizens of Uzbekistan: 20-year-old Kahramon E., 21-year-old Yakhyo F., and 23-year-old Ilesbek I. The police are currently searching for them. It is known that all three live in St. Petersburg and have temporary registration there.
The police are currently conducting an investigation, and the information has been forwarded to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg.
MOVED, BUT DIDN'T REBUILD
In all three cases described above, the male suspects knew the girls were underage, but that didn't stop them.
Having moved to Russia, some foreigners were unable to adapt or assimilate – they still internally adhere to the customs and traditions of their homeland, a source in law enforcement agencies told IA Regnum.
According to him, foreigners who have moved to Russia may know the laws of our country and understand that they may face criminal liability for certain actions.
“But when the situation concerns their relationships with their fellow countrywomen, it seems to them that Russian laws do not apply to this: if a girl is from a Tajik or Uzbek family, then she can be treated as is customary in the remote villages of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.
This is also evidenced by the fact that when such criminals are detained, they sincerely do not understand why they were arrested and what bad they did,” the agency’s source notes.
He also believes that girls who have moved to Russia and even have Russian citizenship do not always understand how to properly respond to signs of attention from adult men. Their mentality and folk traditions forbid them from contradicting men, and they often do not know how to say a firm "no" and defend themselves.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] This is the terrifying moment an out-of-control nuclear icebreaker collided with a cargo ship that it had been sent to rescue in the Arctic.
The nuclear-powered vessel, named The Fifty Years of Victory, was on its way to free the bulk carrier Yamal Krechet after it became stuck in the ice in the Kara Sea.
But as it approached the trapped vessel, it began careering towards it and was unable to change direction.
Shocking footage from onboard The Fifty Years of Victory shows it ploughing directly into the side of the Yamal Krechet.
The ship - which was built to smash through ice ten feet thick - strikes the cargo ship's hull, causing it to rock back and forth.
It then immediately reversed course and backed away after the nighttime collision. "You are free! Proceed to Port"
The Fifty Years of Victory and the other ship both sustained hull damage following the incident, which is expected to lead to a criminal investigation.
Russian officials have stressed there is no threat to the nuclear reactor installation and life support systems on the icebreaker.
#1
This Paris Climate thing keeps popping up like a zombie; the Dems love it, the Pubs hate it. Yet I don’t think it was ever voted on in the Senate, much less confirmed/approved/accepted. It’s all been done by Presidential acceptance or revocation. If this Senate were to formally vote on this and formally reject it, would that not finally put a stake thru its heart? Just kill this thing, please, and putthis thing out of our misery.
[MSN - DPA] The German government plans to send border management experts to the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, government sources have told dpa.
To facilitate the deployment, Berlin plans to amend a 2005 Cabinet decision that previously allowed only unarmed personnel to be sent, according to the government sources.
The adjustment would permit the deployment of armed forces, as the current security situation is deemed too dangerous for unarmed border guards.
A wise choice. It will be interesting to see how many are Team Israel vs Team Palestine after they spend time there.
The deployment could be part of the European Union Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point (EUBAM Rafah), which is set to resume operations after a years-long hiatus.
The mission, first established in 2005 to help control the crossing, was suspended in 2007 when Hamas took control in the Gaza Strip, as the EU refused to cooperate with the Palestinian militant organization.
In an initial phase, a low double-digit number of EU border experts and support staff are to be deployed to supervise border checks, if possible from the beginning of February.
The reopening of the Rafah crossing is part of a three-phase ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, and should enable significant amounts of humanitarian aid to reach Gaza.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Monday said that Italy, Spain and France are the first three EU countries to send personnel to Rafah.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has publicly advocated for the deployment, calling it an important signal of Europe's commitment to global responsibility.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] Western intelligence agencies conduct cyberattacks against critical infrastructure facilities of their opponents to obtain sensitive information, and also spy on their partners.
The US desire for hegemony in cyberspace is only increasing every year. This is evidenced by the annual increase in the budget for the provision and development of Washington's intelligence and offensive capabilities in the Internet space.
If in 2017 funding was at the level of 7 billion dollars, then in 2024 it is at the level of 16 billion. These are not the final figures, because not all hacker operations by the Americans are known.
The current trend puts stability around the world at risk. Victims of operations in the Internet space are not only US opponents. First of all, their allies become victims. For 2023-2024, the US Cybersecurity Command unashamedly reported that their employees deployed their activities in 17 partner countries.
These countries have found themselves in a situation where all their sensitive information is in the hands of the Americans. According to a 2021 Danish investigation, US intelligence agencies, using bilateral cooperation agreements, gained access to classified documents, correspondence and calls of high-ranking officials of the country. Let's not forget about the German Chancellor, who became one of the victims of American intelligence. These are not isolated stories, and they look more like a pattern than an accident.
The White House does not want to limit itself to just spying on allies; it wants to have access to critical infrastructure. In this regard, Washington announced the creation of the "AI Security Center" - a new American structure to oversee the development and integration of artificial intelligence capabilities.
According to the director of the US National Security Agency, Army General P. Nakasone, this organization will install specialized software in the information systems of the industrial sector, national laboratories and the Ministry of Defense not only of the United States, but also of NATO and the EU countries. Observers of authoritative publications in the field of cybersecurity, in particular, "Register" (Great Britain) and "Cybersecurity News" (Germany) noted that the employees of this Center will be able to freely penetrate the internal systems of critical infrastructures, allegedly for the purpose of ensuring security. It is noteworthy that no one in Europe is resisting the Americans.
Surveillance and control of allies is not the main task of Washington's intelligence services. The US Central Intelligence Agency is working to expand the network of hacker groups for a larger-scale development of malicious software with the aim of its further implementation to as many users as possible around the world.
The main goals of this activity are to obtain intelligence information, personal data, access critical infrastructure and disrupt its operation. In particular, the NSA, in cooperation with the Pentagon Cyber Command and the NATO Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (Talli, Estonia), plans and carries out attacks on Russia's critical information infrastructure "under the Ukrainian flag".
Text taken from the Telegram channel of project_nd
[ColonelCassad] Today I watched a video from RT
about the combat work of the Nimble Volunteer Special Forces group "Akhmat" in the forest area south of the "Novoe" microdistrict in Chasov Yar. Akhmat is a Chechen unit, self identified as special operations troops. I consider them fanatics.
Ok. But are they berserker cannon fodder, or fanatics with the skills they claim?
The old camp "Chasovyarovets", located in the forest area "Donnaya Balka", has long been a large fortified area of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which drank a lot of blood from units of the Russian army during the battle for Chasov Yar. During the summer campaign, the above-mentioned forest was literally teeming with personnel, electronic warfare systems and enemy equipment. Hexacopters and FPV drones were launched from there, the operators themselves used well-prepared shelters that saved them from artillery strikes.
Entering the forest (in the slang of the direction it was also called the "southern faggot forest") at the time of the summer campaign was practically impossible due to the convenient location of the forest itself behind the "Seversky Donetsk-Donbass" canal, which was also a serious fortified area of the enemy - a huge number of fortified positions were dug along the canal line, the defeat of which was difficult due to the specifics of their location under the canal pipe (by the way, the pipe itself was actively used by units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to move out of sight of UAVs).
At a certain point, the attack aircraft managed to break the enemy's defense in this section of the canal, after which the fighting moved to the outskirts of the forest. Since the Armed Forces of Ukraine at that time began to lose city blocks and there was a complication in the supply and evacuation from the "southern faggot forest", the number of enemies there significantly decreased - instead of them, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to more actively use strike FPVs, in which, unfortunately, they do not experience a shortage.
As the city blocks "fell away" and the assault groups entered the forest, we managed to push through the remnants of the enemy's defense, and the "icing on the cake" was the assault on the buildings of the "Chasovyarovets" camp, shown in the RT report. In the summer, this camp had a powerful electronic warfare system, which did not allow our units to conduct reconnaissance properly. Perhaps one of the city's defense PPUs was located there (although the main ones were in the five-story block until about September, after which the garrison leadership had to change its location due to frequent FAB of the area).
I would like to congratulate our colleagues on taking an important fortified area, which at one time caused us a lot of problems. There will be more to come, the fall of Chasy Yar is just around the corner, and after taking control of the city, certain opportunities for further work will open up for us.
[ZeroHedge] Former New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob 'Gold Bar' Menendez - who sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while working for the Egyptian government (which was notably exempt from Trump's recent halt to foreign aid) has been sentenced to 11 years in federal prison following his conviction on corruption charges.
The sentence comes after a jury convicted Menendez on 16 counts in a sweeping pay-for-play scheme to sell his office to foreign powers and shady businessmen in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, solid gold bars, and a Mercedes Benz.
Charges against Menendez included wire fraud, bribery and extortion - making Menendez the seventh sitting US senator to be convicted of a federal crime.
Menendez and his wife Nadine were accused by prosecutors of orchestrating a bribery scheme while he was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he acted as an agent of Egypt, and intervened to quash a separate criminal prosecution in New Jersey in exchange for payoffs - and then tried to cover it up.
In a superseding indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, Menendez was accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires anyone acting as "an agent of a foreign principal" to register with the US government. Menendez was prohibited from doing so either way as a member of Congress.
According to the indictment, Menendez and his wife, along with business associate Wael Hana, met with an Egyptian intelligence official in Menendez's Senate office in Washington DC, during which they discussed a US citizen who was injured in a 2015 airstrike by the Egyptian military - an incident which some members of Congress cited as a reason to withhold certain military aid to Egypt.
Shortly after the meeting, the Egyptian official texted Hana that if Menendez took care of the matter, "he will sit very comfortably."
"It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington," said federal prosecutor Paul M. Monteleoni in his closing argument. "But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife."
#1
Just 11 years for 16 counts of screwing over the voters?
But, at 70 y/o and IF he serves the full 11 years, he'll likely die in prison the usual Elite Country Club holding facility for Congress and $$$$$ rich.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] An embattled Georgia mayor and former Black Lives Matter organizer stormed out of a city council meeting as furious residents questioned him about allegedly using a city credit card for lavish purchases.
South Fulton Mayor Khalid Kamau, known as Mayor Kobi, berated his own constituents for citing his spending in office, which included an $1,800 desk that can be turned into a pool table, and over $9,000 in one month on travel including flight upgrades.
This month he was also accused of blowing thousands of taxpayer money for a 20-day luxury vacation to Ghana, with further purchases also reportedly including a $1,300 drone.
Kamau shot back at a tense city council meeting on Tuesday: 'I am so distressed and disappointed that the blackest city in one of the blackest states in the United States of America heading into Black History Month, we are tearing each other down.'
Councilwoman Helen Willis slammed his attempts to dodge the questioning, responding: 'We're not tearing you down you took your black behind over to Africa for 20 days and didn’t tell anybody.'
The hostile exchange came after residents confronted Kamau over his alleged mishandling of taxpayer money, as local Patricia Wise was seen telling the council: 'You guys got to do better, you guys really do got to do better.'
After facing the onslaught, Kamau walked out of the meeting as the hearing turned to discussing new policies, refusing to give an explanation for his huge expenses, per WSBTV. 'I am so distressed and disappointed that the blackest city in one of the blackest states in the United States of America heading into Black History Month, we are tearing each other down.'
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The new Syrian authorities have announced the termination of the previous constitution and the dissolution of the country's parliament.
Unexpectedly]
This was reported on January 29 by the military operations department (the governing body of the new authorities).
“The 2012 constitution, as well as all laws adopted under emergency procedures, are no longer in effect,” the department noted on its Telegram channel.
For the transitional period, Ahmed al-Sharaa was declared the head of the new administration of the interim government of Syria.
The new authorities also announced the dissolution of the Baath Party, which has ruled Syria for more than 60 years, the country's parliament, all security services and armed groups.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad resigned as president and left Syria, ordering a peaceful transfer of power. He and his family arrived in Russia, where they were granted asylum. On December 10, 2024, Mohammed al-Bashir announced his appointment as head of the Syrian government for a transitional period that will last until March 1, 2025. The de facto leader of Syria was Ahmed al-Sharaa, head of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (banned in Russia and recognized as terrorist).
On January 28, the Russian interdepartmental delegation held talks in Damascus with the head of the Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa. The nearly three-hour meeting was generally constructive, said Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. The parties discussed a number of issues, including further mutually beneficial cooperation. At the meeting, Russia also called for resolving problematic issues in Syria through dialogue with the participation of all political forces in the country and ethno-confessional groups.
[Epoch Times] Federal departments and agencies have not addressed 13,808 cost-saving anti-waste and fraud recommendations from inspectors general (IGs), some more than five years old, and nearly 300 more related Government Accountability Office (GAO) ideas, according to government data.
Federal workers’ resistance to reform—plus congressional fears of complaints by civil service workers back home in their states or districts—are two main obstacles to achieving President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the size and costs of the federal government, according to House Oversight and Accountability Committee (HOAC) Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).
Comer said that for longtime House members "whose first priority is not the American taxpayers, but self-preservation, it’s best to not say anything. They want to go along to get along, they’re not willing to rock the boat".
That reality was compounded during the four years of former President Joe Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office, Comer said, because waste, fraud, and abuse "didn’t seem... to be any concern in the Biden administration."
Biden left office with 15 IG vacancies, including in the Department of the Treasury, which has been vacant for more than five years. Comer also noted there were no HOAC spending oversight hearings during the 117th Congress because the Democrat majority’s focus was entirely on Trump.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/30/2025
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#1
Someone needs to read the riot act to the civil service population - they do not run the country. Go ahead and make it a choice - a republic without civil service or a civil service without a republic.
#2
Federal workers can harass Congress critters at their DC homes, but if the Feds had sway in a home district no Republican would be elected there in the beginning.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/30/2025 18:52
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[NYPOST] Security agents escorted the inspector general of the US Department of Agriculture out of her office on Monday after she refused to comply with her firing by the Trump administration, sources familiar with the matter told Rooters.
Phyllis Fong, a 22-year veteran of the department, had earlier told colleagues that she intended to stay after the White House terminated her Friday, saying she didn't believe the administration had followed proper protocols, the sources said.
In an email to colleagues on Saturday, reviewed by Rooters, she said the independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency ''has taken the position that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time.''
Fong declined to comment.
The White House defended the firing of Fong and the other inspectors general, saying ''these rogue, partisan babus bureaucrats — have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy.''
The USDA, however, denied that security officials were involved in the incident in an email to Fox News Digital on Wednesday night.
"According to an internal security report, Phyllis Fong departed the USDA premises on Monday, January 27 of her own accord," a spokesperson said. "She was accompanied by two friends who she paused to take selfies with on her way out. Security officials did not play any role in her departure."
#7
That's a heck of a plan. I'd say that will last about a week and then we'll start seeing many of them typing Resign in the subject line and clicking send.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/30/2025 20:11
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#9
She was part of the cover up for the Minnesota/Walz/AG Ellison Feeding the Future. Considering which Somalian terrorist groups those monies went to, she should be in Gitmo.
[X]
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#3
^When you consider that some of the letter agencies created these NGO's, that would follow.
(Cause you need a way to do things that you're not supposed to be doing.)
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2025 10:21
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With France, Germany and Denmark doing this... is NATO over?
[Breitbart] Germany’s Chancellor tacitly compared President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while France said it offered its army to Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had meetings in several European capitals on Tuesday in what has been interpreted as an impromptu tour of allies to build an alliance against the United States, as President Donald Trump has expressed the desire to acquire Greenland from the country. Greenland has been under the jurisdiction of Denmark for centuries, first a colony and now a largely autonomous territory.
The United States has a long history of buying territory from neighbours to expand the nation rather than through military conquest. It has previously floated the idea of a Greenland purchase several times, going back to the 19th century without success. However, with Greenland becoming increasingly strategically valuable in the race for the Arctic, in addition to its command of the North Atlantic and vast untapped mineral wealth, there has been growing interest in Washington to acquire the island.
Visiting Berlin on Tuesday, Frederiksen met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who appears to have decided that implying a similarity between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is the best way to deal with Washington. It’s a high-risk strategy, but the German leader may be feeling braver than usual, given he will almost certainly be out of a job in three weeks when his party is widely predicted to flop in the federal elections.
Scholz, in a segment of his speech on Ukraine, which German media notes was likely intended for President Trump, said, “inviolability of borders is a fundamental principle of international law… The principle must apply to everyone… Borders must not be moved by force”. At this point, Scholz switched from German to English and added, simply: “To whom it may concern.”
The Danish prime minister then visited Paris, which seemingly prompted the French foreign minister to reveal that the Emmanuel Macron government had offered to deploy troops to Greenland if necessary. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told national radio that the country had “started discussing [troop deployment] with Denmark,” but “at this point, it is not Denmark’s wish” to proceed with that plan.
Macron has already proven remarkably willing to deploy soldiers in recent months, having emerged as the leading European statesman on the question of sending troops to Ukraine to deter future Russian invasions.
Mette Frederiksen’s talks with allies follow what was apparently a difficult 45-minute telephone conversation she had with U.S. President Donald Trump in which the Danish political establishment was assured Trump’s words on acquiring Greenland were not mere rhetoric but sincere intention. This realisation apparently has put the government in “crisis mode” and “freaked out” the state.
The Frederiksen appears to have rushed out a $2 billion investment in Arctic security on Monday, likely intended as a signal to President Trump that they are capable of taking their position in the north seriously. As reported:
“We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defense in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said when announcing the increased defense spending on Monday.
Denmark’s entire defense budget adds up to 36.2 billion kroner (about $3.2 billion), so the Arctic program rolled out by Poulsen represents a substantial investment. Funding is included for improved surveillance on Arctic islands, three new Arctic ships that can launch helicopters and drones, more satellite coverage of the region, and more dogsled teams to patrol the ground.
A Danish populist politician in the European Parliament told Donald Trump to “fuck off” last week because Greenland is a long-established and appreciated part of the country. Yet paradoxically, having delivered this message in English, the lawmaker pivoted to speaking Danish and immediately started listing problems he perceived in Greenlandic society, which he said should be addressed.
Among the criticisms he identified were corruption and widespread child sexual abuse by Greenlandic adults.
#2
Can't get them to protect themselves, but this they gotta do.
I wonder what happens when they find out that the US isn't going to transport or support them there.
They're angling for a buy-off.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2025 8:56
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#3
A week in office and Trump already has the Euros upping their military spending.
#5
I wonder what happens when they find out that the US isn't going to transport or support them there.
It used to be that the Canadian military was considered competent but lacked transport which meant if it was an away game, they needed a ride to get to the scene.
Do current Euro militaries have any expeditionary capability or are they basically territorial defense forces ready to continue the 20th century's tribal squabbles?
#6
Who was the chucklehead who was like, "Europe will defend all its borders, North, East, West, and South."
Like bitch please, Europe's South Border? like Europe isn't overrun with Muslims and Africans. Shit, Macron just tried to pander to the young muslims by guesting on a shit podcast run by a host who is constantly talking about the glory of islaming France.
#7
Greenland is in North America, not Europe. The people of Greenland get to decide whether to stay a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark (which is what they currently are), become an independent country, become part of Canada, or join the United States.
Based on everything I've read they will probably vote to become an independent country, but work closely with the United States and Canada. The Kingdom of Denmark is a colonial power, and did some messed up things there right up to living memory. (Between 1966 and 1970, 4,500 intrauterine devices were fitted into native women and girls as young as 13, without their knowledge or consent.) So Denmark acting like some kind of victimized spouse over the last few months is laughable.
#9
^ He's got a lot of troops from Africa. They'll freeze before they're kitted
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2025 20:07
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#10
Watch Denmark billet them in private residences.
To be fair, it wasn't too long ago that France airdropped an airstrip into an African country, I forget off the top of my head and search engines are retarded.
That said, equatorial Africa would have better staging areas and weather than Greenland.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A Texas man who used his three-month-old baby to push snow off a car is being investigated by police after a video of the disgraceful act went viral online.
The Port Arthur father, only described as a 25-year-old, was seen using the infant as a windshield wiper on a Hyundai Elantra on January 21 during the brutal winter storm that hit the area last week , according to KFDM.
In the now-deleted TikTok video, the man, dressed in dark pants, a white T-shirt and sneakers, was seen sliding the baby along the back and front windshield as he laughed.
#6
My kids would have been laughing themselves to hick-ups had I done that then. It isn't cold there like it was here, or else no way he would be in a t-shirt. Finally, somebody is recording this, probably Mom, so staged not somebody being recorded from across the street acting badly.
Notice one of the sweeps is a bit deep and snow gets across the hood, which dad gets corrected before going on.
But everyone is a morality scold, and this is a dad being a dad which is a no-no in media right now, so of course DM has to thumb press this family instead of, say, investigating the UK/Immigrant S%x trade.
[BreakingDefense] The world’s largest defense contractor recorded total year end losses of $1.4 billion on a classified program in its missiles and fire control (MFC) portfolio as well as $555 million overrun on a program in its aeronautics division, Lockheed said in a news release.
Higher than expected engineering costs and other difficulties forced Lockheed Martin to book $2 billion in losses on two classified programs in 2024, with a $1.7 billion hit occurring in the final quarter of the year, the company said in results today.
The world’s largest defense contractor recorded total year end losses of $1.4 billion on a classified program in its missiles and fire control (MFC) portfolio as well as a $555 million overrun on a program in its aeronautics division, Lockheed said in a news release. Of that sum, the MFC program logged a $1.3 billion charge in the fourth quarter, with the aeronautics program incurring a $410 million charge during the same period.
The MFC program losses stem from a contract where Lockheed can be reimbursed for costs during the initial phase of the program, but where follow-on contract options are locked under a fixed-price deal that holds Lockheed responsible for paying costs above a certain threshold. Lockheed estimates that all options exercised over the “next several years” would be performed at a loss to the company, with the first $100 million charge occurring in the first quarter of 2024.
“During the fourth quarter of 2024, the company again assessed the likelihood that additional options may be exercised and now believe it is probable that all options will be exercised based on performance to date, future requirements of the program, discussions with the customer and suppliers, and anticipated customer funding, among other factors, resulting in the recognition of additional losses,” Lockheed said in a release.
When Lockheed executives first disclosed the hit to the MFC program in April, CEO Jim Taiclet characterized the program as a long-running franchise that will deliver a strong return on investment after going through a period of teething pains, while Chief Financial Officer Jay Malave said the effort was expected to become profitable on an annual basis around the 2028 timeframe.
Meanwhile, Lockheed described the impacted aeronautics program as a fixed-price incentive fee contract involving “highly complex design and systems integration.” The company conducted a review of the program due to undisclosed near-term milestones and trends experienced in the fourth quarter, and recorded losses based on “higher projected costs in engineering and integration activities that are necessary to achieve those forthcoming milestones,” it said.
During an earnings call this morning, Malave laid out a list of process changes aimed at drilling down on some of the challenges faced by the classified aeronautics changes, which include implementing a continuous monitoring process to track the program’s technical milestones, adding technical resources and experts to the team in areas where there is elevated risk, and adding new automated testing procedures to speed up the finding and fixing of issues.
“All those things taken together, give us confidence that we have significantly derisked this program and significantly reduced the risk of future charges on this,” Malave said.
Beyond the classified programs, Taiclet said Lockheed looks forward to working with the Trump administration, particularly on streamlining acquisition processes and inducing innovation. He gave a particular shout out to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), echoing the sentiments of top executives from L3Harris and General Atomics, who recently sent letters to Musk suggesting potential reforms.
“We see DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] as an opportunity to make great progress in all these areas, and we will continue to share ideas and do our part to support efforts to eliminate unnecessary regulatory hurdles while working to increase efficiency in our own internal operations,” Taiclet said.
Lockheed is making “excellent progress” on the F-35’s Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), Malave said, referring to an update to the aircraft’s computing systems needed to field future mission system upgrades. However, the company still needs to complete some mission system integration work and improve the stability of the equipment, and although the company will meet “some milestones” this year, Malave would not go as far as to say the upgrade package will meet full combat capability this year as previously planned.
[WokeSpy] A Lenawee County Democrat who posted an unhinged rant denying the 2024 election results and labeling immigration officials as "Nazi collaborators" is doubling down. Lenawee County Democratic Party Chairman Bill Swift called in to Talk Back Radio with Doug Spade and Mike Clement on Saturday to discuss the post, which was deleted from the party’s Facebook page shortly after it was posted last week. Swift on Saturday also called for the death penalty for the president’s supporters.
Swift alleged the party removed the post over concerns supporters of President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... "might do violence to people in our community," but made it clear "we as a party and I as an individual absolutely 100% support the statements that we made." He described the post as "outlining a very rational argument" about Trump’s inauguration and the president’s immediate move to crack down on illegal immigration. Swift alleged Trump-supporter and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, "performed two Hitler ...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like... salutes, two Nazi salutes" during the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Swift then extrapolated that to build an argument that Trump and those who support him are Nazis, pointing to Trump’s social media missteps during his campaign and alleged "Nazi imagery and Nazi language" at conservative events. He concluded his comments by highlighting another recent post by the Lenawee County 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... that calls for the death penalty for Trump’s supporters. "They should be arrested, and they should be facing the death penalty," he said. "They should be hanged by the neck until dead. I believe this is one of the few areas of the law where I believe the death penalty should be imposed."
[NYPOST] Former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin was confirmed by the Senate Wednesday as President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency administrator — earning bipartisan support.
The 56-42 vote featured Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, as well as John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, giving their approval of Zeldin alongside all 53 Republicans in the upper chamber.
The 44-year-old ex-congressman had flown through the Senate Environment and Public Works vetting process and passed a cloture vote on the Senate floor earlier Wednesday by the same margin and with the same three 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... supporting him.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko struggled to contain his irritation before snapping at a BBC journalist on Sunday, making veiled threats as the reporter bravely grilled him over his sham election.
Dubbed 'Europe's last dicator', Lukashenko is set to extend his 31-year rule over the country after the rigged election, which saw him re-elected with 86.8 per cent of the vote.
Lukashenko only allowed four token candidates who he approved of to have their names on the ballot paper, while his real opponents are either locked up or in exile.
After casting his vote on election day, the president gave a four-hour-long press conference, with questions from media organisations friendly to his regime as well as foreign outlets.
The BBC's Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg, whose questions have attracted the fury of the dictator and his ally Vladimir Putin previously, was warned by Lukashenko: 'Don't overdo it, Steve'.
Their tense exchange began with a frosty comment from Lukashenko, who asked Rosenberg: 'What wretched question have you got prepared for me?'
'Good morning,' the journalist replied as members of the press press laughed along with the president, who then said 'good morning, Steve.'
'How can these elections be called democratic when your staunchest opponents and rivals are either in prison or in exile?' Rosenberg asked.
'Some are in prison and some are in exile, but you're here,' Lukashenko responded menacingly. 'Everyone has the right to choose. That's democratic. Some chose prison, others chose exile.'
[PJMedia] Congratulations, taxpayers of America. Last year you spent more than $15 million on [checks notes] advanced concepts in yarn.
Courtesy of DataRepublican (small r) — a data-crunching genius on X — there's now a searchable, online database of federal grants to nonprofits and NGOs. "Ever wonder exactly which government grants fund nonprofits? Now you can know—because I’ve cracked the code," DataRepublican explained in her X announcement on Monday. "Unlike older tools that only sift through nonprofit 990s (which don’t directly show government dollars), I’ve mined the USASpending database to create fuzzy matches between nonprofits and their linked government grants."
She set it up so you can search by keyword, recipient, funding agency, and much more. Or you can do what I did this morning and be a jerk about it. I thought, "What is the most boring thing in the world and how much taxpayer money is Washington giving away on it this year?"
"Yarn," I immediately decided. "Yarn is the most boring thing in the world." To me, that is — knitters, please take no offense. I'm sure you'd find my collection of Polish LEGO-knockoff WWII warships boring as heck, too.
As it turned out, Americans — unbeknownst to 99.99% of us, I'm sure — will spend $16,500,001 on three yarn-related projects this year. The bulk of it, an even $15 million, went to something called The Industrial Commons on NSF engines.
🚨 NGO / GOVERNMENT GRANT TRACKING TOOL 🚨 🔍 FOLLOW THE GRANTS: CONNECT NGOs TO YOUR TAX DOLLARS 💵 Ever wonder exactly which government grants fund nonprofits? Now you can know—because I’ve cracked the code.
#2
/\ Payments to NGO's are a convenient congressional work-around. NGO's do NOT have to divulge the identity of their contributors. Money laundering at it's finest.
[BreakingDefense] The service issued a request for information today for IVAS Next, giving industry until late February to respond.
The US Army is taking the next step in recompeting its multi-billion dollar mixed-reality goggle production contract with an official ask to industry to send in viable options.
The service published its new Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Next request for information today, giving interested companies until Feb. 26 to respond with their solutions for the combat-suitable heads-up display.
“IVAS provides soldiers and squads a single platform for increased lethality, mobility, and situational awareness necessary to achieve overmatch against current and future adversaries,” the Army wrote in the release. “It is a ‘fight first’ system with the benefit of rehearse and train capabilities.”
While the RFI doesn’t guarantee the service will recompete its current 10-year production contract with Microsoft valued up to $22 billion, it does kickstart such a process after surveying the market last year. Although the Army did not detail a competition schedule or acquisition plan, it offered up a peak at problems its looking to solve with IVAS Next including “known visual comfort limitations” such as “visual discomfort and nausea from virtual, mixed, and augmented reality headsets.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to questions about the new RFI today but has previously said it will throw its hat in the ring. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has also teased development of a new mixed-reality device, though it is not clear if this would be a partnership with Microsoft. Massachusetts-based Kopin has also said it’s interested in completing, while companies like Palantir may also be eyeing a bid.
One industry source closely following the program welcomed today’s RFI, saying it signals that the Army is ready for a new approach and has seen “competitive/superior” technology on the market and is ready to move forward.
Initially pitched as a game changer for the service, the current IVAS contract is based around Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 heads-up display. The idea was a single device soldiers could use both in combat (including under the cover of darkness) and for virtual training. However, reports began emerging in 2021 about problems with the device, followed by a scathing Pentagon inspector general report that detailed soldiers complaining of discomfort, dizziness, nausea, and system reliability.
Service leaders publicly stood behind the program at first, before they began tempering expectations and splitting the program up into three initial versions — the 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 iterations of the goggles. (The service has acquired 5,000 1.0 units, with plans to acquire an additional 5,000 1.1 units for limited use.)
It then billed the new 1.2 version as the make-or-break upgrade — an iteration to correct past problems, in part, by transitioning the device from a helmet-like display with a 70-degree field-of-view, to a hinged, flat design with a 60-degree field-of-view that soldiers can flip up.
But while the service worked with Microsoft on the redesign and testing, it also began teasing an IVAS Next initiative. After attending Army-led industry days and one-on-one meetings with the government last year, a trio of industry sources independently told Breaking Defense they were preparing for a new open competition to decide who wins a lucrative contract to produce the headset.
In tandem, Army leaders began taking inventory of all of their night vision devices to help decide just which units need what and help define IVAS Next requirements for an upcoming competition, one service official told Breaking Defense last year.
Specifically, members of the from the 75th Ranger Regiment were tasked with running IVAS 1.2 through the ringer alongside dedicated night vision systems like the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular (ENVG-B) and another system dubbed PVS-14, the official told Breaking Defense.
“They’re going to provide the best feedback in terms of, here’s what the ENVG-B can provide versus a PVS-14 versus the capability inside of IVAS,” the official said. The goal is for those Rangers to provide a “more mature look” at how they use night vision while also answering questions about the ideal IVAS form factor, battery needs and more.
#3
At this point I personally wouldn't give Microsoft a freakin dime.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2025 8:52
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#4
It'll be bloated and buggy if Microsoft does it. Watch, their crummy Edge browser will pop up in the middle of a fire fight asking soldiers if they wanna play Candy Crush.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/30/2025 13:39
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#5
Then it'll have to reboot for software updates. Please wait. Don't turn off your computer!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/30/2025 13:40
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#6
Lost an engine mid flight, trying feather the prop and transfer fuel to help balance the aircraft, and up pops Clippy.
"It looks like you are trying to lower the landing gears. Would you like help?"
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] President Donald Trump has unveiled plans to house 30,000 illegal migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
That’s seriously hardcore — levelling waaaaay up.
The U.S. military base in Cuba has historically been used to hold terror suspects since 9/11 and current detainees include the accused mastermind of the attack.
Using it for migrants is the latest symbolic move in Trump's unprecedented crackdown on illegal migration that began the moment he entered office last week.
The symbol being that this is how we do things now.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted raids across the country and deportation flights have left the United States daily – with the administration putting out images of the effort.
Trump said the facility with 30,000 beds will be used to keep the 'worst of the worst' migrants under lock and key, and noted how 'tough' it is to escape. It will include suspects from countries he doesn't trust will detain them when they are deported.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem floated the plan earlier on Wednesday, but Trump has now put the idea into motion.
We do things fast and we do them strong. So if you’re on the evil side of the register and you aren’t in the country legally, you might want to get the hell out of Dodge. Pronto.
'Today, I’m also signing an Executive Order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,' Trump said.
And if you’re evil but legal, you might want to leave anyway. Because at some point we’ll have cleaned out the illegals, and will start cleaning out the legal 10% who commit 90% of the crimes. That kind of thing quickly becomes a habit, once the Overton Window moves.
He made the announcement while signing the Laken Riley Act at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump added: 'We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back.
'So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo Bay. This will double our capacity immediately, and tough. That's a tough - that's a tough place to get out of.'
The George W. Bush administration opened the facility in 2002 to detain 'illegal enemy combatants' during the 'War on Terror.' Ultimately, successive administrations have negotiated a series of arrangements to transfer prisoners out of the facility since then, amid public and congressional pressure to close it.
The population has now dwindled to just 15 after the most recent series of transfers.
Among them is 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who agreed to plead guilty after negotiations with military lawyers, avoiding a potential death sentence, and setting off yet another legal saga.
Trump himself ordered his then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to keep Guantanamo open in 2018, reversing an Obama administration order.
#5
I heard it described as a place to send the real baddies until home can be convinced to take back these serious liabilities they were happy to get rid of, and to countries which are generally a pain in the ass and won't cooperate.
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 19:50 Fighters from the 3rd separate assault brigade have denied the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement about the capture of Novoegorovka in the Luhansk region.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced the occupation of a populated area. As "proof," the Russians published a video allegedly recorded in the area of responsibility of the Third Assault Brigade.
The fighters emphasized that the capture of the village is a fake of Russian propaganda for the sake of "the illusion of success of the Russian Federation on the brigade's borders." According to the Ukrainian military, the video itself, filmed by the occupiers, shows the village of Kovalivka being destroyed by them.
18:00 Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha has received an invitation to an extended meeting of foreign ministers from a number of countries, including the United States. This was reported by Interfax-Ukraine , citing sources. Thus, the first meeting between official representatives of Ukraine and the new US administration may take place.
17.39 On Wednesday night, drones attacked 23 arsenals of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) of the Ministry of Defense in the Tver Region of the Russian Federation. This was reported by the Telegram channel ASTRA . At the time of the strike, there were no ammunition at the arsenal. But the facility was damaged. A military unit was also damaged.
17.26 Special Operations Forces operators raided and destroyed Russian invader positions in one of the hottest areas of the front.
Operators of the 3rd separate Svyatoslav the Brave SSR regiment discovered at least four occupiers who had taken over a dugout at the former Ukrainian Armed Forces position. The SSO group boldly broke right into the Russian position in an armored Humvee. The operators took control of the exit from the dugout and threw 13 kg of explosives inside.
The powerful explosion left only a crater and the remains of the occupiers at the site of the enemy dugout.
15:22 The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has handed over about 80 all-wheel drive trucks from a Ukrainian manufacturer to combat brigades.
The trucks will be used to perform special and combat missions. This is the first batch of transport purchased under one of the contracts under state guarantees for the supply of weapons and military equipment for the army.
13.53 British intelligence has analyzed the strikes by the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the oil depot of the Russian airfield Engels-2 in the Saratov region, which were carried out on January 8 and 14. This was reported by the press service of the British Ministry of Defense on Wednesday, January 29.
13.37 In Kupyansk, the occupiers hit an emergency medical vehicle with a loitering munition based on an FPV drone, and another civilian vehicle was also damaged. There are wounded. This was reported by the head of the Kharkiv OVA Oleg Sinegubov. According to him, three medical workers were injured . The 43-year-old driver was hospitalized with blast wounds. The 26-year-old doctor and 41-year-old paramedic suffered from an acute stress reaction.
12.13 Russian troops attacked the Kherson region with drones. Two people were killed due to enemy shelling. This was reported by the head of the Kherson OVA Oleksandr Prokudin on Wednesday, January 29.
10:59 On Wednesday night, Ukrainian military personnel struck the Nizhny Novgorod Oil Refinery in the city of Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod Region of the Russian Federation). This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Units of the Main Intelligence Directorate were involved in cooperation with other components of the Defense Forces.
10.40 In the Tver region of Russia, on the night of January 29, the Transneft-Baltika oil pumping station was attacked by drones. A fire broke out at the facility. This was reported by Russian media and Telegram channels.
9.56 The downing of 29 Shahed-type attack UAVs and other types of drones in the Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa regions has been confirmed. 14 enemy drone imitators have been lost (without negative consequences). This was reported by the Ukrainian Air Force.
8:58 Over the past 24 hours, the missile forces and artillery of the Defense Forces carried out one strike on an ammunition depot, seven strikes on areas where personnel and military equipment are concentrated, two strikes on command posts, and two strikes on enemy artillery systems. This was reported on January 29 by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
8:17 In Kiev, fragments of a Russian UAV fell near a metro station in the Darnitsky district. The fence and the checkpoint building of the Darnitsky depot were damaged. This was reported by the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko.
According to him, there is currently no fire and no victims have been found.
7:50 The Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed 1,670 Russian occupiers in one day. The total combat losses of the Russian Federation from 24.02.22 to 29.01.25 were approximately 834,670 people. This was reported by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
7:23 Several regions of the Russian Federation were attacked by attack drones at night . Allegedly 104 drones were destroyed. This was reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is noted that 47 drones were destroyed over the territory of the Kursk Region; 27 over the territory of the Bryansk Region; 11 over the territory of the Smolensk Region; seven over the territory of the Tver Region; four over the territory of the Belgorod Region; three over the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod Region; three over the territory of the Kaluga Region; one over the territory of the Rostov Region; one over Lake Ladoga in the Leningrad Region.
As a matter of disclosure, I tried DeepSeek yesterday. It's pretty good, and could give the Big Guys a run for their money. by Ivan Lizan
[REGNUM] On January 27, the American IT giant Nvidia Corporation lost $600 billion in capitalization. This happened after the Western world discovered the existence of the Chinese startup DeepSeek.
The word "discovered" is not used by chance. DeepSeek has been working since the beginning of December, and by the New Year, specialized publications had paid attention to it. And only at the end of January, business media began to write about the startup.
One can only guess why journalists and stock speculators showed such miraculous slowness. Perhaps they had other things to do in December — they were preparing for Christmas and the New Year. And in January, the US saw a change of power, and the heads of all IT companies immediately swore allegiance to Donald Trump, who had returned to the White House. If the former-current president was an enemy for them during the first five years, now he has become a dear friend — the Democrats have managed to spite the top managers.
It is possible that the "tops" themselves fueled interest in DeepSeek, fanning the flames of the stock market fire. Or someone skillfully played the "bear" (on the downside) on the stock market.
However, this does not really matter, because the US has much bigger problems than the 600 billion virtual dollars that burned. The phenomenon of the Chinese startup has shown the uncompetitiveness of the American approach to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
THE SANCTIONS WORKED IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION
DeepSeek is a chatbot that has proven to be more effective than the super-popular ChatGPT from American OpenAI. In addition, the Chinese version is available for free and runs on less powerful chips.
Chinese specialists managed to create an advanced AI model in conditions where it cannot be created in the United States. The Americans themselves had a hand in this. DeepSeek was created on Nvidia H800 AI accelerators - slower versions of H100 accelerators created specifically for the Chinese market. American sanctions imposed in 2022 under Joe Biden banned the supply of advanced AI accelerators to China in order to slow down the pace of technological development in the PRC.
But, as you can see, instead of slowing down, the US got an acceleration through optimization.
In the end, the need forced the Chinese to use their wits. DeepSeek was trained for $5.5 million, while OpenAI spent $78 million on comparable “pumping” of GPT. That is, the Chinese chatbot was about 90% cheaper. In total, OpenAI spent more than $7 billion on its networks and invested another $1.5 billion in personnel.
The worst thing for the Americans is that DeepSeek distributes many of its developments for free, and asks for the same 90-95% less than OpenAI for paid access to advanced systems - this explains the turmoil in the market. And the DeepSeek model is also open software, which allows other companies to use it to develop their products.
Simply put, the Chinese, with fewer staff and not the most advanced accelerators, managed to create an advanced AI model, and are even ready to provide access to it for pennies compared to what the leader, OpenAI, is asking for.
At the same time, it was an unnamed Chinese company owned by a local billionaire that achieved success, while Microsoft is behind the flagship of American AI. It is its funding that allows it to cover losses. Expenses and losses are fine: they can be written off, especially in the case of Microsoft, the corporation behind OpenAI, known for its impressive graveyard of corporate products. But now OpenAI will have to reconsider its monetization model, reducing prices in conditions when its services do not allow it to break even.
Another major problem for the US is that OpenAI was the country's IT flagship, a kind of dream of a future where a machine can create at the level of a human, creating not only music and images, but also rocket engines - complementing and even replacing humans. AI was supposed to be a tool that would provide the US with global leadership. Only now this leadership can be provided to its competitor - China.
Now it's time to return to Nvidia, whose stocks plummeted on January 27, despite the fact that OpenAI screwed up. The latter company has little to lose - it is not public.
If OpenAI is the software embodiment of the American AI dream, then Nvidia could well be called its hardware base. And it was no secret that Nvidia's stock was wildly overvalued.
At the end of February 2024, Nvidia's capitalization exceeded $1.97 trillion - for comparison, Russia's GDP is $1.92 trillion. And the amount was constantly growing. In September 2024, the corporation's shares fell by 17%, losing almost $279 billion. In January 2025 - another minus 600 billion. But despite this, Nvidia's capitalization is currently $2.89 trillion. They continue to pump money into the huge bubble.
Nvidia shares "fell" because it became obvious that thousands of its most advanced accelerators are not needed for an AI breakthrough, and therefore demand for the company's products may decrease.
GAMES THAT ARE NOT PLAYED
Overall, the DeepSeek story is a good illustration of the general decline in competitiveness in American IT.
Chinese developers have a number of advantages over their US competitors. First of all, it is much cheaper to develop a new product. The average salary of a programmer in California in 2023 was $85,000 per year (7,000 per month), in China - from 18 to 36 thousand (1.5-3 thousand per month). If you multiply the monthly salary by a conditional 100 employees and a couple of years of development, the scale of the problem with the wage fund in the USA will become clear.
Deepseek employed between 100 and 140 people out of the 200-300 employees of the developer company. OpenAI employs more than 3.5 thousand people, which explains the $1.5 billion payroll. It's all about the exorbitant cost of living in California, especially real estate prices. It won't be possible to reduce expenses, and therefore the payroll.
At the same time, the high cost of living is hurting not only the AI industry, but also the American computer games industry, which was hit by the crisis long before DeepSeek got going.
The Chinese game Black Myth: Wukong cost $70 million and was developed over 6 years. It sold over 20 million copies, which brought the developers about $1 billion. Cyberpunk 2077 cost the Polish CD Projekt about 3-4 times more than The Witcher, and sold more than 30 million copies. At the same time, the development cost of Spider-Man 2 from Californian Insomniac Games was $315 million with a circulation of about 11 million copies.
Examples with production budgets and print runs are given for a reason. The goal of any company is to release the best product at the lowest price. The Chinese and Poles cope with this task, the Americans do not. Development is constantly becoming more expensive, the quality of the final product leaves much to be desired, the risks of failure are ever higher.
And this leads to another problem: managers are trying to reduce the risk of losing money. Instead of new projects, they have to choose a well-known franchise, hoping to attract its fans to the ranks of buyers (for example, "Star Wars"). The "agenda" still gets in the way: for example, instead of beautiful female characters, they have to add heroes of "incomprehensible" gender to games, selected by transgender people and other minorities in focus groups.
As a result, instead of an interesting game, we get bland, stuffy and uninspired crafts. Instead of profit, managers record a financial failure, although from the point of view of abstract business they do everything right.
In general, American IT giants have become victims of corporatization and financialization. IT companies in the US are public, their shares are listed on the stock exchange, and IPOs were once used as a tool to attract financing for expansion.
But going public changes both the managers' mindset and motivation. Their number one goal is to increase the company's profitability per share, maintain the stock price, and pay out generous dividends. If this means cutting funding for development, firing a dozen or so engineers, or "optimizing" something (like removing the charger from the smartphone box), you can be sure it will be done.
IT WON'T WORK TO STOP CHINA FROM LEADING
For decades, American IT giants had no competitors as such. This period was their golden age, but the fat years always end. Now the space for competition is expanding, and the number of opponents in the market is growing.
At the same time, we don’t even think about a number of stories of American IT failures. Once upon a time, Android in its version from Google was the only alternative, and depriving a smartphone manufacturer of access to Google services could have been a death sentence for it. Now life without these services has become the norm.
And the American IT sector will only have more problems. It is not clear how to solve them. If we were talking about physical production, it could be moved to Southeast Asia, where many uncompetitive things have been sent. But IT has a different specificity; this industry is the only truly flagship one in the USA. The American authorities, including the federal ones, cannot afford to lose it.
But the problem is that there is nothing to fight the Chinese with. The world games market is global, it will not work to ban the sale of Chinese games. It will not work to ban Chinese companies from developing AI either - they have already tried, the result is known.
All that remains is to selectively ban the use of individual Chinese products under the pretext of ensuring national security. And also to try to quickly "stake out" a part of the once global IT market.
In general, if you can’t win with your head, you’ll have to push with your elbows.
#3
"As a matter of disclosure, I tried DeepSeek yesterday. It's pretty good, and could give the Big Guys a run for their money."
I can confirm that. Asked Deepseek a couple of difficult questions (ChatGPT started to hallucinate) and Deepseek got the answers right. Then I went into some complicated reasoning with it and the answers were astonishingly accurate.
Certainly a wakeup call. The question is: This is China's free for all version. What capabilities may its secret AI have?
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/30/2025 6:07
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#4
Btw its website seems to be busy a lot but the app works fine.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/30/2025 6:09
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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A migrant allegedly raped an 11-year-old girl in the stairwell of a state-run shelter in Massachusetts - only to be moved to another shelter that same day rather than being sent to jail.
The alleged incident occurred on Dec. 9 in Peabody, outside Boston, when a fifth-grade girl reported being assaulted by the man in a stairwell of a Holiday Inn being used as a shelter, the Boston Globe reported.
Police responded immediately and referred the case to the office of Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker
…D, of course, former small town police chief, then state legislator before winning the Democratic primary to get the DA-ship…
for further investigation.
But instead of arresting the 32-year-old suspect, authorities relocated him that night to an emergency family shelter at a Motel 6 in nearby Danvers.
The suspect, a Honduran migrant who has a pregnant wife and two daughters, 2 and 4, was later moved to an apartment-like unit in the shelter system with his family.
He has yet to be charged, and it took the district attorney more than six weeks to speak to the alleged victim.
Authorities attributed the delay to a lack of experts trained to speak with child victims.
The incident raises further concerns about the state's oversight of its struggling shelter system, which has been under intense strain due to an influx of thousands of new migrants.
Previously, the Globe reported more than 1,000 serious incidents at state shelters over a 20-month period.
While the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities confirmed the shelter provider adhered to protocol by notifying authorities and reporting the incident, they did not address why an individual accused of sexual assault was transferred to another state-run shelter housing children, according to the Globe.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey's administration also remained silent on their policy regarding shelter residents accused of crimes, specifically whether and when they are removed - immediately following an allegation or only after formal charges are filed.
The 11-year-old and her family have been relocated to a subsidized apartment, and her mother confirmed the girl was formally interviewed by authorities last week.
Peabody Police Chief Thomas Griffin confirmed that the police referred the case to both the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and the Essex County District Attorney's office.
The chief said the Essex County District Attorney's office wanted to schedule an interview with a child forensic specialist.
Griffin explained that while specialized interviews are preferable for children in these situations, the limited number of trained interviewers often leads to delays.
The 11-year-old told police the suspect 'pulled her into the stairwell and grabbed her breasts, and put his hand down her pants,' 'touch[ing] her private parts,' the Globe reported. The girl was 'shaken up, in tears and crying,' a police officer said.
The mother of the alleged victim said that her daughter had been in the hallway playing with other kids at the time.
'She started to cry and told me, "I feel dirty, I want to take a shower,"' the mother told the Globe.
The suspect, who told the Globe he entered the US illegally with his family about a year ago, denied the allegations and told police he had only 'brushed arms' with the girl.
'That did not happen,' he said. 'I respect other girls as if they were my daughters.'
He suggested the allegations were 'slander' intended to 'obtain benefits.'
The girl's mother said she remains scared, especially at the thought of the suspect being near other children in the shelter system.
'He's close to more kids, and no one knows,' she said.
Governor Healey has proposed increased security measures, including background checks and requiring proof of lawful immigration status for shelter residents.
However, these proposals do not address the issue of individuals accused of serious crimes remaining in the shelter system.
The mother of the 11-year-old, along with some domestic violence advocates, are calling for a clear state directives to protect shelter residents from those accused of crimes.
This comes as the shelter system's cost is projected to exceed $1 billion this fiscal year.
Healey has downplayed more than 300 reports of serious crimes within the state's rapidly expanding migrant shelter system.
Since 2022, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has recorded 316 'serious incident' reports at hotels, congregate sites, scattered sites, and co-shelters within the program.
Following revelations of these incidents, Healey defended the program, telling the Boston Herald that the 'vast majority' of participants follow the rules, children are attending school, and 'many of them' are working.
'Those who've come through immigration, most of them have received work authorizations and are also working,' Healey said. 'And so relative to that number, the instances have been very few.'
She emphasized that more than 50,000 people have passed through the program's shelters - designed for homeless pregnant women and families with children - over the past three years.
'But I take every, every - and I want my team to take, I want shelter providers to take- every incident seriously,' she said.
Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies called the reports deeply troubling.
'This is very disturbing. This is a huge number of incidents,' she told the Boston Herald, which obtained details of the reports.
The records exposed years of severe incidents within the shelter system, including neglect, drug abuse, trafficking, rape, suicide, and domestic violence.
#2
It's crap like this that made me leave Massachusetts. The state has gone insane.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
01/30/2025 4:55
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#3
GITMO
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/30/2025 6:37
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#4
Another reason to be glad we left Massachusetts in 2023. Talked with a former neighbor yesterday. He said it's unbelievable what Healey and Michelle Wu are doing to the state and Boston.
Hell bent on turning Boston into a Third World sh*thole and the rest of the state is not far behind. Of course they'll get elected time and time again.
That’s nice, dear. That just means your nearby ordinary illegals will be picked up along with the DHS targets. But it’s your choice — and there’s always the thrill of wondering whether Border Czar Tom Homan really will prosecute, as he’s threatened…
[FoxNews] Over 1,200 illegal immigrants charged with crimes have been detained by federal officers.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced Tuesday that he would not cooperate with federal law enforcement officers on deportations of illegal immigrants.
Over the first weekend of President Donald Trump’s second term, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and their partners conducted nationwide roundups of more than 1,200 illegal immigrants who were charged with or convicted of committing crimes on American soil.
"I want to speak directly to people who are undocumented: we love you. We care about you," Frey, a Democrat, said at a press conference. "In the city of Minneapolis, we will stand up for you and we will do anything in our power to help because you're not an alien; in our city, you're a neighbor."
"Now, in Minneapolis we have what is called a separation ordinance," Frey continued, explaining his legal strategy to avoid deportations. "And that separation ordinance states clearly that our city officials, our police officers and beyond will not be gathering information showing who is and is not documented."
"We do not ask the question with regards to immigration status and, because we haven't asked the question, we don't have any data to show documentation status in our city," the mayor said.
"Our police officers will not be cooperating with federal law enforcement around federal immigration law. We enforce state and local laws here in Minneapolis, and we will do so to the best of our ability. But as for cooperation with ICE, the answer is no," Frey said.
#2
Make him put it in writing, which is evidence at a later trial! Blowhards like him will say anything but tend to fold like wet paper when they have to do anything.
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 Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
... the personification of Somali state failure...
... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
...46th president of the U.S. 
......
[eugyppius: a plague chronicle] I don’t have the energy to write you a proper post, mainly because I spent all day watching debate in the German Bundestag. I cannot, however, let this moment pass in silence:
[Breitbart] President Donald Trump’s new homeland security chief, 
[FoxNews] A Guatemalan man was pulled over for speeding in Tennessee before the pursuit began.
[JustTheNews] The executive order explicitly notes that the policy aims to achieve what was left unfinished by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative that critics dubbed Star Wars.
...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down...
[Breitbart] French police announced on Monday the arrest of 37 people as a result of a large-scale anti-child pornography operation in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Grand Est regions.
At the end of January, a series of criminal cases related to sexual acts against minors were opened in Russia.
[ZeroHedge] Former New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob 'Gold Bar' Menendez - who sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while working for the Egyptian government (which was notably exempt from Trump's recent halt to foreign aid) has been sentenced to 11 years in federal prison following his conviction on corruption charges.
Federal workers’ resistance to reform—plus congressional fears of complaints by civil service workers back home in their states or districts—are two main obstacles to achieving President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the size and costs of the federal government, according to House Oversight and Accountability Committee (HOAC) Chairman 
...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like...
...every time you hear the phrase 
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko struggled to contain his irritation before snapping at a BBC journalist on Sunday, making veiled threats as the reporter bravely grilled him over his sham election.
[FoxNews] Over 1,200 illegal immigrants charged with crimes have been detained by federal officers.
