The Show Must Go On....,

antiwar  |  President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.

US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.

“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.

In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.

Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.

But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.

While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.

Iran Breached And Spec'd The Complete Iron Dome While Hitting Its Targets With Hypersonic Missiles

simplicius  |  Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.

Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km.

Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, which peeled back another layer of sophistication that included such things as possible endoatmospheric interception attempts with Israeli Arrow-3 ABM missiles.

But let’s step back for a moment to state that Iran’s operation in general was modeled after the sophisticated paradigm set by Russia in Ukraine: it began with the launch of various types of drones, which included some Shahed-136s (Geran-2 in Russia) as well as others. We can see that from the Israeli-released footage of some of the drone interceptions:

Israel Absorbs The $1 Billion Price Tag For Last Nights Fireworks Show And Calls It A Day

middleasteye  |  It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran's massive drone and missile attack overnight,  according to a former financial adviser to Israel's military. 

"The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per night," estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with Ynet news.

Aminoach highlighted that the staggering price tag stands in contrast to the relatively low amount that Iran had spent to launch its assault, which some estimates have put at less than 10 percent of what it cost Israel to stop the attack. 

Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles towards Israel on Saturday, in response to an Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria that killed two senior Revolutionary Guard commanders earlier this month.

Israel said its military forces and its allies had intercepted 99 percent of the missiles, but some ballistic missiles penetrated Israeli defences and hit the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. 

"If we're talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we actually bring down mainly with fighter jets," he said. 

"Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a David's Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of 4-5bn shekels."

David's Sling is a weapons system meant to intercept medium to long-range rockets and missiles. The Arrow system was designed to thwart long-range missiles, including the types of ballistic missiles Iran launched on Saturday and of long-range missiles launched by the Houthis in Yemen.

 

Senseless Bloodbath In The Moscow Region

sonar21  |  Americans are by-and-large decent, genial folks. But when it comes to history, most have the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient. Sam Cooke was speaking for most Americans when he crooned, “Don’t know much about history …”. So I will make this simple — America’s hatred of Russia has its roots in the U.S. Government’s post-WW II embrace of Nazis. Tim Weiner writes about this in his essential book, Legacy of Ashes. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Berlin, U.S. Army intelligence recruited and relied on German General Reinhard Gehlen:

“During World War II, General Gehlen had tried to spy on the Soviets from the eastern front as a leader of the Abwehr, Hitler’s military intelligence service. He was an imperious and cagey man who swore he had a network of “good Germans” to spy behind Russian lines for the United States.

“From the beginning,” Gehlen said, “I was motivated by the following convictions: A showdown between East and West is unavoidable. Every German is under the obligation of contributing his share, so that Germany is in a position to fulfill the missions incumbent on her for the common defense of Western Christian Civilization.” The United States needed “the best German men as co-workers…if Western Culture is to be safeguarded.” The intelligence network he offered to the Americans was a group of “outstanding German nationals who are good Germans but also ideologically on the side of the Western democracies.”. . .

“But in July 1949, under relentless pressure from the army, the CIA took over the Gehlen group. Housed in a former Nazi headquarters outside Munich, Gehlen welcomed dozens of prominent war criminals into his circle. As Helms and Sichel feared, the East German and Soviet intelligence services penetrated the Gehlen group at the highest levels. The worst of the moles surfaced long after the Gehlen group had transformed itself into the national intelligence service of West Germany. Gehlen’s longtime chief of counterintelligence had been working for Moscow all along.”

In the wake of this debacle, the CIA failed to recruit and run any significant sources in the Soviet Government. The CIA had very few officers who spoke Russian and swallowed whole hog the belief that the Soviets were intent on conquering the world and that it was up to the United States — relying heavily on the CIA — to stop the Soviets. That became the cornerstone of American foreign policy and explains the CIA’s obsession with regime change. No one in the intelligence hierarchy was encouraged or permitted to raise the alternative view — i.e., the Soviets, fearful of a Western invasion, took firm control of the European nations on its western border and installed governments that would served the Soviet interest. The CIA started its life as a new bureaucracy in Washington firmly committed to destroying the Soviet Union.

One of its first projects was recruiting and funding an insurgency with Ukrainians who had sided with the Nazis. While that effort was crushed by the Soviets, it served to further convince Stalin and others in the Soviet hierarchy that the West was in bed with Nazi survivors and could not be trusted.

The failure of the CIA to predict critical world events was an early distinguishing feature of the CIA from the start. The Soviets detonated their first nuke on August 29, 1949. Three weeks later a U.S. Air Force crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radiation beyond normal levels. Weiner recounts what happened next:

“On September 20, the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.”

The CIA’s leaders knack for getting it wrong continued with the failure to heed warnings that China was going to intervene on behalf of North Korea in 1950. Here is Weiner’s account:

“The president left for Wake Island on October 11, 1950. The CIA assured him that it saw “no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea…barring a Soviet decision for global war.” The agency reached that judgment despite two alarms from its three-man Tokyo station. First the station chief, George Aurell, reported that a Chinese Nationalist officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops near the Korean border. Headquarters paid little heed. Then Bill Duggan, later chief of station in Taiwan, insisted that the Chicoms soon would cross into North Korea. General MacArthur responded by threatening to have Duggan arrested. The warnings never reached Wake Island.

At headquarters, the agency kept advising Truman that China would not enter the war on any significant scale. On October 18, as MacArthur’s troops surged north toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the CIA reported that “the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.” On October 20, the CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were there to protect hydroelectric power plants. On October 28, it told the White H ouse that those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers. On October 30, after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was unlikely. A few days later, Chinese-speaking CIA officers interrogated several prisoners taken during the encounter and determined that they were Mao’s soldiers. Yet CIA headquarters asserted one last time that China would not invade in force. Two days later 300,000 Chinese troops struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into the sea.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here? While it is true there were some solid intelligence officers in the ranks of the CIA, any attempt to raise a warning that flew against conventional wisdom or defied what the leaders wanted to hear was ignored or punished. The failures of the CIA leadership to correctly predict the Soviets producing a nuclear bomb and the Chinese invasion of Korea are not isolated incidents. When it comes to big, critical issues — e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Tet offensive, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni, Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9-11 plot, weapons of “Mass Destruction in Iraq” and Russia’s ability to survive western sanctions and spin up its defense industry to outpace the U.S. and NATO countries combined — the CIA missed them all.

What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |   Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around and mouthing off about war in Ukraine. Putin remarked in an interview that Macron’s wanton warmongering over Ukraine was borne out of resentment due to the spectacular loss of France’s standing in Africa. One after another, France’s former colonial countries have told Paris in no uncertain terms to get out of their internal affairs. Since 2020 and the coup in Mali, there has been immense political upheaval on the continent, particularly in West and Central Africa, stretching from the vast Sahel region down to the equator. At least seven nations have undergone coups or government changes against Francophone rulers. They include Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon, and Guinea. The continent-wide changes have come as a political earthquake to France. The new African governments have adamantly rejected old-style French patronage and have asserted a newfound national independence.

Paris has had to recall unwanted ambassadors, shut down military bases, and withdraw thousands of troops. Where to put these French troops? In Ukraine, pitted against Russia? Popular sentiment across Africa is exasperated with and repudiating “Francafrique” corruption. Meanwhile, with an unmistakable end-of-era sense, French media have lamented “France’s shrinking footprint in Africa.” A former diplomat summed up the momentous geopolitical shift thus: “The deep trend confirms itself. Our military presence is no longer accepted. We need to totally rethink our relationship with Africa. We have been kicked out of Africa. We need to depart from other countries before we are told to.” Africa analysts are now watching two key countries closely. They are Senegal and Ivory Coast. Both are currently governed by pro-France presidents but the rising anti-French political tide is putting those incumbents at risk of either a coup or electoral ouster.

The blow to the French political elite cannot be overstated. The loss of status in its former colonies is conflating multiple crises tantamount to the traumatic loss of Algeria back in the early 1960s. Financially, for decades after handing over nominal independence to African nations, Paris continued to exploit these countries through control of currencies and their prodigious natural resources. Most of France’s electricity, for example, is generated from uranium ore mined in Africa – and obtained like most other African resources for a pittance. The system of neocolonial suzerainty was typically sustained by France bribing local corrupt regimes to do its bidding and offering security guarantees from the continuance of French military bases. Not for nothing did Paris think of itself as the African Gendarme.

One of the extraordinary curiosities of this neocolonial arrangement was that African nations were compelled to deposit their gold treasuries in France’s central bank. Any African nation trying to resist the neocolonial vassalage was liable to be attacked militarily through counter-coups, or its nationalist leaders were assassinated like Thomas Sankara in 1987, who was known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”. Nevertheless, the halcyon days of France’s dominance over its former colonies are over. African nations are discovering a new sense of independence and purpose, as well as solidarity to help each other fend off pressure from France to reinstate the status quo ante. The collapse of France’s status in Africa is perceived by the French establishment as a grievous loss in presumed global power.

No French politician can feel more aggrieved than President Emmanuel Macron. Macron imagines himself to be on a mission to restore “France’s greatness”. He seems to harbor fantasies of also leading the rest of Europe under the tutelage of Paris. It was Macron who proclaimed one of his grand objectives as achieving a reset in Franco-African relations, one which would renew continental respect for Paris and promote French strategic interests. How embarrassing for Macron that a whole spate of African nations are asserting that they no longer want to have anything to do with the old colonial power. Chagrin indeed.

    [..] The French president declared with hysteria that: “If Russia wins this war [in Ukraine], Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero.” Macron’s recklessness is criminal. He is talking up war with Russia based on sheer lies and vanity. When he says Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero what he really means is that his credibility and that of NATO will be reduced to zero when Russia defeats the NATO-backed NeoNazi regime in Kiev. Macron is a most dangerous kind of politician. He has an inordinate ego that has been bruised, his delusions have been shattered, he is an impotent vassal of American imperialism, and he is desperate for his sordid political survival. The French people are all too well aware of the charlatan that poses like a Louis XIV Sun King in Elysée Palace basking in his presumed vainglory. How ironic. Kicked out of Africa… and now trying to start World War Three in Europe. How pathetic and criminal.

Deathstar Ukraine The Largest Operation In CIA History

humanevents  |   Jack Posobiec hosted guest Mike Benz on Human Events Daily Thursday to hear his take on the New York Times article that detailed the CIA's involvement in Ukraine prior to the Russia invasion, which Benz said will reveal itself to be "the largest operation in CIA history."

The pair unpacked the reasoning behind the New York Times releasing their story which essentially agreed with what conservative commentators such as Posobiec have been saying since the war began.

"This is actually such a shocking moment in American journalist history," Benz stated. "These are highly highly, highly classified operations."

He said that "It's my contention that when the dust settles on this, the Ukraine skirmish in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup is going to ultimately be the largest operation in CIA history."

Compared to the CIA's Syrian operation under Barack Obama, which was revealed to be the most expensive operation up to this point, Ukraine will blow it out of the water once all said and done, Benz said.

Posobiec clarified that Benz was implying the NYT article was a "limited hangout" when "an operation becomes so compromised, or public knowledge or public interest becomes so obvious around something," that the CIA begins to unveil pieces of the big picture, like an "onion."

When the US involved itself in Ukraine in the Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Brennan era, "We were riding high and riding dirty. And that's what this was, we thought we were unstoppable and we could just coup anyone we wanted, there'd never be any repercussions, and no one would ever stand up for themselves, and Russia would never actually backstop it," Benz said.

This, however, was a "serious miscalculation."

"And when it turned out that their own population didn't support these dirty tricks, either in the form of the rise of a populace presidential candidate like Donald Trump who was running on putting America first in domestic priorities over foreign policy," he explained, "then all hell broke loose."

Is The Israel Lobby The Most Powerful Force In "American" Governance?

strategic-culture  |  What is the ‘elephant’ (or elephants) in the room? Blinken’s recent regional diplomacy was ‘a bust’. None of the regional leaders that Blinken met would talk further about Gaza beyond demanding stridently, ‘no Palestinian population displacement into Egypt’ a ‘stop to this madness’ – the carpet bombing of Gazans – and the demand for an immediate ceasefire.

And Biden’s calls for a ‘pause’ – softly, at first, and the more strident now – is being bluntly ignored by the Israeli government. The spectre of President Carter’s impotence during the Iran hostage crisis hangs ever more soberly in the backdrop.

The truth is that the White House cannot force Israel to do its will – the Israeli lobby holds the more clout in Congress than any White House team. Thus, ‘no exit’ from the Israeli crisis is readily to be seen. Biden ‘made his bed’ with the Netanyahu cabinet and must live with consequences.

Impotence then, as the Democratic Party fractures beyond the simplistic division between centrists versus progressives. The polarisation emanating from the ‘no ceasefire stance’ is having stark destabilising effects on politics, both in the U.S. and Europe.

Impotence then, as the shape of the Middle East crystallises into sharp antagonism towards the West’s perceived accommodation of the mass slaughter of Palestinian women, children and civilians. The die may be too far ‘cast’ to brake the ongoing tectonic reset already underway. Western double standards are just too inescapably obvious now to the Global Majority.

The large ‘elephant’ is this: Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of high explosives since 7 October (the 1945 Hiroshima nuke was 15,000 tons equivalent). What exactly is Netanyahu and his war cabinet’s aim here? Ostensibly, the earlier military operation in Jabalia Camp was about targeting a Hamas leader suspected of lurking under the camp – but six 2,000 lb bombs for one Hamas ‘target’ in a crowded refugee camp? And why too the attacks on water cisterns, hospital solar energy panels and hospital entrances, roads, schools and bakeries?

Bread has almost disappeared in Gaza. The UN says all bakeries in northern Gaza have closed following the bombing of the last bakeries. Clean water is desperately short, and thousands of bodies are slowly decomposing under rubble. Disease and epidemic are appearing, whilst humanitarian supplies are being tightly restricted as a bargaining tool toward further hostage releases..

Editor of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, puts the Israeli strategy very plainly:

“The expulsion of the Palestinian residents, transformation of their homes into piles of construction rubble, and the restriction of the entry of supplies and fuel into Gaza are the “tiebreaking move” employed by Israel in the current conflict, unlike all previous rounds of fighting in the Strip”.

Of what are we talking here? This clearly is not about avoiding collateral civilian deaths occurring as the IDF battles with Hamas. There have been no street battles in Jabalia, or in and around the hospitals – as one soldier commented: “All we’ve done is ride around in our armored vehicles. The boots on the ground stuff will come later”. The pretext of a ‘humanitarian evacuation’ therefore is bogus.

The U.S. Will Fight The West Asian Part Of WW-III Down To The Last Israeli...,

geopoliticaleconomy  |  It is crucial to stress that Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world.

In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it:

If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.

There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.

Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.

I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison…

They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.

First of all, it goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire economic infrastructure all around the world relies on fossil fuels.

The world is gradually moving toward new energy sources, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the entire global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in the global oil and gas markets.

But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is that the United States has tried to maintain control over every region of the world.

This was stated very clearly by the U.S. National Security Council in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:

[The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.

Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”.

Now, historically, when it came to the Middle East, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. And until the 1979 revolution in Iran, the country was governed by a dictator, a shah, the monarch, who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.

However, with the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.

It is not just the massive oil reserves and gas reserves in the region; it is not just the fact that many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia.

It is also the fact that some of the most important trading routes on Earth also go through this region.

It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. This connects trade from the Middle East going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, and around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods.

Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, you have a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, right off the coast of Yemen. And there, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.

The Biden Administration Budgeted For The Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza

stephensemler  |   The White House deployed the Secretaries of Defense and State to Capitol Hill this morning to sell Biden’s $106 billion spending request, which includes billions in military aid for Israel. With rising concerns that Israel’s ongoing military offensive will amount to mass ethnic cleansing, a bunch of protestors thankfully attended the congressional hearing too.

The Protestors Are Right

As this newsletter’s resident budget boffin, I want to explain why the activists were right to protest this specific spending plan. Biden’s proposal lists up to $23.5 billion in funding related to Israel’s military offensive: $8.7 billion in direct military aid, $5.6 billion in potential long-term military support, up to $3.5 billion for State Department’s migration assistance programs, and up to $5.7 billion for USAID’s humanitarian aid programs.1

All of it supports the forced displacement of Palestinians. Based on my reading of the tea leaves — and the 69-page PDF from the White House Office of Management Budget detailing the $106 billion request — I believe Biden is prepared to subsidize ethnic cleansing2 on a historic scale. Here’s how.

The $8.7 billion in military aid would bankroll Israel’s ongoing violent displacement of Palestinian civilians by sustaining its bombing campaign and ground invasion. The other $5.6 billion in military spending is there to support a bloody, protracted invasion of Gaza (which Israeli military leaders openly admit is a real possibility) by boosting US weapons stockpiles in Israel that Israel can draw from upon request, and funding the president’s new authority to send Israel any weapon directly from Pentagon stocks (with minimal oversight). Biden’s plan would primarily manage the humanitarian fallout not by securing Gaza, but by financing mass migration. Judging by how they were written in the proposal, the intent behind the $3.5 billion request for migration assistance is to manage near-term displacement, and the $5.7 billion in humanitarian relief is to accommodate the long-term (and perhaps permanent) mass displacement of Palestinian civilians.

Israeli leaders have expressed interest in ultimately shrinking Palestinian territory and greatly reducing the number of people living in it, and formalized plans for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza have recently emerged from the country’s political establishment. As president, Biden could prevent Israel from weaponizing mass migration, but he chose to budget for it instead.

Were You Aware Of The Secret U.S. Military Bases In Israel?

theintercept  |  Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.

On October 7, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.The U.S. Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a “life support facility”: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.

Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing.

The $35.8 million U.S. troop facility, not publicly announced or previously reported, was obliquely referenced in an August 2 contract announcement by the Pentagon. Though the Defense Department has taken pains to obscure the site’s true nature — describing it in other records merely as a “classified worldwide” project — budget documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512. (The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

“Sometimes something is treated as an official secret not in the hope that an adversary would never find out about it but rather [because] the U.S. government, for diplomatic or political reasons, does not want to officially acknowledge it,” Paul Pillar, a former chief analyst at the CIA’s counterterrorism center who said he had no specific knowledge of the base, told The Intercept. “In this case, perhaps the base will be used to support operations elsewhere in the Middle East in which any acknowledgment that they were staged from Israel, or involved any cooperation with Israel, would be inconvenient and likely to elicit more negative reactions than the operations otherwise would elicit.”

Rare acknowledgment of the U.S. military presence in Israel came in 2017, when the two countries inaugurated a military site that the U.S. government-funded Voice of America deemed “the first American military base on Israeli soil.” Israeli Air Force’s Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch called it “historic.” He said, “We established an American base in the State of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time.”

Have Iran And Russia Set A Trap In Palestine?

thecradle  |    Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam – be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping? Beijing, via its sophisticated diplomacy, is certainly hinting at it to key players, even before the ground-breaking, Russia-China brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement was struck earlier this year. That by itself won’t thwart the perpetual US neocon obsession to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran. Worth less than zero when it comes to military science, these neocons ignore how Iranian retaliation would – accurately – target each and every US base in Iraq and Syria, with the Persian Gulf an open case.

Peerless Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov has shown what could happen to those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean in case of an Israeli-threatened attack on Iran. Moreover, there are at least 1,000 US troops in northern Syria stealing the country’s oil – which would also become an instant target. Ali Fadavi, IRGC’s deputy commander-in-chief, cut to the chase: “We have technologies in the military field that no one knows about, and the Americans will know about them when we use them.” Cue to Iranian hypersonic Fattah missiles – cousins to the Khinzal and the DF-27 – traveling at Mach 15, and able to reach any target in Israel in 400 seconds. And add to it sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW). As confirmed in Moscow six months ago, when it comes to military interconnection, the Iranians told the Russians at the same table, “whatever you need, just ask.”

The same applies vice-versa, because the mutual enemy is one and the same. The heart of the matter in any Russian-Iran strategy is the Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day. Iran is able to block the Strait of Hormuz in a flash. For starters, that would be some sort of poetic justice retribution for Israel aiming to gobble up, illegally, all the multibillion-dollar natural gas discovered offshore Gaza: this is, incidentally, one of the absolutely key reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Yet the real deal will be to bring down the Wall Street-engineered $618 trillion derivative structure, as confirmed for years by analysts at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as independent Persian Gulf energy traders.

So when push comes to shove – and way beyond the defense of Palestine and in a scenario of Total War – not only Russia-Iran but key players of the Arab world about to become members of BRICS 11 – such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE – do have what it takes to bring down the US financial system anytime they choose. As an old school Deep State higher up, now in business in Central Europe, stresses: “The Islamic nations have the economic advantage. They can blow up the international financial system by cutting off the oil. They do not have to fire a single shot. Iran and Saudi Arabia are allying together. The 2008 crisis took 29 trillion dollars to solve but this one, should it happen, could not be solved even with 100 trillion dollars of fiat instruments.” As Persian Gulf traders told me, one possible scenario is OPEC starting to sanction Europe, first from Kuwait and then spreading from one OPEC country to another and to all countries that are treating the Muslim world as enemies and war fodder.

This Is A Test Of The Emergency Broadcast System, This Is Only A Test...,

 reuters  | Summary

• Russia holds public warning tests
• Russia says: Please remain calm
• United States also to hold public warning test

MOSCOW, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Russia tested its emergency public warning systems across the country on Wednesday, blaring out sirens and interrupting some television and radio broadcasts to warn the population to stay calm.

The test, first conducted in 2020, is part of a new initiative that requires authorities to conduct tests twice a year, starting from Sept. 1.

It comes, though, amid the war in Ukraine that has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

At around 10:40 a.m. Moscow time (0740 GMT), sirens wailed across some parts of Russia and stern announcements demanded "Attention everyone!".

"The readiness of warning systems is being checked, please remain calm," speakers said in a stern male Russian voice.

"When you hear the sound of a siren, you need to remain calm and not panic, turn on the TV - any publicly accessible channel or radio - and listen to the information message," the Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a statement.

"The warning system is designed to timely convey a signal to the population in the event of a threat or emergency of a natural or man-made nature."

The United States was also conducting a large-scale test of its public warning systems on Wednesday, via U.S. mobile phones and TV and radio stations.

The purpose of the U.S. test is to ensure that the systems "continue to be effective in alerting the public to emergencies, particularly at the national level", the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said in a press release.

Many other countries have also conducted alert system tests for crises and disasters in recent years.

The Russian test falls on the 91st anniversary of the creation of Russia's civil defence system and follows nationwide educational drills in August on practicing actions and procedures in emergency situations, Russian media reported.

The goal of Russia's tests is to assess the warning systems, the readiness of personnel responsible for launching them and raise public awareness, the emergency ministry said.

 

 

The 4th Reich Is BIG MAD With Elon Musk

nbcnews  |  Tech billionaire Elon Musk has come under fire from Ukraine after it emerged he thwarted a major attack on the Russian navy.

According to excerpts published by CNN, a soon-to-be-released biography of the SpaceX CEO claims that Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his Starlink satellite network over Russian-occupied Crimea last year in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s naval fleet. 

Musk was worried that the planned attack on the Kremlin’s Black Sea fleet, which occurred early in the war, could escalate tensions and potentially lead to nuclear conflict, according to the extract from historian Walter Isaacson’s upcoming book.

The claim was immediately met with criticism from Kyiv. 

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blasted the tech billionaire on X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns. 

“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Podolyak wrote. 

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he added.

Russia is known to have used its naval ships in the Black Sea to strike deep into Ukrainian territory and impose an effective blockade of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast, which is crucial to global grain shipments. 

“As a result, civilians, children are being killed,” Podolyak said. “This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?”

Musk responded to the report, denying that he turned off the service but accepting he had chosen not to enable the attack as he did not want to become directly involved in the war. 

“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” Musk said in a response to a thread on X about the new book’s claims. 

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” he said in another response, referring to a key port city in Crimea that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. 

“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk added. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

According to the excerpts from the new biography, it meant that Ukrainian submarine drones packed with explosives lost connectivity as they approached the Russian ships, and saw them “washed ashore harmlessly.”

The book also delves into how Musk’s decision played out, alleging Musk spoke with top U.S. officials along with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

NBC News has reached out to SpaceX and Zelenskyy’s office for comment.

 

Russian Military Using Weapons That Didn't Even Exist 18 Month Ago

sputnik |  Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.

The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."

“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.
The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."
“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

He was echoed by the Russian Defense Ministry, which, in turn, said that Ukrainian troops kept trying, but were failing to advance as they continue to suffer heavy losses in men and materiel. A number of Western media outlets also pointed to the unimpressive results of Kiev's counteroffensive, admitting that its progress was "slower than desired." Fist tap Dale

These Polacks Out'chere Just Really Doing The Most....,

polskieradio |  The war in Ukraine has weakened the Franco-German axis that once defined Europe, with the balance of power now shifting toward the UK and Poland, a British political scientist has claimed. 

In an op-ed featured in the British news magazine The New Statesman, Maurice Glasman, a political scientist from St Mary's University in London, highlights the profound impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the existing order in Europe.

Glasman argues that the invasion has not only disrupted the balance of power across the continent but has also had consequences for the European Union, Poland's wpolityce.pl website reported on Thursday.

Prior to the crisis, the EU functioned under a shared leadership model, with France and Germany at the helm. France assumed a dominant role in military and diplomatic affairs, while Germany focused on economic matters, according to Glasman.

However, he says the legal framework governing the EU was rooted in the primacy of EU law within member states, which ultimately created tensions in both eastern and western Europe.

These tensions were exemplified by Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU, as well as the opposition voiced by Poland and Hungary on social issues.

“The status quo was based on an understanding over the export of gas (as well as oil and coal) from Russia to Germany, most obviously through the Nord Stream pipeline," according to Glasman.

He writes: "Berlin and Moscow held the fate of Central Europe in their hands once more. German economic interests were predominant, partly because the EU did not develop a unified military strategy of its own."

Significant shift in European landscape

Glasman further states: “This is what made the status of Ukraine so explosive. Its integration into either the EU or NATO was not in German interests. It would undermine its economic interests, as the only serious industrial economy within the EU, which were predicated upon cheap energy imports from Russia.”

In his analysis, Glasman highlights the fact that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has resulted in a significant shift in the European landscape, particularly in the realms of economics and military affairs, wpolityce.pl reported.

Glasman says this shift has exposed Germany's relative weakness and hesitancy in the military sphere, sentiments that are shared by France.

He argues that in the event of a military confrontation with Russia, power and resources within Europe would gravitate towards NATO, subsequently leading to a resurgence of influence from the United States and the United Kingdom.

He writes that “it was widely assumed within academic and elite political discourse that Brexit would lead to the marginalization of Britain within Europe, and to the consolidation of the Franco-German axis within the EU. The opposite has been the case.”

He continues: “Following the invasion of Ukraine, Britain took an unambiguous position of military and political support for the beleaguered Ukrainian state. While the US was offering President Volodymyr Zelensky asylum, Britain immediately transferred weapons and led the western European political response with an unprecedented array of economic sanctions against Russia. It seemed as if Brexit had strengthened its freedom of action at a time of war."

All Is Not Well In "The Garden" As Video Games Cause A Week Of Serious Unrest...,

Telegraph  |  French police said they were “at war” with “savage hordes of vermin” on Friday night as France was rocked by violent waves of riots and looting and about 1,000 more people were arrested.

Two of the country’s top police unions threatened a revolt unless Emmanuel Macron’s government restored order after protests broke out over an officer’s shooting of a teenager outside Paris.

“Today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will enter resistance and the government should be aware of this,” they said.

It came as British travellers were warned about the risk of curfews and travel restrictions due to the spiralling upheaval and vandalism around France.

A domestic intelligence note seen by Le Monde has warned riots could become increasingly “widespread” and go on for “the coming nights”.

The French government announced on Friday that all major public gatherings that could “pose a risk to public order” would be banned. Various rock concerts have been pulled. Some 45,000 police were deployed. 

The Interior Ministry said 994 arrests were made during Friday night, with more than 2,500 fires. The night before, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores ransacked.

While the number of overnight arrests was the highest yet, there were fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than the previous night, according to the Interior Ministry. Gerald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, claimed the violence was of “much less intensity”.

Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities have not released injury tallies for protesters.

Protests have continued into a fourth night, with rioters in Paris on Saturday night setting fire to a bus and clashing with police. Unrest has also spread to Lyon and Grenoble.

Meanwhile, security will be beefed up during the upcoming Tour de France bike race, which is due to start in Spain on Saturday.

Mr Macron faced intense pressure on Friday to impose a state of emergency as he called on parents to keep their children at home and blamed video games for “intoxicated” young protesters.

In updated travel advice, the Foreign Office said: “Locations and timing of riots are unpredictable. You should monitor the media, and avoid areas where riots are taking place.”

 

 

Sergei A. Karaganov: To Back The West Off Russia Will Probably Have To Make A Fused-Glass Example Or Two...,

globalaffairs.ru  |  Russia and its leadership seem to be facing a difficult choice. It becomes increasingly clear that a clash with the West cannot end even if we win a partial or even a crushing victory in Ukraine.

It will be a really partial victory if we liberate four regions. It will be a slightly bigger victory if we liberate the entire East and South of present-day Ukraine in the next year or two. But there will still remain a part of it with an even more embittered ultranationalist population pumped up with weapons―a bleeding wound threatening inevitable complications and a new war.

Perhaps the worst situation may occur if, at the cost of enormous losses, we liberate the whole of Ukraine and remain in ruins with a population that mostly hates us. Its “redemption” will take more than a decade. Any option, especially the latter one, will distract our country from making an urgently needed step to shift its spiritual, economic, and military-political focus to the east of Eurasia. We will get stuck in the west, with no prospects in the foreseeable future, while present-day Ukraine, primarily its central and western regions, will sap managerial, human, and financial resources out the country. These regions were heavily subsidized even in Soviet times. The feud with the West will continue as it will support a low-grade guerrilla civil war.

A more attractive option would be liberating and reincorporating the East and the South of Ukraine, and forcing the rest to surrender, followed by complete demilitarization and the creation of a friendly buffer state. But this would be possible only if and when we are able to break the West’s will to incite and support the Kiev junta, and to force it to retreat strategically.

And this brings us to the most important but almost undiscussed issue. The underlying, and even fundamental cause of the conflict in Ukraine and many other tensions in the world, as well as of the overall growth of the threat of war is the accelerating failure of the modern ruling Western elites―mainly comprador ones in Europe (Portuguese colonialists used the word ‘comprador’ to refer to local traders who catered to their needs)―who were generated by the globalization course of recent decades. This failure is accompanied by rapid changes, unprecedented in history, in the global balance of power in favor of the Global Majority, with China and partly India acting as its economic drivers, and Russia chosen by history to be its military-strategic pillar. This weakening infuriates not only the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (Biden and Co.), but also the imperial-national ones (Trump). Their countries are losing their five-century-long ability to syphon wealth around the world, imposing, primarily by brute force, political and economic orders, and cultural dominance. So there will be no quick end to the unfolding Western defensive but aggressive confrontation. This collapse of moral, political, and economic positions has been brewing since the mid-1960s; it was interrupted by the Soviet Union’s breakup but resumed with renewed vigor in the 2000s. (The defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the beginning of the Western economic model crisis in 2008 were major milestones.)

To stop this snowballing downward slide, the West has temporarily consolidated itself. The United States has turned Ukraine into a striking fist intended to create a crisis and thus tie the hands of Russia―the military-political core of the non-Western world, which is freeing itself from the shackles of neo-colonialism―but better still blow it up, thus radically weakening the rising alternative superpower―China. For our part, we delayed our preemptive strike either because we misunderstood the inevitability of a clash, or because we were gathering strength. Moreover, following modern, mainly Western, military-political thought, we thoughtlessly set too high a threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, inaccurately assessed the situation in Ukraine, and did not start the military operation there successfully enough.

Failing internally, Western elites began to actively nourish the weeds that had come through after seventy years of well-being, satiety, and peace―all these anti-human ideologies that reject the family, homeland, history, love between a man and a woman, faith, commitment to higher ideals, everything that constitutes the essence of man. They are weeding out those who resist. The goal is to destroy their societies and turn people into mankurts (slaves deprived of reason and sense of history as described be the great Kirgiz and Russian writer Chengiz Aitmatov) in order to reduce their ability to resist modern “globalist” capitalism, increasingly unfair and counterproductive for humans and humanity as a whole.

Along the way, the weakened United States unleashed a conflict to finish off Europe and other dependent countries, intending to throw them into the flames of confrontation after Ukraine. Local elites in most of these countries have lost their bearings and, panic-stricken by their failing internal and external positions, are obediently leading their countries to the slaughter. Moreover, the feeling of a greater failure, powerlessness, centuries-old Russophobia, intellectual degradation, and the loss of strategic culture make their hatred even deeper than that of the United States.

Lukashenko Very Excited To Restore Belarus Former Status As A Russian Nuclear Speartip

AP  |  Lukashenko said Tuesday that “everything is ready” for the Russian nuclear weapons’ deployment, adding that “it could take just a few days for us to get what we had asked for and even a bit more.”

Asked later by a Russian state TV host whether Belarus had already received some of the weapons, Lukashenko responded coyly by saying: “Not all of them, little by little.”

“We have got the missiles and bombs from Russia,” he said, adding that the Russian nuclear weapons to be deployed to Belarus are three times more powerful than the U.S. atomic bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

“God forbid I have to make a decision to use those weapons today, but there would be no hesitation if we face an aggression,” Lukashenko, known for his blustering statements, said in comments released by his office earlier Tuesday.

Speaking later Tuesday in remarks broadcast by Russian state TV, he clarified that he would consult with Putin before using any of the weapons.

“Listen, if a war starts, do you think I will look around?” he said. “I pick up the phone, and wherever he is, he picks it up,” Lukashenko said in a reference to Putin. “If he calls, I pick it up any time. It’s no problem at all to coordinate launching a strike.”

Russian officials had no immediate comment on Lukashenko’s remarks.

Lukashenko emphasized that it was he who had asked Putin to deploy Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus. He argued that the move was necessary to deter a potential aggression. 

“I believe no one would be willing to fight a country that has those weapons,” Lukashenko said. “Those are weapons of deterrence.”

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended to destroy enemy troops and weapons on the battlefield. They have a relatively short range and a much lower yield than nuclear warheads fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of obliterating whole cities.

Lukashenko said that Belarus didn’t need the deployment of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons to its territory. “Am I going to fight America? No,” he said.

He added, however, that Belarus was readying facilities for intercontinental nuclear-tipped missiles as well, just in case.

Along with Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Belarus hosted a significant share of Soviet nuclear arsenals when they were all part of the Soviet Union. Those weapons were withdrawn to Russia after the 1991 Soviet collapse under a deal sponsored by the U.S.