EU hits back at Hungary over Russia claims
Samizdat | July 18, 2022
The EU’s top diplomat has hit back at those who criticize the Western sanctions slapped on Russia, saying on Monday that he does not believe them to be a mistake, and adding that the bloc will continue to stand by its policies.
“There is a big debate about ‘are the sanctions effective? Are the sanctions affecting us more than Russia?’ Some European leaders have been saying that the sanctions were an error, were a mistake. Well, I do not think they were a mistake, it is what we had to do and we will continue doing,” Josep Borrell, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told reporters prior to the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels.
Borrell’s comments come after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban castigated EU sanctions against Russia on Friday, claiming they were “miscalculated” and could destroy Europe’s economy. He also noted that the sanctions have failed to destabilize Russia’s economy and haven’t forced Moscow to stop its military operation in Ukraine, instead causing massive damage to the EU’s economic stability.
The senior diplomat also declined to admit that oil prices soared due to the oil embargo that Brussels had imposed on Russia. He said the price of the fuel is now back at the same level as it was before February 24.
“So, how can someone say that it was the ban which has increased the price of oil?” Borrell argued.
Following the start of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, Brent crude prices skyrocketed, reaching more than $120 per barrel in early March. Later, however, the prices went down, with Brent crude trading now at just above $100 per barrel, despite the EU’s decision on June 3 to impose an embargo on Russian oil.
Borrell said at the Council meeting on Monday that ministers would discuss a new sanctions package against Russia, as well as measures to better implement the restrictions already in place, and added that he had presented new proposals on the matter, including a ban on Russian gold.
220-Meter Turbine Breaks in Two in One of Sweden’s Largest Wind Parks
Samizdat – 18.07.2022
A 220 meter high wind turbine with a span of 145 meters, part of a wind farm in Viksjö outside the city of Härnösand in Västernorrland County, has broken in half and crashed into the forest.
No one was injured and the wind farm will be closed until an accident team examines the wind farm.
According to the Nysäter Wind company, which owns the farm, no one was injured. An accident team is on its way to investigate the wind turbine, and is expected to begin its work on Monday. Until then, the farm is closed, and access to the adjacent areas is limited.
“Parts of the turbine are sticking up and leaning against each other. That is why we approach with caution and block off. We also ask ourselves the question of how this could happen. We hope that the investigation can find out,” Nysäter Wind board member and advisor Per Nordlund told national broadcaster SVT.
Nysäter Wind suspected that oil had leaked from the gearbox and urged the public to stay away from the site.
The Nysäter windfarm in Viksjö is touted as one of Sweden’s largest wind power projects. With its 114 turbines, it will be one of Europe’s largest onshore wind turbines and by far the largest investment ever in the history of Härnösand.
However, the wind farm in Viksjö previously ran into trouble during the construction stage. Journalist investigations by SVT and others indicated that subcontractors had been left unpaid for their work, which led to bankruptcy risks, and about 30 companies being owed money to the tune of at least SEK 60 million ($5.7 million).
No fewer than six reported violations of environmental regulations were reported during construction; forests with protected species were felled and waste was dumped in sensitive natural environments.
Furthermore, the massive project was stopped by the county administrative board over environmental criticism, leading to further delays in construction. Only in June 2022 was the park ready for inauguration.
The share of domestic wind power resources in Swedish national consumption has risen from 0.3 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2020.
To counter soaring electricity prices and alleviate Europe’s dependence on energy fuels, the Swedish government plans a massive expansion of offshore wind power. However, critics slammed the plans as inefficient and a way of shifting the bill to the customers themselves. Among others, energy expert Marie Knutsen-Öy called it “an indirect subsidy that creates unnecessary costs and impairs the functioning of the electricity market”.
Germany and France ‘killed’ Minsk agreements – Russia
Samizdat | July 18, 2022
Germany is demanding that Russia guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but such a deal was previously signed, only to be “killed” by Berlin and Paris, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
“When [German Chancellor] Olaf Scholz demands that Russia should be compelled to sign an agreement granting Ukraine guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty, all his attempts are in vain. There was already such a deal – the Minsk agreements – which was killed by Berlin and Paris. They were shielding Kiev, which openly refused to comply,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Russian newspaper Izvestia.
Russia, Germany and France brokered the 2015 Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Donbass, which were designed to put an end to hostilities. But according to Lavrov, Berlin and Paris failed to ensure Kiev’s compliance.
The Russian foreign minister noted that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko admitted the Minsk agreements meant nothing for Kiev, and Ukraine used them only to buy time.
“Our task was to stave off the threat… to buy time to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces. This task was achieved. The Minsk Agreements have fulfilled their mission,” Poroshenko said in June.
Lavrov also mentioned that in December 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a chance to fulfil the Minsk agreements at the so-called Normandy format summit held in Paris. After negotiations with leaders of Russia, Germany and France, Zelensky pledged to resolve issues surrounding the special status of Donbass. “Of course, he did nothing, and Berlin and Paris were shielding him once again,” he noted.
The Minsk agreements included a series of measures designed to rein in hostilities in Donbass and reconcile the warring parties. The first steps were a ceasefire and an OSCE-monitored pullout of heavy weapons from the frontline, which were fulfilled to some degree.
Kiev was then supposed to grant a general amnesty to the rebels and extensive autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Ukrainian troops were supposed to take control of the rebel-held areas after Kiev granted them representation, and otherwise reintegrate them as part of Ukraine.
Poroshenko’s government refused to implement these portions of the deal, claiming it could not proceed unless it fully secured the border between the breakaway republics and Russia. He instead endorsed an economic blockade of the rebel regions, initiated by Ukrainian nationalist forces.
Zelensky’s presidency gave an initial boost to the peace process, but stalled after a series of protests by right-wing radicals, who threatened to depose the new Ukrainian president if he tried to deliver on his campaign promises.
Kiev’s failure to implement the roadmap, and the continued hostilities with rebels, were among the primary reasons cited by Russia when it attacked Ukraine in late February. Days before launching the offensive, Moscow recognized the breakaway Ukrainian republics as sovereign states, offering them security guarantees and demanding that Kiev pull back its troops. Zelensky refused to comply.
Malcolm Nance: White Extremists Are An ‘Insurgency’ Worse Than ISIS – ‘We May Have to Fight’ Our Neighbors
By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | July 14, 2022
MSNBC regular Malcolm Nance, who has spent 36+ years in US intelligence, told Zerlina Maxwell on Wednesday night that around 30% of the country are white extremists and they’re part of an “insurgency” that “we may have to fight.”
WATCH:
From Breitbart :
“Here is the United States — to characterize that to understand what kind of terrorism we might be dealing with, you have to label it as white extremism because we have 30% of the population of the United States who no longer believe in the democratic norms that we established in the founding of the country. Let’s just be honest about that. The January 6 uprising was an attempt to overthrow American democracy. And we have now learned from the hearing that Donald Trump intended to go there to march down to the well of the House of Representatives and essentially be crowned as a king,” [Nance said.]
Anchor Zerlina Maxwell asked, “You call what is happening an insurgency. We have heard that term in foreign wars recently in Iraq. Talk about why you apply the term insurgency to what you see here as a persistent and ongoing threat of domestic extremists?”
Nance said, “I was reading their forums. I was reading their own intelligence about what they intended to do. It was pretty clear at that point that they were going to try to either overthrow the government or they were going to settle in for a long-term series of destabilizing actions using a political party, the Republican party, as their political base and then using violence, threat of violent extremism as a way to manifest change in the street. So remove politics from the halls of power and change politics through violence on the street. This is called an insurgency. The insurrection that happened on January 6 that was one event. An insurgency is a chain of events. It’s common knowledge. A year and a half ago, when I was calling this an insurgency, people were saying, that’s crazy, this isn’t an insurgency, this isn’t like Iraq, it’s not like Libya, it’s not like Syria. Well, it is. And it’s well on its way. It’s closer to the beginnings of the Irish Republican Army. You know Irish Republicanism, where now the Republican Party is Sinn Fein, and it’s just a matter of seeing who comes up as the original Irish Republicans in this story and starts carrying out acts of violence to affect change. So we are well on our way to a multi-year campaign that we are already two years into this campaign where we may have to fight them. The ‘they’ in my title and the ‘they’ in my title is those who want to kill Americans are your neighbors.”
Here we have a US intelligence analyst, who has admitted previously to torturing hundreds of people on behalf of the DC regime, suggesting that white Americans who voted for Trump are part of a terrorist “insurgency” that needs to be put down with force and he’s preparing MSNBC viewers to fight (and presumably kill) their neighbors.
DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas expressed similar views last year when he said that “extremist” white Americans support the Taliban and are poised to carry out terror attacks at any moment.
The FBI has been manufacturing fake terror plots to bolster this narrative and the media has been using fake data to hype the phony threat.
Back in April, Nance went over to western Ukraine to show his support for the Azov Battalion and joined the Ukrainian military’s foreign legion. He claimed he was fighting on the “frontlines.” He came back late last month and released his new book two weeks later.
The description for his new book, “They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency,” says extremist white Americans, “who benefit from the ultimate privilege — being white,” are “a generational terror threat greater than either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.”
“America is primed for a possible explosive wave of terrorist attacks and armed confrontations that aim to bring about a Donald Trump led dictatorship,” the description continues.
Nance is an intelligence asset working to prop up a false narrative to bolster the DC regime’s new Domestic War on Terror.
Big Smartphone is watching you
By Edward Fitzgibbon | TCW Defending Freedom | July 18, 2022
YOU may have noticed that it’s impossible to walk down a city street and not see smartphones everywhere. The interminable fiddling, the addictive near-impossibility for most people of not taking them everywhere they go. While recognising the dazzling technological ingenuity of these slimline contraptions, I’ve come to see them for what I truly believe them to be: an increasing threat to our freedom.
This claim is not made lightly, and I’ve never been a Luddite about modern technology.
It’s not what they are that is the danger, but what they will become, and what they will be used for.
You’ll probably recall the harrowing, nightmarish scenes in Shanghai, with the hazmat-suited, violent, robot-like police. And what’s the other thing you’ll notice? Almost every protester is waving a smartphone, apparently impotently, at the utterly indifferent zombies of the CCP.
The Chinese authorities clearly feel that they have nothing to fear from having their ghastly activities filmed by their unfortunate citizens, or for those terrible scenes to be broadcast to the world. And how are the people of Shanghai (and other places) controlled, in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of social insects? Smartphones.
The unconcealed intention of the WEF globalist totalitarians is to impose a digital ID surveillance state which no one can evade and from which no one can escape.
The obvious addictiveness of smartphones, and their ubiquity, makes them the ideal tool for control and oppression.
The so-called ‘Vaccine Passport’ is a euphemism for what will be, and is intended to be, a Slave’s Passport on the Chinese model. If you have difficulty believing that this might be true, peruse the list of information about you that a ‘passport’ (supposedly containing a record of your jabs and boosters) will contain: all manner of personal details, including your political views, who you associate with, your criminal record and your private medical details. It’s precisely the same list the CCP use to control their citizens’ lives down to the last detail. Simply put, if you don’t comply to the last jot and tittle with the government, you are excluded from society, shunned, shamed and increasingly unable to buy essential supplies, even food. Like the people in Shanghai.
Is this all too far-fetched for you? Slightly older readers might like to try a thought experiment: recall that life continued well enough before smartphones came into all-too-common use. It really did.
Don’t make the dangerously naive assumption that ‘this is Britain and Shanghai could never happen here’. Your addiction to your smartphone could end up trapping you and, through your compliance, all of us, in the nightmare vision of a totalitarian world that Schwab, Gates, the WEF and the WHO have long planned and are assiduously cultivating, step by step.
Your smartphone is nothing less than the shackle that will imprison you, irrevocably, in the Great Reset. Have the courage to dump it.
New Data from Germany: Births and Even Abortions are Down!
Accidental Pregnancies are an Independent Indicator of Fertility
By Igor Chudov | July 17, 2022
Three weeks ago, I wrote an article about Germany, highlighting a very large and consistent drop in births starting January this year, 9 months after vaccination of young people began, until March.
Since then, I found more data regarding Germany:
- Arkmedic pointed out that April births are available (read his article!)
- I found data on 2021 ABORTIONS in Germany, also showing an uncharacteristically large decline in abortions (accidental pregnancies). The abortion data is a completely independent confirmation of the declining fertility of Germans.
Births
We have new data for April — births dropped by 12% in 2022, compared to April of 2021.
Before I go further, I have to remind my readers: birth rates are always seasonal! Most parents prefer to make a “spring baby”, which often ends up with them making a “summer baby” because conception takes more time than expected. So, never compare adjacent months as they are guaranteed to have dramatic changes that are simply seasonality-driven, with differences very repeatable over the years. Only compare months of one year with the same months of another year, please.
The data comes from the German Bureau of Statistics. (if this link does not bring you to the exact page, select “population” and drill down to “births”). I summarized it for you:
You can see that births suddenly started dropping in Dec 2021, (going from +5% yoy in November to 1% in December, down to -10% in January and -13.28% in February. The suddenness and extent of this drop are unprecedented.
The data for April confirmed that the reduction in birth rate over the first three months is not a fluke and is continuing for the fourth month.
Many people feel strongly about abortions. I understand. I am asking you to suspend your feelings for a moment and look at abortions like a demographer would.
Remember: abortions result from unplanned pregnancies! Aside from a relatively small amount of abortions happening due to fetal abnormalities, most abortions happen because the pregnancy was unexpected, unwanted, and accidental.
What this means is, absent large changes in the laws of the land, sudden increases or decreases in abortions happen only because of changes in fertility.
Live births may see increases or decreases because of changed desire to have children due to social factors. In the case of abortions, however, the pregnancy is ALMOST ALWAYS unplanned to begin with, so social factors like economic expectations have little to do with most abortions. Those abortions are only indications of fertility and desire to have unprotected sex.
So… abortions in 2021 fell by 5.3%!
How large is this effect? Between 1996 and 2021, abortions fell by an average of 1,452 abortions per year. In the year 2021, abortions fell by 5,352! The recent years prior to 2021 saw little change in abortions. Thus, the decline of 5,352 abortions in the year 2021 likely is due to the changed fertility of young people in Germany and shows a great decline in unplanned, accidental pregnancies. Abortions are never planned, remember!
Please recall that younger Germans in 2021 did not start vaccinations until about May or so. Thus, if vaccinations are the cause of lower fertility, their effect on pregnancies would not be seen until the second half of 2021.
Furthermore, since abortion is done after about a month into the pregnancy, you can add about a month and deal with about 5 months out of 12 in 2021, most affected by vaccinations. Thus, a 5% drop in abortions could roughly mean a 12% decline in fertility starting about July.
This is a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation that indicates that abortion data largely agrees with the hypothesis that declines in birth rates are caused by vaccination, and not by social conditions.
The abortion story is not, as such, a proof of causation: it is a piece of evidence that agrees with my vaccination hypothesis, and strongly disagrees with the possibility that change in fertility is caused by social factors.
So we see that both abortions, as well as April birth data in Germany, coincide and suggest that vaccinations caused a large drop in fertility among the people of Germany.
See Also
- Jestre just wrote a scary post about Canada birth rates — please take a look! 11% decline (like in Germany)!
- Sweden (dramatic steady decline to -10% this year)
- Taiwan (-28% decline)
- Germany (previous article), North Dakota, UK, and Switzerland. (12-13% declines)
Beijing citizens criticize Covid surveillance devices
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | July 17, 2022
Some residents of Beijing are pushing back against a Covid tracking device they are required to wear on their wristbands. Anyone returning to Tiantongyuan, a residential district in northern Beijing, is required to wear the device all day for seven days.
The device records someone’s temperature every five minutes. According to China Daily, the device’s corresponding app has access to the phone’s microphone, location, and camera.
Those forced to wear the device have raised concerns about how it monitors the location and what is done with the data collected. The development of the device was a collaboration between the government and Beijing Microchip Sensing Technology, which is backed by China’s tech giant Tencent.
One of the people that received the wristband was Dahongmao, a tech blogger who shared his experience with the device on social media.
“If this bracelet can connect to the internet, it definitely can record my movements and it’s almost like wearing electronic handcuffs. I don’t want to wear it,” he said.
“The issuer said it’s a requirement from higher up and that I shouldn’t make it difficult for her. I said I would not want to make it difficult for her but she could tell those above her that I won’t wear it. If you insist that I wear it, you’ll have to come up with the documents that prove that it’s a Beijing government requirement and that this is not some unlicensed company trying to make a profit.”
China Daily and South China Morning Post were separately told by a Beijing COVID-19 hotline that the use of the devices was at the discretion of the residential community.
Earlier this week, Hong Kong announced it would roll out tracking bracelets to enforce its mandatory one-week home isolation.
Eighty Times More Excess Deaths Associated With Cold Each Year than Heat
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JULY 17, 2022
Amid all the hysteria about next week’s extreme temperatures – which could climb to 41°, according to the Met Office – it’s worth bearing in mind that many, many more excess deaths in England and Wales are associated with cold each year than with heat. According to a recent study in the Lancet Planetary Health, between 2000 and 2019, there were an average of 65,000 excess deaths per year in England and Wales associated with cold, but fewer than 800 a year associated with heat. In other words, roughly 80 times more deaths per year are associated with cold than heat.
Needless to say, the report’s authors blame these excess deaths on ‘climate change’ in general and have nothing to say about the likelihood of the 65,000 figure increasing next winter as a result of rising energy bills.
The researchers analysed 10.7 million deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 2000 and 2019 across over 37,473 small areas that include around 1,600 residents, also known as lower super output areas (LSOAs). They then linked these data with high-resolution gridded temperature maps and potential drivers of vulnerability to heat and cold, including demographic and socio-economic factors, health and disability, housing and neighbourhood, landscape, and climatological characteristics. This allowed the researchers to characterise differences across small areas and map variation in temperature-related mortality risks across the two countries.
Dr Pierre Masselot, Research Fellow in in Environmental Epidemiology and Statistics at LSHTM and co-author of the study, said: “The results come at a critical time as countries and communities face increasing health impacts due to climate change and need to find effective ways to adapt to changing temperatures. The analytical framework also provides a flexible tool that can be adapted for future studies which aim to model temperature-related risks and impacts at small-area level under different climate change scenarios.”
The authors emphasised that, while the research showed that excess mortality attributed to cold was significantly higher than that attributed to heat, these results should be interpreted with caution as more cold than hot days were recorded throughout the year. Despite this, they highlighted that cold-related mortality is evidently a considerable health burden, particularly in deprived areas, and should be addressed with targeted public health interventions.
Nevertheless, any un-biased person reading this report cannot help but conclude that the rising cost of utility bills caused, in part, by the Government’s pursuit of ‘net zero’ will result in far more deaths than next week’s heat wave.
If you really care about reducing deaths due to extreme temperatures, shouldn’t you focus your energies on getting the Government to scrap its ‘net zero’ target, lift the ban on Fracking and start investing billions in nuclear[?], instead of disrupting traffic and sporting events?
You can read the Lancet Planetary Health study here.
Russia-Iran relations take a quantum leap
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 17, 2022
When US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan first spoke about a potential Iran-Russian drone deal, Moscow kept quiet and Tehran issued a pro forma rebuttal, which suggested that it is still a work in progress. Sullivan’s disclosure appeared at the end of a White Course briefing for President Biden’s West Asia tour to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to have an element of grandstanding aimed at fuelling the latent anti-Iran sentiments in the Gulf region that could in turn impart momentum to POTUS’ project to put together an Israeli-Arab military front in the region.
In the event, the ploy didn’t work. After Biden’s visit ended, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told CNN, amongst other things, that talks are going on between Iran and the GCC states for improvement of relations and the focus should be on changing Iran’s behaviour.
But Sullivan has repeated his charge and has since added that an official Russian delegation “recently received a showcase of Iranian attack-capable UAVs,” the last time being as recently as on July 5. CNN has cited White House officials as saying that Iran is expected to supply Russia with hundreds of drones for use in the war in Ukraine, “with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as late July.”
Iran is known to have a varied drone ecosystem and is reportedly showcasing to Russia the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 “killer” drones. According to published information, Shahed-129 has a wingspan of 50 feet with a cruising speed of about 160 km per hour, an endurance of 24 hours with a range of 1,700 km and a ceiling of 24,000 feet. The 129 can carry 8 Sadid-345 miniaturized precision-guided bombs capable of hitting moving targets. The bomb’s small size with a range of 6 km, reduces collateral damage and would allow the Shahed to achieve more kills or attack strikes per mission.
The Shahed 191 carries two Sadid-1 missiles internally, has a cruising speed of 300 km/h, an endurance of 4.5 hours, a range of 450 km, and a payload of 50kg. The ceiling is 25,000 ft. Iran’s Fars News Agency says the Shahed 191 has been used in combat in Syria.
Both are stealth drones, harder for air defences to detect. Russia is, reportedly, short of such armed drones, which have the capability to undertake long-range missions to find and destroy, for example, the US-supplied HIMARS mobile rocket launchers which are currently deployed in Ukraine as well as knocking out Ukrainian air defences. Besides, drones are relatively cheap and expendable, unlike crewed aircraft.
If the drone deal indeed goes through, as seems likely, it will mark a quantum leap in Russia-Iran relations. For, Iran will be doing something that only China is capable of doing but won’t out of fear of US reprisal. That makes Iran a very special partner country indeed. Ironically, Russia is yet to upgrade its relationship with Iran as “strategic.”
On its part, Iran is literally sticking out its neck in an act of defiance of the West’s “rules-based order”, as Russia will be deploying its weapon systems on a European battlefield against the air defence systems supplied to Ukraine by the US and NATO countries. There cannot be many parallels of an emerging middle power rendering such critical help to a superpower in high-tech warfare in real conditions on the frontline. Of course, it enhances Iran’s standing regionally and internationally.
In geopolitical terms, however, the most important salience lies in the certainty that the door is closing on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the US via European mediators. Tehran would have drawn the conclusion already that President Joe Biden is virtually co-opting his predecessor’s [Israel Lobby dictated] Iran policy and the US has reverted to its decades-old strategy of promoting an Israeli-Arab front against Tehran. Put differently, Tehran is moving on to a trajectory that is predicated on unremitting American hostility.
This will mean that Tehran will double down on its efforts to improve relations with its Aran neighbours and explore all possible avenues in that direction, seizing the window of opportunity in the new Saudi thinking to reduce its dependence on the US and explore its strategic autonomy. It is possible to say that Tehran is a beneficiary if the Saudi-Russian and Saudi-Chinese relationships strengthen. Arguably, Saudi Arabia’s quest for BRICS membership brings the Kingdom tantalisingly close to Iran’s world view which places primacy on a democratised, multipolar world order where every country is free to choose its developmental path.
To be sure, against this backdrop, President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran on Tuesday is invested with great importance. Iran is becoming one of the most consequential relationships for Russia. What began as a limited alliance in Syria is taking on a global character.
US sponsored Kurdish SDF calls on Russia and Iran to prevent planned Turkish military operation
MEMO | July 17, 2022
The head of the Kurdish-led militant group Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has called on Russia and Iran to help prevent Turkiye from launching a military offensive against its positions in northern Syria, as the threat of a new Turkish operation continues to loom.
According to the AFP news agency, the SDF’s chief commander Mazloum Abdi urged the involvement of Moscow and Tehran against Ankara’s aims in the region this week, accusing the US-led global coalition to defeat Daesh – also known as Operation Inherent Resolve – of taking a “weak” position that is “insufficient to end the threats.”
In May, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to launch a new military operation into the areas controlled by the Kurdish militias, which would be Turkey’s fourth such offensive in northern Syria. The operation is meant as an effort to clear the 30-kilometre-deep ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria from remaining Kurdish militant elements, in order to settle at least a million Syrian refugees there.
Abdi also reiterated that after negotiating with Russia, Kurdish militant forces allowed the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad to reinforce their troops in Kurdish-controlled areas, particularly in cities such as Kobane and Manbij in the north of the country. The threat of a renewed Turkish offensive had seemingly forced the SDF to strengthen ties with Assad, Russia, and now Iranian forces in an effort to repel Ankara’s planned operation.
Abdi’s call for Russian and Iranian assistance is likely more diplomatic than military, as it comes only days before a summit that is to be held in Iran from Tuesday, in which Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi will host Erdogan and their Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a renewed set of negotiations on Syria and the ongoing 11-year-long conflict.
If Moscow and Tehran heed the SDF’s call, they may be expected to attempt to discourage Ankara from its planned military operation.
‘NATO Weapons Double Civilian Casualties in DPR’
Samizdat – 17.07.2022
DONETSK – The number of civilian casualties in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) more than doubled after Ukraine was equipped with NATO’s long-range rocket systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems, a military expert told Sputnik on Sunday.
“Since the start of the special operation, the DPR’s territory has been shelled over 30 times with Tochka-U missiles, there were more than 400 cases of shelling with 155mm NATO munitions, and the enemy used HIMARS MLRS more than five times. We should note that once the [Ukrainian forces] started using NATO weapons, there has been a 2.5-fold increase in civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure,” a military expert to the Joint Center on Control and Coordination of the ceasefire regime (JCCC) Sergey Pereverzev said.
On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces. Moscow and Kiev have made several attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, with a couple of meetings taking place in Turkey, and both exchanged several dozens of war prisoners. However, no agreement has been reached so far and the talks have been paused on Kiev’s initiative.
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Israel Is A Genocidal Society
The Israeli Political Spectrum From The “Liberal Left” To The Far Right, Is United In Genocide
The Dissident | May 5, 2026
… The fundamental issue of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, but the fact that Israel is overwhelmingly a bloodthirsty, war-ready, genocidal society.
Historian Zachary Foster has documented that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis have supported every Israeli war since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, writing:
2006
86% of the Israeli adult population justified “the IDF operation in Lebanon against Hizbollah,” or 2006 Lebanon War, in which Israel killed 1,191 people, the vast majority civilians according to HRW (Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher)2008-2009
82% of the Israeli public thought that the 2008-9 war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians.) Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher2012
90% of Israeli Jews supported war on Gaza ( in which Israel killed 160 Palestinians, 66% civilians)2014
95% of Jewish Israelis believed the war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 2,310 Palestinians, 70% civilians)2021
72% of Israelis believed the war on Gaza should continue (as of May 21) after Israel had already killed 250 Palestinians in Gaza, vast majority civilians. The % of Jewish Israelis who supported killing more Palestinians was much higher.2024
A January poll found 95% of Jewish Israelis thought the Israeli military was using either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza at a time when Israel had already killed >25,700 Palestinians in Gaza.2024
In September, 90% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Lebanon (in which Israel killed 800+, including hundreds of civilians)2025
In March, 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forced expulsion of residents of Gaza, Israel’s main goal in it’s genocide & war on Gaza.2025
In June, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Iran known as the “twelve day war”2026
On March 4, 93% of Israeli Jews expressed support for the war on Iran. 97% of “right-wing” Jewish Israelis support it, compared with 93% in the center and 76% on the left.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis also have openly genocidal views towards Palestinians.
Polls in Israel have shown that:
- 84% of the (Israeli )public gives the IDF an excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army
- 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza.’
- A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The fundamental problem in Israel is Zionism, not Benjamin Netanyahu. – Full article
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- What has Guterres supported in Gaza?
- UAE received $80m in EU farming subsidies as calls grow for sanctions over Sudan genocide
- Trump gives green light for new arms deliveries to Ukraine
- U.S. Blockade Against Cuba Must End Immediately: China
- Trump’s Bogus Claims About Progress in Talks with Iran Just Made Some Insider a Lot of Money
- US Superpower Myth Shattered w/ Trita Parsi
- Iran War Reality BITES – SPIN HARDER /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Mario Nawfal
- If Americans Knew
- Israel has stolen $4.8 billion from Palestinians
- The pro-Israel political consensus is collapsing in both parties
- Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It’s Funded by Israel
- “Most Moral Army” caught desecrating another Christian statue, as famine looms in Gaza – Daily Update
- Israel’s subversion of Foreign Agents Registration Act
- Israeli Paper Admits That The Mossad Astroturfed The January Riots In Iran.
- Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It’s Funded by Israel
- Ex-US spy for Israel runs for office on platform of ethnic cleansing in Gaza – Daily Update
- An All-American Retort to Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon
- How Dr. Adam Hamawy’s experience as a surgeon in Gaza inspired him to run for Congress
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
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