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Most young Americans want Israel given to Hamas – poll

RT | December 16, 2023

Over half of US adults from ages 18 to 24 believe the ongoing crisis in Gaza should be resolved by abolishing the state of Israel and turning it over to Hamas and the Palestinian people, a new poll has found.

The Harvard-Harris poll, conducted this week and released on Friday, showed that 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended,” compared with 32% who favor a two-state solution. Just 17% said Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians to resolve the conflict. Among all age groups, six in ten Americans call for a two-state deal, while only 19% want Israel to be given to the Palestinians.

The survey marked the latest poll showing a dramatic divide between Americans young and old on issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people amid the ongoing war between West Jerusalem and Hamas. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that nearly half of US adults under age 30 either believe the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is a myth or are not sure that it happened.

Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the Harvard-Harris poll said they agree that “Jews as a class … should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 73% of Americans in all age groups – and 91% of respondents ages 65 and older – disagreed with the anti-Jewish statement. Similarly, half of the youngest respondents said they support Hamas in the war, while 81% of overall participants favor Israel. Six in ten young adults – but only 37% of overall respondents – believe Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza.

Americans are similarly divided on identity politics. For instance, 79% of young adults believe that “white people are oppressors” and that non-white people should therefore be shown favoritism in college admissions and employment, the poll found. Among all age groups, 65% of Americans oppose such anti-white discrimination.

Just 42% of Americans approve of how US President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war, down from 45% in November, the poll showed. Only 32% believe that the country is on the “right track,” and 33% see the nation’s economy as heading in the right direction.

Such perceptions may bode poorly for Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024. The president has a net favorability rating of minus 10%, the poll showed. By comparison, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest favorability rating among all political figures listed in the survey, at plus 18%.

The poll found that if the election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat Biden by a margin of 43% to 35%, while Kennedy would garner 17% of the votes. More than seven in ten Americans believe that a vote for Biden would essentially be a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because the 81-year-old incumbent wouldn’t likely complete a second term.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | 1 Comment

London’s spontaneous bus combustion: How is this being allowed to happen?

By Rhoda Wilson for The Exposé | December 14, 2023

Why are London’s buses spontaneously bursting into flames? And why are our politicians not addressing the problem?

In the past couple of years, two huge ships carrying thousands of cars have gone up in flames, apparently because of batteries in electric vehicles.  A fire on board car carrier Felicity Ace in February 2022 led to the vessel sinking in the Atlantic, along with its cargo of 4,000 vehicles. And cargo ship Fremantle Highway caught fire in the North Sea.

In India, a spate of electric scooters catching fire in early 2022 sparked safety concerns causing buyers to think twice.  Electric scooters bursting into flames hasn’t stopped. Fires are so commonplace that The Times of India now have a section dedicated to ‘Electric Scooter Fire News’.

At Luton Airport at least 125 flights were cancelled after a huge fire, which started on level three of the airport’s multi-storey car park.  It caused the entire £20 million structure to collapse. Up to 1,500 vehicles were unlikely to be salvageable, according to estimates at the time. Authorities said the blaze “appeared to have been accidental and began in a parked car, believed to be a diesel vehicle.”

Well, not according to one witness, The Telegraph pointed out.  The eyewitness managed to snap a picture of the vehicle suspected of causing the fire, which looked very like a Range Rover Evoque. There was none of the thick black smoke you would expect with a diesel fire. Instead, the blaze was focused on the front left seat of the car under which – well, I never! – the lithium-ion battery happens to be located in some hybrid Range Rovers.

Data from the London Fire Brigade for 2019 showed an incident rate of 0.04% for petrol and diesel car fires, while the rate for plug-in vehicles is more than double at 0.1%. But vested interests are creating as much smoke as possible to obscure the cause of these fires. Why? Because meeting the notably insane and economically disastrous net zero target by 2050 is predicated on the UK giving up fossil fuels.

The real danger with electric vehicles is the lithium-ion batteries, which are prone to catching fire unexpectedly or exploding and the ensuing inferno is very hard to put out.

Professor Peter Edwards, chair in inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford, told The Telegraph: “Lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles can develop unstoppable so-called ‘thermal runaway’ fires which burn uncontrollably.”

“As well as intense heat, during a battery fire, numerous toxic gases are emitted, such as hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen fluoride. The emission of these gases can be a larger threat than the heat generated,” he said.

Prof. Edwards is also raising the alarm about a pending “potential catastrophe” with all the large-scale lithium-ion battery storage sites sprouting up all over the UK, especially on solar farms.

There’s also a looming potential catastrophe in Sadiq Khan’s London bus fleet.

As of 31 March 2023, approximately 56% of London’s bus fleet is “environmentally friendly.”  Out of a total bus fleet of 8,643, there are 3,835 hybrid buses, 950 battery electric buses, and 20 hydrogen fuel cell buses operating in London.

Below we have gathered incidences of buses spontaneously bursting into flames during 2022 and 2023.  To find these, we conducted an internet search for the term “London bus fire,” while we came across some incidences in other locations along the way, we very much doubt the following is an extensive record of incidences in the past couple of years.

Buses carry many people at any one time, including schoolchildren.  As an urgent matter of public safety, we must ask: What is causing these buses to spontaneously burst into flames?

In May 2022, six electric buses were destroyed in a bus garage in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire.  At the height of the blaze, eight engines were in attendance and six Transport for London (“TfL”) buses – two hybrid electric and four diesel-powered – were on fire. The first bus caught fire while it was charging, before causing the other five to become engulfed.

According to Hertfordshire Live, an unnamed bus driver said that the fire was believed to have been caused by a battery exploding in one of the electric buses while it was charging – but, the Daily Mail said, this had not yet been confirmed.

Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said at the time that “The cause and origin of the fire is currently under investigation and is yet to be established.”

After the fire in Potters Bar depot, TfL recalled 90 electric buses. “The precautionary measure has been decided while the company investigates causes of the blaze,” media outlet Sustainable Bus said.

Also in May 2022, Paris’s transport operator withdrew 149 electric buses made by Bolloré Group’s Bluebus from operation after two ignited on separate occasions.

Damaged electric vehicle batteries pose a risk of “thermal runaway” where energy stored in the battery releases rapidly, creating temperatures of up to 400oC.

 

Dramatic images on social media showed a double-decker bus on fire on Brixton Hill, south London, on 17 June 2022. The driver and passengers left the bus before firefighters arrived. Thankfully, there were no injuries and the blaze was under control in 30 minutes.

Never letting a good crisis go to waste, the Mirror added a climate twist to its reporting of the incident: “The incident comes on what is touted to be the hottest day of the year, with temperatures expected to peak at 34oC this afternoon.”

GB News ran with the same insinuations, implying a link between the ambient temperature and the cause of the blaze in the title of its article: ‘London bus bursts into flames as heatwave causes mayhem on hottest day of year’.

It is not the first time that climate science deniers have used the fabricated “climate change crisis” to explain spontaneous combustion.  In July 2021, IFL Science used the dramatic title ‘The UK Is So Hot That A Bus Stop Reportedly Burst Into Flames’ to describe a passenger bus shelter catching fire in Solihull, West Midlands, UK.

IFL Science went on to say: “The extreme heat is leading to some unlikely (and disastrous) events. On 19 July [2021], the powerful sun bearing down on an unsuspecting bus stop in Solihull reportedly caused it to spontaneously burst into flames.”

The Guardian refuted a link between ambient temperature and the cause of the bus bursting into flames on 17 June 2022. “The Guardian understands that the extreme heat in London was not believed to be the cause of the fire,” it said.

The Guardian: London bus bursts into flames in Brixton, 17 June 2022

London bus passengers managed to escape a large fire that engulfed the rear of a vehicle on Baker Street near Portman Square in Marylebone, London on 10 January 2023.

All passengers had fled the bus before firefighters arrived, the London Fire Brigade said, and there were no reports of injuries. However, one man was being treated for smoke inhalation.

The fire was believed to have been accidental but the exact cause was recorded as undetermined.

Cars and homes on a residential road in Hackney, east London were left damaged after a school bus for pupils with special needs was engulfed in flames on 20 January 2023.

The children were inside the bus when it caught fire.  The bus was carrying three primary school children and was forced to stop after smoke was detected from the front of the vehicle. It was quickly evacuated with no injuries, The Telegraph reported.

The Daily Mail reported that a witness who lived nearby said as soon as the bonnet caught fire, everyone was evacuated off the bus – and she believes people were also evacuated from their houses.

Six other vehicles were also damaged.

The Independent: Hackney school bus fire leaves surrounding cars and homes damaged, 20 January 2023

White smoke was seen billowing out from a London double-decker bus after it broke down in south London, The Independent reported. The bus was stationed near West Croydon Bus Station when it began to emit smoke onto the street.

The Independent: Clouds of white smoke seen billowing from London bus in Croydon, 19 May 2023

A double-decker bus was destroyed by a huge fire on Bradford Broadway, London on 9 October 2023. First Bus said no passengers were on board when the incident started.

A spokesperson said: “One of our buses on the 607 service was involved in a fire incident on the upper deck … We do not know what caused the fire and will assist in the investigation including a review of CCTV footage.”

It’s not only passengers and nearby road users that are in danger from exploding buses.

In October 2023, The Telegraph reported that residents are fighting to block plans to build an electric bus garage under the development of thousands of new flats amid fears battery fires could cause a “volcano.”

Labour-run Barnet Council were in talks with TfL and developer Ballymore about the joint £1.7bn project to build 25 tower blocks on top of a proposed underground electric bus depot in Edgware town centre.

However, Save Our Edgware, a community group, warned that residents would be at “severe risk” from electric vehicle batteries igniting, leading to explosive combustion and multi-vehicle fires.

Other forms of electric-powered transport pose a risk to homes as well. On Monday, the London Fire Brigade had this warning for Christmas:

Why?  Because e-bikes and e-scooters also spontaneously burst into flames.  The London Fire Brigade warned a few months ago that e-bike fires are up 60% this year. Firefighters have been called to an e-scooter or e-bike fire every two days since the start of 2023. Since 2020, at least 12 people have died and a further 190 have been injured in the UK in suspected e-bike and e-scooter blazes, The Telegraph reported.

In one instance, an e-bike left charging is believed to have caused the house fire that tore through a maisonette in Cambridge, UK, over the summer, killing a mother and her two young children.

On the other side of the pond, firefighters are seeing the same problems.   In Montgomery County, Maryland a fire broke out on 28 October 2022, on the 14th floor of the high-rise apartment building called ‘Twin Towers’. (ER: Hmm.) Fire officials said an e-scooter battery malfunctioned while charging.

According to New York City Fire Department in September 2022, electric battery-related fires were up a whopping 233% in two years.  The fires have resulted in 163 injuries and 10 deaths, including a 5-year-old girl who was killed in an apartment building fire.

Inside Edition: Why Are Some Electronic Bikes and Scooters Catching Fire? 22 September 2022 (2 mins)

Featured image: The remains of the school bus after the blaze in Hackney on 20 January 2023. Source: The Telegraph

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

TikTok Permanently Banned Glenn Greenwald’s System Update Show Last Week and Refuses To Say Why

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | December 15, 2023

The TikTok account of a popular show hosted by journalist Glenn Greenwald was permanently banned, sparking debate over censorship practices on social media platforms. The account, primarily used for posting show clips, was banned for allegedly violating TikTok’s community guidelines, specifically the integrity and authenticity policy.

“Your account was permanently banned due to multiple violations of our community guidelines,” the notice from TikTok said, giving little detail about why.

“We could not get any kind of an answer on why it is that our account is banned, but we know that it’s permanently banned,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald, a seasoned journalist with numerous awards, expressed frustration over the lack of clear reasons provided for the ban. He emphasized that his show strictly adheres to fact-based reporting and avoids disinformation or conspiracy theories. The content often critiques US foreign policy and censorship regimes, which Greenwald suspects might have influenced the ban.

This incident has raised questions about the influence of the US security state on social media platforms. Greenwald argues that companies like TikTok, Facebook, and Google are under pressure from US authorities to censor content, a claim that resonates with wider concerns about free speech and media control.

The ban on Greenwald’s show highlights the precarious nature of relying on major tech platforms for disseminating information. With the risk of sudden and unexplained bans, content creators find themselves vulnerable and at the mercy of these platforms’ opaque policies. This situation underscores the importance of alternative platforms committed to free speech principles, as pointed out by Greenwald.

“Look at how arbitrary and capricious this is. If your livelihood, if your ability to be heard, rests on Big Tech, you’re just in the palm of their hands,” Greenwald said.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Israeli bulldozers demolish tents, bury Palestinians alive: Report

The Cradle | December 16, 2023

Israeli bulldozers have killed dozens of Palestinians by running over and crushing the tents in which they were taking shelter outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Al-Jazeera reported on 16 December.

“Dozens of displaced, sick and wounded people were buried alive. The occupation [Israeli] bulldozers trampled the tents of the displaced people in the hospital yard and brutally crushed them,” Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Gaza Anas al-Sharif reported.

“A terrifying massacre and unspeakable scenes. What the Israeli occupation did inside Kamal Adwan Hospital is a horrific crime against citizens and medical staff,” Sharif said in a post on X.

Some 3,000 Palestinians have been sheltering on the grounds of the hospital, which has been under siege by the Israeli army for eight days.

According to the Gaza health ministry, 12 Palestinian babies are still trapped within incubators at the hospital. The statement added that Israeli forces “are gathering men, including medical staff, in the hospital courtyard.”

The ministry called on “the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Red Cross to take immediate action to save the lives of those in the hospital.”

After Israeli forces occupied the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza City in early November, forcing the staff to evacuate, five babies on incubators died as they were left behind. Their decomposed bodies were discovered two weeks later when Emirati journalist Mohammad Balousha was able to visit the hospital when a 7-day-truce temporarily halted the fighting.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza hospitals appear to be a deliberate effort to collapse the health system in the bombed and besieged enclave.

“Since the beginning of the war, Israel has been strategically attacking healthcare facilities,” Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for Red Crescent, told The New Arab.

Israeli attacks have targeted the Al-Shifa hospital, the Al-Quds hospital, the Al-Ahli hospital, the Al-Nasr and Al-Rantisi hospitals for children, and the Indonesian hospital, among others.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 18,800 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, and more than 51,000 wounded since the beginning of Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza began on 7 October.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli ex-detainee: Hamas fighters treated me and my kids with respect

Palestine Information Center – December 16, 2023

NAZARETH – Israeli ex-detainee in Gaza, Chen Goldstein-Almog, said that she and her three children were treated respectfully and not physically harmed or maltreated during their detention by Hamas fighters.

According to The New York Times, Goldstein-Almog had long conversations with her captors, sometimes for hours. “We talked about our families and the extreme danger we all faced.”

She explained that they were mostly detained in an apartment in Gaza, but she and her children were transferred during their detention period — which lasted 7 weeks — to different apartments, tunnels, a mosque, and even a destroyed supermarket, adding that during their movement between those places, the situation was terrifying due to the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

She also said that the commander of the guards appeared educated and spoke Hebrew, pointing out that the guards taught her son 250 words in Arabic to keep him busy, brought him a notebook for study, regularly discussed with them what to eat and invited them to participate in cooking meals in kitchens.

She said that a Hamas fighter apologized to her for the killing of her husband and one of her daughters by other individuals, telling her that what had happened was wrong.

Goldstein-Almog affirmed that before her release, a guard told her “don’t go back to the Gaza envelope because we are coming back” and told her to go further.

Goldstein-Almog, 48, and her three children were captured on the first day of Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7.

They were released in late November as part of a prisoner exchange between the Hamas Movement and the Israeli occupation during the temporary humanitarian truce.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Mossad seeks renewed Qatar talks after army kills Gaza captives

The Cradle | December 16, 2023

Israel’s Mossad director David Barnea is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Europe this weekend to discuss resuming negotiations for an exchange of captives with Hamas, Axios reported on 15 December.

According to two sources briefed on the matter, Israel’s return to the negotiating table suggests it is ready to try to explore a new deal after negotiations collapsed following a 7-day truce that saw women and children captives released by both sides via Qatari mediation.

Senior Mossad officials were scheduled to travel to Qatar for talks last week, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off the trip, angering the families of the remaining captives.

“We are fed up with the indifference and deadlock,” families of the Israeli captives said in a statement.

Hamas captured over 200 Israelis during its 7 October attack on Israeli military bases and settlements surrounding Gaza, while Israel has long held thousands of Palestinians in its occupation prisons.

The announcement comes following Israel’s announcement its army had killed 3 Israeli captives held in Gaza by Hamas, allegedly by mistake.

The three Israeli captives were killed by Israeli troops who fired on them in the Shujaiyya neighborhood in northern Gaza where fierce fighting is taking place, military officials said.

Israeli forces secured the bodies and returned them to Israel.

According to an initial Israeli army investigation, the three Israeli captives were walking as a group, without shirts, when they were shot by a sniper who saw them from a distance of several tens of meters. One of the captives managed to escape to a nearby building and called for help in Hebrew, but was shot.

Several Israeli captives who were released during the truce told Prime Minister Netanyahu and others in the war cabinet that they feared being killed by Israeli shelling while in Gaza.

They complained that Israel claimed to have precise intelligence about where some of the captives are being held but endangered their lives by carrying out heavy shelling of these areas anyway.

One released captive said she had feared Israeli forces would kill her and then blame her death on Hamas.

Considerable evidence has emerged that Israeli forces deliberately killed some of their own soldiers and citizens on 7 October to prevent them being taken captive, per a policy known as the Hannibal directive.

If the meeting between the Mossad chief and Qatari prime minister takes place, it would be the first between senior Israeli and Qatari officials since the collapse of the seven-day truce and Israel’s expansion of its military ground operation to southern Gaza.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Neim said in late November the movement was “ready to release all soldiers in exchange for all our prisoners.”

Hamas is still holding more than 130 captives, who it says are all soldiers or former soldiers. More than 100 Israeli women and children were released as part of a deal that paused the fighting in Gaza for seven days.

240 Palestinian women and children were released, while some 7,000 Palestinians remain captives of Israel.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s World War III Fantasy

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.12.2023

On July 13, 2023, US President Joe Biden confidently announced to the world that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already lost the war.”

The “war” Biden spoke of was Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.

Biden’s bold statement was made during a press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto, following a meeting with Nordic leaders that came on the heels of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Biden declared that the US and its NATO allies had, through their decision to commit to the military victory of Ukraine over Russia, reached “an inflection point in history,” adding that “This fight is not only a fight for the future of Ukraine, it is about sovereignty, security and freedom itself.”

The American president’s pronouncements followed similarly themed rhetoric spoken in Vilnius a day prior, where he announced to his NATO colleagues, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken,” adding that “We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes,” it turns out, isn’t the same as “long as needed.”

Confronted with a trifecta of bad news—the calamitous defeat of the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military in the much-hyped summer counteroffensive, a Russian Army that is growing stronger by the day, and the collapse of political will and fiscal ability on the part of Ukraine’s erstwhile allies in the US and Europe to continue funding Ukraine’s flagging war effort—Joe Biden was compelled to alter his pledge to the cause of Ukrainian and European liberty and freedom to “as long as we can,” with the modifier contingent upon the US Congress’ willingness to throw another $60 billion into the $120 billion in aid the US has provided Ukraine since May 2022.

To intimidate Congress into yielding to his demands regarding money for Ukraine, Biden undertook a campaign of terror. “Frankly,” Biden said in a statement delivered at the White House in early December, “I think it’s stunning we have gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership.”

While many Republicans support continued funding of the Ukraine war effort, the issue has become politicized in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where domestic issues tend to trump foreign affairs. And, currently, there is no more high-profile domestic policy issue than border security and immigration reform. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, noted that while he would support continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort, he could not return to his home state of South Carolina to “try to explain why I helped Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and did nothing to secure our own border. I will help all of our allies, but we have got to help ourselves first.”

Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House and a hardline conservative, indicated that the objection to continued funding for Ukraine went beyond simply funding issues. “What is the objective?” Johnson said to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier this month. “What is the endgame in Ukraine? How are we going to have proper oversight of the funds?”

Russian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher towards Ukrainian positions in the course of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, at the unknown location in the

Both Graham and Johnson had been subjected to a full-court press by Joe Biden and the White House in an effort for the recalcitrant Republicans to reverse course on their objections. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden pleaded. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” Biden noted, “he won’t stop there.” The US president said an emboldened Putin would move on to threaten his NATO neighbors. And then, Biden stated, “We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.”

If the threat of a Third World War in the face of Congressional inaction wasn’t enough, Biden authorized the Pentagon to declassify and release to CNN an intelligence report that claimed that Russia had suffered enormous casualties in its war with Ukraine, with some 315,000 of an estimated 360,000 troops that made up Russia’s pre-conflict ground force, having been killed or wounded. The declassified intelligence report also claimed that 2,200 of Russia’s 3,500 tanks have been lost, along with 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

The release of the declassified report was clearly timed to influence the US Congress by emphasizing the very talking points that have been repeatedly made by Senator Graham and others that the US aid was “Best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”

Given the history of the US intelligence community of declassifying intelligence reports for the specific purpose of releasing the information to mainstream media outlets to shape public opinion—even if the intelligence community knows the information contained in the report is wrong—one must take the report regarding Russian casualties with a heavy grain of salt. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia currently has some 617,000 troops deployed in the Special Military Operation zone. These forces are on the offensive, actively advancing on several fronts against a Ukrainian Army which is rapidly losing its ability to sustain large-scale ground combat operations. This doesn’t sound like the performance of an organization that suffered some 87% casualties, a figure which would make the survivors combat ineffective.

The fact is, US and European support for Ukraine is flagging, and Ukraine is facing an existential crisis in the coming weeks and months that it most likely will not be able to resolve in its favor.

While Russian troops are taking casualties, it is far more likely than not that the real Russian casualty figures are significantly less than the number reported in the declassified US intelligence report, spread out over the original force and the hundreds of thousands of mobilized reservists and volunteers who have entered the fighting since. These losses pale in comparison to the more than 400,000 dead and nearly one million wounded Ukraine has suffered.

Russia’s combat power grows every day, with fresh troops and equipment being made available for the war effort. Ukraine, on the other hand, has exhausted its reserves, and is left scraping the bottom of its human resources barrel to man whatever units it is able to organize from what is left of Ukraine’s diminished, and diminishing, arsenal.

While the Russian Army is indeed large, and growing, and its capabilities expanding as it becomes more combat experienced, it is an army with a very specific mission—the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian force structure is currently more than sufficient to defeat the Ukrainians on a frontage that stretches some 2,000 kilometers in length. It is even large enough to secure some additional Ukrainian territory, in addition to liberating the newly absorbed Russian territories of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions still held by Ukraine. But there are physical limitations as to what one can accomplish with 617,000 troops and occupying all of Ukraine before invading Poland and/or the Baltics is well beyond the capacity of the Russian forces currently deployed in the Special Military Operation.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has never intimated that Russia had any intention to either occupy all of Ukraine or seek to attack NATO — just the opposite. The Russian goals and objectives of the Special Military Operation are spelled out very clearly — demilitarization (the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), de-Nazification (the elimination of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-Nazi political element inside Ukraine), and permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO). There is no intent to take the war to NATO. Such thinking is a fear-based construct of the Biden administration that is inaccurate and far removed from reality, little more than a fantasy which the sober-minded Russian government, ever mindful of the need to carefully manage escalation because of the Special Military Operation, will pay scant attention to.

Joe Biden and his national security team are scrambling to manage the consequences of policy failure. Putin, it seems, has not lost the war with Ukraine. Russia is winning, something no amount of funding by either the US, the Europeans, or both, can reverse. The best thing that could happen to Ukraine is for the congressional Republicans to hold steadfast to their objections and allow Ukraine to be taken off the life support that US funding provides. Ukraine is a terminal case. Continuing to underwrite its failed war effort simply prolongs the agony of its people.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

Zelensky’s Global Begging Tour Is an Obscene Fiasco

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023

The United States’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.

Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.

Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath – the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.

The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.

This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.

After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.

As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as “historic” but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?

The EU membership talks were granted no doubt as a way to distract from the fact that the EU funds were not forthcoming and especially following the miserable response from U.S. lawmakers.

The whole sorry saga indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine has become a deplorable black hole for Western public money. Given the military debacle and the futile bloodshed, it is becoming politically untenable for Washington and Brussels to keep shovelling billions of taxpayer money into this abyss.

Up for the asking this week was a total of nearly $100 billion between the U.S. and Europe for Ukraine. How many badly needed public services in Western states could do with – and are denied – that kind of financial sustenance?

The spectacle of Zelensky touring the world scrounging for more money is as shameful as it is sordid.

Official figures show that the Western governments have already donated a combined total of $200 billion to Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022.

To put that largesse into perspective, it is estimated that the U.S. Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of the whole of Europe following World War Two was equivalent to $173 billion in today’s money.

Think about that. The Western funding to Ukraine already exceeds this historic salvage package by some $30 billion. And yet Western governments are trying to muster another $100 billion on top of that.

There are several conclusions to be made. First of all, the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia is indisputably a calamitous failure. Despite the unprecedented financing of weapons and other support to the Kiev regime, the war is a dead-end for the Western powers. The 30-member NATO military alliance is staring at a defeat unparalleled in its 75-year history.

Secondly, it is patent that the Kiev regime is only being propped up by the transfer of colossal flows of aid from the West. Without those transfusions of weapons and capital, the regime is finished. It has already lost grievous numbers of troops on the battlefield. Conscription drives are scraping the barrel. Without the lifeline of aid, the regime is finished. The Kiel Institute for World Economy reported last week that Western capital pledges to the Kiev regime have fallen off a cliff since the summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week in his annual marathon televised Q&A with the public and journalists that Russia will push on with its objectives of eradicating the NATO-backed Nazi forces in Ukraine. There seems little doubt that the objective will be achieved given the parlous state of the Kiev regime.

Another conclusion to draw is the scale of corruption that Ukraine is mired in. For all the funds pumped into this regime so much of it has been siphoned off from the stated purposes.

The obscenity of this war racket is the inordinate corruption, deaths and destruction of economies across Europe while Western weapons corporations have raked in mega-profits.

Zelensky’s global begging tour is a desperate attempt to keep the war racket going for a while longer. He and his wife Olena have enriched themselves with overseas properties and shopping trips to Paris and New York. Zelensky and his cronies have been paid off with blood money for their role in peddling the biggest war scam in modern history. A scam that is funded by hard-pressed and hoodwinked Western taxpayers who have been gaslighted by their politicians and media about “defending democracy and freedom”.

To keep this grotesque charade going, Western politicians in the pay of arms companies and NATO think tanks are resorting to desperate scaremongering and blackmail.

President Biden has repeatedly warned that if extra funds were not released to Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression” the rest of Europe will be overrun by Moscow.

In Washington this week, U.S. lawmakers who refused to pass the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine were, in effect, accused of being traitors by helping Russia.

Zelensky appealed to European leaders by saying that Putin would exploit any negativity towards Ukraine, and he pleaded with the EU to not “betray” Ukrainians.

On the eve of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, the European Commission declared that it was finally releasing €10 billion in withheld funds to Hungary. That was a bribe to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to concede to the proposed €50 billion in extra aid for the Kiev regime. In the end, Orban did not concede to the multi-billion-euro handout, however, he gave way to his objection to talks for Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Such is the shoddy business of propping up the Kiev regime that arm-twisting and bribery are the order of business in Brussels.

The horrendous waste of lives and financial resources in Ukraine by the Western elite – instead of pursuing diplomacy and peace – is the hallmark that these regimes are terminally corrupt and doomed to failure.

The conflict in Ukraine has recklessly stoked tensions between nuclear powers and has condemned generations of Americans and Europeans to debt. The war in Ukraine is a historic dead-end for the U.S. and its European vassals. Zelensky’s begging bowl is a death rattle.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

US F-35 Still Underperforms Rival Jets as Taxpayer Bill Hits $1.7 Trillion – Experts

Sputnik – 16.12.2023

WASHINGTON – The F-35 fighter jet continues to lag Chinese and Russian counterparts in terms of effectiveness despite costs soaring to exorbitant levels, forcing the US to seek more war to justify the investment, experts told Sputnik.

Earlier this week, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in an audit sponsored by Congress said the $1.7 trillion F-35 program’s costs continued to soar out of control, rising another $44 billion 17 years after it first flew and eight years after it entered service. The aircraft continues to be plagued by issues with technology upgrades including cockpit electronics software, the Pentagon has said.

“The cost of this aircraft, continually rising and hard to justify financially, is a stunning example of what the corporate defense industry has wrought in its domination of Congress and of the Executive Branch,” former Pentagon analyst and retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “A new war anywhere in the world means new and long-term contracts, and provides high paying jobs for a small sector of the country.”

As a result, the former Pentagon analyst said the US political establishment is seeking to foment conflicts regardless of the best interests of the United States.

Kwiatkowski said the F-35 was designed to deliver “a continuous and growing paycheck” to the defense contractors who conduct a lifetime of extensive repairs on the aircraft.

“One plane, all missions, and guaranteed profits. As older and more battle hardened US air combat capabilities are retired and shifted to the F-35, the rest of the world may in fact be chuckling instead of shaking in their boots,” she said.

REMAINS OUTGUNNED BY CHINA, RUSSIA

Kwiatkowski said the US Air Force recognizes the shortfalls of the program such as inability to operate far from logistics support, lessons that would be applied if the F-35 was deployed to defend Taiwan or in a war in the Pacific theater.

“In a battlespace where the F-35 is part of an offensive combined arms campaign, far from home… F-35 would not remain in the fight for long,” the former Pentagon analyst said.

F-35 availability rates, she added, would be far below the current 55% due to both inherent reliability and durability issues. Plus, it is still unknown whether the aircraft has the ability to successfully operate in an active hostile environment, Kwiatkowski said.

Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Earl Rasmussen, former vice president of the Eurasia Foundation, said the F-35 is impressive when it is operational but it will likely face problems when facing Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 or China’s J-20.

“While the F-35 may have an advantage in a perfect environment, war is not a perfect environment. Operational effectiveness may cause challenges and a degradation of sensor and network communication capabilities will likely put the F-35 at a disadvantage in a one-to-one engagement with both the SU-57 and J-20,” Rasmussen said.
The Russian Su-57 and the Chinese J-20 and J-31 have advantages with respect to speed, range, agility and lethality, he added.

“The Chinese J-20 is faster, has longer range, and carries more weapon systems,” Rasmussen said. “The Russian Su-57 while lacking in stealth capabilities is faster, has a longer range, and is more agile with significantly more maneuverability than the F-35. The SU-57 carries a wide variety of armaments to include cruise missiles giving it a great stand-off capability and the ability to engage targets from a range of 300 km [180 miles].”

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

THE WAR ON IVERMECTIN – DR PIERRE KORY (SHORT DOCUMENTARY)

Pierre Kory | December 11, 2023

Acclaimed filmmaker Mikki Willis documented the disinformation campaign that discredited ivermectin around the world. Now updated and rebranded, the movie exposes their wicked tactics.

Covid may be fading faster than last week’s sunburn (likely to make way for the “next pandemic”), but the war on ivermectin rages on. And it’s no wonder, as we continue to discover its efficacy against increasing numbers of viral illnesses and now, even cancers. Of course, the more ivermectin threatens these insanely lucrative markets, the more enemies it racks up. (If you thought the Covid market was massive, in the end, cancer may be even bigger – the global chemotherapy market alone is expected to reach $330 Billion by 2029.)

Mikki Willis is a bestselling author, investigative filmmaker, and now, a friend. (He also used to be an old lefty/progressive like me – emphasis on the “used to be.”) In 2020, he released the first installment of his documentary series, Plandemic. The micro-budget documentary was watched and shared by over one billion people world-wide, making it the most seen independent movie in history. Plandemic 2: Indoctornation, set a streaming world-record with 2 million viewers attending the online premiere. Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening, was released in June of 2023 and is being hailed by critics as, “the most important movie of this era.” Note that the Plandemic trilogy can be seen for free at PlandemicSeries.com.

More relevant to my cause is that last year, Mikki released a short but powerful documentary detailing how ivermectin, the now infamous Nobel Prize-winning medication, had been slandered during the COVID pandemic. Well, a lot has happened in the year since, so Mikki has masterfully updated the film and rebranded it The War on Ivermectin to selflessly help support my book with explosive new clips and critical legal developments.

Check out the film below:

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment