Request submitted to ICC against EU’s Von der Leyen for Gaza genocide
Al Mayadeen | May 27, 2024
The Geneva International Peace Research Institute, GIPRI, submitted a communication to the International Criminal Court (ICC), signed by two Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF) Associates, Professor Richard Falk and TFF director Jan Oberg, urging the Court to investigate the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in war crimes in the occupied Palestine territories including Gaza.
On May 22, GIPRI sent a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC saying that reasonable grounds exist to believe that “the unconditional support of the President of the European Commission to Israel – military, economic, diplomatic and political – has enabled war crimes” and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
They said that the various human rights and prominent academics and experts in international criminal law endorsed the communication and urged the prosecutor to launch investigations based on the information they provided against Von der Leyen.
GIPRI added that Von der Leyen “personally is criminally responsible and liable for punishment for some of the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” which have been committed and are still being committed by the IOF in the occupied Palestine territories, emphasizing that she has “aided, abetted and otherwise assisted in the in the commission or attempted commission of such crimes” which includes giving the means for this commission under Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute of the Court.
As Ukrainian casualties soar, EU will move to conscript European youth to fight, warns Hungarian FM
Remix News | May 27, 2024
Ukraine’s high causality rates combined with its struggle to conscript its own population means the EU will increasingly move to conscript European youth, mostly in the geographical proximity of Ukraine, to fight against Russia, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó following a meeting with EU foreign ministers.
“Ukrainian casualties are becoming more and more unbearable, Ukrainian men are not being allowed out of Ukraine, and now they want to conscript European youth into the war. And obviously, as the escalation hits this neighborhood first, one can almost clearly hear the argument that the soldiers should be sent from the geographical proximity first. All this means that they want to send Central European youth, including Hungarian youth, to the war with mandatory European conscription,” said Szijjártó during an interview with Hungarian media.
The Hungarian foreign minister said he would be firmly opposed to any efforts to institute a European mandatory conscription effort, stating: “Hands off Central Europeans, hands off Hungarian youth, we will not allow Hungarian youth to be involved in the war, because this is not our war.”
Szijjártó did not disclose which foreign ministers or member states are exploring the possibility of a European conscription effort, but recently, several countries have said they would consider sending their own troops to Ukraine if Russia had a breakthrough on the Ukrainian front, including France and more recently, the Baltic states.
However, a long-term goal of the left-liberal establishment in Brussels is the creation of an EU military force, including removing the decision-making process about defense from member states and centralizing it in Brussels. Under such a proposal, a potential conscription effort could arise that applies to all EU member states.
Szijjártó described an extremely intense atmosphere at the Council of Foreign Ministers in Brussels before the European Parliament elections. He stated that the mood turned sour when those present began to talk about the release of €6.5 billion for Ukraine, which the Hungarian foreign minister rejected, saying it would only escalate the war. However, his position came under extreme pressure from a number of other countries.
“And there was a big mess here. The German, Lithuanian, Irish, Polish and other colleagues fell against me in this matter, but this could not shake our position, despite the shouting of Europe’s pro-war politicians,” he said.
“They think that if they shout from many directions, then I will say that it is good, it is fine. However, they should already know us well enough to know this won’t happen,” he added.
French PM reveals how countries like Poland will be flooded with migrants his country doesn’t want
‘They either accept migrants or pay’
BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | MAY 27, 2024
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s claim that the EU migration pact will mean illegal migrants will be transferred to Central Europe and will not go to France, has caused uproar on the Polish right.
“The migration pact introduces solidarity. We managed to force eastern countries to sign a document according to which they either accept migrants or pay,” said Attal during a television debate.
The leader of the Polish conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) over the weekend that his party would be calling for an emergency meeting of the Polish parliament to consider the remarks made by France’s Attal during a television debate.
Attal claimed that the French provinces are safe from being allocated migrants covered by the EU migration pact, as the migrants will in the first instance be sent to Central and Eastern Europe. Kaczyński contrasted Attal’s statement with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s claim that the migration pact will not affect Poland because it has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
“It seems that Tusk once again is saying one thing in the EU and another in Poland,” said Kaczyński.
Conservatives in countries like Hungary and Poland have long warned that the EU’s recently passed migration pact was a ploy to transfer unwanted migrants to countries like Poland and Hungary, despite the West claiming that more migration and diversity was always a good thing and a source of “strength.”
Kaczyński said the parliamentary session on the EU migration pact should receive detailed information from PM Tusk with regard to the circumstances in which his government had failed to block the EU migration pact on the reallocation of migrants entering EU states.
Senior PiS MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski told independent television channel TV Republika that the migration pact will act as “a pump for migrants from Africa” and the Middle East who will see the pact as an invitation to come to Europe.
Saryusz-Wolski reminded that EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson has admitted that Europe needs to have 4.5 million migrants coming every single year “to bridge the demographic gap, change society and provide the left with future voters.”
The Polish government did vote against the EU migration pact at a session of the Council of the European Union, the body in which decisions are made by qualified majority. Kaczyński and PiS have consistently argued that the decision on the pact should be made by the European Council, at which all decisions must be unanimous. In the Council of the European Union, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia voted against the migration pact, which will introduce migrant quotas, but the new law carried the day as most EU states backed it.
The most controversial aspect of the EU migration pact is the provision that should member states refuse to take their share of the reallocated migrants, they will have to pay up to €23,000 for every migrant refused.
US-Ukraine Arms Scheme Could ‘Fail in All of Its Objectives’ – Ex-State Department Analyst
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 27.05.2024
No one will sign up to be part of a deal on Kiev-Washington arms co-production, given Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure amid its proxy war with NATO, former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.
The US State Department recently announced a $2 billion package for Kiev aimed at creating the so-called Ukraine Defense Enterprise Program (UDEP) fund.
In particular, the fund could be used to “strategically weaken Russia by transitioning partners away from Russian systems and supporting [foreign military financing] loans to partners and allies,” an unnamed State Department official was cited by the Defense One news outlet as saying.
“Without any doubt, the US funding package for Ukraine – intended to be used to stimulate Europe’s arms industry, fund US-Ukraine arms co-production, and lure countries away from the Russian arms market – will fail in all of its objectives,” former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett said in an interview with Sputnik.
He explained that “the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme will ultimately fail because the entire nation of Ukraine is now devolving into a failed state.”
Another aspect pertains to the fact that Ukraine “has no personnel able to create weapons anymore, and no ability to establish such an enterprise on its soil, as Russia would immediately target and destroy any such facilities before they could produce or deploy any weapons to be used against Russian soldiers,” per Bennett.
“The Ukrainians know this, and therefore no one would ‘willingly’ sign up to be part of any facility in Ukraine that does such activities because it would just be a matter of time before the building disappeared in a mountain of rubble,” the ex-State Department analyst pointed out.
When asked what specific types of arms or ammunition the US could co-produce with Ukraine, Bennett said that “these type of guerilla terrorist weapons might include drones, sea, air, and land bombs.”
He didn’t rule out that investor nations involved in the UDEP project “would most likely be Britain, France, Germany, and the Baltic nations.”
Touching upon the issue of the weapons market, Bennett said the US “has been on a conveyor belt of producing weapons for the shallow purpose of enriching politicians and the military-industrial complex, and not for military efficiency purposes.” Per him, “This is a lethal flaw, and an impediment which the rest of the world sees and therefore consciously and unconsciously views US-NATO weapons on a lower level than the Russian weapons.”
Bennett referred to Russian weapons as something “designed to defeat the US-NATO Ukrainian military,” which he said is viewed as “the main destabilizer of the world.”
So, he went on to say, “It is logical to assume that Russian weapons will be valued and sought after as the natural antidote or best defense against future Western Empirical operations — which they openly boast is coming with fatalistic and narcissistic indifference.”
As such, the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme “will once again confirm to the American and European peoples — currently held hostage by their governments — that the real enemy of Western peoples are the tyrants in their own government who are using the war to bleed money from citizens and construct an endless excuse for absolute authoritarian political control using endless fear and ‘rumors of war’,” the ex-State Department analyst concluded.
The Carbon Capture Con
By Viv Forbes | Master Resource | May 17, 2024
Carbon-capture-and-underground-storage “(CCUS)” tops the list of silly schemes “to reduce man-made global warming.” The idea is to capture exhaust gases from power stations or cement plants, separate the CO2 from the other gases, compress it, pump it to the chosen burial site and force it underground into permeable rock formations. Then hope it never escapes.
An Australian mining company who should know better is hoping to appease green critics by proposing to bury the gas of life, CO2, deep in the sedimentary rocks of Australia’s Great Artesian Basin.
They have chosen the Precipice Sandstone for their carbon cemetery. However, the chances of keeping CO2 gas confined in this porous sandstone are remote. This formation has a very large area of outcrop to the surface and gas will escape somewhere, so why bother forcing it into a jail with no roof?
Glencore shareholders should rise in anger at this wasteful and futile pagan sacrifice to the global warming gods. It will join fiascos like Snowy 2, pink bats and SunCable (a dream to take solar energy generated in NT via overhead and undersea cable for over 5000 km across ocean deeps and volcanic belts to Singapore).
Engineers with buckets of easy money may base a whole career on Carbon Capture and Underground Storage. But only stupid green zealots would support the sacrifice of billions of investment dollars and scads of energy to bury this harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in the hope of appeasing the high priests of global warming.
The quantities of gases that CCUS would need to handle are enormous, and the capital and operating costs will be horrendous. It is a dreadful waste of energy and resources, consuming about twenty percent of power delivered from an otherwise efficient coal-fired power station.
For every tonne of coal burnt in a power station, about 11 tonnes of gases are exhausted – 7.5 tonnes of nitrogen from the air used to burn the coal, plus 2.5 tonnes of CO2 and one tonne of water vapour from the coal combustion process.
Normally these beneficial atmospheric gases are released to the atmosphere after filters take out any nasties like soot and noxious fumes.
However, CCUS also requires energy to produce and fabricate steel and erect gas storages, pumps and pipelines and to drill disposal wells. This will chew up more coal resources and produce yet more carbon dioxide, for zero benefit.
But the real problems are at the burial site – how to create a secure space to hold the CO2 gas. There is no vacuum occurring naturally anywhere on earth – every bit of space on Earth is occupied by something – solids, liquids or gases. Underground disposal of CO2 requires it to be pumped AGAINST the pressure of whatever fills the pore space of the rock formation now – either natural gases or liquids. These pressures can be substantial, especially after more gas is pumped in.
The natural gases in sedimentary rock formations are commonly air, CO2, CH4 (methane) or rarely, H2S (rotten egg gas). The liquids are commonly salty water, sometimes fresh water or very rarely, liquid hydrocarbons.
Pumping out air is costly; pumping out natural CO2 to make room for man-made CO2 is pointless; and releasing rotten egg gas or salty water on the surface would create a real problem, unlike the imaginary threat from CO2.
In some cases, CCUS may require the removal of fresh water to make space for CO2. Producing fresh water on the surface would be seen as a boon by most locals. Pumping out salt water to make space to bury CO2 would create more problems than it could solve.
Naturally, some carbon dioxide buried under pressure will dissolve in groundwater and aerate it, so that the next water driller in the area could get a real bonus – bubbling Perrier Water on tap, worth more than oil.
Then there is the dangerous risk of a surface outburst or leakage from a pressurised underground reservoir of CO2. The atmosphere contains 0.04% CO2 which is beneficial for all life. But the gas in a CCUS reservoir would contain +90% of this heavier-than-air gas – a lethal, suffocating concentration for nearby animal life if it escaped in a gas outburst.
Pumping gases underground is only sensible if it brings real benefits such as using waste gases to increase oil recovery from declining oil fields – frack the strata, pump in CO2, and force out oil/gas. To find a place where you could drive out natural hydro-carbons in order to make space to bury CO2 would be like winning the Lottery – a profitable but unlikely event.
Normally however, CCUS will be futile as the oceans will largely undo whatever man tries to do with CO2 in the atmosphere. Oceans contain vastly more CO2 than the thin puny atmosphere, and oceans maintain equilibrium between CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 dissolved in the oceans. If man releases CO2 into the atmosphere, the oceans will quickly absorb much of it. And if by some fluke man reduced the CO2 in the atmosphere, CO2 would bubble out of the oceans to replace much of it. Or just one decent volcanic explosion could negate the whole CCUS exercise.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere encourages all plants to grow better and use more CO2. Unfortunately natural processes are continually sequestering huge tonnages of CO2 into extensive deposits of shale, coal, limestone, dolomite and magnesite – this process has driven atmospheric CO2 to dangerously low concentrations. Burning hydrocarbons and making cement returns a tiny bit of this plant food from the lithosphere to the biosphere.
Regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide is best left to the oceans and plants – they have been doing it successfully for millennia.
The only certain outcome from CCUS is more expensive electricity and a waste of energy resources to do all the separation, compressing and pumping. Unscrupulous coal industry leaders love the idea of selling more coal to produce the same amount of electricity, and electricity generators would welcome an increased demand for power. And green zealots in USA plan to force all coal and gas plants to bury all CO2 plant food that they generate. Consumers and taxpayers are the suckers.
Naturally the Greens love the idea of making coal and gas-fired electricity more expensive. They conveniently ignore the fact that CCUS is anti-life – it steals plant food from the biosphere.
Global Warming has never been a threat to life on Earth – Ice is the killer. Glencore directors supporting this CCUS stupidity should be condemned for destructive ignorance.
————-
Geologist Viv Forbes is the founder of the Carbon Sense Coalition.
CDC Director Said All the Right Things in Commencement Address. So Why Does Her Agency Get Things so Wrong?
Reform Pharma Team | The Defender | May 23, 2024
On Monday, Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), delivered a commencement speech at Wake Forest University.
Although she was there to inspire, her overly rehearsed speech epitomized everything wrong within the healthcare system.
Cohen shared a story from early in her career when she did what she thought was right, but both her actions and the system she worked in failed.
“I didn’t do a good enough job learning about the person in front of me,” Cohen told the audience.
Cohen explained that she was treating “Jennifer” for unexplained hair loss, lethargy, weight loss and bloating. After running a series of tests over eight weeks — all of which came back normal — she was stumped by the patient’s results.
It wasn’t until a nurse tech instructed Cohen to ask the patient if she had had enough to eat that Cohen realized she missed the patient in front of her.
Cohen allowed her patient to needlessly suffer for eight weeks because she failed to ask the most basic foundational medical question. She, like many other doctors, followed protocol — or what Reform Pharma calls the Big Pharma agenda — rather than practice medicine.
While Cohen admitted she failed in caring for her patient, today she sits as the director for the CDC, the very organization creating the kinds of protocols that lead to patients being overlooked, misdiagnosed and victims of pharmacide — death and injury caused by Big Pharma corruption.
Doctors follow Cohen’s CDC recommendations. They treat patients as if they were products on an assembly line, giving the same treatment to everyone.
Patients are tossed into the “Pharma Sell Cycle” that guarantees continuous profits for Big Pharma and dependency on our failed healthcare system.
“The system I worked in made it super easy for me to miss the person in front of me,” Cohen said during her speech.
It’s the same system that makes it super easy for her and other healthcare providers to dismiss vaccine injury.
It’s the same system that watches and wonders why the rates of chronic disease and illness in children are skyrocketing while the system pushes toxic vaccines on children, pregnant women and adults, causing serious injury and death.
Cohen pointed out that it is easier to prescribe than it is to heal. It was easier to order tests than it was to be a doctor and connect a patient’s lifestyle to their health.
Who taught her to think like that? She said she is a “pretty smart person” with a “very pricey education.” Yet, she failed to look at the basic needs of her patient and instead, prescribed a Big Pharma solution.
“It was really easy to spend money on the wrong things, ordering blood tests, CAT scans. But it actually was really hard to connect her to the housing, counseling and food resources that she really needed to keep her healthy and thriving,” Cohen said.
Cohen’s story was intended to give testimony to how she now shows up for people and delivers “health in a way that puts people and their health at the center.”
But her claims ring hollow, as she has not had an active license to practice medicine in over 10 years and now works for an agency that only creates one-size-fits-all protocols.
Here is the advice Cohen shared:
- Actually show up.
- Look people in the eye.
- Listen.
- Bring your full self to the table
- Build trust by demonstrating your trustworthiness.
Cohen touts truth and transparency but so far, her words have been nothing more than scripted speeches and vague, dismissive testimonies that continue to erode the public trust.
Dr. Cohen has an opportunity to build trust by bringing her full self to the table as a mom, public servant and doctor to talk with Reform Pharma.
Reform Pharma has invited Cohen to have an open and frank, mom-to-mom conversation to discuss the disturbing and declining state of children’s health in the U.S.
The CDC responded by asking for additional information, which was provided. Reform Pharma hopes that Cohen will take this important opportunity to talk with us. We will come to Atlanta to make it easy for her.
Meanwhile, while she parades across the country, we sit in solace with those who have been and will be injured by her organization’s protocols — and we wait for Cohen to “actually show up,” “look us in the eyes” and “listen.”
Reform Pharma is an initiative of Children’s Health Defense. Our mission is to remove Big Pharma corruption and restore healthcare integrity. For more information visit ReformPharmaNow.org.
Orban Foresees Dire Consequences If EU Militarism Continues Unchecked
Sputnik – 26.05.2024
BUDAPEST – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday that he had never seen greater irresponsibility than Europe getting involved in the conflict in Ukraine without calculating what it would cost.
“Europe is becoming so involved in the war that it does not even have an estimate of the scale of the costs and means necessary to achieve its military objective. I have never seen anything more irresponsible in my life,” Orban said in an interview with the Patriota YouTube channel.
He added that, in his opinion, NATO wanted to become a party to the conflict in Ukraine and “the chances that the alliance can be kept from doing so are limited.”
Budapest is against having decisions on the service of Hungarian citizens made “in Brussels or Germany,” Orban emphasized.
“We don’t want anyone else to be able to make decisions about conscription and sending our young men of draft age anywhere. We have to forget about a European army with compulsory conscription, this is a crazy idea,” the prime minister stressed.
Earlier in May, Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party, the largest one in the European Parliament, suggested reinstating compulsory military service across the entire European Union.
If Weber’s idea was implemented, “Hungarian families would be told from Brussels or Germany that their children would be compulsorily conscripted into the European army and told where they would go,” Orban added.
In the years to come, current events may be seen as a prelude to World War III or even its first episode if Brussels’ militarism is not countered, the Hungarian prime minister warned.
“Perhaps in 10 years the current processes will be called a prelude to World War III. It cannot be ruled out that if things go badly and we fail to control the military psychosis developed in Brussels, the history of these years will also be an episode of the first years of the big world war,” Orban said in an interview with the YouTube channel Patrióta.
Although European politicians see nuclear weapons as a deterrent, unforeseen worst-case scenarios could come to life, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.
“In my opinion, European politicians think of the nuclear bomb as a tactical deterrence tool and not as something that should really be used, but what they don’t consider at the beginning of a war can still happen at the end, thus worst-case scenarios can come to life,” Orban explained.
Previously, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that the United States threatened Moscow with the “destruction” of Russian forces in the special military operation zone if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitriy Medvedev said Poland should understand that an American strike on Russian troops would mean the beginning of a world war.
Record numbers of ‘external and internal enemies’ threaten EU – Macron
RT | May 26, 2024
The EU is facing a record number of “external and internal enemies,” who pose an existential threat to the bloc, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, doubling down on a warning he’d given earlier, that “our Europe” could end up dying.
Macron made the remarks while speaking alongside Germany’s head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the first of his three-day state visit. The two attended the Festival of Democracy, held in Berlin’s government quarter, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the country’s constitution.
“I think that we are experiencing a moment in our Europe which is existential because I really believe that our Europe can die,” Macron stated, referring to a keynote speech he’d delivered in April.
The French president urged a vote for pro-EU forces in the upcoming European elections, warning the bloc has “never had so many enemies inside and outside” as it has now. The purported internal enemies are apparently European nationalists, with their rise raising questions about democracy itself, Macron asserted.
“There is a form of fascination with authoritarianism which is born in our own democracies … which also feeds nationalism and other extremes on our continent,” he claimed.
Macron painted a grim picture of “nationalists” entering government, alleging that they would have failed to tackle Covid-19 and shown “no capacity to respond to migration challenges,” climate change issues, and so on.
“We would have abandoned backing Ukraine against Russia, which all the nationalists in our countries support. And, therefore, history would have not been the same,” the president alleged.
“For all these reasons, it is important to vote in the Europeans,” he concluded.
The call was backed by Steinmeier, who said that the mere fact that Macron had shown up at the Festival of Democracy was somehow “a signal that we need an alliance of democrats in Europe.”
Al-Qassam Brigades: Our fighters captured Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza
Palestinian Information Center – May 26, 2024
GAZA – Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced on Saturday the capture of an unspecified number of Israeli soldiers during an operation in Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“Our fighters were able to carry out a complex operation on Saturday afternoon in the northern Gaza Strip, where they lured an Israeli force into one of the tunnels in Jabalia camp, clashed with it at close range, and killed, captured, and wounded its members,” spokesman for the Brigades Abu Obeida said in a recorded statement broadcast by Al Jazeera satellite channel last night.
“The occupation forces are digging among piles of rubble in search for the remains of some of their prisoners, whom they had previously bombed on purpose, and keep throwing thousands of their soldiers into the alleyways of Jabalia and elsewhere to search for corpses, sacrificing their soldiers for the sake of Netanyahu’s personal machinations and his extremist fascist government’s interests,” Abu Obeida said in his statement.
A separate video clip released by al-Qassam Brigades showed an individual being dragged in a tunnel, purportedly an Israeli soldier, but this has not been yet confirmed.
The video also showcased weapons and equipment seemingly belonging to three Israeli soldiers.
In response, the Israeli occupation army denied the occurrence of an incident where a number of its soldiers were taken prisoners by fighters from al-Qassam Brigades.
US Expends 530 Munitions, Over $1 Bln Fighting Houthi Hellfire Raining Down on Its Carrier Group
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.05.2024
The US and Britain hastily assembled a coalition of the willing in December 2023 to target the Houthis, a month after the indefatigable Yemeni militia began a campaign of ship seizures, drone and missile attacks targeting Israeli-linked merchant vessels in the Red Sea, in solidarity with Gaza.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower supercarrier-led US Navy strike group has expended over 500 munitions targeting Houthi-launched missiles, UAVs and drone boats over and in the Red Sea, and positions inside Yemen, a new tally of Navy data has revealed.
The figures, seen by Business Insider, reportedly included almost 430 instances of US warships and aircraft engaging “planned and dynamic Houthi targets,” with the Eisenhower’s onboard F/A-18 Super Hornet strike jets flying over 27,200 hours across roughly 12,100 sorties, launching 350+ air-to-surface missiles and 50+ air-to-air missiles.
Guided-missile destroyers and cruisers accompanying the Eisenhower have reportedly launched 100 Standard Missile-2 interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles at Houthi aerial and ground targets.
The figures offer the most detailed insight to date into the expenses the US-led anti-Houthi mission in the Red Sea has sustained to date.
Last month, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told lawmakers from the Senate Appropriations Committee that the US had spent nearly $1 billion in the Middle East, including against the Houthis, since the Israeli-Hamas escalation in October, and asked for more money.
But the Navy figures cited by Business Insider suggest the costs could be much higher. For example, F/A-18 jets have an average per hour flight cost of more than $30,400, meaning if the Navy-provided data are correct, the US has spent close to $827 million on sorties alone, not counting expended missiles. The latter include AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, priced between $125,000 and $400,000 apiece, and AGM-88 HARM air-to-surface missiles, which go for between $284,000 and $870,000 each.
Ship-launched standard Missile-2 interceptors cost $2 million apiece, with the more advanced Standard Missile-6 – which the US carrier strike group has also deployed against the Houthis, costing $4.3 million each. Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles, meanwhile, have a price tag of roughly $2 million.
The Pentagon’s anti-Houthi strategy has recently taken flak from US lawmakers over its exorbitant cost.
“In the Red Sea, the Houthis are sending $20,000 drones and we’re shooting them down with missiles that cost $4.3 million. The math doesn’t work on that, gentlemen. It just doesn’t work. What are we thinking?” Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces chairman Angus King said earlier this month during a grilling of senior DoD officials on the (apparently) shambolic state of America’s air and missile defense capabilities.
US-led military operations in the Red Sea, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, have failed to stop or even scale back the extent of Houthi attacks, with the militia ramping up its strikes in the Red and Arabian Seas in recent months, and expanding drone and missile forays into the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin hinted at the intensity of Houthi operations on Friday, revealing that the USS Carney guided-missile destroyer alone had had 51 “engagements” with Houthi missiles and drones over six months, “which is the most direct Navy engagement with a foe since World War II.”
The Carney returned home to Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida on May 19 after its long Red Sea deployment.
Separately on Friday, the Houthis announced that they had targeted three more Israeli-linked ships, including the MSC Alexandra and the Greek-owned Yannis bulk carrier (which the militia said was heading toward Israel) in the Red Sea, and the Essex LPG carrier – a Liberia-registered vessel managed by Zodiac Maritime, owned by Israeli tycoon Eyal Ofer, in the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean attack came just a few days after an anonymous Pentagon official confirmed to reporters that the Houthis have weapons that could reach the body of water – situated over 2,000 km from militia-held areas of Yemen.
Along with their attacks on ships, the Houthis have been stepping up their efforts to target US military assets operating over Yemeni airspace. Last week, the group downed its fifth MQ-9 Reaper drone using a “locally-made” surface to air missile while the $32 million aircraft was “carrying out hostile acts” over Marib province in western Yemen.
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British propaganda campaign incited mass slaughter of communists in Indonesia in 1960s, declassified papers reveal
RT | October 17, 2021
British spies played a part in the mass murder of Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) members in the 1960s, urging locals, including army generals, to “cut out” the “communist cancer,” declassified papers have revealed.
The Indonesian Army’s brutal clampdown on the PKI in 1965 and 1966 is considered to be one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. Between 500,000 and three million supporters of the Communist Party were slaughtered, according to various estimations.
Declassified Foreign Office documents, which were recently released by Britain’s National Archives and seen by The Guardian newspaper, indicate that the UK isn’t without fault in those shocking events.
The British Foreign Office had always denied the country’s involvement in the brutal clampdown on those blamed of communist links in Indonesia. … continue
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- Across the West, speaking for Palestine is now a crime
- No Tricks Zone
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
- 130 Years Later: The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Still Only An Imaginary-World Thought Experiment
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
- Polar Colding…Antarctica Saw Its Coldest October In 44 Years!
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
Aletho News 