If US can clear way for ‘cease-fire in Gaza’, Red Sea problem would be solved
By Yang Sheng | Global Times | December 19, 2023
The US-led joint patrol in the Red Sea following Houthi militia attacks against ships heading toward Israel shows that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza is not only affecting the whole region, but also the international community. Chinese analysts pointed out that the root cause of the trade route problem is the ongoing conflict in Gaza, and only a sustainable cease-fire and allowing humanitarian aid to enter Gaza via land and sea routes can solve the problem in the Red Sea.
China will pay close attention to the situation, and Chinese naval vessels that conduct UN authorized anti-piracy missions in the region will keep performing their duty, analysts said, adding that China will stick to the priority of realizing a cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid for the people in Gaza, rather than joining the US to conduct any military operations without UN authorization to escalate the crisis in Gaza.
The US and a host of other nations are creating a new force to protect ships transiting the Red Sea that have come under attack by drones and ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Tuesday in Bahrain, the AP reported.
The UK, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain have joined, Austin said. Some of those countries will conduct joint patrols while others will provide intelligence support in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The Houthi militia attacked two commercial ships in the Red Sea with naval drones on Monday. The recent attacks have caused concerns about the impact on the passage of oil, grain and other goods on what is an important global trade route, and have pushed up the cost of insuring and shipping goods through the Red Sea, Reuters reported.
The Shanghai-based news website The Paper reported on Tuesday that following other international shipping companies including Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA, Chinese shipping giants like COSCO and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) also suspended transport through the Red Sea.
Ma Xiaolin, dean of the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean Rim at Zhejiang International Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the trade route via the Red Sea is truly important for China as it connects Europe, Asia and Africa, so China will pay close attention to the situation.
“However, although China has naval vessels in the region, their mission is about anti-piracy, rather than intervening in regional issues and other countries’ internal affairs. Only a solution to the ongoing crisis in Gaza can effectively solve the problem in the Red Sea,” Ma said.
On December 9, Al Jazeera reported that the armed group in Yemen claimed that “it will target all ships heading to Israel, regardless of their nationality, and warned all international shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports.”
“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicines it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” the group’s spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.
Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the “Houthis are specifically targeting Israel, so it’s unlikely it will attack Chinese vessels. China doesn’t need to be too worried about the situation and the Chinese warships in the region will stick to their plan.”
“China will keep making efforts to realize a sustainable cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid to get into the Gaza Strip. This is the real priority that needs to be done,” Wang Jin, an associate professor at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwest University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
If Washington and its allies want to solve the Red Sea problem, they should play a responsible role in the UN Security Council to pass a cease-fire resolution and to put concrete efforts into improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which would be more effective than sending warships to conduct joint patrols, experts said.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains severe. According to Reuters on Tuesday, Israeli missiles and air strikes on the Rafah area in southern Gaza struck three houses killing at least 20 Palestinians, Gaza health officials said on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have crammed into Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt to escape Israeli bombardments.
The lack of unity in the UN that is mainly caused by the US is another key reason why the situation is far from easing. The UN Security Council delayed until Tuesday morning a vote on an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a halt to hostilities in Gaza to allow for urgently needed aid deliveries to a massive number of civilians as members intensified negotiations to try to avoid another veto by the US, the AP reported.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday that “the UN General Assembly has adopted two resolutions with an overwhelming majority. We hope the US will listen to the voice of the international community, stop single-handedly blocking Security Council resolutions, and play its due role to promote an immediate cease-fire and prevent an even larger humanitarian catastrophe.”
US must protect Ukraine from ‘communist’ Russia – congressman

Republican Congressman from Georgia, Rich McCormick © Getty Images / Tom Williams; CQ-Roll Call, Inc
RT | December 20, 2023
The US must ensure Russia does not defeat Ukraine in order to preserve America’s global hegemony, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick has said in an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.
The comments come as US lawmakers remain deadlocked over continued financial assistance to Kiev. Republicans have refused to support President Joe Biden’s latest military aid package, including an additional $60 billion for Ukraine, unless a deal is reached on domestic border security and significant immigration reforms.
Georgia Congressman McCormick was asked to comment on concerns that the US could end up “betraying Ukraine” if it delays further assistance, spelling defeat for Kiev’s forces. The lawmaker stressed that he supports Ukraine, while claiming that “every single former [US] secretary of defense” that he has talked to also believes that Washington must prevent a Russian victory.
“First of all, we made a promise. To support a country that was invaded by a communist country,” McCormick said. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, and Russia has not been a communist nation ever since.
The congressman further insisted that the Russia-Ukraine conflict was a “fight between democracy and autocracy.”
Kiev’s defeat, McCormick continued, would not only affect all of Europe, but also the Far East, where he suggested China would invade Taiwan and threaten US microchip supplies. It would also mean that Ukraine’s vast amounts of grain, steel, titanium, and other resources “would make Russia stronger” and “support China,” which would “break up the US global leadership,” he claimed.
“This is a very important battle we need to have,” McCormick insisted, adding that “we can’t continue to slow roll this” and that the US and Europe must do their part to “end this quickly.”
Moscow has repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war being waged against Russia by the US. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Washington is willing to fight Moscow “until the last Ukrainian.”
Putin also claimed last week that Kiev’s desperation over its failed counteroffensive had caused it to send troops on suicide missions in an attempt to breach Russian positions. “I don’t even know why they do that,” the Russian leader said, adding that Ukrainian soldiers themselves describe some operations as a “one-way trip.”
Israel is exploiting the war in Gaza to deny Palestinians access to their West Bank land
By Fareed Taamallah | MEMO | December 18, 2023
Abla Lafi is 59 and from the village of Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She is passionate when speaking about her olive groves, which the Israeli army and illegal Jewish settlers prevent the villagers from harvesting.
“This is our own land,” she said defiantly. “How dare they prevent us from entering it and picking olives from the trees as if we were thieves? We planted them with our own hands. The settlers are the thieves and we are the owners of the land.”
October and November make up the main olive harvest season for Palestinian farmers. Thousands of families depend on a good crop for their livelihood. Around 45 per cent of agricultural land in the occupied West Bank is planted with an estimated 10 million olive trees, producing between 32-35,000 metric tons of olive oil every year.
This year, due to the war on Gaza, settlers and the Israeli army are preventing thousands of farmers from reaching their olive groves. Last month, the occupation state’s extreme far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on the Israeli government to prohibit Palestinians in the West Bank from harvesting their olive trees. According to Smotrich, Israel needs to establish “sterile security zones” with no Palestinian presence around settlements and settler-only roads. It looks as if the Israeli occupation forces are implementing this policy in order to block Palestinians from getting to their own land.

“Extensive damage to land and trees and stringent movement and access restrictions by Israeli forces hamper access to olive trees, especially those close to settlements,” the UN has reported. “At the end of November, an initial estimate indicates [that] 800,000 dunums of land have not been harvested due to Israeli settler violence and access restrictions.”
“Olives not only have economic importance to Palestinians, but are also symbolic of their roots, resilience and attachment to the land. For the Palestinians, the olive tree represents their spirit and identity.”
“We used to go to work on the land with joy and love for all family members, men, women, children and animals, because cultivation means belonging to the land, a feeling which we pass on to our children and grandchildren,” explained Lafi. “The olive season is like Eid for us; we celebrate its blessings with joy and happiness, even the taste of its food is different.” However, she added, since the establishment of the illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, the locals have lived through the olive season in an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and terror from the settlers and the army. “The anxiety and sadness have increased this year due to the war on Gaza.”
The head of the agricultural committee in the village, Nidal Rabie, confirmed that since the war against the Palestinians in Gaza started, the settlers and settlement guards have stopped local residents from reaching their olive groves in the plain adjacent to the illegal settlements built on lands confiscated from the village. “They expelled us as recently as today,” said Rabie. “We tried to access our land, but they came and expelled us at gunpoint.”
The 61-year-old Palestinian farmer who holds US citizenship, added: “We are now in the middle of December trying to pick our olives to no avail. Every farmer who tries to pick olives is shot at. If we wait any longer, the olives will be ruined and the quality of the oil will become low and inedible.”
Although the settlers and soldiers obstruct the olive harvest every year, explained Rabie, sometimes the Palestinians succeed in harvesting at least part within hours and days determined by the Israeli army. “This year the soldiers prevented us from harvesting any olives in the plain. I personally own 30 dunums that I am not able to harvest at all.”
A few days ago, the army even stormed Turmus Ayya at night and confiscated 50 vehicles belonging to the villagers, because they were used in agricultural work. Altogether, around 2,500 dunums belonging to the villagers but adjacent to the illegal settlements have not been allowed to be harvested. “They would have produced around 70,000 litres of olive oil,” he added.

Palestinian farmers in the village are also prevented from cultivating their own land next to which illegal settlements have been built. Mishal Al-Quq, 43, said that he used to live in the US and went back to Palestine two years ago to take care of the land and cultivate it. “This year we are facing a big problem in growing wheat in the plain east of the village as we are prohibited from working there by the occupation army, but now is the season for planting seeds. We must plant quickly, otherwise it will be too late.” Wheat is very important and is a basic crop for the villagers, he said. “We must grow it.” This was confirmed by Rabie, who pointed out that he had bought wheat and barley seeds, but did not know whether he would be able to plant them or not.

The Israeli destruction of the olive groves unmasks a fact that not many in the West know about; it’s often heard that Israelis hold dual US citizenship, but we don’t hear so much about Palestinian Americans. It is estimated that between 45-60,000 Palestinian Americans live in the occupied West Bank, according to Reuters. However, this does not stop Israel from targeting them. They are treated by the apartheid state as Palestinians and have no “American” privileges. For instance, Israel prevents Palestinian Americans from entering the US from the West Bank, an apparent violation of a recent agreement in which citizens from the US and Israel can travel to the other country without a visa. According to Rabie, most of the residents of Turmus Ayya hold dual Palestinian and US citizenship, but the US government doesn’t provide any protection to the farmers. “Some villagers who hold American citizenship contacted the US Embassy and asked for protection to work on our own land. But the embassy said that it could only assist in securing travel to the United States. This would mean displacing us from our land in Turmus Ayya.”
Although the Biden administration has declared the intention to deny visas to violent settlers, Rabie doubts that it will happen. “This was only propaganda. Biden’s true position was clear when he said that if there was no Israel, the US would have to create one. This shows Washington’s collusion with Israel.”
Abla Lafi believes that the goal of Israeli “harassment” is to seize the Palestinian land close to the illegal settlements that were established on stolen land which contains olive trees that have been cultivated for hundreds of years. “They have no right or ownership over it,” she insisted. “We inherited the land from our ancestors and we should not be prevented from entering it. Although it is more difficult this year, we have been facing this same problem every year since the establishment of the first settlement, which I remember was Shilo, in 1978, when I was 14 years old. At the beginning, there were mobile homes and the road leading to them ran through our village. The roads were built on lands confiscated from Qaryut and Turmus Ayya, after which they began to spread like a cancer and descended from the hilltop on to our land in the plain and spread to the nearby villages.”
More settlements were built, such as Rachel, Adei Ad, Amichai and other random outposts inhabited by terrorists known as the hilltop youth, she added. “They began terrorising the people, shooting, destroying property and blocking the roads. Before those settlements were built, when I was a child, we used to live peacefully, plough and plant. I have beautiful memories of the different seasons of figs, olives and wheat that we used to grow.”
Rabie confirmed that settler crimes, the confiscation of land and the cutting down and burning of olive trees in his and other villages, have been carried out constantly by settlers and the Israeli army even before Israel’s latest war against the Palestinians in Gaza. The most ferocious attack by settlers happened on 21 June this year, when hundreds of settlers stormed the village killing Omar Qutain, burning dozens of houses and cars, and hundreds of olive trees and wheat fields, destroying the village. The Israeli army stood and watched, but did not intervene.
No indictment has been filed against anyone, and this is not an exceptional case. According to Yesh Din, out of a thousand cases regarding acts of violence committed by settlers between 2005 and 2021, 93 per cent were closed without an indictment.

“These attacks did not and will not stop farmers from continuing to work on their land,” said Rabie. “If we stop cultivating the land, the Israeli authorities will exploit that to claim that the land is no man’s land, confiscate it and give it to the settlers. They did this before.”
This was a reference to Israel’s use in 1979 of an Ottoman land law of 1858 which stipulates that if private land is not cultivated for three years in a row it becomes state property. “At which point Israel hands it over to the settlers.”
Abla Lafi is determined that these Israeli attacks and policies will not discourage Palestinian farmers from cultivating their land. “I love my land and I love the fertile plain. This is the land that was watered by the sweat of the farmers and the blood of the martyrs who fell defending it: Joda Awad shot dead by the Israeli army in 1988, and Khamis Abu Awad, who was killed by a settler in 1993 while ploughing the land. Minister Ziad Abu Ain was also martyred in the plain defending the land and so was, most recently, Omar Al-Qotain this summer. We cannot give up on the land that many died to defend. We will pass it on to our children.”
Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | DECEMBER 19, 2023
In a plea earlier this month to Republicans not to block further military aid to Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned that if Russia is victorious, then President Vladimir Putin will not stop and will attack a NATO country. Biden’s remark has drawn a sharp rebuke from Putin when he said, “This is absolutely absurd. I believe that President Biden is aware of this, this is merely a figure of speech to support his incorrect strategy against Russia.”
Putin added that Russia has no interest in fighting with NATO countries, as they “have no territorial claims against each other” and Russia does not want to “sour relations with them.” Moscow senses that a new US narrative is struggling to be born out of the debris of the old narrative on Ukraine war.
To jog memory, on 24 February, during a White House press conference on the first day of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, Biden said western sanctions were designed not to prevent invasion but to punish Russia after invading “so the people of Russia know what he (Putin) has brought on them. That is what this is all about.”
A month later, on 26 March Biden, speaking in Warsaw, blurted out, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.” These and similar remarks that followed, especially from Britain, reflected a US strategy for regime change in Moscow, with Ukraine as the pivot.
This strategy dates back to the 1990s and was actually at the core of the expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, from the Baltics to Bulgaria. The Syrian conflict and covert activities of US NGOs to foment unrest in Russia were offshoots of the strategy. At least since 2015 after the coup in Kiev, CIA was overseeing a secret intensive training programme for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. Succinctly put, the US set a trap for Russia to get it bogged down in a long insurgency, the presumption being the longer the Ukrainians can sustain the insurgency and keep Russian military bogged down, the more likely is the end of the Putin regime.
The crux of the matter today is that Russia defeated the US strategy and not only seized the initiative in the war but also rubbished the sanctions regime. The dilemma in the Beltway narrows down to how to keep Russia as an external enemy so that the West’s often fractious member states will continue to rally under US leadership.
What comes to mind is a sardonic remark by Soviet Academician Georgy Arbatov who was advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, to an elite group of senior US officials even as the curtain was coming down on the Cold War in 1987: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you -– we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
Unless black humour in this cardinal truth is properly understood, the entire US strategy since the 1990s to rebuff the efforts of Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and early Putin to establish non-adversarial relations with the West cannot be grasped.
Put differently, if the US’ post-cold war Russia strategy has not worked, it is because of a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, Washington needs Russia as an enemy to provide internal unity within the western alliance, while on the other hand, it also needs Russia as a cooperative, subservient junior partner in the struggle against China.
The US hopes to draw down in Ukraine and stave off defeat by leaving behind a “frozen conflict” which it’s free to revisit later at a time of its choice, but in the meanwhile, is increasingly eyeing the Arctic lately as the new theatre to entrap Russia in a quagmire. The induction of Finland into NATO (and Sweden to follow) means that the unfinished business of Ukraine’s membership, which Russia thwarted, can be fulfilled by other means.
After meeting Biden at the White House last Tuesday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky headed for Oslo on October 13 on a fateful visit to forge his country’s partnership in NATO projects to counter Russia in the Arctic. In Oslo, Zelensky participated in a summit of the 5 Nordic countries to discuss “issues of cooperation in the field of defence and security.” The summit took place against the backdrop of the US reaching agreements with Finland and Sweden on the use of their military infrastructure by the Pentagon.
The big picture is that the US is encouraging Nordic countries to get Ukraine to participate in strengthening NATO’s Arctic borders. One may wonder what is the “additionality” that a decrepit military like Ukraine’s can bring into NATO. Herein hangs a tale. Simply put, although Ukraine has no direct access to the Arctic, it can potentially bring in an impressive capability to undertake subversive activities inside Russian territory in a hybrid war against Russia.
In a strange coincidence, the Pentagon recently prepared the Starlink satellite system for use in the Arctic, which was used by Ukrainian military for staging attacks on the Crimean Bridge, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and strategic assets on Russian territory. The US’ agreement with Finland and Sweden would give the Pentagon access to a string of naval and air bases and airfields as well as training and testing grounds along the Russian border.
Several hundred thousand Ukrainian citizens are presently domiciled in the Nordic countries who are open to recruitment for “an entire army of saboteurs like the one that Germany collected during the war between Finland and the USSR in 1939-1940 on the islands of Lake Ladoga,” as a Russian military expert told Nezavisimaya Gazeta recently.
Russia’s naval chief Admiral Nikolai Evmenov also pointed out recently that “the strengthening of the military presence of the united NATO armed forces in the Arctic is already an established fact, which indicates the bloc’s transition to practical actions to form military force instruments to deter Russia in the region.” In fact, Russia’s Northern Fleet is forming a marine brigade tasked with the fight against saboteurs to ensure the safety of the new Northern Sea Route, coastal military and industrial infrastructure in the Arctic.
Suffice to say, no matter Ukraine’s defeat in the US’ proxy war with Russia, Zelensky’s use for the US’ geo-strategy remains. From Oslo, Zelensky made an unannounced visit on December 14 to a US Army base in Germany. Analysts who see Zelensky as a spent force had better revise their opinion — that is, unless the power struggle in Kiev exacerbates and Zelensky gets overthrown in a coup or a colour revolution, which seems improbable so long as Biden is in the White House and Hunter Biden is on trial.
The bottom line is that Biden’s new narrative demonising Russia for planning an attack on NATO can be seen from multiple angles. At the most obvious level, it aims to hustle the Congress on the pending bill for $61 billion military aid to Ukraine. Of course, it also distracts attention from the defeat in the war. But, most important, the new narrative is intended to rally the US’ transatlantic allies who are increasingly disillusioned with the outcome of the war and nervous that US involvement in Europe may dwindle as it turns to Indo-Pacific.
When Putin reacts harshly that Biden’s new narrative is “absurd”, he is absolutely right insofar as Russia’s focus is on things far more important than waging a senseless continental war in Europe. After all, it was one of the founding fathers of the USA, James Monroe who said that a king without power is an absurdity.
NATO troops directly involved in Ukraine conflict – Russia
RT | December 19, 2023
Several NATO member states have boots on the ground in the Ukraine conflict, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has claimed. He alleged that Western military personnel are operating certain weapons systems, and that hundreds of satellites belonging to the US-led military bloc are providing Kiev with surveillance.
Speaking at a meeting of Defense Ministry officials on Tuesday, where President Vladimir Putin was also present, Shoigu stated that “NATO service members are directly operating air defense systems, tactical ballistic missiles, and multiple launch rocket systems” in Ukraine. He cited radio intercepts featuring English and Polish speakers. According to the minister, Western officers are also playing an active role in preparing Ukrainian military operations as well as training troops, both in their home countries and in Ukraine.
Russian officials have repeatedly warned that ever-deepening Western involvement in the conflict unnecessarily increases the chances of a direct military confrontation between NATO and Moscow.
The Russian defense chief went on to claim that more than 5,000 foreign fighters have been killed since hostilities broke out in February 2022, with 1,427 Polish, 466 US, and 344 UK nationals among them.
“Working in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ interest are 410 NATO military and dual-purpose space devices,” Shoigu estimated.
He also lauded Russia’s defense industry for ramping up production in the past 18 months and helping prevent ammunition shortages on the front lines. “Despite the sanctions, we are manufacturing more high-tech weaponry than NATO countries,” Shoigu continued.
The minister concluded by stating that “as of today, the Russian army is the best-prepared and most combat-ready in the world, armed with cutting-edge weapons tested in combat.”
Putin insisted at the same meeting that the West’s efforts to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia have failed.
Speaking to the Ukrainian branch of US state-run broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Friday, Kiev’s former ambassador to the UK, Vadim Prystaiko, claimed that Britain is developing plans to potentially deploy troops to Ukraine.
The diplomat, who was fired after criticizing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, went on to suggest that while Western officials will deny any such plans, foreign deployments are still possible under certain circumstances.
Will political West transfer $300 billion of stolen Russian assets to Kiev regime?
By Drago Bosnic | December 19, 2023
When the political West insists on the so-called “rules-based world order“, it’s perhaps the most laughable claim of our time, as this supposed “international community” doesn’t abide by its own rules and laws which formally state that private property is protected. The nominally capitalist power pole has no problem using what it usually calls a “communist practice” of illegal confiscation of the said property. In the aftermath of the special military operation (SMO), the United States and its numerous vassals and satellite states illegally froze hundreds of billions in Russian foreign exchange (forex) reserves. Estimates vary, but the most commonly cited number amounts to approximately $300 billion in assets.
The original idea was to cause an artificial default in Russia. In turn, this was supposed to result in massive financial destabilization. Namely, when a country defaults, it disposes of (or ignores, depending on the viewpoint) its financial obligations towards its creditors. The immediate consequence for the country is a reduction in its total debt and a reduction or even cessation of payments on the interest of that debt. A credit rating agency then takes this into account in its gradings of capital, interest, extraneous and procedural defaults, and failures to abide by the terms of bonds or other debt instruments. In short, the country in question becomes a geoeconomic pariah, which then affects its diplomatic standing.
Precisely this was what the political West wanted to ensure for Russia. With no access to its forex reserves, Moscow was expected to bleed dry financially, forcing it into a default that would then isolate the country and make trading with it not just hard, but nearly impossible. This geopolitical tool has been the mainstay of non-kinetic segments of Western hybrid warfare against the world for well over half a century now. And it might work against small to medium-sized countries. However, the Eurasian giant is neither of those. Russia is an energy superpower and a net exporter of natural gas, oil, rare earth metals and nonmetals, fertilizer, food and many other commodities that are absolutely essential to the world.
It’s also an industrial power that produces heavy machinery, chemical products, manufacturing tools, etc. Trying to isolate such a country is simply impossible. What’s more, even much smaller and less powerful countries targeted by US sanctions are finding ways to circumvent them, simply because others need their commodities. This is true for Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria and even North Korea, which bore the brunt of Western sanctions before the SMO. Rather schizophrenically, even the political West itself is trying to find ways to circumvent its own sanctions. Still, it’s trying to make Russia’s life as difficult as possible by attempting to turn it into a failed state or at the very least making it look like one.
All this accomplishes little more than propaganda “wins”, effectively serving only for optics purposes. Thus, the US-led power pole is now trying to find other uses for frozen Russian forex reserves. Namely, according to the Financial Times, G7 is moving closer to approving a plan that would funnel approximately $300 billion in stolen Russian assets to the increasingly cash-strapped Kiev regime. According to the FT’s own admission, the proposal constitutes “a radical step that would open a new chapter in the West’s financial warfare against Moscow”. The troubled Biden administration is yet to announce that this is their official stance, but FT posits that American officials are “actively engaging G7 countries to see it through”.
“A US official said Washington was engaged in active conversations on the use of Russian sovereign assets and believed there was a short timeline to make a decision,” the FT report reads, adding: “They suggested it could be discussed at a possible G7 leaders’ meeting to coincide with the second anniversary in February of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine.”
In other words, the “exclusive club” of closest Anglo-American vassals and satellite states is being given instructions on how to handle their own financial and foreign policy, including the theft of other countries’ forex assets. As previously mentioned, the sanctions warfare has not only been a miserable failure, but has also backfired. Thus, the political West is trying to hurt Russia by not only stealing its reserves, but also illegally transferring them to the Neo-Nazi junta. The obvious goal is to “adequately” substitute US funding that is now virtually guaranteed to run out thanks to the peculiarities of America’s political system, as the growing Republican-Democrat divide turns into an even bigger headache for the Kiev regime.
Apart from the halt in Washington DC’s financing, the EU is also having major issues in finding consensus about continued support for the Neo-Nazi junta. Namely, last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked another “aid” package worth €50 billion. This happened on the same day Budapest abstained from a vote on starting formal EU membership talks with the Kiev regime. It can be argued that Brussels is its last chance to stay afloat financially, although this is virtually guaranteed to break Europe’s already flailing economy. In other words, the political West is risking the dismantling of its entire financial system and stability for the sake of the Neo-Nazi junta that is bound to lose anyway.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition
By Russell Bentley – Sputnik – 19.12.2023
The latest escalation in world military affairs, the situation in the Red Sea and Yemen, has the real potential to eclipse both the war in Ukraine and the invasion of Gaza, both in terms of military and economic impact, on a global scale.
The hubris and abject idiocy of US plans to open yet another conflict that they cannot hope to win, and that cannot lead to anything but the destruction of the world economy can only be described as criminally insane.
In a recent letter to “Dear America”, the Houthi leaders wrote, “A desperate plea for reflection. The consequences are dire, and the responsibility lies with the guardians of the American dream. Beware, for the path you tread upon carries weighty consequences, reverberating across oceans and continents. Choose wisely…” The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences. The US has already announced its intention to choose the latter. It is a choice for which the American people, if they allow it to happen, will suffer gravely.
The US and UK have moved at least 24 combat ships into the seas off the coast of Yemen, ostensibly “to protect global shipping lanes”. This is a lie. The Houthis have clearly stated that, one, that they are only targeting ships serving Israeli interests, and that all other shipping is under no threat, and two, that they are willing to cease all military operations against Israeli shipping as soon as Israel stops its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.
It is ONLY Israeli shipping that is under threat, and it is ONLY Israeli shipping that US and UK naval forces are deployed to protect. But by escalating the situation in the Red Sea, they are putting at risk ALL shipping passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which accounts for 12% of all global trade and 30% of all container shipping, as well as about 8% of world trade in both oil and LNG, for a total annual value of over a trillion US dollars.
As things stand now, only Israel-linked shipping is at risk, and even that risk can be completely eliminated by the cessation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. But if the US attacks Yemen, the Houthis will respond, and they do have the capability to sink US Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. And once that happens, the Red Sea becomes an active war zone, and then, all bets are off, along with all shipping in the Red Sea, and 12% of all global trade. Think about it…

US Navy and allies deployment in the Middle East © Russel Bentley
The economies of the EU nations are already in serious decline. The US national debt stands at over $33 TRILLION, and the era of the US dollar’s reserve currency status in global trade is closing fast. A 12% overnight decline in global trade would almost certainly lead these economies into economic depression equivalent to the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago. As I have said many times before, economic war and military war are two sides of the same coin. The Houthis have a major economic advantage based on their geography to influence and even threaten global economic activity, and have proven their ability and willingness to use it. And it is by no means certain that the Western armada assembled along the Yemeni coast can even defeat the Houthis militarily without unacceptable and unsustainable losses.
According to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Houthis are known to possess two types of larger anti-ship ballistic missiles: The Asef, which has a 450km range, and the Tankil,which has a range of 500km. These missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 5, and carry warheads of between 300 to 500 kg. (By comparison, Chinese anti-ship missiles with 600 kg warheads have been dubbed “Aircraft Carrier Killers”.) The range of these missiles allows the Houthis to cover not only the southern third of the Red Sea, but all of the Gulf of Aden and much of the Arabian Sea as well. With the exception of the USS Indianapolis and the USCG ships in the Gulf of Oman, all of the US/UK naval ships in the graphic above are already within range of Houthi missiles.
After almost ten years of civil war against the Yemeni government backed by the US and a Saudi-led coalition, the Houthis remain an undefeated and powerful fighting force, still in control of about 20% of Yemen, in the northern and western parts along the Red Sea. Though a recent ceasefire was brokered by China and based on Saudi – Iranian rapprochement, the situation in Yemen remains volatile, exacerbated by Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. With the US threatened escalation, the global military and economic risks increase by orders of magnitude.
The Houthis demands are clear and precise: Stop the attacks on Palestinians, and the threats to Israeli shipping will cease. Escalate, and the Houthi response will be asymmetrical and world-changing. To any who might scoff at the idea of a rebel army in an impoverished 3rd world country being able to take on the US military, I would simply remind them of the fact that the US has failed to achieve any meaningful victory in any of the wars it has started over the last 30 years.
The choice is clear – either end the Palestinian tragedy, or unleash a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. The US government has announced its ill-advised decision to choose the latter option. It is up to all good people in the world, and US citizens in particular, to prevent this global and suicidal miscalculation from taking place, or suffer the consequences.

