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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.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Iran in a Changing World – Mohammad Marandi, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

The Duran | December 17, 2023

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Truth is the Biggest Threat to DC ‘Democracy’

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | December 18, 2023

In Washington, truth is reckoned as the greatest enemy of democracy. Hard facts are deadly threats to a president’s prerogative to define reality and impose “the will of the people.”

Early this year, Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested and charged with transmission of national defense information among other charges. Teixeira allegedly leaked classified documents on the Ukraine war and other foreign policy issues to a Discord gaming group. The document propagated from there and appeared in many news articles in the following months.

A hefty Washington Post piece last Wednesday vividly portrays U.S. government officials rushing to plug the hole in the dike before the leak swept away conventional wisdom lock, stock, and barrel. In a passage sure to boost sales of Kleenex inside the Beltway, the Post quotes a U.S. government official who was permitted to remain anonymous: “We were blindsided and furious.”

The leaks vexed Team Biden because President Joe Biden had already proven—via repeated statements—that the war was going great, that Ukraine was on the verge of victory, and that pouring endless billions into Ukrainian government coffers was the only way to save freedom around the world.

The Post, which partnered with PBS for a television program on the Discord leaks, noted that the “top secret…leaks predicted Ukraine’s failure to make substantial gains in its counteroffensive—a multibillion-dollar effort that cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives. The bleak forecast provided a sharp contrast to Washington’s optimistic messaging on the war, and it hurt Ukraine’s relationship with its chief backer, the U.S. government.” The “bleak forecast” was vastly more accurate than anything emitted by the Biden White House. A senior defense official (anonymous, of course) told the Post that the Pentagon raced to determine “what information may have been compromised.” But the real challenge was determining which official lies had been debunked and what other documents might show up to obliterate White House talking points.

The Post bewailed how the leaks discomfited the Ukrainian government. The Post noted that “the leaks included never-before-released casualty estimates for Ukrainian forces, weaknesses in Ukraine’s ability to service damaged armored vehicles and the country’s shrinking supply of air defense munitions, which left population centers vulnerable to Russian cruise missile strikes and drones. Other documents warned that Ukraine was struggling to sustain troops, artillery and equipment…”

The only reason that the “leaks” caused an international uproar is because U.S. government officials and their foreign partners had been brazenly lying about Ukrainian successes and prospects for victory. Folks who read foreign news sources or independent American outlets or websites (such as Antiwar.com and LibertarianInstitute.org) already knew that the war would likely have no happy ending for either Ukraine or Russia.

The Post omitted mentioning the role of federal censorship in deluding Americans about the Ukraine war. In July 2023, the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the FBI routinely colluded with Ukraine’s spy agency which sought help to suppress social media accounts that criticized the Ukraine government or “inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine” (including accurate battlefield reports of Ukrainian military defeats). The House report revealed that the FBI “routinely relayed these lists [of accounts] to the relevant social media platforms” and sought their suppression. The House report noted that “authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists, were ensnared in the censorship effort and flagged for social media companies to take down.” The CIA also pressured Twitter, calling for the suppression of “long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of ‘anti-Ukraine narratives,” journalist Matt Taibbi reported.

Washington Post readers are the cream of the intellectual crop, at least according to Washington Post readers. So how did Post devotees respond to the indignation about the leaker?

The article generated almost 600 comments. Among the most liked was an outburst from “ArtPope”: ”Don’t understand why this article was written other than to support the pro-Putin, anti-Ukrainian position of the white nationalist evangelical fascist RepubliQans.” “Thinking4″ replied: “They have profound ignorance of democracy and that their very words and actions undermine the standing of the US in the world.” (Thinking4 was probably not an English major.)

None of the most liked comments showed any outrage about Team Biden’s perennial lies on Ukraine. Instead, raw hatred was popular: “Find these traitors. Put their butts in jail. 10 years minimum. No deals.” “Make it 30,” came a quick reply, and another person piled on: “In solitary.” Said another: “Throughout history, the traditional punishment for treason is hanging. I’m ok with that.” “Mario TRUTH” joined the lynch mob: “What Teixeira did was nothing short of America WORST traitor it has ever seen. He not only aided in murdering 1000’s of innocent people, he intruded in Ukrainian leaders planning of a counteroffensive that would have saved many of the 1000’s Teixeira killed.” Ukrainian casualties have been high in part because the Pentagon pressured the Ukrainian military to engage in frontal assaults on heavily-fortified Russian positions.

So U.S. government officials are entitled to blindfold and deceive the American people to avoid “intruding” on foreign leaders planning a military attack? This theory of democracy gets curiouser and curiouser.

The Post noted that the Discord leaks “depicted Zelensky in a new light, revealing his apparent interest in occupying Russian border villages and obtaining long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russian territory—an assertion that Ukrainians deny and would have deeply angered Washington.” So America’s favored foreign leader was conniving to pull the United States into World War III? Maybe Biden should have asked if Americans supported such recklessness? No, he was president so he was entitled to delude Americans and pretend to rule the world.

Perhaps the greatest intellectual calisthenics in the long article was the paragraph that exonerated all Biden administration falsehoods on Ukraine. The Post offered a finger-wagging explanation:

“Rather than exposing willful deceit by a U.S. government eager to bury bad news, the Discord leaks revealed a sharp divide between the U.S. intelligence analysts who authored the documents and many senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department who were overly sanguine about Ukraine’s prospects for success.”

Do the Post reporters and editors have no shame? They were not smart (or honest) enough to hark back to one of the clearest lessons from the Pentagon Papers, leaked in 1971. As philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, during the Vietnam War, “the policy of lying was hardly ever aimed at the enemy but chiefly if not exclusively destined for domestic consumption, for propaganda at home and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress.” CIA analysts did excellent work in the early period of the Vietnam conflict. But, “in the contest between public statements, always over-optimistic, and the truthful reports of the intelligence community, persistently bleak and ominous, the public statements were likely to win simply because they were public,” Arendt commented. The Post rationalized the bias of Team Biden: “U.S. officials viewed the airing of pessimistic battle outcomes as detrimental to their endeavor to raise support for the war effort, both in Congress and internationally.” Were officials entitled to utter any falsehood that resulted in higher congressional appropriations to bankroll more bombs and missiles?

Biden, his appointees, and plenty of former military officials on the gravy train have perpetually brazenly misrepresented the war. The result is that the Ukrainian government is on the verge of conscripting Ukrainian grandfathers to send on daily, suicidal Pickett’s Charges so that Ukrainian politicians can keep pocketing billions of dollars in U.S. handouts. Ukraine prohibited any males between the age of 18 to 60 from leaving the country—as if the government had a preemptive right to send them to their death. Ukraine is closing its western border to “military age males” the same way that East Germany closed its border to West Europe decades ago. But, unlike the perfidious East Germans, Ukraine’s leaders are taking practically all the nation’s adult males hostage in the name of freedom.

But it remains a “no cost” war inside the Washington Beltway, where Ukrainian flags quickly replaced BLM banners after the Russian invasion. Nothing has changed for the policy class in the last 60 years. Arendt castigated the lavishly-paid intellectual cheerleaders for the Vietnam War who ignored “the untold misery that their ‘solutions,’ pacification and relocation programs, defoliation, napalm, and anti-personnel bullets, held in store.” In the subsequent decades, there has never been a shortage of weasel intellectuals to sell out peace in return for lavish payoffs.

Will The Washington Post ever honestly examine the costs of its own kowtowing to officialdom? The Post could do a great in-depth investigation of why its own editorial page and columnists have made so many false, misleading, or deranged statements on the Ukraine war. But don’t expect hell to freeze over any time soon.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis

By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023

Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.

The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists.

The fallout from December 5 House Committe on Antisemitism hearings has already cost University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill her job, while demands by billionaire pro-Israel donors and politicians for the firing of Harvard’s Claudine Gay have grown by the day. Both stand accused of refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews, even though no such calls have taken place on their campuses.

Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the forces orchestrating the carefully choreographed, heavily-funded campaign to crush Palestine solidarity activism on campus.

The law firm leading the assault on the universities has included David Friedman, the former ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, among its partners. Until 2021, this firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, was registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent on behalf of an Israeli principal.

The firm’s clients include associates of a jailed Ukrainian billionaire who bankrolled neo-Nazi militias, along with a who’s who of corporations accused of defrauding and even killing consumers.

Meanwhile, the “Jewish student” witnesses who set the stage for the attacks on Magill and her fellow university presidents at the House Antisemitism Committee were employed on at least a semi-professional basis by Israeli lobbying cutouts.

They included Jonathan Frieden, a Harvard Law student who moonlights as president of Alliance for Israel; MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the president of MIT Israel Alliance; and Bella Ingber, co-president of NYU’s Students Supporting Israel.

Israel lobbyist moonlighting as UPenn student calls for Covid-style lockdowns on Palestine protests

The most harrowing — and clearly questionable — claims furnished during the December 5 congressional hearings came courtesy of Eyal Yakoby, an Israeli-American senior at UPenn.

“Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve… read the statement, ‘Ninety-percent of pigs are gas chambered!’ on the pavement as I walked to class,” Yakoby moaned.

The most likely explanation for the appearance of this phrase on UPenn’s Locust Walk was not the presence of chalk-wielding neo-Nazis but rather, that of animal welfare advocates, who were presumably calling attention to the fact that most pigs are killed by slaughterhouses which employ a grotesque method of gas inhalation exposed by activists in late 2022.

“‘You’re a dirty little Jew and you deserve to die’ are not words said by Hamas, but by my classmates and my professors,” Yakoby claimed during a December 5 press conference convened by the House GOP leadership. Oddly, he neglected to name a single student or UPenn employee responsible for such inflammatory remarks.

Conjuring up images of a campus overwhelmed by Hamas-linked hatemongers, Yakoby seemed to call for imposing Covid-era lockdowns on students protesting Israel’s blood-drenched assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.

“During Covid, strict guidelines governed everything from class attendance and graduation walks,” he said. “But now, when students and faculty defy policies to intimidate Jewish students, where is the same resolute enforcement?”

Lawsuits target top US campuses with flimsy, unprovable allegations

Just hours after his appearance alongside members of Congress, Yakoby filed a lawsuit against UPenn, claiming the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to respond to antisemitism.

Yakoby’s lawsuit was filled with dubious, highly politicized accusations, including complaints about the chanting of “antisemitic slurs” such as “Intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea.”

A closer examination of other incidents described in the lawsuit against Penn reveals a great number of them appear to have been seriously exaggerated or manufactured out of whole cloth.

The most ‘threatening’ episode described by the Yakoby, for example, consists of a man who “threateningly approached him” and “yelled ‘fuck you.’” As a result of this experience — and the agony apparently endured when the plaintiff observed other students removing posters showing Israeli captives — the suit claims that “Yakoby missed his next two classes” because he was “shaken by these escalating acts of hate.”

The vast majority of claims of overt antisemitism appear to consist of statements by students and professors who criticized the state of Israel but generally took pains to distinguish between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism.

Elsewhere, the lawsuit accuses professors of antisemitism because they questioned now-debunked Israeli atrocity propaganda about the October 7 attacks, including a demonstrably false claim by Yakoby that the “killing of 40 [Israeli] babies” by Palestinian militants had been “confirmed.”

Many of the alleged incidents described as “assaults” fail to meet basic evidentiary standards, leaving the court with no option but to take the plaintiffs’ word that the contents of the complaint happened as described.

Claims that a Jewish student was taunted with exhortations to “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” for instance, are typical of the highly suspect claims found throughout the lawsuit.

Indeed, no proof of this alleged interaction was provided, nor did the plaintiff’s provide even a vague sketch of the assailant’s identity. Instead, the entire emphasis is placed on the supposed lack of “sympathy” subsequently shown to the student by a professor who decided not to award her an “extension on her class lecture note assignment.”

The plaintiffs also took aim at Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, who had been invited to a literary festival at Penn before being murdered in a December 6 Israeli strike described by human rights monitors as a “targeted assassination.”

The demands of the pro-Israel activists include “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees” who they say are “responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it; suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct… the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” and “compensatory, consequential, and punitive [financial] damages.”

Israel lobbyists are also targeting America’s most expensive campus, New York University, leveling a litany of flimsy and unprovable antisemitism allegations to extract heavy financial damages, including a full refund of tuition. Bella Ingber, who also featured prominently at the House Republican press conference, is a leading face of the NYU lawsuit.

During the Republican presser, Ingber compared conditions at NYU to life under the German Nazi Reich.

“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the unmistakable anti-Semitism that I have experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”

The plaintiffs of the Israel lobby-led lawsuit “request that a judgment be entered in each of their favor, and against NYU” which would see the university “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it… suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct,” and “compensatory and punitive damages.”

In other words, the lawsuit seeks campus-wide regime change, replacing any and all administrators with those willing to take instructions from the Israel lobby.

“Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House” lead legal assault on campus speech

If the language of the NYU lawsuit sounds familiar, that is because it was brought by the same high-powered corporate legal firm presiding over the legal action against UPenn: Kasowitz Benson Torres, best known for its work on behalf of former President Donald Trump. The firm’s leadership has been aptly described as “Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House.”

The law firm was known as Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman until 2017, when its partner, David Friedman left to become US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman has been credited with working alongside former presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to pressure Trump into adopting more radically anti-Palestinian positions.

The firm was founded in 1993 by attorney Marc Kasowitz, who gained national notoriety for his work representing Big Tobacco, describing himself as one of the “most feared lawyers in the United States.” Though reports describe him as a strong Trump ally and a go-to source for the former president, financial disclosures show Kasowitz and his wife have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians as well, including former President Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Also employed by the firm is former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a hardcore neoconservative who now serves as chairman of the pro-war United Against a Nuclear Iran. While in Congress, Lieberman advocated for moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as far back as 1995.

A quick glance at Kasowitz Benson Torres’ recent handiwork reveals a lengthy track record of defending Goliath from David. For example, its website boasts of successfully defending Comcast against a class-action lawsuit by angry customers. Other high-profile clients include Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, best known for causing the ongoing worldwide shortage of a vincristine — a crucial drug in treating most types of childhood cancers with no known substitute — after it deemed production insufficiently profitable.

In 2019, the firm signed on to represent the US-based co-defendants of notoriously-corrupt Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who now languishes in a Kiev prison and is known for bankrolling current president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi Azov Regiment. Ukrainian financial giant Privatbank maintains that Kolomoisky and his associates defrauded the bank out of billions of dollars.

A year later, Kasowitz Benson Torres was required to register as a foreign agent with the US Justice Department after agreeing to represent an Israeli real estate developer specializing in building luxury condos for ulra-Orthodox Jews living in illegal settlements.

This November, The Grayzone revealed a leaked letter signed by David Friedman and delivered to NYU administrators in advance of the lawsuit. The letter demanded NYU establish a position dedicated to “combating antisemitism,” and disband student clubs dedicated to Palestine activism.

Now, the law firm’s crusade to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists is spreading across the country. This November, two of the firm’s partners revealed that the legal team plans similar suits for Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley, accusing them all of “deliberate indifference” to the supposed plight of Jewish students.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

US pressures Saudi Arabia to postpone imminent peace deal with Yemen

The Cradle | December 18, 2023

The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.

According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world’s poorest country for eight years.

“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.

Despite the pressure from Washington, the kingdom is reportedly “continuing on the path to peace” and is working to “speed up” the completion of the peace agreements to avoid “further obstruction by the Emiratis or local agents.”

Saudi and Yemeni negotiators have given their final comments on the agreement. The revised version was recently delivered to UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who has started coordinating an official peace ceremony.

According to Al-Akhbar’s sources in Riyadh and Sanaa, the peace deal includes the complete lifting of a land, sea, and air blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, a “consensual mechanism” to pay the salaries of public employees, and the free export of oil from Saudi-controlled regions.

“The ball is in Riyadh’s court, which is under US pressure to delay the signing and enter into a war alliance against Yemen in the Red Sea,” Al-Akhbar highlights, adding that UAE-backed forces are also looking to derail the peace process.

A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen would significantly hamper US efforts to deploy an international naval task force to the Red Sea to protect Israel’s maritime trade.

“The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits [West Asia],” UK daily The Guardian reported on 17 December.

The US war chief is set to visit Israel later this week to meet with senior officials. According to the British outlet, western officials believe Washington has secured the involvement of Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain.

For the past several weeks, the Yemeni armed forces have been launching attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels attempting to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait south of the Suez Canal.

In response, five of the world’s largest shipping companies have announced a complete cessation of activities in the vital sea route. These are Hong Kong-based OOCL, France’s CMA CGM, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd, and the Italian-Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Co.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Finland’s new ‘defense’ deal with US eerily reminds of similar one with Nazi Germany

By Drago Bosnic | December 18, 2023

Ever since NATO formally (re)started the (New) Cold War, it has been expanding its military presence all across Europe, effectively escalating its crawling aggression on the continent. The obvious target – Russia. The belligerent alliance is determined to create a new “frontline” on Moscow’s western borders, this time by drastically increasing American military presence in Finland. Namely, last week, Helsinki announced that it will sign a bilateral “defense” cooperation agreement with the United States, allowing the latter to station troops and store weapons in Finland. During a news conference in Helsinki on December 14, the Nordic country’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen stated that Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen will sign the so-called Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) on December 18 (today).

“The pact is very significant for Finland’s defense and security,” Häkkänen was quoted by Euronews, adding: “It bears a very strong message in this time. The United States is committed to our defense.”

The DCA will allow American troops to access 15 military areas and facilities in the entirety of Finland, ranging from a key southern naval base and inland air bases to a vast remote army training area in Lapland in the north. Interestingly, Finnish officials admitted that American troops are allowed a permanent presence and regular exercises in the country, but they insist that “there are no plans to establish permanent US military bases in Finland”. These two claims are extremely contradictory, not to mention the fact that such deployments contribute nothing to Finnish security. On the contrary, this can only attract the attention of Russia, which otherwise would’ve never considered Finland a threat. The Nordic country of 5,6 million shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, nearly tripling the line of direct NATO-Russia contact.

Along with the Baltic states, it’s also the European Union’s external border with Russia. The troubled bloc itself is militarizing and effectively unifying with NATO, cementing Europe’s position as a mere pendant of America’s geopolitical strategy of so-called “containment”. Other countries on the continent have similar bilateral agreements with the US, including the neighboring Sweden, while Denmark (already a NATO member) is very likely to do the same. The obvious question arises, why are Finland and Sweden doing this? Will they feel safer with American and other NATO troops stationed in their military facilities? It’s quite obvious that the belligerent alliance has always been an auxiliary extension of the Pentagon and this has been the case since NATO’s unfortunate inception 74 years ago, as well as its subsequent expansion.

Thus, an increase in American military presence in Finland should always be observed from the perspective of US expansionism, as the world’s most aggressive country keeps moving its “defense” infrastructure ever closer to the borders of its geopolitical adversaries. This has been the case in the (First) Cold War and it’s no different nowadays when Washington DC is pushing one European country after another into a broader anti-Russian coalition that now includes the entire EU. The US is also trying to do the same by constituting a near carbon copy of NATO in the Pacific in a virtually identical step, only aimed against China. The formal admission of Finland back in April and the current military expansion are just steps toward the so-called “globalization” of NATO, a terrifying prospect for the security of the world.

It could be argued that Finland was never truly neutral, not even during the (First) Cold War and particularly not since it entered the EU. It has always been packed with US/NATO intelligence assets, although this has escalated significantly in the last several decades. Since then, the country has essentially become a NATO member in all but name. Helsinki directly broke from its formal neutrality when it decided to acquire F-35 fighter jets from the US in late 2021. The Pentagon has direct access to everything the F-35’s sensors can detect, meaning that Finland would be sharing key military data with the US regardless of whether it was a NATO member or not. On the other hand, as I argued back in early April, being a direct member means that the Nordic country is virtually guaranteed to see the deployment of American offensive weapons.

The details of the latest “defense” deal are yet to be revealed, but it can only be expected that it will involve much more than simple infantry deployments. For Russia, this is particularly concerning, as Finland and Estonia, now both NATO members, are in close proximity to St. Petersburg, its second most important city. The stationing of any US offensive weapons such as cruise missiles and nuclear-capable fighter jets would deeply destabilize the otherwise largely stable region. There’s also a quite eerie historical dimension in all this. Namely, Helsinki is essentially repeating the same mistake it made over 80 years ago when it joined the Axis led by Nazi Germany. Now when it’s among “old friends” once again, maybe the Nordic country should dust off the history books and pay very close attention to how this ended the last time.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Sends Carrier Strike Group to Gulf of Aden Amid Houthi Attacks – Reports

Sputnik – 17.12.2023

The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.

Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.

“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.

Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”

On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.

After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Out-of-Control Israeli Regime Killing Own People… Well, Why Not?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 16, 2023

It’s really no surprise that Israel’s military is killing its own people after reports of three hostages shot dead by “friendly fire”.

The Israeli authorities said the three Israeli men were “mistakenly identified as threats” during close combat with Palestinian militants and were fired on by troops.

There are reports of the bodies of three other hostages having been recovered. However, the Israeli regime is not disclosing the circumstances of their deaths. Or rather they haven’t come up with a good cover story yet.

There are also reports that up to 20 per cent of the 117 Israeli soldiers killed so far in action in Gaza have been by “friendly fire”.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has stated that several Israeli hostages have been killed during eight weeks of Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the latest three hostage deaths as an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed that there would be a full investigation into the circumstances to avoid repeating the error.

There are believed to be around 130 Israeli hostages still remaining in Gaza after they were taken there by Hamas and other Palestinian militants during the daring attacks on Israel on October 7. More than 100 captives have already been released during an earlier prisoner exchange truce.

The latest deaths of hostages sparked public protests in Tel Aviv demanding Netanyahu to end hostilities and bring all captives home. Israeli families and supporters have been furious at Netanyahu’s war cabinet for not prioritizing the release of all captives by calling a ceasefire.

Netanyahu and his ministers have rejected domestic and international calls for a ceasefire. Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said that Israel’s attacks on Gaza will continue “with or without international support”.

The U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a visit to Israel on Friday consented to the continuation of military operations for months to come, although no doubt for public relations benefit the American envoy urged a “transition” to minimize civilian casualties.

The intransigent Israeli leaders have said the military operations in Gaza will continue for “several months”. That means the death toll of civilians and hostages will inevitably escalate beyond what is already an unprecedented aggression and litany of war crimes. Already there have been 20,000 Palestinian civilians killed during 70 days of bombing and ground invasion by Israeli troops in Gaza.

Nearly 30,000 bombs have been dropped on Gaza and half of them are “unguided” munitions or so-called “dumb bombs”. That’s over 50 tonnes in high explosive ordnance, or three times the lethal force that was dropped on Hiroshima by the Americans in 1945.

The wanton murder of women and children by the Israeli regime shows that it has no regard for international law nor the commission of crimes against humanity.

Given the barbarity of Israel’s onslaught, it is not surprising that its forces are killing its own people. This is not merely due to “error” or what is called “friendly fire”.

The Israeli military is bombing civilian targets with deliberate genocidal intent. Its snipers are shooting medics and patients through hospital windows.

There are reports of Israeli commandos raiding shelters and executing women and children at close range.

In this unbridled slaughter of innocents and orgy of mass murder it is to be expected that the Israeli forces are killing Israeli hostages because these forces are killing everyone. Anyone that appears in the gun sights of Israeli forces is to be obliterated.

And the Israeli regime and its American apologists have the gall to call the Israeli killers-in-uniform “the most moral army in history”.

During the Hamas attacks on Kibbutzim and other Israeli sites on October 7, it is now well-documented that many of the deaths that day out of the 1,200 victims were caused by Israeli military violence. Israeli witnesses have testified that troops opened fired with tanks and heavy machine guns on houses where Palestinian fighters were holding residents.

Israeli soldiers have also expressed dismay and disbelief that their forces used such indiscriminate firepower in situations where Israeli citizens would be knowingly killed.

The destruction of houses as well as numerous cars at the open air dance festival where several Israeli partygoers were killed could not have been carried out by lightly armed Palestinian fighters. The latter claimed to have killed nearly 400 Israeli soldiers on October 7. Hamas say their primary targets were military. No doubt the militants killed civilians too. However, the emerging evidence indicates that most of the deaths of Israeli civilians were by their own security forces.

This would account for images that purport to show that Hamas fighters incinerated and mutilated victims. Such images have been cited by Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden as evidence of Palestinian “terrorism” and justification for the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

But the deliberate killing of Israelis by their military in situations of close combat as a means to destroy the enemy is known as the Hannibal Doctrine. It is Israeli state policy, albeit not openly acknowledged.

The latest Israeli plan reported this week to flood underground tunnels in Gaza with seawater is also risking the drowning of Israeli hostages. Just like the carpet bombing of Gaza, the lives of the hostages are of little value to Netanyahu and the psychopaths in his cabinet.

If it weren’t for the genocidal offensive on Gaza, Netanyahu would be in court facing prosecution for long-time charges of personal corruption. He wants this murderous war to continue for as long as possible to keep himself out of jail. His cabinet of Zionist fascists also want to wipe Palestinians off the map in a Final Solution of ethnic cleansing.

For the fascist Israeli regime who have gotten away with mass murder and theft for so long with absolutely no compunction, well… why not kill a few of their own for good measure?

Their perennial cover story of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews is just an added sickening depravity. The Neo-Nazis are in Tel Aviv, sponsored and weaponised by Washington.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

I was naive about the West – Putin

RT | December 17, 2023

President Vladimir Putin has said he was wrong to assume the West would establish productive relations with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In reality, it was determined to break the nation apart, the Russian leader explained.

In an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin aired on Sunday, Putin admitted that he was a “naive” leader early in his political career even though he had a solid background in Soviet intelligence.

The Russian president said that he had believed that the West understood that Russia had become a completely different country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that there were no further ideological differences warranting a serious stand-off.

According to Putin, even when he saw Western efforts to support terrorism and separatism in Russia two decades ago, he thought that it was the “inertia of thinking” that was to blame. “They had just got used to fighting the Soviet Union,” he believed.

In reality, however, the West was deliberately trying to undercut Russia, the president said. “After the collapse of the Soviet Union they thought they just had to wait a little longer, and then they would break Russia apart as well.”

According to Putin, the West saw no need for the existence of the world’s largest country, with its large population. “It would be better, as suggested by… [former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski, to divide it into five parts, and subjugate them one by one.”

This alleged Western plan, he explained, hinged on the premise that several smaller states “would have no weight or voice of their own, and would have no chance to defend their national interests in the way that the united Russian state has.”

The Russian leader was apparently referring to a 1997 article penned by Brzezinski, an ardent supporter of Soviet containment who died in 2017, which suggested at the time that Moscow should abandon “a futile effort to regain its status as a global power.” The former White House adviser also opined that “a loosely confederated Russia, composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic” would have an easier time fostering economic relations with its neighbors.

Putin has repeatedly said that the West was planning to split Russia into several states, warning that the Russian people could cease to exist if this happens, and naming its continued unity as the key condition for the country’s success.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

FAUCI THROWN UNDER THE BUS ON WUHAN

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | December 15, 2023

NEW EVIDENCE OF IMMUNE SYSTEM “FLARE UPS” POST COVID SHOT

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | December 15, 2023

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

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 | , , , , , | 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 | , , | Leave a comment

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