#Ukraine secret deal

[rom5]

Alex Krainer: ZELENSKY SELLS Ukraine To BRITAIN! TRUMP EXPOSES The SECRE...

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Do you happen to know of any fics that deals with John returning to the army after he has settled into life in 221b with Sherlock? Maybe him going to fight in Ukraine? I’ve been listening to Sherlock & Co for the first time so that was what inspired this ask!

Hey Nonny!

Ah, I recently had a similar list go around here, basically asking something very similar, so you can check out that post for some Soldier John fics; but as for that request specifically, I don't know of any of him going to Ukraine, though I do have a couple where he's back for a case:

Traitor's Gate by roane (E, 17,714 w., 6 Ch. || Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mystery, Bets and Wagers, Undercover for a Case, BAMF John, Scientist Sherlock, Teasing, Established Relationship, Military Base, Sexting/Texting, Military/Uniform Kink, Frottage, Dirty Sex, Anal, Bottomlock) – John and Sherlock go undercover at a top secret government lab to find out who is selling research. John is back in uniform and Sherlock is back in a laboratory, but they have to pose as strangers. Sherlock thinks he'll have an easy time of it, but John has his doubts. It's up to them to find out who is responsible for putting a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, and try to keep their hands off each other at the same time.

A Week is Just Seven Days Isn't It? by scifigrl47 (T, 39,906 w., 4 Ch. || Humour, Friendship/Bromance, Stroppy/Bored Sherlock, Undercover/Army John, Texting, Pining-ish Sherlock, John Whump) – When John heads overseas for a week, Sherlock's forced to fend for himself. It goes about as well as anyone could have anticipated. Which is to say, very, very poorly. Don't worry, things'll be fine in just seven days. (FFNet)

====

Other than that, if anyone has something to suggest, please do :) SPECIFICALLY going back AFTER spending time with Sherlock; I feel I get asked this a lot and I should really keep track of those fics, LOL.

[darkmaga-returns]

Donald Trump Jr. publicly condemned Ukraine for failing to alert U.S. authorities about Ryan Wesley Routh’s attempt to procure military weapons from Ukrainian contacts to assassinate his father, calling it a "much bigger deal" than Ukraine’s lack of gratitude for U.S. support.

Routh, a pro-Ukraine activist and convicted felon, tried to buy an RPG and Stinger missile via encrypted messages to kill Donald Trump, citing his desire to prevent Trump’s election. He was arrested near Mar-a-Lago in September 2024 with an AK-47 and surveillance gear.

The incident has strained U.S.-Ukraine relations, raising questions about transparency in international security cooperation, as Ukrainian authorities did not inform the U.S. about Routh’s weapons request.

Following multiple assassination attempts on Trump, Congress has pressed for reforms, citing lapses in coordination — especially after a shooting in Pennsylvania where a gunman evaded detection. Trump has demanded full disclosure from the Secret Service about the attacks.

Routh faces a potential life sentence; his trial may reveal further details about the plot. The attempts underscore heightened security challenges for political leaders and the need for improved threat response protocols.

[dertaglichedan]

Michael Goodwin: All of Team Joe aided in the Big Lie — now the world knows the truth of the Biden crime family

Ever since The Post broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop in October of 2020, it’s been obvious that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s influence peddling schemes.

The president’s serial denials were as credible as Bill Clinton’s claim that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Biden’s most ridiculous lie was that he never even discussed Hunter’s foreign business with him.

Laptop messages and photos showing Joe meeting with some of Hunter’s skeezy clients proved otherwise.

Revelations that the son got millions from Ukraine energy company Burisma, despite knowing nothing about energy or Ukraine, destroyed the fiction that this was a merit-based business.

So did crucial public statements by Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden partner who bravely authenticated many of the emails and identified Joe as the “big guy” slated for a 10% cut in a Chinese deal.

Withheld by Archives

Yet the release of the pictures does more than just prove the president a liar.

The decision by the storied National Archives to withhold the evidence until after the election despite a lawsuit from America First Legal opens the door to a larger scandal.

It means the president corrupted others in the administration to cover up his lie.

Think of it as a whole-of-government deception designed to help Biden win a second term.

Did Attorney General Merrick Garland know what the National Archives was hiding?

Did Vice President Kamala Harris?

How could they not know?

Gossip alone would have carried the scandalous information from one administration to another, not to mention the need to document everything a vice president says and does on an official visit with a foreign head of state.

The Secret Service would know the role of everyone in his traveling party and who they met with.

And is there anybody who doubts that the CIA, the FBI and others in the deep state knew Biden was lying with his ridiculous denials?

That’s blackmail-level knowledge, certainly enough to keep him in line.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #TechBros #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava

Trump And Putin: A Love Story

The Trump-Russia-Ukraine Timeline

Trump’s connections to Russia began more than 35 years ago and didn’t end on Election Day 2016…

05/10/2016 Panama Papers Leak: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Others on the List

On Monday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released a searchable database of its Panama Papers. The database allows users to search through the Panama Papers and other records for individuals and corporations that might be using foreign shell companies and offshore accounts to keep financial information private…

Aug 17, 2016 Shady Foreign Lobbying Effort Implicates Trump AND Clinton Campaign Chairmen

Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort reportedly helped route more than $1 million in secret from a pro-Russian group in Ukraine to a Washington D.C. lobbying firm co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta…

08/19/16 Podesta Group retains outside counsel over Manafort-related scandal

A prominent D.C. lobbying firm has hired outside counsel over revelations that it may have been improperly involved in lobbying on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians who also employed former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort…

Sunday 16 October 2016 As Donald Trump made clear, smart businesses know only idiots pay tax

The revelation that the US presidential candidate paid no federal taxes for 18 years will come as no surprise to the global corporations who funnel billions through tax havens…

13 December 2016 Rex Tillerson: an appointment that confirms Putin's US election win

The president-elect has chosen Exxon Mobil CEO as secretary of state but experts say Senate may bridle over realpolitik choice that would benefit Russia…

Dec 19, 2016 Follow The Money: Panama Papers Motherload of Ties Between Trump and Russian Mobster Oligarchs

This lengthy but enlightening article with a forward by David Cay Johnston and written by James Henry, shows just how important the Panama Papers were, if people had wanted to delve into the links between Russian oligarchs and Trump. Too bad people were all focused on “trade deals” that weren’t there to haunt us. All of this information should have been front and center. These people have been Drumpf’s business cohorts for decades. Some of them are apparent family friends. The kids hang out with them, too. It’s a long article and the source allows one free article, so take your time and read it. If only investigative journalists had been doing what James Henry has done and not gone for that shiny object…e-mails. There should be a massive Church Commission to investigate these relationships. Crimes and misdemeanors look like shiny objects to me…

24 January 2017 We broke the Panama Papers story. Here's how to investigate Donald Trump

We were successful because we collaborated with other journalists. Now it is time for the media to join forces once again – especially given the threat Trump poses…

Feb. 11, 2017 The timeline of Trump's ties with Russia lines up with allegations of conspiracy and misconduct

President Donald Trump and several associates continue to draw intense scrutiny for their ties to the Russian government…

FURTHER READING:

[dostoyevsky-official]

Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ is unlikely to impress Europe

After confidentially briefing it around various Western capitals, President Zelelsnky has unveiled – to a degree – his much-trailed ‘victory plan’ to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. Along with three additional secret codicils shared only with certain partners, the plan has five main points. In and of themselves, none of them are implausible, and all would certainly strengthen Ukraine’s security. However, they also embody certain assumptions that likely make them unworkable, simply because they are asking from Nato, the EU and the West in general a great deal more than they seem willing to offer. The first is an immediate and unconditional invitation to join Nato. Zelensky is realistic enough to appreciate that actual membership will have to come later, but feels this would be a mark of resolve that would somehow change the situation. But how? Even if one assumes Ukraine already meets all the accession criteria (which some question) and that all existing Nato members agree (which is even more dubious), how does the promise of membership deter Putin? After all, he already believes Ukraine is essentially Nato’s proxy. [...] Zelensky presents this as a ‘bridge’ to peace negotiations, but peace through strength by ensuring ‘that the madmen in the Kremlin will lose the ability to continue the war’. There is a flat rejection of the kind of deal trading territory for peace that, behind closed doors, is increasingly being discussed in the West. Instead, frankly, it is a challenge – not to Moscow but to Ukraine’s own allies. ‘This plan can be implemented,’ Zelensky told the Ukrainian parliament. ‘It depends on the partners… it certainly does not depend on Russia.’ Well, maybe, although in war the enemy always gets a vote in practice. (And if, as Zelensky claims, ‘Putin is insane and only wants war,’ then the corollary of that rather sweeping statement would seem to be that no deterrence can ever be enough.) More to the point, it does indeed depend on the partners. Zelensky wants unconditional guarantees of Nato and EU membership, he wants more and better weapons without any constraints on their use, he wants investment in Ukraine’s defence industries and national resources, and he wants a ‘strategic deterrent package’ – whatever that may be – that would presumably be largely delivered by Nato and would thus be considered by Putin as the expansion of hostile Western security architecture. This may well be what Ukraine needs, and Zelensky certainly doesn’t lack for chutzpah in presenting such an extensive shopping list. It is hard to see that Ukraine will get it, though. Expect warm words, ringing declarations, token one-off weapons deliveries, and promises of detailed consultations instead.

[gowns]

AMY GOODMAN: We have just been joined on the phone by Raji Sourani [...] the award-winning human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. [...] Can you tell us what happened?

RAJI SOURANI: I think the world should be worried about the crimes going on against Palestinian civilians, who are for the 18th consecutive day in the eye of the storm. They are the target. They are the target of the F-16s, of the cannons, of the gunships, day or night, 25 hours a day. They almost destroyed — they destroyed Gaza. I mean, it’s unbelievable, this army targeting only civilians and civilian targets — towers, houses, hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, shelter places, ambulances, nurses, doctors, journalists. This is the most political army — this is the most political army in the world. This is the mighty Israel, its might and power targeting civilians. They are doing war crimes, crimes against humanity, persecution for 2.4 million people for the last 18 days.

Unfortunately, this colonial, racist West supporting them by all ways and means. They are supporting them with money, with guns, with airplanes, with all what they need to do this crime. They are complicit by supporting them politically and militarily and politically. It’s shame this is happening in the 21st century, while these war crimes not secret enough. It’s projected live on air, and the entire world see it. And the ICC prosecutor, who issued warrants against Putin because he committed war crimes against civilians, because he invaded and made occupation to Ukraine, and here we have this prolonged military occupation, we have prolonged blockade, which is criminal, suffocated people here, we have five consecutive wars, and this is the sixth, and he is doing nothing. He is doing nothing except, you know, freezing the investigation of the war crimes committed by Israel and the Israeli army.

[...]

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, you’re talking about the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan?

RAJI SOURANI: Yes, yes. He is complicit. He is selectively dealing with the Rome Statute, with the investigations, and he’s politically charging the International Criminal Court. Shame on him. He didn’t say one statement, since day one 'til this moment. He should be the backbone of the victims who are suffering in this part of the world. And he sees that, and he knows that, and he receives reports about that. And he's doing nothing.

So, U.S. and Mr. Biden — I’m saying to him — you are complicit. You are part of these crimes, because you are allowing, with your arms, civilians to be targeted and killed. We have almost 1,200 people for almost two weeks under the wreckage and under the destroyed houses, unable to be recovered. We have 57 families deleted, don’t exist anymore, because 20, 25, 30 of them have been killed in one second. We have churches targeted, and people died in it. We have mosques, people sheltered in it, and they were killed. Why you are allowing this to happen? Why you are seeing, watching, supporting Israel? Israel right of defense? Or it should be protecting civilians at the time of war. IHL, international humanitarian law, and human rights, Rome Statute, it’s there simply, Amy, to protect civilians at a time of war. And nobody is protecting us. We are the target of the Israeli army. They want to evict Gaza, and they create a new Nakba. They don’t want anybody in Gaza. They want us to leave. We are not leaving. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here since ever, and we will continue forever. We will not be part of the Israeli plan to evacuate Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, if you can tell us what happened to your own family? When was your house bombed? And were you dug out from the rubble?

RAJI SOURANI: I’m living in Rimal area, Tal Al Hawa, the nicest place in Gaza. I have my own villa, and it’s nice, with very nice garden. It’s a two-story building. It’s me and my wife Amal and my son Basel. And we were, like everybody, I mean, you know, at our home, watching what’s going on. And out of the blue, the bombing began, began in our area — nothing special, nothing unique, nothing consist danger; otherwise, my sense will tell me, I mean, you know, I have to leave, or I will ask my wife and son, I mean, at least, to leave. But there is nothing, I mean, in that part. It’s entirely civilian, and I can tell — and I have always the reason, I mean, to say that.

And I have — the bombing began, and we thought, yes, I mean, this might be one bomb here or there. But it was very close. And the second, and then we began to realize and feel, you know, there is something big wrong happening, because sound getting closer, closer and closer. We were holding — I mean, we were not thinking or realizing that we are going to survive. That’s not easy. And I was thinking of a lot of things, I mean, my life, how I didn’t really, you know, leave like everybody leave. Should I leave, or should I stay? Why we move just in that place two minutes before the rocket of F-16, GBU-38, hit? And I felt the heat of the flame, and I saw the ball of fire. And every time, especially this one, I thought it’s our end. And this was last one, I mean, with the hit directly to my house, and the house was literally destroyed. Lucky enough, I just moved from the place where we are staying, upon the request of my son, to one tiny corridor inside the house. And if we were where we were, we are gone. We are gone.

So, we waited almost half an hour, unable to speak any words, unable to do anything. And we were really, I mean, a state of human shock. And I waited 'til, you know, there was some siren of ambulances remotely, and that means usually the bombing stopped, and they get the green light to come in. Then we began to climb our way out. But it was rather a mission impossible. And we were lucky, I mean, you know, to get out. And when we get out of the place, we just moved to my brother's house, which is like 800 meters away from the place we are staying. This happened on the 18th. But since then 'til today, I can assure you one thing, that the entire area is of Tal Al Hawa completely abolished almost. Two-thirds of it doesn't exist. This really beautiful area of Gaza doesn’t exist anymore.

So, we survived. We were lucky. But our neighbors, I mean, they lost 29 members, Habboush family, and others and others and others and others and others. We are collecting data. We are collecting information. This is unprecedented. I never, ever thought in my life civilians can be the target of war. They are not with Hamas.

Hamas insulted them, insulted their intelligence, insulted their military. We can understand that. In two hours, they were able to destroy the security wall, which America — which U.S. took it as the standard, and many other countries. And they destroyed it in 15 minutes, and they were able to enter. And they took over 11 military strongholds of Israel, and they killed and captured many of them. And they get back to them in Gaza, and we can understand why they are angry with them. And they took the headquarters of Gaza commandment of the Israeli military army, and they arrested generals, colonel and others, and they brought them, I mean, to Gaza. Israel has the right to be angry, absolutely angry, because Hamas showed their intelligence and their military capability means nothing, and they destroyed this illusion in two hours.

But why they are revenging from us? They should rebel from Hamas. Hamas still, I can assure you, functions like a Swiss watch in Gaza, and they are not affected. I can tell that. I can see that. We feel that. They are unable to minimize their power. They are unable to silence them. They are unable to locate where their soldiers are who were taken as prisoners of war. They are unable to do anything for them. That’s why they are revenging from us. This is the shame on the army. I mean, there is rules of engagement between the army, between the resistance movement and any army. But why civilians are the target? This is the big question. This is shame this is happening, I mean, to us.

[...]

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you — the leaflets that were dropped this weekend on Gaza, addressed to residents of Gaza, reading, “Urgent warning to the residents of Gaza: Your presence north of Wadi Gaza is putting your lives at risk. Anyone who chooses not to evacuate from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south of the Gaza Strip may be identified as a partner in a terrorist organization.” These on leaflets. I don’t know if you saw these leaflets, but you have made a decision with your family not to move south. Can you respond to what they’re saying, that anyone who chooses not to evacuate may be identified as a partner in a terrorist organization?

RAJI SOURANI: We have been here since ever, and we will stay forever. And no power on Earth will take me from here. We are the stones of the valley. They have to understand that. And even if they destroy once and again houses on our heads, even if they took our life, we are not moving anymore. Simply, we suffered from the Nakba 75 years. They committed massacres. They killed thousands of Palestinians. They pushed us out. And now it’s time for us not to do that again, at least willingly. We cannot be part of Mr. Bibi’s plan to evacuate Gaza. He said it, from a written statement, in a press conference day one: Gazans should leave Gaza. Where to? Where to? If anybody should leave, people like Mr. Bibi, not us. Enough for the occupation. We want dignity, freedom, end of this belligerent, criminal occupation. Now people from south of Gaza began to come back to north in thousands, because there is no safe haven in Gaza, no safe place in Gaza. And we are not going to be a tool in the hands of racist, criminal, rightist Israeli prime minister. No way. We are not going to do that. We are going to stay in Gaza.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

“It’s lies all the way down.”

October 9, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Oct 10, 2024

“It’s lies all the way down.”

An apocryphal story tells of a skeptical audience member who challenged a 19th-century astronomer after a lecture in which the astronomer asserted that the Earth is round and suspended in space. The skeptic told the astronomer that the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle (a myth with an ancient heritage). The astronomer patiently pushed back, asking, “On what does the giant turtle stand?” The skeptic replied, “On another giant turtle.” The astronomer persisted, “And on what does the second turtle stand?” The skeptic responded, “You aren’t going to trick me! It’s turtles all the way down!”

So, too, with Trump world’s cascade of lies. It’s lies all the way down. It is impossible to disprove lies that disappear into a bottomless cesspool of falsehoods. Trump’s self-replicating lies are a virus compounded by the absolute lack of shame or remorse when the liar is caught in the lie. The last forty-eight hours have given us the textbook example of Trump's “respond to disproven lies with bigger lies” strategy.

On Tuesday, multiple outlets reported that Trump sent Vladimir Putin an early Covid testing machine. Putin instructed Trump to keep the transaction secret because it would prove embarrassing to Trump. (In fact, as noted below, the transfer was probably illegal.)

The story of the Covid testing machine gift to Putin was met with a furious, unequivocal denial by Trump and his spokesperson. Trump told ABC News, “That’s false. He [Bob Woodward] is a storyteller. A bad one. And he's lost his marbles.

Trump's shameless campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, dismissed the stories, saying,

None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

On Thursday, a Kremlin spokesperson made a liar out of Trump, confirming that Trump did send a Covid testing machine to Putin during the early days of the pandemic. See Axios, Kremlin refutes Trump denial on sending Putin COVID testing equipment. The original report of the Kremlin statement is here, behind a paywall: Bloomberg, US Elections: Kremlin Confirms Trump Sent Putin Covid Tests While President.

To recap: Trump and his campaign issued a flat-out denial of Woodward’s report. The Kremlin confirmed the report, proving that Trump was lying about a matter that posed the risk of blackmail by the Kremlin.

How can this man be president?

And, just as importantly, why is the story of this blatant lie not the leading story on every newspaper and website, accompanied by a red-flashing siren graphic? But as of Thursday evening, that outrage—or even news coverage—was missing from major media.

This isn’t just any lie. It is a lie about an action by Trump that likely violated the US sanctions embargo in effect at the time. See Lucian K. Truscott IV, Kremlin confirms that Trump sent COVID testing equipment to Putin (substack.com). (“Russia was under strict sanctions by 2020, which were imposed under the Obama administration after Moscow invaded and seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.”)

The media is reporting that Trump has been caught lying. But those stories lack the analysis of “So what?” and “Why does it matter?” No other candidate caught in such a lie would survive the press firestorm that would follow.

But here, the response is “crickets.” Nothing. Nada. Zip. The press spilled tankers of ink over whether Tim Walz and his wife used “IVF” versus “fertility treatments” twenty years ago. I hope that major editorial boards are furiously working on opinion articles that say, “Trump is a liar who is unfit to be president.”

The second part of Woodward’s story will likely prove true, as well. On Wednesday, JD Vance said, “I haven’t talked to Trump about this, but even if he did talk to Putin, what’s the big deal?” See HuffPo, JD Vance Scorched For ‘Grotesque’ Defense Of Trump’s Reported Chats With Putin.

In case you missed the point, Vance’s comments are a set-up for the revelation that Trump did, in fact, speak to Putin on a half-dozen occasions after leaving office—in direct contradiction to Trump's denials.

Why do those conversations matter? Because the DOJ has accused Russian interests of actively interfering in the 2024 presidential election. The fact that Trump is holding secret discussions with Putin at the very moment that Russia is interfering in our elections creates the strong implication that Trump and Putin are coordinating those efforts. The burden lies on Trump to rebut that logical inference.

The problem with Trump's constant lies is that they are not limited to his treachery. He lies about immigrants, elections, the economy, and natural disasters. Trump has managed to create distrust between victims and first responders. He has encouraged potential victims to ignore evacuation warnings because they wrongly believe FEMA will seize their homes if they leave. He has caused his followers to believe that the government can control and direct the weather to “red states” or “red counties” in purple states.

Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted that hurricanes are striking “red” states because “they” control the weather. She also famously claimed that wildfires in California were caused by “Jewish space lasers.” It is always only one step from any conspiracy theory to antisemitism. (Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has an important story about antisemitic texts being sent to Florida voters connecting disaster relief lies and US support for Israel. See TPM, The Text Campaign Underworld and the Florida Anti-Semitism You Can Find There. This article may be behind a paywall.)

It has become so bad that President Biden took to the airwaves on Wednesday to deny that the US government controls the weather. See Talking Points Memo, Biden Forced To Remind Everyone He Doesn’t Control The Weather.

When the media ridiculed Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ludicrous lie, her response was to double down with more lies. See The Independent, Marjorie Taylor Greene doubles down on weather control conspiracy theory despite experts rubbishing ‘hurricane modification’.

Marjorie Taylor Greene expounded,

“Everyone keeps asking, ‘who is they?’ Well, some of them are listed on NOAA, as well as most of the ways weather can be modified . . .” Greene also attached screenshots of “weather modification project reports” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] website.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attack on NOAA is consistent with the goals of Project 2025. Project 2025 proposes the “commercialization” (read: privatization) of NOAA’s weather forecasting function.

Per PBS, Project 2025 “describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”

Republicans are institutionalizing lies. For example, in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May that removes the term “climate change” from state law and “deprioritizes” efforts to fight global warming. See NPR Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill that deletes climate change from state law. DeSantis said when he signed the bill that “I am not a global warming guy,” but 90% of Floridians believe climate change is happening now. After Hurricane Milton, that percentage is likely to increase.

The attack on NOAA and the institutionalized lies in Florida bring us full circle to Hurricane Milton and Trump's “lies all the way down” strategy of undermining trust in the government. That strategy seeks to reduce the size and presence of the federal government in our lives. However, Hurricanes Helene and Milton highlight the federal government's irreplaceable role in natural disasters that quickly overwhelm the resources of any individual state.

Trump's lies matter. It should be big news when he lies, not a collective yawn in the media and among elected officials. Lying about the federal government's response to natural disasters and his own violations of US embargo sanctions against Russia are disqualifying for the presidency. The media needs to say so. As do we—with an overwhelming repudiation of Trump at the polls.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dzthenerd490]

News Post

Palestine

Dying in ‘Hell’: The fate of Palestinian medics jailed by Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

UK counter-terrorism police arrest 10 Palestine Action activists (newarab.com)

Israeli Attacks Kill 14 in Gaza; Bezalel Smotrich Calls for Palestinian Population to Be Halved  | Democracy Now!

Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza | AP News

Ukraine

Ukraine says Russian attack sets a new record for the number of drones used | AP News

Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south  (economist.com)

Russian deserter reveals war secrets of guarding nuclear base (bbc.com)

‘Worst-case scenario’: Ukraine awaits Trump’s presidency with trepidation | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Sudan

Sudan in danger of becoming a failed state, Jan Egeland warns (bbc.com)

Sudan's Burhan allows UN to use three airports for aid delivery - Sudan Tribune

Major aid scale up by WFP in Sudan as country faces famine (yahoo.com)

U.N. humanitarian chief attends event in Sudan to raise awareness about violence against women | Africanews

Lebanon

LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Israel cabinet meeting to discuss Lebanon deal postponed: CNN (newarab.com)

Live updates: Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal, war in Lebanon and Gaza | CNN

Syria

(74) Updates LIVE: Israel bombs Lebanon’s Beirut; cabinet discusses possible truce (aljazeera.com)

Can Israeli strikes in Syria undermine Iran-backed militias? (voanews.com)

Surprise Attack On U.S. Base In Syria, Rockets Hit Army Facility During Training Session | Watch (indiatimes.com)

[darkmaga-returns]

The New World Order is now operating in plain sight.

Jens Stoltenberg, the former Secretary General of NATO, has been named as the new co-chair of the secretive globalist Bilderberg Group.

Founded in 1954, the Bilderberg group is known for its clandestine meetings at exclusive hotels and alpine resorts where the global elite meet annually to game plan the New Worl Order agenda.

InfoWars reports: The former NATO chief appears to be continuing his job of making sure the military-industrial complex stays in business, as The Guardian reports, “Several of the group’s 31-member steering committee have senior roles in the defence industry. The billionaire former Google boss, Eric Schmidt, chaired the recent National Security Commission on AI, and is now busy launching a kamikaze drone company aimed at the lucrative Ukraine market. Meanwhile, the hugely wealthy Swedish industrialist Marcus Wallenberg is chair of defense manufacturer Saab, which enjoyed a 71% boost in orders in the first nine months of 2024, largely due to the war with Russia.”

In fact, NATO’s weaponry and ammunition stockpiles were conveniently drained by its support of Ukraine, which created a robust market for the weapons industry.

Stoltenberg, who has attended Bilderberg since 2002, spent his time at NATO dealing with the overthrow of Ukraine and its subsequent war with Russia.

[madamspeaker]

If you were going to draw up a list of the people most responsible for the latest indictment of Donald Trump, the former president himself would be at the top, followed by the prosecutors who have brought the case. Republicans in Congress perversely deserve a great deal of credit, too, since they could have exiled Trump from political life and perhaps spared him more intense legal scrutiny if they had voted to convict him in the impeachment trial over his role in the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Ultimately, however, you cannot tell the story of Trump’s historic indictment without Nancy Pelosi. It was the then-Speaker of the House who insisted that there be a congressional inquiry following January 6. And it was the work of the select committee she fashioned that finally appears to have spurred a reluctant Justice Department to action, setting in motion a more intense phase of criminal scrutiny focused on Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The resulting indictment closely tracks the select committee’s work and findings, presenting a factual narrative that traces — almost identically — the evidence presented by the committee of a sophisticated, multipronged effort by Trump to remain in power that culminated in the mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.

“I knew on January 6 that he had committed a crime,” Pelosi told me late Friday afternoon, squeezing me in for a roughly 30-minute interview at the tail end of a remarkable week in Washington.

I wondered what was going through her head as someone who had played an essential role in bringing about the most important criminal prosecution in the history of our country, and I was curious, in particular, when it had occurred to her that Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election had not merely been politically destructive or outrageous but may have crossed the line into actual criminality.

During the Trump administration, Pelosi emerged as one of Trump’s most persistent and effective political antagonists, and the personal rancor between the two was often on public display. She went toe to toe with him in the Oval Office. She authorized the third-ever impeachment of an American president after Trump’s effort to shake down Ukraine’s president to get dirt on Joe Biden. She famously tore up Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech while standing behind him. As Trump’s supporters began to approach the Capitol on January 6, Pelosi said that if Trump joined them, “I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out. And I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”

The rioters proceeded to ransack her office, and instead of punching Trump, who was prevented from going to the Capitol by the Secret Service, Pelosi impeached him again. To this day, Pelosi seems to get under Trump’s skin like no one else. Early Sunday morning, Trump called her “a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”

Long before January 6 itself, Pelosi had been preparing for Trump to try to disrupt the transfer of power. “During the election, I thought, ‘He’s going to try to pull a stunt and we have to try to have as many states in the Democratic column as possible,’” she told me, contemplating the possibility that Biden’s victory might not be certified and that the House would have to move to an obscure procedure in which each state’s congressional delegation would cast a single vote to determine the next president.

Trump promptly proceeded to validate that concern, undertaking an extraordinary effort to remain in power after Election Day by falsely claiming that he had won and by trying to work various levers of official power to stay in office. “As we got closer to January 6, I knew he was cooking up all these things, but what was he going to do about it?” Pelosi recalled. “It was clear that he knew he did not win the election,” she explained. “It was clear, and he had to disrupt” the joint session of Congress to certify the election. As the indictment alleges, Trump did this not only by pressuring Vice-President Mike Pence to illegally cast aside Biden’s electoral votes but also by watching with apparent pleasure as a mob tore through the Capitol and by exploiting the violence fed by his lies.

“When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime,” Pelosi added. She acknowledged that it is not possible to predict “what can be proven” successfully in court, “but I know he committed a crime that day.”

After Biden’s inauguration, Pelosi set about to organize a bipartisan 9/11 Commission–type investigation into the events that led up to January 6, but she was repeatedly stymied by congressional Republicans. “We yielded on every point,” Pelosi recalled of the negotiations with her Republican counterparts at the time. “We gave them an equal number of commission members, which we always would have done — equal member staff, equal member funding for everything — and equal subpoena power, which the majority never gives away, but nonetheless, we did it because this was so awful for our country, so necessary to have this.”

In what turned out to have been a historic miscalculation, Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell blocked the initiative in the Senate. “He went around to members and said, ‘Do me a personal favor and do not vote for this,’” Pelosi told me. “Even though he knew that night — and said — that the Republican president was responsible, they didn’t even want to have an investigation.”

Pelosi has earned a reputation as one of the most tactically savvy leaders in the history of the Congress, and she chuckled as she recalled McConnell’s maneuvering. “People said to Mitch, ‘You think Nancy is going to let this go?’ What could he have been thinking?”

Pelosi then shifted gears to negotiating over a select committee in the House with Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who took the project about as seriously as McConnell had by proposing to name, among other people, bomb-thrower Jim Jordan to the panel. Pelosi quickly decided the negotiations were not going anywhere, explaining that McCarthy wanted to appoint members who would “totally undermine” the committee. “Okay,” she recalled thinking. “That’s really nice. So you get consultation as to who will serve [on the committee], and I have consulted with you, and I’ve said ‘no’ to who you want. That’s the power of the Speaker.”

Pelosi then assembled a group led by Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, along with six other Democrats and Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. It did not take long for observers to conclude that McCarthy may have monumentally misplayed his hand, particularly after the committee produced a riveting series of hearings last summer that were mercifully free of the clownish and disruptive antics of the House GOP’s right flank.

In the course of our discussion, Pelosi was reluctant to take any sort of credit for the committee’s work or Trump’s indictment with the exception of taking “credit for the appointees” on the committee, whom she described as providing a “beautiful balance” in their approaches and a crucial “seriousness of purpose.”

Pelosi said she knew from the beginning that, in order for the committee to succeed, it could not operate in the way of typical committee hearings, and she worked to ensure that the members shared that perspective. “When people were accepting the offer to be on the committee, they knew that it wasn’t going to be every five minutes that they’d be speaking,” she said. “It would be part of the plan [to present] a narrative for the public to understand.”

In the end, Pelosi told me, “the quality of the membership, the effectiveness of the staff, and the excellence of the presentation made it one of the best presentations in the history of our country.”

Meanwhile, there were questions about what the Justice Department was doing to address the potential criminal culpability of Trump and those in his orbit. The committee’s members and staff were uncovering — and presenting to the public — damaging evidence that they had obtained from Trump administration officials, but the DOJ was not pursuing those same threads — despite public frustration among some observers — seemingly content with focusing on the people who had stormed the Capitol or who played a role in organizing the violence that day.

I asked Pelosi whether during this period she had ever tried to speak with Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Biden, or anyone in the White House about making sure the Justice Department was properly investigating Trump’s conduct. “No,” she quickly responded, telling me that she did not think it was appropriate for her to try to influence the department’s work behind closed doors.

“I did want them to pay attention, and I hope that we got their attention,” Pelosi told me. “That’s why the presentation — the narrative — had to be the way it was,” she explained, so that the public record could be as clear and credible as possible. “We couldn’t have people, like the Republicans wanted to put on, who would be disruptive, disruptive, disruptive. Too much was at stake.”

Still, there was palpable anxiety among House Democrats about the Justice Department’s progress — or lack thereof — investigating Trump directly. That anxiety may have reached a high point this June, when the Washington Post published a remarkable 8,000-word story providing the most comprehensive account to date of the department’s investigation into Trump’s conduct.

According to the Post, it took “more than a year” after January 6 “before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election,” and “even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.” One source told the paper that “it felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary” as the department’s investigation finally gathered steam last year.

“When the Washington Post article came out,” Pelosi told me, “not that it was a complete shock or surprise to our members, but they were very concerned about it.”

Now that Trump has been indicted over his effort to steal the election, we are in the midst of a singular moment in American history — one that will have dramatic long-term implications for our country and one that will likely be covered in history books for generations to come. The difference, of course, is that as we live through this period, we have no idea how it will end — with Trump in prison or with Trump in the White House again.

I asked Pelosi how she thought this would all end, and she struck a tentative but cautiously optimistic tone. “As we always say, it all depends on what happens at the end of the day, but you have to determine what the end of the day is. Yesterday was the end of a day. The former president of the United States was arraigned, and that was a triumph for the truth.”

“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi added, referring to both the latest set of charges and the earlier federal indictment over Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his subsequent efforts to obstruct investigators. “They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”

As for the prospect of a second Trump term, Pelosi immediately recoiled when I brought it up. “Don’t even think of that,” she told me. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”

“If he were to be president,” she continued, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House.”

There was a time in American life, not that long ago, when that would have been clear hyperbole. These are categorically different times.

[mariacallous]

North Korean military engineers have been deployed to help Russia target Ukraine with ballistic missiles, and fighters operating in occupied areas of the country have already been killed, senior officials in Kyiv and Seoul said.

There are dozens of North Koreans behind Russian lines, in teams that “support launcher systems for KN-23 missiles”, a source in Ukraine told the Guardian.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, last year travelled to Russia for a summit with Vladimir Putin where the two men bolstered their deepening ties with a secret arms deal.

Pyongyang’s ammunition shipments were vital in allowing Russian forces to advance in a grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine this summer. But it appears increasingly clear that the agreement went beyond supplying materiel.

North Koreans were among the dead after a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk last week, South Korean and Ukrainian officials said. It was not clear if they were military engineers or other forces.

Foreigners have fought as mercenaries for Russia, but if North Koreans are on the ground it would mark the first time a foreign government has sent troops in uniform to support Moscow’s war.

South Korea’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, told MPs in Seoul this week that it was “highly likely” that North Korean officers had been deployed to fight alongside Russians, and several had died in the attack, although he did not give further details.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said in a post on Telegram that some North Koreans had been killed in Russia. His organisation is part of the national security and defence council.

On Wednesday the Ukrainian military said they had destroyed North Korean ammunition in a strike on a depot in the Bryansk region, 75 miles (120 km) from the Ukrainian border.

Joining the war on Ukraine gives North Korea a chance to test weapons, gain combat experience for its troops and bolster its standing with a powerful international ally.

“For North Korea, which has supplied Russia with many shells and missiles, it’s crucial to learn how to handle different weapons and gain real-world combat experience,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, told the AFP news agency. “This might even be a driving factor behind sending North Korean soldiers – to provide them with diverse experiences and wartime training.”

North Korean missiles and shells are of poor quality and unreliable but have been key to keeping Russian guns firing relentlessly on Ukraine’s better-trained and motivated army.

Pyongyang is estimated to have provided around half the larger-calibre ammunition used on the battlefield this year, more than 2m rounds, a Ukrainian source said. It also provided KN-23 missiles, which were used in dozens of strikes across Ukraine last winter, Ukrainian media reported. After a pause of several months, they were deployed again from July.

The KN-23 is a short-range ballistic missile that was first tested in 2019 and has been compared to Russia’s Iskander-M missiles. It is thought to have a range of about 280 miles when carrying a 500kg warhead.

Moscow and Pyongyang have denied weapons sales even as they have publicly celebrated deepening ties in recent months. The Kremlin on Thursday dismissed North Korean troop deployments in Ukraine as “another bit of fake news”.

Kim described Putin as his “closest comrade” in a birthday message sent this week, and Putin made a state visit to North Korea in June during which the leaders signed a mutual aid agreement.

In return for its missiles and other military hardware, North Korea is thought to be seeking Russian help with its spy satellite programme, which has had embarrassing failures over the past two years.

It is not clear how far Russia is willing to go in sharing sensitive military technology with North Korea in return for continued support in Ukraine.

Pyongyang, after decades of UN-led sanctions targeting its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes, is attempting to strengthen its ties with Russia and China as part of an alliance against “western hegemony and imperialism”.

The strategy paid dividends in March when Russia used its veto in the UN security council to in effect end UN monitoring of sanctions violations, a move publicly welcomed by Pyongyang.

[pucex]

The Front Page: How Close Is Iran to the Bomb?

Jay Solomon investigates. Plus. . . Olivia Reingold parties with the flag-loving frat boys of UNC. A letter from a Palestinian to his Israeli neighbors. And more.

OLIVER WISEMAN

SEP 4

A truck is carrying Iranian-made Sayyad-4B missiles during a military parade marking the anniversary of Iran’s Army Day at an Army military base in Tehran on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

It’s Wednesday, September 4, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large.

Today: a Palestinian “traitor” writes a letter to his Israeli neighbors; Olivia Reingold parties with the frat bros who saved the American flag; Bloomberg caves to the tiniest of mobs; and much more. But first: Jay Solomon’s Iran exclusive.

The world is a dangerous place right now. Hardly a day goes by without a reminder of that fact. Yesterday, it was the news out of Ukraine, where two Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian city of Poltava, killing at least 51 people and wounding more than 200 others. Before that it was Hamas’s murder of six hostages in southern Gaza. By one count there are 56 active conflicts ongoing today, more than at any point since the Second World War. And alongside headlines about the world’s major hot wars are signs that the new cold war may be warming up: China’s coast guard ramming Filipino vessels in the South China Sea—a now routine practice—or a Chinese spy plane violating Japanese airspace—that was last week—or Beijing saber-rattling over Taiwan.

In other words, things aren’t great. But they can always get worse!

One way in which things could get a lot worse would be if Iran—the power behind so much of the bloodshed in the Middle East today—acquired nuclear weapons.

How close is Iran to getting the bomb? Closer than many experts seem to think, according to Free Press investigative reporter Jay Solomon. Today he reports on documents translated by The Free Press that reveal how Iran’s parliament is expanding the funding and military pursuits of Tehran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, a secretive body that reports directly to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei—with no civilian oversight—and is charged with researching advanced and nonconventional weapons.

One former UN weapons inspector says the documents show Tehran’s brazenness and desire to make known its growing capabilities. They also suggest that Western assumptions about Tehran’s willingness to strike a new nuclear deal are dangerously mistaken.

[bogusfilth]

The late Senator Howard Baker said of the CIA during the Watergate scandal that “there are animals crashing around in the forest. I can hear them but I can’t see them.” Carlos Marcello and the Chicago Outfit, and their friends in the defense contracting world, were hardly the only ones with grudges against John F. Kennedy, nor would they have had the means to act against him alone. The training at the Pontchartrain property was publicly exposed by the Kennedys’ mid-1963 turn against the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban training program, and between the TFX contract, the new post-Crisis retreat in the fight against communism, the Kennedys’ tentative support for civil rights, and the possibility of indictment in a second Kennedy term under newly enhanced prosecution statutes, the Kennedy administration was kicking up a great deal of shit with its ostensible coalition allies despite its continued relative popularity with the public. 

By the time Kennedy visited the South in the fall of 1963, credible plots against his life were tracked in Miami and Chicago; the Secret Service still permitted an open-air motorcade, despite an increasingly long and obvious enemies list. 

[...]

The murdered prospector’s ex-employer, General Dynamics, and other military contractors have prospered in the 2020s just as they did in the 1980s. While the Dow Jones has been down six percent over the last 12 months, and the U.S. is still under threat of economic recession, GD stock is up more than 17 percent. On Jan. 4, Toronto’s National Post reported that “Super Bison” armored vehicles had arrived in Ukraine after manufacture by GD in London, Ontario. On Jan. 6, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced $3.75 billion in new military aid for Ukraine that includes missiles co-produced by Raytheon and General Dynamics, which can now be fitted for use on ex-Soviet launchers used by Ukraine. Jack Kennedy is long dead, but Convair is doing just fine, as are all of its friends.

[newslink7com]

🚨 Trump’s Secret Talks with Russia? Sanctions Relief on the Table! 🚨

The Trump administration is exploring a deal to ease sanctions on Russia while negotiating an end to the Ukraine war. What’s at stake, and what does Putin get in return?

👉 Read the full story at NewsLink7.com