#transport to libya

[rowyal-trd]

Transportation from Iran to Libya (Misurata, Tripoli) by Rowyal

In the ever-evolving landscape of international trade, efficient transportation plays a pivotal role. One company that stands out in facilitating seamless transportation from Iran to Libya, particularly to destinations like Misurata and Tripoli, is Rowyal. In this article, we will delve into the significance of transportation, the specific routes, and why Rowyal is the preferred choice for businesses and individuals seeking reliable shipping services.

“To obtain more information and inquire about competitive container prices from Iran to any countries, please contact us on WhatsApp at +989171199398”

[pinturas-sgm-aviacion]

1940 Malta Savoia Marchetti SM79 - Mark Postlethwaite

During the morning on 17 August, the Mediterranean Fleet was out for a raid in support of the Army. The battleships HMS Warspite, HMS Ramilles and HMS Malaya, supported by the cruiser HMS Kent and three flotillas of destroyers bombarded Bardia harbour and Fort Capuzzo, starting at 06:45 and continuing for 22 minutes. As the vessels headed back towards Alexandria a series of bombing attacks were launched against them by the Regia Aeronautica.The RAF and the FAA provided escort for the fleet. HMS Eagle's Fighter Flight of three Sea Gladiators had been flown to Sidi Barrani airfield in Libya, and from here patrolled over the Fleet. 'B' and 'C' Flights of 80 Squadron provided air support with flights of four Gladiators over the ships from dawn to dusk. ‘A’ Flight of 112 Squadron was positioned at Z Landing Ground (Matruh West) while ‘C’ Flight of 112 Squadron was based at Y LG about 18 kilometres further west and they also took part in the covering missions.The attacks on the Royal Navy began when, at 10:40 five SM 79s were seen at 12,000 feet, heading in from the north-east. Over the fleet there were, on standing patrol, at least the Gladiators of ‘A’ Flight 112 Squadron (probably six of them), the three Sea Gladiators of HMS Eagle’s Fighter Flight and a single Hurricane from ‘A’ Flight 80 Squadron flown by Flying Officer John Lapsley (P2641). They intercepted the Italian bombers and altogether claimed six of them (…)

John Lapsley told a newspaper about this combat:“I arrived just as five S 79’s had dropped their bombs, all well astern of the fleet, and were making off. One immediately went down in flames – evidently hit by anti-aircraft fire from the battleships. I picked on the leader and gave him about eight short bursts. He fell away, obviously in difficulties. Actually he landed his aircraft in our lines – there were six hundred bullet holes in it [probably ’56-9’ flown by Tenente Lauchard of the 56a Squadriglia].Then I picked on another and had just got a second burst into him he went up in flames. I was about one hundred yards away and the planes were much too close for comfort so I swerved away just as the crew of the S 79 ‘baled out’.The third remaining S 79 by this time was quite close to the coast and he was diving like mad for a cloud. I gave him three or four long bursts, and with one engine smoking he disappeared. I think he went into ‘the drink’.These Italian aircraft seem to be built of ply-wood. At any rate you have to dodge the pieces that come flying back at you when you fire your guns.There didn’t seem to be much more doing, so I came home. Even then I had some ammunition left.(…

) The third to be shot down was ’56-9’ flown by Tenente Arturo Lauchard of the 56a Squadriglia, which was seriously damaged. With all the crew dead inside the second pilot Tenente Vittorio Cèard (Lauchard was wounded) made a forced landing on a beach. The beach was in Egyptian territory and the two pilots were taken prisoners. The plane of Lauchard was later recovered and, taken to Alexandria, was exposed as a war prize on Ismailia Square. Lauchard left a realistic narration of his capture where he told that he was transported to the airport of Sidi Barrani where he was taken to the Officer’s Mess where an Intelligence Officer examined him. Lauchard told him only his name and rank and the amused British Officer showed him a chart where all the units of Regia Aeronautica were recorded with airbase, number of planes and names of the crew chiefs. There his name already was, written on a tag that the Intelligence Officer removed. Later the RAF officers offered a drink to him and he met a young Flight Lieutenant that around ten days before had been shot down by Italian fighters and obliged to bale out. The British pilot told Lauchard that while descending in his parachute an Italian fighter pointed on him but instead of opening fire he passed near him weaving with his arm. It seems that the pilot was almost surely Flight Lieutenant 'Pat' Pattle.

source:

[whencyclopedia]

Ptolemaic Navy

Ptolemaic Egypt was a naval power that exerted influence throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from its foundation in 330 BCE until Cleopatra's defeat by Augustus at the Battle of Actium in 30 BCE. The Ptolemaic Kingdom produced some of the largest human-powered ships of all time, and the largest and most advanced warships of the period.

The Ptolemaic navy was also used to patrol trade routes on the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Nile as a way to deter piracy. Ptolemaic exploratory expeditions helped to improve Greek and Roman geographical knowledge of Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. Despite the overall decline of its military might in land conflicts, it remained a relevant naval force until the end of the dynasty.

Origins

Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, and after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, it was ruled by his general Ptolemy I (r. 305-282 BCE). The rest of Alexander's empire was divided between his other generals in the Wars of the Diadochi. The Diadochi and their successors waged constant wars against each other for territory and resources, which spurred on the development of the Ptolemaic navy.

Ptolemy I's navy originally consisted of the forces left behind by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. 30 triremes were left in Egypt by Alexander under the command of the admiral Polemon. After defeating the Macedonian general Thibron in Cyrene in 324 BCE, Ptolemy probably absorbed what remained of Thibron's fleet. He also made alliances with the rulers of Cyprus, which enabled him to build additional warships.

By 306 BCE, Ptolemy I was able to muster 210 warships and 200 troop transport ships. Ptolemy's brother Menelaus led this fleet against the forces of Demetrius I (c. 336 to c. 282 BCE) at Salamis of Cyprus. Demetrius, whose fleet contained larger ships carrying artillery, annihilated the Ptolemaic fleet. 40 warships and 8,000 Ptolemaic marines were taken captive by Demetrius. This catastrophic defeat meant that Ptolemy I was unable to maintain control of Cyprus and Coele-Syria, which were lost to Antigonus I. Within a decade, Ptolemy I had rebuilt a fleet of 150 ships which he used to recapture Cyprus and take control of Lydia, Tyre, Sidon, and Pamphylia.

He takes slices of Phoenicia and Arabia and Syria and Libya and the dark-skinned Ethiopians; all the Pamphylians and the warriors of Cilicia he commands, and the Lycians and the Carians, who delight in war, and the islands of the Cyclades, for his are the finest ships sailing the ocean. All the sea and the land and the crashing rivers are subject to Ptolemy.

(Theocritus, Idylls, 17.86-95)

Under Ptolemy II (r. 282-286 BCE) and Ptolemy III (r. 246-222 BCE), the Ptolemaic navy rapidly expanded with new and more advanced warships to become the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean. This navy enabled the Ptolemaic dynasty to capture and defend islands and coastal territories that stretched from Egypt to the Aegean, making the Ptolemaic Kingdom into a thalassocracy. Later Ptolemaic rulers would continue to prioritize the maintenance of a large fleet, but by the end of the dynasty, its global power had disintegrated.

Continue reading...

[justforbooks]

Jeannette Charles

The Queen’s most famous lookalike, who enjoyed a long career in film and television thanks to their uncanny resemblance

In 1972, Jeannette Charles was in her mid-40s and settling down to life in an Essex village, having returned, with her husband, Ken, from Libya. They had been living there for some years, but left following the army coup led by Muammar Gaddafi.

On reading about the artist Jane Thornhill in a local newspaper, Charles decided to commission a painting of herself for her husband’s birthday. Thornhill asked whether she could submit it for the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in London, but when she did, the venerable institution returned the picture, believing it to be a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and having been told by Buckingham Palace that the monarch had not sat for it.

The resulting publicity began a new chapter in the life of Charles, who would spend the next 40 years as the Queen’s most famous lookalike, and who has died aged 96. She appeared on British television and in Hollywood films, alongside stars such as Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley and Mike Myers, and also modelled for Spitting Image when the satirical TV show was making the Queen’s puppet.

Charles said of her uncanny resemblance to the monarch, whom she never met: “We both have the same bone structure, so the same style of makeup and hairdressing suits us best. But I’m 2 inches shorter than her, so my clothes wouldn’t always look well on her and vice versa.”

She also made personal appearances – opening shops, handing out gifts with the flamboyant piano virtuoso Liberace and presenting a silver disc to the rock group Queen – and Muhammad Ali put in a special request to have a photograph taken with her. Commercials kept her busy, too, but Charles insisted: “I am not an actress. I only do the one role.”

Her first job as the Queen was posing for a London Weekly Advertiser poster that featured her reading a paper, with a stuffed corgi at her feet. However, London Transport, which was due to display it on buses and Tube trains, objected and never used it. Charles said it was a lesson: “too real … a little vulgar”. She insisted she was a staunch royalist, and told the Guardian in 2022: “I would never do anything that reflected badly on the monarch or myself. Over the years, I’ve turned down large sums to pose for Page 3-type pictures and insisted I should never be introduced as the Queen when making appearances.”

Jeannette was born in London, 18 months after Princess Elizabeth, to Yetta (nee Wonsoff), who was Dutch, of Polish descent, and Alfred Clark, a chef, later restaurateur, and was brought up in Perivale, Middlesex. Her resemblance to the future monarch was spotted when she was still a child. She recalled: “On a trip to Greenwich when I was 11 or 12, a photographer asked if he could use me in some shots, saying, ‘She looks like Princess Elizabeth.’ Later, I’d draw crowds, especially abroad, and sometimes had to run away.”

After leaving Wembley high school, she took a job as a secretary and spent evenings acting with an amateur group in Acton. She dreamed of acting professionally, and passed an audition to train at Rada, but could not afford the fees. Instead, she emigrated to the US at the age of 24 and settled in Midland, Texas.

While working there as an au pair, she met Ken Charles, a British oil drilling engineer with BP. His work took him to Canada – where they married in Alberta in 1957 – and then to South America and Libya.

They returned to Britain in 1969 and, when regal fame came to Charles, she found herself travelling the world again. At home, her early screen appearances were in the sketch shows Rutland Weekend Television (1975), with Eric Idle and Neil Innes, Spike Milligan’s Q series (from 1976 to 1980), and Not the Nine O’Clock News (1980). She was also in sitcoms such as Mind Your Language (1978) and Never the Twain (1990), and jetted to the US for a 1977 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

When Hollywood came calling, she put on the royal tiara to appear in National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985). In The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), she was seen flat on her back with Nielsen on top of her as they slide down a royal banqueting table – when his inept detective believes the Queen is about to be assassinated and jumps to her rescue. For Charles, another highlight of filming that wacky movie was being invited to Presley’s trailer for lunch. “We became good friends,” she said.

She was back in Hollywood for The Parent Trap (1998), with Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson, and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), when she mistook its star, Myers, for a crew electrician on first meeting him.

Alongside chat shows, corporate events, fete openings and other appearances, she appeared in Motörhead’s music video promoting their version of the Sex Pistols song God Save the Queen in 2000.

Charles’s autobiography, The Queen & I, was published in 1986.

Her husband died in 1997. She is survived by their three children, David, Peter and Carol, and her sister, Delinda.

🔔 Jeannette Dorothea Louise Charles, lookalike, born 15 October 1927; died 2 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[odinsblog]

Executive summary

Since launching its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Federation has been locked into a long and costly conflict. Russia has been diplomatically marginalized, subjected to sanctions, and shunned by most of the Western world. Many multinational companies have been forced by international pressure to shutter or sell their Russian operations, and profiting from cooperation with the Russian state is no longer considered acceptable. Russia has found itself in dire need of new allies and resources.

In this environment, the Kremlin-financed Private Military Company Wagner, or Wagner Group, has served as an increasingly important source of revenue for the Russian state. Founded in 2014 to support pro-Russian forces in Donbas, since then Wagner Group has evolved into a complex international network of private military contractors, disinformation campaign infrastruc-ture, and corporate front companies. It has deployed fighters, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, and financing as a proxy for the Russian state in numerous conflicts, from Syria and Libya to Mali, Central African Republic, and beyond

Wagner has most often been described as an independent mercenary group. This status has provided Russia with a thin veil of deniability, particularly in relation to the numerous plausible accusations of murder, rape, torture, and war crimes raised against Wagner fighters. But in reality, Wagner has always operated with the political and material backing of the Russian Federation to advance Russian state interests.

In Africa, Wagner has been deployed in a number of countries across the continent since 2017. In each country it enters, Wagner deploys military trainers, mercenary fighters, and propaganda experts to support anti-democratic regimes, drive instability, and commit human rights abuses. The mercenary group's ostensible provision of "security services" creates a framework for lucrative business contracts for the extraction of natural resources including diamonds, oil, timber, and especially gold.

This report focuses on the Kremlin's 'blood gold': Gold extracted from African countries and laundered into international markets that provides billions in revenue to the Russian state, thereby directly and indirectly financing Russia's war on Ukraine and global hybrid warfare infrastructure.

The Blood Gold Report's analysis suggests that Wagner and Russia have earned more than US$2.5 billion from blood gold since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The report focuses on the case studies of Wagner's blood gold operations in the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mali. In each of these coun-tries, Russia profits from the blood gold trade in different ways:

In CAR, the mercenary group has been granted exclusive extractive rights for the Ndassima mine, the country's largest gold mine, in return for propping up President Touadera's authoritarian regime. Wagner's Ndassima operations are understood to produce US$290 million of gold annually, while local miners have been pushed aside or murdered by the mercenary group.

In Sudan, through control of a major refinery, Wagner has become the dominant buyer of unprocessed Sudanese gold as well as a major smuggler of processed gold. Russian military transporter flights laden with gold have been identified by Sudanese customs officials. While tracking Sudan's unreported gold market is near impossible, estimates suggest that almost Us$2 billion in gold is smuggled out of the country unreported every year, with 'the Russian Company' in prime position to take advantage.

In Mali, Wagner is paid a monthly retainer - estimated at US $10.8 million per month - to prop up a brutal military junta Meanwhile the junta is in turn dependent on a small number of Western mining companies for the revenue it needs to pay Wagner. Mining companies contributed more than 50% of all tax revenues to the Malian state for 2022. Barrick Gold Corporation, a Canadian listed company and Mali's single biggest tax contributor, paid US$206 million in the first half of 2023 alone.

The junta is increasing its financial demands on gold mining companies. Meanwhile, the four largest gold mining companies (weighted by tax contribution) continue to plan further investments in the country, despite the well-documented abuses of the military junta and growing influence of the Wagner Group.

Wagner's blood gold operations in CAR and Sudan have been subject to sanctions, and the Kremlin-backed mercenaries have developed increasingly complex smuggling routes and corporate subterfuge tactics to move blood gold out of these countries and convert this gold into cash.

In contrast, the Malian blood gold system enables Wagner to remain one degree removed from gold production. Instead, legitimate multinational mining companies convert gold into cash for the Malian military junta without triggering international sanctions.

To secure its position in a target country's political and natural resource extraction landscape, Wagner's African playbook consists of a four-pronged attack on the host country's civic institutions and civilian population - suppressing political opposition, spreading disinformation, silencing free media and terrorising civilians.

The ultimate objective of Wagner's playbook is to increase its clients' dependence on Wagner forces to stay in power, thereby securing a long-term revenue stream for the Kremlin and fostering authoritarianism and instability throughout the region as part of Russia's wider geopolitical strategy to distract and bog down the democratic West.

Since the death of Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary group has formally come under the control of the Russian State. Yet the Kremlin's focus on Africa, and its blood gold operations, show no signs of changing.

(continue reading)

[dcthreepainter]

An Aluminum Ending.

The Douglas C-47A with MSN 12741 was delivered to the U.S. Air Forces in 1944 and identified as 42-92890. She served in the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces mostly transporting troops. She returned to the U.S. in 1945 and was sold as surplus in 1947 to the Sperry Gyroscope company of Great Neck, New York, registered as NC60777. In 1962 she moved on to Mobil Oil of Canada, being re-registered as N2614. 12741 was transferred to Mobil Oil of Libya in 1966, and on to Mobil Oil Canada just a year later. She was assigned the Canadian registration of CF-MOC. By 1967 Bradley Air Services of Ottawa, Ontario had acquired her and updated her registration to C-FMOC in 1979. Bradley rebranded to First Air in 1980, but 12741 was soon sidelined and became a parts source. She was sold in 1988 to St. Felicien Air Services, who did little with her until her final sale to Buffalo Airways in 2001. She was presumably stripped for remaining parts of value and broken up for scrap in 2002.

[crystalis]

do you ever just like think about how terrible the united states is like the entire history of it from the beginning, destroying the indigenous peoples and cultures and expanding south and west until reaching the other coast using african slave labour and doing nothing to stop the holocaust until germany delcared war on the US (and rewriting history to say we stopped it bc we're the good guys) and nuking japan killing 100000 people instantly and then literally taking over the world and brainwashing its citizens beyond comprehension to think we're some modest country that Fights For Freedom and that everything we do is for the greater good of mankind .. and we obliterated iraq libya afghanistan cambodia vietnam laos korea guatemala el salvador nicaragua pakistan yemen etc and have a 1 trillion dollar military budget and army bases scattered across the earth and the highest incarceration figures of any country and a militarized police. and homeless people everywhere and no developed public transportation and healthcare is so bad youre literally held hostage by the healthcare sytem if theres something wrong with you or you just die, even though this like the richest or 2nd richest country in the world, its like so crazy.. not even 250 years old AND like idefk how much of the population is conservative patriotic God Bless America "pray for our vets" types.. american politics in general are so outrageous.. the settler colonial empire calling people "illegals" and deporting them is real funny.. god damn america sucks so much and its insane how insulted people get about it and say shit like "get out of our country then" bc theyre completely indoctrinated by american propaganda white supremacy patriotism. and making kids pledge allegience to the flag in school and lying to them and teaching them rewritten history and then going "look at how china and north korea brainwashes their people 😲😱😱" even though americans are the most brainwashed propagandized people on earth

[mariacallous]

Russia has been bolstering its military presence in Libya for the past few months, according to a joint investigation from the independent outlet Verstka and the All Eyes on Wagner project. Libya has been mired in civil war since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and Russia has long been accused of meddling in the conflict. Now, the Kremlin appears to be shipping more military equipment to Libya and the surrounding region and redeploying regular troops disguised as mercenaries, along with recruits from Wagner Group’s Africa operations.

‘Tectonic shifts’

In the past three months, Russia has begun actively transferring military personnel and mercenaries to Libya, according to Verstka’s findings. These forces are primarily concentrated in eastern Libya, a region under the control of Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National Army and a Kremlin ally. (The western part of the country, including the capital, Tripoli, is governed by the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord.)

A source within a Libyan security agency reported that at least 1,800 Russian military personnel have arrived in the country in the last two weeks alone. Some were dispatched to Niger, while others remain in Libya awaiting further orders.

One serviceman told journalists that he and several hundred other special forces soldiers were redeployed from Ukraine at the beginning of the year. Several thousand more fighters — both professional soldiers and mercenaries from Wagner Group’s Africa operations — arrived in Libya between February and April. In conversations with journalists, the soldiers themselves acknowledged that their presence in Libya is unofficial. They said that they’re there as part of a private military company, though they didn’t specify which one.

Russian military personnel and equipment have been spotted in at least 10 locations in eastern Libya since the beginning of March. Russian troops are stationed around major military bases, such as Al Jufra Air Base and Ghardabiya Air Base, as well as near smaller ones by Waddan and Marj.

Sources say that some of the newly arrived Russian military personnel are involved in training local soldiers and new recruits from private military companies. Others are carrying out combat missions, such as securing the transport of military equipment.

“There’s never been such a fuss; tectonic shifts are happening here,” one Russian soldier in Libya commented. “I think a big mess is brewing.”

Following the breadcrumbs

Location data from Telegram users show an increase in activity around military sites in Libya. On March 5, a Russian soldier with the username “Andrey” showed up near the Ghardabiya Air Base near Sirte. A few months before, “Andrey” was in Mulino — a city in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region where soldiers are being trained for combat in Ukraine. Nearly two weeks after “Andrey” appeared at Ghardabiya Air Base, the Libyan National Army conducted military exercises there.

Soon after, another group of Russian soldiers was spotted in Marj, Libya. On March 17, photos of them were posted on Libyan social media; Verstka and its investigative partners were able to geolocate these photos by comparing the buildings and structures in them with satellite images.

In early May, geolocation data confirmed the presence of two Russian soldiers in Jufra. One of them was the same “Andrey” who’d been at the Ghardabiya Air Base in March. He stayed there until at least April, then moved to Jufra by May.

The second soldier in Jufra was 26-year-old Pavel Vavilov from Russia’s Vladimir region. It’s likely that Vavilov entered the military recently: leaked data shows he worked as a security guard in 2020, and before that, as a taxi driver. He’s faced various legal issues, including a theft conviction. Another Telegram account linked to Vavilov shows a car with a license plate from the self-proclaimed ��Luhansk People’s Republic” in the profile picture.

In recent weeks, there’s been a notable increase in shipments of Russian weapons and transport vehicles from Syria to Libya. In photos published on March 30 by the Russian pro-war Telegram channel Military Informant, several Russian Tigr armored personnel carriers can be seen being used in Libyan National Army exercises. Judging by the unit insignia on the front doors, they were delivered to the Libyan National Army’s 106th Brigade.

The channel also released video footage of the exercises. After comparing the terrain, buildings, and landmarks seen in the video to satellite images, Verstka and its investigative partners determined that the footage was shot between Al Jufra Air Base and the town of Waddan.

Russia is shipping a large amount of military equipment to Libya by sea. A source told Verstka that he had personally escorted equipment from a “military port” to various “military bases.” In some cases, the equipment comes to Libya via Syria’s Tartus port. For instance, on April 2, two Russian landing ships — the Alexander Otrakovsky and the Ivan Gren — were spotted in Tartus. On April 6, the same ships were off the coast of Crete, and on April 8, they arrived at the Port of Tobruk in Libya. These vessels were transporting vehicles and weaponry; one item in the shipment resembled a Soviet-era 2S12 “Sani” heavy mortar system. According to open-source investigators, this marked the fifth such shipment in the last six weeks. Satellite imagery shows that since then, the ships have continued to make trips back and forth.

Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, drew attention to the fact that Russian military personnel are being redeployed to the Brak al-Shati base in Libya. According to him, the number of Russian-speaking personnel at the base has increased by about 25 percent in recent weeks.

Back in March 2024, investigators from the All Eyes on Wagner project didn’t find any Russian Telegram accounts at the base. However, the situation has changed in the last few weeks. For example, in early May, an account registered to a Russian number was discovered near the base. The user, 28-year-old Russian Maxim Kukol, doesn’t appear to have been connected to the military before 2021. But there’s no public record of his employment after this. However, by 2022, his debts had been cleared.

Geolocation data also shows a steady stream of Russian military personnel arriving at the Tartus port in Syria, which has become a kind of redistribution hub for military resources. Among them is 19-year-old Navy serviceman Anton Zaikin, who was stationed in Baltiysk, in Russia’s Kaliningrad region, in early 2024. By early May, he had relocated to Syria.

A strategic move

Turkey, the U.S., and other countries have repeatedly accused Russia of interfering in the Libyan conflict, including through the use of Wagner Group mercenaries. Journalistic investigations have confirmed that Russian mercenaries have been present in Libya since at least 2019, and experts say the Kremlin has been supporting Khalifa Haftar since around 2018.

In 2023, Russian officials and Haftar held their first public negotiations since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In August, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov met with him in Libya, and in September, Haftar met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Following this, there were multiple media reports of Kremlin plans to build a Russian naval base in Tobruk, Libya (where Russian military cargo arrives from Syria).

In January 2024, shortly before Russia began sending large numbers of troops to the region, Yevkurov visited Libya again. He met with Haftar in Benghazi; Verstka’s sources say that a new Russian military training base is already operating not far from this city. According to Verstka and All Eyes on Wagner’s sources, the Russian contingent in Libya is controlled by four commanders who were previously in Syria. They, in turn, report to Yevkurov.

“I think the Russians are betting on a war inside Tripoli among the militias, so they’re going to shift gears,” said one military source. Another source suggested that the current influx of Russian equipment and the repositioning of troops are intended to supplant Wagner Group forces in Libya and pave the way for further deployments to other African countries.

RUSI’s Jalel Harchaoui noted that an increased presence in Libya aligns with many of Russia’s strategic regional interests. “Libya offers extremely valuable access to the Mediterranean Sea, acts as a southern flank to exert pressure on NATO and the E.U., and strengthens dialogue with other key Arab countries,” he explained. “Importantly, it also serves as a gateway to Sub-Saharan African countries, offering a strategic route to countries like Sudan, Niger, and beyond.”

According to him, cooperating with the Haftar family allows the Kremlin to achieve these goals while minimizing costs. “Roughly speaking, the Haftar family rewards Moscow materially and financially for doing things that are already in its interest,” Harchaoui believes.

The increased military activity in the region may also have something to do with increased pressure for Libya to hold elections. While there have been several attempts to hold elections, plans have often been delayed or disrupted due to escalations in the military conflict. The U.N. has urgently called for elections to be held to prevent the country from sliding further into war.

[beardedmrbean]

More than 3,000 people are believed to have died in devastating floods across eastern Libya, the country's health minister said Tuesday.

Another 10,000 people are believed to be missing, according to Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"The death toll is huge and might reach thousands," Ramadan said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

In just the city of Derna, the worst hit area, at least 700 people have been confirmed dead from the unprecedented flooding. A quarter of Derna was wiped out after dams burst and the city was declared a disaster zone, with electricity and communication having been cut off.

An additional 1,200 people were injured in the flooding in Derna, according to authorities.

The cities of Al Marj, Susah, Shahat and Al Bayda have also recorded several fatalities.

Rescue and relief efforts were underway on Tuesday to assist those affected by the flooding, according to Gen. Khalifa Haftar, head of the powerful Libyan military faction that controls the eastern part of the divided country.

"We issued immediate instructions to use all our capabilities, provide the needed support of all urgent medical equipment, operate medical convoys and to allocate shelters to those who lost their homes," Haftar said in a televised address on Tuesday. "We have directed the government to form a specialized committee to assess the damage, instantly begin the reconstruction of roads to facilitate transportation, restore the electricity and to take all immediate and needed measures in that regards."

Mediterranean storm Daniel is behind the widespread flooding in the North African nation as it swept away entire neighborhoods and destroyed homes in several coastal towns over the weekend.

Libya's National Center of Meteorology reported that more than 16 inches of rain fell in the city of Bayda within a 24-hour period to Sunday, according to the flood tracking website Floodlist.

Initial reports indicated that the storm damaged dozens of cities and villages in the area, according to Georgette Gagnon, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Libya.

"I am deeply saddened by the severe impact of [Storm] Daniel on the country and have tasked an emergency response team to prepare to support local authorities and partners in the region," Gagnon wrote in a post on social media on Monday. "I call on all local, national and international partners to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to those affected at this difficult time."

U.S. Special Envoy to Libya Ambassador Richard Norland announced Tuesday that the American embassy in Tripoli "has issued an official declaration of humanitarian need in response to the devastating floods in Libya."

"The declaration of humanitarian need will authorize initial funding that the United States will provide in support of relief efforts in Libya," Norland said in a statement. "We are coordinating with U.N. partners and Libyan authorities to assess how best to target official U.S. assistance. In addition, we have been contacted by many Libyan Americans anxious to make private contributions to relief efforts and we will work with Libyan authorities to direct those resources to where they are most needed."

Last week, the same storm system hammered the southeastern Mediterranean, killing at least 26 people in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, according to The Washington Post.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

This is one of the most smirk worthy moments of the first volume of Charles de Gaulle's war memoirs:

"... on October 7th [1941] I addressed a note to Mr. Churchill to update him on our wishes and means [to have the Free French engaged in the North African front]... At the same time, I wrote to general Auchinleck, commander in chief of the east, to remind him of how much we wanted our troops to fight in Libya... On October 9th I visited Mr. Margesson, War minister of Great Britain, and I begged him to intervene. Finally, on October 30th, I instructed general Catroux on the conditions in which it was convenient that our forces were employed, that is, in big units.

I did not receive any British response until November 27th. It was addressed by general Ismay and Mr. Churchill. Their letter was the equivalent to a rotund rejection, as polite as it was sharp. To explain their refusal, our allies appealed to "the dispersion of the French units across different spots in Syria", the fact that "they were not trained to act as divisions or brigades", and finally, "the insufficiency of their equipment". They expressed, however, the wish that, sometime in the future, the question could be re-evaluated.

The English command was evidently planning on achieving the conquest of Libya and ending Rommel without the French. It is true that they had there considerable land and air forces, and that they believed admiral Andrew Cunningham -magnificent chief and sailor- to be in a position to do more than miracles, by intercepting the communications between Italy and Tripolitania.

It is to be easily imagined the disappointment that the English answer produced in me. I could not allow our troops to remain inactive for time indefinite, while the fate of the world was being sorted in battle. I would rather risk a change of direction. And so, then, I called Mr. Bogomolov and I asked him to make his government know that the National Comittee wished for some French forces to participate directly in the allied operations on the Eastern Front, in case the North African theater was closed to them. I, naturally, made no secret in London of my negotiation.

Even before I received an answer from Moscow, the British intentions had already changed. On December 7th, Mr. Churchill wrote to me a warm letter to tell me that "he had just learned how much general Auchinleck wished to employ a Free French brigade in the Cirenaic operations". "I know", the Prime Minister added, "that this intention matches your own wishes. I am also aware the eagerness your men have of meeting the German face to face."...

At Cairo, Catroux arranged then, with general Auchinleck, the departure towards Libya of the first light division, while Koenig, in charge of negotiating the details, obtained from our allies, a useful bonus in anti-tank materials, anti-aerial guns, and means of transport...

But, if the first light division got an opportunity, nothing was being done for the second one, which languished in the East. And I was determined to see that one taking part as well in the operations. Precisely, on December 10th, Mr. Bogomolov had come to tell me that my project of sending French troops to Russia had been warmly received by his government, and that it was willing to facilitate to our forces on the spot all the necessary material. I began, then, to consider the expedition East, of not only the aviation group Normandie [which, according to De Gaulle, was the only element of the Western allies that fought on the Eastern Front], but of the second light division as well. This one, departing from Syria through Baghdad, would cross Persia in trucks and then, from Tabriz, would be transported by train to the Caucasus... On December 29th I wrote to general Ismay communicating to him my intentions, while at the same time giving the necessary instructions to general Catroux. The second light division was to depart on March 15th towards the Caucasus, unless it was admitted before that to Libya.

The British command opposed this project of moving this unit to Russia with all the possible objections. But in Moscow, on the contrary, the Soviets made a deal of it. Molotov speaking to Garreau, and Panfilov to Petit, asked us to put it in practice. Mr. Eden, once acquainted with this, entered the fray and wrote to me to support the point of view of the English military authorities. I could do nothing but defend my own, and it was the one that in the end was adopted by the end of February by the allied command. Ismay communicated it to me. Auchinleck asked Catroux to put at his disposition the second light division. This one left Syria and arrived at Libya the last days of March.

De Gaulle: you are sorry you think my divisions aren't good enough? That that is the reason why you cannot include them? No problem, I'm gonna ask Stalin if they are too poor for him as well. Well, well, well, would you look at that, apparently the Russians would be delighted and can provide what we are lacking. Oh, now they are good enough for the desert campaign all of a sudden? That's what I thought.

Iconic.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

"August 16, 2018

By Ryszard Kapuscinski

(An excerpt)

Herodotus — who lived 2,500 years ago and left us his “History” — was the first reporter. He is the father, master and forerunner of a genre –reportage. Where does reportage come from?

It has three sources, of which travel is the first. Not in the sense of a tourist trip or outing to get some rest. But travel as a hard, painstaking expedition of discovery that requires a decent preparation, careful planning and research in order to collect material out of talks, documents and your own observations on the spot. That’s just one of the methods Herodotus used to get to know the world. For years he would travel to the farthest corners of the world as the Greeks knew it. He went to Egypt and Libya, Persia and Babylon, the Black Sea and the Scythians of the north. In his times, the Earth was imagined to be a flat circle in the shape of a plate encircled by a great stream of water by the name of Oceanus. And it was Herodotus’ ambition to get to know that entire flat circle.

Herodotus, however, besides being the first reporter, was also the first globalist. Fully aware how many cultures there were on Earth, he was eager to get to know all of them. Why? The way he put it, you can learn your own culture best only by familiarizing yourself with others. For your culture will best reveal its depth, value and sense only when you find its mirror reflection in other cultures, as they shed the best and most penetrating light on your own.

(What did he accomplish with his comparative method of confrontation and mirror reflection? Well, Herodotus taught his countrymen modesty, tempered their self-conceit and hubris, the feeling of superiority and arrogance toward non-Greeks, toward all others. “You claim that the Greeks have created gods? Not at all. As a matter of fact, you’ve appropriated them from the Egyptians. You say your structures are magnificent? Yes, but the Persians have a far better system of communication and transportation.”

Thus Herodotus tried by means of his reportage to consolidate the most important message of Greek ethics: restraint, a sense of proportion and moderation.

Beside travel, another source of reportage is other people, those encountered on the road, and those we travel to meet in order to get them to convey their knowledge, tales and opinions to us. Here Herodotus turns out to be the master extraordinaire. Judging by what he writes, whom he meets and the way he talks to them, Herodotus comes across as a man open and full of good will toward others, making contact with strangers easily, curious about the world, investigative and hungry for knowledge. We can imagine the way he acted, talked, asked and listened. His attitude and bearing show what is essentially important to a reporter: respect for another man, his dignity and worth. He listens carefully to his heartbeat and the way thoughts cross his mind.

Herodotus notices the weakness of human memory, aware that his interlocutors relate different and often contradictory versions of the same event. Trying to be impartial and objective, he conscientiously leaves for us to decide about the most disparate variants and versions of the same story. Hence his reports are multidimensional, rich, vivid and palpable. Herodotus is a tireless reporter. He takes the trouble to go hundreds of miles by sea, on horseback or simply on foot only to hear another version of a past event. He wants to know, no matter the price he pays, and wants his knowledge be the most authentic, the closest to the truth. This conscientiousness sets a good example of the responsibility we assume, for all that we do.

The third source of reportage is the reporter’s homework: to read what has been written and endures in texts, inscriptions or graphic symbols on the topic a given reporter is working on. Herodotus also teaches us how to be investigative and careful. In his times, the amount of materials he could rely on was far smaller than that available today. So whatever he managed to collect was precious. He naturally was well read in Homer, Hesiod, poets and playwrights. He would decipher inscriptions on temples and town walls. Everything was important, potentially able to reveal a message or new meanings. By his own example Herodotus showed that a reporter should be a careful observer, sensitive to details seemingly insignificant and banal, which may turn out to be symbols or signs of worlds much more important, stretching farther out, and of higher order.

“All people have a natural tendency to acquire knowledge,” runs the sentence with which Aristotle, a little younger than Herodotus, begins his “Metaphysics,” adding that it is the eye that plays the most important role, because it perceives differences best. We also know the importance of the eye of the reporter, focused, penetrating, noticing what seems invisible, which may be the other face of a given phenomenon, often the most essential.

However, the snag is that to notice what is the most essential, you often have to be on the spot. And to get there, you have to take a trip, to travel. And out of those travels, his presence on the spot resulted in Herodotus’ great reportage about the world that we have been reading for 25 centuries.

Reportage is created out of what Aristotle called “tendency to acquire knowledge.” And in this human desire, a reporter’s passion meets the expectations of his readers, listeners and spectators. A reporter, driven by the “tendency to acquire knowledge,” tries to meet halfway the curiosity about the world of his readers, their own “tendency to acquire knowledge.”

And here is why good reportage is so popular in the contemporary world. The contemporary man, living in the world conjured up by the media of illusions and appearances, simulacra and fables, feeling instinctively that he is fed untruth, hypocrisy, falsehood, and virtual manipulation, seeks something that has the power of truth and reality, things authentic, that is.

I see that during my meetings with readers. When I tell about one of my reporter’s adventures, someone is likely to interrupt me with the question: “Is that authentic?” I assure the person that I have really been there. And then a wave of relief rolls across the audience and a friendly atmosphere sets in. Why, they’re taking part in something real, since someone who has witnessed the event is actually standing right in front of them.

What is a literary reportage, then? How to define and describe it? It’s not an easy matter, as we are living at the moment of “blurred genres,” a new species.

Working in the countries of the Third World, as a correspondent of a press agency for quite a long time, I had this unsatisfied feeling resulting from the paucity of the language of press information when confronting the rich, full-of-variety, colorful, often hard-to-define reality of those cultures, customs or beliefs. The everyday language of information that we use in the media is very poor, stereotypical and formulaic. For this reason huge areas of reality we deal with are beyond the sphere of description, which the formulaic message is unable to convey. So what is the way out of this cul-de-sac of unsatisfied feelings and frustration? I availed myself of the suggestion of such writers as Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose writing straddles the border of fiction and press chronicle. They introduced the term “New Journalism”, “nuevo periodismo.” By this term they meant the kind of writing in which authentic events, true stories and accidents are described with language containing the writer’s personal opinions and reactions and often fictional asides as added color; with the techniques and manners of fiction, that is. So this creative and enriched combination of two different manners and techniques of communicating and describing make up a literary reportage.

This has turned out to be a happy and seminal “blurring of genres,” especially in the light of the progress in science and technology, which has enriched and incredibly differentiated the picture of the world, ever more difficult to describe with language.

I saw it for myself writing “The Shadow of the Sun” (Afrikanishes Fieber). How to describe a jungle with the language of press information? This is downright impossible unless you reach for the treasury of belles-lettres, for its rich variety of expression. On the other hand, today, literature avails itself continuously of reportage production. Notice how many reporters are characters of fiction, how many descriptions are typically in the reporter’s vein among classically fictitious fragments and dialogues!

In this multicultural world, people from those other cultures demand that they be treated as equal, command the same respect and be in our good graces. It is a well-established given that there are no higher or lower cultures and what makes a difference is just the result of their specific geographical and historical conditions.

The problem is that we know little about other cultures, and rather than decent knowledge we are likely to make do with easy and false stereotypes. This is what Herodotus understood all too well. Better still, he knew that only mutual knowledge of each other makes understanding and connecting possible, as the only way to peace and harmony, cooperation and exchange. With this assumption in mind, a reporter takes a plunge into the hive of activity: travels, investigates, takes notes, explains why others behave differently from us and shows that those other ways of existence and understanding of the world have a logic of their own, are sensible and should be accepted rather than generate aggression and war.

So it’s plain to see what responsibility lies with our work, reportage. Plying our trade, we are not just men or women of writing pursuits, but also some kind of missionaries, translators and messengers. We do not translate from one text into another, but from one culture into another in order to make them mutually better understood and thereby closer."

From the site of the American travel writer and essayist Rolf Potts (https://rolfpotts.com/ ).

Ryszard Kapuściński (Polish: [ˈrɨʂart kapuɕˈt͡ɕij̃skʲi]i; 4 March 1932 – 23 January 2007) was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kapu%C5%9Bci%C5%84ski).th

[moonstone-vibe]

Special Interrogation Group From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

@wearebackbagels @rosescruensixxam

Found this on Wikipedia but there are several articles out there and one says that Essner might have survived... ? Also, they didn’t go together to Derna and Bruckner didn’t shoot Essner, so we can ship them in peace :)))

The Special Interrogation Group (SIG)[a] was a unit of the British Army during World War II, formed largely of German-speaking Jewish volunteers from Mandatory Palestine. Disguised as soldiers of the German Afrika Korps, members of the SIG undertook commando and sabotage operations against Axis forces during the Western Desert Campaign.[1][2][3]

Formation

The inspiration for the SIG belonged to Captain Herbert Cecil Buck, MC of the 3rd Bn., 1st Punjab Regiment and later the Scots Guards,[4] an Oxford scholar and German linguist. He had been captured in January 1942, but had soon managed to break free and had then escaped back across Libya to Egypt, partly using German uniforms and vehicles. He was surprised by the ease of his deception and felt that, with greater planning and preparation, the concept could be used more offensively, to assist raiding parties attack key targets behind enemy lines. His plan was approved and, in March 1942, he was appointed the commander of this new unit, the SIG.

In March 1942, Col. Terence Airey, Military Intelligence Research at the War Office in London wrote that "a Special German Group as a sub-unit of M[iddle] E[ast] Commando... with the cover name 'Special Interrogation Group', to be used for infiltration behind the German lines in the Western Desert, under 8th Army... the strength of the Special Group would be approximately that of a platoon... The personnel are fluent German linguists... mainly Palestinian (Jews) of German origin. Many of them have had war experience with No. 51 Commando..."[5]

Some personnel was also recruited directly from the Palmach, Haganah and the Irgun. Other recruits came from the Free Czechoslovak Forces, the French Foreign Legion and German-speaking Jewish troops. The SIG was a part of D Squadron, First Special Service Regiment. Its strength varied between 20 and 38, according to various sources.[5]

Training[edit]

According to ex-SIG member Maurice "Tiffen" Monju Tiefenbrunner, their first training base was located near Suez.[5] The SIG were trained in desert navigation, unarmed combat, handling of German weapons and explosives. They were given fake German identities and were taught German marching songs and current German slang. For their missions, they were supplied with German pay books, cigarettes, chocolates and love letters from fictitious sweethearts in Germany. Walter Essner and Herbert Brueckner, two non-Jewish Germans, had been conscripted from a POW camp to train the SIG. Before the war, both had been members of the French Foreign Legion who had been captured in November 1941 serving in the 361st Infantry Regiment of the Afrika Korps and were subsequently recruited by the British Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) as double agents.

Operations and betrayal[edit]

The SIG drove captured German vehicles behind German lines near Bardia, set up roadblocks and carried out acts of sabotage. Dressed as Feldgendarmerie (German military police), they stopped and questioned German transports, gathering important military intelligence. On 3 June 1942 the SIG was assigned its first assault operation. They were to assist the Special Air Service, led by Lt. Col. David Stirling in destroying Luftwaffe airfields which were threatening the Malta convoys. These airfields were located 100 miles west of Tobruk at Derna and Martuba in the Italian colony of Libya. During the raid, on the night of 13/14 June, Herbert Brueckner managed to run away by faking an engine problem of the truck he was driving and betrayed the Derna party, nearly all of whom were killed or captured.[1] Essner, closely guarded by Tiefenbrunner throughout the raid, was handed over to the Military Police and later shot while trying to escape.[6]

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

The palatial guard of Niger's democratically elected President, Mohamed Bazoum, overthrew him in a coup d'etat. Endorsed solely by Wagner Group, Western media outlets are quick to fixate on how the optics of this new development could be shifted to implicate, further isolate Russia and distance Atlantic powers from culpability in yet further destabilization of the Sahel region. Apart from being US trained, the coup leadership takes over a country wracked by ISIS-affiliated instability and violence resulting from the ongoing Malian civil war on the border, where Tuaregs (MNLA), emboldened and armed by western intervention in Libya against Gaddafi, transported arms and veteran libyan rebels into north east Mali with the intent of establishing an independent Azawad. In the decade since, ISIG (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara) took root in the same conflict and expanded it into Niger. Destabilization resulting from this US-bolstered conflict with islamists in Western Niger has lead to this coup d'etat.

[samueldays]

Is it just US politics that Germans are obsessed with, or do they always want to talk about other countries politics too?

I don't know, I live in Norway, but Norway is absolutely obsessed with US politics, and I view Norway as being a de facto vassal state of the US, lacking in sovereignty.

I've written before about how the US says 'bomb the middle east' and Norway jumps to drop hundreds of bombs on Libya. (Norway having about 1% of the US population, so relative to size, that's like tens of thousands of bombs from the US.)

Another indicator of the vassalhood is when I get a police warning to my job that there is going to be a Kurdish protest nearby, and the police are on standby because Turkish counter-protestors may get violent, and why the fuck are Turks and Kurds fighting in Norway? Because this protest is happening outside the American embassy over an American withdrawal from some random fuckistan, and these supposed 'turkish-norwegians' and 'kurdish-norwegians' are grossly unassimilated. If I were in charge I'd be inclined to deport every fucker who participates in a protest of that sort, on the grounds that you seem to be more Turkish or American, see if Turkey or America will have you, you have no business in Norway, you (ahem) colonizer.

I also recall the newsfeed during the first year of President Trump when the obsession got particularly bad. I was commuting to work by public transport, where some civic-minded person has installed screens aboard that show brief news summaries, and it was Trump this and Trump that constantly. I eventually decided to do a proper count instead of going on irritated impression: over the course of a workweek, every morning feed and every evening feed contained something about President Trump.

Even today, the public transport newsfeed has more about the US President than it has about, for example, the Swedish PM. The US is more important than a neighboring country is to Norway.

[theculturedmarxist]

“The war in Ukraine is also a battle for raw materials. The country has large deposits of iron, titanium and lithium, some of which are now controlled by Russia.” That’s what the federally owned German foreign trade agency Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) reported on its website on January 16 under the title “Ukraine’s raw materials wealth at risk.”

There are trillions at stake. According to the GTAI, “raw material deposits worth $12.4 trillion” remain beyond the control of the Ukrainian army, “including 41 coal mines, 27 gas deposits, 9 oil fields and 6 iron ore deposits.” Ukraine has not only coal, gas, oil and wheat but also rare earths and metals—especially lithium, which has been called the “white gold” of the transition to new energy and transportation technologies. The country accounts for around one-third of Europe’s explored lithium deposits.

Only the ignorant could believe that this is irrelevant to NATO’s war aims. It would be the first major war in over 100 years that is not about mineral resources, markets and geostrategic interests. The World Socialist Web Site has pointed out in previous articles that deposits of critical raw materials in Russia and China, which are essential to the transition to electric mobility and renewable energy, are an important factor in the war calculus of NATO states.

Yet they go unmentioned in the media’s round-the-clock war propaganda. The media wish the public to believe that NATO is waging this war to defend “freedom” and “democracy”—and that after bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria back into the Middle Ages under similar pretexts.

Relevant trade journals, industry magazines and think tanks, on the other hand, rave about Ukraine’s mineral wealth and discuss how best to capture it. It was to this end that German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) even traveled to Ukraine at the beginning of April with a high-ranking business delegation.

According to the industry magazine Mining World, Ukraine has a total of around 20,000 raw material deposits, of which only 7,800 have been explored. Numerous other articles and strategy papers openly state that this is what the war is about.

On February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the largest German business magazine, Capital, published an article stating that “Europe’s supply of raw materials” was “threatened” by the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine was not only “the leading grain exporter” but also the largest EU supplier of iron ore pellets and “a linchpin for Europe’s energy security.” Among investors, the magazine said, there is “concern that the war will cut off exports of key raw materials.”

The GTAI article cited earlier reports that European steel mills were sourcing nearly one-fifth of their iron ore pellets from Ukraine in 2021. GTAI goes on to write that Ukraine is among the top ten producers of iron ore, manganese, zirconium, and graphite, and is “among the world leaders in titanium and kaolin.” In addition to “untapped oil and gas fields,” Ukraine’s lithium and titanium deposits, in particular, hold “enormous potential” for the European economy. In 2020, production volumes amounted to 1,681,000 tons of kaolin, 537,000 tons of titanium, 699,000 tons of manganese and 49,274,000 tons of iron ore.

Lithium for electromobility and energy storage

The price of lithium has increased more than eightfold in the last decade and is the subject of intense speculation. The metal is of strategic importance to the major imperialist powers because it is used in lithium-ion batteries installed in electric vehicles and off-grid renewable energy sources, and is also needed for lightweight aluminum alloys in the aerospace industry.

The largest lithium deposit in Europe is located in the Donetsk Oblast in the middle of the embattled Donbas region, only kilometers from the front lines. An article in the Tagesspiegel, published two months after the Russian invasion, points to untapped lithium reserves of 500,000 tons in Shevchenko near Potrovsk and at least two other Ukrainian deposits.

Western companies and Ukrainian oligarchs were already fighting bitterly for control of this “white gold” before the war. As the Tagesspiegel reports, “Ukrainian businessmen” (who stood close to the Ukrainian government of the time under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) with connections to Western mining companies obtained mining licenses, without a tender process, for the lithium deposit in Shevchenko as early as 2018.

The company in question, Petro Consulting—which was renamed “European Lithium Ukraine” shortly before the war began—is expected to be bought out by the Australian-European mining company European Lithium once its access to Ukraine’s lithium reserves is secured.

In 2018, when the Ukrainian Geological Survey refused to issue a “special permit” for Ukraine’s second largest lithium deposit at Dobra, likewise bypassing the tender process, Petro Consulting went so far as to sue the agency. After the Ukrainian Procurator General’s Office eventually launched an investigation into the allegedly illegal special permits, Petro-Consulting had its Shevchenko mining license revoked by the courts in April 2020 until further notice.

However, a spokesman for European Lithium told Der Tagesspiegel that the company bears “no risk in connection with the Ukrainian deposits.” He expressed confidence that the projects would be “made production-ready” after the end of the war.

Titanium for the Western arms industry

In a September 2022 article titled “Ukraine’s Titanium Can Armor the West,” the transatlantic think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) wrote: “Support for Ukraine has been driven by strategic concerns and moral-political values. But long-term Western help should also be based on solid material interests.”

“Ukraine’s substantial titanium deposits” are “a key resource critical to the West” because the metal is “integral to many defense systems,” such as aircraft components and missiles. Currently, the raw material for Airbus, Boeing and Co. is extracted “in an expensive and time-consuming six-step process” from titanium ore, which until then had been sourced to a considerable extent from Russia. This “dependence” on “strategic competitors and adversaries” is unacceptable from the West’s point of view and can be ended with the help of Ukrainian resources:

For example, Dnipro-based Velta, the largest private exporter of raw titanium in Europe, has developed a new production system that bypasses the intensive process of producing titanium sponge and could supply the US and European defense and aerospace industries with finished metal. Given there are only five countries in the world actively producing titanium sponge —China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan and Ukraine — Velta’s technology could be a game changer for the supply chain by cutting reliance on Russia and China.

CEPA is funded by US and European defense contractors and lists as members of its “scientific advisory board” Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor General H. R. McMaster, former German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and publicists Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama, and Timothy Garton Ash among others.

The CEPA article continues, “Reorienting titanium contracts to Ukraine would stimulate the country’s economy, even during wartime, not to mention during postwar reconstruction, and simultaneously strike another blow at Russia’s war machine.” The goal, it states, should be “cementing Ukraine’s integration into Europe.”

A January 28, 2023 report in Newsweek reports, “there is a nascent effort underway in the U.S. and allied nations to identify, develop, and utilize Ukraine’s vast resources of a key metal crucial for the development of the West’s most advanced military technology which will form the backbone of future deterrence against Russia and China.” The report adds, “If Ukraine wins, the U.S. and its allies will be in sole position to cultivate a new conduit of titanium.”

“Strategic raw materials partnership” between EU and Ukraine

The US and EU efforts to plunder Ukraine’s lithium and titanium deposits are part of the broader goal of tying Ukraine to the West as a strategic raw materials supplier. In particular, the EU is seeking to free itself from dependence on China—currently its most important raw materials supplier—against which the imperialist powers, especially the United States, are preparing to wage war.

On July 13, 2021, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Maroš Šefčovič, Vice President of the European Commission, signed a “Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials and Batteries” in Kiev to “integrate critical raw materials and battery value chains.” Ukraine’s inclusion in the European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA) and the European Battery Alliance (EBA) serves to “bolster Europe’s resilience and open strategic autonomy in key technologies,” the EU Commission said.

Referring to the list of critical raw materials in the EU’s associated “action plan,” Šefčovič told the press, “21 of these critical raw materials are in Ukraine, which is also extracting 117 out of 120 globally used minerals.” He added: “We’re talking about lithium, cobalt, manganese, rare earths—all of them are in Ukraine.”

Following the signing, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is also responsible for the defense and space industries of EU countries, praised the “high potential of the critical raw material reserves in Ukraine” that could help in “addressing some of the strategic dependencies [of the EU].”

Speaking at Raw Materials Week in Brussels in November 2022, Prime Minister Shmyhal stressed that Ukraine is “among the top ten producers of titanium, iron ore, kaolin, manganese, zirconium and graphite” and renewed his pledge to make the country an “integral part of industrial supply chains in the EU.”

The EU’s “strategic dependencies” are by no means limited to Russia or China and certainly not to Ukraine. A global race for strategic sources of raw materials has long since begun, in the course of which the US and the leading EU powers are attempting to divide among themselves the mineral resources and other resources of the “weaker” states. Although they are jointly waging war against Russia in Ukraine, this inevitably exacerbates conflicts between themselves as well.

The escalation of the war in Ukraine shows that the ruling elites are willing to go to extremes to enforce their profit interests. Only the working class can put an end to permanent war and the prospect of devastating nuclear war by bringing the resources of the entire planet under its democratic control on the basis of a socialist program and holding war profiteers to account.

[totallyhussein-blog]

"Let Them Have Answers - And Let Those Answers Be Difficult And Complex. Such Is Life."

Watch the cinematic world premiere trailer of Assassin's Creed Mirage, which is hitting stores in October! In the ninth century CE, Baghdad is at its height, leading the world in science, art, innovation, and commerce.

Amid its bustling urban landscape, a conflicted young orphan with a tragic past must navigate the streets to survive. Experience the story of Basim in Assassins Creed Mirage.

Have you ever visited the Age-Old Cities VR exhibition? You slip on a headset and travel to the Arab world’s most precious cultural heritage sites and cities: Mosul, Aleppo, Leptis Magna, and Palmyra.

Created for the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2019, Age-Old Cities features six iconic monuments from across the Arab world. Ubisoft, the creators of Assassins Creed partnered with Iconem, UNESCO, and the University of Lausanne to design the lifelike reconstructions.

To do this, Ubisoft utilized their game playing expertise to bring these historic sites back to life. With beautifully rendered sound, animation, lighting, and special effects, visitors to the Age-Old Cities exhibition are virtually transported to Libya, Syria and Iraq.