#u.s. war shipping administration

[stone-cold-groove]

He knows... do you... Grace Line - 1944.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

I don’t know why I’m shocked with the United States’ support for genocide given their track record with it. I don’t know, I just hoped that maybe for once they would actually make an effort to prevent one and speak out against it but it looks like we’re going down the same path we always do which is: make it worse, assist in the deaths of innocent civilians and then when the dust settles claim that another genocide can never happen again and next time we won’t be silent and we will do something about it.

[houseofbrat]

Bernie Would Have Won

By Krystal Ball

There are a million surface-level reasons for Kamala Harris’s loss and systematic underperformance in pretty much every county and among nearly every demographic group. She is part of a deeply unpopular administration. Voters believe the economy is bad and that the country is on the wrong track. She is a woman and we still have some work to do as a nation to overcome long-held biases. 

But the real problems for the Democrats go much deeper and require a dramatic course correction of a sort that, I suspect, Democrats are unlikely to embark upon. The bottom line is this: Democrats are still trying to run a neoliberal campaign in a post-neoliberal era. In other words, 2016 Bernie was right.

Let’s think a little bit about how we got here. The combination of the Iraq War and the housing collapse exposed the failures and rot that were the inevitable result of letting the needs of capital predominate over the needs of human beings. The neoliberal ideology which was haltingly introduced by Jimmy Carter, embraced fully by Ronald Reagan, and solidified across both parties with Bill Clinton embraced a laissez-faire market logic that would supplant market will for national will or human rights, but also raise incomes enough overall and create enough dynamism that the other problems were in theory, worth the trade off. Clinton after all ran with Reagan era tax cutting, social safety net slashing and free trade radicalism with NAFTA being the most prominent example. 

Ultimately, of course, this strategy fueled extreme wealth inequality. But for a while this logic seemed to be working out. The Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. Incomes did indeed rise and the internet fueled tech advances contributing to a sense of cosmopolitan dynamism. America had a swaggering confidence that these events really did represent a sort of end of history. We believed that our brand of privatization, capitalism, and liberal democracy would take over the world. We confidently wielded institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO to realize this global vision. We gave China most-favored nation trade status.

Underneath the surface, the unchecked market forces we had unleashed were devastating communities in the industrial Midwest and across the country. By the neoliberal definition NAFTA was a roaring success contributing to GDP growth. But if your job was shipped overseas and your town was shoved into economic oblivion, the tradeoff didn’t seem like such a great deal.

The underlying forces of destruction came to a head with two major catastrophes, the Iraq War and the housing collapse/Great Recession. The lie that fueled the Iraq war destroyed confidence in the institutions that were the bedrock of this neoliberal order and in the idea that the U.S. could or should remake the world in our image. Even more devastating, the financial crisis left home owners destitute while banks were bailed out, revealing that there was something deeply unjust in a system that placed capital over people. How could it be that the greedy villains who triggered a global economic calamity were made whole while regular people were left to wither on the vine?

These events sparked social movements on both the right and the left. The Tea Party churned out populist-sounding politicians like Sarah Palin and birtherist conspiracies about Barack Obama, paving the way for the rise of Donald Trump. The Tea Party and Trumpism are not identical, of course, but they share a cast of villains: The corrupt bureaucrats or deep state. The immigrants supposedly changing your community. The cultural elites telling you your beliefs are toxic. Trump’s version of this program is also explicitly authoritarian. This authoritarianism is a feature not a bug for some portion of the Trump coalition which has been persuaded that democracy left to its own devices could pose an existential threat to their way of life. 

On the left, the organic response to the financial crisis was Occupy Wall Street, which directly fueled the Bernie Sanders movement. Here, too, the villains were clear. In the language of Occupy it was the 1% or as Bernie put it the millionaires and billionaires. It was the economic elite and unfettered capitalism that had made it so hard to get by. Turning homes into assets of financial speculation. Wildly profiteering off of every element of our healthcare system. Busting unions so that working people had no collective power. This movement was, in contrast to the right, was explicitly pro-democracy, with a foundational view that in a contest between the 99% and the 1%, the 99% would prevail. And that a win would lead to universal programs like Medicare for All, free college, workplace democracy, and a significant hike in the minimum wage.  

These two movements traveled on separate tracks within their respective party alliances and met wildly different fates. On the Republican side, Donald Trump emerged as a political juggernaut at a time when the party was devastated and rudderless, having lost to Obama twice in a row. This weakened state—and the fact that the Trump alternatives were uncharismatic drips like Jeb Bush—created a path for Trump to successfully execute a hostile takeover of the party.

Plus, right-wing populism embraces capital, and so it posed no real threat to the monied interests that are so influential within the party structures. The uber-rich are not among the villains of the populist right (see: Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and so on), except in so much as they overlap with cultural leftism. The Republican donor class was not thrilled with Trump’s chaos and lack of decorum but they did not view him as an existential threat to their class interests. This comfort with him was affirmed after he cut their taxes and prioritized union busting and deregulation in his first term in office.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party put its thumb on the scales and marshaled every bit of power they could, legitimate and illegitimate, to block Bernie Sanders from a similar party takeover. The difference was that Bernie’s party takeover did pose an existential threat—both to party elites who he openly antagonized and to the party’s big money backers. The bottom line of the Wall Street financiers and corporate titans was explicitly threatened. His rise would simply not be allowed. Not in 2016 and not in 2020.

What’s more, Hillary Clinton and her allies launched a propaganda campaign to posture as if they were actually to the left of Bernie by labeling him and his supporters sexist and racist for centering class politics over identity politics. This in turn spawned a hell cycle of woke word-policing and demographic slicing and dicing and antagonism towards working class whites that only made the Democratic party more repugnant to basically everyone.

This identity politics sword has also been wielded within the Democratic Party to crush any possibility of a Bernie-inspired class focused movement in Congress attempted by the Justice Democrats and the Squad in 2018. My colleague Ryan Grim has written an entire book on this subject so I won’t belabor the point here. But suffice it to say, the threat of the Squad to the Democratic Party’s ideology and order has been thoroughly neutralized. The Squad members themselves, perhaps out of ideology and perhaps out of fear of being smeared as racist, leaned into identitarian politics which rendered them non-threatening in terms of national popular appeal. They were also relentlessly attacked from within the party, predominately by pro-Israel groups that an unprecedented tens of millions of dollars in House primaries, which has led to the defeat of several members and has served as a warning and threat to the rest.

That brings us to today where the Democratic Party stands in the ashes of a Republican landslide which will sweep Donald Trumpback into the White House. The path not taken in 2016 looms larger than ever. Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros. The top contributors to Bernie’s campaign often held jobs at places like Amazon and Walmart. The unions loved him. And—never forget—he earned the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement that Trump also received the day before the election this year. It turns out, the Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real! While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie. For many of them now that the choice is between Trump and the dried out husk of neoliberalism, they’re going Trump.

I have always believed that Bernie would have defeated Trump in 2016, though of course there is no way to know for sure. What we can say for sure is that the brand of class-first social democracy Bernie ran on in 2016 has proven successful in other countries because of course the crisis of neoliberalism is a global phenomenon. Most notably, Bernie’s basic political ideology was wildly successful electorally with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and now his successor Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, Lula Da Silva in Brazil, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. AMLO, in fact, was one of the most popular leaders in the entire world and dramatically improved the livelihoods of a majority of his countrymen. Bernie’s basic ideology was also successful in our own history.

In the end, I got this election dead wrong. I thought between January 6th and the roll back of human rights for women, it would be enough. I thought that the overtly fascist tendencies of Donald Trump and the spectacle of the world’s richest man bankrolling him would be enough strikes against him to overcome the problems of the Democratic Party which I have spoken out about for years now–problems Kamala Harris decided to lean into rather than confront. Elevating Liz Cheney as a top surrogate was not just a slap in the face to all the victims of American imperialism—past and ongoing; it was a broad signal to voters that Democrats were the party of elites, playing directly into right-wing populist tropes. While the media talked about it as a “tack to the center,” author and organizer Jonathan Smucker more aptly described it as “a tack to the top.” And as I write this now, I have zero hope or expectation that Democrats will look at the Bernie bro coalition and realize why they screwed up. Cable news pundits are already blaming the left once again for the failures of a party that has little to do with the actual left and certainly not the populist left. 

Instead, Trump’s victory represents a defeat of social democratic class-first politics in America—not quite final, but not temporary either. The Democrats have successfully smothered the movement, blocked the entranceways, salted the earth. Instead they will, as Bill Clinton did in the ‘90s, embrace the fundamental tenets of the Trumpist worldview. 

They already are, in fact. Democrats have dropped their resistance to Trump’s mass deportation policies and immigrant scapegoating. The most ambitious politician in the Democratic coalition, Gavin Newsom, is making a big show of being tough-on-crime and dehumanizing the homeless. Democrat-leaning billionaires like Jeff Bezos who not only owns Amazon but the Washington Post have already abandoned their resistance.

Maybe I will be just as wrong as I was about the election but it is my sense that with this Trump victory, authoritarian right politics have won the ideological battle for what will replace the neoliberal order in America. And yes, I think it will be ugly, mean, and harmful—because it already is.

[simply-ivanka]

Kamala Harris: Mystery Commander in Chief

How would the Vice President keep America safe in a dangerous world? The voters deserve some answers.

The Editorial Board --- Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris is all but telling Americans they’ll have to elect her to find out what she really believes, as the Vice President ducks interviews and the media give her a free ride. This is bad enough on domestic issues, but on foreign policy it could be perilous. The world is more dangerous than it’s been in decades, and Americans deserve to know how the woman aiming to be Commander in Chief Harris would confront these threats.

Ms. Harris this week tweeted a photo of her sitting next to President Biden in the White House situation room discussing the Middle East. The point is to suggest she’s a co-pilot on Biden foreign policy.

This isn’t the credential the Harris campaign thinks it is, and the voters should hear directly from her what she thinks about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, the failure to deter Russia in Ukraine, the Iranian nuclear program, China’s island grabs in the South China Sea, and more. The matter is all the more important because Ms. Harris conspicuously declined to choose a running mate who might lend foreign policy experience to the ticket.

Ms. Harris has given a few hints about her own views on the Middle East, and those aren’t encouraging. Her team spent much of Thursday walking back whether she told an anti-Israel group she’d be willing to ponder an arms embargo against Israel. She skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress when our main Middle East ally is under siege. Did she pass over Josh Shapiro as her running mate because he would have enraged the anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party?

To the extent she has revealed a larger instinct on national security, it’s been wrong. She told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2019 that she’d rejoin the Iran nuclear deal as long as “Iran also returned to verifiable compliance.” But Iran didn’t comply and is now on the brink of a nuclear breakout.

Her 2018 Senate vote to “end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen,” as Ms. Harris put it in a tweet, also hasn’t aged well. The Houthis the Saudis were fighting are now targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea almost daily and putting U.S. naval assets at risk. Does she think this status quo can persist—and what would she do differently?

Ms. Harris will surely argue that she and Mr. Biden reinvigorated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. But absent a change in U.S. political will, the war in Ukraine isn’t on track to end on terms favorable to American interests. Her past enthusiasm for banning fracking—which her campaign is trying to walk back—also suggests she isn’t serious about checking Mr. Putin’s main source of war financing.

Ms. Harris would no doubt also tout the diplomatic progress the Biden Administration has made in Asia with Japan, the Philippines and others. Yet she whiffed on one of the single most important diplomatic questions in Asia: She opposed Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that would have excluded China and boosted America as the region’s premiere trading partner.

Most important, will Ms. Harris build up the hard military assets required to deter China’s Xi Jinping and a consolidating axis of U.S. adversaries? “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget,” Ms. Harris said as a Senator in 2020 after voting against a Bernie Sanders proposal to slash the Pentagon by 10%. That vote needed no explanation, but Ms. Harris wanted to make sure the left knew she was sympathetic. Does she still want to slash the defense budget?

Donald Trump often shoots from the hip on these subjects, and his favorable comments about dictators are witless. But his first-term record, especially on Iran and the Middle East, is far stronger than the Biden-Harris performance.

Americans shouldn’t have to read tea leaves to figure out if Ms. Harris would keep the country safe in a treacherous world.

[calm-with-anxiety]

If I see or hear people defending their votes for Trump with “well I didn’t really know her policies and plans for her presidency” I will burst into flames. We live in a time where almost every piece of information is in your hand, you could’ve Googled her plans, it was on her fucking website for weeks, it was 80 pages of policy and how they planned to pay for it. Like you chose to be an uneducated voter that got information from commercials and short form video.

The economy line is bullshit because his plans will make everything more expensive, tariffs are payed for by you, you think the multibillion dollar company will take on the extra cost to buy and ship goods by lowering the CEO salary, no, they will make the item more expensive because they never promised you a $200 tv, but they did promise stockholders a dividend of $10/share. His mass deportation policy will cause the economy to collapse because immigrants, legal or illegal, do the jobs that others look down on. You never see a line of white guys in overalls hoping to be hired for below minimum wage to pick fruit for hours in the sun, you don’t see young white men showing up to construction jobs that the builder has subcontracted so it’s cheaper to build. The bedrock of the U.S. economy is cheap labor and a majority of that is immigrants who are looking for jobs that don’t require knowing perfect English and have employers that look the other way when you don’t have documents because they know you will work for anything.

Don’t even get me started on healthcare, outside of women’s healthcare which will get worse, if he finally gets rid of the affordable care act, aka Obamacare, they will replace it with nothing. The man was president before and after John McCain put his thumb down they never tried to make a new policy that wasn’t throwing the whole program into the trash. Also the affordable care act is more than just low cost healthcare, it put in place pre-existing conditions, for those too young to remember, the insurance companies could deny you coverage all because you might get cancer one day because your mother had it, you would have to pay out of pocket for an inhaler because asthma was a pre-existing condition, even if you were diagnosed with it later in life. Don’t forget what the vaccine situation will be, especially if he puts RFK jr. anywhere near it, like there is actual fear that Polio will come back because guess what? Most people under the age of 40 are not vaccinated for it because it was considered eradicated due to the mass vaccination of children in the 50s and 60s. When you complain about feeling like shit after getting the flu shot or a Covid booster, that is the vaccine working in your body, your body is doing an internal workout so if and when you come in contact with those viruses you won’t be getting extremely sick or die because someone doesn’t know how to cover their cough.

I think this election was proof that you can have all the information and still know nothing because you chose to know nothing. People vote with their eyes, not their mind. Gas where I live has been under $3.00 for months, it’s been under $2.50 at the warehouse stores for weeks, but because an ad on tv said prices are rising people believed the tv over their own experience. People saw grocery prices increase and blamed the administration when in reality corporations took advantage of Covid shortages, raised prices, recorded historic profits, and didn’t start bring prices down until this summer after people realized what was happening to some extent and even then they didn’t return to pre-2020 prices because the profit still needed to be high, they looked at the $2 increase in a bag of chips over 4 years and blamed democrats and not Lays.

This is going to be a painful 4 years, for many people here and abroad, Ukraine will have to depend on Europe which is starting to lean conservative as well and the war in Gaza will take an extreme shift that will make the last year look like a paper cut in terms of humanitarian assistance and a possible end. It’s already getting on my nerves as people tweet “we keep fighting” and “we need to be strong so they can’t do all they plan to do like the first time”, it’s not going to be like the first time, the adults in the room he had with him, many who came out and supported Harris, are gone and now it will be yes men that he was told to put there by the extreme right like the supporters of project 2025 and billionaires. And for those saying “well maybe he will die in office”, you think JD Vance is better? He allegedly picked him because DT jr. suggested him and if you have ever seen jr. and his takes you would know Vance can be worse.

This is gonna hurt for many people that will now be seen as lower than second class citizens and you won’t even have lower prices to show for it as that seemed to be the reason you voted for him, enjoy your expensive goods as people lost rights.

[mariacallous]

Ukraine is outraged by the unwavering American support for Israel, calling it a "double standard" as the United States refuses to intercept Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine, Politico reported on Oct. 16.

This week, the United States deployed the advanced THAAD missile defense system to protect Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles. However, Ukraine receives no similar level of assistance despite facing daily attacks from Russian drones, missiles, and bombs, the article states.

The reason for this discrepancy is that Russia possesses nuclear weapons, making Washington wary of escalating tensions with Moscow.

"The tough answer that Ukrainians may not like to hear but is unfortunately true is that we can take the risk of shooting down Iranian missiles over Israel without triggering direct war with Tehran that could lead to nuclear war," a high-ranking U.S. Senate aide working on Ukraine policy told Politico.

“There’s a lot more risk in trying that with Russia.”

Two officials from the Biden administration confirmed this. The White House fears that sending U.S. troops to Ukraine to intercept Russian missiles could provoke a direct military confrontation between the two leading nuclear powers, with potentially apocalyptic consequences.

"It is sad to look at all this as an ordinary citizen of Ukraine — when in an agreement to prevent escalation on the part of Moscow, your country and citizens are being sacrificed," said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies.

Kyiv wants Poland and Romania to help intercept Russian targets over western Ukraine. This option is being discussed, but the countries have not changed their policies yet, Politico writes. Warsaw has stated that it will not act without full NATO alliance support.

Meanwhile, two Ukrainian air defense officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained that it is easier for the United States to defend Israel's skies because it is a small country, and America can use ship-based air defense systems. In contrast, Ukraine is vast and inaccessible to Western fleets; its allies would need to place air defense systems on the country's western border, from which they could only protect adjacent territory.

"NATO members entering into the aerial defense of Ukraine would need to bring a much larger contribution, over a broader area, with a greater risk of ‘entering the war’ for uncertain gains," said Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“The cost would also be greater, as the frequency of Russian attacks is far greater than the significant but reactive Iranian attempts to strike Israel directly.”

However, Ukraine's frustration is growing as the Biden administration is not doing enough to help Kyiv stop Russian attacks, Politico notes. This includes slow weapons deliveries and a ban on using long-range missiles to strike Russian territory.

According to the outlet, U.S. officials are aware of Kyiv's growing dissatisfaction. They stated that they are working on new weapons supplies, which they hope will address the outrage.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized on Oct. 13 the deployment of a THAAD battery and associated U.S. military personnel to bolster Israel's air defense following Iranian attacks on April 13 and Oct. 1.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said on Oct. 15 that the United States will not intercept missiles over Ukraine as it does over Israel because "the wars are different."

[darkmaga-returns]

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Housing Minister Sean Fraser have resigned, signaling a potential end to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's tenure due to mounting internal dissent and external pressures.

Freeland's resignation letter highlighted the government's fiscal mismanagement and its inability to prepare for a potential tariff war with the U.S. under the Trump administration, raising concerns about Canada's economic vulnerability.

Nearly two dozen backbenchers urged Trudeau to resign in October, citing concerns over the party's performance and the potential for electoral disaster, intensifying pressure for a leadership change.

The opposition Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, has gained ground in polls, positioning themselves as a potential alternative leadership capable of facing the challenges posed by the Trump administration.

The Trudeau administration's failures in addressing economic and pandemic-related challenges have eroded public confidence, creating a critical need for a strong and decisive new leader to navigate the "America First" era and unite the country.

The era of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on the brink of collapse as Canada braces for a second Trump administration and a new threat of steep tariffs.

[cavalierzee]

We Don't Know Who's Bombing Gaza

So, with all the spy satellites, spy planes, spy ships, intelligence agencies, the U.S. doesn’t know who’s dropping bombs on Gaza.

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) – The Biden administration has sent to Israel large numbers of munitions, including more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles, since the start of the war in Gaza, said two U.S. officials briefed on an updated list of weapons shipments.

Between the war’s start last October and recent days, the United States has transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly. (CREDIT: REUTERS)

[beardedmrbean]

Infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout is reportedly back to his old ways less than two years after his release from U.S. custody in a prisoner swap for WNBA star Brittney Griner.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, when emissaries from Yemen’s militant Houthi movement visited Moscow in August to negotiate a $10 million arms purchase, they encountered the man known as Vladimir Putin’s “Merchant of Death.”

The polyglot former Soviet intelligence officer turned to arms dealing after the Cold War, buying up enough surplus Soviet-era military equipment to seed his gun-running into a global enterprise that brought in hundreds of millions in revenue by selling to militant groups in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

His alleged former clients include terrorist group al Qaeda and the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as Western governments. He won the moniker “Sanctions Buster” for his ability to get around restrictive trade measures and his story even inspired a middling 2005 Nicolas Cage movie, for which a sequel is in the works (mercifully, Cage did not try to put on a Russian accent).

One of the world’s most wanted men, Bout was arrested in 2008 in Thailand in a sting by the Royal Thai Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2012, he was convicted in a Manhattan federal court of trafficking arms to terrorists and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Citing a European security official and others familiar with the August meeting in Moscow, the Journal reported that the Houthis’ arms purchase is a relatively small one, consisting of automatic weapons including AK-74s that could begin delivery as early as this month under the guise of food shipments.

However, the Houthi members who visited Moscow also inquired about other weapons Russia would be willing to sell, including anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, the Journal’s sources said, noting that there’s no evidence Bout would be involved in those deals.

Nevertheless, even the smallest shipment will raise ire in Washington, as the Iran-backed Houthis were put back on a U.S. list of “global terrorist” groups in January.

That followed dozens of attacks by the group on merchant and commercial ships in the Red Sea, which the Houthis say is in protest of the Israel-Hamas war, in which the U.S. government has sent billions in arms to the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Houthis also recently claimed responsibility for attempted drone attacks on Israeli cities that were thwarted by Israel’s air defenses.

Russia, the Journal noted, has limited its involvement in the Middle East conflict, and arming one of the belligerent parties would constitute a notable escalation.

Bout, who said he kept a picture of Putin in his prison cell and is a fervent supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was elected to a seat in a local legislature last year.

After his release from U.S. custody, he expressed sympathy for Griner, who was sentenced to nine years in a labor camp by Russian authorities for cannabis oil cartridges found in her luggage, in what was seen as a deliberately harsh punishment.

“Of course, I feel, you know, bad or sorry for any person who’s going to be used as a pawn, despite whether they committed something or not,” Bout told ESPN, following his 2022 release in the prisoner swap for Griner.

[girlactionfigure]

*ISRAEL REALTIME* - "Connecting the World to Israel in Realtime"

🔻Anti-genocide peace rockets fired from Gaza today (2) at Sderot, and friendly neighbor welcoming rockets and friendly homicide drones were fired by Hezbollah at Kiryat Shmona (3), Arab al-Aramsha, and Katzrin today.

▪️From Wednesday to Friday, 70 buses with "pilgrims" crossed the Iraqi-Syrian border. It is clear that these are not pilgrims, but Iranian and Iraqi fighters who cross into the territory of Syria and Lebanon.

▪️ABOUT ALL THE WARNINGS OF WAR IN THE NORTH.. The IDF does not inform the public or countries near and far about future military operations that it intends to launch into an operation or war.  The messages you have been hearing are NOT from the IDF, but rather efforts of the political echelon to deliver a message to Hezbollah that Israel is getting serious.  And in response you get the opposite, the item above, Iran moving militia fighters closer.

▪️Houthis: American and British ships (war and merchant) became legitimate targets after their attacks on Yemen.

▪️4 U.S. bases attacked in Syria and Iraq overnight.

▪️ANGRY SOLDIERS SAY.. he media does not reflect the reality, we are mowing them down in Gaza!!  According to US estimates, Hamas had approximately 25,000 terrorists before the October 7 war, and that the IDF has eliminated about 10,000 Hamas fighters since Oct. 7 with thousands more are missing and wounded.

▪️JUDEA-SHOMRON STATs.. since the beginning of the war, over 2,950 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division, over 1,350 of whom are associated with the terrorist organization Hamas.

▪️FRANCE has joined the suspend-UNWRA club.

▪️Heavy snow on Mt. Hermon, the site is closed.

▪️(How info spreads…)  Min. Of Foreign Affairs contacted foreign embassies in Israel and checked whether they have generators and satellite phones for backup in case of long power outages.  And noting that all these facilities are in Tel Aviv, Hertzilya or Jerusalem - that spreads the thought “what does the government know that they would ask such a question?”

▪️Noting 10 days after “medication” was delivered with the promise of delivery to hostages - with evidence.  No evidence provided.  Remember the last deal, visits by the Red Cross… never happened.  Why do we keep doing this?

▪️NBC news says Biden administration considering slowing down arms shipments to Israel to force Netanyahu to follow U.S. orders to reduce fighting in Gaza.  WHERE ARE THE BABIES?

▪️Min. Of National Security signs regulations automatically extending gun licenses that would expire in Q1, 2024 for months.

▪️IDF: Two reserve units are withdrawing from Gaza, one reserve unit is DEPLOYING to Gaza.

[usafphantom2]

The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is leaving the Middle East

Sep 12, 2024 at 11:41 AM

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s rare move to keep two Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East over the past several weeks has now finished, and the Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the TR to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly.

The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there last month to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the region.

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as the war in Gaza has dragged on for 11 months, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after a more than eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the destroyer Daniel Inouye are expected to be in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday. The other destroyer in the strike group, the Russell, had already left the Middle East and has been operating in the South China Sea.

The Lincoln, which is now in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships, arrived in the Middle East about three weeks ago, allowing it to overlap with the Roosevelt until now.

There also are a number of U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and two destroyers and the guided missile submarine Georgia are in the Red Sea.

@DefenseNews.com

[lookninjas]

You know, it's interesting to me that I saw an article as I was scrolling through my dash this morning that (supposedly) blames the U.S. for being deeply involved in a genocide in Sudan. You might think from such a description that we'd be talking about U.S. military aid or boots on the ground or the CIA or something like that, and not just the Trump administration tanking our diplomatic efforts and Biden's administration not making the best decisions to right the ship. You might also think that such an article would not include a section like this:

David Satterfield, who replaced Feltman as US special envoy to the Horn of Africa and who has since resigned, said that Washington did not have anything but bad choices in Sudan, and therefore had to strike deals with the Sudanese military. According to Satterfield, “If there is ever an opportunity to return to a path towards restoration of a civilian-led government, you’re going to have to talk to the military then as well.

You also might not think that such an article would outright reference Russian involvement in Sudan, which it does.

Russia believes that its strong presence in Sudan will augment its status in Africa and the Middle East, which is considered an American redoubt. Since 2014, and with Moscow’s aspirations to exploit African mineral riches, the Kremlin has strengthened its ties to Sudan in order to ameliorate western sanctions following its invasion of Crimea, sanctions that became even harsher after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.16 In 2017, former Sudanese President al-Bashir visited Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two countries agreed to establish a holding company run by the paramilitary Wagner Group to mine gold ore. Russia also signed a 25-year lease in December 2020 to build a military base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea that can receive nuclear-powered ships. It was also interesting that Hemedti headed an official delegation to Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And while we're talking about Russian involvement in Sudan, which is why I'm here in the first place, it's really really really interesting to me that this article was phrased as proof that the U.S. was heavily involved in genocide in Sudan, despite the fact that the Russian Wagner group (accused of war crimes in Ukraine) has been providing missiles and military training to the Sudanese paramilitary group RSF while smuggling gold out of Sudan to fund their own activities in Ukraine. Fun fact about the Wagner group: They're also heavily involved in social media misinformation campaigns.

Wasn't there a Russian misinformation campaign on tumblr leading up to the Presidential elections in 2016?

And despite the "mysterious" death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash (a short time after his aborted march on Moscow), Russia is still working on bringing the Wagner organization back under their control. Because, you know, they still have that whole invasion of Ukraine they're working on. An invasion of Ukraine that would sure be a whole lot easier for them if they could convince Americans to stop providing military support to Ukraine. They're already doing pretty nicely with the Republican party, but the Democrats (and the American left in general) have been harder to get on-side.

It does kind of feel like tying American military involvement in other countries to active genocide would be a great way to discourage people on the American left from supporting continued involvement in Ukraine, wouldn't it?

We're slightly less than a year away from the next American presidential election. There is no reason to believe that the Russian propaganda machine, which has already been operating at full blast since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, is going to slow down. This quote from the linked article is particularly chilling:

A particular challenge is that people tend to spread falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”; this is particularly the case for false political news (Vosoughi, Roy and and Aral, 2018[7]). For example, one study found that tweets containing false information were 70% more likely to be retweeted than accurate tweets (Brown, 2020[8]). Another study found that false information on Facebook attracts six times more engagement than factual posts (Edelson, 2021[9]). In addition, feedback loops between the platforms and traditional media can serve to further amplify disinformation, magnifying the risk that disinformation can be used to deliberately influence public conversations, as well as confuse and discourage the public.

I think it's important to remember, especially now, that we are capable of spreading misinformation. The article about U.S. involvement in Sudan wasn't placed on there by an algorithm. This is fucking tumblr. That was one of my mutuals. Because they're concerned about American military intervention and they're against genocide and it sounded bad and they were upset and they didn't think to read the article. Because they didn't spend the time of Prigozhin's march on Moscow mainlining information on the Wagner group the way that I did, so they didn't go "Hey, Sudan? Wait a minute --" the way I did. Because misinformation that isn't targeted at your group is designed to be easy to spot, so you'll think that the misinformation that is targeted to your group will also be easy to spot, and it fucking isn't.

Because this culture of "If you care, you'll share" has gotten people to click that reblog button without thinking twice about it.

Don't keep falling for it. You don't have to spend an hour digging up sources and pulling out quotes for a ten-note post the way that I did. I'm like this as a human. It's fine if you're not. But if you're not even going to click the link to read the article and actually read it critically (or if there's no sources at all except a twitter screenshot, which I've also seen quite a bit of), then don't reblog it. Save it as a draft for when you have time to do the research, or just don't do anything with it at all. You're not obligated.

And if you have the relevant background to spot the disinfo, I mean -- again, look, you're not obligated to take that hour and search those sources. Even I don't do this all the time. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it will not spread the way the disinfo does. I'm gonna see that genocide post like five times at least on my dash, and I'm probably going to see it at least once from someone who has at least liked this post (if not reblogged it as well). But if you can. If you have the energy and the time. Try to put a little info out there. It might help someone.

That's all. Be good. Be skeptical.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein 

Israel is on the front lines of a war against the U.S. launched by Islamic radicals led by the Iranian regime and its proxies, including Hamas.

Hamas and its supporters are not only antisemites. They also hate all non-Muslims, the West in general and especially the U.S. Their ultimate goal is to conquer the world and kill or oppress all those who do not accept their interpretation of Islam.

In the U.S., supporters of Hamas and its sponsors have placed the country under siege. They shriek their support of the Houthis, who attack U.S. shipping and naval forces in the Red Sea. They violently disrupt or attempt to disrupt time-honored American celebrations and holidays, such as public Christmas tree-lighting ceremonies, the New York City Thanksgiving parade and the Times Square New Year’s Eve festivities. They close down bridges, tunnels and roads during rush hour. They pollute once-proud U.S. campuses with racist violence. At a recent violent “demonstration” in New York City, a Hamas supporter spewed the “n-word” at the police officers who arrested him. The anti-Americanism of these thugs is as strong as their antisemitism.

There have also been reports that these pro-terrorist “activists” are well-paid and coordinate their efforts, directly or indirectly, with Hamas and its cohorts. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and materially supporting it or providing it with services is prohibited under the law (18 USC 2339). Local laws also apply, which accounts for some of the arrests that have been made.

These pro-terrorist campaigns have no legitimacy whatsoever and no place in the public square. This is obvious given the policies they support. For example, besides supporting the genocide of Jews, they are also viciously misogynistic. Women under the Hamas regime are legally second-class citizens. Domestic physical and emotional abuse is rampant and honor killings regularly occur.

In addition, Hamas is virulently racist. It still labels thousands of people of African origin “slaves.” They reportedly live in a ghetto area of Gaza called Al-Abeed, meaning “The Slaves.”

There is also rampant child abuse, child labor, sexual exploitation of children and slavery in Gaza.

In other words, Hamas supporters are projecting their own evil beliefs and practices onto others, such as their false accusations of genocide against Israel. While supporting genocide themselves—as well as racism, misogyny, slavery and child abuse—they spew blood libels at the Jewish state.

Thankfully, the American people have woken up to the danger posed by Hamas and its Iranian supporters. Recent polls report that an overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in this war.

It is time for the Biden administration to stop pandering to Hamas’s American supporters. They may be strident and vocal in their demands for an unconditional ceasefire and the elimination of Israel, but they do not represent a majority of American voters.

The mistakes being made by the Biden administration are similar to those made by Jimmy Carter when he was running for reelection in 1980. Carter faced similar challenges and his weak response to the Iran hostage crisis and equivocal support of Israel because of his disdain for what he viewed as Menachem Begin’s right-wing government are eerily akin to the errors being made by the current administration.

The results of Carter’s folly speak for themselves: His share of the Jewish vote dropped from 71% to 45%. He lost decisively to Ronald Reagan and the rest is history.

Recent polling suggests that Biden should avoid Carter’s mistakes. For example, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) has seen his support rise since he disregarded concerns about alienating his progressive base and came out strongly in support of Israel.

This is the time for Reaganesque determination and action, not Carteresque appeasement. America’s military response to Houthi aggression was a good start, but more is necessary to prevent further attacks by the Iranian regime and its proxies. The U.S. must project its overwhelming power in order to reestablish deterrence.

Hamas and its cohorts must be prevented from committing any further atrocities and acts of aggression. The only way to do this is to unequivocally support total Israeli victory.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Akbar Shahid Ahmed at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — 19 senators on Wednesday voted against sending Israel additional American military equipment — the first-ever rebuke of its kind in Congress, and a signal of how frustration has grown in Washington as Israeli forces have pummeled Gaza with near-total support from President Joe Biden. That group of Democratic and independent senators voted against sending Israel $61 million worth of high explosive mortar rounds. All but one of them, Sen. George Helmy (D-N.J.), also voted to reject shipping Israel $774 million worth of tank rounds, which its military has used in attacks on children and aid groups. Both tranches of equipment are part of a package of American-Israeli arms deals Biden unveiled in August. The overwhelming majority of the chamber, including all Republicans, still voted to allow the arms deals to proceed. Still, the number represented a significant stand against Biden and a challenge to the idea that support for Israel is beyond question. And notably, some centrist legislators and peers who have issued relatively little criticism of Israel backed the proposal, like Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).

Two previous efforts to publicly rally senators against Biden’s policy — proposals to require greater scrutiny of how foreign countries use U.S. weapons and to mandate a State Department report on Israel’s human rights record — received the endorsement of 18 and 12 senators, respectively. Wednesday’s votes on arms for Israel also included a motion to block $262 million in American bomb kits for the country. Those kits, known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions or JDAMS, have repeatedly been used in strikes that killed civilians. But some who defend exporting them claim they make airstrikes more precise — an argument that appeared to have some purchase among legislators. 17 senators voted against the bomb kits. Critics of Israel’s U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza knew they were never going to actually secure a majority of votes. But while acknowledging the GOP’s unwillingness to question Israel and the intensely pro-Israel views also held by a large proportion of Democrats, skeptics of the Israeli campaigns instead sought to demonstrate a sizeable degree of opposition to continued U.S. involvement in the wars.

[...] Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and allied senators, including moderates like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), rallied votes against the weapons transfers. They said they acknowledge Israel’s right to self-defense but highlighted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to heed calls from humanitarian groups to let more aid reach civilians, and his defiance of U.S. requests to alter Israeli conduct. The Biden administration pushed hard to convince senators to keep endorsing arms deals for Israel. On Tuesday, the White House sent a document of talking points to Congress that claimed lawmakers who voted for the bills blocking the sales would be aiding Hamas, HuffPost revealed. The administration also dispatched Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Capitol Hill for a briefing with legislators prior to the vote.

[...] The efforts by the administration and Schumer dovetailed with those from Israelis and ardently pro-Israel groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobby, called the legislation “dangerous” and urged constituents to contact their senators to oppose it; it ran ads with that message in 17 states. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, also visited Congress on Wednesday. [...] An AIPAC-aligned group focused on countering criticism of Israel among Democrats, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), also sought to minimize how many votes the bills can win. “The Biden Administration confirmed that Israel is adhering to the standards set by the United States for humanitarian aid into Gaza,” DMFI argued. Aid organizations and experts – including inside the U.S. government — have repeatedly challenged the Biden administration’s assessments of Israeli conduct, however, and say the humanitarian situation in Gaza is worsening rather than improving.

18 courageous Democratic Senators, including Sens. Durbin, Warren, Sanders, Ossoff, and Warnock, voted to give AIPAC the middle finger by refusing to send Israel Apartheid State more US military equipment and not waste more taxpayer money in the process.

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) voted Present.

[simply-ivanka]

Biden Leaves His Successor a World of Disorder

His policies have encouraged the advance of U.S. adversaries across the globe.

By The Editorial Board -- Wall Street Journal

President Biden will address the United Nations on Tuesday, in what is likely to be his last big moment on the world stage. A President’s foreign-policy legacy typically outlasts his term, so it’s worth taking a step back and considering the world Mr. Biden will leave his successor.

It is a far more dangerous world than Mr. Biden inherited, and far less congenial for U.S. interests, human freedom and democracy. The latter is tragically ironic since the President has made the global contest between democracy and authoritarians an abiding theme. Authoritarians have advanced on his watch in every part of the world—Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and even the Americas.

***

• Mr. Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was his single most damaging decision, and it has led to cascading trouble. The Taliban control the country and are reimposing feudal Islamist rule. His withdrawal has done more harm to more women than anything in decades, while jihadists have revived their terror sanctuary.

• More damaging is the message his withdrawal sent to adversaries about American will and retreat. The credibility of U.S. deterrence collapsed. Mr. Biden tried to appease Vladimir Putin by blessing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and refusing to arm Ukraine. Mr. Putin concluded he could invade Ukraine at limited cost, especially after Mr. Biden blurted out that a “minor incursion” might not elicit the same Western opposition.

After Kyiv bravely resisted, Mr. Biden sent weapons, but too little and too delayed at every stage of the war. Even now, after 31 months and 100,000 or more dead, Mr. Biden dithers over letting Ukraine use long-range ATACMS against targets inside Russia.

• His record in the Middle East is worse. Rather than build on the Abraham Accords he inherited, he tried to ostracize Saudi Arabia and he banned offensive weapons to fight the Houthis. From the start he courted the mullahs in Iran to renew the 2015 nuclear accord that had enriched Iran before Donald Trump withdrew. He refused to enforce oil sanctions, even as Iran spread mayhem through its proxy militias.

The U.S. was caught flat-footed when Hamas, aided by Iran, invaded Israel and massacred 1,200 innocents. His national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to edit an online version of a Foreign Affairs essay already published boasting that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”

Here’s how quiet: Our foremost regional ally is now at war on multiple fronts. Israel’s defensive campaign in Gaza isn’t finished and a new and perhaps bloodier fight is unfolding with Hezbollah. The Houthis have all but shut down Western commercial shipping around the Red Sea, while Mr. Biden makes U.S. naval commanders play whack-a-missile.

Meanwhile, Iran marches undeterred to becoming a nuclear power. The Biden Administration mouths pieties that this is unacceptable, but its every action suggests it believes a nuclear Iran is inevitable and trying to stop it is too risky. When Iran goes nuclear, the security calculus in the world will turn upside down.

• Mr. Biden’s record in the Asia-Pacific is marginally better, at least diplomatically. He has strengthened U.S. alliances against China, especially with Australia, Japan and the Philippines. The Aukus defense deal is important, as is Japan’s move toward closer military integration with the U.S.

Yet diplomacy hasn’t been matched by hard power. The U.S. isn’t building enough submarines to meet its Aukus commitment and U.S. needs. American bases lack adequate air defenses and long-range missiles to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. State Department foot-stomping hasn’t stopped Chinese harassment of Philippine ships.

• Closer to home, Venezuela’s dictator has predictably stolen another election, exposing the Biden Administration’s deal to ease oil sanctions as naive. Mexico is tilting in an authoritarian direction without U.S. protest. Cuba continues to spread revolution wherever it can. The resulting human suffering reaches America in the flood of migrants that now burden our cities, from Manhattan to Springfield, Ohio.

• Most ominous is the collaboration of these menacing regional powers into a new anti-Western axis. Iran supplies missiles and drones to Moscow, which may be supplying nuclear know-how to Tehran. China is aiding Moscow, which now joins Beijing in naval maneuvers. North Korea also arms Moscow while being protected by China from United Nations sanctions it once voted for.

***

All of this and more adds up to the worst decline in world order, and the largest decline in U.S. influence, since the 1930s. Yet Mr. Biden continues to speak and act as if he’s presided over an era of spreading peace and prosperity. He has proposed a cut in real defense spending each year of his Presidency, which may be his greatest abdication.

Addressing this gathering storm will be difficult and dangerous. The first task will be restoring U.S. deterrence, which will require more hard power and political will. Whoever wins the White House will have to abandon the failed policies of the Biden years, lest we end up careening into a global conflict with catastrophic consequences.

Appeared in the September 23, 2024, print edition as 'How Freedom Faded on Biden’s Watch'

REPOST THIS EVERY TIME

[militantinremission]

American Geopolitics: Corporations over Citizens

So 'Jim Crow Joe' Biden signed a $95.3B Foreign Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel, & Taiwan. Most Americans think that Border Security is a higher priority, but as expected, Congressional Democrats were in lock step w/ Biden's Warmonger Agenda. Members of the CBC & Progressive Party played a major role, providing overwhelming support for this measure. $1B in Military Aid is slated to go to Ukraine WITHIN HOURS of signing this Bill, but a Military Package estimated at $300M was secretly shipped and was already being used last Week. The $61B 'Foreign Aid Package' for Ukraine includes:

$23.2B slated to replenish U.S. Defense stockpiles

$11.3B for current Ukrainian Defense operations

$13.8B for future Ukrainian Defense measures

This is on top of the $113B in American Aid already sent. The Package also includes $26B for Israeli Defense, w/ $1B set aside for 'Aid Relief' in Gaza, & $8B going to Taiwan. This sounds like a good thing for Defense Contractors, Lobbyists, & Commercial Banks (The Industrial Military Complex), but there is No Mention of funding for America's porous Southern Border.

Volodomyr Zelenskyy's Government has received over $300B in Global Aid for his War, but all he has to show for it are 500,000+ slain Ukrainian Soldiers, devasted Cities, & Tens of Millions of displaced Citizens. Accounts of WHERE these resources have gone are murky at best. Reports of American Weapons & Relief Materials appearing on the Ukrainian Black Market have persisted since shipments began. It's apparent that the situation is Critical. Ukraine has recently issued a Draft, calling ALL Ukrainian Men of fighting age to return Home to join the Theater of Battle; failure to do so, will lead to being labeled a 'Draft Dodger'. Meanwhile, rumors have circulated that 1,000- 2,000 French Infantrymen (possibly French Foreign Legionaries) have joined Ukrainian Soldiers on the Battlefield; discarding their French Uniforms & donning Ukrainian ones.

Taking ALL of these factors into account, why is The Biden Administration throwing more Money at Ukraine? Why isn't NATO trying to negotiate a Truce between Putin & Zelenskyy (i.e. Istanbul Summit Communique)? A recent Summit in Switzerland showed that Volodomyr Zelenskyy is sticking to his guns. He is demanding the Same Terms that he offered at the Beginning of the Conflict. Vladimir Putin obviously has momentum, so why is NATO & Ukraine refusing to hear his Terms? The effort by Western Powers & the WEF to humiliate Putin publicly & topple his government has been a dismal failure. The Sanctions placed on Russia have not worked; in fact, it has galvanized the Russian Public & made Vladimir Putin something of a Super Star in the Global South.

Despite U.S. imposed Sanctions, Russia continues to have robust trade w/ several Western European Nations. Germany & France alone have spent Billions on Russian Fertilizer & Timber. Billions more in Natural Resources like Coal, Cobalt, Copper, Tungsten, & Zinc are also being sold throughout Europe. China & North Korea are purchasing the Natural Gas & Oil that once flowed through the Nord Stream Pipeline, & Global South Nations are purchasing Russian Armaments. To be clear, Russia isn't starving. In fact, The Russian Ruble is stronger than it was Last Year. Julius Malema recently stated that Russia's & South Afrika's Gold & Platinum wealth will be the backbone of a BRICS Currency. Saudi Arabia has already began accepting Rubles over American Petrodollars. All of this may explain The Biden Administration's determination to press on in Ukraine.

Military Minds like Scott Ritter & Col. Douglas MacGregor have been talking about Russian dominance over NATO in Ukraine since The War began. They both point out how the diplomatic moves being made by Vladimir Putin are well thought out, & Geopolitical Minds like John Mearsheimer agree. Putin is playing a Long Game, & his actions have aroused 'Russian Patriots'. Since the 'Special Operation' in Ukraine began, the Russian Army has grown from 900,000 Soldiers to over 1.4 Million. Even Men over 40 are seeking Enlistment. Roughly 1,400 Men/Day are volunteering to join the Battle in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian Soldiers are SERIOUSLY depleted, & American Armed Forces Enlistment numbers are down; THIS may explain the number of Young Male Illegal Immigrants being allowed into the Country. The Roman Empire also faced an Enlistment problem; They hired Visigoth Mercenaries to beef up their numbers. History shows how THAT worked out for the Romans.

The Role of Multinational Corporations in all of this has to be considered. Black Rock is buying up large tracts of land in Ukraine, while Defense Contractors rake in 10s of Billions from U.S. Military Aid Packages. The Pentagon says that We have to replenish the stocks that are being shipped to Ukraine & Israel, but neither Front has an 'End Game'. Volodomyr Zelenskyy is fighting a losing battle. He doesn't have enough Soldiers to confront a growing Russian Army; he doesn't even have enough Experienced Soldiers to operate the equipment that Biden intends to ship. As for Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has been very successful in devastating the Gaza Strip, but he hasn't done any real damage to Hamas. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is forcing Israeli Settlers South, & the Houthis have hurt Israel economically... Now Iran has SERVED NOTICE on Israel that their vaunted Air/ Missle Defense Systems (& America's) cannot stop a [bonafide] Iranian assault.

Back in America, Detroit, Flint, & Jackson Ms. STILL need clean drinking water! The Gulf States STILL suffer from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, & Our Roads, Bridges, & Tunnels continue to deteriorate. $200B would go a long way to solving some of these Home Grown problems. Corporations can make their money HERE; improving Trade Routes & increasing the incomes of American Workers. Why isn't this a priority? 'Jim Crow Joe' likes to tout Job Growth numbers, but these are mostly 'Gig Economy' Jobs, or Jobs that offer 30hrs/ Week, w/ NO BENEFITS. Then there's the Border Crisis. Improving the Southern Border IS a National Security Issue, but it's been put on the back burner- Why is that? Why are MILLIONS of unvetted Young Men not just being allowed into America, but also being subsidized?

Why are struggling Black Communities being forced to compete w/ these Men for resources meant for Us? Why are Black Politicians ignoring their Constituents & lending their support to these people, along w/ 2 Wars that have NOTHING to do w/ Us? The 'Fix' is obviously In, but We WILL have the Last Laugh on Election Day.

-Best believe That!