Important Takeaways:
- Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
- A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
- The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
- The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
- On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
- Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
- Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
- Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
- Here, let me focus it for you:
- “The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
- Then again, in a later paragraph:
- ” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
- Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
- Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
- The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
- Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
- Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
- Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
- Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
- Where is this leading?
- What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
- Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
- For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
- By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . .
- Wise-up folks.
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Important Takeaways:
- The US military is almost entirely dependent upon China and Russia for a metal used in many military applications, such as explosives and armor-piercing bullets. The metal is antimony, and China currently owns 53 percent of the world’s supply. However, it processes over 80 percent of antimony ore through contracts with other producers. The US’s last source of antimony, the Stibnite mine in Idaho, ceased operations in 1997.
- It isn’t just the military that relies on antimony, though it does appear insane to import the key element in manufacturing modern military munitions from your most likely adversary; the private sector is also heavily reliant on the metal.
- For example, consider its usage in the high-tech sector, where it is a key ingredient in semi-conductors, circuit boards, electric switches, fluorescent lighting, high quality clear glass and lithium-ion batteries. No antimony, no iPhones. No hi-definition TVs. No modern kitchen appliances, all of which make use of digital circuitry. Oh, and that car you’re thinking about buying? Sorry.
- Now, consider this: There can be no “energy transition” without adequate supplies of antimony. That thick, heavy glass used in solar panels? It’s made with antimony. Those 300 to 700 foot-tall windmills that sporadically produce electricity? Made with antimony. Antimony is a key element in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, as mentioned above, but even more crucial is the fact that it is integral to the development of the next-generation liquid metal batteries that, as Ecclestone pointed out during the webinar, hold the key to truly scalable energy storage for wind and solar power.
- This issue has hit the front burner of Capitol Hill. The House Armed Services Committee is investigating the status of the Defense National Stockpile, which is charged with maintaining a strategic reserve of rare minerals. Our stockpile and the infrastructure to operate it will largely cease to exist by 2025 unless urgent action is taken.
- Crap like this simply validates the idea that we are ruled by fools and buffoons. Congress has nearly sold off the stockpile, according to Defense News, “over the past several decades to fund other programs.”
- The stockpile was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars at its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952. That value has plummeted to $888 million as of last year following decades of congressionally authorized sell-offs to private sector customers. Lawmakers anticipate the stockpile will become insolvent by FY25.
- “A lot of what happened is Congress just getting greedy and finding politically convenient ways to fund programs that they weren’t willing to raise revenue for,” said [Massachusetts Democrat Seth] Moulton.
- These sell-offs have included 3,000 short tons of titanium, used in building military airframes, and 76 million pounds of tungsten ores and concentrates, used in military turbine engines and armor-piercing ammunition. They have also included more than 2 million pounds of tantalum, used in electronics, as well as 26 million pounds of cobalt and 62,881 short tons of aluminum
- Somehow, if a war breaks out over Taiwan, I don’t think the Chinese will be selling up the material we need to make ammunition.
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Important Takeaways:
- Long-range missiles strike civilian targets across Europe. Baltic States are invaded. AI-controlled tanks rule the battlefield. As NATO warns of Russian attack in 20 years, a terrifying prediction of how it will unfold
- The year 2024 is off to an alarming start.
- Almost two full years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and with the Middle East teetering on the brink of disaster following Hamas’ October 7th attacks on Israel, the threat of a wider war looms large on the horizon.
- Prime ministers, defense secretaries and military chiefs have claimed that the threat of a major conflict is greater now than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
- Phase One: Cyber warfare and missile strikes
- ‘Cyber-attacks have real battlefield applications – the Russians used these in the prelude to the invasion to Ukraine to take down the Viasat communications network, among other things,’ RUSI associate fellow and defense analyst Sam Cranny-Evans said.
- But technological advancement in the coming years means Russia’s capacity to employ cyber warfare to sew chaos in NATO’s ranks could be orders of magnitude greater when the time comes to attack.
- Phase Two: Invasion – by land, sea and air
- Hodges said Russia will have learned from the mistakes made in Ukraine
- In one scenario, Gen. Hodges said Moscow could use this renewed military strength to first attack the narrow strip of land known as Suwalki Gap, sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
- This second phase would involve sending thousands of Russian soldiers, AI-controlled tanks and Special Forces, to attack one of the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank – most likely either Lithuania, Poland or Estonia.
- And Gen. Hodges says that after Putin had attacked a nation on NATO’s eastern flank, Russia would wait to see how the military alliance would respond.
- And if NATO did hesitate, Putin would not stop, Gen. Hodges predicts.
- ‘If we hesitated, that failure to live up to our obligations under Article 5 to protect member states… it would break the alliance. It would be a staggering blow to NATO if we didn’t live up to what we said we were going to do,’ Gen. Hodges said.
- Russia’s allies could join the fight
- In recent years Russia has been forging closer ties with other powers, each of whom has their own deep-rooted grievances with what they see as a hegemonic world order led by the US and its Western allies.
- Iran, for example, represents a grave threat in the Middle East, with a fearsome military and the resources to develop nuclear weapons – something Gen. Hodges said would likely happen in years to come.
- With this in mind, it’s less likely Beijing would wade into a European theatre to back up Russia in a conflict with NATO forces.
- But a scenario in which the Chinese Communist Party seizes such an opportunity to launch an invasion of Taiwan in an effort to bring the sovereign, self-governed island back under control – while NATO is focused on the threat from Moscow – is certainly a plausible one.
- So how can the West stop this from happening?
- According to experts, deterrence is the key.
- This requires NATO and its member states to have a military that is not only ready to repel any invading Russian force, but strong enough to outmatch Moscow’s armies to the point that the Kremlin will be unwilling to launch an attack in the first place.
- ‘Deterrence is both having the military capability and signaling to your foe your willingness to use that capability – and your resolve to see it through to the end,’ Sam Cranny-Evans says.
- Gen. Ryan said: ‘Getting ready could be enough to avert a wider war. Not getting ready could invite one.’
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Important Takeaways:
- The Vladimir Putin ally and anchor of the Russia 1 channel has frequently described on his nightly programs how Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was a confrontation with the West, pushed Kremlin rhetoric and issued nuclear threats against Kyiv’s allies.
- Once again, Solovyov returned to this theme, warning that Russia was being “confronted with a formidable enemy—we are dealing with the collective West, so to speak, which means more than 50 countries.”
- “Some of them are not Western, the West is no longer a geographical term,” Solovyov said in the clip posted by journalist and Russia watcher Julia Davis on Monday. “Either way, they will get the economy going and move it onto a war footing.”
- He said this meant that Russia had only a year and a half to two years to bring its economy “up to a level when it will be able to stand up to these countries with their economic potential.”
- “We are moving towards World War III. In my opinion, it’s already underway.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.K. Govt Warns: Be Ready for War with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in Five Years
- Speaking at Lancaster House on Monday, British Minister of Defense Grant Shapps said the West is facing a “much more troubled world” and could no longer consider itself post-war, with considerable new investment in military spending needed. He said:
- …now is the time for all allies and democratic nations across the world to… make sure their defense spending is growing too. Because as discussed, the era of the peace dividend is over. In five years time we could be looking at multiple theatres including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
- …we find ourselves at the dawn of this new era. [The] Berlin Wall a distant memory but we have come full circle, moving from a post-war to a pre-war world. An age of idealism has been replaced by a period of hard-headed realism.
- Illustrating actions taken by Britain to prepare itself for this multifaceted conflict the British government apparently believes is coming, Shapps cited the UK’s support to Ukraine, the country leading the largest NATO deployment since the end of the Cold War this year, the signing of a new UK-Japan-Italy fighter coalition, and the creation of the Australia-UK-U.S. submarine coalition. He said the government was moving to putting 2.5 per cent of GDP into defense spending as soon as it could afford to.
- Estonia, one of Ukraine’s most enthusiastic allies and a state which has a land border with Russia said through their Prime Minister on Monday that their intelligence states NATO has “three to five years” to prepare for a Russian attack on NATO itself.
- Sweden warned its citizens last week to be prepared for war.
- Germany is reportedly of the same mind, with the best-selling newspaper in Europe Bild splashing this week on leaked war plans anticipating Russian invasions of European states by the summer of 2025.
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Important Takeaways:
- Joe Biden ‘is struggling to keep his head above water’ as US is challenged by Iran and Russia – ‘and China and North Korea are taking notes’, experts say as they warn inaction now ‘will cost American lives later’
- Joe Biden ‘is struggling to keep his head above water’ as the US ‘ignores’ threats from Iran and continues to be challenged by Russia – while North Korea and China are ‘taking notes’, experts have warned.
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed yesterday that their forces launched ballistic missiles close to the US consulate in Erbil, northern Iraq – a move condemned as ‘reckless’ by the US State Department.
- Former military intelligence officer Colonel (Ret) Jonathan Sweet and foreign policy expert Mark Toth labelled the US response ‘as perfunctory as it was lacking’, saying it is just the latest example of the Biden administration’s inaction in the region.
- Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ – including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels – has been increasing its attacks on Israel and commercial shipping routes, prompting the US and UK to launch devastating strikes by air and sea.
- But the experts told MailOnline: ‘For all the US military might put on display throughout the Middle East, Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden right now, Iran and their proxies have not been deterred.’
- Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine approaches its third year, Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric has become more aggressive, threatening Ukraine’s statehood and warning that Russia would ‘never’ abandon the gains it has made.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s Medvedev Says Any UK Troop Deployment to Ukraine Would Be a Declaration of War
- Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comments in response to a visit by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to Kyiv to announce an increase in military funding to help Ukraine purchase new military drones.
- “I hope that our eternal enemies – the arrogant British – understand that deploying an official military contingent to Ukraine would be a declaration of war against our country,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
- Medvedev cast himself as a liberal modernizer when he was president from 2008-2012, but now presents himself as one of the fiercest anti-Western Kremlin hawks.
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Important Takeaways:
- Putin unleashes hypersonic missiles in deadly new wave of airstrikes on Ukraine – as UK intelligence claims Russia is on course to lose 500,000 troops on frontlines by end of 2024
- Vladimir Putin unleashed hypersonic missiles in Russia’s latest deadly wave of airstrikes across Ukraine, regional officials said Monday.
- At least four civilians were reported killed and at least 30 injured in the strikes that hit near the front lines of fighting in the east as well as in central and western parts of the country, which has been under invasion by Russia since February 2022.
- Ukraine said it had destroyed 18 out of the 51 missiles of different types launched
- Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces used precision sea-launched and air-launched long-range missiles, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, to strike what it called ‘facilities of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.’
- Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense reported that Russia is on course to have lost a total of 500,000 soldiers by the end of this year
- Western officials and analysts had previously warned that Russia was stockpiling its cruise missiles in preparation for a strategy of winter bombardment, as bad weather keeps the 930-mile front line largely static after 22 months of war.
- Unlike last winter, when the Kremlin’s forces targeted Ukraine’s power grid, Russia is now aiming at Kyiv’s defense industry, they say. But the almost daily barrages have repeatedly hit civilian areas. Monday’s attacks struck a string of urban areas, including housing and a shopping mall, across Ukraine
- The strikes come less than a week after Kyiv warned it only had enough ammunition to withstand a few more powerful attacks, amid intense Russian bombardment.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia Has Used North Korean Ballistic Missiles in Ukraine and Is Seeking Iranian Missiles, US Says
- U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia has acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea and is seeking close-range ballistic missiles from Iran as Moscow struggles to replenish supplies for its war with Ukraine, the White House said Thursday.
- Recently declassified intelligence found that North Korea has provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several ballistic missiles, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. Russian forces fired at least one of those ballistic missiles into Ukraine on Dec. 30 and it landed in an open field in the Zaporizhzhia region, he said.
- Russia launched multiple North Korean ballistic missiles on Tuesday as part of an overnight attack, and the U.S. was assessing the impact, he said. The missiles have a range of about 550 miles (885 kilometers).
- S. intelligence officials believe that North Korea, in return for its arms support, wants Russia to provide it with aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, ballistic missile production equipment and other advanced technologies.
- The White House in October said that North Korea delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia.
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Important Takeaways:
- It is time for all member nations of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to drop the United States dollar in favor of local currencies for financial relations and settlements, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov this week, at the Russia-China Financial Dialogue forum in Beijing.
- “We need to further develop financial cooperation within the BRICS countries,” Siluanov added. “Here we see opportunities … to develop a payments system that would be independent of the infrastructure, which does not always fully fulfill the goals of individual countries.”
- “Therefore, the sustainable development of financial relations and settlements on the BRICS platform is important for us, and we believe that it is necessary to work out such issues, and today we will consider a number of them.”
- Many BRICS partners are already making trades with local or alternative currencies after sanctions stemming from the war in Ukraine effectively cut Moscow off from the Western financial system.
- Rather than kowtow to Western demands, Russia and its partners have instead been laying the groundwork for a new world order that will eventually cut off the West from global trade after the U.S. has been unseated as the global economic superpower.
- Communist China is quickly rising to the top of the trade heap with all of its cheaply made junk, and Russia is helping it and the other BRICS member nations further dethrone the U.S. by encouraging financial transactions in other currencies.
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