Important Takeaways:
- The United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances and enhancing its nuclear weapons modernization program, a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel said on Thursday.
- The report from the Strategic Posture Commission comes amid tensions with China over Taiwan and other issues and worsening frictions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
- “We worry … there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war construct,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
- The findings would upend current U.S. national security strategy calling for winning one conflict while deterring another and require huge defense spending increases with uncertain congressional support.
- The report contrasts with U.S. President Joe Biden’s position that the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is sufficient to deter the combined forces of Russia and China.
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Important Takeaways:
- The country’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported that Kim presided over the Central Military Commission meeting personally, ousting his chief of general staff, General Pak Su-il and replacing him with a deputy, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-gil. Pak was purged among several other “leading commanding officers,” which Rodong Sinmun did not name.
- Kim’s command to prepare for war follows a year of rapidly escalating tensions between North and South Korea that began with Kim demanding an “exponential increase” in the number of nuclear weapons North Korea possesses and has led to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol threatening to “end” Kim’s regime while onboard an American nuclear submarine in July.
- Yoon, a conservative, took office in May and has since prioritized undoing leftist predecessor Moon Jae-in’s concessions to the communist North, including limiting military cooperation with the United States and preventing South Koreans from sending humanitarian aid balloons across the border.
- According to Rodong Sinmun, Kim Jong-un is seeking for his officers to prepare for full-scale war. The Central Military Commission meeting, it claimed, had as its “major agenda item the issues of making full war preparations to neutralize at a blow the enemy attack with overwhelming strategic deterrence and launch simultaneous offensive military actions in contingency.”
- The dictator demanded that the army “more thoroughly gird for a war given the grave political and military situation prevailing in the Korean peninsula.”
- Kim also did not reportedly specifically mention which enemies North Korea should prepare for war against, but images published in Rodong Sinmun showed Kim pointing at a map, apparently highlighting Seoul.
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Important Takeaways:
- Kim pointed at the South Korean capital, Seoul, and its surrounding area on a map at a meeting with generals, in pictures released by state media.
- Kim held a meeting of the central military commission in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, on Wednesday and discussed plans against its enemy, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. It did not say who the enemy was.
- Pak Su Il was also removed from his post as chief of the general staff after just seven months.
- North Korea has launched several missiles since the start of this year, and last month it launched the Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, which officials said could reach the U.S. mainland.
- It also threatened to shoot down American spy planes after what it said were incursions into its airspace.
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Important Takeaways:
- Putin’s escalations in Ukraine show that any fear of NATO is diminishing
- Putin has continued to escalate his attacks against Ukraine and the West.
- He has sent Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus, the first time Russia has sent nuclear weapons to a foreign country since 1962. The Wagner forces too are relocating to Belarus. These moves have led Poland to take precautionary defense moves and, as a result, Putin launched threats against Poland that resemble those made against Ukraine before 2022. He said that Poland covets former territories in Ukraine and Belarus, owes its current statehood to the Soviet Union and any attack on Belarus equates to an attack on Russia.
- Beyond that, Putin withdrew from the grain accord with Ukraine supervised by the United Nations and Turkey. Russia has also launched massive bombardments of Ukraine’s ports, infrastructure and grain infrastructure.
- Russia’s defense minister declared that not only Ukrainian ships, but any ship in the Black Sea delivering or taking cargo to and from Ukraine, is liable to be attacked as a ship working on behalf of Ukraine. Thus “any attempt to bypass the blockade might be seen as an act of war.”
- By escalating, Putin is demonstrating that he believes NATO will not respond forcefully. Furthermore, these concerted actions go beyond efforts to strangle Ukraine’s economy to threaten global hunger, particularly in poor countries. They also claim an unlawful, exclusive Russian dominance over the Black Sea, violate the principle of freedom of navigation and implicitly brandish the threat of nuclear strikes.
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Revelations 13:16-18 “Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”
Important Takeaways:
- 122 million more people pushed into hunger since 2019 due to multiple crises, reveals UN report
- Over 122 million more people are facing hunger in the world since 2019 due to the pandemic and repeated weather shocks and conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published today jointly by five United Nations specialized agencies.
- If trends remain as they are, the Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030 will not be reached, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine-Russia war: Ukraine ‘planning Storm Shadow attack on Crimea’
- Ukraine is reportedly planning to attack occupied Crimea with Himars and British Storm Shadow missile, Russia has claimed in a warning to Kyiv and the West.
- Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, said that Russia would retaliate if Ukraine started hitting the territory that Vladimir Putin annexed in 2014
- “The use of these missiles outside the zone of our special military operation would mean that the United States and Britain would be fully dragged into the conflict and would entail immediate strikes on decision-making centers in Ukraine,” warned Mr Shoigu.
- Crimea may become within target of Ukraine’s arsenal of missiles and artillery as its counter offensive pushes further south. Ukraine says it has recaptured 113 square km (44 square miles) of land from Russian forces.
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Revelations 13:16-18 “Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”
Important Takeaways:
- Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True
- “Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading,” the World Bank warned in a recent analysis. “The result could be a lost decade in the making — not just for some countries or regions as has occurred in the past — but for the whole world.”
- A lot has happened between then and now: A global pandemic hit; war erupted in Europe; tensions between the United States and China boiled. And inflation, thought to be safely stored away with disco album collections, returned with a vengeance.
- But as the dust has settled, it has suddenly seemed as if almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- China’s PLA is openly preparing for war, particularly in areas where Beijing’s territorial and maritime claims are illegal and hegemonic.
- Beijing is planning to win a war in space as part of its reported overall objective of replacing the US as the dominant power on earth. One assessment estimates that fully 84% of China’s space launches are military in nature — indicating that the CCP may well be determined to emerge as the only remaining superpower.
- The proximity of these Chinese anti-satellite vehicles clearly reveals the mission to degrade and/or blind collection and transmission of intelligence data by US systems. Another Chinese anti-satellite project features a satellite with a grappling hook, designed to capture US satellites as an immediate prelude to war.
- Beijing also has rapidly developed an array of space warfare capabilities, including several types of ground-launched anti-satellite missiles capable of hitting satellites in different orbits; ground-based lasers that can blind or damage orbiting satellites; and small robotic satellites capable of maneuvering and grabbing orbiting satellites.”
- China will most likely attempt to shut down US intelligence collection, “eyes and ears in the sky,” prior to combat operations on earth. The United States, if an impending military clash seems unavoidable, may be forced to “preemptively retaliate” by disabling China’s intelligence collection and data transmission space-based assets – if it can.
- “[I]f the U.S. military doesn’t change course… we’re going to lose fast” — Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, americanmilitarynews.com, March 11, 2021.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- Global Military Spending at Record High with Europe Leading the Way
- The world has never spent so much on military muscle. Figures released Monday show $2.24 trillion was outlaid globally in 2022 with Europe leading the way due to Ukraine’s demands for continued supplies of battlefield hardware.
- There was a 13 percent rise in Europe, the steepest in at least 30 years, coming on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and broader insecurity around the world.
- Some of the sharpest increases were seen in Finland (+36 percent), Lithuania (+27 percent), Sweden (+12 percent) and Poland (+11 percent).
- “The continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world,” Nan Tian, senior researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, said.
- Overall the United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender.
- S. military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 percent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.
- India’s military spending of $81.4 billion was the fourth highest in the world. It was 6.0 percent more than in 2021.
- In 2022 military spending by Saudi Arabia, the fifth biggest military spender, rose by 16 percent to reach an estimated $75.0 billion, its first increase since 2018.
- The United Kingdom had the highest military spending in Central and Western Europe at $68.5 billion
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- China Is Preparing For War; Is The US Ready?
- Both the United States and China are investing record-breaking sums in building up their military capabilities. Leadership on both sides increasingly appears to consider such a conflict as inevitable, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
- Xi has ordered the regime’s military wing to prepare for war, and to be ready to launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.
- Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.)… Russia’s ongoing conquest of Ukraine, and the United States’ failure to deter it, contain all the lessons necessary to prepare for what comes next in Taiwan.
- “If we don’t learn the right lessons from the failure of deterrence in Ukraine, authoritarian aggression and the CCP’s malign influence will spread to the Indo-Pacific, and our New Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party could quickly become hot,” Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
- “To prevent this, we have to act with a sense of urgency and do everything we can to deter a CCP invasion of Taiwan.” “If the Chinese Communist Party invaded Taiwan today, we would not be well positioned to defend our friend, our interests, or American values in the Indo-Pacific,” Gallagher says.
- The United States must choose, he believes, to arm Taiwan to the teeth now or come to Taiwan’s aid at a much greater cost later.
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