Unmanned aerial vehicles, which had been used prior, reached their peak activity during the special military operation in Ukraine. From reconnaissance drones to kamikaze ones, from small models to aircraft-type UAVs – they are everywhere.
In the zone of the special military operation, different people fight side by side, and their varied skills help them establish the most effective operations by successfully dividing responsibilities. Hobbies, personal traits, and strengths can be valuable on the battlefield, including in UAV operations.
It’s worth highlighting the successful formation of UAV-artillery teams, where operators not only identify targets but also monitor their destruction, promptly report the results, and provide adjustments for repeated strikes when necessary.
Unless you are living under a bridge or you are eagerly drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media is dishing out, you probably understand that the economy has been struggling. Survey after survey has found that the American people are deeply dissatisfied with how the economy has been performing, and as a result it has become the number one issue this election season. But even though a large portion of the population is not happy about how things have been going, the truth is that the situation is far more dire than most people realize. Just this week we have received quite a bit of very troubling news, and the outlook for the months ahead is very bleak. The following are 11 signs that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than most people think…
#1 Just like in 2008, delinquencies are on the rise. In fact, credit card delinquencies have now reached the highest level that we have seen in more than 10 years…
Meanwhile, more consumers aren’t making loan payments on time. Credit card delinquencies have hit their highest level in over a decade, and auto delinquencies are also spiking. This could prove to be yet another tripwire for the stock market, as consumer spending accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity.
#2 The commercial real estate crisis just continues to escalate. An article that originally appeared in the New York Times claims that major Wall Street banks have “begun offloading their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses”…Principles of EconomicsAmmous, SaifedeanBest Price: $20.21Buy New $20.52(as of 01:59 UTC — Details)
Some Wall Street banks, worried that landlords of vacant and struggling office buildings won’t be able to pay off their mortgages, have begun offloading their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses.
It’s an early but telling sign of the broader distress brewing in the commercial real estate market, which is hurting from the twin punches of high interest rates, which make it harder to refinance loans, and low occupancy rates for office buildings — an outcome of the pandemic.
#3 When banks get into trouble, they start shutting down branches. So far this year, U.S. banks have closed more than 400 branches all over the country…
US banks closed 51 branches across the country in the first three weeks of June.
The figures suggest banks are committed to increasingly offering their services online and axing costly bricks-and-mortar locations.
More than 400 bank branches have closed so far in 2024.
#4 Big companies are laying off workers from coast to coast. For example, approximately 500 Texas truckers just lost their jobs when a large logistics company abruptly shut their doors for good…
A truck and logistics company has abruptly shut – affecting 2,000 workers – just three years after being bought by private equity.
Out of the blue, staff at US Logistics Solutions were given news on Thursday that they were out of a job and would also not get their paychecks on Friday.
Around 500 were truck drivers, and the rest a mixture of warehouse, dock and office workers at the Humble, Texas- based company.
#5 The Dallas Fed Services Index has now been in negative territory for 25 months in a row…
This is the 25th straight month of contraction (sub-zero) for the Dallas Fed Services index and judging by the respondents’ comments, there is a clear place to point the finger of blame
#6 The “restaurant apocalypse” just continues to intensify. This week, we learned that Hooters has suddenly decided to permanently shut down close to 40 “underperforming” locations…
The Atlanta-based sports bar chain, Hooters, abruptly shuttered dozens of “underperforming” restaurants across the U.S., as it joins a growing list of eateries facing the harsh realities of inflation and changing consumer habits, according to reports.
Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN) reported that word began to spread on Sunday evening that Hooters locations in places like Bryan, Texas; Lakeland, Florida; and Louisville, Kentucky were closing abruptly, with nearly 40 restaurants in the U.S. shutting their doors.
#7 Retail chains continue to go belly up at a staggering rate. Today, it was being reported that two large retailers in the Northeast have made a decision to file for bankruptcy…
Two sister chains that sell sporting goods have filed for bankruptcy as retailers continue to struggle.
Bob’s Stores, which sells athletic and casual clothing, and outdoor gear retailer Eastern Mountain Sports together have 50 stores across the northeast of America.
The housing cost burden has hit a record, according to a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Home prices are now 47% higher than they were in early 2020, with the median sale price now five times the median household income, according to the study.
#11 As I discussed yesterday, the homeless population in the city of Chicago tripled from January 2023 to January 2024…
The number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets tripled between January 2023 and January 2024, according to the annual survey used by federal officials to track homelessness, city officials announced Friday.
Those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest by the harsh economic conditions that we have been experiencing.Be Not Afraid of Life:…James, WilliamBest Price: $14.98Buy New $12.79(as of 09:52 UTC — Details)
Homelessness, poverty, hunger and theft are all on the rise, and many of those that serve struggling communities say that they are being absolutely overwhelmed because they simply do not have sufficient resources to meet all of the needs.
Sadly, I am entirely convinced that this is just the beginning. I believe that conditions will eventually become much harsher as the economy continues to deteriorate during the months ahead.
But Joe Biden and his minions insist that everything is just great.
In fact, they would like you to believe that the economy is “booming” right now.
You can believe that if you want, but the cold, hard numbers that we keep getting directly contradict the endless stream of propaganda that we are constantly being fed.
Supposedly to help speed up the maintenance and repair of the American weapons systems being used by the regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the administration of President Joe Biden is planning to deploy American military contractors to Ukraine.
Four United States officials familiar with the matter reportedly told CNN that the policy is still being worked on and has not yet been signed by President Biden.Prophets of War: Lockh…Hartung, WilliamBest Price: $10.13Buy New $14.99(as of 02:45 UTC — Details)
“We have not made any decisions and any discussion of this is premature,” one regime official told CNN. “The president is absolutely firm that he will not be sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.”
In what looks a whole lot like a smokescreen, CNN appears to be framing the narrative on Biden’s behalf by “leaking” the news while at the very same time quoting a source that insists the news is not what it seems.
To send U.S. military contractors to Ukraine represents another violation of Russia’s red line. And yet, the Biden regime continues to push the limit while claiming that “U.S. troops” are not, nor will they ever be, sent to Ukraine.
While some might argue that military contractors are not the same as troops, the fact remains that the U.S. is still directly involved in the conflict and increasingly so with moves like this.
(Related: Speaking of Biden, CNN is covering for him by issuing a gag order on its exclusive coverage of the upcoming presidential debate.)Atomic Habits: An Easy…Clear, JamesBest Price: $5.44Buy New $10.99(as of 02:17 UTC — Details)
Pentagon to green light contracting American companies to operate in Ukraine
As the powers that be (TPTB) lose control over the abomination known as the Western financial system, they have to do something to keep their corporations afloat and in control. This is why the Pentagon is soon expected to start awarding contracts to American companies so they can operate inside Ukraine.
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Officials say the green light will go at some point in 2024, marking the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022 that Washington will make a big move like this to try to transfer its illegitimate assets from the U.S. to Ukraine.
Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe the decade ahead is that investors, consumers and taxpayers will all be rafting whitewater rapids with ever-briefer stretches of calm.
Geopolitical / financial risks are proliferating and becoming more difficult to predict or hedge for a very basic reason: the era of global integration and accord has ended and the era of global disintegration and discord is heating up. In historian Peter Turchin’s terminology, when everyone finds reasons to cooperate, the result is an era of accord; when everyone finds reasons not to cooperate, the result is an era of discord.
Beneath the chaotic swirl of complex dynamics and risk, two core drivers emerge: de-globalization and de-financialization.The Origins of MoneyMenger, CarlBuy New $5.94(as of 01:07 UTC — Details)
The 30-year era of increasing globalization has reversed, reducing the influence of markets and increasing the influence of national security. Where the globalization era led to global trade agreements which served at least a few of every participants’ core interests, the de-globalizarion era will be characterized by fragmentation and deals being cut between nations outside of traditional alliances and ideological camps.
In the neoliberal worldview, markets are solutions to virtually every problem: open up markets and let price discovery and innovations solve all problems. This construct is ideologically appealing, but in the real world, markets generated extremely risky supply-chain dependencies on unreliable offshore sources: yes, these dependencies were efficient and profitable, but when things fall apart, they cause dominoes to fall far beyond what “markets” anticipated or could hedge.
The 50-year era of increasing financialization has also reversed. In a nutshell, financialization optimized capital at the expense of labor / wage earners, and optimized speculation via the vast expansion of credit and leverage, enabling finance to commoditize virtually everything in the global economy: labor, capital, goods, services and yes, even risk.
But commoditized risk that can be hedged only includes the risks that are visible and known. When extremes become more extreme, the potential for risk to escape the neatly fenced corral of hedged risk increases in ways that cannot be quantified and hedged.
I tend to think many observers focus too narrowly on risks arising from financial crises, for example a crisis in the multi-trillion dollar shadowy derivatives market that could cascade as holders of derivative contracts with claims on underlying collateral (for example, the homes underlying nortgages in a mortgage-backed security) start seizing the collateralized assets embedded in the derivatives chain.
While I make no claim to understanding “The Great Taking” scenario and cannot vouch for its accuracy, the basic idea is well-established: derivatives (such as CLOs and CDOs, as well as many even more exotic concoctions) can include claims on the underlying collateral of debt-based assets such as homes or vehicles.How Not to Age: The Sc…Greger M.D. FACLM, Mic…Best Price: $14.98Buy New $21.25(as of 02:30 UTC — Details)
The risk few seem to be discussing is not the seizure itself but the political firestorm any such seizure would ignite. The public has tolerated a stinking mass of self-serving bailouts and insider dealings under the threat of “if we don’t do this, the entire system collapses in a heap” for the past 15 years, but their patience with financier stripmining may run out more quickly than the political elites imagine.
History suggests that social revolutions often start spontaneously from an apparently trivial event: the deadwood of a corrupt system rigged to funnel asymmetric rewards to the few at the expense of the many finally catches fire, and quickly becomes a conflagration.
While many commentators have noted China continues reducing its holdings of US Treasuries (UST) and the general trend of de-dollarization, i.e. offloading Treasuries and seeking payment mechanisms that do not include the US dollar (USD), few seem to ponder what risks might arise in other currency flows, for example, the capital sloshing around the global economy as Direct Foreign Investment (FDI), money that flows into an economy as investments in assets such as manufacturing, mining, housing, tourism, etc.
Just as capital flowing in or out of sovereign bonds reflects the interests of each participating nation, so too do FDI investment flows and the sales and purchases of Strategically Significant Commodities.
By allowing the US government to compel Julian Assange to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, America has condemned itself to be a land where telling the truth is a crime.
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Justice Hugo Black, The New York Times versus The United States, 1971
Julian Assange is soon scheduled to appear before a US Court on the island of Saipan, where he is expected to plead guilty to a single violation of the Espionage Act, namely conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information.How the Brain Works: T…DKBest Price: $7.68Buy New $12.95(as of 01:59 UTC — Details)
Assange is guilty of no crime. It is the United States government which operates in violation of the law and, by suppressing Julian Assange’s duty as a publisher to expose deception on part of the government about war crimes committed by American servicemembers in Iraq and other lies and deceptions perpetrated by the State Department and Department of Defense, in gross disregard for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
By subjecting Julian Assange to five years of imprisonment under horrific conditions in a British maximum-security prison, where he was held under solitary confinement 23 hours a day, the US government broke the spirit and will of a man whose cause had come to personify the fundamental issue of free speech.
The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Juan E. Mendez, has declared that “[s]olitary confinement, [as a punishment] cannot be justified for any reason, precisely because it imposes severe mental pain and suffering beyond any reasonable retribution for criminal behavior and thus constitutes an act defined [as]…torture.”
Every American, whether they operate as a journalist or simply a citizen who believes in the fundamental right of free speech and a free press, must understand the significance of what Assange’s plea deal means—it is a frontal assault on free speech, effectively overturning the landmark Supreme Court decision in The New York Times versus The United States that spawned Hugo Black’s words in defense of this basic American freedom.I Don’t Have Eno…Turek, FrankBest Price: $6.24Buy New $12.99(as of 10:07 UTC — Details)
Let there be no doubt: Julian Assange is free, but free speech and the notion of a free press is dead in America today, killed by our collective passivity in the face of the brutalization of Julian Assange by the US government for the “crime” of exposing their crimes for all the world to see.
The truth no longer sets us free.
Rather, shining light on the inconvenient truth has become a crime.
America is a far worse place today than it was before our government compelled this plea agreement from Julian Assange.
The media’s villainy will soon be erased because it writes the script telling us what’s going on in the world
Declassified UK – 26 June 2024
It is only right that we all take a moment to celebrate the victory of Julian Assange’s release from 14 years of detention, in varying forms, to be united, finally, with his wife and children – two boys who have been denied the chance to ever properly know their father.Julian Assange In His …Assange, JulianBest Price: $15.98Buy New $13.09(as of 11:52 UTC — Details)
His last five years were spent in Belmarsh high-security prison as the United States sought to extradite him to face a 175-year jail sentence for publishing details of its state crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
For seven years before that he was confined to a small room in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after Quito awarded him political asylum to evade the clutches of a law-breaking US empire determined to make an example of him.
His seizure by UK police from the embassy on Washington’s behalf in 2019, after a more US-aligned government came to power in Ecuador, proved how clearly misguided, or malicious, had been those who accused him of “evading justice”.
Everything Assange had warned the US wanted to do to him was proved correct over the next five years, as he languished in Belmarsh entirely cut off from the outside world.
No one in our political or media class appeared to notice, or could afford to admit, that events were playing out exactly as the founder of Wikileaks had for so many years predicted they would – and for which he was, at the time, so roundly ridiculed.
Nor was that same political-media class prepared to factor in other vital context showing that the US was not trying to enforce some kind of legal process, but that the extradition case against Assange was entirely about wreaking vengeance – and making an example of the Wikileaks founder to deter others from following him in shedding light on US state crimes.
That included revelations that, true to form, the CIA, which was exposed as a rogue foreign intelligence agency in 250,000 embassy cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, had variously plotted to assassinate him and kidnap him off the streets of London.
Other evidence came to light that the CIA had been carrying out extensive spying operations on the embassy, recording Assange’s every move, including his meetings with his doctors and lawyers.
That fact alone should have seen the US case thrown out by the British courts. But the UK judiciary was looking over its shoulder, towards Washington, far more than it was abiding by its own statute books.
Media no watchdog
Western governments, politicians, the judiciary, and the media all failed Assange. Or rather, they did what they are actually there to do: keep the rabble – that is, you and me – from knowing what they are really up to.
Their job is to build narratives suggesting that they know best, that we must trust them, that their crimes, such as those they are supporting right now in Gaza, are actually not what they look like, but are, in fact, efforts in very difficult circumstances to uphold the moral order, to protect civilisation.
For this reason, there is a special need to identify the critical role played by the media in keeping Assange locked up for so long.
The truth is, with a properly adversarial media playing the role it declares for itself, as a watchdog on power, Assange could never have been disappeared for so long. He would have been freed years ago. It was the media that kept him behind bars.
The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the US and British governments carefully crafted against Assange.
Even now, as he is reunited with his family, the BBC and others are peddling the same long-discredited lies.
Those include the constantly repeated claim by journalists that he faced “rape charges” in Sweden that were finally withdrawn. Here is the BBC making this error once again in its reporting this week.
In fact, Assange never faced more than a “preliminary investigation”, one the Swedish prosecutors repeatedly dropped for lack of evidence. The investigation, we now know, was revived and sustained for so long not because of Sweden but chiefly because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, then led by Sir Keir Starmer (now the leader of the Labour party), insisted on it dragging on.
Starmer made repeated trips to Washington during this period, when the US was trying to find a pretext to lock Assange away for political crimes, not sexual ones. But as happened so often in the Assange case, all the records of those meetings were destroyed by the British authorities.
The media’s other favourite deception – still being promoted – is the claim that Wikileaks’ releases put US informants in danger.
That is utter nonsense, as any journalist who has even cursorily studied the background to the case knows.
More than a decade ago, the Pentagon set up a review to identify any US agents killed or harmed as a result of the leaks. They did so precisely to help soften up public opinion against Assange.
And yet a team of 120 counter-intelligence officers could not find a single such case, as the head of the team, Brigadier-General Robert Carr, conceded in court in 2013.
Despite having a newsroom stuffed with hundreds of correspondents, including those claiming to specialise in defence, security and disinformation, the BBC still cannot get this basic fact about the case right.
That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when journalists allow themselves to be spoon-fed information from those they are supposedly watching over. That is what happens when journalists and intelligence officials live in a permanent, incestuous relationship.
Character assassination
But it is not just these glaring reporting failures that kept Assange confined to his small cell in Belmarsh. It was that the entire media acted in concert in his character assassination, making it not only acceptable but respectable to hate him.
It was impossible to post on social media about the Assange case without dozens of interlocutors popping up to tell you how deeply unpleasant he was, how much of a narcissist, how he had abused his cat or smeared his walls in the embassy with faeces. None of these individuals, of course, had ever met him.The Trial of Julian As…Melzer, NilsBest Price: $5.43Buy New $14.81(as of 11:52 UTC — Details)
It also never occurred to such people that, even were all of this true, it would still not have excused stripping Assange of his basic legal rights, as all too clearly happened. And even more so, it could not possibly justify eroding the public-interest duty of journalists to expose state crimes.
What was ultimately at stake in the protracted extradition hearings was the US government’s determination to equate investigative national-security journalism with “espionage”. Whether Assange was a narcissist had precisely no bearing on that matter.
Why were so many people persuaded Assange’s supposed character flaws were crucially important to the case? Because the establishment media – our supposed arbiters of truth – were agreed on the matter.
The smears might not have stuck so well had they been thrown only by the rightwing tabloids. But life was breathed into these claims from their endless repetition by journalists supposedly on the other side of the aisle, particularly at the Guardian.
Liberals and left-wingers were exposed to a steady flow of articles and tweets belittling Assange and his desperate, lonely struggle against the world’s sole superpower to stop him being locked away for the rest of his life for doing journalism.
The Guardian – which had benefited by initially allying with Wikileaks in publishing its revelations – showed him precisely zero solidarity when the US establishment came knocking, determined to destroy the Wikileaks platform, and its founder, for making those revelations possible.
The health authorities deliberately lied the public about COVID because they didn’t want to lose the respect of the lawmakers. They knew that COVID was LESS dangerous than the flu!!
I simply cannot believe that the mainstream media is ignoring this huge story.Covid 19: Decoding Off…Chaillot, PierreBuy New $23.74(as of 09:46 UTC — Details)
After multiple rounds of FOIA requests and court orders, documents very reluctantly released by the RKI in Germany (the equivalent of our CDC) showing that health officials deliberately lied to the public about the dangers of COVID and the COVID vaccine so that the government wouldn’t cut their funding.
Worldwide press blackout on this story. You aren’t supposed to know.
The video
Watch this excellent 6 minute video that was independently produced by Professor Stefan Homburg. It’s short and to the point.
If you had any faith that government institutions are working for your benefit, this video will shatter it.
It’s a Rumble video since I’m sure it would violate YouTube’s community standards.
German journalists fought very hard to have this documents released
German journalists sued the German government for access to internal communication by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which is the German equivalent of the CDC. The court case was required since the journalists’ FOIA request was not honored. When the documents finally became available after the court order, most of it was redacted. After further pressure, it has now been unredacted.
Aaron Siri is very familiar with this with the CDC in the US. Same modus operandi.The Pfizer Papers: Pfi…The WarRoom/DailyClout…Buy New $32.50(as of 01:32 UTC — Details)
The experts knew as early as January 2021 of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis as a life-threatening complication of the AstraZeneca clot shot. They ‘forgot’ to inform the public about this fact.
The experts realized that there was no evidence whatsoever that the jabs reduced disease transmission, but they neglected to inform the public. Instead, they weaponized compassion and spread official disinformation that everyone should get jabbed “to protect grandma” and reach herd immunity through vaccination, even though both are impossible if the jabs don’t even reduce transmission.
The experts knew that even N95 masks were ineffective outside hospital settings, but mandated them anyway. In short, the experts were the true ‘misinformation spreaders.’
The experts recommended against closing schools, yet the government did this anyway.
The experts said that ‘COVID’ should not be compared to the flu, because it is LESS dangerous than the flu. They also knew only old and sick people were at increased risk, yet they made it seem that even young, healthy people had severe health risks. The average age of death of ‘COVID’ patients was 83 years, which happens to be ABOVE the average life expectancy of 81.26 years in 2019.
The government ordered the experts to ‘recommend’ what the government wanted. So the government did not “follow the science” as was claimed ad nauseam, but “The Science™” followed government orders. The RKI was ordered to keep risk levels high even though clearly nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The RKI was nothing more than the government press office, tasked with selling political decisions as scientific, while in reality nothing could be further from the truth.
Why did RKI follow government orders? Because they feared being bypassed and becoming irrelevant. Their behavior proves clearly that they thought this worse than misleading the public.
Summary
The German health officials knew that the flu was worse than COVID, they knew masks didn’t work, they knew the AstraZeneca vaccine was deadly, they knew lockdowns weren’t recommended, and they knew the jabs didn’t reduce transmission, but they kept all of this from the public so they could tell a fairy tale story about how if we all did our part and got vaccinated, we could stop the spread.
Do you think the next time they cry wolf again, anyone will believe them?
Paris – In the sciences of physics and mathematics, graphs and comparative tables are in first place for drawing irrefutable conclusions, interpretation, and hypotheses. In sociology, politics, and war, resorting to graphs and comparative tables has become the way to build conclusions on the basis of which strategies are drawn or contradicted, and on which forecasting is built and constructed. On its destination expectations. During the nine months of war that has been taking place in the region since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the graphic lines of a number of paths allow drawing qualitative conclusions that allow drawing conclusive predictions about the seriousness and lack of seriousness of certain hypotheses and options. As the comparative tables between the conditions of confrontations and similar confrontations indicate, the opportunity to draw strong standards and conclusions. Definitely, and therefore we will follow these two approaches in extrapolating the hypothesis of waging an Israeli war against the resistance in Lebanon.
It is no longer a secret that a previous discussion took place to wage a war against the resistance in Lebanon, in the first days of the Flood War, and that given the nature of the great challenges represented by this war, the decision was made, inspired by the interventions of generals in the American army and the occupation army, linking the timing of this decision to the outcome of the war in Gaza. Based on the fact that a quick victory in Gaza, as was expected, gives the public, the army, and the allies morale and confidence that there are chances to win this war. By comparing what was available in the first days of the war and what exists today, it is possible to rely on the graphs to see whether the chances of winning this war have increased or decreased?
The graphs indicate that the percentage of supporters of the war in general in public opinion in the entity has decreased from 94% to 27%, and that the percentage of support for the government and its president has fallen to its lowest levels, below 24%, and that the effectiveness of the army in the field has decreased from the level of its ability to penetrate. In an area of 180 square kilometers in 4 weeks in northern Gaza, and the inability to penetrate 30 square kilometers in 10 weeks in southern Gaza with the Rafah attack, and the number of dead and wounded in the army has moved from the level of 50 per month in the first month to the level of 50 per week in the last month. The rate of dropout in the army, desertion, and rebellion is 10%, and the rate of injuries and psychological trauma is parallel, as is the rate of the wounded. The terribly declining graph line for society and the army is paralleled by a declining trend in firepower, and a negative trend in support for the Western street, where describing the entity as criminal has taken its place. Consider it an example of urbanization.
In the comparative tables, a simple comparative table is presented between the experience of the July 2006 war and the hypothesis of a similar war today, where the facts say that the resistance’s capacity at that time on the human level, in terms of quantity and quality, was no more than 25% of what it is today, and perhaps it was less than 10% of what it is. Today, according to some estimates, this is also the case on the quantitative and qualitative military level, and on the moral level, the resistance, despite the high spirit of sacrifice of its fighters, was concerned about the degree of success in preventing the occupation army from achieving geographical breakthroughs, with confidence that it would ultimately make it pay a high price for the incursion, compared to With an army that was proud of its ability to achieve, in the first war it fought after the withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, versus an army that had destroyed morale and exhausted from nine months of fighting, and was unsure of its ability to win. If the confrontation between this army and this resistance in 2006 ended in the failure of the elite infantry units to achieve any achievement and massacres struck tanks and armored vehicles in the Khiam Plain and Wadi al-Hujair, then predicting results multiplied several times, perhaps reaching tens of tens, does not seem like an exaggeration. As for the destructive capacity, it can be said that in exchange for the lack of development of what the occupation army has, compared to what it did and will repeat in any war, the resistance is now capable of destroying a parallel that it did not have in 2006, where electricity stations, airports, trains, gas and oil platforms, and tanks for fuel and materials. Chemicals are certain results of the war, while there are doubts about the ability of the occupation aircraft to enjoy the same freedom that it had in Lebanese airspace in 2006.
There is another comparative table that can also be adopted, and it is fresh, represented by the confrontation that occurred with the Iranian response to the bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus. According to American statements from multiple political and military leaders, it appeared that had it not been for the American intervention, the entity would have been subject to complete destruction. Despite the American intervention, a significant number of missiles and drones reached their intended targets, and in light of the similarity between the capabilities of Iran and the resistance in Lebanon. From a qualitative angle, the Iranian arsenal is open to the resistance without conditions, with a quantitative difference in favor of the resistance that is forced to store huge quantities in anticipation of the interruption of supply routes in the event of war, and a human difference in favor of the resistance as well, as the resistance’s military structure is more involved in wars and has a direct link to the issue of war, existentially and morally. It becomes very important to stop at what General Charles Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the American Armies, said about the impossibility of providing the same assistance that the American forces provided in the face of the Iranian response, based on an additional distinction in favor of the resistance in Lebanon, which is the geographical dimension, as the resistance is attached to the geography of occupied Palestine and the distance of Iran. On the one hand, and the maps of the deployment of American forces, bases, and carriers, on the other hand, make American intervention to repel missiles and drones launched from southern Lebanon close to impossible.
The comparative charts and tables conclude beyond reason that the failure in 2006 will be replaced by a crushing defeat in the event of going to war with the resistance in 2024, and that the occupation army is in the lowest levels of efficiency, readiness and morale, unlike the resistance, and that the entity is unable to deal with the intensity of targeting without American support constituted a source of protection against the Iranian response, and it will not be able to do the same in the event of a war with the resistance in Lebanon, and only the stupid or the hateful imagine and promote the
Nach Bidens katastrophalem Auftritt in der TV-Debatte gegen Donald Trump hieß es, dass ranghohe Demokraten ihn von der weiteren Präsidentschaftskandidatur abbringen wollen. Nun erklärt sein Wahlkampfsprecher: Biden wird nicht aus dem Rennen ausscheiden.
Präsident Biden wirkt während der TV-Debatte sichtlich geschwächt
Präsident Joe Biden wird nach dem katastrophalen Auftritt während des ersten TV-Duells zwischen dem amtierenden Präsidenten und seinem Vorgänger, Donald Trump, nicht aus dem Rennen um die Präsidentschaft aussteigen. Dies bestätigte der Wahlkampfsprecher Bidens, gegenüber The Hill.
Auch Biden selbst dementierte die Rücktrittsvermutungen bei einem Restaurantbesuch nach der Debatte mit einem klaren „Nein“. Auf seine Performance angesprochen erklärte der Präsident nur, dass es „schwer“ sei, mit einem „Lügner zu diskutieren“. Er bezog sich auf die New York Times, die berichtet habe, dass Trump angeblich ganze „26 Mal gelogen“ hätte.
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Bidens Team will von seiner Niederlage wohl nichts wissen. Die schwache und heiser klingende Stimme begründete das Weiße Haus mit einer Erkältung. Vizepräsidentin Kamala Harris sagte gegenüber CNN: „Es war ein langsamer Start, aber ein starkes Ende.“
Die Aussagen stehen im Kontrast zu Berichten von CNN. Demnach hätten hochrangige Demokraten nach der Debatte darüber nachgedacht, zu versuchen, Biden doch noch von einer Kandidatur abzubringen – das wäre theoretisch noch beim Parteitag der Demokraten im August möglich. Auch zahlreiche, zweifellos eher Biden-freundliche, linke Kommentatoren sprachen von einem Ausfall von Biden an diesem Abend.
„Ich wünschte, Biden würde über seine Leistung in der Debatte nachdenken und dann seine Entscheidung bekannt geben, aus dem Rennen auszusteigen und die Wahl des demokratischen Kandidaten dem Parteitag zu überlassen“, so New York Times-Kolumnist Nicholas Kristhof.
Für Biden sollte die TV-Debatte eigentlich ein Wendepunkt sein, der Präsident kämpft mit schlechten Umfragewerten. Tagelang hatte er sich nach Camp David zurückgezogen, um sich auf die Debatte vorzubereiten. Doch das nützte ihm scheinbar nichts. Die Blitz-Umfrage, die der Sender CNN direkt im Anschluss an die Fernsehdebatte der Präsidentschaftskandidaten durchführte, zeigte: 67 Prozent der Zuschauer sehen Trump, nur 33 Prozent Biden als Sieger.
Die gleiche Umfrage ergab nach der letzten TV-Debatte 2020 noch einen Sieg für Biden mit 53 zu 39 Prozent. Die Verschiebungen sind dramatisch – und auch eine erhebliche Zahl von Biden-Unterstützern sieht Trump diesmal als Sieger.
THE WAR WITH RUSSIA SHOWS NO SIGNS OF ABATING AND THE THREAT THAT THE US MIGHT BE DRAWN INTO THE CONFLICT REMAINS REAL. TO ATTAIN PEACE, WASHINGTON HAS TO STOP PRETENDING IT CAN DOMINATE THE WORLD.
A child played as women rested on a bench in front of destroyed residential buildings in Kostyantynivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on June 22.ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Everything about the war in Ukraine is changing. Tragically, Ukraine is losing ground and men so relentlessly that its deputy head of military intelligence has concluded Ukraine might be unable to win. The United States and Europe are rightly looking for new ways to help. But they are escalating toward direct war with Russia, by permitting Ukraine to use American missiles on targets in Russia, by possibly basing fighter jets in NATO territory, and by considering deployments of more US personnel and NATO “trainers” into Ukraine, even though these risky moves are unlikely to turn the tide.
President Biden at the D-Day commemoration in early June said the United States would continue to support Ukraine “completely.” In turn, the United States and Europe could get pulled into another “forever war,” this time against a Russia that now possesses a potent war machine and the world’s fourth-largest economy by purchasing power, and that is backed by manufacturing superpower China. And all this escalation is eroding an 80-year taboo against combat between nuclear-armed superpowers, even though Biden, his White House team, the Pentagon-affiliated think tank RAND, and the US intelligence community worry Russia could go nuclear.
As the risks rise and Ukraine’s plight worsens, Biden’s low approval ratings on foreign policy could fall further, jeopardizing the entire Democratic Party. The United States’ own intelligence agencies don’t believe Russia wants to attack Europe, barring additional escalation from the West. So further tragedy could be avoided if there were an alternative for Ukraine.
In fact, there’s long been an alternative, supported by heavyweight US foreign-policy veterans. And Biden has just hinted that he might be open to it.
People visited the Lychakiv military cemetery on a Day of Mourning and Remembrance for the Victims of War in Lviv on June 22.YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
In 2018, before the current war began, I moved from the United States to Finland, a country pressed against Russia for 800 miles. My neighborhood here, next to a military base, could be wiped out by Russian hypersonic missiles within minutes of launch. And Finns are still alive today who were my own Finnish daughter’s age when, like Ukraine, Finland was invaded by Russia in 1939. After 90,000 Finns died fighting, the Finns surrendered territory to save their sovereignty. Because Finland had been a conduit for repeated European attacks on Russia, thereafter Moscow required Finland to commit to military neutrality.
Today Finns fiercely oppose Russia, and last year they finally joined NATO — mainly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finns also do not look fondly on their early neutrality, a period called “Finlandization,” when they were abandoned to the Soviets. Still, as the Cold War thawed, Finland bolstered its sovereignty and army and joined the European Union, while staying militarily nonaligned. Under this better model — independent neutrality — Finns for decades succeeded in building one of the most stable democracies in the West without joining NATO, earning respect as a peacekeeper and ranking every year as the happiest country on earth.
For Ukraine, independent neutrality like Finland’s has long been a viable alternative to NATO membership and, in fact, was already agreed to in principle by Kyiv and Moscow in the first weeks of the current war. According to a recent investigation by experts at RAND and Johns Hopkins University, and confirmed by The New York Times, instead of Ukraine continuing to fight in hopes of joining NATO, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and key officials in his government in March 2022 asked that members of the UN Security Council guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality to end Russia’s invasion. The arrangement would have enabled Ukraine to join the EU, like Finland. But leaders in Washington and London weren’t interested and the plan died.
After more than two years of a worsening war, though, Biden has now suggested that peace in Ukraine “doesn’t mean NATO” and that he doesn’t necessarily “support the NATOization of Ukraine.” So UN Security Council guarantees for Ukraine’s neutrality could now be viable instead, and would be popular: Negotiating to end the war is supported by 94 percent of Americans, 88 percent of Western Europeans, and 72 percent of Ukrainians, despite their continued hopes for victory. To get there, though, Washington would have to start thinking again with more than just one half of its foreign-policy brain.
One way to understand America’s foreign-policy establishment, especially in relation to Russia and Ukraine, is that it’s like a brain with two sides: one wired for diplomacy, the other for dominance. The results have been, well, unstable. Figures such as former president Ronald Reagan and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who advised presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, used both sides of the brain but eventually tilted toward diplomacy. The diplomat George Kennan under President Harry Truman,and Obama himself, favored diplomacy. Under former president George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney pursued dominance.
The diplomacy side has long supported neutrality for Ukraine and coexistence with Russia. Reagan was a hawk, but after the Soviet Union and United States came perilously close to nuclear war in 1983, he negotiated the pioneering Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which restored the stability of nuclear deterrence and helped end the Cold War. Reagan’s legacy was carried on by many key figures in Washington, who encouraged diplomacy with Russia and neutrality for countries such as Finland and Ukraine as their best defense. Ukraine’s own original Constitution endorsed neutrality.
Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region of Ukraine last August.TYLER HICKS/NYT
America’s own provocations
But after the Cold War, the other side of America’s foreign-policy brain pursued dominance, threatening Ukraine’s neutrality. First Wolfowitz and Cheney developed a plan for global USmilitary supremacy. When Vladimir Putin became the Russian president in 2000, he was keen to build his country back into a superpower. But he also tried to strengthen relations and treaties with the United States and was supported by key figures in Washington and Europe. The dominance camp, however, had other ideas.
Bush and Cheney began pulling out of treaties with Russia while building a new nuclear arsenal and doctrine for a preemptive first strike against Russia — even at the risk of millions of American deaths and nuclear winter. In 2005, the Bush administration also started “retooling” NATO from a defensive European alliance into an out-of-area “deployable, modern, and responsive” fighting force. George W. Bush, with Cheney’s backing, then went against the advice of almost everyone in the West by pushing in 2008 for this retooled NATO to enter Ukraine, even though Ukrainians themselves were, according to Galluppolls, “more than twice as likely to see NATO as a threat than as protection.”
In 2009, during Obama’s first term, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, also announced the installation of US Aegis missile sites that eventually would go in Poland and Romania. Clearly, similar missile launchers could go into Ukraine, too, if it joined NATO. The Aegis launchers were billed as “defensive,” but in fact they created a new threat to Moscow more dangerous than the weapons Reagan’s treaty had outlawed. Meanwhile, the militaries of the “retooled” NATO also alarmed Moscow in 2011, when they demonstrated their new mission by helping to destroy Muammar Qaddafi’s government in Libya at Washington’s request.
The majority of Ukrainians wanted to stay militarily neutral, but many also wanted to join the EU. Pro-EU protests in Kyiv in 2013-14 precipitated a crisis that resulted in a new, ad hoc Ukrainian governmentmore aligned with the United States. In response, Russian military forces swelled into Crimea, and Russia annexed the territory without firing a shot. This, many Americananalystsconcluded,didn’t signal imperial expansion but rather an improvised effort to secure Russia’s main naval base against future US and NATO encroachment.
The diplomacy-minded Brzezinski, whose own homeland of Poland had been invaded by Russia, assessed the risks of pushing Ukraine into NATO andrepeatedlyurged a Finnish-style alternative — not “Finlandization” but independent neutrality. Henry Kissinger weighed in to support Finnish-style neutrality and its “fierce independence.” At the Harvard Kennedy School a similar plan was proposed; at the Brookings Institution, Michael O’Hanlon issued a book-length study in 2017, Beyond NATO, detailing the value of neutrality for Ukraine, Finland, and other countries as well.
And though he condemned the annexation of Crimea and imposed sanctions on Moscow, Obama, just before leaving office, advised against confronting Russia over Ukraine.
By then Ukrainians themselves were favoring the security NATO seemed to offer. The trouble was, the domination side of the US foreign-policy brain had itself become too dominant. In 2018, although the United States was being defeated by low-tech militias in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new National Defense Strategy set out to “win,” militarily if necessary, in a global strategic contest against Russia and China, both nuclear superpowers.
The United States, its goals ambiguous, deepened military cooperation with Ukraine during 2021, advancing a de facto NATOization. According to the former head of Russia analysis at the CIA, George Beebe, soon “the US military would become firmly entrenched inside Ukraine” — roughly the equivalent of the Russian military installing itself in Toronto. For Moscow, not responding would be, in Beebe’s assessment, “risky.”
Indeed, Russia by late 2021 was massing troops on the Ukraine border. But Putin also took a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook, proposing in December 2021 a new peace treaty with the United States and NATO, to pull back offensive weaponry and reestablish the stability of defensive deterrence.
Curiously, the reaction from the United States and NATO was broad dismissal, even though in principle, the proposal was not unlike the landmark INF Treaty Reagan had signed. The former CIA analyst, Beebe, considered Moscow’s proposal “a basis for negotiations” with “potential middle grounds on many of the issues.” And a core element was the same as the proposals by Brzezinski, O’Hanlon, and many others in the West: neutrality for Ukraine. But astonishingly, given the risks to the people of Ukraine, Biden’s foreign-policy team flatly rejectedany discussion of Ukrainian neutrality.
A Ukrainian soldier near the front line at Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region on June 21.OLEG PETRASIUK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A fresh vision for Ukraine’s survival
Now that Biden has opened the door to alternatives to NATO, however, and with the conflict getting more dangerous by the day, the Democratic Party leadership could endorse a fresh foreign-policy vision that champions not just the past successes of Finland but also the huge rewards of strong neutrality in general.
A heroic first step the United States could urgently take, and which would entail a deeper commitment to Ukraine’s survival than sending more missiles, would be to lead the UN Security Council in collaborative guarantees for Ukrainian security as the basis for a ceasefire. This collaborative, more multilateral, and more global approach to Ukraine’s security would address Russia’s stated concerns about NATO. A ceasefire could then open the possibility for Zelensky, whose term has expired, to restore elections, and for Ukrainians to vote on restoring their neutrality.
Endorsing neutrality for Ukraine would also be a chance to rewire Washington’s foreign-policy brain. Our dominance-driven wars and interventions have been disasters. The “unipolar moment” of US primacy is over and the global majority is aligning away from Washington’s presumption to control their fates. Yet our drive for dominance continues to suck us deeper — in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — toward potentially suicidal defeats.
The United States, too, was once a neutral country. Today the United States heads a vibrant global coalition of democracies. A retreat into isolationism would be a mistake. That said, this larger collective could declare permanent defensive armed neutrality on the world stage. Instead of trying to “win” against everyone else, maybe we could, for a change, as Finland did, try investing in and strengthening ourselves, and lead by example.
*Trevor Corson is a widely published journalist and journalism educator now based in Finland.
Der Friedensstifter 