Tag Archive for: WW III

What is World War III really being fought over and why?

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We hear a lot in the conservative media about the dangers of socialism, communism, Islamism and so many other “isms.”

But World War III, which is already well underway in my opinion, is not being fought over ideologies. It’s being fought over energy and natural resources. I’m not saying ideology is unimportant. It is. But he who controls the world’s resources will be free to impose whatever ideology he wants.

Washington and London, which make up the heart of the Western liberal world order, has come to the point where it thinks it’s admirable and virtuous to redefine God-created genders and appropriate to unleash deviant transvestites on innocent school children. To enforce this sick cultural ethos, it must gain control of the world’s resources and ration them back to the nations based on their compliance with their putrid socio-political values, which includes radical pro-abortion policies, continuous mRNA injections for all from birth to death, rapid digitization of everything including human beings, and an obsession with all things LGBTQ.

To pull this off, the West, with NATO as its terroristic military force, is seeking to neutralize the massive resources of Ukraine and Russia as it ramps up its “net zero” sustainable development model of economic growth. This economic model is really just a scam designed to pilfer what remains of middle class wealth and further subjugate them under AI-powered government-corporate control. Hence the need for more massive data centers. And Donald Trump is happy to oblige, as he announced last week his plan to blanket the United States with new data centers, taking advantage of $8 billion in foreign investment from a billionaire in the United Arab Emirates.

The surveillance state cannot be built out without these data centers scooping up, processing and storing highly personal information on every citizen. But Trump is either unaware of the dangers of AI or doesn’t care because he is consumed by a belief that it is through technology and technological advances that he will “make America great again.”

A Trump White House has the potential to be like a wet dream for the technocrats who want unfettered freedom to develop and deploy AI in any way they see fit, which usually has to do with replacing us in our work and controlling us in our behaviors. Transhumanism expert Joe Allen has said the technocratic oligarchs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates et al, plan to replace our republic with a system he describes as an Algocracy, or “rule by algorthim.”

The modern technocratic state is going to be based on energy and carbon credits. Fiat currencies will become a thing of the past if these global predators succeed in their plans for a one-world surveillance state, where freedom of movement becomes a distant memory. Our healthcare and even our diets will also be tightly controlled by the elitist globalist predator class, whose interests are exemplified by the World Economic Forum and other elitist organizations.

With an understanding of the ongoing war over who controls the global food and energy supplies, it becomes easy to see how the NATO-Russia war (with Ukraine as NATO’s proxy) will blow up into World War III.

Moscow accused Ukraine Monday of conducting “energy terrorism” after what the Kremlin described as a failed drone attack against a Black Sea gas-compressor station that forms part of the major TurkStream gas pipeline linking Russia and Turkey.

The following is from the France 24 media outlet.

The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting “energy terrorism” and posing a danger to Europe‘s energy security, after an attempted drone attack on part of a major gas pipeline that carries Russian supplies to Turkey.

The allegation comes amid an escalating energy war between the two countries, almost three years after Russia launched its military offensive.

Ukraine has not commented on the alleged attack.

Ukraine halted the transit of Russian gas to third countries via Ukraine on January 1, ending decades of energy cooperation that had brought billions of dollars to both countries, in a bid to cut off revenue for Moscow’s army.

The United States last week rolled out fresh sanctions on Russia’s oil sector in another blow to Moscow’s vital hydrocarbon industry.

The Russian defense ministry said on Monday that Ukraine had fired nine attack drones on Saturday at a gas-compressor station in the village of Gai-Kodzor, near Russia’s southern coast on the Black Sea.

The site is across from the Crimean peninsula — which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in 2014 and has been heavily targeted by Kyiv throughout the three-year war.

Moscow said the facility was part of the TurkStream pipeline and accused Ukraine of trying to “cut off gas supplies to European countries.”

The Moscow Times further reported as follows:

The Defense Ministry said all the drones were shot down but some “minor damage” was recorded from falling debris. Gas deliveries were unaffected.

According to Russian state news agencies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack a “continuation of the line of energy terrorism that Kyiv has been pursuing, under the curation of its overseas friends, for a long time.”

He called it “very dangerous for European consumers” and said Russia’s foreign minister and the head of Gazprom had discussed it in a call with their Turkish counterparts on Sunday.

Moscow’s forces have bombarded Ukraine’s energy sector with repeated aerial strikes since February 2022, causing major damage and power outages across the country.

The Western puppet politicians would have us believe the war is being fought over “democracy.” They say Putin is a dictator who wants to take over all of Europe. This is preposterous. The Soviet Empire collapsed because it could not handle the financial burden of keeping the Eastern European countries under its thumb, and Putin knows this. Russia is not capable of conquering and occupying Eastern Europe, let alone all of Western Europe, too. So these Western leaders are lying through their teeth, and unfortunately the Western press is all too happy to parrot thier fear-mongering narratives about Putin.

But even if Putin was as bad of a dictator as they tell us, the U.S. and NATO have in the past had no problem with dictators as long as they trade in dollars and follow the rules of the post-World War II liberal world order.

Don’t buy the hypocritical and self-righteous lies so prevalent throughout the Western media, including much of the conservative media. The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with democracy. It’s being fought for the sole purpose of detaching Putin from his position in control of a vast store of natural gas, oil, gold, uranium, and other valuable natural resources that the West wants to control and profit from. They can’t profit from it as long as Putin is in charge of Russia. And the last thing Washington wants to see is Putin plowing those oil and gas profits into his military/defense/industrial sector at a time when the West is seeking to eliminate so-called “fossil fuels” and convert to unreliable, less efficient and more expensive wind and solar energy. How will the U.S. and E.U. compete if Russia is selling cheap oil and gas to China and India? They can’t. They know it. And Russia must be brought to heel.

The Kremlin on Monday also accused the United States of “destabilizing” the world energy market through fresh sanctions on Russian oil producers.

The United States and Britain on Friday announced sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, including oil giant Gazprom Neft and 180 ships it says are part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet.”

The move came just days before Joe Biden leaves office.

No one wants to give their sons to fight and die in a war being fought over which country’s elites get to exploit the most resources. But they will send their sons to die if the stakes are recalibrated into a lying narrative about “fighting for democracy and freedom.” The elites figured this out a long time ago, and it still works beautifully for them today. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Pleas visit LeoHohmann.com — Investigative reporting on globalism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and where politics, culture and religion intersect.

Globalists fret U.S. is unprepared to take on Russia-China even as they provoke war with Russia-China

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New study exposes true danger of neocon Uniparty now in control of U.S. government: Will U.S. survive another year without being nuked? The most pressing question of 2024 that nobody’s discussing. 

The U.S. military is no longer prepared to fight a major war, according to a new study conducted by a congressional panel. This dire sense of unpreparedness strikes me as odd given the fact that the U.S. military and its overseers in the political realm seem to be itching to start a major war with the very powers — Russia-China-Iran-North Korea — that its own experts say it’s unprepared to fight.

According to the report, the threats the U.S. is facing are “the most serious and most challenging” it has seen in almost a century. But the U.S. defense base is not equipped to meet those threats, according to a report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy published July 29 by the Rand Corp.

Before we dive into the report, it’s crucial to note what the Rand Corp. is. This is a globalist think tank that provides the intellectual cover for American Empire building and what President Eisenhower rightly termed the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” Yes, Eisenhower, in his farewell address, had originally included the word “congressional” in his speech but decided at the last minute to remove that word because he still had some legislation he wanted to get through Congress in his last few days in office.

Keep Rand Corp.’s bias toward globalist, neoconservative/neoliberal war-mongering in mind as we dissect this report.

According to this report, the biggest problems facing America are a troubled Pentagon and a failure by the federal government to properly address threats emanating from China and Russia. Like every good lie, it does contain elements of truth. That’s part of the deception.

The report reads:

“The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today. The United States is still failing to act with the urgency required, across administrations and without regard to governing party.”

TRANSLATION: the U.S. taxpayer, which foots the bill for a defense budget bigger than all of the other nations of the world combined, is not doing enough. The American taxpayer needs to fork over even more money to the military-industrial-congressional complex so it can confront Russia and China in those countries’ backyards, and be ready to fight those countries in a World War III type scenario when they inevitably grow tired of U.S. meddling in their regions of the world.

Rand goes to great lengths to assure us that the commission which produced this report is of the highest integrity and professionalism. It’s a congressionally established and bipartisan commission, made up of “high-level defense and national security experts,” tasked with assessing the U.S. defense strategies and providing recommendations to Congress and the Pentagon.

Rand Corp. provided the commission with “analytic, administrative, editorial, and publication support.”

The report goes on to state that both China and Russia are bolstering their military capacity while working closer with one another, creating a looming threat from two of the world’s largest superpowers. This relationship has also welcomed other American adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea.

All of that is true. But the authors never ask, why is it that Russia is working closer than ever with China, a historic enemy of Russia? Could it be that U.S. policy since at least 1992 has driven Russia into the arms of China? What with the U.S.-led NATO military alliance doubling in size, from 15 to 32 nations, surrounding Russia’s western flank, positioning missile systems on Russia’s border, pointed at Moscow, and training up a hostile military force in Ukraine specifically designed to kill Russians? Nah, none of this could factor into Russia’s decision to expand its own military and join forces with China, could it?

China remains the key player in the multi-nation axis, according to the report.

“The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment.”

Hmm. China is also building up its military forces. And how has China, which as recently as 50 years ago was a backward flea-bitten outpost of the Third World, been able to afford this massive upgrade and modernization of its military? It couldn’t be because U.S. businessmen, driven by greed and incentivized by changes in U.S. laws and trade policy, have been pouring money into China and outsourcing U.S. industrial capacity over there for the past 50 years, could it? Nah, again, this is just a conspiracy theory put forth by ignorant and old-fashioned isolationists such as myself.

This new axis of China-Russia-North Korea-Iran “creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war,” the report goes on to warn.

The Pentagon is burdened with bureaucratic and slow-moving processes, relies on “decades-old military hardware” and has given way to a “culture of risk avoidance,” the report claims.

The U.S. defense base is unable to meet the needs of American allies in terms of military and technology equipment, according to the report, which assumes it is the responsibility of the United States to arm, train and equip its allies while serving as the policeman of the world. No surprise there since the Rand Corporation is a stalwart servant of the military-industrial complex and staunch advocate of forever wars.

This report should be taken with a large grain of salt because its underlying premise is not the defense of the U.S. homeland but rather the defense of an American empire which is crumbling under the weight of a $35 trillion national debt. That debt is the direct result of Congress and the White House listening to reports like this one, and recklessly abusing U.S. military power to bully other nations into submission. While that may have worked for a time with countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, it’s not going to work with the likes of Russia and China. The latter, China, is a creation of the U.S. itself and would still be a backward Third World country were it not for U.S. investment and anti-American trade polices over the last 50 years.

Russia was a willing Western partner but got fed up with the U.S. lies about the expansion of NATO on its borders, then twisting the narrative around to make it look like Russia is the aggressor, when it was just defending itself against a hostile Western puppet regime installed in Kiev. Ukraine is not “Russia’s war” or “Putin’s war,” as repeated ad nauseam in the Western media. This is NATO’s war against Russia, using its puppet Ukrainian regime as a proxy. Western fantasies about the military defeat and Balkanization of Russia have been openly discussed in hearings before Congress, as recently as two years ago, as documented by Monthly Review on June 27, 2022.

The “mounting security threats” warned of by Rand Corp. and its neocon lineup of “experts” would not exist if the U.S. would mind its own business and stop meddling in volatile parts of the world like Ukraine, which is in Russia’s immediate sphere of influence. Would the U.S. government tolerate Russia installing a pro-Russian regime in Mexico, then arming, training and forming a military alliance with that regime, then overseeing that regime’s missile bombardments of cities in Texas? I think not.

If the U.S. does not reevaluate and majorly overhaul its foreign policy towards Russia, there will be no amount of money or expertise capable of defending its homeland, because, frankly, it is inviting all of the problems spoken of in the Rand-published report. With a properly adjusted foreign policy, defending the homeland would be a simple task, and much less expensive. Simply shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, close the majority of U.S. foreign military bases, adopt a policy of free and fair trade with all nations, and train an Army, Navy and Air Force that truly focuses on defending America and a few strategic allies in and around North America. NATO should be shut down for good. It is no longer a defensive alliance. NATO has evolved into a rogue offensive force provoking wars in multiple theaters with nations it is frankly unable to defeat if it should come down to a major World War III type confrontation. Stop bluffing and adopt a more realistic approach to the world. America is blessed by such favorable geography that it could never be defeated by any invading land force in a conventional war. The only existential national security threat to the American homeland today is that of our own government recklessly and needlessly provoking a response from nuclear-armed Russia that, if not brought to heel, will result in our own nuclear annihilation.

The current foreign policy based on meddling in other countries’ internal politics and economics has created an environment in which America is seen as an international bully that needs to be countered. And the only way to counter a bully is to take up sides with the bully’s biggest adversaries, China and Russia. That’s the whole reason behind BRICS. Fear of U.S. economic sanctions is fueling the growth of BRICS, with up to 40 nations now trying to join that 10-nation coalition led by Russia and China.

If the U.S. government continues on its current disastrous path, it will experience a nasty comeuppance, likely within the next one to three years. That comeuppance will consist of economic collapse and possible nuclear destruction.

You can only poke the bear so long before the bear resorts to his most fearsome option. Because a bear will protect its cubs. This idea that Putin is a hardened communist who hates his own people is utter hogwash. Putin is certainly no saint, but he loves Mother Russia and will defend it to the bitter end.

Maybe that’s what the globalist power elites in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin want. Nuclear annihilation. They do have a hatred not only for their own people but humanity in general. That’s what makes them Luciferian. Part of a death cult.

Pray that these false leaders either repent or get taken out of the way, before it’s too late.

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.

Please visit Leo’s Newsletter Substack

IDF BATTLE VIDEOS: IDF Ends Nur al-Shams Operation and More…

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IDF BATTLE VIDEO: IDF ends Nur al-Shams operation

At the end of 15 hours of operation; IDF and Police Border forces destroyed dozens of explosives that were buried under civilian infrastructure in Nur al-Shams in the Menashe Brigade.

In an extensive engineering operation conducted in Nur al-Shams, the units, under the intelligence guidance of IDF Intelligence and the Shin Bet, destroyed dozens of explosives planted in traffic routes with the aim of harming our forces and putting the residents living in the area at risk.

In addition, as part of the operation, the fighters destroyed two “war rooms” used for local terrorist organizations, arrested a wanted terrorist and destroyed a vehicle in which several explosive charges were stored.

Also, during the night, the IDF, Shin Bet and Border Police forces arrested 15 wanted terrorists throughout Judea and Samaria and confiscated weapons.

The wanted terrorists who were arrested and the means of warfare that were confiscated were transferred to the security forces for further treatment, there were no casualties to our forces.

IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Hezbollah terrorists detected and hit

After identifying the source of the shooting, the IDF attacked a building where two Hezbollah terrorists suspected of carrying out the shooting at Meshgav were identified earlier today.

Earlier today, a number of launches were detected from Rav a-Taltin area in Lebanon to the Mashgab area, the air defense fighters successfully intercepted most of the launches.

Shortly after the launches, the forces of Division 91 identified two terrorists entering a military structure of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of ​​the source of the shooting, Air Force fighter jets attacked the structure containing the terrorists.

IDF BATTLE VIDEO: Yahalom fighters destroyed tunnels in Shejaiya

The combat teams of the 7th Paratrooper Brigade and the Yahalom Unit have been fighting for over a week above ground and underground in the Shejaiya area under the command of Division 98.

The forces of the division conducted face-to-face battles with terrorist squads, eliminated more than 150 terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and encountered trapped buildings and destroyed charges.

In addition, the forces located dozens of weapons and intelligence documents that the terrorists left behind.

The forces located, with intelligence guidance and an engineering effort, tunnel shafts and significant underground routes that were destroyed. In the divisional activity, six offensive tunnels with a length of about six kilometers were located and destroyed. The forces continue to explore and destroy the signs in the area.

In exploring the tunnels, the fighters of the Yahalom (who specialize in explosives and underground fighting) unit located underground tunnels that make up a branching tunnel system, in some of which the terrorists’ living and command rooms were located, in one of the tunnels weapons and intelligence documents were located.

EDITORS NOTE: These Newsrael/IDF videos are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

America’s War with Russia and the Communist Revolution in North America

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Creating a hypothesis out of connected dots that probably mean nothing at all…

In the past few days, we have posted a couple of videos of Viktor Orbán, warning about NATO setting the stage for a larger and unnecessary war, which will certainly be destructive for all of us in many ways. The interview we posted was from last week, but Gates of Vienna has posted a newer one on the same theme from this past Friday. We also posted a speech Orbán gave to a  live audience on the same theme. The theme being, the curious insistence of war with Russia by NATO.

Before I continue, a quick definition.

A hypothesis is just an idea someone may have. Could be from connecting dots in evidence, or even the unconscious collation of data in one’s own brain which leads to an insight or idea. It could turn out to be a world changer, or a steaming pile of BS. I’m really hoping this one is the latter.

Let’s put in a few more dots:

BREAKING: Ukraine Strikes Russia With Western Weapons.. — NY TIMES

Here we go!

Just shortly following the Biden administration’s authorization for Ukraine to employ American weaponry against Russia, Kyiv swiftly acted on this newfound liberty by targeting a military installation across the border, utilizing a U.S.-manufactured artillery system, as indicated by a member of Ukraine’s Parliament.

Yehor Chernev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s committee on national security, defense, and intelligence, disclosed on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had successfully neutralized Russian missile launchers with a strike in the Belgorod region, approximately 20 miles into Russian territory. T

he operation employed a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), he affirmed.

This marks the inaugural instance of a Ukrainian official openly acknowledging the use of American weaponry to engage targets within Russia subsequent to President Biden’s rescindment of the prohibition on such actions.

OK so that’s pretty in tight with what Orbán was saying. From the theoretical right to the factual.

I dunno who this is. Is this anybody? Still, it doesn’t seem that unlikely that if you corner a bobcat and attack it, it will strike at you with all it has even if you have a small army of bears behind you. Dead is dead. May as well go down fighting, from anyone’s perspective. No? If anyone knows who this Russian alleged diplomat is, please leave a comment. It matters of course, who it actually is.

Macgregor again:

BREAKING: NATO now planning to get US troops to the front-line to fight RUSSIA..

What are they thinking?

NATO has disclosed its preparations to deploy American troops to the European frontlines in the event of a full-scale conflict with Russia.

Innovative ‘land corridors’ are being established to expedite the movement of soldiers through central Europe, bypassing local bureaucratic hurdles.

This strategic setup enables NATO forces to swiftly react should Putin’s aggressive actions in Ukraine extend westward.

Reports suggest that these plans also encompass provisions for potential Russian attacks.

In such scenarios, troops could mobilize through corridors in Italy, Greece, and Turkey to reach the Balkans, or alternatively, advance towards Russia’s northern border via Scandinavia.

These details were shared by officials with The Telegraph.

BREAKING: NATO READIES 300,000 TROOPS FOR EUROPEAN DEFENSE AGAINST RUSSIA

NATO is preparing for a potential conflict with Russia by developing ‘land corridors’ to quickly deploy 300,000 US troops to the European frontlines.

Troops would land at key ports, including Rotterdam, and move east via pre-planned routes to counter any potential Russian attack.

Lt. Gen. Alexander Sollfrank:

“Huge logistics bases, as we know them from Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer possible because they will be attacked and destroyed very early on in a conflict situation.”

These corridors would utilize ports in the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Norway, as well as the Germany-Poland railway.

With escalating warnings of a Russian assault, this strategic move ensures rapid military reinforcement to defend any threatened NATO territory.

Sources: Telegraph, Defense News, ERR News.

OK so now this:

Biden prepares an order that would shut down asylum if a daily average of 2,500 migrants arrive

President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as the White House tries to neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of the November elections. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is telling lawmakers that President Joe Biden is preparing to sign off on an executive order that would shut down asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening only once that number declines to 1,500, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

The impact of the 2,500 figure means that the executive order could go into immediate effect because daily figures are higher than that now.

The Democratic president is expected to unveil the actions — his most aggressive unilateral move yet to control the numbers at the border — at the White House on Tuesday at an event to which border mayors have been invited.

Ok first of all, this article is written in political language. What did Orwell say about that?

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

So if I dare translate from politics to reality, what we get out of that AP News item is:

‘Biden deliberately let in all these people with zero connection to America’s libertarian culture, past and values. We can know this because for some reason now, he is stopping’. (Yes, for Biden you can read Obama, and for Obama you can read COMINTERN)

Even Bill Mahar figured that much out

Here is the hypothesis:

If the question is:

‘How do you take a nation down from an individualist, true-liberal or libertarian nation and make it into a communist-authoritarian one when the public is armed and has a 2nd amendment to the Constitution which most people understand, and understand why it is there?’

The answer might be:

Well you bring in millions of replacements for the actual Americans, and send the Americans to get killed by Russia. And if you beat Russia, bonus, and if you don’t you send them a nice thank you note for assisting in your own revolution.

Just an idle thought. Pretty sure I am totally full of it here. But this is a blog and that means writing down a few thoughts when they may help save a few lives or reinforce and important principle of Western Civilization. We called it right on the vaxx, Islamic immigration, communism and other more local events. Hopefully wrong on this one.

But one thing is for sure. One of the reasons we lose all the time is we don’t think big enough. Our enemies think ion a massive scale. All the time.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Paul Craig Roberts: ‘The March to the Third World War Continues’

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This is a bit of a different perspective from a wise elder-statesman, economist, scholar and journalist, Mr. Paul Craig Roberts. Could Putin be exercising too much restraint for his own good and the good of the Russian people? And could that restraint end up backfiring into a nuclear-fought World War? These are questions examined by Roberts in the must-read article below.

The March to the Third World War Continues

By Paul Craig Roberts, Institute for Political Economy

I admire Putin, but I am his critic. I think he is unintentionally leading us into World War 3.

Putin’s limited military operation in Ukraine confined to clearing Ukrainian Nazi militias and Ukrainian military forces out of Donbas, a Russian speaking province attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders as was Russian Crimea, was a strategic blunder.

It was a strategic blunder that followed four or five previous strategic blunders within the Ukraine context. There were others outside the Ukraine context.

Donbas formed into two independent republics in response to the anti-Russian coup orchestrated by the United States that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government. Putin’s first strategic blunder was in permitting Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.

In 2014 after the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the two independent Donbas republics voted overwhelmingly, as did Crimea, to be reincorporated into Russia. Putin accepted Crimea’s request, as otherwise Russia would lose its Black Sea naval base, but rejected the request of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics.

This was Putin’s second strategic blunder. If Putin or the Kremlin or the Russian government had given equal treatment to Donetsk and Luhansk a decade ago in 2014, there would have been no limited military operation with Ukraine. Neither Ukraine, NATO, nor Washington would dared to have attacked Russian territory in order to “recover Donbass.”

If the US persisted in bringing Ukraine into NATO, Putin would have been forced to recognize that he was at war with the West and that he had no alternative but to reestablish Ukraine to its many centuries existence as a part of Russia. Ukraine’s “independence” is an American creation 30 years old. Every Western analyst has overlooked, or kept silent about, the fact that the dismemberment of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union is like the dismemberment of Germany after World War I, the difference being that Hitler was determined to put Germany back together but Putin has no such ambition. If truth be known, Putin is essentially a 20th century Western liberal, and this is why he is failing as a war leader of Russia in the 21st century.

Instead of accepting the Donbas vote, Putin elected to leave Donbas in Ukraine, but he tried to protect the Russian population there with the Minsk Agreement sometimes called the Minsk Protocol. Briefly, under the Minsk Agreement, Donbas remained in Ukraine but was granted some forms of autonomy, such as its own police force in order to protect the Russian population from being persecuted by the Ukrainian government. Putin secured the signatures of Ukraine and the two independent republics to the agreement, and he secured the agreement of Germany and France to enforce the agreement. Quite clearly, despite the obvious lies of Washington, EU governments, and the Western presstitutes, Putin intended no “invasion of Ukraine” or even a limited military operation. He wanted to avoid military conflict.

During the next eight years from 2014-2022 we witnessed extraordinary diplomatic efforts by Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, the two most capable diplomats of our time, to work out a mutual security agreement between the West and Russia, even including Russia as a member of NATO.

For eight years Russia got the West’s cold shoulder. In December of 2021 and January of 2022 Putin and Lavrov worked hard to secure a mutual defense agreement with the West in order to defuse the military action that Washington was forcing on Russia to defend the Donbas Russians from the large Ukrainian army Washington had built while Putin for eight years had his hopes on the Minsk Protocol. In the past year or two both the German Chancellor Merkel and the French President admitted that the Minsk Protocol was used to deceive Putin while the West built up the Ukrainian military. You can find these admissions online. Here, for example, is Merkel:

According to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Minsk agreement served to buy time to arm Ukraine. “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” Merkel told the weekly Die Zeit. “It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today (December 21, 2022).”

Putin expressed his disappointment in Merkel’s confession:

Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, has been disappointed by the statement of German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, where she claimed that the Minsk agreements of 2014 enabled Ukraine to prepare for the war with Russia. “For me, it was completely unexpected. It is disappointing. I did not expect to hear something like that from the ex-Chancellor. I always hoped that the German leadership was genuine. Yes, she was on Ukraine’s side, supporting it. But nevertheless, I genuinely hoped that German leadership expected a settlement based on the principles achieved, among other things, during the Minsk negotiations.”

The naivety Putin reveals is extraordinary. He is a babe in the woods having to contend with Satan.

Faced with an Ukrainian invasion of the Donbas republics, Putin was forced to intervene. But having foolishly trusted the West to abide by the Minsk agreement, Putin was not prepared for military action. He had to rely on a private military unit, whose professionalism embarrassed the Russian generals who came to see Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group as the enemy instead of the West.

When a few of Prigozhin’s men marched on Moscow in protest of the high casualty manner in which the conflict was being managed and demanded the use of force to get the war over, the jealous Russian generals told Putin it was a coup attempt and by deceiving Putin achieved their aims of banning Prigozhin, later killed in a mysterious airplane crash, and incorporating the Wagner Group into the Russian army. Like generals the world over, their last concern was the conflict. Generals use wars to build empires.

The “limited military operation” was one of the worst strategic blunders in world history. It was a blunder because Putin failed to perceive that he was at war with the West and that the most desperate need was to win the war immediately before the West could get involved and step by step escalate and widen the war.

This is precisely what has happened. Everything the West affirmed would not be sent to Ukraine has been sent. The West is fully at war with Russia in Ukraine. US and NATO troops are present on the scene, providing intelligence, targeting information, battle plans. French President Macron and now other European politicians are talking about deploying NATO troops on the front lines. They argue that Russia, confronted with NATO and US troops will stop its advance in order to avoid a wider war. In other words, the argument is that introducing NATO soldiers into the conflict will lead to peace.

But peace is not what the West desires. The West has blocked every effort that Putin has made with Zelensky. The only purpose of the NATO troops is to widen the war or to intimidate Putin into withdrawing from the conflict.

This is obvious to everyone but the Russian government.

What is it that prevents the Kremlin’s recognition of reality? I can only speculate. Perhaps communist rule left Russians suspicious of their government. It was the US and not the USSR that was successful. The Soviet system was repressive, but the Americans were believed to be free. Radio Free Europe and Voice of America painted a rosy picture of Western life, a dream for Russians experiencing Soviet deprivation.

Among the Russian intellectual class the West, not Russia, was the future. The pro-Western Russian elites are known as the Atlanticist-Integrationists, a term that reflects their desire to be part of the West. I know from personal experience with them that it took events and a long time for these Atlanticist-Integrationists to wake up and realize their delusion. But for years they were a constraint on Putin, if one was needed, as Putin himself was initially besotted with the West. Putin even fell for “globalism,” a means of Western control. So did his stupid central bank director.

From the standpoint of the Atlanticist-Integrationists, the point is to avoid justifying Western suspicions of Russia caused by Putin defending Russian interests. The West would interpret decisive Russian actions in defense of Russia as “Russia rebuilding its empire.” Consequently, the Russian liberals and the youth cultivated by foreign NGO money operating in Russia unregulated imposed constraints on Putin’s ability to defend his country, even if he understood the problem, which is not clear.

Considering the vast disproportion in the military power of Russia and Ukraine even with Western armaments and untold billions of dollars, the continuation of the conflict into a third year has created the image of an irresolute Russian leadership, afraid to win in case it provokes a wider conflict. Putin and his government and his military, unlike Prigozhin, have made the strategic blunder of failing to understand that letting the conflict drag on permits the West to get increasingly involved. Whether NATO troops appear or not, the West has other means of escalating the conflict until it spins out of control.

UK defense chief, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, told the Financial Times that the latest delivery of long-range missiles to Ukraine allows Ukraine to “increase long-range attacks inside Russia” and helps Kyiv shape the war in much stronger ways.

So that you understand, the long-range missiles, which President Biden denied would ever be given to Ukraine, have been given. They are not battlefield weapons. Their use is to further embarrass Putin with inability to protect Russian civilians and infrastructure from Ukrainian attacks inside mother Russia. Clearly, Washington is doing everything it can to embarrass Putin with Russians, and Putin is playing into Washington’s hands.

Putin’s limited military operation is a total failure. Yes, Russia dominates the battle front. But by restraining the use of force Putin has created the impression that he is irresolute and an inconsequential military opponent. Even the president of France, hardly a military power, is unafraid of Russia under Putin and is willing to send French troops to fight for Ukraine against Russia.

Initially the French president was ridiculed for suggesting NATO troops be sent to Ukraine. Now others are warming to the idea.

The American president declared never would long range missiles be delivered to Ukraine, and now they have been.

As I warned, Putin’s failure to put down a heavy foot has encouraged provocation after worsening provocation, and these provocations invited by Putin’s non-response are leading to a provocation that Putin will not be able to ignore, and then the world blows up.

When will Putin understand that all he has gained from his limited military operation is a wider war, two new NATO members–Finland and Sweden–that greatly expand (more that Ukraine) Russia’s borders with NATO, and deliveries to the anti-Russian government in Ukraine of weapons unintended for the battlefield but for long distance strikes into Russia, which will make Russia look weak and Putin a failure as a war leader who is unable to protect his country?

The US Secretary of State, Blinken, was recently in China doing his best to unwind the Russian-Chinese relationship. Putin’s inability to deal with such a minor military adversary as Ukraine must make China wonder. Clearly Putin’s failure to win a war, now in its third year which he should have won in 3 weeks, provided Blinken with the opportunity to pressure China. Blinken saw the opportunity and used it. Blinken gained the support of a Chinese “Russian expert” and the ear of the Chinese government.

China itself is an ineffectual defender of its interest. Chinese thinking teaches the long run perspective. China simply waits out its opponents, but the West is immediate, which is something China doesn’t understand.

There is still no Russian-Chinese-Iranian Mutual Defense Treaty that would put a halt to Western provocations and war-making. No doubt the Russians and Chinese don’t want to be provocative. This indicates that they are incapable of realizing that they are at war.

To sum up: Putin thinks Russia has won the conflict because, despite $200 billion in US aid, Russia dominates the battlefield. Ukrainian casualties are 10 or more times Russian casualties, and the Western weapons are vastly inferior to the Russian ones. Putin thinks it is only a matter of time before the West comes to its senses and realizes it has lost and agrees to Russia’s conditions for ending the conflict. Why does Putin think that the West has any sense to come to? Putin is deceiving himself.

Putin should read Mike Whitney’s latest. Whitney has an independent uncompromised mind concerned only with the truth. Whiteny says, backed with the evidence, that the US, understanding that it has lost the battlefront war, nevertheless still intends to win the real war and has moved to Plan B. Plan B is to prolong the conflict with aid not for the lost battlefield but for long distant strikes into Russia against civilian centers and essential social and economic infrastructure. The success of these strikes will show Putin to be a failure, a leader unable to protect mother Russia from a non-existent military power–Ukraine.

Will the pro-Western Russian intellectuals seize on “Putin’s failure to protect Russia” by pushing for a peace accord that results in Ukraine’s admission to NATO?

In other words, Putin’s timidly, restraint, and miscalculations have defeated him.

Here is Whitney’s analysis of the U.S. Plan B.

Putin has been seriously damaged by the incomprehensible failure of Russian intelligence. Where, for example, was Putin when the US/Israeli trained and armed Georgian Army attacked the Russian protectorate of South Ossetia killing Russian troops serving as peace keepers? Putin was at the Chinese olympics unaware that he was faced with a dangerous crisis. Putin was recalled from his fun and games and had to use an unprepared Russian Army to repel the American/Israeli trained Georgian army. Then when he again had Georgia in Russian hands, he left, apparently leaving in exchange for a less hostile government toward Russia. Now there are reports, true or false, of another Georgian color revolution against the Georgian government that is not sufficiently hostile to Russia.

Do we have here a second war front opening against Russia in addition to Ukraine? And what about the reports that NATO is focusing on Belarus where Russian nuclear weapons are stationed if not deployed? Will a third war front open?

Russian intelligence also failed Putin when the Washington orchestrated Maiden Revolution occurred. Putin had no warning of what was happening on his doorstep. He was away, again, enjoying the Sochi Olympics while Washington took possession of Ukraine, a part of Russia for centuries.

What explains these massive total failures of Russian intelligence? Are the Russian intelligence services so pro-Western that they are incapable of seeing reality? Or are the intelligence agencies operating under a protocol in which only a happy agreement can be the result of the US orchestrated conflict between Russia and the West?

If Putin continues to deny reality, he risks losing his alliance with China. This will end dollar replacement in the settlement of international balances and leave the entirety of the dissenting world at the mercy of US financial sanctions. Can even this report from RT bring Putin to confront reality?

“Specifically, an article in The Economist by Feng Yujun, a professor at Peking University, has caused a stir. This methodical, official expert on Russia and the Ukraine conflict speaks very much in the spirit of Western political thought: he criticizes Moscow, predicts its defeat, praises Kiev for its ‘strength and unity of its resistance,’ and even suggests that if Russia doesn’t change its power structure, it will continue to threaten international security by provoking wars.

“Knowing how Chinese society is organized, it’s hard to imagine that the professor who penned this article was acting at his own risk without the support of responsible comrades in Beijing. The recent refusal of four major Chinese banks to accept payments from Russia, even in yuan, can also be seen as an alarming signal to Moscow. In other words, it may turn out that the Russian-Chinese alliance, so strong in words, is far from being effective and trouble-free in practice. And Blinken would certainly have tried to consolidate this trend.”

Clearly, Putin has no economic and political advisers with sufficient intelligence and awareness to tell him the dangerous situation he has created for himself and for Russia. And for the world, as the consequence will be nuclear war.

About Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Roberts has held academic appointments at Virginia Tech, Tulane University, University of New Mexico, Stanford University where he was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution, George Mason University where he had a joint appointment as professor of economics and professor of business administration, and Georgetown University where he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Read more.

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Do not take your eyes off Ukraine: It’s still the most likely to trigger WWIII

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This guest post by Jim Rickards is spot on in its analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war and its potential to explode into something much bigger. He spells out the falsehoods embedded in the Western position toward Russia and why the continued pushing of this false narrative cannot have a good outcome. Either someone with sound logic steps up or we are heading up the escalation ladder to a point of no return, and that will bring catastrophic consequences to the people of the West — you and me.

Ukraine’s Starting to Get Dangerous

By Jim Rickards, at The Daily Reckoning

A lot of people seem to have forgotten about the war in Ukraine. That’s a mistake.

Russia is slowly but steadily defeating Ukraine, which is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone except the most anti-Russian diehards.

That’s leading to desperation in elite Western circles determined to stop Russia one way or the other. In their minds, they simply can’t let Putin win. They think that if Putin wins in Ukraine, he’ll next move on to the Baltic states, Poland and elsewhere.

You know the West is getting desperate based on recent threats by France’s Emmanuel Macron to send troops to Ukraine.

The vice president of the Russia Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy (descendant of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), warned that French troops would be priority targets for Russian forces if they entered Ukraine.

Even though France would send troops independent of NATO, that puts us on a very dangerous path that ultimately leads to direct conflict between NATO and Russia. And that path ends, ultimately, in nuclear war.

Tolstoy added that it would take “just two minutes to nuke Paris.” It’s not hard to envision how quickly things could escalate if France decided to send troops to Ukraine.

More Escalation

Meanwhile, NATO is preparing to send F-16s to Ukraine. Airfields in Ukraine are highly vulnerable to Russian attack, especially since Ukraine’s air defenses are heavily depleted at this point and the Russian air force is becoming increasingly active in Ukraine.

But if NATO allows the F-16s to be based on its own airbases, Putin has warned that these airfields would become a “legitimate target” if strikes against Russian forces were launched from them.

By the way, Russia has hypersonic missiles that NATO has no practical ability to shoot down, so these attacks would likely be successful. Of course, NATO would have to retaliate in kind. You can imagine where all this could lead.

We’re already well along the escalation ladder. And the higher you go, the more face you stand to lose if you back down. I warned about that from the outset of the war.

But the entire notion that Russia poses some existential threat to NATO or Europe is absurd.

Putin Has Nothing to Gain and Everything to Lose

First off, the theory that Putin will invade other countries if he wins in Ukraine is nonsense. The Russian army lacks the men and materiel to occupy Ukraine while simultaneously invading other countries.

This isn’t the Soviet Union with its massive tank armies poised to roll over Western Europe. And Soviet communism is long dead, so there’s no ideological basis for Russia to invade Europe. These days Russia is a conservative, Orthodox Christian nation.

But more importantly, Putin has absolutely no incentive to invade any of these nations, which are NATO members. What do they have that he wants?

All it would do is trigger Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all, inviting a massive NATO response. At that point, you’re on the fast track to nuclear war.

Putin is fully aware of that.

Fearmongers like to point to what Putin once said in a speech: “Whoever doesn’t miss the Soviet Union doesn’t have a heart.”

They take that as proof that he wants to recreate the Soviet Union. But they conveniently omit what he said next:

“Whoever wants it back doesn’t have a brain.”

Whatever you think of Putin, he definitely has a brain. He has no intention to restore the Soviet Union.

It’s Not Just About Intentions

But like any great power, Russia has interests, and Ukraine has always been a vital strategic interest to Russia.

And Russia is not going to tolerate Ukraine joining a NATO alliance that’s hostile to Russia. Critics say Ukraine is a free and independent nation that can join NATO if it wants. Russia has no say in the matter, even though Ukraine borders Russia.

Well, I guess they never heard of the Monroe Doctrine. The U.S. basically declared the entire Western hemisphere its own domain. But a great power like Russia can’t have a say in its own backyard?

Critics also say that the idea of NATO invading Russia is ridiculous. That’s just Russian paranoia. And that’s true, NATO isn’t going to actually invade Russia. But it’s not just intentions that count in the world of geopolitics. It’s also capabilities.

As Bismarck once noted: “What matters in politics is capabilities, not intentions. Intentions change, capabilities remain.”

Given Russia’s long history of being invaded, it’s not hard to imagine why it might seem a bit paranoid of exterior threats.

If you look at a map, parts of Ukraine are actually east of Moscow.

Will the U.S. Keep the War Going?

Of course, Ukraine can’t continue fighting without U.S. assistance. The Biden White House wants $60 billion of new money to give to Ukraine to fight the war. This is on top of several hundred billion already provided.

This was proposed last summer but has stalled in the Senate and House of Representatives ever since. The House passed a separate bill to aid Israel last fall, but the Senate refused to take it up because they want to tie that aid to money for Ukraine.

The Senate passed a bill that would provide aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in one package combined with some money for phony border security.

That bill was so unpopular it could not even make it out of the Senate. Then the House insisted on passing regular appropriations before considering Ukraine.

That process was completed on March 23, but now Congress is on a two-week Easter recess so nothing further will happen until mid-April. No one has even answered the most important question, which is what would Ukraine do with the money.

They can’t buy badly needed 155mm artillery shells because the Western arsenals are bare and factories are not geared to make more than a handful. It will take years to expand that manufacturing capacity.

You can walk into a store with a wallet full of $100 bills, but if the shelves are empty, it doesn’t do you any good. The products simply aren’t there.

Meanwhile, wonder weapons from the West such as tanks, cruise missiles, armored personnel carriers, HIMARS precision-guided artillery and anti-missile batteries have all been destroyed, disabled or shot down by Russia.

The war in Ukraine hasn’t been good advertising for Western weapons.

Fallout

To repeat what I said earlier, Ukraine is losing the war badly. Russia is advancing on the southern and eastern fronts in Ukraine.

Still, the pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to do something remains. The Republican warmongers in the Senate like Lindsey Graham and Joni Ernst won’t let up. Many Republicans in the House such as Chip Roy and Marjorie Taylor Greene are opposed to Johnson on this.

Incredibly, Johnson may respond to the pressure with a solution worse than an outright appropriation. He may get behind efforts to steal $300 billion in Russian central bank assets held in the form of U.S. Treasury securities.

That would destroy confidence in the U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasury securities and the U.S. rule of law. Russia would quickly recover the loss by seizing $300 billion or more of Western assets still in Russia. No one in Congress seems to understand any of this.

If they follow through, the economic fallout would be bad enough. But if this war doesn’t stop soon, we could ultimately be looking at nuclear fallout.

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Oct 7th Coming to the USA?

U.S. Army BG (Ret.) John Adams: Will Biden Administration continue support or obstruct Israel’s victory over Hamas in Gaza?

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Jerry Gordon, a Senior Editor of The New English Review, invited retired U.S. Army Brigadier General John Adams (Ret.) for this fourth in a series of discussions on Israel Defense Force military doctrine and strategic options in the conduct of the Jewish state’s civilizational war with Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. He addresses the conflict given his extensive background as a 30-year veteran of combat, staff and international military diplomatic assignments and post-service informal analysis and discussions with former Senior IDF commanders.

Among the issues covered in this wide-ranging discussion are:

  1. Biden Administration attempts to force Israel to “scale down” Gaza operations conflicts with IDF objective of destroying and displacing jihadist Hamas.
  2. Biden Administration “day after” two state solution, modeled on failed 1993 Oslo Accords, is rejected by the Netanyahu government because of national security concerns. PLO – Fatah was routed by Hamas in 2006 Gaza elections and both groups share same objective: destruction of Jewish state.
  3. Discovery of massive Hamas tunnel near Israeli Erez Gaza crossings and failure of border high tech Iron Wall in Hamas breach on October 7th – Israel’s “Maginot Line” – are priorities to be investigated in post-conflict intelligence failures investigation.
  4. Hamas discussions with Egyptian intelligence on new round of pauses include release of 40 to 50 of remaining Israeli captive in exchange for longer pause and increased humanitarian aid and release of Israeli Palestinian security prisoners.
  5. Other “Day After” solutions reviewed include “One State” proposal by noted Israeli geo-political commentator Caroline Glick based on Arab Clan governance of municipalities and pathway to Israeli citizenship and New State proposal of former Senior IDF officers- an expansion of Gaza into Egyptian Sinai – “Singapore” on Mediterranean Coast.
  6. Iran is behind proxy Yemen’s Houthi rebel drone and ballistic missile attacks in support of Hamas in Gaza threaten global war and maritime risks in Red Sea and transit via Suez Canal. USS Destroyer Carney successfully repulsed Houthi drone and missile attacks.  Defense Secretary Austin announced formation of international maritime task force in Operation Prosperity Guardians composed of US, Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.
  7. Iran is also behind Hizballah as it threatens rocket and precision guided missile barrages to northern and central Israel. Hizballah has an inventory of upwards of 150,00 rickets and missiles. The IDF has conducted air attacks, in response to rocket and mortar attacks. Israel has evacuated an estimated 200,000 from both northern and southern communities. Defense Minister Gallant announced possible limited incursion of 18 kilometers to Litani river in Southern Lebanon to destroy Hizballah positions. The Biden Administration maintains one US Navy Carrier Battle Group offshore Lebanon (another CBG is in the Persian Gulf) to prevent a widening war in the Middle East.
  8. Israel needs to complete its mission of destroying or displacing Hamas without significant delays to avoid rising costs to its economy.

WATCH: Will Biden Administration continue support or obstruct Israel victory over Hamas in Gaza War?

About BG John Adams, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General John Adams retired from the US Army in September 2007. Currently an independent defense consultant, he is also studying toward a PhD in Political Science at the University of Arizona, with a research focus on European security institutions. His final military assignment was as Deputy United States Military Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, the highest military authority of NATO. He worked closely with military representatives of NATO and Partnership for Peace member nations to develop policy recommendations for the political authorities of the Alliance, and helped coordinate the transfer of authority in Afghanistan from US to NATO control.

Born and raised in the Washington, DC, area, General Adams was a Distinguished Military Graduate and received a Regular Army commission from North Carolina State University Army ROTC in 1976. As a Foreign Area Officer, Military Intelligence Officer, and Army Aviator, his more than thirty years of service in command and staff assignments includes nearly eighteen years in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including assignments with US Embassies in Belgium (1994-1997), Rwanda (1996), Croatia (1998-2001), and South Korea (2002-2003), where as an Army Foreign Area Officer and military attaché, he provided political-military advice to US Ambassadors, combatant commanders, US Government authorities in Washington, visiting US Government delegations, and represented the United States with foreign government officials regarding national and regional issues. As an Army Aviator, he has more than 700 hours as pilot-in-command in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft including the UH-1D, OV/RV-1D Mohawk, and RU-21 Guardrail Special Electronic Mission Aircraft.

On September 11, 2001, he was stationed at the Pentagon as Deputy Director for European Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and directly participated in immediate disaster recovery operations at the crash site as well as coordinated international support for the US diplomatic and military response. He is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm (1991), Operation Guardian Assistance in Rwanda (1996), and served and traveled extensively on official business throughout the Balkans from 1998-2003. He traveled on temporary duty to both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004.

General Adams holds Masters in International Relations (Boston University), English (University of Massachusetts), and Strategic Studies (US Army War College). He taught English at West Point from 1988-90. He is proficient in French, Dutch, German, and Croatian.

John and his wife, Laura Magan MD, make their home in Tucson. They enjoy sailing, hiking, and cooking. He has two daughters, the oldest who graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2008 and now works as a program coordinator with Operation Smile in Norfolk, Virginia, and the youngest who is a senior at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

©2023. Jerry Gordon. All rights reserved.

‘Complicated’: Over 100 Harvard Faculty Defend ‘From The River To The Sea’

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Over 100 Harvard faculty members signed a letter saying the phrase “from the river to the sea” is “complicated” in response to the president’s recent statement on antisemitism.

Harvard President Claudine Gay wrote multiple statements about the antisemitism on campus following backlash from donors and fire from former grads about her response to antisemitism on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, including a new statement on Thursday denouncing the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which has genocidal implications. A letter signed by many Harvard faculty members claimed that “pressure from donors” is racist and that condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea” is the wrong decision.

“As Harvard faculty, we have been astonished by the pressure from donors, alumni, and even some on this campus to silence faculty, students, and staff critical of the actions of the State of Israel. It is important to acknowledge the patronizing tone and format of much of the criticism you have received as well as the outright racism contained in some of it,” the letter reads.

‘The signatories are the usual suspects from the anti Israel woke hard left. Their one sided screed is part of the problem, not part of any reasonable resolution. I doubt that many of them would sign a letter in support of the free speech of such ‘complex ‘ issues as racism, sexism, homophobia or Islamophobia. Their double standard against Israel is obvious,” former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Student protests across the U.S. have used the phrase “from the river to the sea” as well as other anti-Israel slogans. Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania implemented antisemitism task forces to address antisemitism on campus following the Hamas terrorist attacks.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib previously reposted a tweet with the phrase “From the river to the sea” and has made other anti-Israel comments. The House voted to censure Tlaib on Nov. 7 over anti-Israel comments made following the terrorist attacks.

“The phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free’ has a long and complicated history. Its interpretation deserves, and is receiving, sustained and ongoing inquiry and debate,” the letter reads.

The letter goes on to call the choice to denounce the phrase “imprudent” and a misjudged “act of moral leadership.” “It might be framed in the language of liberation, but it calls for the destruction of Israel,” professor Norman Goda, Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, told the DCNF.

Harvard did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

BRANDON POULTER

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

There is No Moderate Jihad

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And that’s why co-existence is impossible.

Civilized nations have spent generations trying to convince themselves that the primary religious and national impulses of the Muslim world come down to more than conquest and mass murder.

The horrors of the past few years in Afghanistan and Israel both came down to the mistaken belief that you could negotiate and reach an agreement with Jihadist movements.

Both D.C. and Jerusalem had become enchanted with diplomatic initiatives to the Muslim world, from the Abraham Accords to two years of relative peace with Hamas, politicians, generals and diplomats were convinced that they had finally unlocked the secret of coexistence.

But there’s no perpetual motion machine, no diet that lets you eat what you want and no coexistence with an ideology that is built on conquering and destroying all outsiders.

Individually, contextually and circumstantially coexistence is possible. But not in the long run.

How long that long run is depends not on building relationships, but showing strength. Civilized people treat coexistence as a means of developing bonds but the other side uses periods of coexistence to test for weaknesses. Coexistence on their side is a wholly insincere façade, no matter how authentic it may appear, that gathers information to be used when the attack comes.

Israeli Kibbutz residents thought that they were building relationships with day laborers from Gaza. They chatted about life, their kids and their various hardships. Then those same laborers returned to kill, rape and abduct them. But that is how that was always going to end.

That is how it will end for us with the millions of immigrants that we have taken into our nations.

It is a fundamental error to view Hamas as an “extremist” group. It is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood whose political parties rule a number of Muslim countries. Its political organizations also dominate Muslim communities in America and Europe. Most of Al Qaeda’s leaders were also members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The myth of a split between political Islam and militant Islam, between moderate and extreme Islamic movements was always just that.

As Erdogan, the brutal Islamist tyrant who became the poster boy for moderate Islam said, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing.” He has since, despite previous claims of turning more moderate and rebuilding relationships, renewed his support for Hamas, and threatened western nations with a Jihad against the “crusaders”.

The trouble with all the dreams of coexistence is that Islam is Jihad and Jihad is Islam. The most fundamental external expression of Islam is a drive to conquer the entire world, not in some uncertain ‘end of days’ future, but here, now and in the present. The difference between the so-called moderates and extremists comes down to quibbling over when and how that conquest is to begin, where it is to be implemented and who is to take charge of it.

But the actual conquest is an ongoing project. Every Islamic war, whether against Muslims or non-Muslims, is waged as part of an agenda of global conquest. Muslim civil wars are waged between different factions under the banner of Islamic leadership. And the purpose of Islamic leadership is to impose Islamic law in its lands and then invade other lands to impose the same brutal theocratic repression there.

The Jihad is the defining force of Islamic political and religious life. Much as with Communism, coexistence with it is impossible. It was impossible to coexist with members of a movement that believed in conquering and subjugating everyone under the red flag and the little red book. Individually you could chat with a Communist or help them with their groceries, but the ideology doomed any long term relationship with someone who wanted you dead or as a slave.

This was a difficult lesson that we never learned during the Cold War. Is it any wonder that we’re incapable of grasping this concept now when our civilization’s future is once again on the line?

The Cold War was fought on the optimistic premise that everyone wanted the same things we did, and that once we taught them to want them, they would adopt our means of getting them. Convince Communists that color TVs were fun and they become democratic capitalists. What sounded like a good argument to us has failed in every country that it’s been tried, except those that, like Japan and Germany, were originally democratic and capitalist. Instead we convinced China that it should make and sell us the TVs and use the money to build up its military, and convinced the Muslim world to move here, kill us and take the TVs.

We are not the world and the world is not us. Not all religions, cultures and countries are alike. Most have things that they believe in every bit as strongly as our fanciful belief that all people are basically good and that if we could just get them in a room, we would agree on most things. That’s what we did with multiculturalism and it’s why we now have violent riots every few years because we don’t agree on basic things like what we want out of life or how we treat each other.

That’s why we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the Jihad is a fringe, the misbehavior of a tiny minority, and that even that tiny minority doesn’t really buy into it. Every religion and movement has its hypocrites, but the belief that the world must be purified by Islam is as sincerely held by the majority of its believers as by those who fought for Communism. That is the religious impulse, more than any other, at the heart of Islam and its promise to Muslims.

Each religion has elements that make it exceptional. What makes Islam exceptional is not the collection of beliefs, scriptures and rituals often cribbed from Judaism and Christianity, but what it offers that these religions do not, an imminent redemption of the world achieved not in the distant future, but in the present day through the violent actions of its followers. That, and not borrowed scripture and ritual, is what allowed Islam to defeat Jews and Christians.

Western nations view this as ancient history while Muslims see it as an enduring struggle. That is why they talk, as Erdogan does, about “crusaders” and taunt the Jews with the massacre of Khaybar by Mohammed’s bandits. Convinced that history can never repeat itself, we dismiss the idea that it’s relevant or that the people we are dealing with are serious about bringing it back.

Civilized people are shocked by the horrors that ISIS, Boko Haram or Hamas perpetrate because they refuse to learn history or to see how it might be relevant to current events. It’s fashionable to draw a line, whether it’s 5 minutes ago or in 1967, and begin the clock from there. Why is this happening, they wonder, as if this had not been the longstanding practice of Islamic armies to behead fallen enemies, mutilate bodies or to rape women for over a thousand years. They assume without a shred of evidence that such practices must have been abolished.

What we are experiencing is not a reaction to anything we did. It has nothing to do with our views on a ‘Palestinian’ state, whether we draw Mohammed or welcome refugees. The Jihad is the founding religious impulse of Islam with over a thousand years of history behind it. The Jihad not only predates the United States of America and the rebirth of Israel, but dates back to a name when pagan kings ruled the various parts of England. It predates colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, globalism, the dollar, WWI and the Carter administration.

The Jihad made Islam possible. It is also what gives it meaning. It is the precarious reality that colors all relationships with the Muslim world. We have learned to ignore it at our own risk. And every time we unsee it, people die. They die by the dozens, the hundreds and the thousands. And the killing and the dying happen because we mistake what is at best a Cold War for a rich relationship. We think that we are building bridges when we’re really welcoming invaders.

To survive, we need to see all the things that we’ve been unseeing. We have to recognize that these horrors are not aberrations, they are the norm. It’s the pleasantries and periods of coexistence that are the aberration. It’s not a problem we can negotiate away. It’s not solvable by spreading democracy or building up trade relationships. The only reason we weren’t living with these horrors on an everyday basis is that the Western world became too powerful to have our coastlines and ships raided for slaves as used to be common practice in the past.

What the Muslim world and it leftist allies call “imperialism” and “colonialism” meant that kidnapped European women stopped showing up in the harems of the Ottoman Caliphate and European children as slaves in his armies. It also meant that the Jews were able to rebuild their country and, briefly, Christians in the region were also able to freely lift their heads again. We forgot that we had become strong to stop ourselves from falling victim to the endless Jihad. And our sons and daughters came to sympathize with former enemies who would rape and kill them.

Now we have made ourselves weak and the horrors are returning. We struggle to coexist with those who want to kill us. And then we wonder why they keep killing us. There’s our answer.

Coexistence is death, resistance is life. Until we learn to stop coexisting with our killers, they will go on killing us. All else is an illusion. A fantasy that we keep feeding ourselves. There is no moderate Islam because there is no moderate Jihad. And there is no moderate Jihad because there is no moderate way to conquer and enslave non-Muslims. Islam is a state of perpetual war. To know Islam is to never know peace. We coexist with Islam and so we are at war.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

THE WAR ON X: WW III • The Global War Against Islamic Terrorism — Day 16

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Today October 23rd, 2023 we are now seeing the violence that Hamas began 16 days ago is now spreading like wild fire across the Middle East, Europe and in America.

Demonstrations, some violent, are being led by supporters of Hamas. This is the global Islamic jihad we have been predicating for years.

Here are some of the top headlines for today:

These tweet on X say it all.

This interview with Brother Rachid was taped on Friday, October 21st for RAIR Foundation and the story can be read here. Brother Rachid has a wildly popular TV show in the Arabic World where be brings people out of Islam and into Christianity.

WATCH: EXCLUSIVE With Hunted Islamic Expert Brother Rachid: ‘Muslims Will Be the Majority, They Will Govern the West’

WW III • The Global War Against Islamic Terrorism

©2023. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Anguished Families Cling to Hope that Hamas Hostages Will Be Found

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“I can’t describe such a moment in words where you watch your whole family get taken away from you,” Yoni Asher tried to explain. Summoning the courage to keep talking, he looked around the room of diplomats, U.N. officials, and other suffering families, and put himself back in the moment where his world changed forever.

“My wife was visiting her mother at one of the kibbutzim, and I stayed home,” Yoni stopped, as he probably had a million times in the last week, to let his decision sink in. “I got a phone call from my wife,” who was, “scared — scared,” he repeated, “whispering, terrif[ied], saying that she’s hearing gunshots and people are entering the house.” It wasn’t until later that he saw the video of his wife and two daughters on one of Hamas’s cars or trucks. “I recognized them,” Yoni said quietly of his two little girls, Raz and Aviv, and his wife, Doron.

As the tears fell freely down his face, Yoni finally got out the words that thousands of tortured families have said since October 7: “I woke up to the worst nightmare of my life.”

Others, like Yakov Argamani, pace around their houses, clutching a book of psalms. Surrounded by memories, he mourns that his beautiful teenage daughter’s smell is gone from the room. “Noa was here, there, everywhere,” he told The New York Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman. “All of a sudden, it’s gone. And I’m lost,” the broken father laments.

Other dads, like Hen Avigdori, try to comfort the one child who’s left — while slipping away to cry for his son’s missing sister and mom. “I’m in this endless loop of hope and despair, hope and despair,” he said. “I need some proof of life. I need to know where my wife and daughter are.”

From Thailand to France and America, the families of the 199 missing hostages are in an aching form of limbo. Between television interviews and underground meetings with government officials in Tel Aviv, they live hour to hour, haunted by their last conversations and the knowledge of what Hamas is capable of. To so many, captivity is a fate worse than death. As one heartbroken father told reporters, realizing his eight-year-old little girl had been killed was better than thinking of her in the terrorists’ hands. “It’s a blessing,” an emotional Thomas Hend told CNN the moment he learned Emily’s fate. “She was either dead or in Gaza,” he said after the 48-hour search. “And if you know anything about what they do in Gaza, that is worse than death.”

The number held by Hamas, which Israeli officials increased to almost 200 over the weekend, is complicating things for the soldiers on the ground. While teams of military teams search the 30-mile Gaza strip, terrorist Abu Obeida warned that his men have scattered the hostages — babies, grandmothers, young women, newly orphaned children, and soldiers — in “safe places and the tunnels of resistance” all throughout the area.

Brigadier General Daniel Hagari, a top Israeli military spokesman, insisted they have information on the location of the captives and sought to reassure families that the troops “will not carry out an attack that would endanger our people.” In the meantime, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, issued a stunning declaration, offering himself to Hamas if the terrorists would let the child hostages go. “I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home.”

Countless parents at the makeshift headquarters of the Families of Hostages and Missing Persons Forum would almost certainly do the same. “All we have been told is that her phone is in Gaza,” Meirav Gonen said helplessly. Romi, who was kidnapped from the music festival, stayed on the line with her mom for almost 45 minutes until her phone went dead.

“I know she was shot,” Meirav explained. “She called me at 10:15 and I was on with her until 10:58, she was fading away and I heard shooting around her coming closer to the car and then people shouting in Arabic … shouting she was alive and that they need her.”

Romi’s face is one of many lining the wall of Tel Aviv’s HaKirya government building, a horrifying reminder of the dozens of missing. “It’s so, so lonely,” Meirav chokes up. “All the thoughts and feelings that you have once you stop for a minute to listen to them.”

Lt. General (Ret.) Jerry Boykin understands the pain of hostage crises more than most. As commander of the Army’s elite Delta Force, he was one of the leaders on the failed mission to rescue Iran’s hostages in 1980. Like so many veterans, he knows the incredible lengths America will go to bring its people home. “I think most of what you see, other than the bombing and the shelling by the Israelis … is reconnaissance to try to locate the hostages,” he explained to guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on “Washington Watch.” “This is a big issue for the Israelis because there are Americans being held. And I can assure that those people on the ground in [Gaza] include some Americans, our special operations that are experts at hostage rescue.”

But, Boykin warned, “the key thing to hostage rescue is good intelligence, and I think that’s what they’re doing [in Gaza right now]. … They’re in there looking for the hostages. And I pray that they will find them before the end of this campaign … because ultimately,” he said soberly, “these people will be killed if we can’t find them in time.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was cagey on Sunday about the involvement of U.S. special ops, saying only that the military “won’t rule anything in or out” about the hostage effort on the ground.

For now, Boykin insisted, the world needs to keep its eye on the ball. All of this, he argued, “is on the backs of Hamas.” “Hamas is responsible for everything that has happened up to this point. There is nothing, no one killed, nothing that Hamas is not responsible for. And we have to remember that. … What has happened here is a terrible, brutal, even demonic attack on the Israelis. … And we stand with the Jews.”

More than that, we pray for the Jews — and everyone affected by this unspeakable tragedy. For a partial list of hostages to remember in prayer, visit Pray for Israel by Name and join us in asking for God’s continued blanket of peace and protection on the innocents in the grip of Hamas.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Could Americans Face Nuclear Attack Because of Syria?

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TUCSON, Ariz. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. and Russian aircraft could literally be on a collision course in Syria, as the two countries have not agreed on flight safety rules in Syrian airspace. U.S. pilots are under orders to change their flight path if a Russian plane is within 20 nautical miles, according to a CNN report.

Americans who lived through the Cold War may recall the novel Alas, Babylon, in which a worldwide nuclear conflagration resulted from an accident caused by a low-level military officer. At that time, people were knowledgeable about nuclear weapons effects, and the U.S. had a civil defense program, notes Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D. Today, there would be millions of avoidable casualties.

What will happen if there is an accident in Syria? During the decades of Mutual Assured Destruction, nuclear-armed states were cautious about provocations, confining their interference and bombing to nonnuclear states. But now, the U.S. and Russia are at odds in Syria. Both claim to be fighting ISIS; however, aggressive Russian air attacks, plus missile attacks from warships in the Caspian Sea, are also claimed to be directed against U.S. supported “moderates” who are trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia supports Assad.

Russia is apparently seeking to replace the U.S. as the dominant force in the Middle East. And tensions are also growing outside Syria. Russian president Putin states that Moscow may boost its western forces in response to NATO’s moving troops and storing heavy equipment along the Russian border. He announced thatRussia will be deploying more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015.

These are very dangerous times, Orient states. Yet the presidential candidates are mostly ignoring the strategic circumstances.

GOP candidate Ben Carson emphasized the importance of understanding the geopolitical situation. That is complex and obscure to most Americans. However, the state of the vulnerability of American civilians, Orient emphasizes, is simple and undeniable. As threats grow and proliferate, the only civil defense in today’s America is self-help.

Probably the most important measure is to drop to the ground and take the best available cover if you see a bright flash. This and other information on a 60-second training card could save millions.

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

PODCAST: Obama’s Policies in the Middle East Destablizing World Security

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I recently did a talk radio interview with former U.S. Federal Judge Joe Miller, USMA ‘89, the host of the Joe Miller Show. As a former counter terrorist intelligence operative who was on the DOD Task Force after 9/11 which reported to the Assistant Secretary of the Army, I served in nine counter-terrorist operations, was recruited as an Arabic linguist by Special Warfare Group ONE in order to deploy with SEAL Team ONE, was an armed Federal Law Enforcement Officer in DHS, and was assigned as an Intelligent Analyst in the FBI after graduating from the FBI Academy in Quantico.

Listen to my interview on the Joe Miller Show:

I voiced my concern that for the past 6 years, the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East have been destructive for the stability of the region. The Obama administration’s foreign policy has shifted support from the United States’ 60 year traditional alliance with friendly Sunni countries (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates) to Iran, the world’s number one major sponsor of terrorism with Shite ruling class. Iran regularly declares that it is enemy of the “Great Satan”, the United States, who has been killing and maiming thousands of members of the US Armed Forces for 36 years.

The Obama administration’s absence of a foreign policy in the Middle East has resulted in Iran filling the void by taking control of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon with Afghanistan and Bahrain in their gun sights.

The Obama administration’s policies toward Iran has been facilitating Iran’s development of nuclear weapons for the last two years. The foreign policy of the Obama administration continues to embrace the terrorist state of Iran, while continuing to reject military aide for friendly Sunnis countries in the Middle East (the request for urgent military aide for Jordan, Egypt, Kurdistan, and the Assyrian Militia have been denied).

If the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations permits Iran to continue the development of nuclear weapons and eventually obtain nuclear weapons, that agreement will result in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and might set the stage for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, which might result in the outbreak of World War III.