86 Palestinians Killed in the Living Hell of Gaza as Israel Prepares to Invade

Note one of the mourners is missing an eye. (Photo: Palestinian Health Authority)

At least 91 Palestinians were killed and 284 others were wounded over the past 24 hours as the IDF prepares for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian death toll since Oct 2023 is now 54,381; 124,381 people are injured or maimed. The majority of the victims are women and children. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the IDF operation will lead to a complete takeover of the territory: “We are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip.”

In March 2025, the American taxpayer expedited delivery of four billion dollars in military assistance to Israel.

The remains of the Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza. (Photo: UN OCHA)

Displaced Palestinians trying to survive the IDF onslaught. (Photo: Public domain)

31 starving Palestinians were killed at this food distribution center. (Photo: Public domain)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/01/middleeast/palestinians-killed-gaza-aid-center-intl-hnk

We Are Going to Build a Jewish State in the West Bank”

With those statements, Katz had a clear message for French President Emmanuel Macron “and his friends”: “They will recognize a Palestinian state on paper, and we will build the Jewish Israeli state on the ground here,” the defense minister said during his visit. “The paper will disappear into the trash of history and Israel will flourish and flourish.”

Earlier, Macron called the recognition of the Palestinian state “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity.” He also urged a tougher line from European countries against Israel if it does not respond to the disastrous humanitarian situation caused by the war in the Gaza Strip in the coming hours and days.

Rampaging Israeli settlers protected by the IDF attacking Palestinian vehicles driving at a section of Nablus-Jenin road in the north of the occupied West Bank.

In 2025, the death toll of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and maniacal Settlers in the West Bank has reached 99, with 60% of these fatalities occurring in just four areas, including Jenin and the Nur Shams refugee camps. The Israeli cabinet just approved establishing 22 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which marks the largest expansion of settlements in decades.

Source: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ocha-humanitarian-situation-update-276-west-bank/

IDF Soldier Use of Human Shields Widespread

The boy shook constantly, he said, and both repeated “Rafah, Rafah” — Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than one million Palestinians had fled from fighting elsewhere at that point in the war. It seemed they were begging to be freed, the sergeant said.

Several Palestinians and soldiers told the AP that Israeli troops are systematically forcing Palestinians to act as human shields in Gaza, sending them into buildings and tunnels to check for explosives or militants. The dangerous practice has become ubiquitous during 19 months of war, like you can see below.

Palestinian Hazar Estity kisses her 21-month-old son, Nizar, who is being held by his grandmother, Nazek, on April 29, 2025, at an apartment in the West Bank town of Zababdeh. Estity says she was used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers. (Photo: AP / Nasser Nasser)

Some IDF soldiers and veterans with a sense of decency joined Breaking the Silence. You can read their testimony about IDF brutality here: https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

In 2024, PM Benjamin Netanyahu, an MIT graduate, skillfully used the hostage situation to continue military operations to depopulate the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank, keep his corruption trial in abeyance, and tilt the US 2024 election towards Dotard Trumpf by alienating the antiwar segment of the Democratic Party (approximately 6,265,888 voters the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket had in 2020). An international arrest warrant for war crimes issued by the ICC remains active for Benjamin Netanyahu. An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of a law.

Ensuring American support for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel is the notorious American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Their Islamophobic messaging and funding of pro-Israeli candidates in US elections ensures the uninterrupted flow of military and economic aid to Israel. AIPAC’s effective messaging of demonizing Arabs and Islamophobia explains why many American voters are indifferent to the plight of the Palestinian people. AIPAC talking points that “they” should have voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, “they” had previous chances at statehood and didn’t take it, or “they” are all terrorists, or pro-peace activists are all “Hamas lovers,” are all overused palaver. Blah-blah-blah. Thanks to AIPAC, the American taxpayer is complicit in ethnic cleansing and war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/31/middleeast/israel-gaza-strip-occupation-resources-dg

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-army-human-shields-80f358dd2c87a1123f26ffada159701c

https://www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/live-midden-oosten-israel-opent-vuur-op-menigte-bij-hulpdistributiepunt-zeker-30-mensen-gedood~ba7f8873/

https://www.trackaipac.com/

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=Q05

https://www.state.gov/military-assistance-to-israel/

US Intelligence Community Update

Director of National Intelligence

Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard wants to turn President Dotard Trumpf’s daily intel briefings into Fox News-type broadcasts because he “doesn’t read.” The most under-qualified person to ever the any US intelligence agency is hoping to add animations and more dynamic multimedia elements to Trumpf’s President’s Daily Briefs, or PDBs, to fit his viewing habits and hold his attention, five people with knowledge of the discussions told NBC News. Gabbard also reportedly consulted with current and former intelligence officials on bringing in a Fox News producer and host to reshape the PDBs “which are usually text and image-based for national security reasons” to deliver the intel in broadcast form. The process could involve granting the Fox News team security clearance to access classified information.

Source: https://archive.ph/4h2N9

More Stalinist Purges

Tulsi Gabbard fired two senior analysts from the prestigious National Intelligence Council (NIC) who disagreed with Dotard Trumpf about Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and his alleged connection with a street gang called Tren de Aragua (TDA).

Half of the National Security Council’s (NSC) 350 members were abruptly removed and many were given two hours to clean out their desks. This was supposedly done as a cost-cutting measure, but the reality is the Trumpf junta is ensuring only loyal followers of the MAGA cult remain in positions of power in the US national security architecture.

Sources:

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/trump-venezuela-gangs-tda-intel-memo

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national-security-council-cuts_n_6830f4cee4b0ca4a5f5699b9

FBI Arrests DIA Employee for Attempting to Sell Secrets

The FBI arrested Nathan Vilas Laatsch (28), a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee for attempting to transmit classified information to a friendly foreign government. Laatsch, who held a TS/SCI clearance, said that he had “completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation” that he wanted to send. He said his reasoning for the decision was because he did not align with the current Trumpf junta’s policies. The FBI was subsequently tipped off and made contact with Laatsch under the guise of the aforementioned foreign government. Laatsch would end up transcribing and smuggling out classified products on two occasions to who he thought was an official of the friendly foreign government, and was arrested after the second exchange.

A criminal complaint is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

This is terrible. Nathan Vilas Laatsch worked ten years at Publix before finally getting his break with a position at DIA, only to be disgusted by the Trumpf junta, motivating him to sell secrets. This young man threw his life away. Decades ago DIA was a fine place to work, but who knows how toxic the environment is now under the white supremacist Trumpf junta?

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-government-employee-arrested-attempting-provide-classified-information-foreign-government

CIA Update

Civilian Sleuth Exposes CIA Tradecraft

404 Media reported that Ciro Santilli, an amateur security researcher, discovered that the CIA had been using several Star Wars sites in the early 2000s to communicate with informants in other countries (Image: Cirosantilli2/Wikimedia Commons)

Ciro Santilli, an amateur security researcher, discovered that CIA had been using several Star Wars sites in the early 2000s to communicate with informants in other countries. One such site is StarWarsWeb.net. Santilli dug through hundreds of domain names and analyzed each of the sites’ HTML and even used bots to bypass the Wayback Machine, a massive archive of the internet, to see what the website might have looked like at its launch.

The unassuming site, which is decked out in pictures of R2D2 and C-3P0, a stock image of a boy dressed as a Jedi, also includes ads for the latest Star Wars video games and Lego sets. (Image: cirosantilli.com)

In order to chat with their CIA handler, informants would simply have to enter a password into the search bar, and a pop-up window would appear. The sites were forced to shut down after the Iranian government doubled down on its efforts to find informants who may be speaking with American intelligence agencies in 2018.

“The CIA really failed with this,” said Bill Marczak of the University of Toledo’s Citizen Lab. According to Marczak, the messaging system “stuck out like a sore thumb.”

By 2011, Iranian authorities successfully dismantled the CIA network in its country, and either executed or imprisoned the informants. Likewise, it was reported that authorities in China also found similar websites being used in their country and executed more than two dozen CIA sources between 2011 and 2012.

Other sites include a fan site for the late comedian Johnny Carson, a site about extreme sports, and one about Brazillan music. (Image: cirosantilli.com)

The outlet reports that some of the sites targeted France, Spain, and Brazil based on their language and content. (Image: cirosantilli.com).

Israel, North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China have competent and experienced counterintelligence organizations. Cultivating and handling HUMINT sources in hostile environments with sophisticated or pervasive surveillance systems is therefore a daunting challenge for CIA and DIA. If a civilian sleuth like Ciro Santilli was able to piece this CIA operation together, imagine how easily America’s adversaries were able to unravel this program and neutralize the informants. CIA and DIA adopted other methods of clandestinely communicating with their sources since this operation which Coriolanus is aware of, so that means the enemy is also aware. Moreover, Trumpf’s idiotic purge of the USIC will make intelligence collection even more difficult with the loss of experienced operators, analysts, and investigators.

Messages were posted in Mandarin, Farsi and Korean on various CIA accounts. CIA/ Facebook

Source: https://archive.ph/oPiLu

Drunk Driver Lucky Not to Be Killed by CIA Security Officers

Background: CIA new headquarters building in Langley, Virginia (CIA.gov) Inset: Monia Spadaro (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office)

Security officers shot Monia Spadaro who was driving in the wrong lane toward CIA headquarters. The drunkard was driving her gray Toyota Corolla at about 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, 22 May, when she traveled on to CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia. The federal sign at the front entrance reads: “WARNING: RESTRICTED US GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION” and prohibiting entry to people “without proper authorization.”

Spadaro reportedly entered the complex in the outbound lane of traffic — causing a CIA police officer in a marked CIA vehicle to flash their lights and activate their sirens.

She continued toward the main security gate “while executing several reckless maneuvers” by driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving from one lane to the other. Another CIA officer reportedly tried to stop the car, but it sped up, and as it reached the gate, the officer fired shots at the car and hit Spadaro. The defendant was treated at a local hospital and then arraigned before a federal magistrate in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Miss Spadaro is lucky to be alive. She could have been easily killed by CIA security personnel who did not know whether she was a terrorist, saboteur, lunatic, or drunkard.

A criminal complaint is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Source:

Canada: Thousands Flee Massive Wildfires in Northern Manitoba; Evacuation Orders in Alberta and Saskatchewan

Massive wildfires burning out of control in western and central Canada are forcing thousands to flee as dire forecasts for the country’s fire season come to fruition. The intensifying blazes are also sending hazardous smoke toward major cities in the US.

The premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan provinces have declared monthlong states of emergency, and much of Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Ontario, are at “extreme” risk of wildfires. — the highest level on Environment Canada’s fire risk scale.

A wildfire in the Sherridon, Man. area is shown in a government handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – Manitoba Government

There are just over 170 wildfires burning across Canada, about half of them uncontrolled. The country raised its National Preparedness Level to 5 of 5, unusually high for this early in the fire season. Last year, Canada didn’t reach that level until 15 July.

These fires are the result of global climate changing and are going to add pollution and carbon into the atmosphere, reducing the Air Quality Index (AQI) in surrounding areas. The habitats of thousands of animals are being destroyed, along with people’s homes and properties. Insurance costs are going to skyrocket after paying out for the losses.

The new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, has several challenges on his plate. Besides dealing with the new geo-political landscape caused by Dotard Trumpf and war criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, Mr. Carney must deal with this natural catastrophe. But the new PM holds a doctoral degree and assembled a competent cabinet which will deal with all of these issues logically. Link: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/cabinet

Sources:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/wildfires/article/evacuation-orders-impact-thousands-as-wildfires-continue-burning-in-manitoba-saskatchewan-alberta/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/29/weather/canada-wildfires-smoke-midwest-climate

https://www.saskpublicsafety.ca/emergencies-and-response/active-incidents

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/2025/05/30/prime-minister-carney-convenes-incident-response-group

US: Multi-State Food Recall for Salmonella-Tainted Cucumbers From Florida

The FDA informs: “Bedner Growers, Inc. of Boynton Beach, FL is voluntarily recalling cucumbers sold at Bedner’s Farm Fresh Market between 29 Apr and 14 May 2025 because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.”

The cucumbers are being recalled because they have been linked by the FDA to a Salmonella outbreak that has resulted in 26 illnesses in AL, CA, CO, FL, IL, KS, KY, MI, NC, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, and VA.

Florida is probably one of the worst managed states in America, led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who graduated Yale University and Harvard Law School. His handling of the COVID epidemic was a disaster as his is response to escalating gun violence in the Sunshine State: tax holidays for firearm purchases. DeSantis wasted money on establishing an election police and empowered local police forces to enforce immigration laws. Tourism is crashing in Florida, farms have lost migrant workers, and the orange juice industry is falling apart. We should expect more calamities from Florida because of poor governance during natural disasters, as well as uncontrolled gun violence and unvaccinated people.

Source:

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/bedner-growers-inc-recalls-cucumbers-because-possible-health-risk

US: Dangerous Invasive Tick Spreading

Per the CDC, the number of people diagnosed in 2022 with tick-borne diseases in the US rose to 62,551. In the previous decade, infections averaged about 33,000 a year. With climate change raising temperatures, tick populations have expanded into new regions and put more people in contact with ticks and their illness-causing bacteria.

Sources:

https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/caes/publications/caes-press-release-invasive-longhorned-tick-infection-5-27-25.pdf?rev=a916f5a25703451994cecca4a8721600&hash=64A38C08E5838D15D88091BF928C6B47

USAToday

Legionnaires Disease Detected in Las Vegas

Five travel-associated cases of Legionnaires’ disease are being investigated by the Southern Nevada Health District. Four individuals have recovered and one remains hospitalized.

Following notification of cases, the Health District conducted environmental water sampling at the facilities the travelers stayed at. Multiple water samples tested positive for Legionella, the bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease, the release said.

Legionnaires’ disease symptoms typically begin within two to 10 days after exposure to the bacteria. However, people should watch for symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, fever, muscle aches and headaches for up to two weeks after exposure.

Source:

https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8323167/Grandview-Legionella-Investigation

Endnote: The Trumpf junta published its long-awaited report Making America Healthy Again, which was rife with errors and poor or missing citations. Hardcopies of the report would make excellent kindling for the fireplace. HHS cancelled a $590 million contract with Moderna to develop a vaccine for avian flu and the Trump junta terminated the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program as part of the agency’s reduction in force. In Nov 2023, the FDA had recalled these three children’s beverages below because they were linked to lead poisoning.

Link: FDA

A recent report suggested that Felon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a dust-up in the White House and Musk was seen with a black eye in the Oval Office which he attributed to his five-year-old son inaptly named “X.”

The Worst Person in the World sporting a black eye. Felon Musk won’t be going away anytime soon as a “special government employee.” Expect more corruption, as well as mega-contracts and zero regulation of his companies.

Simply put, the Trumpf junta’s health, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, and national security departments are led by incompetents, lickspittles, political hacks, oligarchs, and mountebanks. The arch-malefactor is oligarch Felon Musk. Their policies do not promote the security, safety, or health of the American people. Dotard Trumpf has turned the White House into a three-ring circus which will endanger American lives while robbing them blind, as you will read more about below.

Russia: Deputy Mayor of Stavropol Neutralized by Explosion

See video of operation in link: https://mamul.am/en/news/326364

An international arrest warrant issued by the ICC for war crimes remains active for Russian President Vladimir Putin. An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innnocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Germany: Two Heroes in Stabbing Rampage Muslim Refugees

Muhammad al-Muhammad helped to halt a knife attack in Hamburg in which 18 people were injured. (Photo: Marco Zitzow/BILD/BILD Fotoservice)

There were no calls from neo-Nazis to shut down Germany’s borders after this terrorist rampage because the perpetrator was a white German native woman. A 2023 analysis found that both print and television German media reported five times more on violent crimes when the suspect was a foreigner. Munich-based Ifo Institute found there was no correlation between migration and higher crime rates. In June 2024, some 3.48 million refugees with varying types of residency permits were living in Germany, a country of 84,198,272 people, and the third largest economy in the world. Germany provides universal health care for its residents, is cracking down on Neo-Nazis, and is generously helping Ukraine fend off Russian aggression. 

Gut arbet, Muhammad, live long and prosper in Germany; Coriolanus enjoyed his assignment there decades ago.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/26/hamburg-knife-attack-syrian-refugee

https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2025-02-18/more-foreigners-do-not-increase-germanys-crime-rate#:~:text=Migration%20to%20Germany%20does%20not,and%20the%20local%20crime%20rate.

South Africa: Pet Baby Hippo Kills Owner

The late Major Marius Els with Humphrey (Photo: Social media)

An army Major from Free State province of South Africa met a horrifying end after he was mauled to death by his pet hippo who he took in as a baby and treated ‘like a son.’ Marius Els (40) was bitten to death by the 1.2 ton hippo he named Humphrey. He had brought Humphrey to his 400 acre farm where the animal learned to swim with humans. A clip of Els riding the 2,000-pound beast like a horse went viral after many people were shocked he was able to accomplish such a feat.

But there had been several signs the animal would never be able to be domesticated — including an incident where a 52-year-old man and his seven-year-old grandson had to climb a tree to get away from the hippo when they canoed through the section of river on Els’ farm where Humphrey lived. Els reportedly tempted the hippo away with an apple while the pair were rescued by paramedics.

Els’s widow, Louise — a pharmacist — also expressed misgivings, as the hippo had caused trouble before. Humphrey had chased golfers on a nearby course and killed several calves belonging to Els’ business partner.

But Els’ himself was always upbeat about his unusual relationship with the animal. He said: “Humphrey’s like a son to me, he’s just like a human. There’s a relationship between me and Humphrey and that’s what some people don’t understand.”

“They think you can only have a relationship with dogs, cats, and domestic animals. But I have a relationship with the most dangerous animal in Africa.”

“I can swim with him. I go in the water. He allows me to get on his back, and I ride him like a horse. He swims with me. He’s like a son to me.”

But unfortunately for the animal lover, the situation did not end well for him after Humphrey turned on him — resulting in Major Els being killed by the hippo. Paramedics found Els immersed in a river and “had been bitten several times by the animal.” It was unclear how long he had been lying in the water.

Here is a video of what an adult hippopotamus is capable of:

Photo by William Warby on Flickr CC BY 2.0 (Cropped from original).

Hippos are formidable creatures and are armed with giant canine teeth — they are said to kill more people every year than lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo, and rhinos combined. Vegetarians, adult hippos have no predators because of their huge size, thick skin, ferocious temperament, and powerful jaws, but young hippos are vulnerable to Nile crocodiles, leopards, lions, and spotted hyenas.

While the common hippo (Hippopotamus amphibious) is categorized as vulnerable, its smaller relative, the pygmy hippo (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis), does have a place on the endangered species list. Both species continue to be threatened by illegal hunting and shrinking habitats.

Source:

https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/pet-hippo-mauled-owner-humphrey-marius-els-south-africa-491517-20250528

Sidenote: South Africa President Cyril Cyril Ramaphosa had recently rebuked Dotard Trumpf’s mythological claim that white Afrikaners are being persecuted in his country. But one such “persecuted” Boer who took advantage of the resettlement plan in the US established a website with resource information to help other Boers emigrate to America:

https://www.refugeforafrikaners.com/

The website author ridiculously wrote that rightwing Fox News and Newsmax are “Trusted News Sources.” At the bottom of the website is a gif of the Dotard doing a silly dance.

‘Verloorder’ is Afrikaans for “loser.”

Mexico Fighting Organized Water Pilferage

Authorities in the Mexican state of Michoacán are employing satellite technology to counter water theft, as criminal groups exploiting an increasingly scarce and valuable natural resource.  The environmental surveillance system will monitor deforestation and land-use, as well as the 35,000 privately-owned irrigation reservoirs to ensure they are not illegally filled during the dry season. If the reservoirs are filled, the government will investigate the source of the water used. 

The system, which is backed by NASA and EU satellites, would permit authorities to “address environmental crimes on a large scale like never before in the state’s history.”

Nearly 76% of Mexico experienced drought through the end of May 2024, according to the North American Drought Monitor (NADM) and the soil has not yet fully recovered. That was the most widespread drought Mexico has experienced since 30 Jun 2011, when 85% of the country was affected.

In March, the Trumpf junta callously refused to release Colorado River water to Mexico, making that the first time the US had refused to release water in their 80-year partnership agreement. On 28 April in the spirit of good fellowship, Mexico said it would meet its water-sharing responsibilities with the US to help Texas ranchers and farmers. This past January, Dotard Trumpf idiotically wasted 2.2 billion gallons of California’s precious water, against the wishes of the US Army Corps of Engineers and Sacramento. Weather predictions indicate this summer will prove to be punishing in the American Southwest.

Sources:

https://insightcrime.org/news/water-scarcity-is-a-boom-for-mexican-organized-crime/

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/04/welcoming-mexicos-water-deliveries-to-the-united-states-and-steps-to-meet-1944-water-treaty-requirements/

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/multi-year-drought-and-heat-waves-across-mexico-2024

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/climate/trump-california-water-dams-reservoirs

Donald Trumpf and Cronies Make Fortune in White House

Two Mega-Goniffs Score With $2bn Investment from Abu Dhabi

The investment by a firm controlled by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund will go to World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm whose biggest beneficiaries are the Trumpf and Witkoff families. Thanks to Abu Dhabi’s purchase of their “stablecoin”, the Trumpfs and Witkoffs will collect hefty fees and could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments.

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/30/trump-steve-witkoff-envoy

Felon Musk Tried to Block Massive Trumpf-backed Mideast AI Deal Unless He Was Included

The worst person in the world rushed to the Mideast to hold up a massive Trumpf-endorsed American AI operation in Abu Dhabi unless it included him. That apparently explains Felon Musk’s sudden appearance at a Trumpf meeting with Saudi Arabia officials during the president’s three-country Middle East vacation.

Trumpf was about to announce a huge AI partnership on foreign soil with America’s OpenAI, run by Musk’s arch rival Sam Altman, and the United Arab Emirates’ G42 company to build a Stargate UAE campus in Abu Dhabi.

The operation would also include America’s Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco, and Japan’s SoftBank as part of the UAE’s push to become a major AI player. The new venture will be the biggest AI campus outside the US.

The Dotard must have said ‘WTF is Elon doing here?’ like when he blocked Musk’s secret China war briefing a few months ago. Trumpf and his cronies have completely erased the lines between government and private business, making mega fortunes for themselves and there is little the American people can do about their abominable corruption and greed.

Source:

www.the-independent.com

Kitten Comforts Crying Abandoned Puppy

You can hear the robust purr of the kitten comforting the poor puppy.

Brutal Police State in America Worsens Under Racist Trump Junta

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/massachusetts-police-hold-girls-face-ground-ice-arrests-mother-video-s-rcna205798/

Being Palestinian is Becoming Illegal in America

Note the language in this Justice Department Press Release:

“Palestinian Nationals Charged With Unlawful Possession Of Firearms And Ammunition”

“Mohammed Aburidi (24, Palestinian) and Tareq Aburidi (19, Palestinian) with possessing firearms and ammunition as aliens admitted to the US on nonimmigrant visas. If convicted, each faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison. An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed one or more violations of federal criminal law, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless, and until, proven guilty.” 

The press release reads “Palestinian Nationals…” and not “Two Florida Men…” Imagine if Justice Department statements read “Two Black Men….” There is no reason for this brazen language in the document other than to imply that the two defendants have an inherent ‘mens rea’ simply for being Palestinian.

Press release: https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/palestinian-nationals-charged-unlawful-possession-firearms-and-ammunition

Trumpf Junta Calls for 20,000 Deportation Officers

Excerpted from the Presidential Proclamation Establishing Project Homecoming, dated 9 May 2025:

“The Secretary of Homeland Security shall supplement existing enforcement and removal operations by deputizing and contracting with State and local law enforcement officers, former Federal officers, officers and personnel within other Federal agencies, and other individuals to increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers in order to conduct an intensive campaign to remove illegal aliens who have failed to depart voluntarily.”

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will pay illegal aliens a stipend of $1,000 to self-deport back to their home country through the CBP Home App, paid after their return home has been confirmed. DHS will also provide travel assistance to self-deportees. This program will decrease the costs of a deportation by approximately 70%. Currently the average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an illegal alien is $17,121.”

Source: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-travel-assistance-and-stipend-voluntary-self-deportation

This insurrectionist above proudly carried the symbol of white supremacy, the Confederate flag, into the US Capitol on 6 Jan 2021. He and the other rabble that attacked Congress that day were all later pardoned by President Dotard Trumpf and treated as “patriots.”

Is this Latina voter above one of the tens of thousands of people who now regret voting for Dotard Trumpf?

America’s Local Police Forces Already Assisting ICE

More than 100 people have been taken into custody by ICE in a joint operation with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, leaving many in Nashville’s immigrant community uncertain and worried.

“None of us have ever seen anything like this,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

The Highway Patrol made 588 stops in the joint operation with ICE, which took custody of 103 under investigation for immigration violations. The operation with ICE is a reminder of how local and state law enforcement jurisdictions are critical to the Trumpf junta’s plans for mass deportations. Last week, Florida officials touted a joint operation with ICE that resulted in 1,120 immigration arrests.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-arrests-nashville-ice-tennessee-0fe523bc9d0ed143e105da0e96ad0c6c

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to collect photographs of everyone leaving the US for Mexico or Canada by car. The photographs will then be matched to the images in the passengers’ passports, visas, or travel documents.

The agency is “still working on how to handle outbound vehicle lanes.”

The new face-scanning initiative may be intended to track self-deportation by undocumented persons, something the Trumpf junta is promoting. Photos will be used to verify later crossings into the US.

Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/driving-to-mexico-or-canada-us-will-snap-pics-of-everyone-in-your-car

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested approximately 30 times before a white supremacist assassinated him on 4 Apr 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/nyregion/newark-ice-protest-lawmakers-ras-baraka.html

Archived link: https://archive.ph/NUsIJ

“Make America White Again”

Dotard Trumpf is attempting to reverse the demographic trend that will make white Americans a minority in the country. To that end he has been conducting mass deportations, removing books from federal or military libraries that promote diversity, and firing competent people of color in government. To that end, his latest victim of thousands is Carla Hayden, the longtime head of the Library of Congress, in a move that Democratic lawmakers panned as “callous” and “ignorant.”

Carla Hayden had one year left in her ten-year appointment, but Trumpf cruelly took that away from her.

First Afrikaner Refugees Coming to US Next Week

Afrikaners outside one of the US missions in South Africa.

To further his goal of making America white again, Trumpf is bringing the first group of white South Africans it has classified as refugees to the US early next week. Trumpf cruelly halted virtually all other refugee admissions shortly after he took office in January, but the junta hastily put together a program to admit Afrikaners, who he claims have been the victims of racial persecution in their home country. The junta plans to send government officials to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia for a gala event to celebrate the arrival of white people to America.

Sources:

za.usembassy.gov

Trumpf Junta Good at Fascism, Terrible at Everything Else

Trumpf Fires FEMA Chief as Hurricane Season Nears

With three weeks before hurricane season begins, Trump fired the acting head of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton. His sin was contradicting Trump when he said: “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate FEMA.” Hamilton was deployed four times overseas as a USN SEAL before he worked for the State Department and DHS. Trump’s budget proposes a $644 million cut to FEMA. Trump was sharply critical of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene, a devastating storm that killed 250 people and inflicted $78.7 billion in damage from Florida to North Carolina.

One of the biggest factors for tropical development in 2025 is the abundance of warm water available to fuel storms. Water temperatures across the ocean, as well as in the Gulf and Caribbean, are already well above historical averages, and they will continue to run warm throughout most of the year, as you could see from the satellite imagery above. This will prime storms for explosive development.

Firing the head of FEMA and slashing its budget will hurt hurricane and flood-prone areas, affecting Red States more than the Blue States. As you could see below, historic amounts of rainfall in April has caused flooding in the Tennessee, Ohio, and middle Mississippi valleys. Runoff from that rain is just now surging through the lowest portion of the Mississippi River and will lead to moderate to high flood levels in some areas, including Baton Rouge, LA.

Sources:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/08/donald-trumps-administration-fires-fema-administrator-cam-hamilton/83517764007/

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/04/25/weather-tennessee-ohio-mississippi-valleys-flood-risk-april-2025/6401745616716/

Trumpf Has Skipped All But Twelve Daily Intelligence Briefings

So Why Does Trumpf Want Boxes and Boxes of Classified Documents?

After losing the 2020 election, Dotard Trumpf hoarded thousands of boxes of classified White House documents and stored them improperly at his palatial estate in Mar-a-Lago, FL, which lead to a special counsel investigation. Because of corrupt Republican judges like Aileen Cannon, Special Counsel Jack Smith was unable to convict Trumpf of this breach. The classified documents were returned to the White House or to secure archives during the Biden Administration.

Boxes are loaded onto Air Force One before Dotard Trumpf’s departure at Joint Base Andrews, MD, on Friday, 28 Feb 2025. (Photo:
Luis M. Alvarez / AP)

After Dotard Trumpf re-won the White House on 5 Nov 2024, he ordered his staff to re-take those boxes of classified documents (and possibly other items) back to his Mar-a-Lago compound, which does not have enough GSA-approved safes for all of those secret documents– re-perpetrating his Original Sin.

So, if Trumpf doesn’t enjoy receiving these invaluable PDBs, why is he illegally storing them and other secrets unsafely in Florida, and where does he get his information from?

Trumpf’s Main Source of Information is TV

FBI Director Kashyap Patel Completely In Over His Head

The most under-qualified man to ever lead the FBI attends intelligence briefings twice per week, similar to Dotard Trumpf blithely ignoring national security issues. Moreover Congress recently exposed Kashyap Patel’s incompetence, lack of professionalism, and petulance. Below Kashyap Patel attends a budget meeting without a budget:

‘You Have No Timeline?!’ Senator Gobsmacked by FBI Director Kash Patel Showing Up at Budget Hearing Without a Budget

Mediaite (@mediaitenews.bsky.social) 2025-05-08T14:56:36Z

Below, watch Kashyap Patel melt down after US Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (D-PA, 4th CD) accused him of committing perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year. When Patel became obnoxious and belligerent, Congresswoman Dean ends by saying “sadly, this is an unserious moment for the FBI.”

What would this man think of Kashyap Patel?

Sources:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/kash-patels-new-way-leading-fbi-fewer-morning-intel-briefings-sports-e-rcna202865

https://www.mic.com/impact/jan-6-video-trump-tv

https://trumpgolftrack.com/

Incompetent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

Hare Krishna offshoot cult member DNI Tulsi Gabbard issued a collection emphasis message to intelligence agency heads to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island. Astonishingly, the most under-qualified person to ever lead the ODNI used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts over a period of several years. 

Directing intelligence collection on Greenland is a monumental waste of time and resources for the USIC, but reflects Trumpf’s idiotic ambitions to absorb the landmass one day. Tulsi Gabbard’s simpleton password use means that her personal communications may have been compromised by nefarious actors or volunteers from Anonymous. She has already fired 100 or so USIC analysts for alleged inappropriate use of secure chat rooms when a reprimand would have sufficed. This rank amateur and member of the ‘Science of Identity Foundation’ (SIF), a notoriously homophobic and Islamophobic cult, has absolutely no business whatsoever leading the USIC.

Archived links: WSJ.com, wired.com, https://www.culteducation.com/group/1298-science-of-identity/36770-tulsi-gabbard-s-ties-to-secretive-cult-may-explain-her-perplexing-political-journey.html

India’s Influence in White House Could Begin to Parallel AIPAC’s

JD Vance and his Hindu wife and father-in-law in India.

Don’t Believe Coriolanus About India’s Influence in the White House?

VPOTUS JD Vance and family enjoying an American taxpayer-funded vacation to India.

Hindu cult member DNI Tulsi Gabbard with Hindu nationalist India PM Narendra Modi.

Two Islamophobes meet in the White House.

The world’s worst person laughs with rightwing Hindu nationalist PM Narendra Modi.

Followers of the Watch are aware from previous posts that PM Narendra Modi has signed death warrants for Sikh separatists in Canada and the US. One Sikh activist was killed in Canada, while another one in NYC was saved.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/india-pakistan-tensions-kash-patel-says-fbi-will-continue-offering-full-support-to-pm-modi-govt-top-updates/ar-AA1DGBwC

The CDC informs: “As of 8 May 2025, a total of 1,001 confirmed measles cases were reported by 31 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, NYC, NYS, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.”

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya sent shockwaves through the autism community by announcing the creation of a “disease registry” to track autistic people. Nazi Germany used such a list to identify possibly hundreds of autistic children to be killed in experimental “euthanasia” clinics. Until the 1970s, numerous US states used registries to identify disabled people to be subjected to forced sterilization and institutionalization. A number of states still maintain lists of autists. “The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed,” says Larkin Taylor-Parker, legal director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It doesn’t usually end well for us. It has ended in murder, industrial-scale incarceration and murder.” 

Source: https://www.nih.gov/

Violent White Americans Rampage Unchecked

White NYS Town Official Shoots Door Dash Deliveryman

The Economics of John J. Reilly III’s Folly

The median value of a home in Chester, NY is $399,000, the median household income is $147,000, and the average annual salary for a Highway Superintendent in New York State is $129,718. In essence, John J. Reilly III was living, pardon the pun, the Life of Riley in his 64% white majority hamlet of 12,588 people while enjoying his well-paying sinecure. But that wasn’t enough for John J. Reilly III, so he also sold firearms using his FFL. But Mr. Reilly is being investigated by the ATF after he shot the poor guy in the back with an illegal weapon.

BLUF: This imbecile had it real good until he tripped over his own hatred and racism. Now the ATF is dismantling John J. Reilly III’s firearm trafficking business, he will lose his $129,718 per annum sinecure, and he will be facing state and federal charges. This dope threw away his life away “protecting his property.”

In an average year, 870 people die and 2,607 are wounded by guns in New York. Throughout the US, every eleven minutes someone is murdered with a firearm. This deliveryman is lucky to be alive after being shot in the back by this lunatic.

Sources:

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chestertownorangecountynewyork/PST045223

https://troopers.ny.gov/news/new-york-state-police-arrest-chester-man-following-doordash-shooting-incident

White Tesla Driver Arrested Again for Road Rage and Assault

Tesla driver Nathaniel Radimak (38), who was charged with attacking motorists’ vehicles with a pipe in the Los Angeles area, has been arrested again for allegedly assaulting two women during a road rage incident in Honolulu. The recent arrest comes less than a year after this lunatic was released from prison for the California road attacks. A woman, 18, was parking her vehicle downtown when she saw a gray Tesla speeding past. The woman and Radimak “exchanged words” before he got out of the Tesla and assaulted the woman and her mother. Radimak then fled in his gray 2022 Tesla with Oregon license plates and was located in Waikiki. Charges are pending. 

Nathaniel Radimak was originally sentenced to a five-year prison term, but was released on parole after serving less than one year, as confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The CDCR states his early release was “after serving his full sentence as defined by law.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/tesla-road-rage-honolulu-los-angeles-arrest-91b436b256fc8eb6897041b41c54a8a8

Harper Magazine’s Weekly Review 6 May 2025

US Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that border agents stopped more than 22 million fentanyl-laced pills from crossing into the US, effectively saving 258 million lives or around three quarters of the population; and the Trumpf junta’s preliminary budget proposed to cut a program that would expand access to the overdose antidote naloxone. Mike Waltz was fired as the national security advisor and replaced by Marco Rubio, who is now the interim national security advisor, the secretary of state, the acting administrator of USAID, and the acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration. “Too much,” said a Virginia senator of Rubio’s roles. It was reported that the US economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, which marks the country’s first economic downturn in three years. “The bad parts,” said Dotard Trumpf, “are the Biden economy.” General Motors announced that it was due to lose between $4 billion and $5 billion in annual revenue; American Airlines announced a $473 million net loss for the first quarter of 2025; the US Navy lost a Super Hornet fighter jet, which costs more than $60 million, after it fell overboard from the USS Harry S Truman into the Red Sea; and millions of dimes rolled onto a highway in Wise County, Texas, after the truck transporting them tipped over. Junta supremo Trumpf said that he does not “rule out” using military force to take control of Greenland; the Department of Justice sued Hawaii and Michigan over their plans to sue fossil fuel companies for their contributions to the climate crisis; the White House issued an executive order demanding that the board of directors for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, three of whose members the president sought to fire in a separate executive order, “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS”; a report on press freedom ranked the US 57th on its freedom index, on par with Gambia and Uruguay; and Sovereignty edged out Journalism to win the Kentucky Derby.

Some twenty armed federal agents busted into an Oklahoma City home and seized the laptops, phones, and life savings of the family living there, even though their names did not match those of the suspects listed on the officers’ search warrant; and ICE agents raided the house of an Irvine, California, couple whose son has been accused of doxxing agents, but had moved to New York months ago. A group of Jewish men in New York chased, kicked, and threw a traffic cone at a woman they mistakenly assumed was a protester agitating against the arrival of Israel’s national security minister. A man was arrested in an Israeli airport for his connection to a 2022 cryptocurrency hack that nearly destroyed a California blockchain company; kidnappers in Paris chopped off the finger of a Frenchman and demanded that his son, a cryptocurrency millionaire, pay ransom four months after a co-founder of a crypto firm was abducted and had his own finger cut off in central France; and it was reported that a Japanese woman cut off her boyfriend’s ring finger with an axe after having allegedly snipped off his nipple with a pair of scissors three weeks prior. “I heard,” said the boyfriend, “that nipples regenerate.”

A California railroad executive was found guilty of embezzling funds to build a secret apartment in the Burlingame train station, and a London man traveling by train to court to face thirty-six counts of train fare evasion was stopped by transit authorities for traveling without a ticket. A British man received an eight-month suspended sentence for setting fire to his own house twice in one night; a man who had been rescued from Mount Fuji after suffering from altitude sickness was rescued a second time after returning to the mountain in search of his phone; and a man who allegedly killed another man on a basketball court in Louisiana returned to the scene of the crime wearing nothing but a towel. A man in Pennsylvania broke into a Mormon church while in the nude, and a naked man was arrested trying to break into a home in Flagler County, Florida. “Attempting to break into a home without your britches,” said the sheriff, “is not an encounter you want to have with law enforcement.” It was reported that the president of the Art Institute of Chicago stripped on a flight to Europe, a strip club in Detroit was shuttered after a cellphone video of twenty kids partying inside was discovered by one of their mothers, Google announced plans to introduce an AI chatbot for children, and the US president posted an AI-generated blasphemous photo of himself as the pope. “I’m fine,” said US VPOTUS JD Vance, “with people telling jokes.” —Megan Evershed

Our deepest appreciation to Megan Evershed and the esteemed staff at the venerable Harper’s Magazine for this invaluable weekly synopsis chronicling the insanity, inanity, and inhumanity besetting the world.

Chimpanzee Asks For Help Drinking Water, Then Washes Man’s Hands

Europe Step Ups for Ukraine

Activists display a 500-square-metre banner in support of Ukraine in Brussels, 6 Mar 2025. (Photo: EPA-EFE / OLIVIER MATTHYS)

Dedicated Followers of the Watch, Coriolanus is doing his utmost best to keep up with the madness of King Trumpf and the repercussions of his destructive policies on behalf of Vladimir Putin. Not to be neglected is Felon Musk, the worst person in the world, who will receive a dedicated post about his nefarious activities in the near future.    

Vladimir Putin with his protege in Helsinki, Finland on 16 Jul 2018. (AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Trumpf’s Underhandedness

Two of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s political rivals have confirmed that they have been in contact with members of US President Donald Trumpf’s entourage. Secret discussions have been held about holding snap presidential elections in Ukraine that could potentially unseat President Volodomir Zelensky before a final peace deal is signed.

Yulya Tymoshenko and Petro Poroshenko are currently much less popular in Ukraine than Zelensky. Just 10% of Ukrainian voters said they would support Poroshenko in a presidential election, while only 6% said they would vote for Tymoshenko. The former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who is currently serving as the Ukrainian ambassador to London, has been Zelensky’s main political rival for some time now, with 21% of Ukrainians surveyed saying they supported him.

Trumpf has also indicated a desire to revoke the temporary legal status for around 240,000 Ukrainians in the US who fled Putin’s brutal Feb 2022 invasion. His cruelty knows no bounds.

The US has halted intelligence sharing with Kiev, threatening Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian targets amid the full-scale war, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said during a TV interview. “Trumpf had a real question about whether President (Volodymyr) Zelensky was committed to the peace process, and he said let’s pause,” Ratcliffe said. The move follows Washington’s decision to freeze all military aid supplies to Ukraine following a public spat between Zelensky and Donald Trumpf. The decision was likely intended to put pressure on Zelensky in peace talks.

American volunteer soldiers fighting in Ukraine say that they feel “betrayed” by their own country after the US halted military aid and stopped sharing intelligence with Kiev.

Alexis Antilla is an American volunteer fighting in Ukraine. (Photo: CBS, circa 2022)

“(US President Donald Trumpf) betrayed every one of us,” a US Army veteran, who goes by the callsign ‘Goldfish’ said.

And on the frontlines, a Ukrainian sniper named “Lektor” achieved a remarkable feat.

Ukrainian Army sniper “Lektor” in an undated photo.

A soldier of the Main Intelligence Directorate named “Lektor” in a duel with a Russian sniper killed him at a record 2,069 meters. That’s an incredible two kilometers.

According to Lektor, the chances of hitting the target from such a distance were low.

“This distance is the limit for the caliber of weapons with which I worked. Plus, it was a moving target. There is very little chance of hitting a moving target, given that the bullet flies at that distance of 4 seconds, the target moves, there is one wind near me, and a completely different one near the target, which affects the trajectory of the bullet. But that’s how it turned out. Everything is right, it turns out, he did it,” the sniper notes.

At the same time, Lektor added that after this shot, he could not leave his position for a long time, as the enemy was trying hard to detect it.

France Responds

Paris has signaled they will provide intelligence to Ukraine following this unsurprising stab in the back from Putin’s protege. Paris has approximately 100 military and commercial satellites in orbit.

Artist’s rendition of a Comsat NG satellite. (Image: Thales Alenia Space)

More ominously, France will consider extending the protection of its nuclear arsenal to its allies said French President Emmanuel Macron, while warning that Europe needs to be ready for the US to not “remain by our side” in the Ukraine-Russia war.

“I’ve decided to open the strategic debate on the protection by our deterrence of our allies on the European continent,” he said in a live broadcast on his official social media channels. Macron stressed the need for Europe to continue assisting Ukraine and strengthen its own defense. “Our nuclear deterrence protects us, it is complete, sovereign, French from end to end,” Macron said of France’s nuclear arsenal. “This protects us much more than many of our neighbors.”

The Suffren can sail autonomously for 70 days at a depth of 350m. (Photo: AFP)

France is ranked 7 out of 145 countries in terms of military strength by the Global Firepower Index (GFI). They possess an arsenal of 290 nuclear warheads with the range to strike Moscow. Roughly 80% of the warheads are for delivery by three ballistic missiles submarines. Decades ago, France established its own nuclear arsenal so as not to depend on the US and it seems they were right. In a nuclear exchange with Russia, Paris would be atomized within minutes. This is the conundrum of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD). Look where Trumpf and Putin have taken the world.

The EU Responds with ReArm Europe

Excerpt from EU President Ursula von der Leyen statement:

“We are living in the most momentous and dangerous of times. I do not need to describe the grave nature of the threats that we face. We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defense spending. Both, to respond to the short-term urgency to act and to support Ukraine but also to address the long-term need to take on much more responsibility for our own European security. ReArm Europe could mobilize close to EUR 800 billion Euros for a safe and resilient Europe. We will continue working closely with our partners in NATO.” Signed, EU President Ursula von der Leyen.

Europe and NATO are working around the US, as Washington under Trumpf is now viewed as a hostile power under occupation by the Kremlin. The UK, Turkiye, and Canada expressed willingness to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine within a “coalition of the willing.” Europe will adjust to the new security and intelligence paradigm, although this will be difficult for some of the member states as they relied on the US “Rock of Gibraltar” for nearly 80 years.

Sources:

Trump team meets with Zelensky’s political rivals in apparent bid to remove him from power — Novaya Gazeta Europe

Ukraine war latest: US halts intelligence sharing with Ukraine, CIA director confirms

Press statement by the President on the defense package

Macron says France to consider protecting European allies with its nuclear arsenal | CNN

www.globalfirepower.com

‘He betrayed every one of us’ – US soldiers in Ukraine speak out after Trump’s military aid halt

www.bbc.com

Canada ‘ready and able’ to join Ukraine peacekeeping force, defense minister says | CBC News

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/politics/government/trump-planning-to-revoke-legal-status-of-240-000-ukrainian-refugees-key-developments/ar-AA1AmTXY

Canada Punches Back Against Trumpf

Ontario Premier Doug Ford along with PM Justin Trudeau have been leading the national charge against Trumpf.

Canada, a G-7 nation that enjoys $53,431.20 per capita GDP, is not taking Trumpf lightly. Ontario Premier Doug Ford slapped a 25% surcharge on US-bound electricity, which will affect New York, Michigan, and Minnesota. Ontario cancelled its $100-million contract with Felon Musk’s Starlink as well. The contract, signed in 2024, was intended to provide Starlink satellite internet to 15,000 remote homes and businesses in northern Ontario.

A $100 million contract for 15,000 remote homes? What in blazes did Felon Musk almost get away with in Ontario?

Premier Doug Ford also removed all US alcohol and liquor from its official stores run by the LCBO. The LCBO is the largest single purchaser of alcoholic beverages on the planet, serving a population of nearly 16 million people.

The province of Manitoba proudly followed suit. These moves will result in a loss of $1 billion to American companies. Please click link:

CEO Brown Forman, the manufacturer of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey in Tennessee, said that Canadian provinces removing American liquor from its shelves is “worse than a tariff.” In 2024, the “Volunteer State” solidly voted for Donald Trumpf as you could see below.

In 1998, Frank Sinatra was famously buried with a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. A mourner quipped, “Here, Frank, you may need this.”

To the west, British Columbia is hitting back at economic threats from the US by introducing tools to impose fees on US truck traffic travelling through the province on the way to Alaska.

Premier David Eby said the tolls may or may not be used, but warned that Canada needs to have tools available to fight the tariffs coming from America’s Godzilla.

British Columbia Premier David Eby

Eby made the announcement on the lawn of the Legislative Assembly building in Victoria, which had been draped with a large Canadian flag, while members of his party chanted “Canada” in the background.

Of course there are other countermeasures Canada and her provinces are individually and jointly pursuing against Trumpf but time constraints preclude listing them all. Coriolanus has a suggestion for Canadian sports franchises that value their patriotism over profits.

If the Toronto Blue Jays baseball franchise boycotted the 2025 Major League Baseball (MLB) season which opens soon, this would likely result in a multimillion-dollar loss for the US economy according to AI calculations.

Total Estimated Cost to the US Economy

Direct Game Revenue Loss: $152 million (tickets, concessions, etc.)

Local Economic Impact: $228 million to $380 million (multiplier applied)

Broadcast/Sponsorship Loss: $30 million to $50 million (US share)

Tax Revenue Loss: ~$30 million

Total Loss Range for US: $410 million to $612 million

Similarly, if the Toronto Raptors boycotted the 2025 NBA season, AI calculations estimate that the US economy might see a loss of $300-$500 million.

In a trillion dollar economy these amounts may seem small, but they will have some economic impact. More importantly, the psychological impact will be much more effective. Plus, MLB and the owners will have to scramble and find 162 replacement games (out of a total 2,430 games), which will upset their schedules. Since most owners are wealthy oligarchs overcharging fans for beer, hot dogs, and hamburgers at the stadiums, why not give them the headache?

Sources:

Ontario Removes All American Alcohol From Store Shelves | Crooks and Liars

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/ontario-starlink-1.7475817

Ontario slapping 25% surcharge on U.S.-bound electricity Monday, Ford says | CBC News

B.C. planning legislation that could toll trucks travelling to Alaska, Eby says | CBC News

US National Security Weakens as FBI and CIA Culled Again by Trumpf

FBI Senior SA James Dennehy (Photo: Sarah Yenesel / EPA, via Shutterstock)

The top agent at the FBI’s New York field office has been forced out of his job, following clashes with Justice Department officials over Trump administration directives.

The veteran agent, James E. Dennehy, was told to retire from his role leading the FBI’s largest field office, delivering another blow to the senior ranks of the bureau. Mr. Dennehy, who had been running the office since Sep 2024, had angered Trumpf administration officials by supporting bureau leaders who resisted turning over the names of those who investigated the 6 Jan 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Mr. Dennehy had also angered Attorney General Pam Bondi by what she claimed was the New York office’s failure to turn over all the investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier charged with sex trafficking who killed himself in prison. Ms. Bondi provided no evidence to back up her assertion.

Mr. Dennehy’s departure comes after weeks of turmoil at the FBI that saw nearly a dozen executives at headquarters removed unexpectedly, leaving a leadership vacuum and confusion on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building in Washington, DC.

Mr. Dennehy, who served for seven years as a USMC officer before joining the bureau in 2002, spent most of his career investigating or supervising counterintelligence cases, which, in essence, involved chasing (Russian or Chinese) spies rather than building criminal cases.

Underqualified sycophant John Ratcliffe is the ninth director of CIA. (Photo: CIA)

The government cuts ordered by the Trump administration have hit CIA. Some officers hired in the last two years have been summoned to a location away from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, VA, and asked to surrender their credentials to security personnel.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the reports that newly hired agents were being fired were troubling and would “undercut our national security.”

In fact, some young agency officers working inside Langley have been hesitant to answer their phones, worried that it will be a call from security asking them to report to an off-site location. The firings have devastated morale and cut productivity.

CIA officers are formally on probation for four years. But the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been focused on paring back more recent hires.

The first two years of CIA officers’ careers are a time of intense training, and the government spends large amounts of money to teach them spy tradecraft, languages, and other skills.

More experienced officers who transfer to CIA from other intelligence agencies also face a lengthy probationary period. Senator Warner stated that if the layoffs affect those officers, it would effectively waste years of training investment.

These culls are designed to rid the US Intelligence Community (IC) of non-conformists, those who are not loyal to Trumpf or minority employees, using the guise of cost-cutting. As a former member of the USIC, Coriolanus worked with several CIA officers, some would go on to become friends. Your author is appalled that the US government has become a cat’s paw to the Kremlin, thanks to Donald Trumpf, and the damage he is causing to the US is irreparable. These are important lessons for Ottawa, London, Paris, Brussels, Kiev, and Tokyo, Seoul: Remain vigilant to foreign interference and espionage lest you follow America’s hideous path.

Sources:

North Carolina Man Pleads Guilty to Attempting to Illegally Export Sensitive Technology to China

David C. Bohmerwald, the owner of a Raleigh-based electronics resale business called Components Cooper, Inc., pled guilty to attempting to export accelerometer technology with military applications to China without a license, in violation of the Export Control Reform Act (“ECRA”), and faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced. 

Ultra Low Noise Miniature Triaxial Accelerometers

Bohmerwald (63) purchased 100 accelerometers from a US-based electronics company and then attempted to export the devices to a company in China. These accelerometers have a wide array of applications ranging from research and development of products to defense uses. When used for military applications, accelerometers are crucial to structural testing, monitoring, flight control, and navigation systems. The technology can help missiles fly more accurately and measure the precise effect munitions have on structures. A license is required to export the accelerometers to China.

The US based electronics company notified law enforcement due to Bohmerwald’s suspicious and unusual purchase request. Among other things, when Bohmerwald purchased the accelerometers, he claimed that they were for an end user in Missouri. In fact, when federal agents contacted the Missouri company, they denied having an order pending with Bohmerwald and his business, Components Cooper.

After Bohmerwald received the accelerometers, he dropped two parcels at a local FedEx shipping store. One of the packages was addressed to a business in China. An agent with the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, detained the package and found it contained 100 accelerometers. The agent confirmed that there were no relevant licenses on file to support the export of the items. In addition, Bohmerwald falsely listed the value of the package at $100, when the true value was nearly $20,000. When interviewed by agents, Bohmerwald admitted to acquiring the technology on behalf of a Chinese-based company, knowing that the technology was export-controlled, and knowing export of the items required a license.

As long as Beijing has the manpower, funds, and resources, Chinese espionage will continue unabated as stealing technology can be cheaper than research and development (R & D). Moreover, as long as there are traitors in the West who are willing to sell out their country for money, as you have read about here on Coriolanus, the USIC (and allies) will have their hands full for some time.

Source:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/raleigh-man-pleads-guilty-attempting-illegally-export-sensitive-technology-china

Israel Shin Bet: Netanyahu’s Policies Paved the Way for 7 Oct 2023 Attacks

ICC-indicted Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to fire the director of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar. (Photo: Maya Alleruzzo / AP)

Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, has said Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies were among the underlying causes of the 7 Oct 2023 attack in which Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and seized 251 captives. In its report on the 7 Oct 2023 attack, Shin Bet acknowledged its own responsibility, admitting it was aware of warning signs that Hamas was planning an operation, but the agency did not grasp the scale, timing, and location of the planned attack. Netanyahu’s acquiescence in the flow of funds from Qatar to Gaza was designed to divide Palestinians by boosting Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian state.

The gunmen attacked to seize Israeli hostages because thousands of Palestinians were being held in security detention for years without trial or hearing. Amnesty International reported many Palestinians were tortured in those military prisons. With no way to get these captives freed, Hamas took hostages for a prisoner swap. Two trades took place in Nov 2023 before Bibi unleashed the full-scaled Nakba during the entire year of 2024, which led to his indictment as an alleged war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. In 2024, the “Crime Minister” continued the Nakba every single day to ethnically cleanse Gaza, delay his corruption trial, and weaken the Democrats in the 2024 election. He partially succeeded.

Hundreds of Palestinian detainees in Israeli military detention have been subjected to mistreatment and torture.

Palestinian children in IDF detention. (Undated photo)

Is it any wonder that armed gunmen from Gaza went on a rampage to abduct Israelis in order to conduct a prisoner trade?

Israel Security Agency director Ronen Bar speaks at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya, 11 Sep 2022. He poses a threat to Netanyahu far greater than the Iranians or Palestinians. (Photo by Avshalom Sassoni / Flash 90)

Spokesperson Eli Feldstein is seen at an event with PM Benjamin Netanyahu during the Nakba against the Palestinians in Gaza. He is under investigation by the Israel Attorney-General’s office for the alleged theft and leaking of classified IDF documents to contacts in Qatar. (Photo: IDF)

Coriolanus visited pre- and post-apartheid South Africa and can testify that Netanyahu followed a similar strategy the Afrikaaners used to divide their opposition. The Afrikaaners secretly funded the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party who were opposed to the African National Congress as they were predominantly from the Xhosa tribe. Using tribal warfare, Pretoria kept the two massive groups at each other’s throats for years, much like the disunified Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Over time, the white minority government realized their hold on power was untenable, so they released Nelson Mandela and transitioned away from apartheid with a minimum amount of bloodshed.

Dubbed the “Crime Minister” by his political opposition and “Israel’s curse” by a Canadian newspaper, Netanyahu has an outstanding international arrest warrant out for him issued by the ICC. His wife Sara and he are embroiled in a corruption trial and “Bibi” faces a serious inquiry into his handling of the 7 Oct 2023 surprise attack by Palestinian resistance fighters.

All indictments are merely allegations. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Sources:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-5-months-before-oct-7-shin-bet-head-told-netanyahu-war-in-gaza-inevitable/

Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests   – Amnesty International

AG orders criminal probe into Netanyahu’s aides’ ties to Qatar | The Times of Israel

Investigators Assess if Netanyahu’s Aides Forged Oct. 7 Phone Records – DNyuz

US Stops Sharing Air Quality Data From Embassies Worldwide

The US government will stop sharing air quality data gathered from its embassies and consulates, worrying local scientists and experts who say the effort was vital to monitor global air quality and improve public health. The State Department said its air quality monitoring program would no longer transmit air pollution data from embassies and consulates to the EPA’s AirNow app and other platforms, which allowed locals in various countries, along with scientists around the globe, to see and analyze air quality in cities around the world.

The US embassy’s hourly smog updates have irked Beijing officials—and spurred mitigation measures. (Photo: Kevin Frayer / Stringer / Getty Images)

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/world/us-air-quality-pollution-intl-hnk/index.html

https://www.science.org/content/article/rooftop-sensors-us-embassies-are-warning-world-about-crazy-bad-air-pollution

Unvaccinated Americans Dying or Sickening from Preventable Illnesses

The New Mexico Department of Health said that the state had its first measles death. The victim tested positive for the measles virus after death and the official cause of his demise is under investigation. The adult, who was unvaccinated, didn’t seek medical care before dying.

Measles is spreading rapidly in West Texas, with 159 cases reported so far. Most of the cases are in Gaines County. In neighboring Lea County, New Mexico, ten cases have been identified. A school-age child in Texas last week was the first person to have died in the outbreak and the first to have died from measles in the US in a decade. Most of the people who have gotten the measles in Texas haven’t been vaccinated, including the child who died. Mexican authorities warned their citizens to avoid Texas.

The Minnesota Department of Health reported a case of tetanus in an unvaccinated child under ten years of age in 2024. The child experienced pain and stiffness in the neck, and he could not breathe on their own. They were intubated and admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). The child had no visible wounds, and parents were not aware of any recently healed wounds. Tetanus is a rare, but a very serious vaccine-preventable disease that causes significant illness and can be fatal. Also called lockjaw, it is a disease caused by bacteria that affects the body’s muscles and nerves. Tetanus cannot be spread from person to person and vaccination is the best way to prevent it. Luckily, the child survived.

The CDC reported that there are at least 32,000 cases of pertussis (“whooping cough”) in the US. This is another disease that is preventable with vaccination.   Antibiotics can treat the bacterial infection, but only if it’s caught within the first few weeks, before the arrival of the exhausting, painful cough. Then, the only treatment is comfort care with plenty of rest and fluids while the infection runs its course.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr made a small fortune as an anti-vaxxer before joining the Trumpf regime. He vowed to “Make America Healthy Again.” (Photo: Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in a recent editorial that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity.” But Kennedy, a longtime notorious anti-vaccine activist, stopped short of calling for parents to vaccinate their children. “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” he wrote.

RFK Jr. has claimed that cod liver oil, budesonide, and clarithromycin have shown “very, very good results” as remedies for measles. Infectious disease experts, however, say these treatments don’t have much medically sound backup and are not intended as measles remedies. The only proven way to prevent measles is through the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Two doses are 97% effective.

Each of these unnecessary deaths and illnesses are the result of anti-vaxxer propaganda. If these idiots wish to die or allow their families to die because of this gross misbelief, so be it. But they are also harming innocent people. When COVID-19 was raging, false prophets touted the effectiveness of ivermectin (a horse de-wormer) as an alternative to vaccination. The number of preventable COVID deaths under Trumpf was incalculable. Now the effectiveness of cod liver oil as a treatment for measles is spreading. Avian flu is spreading globally and Trumpf cut resources at CDC and NIH, as well as withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). We can only guess how many needless deaths all of this chaos will cause.

Sources:

Second measles death reported in ongoing outbreak

Minnesota officials report tetanus case in unvaccinated child in 2024

RFK Jr. Claims Cod Liver Oil, Steroids, Antibiotics Can Treat Measles—Here’s What Doctors Say

Whooping cough cases in the US are the highest they’ve been in a decade | CNN

Helpful Cats

America’s Godzilla Betrays Ukraine, Threatens Canada, Targets US Law Firm Employing Democrats, Weakens FBI and CIA

Followers of the Watch, Coriolanus is doing his utmost best to keep up with the chaos caused by Vladimir Putin’s protege in the White House, Donald Trumpf (AKA America’s Godzilla).

France President Emmanuel Macron visited the White House and publicly corrected Donald Trumpf about who started the war and European economic support for Ukraine during the past three years of Russia’s brutal invasion. On camera America’s Godzilla lied twice and this meme below captured the exchange perfectly. The link at bottom will take you to the video.

Is there anybody on the planet does NOT know that Trumpf is a Kremlin puppet who threw Ukraine under the bus with this Neville Chamberlain “peace in our time” mineral extortion scheme/peace plan? See below for Ukraine update.

The Dotard-in-Chief reiterated his desire to annex Canada and has vowed to press ahead with 25% tariffs on imports from the country when a one-month reprieve elapses on 4 March. Peter Navarro, a top White House official and convicted felon, proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network to increase pressure on the country.

In addition, Godzilla roared that he would strip security clearances from lawyers at a prominent Washington law firm aiding former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the man who investigated him. Trumpf demanded a review of any federal government work Covington & Burling may have, intensifying his bid to truculently punish his enemies.

The law offices of Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. (Photo: Andrew Kelly / Reuters)

Covington & Burling employs high-profile Democratic lawyers who worked in the Obama and Biden administrations. Signing executive orders before reporters in the Oval Office, the twice-impeached and convicted Dotard-in-Chef described the plan to reporters and offered to childishly send the pen he used to Jack Smith, who led two investigations against him as Special Counsel.

To the dismay and shock of thousands of FBI agents, Trumpf hired an unqualified rightwing former podcast propagandist to be Deputy Director. The former USSS agent, Dan Bongino, once called the FBI “irredeemably corrupt. Kash Patel then re-assigned hundreds of FBI agents from Washington, scattering them throughout the US. Across the Potomac River, CIA personnel are conducting damage assessment after a White House email about civil service layoffs appeared to compromise the names of certain undercover officers.

This damage control, reported CNN, is “just one of multiple aftershocks from President Donald Trump’s push to take a jackhammer to the federal government — including the CIA. The administration’s efforts to cut the workforce and audit spending at the CIA and elsewhere threaten to jeopardize some of the government’s most sensitive work, current and former US officials familiar with internal deliberations say.”

CIA honors its fallen officers at its memorial wall, which uses stars rather than names, in keeping with their clandestine calling. (Photo: CIA)

As Dame Agatha Christie once wrote: “Who benefits from this crime?” All of these moves by Donald Trumpf benefit Vladimir Putin. Godzilla is weakening America’s internal and external security apparatuses. By relocating FBI agents outside Washington, Trumpf reduces any resistance forces nearby while also making life easier for foreign espionage assets to operate in the National Capital Region (NCR). By alienating Canada and other allies, Putin is watching NATO beginning to fracture. Putin will continue to fund the rightwing in Europe who will parrot his lines about the evils of Ukraine and NATO. Trumpf’s audacious and offensive behavior towards Canada has galvanized their population on both sides of the aisle and their imminent elections will present an anti-Trumpfer from either the Conservative or Labor Party. The international intelligence-sharing architecture once headed by the US presents another separate dilemma. NATO, the remaining Five-Eyes partners, Japan, and South Korea will limit intelligence-sharing with the US. Israel’s Mossad may also be leery about sharing sensitive information with the US. Bilateral intelligence sharing programs exclusive of the US will probably be the way ahead for the Western powers.

What will Trumpf target next? Medicare? VA benefits? Social security? Mexico?

Sources:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/suspension-of-security-clearances-and-evaluation-of-government-contracts/

https://www.ft.com/content/2dfa3c11-64a7-49f6-83df-939b8d1cfb8e

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-macron-canada-mexicoreciprocal-49caafc1240db7e17cfb45e71520dc98

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-02-24/trump-macron-discuss-ukraine-russia-full-remarks-video

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/fbi-agents-express-shock-dismay-naming-right-wing-podcaster-no-2-post-rcna193498

Israel Charges Two IDF Reservists with Espionage on Behalf of Iran

Yuri Eliasfov, Georgi Andreyev (Photo: Sharon Zur)

Two IDF reservists Yuri Eliasfov (22) and Georgi Andreyev (21) were charged with collaborating with an Iranian foreign agent known as “Boaz” and carrying out actions intended to harm Israel’s national security.

Eliasfov is accused of aiding an enemy in war, providing information that could benefit the enemy, contact with a foreign agent, aggravated forgery and other offenses. Andreyev is charged with contact with a foreign agent, vandalism and tampering with evidence. Neither has a previous criminal record.

According to the indictment filed in Haifa District Court, Eliasfov served as a technician in the Iron Dome air defense system and later during his reserve service, while Andreyev was a technician at the Israeli Air Force’s operations center and also served in reserves. The two have been friends for years.

The two spray-painted pro-Iranian graffiti in public places across Israel in exchange for $100 in cryptocurrency, photographed the creation and sent the images to “Boaz” before erasing part of the text.

Eliasfov allegedly sent “Boaz” blurred images of sites he claimed were military locations, receiving payment. He later offered to sell him weapons.

Between November 1-3 last year, while on reserve duty, Eliasfov recorded the Iron Dome radar screen, capturing classified data on the system’s location. He sent “Boaz” an edited clip containing highly classified information and offered the full video for $10,000, demanding an $800 advance payment.

Iron Dome battery (Photo: Israeli Security Ministry)

During his compulsory service, Eliasfov allegedly took eight photos of Iron Dome’s computer systems containing classified data and stored them on his phone, knowing they were highly confidential.

“Boaz” reportedly believed Eliasfov was a commander in the IDF’s elite Egoz unit with military connections. The Iranian agent expressed interest in Israeli Air Force bases, aircraft and specifically Nevatim Airbase, targeted in an Iranian attack last October.

The espionage war between Israel and Iran will continue along with their state of belligerency. Note that Iranian anti-Israeli attitudes intensified after Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in the early 1980s which killed thousands of Shiites and led to the creation of Lebanese Hezbollah. When the Shah of Iran was in power, both CIA and Mossad worked and trained the Peacock Throne’s notorious security service, the SAVAK. As you previously read here on Coriolanus, in 2024 Israel’s security services previously rendered ineffective a few other Iranian spy rings. These two suspects are Ashkenazi Jews with Slavic names, like some of the other spies netted by the Shin Bet.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Source:

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryc11k4q00yg

Ukraine Update

Ukraine’s Schools Preparing Next Generation to Defend Itself from Russia

School children during a “Defense of Ukraine” lesson in Kyiv Oblast. (Photo: Lisa Bukreyeva / The Kyiv Independent)

In a small town in Kyiv Oblast, 10th grader Alina Marynenko just beat her entire class to be the most accurate shooter on an AK-47 simulator.

“Fourteen out of fifteen! I set a record! We beat the boys!” Marynenko yells out to her class.

Marynenko and her classmates fired the simulated weapon during a “Defense of Ukraine” lesson, an experimental course part of a wider educational reform passed after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The course has been part of the Ukrainian school curriculum since Soviet times, also known over the years as “Pre-Conscription Training” and “Defense of the Homeland.” If before 2022, the subject was seen as obsolete, hardly taken seriously by students who at times saw it more as an opportunity to goof off, Russia’s all-out aggression has given it a new life.  

Schoolchildren practice with firearms during a “Defense of Ukraine” lesson in Kyiv Oblast. (Photo: Lisa Bukreyeva / The Kyiv Independent)

The program’s backers maintain they are not aiming to train 16 and 17-year-olds to be soldiers, but preparing them for a reality where Russian aggression is ongoing, with no clear end in sight.

FPV drone flying simulator in a “Defense of Ukraine” classroom in Kyiv Oblast. Ukraine has become an expert at precision drone warfare. (Photo: Lisa Bukreyeva / The Kyiv Independent)

Similarly and sadly, the Kremlin is militarizing their youth as well. In 2024, the Russian state introduced a mandatory discipline for middle and high school called the “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland.” For about 60 years, Soviet schoolchildren assembled and disassembled assault rifles, learned how to put on gas masks, and provided first aid during the lessons of “Basic Military Training” (BMT). This subject was removed from the school curriculum in the late 1980s and replaced with FLS.

A Russian army officer wearing a “Z” symbol, associated with support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, demonstrates a Kalashnikov assault rifle to a boy during a pro-military event in Krasnogorsk, Russia, on 24 Feb 2024. The event, organized by local authorities, coincides with the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (Contributor / Getty Images)

Russian teenagers take part in a ceremony to join the patriotic Youth Army cadet movement in the main hall of the Stalingrad Battle Museum in Volgograd, Russia, on 25 Jan 2023. (Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)

Ukrainian Intelligence Chief: “Putin Wants All of Warsaw Pact Back”

Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. (Photo: Ukrainian Defense Ministry.)

Ukraine’s intelligence director Kyrylo Budanov warns Russia views itself as an empire seeking to reclaim former Soviet territories, with Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria as targets if Ukraine is defeated.

“Russia doesn’t see itself as a federation—it sees itself as an empire. The model its leadership envisions is a version of the Soviet Union that includes former Warsaw Pact countries. This won’t change if the worst-case scenario unfolds.” 

According to him, absorbing these nations is Russia’s “minimum objective” in its imperial ambitions.

“If we fall, Poland is next. I’m saying this outright—not to instill fear, but to make it clear. Then will come for the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria. A full rollback.” 

Despite Moscow’s claims of openness to negotiations, Russia continues its relentless aerial attacks on Ukraine.

Budanov added that Russia has received 120 long-range self-propelled artillery pieces and 120 multiple launch rocket systems from North Korea.

The DPRK has already supplied this equipment to the Russian troops and they have begun to use it. We are talking about 120 self-propelled artillery systems of 170 mm caliber and 120 MLRS of 240 mm caliber.

“These are quite impressive numbers,” the DIU chief emphasized.

He added that “it’s another question altogether” how much more North Korean weapons are being supplied to Russia. The intelligence chief noted that the DPRK provides the occupiers with 49% of 122-152 mm artillery ammunition and 122 mm MLRS rockets. 

Russian Military Losses

Russian military funeral.

ICC-indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin’s Nakba against Ukraine has cost his country dearly. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Russia has lost 870,700 troops since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 Feb 2022.

This number includes 1,170 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past 36 hours.

According to the report, Russia has also lost 10,201 tanks, 21,183 armored fighting vehicles, 38,702 vehicles and fuel tanks, 23,686 artillery systems, 1,299 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,085 air defense systems, 370 airplanes, 331 helicopters, 26,961 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine.

Donald Trumpf sanctioned the ICC in an effort to remove the international arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu.

If a ceasefire or peace is arranged, Ukraine will walk away from this conflict much like Japan and Finland did after their wars with the much larger Russia: combat-experienced and esteemed in the eyes of the international community. Russia and Ukraine might look like North and South Korea, two highly-militarized states at stone’s throw of each other. But genuine negotiations between Kiev and Moscow have not yet begun. US and Russian envoys discussing the future of Ukraine in Saudi Arabia without their presence was a poor sign of imperial arrogance. When someone asks what’s for dinner, this usually means it’s them. Either way, Putin’s goal of absorbing Ukraine into his fold have so far failed. And how much longer can Putin and Trumpf live? Will their successors want to maintain this ideal of a “Greater Russia”? As long as Europe can keep supporting Kiev without the US, Ukraine can outlast her enemies.

Sources:

https://euromaidanpress.com

https://kyivindependent.com/general-staff-russia-has-lost-870-700-troops-in-ukraine-since-feb-24-2022/

Dead Body Placed Beside Australian Couple on Qatar Airways Flight for Four Hours

An Australian couple have spoken of the “traumatic” moment the body of a dead passenger was placed next to them on a Qatar Airways flight. Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who were travelling to Venice for a dream holiday, said a woman died in the aisle beside them during the flight from Melbourne to Doha. The couple say cabin crew sat her corpse, which was covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight and did not offer to move him, despite there being empty seats. Qatar Airways said it apologized for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused,” adding that it was in the process of contacting passengers.

Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin. Inset: Mitchell Ring on the infamous flight. (Courtesy 9Now Australia)

Qatar Airways crew stated the deceased passenger was too large to move to the vacant seats in business class. But this large passenger was able to squeeze her way into economy class? Perhaps the crew didn’t want to upset the oligarchs enjoying Business Class. And in case you missed it, this week there was another aviation incident when a private jet entered the runway without authorization from air traffic control resulting in a near-miss in Chicago. Between President Planecrash in the US and this mortifying experience, who thinks the skies are friendly enough to fly?

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz03l18jv97o

https://abcnews.go.com/US/southwest-plane-lands-safely-chicago-after-close-call/story?id=119174069

North Korean Hackers Steal Record $1.5 Billion in Single Crypto Hack

North Korean hackers have stolen $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency in a single heist, making it the largest crypto hack on record..

The hackers struck Bybit, which describes itself as the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, with over 40 million users.

In a matter of minutes on Friday, the hackers stole a significant portion of North Korea’s reported annual gross domestic product. And over the weekend, the hackers were already laundering about $160 million of the stolen loot through a series of accounts connected to North Korean operatives, according to crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs. In a single hack, the North Koreans have nearly doubled what they stole in crypto last year, the firm said.


An ethereum coin. Credit: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

North Korea’s formidable hacking corps is an essential source of revenue for the nuclear-armed, sanctions-battered dictatorship.

Kim Jong-un enjoying a cigarette while his people starve. (Undated photo: KCNA)

In addition to hacking, North Korea makes money by producing and selling illegal drugs, counterfeit consumer goods and currency, and human/arms/wildlife trafficking. Pyongyang added to its coffers by keeping the salaries of the soldiers it sent to fight and die in Russia, as well as by selling weapons to Moscow. The fight to defeat North Korean crime must be through vigilance and intelligence-sharing, otherwise Kin Jong-un will continue developing his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) unabated. Lastly, Coriolanus has dealt with organized crime decades ago and he learned this philosophy years ago: “If you don’t understand it, get rid of it.” This axiom certainly applies to investing in crypto-currency. No Followers of the Watch should even be tempted to think about this unregulated demi-currency.

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/politics/north-korean-hackers-crypto-hack/index.html

Health News: Four Things to Increase Your Lifespan

Stacy Andersen, a behavioral neuroscientist at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, is a codirector of the New England Centenarian Study, which examines the lives of people over 100 who are in good health. She has traveled the country visiting centenarians in their homes, meeting their families, and often sitting down with them for breakfast to try to pinpoint why they have lived so long.

Ms. Anderson, who studied centenarians for twenty years, contends doing these four things will add to your life expectancy. Of course this excludes genetic, financial, and environmental factors impacting us.

1) Eat foods from five different colors every day.

You can get a diverse range of nutrients by eating a variety of fruits and vegetables. (Istetiana/Getty Images)

2) Exercise daily and mix it up.

Yoga, tennis, swimming, jogging, martial arts, weight-lifting all help.

3) Get good-quality sleep.

4) Challenge yourself to learn a new skill.

Learn to play different games, a musical instrument, or another language.

Many researchers suggest that having a pet in your life may also increase your longevity. Reducing alcohol, coffee, soda, and tobacco consumption can’t hurt either. Coriolanus has some work to do himself.

Source:

https://www.businessinsider.com/things-longevity-scientist-centenarians-does-for-live-longer-2025-2

US Army Choir Sings Protest Song from Les Misérables at White House

At the Governor’s Ball in the White House earlier this week, the US Army Choir sang an arrangement from Les Misérables. The Victor Hugo novel (and musical) revolves around anti-monarchy and fighting tyranny, famous for its climactic scene from the Paris Uprising of 1832. The US Soldiers gleefully protested the sham Trumpf administration right under their very noses. Watch and listen:

Coriolanus is proud of his Soldiers.

Pocket-Sized Kitten Changes This Man Into Cat Lover Forever

Desertions Spark Panic, and Pardons, in Ukraine’s Army

Oleksandr left his unit without permission after six months of hard fighting, but later returned to the army (Photo: AFP)

Oleksandr LNU (photo in link) deserted from the front line in eastern Ukraine after watching his fellow servicemen being pulverized by Russian bombardments for six months. Then, those remaining were ordered to counterattack.

It was the final straw for Oleksandr (45) who had been holding the line in the embattled Lugansk region in the early months of the war. Even his commanding officer was reluctant to send his men back toward what looked like certain death. So when Oleksandr saw an opening to save his life, he did.

“We wanted to live. We had no combat experience. We were just ordinary working people from villages,” the soft-spoken serviceman.

Family, friends, and army comrades gather to mourn Ukrainian army paramedic Nazarii Lavrovskyi (31) at his funeral at Lisove cemetery in Kiev, 24 April 2024 (Photo: Francisco Seco / AP)

Oleksandr’s is just one of many cases plaguing the Ukrainian military, which has already suffered at least 43,000 losses in nearly three years of fighting, President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed this month. The government is also struggling to recruit new troops.

Figures published by the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office show that more than 90,000 cases have been opened into instances of soldiers going absent without leave or deserting since Russia invaded in 2022, with a sharp increase over the past year.

Members of Ukraine’s ‘Da Vinci’ Assault Battalion without masks or blurred faces. Kiev now offers amnesty for first-time deserters if they return to their units. (Photo: AFP)

Shell shock and PTSD have devastating effects on soldiers, on top of them dealing with plain innate fear and miserable living conditions in the front lines. This is not a new phenomenon. Drone operators or logistical personnel in the rear are most likely not deserting, but frontline soldiers are. During the Second World War, 50,000 American soldiers of the “Greatest Generation” deserted in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) from 1942 to 1945; there were no desertions reported in the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).

Kiev offering amnesty or pardons is a positive step in improving morale, as well as maintaining their exhausted manpower levels. The Ukrainian Army may also consider extended Rest and Recreation (R & R) leaves, like US servicemen enjoyed in Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Hawaii, Taiwan, and Singapore, during the long and tortured Vietnam War.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/21/why-is-ukraines-army-facing-a-desertion-crisis

https://www.ibtimes.com/desertions-spark-panic-pardons-ukraines-army-3757026

https://www.npr.org/2013/06/17/189275754/wwii-deserters-stories-of-men-who-left-the-front-lines

Russian Arrested For Running Gay Travel Agency Found Dead in Cell

The late Andrei Kotov in court (Photo: SOTA)

Authorities claim Kotov organized a New Year holiday trip to Egypt and a Volga River cruise centered around LGBTI+ themes.

Denying the charges, Kotov defended himself in court, stating that the tours were purely of a tourist nature and did not involve any ideological propaganda.

“The LGBTQ+ community in Russia has been under legal and public pressure for over a decade but especially since the Kremlin sent troops to Ukraine in 2022. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has argued that the war is a proxy battle with the West, which he says aims to destroy Russia and its “traditional family values” by pushing for LGBTQ+ rights.”

Helmeted riot police detain clearly dangerous looking LGBTQ+ rights activists during a St Petersburg march. (Photo: Getty Images)

One of Russia’s most famous sons, the man who composed “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker,” was LGBTQ+.

You wonder what music Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to?

“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”

― Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Sources:

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lgbt-gay-travel-arrest-death/33257088.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russian-man-arrested-for-allegedly-running-gay-travel-agency-dies-in-custody

What Will the Incoming Trump Regime Prosecute and What Will the FBI Investigate?

The President-elect already announced he will vindictively go after his enemies once he assumes power.

The Trump/Putin/Musk cabal, with advice from the rightwing Federalist Society (AKA the) “Feudalist Society”) will appoint Assistant US Attorneys (AUSAs), as well as the US District Marshals which are basically well-paying sinecures, in the below 94 federal districts.

Under the new regime, will these AUSAs defend anti-trust measures against oligarchs or prosecute violators of the Clean Water Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act?

The President-elect intends to nominate the reactionary and unpopular Kash Patel to be Director of the FBI.

If confirmed by the US Senate, this unqualified and incompetent Trump loyalist will be D/FBI. (Undated photo)

While the FBI will continue to investigate nefarious Iranian and Chinese operations in the US, as well as ISIS plots, will the FBI continue to investigate Russian espionage or white supremacist organizations?

Notorious convicted Russian spy Maria Butina infliltrated the GOP and the NRA.

Flesh-Eating Bacteria Cases in Florida Prompt Warnings for Disney World Guests

(Image credit: Inside The Magic)

In 2024, Florida reported 83 confirmed cases of Vibrio vulnificus, almost doubling the 46 cases seen in 2023. 17 deaths have been attributed to the bacterium this year compared to 11 in 2023.

The recent spike in cases is linked to two powerful hurricanes—Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton—which battered Florida with heavy rainfall and flooding. These conditions create ideal environments for Vibrio vulnificus to thrive in warm, brackish, and saltwater areas.

The Florida Department of Health has identified counties with elevated cases, including Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Lee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota. Fortunately, Disney World is located in Orange and Osceola Counties, where Vibrio vulnificus cases remain rare.

According to the CDC, this bacteria can enter a human through an open wound or by consuming seafood contaminated with Vibrio vulnificus.

Necrotizing fasciitis can result in life-long complications from loss of limbs or severe scarring due to surgically removing infected tissue. Even with treatment, up to 1 in 5 people died from the infection.

Global warming has been linked to the increase in flesh-eating bacteria in several states.

In 2016, Aimee Copeland went ziplining in Georgia and fell into shallow dirty water. She became infected with Vibrio vulnificus and lost all of her limbs.

Aimee Copeland was 24 at the time and pursuing an MA degree in psychology. (Photo: John Loomis)

Florida suffers red tide and blue-green algae blooms, which hurt people, animals, pets, and marine life. Emergency declarations have shut down beaches and fishing along large parts of both coasts. Nitrogen and phosphorus entered the watershed harming agriculture. There is a fresh water shortage in southern Florida because the salinity of Florida Bay has changed.

Remarkably, Floridians have no right to bodies of water ‘free of pollution.’ For the second time this year, a Florida appellate court has ruled against environmentalists fighting to enact a widely supported local clean water measure.

Sources:

https://insidethemagic.net/2024/12/disney-world-flesh-eating-bacteria-emd1/

https://www.cdc.gov/group-a-strep/about/necrotizing-fasciitis.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/02/02/flesh-eating-infections-rising-on-the-east-coast-scientists-warn—global-warming-is-making-it-worse/

https://people.com/human-interest/aimee-copeland-flesh-eating-bacteria-survivor/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/floridians-no-bodies-water-free-204050826.html

Retired US Army General: Elon Musk is National Security Risk

US Army Lieutenant-General Russel Honore in Cameron Prairie, LA on 25 Sep 2005. (Photo: Carlos Barria / Reuters)

Retired US Army Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré branded Elon Musk a “national security risk,” citing Musk’s history of appeasing and praising the Chinese Communist Party and his multiple business deals with them, particularly in the space race.

In a scathing op-ed published in The New York Times (NYT), Honoré noted that Musk and his company SpaceX already face federal reviews for failing to provide details of meetings with foreign leaders, but said that such infractions were “just the beginning of my worries.”

Musk has previously borrowed at least $1.4 billion from banks controlled by the Chinese government to help build a “gigafactory” in Shanghai for Tesla. The factory was responsible for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries in the third quarter of 2024.

“China does not tend to give things away,” Honoré wrote. “The country’s laws stipulate that the Communist Party can demand intelligence from any company doing business in China, in exchange for participating in the country’s markets. “This means Mr. Musk’s business dealings in China could require him to hand over sensitive classified information, learned either through his business interests or his proximity to President-elect Donald Trump.”

The NYT reports that the egomaniacal oligarch is being investigated by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General, the USAF, and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Musk had not disclosed frequent meetings with foreign leaders, most notably Russian president Vladimir Putin. Musk has been violating the rules set out by his “top secret” security clearance for years and Israeli officials have expressed concerns that he could leak sensitive state secrets.

Elon Musk’s murky background of how he obtained his fabulous wealth and the circumstances surrounding his immigration to the US remain unclear. There have been calls to investigate and deport the racist Elon Musk back to South Africa for obtaining his US citizenship under false pretenses. Linked at bottom are the specific USCIS regulations on US naturalization which Musk may have violated.

An indictment or accusation is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Sources:

Opinion | Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk – The New York Times

Retired Army general declares Musk a ‘national security risk’ in brutal NYT op-ed | The Independent

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-investigated-violating-terms-top-secret-clearance

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-l-chapter-2

American Police Brutality: NYS Prison Guards Beat Inmate to Death

Warning: Some Followers of the Watch may find the following images graphic and disturbing. This is one of the most cruelest stories that ever beset the author’s eyes.

NYS prison inmate Robert L. Brooks bleeding and disoriented. (Photo: AFP)

This brutal racist attack on inmate Robert L. Brooks (43) happened at Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate NY on 9 Dec in an examination room. Brooks was serving a twelve-year sentence for assault. Other officers stood by and watched as the handcuffed and helpless Brooks was abused and beaten by several correctional officers while blood poured from his face during the 30-minute episode.

After the beat down, Brooks was taken to Wynn Hospital in Utica and declared dead from “asphyxia due to compression of the neck,” in the early morning of 10 Dec.

One guard is holding Brooks in a chokehold as officers try to move him. (Photo: AFP)

One prison guard kicks and stomps on Brooks’ chest. (Image: Office of the New York State Attorney General)

NYS Governor Kathy Hochul began the process of firing the guards and had already suspended 13 without pay. One guard has already resigned.

Marcy Correctional Facility received a scathing evaluation by an oversight agency following a two-day monitoring visit from 11-12 Oct 2022.

Key Highlights: Observations of a Retaliatory Environment, Racial Disparities in Disciplinary Process Affecting Access to Food for Incarcerated Individuals

Marcy Operating Outside HALT Guidelines by Incarcerating Individuals with Mental Health Conditions in SHU Units

The Empire State incarcerates approximately 32,600 convicts which provide white, rural non-college graduates with pensioned careers and peace officer status. There are over 15,000 sworn members in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYSDOCCS). This nationwide pattern of hiring rural whites to guard minority convicts is called the “prison-industrial complex.”

Note the correlation between the prisons above and this 2020 election map below:

The competent NYS Attorney-General Letitia James will most likely be leading the prosecution.

Compare America with Scandinavia.

Norwegian prison guard playing volleyball with inmates. (Photo: NY Times)

Sources:

https://nypost.com/2024/12/27/us-news/ny-prison-guards-beat-handcuffed-inmate-robert-brooks-video/

https://www.correctionalassociation.org/press-releases-archive/2023-marcy-pvb-release

https://doccs.ny.gov/

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2024/12/body-cam-shows-ny-prison-guards-pummeled-handcuffed-inmate-during-fatal-assault-investigator-says.html

France: In 2023, 62% of Criminal Convictions Were for Sexual Offenses

This woman is protesting domestic violence, an issue that continues to plague France. A 2018 report said one out of ten women were raped at least once in their lifetimes. (Photo: The Globe Post and AFP)

Rape was the most frequently convicted crime in French courts in 2023, with 1,800 cases resulting in convictions.

Sexual crimes accounted for 62% of the 2,900 criminal convictions handed down by French courts in 2023.

Aggravating circumstances were considered in more than 70% of these cases, and 10% involved perpetrators who were the victim’s spouse or partner.

In total, nearly 550,000 people were convicted of all crimes in 2023, while some 900,000 offences were recorded in criminal records.

However, serious crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery and violent crimes, accounted for only 0.3% of these infractions.

The average length of French prison sentences in 2023 was 9.7 months.

This outrageous case in 2024 blackened both of France’s eyes.

The hideous Dominique Pelicot, who drugged and raped his wife Gisele Pelicot, appears during his trial with 50 co-accused at the courthouse in Avignon, France, 17 Sep 2024, in this courtroom sketch. (ZZIIGG / Reuters)

Below are what French prisons look like. All photos courtesy of acidcow.com:

Endnote: France, an EU and NATO member which hosts INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, is unhappily and ironically a top ten member of the Global Organized Crime Index.

Sources:

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20241228-rape-tops-criminal-convictions-in-france-justice-report-shows

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/09/19/french-mass-rape-trial-something-was-wrong-suspect-tells-court_6726653_7.html

Cat Simply in Love With Woman That Saved Him

Post-Election Democratic Party Dismay and Discourse: “Ready! Aim! Fire!!!”

Democratic Party voters and strategists are still conducting their post-mortem analysis of the 2024 catastrophe. Kamala Harris energetically filled rallies, selected a sound, competent, popular running mate in Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, set records in fund-raising, and trounced Donald Trump in their one nationally televised debate.

Yet, Kamala Harris lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote. 2004 was the last time the Democrats lost the popular vote (former US Navy Seal John Kerry: 48.3%; George “Dubya” Bush: 50.7%).

Post-COVID inflation, Latino male support shifting to the GOP, Kamala Harris not appearing on a podcast (racist blue-collar Joe Rogan), insufficient campaign time, or America was not ready for a woman of color to be POTUS, were factors that contributed to the Kamala Harris defeat in one way or another.  

Not all, but some Democrats have reached their own infallible, unshakeable conclusion as to why Kamala Harris lost in 2024. A small but vocal portion of the Democratic Party blame the 3,500,000 Arab-Americans that did not vote for Kamala Harris on Election Day, particularly the community in swing-state Michigan.

Kamala Harris won a miserable 20% of the vote in Michigan while Donald Trump barely eked out a 1% edge over her (21% supported the Republican). Green Party candidate Jill Stein won the lion’s share with 59% of their vote. Had Dr. Stein selected a Palestinian-American VPOTUS running mate, she might have won even more votes in the Wolverine State. Kamala’s dismal numbers shouldn’t have surprised political strategists. TV commentator Mehdi Hasan said not only did Harris not court the Muslim and Arab America vote, Harris “actively spurned it.” Worse, US arms shipments to Israel continued unabated throughout the campaign season.

In the blogosphere, some Democrats claim that thanks to these spurned Arab-American Michiganders, “things will get worse for Palestinians” in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under Donald Trump: “So there!”

One furious blogger sounded like a war-hawk Likudnik by suggesting the US “carpet-bomb Dearborn, MI,” like the USAF did over the skies of North Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. These words came from a Democrat.

44,500 Palestinians have been killed, over 105,000 wounded or maimed, and 2.3 million Gazans have been displaced. The UN warns of an imminent famine this winter in Gaza. So, how much worse could it get for Palestinians who are being slaughtered at an average rate of 3,000 per month since 7 Oct 2023, with a sitting Democrat in the White House?

The ones who have been hurling venomous vituperation at Arab-Americans– “hijab-wearers”— sound like Donald Trump with his tropes about “the enemy within.” We can almost hear them think: “Wouldn’t it be better without all these goddamned Arabs?” Basically, these angry Democrats made Arab-Americans a convenient but illogical scapegoat responsible for Kamala Harris’ cataclysmic loss.

Wiser would be for Democrats to look at the enormous anti-war segment of the American population for why they lost in November 2024 and not blame the “hijab wearers” or “Hamas lovers.”

Demonstrators protest outside the UN during a resolution to demand the cease-fire in Gaza on 12 Dec 2023 in NYC. (Photo by Kena Betancur / VIEWpress)

In early 2024, 67% of Americans of all political affiliations wanted the Biden/Harris Administration to join the international call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. US vetoes at the UN Security Council frustrated peacemakers. After being sidelined at the 2024 DNC Convention in Chicago, anti-war Democrats and Americans simply did not turn out nationally on 5 Nov for Kamala Harris. This explains the huge difference in numbers between 2020 Biden/Harris and 2024 Harris/Walz presidential elections.

In 2024 to protest the brutality of the Likud regime, USAF Airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Wash DC. (Photo: Social media)

To protest the brutality of the Saigon regime in 1963, Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Duc set himself on fire. (Photo: Public domain)

As history taught us, after anti-war Democrats were sidelined in 1968, they too did not turn out nationally for Hubert Humphrey, ushering in the corrupt Richard Nixon era. You may read the exact numbers for both elections in my 20 Nov post about the striking parallels between 1968 and 2024.

Being anti-war in 1968 did not make one a “Viet Cong lover”; being anti-war in 2002 did not make one a “jihadi lover;” being anti-war in 2024 did not make one a “Hamas lover.”

Indicted war criminal Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s unrelentless Nakba against the Palestinians and his incalcitrant lack of cooperation with the Biden Administration in reaching a ceasefire to free the hostages sealed the fate for the Democrats in 2024. In the US, the number of anti-war Americans far, far outnumber 3,500,000 Arab-Americans (who are not all eligible to vote by age). VPOTUS Kamala Harris may have been better served paying attention to the powerful antiwar sentiment reverberating throughout the American people as evidenced by the thousands of protests on US college campuses in 2024.

Sources:

How Kamala Harris Thumbed Her Nose at Arab American and Muslim Voters – CounterPunch.org

3.5 Million Reported Middle Eastern and North African Descent in 2020

Most Michigan Muslims voted for Jill Stein, followed by Trump, exit poll suggests

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1035521/popular-votes-republican-democratic-parties-since-1828/

Thích Quảng Duc: The Burning Monk | Barbara O’Brien

Aaron Bushnell: Aaron Bushnell: Candlelight Vigil Planned Outside Israeli Embassy In Washington DC For US Airman Who Set Himself On Fire | US News News, Times Now

Campus protests over Gaza are spreading: See our map

Two-Thirds of US Voters Across Political Spectrum Support Permanent Gaza Cease-Fire | Common Dreams

FBI Arrests NYC Woman Over FSB Contacts

Nomma Zarubina (Social media)

The US charged a Russian woman who engaged with anti-war opposition activists over false statements about her ties with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

NYC resident Nomma Zarubina (34) was accused of concealing her 2020 recruitment by an FSB agent under the code name “Alyssa,” according to the Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR).

“[Zarubina] aimed to build a network of US contacts among journalists, military personnel, think tank researchers and Russia experts to influence their perspectives,” RADR said.

Zarubina faces up to five years in prison if found guilty of making false statements to law enforcement agencies. She was released on $25,000 bail and banned from traveling outside New York. A judge scheduled a preliminary hearing in her case 30 days from 21 Nov. 

On 19 Nov, the defendant spoke in Canada’s Parliament Hill at a conference on Russia’s future where she mingled with MPs, academics, and policy makers.

Zarubina has engaged with its community organizers across various cities, attended discussion panels hosted by US think tanks and posed for photos with notable Russian opposition figures since 2023. Zarubina recently began appearing as an expert at conferences held by the Free Nations of PostRussia Forum, a Poland-based platform that advocates for Russia’s decolonization and fragmentation into 41 independent states. 

Russia last year labeled the Free Nations of PostRussia Forum an “undesirable organization,” and on  22 Nov designated 172 of what it called its “subdivisions” as terrorist organizations.

Zarubina advocated for a “United States of Siberia” at the forum’s joint panel with the Jamestown Foundation in April, according to the Russian civil activist news outlet activatica.org. Zarubina actively supported President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea on social media, according to an analysis by the investigative news website Agentstvo.

Zarubina wrote on Facebook that media reports about her arrest amount to “rumors, opinions and blackmail.”

Zarubina told the Sibir.Realii news outlet that she had been summoned by the Russian special services in late 2020 but denied receiving any instructions from them. She then claimed to voluntarily report those and other contacts with Russians to the FBI in April 2021.

“I’ve since been in touch with the Americans around once every six months,” the US-funded outlet quoted Zarubina as saying.

“I’ve known the people who arrested me for four years. I thought we had a very good relationship, I was kind of helping them,” she added.

Zarubina voiced fears that she may now become the target of Russia’s security services, which she said were unaware of her contacts with the FBI despite claiming to have her under surveillance in NY.

“This is no longer the level of false statements, but of treason. And it’s not safe for me to be in New York either.”

There is more to this story than meets the eye. As a covert influencer for the Kremlin, through a penny-ante 18 USC 1001 violation, Nomma Zarubina has been rendered ineffective by the FBI Counterintelligence Division. But there may be an undisclosed reason for her arrest and public exposure. If Nomma Zarubina attempted to walk the tight-rope as a double agent, then she failed both the FBI and the FSB. We shall see what fate has in store for our modern day Mata Hari.

Sources:

U.S. Charges Russian Woman Over FSB Contacts – Reports – The Moscow Times

Russian Woman Arrested in U.S. For Alleged Ties To Russian Intelligence

Russian consultant accused of spying for Moscow spoke at Parliament Hill forum two days before arrest by FBI – The Globe and Mail

Russian America for Democracy in Russia Inc – GuideStar Profile

Israel: Nakba Remorselessly Continues as Gaza Pummeled Again

A rescuer sifts through charred debris after an Israeli strike hit a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians, in Mawasi Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 4 Dec 2024. (Photo: AFP)

Israel launched more attacks on targets in Gaza. One IDF strike that hit a tent camp housing displaced people killed at least 21 and wounded 28 in southern Gaza. The IDF said its aircraft struck senior Hamas militants “involved in terrorist activities” in the area.

At least 15 bodies were brought to the hospital, but reaching a precise number of dead was difficult because many were dismembered, some without heads or badly burned. The strike hit the Mawasi area, a sprawling coastal camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Earlier strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed eight people, including four children.

A wounded Palestinian child is carried on a stretcher at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, following an Israeli bombardment in Nuseirat, central Gaza, 4 Dec 2024. (Photo: AP)

UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza and that most of its 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times.

Displaced Palestinians make their way as they flee the northern part of Gaza, amid an IDF operation in the northern Gaza Strip, 4 Dec 2024. (Photo: Reuters)

Further north, another Israeli airstrike hit three houses in Gaza City, killing at least ten people and wounding many others. Many victims were still trapped under the rubble with rescue operations under way.

11 people were killed in three airstrikes on areas in central Gaza, including six children and a medic. Five of the dead had been lining up outside a bakery.

A further nine Palestinians were killed by tank fire in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 44,500 Palestinians, more than half of the verified deaths women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Israel says that the death toll includes thousands of militants it has killed.

As you read in the previous post, at one point more IDF soldiers are going to have pangs of guilt over their conduct in this horrible Nakba. Leaked videos of IDF personnel abusing Palestinian prisoners were a sign of discontent within the ranks of the Israeli military. PTSD, depression, alcohol/drug addiction, and suicides will take their toll on Israeli society as it did on America following all of her wars. In the meantime, more Palestinians will be killed and wounded; they too will be suffering from irrevocable PTSD.    

This US Vietnam War veteran is homeless like millions of Palestinians and may be suffering from PTSD like them and Israelis (Photo: Courtesy of endhomelessness.org)

Source:

Dozens killed in new Israeli attacks in Gaza, Palestinian officials say

Norway: Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Alfalfa Sprouts Stricken 23

Norwegian officials are investigating a national outbreak of Salmonella that may be linked to alfalfa sprouts. 23 people had fallen in nine regions.

Patients have been reported since mid-October. They range in age from 18 to 79 with a median of 48 years old and 16 of them are women. Eight people have been hospitalized. Bacteria with a similar genetic profile have been detected in all patients, which suggests a common source of infection.

“Several of the infected people in the outbreak reported eating sprouts. Earlier this year, FHI also saw an increase in cases of Salmonella infection where sprouts have been suspected as the cause of disease,” said Umaer Naseer from FHI.

Consumers are advised to throw away sprouts purchased in recent weeks. This also applies to products where alfalfa sprouts are an ingredient, such as sandwiches, baguettes, salads, and wraps.

The suspicion is based on patient interviews, epidemiological data, patients’ purchasing information and product distribution patterns.

Norske Spirer has recalled products containing organic alfalfa sprouts from the market.

Norway recorded 757 Salmonella cases in 2023, with 37 percent infected in the country and 63 percent infected abroad. Three Salmonella outbreaks affected 14 people. 

Swedish update

Meanwhile, in Sweden there has been a recall as authorities continue to investigate a different Salmonella outbreak also linked to sprouts.

The Public Health Agency of Sweden said 92 people from 18 regions have been infected with one of 12 genetically closely related Salmonella Typhimurium sequence type (ST) 36 variants.

Authorities made a connection between illness and consumption of alfalfa sprouts germinated from a certain seed batch. SydGrönt and Munkagrodden issued a recall and stopped germination from the seed lot.

Source:

Norway links Salmonella outbreak to sprouts | Food Safety News

Update: FBI Arrests Alleged Sex Predator John Doe 49

Thanks to all of you who identified the distinctive tattoos from a previous post, the FBI arrested alleged child abuser John Doe 49 AKA Christopher Lynn Driskill (48) of Texas. We knew John Doe 49 would be found with maximum public exposure, and he was. If convicted, this sexual deviant faces up to 30 years in federal prison.

If you are experiencing or witness child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 911.

The National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline — 800.656.HOPE (4673) — provides free, 24/7 support for those in need.

Anyone with tips may call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

A criminal complaint is merely an allegation of criminal conduct, not evidence. Mr. Driskill is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Source:

Northern District of Texas | Alleged Child Molester Identified by His Distinctive Tattoos | United States Department of Justice

American Warzone: Three Dead, Five Wounded in Chicago’s Gage Park Neighborhood

Eight people were shot, including three fatally, Monday afternoon at a social gathering in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood.

The shooting was reported to police around 2:10 p.m. CST in the 3500 block of West 59th Street, Chicago Police Chief of Patrol Jon Hein told reporters in a press conference.

Hein said investigators were still conducting interviews. He described the victims as being four men and four women between the ages of 20 and 35. All were Hispanic. Six of the victims were located at the scene and were transported by ambulance to the hospital. The other two victims self-transported.

Asked if any of the victims were migrants, Hein retorted that their immigration status “is irrelevant at this time.”

“We have eight victims, and we’re going to solve this crime and find the individuals responsible for this heinous, terrible incident,” he said, calling on members of the public with information about the shooting to contact the authorities.

He added that police have previously received calls at the residence where the shooting took place. The circumstances leading up to the shooting were unclear, but Hein said the victims had been attending an unspecified social gathering.

The Windy City has been re-dubbed “Chiraq” because of the endemic shootings plaguing the metropolis. According to The Gun Violence Archive, a non-advocacy group that tallies gun violence across the US, there have been at least 473 mass shootings with four or more victims so far this year.

Per the CDC, in 2022 there were more than 48,000 firearm-related deaths in the US. That’s approximately 132 people dying from a firearm-related injury each day. These are war-time casualty numbers without an enemy invasion.

US Army medics treating the wounded during a Field Training Exercise (FTX). (Photo: US Army)

Sources:

8 shot, 3 fatally, in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood – UPI.com

Fast Facts: Firearm Injury and Death | Firearm Injury and Death Prevention | CDC

The Arctic Could Be Ice-Free by Summer 2027: What it Means for Weather, Shipping and Polar Bears

While most projections of the Arctic’s sea ice have focused on month-by-month conditions, a new study has revealed possible predictions down to the day.

Previous expectations had the Arctic Sea loss predicted around 2030, but these results reveal that an ice-free day could occur as early as late summer 2027. 

Nine other simulations, while less likely, predict that it could occur within the next three to six years.

Scientists, from the study published in Nature Communications, say the Arctic’s first ice-free day is now inevitable and irreversible, regardless of how humans alter greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Mappery.com

The Arctic Ocean covers a vast area of more than 16 million square kilometres, and for thousands of years, it has witnessed a natural seasonal event: layers of frozen seawater dramatically build up over the winter months into a thick ice cap that peaks in March before it melts in September. 

In recent decades, however, this dramatic event has been less prevalent. 

Sea ice has declined by more than 12 per cent every decade since 1978, when satellite imagery – the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer or ‘SMMR’ – started recording Arctic sea ice growth and retreat.

That’s 80,000 square kilometers every year – roughly the same size as Austria or the Czech Republic

Scientists define ‘ice-free’ as the sea ice area dropping to less than one million square kilometers in a short time, which is considered a climate tipping point. 

A team of international researchers used over 300 computer models to predict the first ice-free day. These showed an accelerated timeline compared to what was previously projected

Rapid ice loss events are typically associated with intense winters and spring warming. 

Long-term, if the Arctic Ocean is regularly declared ice-free, this could significantly impact the fragile ecosystem of the northernmost sea, including everything from the ‘emblematic polar bear to the crucial zooplankton,’ the study reveals. 

Polar bear Gerda (six) cuddles up with her cub at Novosibirsk Zoo in Russia. Zoos may be the safest places for these poor creatures. (Photo: Vera Salnitskaya)

The day the Arctic shows ice-free conditions is symbolically significant. It will visually highlight how humans have changed one of our planet’s defining natural features: from a white to a blue Arctic Ocean.

The sun never sets in the Arctic during summer, so without the reflective ice reflecting sunlight into space, the ocean will absorb and distribute a substantial amount of heat around the Earth. 

International waters do not have any jurisdiction, so commercial industries could exploit opportunities found in the warmer Arctic waters. They could fish and deep-mine previously inaccessible marine and mineral populations, while freight companies could take a quicker shipping route across the Northwest Passage.

The warming could also lead to more erratic and extreme weather events through changing wind and ocean current patterns. 

Warmer years have already occurred: in March 2022, some of the Arctic was 50F/10C warmer than the average, which caused areas around the North Pole to almost melt.

The study’s authors say there is still a chance to delay the timeline for the sea ice melt in the near future. 

“Any reductions in emissions would help preserve sea ice,” added Jahn.

Arctic-oriented military installations; mostly Russian.

The Kremlin is ready to exploit the untold wealth under the Arctic Sea and have military plans and resources specifically for that purpose, so the Kremlin welcomes the melting sea ice. Earlier this year, NORAD intercepted the first Chinese bombers flying near the ADIZ, accompanied by Russian planes. Beijing has eyes on the untapped resources in the Arctic as well.

In 2007, a Russian deep-sea submersible planted a flag on the Arctic seabed claiming the continental shelf.  The area is estimated to hold 258 billion tons of fuel equivalent.  

Sources:

The Arctic could be ice-free by summer 2027: What it means for weather, shipping and polar bears | Euronews

Russia in the Arctic – Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

Speculation Swirling about President Biden Pardoning President-elect Donald J. Trump

President Gerald R. Ford pardoning Richard M. Nixon on national TV, 8 Sep 1974.

Democratic Congressman James Clyburn supports President Joe Biden pardoning Donald Trump, agreeing with Senator Joe Manchin (I-WVA) after Special Counsel Jack Smith filed to dismiss the two federal cases against the president-elect.

Speculation is rife and causing dismay among Democrats that such a sacrilege could even be entertained. The judicial system, including the Supreme Court, has– and will– blatantly shield Donald Trump from any legal jeopardy. State prosecutors have been stymied as well.

Either way, Trump has made a mockery of justice and will continue to do so after he leaves office, clearly demonstrating that wealthy oligarchs are above the law in the US.

President Biden may as well as get the last word in before he retires. So, here is the pardon that Joe Biden should read live soberly and somberly on his teleprompter in the Oval Office to a rapt, international audience like Gerald Ford exactly 50 years ago:

“Now, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Donald J. Trump for all offenses against the United States such as inciting insurrection, vile treachery, business fraud, racial discrimination, cowardly draft evasion, being an unregistered agent of the Russian government, tax avoidance, Mammon-like graft, voter suppression, plundering classified information, slander, libel, sexual misconduct, and manifest deception against the American people, which he, Donald J. Trump, has heinously committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from June 14, 1946 through January 19, 2025.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four.”

JOSEPH R. BIDEN

This way, the message is heard far and wide and will last forever. Plus, Joe Biden gets in the last word about Donald J. Trump on international TV.

And kick for that matter. “Here’s a pardon for you, Donald!”

Source:

Donald Trump Pardon Supported by Top Democrat – Newsweek

Affectionate Cats

Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination as ODNI National Security Risk

(Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic writes that Tulsi Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post, especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) Gabbard has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything.

To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a grave threat to US national security.

Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In 2017 Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress, said she was unsure whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a war criminal.

In early 2017, while still a member of Congress, Gabbard met with Assad, saying that peace in Syria was only possible if the international community would have a conversation with him. “Let the Syrian people themselves determine their future, not the United States, not some foreign country,” Gabbard said, after chatting with a man who had stopped the Syrian people from determining their own future by reportedly using chemical weapons on them. Two years later, she added that Assad was “not the enemy of the US, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the US,” and that her critics were merely “warmongers.”

Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner:

Gabbard has blamed NATO and the US for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the US has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the US not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.

When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched at Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia.

A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence. Gabbard hasn’t been central to Trump’s campaign and he owes her very little. For someone as grubbily transactional as Trump, it’s not an appointment that makes much sense. Perhaps Trump just likes the way she handles herself on television.

But Trump could also be engaging in a ploy to bring in someone else. He may suspect that Gabbard is unconfirmable by the US Senate. Once she’s turfed, he could then slide in an even more appalling nominee and claim that he has no choice but to use a recess appointment as a backstop. (Hard to imagine who might be worse as DNI than Gabbard, but remember that Trump has promised at various times to bring retired General Mike Flynn back into government. Flynn is a decorated veteran who was fired from Trump’s White House in a scandal about lying to the FBI; he is now a conspiracist who is fully on board with Trump’s desire for revenge on his enemies.

US-government employees with clearances are trained every year to spot “insider threats,” people who might for various reasons compromise classified information. Trump’s open and continuing affection for Putin and other dictators would be a matter of concern for any security organization. Gabbard’s behavior and her admiration for dictators are no less causes for worry—especially because she would be at the apex of the entire USIC.

This nomination should be one of the handful of Trump appointments where soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune and his Republican colleagues draw a hard line and say no—at least if they still care at all about exercising the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent.

Tulsi Gabbard (L), Cult leader Chris Butler (R)

Tulsi Gabbard’s erratic views may be the result of her membership in the Hawaii-based Science of Identity Foundation, founded by Chris Butler in the 1970s. Followers must practice vegetarianism and are not allowed to gamble, engage in any sexual contact outside marriage, or consume caffeine or intoxicants. Butler’s teachings included condemnation of homosexuality, hostility towards Islam, and skepticism of science. Both Tulsi Gabbard’s parents were associated with the Science of Identity Foundation which has been described as a “secretive Hindu cult.” Placing a cult member and Putin apologist to the acme of the USIC is tantamount to self-inflicted national sabotage of epic proportion.

Our gratitude to Tom Nichols at The Atlantic.

Sources:

Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk – The Atlantic

Cult Education Institute :: Group Information Archives

Science of Identity Foundation – Wikipedia

Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to secretive cult may explain her perplexing political journey | The Independent

The FBI Needs Our Help Investigating Child Sex Exploitation Case

The FBI is searching for a white male known only as John Doe 49 for “critical information” in a child sexual exploitation investigation. The individual is described as 45 and 65 years old, bald, with a dark goatee.

John Doe 49 has at least at least five visual tattoos: the word “Dabby” on the right side of his chest, the numeral “197” followed by possible additional unknown text on his left bicep, and additional tattoos on his left and right forearms and right bicep.

Somebody, somewhere CONUS (or OCONUS) has seen John Doe 49 or his tattoos at work, in a supermarket, poolside, tattoo parlor, medical office, saloon, restaurant, park, train/subway, at the beach, massage parlor, or shopping mall.

Anyone with information about the man is urged to call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), or to contact a Crimes Against Children Investigator at their local FBI office, or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.

Members of the public can also submit anonymous tips about John Doe 49 online here.

John Doe 49

Canada Leads Large NATO Exercise Near Russia’s Border as NATO Prepares for Donald J. Trump

Cpl. Guillaume Lavoie and Cpl. Matthew Bowler from Quebec in a defensive trench position. Canadian and NATO soldiers train re-taking territory from enemy forces in the Resolute Warrior military exercise near Riga, Latvia. The Canadian-led exercise involved 13 NATO countries and over 3,500 soldiers, of which 2,200 were Canadian. (Photo: Corrinne Seminoff/CBC)

At the sprawling forested Ādaži military base, north east of Riga, Latvia, Capt. Harrison Burrows is one of more than 3,000 troops who has spent the past two weeks participating in a Canadian-led NATO military exercise designed to simulate an attack on the Baltic nation coming from beyond its nearly 300 km-long border with Russia. 

This is the first exercise held in Latvia since the military forces in the country were scaled up to a multinational brigade, also led by Canada, that is made up of soldiers and equipment from more than 13 nations. 

The 5 Nov election of Donald Trump could potentially create friction in the 32 member alliance, given his past warnings that the US will leave NATO nations to their own defences if they don’t spend more on defence.

In Feb 2024 on the campaign trail Trump even said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever” it wants to allies that don’t pay up. 

While at the time the White House called those comments “appalling and unhinged,” NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte, who previously served as the prime minister of the Netherlands and frequently met with Trump during his first term as president, describes Trump as someone who tries to invigorate the debate about defence spending. 

In 2023, the US spent more than $900 billion US on defense, which accounts for more than 65 per cent of NATO’s overall military spending. 

While NATO allies are expected to spend two per cent of their gross domestic product [GDP] on defence, a quarter of members don’t, including Canada, which is expected to spend under 1.4 per cent this year. 

While Rutte says all NATO members need to spend “considerably more” than two per cent on defence, he pointed to Canada’s leadership of the multinational brigade as evidence of its commitment to supporting the security priorities of the alliance. 

Most of the Canadian soldiers deployed to Latvia are on six-month rotations, and in January, for the first time, Sweden will be sending 600 troops as part of its first deployment as a new NATO member, having joined the alliance in March 2024. 

NATO and the EU have been preparing for the possibility of a Trump presidency and this military exercise is one of the publicly seen results. The intelligence apparatus of NATO countries is also ready for the Trump presidency and will carefully screen information they provide to the USIC.

Sources:

As Canada leads a beefed-up NATO force near Russia’s border, the alliance prepares for Trump | CBC News

Analysis

NATO’s two per cent spending target — where it came from, what it means

NATO at 75: Is Canada losing its grip on the world’s greatest military alliance? | CBC News

Israel Continues Murdering Lebanese Medical Personnel (AKZ-L)

Lebanese first responder Hussein Fakih, who heads the Lebanese Civil Defense rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, is seen recovering from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike. The IDF murdered eight members of his team in just one month. (Photo: 22 Oct 2024; CBS News/Agnes Reausays)

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has deplored the Israeli strike on a Lebanese civil defense center where “at least 12 paramedics were killed”, saying such attacks “are becoming the new normal”. Attacking medical personnel or infrastructure is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said that IDF attacks killed 59 people and wounded another 182 across the country over the previous 24-hour reporting period.

The UN reports:

At least 100,000 people have been forced to leave northern Gaza, with UN colleagues on the ground reporting worsening conditions and Israel’s continuous denial of aid delivery requests as displacement and the death toll rises there and in Lebanon amid constant airstrikes.

Al-Jazeera correspondents in the Gaza Strip (AKZ-G) provided the following update:

-Israeli forces are demolishing residential neighborhoods in southern Gaza’s Rafah city adjacent to the Philadelphi Corridor, an area bordering Egypt.

-Israeli ground forces have demolished many residential buildings in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.

-The air force has attacked a group of Palestinians in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya town, killing three civilians.

-Israeli artillery has bombed the as-Saftawi neighborhood in northern Gaza, causing significant damage to civil infrastructure.

-Many Palestinians are injured following a strike on a residential building in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighborhood.

-Naval warships have opened fire at the coast of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.-

Displaced Palestinian children drawing artwork on their tents in Gaza. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu)

The Immortal Bard would say to the craven PIFWC (Person Indicted for War Crimes) PM Benjamin Netanyahu, AKA the “curse of Israel”:

“Begone, thou wayward crook-pated horn-beast!”

Sources:

LIVE: WHO chief slams Israel’s killing of 12 paramedics in Lebanon strike | Israel attacks Lebanon News | Al Jazeera

Middle East crisis: Live updates for 15 November | UN News

American Warzone: Gunfire Strikes Southwest Plane on Tarmac of Dallas Airport

There were no injuries after a Southwest flight carrying passengers was struck by gunfire on the tarmac of Dallas Love Field Friday night.

Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was preparing for departure to Indianapolis when “a bullet apparently struck the right side of the aircraft under the flight deck,” a Southwest spokesperson told CBS News in a statement.

The airline said no one was hurt. The aircraft returned to its gate after sustaining damage from a “security incident” and the passengers deplaned. The runway was also temporarily closed, but has since reopened.  

Dallas police confirmed the incident, saying that officers responded to reports of gunfire at 9:48 PM local time, arriving to find that the aircraft had been struck.  

No further details were provided on the circumstances of the incident or what was the potential source of the gunfire. It’s unclear how many people were aboard the jet at the time, or how much damage the aircraft sustained.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that the Boeing 737-800 “was reportedly struck by gunfire near the cockpit.”

Dallas police are leading the investigation. Luckily, no one was killed or wounded in this idiotic incident.

Earlier this week, gunfire amid ongoing gang violence struck three planes that were either landing or departing Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. The shootings prompted the FAA to issue a 30-day ban on US airlines flying to Haiti. 

In 2021, Texas reported 1,006,555 firearms licenses and 45.7% of adults say they live in homes with guns.

In an average year, 4,122 people die and 7,726 are wounded by guns in Texas.

This equates to 11 people killed and 21 wounded every day in the Lone Star State.

Source:

Gunfire strikes Southwest plane on tarmac of Dallas airport, officials say – CBS News

1. Texas – Gun map: Ownership by state – statistics and rates

Gun-Violence-in-Texas-2024-05.pdf

Chemist Identifies Mystery ‘Blobs’ Washing Up in Newfoundland

The blobs were photographed on the southern shores of Newfoundland in Sept 2024 by a local resident. (Photo: David McGrath)

A chemist in Canada has identified “with a high degree of confidence” the strange blobs that started washing up on Newfoundland’s shores months ago. Globs of the white sticky substance, which have a spongy interior and range in size from a coin to a dinner plate, have been found for miles along Placentia Bay since at least September. Canada’s environmental agency began an investigation, but it has not released any conclusions.

Dr. Chris Kozak informs:

“I’m quite confident that the sample that I handled was PVA butylene rubber,” describing a mix of synthetic rubber and polyvinyl acetate, known as PVA. That polymer is the active ingredient in white glue — the kind of white glue you have at home is a very dilute, kid-friendly version of this stuff.”

A synthetic rubber and PVA mixture would in theory be safe to handle, but as plastic pollution it should be cleaned up. If the material has been tainted by a toxic pollutant like crude oil, however, it should be handled with caution.

The greater threat may be toward marine life, especially if more of the material sank to the ocean floor as they could be perceived by marine life as food, looking like squid, octopus, or jellyfish.

The origin of the substance, and how it wound up in the ocean, remains a mystery. The bay has a long history as a center for both fishing and industry, and is home to a shipyard and oil facilities. But the substance may also have crossed vast distances before washing ashore.

Oceanography, shipping and industrial data, weather events, satellite images, and research on synthetic rubber and the environment could all help determine the origin.

Source:

Chemist Identifies Mystery ‘Blobs’ Washing Up in Newfoundland – The New York Times

Pentagon Reports Over 20 Unexplained UFO Sightings in One Year

The Pentagon’s department tasked with investigating unidentified flying objects, officially referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), revealed that over 20 reported sightings in the past year remain unexplained. According to the annual report from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), these incidents warrant further investigation due to their unusual characteristics. See link below for official report.

Between 1 May 2023 and 1 Jun 2023, AARO received 757 reports of UAP sightings, 485 of which were newly reported during this period, with the remainder stemming from 2021 and 2022. Most sightings occurred in the skies, although 49 were observed in space. AARO director Jon Kosloski noted that 21 cases remain unresolved and have been identified as “true anomalies,” requiring additional analysis.

The report emphasized AARO’s collaboration with the intelligence community and scientific partners to better understand and assess these cases, particularly those exhibiting anomalous behaviors or characteristics. AARO also pledged to promptly inform Congress if any evidence of advanced foreign aerospace technologies emerges.

Despite the unusual nature of some sightings, Kosloski confirmed that AARO has not uncovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life, activities, or technology. The cases reviewed so far show no signs of breakthrough aerospace technologies, and the office resolved 118 sightings, attributing them to causes such as balloons, birds, and drones.

The report also highlighted challenges that have hindered AARO’s ability to resolve more cases, citing the lack of timely and actionable sensor data as a significant constraint. To address this, the office is working with military and technical partners to improve sensor capabilities, streamline information-sharing processes, and enhance UAP reporting systems.

The governments of Russia and China are much more opaque in disclosing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), although sightings occasionally appear on social media.

The undated photo below was taken over Buryatia, Russia.

Sources:

Massive UFO found above Buryatia, Russia, in latest sighting | Daily Star

www.dailystar.co.uk

AARO Home

Pentagon Reports Over 20 Unexplained UFO Sightings in a Year

Sweet-Toothed Bear Wanders into Tennessee Candy Store

Employees said the bear seemed to show a preference for Charleston Chews and Hershey’s Kisses.

Map courtesy of jeffbales.com

The Gatlinburg Police Department was summoned to the scene to help get the bruin out of the store.

No injuries to the poor bear or civilians were reported.

Murder-Death-Kill: IDF Warpath Continues With US Elections Days Away

The IDF and the Likud Party are doing the best they can, young lady, so please be patient. (Undated image)

Israeli strikes killed at least eight people, including six health workers in south Lebanon. The killing of the six Lebanese health workers and the wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon brought the death toll of health workers to 178 over the last year, while 279 health workers have been injured. Beirut long accused Jerusalem of targeting its medical personnel and infrastructure, a violation of the Geneva Convention. The IDF also struck reported Hezbollah weapons depots and bases in Syria. In Gaza, at least 46 Palestinians were killed in IDF strikes across the enclave, primarily in the north, where one attack hit a hospital. The Israeli military accuses Palestinians of using the hospital for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there, which health officials denied.

An Israeli attack in the occupied West Bank killed three Palestinians. Since Oct 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 763 Palestinians in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to facilitate the seizure of lands and homes by fanatical Settlers. A few of these maniacs have been sanctioned by the Biden Administration as a token measure, as you read in previous posts.

Over the past 24 hours, Israel amassed at least 67 deaths in all three Arab Killing Zones (AKZ): AKZ-L, AKZ-G, AKZ-W. (Russian President Vladimir Putin has established a Ukrainian Killing Zone or UKZ, which is discussed later.)

Lebanese fighters counterattacked with projectiles, killing one Israeli farmer and four foreign workers. Their nationalities were not disclosed.

One of the IDF strikes in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza killed at least 16 Palestinians, including a paramedic and two local journalists.

In AKZ-L, Israel issued an evacuation warning to residents of Baalbek for a second consecutive day. The IDF conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city famed for its Roman temples.

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the Israeli onslaught, listen to a story at a school being used as a shelter in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, 31 Oct 2024.

Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday’s warning, with wafts of black smoke still visible emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks.

Lebanese Shia fighters aim to keep Israeli forces out of Khiyam to prevent the IDF from detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns.

Israeli bulldozers damaged the office of UN aid agency UNRWA in the West Bank’s Nur Shams camp, according to Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s chief.

The office “can no longer be used,” Lazzarini grimly posted on social media platform X.

An IDF bulldozer operates at the parameter of the Nur Shams refugee camp during the ongoing army operation, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 31 Oct 2024. This is what Lebanese Shias are trying to prevent the IDF from doing to their homes. An IDF bulldozer like this killed American peace activist Rachel Corrie in 2003.

The late Rachel Corrie (Undated photo: Wikipedia)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that Lebanese Hezbollah pull back to north of the Litani River, about 30 km from the Israeli frontier. In addition, Israel wants the Lebanese army to deploy along the border, an international intervention mechanism to enforce the truce, and the IDF to remain free to respond militarily in case of threats. And after abandoning their ancestral homes, where would these Lebanese Shias live?

(Map: worldatlas.com)

Lebanese Hezbollah did not exist before 1982. They organized as a resistance to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Everyone in Lebanon, regardless of their faith, remembers the horrific 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. The aftermath led to the resignation of Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (but he was kept in the cabinet as a “minister without portfolio”). As people in the Middle East did not forget 1982, neither will they forget 2023-24.

Israel’s offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza has killed more than 43,100 people, with Israel claiming the death toll includes thousands of militants. Nakba 2024 has devastated much of the Gaza Strip, while the fighting and Israeli evacuation orders have displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people. At this rate of homicide, by year’s end the IDF will have killed close to 50,000 Palestinians while maiming 150,000. Coriolanus has not yet calculated the predicted death toll for of Lebanon.  

The Vietnam War destroyed the legacy of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ). How will history judge retiring, kind-hearted President Joe Biden? (Artwork: Mr. Dave Chappatte)

Sources:

Middle East fighting rages on several fronts, killing dozens (voanews.com)

Sabra and Shatila massacre – Wikipedia

Finnish Prosecutor Charges Russian Ultranationalist Leader with War Crimes

Russian radical nationalist and accused war criminal Voislav Torden AKA Yan Petrovsky. (Photo: Antifascist-europe,org)

The Finnish Prosecutor-General’s Office has charged Voislav Torden, AKA Yan Petrovsky, a Russian ultranationalist and former commander of the Rusich sabotage group, with war crimes committed in Ukraine in 2014.

Torden faces five counts stemming from his involvement with Rusich, which fought against Ukrainian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Torden and his group are linked to the deaths of 22 Ukrainian soldiers and the injury of four others. He is accused of war crimes and committing acts of cruelty against both injured and deceased enemy combatants.

Born Yan Petrovsky in 1987 in St. Petersburg, Torden relocated to Oslo in 2004 with his mother. He then regularly visited Russia, where he met former paratrooper and nationalist Aleksandr Milchakov. In 2014, they traveled to Ukraine’s Donbas region to support Russia-backed separatists in their fight against Ukrainian forces.

In Sep 2014, Rusich ambushed a column of the Ukrainian battalion Aidar near Shchastya, with Milchakov later boasting about photographing himself with the bodies of slain Ukrainian soldiers, while members of Rusich reportedly mutilated some of the remains.

In 2016, Torden was deported from Norway to Russia, where he changed his name from Yan Petrovsky to Voislav Torden. He entered Finland in 2023 as a family member of his wife, who received a study permit. Torden was detained on 20 Jul 2023, at Helsinki Airport while attempting to board a flight to Nice, France.

Following his arrest, Ukrainian authorities sought his extradition, but Finland’s Supreme Court denied the request, citing concerns over conditions in Ukrainian prisons and the potential for Torden to face humiliation in custody. Ukraine has charged him with war crimes from the 2014-15 conflict, and he was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for extreme cruelty during combat in the Kharkiv region.

The specifics of his activities in Ukraine during that time remain unclear.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Meanwhile, USSECSTATE Antony Blinken said that Russia has been suffering some 1,200 casualties a day in eastern Ukraine, more than at any other time during the war. 8,000 North Korean troops are ready for combat in what will most likely be “meat attacks” against Ukrainian defenders. Blinken stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin turning to North Korean troops “is a clear sign of weakness.”

President Volodimir Zelensky again asked NATO for permission to attack deep targets in Russia following a lethal drone attack on a residential building in Kharkiv.

Police officers stand next to the bodies of people found under the debris of an apartment building that was hit by a Russian air strike in Kharkiv on 31 Oct. Three were killed and scores wounded. Two boys, aged 11 and 15, were among the dead. Putin has turned Ukraine into a killing zone (UKZ), like Netanyahu’s AKZ in the Middle East. (Photo: Reuters)

Sources:

Finnish Prosecutor Charges Russian Ultranationalist Leader With War Crimes (rferl.org)

The Prosecutor’s Office of Finland has charged the leader of the neo-Nazi group “Rusich” Petrovsky with committing war crimes in Ukraine (currenttime.tv)

U.S. Says 8,000 North Korean Troops Ready For Combat In Kursk Region (rferl.org)

Thousands of Passenger Flight Signals Jammed Over Warzones in Ukraine, Middle East

The navigation systems of thousands of passenger aircraft are being disrupted every day as they fly close to conflict zones who warn that the blocking or spoofing technology could one day put lives at risk.

Over the past two years, electronic warfare technology has been deployed to disrupt drones or missiles that use global positioning system or other satellite navigation technology to home in on their targets.

However, the blocking or spoofing of GPS signals also affects commercial aircraft, explained Raphael Monstein, a research associate at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.

“Spoofing is when an actor sends out malicious signals to all the receivers that are in the coverage area. And it tricks the receiver into believing that it is in a different position than it actually is. And particularly in aviation, that has quite some consequences, which can be quite negative.”

“It has a lot of side effects in the cockpit, and they can range from spurious warnings — obviously the loss of situational awareness because you’re not quite sure when your GPS indicates you’re somewhere else. You can have very different reactions of the aircraft, depending a bit on the aircraft type.”

Monstein and his team in Zurich track GPS interference of civilian aircraft in real time and publish it on an online map.

They have detected an increase in such incidents since the beginning of 2024.

“And they are mainly around conflict zones. One of them would be the Middle East. One would be the Black Sea and around Russia,” he said. “We talk about on an average day about 1,000 aircraft at least being affected by that. And that is a very big scale. That is novel. We haven’t seen that kind of [interference] anywhere in the world so far.”

The disruption isn’t only happening above war zones. In April, Finnair, Finland’s national carrier, suspended flights to Tartu in eastern Estonia near Russia after GPS disruptions prevented two aircraft from landing at the airport. Finnair resumed the flights in June after the airport installed navigation systems that do not rely on GPS. Experts say most airports have such alternative equipment already installed.

Finnair previously reported similar problems when flying close to the Finland-Russia border and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The interference began in 2022, the year Finland applied to join NATO, after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

At the time, Estonia’s defense minister said it was a deliberate Russian tactic.

“We all understand that these hybrid attacks are still very acute. We have to be ready also for these.”

Russia denies seeking to disrupt GPS signals of commercial aircraft.

The Swiss-based researcher contends that back-up systems will help prevent catastrophes, such as the ground proximity warning system. GPS blocking and spoofing also affects navigation systems on the ground. Residents of Moscow have recently complained of malfunctioning smartphone applications, such as map, taxi-hailing or food delivery apps. Experts have linked the disruption to Russian attempts to defend against Ukrainian drone attacks.

Sources:

Thousands of passenger flight signals jammed over war zones in Ukraine, Middle East (voanews.com)

France: Former Intelligence Chief Faces Trial for Attempted Extortion

Bernard Bajolet, former head of France’s foreign intelligence service, is due to face trial for attempted extortion of a businessman who the spy agency claims owes it millions of euros linked to murky investments. © AFP / BERTRAND LANGLOIS

Bernard Bajolet allegedly instructed DGSE agents, which he led from 2013 to 2017, to pressure entrepreneur Alain Duménil, with whom the agency was engaged in a lengthy dispute.

Duménil claims he was detained at a Paris airport as he prepared to board a flight and threatened with harm to himself and his family unless he handed over 15 million euros, an account the DGSE contests.

Now a judge has ruled there is sufficient evidence to try Bajolet for complicity in attempted extortion over the 2016 incident. Bajolet has been ordered to appear in criminal court outside Paris, where he will face the charge of “arbitrary infringement of individual liberty as a holder of public authority.”

The case has provided a rare glimpse into the financial interests of the DGSE, which is entrusted with managing a war chest designed to secure the state in the event of a national emergency. 

Seeded by the reparations damages paid to France after World War I, the capital was kept separate from the agency’s operational budget and placed in investments that helped it grow substantially over the decades. But by the turn of the 21st century, with little external oversight to monitor them, the DGSE’s investments had turned risky and were losing it considerable sums, according to an investigation by Le Monde

Seeking to extricate itself from loss-making companies and recover its funds, the service entered into a deal to exchange shares with Duménil in the early 2000s. But the French-Swiss businessman – who has since been sanctioned for tax fraud and other wrongdoing – promptly transferred the remaining assets and liquidated their holding companies, leaving the DGSE with now worthless shares.

The DGSE pursued the case in the courts for over a decade, but failed to recoup a loss it estimates at some 15 million euros.

In March 2016, Duménil alleges, the DGSE resorted to shadier means.

According to statements to investigators seen by Le Monde, he claims he was stopped by border police at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and handed over to two plain-clothes DGSE agents.

“‘You robbed the government of 13 million, which today makes 15 million with interest’,” Duménil said one of the agents told him. “‘You have to give it back to us’… He was very threatening, talking about me ending up in a wheelchair or worse.” 

The businessman says the agents also showed him pictures of his family and friends: “They wanted to make me understand that they could also go after any of these people.” 

Multimillionaire Alain Duménil (undated photo)

Duménil was allowed to leave and subsequently filed a complaint, which has been dismissed several times but allowed to stand on appeal. While the identity of the DGSE agents remains classified, director Bajolet was indicted in late 2022 for allegedly ordering their actions. 

A career diplomat, he acknowledges approving the plan to intercept Duménil at the airport, but told investigators he did not give detailed instructions and hoped only to revive discussions between each side’s lawyers. The DGSE denies Duménil was ever detained or threatened. It has not commented on the latest developments in the case.

Bajolet’s trial, for which a date has not yet been set, threatens to bring the agency further scrutiny.

After the judge’s ruling on 23 Oct, Duménil’s lawyers said in a statement: “Beyond the trial of Bernard Bajolet, this will be the trial of the DGSE and the twisting of its work to private ends.”

To raise funds to fight the Vietminh insurgency, the intelligence services traded in opium during the French colonial occupation of Vietnam, as did the Viet Minh. Both sent their agents to peddle the opium in Thailand. French intelligence agencies also raised funds in Southeast Asia by manipulating the overvalued Vietnamese currency, the Piaster, on the black market. The French intelligence services have a mixed bag reputation during their history. They were accurate about an eventual Taliban victory in Afghanistan, but dead wrong about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And as this incident exposes, there is little oversight of the DGSE.  

On 10 July 1985 in Auckland, NZ, the DGSE sank the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean.  A Portuguese photographer was killed.  30 years later Jean-Luc Kister, the DGSE frogman responsible for the explosion, apologized on French national TV.

Sources:

France’s former intelligence chief faces trial for attempted extortion (rfi.fr)

French Indochina: Opium Espionage and “Operation X” (akha.org)

Dirty Wars: French and American Piaster Profiteering in Indochina, 1945-75 ダーティー・ウォーズ インドシナにおける仏米ピアストル暴利 1945-75年 – The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (apjjf.org)

The French secret service and its ‘war chest’ caught in the nets of the justice system (lemonde.fr)

Italy: Botulism Sickens Eight; Kills One

Bar Necci, a typical bistro in Rome’s multicultural Pigneto neighborhood with working-class Roman roots.

After six patrons at an unspecified bar in the Pigneto district of Rome recently ate sandwiches contaminated with botulism, two other cases emerged. One woman died and her daughter has been hospitalized with serious symptoms after they had eaten frozen artichoke soup, purchased in a supermarket. The two women began to feel seriously unwell shortly after eating. For the older of the two, the poisoning would have been fulminant and she died shortly after admittance to the Sant’Eugenio hospital in Rome. Her daughter spent a week in intensive care. 

The public prosecutor’s office in Rome has opened an investigation. The prosecutor, Fabio Santoni, delegated the Nas carabinieri for the investigation. When the investigators went to the commercial establishment where the product was presumed to have been purchased, they realized that the batch had already been replaced. Investigators are trying to determine how the chain of preservation of the frozen foods led to the death of one person and the serious illness of the other. There is no information suggesting the six bar patrons who dined in the Pigneto bar died from the botulism.

According to the CDC, botulism is a rare but serious illness. It is caused by a toxin that attacks the body’s nerves and causes difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis, and even death. The toxin is made by Clostridium botulinum and related bacteria. There are five main kinds of botulism and all are medical emergencies. Improperly home-canned, preserved, or fermented foods can provide the right conditions for spores to grow and make botulinum toxin.

Sources:

Rome, botulinum in artichoke soup: a woman died – LaPresse

Colorado Animal Murderer Sentenced to Prison for Assaulting Law Enforcement During 6 Jan Attack on US Capitol

(Photo: FBI)

Patrick Montgomery (51) of Littleton, CO was sentenced to 37 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release by the Honorable US District Judge Randolph D. Moss for assaulting law enforcement personnel on 6 Jan 2021.

On the morning of 6 Jan 2021, Montgomery and co-defendants Brady Knowlton and Gary Wilson met at the Yours Truly hotel in Washington, DC and attended the “Stop the Steal” rally. After the protest, the three defendants made their way to the West Front of the US Capitol building, crossing over inside the restricted perimeter.

When they confronted a police line, Montgomery grabbed a law enforcement officer’s baton and attempted to wrestle it away from him. The officer held onto the baton and fell to the ground with Montgomery. The two then attempted to wrestle control of the baton from each other while Knowlton and Wilson watched nearby. During the scuffle, Montgomery kicked the police officer in the chest.

The three maniacs then made their way near the Senate Floor, where they confronted a USCP officer. Knowlton yelled at the officer: “This is not about us. This is bigger than me, it’s bigger than you. It’s about this – everyone’s right to self-government . . . We’re with you guys. You think these people in this building would fight for you?” Montgomery yelled: “You gotta stop doing your job sometime and start being American. You gotta quit doing your job and be an American!” Wilson yelled: “We came all the way from our job to do your job, and the freaking Senators’ job!”

After this confrontation, the defendants exited the Capitol building. The FBI arrested Montgomery on 17 Jan 2021 in Colorado.

Here Patrick Montgomery proudly poses with two other miscreants on 6 Jan 2021, presumably Brady Knowlton and Gary Wilson. Co-defendant Brady Knowlton is awaiting sentencing. Gary Wilson was previously sentenced to 30 days incarceration followed by 12 months supervised release for his heinous conduct on 6 Jan 2021.

In the nearly four years since 6 Jan 2021, more than 1,532 suspects have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to attacking the US Capitol, including more than 571 seditionists charged with feloniously assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The FBI investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

This abomination proudly murdered a defenseless mountain lion. Cretinous Patrick Montgomery told Colorado gaming officials that he had killed the animal during a March hunt, but a background check unearthed a 1996 conviction that barred the Capitol rioter from owning a firearm. (Undated photo: mediate.com; the-sun.com.)

Patrick Montgomery, Brady Knowlton, and Gary Wilson come from exactly what 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton hailed as a “basket of deplorables.” These “useful idiots,” white supremacist supporters of Donald Trump, heeded his imbecilic call and then threw away the shambles of their lives with these felony convictions.

For the odious animal-killing Patrick Montgomery, the state of Colorado hosts at least three federal prisons to house him for the next three years. The BOP guards should be issued clothespins for their nostrils.  

Sources:

District of Columbia | Colorado Man Sentenced to Prison for Assaulting Law Enforcement During the Jan. 6 Capitol Breach | United States Department of Justice

Capitol riot suspect, 48, under house arrest after shooting mountain lion in breach of ex-con’s gun ban | The US Sun (the-sun.com)

Unheard Frédéric Chopin Work Discovered

Frédéric Chopin (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Last month, a German library unearthed a previously unknown Mozart composition. Now, a Manhattan museum curator has found what appears to be a long-lost composition by Frédéric Chopin, the first of its kind to be discovered in over half a century.

Curator Robinson McClellan, who is also a composer, found the piece while sorting through a collection of cultural memorabilia in the vault of the Morgan Library & Museum. It’s written on a scrap about the size of an index card, with Chopin’s name written. After a lot of testing and, presumably, many experts’ corroborations, they confirmed that it’s almost certainly a genuine Chopin composition. Before the Polish composer died in 1849 at age 39, he wrote only about 250 known works — much less than his more prolific contemporaries — so there’s some extra magic in coming across a previously unheard piece by him.

Curators are confident that the work is authentic. There are doodles on the page and an oddly-drawn bass clef, which correlate to other original Chopin findings, despite the music itself sounding a bit different than other works. Lang Lang recently recorded the waltz for the New York Times; he told the publication that while it’s “not the most complicated music by Chopin, it is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine.”

You may listen to it here.

Sources:

A Previously Unheard Chopin Work Has Been Found (stereogum.co

A Post-Halloween Emeth

Arab Killing Zones (AKZ): IDF Strikes Kill 115 in North Gaza, 60 in Lebanon

Palestinian first responders remove a body from the rubble of a five-story residential building hit by an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on 29 Oct 2024. (Photo: AFP)

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli airstrike Tuesday hit a five-story residential building in northern Gaza, killing at least 115 people.

The Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and to a great extent the West Bank, is an “AKZ” or “Arab Killing Zone” for the Likud Party and the IDF. The Israeli term is “Nakba,” which is Arabic for “catastrophe.” Over the past 24 hours, the IDF liquidated 175 victims in the AKZ without trial,  judicial hearing, or concern for collateral damage and nearby innocent victims. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch use the term “XJK,” short for “Extra-Judicial Killings.” The Likud Party definition of “co-existence” with Arabs is child-like in simplicity: “We exist, you do not.”

In the northern sector of the IDF AKZ, at least 60 people were liquidated in IDF attacks on Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. Two children were among those killed in strikes which targeted 12 areas in the Baalbek region. 58 Arabs were wounded and rescue efforts were under way. Baalbek governor Bachie Khodr called the attacks the “most violent” in the area since Israel began its “special military operation” against Hezbollah last month.

Map: BBC News.

Israel has carried out thousands of air strikes across the northern AKZ (Lebanon) over the past five weeks. Unverified video posted on social media showed damage to buildings and forests ablaze, as rescuers searched for the injured.

Hezbollah fighters resisted Israeli troops near Lebanon’s southern border and fired rockets at a naval base inside Israel near Haifa.

Cross-border hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah broke out after the armed Lebanese group started firing rockets in and around northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 Oct 2023, the day after its ally conducted a brazen raid to seize Israeli citizens in order to conduct a future prisoner swap. Over 2,000 Palestinians (may be more by other accounts) had been held in IDF security detention without hearing or trial according to Amnesty International.

Israel invaded the northern AKZ (Lebanon) in a dramatic escalation on 30 Sep to destroy Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure in “limited, localised, targeted raids.” But Israeli Likud PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s “special military operation” has internally displaced up to 1.3 million Lebanese people, killing 2,600 of them and wounding over 12,400 in the AKZ. Lebanon’s medical infrastructure is being destroyed by the IDF in what Beirut says is deliberate and a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized legislation passed by the Israeli parliament banning the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians, UNRWA. The law is set to go into effect in 90 days, which Guterres said “could have devastating consequences” for Palestinian refugees.

The Likud Party and the IDF do not want witnesses to ethnic cleansing nor do they want Palestinians to receive any humanitarian or medical assistance. We are witnessing the Gaza Strip become the most inhospitable place in the universe for human beings.  

In the north AKZ, the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah announced that Sheikh Naim Kassem is its new leader, following the killing of longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Sep 2024 Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

The group’s Shura Council elected Kassem, announcing that these Shia Muslims would continue Nasrallah’s policies of resistance to Israel and support for Sunni Palestinians. Kassem served as Hezbollah’s deputy leader for more than three decades.

Israel’s Nakba against Gaza, the southern and western portion of the AKZ, has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians (half of them women and children). Israel alleges the death toll includes thousands of terrorists. At this rate, by year’s end approximately 50,000 Palestinians would have been eradicated while 150,000 will have been maimed. The Israeli Nakba campaign has devastated much of the Gaza Strip, while the fighting and Israeli evacuation orders have displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Arabs.

Rene Lichtman, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, said on 24 Jan 2024: “Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. We’ve got to fight back.”

Holocaust survivor Rene Lichtman at a protest against Israel’s Nakba against Gaza. (WSWS© Photo: New York Post)

Monsieur Lichtman, these brave young Israeli teenagers below may have heard you.  

Israeli conscientious objectors. Approximately 63 high school students signed a public letter declaring that they will refuse to be drafted into the IDF to participate in the Nakba. One brave young man has already been imprisoned for refusing induction into the IDF. (Image by AFSC.org)

Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) war crimes prosecutor Karim Khan KC is patiently awaiting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and DM Yoav Gallant at the Hague for creating the horrendous AKZ in the Middle East called the Gaza Strip. (Photo: BBC)

Sources:

Lebanon says 60 killed in Israel strikes on Bekaa Valley in east (bbc.com)

Israeli strike kills at least 60 in northern Gaza, health officials say (voanews.com)

Israeli Teens Tell Netanyahu They Won’t Serve IDF (forward.com)

ICC statement on arrest warrants of Israeli and Hamas leaders (bbc.com)

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 115, most in apartment building in Beit Lahia in the north – UPI.com

Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests   – Amnesty International(7) Middle East Live Updates: Israel’s Parliament Passes Bill That Threatens UNRWA’s Work – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Drones Attack ‘Spetsnaz University’ In Russia’s Chechnya

Fire atop the roof of a building on the campus of “Spetsnaz University” after drone attacks on 29 Oct. (Photo: RFE/RL)

For the first time since Moscow launched its full-scale of illegal invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022, the territory of Russia’s North Caucasus region of Chechnya has been targeted by drone attacks. Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Telegram on 29 Oct that drones had attacked the building of the so-called “Spetsnaz (Special Forces) University” named after President Vladimir Putin in the Chechen city of Gudermes, some 500 km from Ukraine’s borders and west of the capital, Grozhny.

(Map: worldatlas.com)

According to Kadyrov, there were no casualties and a fire atop the roof was extinguished. Kiev did not comment. The Chechen warlord had said thousands of men went through special training in the facility before joining Russian troops in Ukraine. 

Chechen personnel in Ukraine. Akhmat Special Forces have distinguishing trademark sideburns. Undated photo: east2westnews.com via www.ar15.com)

Russian air defenses were unable to neutralize this drone attack which made it completely through Chechen territory. This symbolic attack alerts the Chechens that the Ukrainians can reach out to them and that there is a price to pay for assisting Vladimir Putin.

Kremlin satrap Ramzan Kadyrov stands proudly in the center. (Undated photo: Yelena Afonina /TASS / Reuters)

Sources:

Drones Attack ‘Spetsnaz University’ In Russia’s Chechnya (rferl.org)

Ukrainian Imprisoned for Assassinating Ex-Commander of Russian Submarine

The late Stanislav Rzhitski fired drones at Ukrainian civilians. (RFE/RL file photo)

The Krasnodar regional court in Russia’s southwest has sentenced Serhiy Denysenko, a Ukrainian-Russian dual citizen, to 25 years in prison for killing the former commander of a Russian submarine implicated in the shelling of Ukrainian territories in 2022.

The court also ordered Denysenko to pay five million rubles ($51,350) to the father of Stanislav Rzhitsky as compensation in the shooting death.

The court pronounced the ruling on 29 Oct after finding Denysenko, who obtained Russian citizenship in March 2023, guilty of murder, illegal weapon possession, and high treason.

Denysenko was arrested on 11 July 2023, a day after Rzhitsky (42) was killed in the city of Krasnodar while jogging. The assailant fired several shots from a pistol with a silencer and struck Rzhitsky four times. Rzhitsky, who served at the time as a deputy head of the department for mobilization work in Krasnodar, died at the scene.

(Map: Britannica.com)

Russian prosecutors claimed that the Security Service of Ukraine was behind the attack. The chief of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, rejected the claim, saying the anti-war sentiments among Russian military may have triggered the assassination.

Rzhitsky used to command the Krasnodar submarine in the Russian Navy.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Krasnodar is a diesel-electric submarine built for the Black Sea Fleet and designed “to fight surface ships and submarines, lay mines, and conduct reconnaissance.”

The Krasnodar is equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, and Ukrainian authorities claimed that the vessel had participated in the shelling of the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsya in July 2022, firing its Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea.

(Graphics: iswnews.com)

In addition, a person with the same name as Stanislav Rzhitski is in the database of a Ukrainian website that collects information on war crimes allegedly conducted by the Russian military.

The website claims that Rzhitski was the commander of the Alrosa submarine and was directly involved in the military invasion of Ukraine. Unclear is when Rzhitsky left the submarine fleet for the post of deputy head of the department for mobilization work in Krasnodar.

Serhiy Denysenko, a karate black belt, will suffer a brutal sentence in a Russian prison or gulag. Sensei Serhiy has a slight glimmer of hope, though. Since he was not executed, he may be exchanged in a future prisoner swap between Kiev and Moscow.   

Sources:

Ukrainian Jailed For Murdering Ex-Commander Of Russian Submarine (rferl.org)

Disgraced US Navy Reserve Officer Sentenced for Bribery Scheme Involving State Dept Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) Program

Heroic-looking Cmdr. Jeromy Pittmann, seen here as a lieutenant commander in Afghanistan in 2014. (Photo: Patrick Gordon / US Navy)

Disgraced US Navy Reserve Commander Jeromy Pittmann (53) of Pensacola, FL, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for his role in a years-long bribery scheme involving Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghan nationals.

He accepted bribe payments from Afghan nationals in exchange for drafting, submitting, and verifying fraudulent letters of recommendation for Afghan nationals who applied for SIVs with the US Department of State.

Pittmann signed over 20 letters in which he fraudulently represented that he personally knew and had supervised the Afghan national visa applicants while they worked as translators in support of the US military and NATO. Pittman testified in those letters that the applicants’ lives were in jeopardy because the Taliban considered them to be traitors. He also wrote that he believed the applicants did not pose any threat to the national security of the US. In fact, Pittmann had no knowledge of the applicants whatsoever. In exchange for the fraudulent letters, Pittmann received several thousands of dollars in bribes.

To avoid detection, Pittmann received the bribe money through an intermediary and created false invoices purporting to show that Pittmann was receiving the money for legitimate work unrelated to his military service.

The SIV system has come under scrutiny after an Afghan man living in Oklahoma was charged earlier this month with allegedly plotting a terror attack on Election Day on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) terror group.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi (27) worked for CIA as a security guard in Afghanistan before entering the US in 2021 on a SIV. Authorities assess that Tawhedi became radicalized after he arrived in the US.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi is seen making the “Tawhid” gesture in an undated photo. He is under arrest. (Photo: FBI)


This disgraced USNR field grade officer endangered US national security and threw his life and career away over sheer greed. As a US Navy Reserve Commander (O-5) on active-duty, Pittmann’s monthly base pay was between $6,725.70 to $11,426.70.

If any of Pittmann’s Afghan SIV applicants conduct an attack in the US, his sentence has the potential to be reviewed and increased. There is no public information available whether the US Navy is recalling him to active-duty for court-martial, reduction in grade and pay, or dishonorable discharge under the UCMJ.


Source:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-navy-reserve-officer-sentenced-bribery-scheme-involving-department-states-approval

US: Iowa Resident Dies of Rare Lassa Fever

The current risk of Lassa virus transmission in the US is “incredibly low,” Iowa’s medical director says. (Image: CS Goldsmith, P. Rollin, M. Bowen/CDC)

A resident of eastern Iowa who had recently traveled to West Africa died after catching Lassa fever. The virus, which is in the same viral hemorrhagic fever category as Ebola, is rarely seen in the US.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services announced the death Monday but did not release the person’s name and disclosed few details about them. Preliminary tests were presumptively positive for the virus and the CDC is working to confirm the diagnosis.

The department said the person was middle-aged and had traveled to West Africa, where it is believed they contracted the virus. The current risk of transmission in the US is “incredibly low,” according to Iowa State Medical Director Dr. Robert Kruse.

Each year, about 100,000 to 300,000 people become infected with Lassa fever in West Africa, where the disease is endemic, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the University of Minnesota. Since 1969, there have been only eight known cases in the US, all of them travel-related.

It’s even rarer for someone to die from Lassa fever. The disease has an overall fatality rate of just 1%, according to the World Health Organization. In severe cases, the patient may have bleeding; difficulty breathing; pain in the chest, back and abdomen; and vomiting. Someone with milder symptoms may develop a slight fever, feel tired or have a headache. Most people who are infected with Lassa virus have no symptoms at all.

Lassa fever can spread between humans but not through casual contact. Typically, the virus spreads only when someone comes into contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.

Lassa fever most commonly spreads through the multimammate rat in West Africa. People can get sick after touching objects contaminated with rat feces or urine, or after eating food that’s been contaminated. Some people also get sick after eating the rats themselves, according to the CDC.

Natal multimammate rat. (Photo: http://www.iNaturalist.org)

Prompt treatment is considered key for Lassa fever. Ribavirin, a broad-spectrum antiviral that works well against RNA viruses and is also used to treat hepatitis C, is the primary treatment.

The Iowa Department of Health is investigating and monitoring the situation in conjunction with the CDC and local public health partners. The agencies are trying to determine who may have had close contact with the patient, who had been treated in isolation at the University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center.

The CDC says the patient was not sick while traveling, so the risk to other airline passengers is extremely low.

Sources:

State and Hospital Officials Follow Federal Guidance After Lassa Fever Death | Health & Human Services (iowa.gov)

About Lassa Fever | Lassa Fever | CDC

Iowa resident dies of rare Lassa fever, officials say | CNN

Vladimir Putin Oversees Large-Scale Nuclear Response Drills as Tensions with NATO Run High

RS-24 Yars (MIRV-equipped, thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles AKA SS-29s),  Each missile is thought to be able to carry up to four warheads.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has overseen an extensive nuclear exercise simulating a retaliatory strike involving missile launches, putting Russia’s nuclear capabilities front and centre as tensions with the West over Ukraine continue to escalate. 

Speaking via video with military leaders on Tuesday, Putin confirmed the drills are designed to simulate the actions of top officials in a nuclear response, involving launches of both ballistic and cruise missiles.

Defence Minister Andrei Belousov stated that the exercise aims to practice “strategic offensive forces launching a massive nuclear strike in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy”. 

The drills included the test-firing of a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk launch site, intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from submarines in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, and long-range cruise missiles deployed by Tu-95 strategic bombers. 

The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that all missiles successfully hit their targets.  

Putin, who has frequently highlighted Russia’s nuclear capabilities to discourage Western support for Ukraine, described Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a “reliable guarantor” of sovereignty and security. 

He reiterated Russia’s stance that nuclear weapons are a last resort, and announced ongoing modernization efforts for Russia’s nuclear forces to improve their precision, speed, and resistance to missile defenses. 

In recent months, Putin has also issued a stern warning that if Western arms donors permit Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with weapons they have supplied, they would be risking a direct war between his country and the NATO alliance.

He has also revised Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which now considers a conventional attack by a non-nuclear country allied with a nuclear power as grounds for a joint response, potentially including nuclear weapons. 

These exercises follow other recent drills with Belarus, a Russian ally hosting some of Moscow’s tactical nuclear arms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is saber-rattling ahead of the US presidential election. These drills are a message that the Kremlin is serious about Western assistance to Ukraine. Nuclear delivery systems do undergo routine readiness drills, but the timing of this is political. After many years, the US relocated nuclear delivery systems closer to Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Source:

Vladimir Putin oversees large-scale nuclear response drills as tensions with NATO run high | Euronews

Illinois Militant Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Law Enforcement During 6 Jan Attack on US Capitol

Joseph Bierbrodt

Joseph Bierbrodt (55) of Sheridan, IL pleaded guilty to obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, both felony offenses, for his atrocious conduct on 6 Jan 2021. The Honorable US District Judge Christopher R. Cooper will sentence Joseph Bierbrodt on 3 Feb 2025.

Bierbrodt and his brother, William Bierbrodt, attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 Jan 2021, in Washington, DC and then made their way toward the US Capitol building. The two eventually arrived at the Northwest Terrace and approached the Parliamentarian Door, which was locked to prevent rioters from further accessing the building. William Bierbrodt then used his cane to smash the door window and reach his hand inside, unlocking the door.

William Bierbrodt used his cane to break into the Capitol. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)

With the door now open, Joseph Bierbrodt and other rioters entered the Capitol. Immediately upon entering the Capitol, Joseph Bierbrodt grabbed a USCP officer by the upper torso and pushed him into a wall.  He then spun the officer around and shoved the officer into the arms of another rioter. After the assault, Joseph Bierbrodt moved to a location in the Senate Wing, where he met a line of police officers restricting his access further into the building. Both brothers finally departed the US Capitol hours later.

Joseph Bierbrodt (L) and William Bierbrodt (R) at the US Capitol on 6 Jan 2021. Both brothers are military veterans. (Photo: FBI)

The FBI arrested both Joseph Bierbrodt and William Bierbrodt on 26 July 2023, in Sheridan, IL. William Bierbrodt is still on trial.

In the nearly four years since 6 Jan 2021, more than 1,532 suspects have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to attacking the US Capitol, including more than 571 seditionists charged with feloniously assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The FBI investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

These two whiteist neanderthals, US military veterans, heeded the idiotic call of Donald Trump that the US is being undermined by liberals and the minorities stole the 2020 election. After the cane-swinging imbecile is found guilty in court, both siblings would have thrown their lives away with these federal felony convictions over ignorance and hatred.

Source:

District of Columbia | Illinois Man Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Law Enforcement During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach | United States Department of Justice

Joseph Bierbrodt Statement of Facts.pdf (justice.gov)

French Brand Tops Mercury Contamination in Europe’s Tuna

Mercury contamination has been found in cans of tuna tested across Europe, with some samples containing four times the permitted level, two NGOs warned. The highest level was found in cans sold by French brand Petit Navire.

Bluefin tuna fished off Calabria, Italy. (According to the NGOs, tuna remains the most consumed fish in Europe. Photo: Reuters / Tony Gentile)

Tests carried out by NGOs Bloom and Foodwatch showed all 148 cans tested positive for mercury contamination. The samples were bought in France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy.

Mercury is “one of the ten substances of greatest concern in the world, like asbestos or arsenic,” said the organisations. Its derivative, methylmercury, is classified as a “possible carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

More than half the tested cans contained mercury levels higher than those permitted for other fish species.

While mercury content in fish like pollack or cod must not exceed 0.3 mg/kg, the limit for tuna is set at 1 mg/kg.

The NGOs criticized this discrepancy and called for authorities to impose the lower 0.3 mg/kg limit on tuna – Europe’s most consumed fish.

“This metal is a powerful neurotoxicant and low doses consumed regularly are enough to cause serious disorders of the nervous system in children and attack the brain functioning of adults,” said the NGOs.

The highest concentration was found in French brand Petit Navire at 3.9 mg/kg. Spain’s Carrefour products followed with 2.5 mg/kg, while Italian brand As do Mar showed levels up to 1.5 mg/kg.

Bloom and Foodwatch demanded authorities stop the sale of tuna products exceeding 0.3 mg/kg of mercury. They also called for bans in nurseries, hospitals, maternity wards, retirement homes, and school canteens.

Source:

French brand tops mercury contamination in Europe’s tuna (rfi.fr)

https://www.iarc.who.int/

A Mutt Known as ‘Houdini’ for Ability to Elude Capture Finally Nabbed in New Orleans

(Photo: Brett Duke / The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Dubbed on social media as the “Houdini” of New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood, Scrim — a scruffy, mixed-breed dog that was on the lam for more than six months after escaping his yard — has finally been caught.

The 13-pound runaway was captured with the use of a tranquilizer dart. New Orleans news outlets report that he is missing a chunk out of his ear and has various abrasions. Also, X-rays revealed two projectiles — possibly small bullets or air rifle pellets — were lodged inside his little body.

Veterinarian Dr. Mary Miller told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate she couldn’t be positive what type of weapon had been used, since she decided to leave the projectiles embedded in the dog’s flesh. “We’re probably not going to remove them,” Miller said, “because they’re not going to cause an issue.”

Despite his injuries, Miller said, Scrim’s condition “wasn’t awful.”

Michelle Cheramie, owner of the nonprofit Zeus Rescues in New Orleans, said she had rescued Scrim from a south Louisiana dog pound where he was in jeopardy of euthanasia. Scrim was eventually adopted by a family in Mid-City, but soon escaped.

He soon became the talk of the neighborhood, and a bit of a star on social media where people posted videos from cellphones and security cameras whenever he was spotted. He managed to elude traps and would-be captors with nets and tranquilizer guns.

Finally, Cheramie got a call that Scrim had been sighted. She grabbed her tranquilizer gun and a group of volunteers showed up at the scene.

“WE GOT HIM!!!!” Cheramie posted on social media.

Once he’s fully healthy, he will be adopted again. Tammy Murray, co-founder of the nonprofit New Orleans Animal Welfare Society, told the newspaper she plans to take him in.

Scrim being taken for walk at animal hospital in New Orleans, LA. (Photo: Brett Duke / The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Source:

Dog dubbed ‘Houdini’ finally captured in New Orleans | AP News

Gaza De-Population Campaign Continues

Palestinians waiting for bread 28 Oct 2024. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a famine. (Photo: Mohammed Salem / Reuters)

96 Palestinians were killed and 277 wounded in the Gaza Strip over the last 48 hours. At least 43,020 people have been killed and 101,110 wounded in Israeli military attacks on Gaza since 7 Oct 2023. At this rate of homicide, by year’s end the Likud Party and the IDF will have killed close to 50,000 Palestinians while maiming 150,000 in the Gaza Strip. The IDF detained approximately 100 Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital. The people apprehended included fighters who attempted to escape during the evacuation of civilians, an army statement claimed. The IDF reported that weapons, funds and intelligence documents were found in the hospital and surrounding area. Israel’s forces “arrested and deported all the medical staff” at Kamal Adwan Hospital, except one unidentified individual.

IDF jets attacked the city of Tyre, Lebanon, killing at least seven people and wounding 17 others. Beirut accuses Jerusalem of intentionally trying to destroy its medical infrastructure. (Photo: Ahmad Kaddoura / Anadolu)

Hard working CIA Director William J. Burns was meeting in Qatar with his Israeli counterpart, David Barnea of the Mossad, to re-start negotiations for a cease-fire and a release of the hostages.  Mr. Barnea, who studied in the US years ago, had urged Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate with Palestinian resistance leaders immediately in order to release the Israeli captives. At the time of the surprise attack on Israel (7 Oct 2023), at least 2,000 Palestinians were being held in security detention without hearing or trial. Other reports cited larger numbers of detentions and torture. In Nov 2023 the first prisoner swap between the Palestinian captors and the IDF concluded. Afterwards, Netanyahu opted for a permanent solution to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. USSECSTATE Antony Blinken met with Israeli leaders at least 11 times for cease-fire negotiations, but this was all kabuki theater. According to some people close to Joe Biden, he felt betrayed by being pushed out in favor of VPOTUS Kamala Harris to take on GOP candidate Donald Trump. Then, Biden felt “humiliated” by Netanyahu who only played lip-service to him about a cease-fire before the all-important US presidential elections. Netanyahu, indicted as a war criminal by the Hague like his fellow war-monger Russian President Vladimir Putin, effectively tarnished Joe Biden’s legacy as he winds down his multi-decade career of American public service.  

Sources:

(4) Updates LIVE: Israel’s three-week siege of northern Gaza kills at least 1,000 (aljazeera.com)

U.S. and Israeli Spy Chiefs Meet for Gaza Cease-Fire Talks: Live Updates – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Barnea takes over Mossad; Cohen: Mossad struck deep into Iran’s heart – Israel News – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests   – Amnesty International

Kim Jong-Un’s Close Aide in Russia Overseeing North Korean Troops

Kim Jong Un (C) inspecting a special operations training base of the Korean People’s Army while enjoying a smoke. General Kim Young Bok, Vice Chief of the Korean People’s Army General Staff, is second from right. (Undated photo: Rodong Sinmun·News1)

General Kim Young Bok, a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un, has arrived in Russia to oversee North Korean troops there helping Russia in its war against Ukraine.

The North Korean troops are mobilizing near the front lines in Ukraine. An estimated 12,000 North Korean troops, including 500 officers and three generals, were in Russia undergoing training.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to deny or confirm that North Korea had sent troops to help his army. The arrival of the North Koreans has raised fears in Ukraine, its Western allies and South Korea about what they see as a dangerous escalation of the Ukrainian war.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency that Russia was transporting North Korean soldiers to the front lines in trucks with civilian license plates. Russian police stopped a Kamaz truck with civilian license plates on the Kursk-Voronezh highway which was reportedly loaded with North Korean military personnel, but the driver did not have documented combat orders.

South Korean NIS (FKA KCIA) reported that North Korean soldiers will receive $2,000 per month in pay, but the Ukrainian government-run news platform United24 said that that most likely this money would “remain with the state.”

Separately, The New York Times reported that the first North Korean troops had made the nearly 6,500 km (4,038 mile) journey to the Kursk region, with thousands more arriving daily.

Citing troop movement data from a senior Ukrainian military officer, the newspaper said that as many as 5,000 North Korean soldiers were expected to have arrived this week.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) released a satellite image by Airbus Defense and Space showing Russia’s Khabarovsk military facility, where the NIS said North Korean personnel are gatherung. (Photo: AFP)

As expected, (and posted here on Coriolanus) Ukraine initiated a PSYOP program to induce these North Korean soldiers to surrender.

“We appeal to the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army who were sent to support the Putin regime. Don’t die senselessly on foreign soil. Do not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home.

(Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate, or GUR, prepared this Korean-language message on its Telegram messaging channel).

“Surrender! Ukraine will provide you with shelter, food, and warmth,” it added, introducing its surrender hotline “I Want to Live.”

Ukraine promises food and shelter to North Korean soldiers if they surrender. The “I Want to Live” project released a video offering food and shelter to North Korean soldiers who surrender during the war in Ukraine. (RFA English)

There should be no surprises in this reporting that North Korean supremo Kim Jong-Un would send a trusted aide to overwatch the deployment of his cannon fodder and that Pyongyang would keep the soldier’s renumeration for fighting and dying against Ukraine. Kiev’s PSYOP program was to be expected as they have been inducing Russian soldiers to surrender since Putin’s brutal invasion began in Feb 2022. The next development to monitor is whether South Korea begins transferring potent mass casualty weapons and trainers to Ukraine in response.

Sources:

Kim Jong Un’s close aide in Russia overseeing North Korean troops: report – Radio Free Asia (rfa.org)

Ukraine urges North Korean soldiers to surrender, offering food, shelter – Radio Free Asia (rfa.org)

Russia pays North Korean soldiers about $2,000 a month: South’s spy agency – Radio Free Asia (rfa.org)

France: Why Are They Suddenly Deporting Kurdish Activists?

Demonstrators hold the Kurdistan flag during a rally in Paris in 2016 to protest against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after 11 HDP lawmakers were detained as part of a terror-related investigation. (Photo: Francois Mori / AP)

In March and April, France deported three Kurdish activists to Turkiye: Firaz Korkmaz (24), Mehmet Kopal (37), and Serhat Gultekin (28). All were suspected of having close ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been in conflict with the Turkish state for 40 years. France, along with its Western allies, considers the PKK a terrorist organisation. Approximately 150,000 Kurds reside in France.

The Kurdish Democratic Council of France (CDKF), an umbrella group of 27 Kurdish associations, has condemned the deportations and warned that more cases are under investigation.

In late April, eight Kurdish men were arrested, accused of extorting funds from the Kurdish community to support PKK activities, which is seen as financing terrorism.

French authorities also raided exiled Kurdish broadcasters Sterk TV and Medya Haber TV in Belgium at the request of the French judiciary. The CDKF says this level of action is unprecedented. Prior to April, no Kurdish activists had been handed over to Turkiye since 2019, when diplomatic relations between Paris and Ankara hit a low point.

The friction was partly due to France’s support for the Kurdish YPG, which was fighting the Islamic State in Syria, but is viewed by Turkiye as an extension of the PKK.

Since April, French authorities have revoked refugee status from 50 Kurdish militants and deported the three activists. The case of Serhat Gultekin has drawn particular concern.

A member of Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish HDP party, Gultekin had been reportedly tortured and persecuted in Turkiye before fleeing to France in 2017. He applied for political asylum and continued his activism in exile. In April 2023, Gultekin and ten others were found guilty of extortion and financing terrorism.

He was sentenced, but in a highly unusual move the anti-terrorist state prosecutor specifically warned of the dangers of sending him and the others back to Turkiye “in view of the danger they had faced” and “the risks that an expulsion would expose them to”.

The court agreed, but French authorities took a different view. On 12 April, the day before the judge was set to rule on Gultekin’s asylum claim, the Interior Ministry issued a deportation order.

“Plainclothes police officers put him in a truck, handcuffed him, tied him up and took him to the airport,” said Gultekin’s lawyer.

“In the truck, they told him: ‘Serhat, we’re going to send you to Turkiye. Whether you like it or not’.”

When Gultekin landed, members of Turkey’s MIT secret services were waiting. He is now serving a six year and three-month sentence in an Istanbul prison.

On 26 Sep, the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal declared Gultekin’s deportation “illegal”, stating it violated Article III of the European Charter of Human Rights, which prohibits torture.

The CDKF is also fighting to prevent the deportation of Idris Kaplan, another activist sentenced in absentia to life in Turkiye as an alleged PKK leader.

“You can’t hand your allies over to their enemies in the name of security or diplomatic agreements. That’s a basic moral principle,” argued CDKF spokesperson Agit Polat in Le Monde, pointing to Kaplan’s role in fighting the Islamic State armed group alongside French special forces in Iraq.

On 8 Oct a court suspended Kaplan’s expulsion order.

So why have French authorities taken a tougher stance on Kurdish activists? One theory is that economic interests are now outweighing human rights concerns. Ratings agency Moody’s recently downgraded France’s outlook from “stable” to “negative,” opening the door to a potential credit rating cut citing concerns over the country’s finances. The downgrade reflects “increasing risk that France’s government will be unlikely to implement measures that would prevent sustained wider-than-expected budget deficits and a deterioration in debt affordability,” said Moody’s Ratings. Moody’s affirmed France’s credit rating at Aa2, saying this was supported by its “large, wealthy, and diversified economy.”

Kostas Pikramenos, co-author of a book on Turkey’s MIT intelligence service, says Kurdish activists may be used as bargaining chips in intelligence negotiations. The expulsion of the three Kurds is most likely part of a “seduction operation by France to sign commercial contracts” with Turkiye, Pikramenos told Marianne news magazine, pointing to a $40bn order of 200 Airbus aircraft by Turkish Airlines (THY) in late 2023.

(Image: Airbus.com)

The CDKF believes France may be paying Turkiye for its intelligence cooperation. Ankara reportedly shared information on planned ISIS-K attacks during the 2024 Olympics, according to an anonymous French intelligence source. French President Emmanuel Macron publicly warned that ISIS-K had attempted several attacks on French soil in recent months.

Meanwhile, the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) emphasised that it “independently assesses” Interior Ministry requests to revoke refugee status. These decisions can be appealed in the National Asylum Court.

The CDKF has warned that five more Kurdish activists could face deportation in the coming months.

Sources:

What’s driving France’s sudden deportation of Kurdish activists? (rfi.fr)

Prosecutor seeks prison terms for alleged PKK members on trial in Paris

Turkey opens another ‘Kafkaesque’ trial against scholar exiled to France

Moody’s downgrades France to ‘negative’ credit outlook (rfi.fr)

Alaska and US Military History: The “Eskimo Scouts”

The USS Concord is a typical late 19th-century US gunboat (Photo: Edward Hart circa 1890).

The US Navy recently apologized for the 1882 shelling and burning down of Angoon, a Tlingit village of 420 people in Alaska (highlighted in red).

Years after this atrocity at Angoon by the USN, Uncle Sam would ask the Eskimo population to help defend Alaska from Imperial Japan. The indigenous men proudly formed and served in the “Alaska Territorial Guard” AKA the “Eskimo Scouts.” Note the age range of those who served: 12-80.


Note the resemblance between the Inuits of North America (above) and the Buryats of Siberia (below) from across the Bering Strait.

The Free Buryatia organization announced that around 150 Buryat soldiers who were serving in the Russian Army in occupied territories of Ukraine have resigned their positions and asked to be returned home. (Source and Photo: 150 Buryat Soldiers in Russian Army Resign kyivpost.com)

Canada’s military similarly employs indigenous tribes in their northern provinces called “the Canadian Rangers.” Above former Tory Canadian PM Stephen Harper is on the rifle range for a photo-op with these tundra experts.



Sources:



https://apnews.com/article/navy-1882-tlingit-village-alaska-bombing-apology-b7da179eb05bd30afa373f9fc093305e

US Army

Taiwan: 60 People Sickened from Suspected Food Poisoning

Taiwan has a population of 23,595,274 and GDP per capita is $47,800 (2019 est.) (Map and Data: CIA)

60 people have reported symptoms of food poisoning after buying boxed meals from an eatery in Kaohsiung. The health department said patients fell ill with symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea and fever after eating boxed meals purchased from a small storefront restaurant in the city’s Sanmin District the previous day.

46 patients sought medical attention, while 14 others were found via contact tracing. Seven of the 46 patients have been hospitalized, and one was treated in the emergency room.

29 students from Kaohsiung Medical University were among the customers who had bought lunch from the eatery and 20 of them had to seek medical attention.

Personnel from the Kaohsiung Department of Health collect food samples from a storefront restaurant in the city’s Sanmin District for testing in this undated photo. Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Department of Health.

City officials inspected the eatery and ordered its closure for seven days, citing several violations of food safety regulations. The violations included open trash bins, no records of fridge temperatures, and no records of employee health checks.

While no leftovers from the 410 boxed lunches sold were available for testing, health officials took samples of the food items in the eatery. Samples were also taken from the sick customers and the kitchen workers at the eatery and will be tested for pathogens.

The eatery will have to pass another inspection before it could be allowed to reopen. The source pathogen of the food poisoning is still being investigated.

Sources:

60 people fall ill from suspected food poisoning in Kaohsiung – Focus Taiwan

Florida Militant Arrested for Assaulting Law Enforcement and Other Charges During 6 Jan 2021 Attack Against US Capitol

Jeremy Michael Miller (Photo: FBI)

Jeremy Michael Miller (45) of Florida was arrested and charged by the FBI for felony and misdemeanor offenses of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder.

Miller was identified in video footage on 6 Jan 2021 on the Lower West Plaza of the US Capitol grounds fighting with police along a line of metal bike rack barricades. Miller allegedly grabbed a bike rack and tried to pull it away from police. Police quickly reestablished their line and video footage show Miller allegedly linking arms with other rioters and using their backs to push into the barricades; however, the group was unable to break through the police line.

(Photo: FBI)

Rioters, including Miller, violently resisted police on the Upper West Terrace. The defendant allegedly pushed his body against a police riot shield, attempting to stop or push through a line of officers.

(Photo: Getty Images)


Video footage shows that this maniac then tried to pull a riot shield away from another police officer, grabbing with both hands in an attempt to wrest the shield away. After several failed attempts, Miller retreated back into the mob.

In the 45 months since 6 Jan 2021, more than 1,532 suspects have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to attacking the US Capitol, including more than 571 seditionists charged with feloniously assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The FBI investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

A complaint is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Jeremy Michael Miller represents one of America’s Fedayeen Saddam (FS), a white supremacist holding on to the last vestiges of white supremacy in the US. He heeded the idiotic call of Donald J. Trump that minorities stole the 2020 election and now will either plead guilty to a lesser count or be found guilty in a trial. Either way, this 45-year-old lunatic threw his life away over racism and ignorance.

Source:


https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/florida-man-arrested-assaulting-law-enforcement-and-other-charges-during-jan-6-capitol-4

Sneaky Alabama Bear Steals Trash Can from Garage