Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally decided to drop the charade.

One of the worst-kept secrets of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine is that the US allows its client state to use American arms for striking inside of Russia despite officially prohibiting it from doing so. Sergey Poletaev explained the pseudo-“legal” means through which this happens in his latest piece for RT, but now Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally decided to drop the charade and more openly allow Ukraine to do so without going through these largely symbolic workarounds.

He responded to Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul’s criticism of these operational restrictions during a hearing by declaring that “Ukraine will have to make and will make its own decisions” on the use of these arms even though the US doesn’t endorse attacks inside of Russia. The New York Times then reported on the same day that the Biden Administration is deliberating whether to formalize this new unofficial policy, though that debate is now moot and just a distraction.

The reality is that the US has always tacitly approved Ukraine’s use of these weapons for striking inside of Russia, it’s just now more openly allowing this as a morale-booster amidst Russia’s fresh push into Kharkov Region, which is re-entered without any resistance due to unbuilt border fortifications. Nevertheless, seeing as how this coincides with talk of formalizing some NATO countries’ unofficial training missions inside that country, it’s clear that the West is escalating its involvement in the conflict.

Keeping the aforesaid two policies an open secret enables these two to “save face” to an extent, thus facilitating the management of their security dilemma by reducing the odds of either side “overreacting” such as when Ukraine strikes Russia with Western arms and Russia kills NATO trainers. If either was formally acknowledged upon totally doing away with this charade, then there’d be lots of pressure from hawkish policymakers and members of society to reciprocally respond, which would risk World War III.

These two latest Ukrainian-pressured examples of “mission creep” – solely with respect to their optics since these policies have already been in effect for some time – are therefore obviously intended to bring NATO and Russia to the brink of a direct conflict. This is exactly what Russian Ambassador to America Anatoly Antonov assessed when reacting to the recent congressional hearing when Blinken signaled that his country will more openly allow Ukraine to use its arms to strike inside of Russia.

Russia seemingly anticipated this development and that’s likely why it announced tactical nuclear weapons exercises earlier this month as was explained here at the time, with the primary intent being to deter a full-fledged NATO invasion, especially one that approaches or crosses the Dnieper. In the last-mentioned scenario, Russia might resort to the use of tactical nukes in self-defense per its doctrine in order to preemptively stop an imminent NATO invasion of its newly unified formerly Ukrainian regions.

It’s imperative that this red line isn’t approached, let alone crossed, otherwise World War III could easily break out by miscalculation given Russia’s national security perceptions that were just explained. With that in mind, it’s best to asymmetrically partition Ukraine via the model that was shared here earlier this spring, which includes a demilitarized buffer zone in the Kiev-controlled regions east of the Dnieper. Regrettably, the US hasn’t expressed any interest in this scenario, hence why it continues escalating.

That being the case, it can’t be ruled out that the two latest Ukrainian-pressured examples of “mission creep” will prompt Russia to escalate in response, thus climbing the escalation ladder and bringing the world closer to the brink through no fault of its own since it has the right to do so in self-defense. If this vicious cycle isn’t soon stopped through a creative diplomatic solution for ending the conflict, then a conventional NATO intervention might be inevitable with all that entails for bringing about World War III.

“Walking through the streets of Baltimore City, especially on the west side, feels like navigating a warzone. Drug gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods, and the police are nowhere to be found. We’ve all become numb to the violence, with shootings and drug overdoses around the clock. The fentanyl flooding the streets is killing people left and right, and all that’s left out of all this chaos are used Narcan kits littering city streets,” said Baltimore resident Theresa Davis. 

Davis continued with a few questions: “Where are the politicians who promised the end of the drug crisis? You know, the White House is just right down the street—where is Biden?” 

“This is insane – our leaders have failed us,” she added. 

Davis’ shocking account of life in Baltimore City and the around-the-clock chaos leaves one wondering why the metro area is imploding. 

Baltimore has been trending down for decades, but the death of Freddie Gray sparked the “Ferguson effect” and ushered in failed social and criminal justice reforms that only resulted in record homicides, violent crime, and drug overdoses in the last decade. 

Our latest report showed that defunding the police movement is not working well… 

Baltimore is now facing apocalyptic levels of policing shortages.

Last week, THREE police officers patrolled a whole district of 61,000 residents.

Police are now UNABLE to respond to calls, including for child assault.

The department is now postponing police training in an… pic.twitter.com/4XhEURoR4d

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 25, 2024

All of this has led to a population collapse. 

The exodus accelerated in the last ten years. 

Law-abiding residents in the metro area are demanding accountability from the radical leftist politicians whose policies have backfired. Yet Democrats put on a spectacular performance this week, celebrating how allegedly the toxic water in the Inner Harbor is now “swimmable.” 

Meanwhile, news this week from the New York Times is a shocker for some. Baltimore City has been crowned America’s “overdose capital.” 

People in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major American city.

In the past six years, nearly 6,000 lives have been lost. The death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly double that of any other large city, and higher than nearly all of Appalachia during the prescription pill crisis, the Midwest during the height of rural meth labs or New York during the crack epidemic.

We’re left speechless… 

Again, speechless (but not shocked if you read ZH). 

The numbers are “horrifying,” said Dr. Laura Herrera Scott, Maryland’s health secretary since 2023, adding, “We haven’t deployed the right resources in the right places.”

Scott’s comments reveal that the bloated local government is ineffective in solving real crises. In other words, the wrong people are running the show. 

Where are those woke lawmakers in Annapolis? Sigh, they’re too busy focusing on pushing radical trans health bills instead of solving real problems. 

“This is a perfect example of the Democrat supermajorities in the legislature failing to implement tough penalties for drug deals and a total failure of the City Council and Mayor. Republicans continue to offer solutions, and Democrats continue to reject those solutions. This problem is created and exacerbated by Democrats failures,” Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, said in a statement. 

Authored by David Thunder via the Brownstone Institute,

In case you hadn’t noticed, we just celebrated “Europe Day” on Thursday, May 9th, marking the 74th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration. This declaration, presented by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on 9th May 1950, paved the way for the formation of a European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), constituted in 1952 by France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The ECSC was the first serious attempt to institutionalise supranational European cooperation in the post-war era, and eventually evolved into the monetary, political, and economic union that we now call the European Union. 

As the European Union has expanded and translated greater power to European organs of governance and policymaking, most notably the European Commission, it has had to contend with significant growing pains: the wide cultural, political, and economic diversity contained within the union has made it exceedingly difficult to develop and maintain a vision of Europe that is broadly shared across the union.

A Fundamental Rift in Europe

The exit of Britain from the EU, combined with the intervening electoral successes of Euroskeptical parties and leaders in countries like Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, and the Netherlands, is symptomatic of a fundamental rift between the “official” vision of Europe, espoused by the current Commission and many of the traditional leftist and centre-right parties, a Europe of “pooled sovereignty,” shared social ideals, and centrally coordinated taxing, climate, pandemic, and refugee policies, and the vision of dissenting parties, which envisions Europe as a union of independent, sovereign nations, who cooperate for economic interests but have broad discretion to set their own policies across a broad range of domains, from immigration and taxation to climate, agriculture, health, and welfare. 

The Drive for Political Consolidation

Although the European Union was born fundamentally as a vehicle of economic cooperation, the seeds of a more consolidated and integrated political union have been present from the very beginning, since the post-war ideal of peace, human rights, and solidarity upon which the European Union was built could, potentially, be interpreted to entail increasingly integrated foreign policies, taxation policies, and social policies across the Union, as well as a more expansive role for the European Court of Human Rights – which is precisely what came to pass.

But it was arguably the introduction of monetary union in 1992 that served as a powerful catalyst for greater political harmonisation. For monetary union is only sustainable with a relatively high level of control by EU institutions over public finance and spending, requiring a significant renunciation of political and economic sovereignty by member states.

An Unresolved Tension

One of the most iconic representatives of the more demanding approach to European integration is French President Emmanuel Macron. In numerous public interventions, including a speech given in the Hague on 11th April 2023, he called for “a stronger and a better European integration,” even a more “sovereign” Europe, on a range of issues, from defence and industrial regulation to the regulation of social media and climate policy. 

Agree or not with Macron’s proposal to “pool” European sovereignty across a range of policy domains, at least this much seems clear: the ideal of Europe as a union of sovereign nations cooperating along certain limited policy domains, which seems to fit the earliest models of EU integration, has been steadily ceding ground to the ideal of Europe as a sovereign union of citizens with taxes, finances, defence, climate policy, immigration, and foreign policy controlled from the centre.

EU leaders have been unable to resolve the tensions between these two irreconcilable visions of Europe, because there is no political or cultural consensus among and within member states on the future of the European Union. These unresolved tensions have laid the groundwork for the steady polarisation of Europe into two factions: one favouring a concentration of a wide range of political and economic functions in European institutions, and the other favouring a looser, more decentralised union of independent states.

The Rise of Nationalist Populism

Up to Brexit, EU leaders more or less fudged these tensions. But as public finances got tighter, welfare got scarcer, and the EU came under ever greater pressure from migration from developing countries, nationalist discourses with a populist, anti-establishment tone steadily gained momentum. Indeed, we have reached a point at which parties skeptical about the current direction of travel toward ever-greater integration, even if not always leading in the polls, are now big enough in most EU countries to have a real impact on national policy. If current electoral trends and opinion polls are anything to go by, this June’s European elections will shift the balance of power in the European Parliament closer to parties that are deeply critical of European integration on issues like immigration and climate policy. 

Tough Choices Ahead

All of these developments suggest that we are in for a showdown between advocates of further integration and consolidation, such as the current European Commission and its centrist and leftist allies in the European Parliament, and the path of a “slimmer” and less politically ambitious Europe, pushed by nationalist and Euroskeptical parties on the right.

Both options entail significant risks. An attempt to drive forward the integration process may contribute to an even greater sense of powerlessness on the part of citizens as they see critical political functions effectively removed from their national parliaments, fueling Eurosceptical parties even further. At a time when nationalism and discontent over what is perceived as unchecked immigration appears to be gaining momentum, a move toward further political consolidation may potentially tear the European Union apart.

Any attempt, on the other hand, to restore the economic and political sovereignty of member states would likely destabilise Europe’s current economic system, at least in the short term. A viable monetary union may be put in jeopardy if European institutions renounce their control over the public spending and finances of member states.

Sooner or later, EU citizens and political leaders will have to decide which Europe they wish to back: a highly integrated political union with major policies decided from Brussels, or an economic union of sovereign nations with central coordination reserved primarily for issues of mutual economic interest. Neither of these two options is guaranteed to succeed. But trundling along in a political and institutional halfway house, with policies that upset a lot of people but no serious attempt to articulate a shared vision of where Europe is headed or what it stands for, is a recipe for political mediocrity, disillusionment, and chronic instability. 

Republished from the author’s Substack

On Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree which paves the way for the government to conduct legal seizure of any US assets in Russia, including property and real estate.

This in retaliation and in order to compensate for any Russian assets that are taken by the US, at a moment Washington is forging ahead with a joint plan with the EU to generate profits for Ukraine and its defense, utilizing frozen Russian assets.

However, this new initiative by the Kremlin is reportedly only being prepared in the instance that the US and Europe outright steals (or fully seizes) the currently frozen funds.

In preparation for initiating the retaliatory measure, the government has moved many of the assets of foreign investors to special accounts from which funds cannot be moved outside of Russia without direct Kremlin approval.

According to the announcement in state media:

As part of the move, movable and immovable property of the United States, American companies and citizens on the territory of Russia, as well as securities owned by them, shares in the authorized capital of Russian companies and other property rights of the United States and Americans in the country will be subject to seizure.

Under the decree, the Russian copyright holder (in this case – Russian government or the Central Bank) has the right to “apply to the court… with a claim to establish the fact of unjustified deprivation of his rights to property due to a decision by a US state or judicial authority and to receive compensation for said damage.”

More details in Russian media say “Putin’s decree gives the government four months to prepare the legal framework for the mechanism and submit the relevant proposals to parliament for consideration.”

Additionally, “The court will be able to grant compensation in the form of property physically present in Russia, shares in Russia-registered businesses and property rights. A governmental commission will be responsible for compiling the list of those who could be targeted for compensation.” Already, most major US companies fled Russia during the opening months following the February 2022 invasion.

🚨 12-HOUR NEWS RECAP

1. Russia threatens to kill every French soldier Macron sends to Ukraine. World War 3 looks almost inevitable at this point.

2. Hungary is set to block EU plans to use interest payments on frozen Russian assets to fund the war in Ukraine. Putin says hey,… pic.twitter.com/TgCmKbHfYY

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 21, 2024

This week President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen issued a revealing statement on where the West’s economic policy stands with Russia. She spoke primarily of China, but also asserted… “I don’t think that we are in a trade war. I have the motto: ‘de-risk not decouple’, and I think here it’s very clear we are in the category of de-risking from China. We have decoupled from Russia.”

Via The Cradle

Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, announced Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon address a joint meeting of the Congress. 

“Tonight, I’m happy to announce… we will soon be hosting Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Capitol for a joint session of Congress,” Johnson said during a speech at an Israeli embassy event. Johnson said during the speech that Netanyahu’s upcoming address will be “a strong show of support for the Israeli government in their time of greatest need.”

The announcement comes as officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden have made increasingly critical comments on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. 

Despite Biden’s continued support for the Israeli war effort, Johnson is a critic of his administration’s policy toward Israel. Netanyahu’s speech at Congress is expected to draw the ire of some Democrats who have spoken out about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. 

Speaking at the same event, a US Democratic Representative said, “As Americans, we reaffirm our commitment to Israel’s sovereignty.”

Both officials condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

Johnson also said on Thursday that the US “should punish the ICC and put Karim Khan back in his place. If the ICC is allowed to threaten Israel’s leaders, we know that the US will be next. There is a reason we never endorsed the ICC, because it is a direct affront to our own sovereignty.”

The decision – which also includes calls for warrants against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh – has created an uproar in Washington, with Republican members of the US House of Representatives working on a sanctions package against the ICC. 

“Congress is reviewing our options right now, we have some very aggressive legislation that were going to push as soon as possible, it will include sanctions. If the ICC moves forward with its absurd request, this is going to be a bigger international problem,” Johnson added. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that he is willing to help Congress impose sanctions against ICC officials over their request for arrest warrants against the Israeli officials. 

🇩🇪🇮🇱 GERMANY CONFIRMS IT WOULD ARREST NETANHAYU

A spokesperson for the German chancellor confirmed the German authorities would arrest Netanyahu if he enters the country amid a proposed arrest warrant by the ICC for war crimes.

The stance has caused outrage in Israel, with… pic.twitter.com/QmkIayBxzn

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 23, 2024

EU leaders have taken a more balanced approach towards the ICC decision. Germany said on Wednesday that if the ICC goes ahead and issues the warrants, it would arrest the Israeli premier if he set foot on German soil. 

France said earlier that week that it backs the ICC in the “fight against impunity.” 

Authored by Chris Hedges via Scheerpost.com,

The decision by the High Court in London to grant Julian Assange the right to appeal the order to extradite him to the United States may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. It does not mean Julian will elude extradition. It does not mean the court has ruled, as it should, that he is a journalist whose only “crime” was providing evidence of war crimes and lies by the U.S. government to the public. It does not mean he will be released from the high-security HMS Belmarsh prison where, as Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, after visiting Julian there, said he was undergoing a “slow-motion execution.”

It does not mean that journalism is any less imperiled. Editors and publishers of  five international media outlets —– The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL —– which published stories based on documents released by WikiLeaks, have urged that the U.S. charges be dropped and Julian be released. None of these media executives were charged with espionage. It does not dismiss the ludicrous ploy by the U.S. government to extradite an Australian citizen whose publication is not based in the U.S. and charge him under the Espionage Act. It continues the long Dickensian farce that mocks the most basic concepts of due process.

This ruling is based on the grounds that the U.S. government did not offer sufficient assurances that Julian would be granted the same First Amendment protections afforded to a U.S. citizen, should he stand trial. The appeal process is one more legal hurdle in the persecution of a journalist who should not only be free, but feted and honored as the most courageous of our generation.  

Yes. He can file an appeal. But this means another year, perhaps longer, in harsh prison conditions as his physical and psychological health deteriorates. He has spent over five years in HMS Belmarsh without being charged. He spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy because the U.K. and Swedish governments refused to guarantee that he wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., even though he agreed to return to Sweden to aid a preliminary investigation that was eventually dropped.

The judicial lynching of Julian was never about justice. The plethora of legal irregularities, including the recording of his meetings with attorneys by the Spanish security firm UC Global at the embassy on behalf of the CIA, alone should have seen the case thrown out of court as it eviscerates attorney-client privilege.

The U.S. has charged Julian with 17 acts under the Espionage Act and one count of computer misuse, for an alleged conspiracy to take possession of and then publish national defense information. If found guilty on all of these charges he faces 175 years in a U.S. prison.

The extradition request is based on the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs — hundreds of thousands of classified documents, leaked to the site by Chelsea Manning, then an Army intelligence analyst, which exposed numerous U.S. war crimes including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral Murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to U.S. checkpoints.

In February, lawyers for Julian submitted nine separate grounds for a possible appeal. 

A two-day hearing in March, which I attended, was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel, and of many of the rulings of District Judge Baraitser in 2021. 

The two High Court judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, in March rejected most of Julian’s grounds of appeal. These included his lawyers’ contention that the UK-US extradition treaty bars extradition for political offenses; that the extradition request was made for the purpose of prosecuting him for his political opinions; that extradition would amount to retroactive application of the law — because it was not foreseeable that a century-old espionage law would be used against a foreign publisher; and that he would not receive a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. The judges also refused to hear new evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Julian, concluding — both perversely and incorrectly — that the CIA only considered these options because they believed Julian was planning to flee to Russia.

But the two judges determined Monday that it is “arguable” that a U.S. court might not grant Julian protection under the First Amendment, violating his rights to free speech as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

The judges in March asked the U.S. to provide written assurances that Julian would be protected under the First Amendment and that he would be exempt from a death penalty verdict. The U.S. assured the court that Julian would not be subjected to the death penalty, which Julian’s lawyers ultimately accepted. But the Department of Justice was unable to provide an assurance that Julian could mount a First Amendment defense in a U.S. court. Such a decision is made in a U.S. federal court, their lawyers explained. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, who is prosecuting Julian, has argued that only U.S. citizens are guaranteed First Amendment rights in U.S. courts. Kromberg has stated that what Julian published was “not in the public interest” and that the U.S. was not seeking his extradition on political grounds.

Free speech is a key issue. If Julian is granted First Amendment rights in a U.S. court it will be very difficult for the U.S. to build a criminal case against him, since other news organizations, including The New York Times and The Guardian, published the material he released. 

The extradition request is based on the contention that Julian is not a journalist and not protected under the First Amendment.

Julian’s attorneys and those representing the U.S. government have until May 24 to submit a draft order, which will determine when the appeal will be heard. 

Julian committed the empire’s greatest sin — he exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, routine violation of human rights, wanton killing of innocent civilians, rampant corruption and war crimes. Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Trump or Biden — it does not matter. Those who manage the empire use the same dirty playbook.

The publication of classified documents is not a crime in the United States, but if Julian is extradited and convicted, it will become one. 

Julian is in precarious physical and psychological health. His physical and psychological deterioration has resulted in a minor stroke, hallucinations and depression. He takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been observed pacing his cell until he collapses, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall. He has spent weeks in the medical wing of Belmarsh, nicknamed “hell wing.” Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.” 

These slow-motion executioners have not yet completed their work. Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the Haitian independence movement, the only successful slave revolt in human history, was physically destroyed in the same manner. He was locked by the French in an unheated and cramped prison cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and probably tuberculosis. 

Prolonged imprisonment, which the granting of this appeal perpetuates, is the point. The 12 years Julian has been detained — seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and over five in high-security Belmarsh Prison — have been accompanied by a lack of sunlight and exercise, as well as unrelenting threats, pressure, prolonged isolation, anxiety and constant stress. The goal is to destroy him.

We must free Julian. We must keep him out of the hands of the U.S. government. Given all he did for us, we owe him an unrelenting fight. 

If there is no freedom of speech for Julian, there will be no freedom of speech for us.

*  *  *

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

The Ukrainians aren’t waiting for ‘permission’ from the US despite the Biden administration’s official prohibition on using American-supplied weaponry to strike inside Russian territory. But perhaps Kiev’s argument is that Crimea is not ‘Russian territory’…

“Ukraine hit a Russian military complex in Crimea with U.S.-provided long-range missiles Thursday night, the latest in a mounting series of strikes aimed at slowing the Russian war machine,” The Wall Street Journal reports Friday.

The WSJ continues, “The missile strike hit a communications center of Russian air-defense forces in the city of Alushta, according to a Ukrainian defense official.” It added: “Crimean social-media channels reported several explosions in the coastal city, with one video showing a large blast, but the extent of the damage couldn’t immediately be established.”

Long-range ATACMS (or Army Tactical Missile System), were first transferred ‘secretly’ by Washington to Ukraine’s military earlier this year, and only disclosed publicly just weeks ago. In late April, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said a “significant number” of the ATACMS have been sent to Ukraine but did not specify how many. They can hit targets up to 190 miles away – and earlier in the war were withheld reportedly on White House concerns that they would be used to attack deep within Russian territory.

The UK and France have also of late provided longer-range systems, including cruise missiles that can be launched from aircraft. The WSJ underscores these new weapons “have significantly boosted the range, value and number of the deep-lying targets that Ukraine can attack.”

But the reality is that with each new attack on Russia, its forces appear to be hitting back harder with ‘punishing’ strikes on Kharkiv and as far south as the large port city of Odessa. 

For example, Russia’s defense ministry is reporting its troops have achieved 49 combined strikes at “Ukrainian military sites, military-industrial facilities, arms, ammunition and fuel depots, army and mercenaries’ deployment areas” over the past week of fighting.

In the Kharkiv region, “The enemy’s losses over the week amounted to 1,840 personnel, six tanks, eight armored combat vehicles, 40 motor vehicles, four Grad and Vampire multiple rocket launchers and 37 field artillery guns,” the ministry said.

Thus Ukraine’s provocative attacks inside Russian territory aren’t having any actual impact on frontline fighting positions. Instead, the attacks are ultimately resulting in drawing NATO and Russia deeper into a more direct conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday lodged a new complaint, saying West-supplied weapon are already being used against civilians inside Russia.

The below WSJ/ISW map demonstrates Ukraine forces’ significantly increasing missile range:

“American weapons are already being used against a wide variety of facilities outside the combat zone,” Lavrov stated. “We proceed from the fact that American and other Western weapons are hitting targets on Russian territory, primarily civilian infrastructure and residential neighborhoods.”

He bluntly concluded Western countries “are waging a war against Russia” despite all the officially stated positions which appear to dissuade Kiev from escalating with Western weapons. Lavrov said this is something that “that the Americans are trying to present to their public opinion or to NATO members.”

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

I miss the 1970s sometimes.

Not just the music. And the sex. And the drugs. I miss the terrorists. The old-school terrorists. Or, OK, maybe not the terrorists, but the revolutionaries who cheered on the terrorists.

I miss the clarity, and the honesty, of that era.

Maybe you’re too young to remember, but, back in the day, you didn’t get all this hemming and hawing about murdering civilians. The terrorists, and the revolutionaries who supported them, were not ashamed of murdering civilians. The Revolution demanded that they murder civilians. Murdering civilians was one of the fundamental strategies of the Revolution.

The way this strategy works is simple. What you do is, you murder a bunch of civilians, in order to provoke your adversary into massively over-retaliating against you and committing all kinds of war crimes and atrocities, like the USA did in Iraq twenty years ago, like the IDF is now doing in Gaza. The goal of the strategy is to broaden the conflict, and draw your potential allies into it, or at least significantly weaken support for your enemy.

OK, sure, that means you have to murder some people… men, women, children, whole families, and then your enemy is going to go apeshit and kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of your people, but, if all goes to plan, your “allies” will join you, and attack your enemy, and drive him into the sea, or off the face of the earth, or wherever. So, in the end, all the murdering will have been totally worth it.

This is not a theory I just made up.

It is one of the basics of asymmetric warfare. If you are not already familiar with that subject, this might be a good time to look into it.

I’m not a fan of murdering civilians. Not even for the Revolution. I do not think it is a very good strategy. Plus, well, the murdering. I’m against that, generally. Soldiers killing each other is one thing. They have been doing that since the dawn of history. And I have no problem with guerilla tactics. People fight wars with the means they have available. It’s just the murdering thing that I can’t get down with. Especially the murdering of the women and the kids, but it’s probably not politically correct to say that, what with the diversity, equity, and inclusion thing these days.

Anyway, as it appears I’m currently alienating a significant portion of my longstanding readers, half of whom believe I’m an “Islamofascist,” and the other half of whom believe I’m a “Zionist,” I figure I’ll go ahead and go for broke, and wax nostalgic about the 1970s, and say a few things I haven’t been saying, or, rather, I’ll say a few things I’ve been saying delicately not so delicately.

I’ve been saying those things delicately, because, as I made pretty clear in October, when this whole horror show started, my sympathies are with the Palestinian people. My sympathies are also with the loved ones of the Israeli civilians who were murdered by Hamas, but I am talking about the bigger picture now, the broader “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

In that bigger picture, the Palestinians are fucked. They’ve been getting fucked for quite some time now. That is what happens when empires conquer the land you live on and do what they want with it. The land in question has been getting conquered for approximately 4,500 years. The Babylonians conquered it. The Persians conquered it. Alexander the Great conquered it. The Romans conquered it. And so on. That’s all ancient history.

More recently, in 1920, the Ottoman Empire lost World War One, and the British Empire took the land over. You are probably familiar with the rest of the history. The British pulled out in 1948. Zionists established The State of Israel. War broke out. Israel won. War broke out again. Israel won again. And again. And so on. And … well, here we are.

As I was saying, the Palestinians are fucked. Look at a map of the territory. Does it look like Palestine is on the verge of being “free”?

The State of Israel is not going anywhere. It is an essential component of the global-capitalist empire. It’s the empire’s headquarters in the Middle East. It has nuclear weapons. It is backed by the US military. The “Islamic world” is not going to join Hamas and attack it, regardless of how many war crimes it perpetrates in Gaza. The ICJ is not going to put it on trial. The United Nations isn’t going to make it play nice. It isn’t going to disappear into the ether. It is a fact of life. It isn’t fair. It has nothing to do with fairness and justice and rights and good and bad and whatever. It doesn’t even have much to do with Zionism. Zionism is just Israel’s ideology, like Islamism is Saudi Arabia’s ideology. What it has to do with is the global-capitalist empire, and resistance to the global-capitalist empire.

Which brings us back to asymmetric warfare, and Hamas’ October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” strategy, and the utter fucking pointlessness of it, and the utter fucking callousness of it.

Do you seriously believe that the leadership of Hamas did not know exactly how Israel would respond to the slaughter of hundreds of Israeli citizens, families, children, people at a rave? If you honestly believe that, I don’t know what to say.

The goal of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack was to provoke precisely the response it has provoked. There is nothing mysterious or complicated about this. It is Asymmetric Warfare 101, straight out of the Terrorism textbook.

For seven months I have been watching my “radical” colleagues trying to obscure this fact. It isn’t helpful. It doesn’t help anyone. It certainly doesn’t help the Palestinian people. There is more than enough about Israel to criticize. Lying, twisting the facts about Hamas, convincing people that the IDF “Hanniballed” everyone on October 7, is (a) unnecessary, (b) obfuscatory, and (c) destroys your credibility.

On top of which, it makes you look like pussies.

If you believe that murdering people to provoke your enemy into overreacting is a productive armed-resistance strategy, at least have the fucking courage to say so. Bring back the spirit of the 1970s! The old PLO! The RAF! The IRA! The SLA! Do it for the Revolution! Or the Globalized Intifada! Or whatever.

I’m just kidding, of course. It is an idiotic strategy. It hands your enemy a free “get out of war-crimes tribunal” card. Meanwhile, the people you are purporting to be fighting for are getting slaughtered by the tens of thousands. But whatever … as long as it boosts your cred among the other “legitimate armed resisters,” who cares how many families get wasted? After all, it’s not your fault! It’s the oppressors! The Zionists! The Americans! Or whoever.

Seriously, though, I am feeling a bit nostalgic for the 1970s, when at least you could have a real argument over tactics with your revolutionary comrades instead of hearing mindless gibberish like this …

Yes, you actually just read those words, “they never killed anyone with an intent to kill.” And Lena’s note is not at all an anomaly. I have been hearing this gibberish for seven months now.

So, thanks, all my radical anti-Zionist friends and colleagues who have been pumping out this narrative, and all the thought-terminating clichés, and conducting Anti-Zionist Inquisitions, and so on! Well done! I’m pretty sure all the folks like Lena who you have helped to transform into a mass of mindless Pavlovian robots will never, ever, be turned against us, like, you know, the next time the Powers That Be come up with an irresistible stimulus!

I mean, what are the odds of that ever happening?

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Via Middle East Eye

The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza has been closed indefinitely since the Israeli military seized the crossing on 7 May, a closure which has left thousands of Palestinians in limbo. Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, and the subsequent closure of all other crossings, the Rafah crossing with Egypt has been the only passageway for civilians fleeing the conflict.

An Egyptian company with exclusive control on exits and transfers via the terminal had been charging Palestinians at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 per child to cross to the Egyptian side. In April, Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, a firm owned by Sinai tribal leader and business tycoon Ibrahim al-Organi, made at least $2m per day from Palestinians, Middle East Eye has revealed.

Now, those who were due to travel in May after paying thousands of dollars in advance have no clear means of getting a refund. And they do not know if they will ever leave Gaza via Egypt, as Cairo has refused to work with Israel to operate the crossing. 

Samer, 29, paid Hala $20,000 before Israel shut the Rafah crossing. He wanted to leave Gaza along with his new wife and his elderly and sick parents. To raise the money, he had to borrow from friends and family, and sell his car and all his electronic goods. 

“I cannot believe that as soon as I got the money and was supposed to travel three days after the invasion, I am still here,” he told Middle East Eye. “I feel like a rat in a box running around trying to find an exit, and as soon as I see a hole in the box, someone shuts it.”

People are unsure when they might get their money back, or how to reach out to Hala for assistance. Hala has yet to provide a clear communication channel or timeline for resolving these issues, and does not respond to emails or social media messages.

The company did not release any official statement or comment to explain to thousands of Palestinian customers what they needed to do to either obtain a refund or keep their names registered. An employee from Hala told MEE on condition of anonymity: “We are overwhelmed with calls and complaints. The company is trying to figure out a solution, but we don’t have any concrete answers at the moment.”

Hala’s official Facebook page is full of messages from Palestinians asking how they can get a refund, and asking what will happen if the borders remain shut. Others asked anyone who managed to get a response from Hala to share the information, as all their attempts to contact the office had failed.

Thousands of Palestinians are believed to be in the same position. The daily lists published by Hala in April showed that between 300-400 Palestinians left via the Rafah crossing on a daily basis. Applicants register and pay for these lists weeks in advance.

Tough choices

Sahar, 36, has a close relative in Egypt who registered her for travelling with Hala’s office in Cairo. Sahar was supposed to leave Gaza on the same day Israel invaded the crossing. 

When her sister went to the Hala office, she was told that they could issue a refund, but she would have to wait some time to receive it. However, when – and if – the Rafah crossing reopens, Sahar will have to go through the registration process all over again, and the company would not guarantee her exit then.

🇪🇬 People in Egypt tore up posters of President Sisi after the Rafah border crossing was closed 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/SBOdQPcU6c

— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) May 24, 2024

“I decided not to get a refund. I just want to know that if the crossing reopens ever again, I have a way out. I had already said my goodbyes the night before the invasion,” she told MEE. “We should not be paying money to leave to begin with. Now, even when we manage to get the money, we cannot leave.”

Yosef, 39, paid $13,000 to Hala before the Israeli operation, to travel with his wife and two children. Yosef’s wife sold all her gold jewelry to pay the travel fees. She had always thought she would sell the gold to use as a down payment for a house in Gaza City. 

“I am torn between two tough choices. Either ask for a refund, which takes a long time to get, but that means if the border opens again we lose our ‘turn’ and we will have to go on a waiting list again,” Yosef told MEE.