Amid persistent more-than-rumors that Ukraine’s President Zelensky is trying to fire his defense chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhny, CNN has given the embattled general op-ed space to speak some things that are certain to pour fuel to the fire.

Prior international reports, including in CNN, said that on Monday Zelensky asked his top general to step down. Zaluzhny reportedly refused. We earlier asked the question, is there a brewing mutiny as the split between the military leadership and Zelensky administration grows wider? 

In Zaluzhny’s CNN op-ed, published late in the day Thursday, the top general has continued saying things which run afoul of Zelensky’s more positive, rosy narrative as the latter desperately tries to attract more Western weaponry and funding, at a moment many European nations are struggling with depleted domestic stockpiles. 

“We must contend with a reduction in military support from key allies, grappling with their own political tensions,” Zaluzhny writes. “Our partners’ stocks of missiles, air defense interceptors and ammunition for artillery is becoming exhausted, due to the intensity of hostilities in Ukraine, but also from a global shortage of propellant charges.”

“Russia, taking note of how developments in the Middle East have distracted international attention, might seek to provoke further conflicts elsewhere,” he concludes further, echoing things Zelensky has also acknowledged.

Perhaps Ukraine is preparing for the deeply unpopular (unpopular especially among Ukrainians) move for a new mass mobilization? The general’s words hint at this…

We must acknowledge the significant advantage enjoyed by the enemy in mobilizing human resources and how that compares with the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures.

But again, this is sure to rile his boss Zelensky, given it comes off as a deep criticism of the Ukrainian government’s leadership and capabilities (“inability of state institutions… to improve the manpower levels…”).

And here is more from Zaluzhny’s op-ed, where he offers further self-critique of the state of readiness of the nation:

Finally, we remain hamstrung by the imperfections of the regulatory framework in our country, as well as the partial monopolization of the defense industry. These lead to production bottlenecks – in ammunition, for instance – which further deepen Ukraine’s dependence on its allies for supplies.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg too is acknowledging the open divisions in a Friday report:

General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi is a national hero for Ukrainians after repelling the first wave of Vladimir Putin’s invasion on the outskirts of Kyiv.

But two years into the war, setbacks on the battlefield and political jealousies in the capital have soured his relationship with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. This week, the president tried — and failed — to force out his commander-in-chief, pulling back the curtain on a damaging rift at the heart of the Ukraine war effort.

Zaluzhny on eve of his expected firing by Zelensky shows his backing from far-right, which has power to overthrow Zelensky. Zaluzhny takes selfie with leader of far-right Right Sector & commander of Right Sector brigade of Ukrainian military in front of portrait of Nazi… https://t.co/LUhvSw4zYB pic.twitter.com/EX8kAnBKI8

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) February 2, 2024

The dispute hearkens especially back to a November interview Gen. Zaluzhny gave to The Economist. He had angered the Zelensky administration and external allies by being the first top official to paint a very negative picture of how Ukraine’s military was fairing on the battlefield. What’s more is the admission quickly caught the eye of other major publications, most notably The New York Times, which underscored “His comments marked the first time a top Ukrainian commander said the fighting had reached an impasse…”.

The NYT described that “It is the most candid assessment so far by a leading Ukrainian official of the military’s stalled counteroffensive.” But having taken on massive and still mounting casualties, it’s likely that rank and file conscripts would welcome the defense chief’s realism. 

Via Off-Guardian.org,

There’s a lot of “World War Three” in the news right now…

Grant Shapps, the UK’s defence minister has claimed we have “moved from a post-war to a pre-war world”, whatever that means.

Going on to say we can expect the world to be “engulfed” by wars with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea all within the next five years. Again, no idea how he can know that.

Two days ago, The Telegraph was headlining:

World War Three is approaching fast, and too few are willing to admit why

Two days before that, the Mirror went with:

World War 3: 5 chilling signs UK and US are heading for all out conflict amid global unrest

Yesterday, Spiked! asked simply:

Are you ready for World War 3?

Before adding, “Our sabre-rattling elites need to take a deep breath.”

Today, the Express reports that:

Top NATO allies strike World War 3 deal as Putin on brink of war with the West

The Telegraph has clearly got its priorities in order, warning:

A third world war would transform global finance beyond recognition

(And, incidentally, ripping off a Jasper Carrott stand-up routine from 40 years ago).

Perhaps the oddest WWIII headline belongs to Newsweek, which wants us to start farming a new superfood “in case of nuclear war.”

In terms of actual conflict, we have the ongoing “wars” in Ukraine and Gaza, and a civil war in Myanmar as well.

ISIS allegedly conducted a terrorist attack in Iran. Iran took out targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan responded in kind.

Somebody apparently droned some US servicemen in Syria. The US is blaming Iran and may retaliate.

The eternal war in Yemen is still ongoing, with Houthi rebels now attacking ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestine.

The UK and US are sending ships into the area, with “experts” calling for “airstrikes to prevent World War III”, apparently hoping to invoke the rare “de-escalation via blowing stuff up” tactic.[ZH: the strikes have begun]

In a similar vein, Zelensky is warning Germany might walk into WWIII if it doesn’t supply him with missiles (I don’t follow his logic, but then I haven’t spent a few billion dollars of US “military aid” on cocaine).

Trump is trumpeting that Biden’s carelessness has left the world “on the brink of World War Three.”

The “doomsday clock” is set at 90 seconds to midnight.

And suddenly everyone is talking about conscription, (as if that would have any bearing at all on a WWWIII). Both the UK and Australia have had calls for conscription in the past week.

So, what’s going on?

How does the apparent surge in international conflict work with the “great reset” world government plan? Is it breaking it or making it?

Is it possible they are dangling a nuclear Sword of Damocles over the world in order to scare people into embracing “world peace” through a global new world order?

Or could they be picking the sides for the next Cold War?

…or is it all real, and we could all be radioactive ash by 2025?

What do you guys think?

• Will the UK bring back conscription?

• Is this about good old-fashioned military spending?

• Are we really on the brink of WWIII?

• Or is this a narrative, and if so what’s the purpose?

• What happens next?

Authored by Richard Porter via RealClear Wire,

Diversity and inclusion are not what’s wrong with DEI. 

“Diversity” and “Inclusion” are apple-pie American concepts that echo our national motto: out of many, one; from diversity, inclusion, and unity.

What DEI proponents have cleverly done, though, is sandwich between two “good” words a third word with ancient roots that they have vested with a new, radical meaning and evil implications. That word is “Equity.” 

Equity arose in Anglo-American legal history as a procedure by which an injured party could petition the king to right a wrong that the rule of law did not address.

For example, under law, damages were the sole remedy for a person who suffered a tort or breach of contract, but the law did not provide an adequate remedy for an ongoing, or not-yet-completed, wrongful action. In these events, the British king (or his chancellor) could step in and command the wrongdoing to stop.

In the U.S., the mechanics of “equity” were folded into the rule of law more generally. Courts administer equity and law the same way: on a case-by-case base with legal reasoning applied to the facts in light of how prior cases with similar facts were resolved. 

So, in our traditional usage, equity is encompassed within the rule of law. In our system of government of, by, and for the people, in which all people are created equal, there is no king above the law who is permitted to take actions outside the law. 

Still, the ancient idea of the king “doing justice” through equity made “equity” a synonym for “justice” in common usage. 

But the E in DEI is not a call for “justice” in the ordinary sense of remedying an individual wrong based on particular facts. Instead, it is a call for “social justice” based on a theory: the idea that whites, Jews, and Asians are oppressors and everyone else is oppressed. To the DEI self-styled “anti-racist,” every aspect of society and every institution is tainted by “white supremacy,” and the color-blind ideal of traditional American liberalism is not sufficient to remedy racism that’s built into institutional DNA.

So, in DEI speak, equity is a call for revolution; it’s a call to overturn all government, economic, and social institutions and the rule of law itself because all institutions are, by their nature, unjust to oppressed groups – or so they say. 

Equity turns the American ideal of equality and equal justice under the law upside down. Under DEI, individuals should benefit (and others suffer) based on skin pigment, gender, or ethnicity, not because of what they have done, and without any finding of a particularized injury or wrongdoing, all because of events long past involving people long dead.

DEI establishes a modern caste system, in which rights and benefits are assigned by a group in order to achieve “social justice;” we may have been created equal, but some are more equal than others, according to the “equity” ideologue.

The oppressor/oppressed framework for assessing “social justice” also drives DEI’s “intersectionality” logic: disparate groups who suffered discrimination in the past (excluding the Irish, Poles, Jews, and other disfavored whites) have a common interest in “social justice.” Intersectionality theory is why DEI ideologues hold the improbable idea that the U.S. civil rights struggle is linked to Middle Eastern conflicts.

Indeed, the response of DEI ideologues to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack reveals much about the E between the D and the I: Palestinians are oppressed and Israelis are oppressors, so Hamas’ attack is equity, not an atrocity. 

This immediate, weirdly enthusiastic embrace of Hamas’ evil-doing and the ongoing campus and other protests in support of Hamas raise the obvious question: If slaughter is justified in Israel, then what is acceptable in the name of equity in America, where DEI proponents believe “white supremacy” is an intractable systemic problem requiring the “deconstruction” of everything? 

Americans of good faith reject racism and should, therefore, toss DEI’s unjust concept of “equity” on the ash heap of history while renewing our commitment to D&I in the pursuit of equal opportunity and equal justice for all.  

Could this be why Joe Biden, who embraced “equity” instead of equality and equal opportunity from the outset of his administration, switched back to “equality” while speaking in Charleston recently, sidling away from the inhumanity of this ideology? Or was that merely a slip of the tongue by an old man harkening back to our earlier age? 

We shall see. But, based on what we have already seen, it’s clear that the E between the D&I spells an end to equal opportunity and equal justice for all, an end that would be inhumane, brutal, and evil.

Richard Porter is the National Committeeman from Illinois on the Republican National Committee.

Another powerful atmospheric river-fueled storm is set to produce life-threatening flooding across Southern California late Saturday into early Sunday and extending into next week. 

An atmospheric river will drench California from Sunday-Tuesday with over 6 inches of rain in the mountains.

The moisture plume can be seen streaming in from Hawaii & siphoning moisture from near the equator.

El Niño & an active Madden-Julian Oscillation are contributing to it. pic.twitter.com/sJkq9BBrwj

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) February 2, 2024

Marc Chenard, a senior branch forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center, told Bloomberg that the Los Angeles metro area could receive 5 to 6 inches of rain, while Santa Barbara could record upwards of 8 inches. This comes after an atmospheric river-fueled storm dumped rain from San Francisco to Southern California this week. 

“Chances are increasing that a lengthy period of heavy rain will develop late Saturday night and continue through most of Sunday and Monday,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned in an update this morning, adding, “This storm could generating unprecedented amounts of rain across a widespread area!”

“It does look like it will be a significant event and it will be a longer duration than this past one,” Chenard said. 

He warned: “The fact that it is later in the year, on top of what has been a wet period, surely makes everything worse.”

This weekend’s atmospheric river could dump more than a month’s worth of rain across much of Southern California in just several days. 

Does California now have too much water? 

Full spill ahead! 🌊 California officials triggered Oroville Dam’s main spillway release this week to mitigate atmospheric river flooding. pic.twitter.com/QCybMoH6H7

— AccuWeather (@accuweather) February 2, 2024

NWS forecasters also warned of the “potential for damaging, life-threatening flooding,” urging people to prepare. 

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Locked inside the crowded Chinese prison, blind lawyer Chen Guancheng hid his most treasured possession from the guards – inside a single serve milk box.

A pocket-size shortwave radio.

For three years, Mr. Chen looked forward to the hours after curfew. With a blanket wrapped over his head and the radio’s metal antenna parallel to his body, he lay still as the vibrating device under his ear brought to life a world outside the prison’s walls. Petitioners, protesters, human rights abuses, a grassroots movement to cut ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—in that tiny murmuring voice, he saw them all. He was free.

Over the decade since Mr. Chen escaped to the United States, the pool of Western broadcasters for information-hungry Chinese like him has shrunk considerably.

Radio powerhouses—BBC, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America—have either cut back on their China service or moved programs online. Meanwhile, the “Great Firewall,” the regime’s censorship apparatus aimed at isolating China digitally, seems only to grow taller by the day.

Bucking the trend is a largely volunteer-run radio network called Sound of Hope, whose 10 p.m. and midnight segments kept Mr. Chen informed about current affairs in China during his years in prison.

The company now boasts one of the largest shortwave broadcasting networks around China, with about 120 stations beaming signals to China 24/7.

Allen Zeng, Sound of Hope’s co-founder and CEO, sees shortwave as the answer to the regime’s information blackout.

“They can turn off the internet, carry out the killing, wash clean the blood, and turn it back on,” he told The Epoch Times, pointing to Iran’s pattern of blocking the internet during nationwide protests.

With shortwave radio, though, “they have nowhere to turn it off,” Mr. Zeng said.

“It’s like the rain falling down from the sky—they have no way to block the sky.”

A Voice to Trust

An unlikely journey began in 2004 for Mr. Zeng, then a Silicon Valley engineer.

Inside China, a massive nationwide campaign had been underway, targeting virtually one in 13 Chinese who live by truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, the three tenets of the faith group Falun Gong.

Arbitrary jailing, slave labor, the abuse of psychiatric drugs, and sexual abuse—the stories trickling out of China were sickening enough that Mr. Zeng and a team of like-minded Chinese expats felt they could no longer stand by.

“We had to do something about it. We needed to stop the killing,” he said.

The first thing that came to mind was the shortwave radio that had been a household item in China since the Cold War era, one that in 1989, Mr. Zeng and other college students had turned to for information when authorities rolled their tanks over democracy-loving demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

“Because nothing else could be trusted,” he said.

With little budget and know-how, the team started small: leasing one hour of airtime from Taiwanese national broadcaster Radio Taiwan International.

Around that time, “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” an Epoch Times editorial series that unpacked the nature of the Chinese regime, had just been published, and Sound of Hope took it to audio.

It was such a hit in Beijing that shortwave radios were out of stock for months.

The response, and occasional words of encouragement from listeners who managed to bypass China’s internet censorship, kept Mr. Zeng’s team going. Dissidents chipped in and programs diversified. Soon, they were Radio Taiwan International’s biggest contractor.

Gauging the size of the network’s audience is difficult given the opacity of data from China.

But Sound of Hope became so influential that it caught Beijing’s attention. The Chinese regime began to pressure the radio network’s Taiwanese partner.

Eventually, the Taiwanese broadcaster backed out. Sound of Hope was back to square one.

‘Walking in the Dark’

Giving up wasn’t in Mr. Zeng’s vocabulary.

As the partnership with Taiwan unraveled, the engineers raced to develop their own solutions. They drew inspiration from fishing vessels’ radio waves to build their own transmitter.

The result was a mini-tower based in Taiwan with upward-facing antennas that spread out like wings. They nicknamed it “Seagull.”

The team set its sights low. The first “seagull” had a power level of 100 watts—a thousandth of the smallest radio service they had leased from the Taiwanese broadcaster.

“It was the only thing we could afford,” Mr. Zeng said.

“Seagull” No. 1 was short-lived, and so were many of its successors whose signals the Chinese authorities quickly jammed. But to the team, it was a major discovery: At 100 watts, they still had a chance to be heard.

They kept producing and tweaking their equipment with each new creation.

“It was just like walking in the dark—we didn’t know whether there would be an end to this tunnel,” Mr. Zeng said.

Finally, on the 16th try, they saw a breakthrough. The signal broke through and held steady.

Mr. Zeng figured that they had, for the moment, consumed all the jamming power from China.

“We outgunned them pretty much,” he said. “They cannot move as fast as we did.”

Expansion

Technical challenges aside, getting the stations to work was no easy feat.

The wilderness, their best location for an uninterrupted signal, is also a haven for creepy crawlies, from scorpions to snakes. Hsieh Shih-mu, a volunteer, stepped on a snake once and sighted many more while building some of the earliest “seagulls” in Taiwan’s southern tip. Often, after wobbling back home on a motorcycle on the pitch-black mountain road, he was covered in mosquito bites.

Narrow and muddy, the path became doubly treacherous after rain. One time, another volunteer nearly fell off the hill—and would have, if not for the roadside tree branches that caught his motorcycle. They had to call a tow truck to haul the man back up.

Read more here…

Via Middle East Eye

While pressure has continued to mount on US President Joe Biden to take action in response to Israel’s war on Gaza, he has instead set his sights on the occupied West Bank. Activity by Israeli settlers has dramatically increased since the beginning of the Gaza war on October 7 and a number of governments have begun imposing penalties and bans on those suspected of violent or illegal activity.

On Thursday, the US government said it had imposed financial sanctions on four Israeli settlers for violence against Palestinians to “promote accountability for certain harmful activities that threaten the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank”. 

“The situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction – has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability,” Biden said in an executive order.

With more sanctions expected in the future, Middle East Eye takes a look at the four Israeli settlers targeted by the US…

David Chai Chasdai

A 29-year-old settler most notorious for instigating the deadly riots in the Palestinian town of Huwwara in February last year, David Chai Chasdai was arrested in Israel over his involvement in what an Israeli army commander branded “a pogrom committed by outlaws”.

The Huwwara rampage led to the death of 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash and the wounding of 98 other Palestinians, alongside the widespread destruction of property and burning of cars and homes.

Chasdai, who had long been monitored by the security services, was held for three months in administrative detention, a move rarely used against Israelis.

Though the riots were condemned by both Israeli politicians and the international community, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir criticised Chasdai’s detention as “undemocratic” and described him and his fellow settlers as “heroic”.

According to Haaretz, he was previously arrested for threatening a police officer, making dangerous substances in 2015 and 2017, and was convicted for assaulting a Palestinian taxi driver with teargas.

Einan Tanjil

Einan Tanjil, 21, was, according to the US State Department, involved in assaulting Palestinian farmers and left-wing Israeli activists with stones and clubs, resulting in “injuries that required medical treatment”.

In 2021, Tanjil was indicted for attacking 19-year-old Israeli activist Neta Ben-Porat with a club, beating her on the head and legs while she was trying to help Palestinians harvest olives near the West Bank town of Surif. The indictment also said he had possession of a knife and teargas.

Shalom Zicherman

In June, 32-year-old Shalom Zicherman found prominence when video footage of him assaulting Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank was circulated online.

Zicherman, who is from the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Yair, is seen blocking them on the street and attempting to break the windows of passing vehicles with activists inside.

לפני כשנה, שלום זיכרמן ממצפה יאיר זרק שתי אבנים על המכונית שבה ישבתי, שבר את החלון ופצע את יסמין ונור. בקרוב יש דיון נוסף בתיק שנפתח נגדו. זאת הזדמנות לשרשור קצר על למה למרות שזה המקרה היחיד שאני מכיר באופן אישי שמתנחל עומד בו לדין על אלימות, בסוף שלום הוא בעיקר שעיר לעזאזל. pic.twitter.com/H4Pjtg3huK

— Itai_Feitelson (@ItaiFeitelson) June 20, 2023

According to the State Department, Zicherman “cornered at least two of the activists and injured both”. He was indicted in 2022 over the attacks and his trial is still ongoing.

Israeli activist Itai Feitelson, who originally posted footage of the attack, said it was the only case he knew personally in which a settler had been prosecuted for violence, but said that “in the end, Shalom is mostly the scapegoat”.

Yinon Levi

The State Department described 31-year old Yinon Levi as having led a group of settlers who “engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank”. 

It said Levi had regularly led groups of settlers from the illegal Meitarim Farm outpost to assault Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, as well as threatening them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burning their fields, and destroying their property.

According to NPR, Levi’s response to the sanctions was to suggest it was “strange they’re dealing with this nonsense now”, adding that he had never visited the US or had property there.

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

A group of 74 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson demanding that he oppose the reauthorization of the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act. 

BREAKING: 74 House Representatives urge Speaker Johnson to REJECT a permanent reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 (a.k.a. archaic gun control) in a GOA-backed letter ahead of the law’s expiration on March 8th, 2024. pic.twitter.com/5R6G7lq7oo

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) February 1, 2024

For those unaware, the Undetectable Firearms Act was enacted in 1988 and bans the manufacture, sale, or import of any firearm that a metal detector cannot detect. 

No firearms that met the criteria to be banned under the law existed at the time of passage.

Additionally, because of a sunset provision in the law, it must be reauthorized every five or ten years. The last reauthorization was in 2013. 

📣Republicans in Congress CANNOT allow the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 to be expanded or made permanent, lest @JoeBiden weaponize its flaws against any firearm with major components made with plastic.

This is a legitimate and serious threat, and the administration has… https://t.co/ZqUSApfOFX

— Aidan Johnston (@RealGunLobbyist) February 1, 2024

The letter sent to Speaker Johnson states that “The Biden Administration has already demonstrated its ability to weaponize the Undetectable Firearms Act into a widespread plastic gun ban.” 

That’s true. We’ve already seen what harm the Biden administration can do with existing law.

Recently, a one-word change to the definition of “firearms dealer” was enough for the Biden ATF to put forth a rule that, in their own words, moved “the United States as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.”

Gun Owners of America has been fighting the Undetectable Firearms Act since it was enacted in 1988.

Since then, there have been many pro-gun members of Congress who were silent as the UFA was authorized and reauthorized by voice votes and unanimous consent.

When it was last reauthorized in 2013, Congressman Thomas Massie was the only voice shouting “nay,” but he didn’t even have a mere fifth of a quorum there to back him—which is required to demand a recorded vote.

This time, 73 Members of Congress have Rep. Massie’s back with this letter. The historic amount of opposition to the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 represented by this letter of opposition truly cannot be understated.

Gun Owners of America stands with our allies in Congress in opposition to the reauthorization of the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act. 

*   *   *

We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

Authored by Callista L. Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

Open Doors International, a nonprofit organization which supports persecuted Christians in more than 70 countries, recently released its annual 2024 World Watch List.

The list highlights and ranks countries in which Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination. Each year, the report brings vital attention to brave Christians around the world who suffer because of their faith.

Tragically, the 2024 report revealed that persecution against Christians is worsening. The previous year’s World Watch List found that more than 360 million Christians faced severe persecution and discrimination for their faith. Today, this figure has increased to more than 365 million people with “dangerously violent” instances of persecution taking place in World Watch List countries.

Further, the 2024 report recorded a significant increase in the number of attacks on churches and Christian properties last year. According to Open Doors, “More than 14,700 churches or Christian properties such as schools and hospitals were targeted in 2023. It marked a seven-fold increase compared with attacks recorded the previous year.”

Additionally, in 2023 the total number of Christians who were forced to leave their homes for various reasons – including political instability, war, and extremism – more than doubled from the previous year. Nearly 300,000 Christians had to flee their homes and approximately 3 percent of Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most dangerous countries were displaced.

According to the report, North Korea is “the most dangerous place in the world for Christians.” If a person’s Christian faith is discovered, he or she is killed on the spot or shipped to a labor camp where the chances of survival are slim. Kim Jong-un sees Christianity as a threat to the dictatorship and carries out an effective death sentence on believers.

In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping similarly sees Christianity as a threat to the Party’s power. Last year, at least 10,000 churches (mostly underground house churches) were closed in China while other state-sanctioned churches were required to display signs that read, “Love the Communist Party; Love the country; Love the religion.”

In Asia as a whole, two-in-five Christians are persecuted for their faith. Christians in India face violent attacks from Hindu extremists and are punished for violating anti-conversion laws in some states.

Rishi, a church leader in India, told Open Doors, “Though I was attacked twice, still I can feel God’s protection in my life. I was attacked, yet was not crushed. I will continue to trust my God.”

In Africa, one-in-five Christians are persecuted. Somalia was ranked No. 2 for countries in which Christians face the most extreme persecution on the 2024 World Watch List. In Somalia, most Christians are Muslim converts and are consequently targeted by Islamic extremists, namely the terrorist group al-Shabaab which has expressed its objective to eliminate Christians from the country.

Nigeria, according to Open Doors, “remains the deadliest place to follow Jesus.” In 2023, there were nearly 5,000 Christians who were killed for their faith, with 82 percent of the slayings occurring in Nigeria. Ranked No. 6 on the 2024 World Watch List, according to Open Doors, “More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all the other countries of the world combined.”

For millions of Christians around the world, the cost of worshipping freely is high. Some even pay the price with their lives.

The Open Doors 2024 World Watch List brings crucial attention to Christian persecution and discrimination – and is a vital tool for those who wish to help Christians around the world.

For more commentary from Callista Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

Authored by Scott Sturman and Doug Goodman via The Epoch Times,

Executive Order 14057 justifies the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions as necessary to counteract the existential threat of climate change. The program’s comprehensive and prohibitively expensive initiative proposes to transform the operational military by achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, purportedly on firmly established “science-based” targets that are validated by computer models and consensus within the scientific community.

The plan’s ambitious yet unrealistic goals, which are presented as an alarmist ultimatum, ignore the foundational principles of physics and battle-proven lessons of military history.

The Plan establishes emission objectives by determining “alignment with the scale of reductions required to limit global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.” These emission reduction targets come directly from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Net-Zero Paris Climate Accord. The IPCC is not a science based organization that conducts its own research but rather a governmental policy organization whose members are countries, not scientists, and whose representatives are bureaucrats who develop and promote international climate policy. The IPCC sponsors and filters climate science research generated from outside organizations to support its primary charter of establishing the man made causes and influences on climate change.

The narrative that the earth’s climate balances precariously on the brink of catastrophe and merits the distinction of a national security priority is constantly presented to the public in familiar, apocalyptic terms. President Biden warns that global warming is the greatest threat to national security. DOD Secretary Austin alerts the public of existential climate threats, including an ice-free Arctic Ocean, although as of January 2023 the Arctic sea ice pack is at its highest since 2003. The DOD and high ranking officials from the navy, army, and air force proclaim that it is incumbent upon the armed services to implement net zero without delay to avert a worldwide catastrophe. Despite the incessant fearmongering, no one appears to pause and consider that the DOD produces only 1 percent of the United State’s CO2 emissions, which in turn is responsible for 13 percent of the world’s total. Even if the DOD achieves net zero, eliminating 0.13 percent of the world’s CO2 output would not detectably reduce global temperatures.

The McKinsey Report details the enormous costs and disruption to society to attain net zero and concedes there is only an even chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C, and it is far from certain whether the world will be able to keep the temperature increase to that level. The transition will require a fundamental change to the world’s economy, costing an estimated $6 trillion per year for the next 30 years. This translates to $11,000 per year for every American until 2050 for a result that cannot be ensured. Most of the sacrifice will come from the Third World, where 1/3-1/2 of GDP will be required to achieve net zero, but at a further cost of killing millions and plunging more millions into extreme poverty and starvation. Bjorn Lomborg warns that a zero fossil fuel solution is expensive, leads to misery and an impoverishment of the planet, and will fail to mitigate temperature elevation appreciably.

The hasty evolution to net zero comes at a prohibitive price, and its adherents concoct doomsday scenarios that demand and ennoble mass sacrifice. Depicting a world in complete environmental collapse due to the effects of fossil fuels promotes a theme intended to instill panic. The DOD embellishes adverse weather-related and environmental events but fails to place them in context or provide contrary interpretations. The extent and history of glacial retreat, sea level rise, desertification, forest fires, heat waves, death due to heat as opposed to cold, hurricanes, and tornados are exaggerated and depicted in emotional terms to legitimize drastic action. These contentions have been examined extensively, using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) and the IPCC’s own data, and refute the hypothesis that there is a climate crisis based on these criteria. The number and intensity of severe climate events have diminished, and for those that occur, poor countries lack the resources to deal with natural disasters, while wealthier societies are able to better mitigate structural damage and human injury.

Computer modeling, a useful tool for conceptualization, forms the heart of climate science. The technique, however, is unable to prove hypotheses and has been wildly inaccurate since its inception. Climate science is a complex subject of interacting variables acting over time cycles that differ by order of magnitudes from the depths of the oceans to the upper stratosphere that are in turn affected by orbital mechanics and solar perturbations. The authenticity of ground-based temperature readings, the raison d’être of climate activists, raises alarm about the IPCC’s most fundamental assessments, since the underestimation of the heat island effect may distort the temperature anomaly data by up to 40 percent.

The major problem with computer models is the resolution and averaging required to make the models computable. The atmosphere is divided into volumes with horizontal grid lengths of tens of kilometers within which parameters like temperature, pressure, and density are averaged to represent the entire volume. Atmospheric processes like cloud physics and turbulence occur at scales well below the resolution of these cells, which compels modelers to estimate the values and effects of these processes. These guesses invariably favor global warming and the deleterious effects of CO2.

Since data collection points rarely align with the grid points required by the numerical models, discrepancies of hundred of kilometers exist, which modelers homogenize to allow the data to fit the grid. This leads to false adjustments and manipulations of the real data. Computational models are inherently unstable and diverge from physical reality. At distances below the grid scale, perturbations multiply and a butterfly effect ensues. Modelers are forced constantly to realign or reset the initial conditions, which mask the deviations and give the illusion that the models accurately predict observed conditions.

DOD officials defend net-zero defense prioritization by claiming that scientific consensus and sham peer reviewed studies validate this contention. Peer review has degenerated into a process that favors a regression to the mean, and has become a form of consensus. The original 97 percent consensus claim from Cook in 2013 that humans are the major cause of global warming that will result in catastrophic climate events has been widely discredited. Investigators point out that the number is closer to 1.6 percent, but the original, inaccurate claim of near-universal consensus, advanced by Barack Obama and John Kerry, remains a favored technique of politicians to inject ideology into science.

John Clauser won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work with particle entanglement and serves as an example that the most distinguished and competent scientists are not immune from rebuke for challenging the climate change narrative. Dr. Clauser stated publicly that there is no climate emergency and the dangerous corruption of science threatens the world economy and welfare of billions of people. Mainstream media outlets allied to climate science activism predictably marginalized the distinguished physicist with ad hominem attacks and inferred that only bona fide climate scientists like Dr. Michael Mann, the originator of the widely debunked hockey stick shaped temperature acceleration profile, are qualified to speak on the subject.

The DOD plan to reduce greenhouse emissions makes no mention of the stabilizing benefits of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations in terms of food production or the weak correlation between temperature and CO2 levels over the last 570 millions years. There has been a 20 percent increase in the world’s biomass over the past 40 years, and CO2 is responsible for 70 percent of this benefit. Some of the world’s most unstable regions have achieved an element of food security, as exuberant plant life has reversed desertification and conferred a degree of economic stability—a benefit for developing more accurate military contingencies.

A nation’s military priorities must optimize its access to natural resources, develop war plans that allow for flexibility and maximum projection of power, and to conclude that one’s enemies will not be concerned with carbon footprints when it comes to surviving and winning a major military conflict. No commander purposely informs potential enemies that the armed forces will be restricted for decades to specific, unproven technologies and untested operational strategies that are established solely to comply with climate change dogma. Future and present adversaries are under no such constraints and will devote resources predicated on the best opportunity for success. Virtue signaling climate scientists and their dutiful DOD disciples, whose premises are based on computer modeling, enact policies that weaken the military and serve as classic examples of those who hijack science to advance political agendas.

From RealClearWire

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

• China is over the halfway mark in completing its strategically vital oil project in the critical Iraqi energy hub of Nasiriyah.

• This facility will act as a storage hub and supply conduit for 3.0-3.5 million barrels of crude oil.

• Even before the huge strategic importance of the new Nasiriyah facility, China will benefit from its massively enhanced presence there in the matter of increasing its oil supplies from southern Iraq, with the DhiQar Province being home to several huge fields

China is over the halfway mark in completing its strategically vital oil project in the critical Iraqi energy hub of Nasiriyah, at the heart of the some of the country’s biggest oil and gas fields and close to its main export terminal of Al Fao in Basra. According to the Iraq Ministry of Planning, the China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company (CPPEC) is now over 55 percent complete on the construction of the country’s biggest crude oil storage facility, located in Nasiryah city in DhiQar province.

This facility will act as a storage hub and supply conduit for 3.0-3.5 million barrels of crude oil that will then either go to export out of Basra Port or will be transported through pipelines to refineries and power plants in central and northern Iraq. It will also act as a logistical command centre for all of China’s extensive oil and gas projects in Iraq and for the build-out of multiple non-oil projects connected to the all-encompassing ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’, as analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. 

Even before the huge strategic importance of the new Nasiriyah facility, China will benefit from its massively enhanced presence there in the matter of increasing its oil supplies from southern Iraq, with the DhiQar Province being home to several huge fields. The Gharraf field is one, holding around 1.3 billion barrels of oil reserves and currently producing around 130,000 barrels per day (bpd), with plans to increase this to 230,000 bpd within the next two years. Lead operator Petronas of Malaysia said last May that it wants to sell its stake in the field. However, China already effectively controls what goes on at the site through major ‘contract-only’ awards secured by its companies.

The winning of multiple contract-only awards by Chinese firms at major oil and gas sites in Iraq was for a long time the preferred way for the country to covertly gain control over a site without provoking the ire of the U.S., while it still retained a strategic interest in Iraq, as also analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. In Gharraf’s case, the China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation (CPECC) was awarded a US$308 million engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning contract a while ago. Additionally, July 13 saw China’s Zhongman Petroleum and Natural Group sign a separate engineering and construction project for Gharraf. Back in 2015, Zhongman was also awarded a US$526.6 million drilling deal for Iraq’s supergiant West Qurna 2 oilfield. Further emboldened by the effective withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq at the end of its combat mission in December 2021, the beginning of this year saw PetroChina take over the lead developer role at the neighbouring supergiant West Qurna 1 oilfield from the U.S.’s ExxonMobil. This was followed just a week later by the awarding of a major build-own-operate-transfer contract to a subsidiary of PetroChina to develop the Nahr bin Umar onshore gas field.

At the other end of the development scale in DhiQar Province is the supergiant Nasiriyah oilfield, discovered by the Iraq National Oil Company in 1975, with an estimated 4.36 billion barrels of reserves in place. Coming on stream in 2009 and listed on Iraq’s 2009-2010 fast-track plan, which aimed to raise its output to about 50,000 bpd, the first half of 2009 saw ENI, Nippon Oil, Chevron, and Repsol submitting bids to develop the field on an Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contract basis, with a consortium comprised of Nippon Oil, Inpex, and JGC Corporation looking set to win the contract before negotiations broke down again. The departure in 2014 of the divisive figure of Shia Islamist Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, and his replacement by the seemingly more inclusive, although also Shia, Haider al-Abadi led to optimism in Iraq that the Nasiriyah project could move ahead again, but these hopes were also dashed.

China has long seen Nasiriyah as an important part of its overall plans for Iraq, which are essentially to turn it into a client state, as it has done with Iran, to create one giant oil and gas station for it in the Middle East, which it can also use for geopolitical pressure purposes against the U.S. In Iran’s case, China has been successful so far into effecting this transformation from it as sovereign state into a Middle Eastern equivalent of Hong Kong (a Special Administrative Region of China) through the all-encompassing ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’ , as first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. China is using the same sort of arrangement for Iraq, as evidenced in the equally all-encompassing ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’ of 2021. This in turn, was an extension in scale and scope of the ‘Oil for Reconstruction and Investment’ agreement signed by Baghdad and Beijing in September 2019, which allowed Chinese firms to invest in infrastructure projects in Iraq in exchange for oil.

Following this, Iraq approved nearly IQD1 trillion (US$700 million) for infrastructure projects in the city of Al-Zubair in the southern Iraq oil hub of Basra. The Al-Zubair announcement came around the same time as the awarding by Baghdad of another major contract to another Chinese company to build a civilian airport to replace the military base in Nasiriyah – the capital of DhiQar Province. This airport project, China announced, would include the construction of multiple cargo buildings and roads linking the airport to the city’s town centre and separately to other key oil areas in southern Iraq, which it now controls. In the later discussions involved in the 2021 ‘Iraq-China Framework Agreement’, it was decided unanimously by both sides that the airport could be expanded later to be a dual-use civilian and military airport. The military component would be usable by China without first having to consult with whatever Iraqi government was in power at the time, a senior source who works closely with Iraq’s Oil Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com at the time.