[KhaamaPress] A senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the editor of The Long War Journal has stated that ISIS remains a threat from Afghanistan.
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the editor of The Long War Journal, made these comments on Friday, January 3, during an interview with Fox News.
Bill Roggio pointed out that "the claim of ISIS’s defeat, just like the premature claim of al-Qaeda’s defeat, is inaccurate."
He emphasized that while the group may have suffered setbacks, their presence remains active. This senior fellow also clarified that, besides Afghanistan, ISIS continues to pose a significant threat in Africa, especially in the Sahel and East Africa, as well as in Iraq and Syria.
He argued that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... ’s regime in Syria have created security vacuums in South Asia and the Middle East.
Roggio’s comments were made in relation to a recent attack in New Orleans on Wednesday, where 15 people were killed and 30 others injured. After the incident, the FBI revealed that an ISIS flag was found in the attacker’s vehicle.
It is also noteworthy that ISIS was responsible for an attack during the August 2021 evacuation operation at Kabul’s airport, which killed 13 U.S. soldiers and over 150 Afghans.
These attacks highlight the continuing global threat posed by ISIS, despite claims of its defeat in certain regions. The persistent instability in areas like Afghanistan and Syria allows bully boy groups to maintain their operations and further destabilize already fragile regions. The international community must continue to address these threats to ensure greater global security.
International organizations and research foundations have revealed that more than 20 terrorist groups, including ISIS, are active in Afghanistan. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by... the Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... claim that ISIS has no presence in the country.
Many are the kind words that have been spoken at the worst possible time. Many are the charitable causes that have had the opposite effect to that which was intended.
But it can also be too kind. In 2015, the historian Tom Holland, reflecting on the Rotherham grooming gangs, posted:
The true nightmare of #Rotherham is that the motives of those who turned a blind eye, however monstrous the consequences, were indeed noble.
“It wasn’t the indifference that was noble,” he clarified, “But the concern not to demonise a minority. Caring for the weak. The Christian thing.”
Amid renewed interest in the subject of grooming gangs, this week, Mr Holland has received a lot of criticism. He replied:
My position remains:
The authorities have a responsibility to preserve good race relations.
This is a noble goal.
In the context of the grooming gangs, this goal resulted in fatefully wrong decisions being taken.
10 years on, the tragedy of this is even more evident
To be clear, I am a fan of Holland’s, and am quite aware — unlike some of his fiercer critics — that he is not claiming that the failure to stop the rape and abuse was noble but that it sprang from a misplaced noble impulse.
But the fact remains that this is outright wrong.
The officials in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and elsewhere did not have a high-minded concern for social cohesion — they had a selfish and small-minded desire not to rock the boat.
In defence of Holland, the author and lecturer Adrian Hilton wrote:
He isn’t speaking about individual motives, but social virtue, and he is absolutely right: the King’s peace—pax regis—is a noble pursuit. You can cavil with his hierarchy of nobleness, but public order is indeed a noble pursuit. And so is child safeguarding.
Obviously, when a concern for “public order” is enabling mass child rape, “public order” is not the virtue that it might have been. If my concern with litter in the park is causing me to hurl abandoned puppies into the bin, that “social virtue” has warped into something perverse. Still, Hilton is hinting towards that with his reference to a “hierarchy of nobleness”, so I’ll ask again — to what extent was that a motivation?
Now, it is true that officials were concerned about public order. Turning to page 112 of the independent inquiry into the grooming gangs in Telford, for example, one finds:
Between 2006 to 2008, senior management within the Council were concerned that allegations about Asian male involvement with CSE in Wellington had the potential to start a “race riot” …
But what else does one find? One finds the fear of “complaints of racism” and of being “politically incorrect”. That doesn’t sound noble to me — it sounds cowardly and self-centred. Indeed, it makes it sound like the concern with public order had less to do with virtuous ideals than with protecting their careers and their institutions. There is a difference between being concerned with peace for its own sake and being concerned with peace because your arse is on the line if there turns out to be violence.
Yet the failure to stop the rapes had many causes — and they don’t get any nobler. In the Jay Report into the grooming gangs in Rotherham, for example, we hear appalling details about the classism and misogyny of police officials. According to one witness, the attitude of some police officers was that the victims were “undesirables” who could not be trusted.
“Police weren’t arsed with us, really,” said one victim who was key to the belated investigations in Rochdale, “They don’t give a fuck when you’re not from a wealthy background.”
Then there is the whiff of outright corruption — the laptops and documents that were stolen in Rotherham, with, in the latter case, “no signs of a forced entry to the key-coded and locked security doors”.
Whatever went missing, one doubts that it was evidence of a sincere concern for the public good.
Again, the desire to explain a sin is not the same as the desire to excuse it. I am not suggesting that Messrs Holland and Hilton are anything but appalled by the failure to stop the rapists. But it is a mistake to ennoble that failure. That failure was not just tragic but actively wicked and it is important to appreciate that if appropriate accountability is going to be achieved.
The road to Hell is not always paved with good intentions. Some of its paving stones are also cowardice, venality and spite.
A useful article about a period of Russian military history that is mostly shrouded in politics. by Yuri Aquilyanov
[RedStar] In 1919, the Civil War raged throughout the territory of the former Russian Empire. Troops of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia under the command of General A.I. Denikin launched a broad offensive on Moscow. General P.N. Wrangel's combined group captured Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd), and the cavalry corps of Generals K.K. Mamontov and A.G. Shkuro operated in the Voronezh region.
In order to combat the mounted masses of the Red Army, it was necessary to create something new, capable of opposing the professional cavalry, which consisted mainly of experienced cavalrymen of the Don and Kuban-Terek Cossack troops. This new formation was the 1st Cavalry Army - an operational-strategic association of the Red Army, designed to combat the enemy's mounted masses in the steppe expanses of southern Russia.
On November 17, 1919, the Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) of the Republic, at the suggestion of the RVS of the Southern Front, decided to create the 1st Cavalry Army, and already on November 19, the order for the troops of the Southern Front stated: "... the 1st Cavalry Corps of the Southern Front in its current composition is to be renamed the Cavalry Army of the RSFSR." S. M. Budyonny was appointed commander of the Cavalry Army. It included four cavalry divisions, a separate Caucasian special-purpose brigade, an armored motor detachment, four armored trains, and an air group (a total of 16,000–17,000 fighters).
The 1st Cavalry Army played a decisive role in the Donbass offensive operation. At the end of 1919, the Red Army faced a critical task: to liberate the Donetsk coal basin; the republic’s economy was in dire need of coal. On December 12, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front set the tasks for its troops: the 1st Cavalry Army, which, together with the 9th and 12th rifle divisions attached to it, constituted the front’s strike group, was to advance on the Donbass and cut off the Volunteer Army’s retreat routes to the Don region.
The battle for the Donbass began on December 25, 1919. On the approaches to Donbass, the strike group dealt a stunning blow to Denikin's forces and immediately captured the crossings over the Seversky Donets. The 1st Cavalry Army routed the enemy's cavalry group consisting of the cavalry corps of Mamontov, Shkuro and Ulagay. On January 1, 1920, the troops of Budyonny's strike group and the 13th Army completely cleared Donbass of the enemy. They accomplished their task brilliantly. Soviet Russia received the largest coal and metallurgical base in the country at that time, with a population that overwhelmingly supported the Bolsheviks.
In January 1920, the 1st Cavalry Army, in cooperation with the troops of the 8th Army, liberated Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don. During these battles, the main forces of the White Guard Volunteer Army were routed, the enemy front was split into two parts, which allowed the Kuban and Don lands to be separated.
At the end of January 1920, the 1st Cavalry Army became part of the Caucasian Front. In February, operating in the Tikhoretsk direction, it carried out the Yegorlyk operation together with the 20th, 34th and 50th Rifle divisions of the 10th Army attached to it, during which the 1st Kuban Infantry Corps of the Whites and General Pavlov's cavalry group were routed.
In his book "Whites against the Reds", the white emigration activist Dmitry Lekhovich gave the following assessment of the commander of the 1st Cavalry Army: "He (S.M. Budyonny) turned out to be a resourceful and dashing cavalry commander, who knew how to grasp the main thing. For him, a horse was not so much a means of transportation as a weapon, and when he formed the cavalry corps, which later expanded into the First Cavalry Army, the horses in his units were the best, specially selected from the stud farms of Central Russia."
The 1st Cavalry Army, being a powerful strategic strike maneuver force as part of the Southwestern Front, made a significant contribution to the fight against the Polish intervention
The actions of the 1st Cavalry Army in the war with Poland in 1920 were a classic example of the use of a large cavalry unit for strategic purposes. In connection with the attack by Poland, the 1st Cavalry Army was transferred from the North Caucasus to Ukraine and included in the Southwestern Front. The cavalry made a thousand-kilometer march in mounted formation along the route Maikop - Rostov-on-Don - Yekaterinoslav - Uman. During the march, units of the 1st Cavalry Army routed rebel detachments operating in the rear of the troops of the Southwestern Front.
On May 25, 1920, the Cavalry Army concentrated in the Uman region. By this time, it numbered 16 thousand fighters, 304 machine guns and 48 artillery pieces.
The Front Command decided to break through the Polish front in Ukraine with the 1st Cavalry Army, initially directing the efforts of the Soviet troops of the Southwestern Front against the Kiev and then against the Odessa enemy group.
To accomplish this task, the 1st Cavalry Army was concentrated in a sector 10 kilometers northeast of Novo-Fastiv. Its combat formation was multi-echelon, which ensured the build-up of the force of the attack during the offensive. The 4th Cavalry Division was in the first echelon, with the 14th and 11th Cavalry Divisions positioned in a ledge behind its flanks, and the 6th Cavalry Division and Special Cavalry Brigade in the third echelon.
By the evening of June 3, the 1st Cavalry occupied the starting line for the offensive. It was raining during these days. The Polish command expected that the bad weather would prevent the Soviet troops from starting military operations. Nevertheless, on June 5, the 1st Cavalry Army, with a powerful blow on a narrow front, broke through the enemy's defenses in the Samgorodok-Snezhna sector, and on June 7 captured Zhitomir and Berdichev deep in the enemy's rear, causing a hasty retreat of all forces of the 2nd and 3rd Polish armies.
The Soviet offensive was so rapid that by the evening of the same day, the 1st Cavalry Army broke through north and east of Kazatin and reached the rear of the 3rd Polish Army. By the evening of June 7, the 4th Cavalry Division captured Zhitomir, destroying the Polish garrison and freeing seven thousand Red Army soldiers from captivity, who were returned to duty. On the same day, the 11th Cavalry Division captured Berdichev. In addition, the 1st Cavalry Army defeated the Polish cavalry group under the command of General Savitsky in the Belopolye region, which covered the left flank of the 6th Polish Army.
By June 8, Budyonny's men finally broke the resistance of the enemy troops concentrated in the Kazatin and Berdichev region. The depth of the 1st Cavalry Army's breakthrough into the rear of the Polish troops was 120-140 km. The Polish front in Ukraine was split into two parts. Having lost control of its troops, the Polish headquarters headed by Pilsudski, which was in Zhitomir, hastily redeployed to Novograd-Volynsky.
A participant in the White movement and later an émigré, Roman Gul, described the actions of the 1st Cavalry Army in the war with the Polish gentry in 1920: “This attack by the Scythian cavalry seemed like a catastrophe to Poland. The Budyonny men tore the enemy front with an 80-kilometer gap, and rushed headlong into the Polish rear, smashing and sweeping away everything in their path.”
Perhaps the most vivid picture of the moral impact of the Cavalry Army on the Polish bourgeois state was painted by Marshal Pilsudski himself. “However, these events had the strongest impact,” he wrote, “not on the front itself, but outside it, in the rear. Panic broke out in areas located even hundreds of kilometers from the front, and sometimes even in high headquarters, and spread deeper and deeper into the rear... A new weapon of struggle, which Budyonny's cavalry turned out to be for our troops, who were unprepared for this, became some kind of legendary, invincible force."
The 1st Cavalry Army, being a powerful strategic strike maneuver force as part of the Southwestern Front, made a significant contribution to the fight against the Polish intervention at the decisive stage of military operations, proved the viability of large cavalry units, their ability to solve problems of a strategic scale...
In May 1921, the 1st Cavalry Army was disbanded, but its headquarters remained until October 1923. The experience of the Civil War was further developed in the theory of Soviet military art in the interwar period. In the 1930s, when S.M. Budyonny headed the Red Army Cavalry Inspectorate, where combat regulations and instructions for cavalry actions in modern combat were actively developed.
During exercises in a number of military districts, the possibilities of creating and using cavalry-mechanized groups (KMG) in combat were studied as part of a front-line offensive operation.
The emergence of KMGs was due to the desire to combine the mobility of cavalry with the great striking force and high protection of the emerging tank and mechanized troops. The Red Army command worked out issues of close cooperation between cavalry, tank units, and aviation. KMGs were widely used during the Great Patriotic War. They were used primarily in forested and swampy, mountainous, and mountainous-desert terrain.
The Formosa Air Battle was the largest air-sea battle of the Pacific war, marked by both strokes of luck and loss.
By Mike Fink
[USNI] The Battle of Leyte Gulf (23–26 October 1944) casts a long shadow. Considered the largest naval battle in modern history, it marked the end of the Imperial Japanese Navy as an effective fighting force and the beginning of the kamikaze campaign. However, this battle’s notoriety has overshadowed a key event that occurred less than two weeks earlier: the Formosa (present-day Taiwan) Air Battle, fought between 12 and 16 October.
Though still relatively unknown to general audiences of World War II history, the Formosa Air Battle was the single largest air-sea battle of the Pacific war. Japan committed a greater mass of airpower to this battle—1,425 aircraft over the course of one week—than anything the U.S. Navy had faced prior. In fact, the Japanese air force participating in the Formosa Air Battle was multiple times bigger than the carrier air formations encountered during the more well-known Battle of the Philippine Sea.1
For Fighting Squadron (VF) 18, a new squadron operating as part of the U.S. Navy’s Fast Carrier Task Force, Formosa was a deadly proving ground.2 Of its 47 original aviators, fewer than half had seen Japanese planes in the air prior to Formosa. An even smaller number had engaged in air-to-air combat. They did have one thing working in their favor, though: They had undergone extensive training under an instructor whose plane-handling skills were second to none.
His name was Cecil E. Harris. He was a quiet man, a South Dakota farm boy who left the family plot to become a schoolteacher during the prewar years. Though interested in flying from an early age, his mother had disallowed it “because it’s too dangerous.”3 He had to wait until college to enroll in civilian pilot training courses and subsequently undergo naval aviation cadet training. Once in the Naval Reserve, his fitness reports beamed that Harris was “an outstanding young pilot,” had “an exemplary manner,” showed “excellent judgment and initiative,” and was “well liked both by officers and men in the squadron.” He was leadership material through and through.4
The Navy’s second-ranking ace of World War II, Harris used the Hellcat’s ability to outperform Japanese fighters on the vertical plane to maximum effect.
Lieutenant Harris also was the only member of VF-18 who had been in a serious air battle before the squadron’s deployment on board the USS Intrepid (CV-11) in August 1944. He had been credited with destroying two Japanese A6M Zero fighters while stationed on Guadalcanal in the spring of 1943.5 Fortunately for “Fighting 18,” the squadron’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Edward “Murf” Murphy, valued experience and talent over considerations of rank. Harris was made flight officer and put in charge of training the squadron despite being outranked by several of his peers. According to Lieutenant (junior grade) Bryant “Wally” Walworth, Harris “worked his very fingers off” getting them up to speed.6
After more than six months of training in Hawaii and a month of combat operations on board the Intrepid, the greenhorns of Fighting 18 were as ready as they could be to undergo their trial by fire. There was a sense of foreboding about the Formosa operation. Lieutenant (junior grade) Charles “Punchy” Mallory wrote in his diary: “We received our briefing on Formosa and we may run into something big there.”7 Lieutenant Harris knew what was coming. It weighed on him. One of his responsibilities as flight officer was to draw up schedules for these operations, assigning men to what could be their last mission. Always leading from the front, Harris made sure to assign his division to the morning fighter sweep that would kick off the Formosa operation.
The Pacific sky was still “as black as the inside of your hat” when flight operations began at 0606 on 12 October.8 That did not seem to impede the Intrepid’s deck crews, who had the 16 F6F Hellcats assigned to the sweep airborne within 10 minutes. After grouping up with 20 additional fighters from nearby carriers in the Intrepid’s Task Group 38.2, the sweep proceeded beyond the destroyer screen out over the empty sea.
Bomb-laden Hellcats quickly made landfall, roaring over Formosa’s heavily forested coastline and mountainous interior. Skipper Murphy led the sweep into the Strait of Formosa before turning around to approach the target, Shinchiku (present-day Hsinchu), from the west. Dawn light twinkled off his Hellcats as they wheeled and turned together in tight formation like a flock of starlings.
[Breitbart] Officials knew about the coronavirus breakout in the fall of 2019 — sooner than they claim — and the biotechnology used to create the virus developed in the U.S. and was then exported to China, Dr. Andrew Huff, author of The Truth About Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History, said on Breitbart News Saturday.
Huff walked through some of the revelations, stating that “when you really boil this down, most of the biotechnology, or the advanced technology that was used to engineer SARS-CoV-2, was developed in the United States – primarily at the University of North Carolina with Dr. Ralph Baric – and illegally exported to the Chinese.”
“So there’s so many different crazy facets of this story … The recent development just two weeks ago, there’s an article published in The Sun which shows that senior intelligence officials had informed senior Pentagon officials that the disease had been spreading in China in early October 2019,” he said, noting that this is not the same timeline the public was offered.
“If you look at what the U.S. government had been told, telling us, what Dr. Anthony Fauci had been telling us, Dr. Birx and all these corrupt individuals, was that this disease started spreading on the planet in December 2019,” he said, explaining that the timeline is simply not true.
Huff said he used to work in the “classified space of developing intelligence tools for infectious diseases, specifically.” If one looks at the proper chain of command and how long it would take that information to work through the proper channels to be validated, “it really looks like the disease started spreading in late August, early September, 2019.” Kinda the classic 'asian flu' cycle
“So what we really have here is a giant scandal to subvert the President of the United States at the time: Donald Trump,” Huff said.
“So what the heck were all these Pentagon and intelligence officials doing? Why wasn’t the president notified? And really, you know, you step back and said, look at what is this. It’s treason. And I’m really excited for RFK to come to office,” he said, predicting there will be accountability for all of the corrupt health, intelligence, and health security officials that were involved in the giant coverup.
Further, Huff explained that a preemptive pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci would essentially implicate everyone.
“At best, Dr Fauci is guilty of 25 million counts of negligent criminal homicide. So they knew that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a leaky lab, but they allowed the research to go on. They illegally exported the technology. They didn’t have the proper safety controls in place from a risk management perspective on the United States side and with the contractors involved with this research,” he said, adding, “And on top of it, you’re giving advanced biotechnology to an enemy of the United States.”
“All of this is illegal. … So in U.S. law, if the president issues a pardon to someone, and the person accepts the pardon, it’s an admission of guilt of the crimes. And if you look at all the individuals involved with the cover up, the export of this technology, that is a violation of the RICO Act. And you can use, you know, basically the same kind of criminal process and prosecution that they use against mobsters to go after someone like Anthony Fauci and all his conspirators,” he continued.
“So even if they pardon Anthony Fauci, if he accepts the pardon, it then incriminates everyone involved in the RICO, and they’re all guilty. So you know, if they go and they pardon Anthony Fauci with a blanket pardon, he accepts it, well, he condemns everyone else in the government who’s, who is involved in this operation,” Huff added.
#2
Officials knew about the coronavirus breakout in the fall of 2019
Apparently, there was publicly available satellite imagery of MASSIVE changes to traffic patterns in Wuhan in September of 2019. Why hasn't the MSM been trumpeting this for five years?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/05/2025 11:19 Comments ||
Top||
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
NOT!
[LawEnforcementToday] In 2015, roughly ten years before the New Orleans terrorist attack that killed 15 and injured dozens of people, including two city police officers, an FBI agent was befriended by a man, Erick Jamal Hendricks, who connected him to a radical Islamist terrorist, Elton Simpson, The Federalist reports.
The undercover agent, who has never been identified, encouraged Simpson to “tear up Texas” after being made aware of a possible terrorist attack at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest to be held in Garland. In other words, much as what is alleged to have happened at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, where participants were encouraged by undercover FBI agents and informants to breach the Capitol, also occurred ten years ago.
The Dallas Morning News reported that the contest was to be held at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland. On May 3, 2015, just before the cartoon contest was to end, Simpson and an accomplice, Madir Hamid Soofi jumped out of a vehicle loaded with multiple rifles and handguns.
The two men started shooting dozens of rounds at the building, however, they were shot and killed by responding police officers and SWAT teams. CBS News reported at the time that local police had “prevented a massacre.”
The FBI agent was present at the attack and later told Hendricks, who was not at the attack site, that he was his “eyes” that day, the Dallas Morning News reported.
According to an AP wire at the time reported by WFAA, the unidentified FBI agent drove by the two men as they opened fire at the Culwell Center.
Court documents alleged that Garland was spoken explicitly about as a potential target in conversations between the FBI agent and Hendricks in Baltimore, Maryland, the day before the attack. Hendricks was arrested over a year after the Garland attack.
An attorney who represented a security guard who was shot in the leg during the attack and Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, who was convicted on multiple weapons and conspiracy charges in connection with the case, criticized the FBI and believes there is more to the story.
“We are convinced that there is much more to this story than the FBI has admitted,” the attorney, Trenton Roberts, told the FBI.
While the FBI agent's presence was initially reported in August 2016, his proximity was unknown until later.
“A dark sedan in front of the agent made an abrupt stop. As the agent drove around the car, two men with an Islamic State flag, wearing body armor and carrying military-style rifles, got out and opened fire.”
In court, Kareem’s lawyer, Daniel Maynard, said the FBI agent didn’t attempt to stop the terror attack, the AP report read.
“This was not an unbiased investigation by the FBI to determine the truth, but a rush to judgment to get a conviction and to cover up the FBI’s own ineptness and misdeeds,” Maynard wrote.
The FBI is the lead investigative agency probing what led Shansud-Din Jabbar, 42, to carry out the New Orleans attack in the early morning hours on New Year’s Day. Given their history of foreknowledge of such incidents, can they really be counted on to do a fair and impartial investigation? As seems to be the case lately, dead men tell no tales, and just as the man who shot at President-elect Trump was taken out, so too was Jabbar.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Israel entered the year 2025 in the conditions of a “besieged fortress” and fighting on several fronts at once.
At the same time, compared to the beginning of the year, the socio-political situation in the country has significantly leveled out. Israeli leaders managed to quell popular discontent with unpopular decisions, preventing a political crisis.
For some politicians – first and foremost for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the outgoing year has been a triumph in many ways. The country’s position on the international stage has been strengthened, and Israelis intend to continue their “victorious march.”
However, upon closer examination it is clear that strengthening in some areas has provoked distortions in domestic political life. However, the Israeli establishment is trying not to notice them for now.
UNSINKABLE
The person of the Israeli Prime Minister has been the focus of most attention in the past year. By the end of 2024, Netanyahu had significantly strengthened his position - neither numerous spy scandals (in some of which the Prime Minister was involved) nor the break with his former allies - Benny Gantz and Yoav Galant - could "sink" him.
In addition, the prime minister managed to achieve the main thing: torpedo the creation of a commission to investigate the reasons for the successful breakthrough of Hamas into the territory of the Jewish state in October 2023. The investigation promised big problems not only for Netanyahu, but also for a number of his allies, which would have led to the dissolution of the current government.
In an attempt to fight back against the “October 7 theme,” Netanyahu carried out personnel purges in the Defense Ministry and special services (in particular, in military intelligence), and also launched the process of forming his own “personal intelligence,” transferring the Ifcha Mistabra unit to the Prime Minister’s Office.
According to Wikipedia, “The Devil's Advocate Unit" is a small unit in the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate. Its purpose is to evaluate intelligence assumptions and products in a professional and critical manner, including serving as the "Devil's advocate" or the "Ifcha Mistabra" function. This means examining unlikely scenarios and questioning common assumptions of the Research Department as well as proposing adversarial evaluations. The unit works as an independent part of the Research Department.
Thus, he not only prevented a possible consolidation of military officials against himself, but also demonstratively “punished those responsible” for the Hamas attack, thereby somewhat relieving public tension.
It is very difficult, at first glance, to reproach Netanyahu for miscalculations on external borders. The Israeli government considers itself the winner not only in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, where the ceasefire was established essentially on Tel Aviv's terms.
The Israelis' skillful use of the "Syrian turmoil" to expand their zone of control in the Golan Heights is also considered a plus. Tel Aviv makes it clear that it does not plan to simply leave the occupied territories.
Netanyahu also showed great foresight in his timely rapprochement with the Republicans in the United States, which, in light of Donald Trump's election victory, provided Tel Aviv with a vote of confidence from the White House, as well as support for the Israelis' regional ambitions.
Israel hopes that with Trump's support it will be able to inflict a strategic defeat on Iran and also continue to normalize relations with its Arabian partners. Both tasks are likely to become priorities for Tel Aviv in the coming year.
THE FATE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS
At the same time, the external success of the Netanyahu government is quite ephemeral. Beautiful slogans, sounding from the podiums, mask, but do not solve any of the problems that have accumulated in the country.
Israeli society is highly polarized. Living in a besieged fortress does not contribute to the country's economic prosperity, and the ongoing shelling of cities (including the capital's neighborhoods) provokes panic and defeatism, and alienates foreign partners.
Residents of the northern regions of the country are dissatisfied - despite statements about the defeat of Hezbollah, people are in no hurry to return to the border regions. No politician has yet undertaken to guarantee the "inviolability of the northern borders."
And given that a number of areas of the Israeli-Lebanese border are still considered a “zone of special attention” by the Israeli army, the return of internally displaced persons there does not seem possible even in 2025.
The issue of releasing hostages held by Israel's opponents also remains in limbo.
Both Hamas and official Tel Aviv periodically report on achieving a “fundamental breakthrough” in the negotiations, but do not back up these statements with anything.
And given the general unpredictability of Trump (the future main guarantor of the deal), the hostage agreement is hanging by a thread.
Of course, symbolic exchanges could happen at the beginning of the year – as a “gift” for Trump’s inauguration – but even the most optimistic politicians are not talking about a full return of the detainees.
Skeptics also point to Trump's desire to take into account, in addition to Israel, the interests of some of the Arab allies (for example, Saudi Arabia), and also to try to achieve a cautious détente with Iran. And here, Tel Aviv's overly belligerent position risks spoiling Washington's diplomatic game.
Israelis' dissatisfaction with the situation "on the distant frontiers" is compounded by other challenges - growing interethnic tensions and disagreements over economic and political reforms.
The government has so far preferred not to respond to internal problems, shifting the focus of attention to military and diplomatic victories, which is very dangerous.
Given the dynamics of public sentiment, the situation risks escalating to the limit in the first months of the new year, provoking a large-scale domestic political crisis.
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
Another challenge for Netanyahu and his supporters is the gradual strengthening of the opposition. And this is not only about the “military wing” consisting of high-ranking retirees (including former defense ministers Benny Gantz and Yoav Galant) – the current prime minister is watching it very closely.
A much greater danger is the formation of an “opposition clique” from among the most ardent and irreconcilable Israeli politicians – Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Both hawks advocate a tougher Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and Tel Aviv's "sole control" over the Gaza Strip. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich criticize Netanyahu for his "indecisiveness," viewing his attempts to balance the interests of other beneficiaries of the Gaza reorganization as weakness.
Considering that the parties represented by the hawks act as one of the “props” of Netanyahu’s coalition government, their transition to the opposition could seriously weaken the prime minister’s political stability.
Apparently, in 2025, Netanyahu will have to balance interests not only with opponents, but also with yesterday’s allies and like-minded people.
Otherwise, the triumphal march of the “most right-wing government” in Israel’s history risks ending as disastrously as the rise of its predecessor, the “most inclusive government” in history led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
#1
Germany and Japan were defeated 80 years ago. The U.S. has maintained tens of thousands of military personnel in both countries every day since then. Every day for 80 years. With no end in sight on the horizon.
It seems that if the U.S. calls on Israel to leave areas it now controls, Israel should point at Germany and Japan, and politely reply, “You first.” The only people who could propose such a thing while maintaining a straight face would be pompous fools like tommyboy freidman or others setting around in air conditioned faculty lounges (financed by CCCP and Soros and Qatar) thousands and thousands and thousands of miles away.
[ZeroHedge] Imagine staring at the night sky, knowing that somewhere out there, a world exists where the air holds the faint whispers of life—a clue so rare and extraordinary that it could rewrite our understanding of the cosmos. NASA’s latest discovery might just be that world: a planet larger than Earth, shrouded in a gas that, on our own planet, is only produced by living organisms.
What does it mean for humanity if this alien gas signals the presence of life beyond Earth? Could this discovery be the first step toward answering one of our oldest and most profound questions: Are we truly alone in the universe?
THE PLANET: BIGGER, MYSTERIOUS, AND FULL OF PROMISE
Orbiting a distant star in a quiet corner of the galaxy, this newly discovered planet captivates astronomers with its sheer scale and unique characteristics. Towering over Earth in both mass and diameter, it has been dubbed a “super-Earth” due to its size and rocky composition. Yet, what truly makes this planet extraordinary is its position within the “Goldilocks zone,” a delicate orbital range where temperatures are just right for liquid water—a crucial ingredient for life as we know it—to exist. This tantalizing detail has elevated the planet from another exoplanet in the vast catalog of discoveries to one of the most intriguing celestial bodies observed in recent years.
Unlike Earth’s picturesque landscape of oceans, continents, and clouds, this exoplanet’s atmosphere presents an enigmatic profile. Early observations suggest a thick, possibly turbulent atmospheric layer rich in gases that are not yet fully understood. Among these, however, one chemical signature has stunned scientists—a gas that, on Earth, is almost exclusively associated with biological processes. Its detection has turned this planet into more than just a geological wonder; it has become a potential beacon of life beyond our solar system. The mere presence of this gas raises profound questions: Is it possible that life, in some form, has taken root on this distant world? Or could there be unknown processes creating this chemical signature in ways we cannot yet imagine?
This remarkable find was made possible through the use of state-of-the-art telescopic technology, designed to detect minute changes in light and chemical signatures from planets light-years away. Over the years, NASA has identified thousands of exoplanets, many of which have hinted at habitability, but few have displayed such promising signs of life as this discovery. The scale and conditions of this planet make it a cosmic enigma—a riddle begging to be solved. For scientists and dreamers alike, it represents more than a distant world; it’s a keyhole through which we may glimpse answers to one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Are we alone?
#8
Known as [gas name, e.g., phosphine or methane], this compound is a byproduct of life,
An article about the exciting discovery of the presence of a gas that manages to avoid naming the actual gas in question. I detect either journalism, bless their hearts, or generative AI like ChatGPT. Given the amount of BS padding that would be embarrassing in a lazy high school essay, we could be seeing chatbot-assisted journalism.
Just one more milepost on the path to the Enshittification of Everything.
Real or vapourware? And if real, is it as scary as Zero Hedge believes?
[ZeroHedge] China's ability to leapfrog current 5th-generation military aviation technology, like the West's F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II, to 6th-generation fighters and fighter bombers, recently prompted Deutsche Bank analyst Scott Deuschle to issue an alarming note titled, "A Wake-Up Call for Sixth Gen."
On Dec. 26, footage of China's next-generation tactical fighter-bomber, expected to replace the Xi'an JH-7, surfaced on Chinese social media before appearing on X. The diamond-shaped wing design left military observers across the West stunned.
DB's Deuschle characterized China's rapid advancements in sixth-generation combat aircraft as a serious "wake-up call" for the United States Air Force. This development comes amid a race between the US, China, and Russia to produce fifth—and sixth-generation fighters, bombers, and hypersonic weapons.
"China has finished developing all planned 5th gen fighters. Hence, our 6th generation fighter will be moving along according to schedule," Zhao DaShuai, a member of the People's Armed Police Propaganda Bureau, recently noted on X.
In other words, China appears to have leapfrogged 5th-generation technology to 6th-generation technology, while the West sabotages its military capabilities with wokiesm and Marxist diversity and ESG climate change policies. The problem with the West is that Hollywood makes fantasy films about these sixth-generation jets.
#2
I'm not any kind of expert. But the from footage I saw of that big, three engine plane it looks designed to hang out stealthily at the edge of space, coordinate with drones and smaller fighters, and reign missiles downward. Sensible-and dangerous as hell-but not really revolutionary.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
