[IsraelNationalNews] Antisemites are very angry. They are so convinced that they are on the so-called "right side of history" that they must be given a pass for hate, for violence, even for murder.
Last week, in Newton, Massachusetts, a man became so enraged at the sight of people supporting Israel that he ran across the street and tackled another man 15 years his elder, not a Jew but an Iraq veteran who supports the right of Jews to live, to the ground. Even after being pulled off of his victim, he continued to attack the pro-Israel demonstrator until his intended victim drew his gun and shot the attacker.
As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
It turns out there are consequences to physically attacking other people, one of which is the risk that they might actually defend themselves and put you in the hospital. Make no mistake, Caleb Gannon is no victim. All he had to do to avoid having a bullet in his gut was not be a violent brute, but he chose to be a violent brute and paid the price. He is fortunate that his intended victim is more civilized than he is and did not think twice about providing medical assistance to someone who tried to bash his head in.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, is very angry at the Los Angeles City Council for responding to the pogrom staged outside a local synagogue in June by barring protesters from coming within eight feet of the institution outside of which they are protesting. According to CAIR, Jews have no civil rights, certainly not the right to freedom of worship or freedom not to be assaulted at their places of worship. They want to play stupid games for free and for all the consequences to be paid by their Jewish victims.
This belief that violence should be consequence-free if directed at Jews or "Zionists" has been fed by officials like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who outrageously refused to charge the majority of the anti-Israel protesters who illegally took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and held an innocent janitor against his will last Spring.
It has been fed by universities that refuse to take action against genocidal hatred against Jews, like Cornell, which couldn’t be bothered to discipline Russell Rickford after he called the October 7 massacre "exhilarating" and who is back teaching at the school as if he didn’t sing the praises of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Most outrageously, this belief that violence against Jews should be met with cheers and not so much as mild criticism has been fed by the President and Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden stated that the worst people in America "have a point," and Harris said that people motivated by nothing but hatred "are showing exactly what the human emotion should be."
Why shouldn’t Caleb Gannon tackle and beat a man he disagrees with about Israel if the President agrees he "has a point?" Why shouldn’t Islamists and Nazis attack Jews outside synagogues and create pogroms if the Democratic presidential nominee says their hate makes them role models?
The belief that violence against Jews should be consequence-free is the core belief of the global anti-Zionist movement. The goal is the return to the days when Jews could be attacked, beaten, raped, and murdered in the cruelest ways imaginable with the government either looking the other way or actively supporting and encouraging the violence.
This is why Israel’s attempts to defend the lives of its children always receive more condemnation than the murderous and genocidal actions of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is perhaps the most honest official in this regard, as she has openly claimed that Israel has no right to self-defense, but the belief that Hamas and Hezbollah have the right to murder Jews with total impunity is widespread throughout the UN and the so-called "progressive" world.
Hamas committed an act of genocide, a massacre of historic proportions and unfathomable evil and barbarity. And it did so against a state with a superior military to its own forces. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Of course it was going to be hit hard in response. Of course Israel was going to do whatever it could to prevent such a massacre from being repeated. No sane nation would engage in a simple tit for tat and return to the status quo ante after such atrocities. The prize Hamas received was the decimation of its leadership, the destruction of its military infrastructure, and the deaths of half of its fighting force in addition to all those terrorists who have been wounded or captured during the war.
If Hamas had not played the stupid game of trying to wipe out the Jewish people, there would be no war and no destruction in Gaza.
If Hamas had agreed to any of the ceasefires the Biden Administration has attempted to force on Israel, the war would have ended and it would have remained in power in Gaza.
But it continues to play the stupid game in the hopes its genocidal supporters and cowardly world leaders will deliver something other than a stupid prize.
Hezbollah, not content to let Hamas have all the Jew-killing fun, has been attacking Israel nonstop for the last 11 months, ever since the October 7 massacre. It has fired more than 6,000 rockets at Israel, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to be displaced from their homes in the north for nearly a year. In the worst attack, 12 innocent children were massacred when a Hezbollah rocket struck a playground where they were playing soccer.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah became the latest player to experience the life lesson - play stupid games, win stupid prizes — when hundreds, of not thousands, of pagers it distributed to its terrorist operatives exploded simultaneously throughout Lebanon. The pagers, which were meant to protect Hezbollah from Israeli surveillance and intelligence, became the source of its greatest humiliation ever. Never has a terrorist organization been made into such a laughingstock as Hezbollah was when thousands of its operatives had their pants explode.
Already, there are outcries that the pager explosions were another genocide and that it was a crime, coming from those who think the genocide of Jews should be consequence-free. But Hezbollah has only itself to blame. Like Hamas, it invited destruction by attacking a stronger military power, by displacing tens of thousands from their homes, murdering children, and creating an intolerable situation where Israel would have no choice but to act against it. If Hezbollah had stayed out of the war, if it had not attempted to get a piece of the Jew-killing action, its terrorists would not have been emasculated.
Lebanon and Gaza have both won the stupid prize by playing the stupid game of hate. Both Gaza's territory and Lebanese country and could have been paradises, with bustling economies, strong tourist sector, and a high standard of living for their residents. Instead, they both fell under the sway of terrorist organizations, Iranian proxies more concerned with serving the Ayatollah and forging a global caliphate in the blood of infidels than the well-being of the people of Gaza and Lebanon. The result was economic collapse, political corruption, and the wasting of generations on nothing but death.
From the streets of Newton and Los Angeles to the tunnels underneath Rafah and the Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut, antisemites are finally facing a reality where the rules of the popular 2,000-year-old game of ’kill the Jew’ have changed. Thanks to the success of Zionism, there are now places where attacking Jews has consequences.
’Kill the Jew’ is a stupid game that results in very stupid prizes. Just ask those Hezbollah terrorists who suddenly had large holes in their pants.
[ZeroHedge] An X Post Goes Viral, Then Gets A Hate Speech Label
Earlier this week, University of Chicago student Daniel Schmidt's post about race and crime garnered 1.2 million views on X, before its visibility was limited with a hate speech label.
In the past three years:
- Two students at my college have been murdered by black people.
- Dozens of students at my college have been mugged by black people.
I say this and get flagged for hate speech.@ElonMusk, can we please have an honest conversation about this? pic.twitter.com/OC8U7zT9Bt
— Daniel Schmidt (@realdschmidt) September 17, 2024
Because of that limited visibility, I can't embed his original post here, but I have posted the text of it below. Before we get to it, my post below includes the video in his original post, which was of a local news report interviewing another University of Chicago student, who managed to remove the magazine from a mugger's gun during an attack near the school.
Crime in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/S7P41A2Wzs
— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) September 17, 2024
Authored by Daniel Schmidt on X [Emphasis mine]
RACE AND CRIME IN CHICAGO
At my college, the University of Chicago, it’s inevitable that black people will mug students at gunpoint this school year—because it happens every year. Last year more than a dozen students were mugged. One student had a gun pointed at her head while walking on campus at 3:00 PM. You may have seen the video below back in April.
I’m starting my senior year in a few days. When I began college I tried to ignore all of this... I just wanted to be a finance bro... But then an Asian student was killed by a black person one month into my freshman year and it dawned on me: Is the modern American Dream just trying to live far away from black people? That’s why investment bankers work 18-hour days? That’s the end game? That’s it?
I started thinking I shouldn’t have gone to college in Chicago. I really chose this place over Princeton, New Jersey...
But lately I’ve started asking myself: Why do I have to accept the destruction of a great institution? Why do I have to surrender it to people who want me dead? Fuck them.
John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago in 1890. Since then it has produced 99 Nobel Prizes, a remarkable achievement given the school is relatively new. It’s also one of the only colleges today that sincerely protects free speech (why I can make this post without getting expelled). It’s undoubtedly the only top university that cowards haven’t co-opted. I love it dearly.
Yet nowhere else on Earth will you find such an astonishing IQ contrast within a five-minute walk. The average SAT score of a student at UChicago is 1545, the highest of any university in the country. In the past three years, two of those students have been murdered, and dozens have been mugged, by thugs whose IQs are too low to understand why killing someone is wrong. They act solely on impulse. They think it’s fun. That’s all it is.
What will happen as black crime invariably gets even worse? Will the kind of student needed to continue UChicago’s legacy of academic excellence even want to attend college in Chicago? As things stand, this is an institution headed toward its deathbed, and that makes me very sad.
I’m so tired of this. I want to ride a subway without worrying a black person will shoot me. I want to go on a date with a girl at night without worrying a black person will shoot us. I want my future children to be able to live in cities without worrying a black person will shoot them.
I was born in 2003—you cannot get me to genuinely care about slavery, or redlining, or any other past event that is supposed to force me into accepting third-world conditions as the norm for American cities. It seems the only solution is the most obvious: over-police and over-incarcerate. Bring in the National Guard. Spend $$$ on maximum police surveillance. Do whatever is necessary to make these cities safe again. Each day passed is another victim.
The problem, of course, is that we cannot arrive at that solution right now because of the fear of being called racist. I’ve seen this firsthand.
At UChicago, a left-wing group called CareNotCops routinely bullies students and professors alike from speaking out by throwing around that word. When I was a freshman and a black person murdered an Asian student, hundreds of international students wanted to organize a protest to demand more police. They felt these criminals targeted them the most. In response, CareNotCops immediately called them racist, and the demands were dropped.
This led me to realize that “racist” is a branding weaponized by the most spiteful in society to overwhelm good-hearted people with fear and forbid a brighter future. Nothing has held back progress more than the anxiety of that label. Only once we end our enslavement to that meaningless word can lives be saved.
#2
Truth is never 'hate' speech. Hate is refusing the recognize facts necessary to address a problem, cause you can not solve problems by ignoring the truth.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Pavel Kiselev
[REGNUM] Exactly 90 years ago, on September 18, 1934, the League of Nations opened its meeting at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, where an extraordinary decision was made. The country that Sir Winston Churchill had recently called “the most terrible tyranny in the history of mankind” – the Soviet Union – was accepted into the “club”.
In mid-September, thirty delegates of the League addressed Moscow with a telegram inviting the USSR to join the international organization and “bring its valuable cooperation.”
The appeal to Joseph Stalin was signed by such grandees of international diplomacy as the head of the French Foreign Ministry, Louis Barthou (who would die in a matter of days in a terrorist attack, believed to have been carried out by Nazi Germany) and the head of the London Foreign Office, Anthony Eden (who would soon “slam the door” in disagreement with the policy of appeasement of the fascists).
Western democracies decided to turn to the “country of the Bolsheviks” at a time when the world was in turmoil.
The previous year, in 1933, Adolf Hitler, who had come to power, withdrew Germany from the League so that the newly formed Third Reich would have a free hand in the “living space” of Europe.
At the same time, the Japanese Empire also left the club of civilized countries - after the invasion of Chinese Manchuria, which is considered one of the first "Zarnitsa" of World War II.
Italy, which was listed as one of the founding countries of the League, did not leave the organization, but under the leadership of Duce Benito Mussolini, it was preparing aggression against Ethiopia.
It was becoming clear that the eternal peace after the Great War, which the League of Nations was supposed to guarantee, was nothing more than an interbellum. And the ongoing Great Depression was nothing compared to the looming new global battle.
Paris and London at that time clearly sought to attract the Soviet Union as one of the guarantors of the preservation of the "Versailles" post-war world order. It must be said that our country was in no hurry to play this role.
"A HOUSE OF MEETINGS FOR IMPERIALIST BOSSES"
Thus, in 1927, Stalin spoke very dismissively of the League:
“The Soviet Union does not participate in the League of Nations because it does not want to be an integral part of that screen of imperialist machinations which the League of Nations represents and which it covers up with the unctuous speeches of its members.
The League of Nations under present conditions is a "house of rendezvous" for imperialist bosses who carry out their business behind the scenes. What is officially said in the League of Nations is empty chatter, calculated to deceive the people."
The USSR does not want to take responsibility for the imperialist policy of the League of Nations, for the new military preparations that are “sanctified” by the League, the Soviet leader listed.
The Soviet ideological narrative was dominated by an attitude that Vladimir Mayakovsky had briefly formulated in his “ Soviet ABC ”: “Europe is ruled by the League of Nations. There is plenty of room for thieves to run wild!”
When negotiations between Geneva and Moscow on the entry of the “bosses” into the company finally began, the Kremlin, through the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, voiced rather harsh conditions.
The Soviet Union does not take responsibility for decisions previously taken by the League of Nations. Moscow does not like the organization's Charter, since it "in some cases legalizes war" and does not guarantee racial equality.
Finally, explained People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov, the USSR with its seven union republics can in itself be called a league of nations, completely self-sufficient.
But, be that as it may, Moscow responded with consent to the invitation to join the global club.
Before answering the question about the reasons for this decision, it is necessary to explain which organization the USSR joined on September 18, 1934.
WILSON'S PULSE
The League of Nations, “born” on January 18, 1919 in the Peace Hall of the Palace of Versailles and dissolved in 1946, after the creation of the United Nations, is usually compared to the UN. Mostly in favor of the currently existing global structure.
The League of Nations was run by three bodies beginning with "s" - the council, the secretariat and the assembly, whose powers duplicated each other. In the UN, the structure is clearer - the General Assembly, the Security Council, the International Criminal Court, etc. are each responsible for their own area of work.
In the League, all member states had equal voting rights, while in the UN, the five countries – permanent members of the Security Council – are “more equal than others”: the countries have the right of veto. The League of Nations had various military control commissions, but did not have its own peacekeeping forces or collective sanctions. The UN is more active than its predecessor in “inventing” international law.
Finally, unlike the League of Nations, a country cannot be expelled from the UN – which would seem to help avoid international ostracism.
But despite all the differences, both international structures have one thing in common. Both have failed to fulfill their declared main task – to preserve international peace. Although the UN was unable to do anything with post-war conflicts – from Korea in 1950 to Donbass in 2014 – the League “failed” more loudly, failing to stop a world war.
But the idea was beautiful, and the scheme seemed to work for a while.
The basis for the emergence of the League of Nations was the “ 14 points on peace conditions” voiced by US President Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, in January 1918.
The idealistic leader of the country that entered the Great War later than others and benefited most from it was sure that the United States would now dictate these very terms of peace – and almost eternal ones at that.
The ideological basis for the post-war Versailles-Washington world order was considered to be the treatise "Towards Eternal Peace" by Immanuel Kant. The working language of the League was planned to be the international artificial language Esperanto (however, it was decided to abandon it in favor of the more practical French and English).
Finally, the opening of the first session of the League was arranged in the most symbolic manner.
On January 18, 1919, 72 delegates from 26 sovereign states and four British dominions gathered in the Peace Hall of the Palace of Versailles (where the defeated Germany would later be “punished”). The “Founding Father” of the League, Wilson, gave a speech.
“In a dramatic pose, feeling his pulse on his left hand with his right hand, Wilson concluded: ‘The pulse of the whole world beats in unison with this enterprise,’” wrote American historian Anatoly Utkin.
Beautiful speeches and gestures masked yet another redivision of the world: the former colonies of defeated Germany were hastily transformed into “mandate territories of the League of Nations” (read: new colonies distributed to the victorious countries).
Also left behind the scenes was the intervention against Russia, which at that time was being carried out by the founding powers of the league: the British and Japanese empires and the French Republic.
The US President's adviser and one of the ideologists of the League of Nations, Edward Mandel House (who was called "Wilson's Talleyrand") wrote back in 1917: "The rest of the world will live more peacefully if, instead of a huge Russia, there are four Russias in the world. One is Siberia, and the rest are the divided European part of the country."
Perhaps if the League of Nations had turned into a full-fledged global government, a collective "civilized world" and tried to deal with our country. In the end, the former Austria-Hungary was accepted "in parts", Weimar Germany was forgiven and accepted into the new global world.
But something went wrong with this “globalization 1.0” from the start.
HOW A LIGHT RAIN "WASHED AWAY" THE WORLD GOVERNMENT
Paradoxically, the country that actually “invented” the League of Nations never joined the club. The United States remained outside the League, along with Nepal, semi-independent Tibet, and the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz (the future Saudi Arabia).
The Senate opposed Wilson's plans, believing that US participation in the League of Nations could potentially limit the White House's permissiveness in international affairs. After all, the organization's charter envisaged intervention in a war if it began between members of the alliance.
But the senators' fears were exaggerated. The League of Nations was powerless to intervene in wars waged between the victorious powers.
In the early 1930s, the League failed to stop the aggression of one member country, Japan, against another, the Republic of China. Another "alarm bell" that affected the League's image was the invitation of an outside arbitrator, the United States, to resolve the conflict (however, the Americans did not help either).
In March 1933, when Manchuria was already firmly occupied by the Kwantung Army, the Council of the League issued “recommendations on the Manchurian question.” In response, Japan simply left the organization, and its Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka (a future war criminal) declared from the Geneva tribune as a farewell: “In a few years, we will be understood by the world, as it understood Jesus of Nazareth… Japan’s mission is to lead the world spiritually and intellectually…”
In October 1935, another politician with messianic tendencies, Mussolini, started a war against a country — a fellow League member — Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The country’s legitimate ruler, Emperor Haile Selassie, testified from the rostrum how the Italians were using mustard gas and phosgene, banned by the League, to the fullest extent: “Special sprayers were installed on board the planes that could disperse a fine, deadly rain over vast areas.”
Haile Selassie concluded this historic speech with the words: “If it happens that a strong government… can destroy a weak people with impunity, then the hour will strike for that weak people to turn to the League of Nations… God and history will remember your judgment.”
In the end, Italy, with the help of tanks, bombers and chemical weapons, defeated the weak enemy and, having completed the task, voluntarily left (rather than was expelled) from the League in 1937. In response, the League refused to recognize Ethiopia as part of the new colony - Italian North-East Africa.
This marathon of impotence could have been stopped by the Soviet Union’s entry into the League of Nations.
HOW TO START A WORLD WAR WITH ONE SHOT
In the first half of the 1930s, two related processes were taking place in parallel: the growth of the international influence of the Soviet Union (the only country that, for obvious reasons, found itself outside the Great Depression) and a change in the West’s line of behavior – from an uncompromising struggle against Moscow Bolshevism and the Comintern to pragmatic interaction with the Soviets.
Such pragmatists included, for example, the second president of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš, and the head of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Paul-Boncourt, one of the main lobbyists for strengthening the League of Nations at the expense of the USSR.
Moscow's line of conduct also changed. Stalin understood that the young socialist country needed to emerge from international isolation after the Civil War and become a full-fledged participant in the largest interstate organization.
One of the Soviet diplomats who understood Stalin’s line well was Maxim Litvinov, who in 1930 replaced Georgy Chicherin, a man from the “Leninist guard,” as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
If Chicherin believed that the stake should be placed on the “organizer of the international revolution of the proletariat” – the Comintern, then Litvinov was a supporter of realpolitik: a direct clash between the USSR and the West is disadvantageous for both sides – it is necessary to seek common ground.
Stalin himself, in an interview with the bourgeois press – the New York Times – said that the USSR was ready to help prevent war if the League’s efforts were directed toward that end.
In 1934, the aforementioned Louis Barthou became the new head of the French Foreign Ministry. He was an old acquaintance of People's Commissar Litvinov and an ardent supporter of not appeasement, but of containing the fascist regimes that were becoming more and more numerous in Europe. It was Barthou and Benes who "pushed through" the USSR's entry into the League of Nations and also advocated for our country's inclusion in the League Council.
According to their logic, only the joint efforts of Western democracies and the Soviet Union could stop Hitler, and the format for the international security system should have been a “rebooted” League.
But three weeks after the USSR joined the League of Nations, as mentioned above, Louis Barthou was shot in Marseilles along with the King of Yugoslavia Alexander I. Journalists compared this terrorist attack to the shot of Gavrilo Princip in 1914, which seemed an exaggeration - after all, the world war did not start in 1934.
But the vector of Western policy changed, which led to a world war.
"TO SAVE FUTURE GENERATIONS FROM DISASTERS"
As part of the policy of appeasing Hitler and directing his appetites to the east, Britain and France will calmly watch as the Fuhrer destroys all the fruits of the Versailles-Washington system - from the Rhineland demilitarized zone to an independent Austria.
Just four years after Barthou's assassination, in 1934, Britain and France would feed Hitler the only democracy in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, led by President Beneš.
The collective security negotiations that Moscow conducted with London and Paris in 1939 were as fruitless and strange as the “phony war” of 1940. And, let us add, as fruitless as the collective security negotiations that Moscow conducted with the West in 2022.
At the same time, as Soviet intelligence knew very well, the “peacekeepers” Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier were considering the possibility of starting a war against the Soviet Union, for which they planned to launch attacks from Finland and the Caucasus (declassified data was published on August 24, 2024 on the website of the Presidential Library).
It is not surprising that the USSR tried to ensure “individual” security by concluding the so-called Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, dividing spheres of influence from the Arctic to the Black Sea.
The League of Nations, which never became a means of saving the world, remained a powerless extra all this time. However, it was enough to exclude the Soviet Union for the Soviet-Finnish War, the blame for which the main members of the League of Nations, of course, pinned on the USSR.
In the Soviet press, the League Council's decision of December 14, 1939 to exclude the USSR was called "shameful." The main initiators of this procedure were branded as "imperialist warmongers."
This rhetoric was entirely consistent with the views of the Soviet government, which had lost all faith in the ability of the League of Nations to fairly resolve world conflicts.
Almost a century later, it is clear that faith has also been lost in the similar abilities of the UN, which, according to its Charter, was supposed to “ save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.” But this does not mean that the idea of creating a “collective deterrent,” which they tried to implement back in the mid-1930s, will remain a utopia.
#1
"On an official level, the FSB - like its predecessor the KGB - is a state within a state, immune from any accountability, and so can run amok. Now it has become the state."
Mark Hollingsworth - 'Agents of Influence - How the KGB Subverted Western Democracies', page 9.
#2
/\ Any similarities to our own intelligence services should be viewed as conspiratorial and immediately dismissed. In fact, the reading of Hollingsworth should be strongly discouraged.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] September 18 marks 285 years since the signing of the Belgrade Peace Treaty. It ended the fifth Russo-Turkish War, the campaign of 1735–1739. This war, fought during the time of Empress Anna Ioannovna, which could have been one of the most striking episodes of Russia's advance to the south – as striking as the later campaigns of Rumyantsev, Potemkin and Suvorov – has now fallen out of current historical memory.
Yes, a trace of that war remained in the book, although not a domestic one, although popular in Russia. The events of the chapter "The Adventures of Munchausen", in which the baron flies on a cannonball and rides half a horse, take place precisely during the Turkish campaign.
Such a Brunswick officer - Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen - was indeed in Russian service, and his heroism during the storming of the Bendery fortress is documented. But they, of course, cannot be compared with the fantasies of the author of "Adventures" Rudolf Erich Raspe.
But the victorious campaigns of our ancestors under the command of Russified foreigners - Field Marshals Burkhard Munnich and Peter Lassi - are remembered much less often than they deserve.
But Ochakov, and Bender, and Khotin, and the capital of the Crimean khans, Bakhchisarai, were first taken by the Russians precisely then, under Anna Ioannovna.
Our ancestors entered the capital of the Moldavian Principality - Iasi and won a brilliant victory over the Turks and Tatars in the battle of Stavuchany, where the Russian troops were commanded by Minikh, and the enemy troops by Ilyas Kolchak Pasha, a distant ancestor of the famous admiral.
In what way was this "lost" war unsuccessful for Russia? In that the Petersburg diplomats turned out to be much weaker than the military.
WHY DID THE WAR START?
Peter I's niece Anna Ioannovna, or rather her court, had an ambitious task - to continue the work of the great sovereign in advancing the Russian borders from the outskirts of the Wild Field to the Black Sea coast.
The reason for the war with the Ottomans and their vassal, the Crimean Khanate, was the increasing raids of the Tatars on the lands of Little Russia and Slobozhanshchina.
In addition, the Turkish Sultan Mahmud, who had recently taken power, declared himself the protector of the Muslims of the North Caucasus. In practice, this meant that the Kabardian, Chechen and Dagestani lands could come under the rule of the Crimean Khan.
Khan Kaplan-Girey himself, with his army, “marched” across the Caucasus from Kabarda to Dagestan in 1735, brazenly violating the 1724 treaty on the delimitation of spheres of influence in the region between the Russian and Ottoman empires.
The Turkish-Tatar raid also affected the possessions of the Persian Shah, who was our ally at the time. War became inevitable, especially since Austria and Persia promised support.
According to contemporaries and historians, the Turks were incited against Russia by the then hegemon of Europe – France, where Louis XV the Beloved ruled. The great European War of the Polish Succession had just ended in 1735 – and in it the coalition for which France “played” lost to the alliance of which Russia was a member.
Ironically, the same Versailles court would later reconcile Turkey and Russia in Belgrade.
THREE CONQUESTS OF CRIMEA
At the beginning of the war, in the autumn of 1735, the Russian army under the command of a relative of the royal family, General-in-Chief Mikhail Leontiev, set out on a Crimean campaign.
But they did not reach their goal then - mud and ice prevented them. The sad fate of the campaign of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the favorite of Tsarevna Sophia in 1687-89, was repeated - as then, the exhaustion of a large army even before the military actions proved fatal.
The following year, 1736, Field Marshal Burchard Christoph Munnich, a brilliant military engineer and intelligent strategist, took up the matter and carried out careful preparations for the offensive.
According to memoirist Christoph Heinrich von Manstein (from that same military dynasty), “Münnich’s army never set out on a campaign without being accompanied by a convoy of 90,000 wagons.” And it worked.
In May 1736, Minikh's Dnieper army broke down the gates to Crimea - the fortifications of Perekop. Unlike the commanders of later eras, General-in-Chief Vasily Dolgorukov-Krymsky and Army Commander Mikhail Frunze, Minikh needed only a few cannon shots to scare off the enemy.
Then Gözlev (Evpatoria) was taken, and in June the capital of the treacherous Kaplan-Girey, Bakhchisarai, was burned.
Then, in June 1736, Azov (which, let us recall, was taken under Peter, but had to be ceded to the Turks) and the Ottoman fortress at the mouth of the Dnieper - Kinburn - were captured. But the army that participated in the Crimean campaign was exhausted by heat and disease. Field Marshal Minich decided to continue the war the following year.
In the spring of 1737, Pyotr Lassi led his Don Army to Crimea, and Minikh to Ochakov. In July, the latter was captured, and the Don Army, having crossed the Sivash, defeated Kaplan's successor, Khan Fethi-Girey, on the Salgir River.
Against the backdrop of Russian successes, Austria entered the war, whose troops entered Turkish Serbia.
VICTORIES DURING THE PLAGUE
But difficulties also emerged. Even during Minikh's first campaign, the Tatars used the scorched earth tactic - they destroyed food and forage supplies, poisoned wells, and drove away the population.
In the campaign of 1738, Lassi's army again managed to take Perekop and invade Crimea. But the Russian troops, cut off from their supply bases, were unable to gain a long-term foothold on the peninsula.
Soldiers and officers did not understand why they were being driven to Crimea for the third year in a row, since it had never been truly conquered. In addition, epidemics began to rage among the troops. And the plague began to penetrate the "frontier" territories, which included, for example, the environs of Kharkov, along with the military trophies.
For example, Colonel Ivan Kvitka of the Izyum Sloboda Cossack Regiment recalled the events of 1738: "In August, the plague became obvious... Through September, the plague continued in Kharkov and other places. Through October, the plague was very strong in Kharkov, and many houses died out to the last soul. The air was stinking."
But from a military point of view, the campaign continued quite successfully.
On August 28, 1739, the above-mentioned battle took place near the Moldavian village of Stavuchany (in the present-day Khotyn district of the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine). In it, Minikh's army routed the army of Veli Pasha and Ilyas Kolchak Pasha, which was superior in size and strength. After this defeat, the Turks surrendered the Khotyn fortress, and about 90 thousand janissaries and soldiers were captured. Kolchak Pasha also surrendered to the Russians.
Even then, Russia could have taken Moldova out of Turkish rule - our troops occupied Iasi. This was a turning point in the war in our favor - and victory was entirely expected.
The young poet and naturalist Mikhail Lomonosov responded to the events with the " Ode on the Capture of Khotin ": "Love for the fatherland strengthens, The spirit and hand of Russian sons; Everyone wants to spill all their blood, The menacing sound invigorates them."
DIRECTED BY VILLENEUVE
But the Austrian allies and, perhaps even more so, domestic diplomats “helped” to nullify the victories of Minich and Lassi.
Due to the inconclusive actions of the army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI of Habsburg, the Turks recaptured Belgrade and a number of other Danube lands. The most talented Austrian commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy, died in 1736, played a fatal role.
Austria, through France, asked the Turks for negotiations, and on September 1, 1739, separately made peace with them, returning Serbia and part of Wallachia to the Sublime Porte.
Russia was left alone with the Ottomans, but thanks to military victories, we were in a strong position from which we could dictate terms in the negotiations. The Versailles court entrusted the mediation to the French ambassador in Constantinople and namesake of the famous modern director, the Marquis Louis de Villeneuve. The negotiations took place in Belgrade, which had been returned to the Turks.
The problem was that the head of the Foreign Ministry, Count Andrei Ivanovich (Heinrich Johann Friedrich) Osterman, was not the strongest diplomat. At the start of the Belgrade negotiations, Russia could lay claim to Crimea, the south of Novorossiya, Bukovina, Moldova and even part of today's Romania.
But judging by the chronicle of the negotiations, the Russian side was continually giving in. Perhaps Osterman wanted to end the conflict as quickly as possible, fearing complications with the European powers - first and foremost with Sweden, with which another war did indeed soon begin.
Some of the acquisitions were defended. In addition to Azov and Taganrog, lost under Peter I, Zaporizhia returned to Russia, where the New Sich arose on the territory of today's Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions. The "Zadneprovskie places" - territories within the borders of today's Kirovograd region of Ukraine - also remained part of the empire.
But the main thing, alas, was that as a result of the Belgrade Peace, the access to the Black Sea was lost for a long time – until the Rumyantsev campaigns – and remained with the Ottomans. There was no talk of control over Crimea – on the contrary, Tatar raids continued for almost another half century. For example, Kharkov landowner Anna Danilevskaya recalled in 1769: “Tatars and Nagays, I tell you, scurried here even during my time.”
THE CAPITAL IS HAVING FUN, THE WINNERS ARE BEING JUDGED
However, in St. Petersburg they hardly thought about the hardships of the border residents - here the big "information occasion" was the court amusements, described in detail a century later by Ivan Lazhechnikov in the novel "The Ice House".
For example, the wedding of the jester Prince Golitsyn and the Kalmyk woman Avdotya Buzheninova that took place in 1740. “ Now is the time for you to have fun, Now the travelers should go wild in every possible way,” wrote the poet Vasily Trediakovsky on this occasion.
In 1740, Anna Ioannovna died, and then, after the accession of her cousin Elizabeth Petrovna, Minikh went into exile to Pelym for two decades, and Osterman to Beryozov. The figures of Anna's reign were tried, however, not for the campaign, but for intrigue at court.
It became unacceptable to remember this campaign for many years. After all, how can you explain to the average person why the army of Rumyantsev and Prince Dolgorukov, and then Potemkin and Suvorov, had to fight where Minikh and Lassi had already been before them?
But - if we ignore diplomatic blunders and take into account only the military component - it became clear: the status quo, which has been in place in the Black Sea steppes (in the future Novorossiya) almost since the Middle Ages, can be completely broken in our favor.
During the course of the campaign, it became clear to the outstanding Russian commander and engineer Burkhard Christoph Minich that the Wild Field needed to be developed and populated.
And not only within the defensive lines built according to his design south of Izyum and Slavyansk, but all the way to the sea coast. In the following reigns, this issue was resolved, but without the participation of the heroes of the forgotten war.
[JustTheNews] Early warnings about second would-be Trump assassin latest evidence of federal law enforcement vulnerabilities.
Pakistani man trying to help Iran assassinate Donald Trump gets waived into the United States. An American who would later try to shoot Trump is flagged at the border but gets no follow-up. A young man acting suspiciously at a Trump rally isn't confronted until he starts firing. And agents fail to confront a future would-be assassin after getting a tip about illegal weapons.
The back-to-back assassination attempts against the 45th president and current GOP nominee have exposed glaring failures and vulnerabilities inside several federal law enforcement agencies and prompted painful questions about whether the FBI and Secret Service are too lax when it comes to proactive security.
"I was disappointed in just the blasé attitude there. These aren't normal times," Sen. Ron Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.
"They have to provide greater security for President Trump, and they've got to get those resources wherever they can get it. And President Biden, using his executive authority, ought to make sure that they get those resources," he added.
A former Navy SEAL turned congressman told Just the News that the country was lucky that the first two assassination attempts involved amateurish tactics and warned that a real professional assassin likely would have succeeded.
"The problem with that is is we're sending a signal to the rest of the world and even individuals within our own country who hate President Trump, that these guys, without any training and experience, are getting very close," Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
"And that's a very dangerous precedent and a very dangerous signal that we are sending to the enemies of President Trump," Crane said.
The assassination attempt Sunday in Florida stunned security experts because the Secret Service had not swept or locked down the golf course with a security perimeter, and did not have cameras or drones to detect Ryan Routh even as the alleged assassin lingered for 12 long hours looking for a shot.
Now there are questions about earlier intervention with Routh.
Emerging evidence shows that Routh flashed across the federal law enforcement radar at least four times since 2019 without any significant intervention.
For instance, Just the News reported Tuesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection flagged Routh during a return trip from Ukraine and referred him to Homeland Security Investigations to be probed but the agency declined to do so. Instead, the suspect traveled to Florida and was spotted by the Secret Service with the barrel of his gun poking through the bushes, poised to fire on Trump as he golfed at his South Florida course Sunday.
The FBI and Secret Service have recently
…not just recently — 9/11 was problematic, too…
been plagued by cases where investigators had flagged troubling behavior by suspects before they would go on to plan or commit serious crimes. These examples include failure to track Thomas Crooks, the first attempted Trump assassin, at the Pennsylvania rally and the Homeland Security Department’s decision to allow Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national planning an assassination attempt against U.S. officials, into the country.
Routh’s assassination attempt was no different. Two other known warnings preceded the flag by border entry officials in 2023. A 2022 report by a volunteer nurse warning officials about Routh’s unstable behavior and a 2019 tip to the FBI that Routh was illegally in possession of a firearm as a felon both seemingly show that Routh had been on federal law enforcement radar on at least two other occasions. Curiously, Routh has been interviewed several times by major media outlets prior to his death-stalking Trump last week. Routh has been quoted as a credible voice by Reuters, Newsweek, The New York Times, AFP, and others, speaking two years ago about his alleged commitment to supporting the war in Ukraine.
U.S. border entry records show Routh was interviewed in June 2023 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials when he returned from Ukraine last year and flagged for further investigation based on spontaneous comments he made to agents, but the Homeland Security Department simply declined to act, Just the News reported Tuesday.
Government records show that CBP officials knew that Routh had traveled to Warsaw, Poland, near the Ukraine border, and to Istanbul, Turkey, in 2022 and 2023 and had admitted in his interview that he had been recruiting as many as 100 foreign fighters from Taiwan, Afghanistan and Moldova to join Ukraine's war against the Russian invasion.
The self-appointed Ukraine advocate was referred to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the lead investigative organ of the Homeland Security Department, but the division declined to pursue the matter. It is not clear why HSI refused to probe Routh further. The agency referred Just the News to the FBI when reached for comment Tuesday.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who volunteered in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2022, claims she told Border Protection agents about several encounters she had with Routh in the country. She told CBP authorities she suspected Routh was dangerous in an interview when she returned to Dulles airport in Washington a year before Routh’s encounter with the agency in Honolulu. In a notebook kept during her trip to Ukraine, Walsh wrote that Routh exhibited “Overall Predatory Behavior (or antisocial traits),” according to a page she shared with the Wall Street Journal.
Walsh also told the Journal that after Routh described to her his efforts to recruit Syrian refugees to fight in Ukraine against Russia, she submitted an online report to both the FBI and Interpol with her concerns about the future would-be assassin.
Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami Field Office, at a press conference yesterday in South Florida told reporters that a tip came in 2019 that Routh was in possession of a firearm as a felon. Veltri said the tipster failed to confirm details of his report and so the bureau referred the complaint to the local police department where Routh was living Hawaii. It does not appear local police pursued the lead after it was referred by the bureau.
Routh was convicted of felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction—a machine gun—along with carrying a concealed weapon, possessing stolen property, and a hit-and-run in Greensboro, NC, where he lived before moving to Hawaii in 2018. There are also charges related to driving with a suspended license, according to the court records obtained from Guilford County, where Greensboro is situated.
Just the News previously reported federal authorities allowed Asif Raza Merchant, the Pakistani man charged with plotting with Tehran to assassinate Donald Trump and others, to enter the U.S. in April with special permission known as “significant public benefit parole” even though he was flagged on a terrorism watchlist and recently traveled to Iran, according to similar border entry records.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed Merchant, fingerprinted him and inspected the contents of his electronic devices when he arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston, but then let him leave with the special parole that expired on May 11 despite his suspicious travel history which included a visit to Iran—a state sponsor of terrorism—and watchlist flag.
The Justice Department says Merchant tried to hire an individual for an assassination plot shortly after he entered the country in April and that individual become a confidential informant for law enforcement after reporting the contact. He was reportedly targeting Donald Trump. Merchant was ultimately arrested on July 12 as he attempted to make arrangements to leave the country.
The Secret Service was plagued by several security failures leading up to the first Trump assassination attempt in Butler, PA, in July. The investigation into the assassination attempt that left one attendee dead, and three injured including Trump, is being led by the FBI.
Before Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old Pennsylvania native, opening fire on the former president and his rally attendees, local law enforcement teams reportedly flagged him as suspicious, even taking photos of the would-be assassin before he climbed on the roof of a nearby building and launched his attack.
BLUF: Given what this guy was doing in Ukraine and his interactions with CBP agents and with a CIA agent (as Susie reported Monday), and the fact that a nurse working in Ukraine brought Routh to the attention of CBP as a dangerous person, there's no way the various intelligence agencies in our country didn't have him on their radar or under constant surveillance. If Tucker Carlson interacting with people in Russia for an interview was enough to have his Signal account hacked and communications tapped, with the level of interaction Routh was having with foreign agents around the world he had to have had a FISA warrant active on his communications, right? Perhaps we will find out.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[RUSVESNA] It is generally accepted that the SVO in Ukraine led to a revolution in military affairs, radically changing approaches to combat operations.
But the current explosions of gadgets in Lebanon could lead to radical changes of no lesser scale, which, however, will affect not only armies and special services, but also the entire population of the planet.
According to a version circulated in the media, electronic devices with lithium-ion batteries are now exploding. This version has not yet been confirmed (it is possible that gadgets with other batteries are exploding), but one fact is obvious: no matter what element of the gadget the explosives were placed in, they were not detected by the explosive scanners currently in use. See PETN
Considering that gadgets of both Hezbollah members and the Iranian ambassador exploded, it is obvious that they must have been repeatedly checked for explosives in the past. For example, when entering the embassy or command posts. And this check showed nothing. In my experience, entry to SCIFs or secure facilities required 'surrender' of devices without inspection.
Often a wall of small locking storage boxes, monitored, like a post office.
In other words, the main conclusion from what happened is that the world has developed a technology for producing explosives that is not detected by currently used control means.
If this assumption is correct (we repeat, the mechanism of detonation is not yet clearly understood), then the consequences could be colossal.
A huge number of processes in everyday life will be at risk.
First of all, air travel. Terrorists, having mastered this technology, will be able to bring gadgets on board and detonate them during the flight.
And this is just one example.
The meaning of many of the devices we use may be rethought, new restrictions and prohibitions may be introduced, and controls may be tightened.
And as a result, the world will definitely not become safer and freer.
#3
Kamakazi FPV drones also have. Easy to get a fairly inexpensive drone, slap something that goes boom to it and drive it into a crowd. Perfect terrorist weapon.
#5
/\ 'The problem is that you can't do to them [Russia] what they do to you', remarked Estonia's president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, after hos country was cyber-attacked by Russia in 2007. 'You can't disrupt their election, particularly since they have already been decided.'
[IsraelNationalNews] Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva about the explosion of pagers and communication devices used by the Hezbollah terrorist organization on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Col. Kemp cautioned that the New York Times was premature in its claim that the detonation of the pagers "was a tactical success that had no clear strategic impact." Who cares that NYT "thinks"?
He stated, "We do not know whether this attack will have strategic impact, perhaps as part of a larger plan that has not yet unfolded. However that might or might not work out, this operation against Hezbollah will have had a major effect in its own right. First, it will have done immense damage to the terrorist organization, taking a large number of its fighters and leaders out in one go. Plus of course, severely undermining their communications capability."
"Second, it will have intimidated Hezbollah, potentially frightening some members into leaving the group or even scare off new recruits from joining. The psychological impact will be enormous, with every Hezbollah terrorist now fearing that almost everything he owns or touches, including cars, guns, laptops, radios, and other electrical items, could potentially be weaponized against them. This is not what Hezbollah terrorists signed up for. Wide-scale and severe maiming and death by remote control is far removed from the supposed glory of battlefield martyrdom they were promised," he added. "Potentially even, this move could contribute to any future Hezbollah decision on whether or not to pull back from immediate conflict with Israel, not least because it is clear the extent that their organization has been comprehensively penetrated by Israeli intelligence."
"Third, it has humiliated Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that struts its power on the world stage, presenting itself as one of the strongest armies in the Middle East. While trying to conceal its communications from Israel, that very activity has been turned against it in spectacular style. The resulting mockery that has already greeted Hizballah in the region will add to the terrorist group’s demoralization.
He noted that, "Beyond Hezbollah, this operation will also spread fear among Israel’s other enemies including Iran and Syria. They will be terrified that Israel’s long arm will also reach into their own intelligence, terrorist and military apparatus."
Col. Kemp praised the use of the pagers as an extraordinarily precise tactic that limits civilian casualties to an unprecedented degree. "It’s hard to think of a more precise and discriminating method of attack than detonating pagers known to be specifically assigned to individual terrorists, using devices that limit the potential for collateral damage. I doubt any widespread military attack in history in civilian areas has ever been so precisely targeted."
"The targets of the attack were terrorist fighters who are involved, directly or indirectly, in active combat operations against Israel including rocket and drone attacks every day for almost a year. Under international law that makes them legitimate and lawful targets for attack as Israel seeks to defend its citizens from violent aggression," he said.
When asked what Israel could or should do to take advantage of the damage this incident has caused Hezbollah, Col. Kemp responded, "This may be part of a wider military plan and only the Israeli government is in a position to judge what follow-up action now needs to take place. Clearly, Hezbollah is now at an unexpected low point and its weakness is ripe for exploitation."
A second incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon when multiple explosions were reported in the Dahieh area of Beirut, Lebanon, killing at least five people and injuring approximately 500.
Wednesday's incident appears to involve other kinds of communication devices such as walkie-talkies and radios and not just pagers as the original incident on Tuesday had. UAV controllers are communication devices.
[X]
Israel will be mapping out injuries, hospital admissions, social media posts, electronic communications, news footage, and medical records, linking them all to people who had these pagers today. Forget the injuries and deaths; Israel just created a massive and growing trove of…
…. growing trove of information about both known and previously unknown Hezbollah militants, as well as their supporters, partners, friends, family members, colleagues, workplaces, vehicles, and homes.
They just created an incredibly dense and *up-to-date* social graph of an entire terrorist network, across Lebanon as well as neighboring countries. It is incredible what they just did.
(Imagine being in a dark room with a massive Christmas tree in it. The tree has thousands of electric lights strewn all over it, but they’re unlit because the wall plug is not plugged into the wall socket.)
(Now, plug it in.)
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
09/19/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11122 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
Bringing the expression "you can run, but you can't hide" to a new level.
#3
Add the SIGINT overlay and 2nd/3rd order-link analysis and you have a well mapped Order of Battle and Master Target Folder for exploitation ops. Brilliant!
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.
