02-16-2024, 11:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-22-2024, 01:57 AM by kyonides.
Edit Reason: Spoilers
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RUSSIA
USA
INTERNATIONAL
MIDDLE EAST
Published on February 11, 2024
EUROPE
I hope it's just an accident and not a terrorist attack.
Looong Article
Quote:Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who reportedly died under murky circumstances in a brutal prison camp at the age of 47 on Friday, was a fierce critic of strongman Vladimir Putin and the corruption of the Russian elite.
Navalny was himself imprisoned on corruption charges he dismissed as false and supposedly died while taking a walk after surviving an attempt by the Putin regime to assassinate him with chemical weapons.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was the son of a Soviet military officer and an economist who spent much of his youth living in his father’s military garrison posts. He often visited his grandmother in Chernobyl and the government coverup of the horrific nuclear disaster there in 1986 seems to have been a formative experience for him.
Navalny grew up to become a lawyer, obtaining his degree from the People’s Friendship University in Moscow in 1998. He earned an economics degree three years later and, while studying for that degree, he joined a pro-democracy, pro-market political party called Yabloko. He was expelled from Yabloko in 2007, supposedly because he engaged in prohibited “nationalist activities,” but Navalny said it was a power play by a rival for party influence.
Navalny did take a more stridently nationalist tone during his early political career. Among other positions, he called for deporting migrants from Russia to preserve its ethnic integrity, he supported the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, and his criticism of Putin’s annexation of Crimea was rather nuanced.
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Navalny’s exit from Yabloko was the first of many times he would claim to be accused of wrongdoing for political reasons. Such accusations came with increasing frequency as he reported on the corruption of the Russian elite and became a persistent critic of Vladimir Putin, who rose to power in 2000.
Navalny won some major victories over the past two decades. During a brief interregnum in Putin’s power when Dmitry Medvedev was president of Russia, Navalny’s persistent criticism forced Medvedev to admit corrupt officials were embezzling over $30 billion a year from the national treasury.
Putin was back in the saddle soon enough, rewriting the Russian constitution to effectively make himself president-for-life. Navalny founded an anti-corruption website that pulled a million visitors a month. He dubbed Putin’s United Russia the “party of crooks and thieves,” and it stuck.
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One of Navalny’s first big protest marches was against election fraud in 2011. Even though the vote was heavily rigged to keep Putin in power, Navalny managed to hold United Russia down to less than half the vote. He ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and was promptly sentenced to five years in prison for “embezzlement” in a politicized trial.
Navalny and his brother Oleg were accused of embezzling about $500,000 from a state-owned timber company while he was an advisor to the governor of the Kirov region in 2009. When the judge handed down a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence to Oleg, Navalny cried: “Aren’t you ashamed? Why are you jailing him? This is a dirty trick. To punish me more?”
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The Putin regime settled for suspending Navalny’s sentence, which allowed him to remain free but effectively barred him from running for office, maintaining a fiction of opposition that Putin’s regime called “managed democracy” or “competition without change.”
Putin would occasionally set up hapless punching-bag opponents to run against him in dubious elections he would “win” by gigantic margins, stuffing the ballot boxes as needed to ensure his margin of victory made headlines, while legally barring genuine opposition leaders like Navalny from contesting his power. When Navalny tried to run for president in 2018, his embezzlement conviction was invoked to disqualify him.
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In August 2020, Navalny was flying back to Moscow after working with activists in Siberia when he became mysteriously ill, sweating profusely and losing consciousness. Navalny’s team immediately suspected he had been poisoned. His plane made an emergency landing in Siberia, where Navalny spent some time hospitalized and breathing through a ventilator.
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Navalny’s friends and family insisted he was not safe in Russia, especially after Siberian doctors blithely insisted they could find no trace of toxins in his system. He was transferred to a German hospital, whose doctors quickly determined he had been poisoned with a lethal nerve agent called Novichok, the same poison Russia used on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom in 2018.
Navalny survived and in December 2020 he claimed he was able to trick an agent of Russia’s FSB security service into admitting he was part of the unit assigned to shadow Navalny during his trip to Siberia and put Novichok in his underwear.
Navalny returned to Moscow from Germany in January 2021, fully aware he would be arrested upon arrival. The Russian government charged him with violating his probation from the 2013 embezzlement case and took him into custody at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.
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While imprisoned in January, Navlany’s investigative team released its most provocative corruption report to date, a video expose of the lavish “billion-dollar Putin palace” constructed in southern Russia, allegedly by oligarchs who wanted to demonstrate their fealty to the authoritarian ruler. The palace was the size of a small city and included amenities to indulge all of Putin’s expensive hobbies including wine-making, ice-skating, tennis, and cinema. It even boasted a nightclub with a stripper pole, which Navalny sarcastically suggested might have been a “training ground for firefighters.”
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The Putin regime was infuriated by the expose, bouncing Navalny into increasingly harsh prisons and heaping more charges and sentences on him. The NBK and other groups linked to Navalny were outlawed as an “extremist” organization and their offices across Russia were shuttered in June 2021. Navalny’s allies later relaunched the NBK as an international organization with American and European members.
When he was sentenced to nine more years in prison for embezzlement in March 2022, Navalny quoted from the American television show The Wire: “You only do two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out.”
“I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, considering the print extremist,” he added.
Navalny disappeared for most of December 2023, to the great alarm of his friends and allies. He reappeared in the Arctic prison camp known as Polar Wolf near the end of the month, having been transferred in secret.
In January 2024, hundreds of Russian doctors signed a letter to Putin asking him to “stop abusing” Navalny, whose health was deteriorating in prison.
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This pleading fell on deaf ears, and Navalny reportedly died in the Polar Wolf camp on Friday, supposedly collapsing soon after he complained of feeling unwell after an exercise walk. The prison claimed its medical team tried to resuscitate him and failed. Navalny was seen in good health, and in good cheer, in a video of his court appearance on Thursday.
Putin did not comment on Navalny’s passing, but the Kremlin said he was informed while traveling through the Urals to visit factories. Navalny’s wife Yulia said she was not sure he was really dead, because “Putin and his government lie incessantly.”
USA
Funds for War in Ukraine, Engoron vs Trump, Fani Willis, Sanctuary Cities
Quote:President Joe Biden said Friday that the apparent death of Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny brings new urgency to the need for Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine to stave off Moscow’s invasion.
Speaking at the White House, Biden said that no matter the cause, he holds Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible for Navalny’s death. He added, “I hope to God it helps” push U.S. lawmakers to send more aid to Ukraine.
Biden said that “history is watching” lawmakers in the House, which hasn’t moved to take up a Senate-passed bill that would send funds and armaments to Ukraine, whose troops U.S. officials say are running out of critical munitions on the battlefield.
“The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten,” Biden said. “And the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”
Biden said the U.S. had not confirmed Navalny’s death in a Russian prison above the Arctic Circle, but that he had no reason to doubt it either.
The president sharply criticized House Republicans for letting the chamber enter a two-week recess without moving on the Ukraine funding.
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Republican Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this week said the House won’t be “rushed” to pass the aid, but on Friday he said Putin was “a vicious dictator and the world knows he is likely directly responsible for the sudden death of his most prominent political opponent.”
“We must be clear that Putin will be met with united opposition,” Johnson, R-La., said in a statement. “As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States, and our partners, must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”
Quote:Judge Arthur Engoron fined former Donald Trump and the Trump Organization on Friday in civil a fraud case for more than $350 million and barred him from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years.
New York Attorney General Letitia James sought to essentially bankrupt Trump by calling for a $370 million fine and a lifetime of from the real estate industry in New York State. James claimed Trump committed financial fraud.
Trump plans to appeal the ruling. “This is a case that should have never been brought, and I think we should be entitled to damages,” Trump said during closing arguments.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called the ruling “confiscatory, extreme, and abusive.”
The judgment is the second this year in which Trump was found guilty and required to millions. In writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him, the judge orderedTrump to pay $83.3 million.
Quote:Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis allegedly reimbursed her lover and fellow Trump case prosecutor, Nathan Wade, with cash for extravagant vacations they spent together, Wade said on the stand in a Georgia courtroom Thursday. Wade said the expenses were initially paid for with his business credit card.
If the presiding judge determines Willis engaged in an actual conflict of interest with her lover and fellow prosecutor, Willis would be removed from the case, handing former President Donald Trump a massive victory in the Georgia election interference case.
Judge Scott McAfee said during a Monday hearing that disqualification from the case is “possible” for Willis.
Trump and codefendant Mike Roman accused Willis and Wade of corruption for:
Maintaining an improper romantic relationship
Enriching themselves through the taxpayer-funded prosecution
Meeting with Biden administration officials before indicting Trump and codefendants
Thursday’s revelations appear to confirm the accusations and contradict Willis’s claims.
Wade testified Thursday that his relationship with Willis began in 2022 after Willis opened the case against Trump in 2021. But former Fulton County District Attorney employee and friend of Willis since college, Robin Yeartie, said she was definitely in a relationship with Nathan Wade since 2019, contradicting Wade and Willis.
Quote:With more than 40,000 migrants arriving since 2022, Denver is at a breaking point with the weight of the costs of delivering free housing, free medical care, free legal advice, free education for their children, and other things to migrants.
In response, Democrat Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has come down to massive budget cuts to city services to legal residents to address the issue.
Up until last month, Denver has put $42 million into caring for Joe Biden’s flood of illegal aliens that have inundated the Mile High City. The costs may amount to more than $180 million this year, according to the New York Times.
Mayor Johnston said that the $9 million coming from the federal government to be dedicated to the migrant issue was simply not enough to solve the crisis. So, to address the shortfall, Johnston says the city needs to pick up the difference.
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“We want to continue to be a city that does not have women and children out on the street in tents in 20-degree weather,” he added. “And we also want to provide all our constituents with the services they deserve and the services that they expect.”
“This is a plan for shared sacrifice,” said Johnston said.
Johnston went on to propose cuts in services to city residents.
Perhaps absurdly, the Democrat mayor tried to blame Republicans and Donald Trump for the illegal alien issue and claimed that Trump scotched a a “bipartisan Senate deal” and he and Republicans worked to “kill that bill just so this crisis would continue just because he thinks he has a better chance of reelection.”
INTERNATIONAL
ICJ on the War in Gaza
Quote:The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ judicial body for handling disputes among countries, declined Friday to block Israel from undertaking military operations in Rafah, Gaza, against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
South Africa, which is pursuing a separate legal action against Israel for supposed “genocide” in Gaza, brought an urgent application to the ICJ on Monday, hours after Israel rescued two hostages from Rafah. South Africa complained of an “assault” but left out the hostages.
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The Court notes that the most recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and in Rafah in particular, ‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences’, as stated by the United Nations Secretary-General (Remarks to the General Assembly on priorities for 2024 (7 Feb.2024)).
This perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024, which are applicable throughout the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, and does not demand the indication of additional provisional measures.
The Court emphasizes that the State of Israel remains bound to fully comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention and with the said Order, including by ensuring the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Israel says it needs to attack Hamas in Gaza to eliminate the last four Hamas battalions, capture the Hamas leaders, and rescue the remaining 130 or so Israeli hostages.
Many nations, including the U.S., are discouraging Israel from launching an attack on Hamas in Rafah – partly out of concern for the number of Palestinian civilians who have fled there, and partly because some want to use Hamas’s presence in Gaza as leverage to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state as a condition for a hostage release.
On Friday, reports emerged that Egypt is building a walled enclosure near its border with Rafah in possible anticipation of an influx of up to 100,000 Palestinian refugees — a sign that Egypt may quietly help Israel defeat Hamas by evacuating civilians.
Separately, the ICJ is set to hear testimony from 52 states against Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as part of a process to issue a non-binding advisory opinion that was initiated through the United Nations in 2022, long before the war.
MIDDLE EAST
Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel, ICC, Hezbollah, Biden & Jordan & Temple Mount
Published on February 11, 2024
Quote:Former Iranian Nuclear Chief Ali-Akbar Salehi discussed in a February 11, 2024 interview that aired on Nasim TV (Iran) whether Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb. He said that Iran has crossed "all the scientific and technological nuclear thresholds" necessary to create a nuclear bomb.
Transcript of the Most Relevant Part of the Interview
Interviewer: "Do we have the capability to produce a nuclear bomb?"
Ali-Akbar Salehi: "We have [crossed] all the scientific and technological nuclear thresholds. Let me give you an example so you can understand for yourself."
Interviewer: "No, please…I just want to know if we can do it or not."
Salehi: " Let me give you an example. What does it take to make a car? You need a chassis, an engine, a wheel, a gearbox..."
Interviewer: "I see that you are being diplomatic..."
Salehi: "If you are asking me if we built the gearbox and the engine, my answer is yes. Each part has its own role."
Quote:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that hostage talks are going nowhere, despite intense pressure from the Biden administration, because Hamas refuses to drop a demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza and agree to end the war.
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Israel did not receive in Cairo any new proposal of Hamas on the release of our hostages.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that Israel will not give in to Hamas’s delusional demands.
A change in Hamas’s positions will allow the negotiations to advance.
Israeli negotiators returned Tuesday from meetings in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, as well as senior U.S. officials.
The Biden administration is proposing a six-week pause in fighting, during which Hamas would release Israeli hostages in stages, and Israel would release at least three Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for each of the roughly 130 Israeli hostages.
Hamas has responded by insisting that Israel withdraw from Gaza and end the war; that it release thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including the perpetrators of the October 7 terror attack; and that it facilitate the rebuilding of Gaza at its expense.
Netanyahu has responded that these conditions are non-starters. Hamas is losing badly, and has been reduced to four battalions, which are located in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, from which two Israeli hostages were rescued early Monday.
Quote:Family members of Israeli hostages traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday to file charges against Hamas with the International Criminal Court (ICC), submitting a 1,000-page document on Hamas’s crimes since the October 7 terror attack.
The Times of Israel reported:
The family members of hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza formally submit[ted] their war crimes complaint against the terror group to the International Criminal Court [ICC] in The Hague.
“We came to demand justice. On the 7th of October we went through a second holocaust. These human monsters are the heirs of Hitler, Eichmann and Goebbels. They must be wiped out and the notion of collective death which they spread must be eliminated. History will not repeat itself, we are taking our fate into our hands and demanding the justice that we are owed,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum organization declares.
Several hundred people attend a rally staged by the forum outside the court amid the rain in the Dutch city, in which parents, siblings and children of the hostages, along with those who were released from Hamas’s captivity back in November, and survivors of the October 7 atrocities, address the crowd.
The ICC is different from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The latter, where Israel is currently defending itself against charges of “genocide” brought by South Africa, is for settling disputes between countries. The former has jurisdiction to pursue violations of international law. Though Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that grants authority to the ICC, and is not subject to its jurisdiction, the court’s jurisdiction can still be arguably extended to war crimes by non-state actors like Hamas.
Quote:The leader of the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, claimed in a speech on Tuesday the group’s attacks had displaced 100,000 Israelis and another two million could lose their homes, the latest in a series of escalating threats against the Jewish state from Beirut since October 7.
Nasrallah used his remarks on Tuesday – at a “ceremony held by the Lebanese resistance movement [sic] in honor of Lebanon’s wounded and captured [terrorists],” according to Iran’s PressTV state outlet – to declare that Hezbollah would respond proportionately to any self-defense operations by Israel to prevent more jihadist slaughter on its territory. “All options are on the table,” he declared.
Hezbollah has faced significant pressure from other jihadist organizations to become more active in the war against Israel since October 7, when Hamas – a Sunni terrorist organization that competes for funding and armament from the Iranian state with Hezbollah – invaded Israel from its stronghold in Gaza, killing an estimated 1,200 people and engaging in atrocities including the killing of children as young as infants, widespread torture of civilians, gang rape, and desecration of the corpses of their victims, filmed for social media. Iran’s extensive network of jihadist terror groups united to support Hamas in the aftermath of the attack, including some, such as the Houthi terrorist gang of Yemen, formally declaring war on Israel.
Nasrallah refrained from declaring war on behalf of Hezbollah and did not issue an official speech until November, building anticipation for a major address against Israel.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched airstrikes Wednesday on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and beyond, in response to a rocket attack on northern Israel that hit the holy city of Safed, as well as a military base, killing a female soldier.
Safed is one of the four holy cities in Judaism, the others being Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias. It is a center of the Jewish mystical movement known as Kabbalah. It is located in the northern Galilee, in a region populated by many Arab villages as well.
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An Israeli soldier was killed and eight others were wounded as a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon slammed into Safed and an army base in the northern city, the military and medical officials said.
In response to the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said it launched “widespread” airstrikes against targets belonging to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.
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The slain soldier was later named as Staff Sgt. Omer Sarah Benjo, 20, of the 91st Division’s 869th Combat Intelligence Collection unit, from Ge’a.
It was not immediately clear why Israel’s Iron Dome missile system did not intercept the rockets, though Hezbollah has been firing anti-tank missiles that fly close to the ground and are not detected by the radar used to intercept other projectiles.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the attacks on Israel would only stop when Israel’s “aggression” against Gaza stops.
Quote:Police in Mersin, Turkey, confirmed on Tuesday that they had arrested an unnamed man working at the construction site of the Russian-built Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in connection with an investigation into the Islamic State.
According to a translation of a Mersin police statement by the Turkish outlet Duvar, authorities said that the person in question was an employee at the future nuclear power plant site and had obtained work there using a false identity. The person was identified only by the initials “U.A.” and allegedly found to be a Russian citizen, though some reports conflict with that information and state that his nationality remains publicly unknown.
Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power company, is in charge of the construction of the Akkuyu facility. Once completed, it will be Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has celebrated the project as elevating Turkey’s geopolitical profile by allowing it to enter the “club” of nuclear-capable states and the plant as boasting state-of-the-art security features.
The police announcement of the Islamic State-linked detention on Tuesday included photos of the man being arrested, but no specifics on why, aside from the use of fake identification, he was detained or what kind of criminal charges he may face. It is unclear at press time what the man’s job was at the Akkuyu site. Police also did not directly state if the man was believed to be a member of the Islamic State, only that his arrest occurred “within the scope of the work carried out by our Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Branch Directorates” against the Islamic State.
Quote:At a time when the Jewish state is battling an existential threat, President Joe Biden assured the Jordanian king that Jewish and Christian prayer would continue to be banned — under what is known as the “status quo” — on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the holiest site in the Jewish faith and revered by Christians worldwide, so as not to inflame Muslim anger.
On Monday, President Biden and King Abdullah II of Jordan discussed the Gaza war at the White House, with Abdullah advocating for an immediate end to the war, even with an undefeated Hamas still ruling the coastal enclave. This despite the fact that the U.S.-designated Islamic terror group, whose charter calls for the murder of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state through relentless jihad, perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history in October, in an operation stemming from its radical beliefs.
The attack, which Hamas dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” after the Temple Mount, saw some 3,000 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air, and gun down participants at an outdoor music festival while others went door-to-door hunting for Jewish men, women, and children in local towns who were then subject to torture, rape, execution, immolation, and kidnapping.
It resulted in nearly 1,200 dead inside the Jewish state, over 5,300 more wounded, and at least 242 hostages of all ages taken — of which nearly 140 remain in Gaza. The vast majority of the victims are civilians and include dozens of American citizens.
The Jordanian monarch also warned against an impending Israeli ground operation in Rafah, despite the location and rescue of two Israeli hostages there on Monday morning, as he insisted “we must not ignore the situation in the West Bank and in the holy sites of Jerusalem.”
According to a White House readout of the meeting, President Biden agreed, and “underscored the importance of upholding the status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, recognizing Jordan’s crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem holds a paramount place in Jewish history, serving as the ancient capital under King David and housing the First and Second Temples, central to Jewish worship and pilgrimage for millennia. Contrary to claims of its Islamic sanctity, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran, though it is mentioned nearly 700 times in the Hebrew Bible. The city’s deep Jewish roots are also evidenced by its continuous Jewish presence, and the enduring practice of facing Jerusalem in prayer, underscoring a long-standing connection that predates and outstrips its significance in Islamic tradition, where Mecca holds primacy.
EUROPE
EU Needs Atom Bombs, Belgian Farmers, NATO's Financial Issues, Explosion in Sweden
Quote:The European Union, already racing towards becoming a federal superstate in its own right, may need to develop its own nuclear deterrent “on the way to a European army” a top German MEP says.
The leader of German governing party in the European Parliament the Social Democrats (SPD) Katarina Barley MEP responds to Russian aggression in the east of Europe and clear signals from President Trump that Europe needs to do more to protect itself in line with NATO treaty requirements by suggesting the time may have come for nuclear weapons.
Speaking to the German liberal-centrist-positioned newspaper Der Tagesspiegel Barley said the certainty of the “U.S. nuclear umbrella” for Europe was waning and consequently nuclear weapons for the European Union “could also become an issue on the way to a European army.”
Given what she said was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interest in Poland and Lithuania, “it shows how vigilant we must be”, she said, remarking if the U.S. was overcome by war fatigue in Ukraine and stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv then Europe would have to step in.
The EU had two nuclear-armed states before Brexit, when the United Kingdom withdrew from the continental power bloc, leaving just France with its 290 warheads. In addition, European states Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands host and train with U.S. nuclear weapons through the NATO nuclear sharing programme. Their own aircraft can carry and launch American nuclear weapons, but only with American permission, making the system an extension of the U.S. programme through NATO rather than an independent deterrent.
Extending nuclear weapons to more states is fraught with legal difficulty, not least due to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1968 which absolutely forbids this. Indeed, several nations condemned Russia for deploying parts of its nuclear arsenal to allied state Belarus last year, saying this breached the Treaty, making Europe attempting to do the same thing questionable in practice.
Russia argued that by giving Belarus the ability to launch nuclear weapons from its aircraft on its behalf they were merely doing the same thing the U.S. had by integrating its own bombs into the German air force, for instance. Yet the U.S. nuclear sharing programme predates the Non-Proliferation Treaty by years, and consequently was ‘grandfathered in’ at the time of signing.
Quote:The protest forced the leader of the local Flemish government, Jan Jambon, to cancels his scheduled trip to Barcelona to try to come to a deal with the farmers. Speaking ahead of the protest, Jambon said per Dutch public broadcaster NOS: “I don’t think anyone would like to see the blockade of the port of Antwerp happen, but it is up to everyone to take their own responsibility. I hope that people will be reasonable tomorrow. ”
On Tuesday, Flemish Minister for the Environment Zuhal Demir offered to meet with a delegation of farmers from the Antwerp protest, saying that they would have a police escort to meet with her in Brussels. However, the farmers, many of whom appear intent to continue their blockade of the port overnight, scoffed at the offer, arguing that if she felt the issue was so important, she could come to them, the Antwerp-based Het Laatste Nieuws reports.
Although the blockade of the port comes amid a wider struggle of farmers across Europe, who have faced increasing difficulty amid rampant inflation, the mass importation of cheap Ukrainian agricultural products, and the EU’s green agenda, the latest protest in Antwerp came in response to the Flemish government’s latest decree on nitrogen, demanding that they are cut in half by the end of the decade in order to comply with European Union standards.
Farmers have argued that the decree disproportionately impacts them, while giving carveouts to big business. Speaking to the Gazet van Antwerpen a group of farmers said: “First of all, industry is allowed to emit forty times more than farmers. We are also accused of producing for export. But what about companies like Ineos here in the port of Antwerp, or Volvo Cars? Don’t they also export?”
“This protest comes from below. This time the initiative comes from the farmers themselves. It is mainly us, young farmers, who see our future melting away before our eyes. That is the life’s work of sometimes several generations in the family,” they continued.
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The broad support for farmers against the climate change-inspired regulations and taxes has sparked fear among globalist governments throughout Europe and even the EU leadership in Brussels announced that it would be walking back several elements of its Net Zero plans in an attempt to quell the anger of the farmers.
However, with around 400 million people set to head to the polls in June to decide the makeup of the next European Parliament, farming groups appear intent to keep the pressure up to ensure that agriculture remains at the top of mind for voters. Arnaud Rousseau, the head of the FNSEA agricultural union in France, said this week that it is “very probable” that farmers in France will once again take to their tractors to demand better treatment.
Quote:18 of NATO’s 31 member states are expected to hit the two per cent of GDP spent on defence minimum required by alliance treaty this year after a period of “unprecedented” increases in defence spending among allies. While 13 states continue to be what Donald Trump calls “delinquents”, the average spend over all European NATO members is now at a point where, for the first time in 25 years, they are spending two per cent of GDP on defence among them.
At the end of the Cold War, NATO’s European members spent an average of 3.5 per cent of their GDP on defence — compared to 6.5 per cent by the United States — but this rapidly fell in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. European states spent an average of 2.5 per cent by the early 1990s, and incredibly spending continued to fall even after Russia’s occupation of Crimea and a pledge by all members to do better, both in 2014, hitting just 1.44 per cent by 2015.
That all changed with the bullish talk of Donald Trump in the runup to the 2016 Presidential Election, and after in office, where he warned members to start paying their dues. Defence spending of European states started to rise from that time, going from 1.56 per cent in 2019 to 1.85 in 2023, and finally a projected 2 per cent in 2024.
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[NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg reiterated that “two per cent is a minimum”, admonishing the many NATO members that haven’t made that figure, and even those that have which see it as a target rather than the floor. Stoltenberg has praised President Trump for helping force up NATO spending figures in the past, saying his “message is having a real impact… all allies have stopped the cuts” in 2019, but changed tack today, warning against taking Trump’s recent remarks on NATO literally.
Stoltenberg said, "We can never take peace for granted, but there is no imminent military threat against any NATO ally. NATO will continue there is no room for miscalculation in Moscow about our readiness and resolve to protect all allies… we should give no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding."
President Trump had said last week: “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?… No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills”, sparking public expressions of outrage among European leaders.
Quote:Firefighters in Sweden were struggling for the second day on Tuesday to put out a blaze at a water park that’s under construction at one of the country’s biggest amusement centers. One park employee is missing and 16 people, mainly workers, were slightly injured.
Authorities could not say what had caused the fire at the Oceana water park in the popular Liseberg amusement complex in Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city. The fire broke out on Monday and spread over several water slides and the pool area.
Svante Carlsson of the city’s fire department said his firefighters have gotten the fire under control on Tuesday. There was “extensive damage and some parts of the structure have collapsed,” he said, adding that he expects his crews “to be on the scene for some time.”
A nearby hotel and office facilities were evacuated. Police earlier said they were investigating the blaze as a workplace accident and a case of “gross public negligence.”
I hope it's just an accident and not a terrorist attack.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE