Quote:Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, says President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s policy of “unlimited immigration” to the United States has been carried out “on purpose — not due to incompetence.”
During a House Oversight Committee hearing this week, Krikorian clarified that Biden and Harris’s welcoming of millions of migrants to American communities in less than four years is deliberate, not by accident.
“The Biden-Harris record on immigration is the result of neither incompetence nor failure. The largest border crisis in the history of our country, probably the largest such event in human history, began on January 20, 2021, on purpose — not due to incompetence,” Krikorian said:
Since that date, there have been more than 10 million encounters of inadmissible aliens at our borders, millions of whom have been and who continue to be unlawfully allowed to enter the United States. This did not happen because the Biden-Harris administration and its impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas made mistakes or miscalculations. [Emphasis added]
Krikorian said Biden, Harris, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s right-to-migrate ideology has dictated the administration’s official border policies even though they are contrary to federal immigration law.
“There are two ways of thinking about the immigration issue overall: Either no one in the world is allowed to come here and we make limited exceptions or everyone in the world is allowed to come here with certain limited exceptions,” Krikorian said:
The Immigration and Nationality Act, of course, is based on the former perspective. No foreigner has a right to move here, but we the people decide the specific grounds to admit a limited number of people. [Emphasis added]
This administration’s approach to immigration is based on … the opposite view — that everyone in the world has a right to move here if they so wish and the American people have no right to place limits on immigration apart from those related to basic safety. [Emphasis added]
Krikorian said that instead of the term “open borders,” he prefers to more accurately describe the Biden-Harris policy as one of “unlimited immigration” regardless of the impact on American citizens.
“I would describe the Biden-Harris approach to immigration as one of unlimited immigration that holds that any limits on the levels of immigration are morally indefensible and circumventing those limits by any means is a moral duty,” Krikorian said.
“This is fundamentally contrary to federal law, of course, but also contrary to the Constitution and the sovereignty and consent of the government,” he continued.
Krikorian’s testimony comes as a report from the House Homeland Security Committee, published this week, detailed how more than 85 percent of migrants arriving at the southern border are being released into American communities.
Quote:The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that almost 98,000 people whose citizenship papers have not been confirmed are allowed to vote in state and local races.
The ruling was handed down on Friday, according to the Associated Press (AP). The outlet noted that the decision came “after officials uncovered a database error that, for two decades, mistakenly designated the voters as having access to the full ballot.”
The report also said those individuals were already entitled to vote in federal races regardless of the court’s decision.
The database error highlighted the problem with those voters’ citizenship statuses, Fox News reported on Friday. The outlet said it affected people “who obtained their driver’s licenses before October 1996 and subsequently received duplicates before registering to vote after 2004.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer ® and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) did not see eye to eye on what status those particular voters should have, the AP article explained.
Richer wanted to find an answer to the question, so he filed a special action to Arizona’s Supreme Court on Tuesday.
“It is my position that these registrants have not satisfied Arizona’s documented proof of citizenship law, and, therefore, can only vote a ‘FED ONLY’ ballot,” Richer stated.
According to the AP report, the Republican-leaning court sided with Fontes:
It said county officials lack the authority to change the voters’ statuses because those voters registered long ago and had attested under the penalty of law that they are citizens. The justices also said the voters were not at fault for the database error and also mentioned the little time that’s left before the Nov. 5 general election.
AP noted that Richer and Fontes agreed with the decision.
It is important to note that 24 attorneys general in August were fighting for Arizona to gain permission to require voters to be U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, Breitbart News reported.
In addition, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) does not believe there is an underlying problem of illegal immigrants voting, the outlet reported on September 4.
“There is no evidence that undocumented migrants vote. This is a solution looking for a problem,” he said.
Quote:A former Drug Enforcement Administration special agent says the activities of the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), in Texas, could be “just the beginning.”
“TdA is a criminal organization and they grow, they metastasize,” former DEA Special Agent Michael Brown told NBCDFW this week. “So right now, within some communities in Texas, maybe one or two members. Six months from now, it could be 600 members.”
Brown currently serves as global director of counter-narcotics at Rigaku Analytical Devices.
“America does not need another violent criminal organization from south central, south America, setting up operations in their cities,” the former DEA special agent added.
The Texas Senate Committee on Border Security conducted a hearing on Thursday. During the hearing, Texas Department of Public Safety Director, Colonel Steve McCraw told the senators, “El Paso is the hot spot, the hottest spot right now, for the reasons we talked about.”
Earlier this week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation declaring the Venezuelan TdA gang to be a Foreign Terrorist Organization, Breitbart Texas reported. The move gives Texas law enforcement officials additional tools and resources to attack the gang and “disrupt their criminal operations and deny their foothold in the state,” the governor stated.
During Fiscal Year 2020, President Donald Trump’s last full year in office, Border Patrol agents apprehended only 465 Venezuelan migrants who crossed from Mexico into the five Texas-based sectors. During the first year of the Biden-Harris administration, a dramatic increase in crossings led to the apprehension of nearly 68,000 Venezuelan migrants.
From FY21-FY24 year-to-date, Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 499,000 Venezuelan migrants who illegally entered the United States in the five Texas-based Border Patrol Sectors, Texas DPS officials reported.
“Our goal is to defend Texas from the growing threat of the gang,” Abbott concluded in his address on Monday. “We will not let them use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens.”
“They have a target on their back, and we are going after them,” the governor stated. “Texas is the wrong state for them to try to do business in.”
Quote:A Border Patrol agent became the victim of a frightening assault near Sunland Park, New Mexico, as he attempted to apprehend a migrant for crossing the border alongside several others. The migrant punched and bit the Border Patrol agent as he was being led to a transport vehicle on Thursday.
In the El Paso Sector alone, agents have seen the number of assaults rise from 46 in 2021 to more than 70 this year since October.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed to Fox News that the agent “was physically assaulted and bitten” by one of the migrants. One suspect was arrested for the assault and taken to a hospital for medical evaluation. In the Fox News report on the incident, CBP says Mexican officials assisted in apprehending part of the migrant group that managed to flee to Mexico.
According to CBP, the injuries sustained by the Border Patrol agent were non-life threatening. The suspect, who remains unidentified, was arrested for the assault and illegal entry into the United States. The New York Post reports the migrant allegedly “took a bite” out of the agent’s face.
Although migrant crossings along the southwest border have fallen significantly since December, assaults on border agents have not dropped. In RY 2023, more than 90 assaults on Border Patrol agents were reported within the El Paso Sector, according to CBP. Since October, 73 assaults have been recorded despite apprehensions falling more than 60 percent since December, from 33,966 apprehensions to 13,282 in August.
A CBP source tells Breitbart Texas the drop in apprehensions does not mean assaults on agents will drop as well. “The demographic of migrants that are prone to assault agents are smugglers, criminal migrants, and those who know they will be returned to their home country, we are still dealing with these folks daily,” the source explained.
The source says migrants who surrender by the hundreds, knowing they will be released into the United States to pursue asylum claims, are generally peaceful at the time of arrest.
“There’s no reason to fight if we are just going to let you go once you are processed. If, on the other hand, you’ve paid a smuggler thousands of dollars to get to the border and you know we are sending you back, the fight is on,” the sources told Breitbart Texas.
The slowdown of migrant crossings began in late December after significant press coverage of thousands of migrants crossing daily into the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, received substantial media coverage. As reported by Breitbart Texas, after a series of meetings between the Biden-Harris administration and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO), along with other measures, authorities in Mexico all but halted the use of the Bestia train system in Mexico used by the migrants to reach the U.S./Mexico border.
Quote:Four people are dead and numerous others injured after multiple gunmen opened fire in Birmingham, Alabama, just after 11 p.m. Saturday.
KSTP reported that Officer Truman Fitzgerald noted “multiple suspects fired upon a large group of people who were outside in a public area.”
He added, “Detectives believe the shooting was not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire.”
A woman and two men were pronounced dead at the scene and another man died after being transported to the hospital.
WTM13 noted that upwards of 18 people were injured in the incident, in addition to those that were killed, and no suspects in the shooting have been apprehended.
Police are working to ascertain who was the intended target in the shooting.
Quote:No charges will be filed against the concealed carry permit holder who shot and killed two people during a Detroit Lions tailgate party last Sunday.
Breitbart News reported on the shooting, noting that it occurred around 4:30 p.m. following a fight and that one person died at the scene. A second individual later died at the hospital.
FOX 2 Detroit noted that investigators determined that the 40-year-old concealed carrier fired his fatal shot after first having a gun pulled on him by Jalen Welch.
The concealed carrier fired one shot that passed through Welch’s head and hit a bystander named Rayshawn Palmer. Welch and the bystander both died.
MLive quoted Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy saying, “The most heartbreaking of all is the fact that a completely and totally innocent bystander, Mr. Palmer was shot and killed with the same bullet that passed through the head of Mr. Welch…It could have been any one of us. We looked at all the applicable law and there is no crime that can be charged and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Quote:Authorites report that a Canadian teenager posed as a potential buyer of a victim’s Porsche in order to steal it and was caught on security footage running over the owner in his driveway as she drove off.
Sarah Badshaw, whom police say has a criminal history in the Toronto area, was arrested Thursday after stealing a 2022 Porsche Cayenne from a Mississauga, Ontario, home on September 6, Peel Regional Police said.
It was 2:00 in the afternoon when Badshaw, 18, went to the alleged victim’s residence near Winston Churchill and Eglinton Avenue “in response to an Auto Trader advertisement,” the press release stated.
“While viewing the vehicle, the suspect reversed rapidly, striking and injuring the victim before fleeing with the stolen vehicle.”
Doorbell camera footage that the police department shared allegedly shows the Porsche’s owner being sent tumbling to the street as his legs are run over:
The alleged victim later told CTV News Toronto that he suffered elbow, hand, and leg injuries.
An accomplice in a gray Bentley Bentayga parked across the street from the car owner’s home was also involved in the robbery, Fox News reported based on police statements.
The Porsche was found abandoned in Mississauga on Wednesday, and Badshaw turned herself in to the authorities the next day, Peel officials said.
She has since been hit with the following charges:
Dangerous Operation Cause Bodily Harm – Criminal Code
Theft of Motor Vehicle – Criminal Code
Fail to Remain After Accident Resulting in Bodily Harm – Criminal Code
Quote:Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has blamed the U.S. government for the current cartel turf war that is terrorizing residents of the state of Sinaloa. The politician claimed that if U.S. authorities had not worked to arrest one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s top leaders, the country would be at peace.
The comments come as the state of Sinaloa is ground zero for a fierce turf war between the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel and the faction loyal to the family of recently arrested kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. The turf war has led to dozens of murders and countless more abductions.
During one of his daily news conferences this week, a reporter asked if the U.S. government was responsible for the violence.
“Yes, of course they are,” Lopez Obrador replied. “For having carried out that operation. They need to internalize that they can’t just act like that without taking into account Mexico’s government.”
Lopez Obrador claimed that there was an accord between the U.S. Department of Justice and the Chapitos faction so that Joaquin Guzman Lopez could surrender and capture Zambada. The Mexican politician questioned why the USDOJ changed the detention status of Ovidio Guzman, one of the members of the Chapitos, at the same time that his brother was helping capture Zambada.
“If we are facing this situation in Sinaloa it is because they took that decision,” Lopez Obrador said. “In Sinaloa, we didn’t have the violence that we have now.”
As Breitbart Texas has been reporting, on July 25, the Chapitos captured Zambada during a meeting with top politicians in Sinaloa. They put him in a plane that landed near El Paso, Texas, where U.S. authorities were waiting for him. Since the arrest, there was a short period of tense peace as both factions prepared and on September 9 both factions began openly fighting. While Mexico’s government has only confirmed 48 fatalities, unofficial accounts point to a much higher figure, which brought this part of Mexico to a complete standstill.
Quote:Hospitals in London are prioritising patients who don’t speak English for care while sending native or fluent speakers to the back of the queue, a report has found.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which has five hospitals in north-west London under its remit, has begun to push patients who require a language translator to the front of the line.
The policy is supposedly intended to cut costs for interpreters by reducing the number of hours worked. However, this results in English speakers being deliberately passed over.
The policy even reportedly applies in clinics that have a ticketing system for determining the order of patients seen.
One patient told the MoS: “It’s a clinic, so you go in expecting to wait a while, but when someone behind me in the queue was let into see the doctor before me I asked the receptionist why and was told that the people with interpreters are prioritised because they can’t wait for more than an hour.”
London, which has become a minority English city, has the largest proportion of migrants of any region of the UK, with more than 40 per cent of its residents being foreigners.
It is currently unclear if the policy of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is being adopted by hospitals in other areas of the country.
However, the decision to prioritise non-English speakers by a branch of the state-run healthcare system was criticised by former immigration minister and Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick.
“Brits are already waiting too long for treatment. The last thing they should be subjected to is the indignity of being pushed to the back of the queue,” Jenrick said.
“This is yet more evidence of the pressure mass migration places on our public services and the difficulties integrating such unprecedented numbers… Non-English speakers shouldn’t be given a queue pass.”
Responding to the report, a spokesman for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust said: “We are committed to responding to the specific needs raised by any of our patients – and every patient has the right to a professional interpreter.”
Quote:A murderer migrant from Uganda will not be deported after British judges found that sending him back to his homeland would violate his human rights.
The UK Home Office has once again been thwarted by the left-leaning judiciary and foreign laws, as the government attempted to remove a murderer from Uganda, who was convicted in 2006 over the gangland murder of Eugen Breahna in London.
The Ugandan national, known only as ZM because he was granted anonymity, was among three sentenced to jail after chasing down Breahna and beating him to death with baseball bats and golf clubs in the back of an ambulance.
ZM, who was 18 at the time of the killing and who is now 37, was given a so-called “life sentence”, yet was only mandated to serve a minimum of 16 years behind bars.
The British government sought to remove the Ugandan national to his homeland upon his release, however, the deportation was shut down by a judge, who found that it would breach human rights guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which the UK is still bound by despite Brexit as it is technically a separate institution from the EU.
ZM’s lawyers successfully convinced a first-tier immigration judge that he suffers from mental illness and therefore it would be “inhumane” to send him back to Uganda as the African nation cannot provide the same level of care, the Daily Mail reports.
Quote:Kate, the Princess of Wales, made her first public appearance Sunday since she announced she had completed chemotherapy and would return to some public duties.
Kate and her husband, Prince William, were seen Sunday attending church with King Charles III and Queen Camilla near their royal Balmoral estate in Scotland.
Kate, 42, announced on Sept. 9 that she had completed treatment six months after revealing she had an undisclosed type of cancer. Her announcement came six weeks after Buckingham Palace announced that the king was being treated for cancer.
In a video announcing her progress, she said the path to full recovery would be long and she would take it day by day. She said she would undertake some limited engagements through the end of the year.
While she stepped away from most public duties during her treatment, Kate made two appearances earlier this year. First, during the king´s birthday parade in June, known as Trooping the Colour, and most recently during the men´s final at Wimbledon in July, where she received a standing ovation.
Quote:The Irish government has abandoned plans to implement controversial new hate speech laws following widespread backlash from free speech advocates.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee confirmed on Saturday that Dublin will drop new hate speech provisions in the proposed Criminal Justice Bill, admitting that the “incitement to hatred” section of the legislation did “not have a consensus,” the Irish Times reports.
Critics of the speech restrictions have noted that the government failed to actually define what constitutes “hate” and therefore the law would have given broad powers to the state to crush dissent. The scope of the draconian powers would have even included jailing people for up to two years for merely “possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics.”
Those convicted for “incitement to violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics” would have faced up to five years in prison.
Proponents of implementing fresh hate speech restrictions have argued that it is necessary for the “common good“, with many citing growing tensions and outbursts of violence against the government’s mass migration agenda, which has radically changed the demographics of Ireland and has put significant strains on public resources.
The decision to scrap the hate speech provision has been hailed as a victory for liberty throughout the West in general. American professor Michael Shellenberger described the turn of events as a “massive Free Speech Victory,” adding: “This is wonderful news that gives us momentum to beat back totalitarianism worldwide!”
The populist Irish Freedom Party said in a statement: “The Govt has strangled anti-free speech legislation after the Irish Freedom Party has helped lead the campaign against the draconian measure since 2019. It’s good to get a result, but we need to get rid of all those politicos who want to restrict our freedoms. Vote them out.”
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday will visit the Pennsylvania ammunition factory that is producing one of the most critically needed munitions for his country’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces.
He is expected to go to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant to kick off a busy week in the United States shoring up support for Ukraine in the war, according to two U.S. officials and a third familiar with Zelenskyy’s schedule who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that were not yet public. He also will address the U.N. General Assembly annual gathering in New York and travel to Washington for talks on Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Scranton plant is one of the few facilities in the country to manufacture 155 mm artillery shells. They are used in howitzer systems, which are towed large guns with long barrels that can fire at various angles. Howitzers can strike targets up to 15 miles to 20 miles (24 kilometers to 32 kilometers) away and are highly valued by ground forces to take out enemy targets from a protected distance.
Ukraine has already received more than 3 million of the 155 mm shells from the U.S.
With the war now well into its third year, Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. for permission to use longer range missile systems to fire deeper inside of Russia.
So far he has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.
Quote:A blaze tore through a Russian arms depot deep inside the country, triggering explosions and the closure of a major highway, after Ukraine overnight launched over 100 drones at Russia and occupied Crimea, Russian news reports and the Defense Ministry said.
The depot appeared to be just kilometers (miles) from another that was struck by Ukrainian drones early Wednesday, injuring 13 people and also causing a huge fire.
Russian authorities on Saturday closed a 100-kilometer (62-mile) stretch of a highway and evacuated passengers from a nearby rail station after the fire caused a series of explosions. Posts on local Telegram channels on the messaging app said a missile depot was struck near the town of Toropets, in Russia’s Tver region about 380 kilometers (240 miles) northwest of Moscow and about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Unverified images circulating on Telegram showed a large ball of flame rising into the night sky and dozens of smoke trails from detonations.
An ammunition depot and missile arsenal in southwestern Russia also caught fire in a separate attack Saturday in the Krasnodar region, triggering evacuations after the blaze caused a series of blasts. Videos on social media showed bright orange clouds rising over the horizon, as dull thuds of detonations sounded almost continuously.
Russia’s Defense Ministry early on Saturday claimed that its forces overnight shot down 101 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and occupied Crimea. There were no immediate reports of casualties in either Russian region.
Quote:Russian strikes hit high-rise apartment blocks in Ukraine’s city of Kharkiv, leaving dozens wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack this past week.
The bombs fell Saturday night on the district of Shevchenkivsky, north of the center of Kharkiv, the second largest city, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Nine residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, including 16- and nine-story blocks, he added.
Twenty-one people were wounded, including an 8-year-old, according to Syniehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said 60 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings.
Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
The attack came after another late Friday that wounded 15 people, including a 10- and 12-year-old, as Russian airstrikes hit three Kharkiv neighborhoods, Terekhov said.
According to Ukrainian officials, KAB-type aerial glide bombs were used in both attacks, a retrofitted Soviet weapon that has for months laid waste to eastern Ukraine.
Russia also launched 80 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian air defense shot down 71 drones, and another six were lost on location due to electronic warfare countermeasures, the statement said.
Farther south, a 12-year-old girl and a woman died after a Russian drone struck a passenger car in the city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported. Two others, including a 4-year-old, suffered wounds.
A Russian artillery strike also killed one person in the eastern town of Kurakhove, regional prosecutors said, as Russian forces continue their grinding advance westwards through Ukraine’s industrial Donetsk province.
Russian drone strikes on Sunday also damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine´s central Poltava region and the northern city of Shostka, local officials reported.
Shostka lies in the Sumy region, across the border from Russia’s Kursk province – the target of a startling Ukrainian military incursion launched last month. Weeks into the incursion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelneskyy said its aim is to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian cross-border strikes that have for months wreaked havoc in Sumy.
Quote:Prime Minister Michel Barnier announced President Emmanuel Macron’s new government in France, which will represent a continuity establishment cabinet after months of deadlock and effectively shutting out both leftists and populists from the halls of power.
Over two months after snap legislative elections that left the National Assembly in a three-way power struggle, with no faction securing enough votes to form a majority on their own, newly-installed Prime Minister Barnier unveiled a Macronist-dominated government on Saturday evening.
Despite his faction winning fewer votes than the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) coalition and the populist National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen, Macron partisans secured the most top positions in the new Barnier government, with top allies of the president, Antoine Armand and Laurent Saint-Martin, being installed as the new Economic and Budget ministers, respectively, Le Figaro reports.
The influential post at the Quai d’Orsay, minister of European and Foreign Affairs, will be staffed by Macron loyalist and EU princeling Jean-Noël Barrot, replacing Stéphane Séjourné, who has been tapped to become Brussels’ next censorship czar.
Meanwhile, fellow Macronist and Ukraine War-hardliner Sébastien Lecornu will represent one of the few holdovers, having been tapped to remain in his position as Defence Minister.
Barnier did manage to snag one of the top posts, however, with Senate Les Républicains (LR) leader Bruno Retailleau set to be installed in the Hôtel de Beauvau as France’s next Interior Minister, the cabinet post tasked with managing immigration.
While Retailleau is seen as more of a hawk on migration than his predecessor Gérald Darmanin and therefore his selection was apparently intended as red meat towards the populist right, the senator has also been at odds with the National Rally, having sensationally joined an attempted coup of now-disputed LR leader Eric Ciotti for backing an alliance with the Le Pen party during the legislative elections.
Quote:A century-old artillery round weighing nearly 300 kilogrammes (660 pounds), was safely removed on Sunday from a construction site near the Serbian Parliament in Belgrade, police said.
The 305mm “Morser M.11” howitzer shell, found last Wednesday, was used by the Austro-Hungarian army during the July 1914 siege of the capital during World War I, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic ahead of the removal operation.
Police had ordered nearby residents to remove their vehicles from the area and urged them to be cautious, advising to leave homes if possible.
The shell was sent to a sandy terrain about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Belgrade, where it was destroyed.
Several bombs left over from previous wars have been found in Serbia, but they have been removed without causing explosions.
In Nis, southern Serbia, a large bomb from the 1999 NATO bombing was discovered in April, while in 2021, a 242-kilogramme bomb from WWII was removed from a construction site in a Belgrade suburb.
Quote:Hezbollah rockets triggered air raid sirens near the Christian holy site of Capernaum on Sunday morning, according to Israeli websites that provide alerts about incoming rockets, missiles, and drones to allow Israelis to take cover.
Capernaum is an ancient town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus Christ was based for a significant part of his ministry. It includes important archaeological excavations, including the traditional site of St. Peter’s house, as well as Christian houses of worship.
Hezbollah fired scores of rockets at Israel on Sunday. One Israeli teenager died as the result of a traffic accident during a rocket attack, when the teenager, driving a vehicle, apparently panicked and drove off the road, according to the Times of Israel.
The Israeli military is stepping up attacks on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, as the two sides move rapidly closer to all-out war.
Israel has vowed to restore the northern residents of Israel to their homes. Over 60,000 civilians from 74 towns in northern Israel have been evacuated since October, when Hezbollah started firing rockets, anti-tank missiles, and drones at the region, without provocation, following the Hamas terror attack on southern Israel.
Quote:Israelis woke up Sunday to air raid sirens across the northern portion of the country as Hezbollah fired scores of rockets, causing damage and fires in open areas, but not causing any serious injuries, thanks to Israel’s defenses.
On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched waves of airstrikes against Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, hitting 400 targets, including rocket launchers that the Iranian-backed terror group was about to activate.
In a statement, the IDF said early Sunday morning:
Since the afternoon, with the direction of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, the IAF struck approximately 290 targets, including thousands of launcher barrels, alongside additional terrorist infrastructure in multiple areas in southern Lebanon.
Over the past few hours, in an additional series of strikes, the IDF struck approximately 110 Hezbollah terrorist targets, including launchers and terrorist infrastructure in multiple areas in southern Lebanon.
The IDF will continue operating to dismantle and degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and terrorist infrastructure.
Later, when Hezbollah began firing at Israeli communities in the north, the IDF said:
Following the sirens that sounded between 6:24 and 6:32 and between 6:52 and 07:00 in numerous areas in northern Israel, approximately 85 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Some of the projectiles were intercepted, and fallen projectiles were identified in the areas of Kiryat Bialik, Tsur Shalom, and Moreshet. Israel Fire and Rescue Services are currently operating to extinguish numerous fires that were ignited in the area.
Following the sirens that sounded at 4:48 and 5:10 in the Jezreel Valley area, approximately 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Most of the projectiles were intercepted, and the rest fell in open areas. No injuries were reported.
Hezbollah appeared to be targeting Israeli air bases, according to Israel’s Army Radio, but only hit civilian areas and open spaces.
Schools were closed for in-person learning in Haifa and communities to the north.
The Israeli military also intercepted missiles fired at the country from Iraq, presumably from Iranian-backed militias.
Asked by the anchor on Army Radio whether the escalation represented the “Third Lebanon War,” or just a step toward it, a correspondent said that it was just a step, but most Israelis expect war, and have been preparing for it.
The escalation came after several days in which Israel surprised Hezbollah leaders with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as well as precision airstrikes. Hezbollah attacked Israel without provocation in October, and has fired at northern Israel for months.
War with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon would be the “second front” that U.S. President Joe Biden sought to avoid when he warned Hezbollah and Iran last October, “Don’t.” That warning seems to have failed, as Israel fights alone.
Quote:Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu issued statements in Hebrew and English on Sunday after the Israeli military pounded the Iranian-backed terror group in southern Lebanon, following several days of stunning strikes.
Netanyahu spoke after Israel had targeted hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers and other Hezbollah sites on Saturday and Sunday in Lebanon, and Hezbollah fired scores of rockets at Israel, causing relatively little damage.
He did not specifically refer to the pager attacks that killed dozens of Hezbollah officials and wounded thousands more; or the walkie-talkie explosions that killed at least a dozen and wounded hundreds more; or the precision airstrike that eliminated one of the group’s top commanders, and several other officials with him. But he warned that Hezbollah would “get the message,” if it had not already, that Israel will return its northern residents to their homes.
Netanyahu also delivered an English version of his statement, with some modifications:
On October 7th, the Hamas terrorist monsters burst into Israel, murdered our people, raped and beheaded our women, burnt babies alive, and took 255 innocent people hostage, including many Americans.
A day later, on October 8th, another Iranian terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, attacked Israel completely unprovoked. They fired missiles and rockets into our cities. They made 60,000 Israelis leave their homes along the Lebanon border, becoming refugees in their own land.
In the subsequent months, they haven’t stopped for a single day attacking us.
No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can’t accept it either.
We will take whatever action is necessary to restore security and to bring our people safe back to their homes.
Northern Israel remains on high alert, as the country prepares for a potential all-out war against Hezbollah.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he delegated “everything” as commander-in-chief to Vice President Kamala Harris, including foreign policy and domestic policy.
The acknowledgment is significant because it contradicts Harris’s talking points. Harris has tried multiple times to distance herself from the Biden-Harris record.
“My approach is about new ideas, new policies that are directed at the current moment. And also, to be very honest with you, my focus is very much in what we need to do over the next ten, twenty years to catch up to the twenty first century,” Harris told Brian Taff of Philadelphia’s Action News 6 ABC on September 13.
“I’m obviously not Joe Biden, and you know, I offer a new generation of leadership,” she said, providing examples of what the Biden-Harris administration failed to achieve.
Fifty-seven percent of registered voters believe they are not better off under the Biden-Harris administration as they were four years ago under former President Donald Trump, RMG Research polling found in September. Only 25 percent of Americans rate the economic conditions under the Biden-Harris administration as “excellent or good,” a Pew Research survey showed.
While campaigning for Harris on The View on Wednesday, Biden appeared to blame Harris for the administration’s failure to reduce inflation, secure the southern border, and responsibly withdraw from Afghanistan.
“As Vice President, there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do and so I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy,” he said.
Biden’s statement exacerbated Harris’s conundrum: She cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.
Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” host and NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell discussed new threats by Iran against 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump that he was briefed on and stated that, according to people she spoke to, it is “safe to conclude that Vice President Harris is favored by Iran and that Donald Trump is favored by Vladimir Putin.”
While speaking with former Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Leon Panetta and former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Mitchell said there is “the threat against — the threat from Iran” that has been “credibly reported and confirmed by the community, that Donald Trump was just briefed [on], that there are new threats against him. We know about the former officials, and now, he is another, and that this is a new threat. At this point, it is — I’m told — safe to conclude that Vice President Harris is favored by Iran and that Donald Trump is favored by Vladimir Putin.”
Sherman responded that Harris understands that Iran is a threat and will be tough on them and Iran shouldn’t mistake the desire for diplomatic solutions with weakness, while Panetta said that Trump just gives America’s enemies what they want.
Weird. I thought that it has been Biden and Harris who gave America's enemies what they wanted.
Quote:A Senate investigative report on the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump revealed several glaring security errors made by the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), including the hours-long debacle of an agent overseeing the drone system trying to troubleshoot the devices by calling a toll-free tech support hotline.
The interim report, released Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, detailed how the USSS failed to secure the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally and the building from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks allegedly took shots at Trump.
Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI), Rand Paul (R-KY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) highlighted the 94-page document’s key takeaways in a statement, decrying how the agency “failed to clearly define responsibilities for planning and security.”
“USSS personnel responsible for planning in advance of the July 13 rally denied that they were individually responsible for any planning or security failures and deflected blame,” the bipartisan group of senators said, adding that “USSS Advance Leads told the Committee that planning and security decisions were made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for approval.”
The committee’s investigation has not only revealed that no specific person with the Secret Service has owned up to approving the failed security measures, but also exposed that not one agent entered or went onto the roof of the AGR International building where Crooks was perched prior to the shooting.
“USSS identified the AGR building as a concern due to the line-of-sight from the roof to the stage, but did not take steps to ensure sufficient security measures were in place,” the committee members found.
“USSS personnel, including the USSS Counter Sniper Team Leader, did not enter the AGR building or go on the roof prior to the shooting,” they continued. “One USSS counter sniper team, whose responsibility included scanning the area around the AGR building for threats, had an obstructed view of the AGR roof.”
The first time USSS agents entered the building and went onto the roof was after Crooks fatally shot one audience member, seriously injured two others, and grazed Trump’s ear.
The agency also failed to coordinate with local and state law enforcement, by not giving them “any specific instructions for covering the AGR building” and not ensuring that agents could “share information with local law enforcement partners in real time.”
“USSS did not adequately consider state and local law enforcement operational plans,” the senators stated.
USSS also denied specific requests for additional Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) capabilities and a Counter Assault Team liaison, the report found.
“A USSS Counter Surveillance Unit – which could have helped patrol the outer perimeter that included the AGR building – was not requested by USSS Advance Leads,” the senators added.
Quote:Former President Donald Trump criticized the FBI for how it is handling the investigation into the assassination attempts against him, but he told the crowd in Mint Hill, North Carolina, “No threat will shake me.”
“As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve — but possibly do — Iran, but I don’t really know,” Trump said.
“Can’t be sure, because in the first case, in Butler, Pennsylvania — great place…” Trump said, noting that he is going back to Butler to “finish” his speech. Trump then turned to the FBI, noting that the federal agency seems to be having trouble investigating the assassination attempts.
“The FBI has been unable to open the three potentially foreign-based apps. And in the second case, the assassin had six cell phones in his car, yet the FBI has likewise been unable to penetrate their guard,” Trump said.
“They want to know, and I want to know, and the whole country and maybe the world wants to know, who is he calling? Who is he calling?” Trump asked.
“In the old days, the FBI and the DOJ used to capture people before anything happened. In current days, the upper echelon of the FBI is all talk while they focus on the sitting President’s political opponents,” Trump observed. “That’s what they’re doing.”
“All they focus on is their political opponent. But they must get Apple to open these foreign apps, and they must get Apple to likewise, open the six phones from the second lunatic … and open them immediately, because we have a lot at stake — whether it’s me or any other former president. They break into apps all the time. They had no problem breaking into the apps of the J6 hostages,” he noted.
Mentioning that the alleged attempted assassins’ apps could be foreign, he added, “They could also be something else, but we’ll never know until they’re opened. … And really, why is it that the father of the shooter in the Butler instance has one of the best and most expensive lawyers in the entire state of Pennsylvania? How did he get to this expensive lawyer?” Trump asked, deeming it “strange.”
Trump said if he were president and a former president and leading candidate faced these threats that he now faces — whether Democrat or Republican — he would “inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
Haitians Backed by Zuckerberg & Soros Want Trump & Vance Get Arrested
Quote:A group that campaigns for more Haitian migration asked judges Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, to arrest and file criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and JD Vance.
The call comes amid the duo’s criticism of the government-funded migration drive into the citizens’ jobs, homes, and communities.
The charges were requested by the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which has been backed for many years by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group, and by investor George Soros’ political campaigns. The jarring claim was loudly echoed by pro-Democratic media sites, such as NBCNews.com, who prefer to hide the ordinary civic and pocketbook damage of migration behind elite claims about racism.
“The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm,” the Associated Press wrote September 24:
Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio. Examples might be a grocery store charging a customer for a bounced check. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled.
Trump and Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, are charged with disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm that there is probable cause and issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance.
“Guerline Jozef, a co-founder and the executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, filed the charges on behalf of the group,” NBCNews reported:
“Over the last two weeks, both Trump and Vance led an effort to vilify and threaten the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio,” Jozef wrote.
…
“If anyone else had disrupted public service, made false alarms, and engaged in telecommunications harassment in the manner Trump and Vance did with their relentless and persistent lies—even after the governor and mayor said what they were saying was false, they would’ve been arrested by now,” Chandra said in a statement Tuesday. “They must be held accountable to the rule of law in the same way any of the rest of us would be.”
The lawfare follows the government-arranged delivery of perhaps 20,000 Haitians to the city, which has had a huge civic and pocketbook impact in the town of almost 60,000 Americans.
The inflow has been welcomed by business, political, and media leaders in Springfield, but is decried by ordinary Americans who are losing wages, opportunities, housing, safe roads, civic aid, and their stable community to the chaotic migration.
Quote:Former US president Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky of refusing to “make a deal” to end his country’s war with Russia.
“We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky,” the Republican White House candidate said in sharply critical remarks at a campaign rally in North Carolina.
“Every time he came to our country, he’d walk away with $60 billion,” Trump said, derisively describing the Ukrainian president as “probably the greatest salesman on Earth.”
“What do you have left now?” Trump sneered. “The country is absolutely obliterated.”
A face-to-face meeting between Trump, who has been highly critical of the aid Washington and the Pentagon have disbursed to Kiev, and Zelensky had been floated for the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York.
But the meeting is expected to be scrapped, according to US media, which reported Trump did not appreciate the interview Zelensky gave to The New Yorker magazine, in which the Ukrainian president said he believed the 78-year-old Republican “doesn’t really know how to stop the war.”
Trump’s remarks came shortly after Zelensky addressed the United Nations and accused Russia of plotting potentially catastrophic attacks on Ukrainian nuclear plants.
Trump claimed in early September he had a plan “guaranteed” to end the war but would not reveal it unless he wins the US presidential election.
He also repeatedly asserted he would settle the war between Moscow and Kiev within 24 hours — without explaining how.
In recent months he has been particularly critical of US funding for Ukraine and has called on Europe to step up its contributions.
When contacted by AFP, Trump’s team refused to confirm whether the meeting between the two men had been scrapped.
Quote:Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Visa stock, according to public records, just weeks before the Justice Department launched a lawsuit against the credit card company on Tuesday.
The finding raises concerns that many members of Congress trade stocks based on information unavailable to the public.
Seventy-six percent of voters believe congressional members and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” in trading stocks.
Paul Pelosi traded the stock before the DOJ launched a probe into Visa for allegedly monopolizing the debit card market, Bloomberg reported.
The New York Post reported the trade:
Meanwhile, Christopher Josephs, the tech entrepreneur who runs the “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker” on X, posted a screenshot of a congressional filing on July 3 which showed that the former House speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, had sold 2,000 shares of Visa worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
The disclosure form shows that Pelosi’s transaction is marked “SP,” or spouse — a reference to husband Paul, the San Francisco-based venture capitalist and real estate investor.
At the time Paul Pelosi sold Visa stock, there was no public indication that an antitrust lawsuit against the company was imminent.
...
Pelosi’s stock portfolio was up 65.5 percent in 2023, one of the best performances in Congress, an Unusual Whales analysis showed.
Some of the most notable establishment members to beat the market were:
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — up 65.5 percent
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — up 52.8 percent
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) — up 38.2 percent
Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) — up 25.3 percent
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — up 18.1 percent
Let's travel back in time and read what happened back in October 17, 2022. Yes, almost 2 years ago!
Quote:Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, exercised seven-figures worth of Alphabet stock call options days before House leadership unveiled a bill that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks.
The value of the stock purchase was between $1 million and $5 million, according to a certified congressional disclosure made by Nancy Pelosi on October 14. Members of Congress are only required to report the values of such trades in broad ranges.
Paul Pelosi exercised the Alphabet call options, which he purchased in December 2021, on September 16 — the day they were set to expire. (Alphabet is the parent company of Google.)
That date fell just a week before House leadership introduced a Nancy Pelosi-backed bill that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks.
The disclosure also notes that Paul Pelosi sold call options in NVIDIA and Micron Technology for a loss about a month after President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 into law.
On September 16, Paul Pelosi sold 50 call options (5,000 shares) of NVIDIA at a strike price of $26.86 per share, for a loss of $361,476.
That same day, he also sold 100 call options (10,000 shares) of Micron Technology at a price of $1.84 per share and a total loss of $392,575.
The disclosure of a financial loss is notable as Nancy Pelosi — or any member of Congress — rarely volunteers that level of detail about stock trades by themselves or their spouses. The last time Nancy Pelosi disclosed that her husband traded for a loss was in July, when Paul Pelosi sold $25,000 shares of NVIDIA stock for a loss of $341,365.
Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 with a goal of strengthening "American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the United States the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence."
Quote:Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Democrats will win the majority in the House of Representatives in November and then vote in House Minority Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as speaker.
Pelosi said, “Why Don’t We just all agree, whoever wins, we are for the peaceful transfer of power. He’s trying again to just wed himself to this fake conspiracy theory about the election. But you know what? We don’t agonize. We organize. And we organize and make sure that Hakeem Jeffries has that gavel on January 6th. It’s very essential not only for the issues that we care about, our kitchen table issues, lowering the cost of prescription drugs that we have done, lowering the cost of healthcare, which we have done, lowering the cost of childcare, which we did, but we have to renew.”
She continued, “Hakeem will be speaker.”
Pelosi added, “The National Anthem says prove through the night that our flag is still there. You’ve heard me say that again and again. And we this is our night we have to prove through the night that our flag is still there. I’ll give you another Baltimore phrase comes from Horse racing. We’re here, we’re going to whip to the lead, and then we’re going to whip the lead to victory.”
Quote:Arizona police confirmed on Tuesday that the Tempe campaign office for Vice President Kamala Harris was hit with gunfire.
“We can confirm that on 9/23/24, what appears to be damage from gunfire at … a DNC Campaign Office, was discovered,” Tempe police told NBC News on Tuesday.
Public Information Officer, Sgt. Ryan Cook confirmed that no injuries occurred and that the shots were fired during overnight hours.
“No one was inside the office during the overnight hours, but this raises concerns about the safety of those who work in that building, as well as those nearby,” Cook said.
Tempe police said they received calls from workers on Monday reporting what appeared to be “gunshots through the front windows of the office which is shared by staff members for the Arizona Democratic Party,” per NBC News.
The gunfire incident marked the second time in just two weeks that the campaign office had been hit with criminal damage — the first being shots fired from a “BB gun or pellet gun” on September 16.
“The apparent gunfire marks the second incident of criminal damage at that office in recent weeks, according to Tempe police, who said that just after midnight on Sept. 16 the office’s front windows were hit with what appeared to be a BB gun or pellet gun,” noted NBC News.
The gunfire incident occurred following two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump, which has led to heightened security concerns. Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have condemned all forms of political violence and have called for Americans to “lower the temperature.”
“As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” Harris said in a statement following the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life in September.
“I am thankful that former President Trump is safe. I commend the U.S. Secret Service and law enforcement partners for their vigilance. As President Biden said, our Administration will ensure the Secret Service has every resource, capability, and protective measure necessary to carry out its critical mission,” Harris added.
Quote:Additional U.S. troops are being rushed to the Middle East during a rise in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah terrorist forces in Lebanon that has elevated risks of a wider regional war, the Pentagon said Monday.
AP reports Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder would provide no details on how many additional forces or what they would be tasked to do. Their precise geographical region of deployment has also not been disclosed.
The U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops in the region. Just last month U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and told the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area.
As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. believes Iran or its proxies may launch a strike against Israel as soon as this week.
The new deployments come as Israel is preparing to conduct further operations and the State Department is warning Americans to leave Lebanon as the risk of a regional war increases.
“Due to the unpredictable nature of ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel and recent explosions throughout Lebanon, including Beirut, the U.S. Embassy urges U.S. citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available,” the State Department cautioned Saturday, as the AP report noted.
The push of more U.S. forces into the troubled Middle East came as Israel attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets on Monday in airstrikes that Lebanese health authorities said killed at least 274 people, making it the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly a year of conflict, CBC News reported.
Quote:Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro declared that neither Israel nor the United States are “the children of God” and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “criminal” in an unhinged speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
Petro, who called for a “world revolution” and for an artificial intelligence “global public authority,” accused the “richest one-percent of humanity, the powerful global oligarchy” of allowing bombs to fall in “Gaza and Sudan,” and denounced free market ideas for allegedly bringing about “the maximization of death.”
The bombs, according to Petro, are allegedly being brandished by “racists, supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race.”
“The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza. When Gaza dies, humanity will die,” Petro said. “It turns out that God’s people were not Israel, nor the United States, but the whole of humanity and the children of Gaza were just that, humanity, God’s chosen people.”
“[Benjamin] Netanyahu is a hero for the richest one percent of humanity because he is able to show that peoples are destroyed under bombs,” he continued.
Petro, an ardent communist and member in his youth of the M19 Colombian Marxist guerrilla terrorist organization, cut diplomatic ties with Israel in May in response to Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists of Hamas. The rupture followed Petro publicly comparing Israel to Nazi Germany for entering Hamas-controlled Gaza to prevent the terrorists from repeating the atrocities of the October 7 attack against the country.
The far-left president ranted that “no one listens” to governments such as his that demand an end to the “genocide” in Gaza, the “decarbonization” of the world, and his proposal of debt forgiveness in exchange for climate action. Petro claimed that governments with “the power to destroy life” are the ones that are heard instead.
The Colombian far-left president also criticized the free market and accused “the richest one percent” of opposing the end of using oil and coal and advancing the “climate crisis.” Petro claimed that the ones leading humanity “to the destruction of the atmosphere and of life” are those who shout “Long live liberty, damn it!” – using the campaign slogan of President Javier Milei of neighboring Argentina, a fervent anti-communist.
“They [“the richest 1 percent”] pay for the campaigns, they own the media, they are the ones who hide the truth from science, as in the movie Don’t Look Up, they are the ones who say what is thought, what is said, and what should be banned and silenced,” Petro said.
Petro also accused the “global oligarchy” of “economically blockading rebel countries” such as Cuba and Venezuela. Petro notably did not condemn the regimes of those countries for their extensive track records of human rights violations against their own people.
The Colombian president also referred to socialism and asserted that its “red flag,” which did not find its place in history, must now be of “all colors.”
“That word socialism today has another meaning. People are strong if we help each other. It is the basis of socialism,” Petro said.
Petro concluded his speech by calling for a “world revolution” and stressing the need to “build the greatest army of all time, composed of warriors of life” to overthrow the “global oligarchy.”
“It is up to humanity to fight the battle. It is time for the people to take the problems into their own hands. We must turn to the people. New leaderships will appear; the oligarchy will be overthrown. A new history is about to begin,” he concluded.
Keep in mind that a real life example of terrorism like Petro has no stance here criticizing Netanyahu for defending his country from terrorist organizations funded by Iran. No country should be forced to accept the destruction of their nation at the hands of terrorists.
Quote:Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent over half of his very lengthy address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday criticizing Israel for its war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Erdogan accused the Israelis of genocide, compared them to Nazi Germany, and demanded the U.N. authorize “coercive measures against Israel” to halt the war in Gaza.
“The international community, and all of us in the human family, must fulfill our obligation to the Palestinian people without further delay,” Erdogan demanded.
Turkey’s Islamist leader claimed the U.N. has “failed in its founding mission” and become a “dysfunctional structure” because it has done nothing to stop “the massacre that has been going on in Gaza for the last 350 days.”
“They shredded the charter of the United Nations from the rostrum of the United Nations and shamelessly challenged the whole world,” he said of the Israelis.
“In Gaza, not only children are dying, but also the United Nations system. The values that the West claims to defend are dying. Truth is dying. The hopes of humanity to live in a more just world are dying, one by one,” he declared.
Erdogan blamed the U.N.’s inaction on Israel and its most influential supporters, although he never quite got around to calling out the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, by name.
“‘The world is bigger than five’ is my motto. International justice cannot be left to the will of five privileged member states of the Security Council,” he said.
Erdogan extensively regurgitated Hamas propaganda about the war in Gaza, absurdly insisting that almost all of the casualties were “women and children” deliberately targeted by Israel in a campaign of genocide.
“I call out to the United Nations Security Council: what are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza, to put a stop to this cruelty, this barbarism? What are you waiting for to stop Netanyahu and his mass murder network?” he asked.
Erdogan tried intimidating the “countries supporting Israel in an unconditional manner” by asking how long they could “carry the same of witnessing this massacre.” Later, he suggested all of the countries supporting Israel should be held accountable as accomplices to its alleged crimes.
Erdogan accused the Israelis of “disregarding basic human rights,” “trampling on international law,” and “practicing ethnic cleansing–- a clear genocide against a nation, a people, and occupying their lands step-by-step.”
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity,” he declared, asking the UNGA to authorize the use of force against Israel.
Erdogan also insisted Israel must pay “the bill for the billions of dollars of damage caused in the cities that have been destroyed, wrecked, and reduced to rubble.”
The Turkish leader restated his support for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said he would not rest until “those who gave the orders, pulled the triggers and dropped the bombs are held accountable for their crimes.”
Erdogan took time to salute the destructive and often violent pro-Hamas protests held in Western countries – an especially savory bit of hypocrisy, given how he deals with dissenting voices in Turkey, and has even ordered his security forces to assault them when on American soil.
“I would like to especially thank the university students and the youth,” he said.
Nowhere in Erdogan’s speech was there even the slightest mention of why Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza, and now Hezbollah in Lebanon. Erdogan mentioned October 7 – but he framed it as the beginning of Israel’s random and remorseless massacre of “41,000 people, mostly children and women.” He studiously avoided mentioning anything unpleasant that might have happened to some Jews on that day.
Erdogan did not even mention Hamas until almost 20 minutes into his speech and his sole reference to the Palestinian terrorist gang was to falsely congratulate them for supposedly accepting every ceasefire offer that came their way.
Erdogan went on to claim Israel deliberately scuttled any hope for peace by “sneakily killing its negotiating partner at the time it was closest to a ceasefire,” a reference to the July elimination of Hamas mastermind Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. Israel has not taken responsibility for the suspected bombing that killed Haniyeh, though its government is widely suspected of orchestrating it.
Erdogan effectively wrote the Palestinians a blank check for terrorism, seemingly including the October 7 atrocities, because they are “exercising their legitimate rights of resistance against this occupation and ethnic cleansing.” Erdogan has in the past repeatedly and explicitly stated, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization,” including shortly after October 7.
“The just resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupiers of their land is noble, it’s honorable, and legitimate,” Erdogan said, taking a moment to wave at his “brothers and sisters in the legitimate resistance in Palestine.”
Erdogan insisted the only possible resolution to the conflict was giving the Palestinians a state carved from Israeli territory, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Erdogan spent some time complaining about issues of particular interest to Turkey, praising the Turkish Cypriots and the BRICS economic collective, and complaining that part of Syria remains “in the grip of terrorism and separatist organizations,” by which he meant the Kurds.
Erdogan, who has styled himself as a defender of global Islam, complained that “Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism” are “creeping over the world like poison ivy.”
“Every week, attacks are taking place on our mosques and our holy book of Quran. In the middle of Europe, peoples’ homes are set on fire and their lives are taken because of their ethnic and religious affiliation,” he said, demanding the appointment of a special U.N. envoy to combat Islamophobia.
At the end of his long speech, Erdogan caught his second wind and launched a spirited attack against the LGBTQIAP2S+ movement, describing it as a threat to “the institution of the family,” which is a “pillar of society.”
“The disgrace staged at the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games has revealed the extent of the threat we face as humanity. A sporting event watched by innocent children and hundreds of millions of people of all ages and beliefs has been used as a tool for sexist propaganda,” he said.
The disgrace Erdogan referred to was a recreation of what many interpreted to be the Christian Last Supper with drag queens, bracketed by a transgender fashion show and a dance number simulating various forms of gay intercourse, including a threesome. Organizers claimed the feast was meant to portray a Hellenic pagan scene hosted by the ancient Greek god Dionysus.
“Those disturbing scenes of evil have wounded not only the Catholic world, the Christian world, but everyone who respects the sacred values,” he said.
Erdogan said the homosexual agenda has become “a war against the sacred and human nature,” a “multidimensional, comprehensive, and ruthless project of destruction.”
“Anyone who raises a voice against this annihilation project is silenced and targeted by hate campaigns,” he said, declaring that his government would not be intimidated.
“Turkey is determined to break this siege and resist the climate of fear. To this end we became a member of the United Nations Friends of the Family group. Inshallah, together with other member countries, we will not hesitate to defend the family, the human being, and human nature,” he concluded.
Quote:Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used his address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday to attack Israel on behalf of Iran’s terrorist clients in Hamas – an unsurprising, but perhaps slightly disappointing, tirade from an Iranian second-in-command who billed himself as a more compassionate, reformist leader.
Pezeshkian spent a few minutes touting his platform of “reform, national empathy, constructive engagement with the world, and economic development,” and promoting Shia Islam as a religion of “peace, justice, and universal tolerance,” but then began reciting Hamas propaganda about Israel’s supposedly murderous campaign in Gaza.
Pezeshkian railed against the Israelis for referring to their campaign of “genocide, the killing of children, war crimes, and state terrorism” as “legitimate self-defense.”
“They label hospitals, kindergartens, and schools as ‘legitimate military targets.’ They label the freedom-loving and brave people around the world who protest against their genocide as ‘anti-Semitic.’ They label an oppressed people, who have stood up against seven decades of occupation and humiliation, as ‘terrorists,’” he thundered.
Iran is the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism by a wide margin but, in Pezeshkian’s twisted worldview, his country merely supports “popular liberation movements.”
“We have been siding with the people across the world, who have flooded the streets in outrage against Israeli atrocities. We condemn Israeli crimes against humanity,” he said.
Like other terrorist-supporting leaders who spoke at UNGA, Pezeshkian made no mention whatsoever of the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians – including women, children, and infants – on October 7. He studiously avoided mentioning Hamas’ use of human shields, its terror tunnels, its criminal abuse of hostages, and its penchant for putting weapons in civilian locations.
Pezeshkian painted Iran as a helpless victim of “threats, war, occupation, and sanctions.”
“Iran has never initiated a war. It has only defended itself heroically against external aggression, causing the aggressors to regret their actions,” he claimed.
Of course, Iran constantly wages aggressive war against its neighbors and the West, but it uses cutouts and proxies like the terrorist Shiite militias of Iraq, the Hezbollah terrorist organization that has laid waste to Lebanon with Tehran’s support, and the Houthi pirates of Yemen, who have conducted reckless attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea.
Pezehskian mentioned none of Iran’s vicious proxy forces in his speech, nor did he accept responsibility for arming and training them.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all, and seek no war or quarrel with anyone,” the Iranian president claimed, at roughly the same time as reports were breaking that Iran brokered a deal with Russia to supply the Houthis with more dangerous anti-ship missiles.
Pezeshkian did briefly mention Russia, but only in the context of claiming that Iran wants “lasting peace and security” for both the Russians and Ukrainians.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran opposes war and emphasizes the urgent need to end military hostilities in Ukraine. We support all peaceful solutions and believe that dialogue is the only way to resolve this crisis,” he said.
Pezeshkian criticized former U.S. President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), without mentioning the Iranian cheating that prompted Trump to withdraw.
Pezeshkian also avoided mentioning recent complaints by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has ceased cooperating with its investigators while it races to increase its already treaty-busting stockpile of enriched uranium.
Instead, the Iranian leader blasted sanctions as inhumane, demanded the U.S. unilaterally lift all of them, and said his government is ready to “engage with JCPOA participants.”
Pezeshkian tossed in a complaint about Trump ordering the liquidation of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, without mentioning that Soleimani’s entire job was to destabilize other governments in the Middle East – the very activity Pezeshkian insisted Iran never engages in – or that Soleimani was killed in Baghdad while in the midst of organizing terrorist attacks on Americans with the aid of Iraq’s Shiite militias.
The Iranian leader pitched his closing remarks as a direct statement to the American people, implicitly either pleading with them, or threatening them, not to send Trump back to the White House.
“In order to build a better future world, Iran stands prepared to foster meaningful economic, social, political, and security partnerships with global powers and its neighbors based on equal footing,” he claimed.
“The appropriate response to this message from Iran is not to impose more sanctions, but to fulfill existing obligations to remove sanctions, benefiting the Iranian people and hence laying the foundations for more constructive agreements,” he concluded.
Not like Iran ever cared about meeting the deal's demands at all.
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed China’s peace proposals as insincere and even treacherous at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday, insisting only his own proposals can bring “real and just peace” to his people by ending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion.
Zelensky began his address to the Assembly by recalling the “terrifying report” he received a month into the invasion about Russian tanks firing at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia – which, he reminded his audience, is the largest nuclear plant in Europe.
“The Russian army stormed this facility just as brutally as any other during this war, without thinking about the consequences, possibly disastrous,” he said.
“This was one of the most horrifying moments of the war, when no one could know how Russian strikes on the nuclear facility would end, and everyone in Ukraine was reminded of what ‘Chernobyl’ means,” he continued, alluding to the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster, which occurred on Ukraine’s soil when it was part of the Soviet Union.
Zelensky repeatedly warned that Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia represents “the major source of radiation danger in Europe, possibly the world,” and demanded the facility be returned to Ukrainian control.
He extended that warning by musing that “smoke from fires in war-torn cities can reach other countries,” and accused Putin of committing “ecocide” by heedlessly causing massive environmental damage during his invasion of Ukraine.
“If – God forbid – Russia causes a nuclear disaster at one of our nuclear power plants, radiation will not respect state borders,” he said.
Zelensky said Putin’s vicious strategy was to wipe out Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, inflicting so much suffering on its civilian population that Kyiv might finally surrender.
“As of today, Russia has destroyed all of our thermal plants, and a large portion of our hydroelectric capacity. This is how Putin is preparing for winter, hoping to torment millions of Ukrainians – ordinary families, women, children, ordinary towns, ordinary villages. Putin wants to leave them in the dark and cold this winter, forcing Ukraine to suffer and surrender,” he said.
Zelensky accused other countries of helping Russia, name-checking North Korea and Iran – a “telling choice of friends,” in the Ukrainian leader’s opinion. He accused Russia’s allies of feeding it satellite data that helped the Russians target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Quote:Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has made an appeal to the U.N. Security Council and “global south” nations to force Russia to peace, accusing the country of “international crimes” and of targeting nuclear power stations.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the utility of talks to resolve the Ukraine War, saying all the nations of the world to come together to “force” Russia into peace. Addressing the U.N. Security council in a punchy speech, President Zelensky told its members — Russia is a permanent member of the council — that: “we know some in the world want to talk to Putin… but what could they possibly hear from them, that he’s upset because we are exercising our right to defend our people?”.
The Ukrainian leader accused Russia of “international crimes” including razing cities and villages, and said “have have proof” that Russia is targeting Ukrainian nuclear power plants, potentially an extremely serious outcome. “This war can’t simply fade away, this war can’t be calmed by talks”, Zelensky said, remarking of the Russian nuclear attack threat: “If Russia is willing to go this far, it means nothing you value matters to Moscow.”
Making a global appeal, and particularly to nations who aren’t already donors to the Ukraine war effort, President Zelensky made an address to nations like China, Brazil, and African states for help. Britain’s The Guardian characterised his words as a message to the “global south”.
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He said: I invite all of you, all principled nations to join us in this process, all who truly respect the U.N. charter. We invite China, we invite Brazil, I have already invited India. We are working with African nations, with all of Latin America, Middle East, Central Asia, Europe, the Pacific region, North America, all. All are equally important for peace.
This is due to be a big week for President Zelensky. Beyond his set-piece speeches to the United Nations, he is due to use his time in the United States to meet with key U.S. leaders including President Biden to present what Zelensky has repeatedly hailed as his “peace plan”. As well as the U.S. President, Zelensky also visited a U.S. munitions factory making shells for the war and is due to speak with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, again on the peace plan.
One key element President Zelensky is expected to be working towards during his time in the U.S. is permission to use long-range missiles to strike Russian military bases deep inside Russia. Ukraine states these facilities are used to launch major air-strikes on Ukrainian cities that are far better defeated on the ground before they launch.
European backers are moving toward supporting Ukraine making these deep strikes into the Russian hinterland but Washington remains opposed, fearing escalation with Moscow.
President Zelensky is scheduled to address the United Nations again today in the morning session of the General Debate of the 79th Session, after 0900 New York time (1400 BST).
Quote:Argentine President Javier Milei used his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to deliver an enthusiastic condemnation of “globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda” and warn that the U.N. flagship Agenda 2030 is a threat to global freedom.
Milei introduced himself as a “libertarian economist … honored with the mandate of the presidency of the Argentine Republic” thanks to the “precipitous failure of over a century of collectivist policies,” marking a notable rift from many General Assembly speeches that amplify U.N. leadership messages on climate change, wealth redistribution, and silencing “misinformation.” Milei became president in December 2023, so Tuesday’s event was his first opportunity to address the forum.
Before delivered a list of damning facts about the current state of the United Nations, Milei applauded the institution for successfully preventing a third world war, the original purpose of its existence.
“We went from having two world wars in less than 40 years, which together took over 120 million lives, to having 70 consecutive years of relative peace and global stability,” he noted, “under an order that allowed the whole world integrate itself commercially, compete, and prosper.”
This “outstanding success in the history of nations,” Milei stated, brought about a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, which the president, an avid student of Judaism, read to the forum:
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
But the U.N. “started to mutate,” he continued, and became “a leviathan of multiple tentacles that wants to decide not just what every state or nation should do, but how all the citizens of the world should live.” The current U.N. is “a supranational government model of international bureaucrats who want to impose on the citizens of the world a determined way of life,” he warned.
Milei then launched into a searing condemnation of the recent United Nations record, condemning its support of Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns and its support of totalitarian regimes:
This is how we have seen how an organization that was born to defend the rights of man has become one of the principal advocates for the systematic violation of liberty – for example, with the worldwide quarantines during 2020 which should be considered a crime against humanity.
In this very house, which claims to defend human rights, bloody dictatorships such as those of Cuba and Venezuela have been allowed onto the Human Rights Council with not even the least reproach. In this very house, which claims to defend the rights of women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women allows entry to countries that punish women for showing skin. In this very house, systematically, they have voted against the state of Israel – which is the only country in the Middle East that defends liberal democracy, while showing simultaneously a total incapacity to respond to the scourge of terrorism.
“Crimes against humanity” is a catch-all term in international law for actions that, on a global scale, are prosecutable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Milei did not single out anyone to charge with the crime, but the context of accusing the United Nations of playing a role in supporting repressive quarantines points to the head of the U.N.’s World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was reelected to lead the agency uncontested despite his egregious failure in contain the novel coronavirus or holding China accountable for its destruction of relevant biological evidence and silence as the virus began spreading in Wuhan in December 2019. Tedros’ current main project is the development of a “pandemic treaty” that would greatly empower the W.H.O. to act above sovereign states in the face of public health emergencies.
Milei also used his speech to condemn the World Economic Forum (WEF), a venue he has visited to share similar condemnations of globalism.
“What also hasn’t helped is the tutelage of the World Economic Forum, where they promote ridiculous policies with Malthusian veneers, like the policies of Mission Zero, which harm above all poor countries,” Milei told the United Nations, “to policies tied to sexual and reproductive rights — when the birth rates of Western countries are collapsing, announcing a bleak future for all.”
Milei predicted that the world is “at the end of a cycle.”
“Globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda have crashed into reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to real-world problems — in fact, they never had them,” he declared. “If Agenda 2030 failed, as its own promoters recognize, the response should be to ask ourselves if it was not a poorly conceived plan from the beginning, accept that reality, and change course.”
The Argentine president concluded by summarizing the creed of his anti-collectivist, libertarian movement in Argentina.
“We believe in the defense of life — for all. We believe in the defense of the right to property — for all,” he listed. “We believe in the freedom of expression — for all. “We believe in freedom of religion — for all. We believe in freedom of commerce — for all. And we believe in limiting governments — all of them.”
Quote:The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, offered the U.N. General Assembly a succinct speech on Tuesday comprised of two parts: a victory lap on the overwhelming success of his campaign against criminal gangs, and a warning from “a friend” that the current trajectory of the Western world will lead to a “new dark ages of humanity.”
Bukele declared that “the free world is no longer free,” using examples including the erosion of freedom of expression, especially on social media, and rampant crime in major Western cities. He did not specify any particular instances of censorship or crime, but the Salvadoran president has in the past lamented the decline of major American cities such as New York and Baltimore stridently condemned attempts to prosecute American former President Donald Trump while he campaigns to return to the White House.
Bukele spoke on a packed first day at the General Assembly that included despondent remarks from outgoing American President Joe Biden, a 40-minute rant from Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and, immediately before Bukele, a rousing condemnation of globalism from President Javier Milei of Argentina – whose administration has turned to Bukele for advice on fighting crime.
The U.N. typically suggests a 15-minute time limit for speeches, though it does not cut off its high-level speakers if they cross the limit, as in the case with Erdogan. Bukele, going against the current, addressed the Assembly for about ten minutes.
“When I came for the first time to the United Nations General Assembly, in 2019, I know that not many people knew of El Salvador or had even heard talk about El Salvador,” he noted. If they knew about it, they only had bad references, as the most violent country in the world or the Mara country.”
“Five years after that first speech, I come here as the president of a country that now has a voice in the world,” he declared.
Bukele shifted his tone dramatically in this week’s speech from how he initially addressed the Assembly during his first speech in 2019. At that time, Bukele dismissed the forum as irrelevant, comparing it to Blockbuster video, and took a selfie on the podium to prove that the United Nations is so poorly respected more people would see the selfie than hear his speech. On Tuesday, Bukele treated the forum as relevant and used it to offer a warning, particularly to the Western world.
After celebrating the “undeniable” success of his campaign to eradicate MS-13, 18th Street, and other gangs that had taken over his country in five years, he suggested that El Salvador’s progress had occurred simultaneously with an ongoing decline in the “free world” that would lead the planet to doom.
“While the Salvadoran people became more optimist, the majority of people in the modern world become ever more pessimist,” Bukele observed. “And they have a point: the world has become divided, depressed, worried, hostile, and hopeless. And it has done it at an unprecedented pace.”
“The free world is no longer free. This is not an exaggeration,” he proclaimed.
“When the free world became free, it was due to its principles of freedom of expression, equality before the law, unity, and respect for private property. But once a nation abandons the principles that make it free, it’s only a matter of time untl it loses its freedom completely,” he suggested.
Without naming any particular nation, Bukele continued, “In some cities of the so-called free world, stores need to secure their products behind class doors with lock and key to avoid theft. And I’m not talking about expensive products, but simple things like chocolate bars and razors.”
He also addressed the leftist-led campaigns against free expression, particularly online.
“The largest social media platforms in the world were forced to censor their users at the demand of their governments,” the president said. “Citizens of Western states have been arrested for sharing posts on social networks. Governing parties have tried to ban their political opposition.”
“These are not accusations or conspiracy theories. These are provable and widely documented facts,” he added.
“You can’t claim the title of free world if your people are not even free to walk the streets without fear of being harassed, robbed, or murdered,” he suggested.
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Quote:Ukrainian troops engaged in hand-to-hand combat as they drove Russian forces out of a huge processing plant in the town of Vovchansk in Ukraine’s northeast that had been occupied for four months, officials said Tuesday.
The plant, a partly steel structure with some 30 buildings, had been a Russian stronghold in the Kharkiv border region since May when Russia sought to further stretch Ukraine’s weary forces by launching a fresh push in the area.
Taking back the plant was likely intended to demonstrate that Ukraine is not giving up the fight despite being outmanned and outgunned by the Russian army. The accomplishment coincided with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the United States where he is looking to ensure continuing foreign support for his country with the war deep into its third year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to grind down Ukraine’s appetite for the fight and sap the West’s support for Kyiv by drawing out the conflict. Russian forces have been creeping forward on the battlefield this year but the progress has been costly. The U.K. Defense Ministry estimates more than 1,000 Russian troops are being killed or wounded each day.
A statement from Ukrainian Military Intelligence said its units recaptured the Vovchansk plant after fierce fighting “in densely built-up conditions.”
The Russian onslaught has reduced Vovchansk, and many other Ukrainian towns and villages, to smoking piles of rubble and bombed-out residential buildings.
Quote:The anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is officially the strongest faction in East Germany following the regional elections in Brandenburg on Sunday.
Despite a narrow defeat to the Social Democrats (SPD) in the north-eastern state of Brandenburg, the populist Alternative for Germany party can now boast having the most state parliament seats in the former East Germany. According to calculations from broadcaster NTV, the AfD control 138 seats in the East, surpassing the neo-liberal centre-right Christian Democrat Union following the vote in Brandenburg.
The CDU — the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel — will now only have 128 seats in the East. Before Sunday, both the AfD and CDU were tied at 131 state parliament seats in the socially conservative former Soviet controlled part of the country.
The shift in balance of power towards the right comes after the AfD’s victory in Thuringia, which represented the first time the party came out on top in a state election in its history with 32.8 per cent of the vote.
The populist party also secured a strong second-place showing in Saxony with 30.6 per cent of the vote. In Brandenburg on Sunday, the AfD secured 29.2 per cent of the vote, barely behind the SPD at 30.9 per cent.
Results in Brandenburg also confirmed the staying power of the upstart leftist-populist party of Sahra Wagenknecht, a political firebrand who broke from the Left party over her opposition to the war in Ukraine and mass migration.
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Wagenknecht’s eponymous BSW party won 13.5 per cent of the vote in Brandenburg, besting the 12.1 per cent for the CDU, which continues to struggle to regain trust after former leader Merkel opened the floodgates to mass migration in 2015.
Despite aligning with the AfD on key issues, Wagenknecht has ruled out an alliance with the right-wing party, joining the so-called cordon sanitaire of establishment parties to block the AfD from joining any government, be it at the state or federal level.
Yet, with the collapse of support for the Green party, over failures of climate-inspired energy policy and continued support for mass migration, Wagenknecht may be seeking to replace the Greens as a coalition party of the Social Democrats. Such an alliance would likely come with a demand that the SPD finally reverse course on migration.
However, following disappointing results in regional elections and struggles in national polling, the governing SPD may be in a state of flux. Although Olaf Scholz has committed to running for a second term as chancellor, his party essentially abandoned him in the Brandenburg campaign. Rather than running on the chancellor’s record, the local Social Democrats focussed on regional leader Dietmar Woidke instead, refusing to even feature pictures of Scholz on any campaign material.
Social Democrat co-leader Lars Klingbei attempted to quell discussion about a leadership change, saying on Monday that there is “absolutely no wobbling… In the leadership of the party, the parliamentary group, among the state governors and ministers, there is no discussion about this in any place.”
Quote:The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.
Announcing their early resignation, Green leaders Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang said that the party is in “the deepest crisis in a decade”.
Their decision to cede control of the party comes after yet another embarrassing defeat at the ballot box, with the Greens only managing to win 4.1 per cent of the vote in the Brandenburg elections over the weekend, falling below the five per cent threshold to be represented in the state’s parliament.
This was a repeat of similarly dismal performances in Thuringia, where the party also fell short of the threshold, and in Saxony, where the leftist party barely met the requirement, with 5.1 per cent of the vote.
Ricarda Lang admitted in comments reported by Welt: “New faces are needed to lead the party out of the crisis.”
The Greens, which currently make up one third of the “traffic light” coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have suffered a severe decline in popularity as the public’s attitude towards issues like mass migration and the green agenda have soured.
This trend has been particularly noticeable among young voters, with the Greens losing a staggering 74.1 per cent of its support among 16 to 24 year olds in Brandenburg, falling by 20 percentage points from 2019 to just seven per cent support among the age group. Meanwhile, the anti-mass migration populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) increased its vote share among young people by 14 points to 32 per cent.
While the German people have increasingly turned against the mass migration party, with recent Islamist terror attacks carried out on Mannheim and Solingen, forcing Chancellor Olaf Scholz to enact border controls and begin deportations of illegals back to Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban takeover of the country in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal of American forces in 2021, the Green party has continued to argue against limits on migration.
The intransigence of the party on immigration was criticised by popular Social Democrat leader of Brandenburg Dietmar Woidke, who narrowly defeated the AfD at the weekend elections after distancing the local party from the SPD-led government in Berlin. Woidke told German paper Welt that he would have “expected a more pragmatic attitude from the Greens, especially when it comes to migration,” adding that “you cannot make government policy against the clear expectations of the population.”
The Greens have also faced pushback for failures of its climate agenda, which has left the leading European economy vulnerable to external shocks, notably from the war in Ukraine and the drastic reduction in supplies of Russian energy. The coalition government also controversially decided to push forward with Green Party plans to entirely phase out nuclear energy amid the energy crisis, despite the success of the clean form of energy in neighbouring France.
Finally, while Green parties have traditionally been proponents of peace, the current Green party in Germany has been one of the leading advocates for sponsoring Kyiv in its conflict with Russia. Infamously, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, one of the top Green politicians in the country, declared in 2022 that the government would continue to financially support Ukraine “no matter what” the German voter thinks.
The electoral issues facing coalition parties are not contained to the Greens, however, with fellow traffic light partner, the neo-liberal corporatist Free Democrats (FDP) suffering even worse results in recent state elections than the Green Party, only managing to gain 1.1 per cent of the vote in Thuringia, 0.9 per cent in Saxony, and 0.8 per cent in Brandenburg.
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Quote:Members of Britain’s governing Labour Party dealt Prime Minister Keir Starmer a blow on Wednesday, rejecting his decision to cut payments that offset winter heating costs for millions of retirees.
The vote on the final day of Labour’s annual conference is not binding, but it’s a setback to Starmer’s efforts to unite his center-left party around the contentious measure.
Since winning office in July, Starmer has cautioned that the dire state of the public finances inherited from the last Conservative government means he must make hard choices such as ending the winter fuel allowance, worth between 200 and 300 pounds ($262 and $393), for all but the poorest pensioners.
Trade unions that are among Labour’s funders and allies organized resistance to the cut at the conference in Liverpool, northwest England. They forced a vote on a demand for the decision to be reversed. It was narrowly passed in a show-of-hands vote amid cheers and jeers in the conference hall.
“I do not understand how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel payment for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched,” said Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, to applause from delegates. “This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and it needs to be reversed.”
The government has promised the withdrawal of the heating allowance will be offset by an above-inflation increase in the state pension and other measures to reduce poverty.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told delegates that the cut “wasn’t a decision we wanted or expected to make.” But she argued that “this Labour government has done more to help the poorest pensioners in the last two months than the Tories did in 14 years.”
Starmer tried to unite the party and appeal to a skeptical electorate in his first conference speech as prime minister on Tuesday, telling voters exhausted by years of political and economic turmoil that better times are on the way – if they swallow his recipe of short-term pain for long-term gain.
He said he would make “tough decisions” – code for public spending restraint and tax increases – to achieve economic growth to fund schools, hospitals, roads, railways and more.
Starmer acknowledged some of those decisions would be unpopular, but said: “We will turn our collar up and face the storm.”
Quote:Britain’s left-wing Prime Minister says he hopes to meet with both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris while he is in the United States this week, but his own ministers struggle to keep on message, laying on the criticism of Trump.
Sir Keir Starmer has flown to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, and hopes to use his time in the United States to get into the good graces of the future U.S. President, whoever that may be. Speaking to reporters on his flight, Starmer said: “As far as the candidates are concerned, if possible, it would be very good to meet both of them at some stage before the election. We’ll just have to see what’s possible”, notes The Daily Telegraph.
But Starmer may have an uphill battle ahead of him to secure these meetings, given as The Guardian asserts, he is “understood not to want to see one candidate without also meeting the other”, meaning a refusal by one could see the British Prime Minister coming home empty-handed. The problem for Starmer may be that even as he continues his months-long charm offensive towards the Trump team — the Labour Party’s natural alignment with the Democrats make such less efforts less important there — his own senior colleagues undermine it.
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Speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference this week, newly-appointed Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum Dame Angela Eagle spoke in the very specific language of the progressive left employed when they feel they are interacting among their own tribe, bemoaning the toxic “othering” of asylum seekers”, and right-wing rhetoric “creating a space, I think, for overt racism”.
It is difficult for newly arrived immigrants to “rise above the constant drumbeat of toxic anti-immigration, anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become emboldened, not only in Britain but across the western countries”.
Getting into her stride, the ‘Border security’ minister made her actual views on the utility of borders clear, remarking: “I mean, Trump does the same… If you look at some of the memes that he’s using with the wall stuff at the moment, it’s astonishing, quite the level of vitriol that it has created.”
The Trump camp made its displeasure known and bit back, with a spokesman reportedly saying of the comments: “Nobody knows who this random person is or cares what comes out of her mouth… Who is she and what does she do?”.
Politico notes Brexit leader and British Trump ally Nigel Farage looked askance at Eagle’s intemperate comments, observing: “Angela Eagle and the Labour Party are so scared of this subject that all they can do is throw abuse at anyone who is concerned at the unwanted changes to our country” while party leader Sir Keir — off on his charm offensive to America — declined to back up his colleague’s comments at all.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Federal prosecutors indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday, The New York Times reports, casting doubt on the moderate Democrat’s future as chief executive of the country’s largest city.
The U.S. Department of Justice had been investigating whether Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign received illegal foreign donations from the Turkish government. The probe came into public view in November, when federal agents seized the electronic devices first of an Adams campaign aide in charge of fundraising, and then Adams himself.
A series of additional scandals have since consumed Adams’ mayoralty with federal prosecutors investigating top Adams administration officials for charges that include alleged bribery and shakedown schemes. The steady drip of federal raids and rumored indictments has spurred the resignation of a host of top officials. In the past two weeks alone, Adams’ schools chancellor, health commissioner, police commissioner, and City Hall attorney have all left.
A former female colleague of Adams’ while he was in the New York Police Department is also suing him for sexual assault she says he perpetrated in 1993.
As Adams’ troubles have mounted, he has maintained that he is laser-focused on running the city, which has been dealing with continued affordability challenges for residents and the integration of more than 210,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since 2022.
But there is already a growing field of Democrats challenging Adams in the mayoral primary in June 2025, including state Sens. Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, City Comptroller Brad Lander, and former City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps the most influential progressive in New York City, called for Adams to resign on Wednesday.
“I do not see how Mayor Adams can continue governing New York City,” she posted on X, citing the “flood” of investigations and resignations.
Quote:The 57-page indictment against Eric Adams (D) was released Thursday and contained a litany of serious allegations against the New York City mayor.
Adams has been indicted on a slew of federal charges relating to contributions to his 2021 campaign, “including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him.”
Overall there are five district criminal counts in the Adams indictment including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations that prosecutors said began when he was a top elected official in Brooklyn and continued after he became mayor.
The indictment alleges Adams defrauded the public matching funds program by submitting inflated donation figures boosted by the Turkish money and receiving eight times that amount in matching public funds.
“As Adams’s prominence and power grew, his foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him, particularly when, in 2021, it became clear that Adams would become New York City’s mayor,” the indictment alleges.
A further page notes an Adams staffer deleted messaging apps during an FBI interview.
The counts are:
Count one: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery and to receive contributions by foreign nationals
Count two: Wire fraud
Count three: Solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national
Count four: Solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national
Count five: Bribery
As Breitbart News reported, Adams has already responded to the indictment from a grand jury noting the charges against him would be “entirely false.”
“My fellow New Yorkers, it is now my belief that the federal government intends to charge me with crimes,” Adams said in a video. “If so, these charges will be entirely false, based on lies. But, they would not be surprising.”
Adams is the first sitting mayor in the city’s history to face criminal charges.
The charges come after the mayor had his home raided by the FBI earlier this year, and multiple deputies‘ homes were searched earlier this month.
Further details are expected to be revealed at an 11:30 a.m. press conference coming just hours after his phone was seized by the FBI.
Quote:New York City Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán (D) said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that New York City Mayor Eric Adams should be removed by Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) after his indictment for his alleged role in campaign finance and foreign influence crimes.
Cabán said, “The question really for New Yorkers right now is can this mayor in this moment govern, can he deliver the critical services that New Yorkers deserve every single day? And we know that he can’t even before the indictment dropped. So it’s not just that he has now been criminally indicted for first in the history of New York City. It is not just the mass exodus of high level officials in the administration, but it’s this ongoing pattern of mismanagement and corrupt that has broken down on the city’s ability to deliver government services and provisions and you are yes, innocent until proven guilty. I am a huge proponent of due process. But this is about can he deliver and do the job? This is way too distracting in this moment.”
Host Jake Tapper said, “Governor Kathy Hochul has the power to remove Mayor Adams from his position should she?”
Cabán said, “Yes. You know, like I said, this is a moment where it’s very clear that he cannot govern. There is an inability for government to function the way it is.”
Quote:On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) stated that “it’s just unfortunate” that New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) said some of the same things as 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump about migrants and immigration, Trump’s argument “is a horrible one around migrants, around immigration.” And “that is not who New York is. New York is defined by the contributions of immigrants to the city of New York. This is the place, the Statue of Liberty.”
After host Alex Wagner referenced Adams’ comments about migrants, Jayapal said, “I think the challenge here is that the whole argument right now that Donald Trump is pushing is a horrible one around migrants, around immigration. And it’s just unfortunate that Eric Adams [said] some of those same things, he said some of those same things and I think New Yorkers didn’t like it. I think that is not who New York is. New York is defined by the contributions of immigrants to the city of New York. This is the place, the Statue of Liberty. And I think that — so, this is difficult, in many ways.”
Now we should mull the possibility that the charges pressed against NYC mayor are motivated by his remarks on immigration.
Quote:Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that former President Donald Trump should be extinguished from politics, which she clarified meant “vote him out.”
Raimondo said, “Tax policy, you have to work with Congress but if he decides he wants to do something crazy, like a 200% tariff, which will hurt Americans, raise prices and lose jobs, he could do it as president. Which is why honestly why I’m here in my personal capacity. The stakes are so high in this one. We cannot afford to put him back in the White House.”
She added, “He’s the one that overturned Roe. For me, you know, when I was the governor of Rhode Island, one of the first governors in the country back in 2019 to codify Roe in state statute in Rhode Island. I worked with the legislature, it was because he was president, and I feared exactly what would happen. I said women of Rhode Island would be protected. That’s real protection, stepping up and leading. And what he says is the opposite. It is just another lie. How did we get here? Let’s extinguish him for good. We have an answer, we have a remarkably talented candidate who is sincere, who is pragmatic, who is open. Let’s just get it done.”
Host Mika Brzezinski said, “And extinguish, you mean vote him out?”
Raimondo said, “Yes, absolutely vote him out. Banish him from American politics. Yes just vote him out so he goes away.”
Quote:California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a series of “reparations” bills on Thursday, including a formal apology for slavery, even though the state entered the Union as a free state in 1850.
The apology reads, in part:
Whereas, Well after California entered the Union and declared itself a free state outlawing slavery, more than 2,000 enslaved African people were brought to California from 1850 to 1860.
Whereas, the California Supreme Court enforced fugitive slave laws until 1865, stating that the antislavery law in the California Constitution was merely a “declaration of a principle.”
…
Resolved, The State of California apologizes for perpetuating the harms African Americans faced by having imbued racial prejudice through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding and declares that such actions shall not be repeated.
Newsom signed several other bills passed by the state legislature and pushed by reparations activists. As Breitbart News noted, however, the bills did not include actual cash payments or a reparations fund, provoking protests.
The movement for reparations gained traction during the chaotic summer of 2020, when protests and riots spread across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police in Democrat-run Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Newsom signed legislation establishing a committee to study reparations. After it made recommendations that included massive cash payments and racially separate schools, legislators toned down the proposals. Newsom only included $12 million toward the reparations issue in his budget this year, which grappled with a near-$50 billion deficit.
The California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) hailed the state’s apology, among other “significant Reparations-related legislation.” The hope is that California will inspire other states, and the federal government to do the same.
They only had the chance to do that back in the 19th century. It's a scam to come up with SEVERAL bills now to "repair" what had been dealt with almost 2 centuries ago. The black people have enjoyed freedom for such a long time that there's no longer an excuse to claim they've been harmed as a minority for decades.
Quote:Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) invited a never-Trumper to Senate Republicans’ private weekly lunch on September 17 to argue that Republicans should prioritize defense spending above election integrity.
McConnell’s pitch undermined the House Republican plan to pass a six-month continuing resolution (CR) attached to the SAVE Act – a bill by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) to eliminate non-citizen voting favored by Donald Trump.
In the meeting, McConnell brought in members of the Commission on National Defense Strategy to present a report that endorsed raising taxes to send billions more taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon, a meeting reported by the Daily Signal.
Breitbart News has learned one of those leaders brought in by McConnell to address Republicans was Commission Vice Chair Eric Edelman, a former Undersecretary of Defense for George Bush. In 2020, Edelman endorsed Joe Biden against Donald Trump, disparaging Trump’s fitness for office.
Edelman maintains his fervent opposition to the Republican standard-bearer. On September 18, the day after he pleaded with Republican Senators to prioritize defense spending over conservative policies, Edelman’s name appeared on a letter with dozens of other national security officials attacking Trump and endorsing his Democrat opponent, Kamala Harris.
The September 17 meeting underscores McConnell’s increasing distance from the conference he has long ruled – and highlights the significance of the battle to replace him.
Three candidates have declared so far in Sens. John Thune (R-SD), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Rick Scott (R-FL).
Thune and Cornyn are considered loyal McConnell disciples. Thune currently serves as Republican Whip –McConnell’s top deputy, while Cornyn served in the role before term limits forced him to step aside.
Scott challenged McConnell for leader at the end of the previous conference. Although McConnell won, Scott’s was the first challenge to McConnell’s leadership in his many years atop the Republican conference.
By amassing ten votes in a race that McConnell was certain to win, Scott showed that members of McConnell’s conference were increasingly willing to stand up to him despite the consequences, signaling McConnell’s loosening grip.
Quote:During an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that the relationship between the U.S. and China has “gotten closer. I think we have deepened our ties with China.”
CNBC Senior Economics Reporter Steve Liesman asked, “You mentioned in your speech the risk of China and the importance of having a positive relationship with China or at least building on that relationship. Yet, over the course of this administration, you have kept the tariffs put in place by former President Trump and you’ve actually added to them. Do you believe that that relationship has gotten closer?”
Yellen answered, “I do believe it’s gotten closer. I think we have deepened our ties with China. We have found ways to constructively discuss and address our differences. I don’t want to say that there will be some miracle in which we see China address all of our concerns quickly, but we have had productive discussions of our differences so that we better understand one another and we’re cooperating in areas that the world needs us to work together. Financial stability is one of these areas, and, for example, if we were to, God forbid, see a globally systemically important bank…fail, that has operations in China and the U.S. and Europe, we would need to be able to cooperate and we are working closely with financial authorities in China, doing tabletop exercises and deepening our ties so that we would be able to work constructively and quickly to manage a financial crisis that involved the banks and the financial system in our countries.”
Quote:Hurricane Helene, which is expected to make landfall in northern Florida Thursday evening, has been upgraded to a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) upgraded the massive storm, barreling down on Florida, Thursday evening.
“Update 6:20 PM EDT Thurs: Helene now an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane,” the NHC wrote in an update.
“A NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft currently investigating Helene recently found that the maximum sustained winds have increased to 130 mph (215 km/h). The minimum central pressure has also decreased to 947 mb (27.96 inches) based on dropsonde data,” it added:
NOAA Wrote:Update 6:20 PM EDT Thurs: Helene now an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane
A NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft currently investigating Helene recently found that the maximum sustained winds have increased to 130 mph (215 km/h). The minimum central pressure has also decreased…
The 6 p.m. ET update from the NHC warned that, “A catastrophic and deadly storm surge will occur along portions of the Florida Big bend coast, where inundation could reach as high as 20 feet above ground level.”
“Potentially catastrophic hurricane-force winds are expected within the eyewall of Helene and will spread inland over portions of northern Florida and Georgia when Helene makes landfall in the Florida Big Bend region this evening,” it adds, also warning of “damaging wind gusts” well inland, affecting portions of Georgia as well as the Carolinas.
Quote:U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel that fighting Hezbollah would only make it more difficult to return more than 60,000 displaced Israelis to their homes, as he pushed for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
The Times of Israel noted:
During his meeting with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer earlier today on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the Biden administration’s belief that an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah will only make it more difficult to accomplish the objective of returning evacuated Israelis to their homes along the northern border.
…
“A diplomatic settlement will allow civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes… further escalation of the conflict will only make that objective more difficult,” Blinken told Blinken, according to the US readout.
President Joe Biden is backing a 21-day ceasefire proposal that the administration insists it cleared with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but which the Netanyahu government denies that it approved. Hezbollah has not commented.
The Biden administration has tried to use diplomacy for nearly a year to resolve the conflict that erupted when Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terror organization, began shooting projectiles at Israeli cities, totally unprovoked.
At first, Israel retaliated only by firing at the sites from which it was attacked. Then it began targeting Hezbollah leaders and weapons caches throughout southern Lebanon. It is now preparing a ground assault in Lebanon.
Israel’s goal is to push Hezbollah back to the Litani River and to restrict its ability to fire on Israeli civilians. Alternative, it also hopes that continued military pressure will force Hezbollah to agree to stop shooting at Israel.
Hezbollah has been unreceptive to diplomatic efforts, insisting that Israel agree to a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel abandon a key military post on the Israeli side of the border, which Israel has flatly refused to do.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, approved in 2006, mandates that Hezbollah leave the border with Israel and be disarmed. The United Nations failed to enforce its own resolution as Iran armed Hezbollah for years.
Quote:Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded Israel be stripped of membership in the United Nations in his address to the 2024 General Assembly (UNGA) on Thursday.
Abbas raged against Israel’s war against the Palestinian terrorist gang Hamas, denouncing it as a “full-scale war of genocide” by the “occupying usurpers” of Israel.
“Entire family names have been wiped out of the civil record,” he said. “More than one hundred families have been completely wiped out. Thousands have died because of the spread of disease, and shortages of medicine and water.”
Like other apologists for Palestinian terrorism at the UNGA, Abbas carefully avoided mentioning exactly why Israel is conducting a war against Hamas, or who started that war. He said nothing about the Israeli men, women, and children murdered, raped, and kidnapped on October 7.
Abbas did not mention Hamas at all, although he did vaguely object to the killing of civilians and say that anyone holding “women, children, and the elderly” as prisoners should release them.
Abbas portrayed himself as “the voice of reason” for calling on Israel to respond to the atrocities he couldn’t quite bring himself to mention by immediately implementing a “two-state solution.” He damned the Israelis for deciding they would rather fight the rapists and murders instead.
In a similar vein, Abbas condemned Israel for “launching a new war of aggression on the brotherly Lebanese people” – another “war of genocide” – without mentioning the terrorists of Hezbollah or their relentless attacks on Israeli civilians.
“Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel. This madness cannot continue. The entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank,” Abbas railed at the U.N. member states.
“If Israel thinks that it would get away from being held accountable and punished for these crimes, then it is delusional,” he said.
“The international community must immediately impose sanctions on Israel. The massacres, the crimes, the genocide that Israel has perpetrated against our people since its inception in 1948, to this very day, will not go unpunished. There is no statute of limitations,” he said.
“Israel, which refuses to implement United Nations resolutions, does not deserve to be a member of this international organization,” he said, vowing to “submit an application” to have Israel’s membership revoked.
Abbas railed against the U.S. government for “obstructing” three U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have imposed a ceasefire on Israel.
“The U.S., alone, stood and said no, the fighting is going to continue,” he said. “Added to that, it furnished Israel with the deadly weapons that it’s used to kill thousands of civilians, children and women.”
It's laughable to see how a leader that represents no actual country gets some time to address the UNGA directly and demand the expulsion of a real country. Palestine does NOT meet the UN requirements to get a seat as a full-fledged member of the UN. They have no moral authority to tell the UN what to do with any state, be it Israel or any other nation around the world.
Quote:Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani warned the United Nations in his General Assembly address on Thursday that the world faces a new wave of “occupation,” “terrorism,” and flagrant violations of international law, notably omitting mention of the Iran-backed jihadist terror groups wreaking havoc in his country and region.
Al-Sudani spent much of his speech condemning Israel for its ongoing self-defense operations in Gaza, declaring that “putting an end to the violations taking place in Palestine [sic] and the region is the responsibility of everyone, particularly the Security Council.” He also condemned Israel for strikes against the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, headquartered in Lebanon, again offering no context for why Israel was conducting military operations in the country at all.
The complete absence of any mention of Iran in Al-Sudani’s speech, which largely addressed regional crises Tehran is responsible for, is notable given the Iranian Islamist regime’s growing influence in his own country. In the past decade, the Iraqi government has empowered jihadist Shiite guerrillas through the formalization of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Iran-backed militias that have repeatedly posed a threat to American forces in the country, there to help fight the Islamic State terrorist group. Baghdad has idly stood by while some of the most belligerent PMF units, most prominently Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), threatened attacks on U.S. forces — and condemned the American government for violating its “sovereignty” when responding to the KH threat.
Iran’s colonization of Iraq has dramatically accelerated since its proxy, Hamas, conducted an unprecedented massacre in Israel on October 7. Reports in September indicated that Hamas has moved into offices in Baghdad, as have jihadis representing the Houthi terrorists of Yemen. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made a visit to Iraq his first international trip since his inauguration, timing his presence in the country with Iraqi pressure on Washington to leave the country.
Al-Sudani appeared to be addressing precisely the kinds of threats that Iran presents to the world in his speech, but without mentioning the country — and targeting Israel for his criticism.
“Important principles such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, multilateral cooperation, the laws of war,” he listed, “humanitarian laws, and the international humanitarian law and the responsibility to protect and the right to self determination are being ignored.”
“The world is being pushed towards full-scale confrontations and conflicts while the United Nations Security Council is powerless and without rule,” he lamented.
Quote:Australia and New Zealand are looking for an explanation from China on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) for its unusual test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday.
The two island nations said they would consult with other members of the Pacific Islands forum (PIF) before the UNGA wraps up on Friday.
The PIF is an 18-member organization that includes French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa in addition to Australia and New Zealand.
China launched an ICBM into the Pacific for the first time since 1980, in an unusually public demonstration of military power. Chinese officials blandly insisted the test-launch was a “routine arrangement in our annual training plan,” even though it was clearly nothing of the kind.
Beijing has been coy about the missile hardware it tested and its intended flight path, but the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday spotted a map published in a Chinese newspaper that showed the missile flying in a straight line from China’s Hainan Island to “the center of a ring formed by Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Western Samoa, Fiji, and Vanuatu.”
The ICBM passed within a hundred kilometers of the northern Philippines on its way to splashdown, and may have passed over Guam.
A spokesman for the New Zealand Foreign Ministry said on Thursday said his government was seeking more details about “the unwelcome and concerning development.”
“Pacific leaders have clearly articulated their expectation that we have a peaceful, stable, prosperous, and secure region. As part of the region, New Zealand strongly supports that expectation,” the spokesman said.
The Australian government said it has “sought an explanation from China” for the missile test.
“The launch comes in the context of China’s rapid military build-up, which is taking place without the transparency and reassurance that the region looks for from great powers,” said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Biden administration seemed far less perturbed by China’s strange missile test than Australia and New Zealand. The Pentagon on Thursday praised China for handing out warning messages before the launch.
“We did receive some advanced notification of this ICBM test and we believe that that was a good thing. It’s a step in the right direction and it does lead to preventing any misperception or miscalculation,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
Singh hailed China’s launch warnings as a “common-sense, confidence building measure” the U.S. would like to see more of.
The Pentagon might have been effusive in praising China’s transparency because the Chinese military only recently restored bilateral communications with the United States, ending a blackout China imposed in a tantrum after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
China took the very unusual step of publishing photographs of its ICBM launch on Thursday, using China Junhao, the media service of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The photos revealed the missile was a DF-31AG, a vehicle capable of reaching the U.S. mainland from almost any of its known launch sites in China.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia full supports China’s “sovereign right” to test and improve its missiles. Peskov noted that China has no formal treaty obligation to share information about its missile tests in advance with the United States, but it does have such a treaty with Russia, and the “necessary exchange of information” took place in this instance.
Quote:The head of Haiti’s “Transitional Presidential Council” Edgard Leblanc Fils demanded “historical reparations” for his country at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, asserting that the international community has an “essential role” in Haiti’s recovery.
The Transitional Presidential Council, which Leblanc presides over, was formed at the end of April following a prolonged period of political negotiations to serve as the nation’s working government after months of gang violence left the country on the brink of total collapse. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
In his speech to the U.N., Leblanc extended a salute to all Haitian migrants around the world, assuring them that, wherever they are, the council he leads is “thinking of them until the conditions are right for them to return to the fold.”
Speaking on behalf of the Haitian people, Leblanc also extended “fraternal greetings to all the friends of Haiti” that have shown solidarity with its migrants, making special mention of Springfield, Ohio.
“The long history of friendship and mutual solidarity between our two nations, since our participation in the Battle of Savannah in 1779, allows us to say with confidence that the American people reject any incitement to hatred against our community,” Leblanc said. “The active participation of Haitian immigrants at various levels of American life is tangible and significant.”
“In this respect, the passions that naturally emerge during an election campaign should never be used as a pretext for xenophobia or racism in a country like the United States, a nation forged by immigrants of all origins and which has set itself up as a model of democracy on a global scale,” he continued.
Leblanc stressed that solving Haiti’s problems “rests first and foremost on the shoulders of the Haitian people,” but that the responsibility does not lie with them alone. Leblanc declared the international community, the United Nations, and the “foreign powers that often played a decisive role in Haiti’s history” responsible for an “essential part” of the efforts towards restoring peace and the rule of law in the country.
“In this sense, Haiti’s failure to recover is not just that of a nation. It reflects a collective failure, a global inability to fully respect the principles of solidarity, justice and international cooperation,” Leblanc said. “Together, with shared responsibility and renewed commitment, we can transform this crisis into an opportunity, and chart a lasting course towards peace.”
The head of the transitional council described Haiti as the “great victim of a historical injustice that has … delayed its development,” accusing France of holding its freedom ransom in 1825. Lebland added that Haiti’s colonial past “largely mortgaged its development.”
“On the eve of the bicentenary of this unprecedented event in the history of the world, has the time not come for the restitution of these sums?” Leblanc asked the U.N.
The Haitian transitional council leader affirmed that Haiti has confidence in the United Nations’ role to set up dialogue mechanisms to facilitate talks between “countries that were victims of colonization and the former colonial powers.”
“Here, at this 79th session of the General Assembly, Haiti is, through me, not simply demanding reparation, but raising a question of principle, that of imminent justice,” he asserted.
On the subject of the out-of-control gang violence in Haiti, Leblanc assured his listeners that restoring national security is an absolute priority of the nation’s authorities, who are “fully committed” to ending the spiral of violence and restoring order to the country. Leblanc also expressed support of a U.N. peacekeeping mission to fight gang violence in the country proposed by the United States and Ecuador this month.
“They are aware that peace and stability are the indispensable foundations for Haiti’s recovery, for the restoration of confidence in institutions, and for the socio-economic development of its people,” he said.
Quote:King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned the international community for allegedly failing their “moral duty” to protect Palestinian civilians during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, but took a moment to categorically reject the possibility of Jordan taking in Palestinians fleeing war.
The king dedicated the entirety of his speech to condemning Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terror organization Hamas. Israel launched a sweeping anti-terrorist initiative in Hamas-controlled Gaza following the invasion of the country by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. On that occasion, Hamas jihadists stormed residential neighborhoods in Israel, killing entire families in their homes, engaging in gang-rape and torture, and taking hostages. The Israeli government believed 101 people remain in Hamas captivity at press time, while approximately 1,200 were killed on the day of the attack.
King Abdullah did not mention Hamas by name during his speech, though he mentioned “October 7” on several occasions – not as the date of an unprecedented slaughter by jihadists, but as the start of what he claimed was a massacre of Palestinians. Absent recognition of the October 7 attack, the king made the Israeli military operation appear to not be prompted by anything.
“This Israeli government has killed more children, more journalists, more aid workers, and more medical personnel than any other war in recent memory,” the king claimed. “Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 – so is it any wonder that many are questioning how can this war not be perceived as deliberately targeting the Palestinians?”
“The level of civilian suffering cannot be written off as unavoidable collateral,” he added.
The alleged death toll of 42,000 people appears to be a reference to numbers published by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” a Hamas entity.
King Abdullah continued to declare that world nations must act to protect Palestinians – except Jordan, which would not accept Palestinian refugees in the name of rejecting “forced displacement.”
“Now is the time to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people,” he declared. “It is the moral duty of this international community to establish a protection mechanism for them across the occupied territories. This will guarantee the safety of Palestinians and Israelis from extremists who are taking our region to the brink of an all-out war.”
Among those “extremists,” he claimed, were individuals urging Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees.
“That includes those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland,” he added, “so let me be very, very clear: that will never happen. We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime.”
Israel’s attempts to eliminate the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, the king claimed, had created the impression that “some nations are above international law, that global justice does bend to the will of power and that human rights are selective, a privilege to be granted or denied at will.”
Israel declared war on Hamas following the barbaric October 7 attacks, aiming to target its terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and ensure that it cannot repeat a similar massacre in the future. Complicating Israeli efforts is Hamas’s longstanding policy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields – hiding weapons and terror tunnels throughout Gaza’s schools, hospitals, and even children’s bedrooms. Absent any mention of Hamas, King Abdullah also failed to address Hamas’s use of Palestinians as human shields.
Jordan is among the neighboring Mideast states in which residents have apparently expressed support for Hamas terrorism in the past year. Most notoriously, entrepreneurs opened a restaurant in the country called “October 7” shortly after the attack, but changed the name in response to international outrage.
While the West has been open to the possibility of taking in Palestinian refugees, including the administration of leftist President Joe Biden in the United States, Gaza’s neighbors have been far less enthusiastic. In addition to Jordan, the government of Egypt – the only nation besides Israel to share a border with Gaza – has adamantly rejected the idea of offering safe haven to Palestinian refugees, while simultaneously decrying Israel for attempting to liberate them from Hamas.
“Egypt rejects any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land, which would come at the expense of the countries of the region,” Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi proclaimed in October, shortly after the Hamas attack. Sisi suggested displacing Palestinians into the middle of the arid Negev Desert in Israel instead.
“If there is an idea to displace Palestinians from Gaza, why not transfer them to the Negev until the armed groups in Gaza, such as Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], are eliminated?” he asked.
Egypt’s resistance to opening the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, even to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, has repeatedly obstructed the delivery of vital food and medicine. The United Nations has largely supported Egypt in its refusal to allow Palestinian civilians to avoid the Gaza war zone.
If most of the modern Palestinians were actual Jordanians, why doesn't Jordan welcome its expatriates? Shouldn't a king care for his beloved subjects?
Quote:International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan held meetings on Monday with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Islamist President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, all in New York in anticipation of the U.N. General Assembly.
Reports from the meetings indicated that Abbas and Erdogan both enthusiastically pressured Khan to use his position at the ICC to persecute Israeli leaders in response to the country’s self-defense campaign in Gaza, the stronghold of the Sunni jihadist terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, conducting door-to-door attacks on civilian neighborhoods and engaging in mass killings, gang rapes, abductions, infanticides, and other atrocities. The Hamas attack, which supporters refer to as the “al-Aqsa flood,” killed an estimated 1,200 people. The Israeli government has identified another 101 people who remain hostage in Gaza as of press time, nearing the anniversary of their abduction by Hamas.
Khan announced in May that he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for approving military operations against Hamas after the October 7 attack. His announcement also included that he would seek arrest warrants for several senior Hamas leaders in response to the crimes committed on October 7, but equated them to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) response to them.
The prosecutor pressured the ICC to expedite his request for arrest warrants in early September, but the lengthy process has yet to yield any actionable warrants.
The Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday that Erdogan, a vocal supporter of the Hamas terrorist group, received an audience with Khan after having for months “fiercely advocated holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu administration accountable in international courts of law for its nearly year-long relentless offensive in the Gaza Strip.”
Turkish outlet TRT World added, that Erdogan used his time to accuse Israel of “genocide” for attempting to prevent more Hamas terror attacks, citing the Turkish presidency’s Communications Directorate.
“Israel must be held accountable for the crimes it has committed,” Erdogan reportedly said, “and … it is extremely important for the genocide case filed against Israel at the International Criminal Court to be concluded and for the perpetrators of genocide to receive the punishment they deserve.”
Erdogan, an avowed Islamist, has repeatedly defended Hamas as a legitimate political organization despite its lengthy history of human rights abuses and terrorism. Shortly after the attacks in October 2023, Erdogan declared, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a group of mujahideen defending their lands.” Before the month was over, the Turkish government organized a rally in support of Hamas, branded the “Great Palestine Rally,” which reportedly convened 1.5 million people against Israel.
“Israel, we will declare you to the world as a war criminal. We are preparing for introducing Israel to the world as a war criminal,” Erdogan said at the event, where he repeated, “Hamas is not a terrorist organization.”
In addition to meeting with Erdogan on Monday, Khan reportedly met with Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the leader of the so-called “moderate” political party Fatah. According to the Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA), Abbas similarly accused Israel of “genocide” for targeting Hamas, itself an explicitly genocidal organization, and claimed that Israeli “colonists” had also committed “violations” against his Authority.
“President Abbas demanded to expedite investigations into Israeli war crimes committed during the aggression on the Gaza Strip, as well as into colonial terrorism in the West Bank,” WAFA reported, “violations committed against detainees, and other crimes committed by the occupation in the occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The ICC is a global legal entity that prosecutes only three crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It was created by the Rome Statute and thus only has jurisdiction to act with state actors that are signatories to the legal document. Israel is not a Rome Statute signatory. The Palestinian Authority signed onto the Rome Statute in 2015 despite not being a state entity.
Khan became the ICC’s prosecutor in 2021, rising to the position after working on cases against Islamic State jihadists and working as an attorney for Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, once known as the most flamboyant son of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and later accused of war crimes before the ICC. The global court demanded his arrest in 2017 for war crimes, but he evaded detention and attempted to run in the 2021 Libyan presidential election, which was canceled indefinitely.h
Really? Can you trust a guy that worked for Kadhafi's son!?
Quote:President Joe Biden joined French President Emmanuel Macron and several other nations Wednesday evening in proposing a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah — just as Israel had begun to destroy the terrorist organization.
The text of the ceasefire demand fails to mention Hezbollah, calling only on the government of Lebanon and Israel to comply. It also does not mention Iran, which is the country that arms, funds, and trains Hezbollah’s terrorists.
Hezbollah broke an existing ceasefire in October, when it began shooting at Israel last October. The ceasefire, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006, required Hezbollah to disarm and leave the border.
The United Nations failed to enforce the ceasefire, allowing Hezbollah to build up forces in southern Lebanon. Israel evacuated over 60,000 citizens from their homes in October, but focused its military efforts on Hamas in Gaza.
It began fighting back in earnest last week. As Breitbart News reported, Israel disrupted Hezbollah’s communications, killed many of its senior officials, and destroyed some of its weapons, and was preparing for a ground invasion.
With world leaders descending on the United Nations this week, the Security Council held a meeting on the crisis, and the Biden administration joined several other nations in proposing a 21-day ceasefire, leading to a permanent deal.
The U.S and France issued a “Joint Statement by the United States, Australia, Canada, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Qatar,” which said:
The situation between Lebanon and Israel since October 8th, 2023 is intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation. This is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon.
It is time to conclude a diplomatic settlement that enables civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes in safety.
Diplomacy however cannot succeed amid an escalation of this conflict.
Thus we call for an immediate 21 day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement consistent with UNSCR 1701, and the implementation of UNSCR 2735 regarding a ceasefire in Gaza
We call on all parties, including the Governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary ceasefire immediately consistent with UNSCR 1701 during this period, and to give a real chance to a diplomatic settlement.
We are then prepared to fully support all diplomatic efforts to conclude an agreement between Lebanon and Israel within this period, building on efforts over the last months, that ends this crisis altogether.
Biden’s envoy, Ambassador Amos Hochstein, failed to broker a diplomatic agreement over the last year. He was described Wednesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office as “talented” but unable to resolve the crisis.
According to reports, Hezbollah demanded that Israel abandon a mountainside observation post on the Israeli side of the border — meaning that Israel, not Hezbollah, would have to demilitarize the border, leaving itself vulnerable.
Quote:The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran has reportedly ordered all of its members to stop using communications devices, at least until they can all be inspected.
The order came a few days after pagers and handheld radios used by the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah blew up, killing 39 and injuring over 3,000 more.
Two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters on Monday that the IRGC plans to inspect all of the electronics carried by its operatives. The IRGC gets most of its equipment from China and Russia and, in the wake of the Hezbollah blasts, the IRGC fears its supply lines may not be secure.
The security officials said Iran is also worried about “infiltration by Israeli agents, including Iranians on Israel’s payroll,” so a “thorough investigation” of middle- and high-ranking IRGC officers has begun.
“This includes scrutiny of their bank accounts both in Iran and abroad, as well as their travel history and that of their families,” one of the officials said.
The IRGC has reportedly obtained debris from exploded Hezbollah pagers and radios to study how the attack was pulled off, and the Iranians have asked their Hezbollah clients for “technical assessments” from last week’s explosions.
Iranian officials said they were particularly worried about Israel – widely thought to have engineered the pager blasts, although it has yet to claim responsibility for them – using its heretofore-unsuspected skills at weaponizing personal electronics to surveil or sabotage Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Neither of Reuters’ sources was willing to disclose how the IRGC’s roughly 190,000 personnel are communicating with each other at the moment. One of them mentioned that the Iranian military stopped using pagers “over two decades” ago. Another spoke of using “end-to-end encrypted messaging systems,” without discussing what sort of battery-powered device might be considered safe to use on either end of those messages.
Iranian opposition news service Iran International noticed on Monday that “regime insider” and former nuclear negotiator Mohammad Marandi has been cranking out social media posts warning Iranians not to purchase electronic devices from Western, Taiwanese, South Korea, or Japanese manufacturers.
Hezbollah’s exploding pagers were ostensibly manufactured by a Taiwanese firm, while it walkie-talkies came from a Japanese company. Both of those companies have said they had nothing to do with the equipment that exploded, describing them as obsolete models and knockoffs.
It is not yet clear whether the pagers and radios were weaponized at the time of manufacture, or if they were intercepted and sabotaged at some point along their supply chain.
Quote:Israeli warplanes targeted more than 300 Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Monday and Israel warned civilians to evacuate the area as more intense strikes are on the way.
Lebanese officials said at least 182 people were killed and over 700 injured in the strikes, including “children, women, and paramedics.”
The IDF said Hezbollah fired at least 150 rockets, missiles, and other projectiles at Israeli territory on Saturday and Sunday. Most of the attacks were launched from inside Lebanon and some of them reached further into Israel than previous Hezbollah attacks.
“This morning, the IDF launched extensive, proactive airstrikes, based on precise intelligence, aimed at degrading the capabilities and infrastructure of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon. This is infrastructure that Hezbollah has built over many years,” Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a statement on Monday.
Hagari said the campaign was focused on eliminating Hezbollah artillery hidden inside civilian structures, which Hezbollah uses to launch indiscriminate barrages against Israeli civilian targets.
“The scenes that can be seen now in southern Lebanon show Hezbollah’s weapons exploding inside homes. Every house that we strike contains weapons – rockets, missiles, UAVs that are intended to kill Israeli civilians,” he said.
“We are preparing to strike terrorist targets in the Beqaa Valley region soon. Hezbollah stores strategic weapons in civilian buildings, knowingly using the population as human shields and endangering them,” he said.
Hagari warned Lebanese residents of the Beqaa Valley to “move away immediately” from “houses where rockets and weapons are stored.”
“You can see the operations we are currently conducting in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah intends to launch these weapons toward Israel, and we will not allow it! Stay away for your own protection,” he warned.
“Hassan Nasrallah is lying to you and putting you in danger,” Hagari said, referring to the leader of Hezbollah. “Listen to the warnings and messages that will be issued by the IDF for your safety and the safety of your families.”
Israeli military officials said Hagari’s warning for civilians to clear the area around Hezbollah’s hidden weapons was the first such warning the IDF has ever issued for Lebanon.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed photos Monday of a Hezbollah missile being stored in a private home in southern Lebanon, as civilians heeded a warning by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to flee the area.
Earlier, IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari had released an infographic showing how Hezbollah uses civilian buildings to hide weapons, and declaring that Israel was determined to destroy those weapons. He urged Lebanese civilians to move far away from such buildings.
Later, Netanyahu released a video in which he urged civilians to leave the area, and said they would be allowed to return to their homes once Israel had completed its mission.
“I have a message for the people of Lebanon: Israel’s war is not with you. It’s with Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said.
Lebanese civilians, apparently taking Netanyahu’s words seriously, soon clogged northbound roads in Lebanon.
The IDF said in a statement:
Over the past day (Monday), the IDF conducted precise, intelligence-based strikes on approximately 1,300 Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanon in order to remove immediate threats against the State of Israel.
During the strikes, long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, rockets with warheads capable of carrying 100kg of explosives, short-range rockets, and explosive UAVs were all struck by the IDF.
Hezbollah located its strategic munitions and capabilities inside Lebanese villages and civilian homes, and intended to fire them toward civilians in Israel while endangering the Lebanese civilian population.
As a result of many of the strikes, there were significant secondary explosions caused by Hezbollah’s weapons that were being stored inside the buildings.
In accordance with the situational assessment, the Minister of Defense extended the special situation for the home front to the entire country. At this time, there are no changes to the Home Front Command defensive guidelines. We will immediately update if any changes are made on the relevant platforms.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Wednesday that soldiers are prepared for a ground war in southern Lebanon as Israel continues to pound Hezbollah weapons sites from the air.
The purpose of the ground operation would be to remove Hezbollah from its positions near the Israeli border, where it operates in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which was adopted as an agreement to end the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
The IDF said in a statement:
Yesterday (Tuesday), the Commanding Officer of the Northern Command, MG Ori Gordin, visited the commanders and soldiers of the 7th Brigade during their brigade exercise on the northern border. He assessed their readiness and conducted an operational situational assessment with them.
During the visit, MG Gordin emphasized the importance of the soldiers’ preparedness and readiness in order to change the security situation and enable the residents of the north to return to their homes.
From the remarks of MG Gordin: “We have entered a new phase of the campaign, and we are now in Operation ‘Northern Arrows.’ The operation began with a significant blow to Hezbollah’s capabilities, focusing on their firepower capabilities, and a very significant hit on the organization’s commanders and operatives. Facing this, we need to change the security situation, and we must be fully prepared for maneuvers and action.”
A ground war in Lebanon would prove uniquely challenging, as Hezbollah has had a decade and a half to prepared defenses, with weapons from Iran and a tunnel network that is said to have been built with North Korean assistance.
However, Israel may feel it has no choice but to risk a ground war, in order to protect its northern communities from Hezbollah fire. It has already told civilians to evacuate from areas Hezbollah uses to store weapons in civilian homes.
Israel has prepared for a ground war since Hezbollah began firing in October, following the Hamas attack on October 7. However, it was more concerned about Hezbollah invading Israel. The IDF only recently shifted to the offensive.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that while Israel would prefer a diplomatic solution, none has been possible, despite the work of the “talented” Biden administration envoy, Amos Hochstein, shuttling back and forth.
Update: The IDF announced Wednesday that it is calling up two reserve brigades for duty on the northern border.
Quote:Hezbollah fired a missile toward Tel Aviv and central Israel on Wednesday morning local time, setting off air raid warnings and sending residents scrambling to bomb shelters and safe rooms.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
It was not immediately clear what kind of projectile was fired, though Army Radio reported that one “missile” from Lebanon landed in Israel without causing any damage, then reported that the Arrow missile defense system, which is used for longer-range missiles, had intercepted it.
Update: The Times of Israel reported that David’s Sling, another missile defense system, was used instead.
The Army Radio military corespondent, Doron Kadosh, suggested that Hezbollah might be trying to establish a kind of parity with the Israeli military, which has struck targets in Beirut over the past several days. The difference: Israel aims at military targets, such as Hezbollah leaders; Hezbollah aims at civilians (and also hides among civilians).
The Hezbollah attack came a day after Israel killed one of the Iranian-backed terror group’s senior commanders, who was in charge of missile attacks on Israel. It also came less than a day after U.S. President Joe Biden spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Biden issued his infamous “don’t” to Hezbollah and Iran during a visit to Israel in October. That warning appears to have been ignored, as Hezbollah escalates closer to full-scale war.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) successfully intercepted a surface-to-surface missile early Friday morning local time that had been launched at Tel Aviv by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
According to the IDF, Israel’s Arrow system, used to knock down long-range missiles, successfully intercepted the Houthi missile outside Israeli airspace.
Local air raid warnings were triggered in the middle of the night by fragments of the missile that continued flying. Only minor to moderate injuries were reported, most caused when people raced to shelters.
The Houthis, an Iranian-backed terrorist proxy group, occupy portions of Yemen. President Donald Trump listed them as a terrorist organization before leaving office; President Joe Biden removed their terrorist designation, only to restore it three years later, after months of attacks on Red Sea shipping and attempts to attack targets in Israel.
The Houthis have expressed solidarity with Hezbollah, which is currently under attack from Israeli forces in Lebanon.
The missile was the second fired by the Houthis this month; the first was also intercepted, but over Israeli airspace.
Quote:Israel killed Hezbollah missile commander Ibraham al-Kubaisi in an airstrike on the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiya on Tuesday, in an attack that was apparently confirmed by Lebanese sources.
Reuters reported:
An Israeli airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday killed a Hezbollah commander who was a leading figure in its rocket division, two security sources in Lebanon said, as fears of a full-fledged war in the Middle East mounted.
The sources identified the commander who was killed as Ibrahim Qubaisi. The attack, in which six people were killed, dealt another blow to the Iran-backed group which has faced a series of setbacks at the hands of Israel over the past week.
Israel has been targeting senior members of Hezbollah for several days, eliminating many of leader Hassan Nasrallah’s lieutenants.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi vowed Tuesday that Israel would not give Hezbollah a break from attack, as Israeli airstrikes were said to reach 1,600 in a single day.
Israel is seeking to push Hezbollah back from the Israeli border, allowing the evacuated residents of northern Israel both Jewish and Arab, to return to the homes they were forced to leave when Hezbollah opened fire last October.
Hezbollah is occupying southern Lebanon illegally.
Update: The Times of Israel reports that the IDF said that Kubaisi (or Qubaisi) was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three soldiers in 2000: Staff Sgt. Benyamin Avraham, Staff Sgt. Adi Avitan, and Staff Sgt. Omar Sawaid.
Update: Hezbollah has confirmed Qubaisi’s death, as per the Times of Israel.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that it had killed Hezbollah’s drone commander, Muhammad Hussein Srour, in a precision airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon.
In a statement, the IDF said:
The IDF Spokesperson Unit announces that today (Thursday), September 26th 2024, with the direction of IDF intelligence, the IAF struck and eliminated the terrorist Muhammad Hussein Srour in Beirut.
Srour advanced and directed numerous aerial terror attacks, including drone attacks, cruise missiles, and UAVs aimed at the people of Israel.
In recent years, Srour led the manufacturing project of UAVs in southern Lebanon and established UAV manufacturing and intelligence gathering sites in Lebanon, located adjacent to civilian infrastructure in Beirut, as well as areas in southern Lebanon.
Srour joined Hezbollah in the 1980’s and held several roles within the terrorist organization, including commander in the surface-to-air missile unit, commander in the “Aziz” Unit of the Radwan Force, as well as Hezbollah’s emissary to Yemen and the Houthi terrorist regime’s Aerial Command.
During the “Iron Swords” war, he promoted and executed several terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers using UAVs and explosive devices.
The IDF will continue to operate to undermine Hezbollah’s capabilities and to dismantle the terrorist organization’s top command.
"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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Weird. I thought 
that it has been Biden and Harris who gave America's enemies what they wanted.
Can you trust a guy that worked for Kadhafi's son!?
