Quote:The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is ordering Boards of Elections throughout the state to follow its previous rulings and not count “mail-in and absentee ballots that fail to comply” with the state election code.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued its ruling on Monday, as elections board officials in Bucks County, in particular, have defied Pennsylvania Supreme Court precedent and moved to count ballots that the court has determined cannot be counted.
The ruling reads in part:
The Court hereby ASSUMES its King’s Bench authority over the instant Application, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 502, only to DIRECT that all Respondents, including the Boards of Elections in Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia County, SHALL COMPLY with the prior rulings of this Court in which we have clarified that mail-in and absentee ballots that fail to comply with the requirements of the Pennsylvania Election Code, see 25 P.S. §§ 3146.6(a), 3150.16(a), SHALL NOT BE COUNTED for purposes of the election held on November 5, 2024.
The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania brought the lawsuit against all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, as all eyes are on the U.S. Senate race where Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) refuses to concede to Sen.-elect Dave McCormick (D-PA) despite the Associated Press calling the race for McCormick more than week ago.
The ruling comes days after Bucks County commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and chair Robert Harvie Jr. moved in a 2-1 vote to count 405 misdated or undated mail-in ballots on November 12, as counsel for McCormick pointed out in a separate lawsuit against the Bucks County Board of Elections in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.
“The Board did so even though its legal advisers recommended rejecting the ballots ‘based on the current state of the law,'” the appeal read.
After a warning from the county legal advisers that counting the ballots would likely lead to a lawsuit, Ellis-Marseglia said, “I just can’t vote to reject [these ballots]. I just can’t,” per the filing.
Walter Zimolong, McCormick’s counsel, wrote that the “Board violated the Election Code’s mandatory date requirement and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s repeated orders holding that the date requirement must be enforced.”
Soros Glad US Approved Use of Long-Range Missiles in Ukraine
Quote:Democrat mega-donor Alex Soros has hailed the reported decision by outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to use American-made long-range missiles to strike targets within Russia.
On Sunday, legacy media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal reported — citing unnamed U.S. officials — that with just two months left in his term, President Biden had reversed course and signed off on Kyiv using Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles to strike targets within Russia.
Previously, the 81-year-old Democrat had been wary of making such a decision over widespread concerns that long-range strikes with American arms could spark an escalation in the conflict between Western nations and the world’s largest nuclear power.
Apparently, unconcerned with the potential of an escalation, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundations Alex Soros wrote on X, “This is great news!” in response to a report about the sign off on ATACMS strikes inside Russia.
The scion of globalist George Soros’ international influence network has been an outspoken proponent of Ukraine continuing the war with Russia, and has even entered into partnership with a charity sponsored by President Zelensky’s wife.
Since Ukraine gained independence from Russia, the Soros family has been very active in the former Soviet state through its International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) in Kyiv.
According to the Open Society Foundations, the IRF has been the “largest independent funder of Ukraine’s vibrant array of civil society and citizen’s groups for more than three decades.”
Over the past decade, alone, the Soros organisation has poured over $230 million into the country, including to help establish the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine in 2015.
As with the network’s operation elsewhere, the Soros foundation has long sought to influence the political environment in Ukraine, with George Soros admitting in 2014 that Open Society played an “important role” in the Western-backed Euromaidan movement which toppled the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych for opposing cutting off ties with Moscow.
Soros's supportive post on X might be actually telling us it is a terrible idea indeed.
Let's hope Russia won't start using nukes after learning about this sudden approval.
National Security Adviser Admits American F-16's & Tanks Didn't Help Ukraine
Quote:During an interview with “PBS NewsHour” aired on Monday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan responded to criticism of the Biden administration for delaying providing tanks and F-16s to Ukraine by stating that those haven’t made a significant difference on the battlefield and “the straightest line between Ukrainian performance and inputs” is “mobilization of manpower.” And “Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines, in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines.”
“NewsHour” Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent Nick Schifrin asked, “In the past, you’ve tried to avoid provoking the Russians from escalating, at times. You didn’t provide tanks, and then you did decide to make that decision to provide tanks. You didn’t provide F-16s, then you did provide those F-16s. Do you believe, at this point, looking back, if you had provided any of those authorizations earlier, it would have made a difference to Ukraine in the war?”
Sullivan responded, “Have we seen a marked difference since we have provided tanks to Ukraine, in terms of the battlefield? Similarly, on F-16s, have we seen a marked difference? Our view has been that there’s not one weapons system that makes a difference in this battle. It’s about manpower. And Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines, in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines. It’s about munitions, and it’s about all of the other things that go to a country’s national strength, their morale, their cohesion, their industrial base.”
Schifrin followed up, “But I ask because Ukraine is losing more territory today than at any point this year. So, do you really believe that nothing the U.S. could have done earlier would have changed that?”
Sullivan answered, “We provided the tanks, we provided the F-16s, we provided the HIMARS, we provided the Patriots. We provided many of the things that you said earlier we wouldn’t provide. And it’s not back then, it’s rather today that Ukraine finds itself in a more challenged position on the battlefield, suggesting that there’s not a straight line between those weapons systems and how it does on the battlefield. Where is the straightest line between Ukrainian performance and inputs? It’s on mobilization of manpower.”
Quote:John Balbus, who heads the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, says he is hardwiring his office’s work into the agency to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s vowed reforms of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Balbus’s plan of action entails senior executive service employees, who are the hardest to fire, creating and disseminating a global warming “training module” to all employees for “climate literacy.”
The goal is for his training module to remain even if Trump axes his Office of Climate Change and Health Equity.
“Health systems are recognizing that this is a business issue, this is a financial risk issue, that it’s a threat to the mission,” John Balbus told PoliticoPro on Monday.
PoliticoPro reported on the agency’s fear of Trump vow to purge the administrative state:
With President-elect Donald Trump’s second term looming, the leader of the climate change office that President Joe Biden created at the Department of Health and Human Services hopes its work can live on in atomized form.
Trump is expected to shutter the three-year-old HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, whose small staff focuses on efforts to communicate climate-driven risks to health-care operations and public health. The office has subsisted on staff detailed from other federal agencies.
…
Yet Trump represents a threat to many of the initiatives Balbus’ office has touted because they rely on the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has vowed to reverse. Biden’s climate law has supplied key funding for health-care and hospital systems to improve their defense against the effects of climate change, particularly through direct payments supported by Treasury Department tax credits, Balbus said.
The term “administrative state” describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses its rule-making ability to essentially usurp the separation of powers between the three branches of government by creating a so-called fourth branch of government not formed by the Constitution.
Before Trump left office in 2021, he signed an executive order (EO) to reclassify federal government employees into Schedule F, which would have allowed the president to enhance accountability and job performance within the bureaucratic agencies. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” Trump said in April about Schedule F.
President Joe Biden canceled the order in 2021, but with Trump’s victory, he could reimplement the executive order and purge the unelected technocrats steering the federal government.
Quote:Hollywood star Harrison Ford, who has publicly promoted climate change activism, was recently seen disembarking a private jet, reportedly en route from celebrating the birthday of his wife, actress Calista Flockhart.
Harrison Ford was snapped on Monday stepping off the jet in Los Angeles, one day after Flockhart’s 60th birthday, according to a Daily Mail report. The actor is a regular flier of private jets, having been photographed numerous times in the past despite his support of climate change activism.
Ford called the effects of climate change the “greatest moral crisis of our time” in a 2019 video. The following year, he said “this shit is going to kill us,” referring to what he called a looming climate disaster.
He has also backed Greta Thunberg, saying that young climate activists like her represent the “moral army.”
None of these declarations appears to have dissuaded Harrison Ford from using private jets, whose carbon emissions put the actor way above the average American’s yearly output.
Harrison Ford recently endorsed Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House, claiming that Harris and running mate Tim Walz “believe in science.” Ford was one of numerous Hollywood celebrities who endorsed Harris in the days leading up to the presidential election.
But all that Hollywood star power failed to carry Harris over the finish line, with President-elect Donald Trump winning both the electoral and popular votes.
EUROPE
Ukraine: Iranian Missiles & Drones Hit Energy & Power Infrastructure
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s energy and power infrastructure with hundreds of drones and missiles, including Iranian-made weapons.
Russia is very fond of Iran’s Shahed series of propeller-driven suicide drones. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claims Russia has launched over 8,000 Shahed drones over the past two and a half years.
“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone attack, two people were killed and six others were injured, including two children,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president said his forces were able to intercept 144 of the Russian-launched drones and missiles before they hit their targets, but the attack was so massive that many of the projectiles got through.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing explosions in Odesa, Zapoizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, and the capital city of Kyiv. The major port city of Odesa was reportedly left without power after the attack, forcing hospitals to run on emergency generators. Several other regions reported blackouts.
“The situation is most difficult in Odesa and Odesa district. Unfortunately, it is not yet technically possible to supply power to the critical infrastructure in the Kyivskyi and Primorskyi districts of the city,” Ukraine’s power distributor DTEK said on Monday.
DTEK said power was restored to about 400,000 homes as of Monday morning, while 321,000 customers were still without power. The regional governor of Odesa, Oleh Kiper, said work was proceeding on restoring water and heat to the region, but, meanwhile, 445 shelters had been established for residents.
Ukrainian officials warned rolling blackouts would affect most regions of the country on Monday, lasting up to eight hours in some regions.
Kiper said the Russian attack killed at least eight civilians and injured 18 more.
Quote:Russia has updated its nuclear doctrine, stating that in some circumstances attacks against it with conventional weapons will be considered sufficiently threatening to launch a nuclear retaliation.
Today is the 1,000th day since Russia attempted a blitz attack to capture Kyiv and other key Ukrainian cities, meeting stronger than expected resistance and logistical difficulties, leading to a bloody near-three year war. Following an apparent signal that the United States in the dying days of the President Joe Biden administration is willing to step up the war by permitting Ukraine to use American long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia, the Russian Federation has articulated that it could consider such attacks a matter for nuclear retaliation.
Ukraine wasted no time, however, and it is claimed they made their first long-range missile strike on the Russian interior this morning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the nation’s new nuclear doctrine into existence by decree on Tuesday morning, Kremlin state media says. The document, now on its third revision in 15 years, is said to have been prompted by “new military threats” faced by Russia after its decision to re-invade Ukraine.
Per a statement from Moscow: “The amended doctrine expands the range of countries and military alliances subject to nuclear deterrence, as well as the list of military threats that such deterrence is designed to counter”.
Crucially for Western military planners, Russia now considers “any attack” by a non-nuclear country that is supported by a nuclear power — as could be argued is the case with the United State, France, and the United Kingdom’s support of Ukraine — as a “joint attack” and liable to a nuclear response. Such attacks include conventional weapon strikes that threaten Russian “sovereignty” and “large-scale launch of enemy aircraft, missiles, and drones targeting Russian territory”.
As well as Russian territory, the doctrine also encompasses Belarus — which has a considerable border with the European Union — and which has lately been fully locked into the Russian nuclear defence system.
President Putin signing off on the new document has been interpreted specifically as a response to U.S. President Joe Biden allegedly agreeing to allow Ukraine to launch long-range missile strikes deep into Russia’s hinterland. Those claims have yet to be confirmed by the White House, and the new Russian nuclear doctrine has been in the works at least since September, when conversations about the possibility of longer-range Ukrainian strikes with American and European weapons were kicked up a gear.
Nevertheless, Russia reacted with extreme aversion to the claim the White House had signed off on missile strikes, with several Kremlin leaders warning of escalation and even President Putin’s previous claims that such an attack would mean a state of war between the U.S. and Russia.
Emphasis is mine. Yes guys, things are moving faster than ever before now that Biden knows he has few days left in office.
kyonides Wrote:Soros's supportive post on X might be actually telling us it is a terrible idea indeed.
Let's hope Russia won't start using nukes after learning about this sudden approval.
Yeah, I admit that opinion of mine isn't aging very well.
Putin's Ideologist Makes it Clear: Russia Wants to Annex Ukraine!!
Quote:Russia’s demands for Ukraine go beyond peace deals or territorial compromises, with “full control over Ukraine” being a non-negotiable goal for Moscow, according to Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin. Dugin is known as “Putin’s brain” and has described the West as the “source of absolute evil,” claiming that Trump “underestimates” Russian ambitions while admitting that Moscow had failed to accurately explain to the U.S. “what we really wanted.”
In an interview on the New Rules podcast, Russian ultranationalist and political philosopher Alexander Dugin revealed Russia’s uncompromising stance on the Ukraine conflict, asserting that any negotiations must begin with full Russian control over all Ukrainian territory.
“Nobody in Russia [has] yet to clearly explain to your [U.S.] administration what we really want of Ukraine, but we really want the full and total control over Ukraine as part of our space,” he admitted.
Dugin dismissed current Western-backed peace proposals, such as ending the conflict or delaying NATO membership for Ukraine, as entirely unacceptable.
“We start speaking about the freezing of the conflict after we have guarantees that all territory of Ukraine will be under [Russia’s] control,” he demanded, adding that “the only way for us to start peace talks is to get full control over all the territory of Ukraine.”
Dugin further elaborated that Russia considers Ukraine’s existence, in any form, incompatible with Russia’s own survival, arguing it is an existential necessity in Moscow’s geopolitical calculus. Acknowledging that former U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection could shift dynamics, the nationalist Russian philosopher warned that Trump “underestimates” the strategic importance of Ukraine to Russia.
“[The] existence of Russia is incompatible with the existence of any form of Ukraine, and maybe that could seem to Trump a bit exaggerated, but that is a very realistic approach,” he stated, insisting that the incoming U.S. leader “understand that it is not an exaggerated claim but rather an existential necessity of Russian geopolitical being.”
While Trump may view the conflict as an “annoying” inconvenience inherited from his predecessors, Dugin emphasized that for Moscow, Ukraine represents an “existential ontological priority” that outweighs all other concerns.
“I think that the problem is he doesn’t understand the real importance of Ukraine for Russia. He may be misjudging the situation thinking that it is just about some new acquisitions of our earths, of territories, and not recognizing it as an existential threat to Russia,” Dugin said, stressing that any future U.S.-Russia negotiations must start with the West acknowledging Russia’s unyielding demand for the entirety of Ukraine to be part of its sphere of influence.
Threatening the unleashing of Russia’s ability to “cause pain” to both the West and Trump in particular, including the complete destruction of the world, Dugin noted that the issue of Ukraine is “not the only thing” that stands between Russia and the West.
“There are many other issues, and in these issues, we could behave ourselves much more aggressively than we did before,” he warned, adding that the U.S. should calculate its gains if Russia would ultimately “start nuclear conflicts” and “destroy humanity in response to the extremist globalists position in Ukraine.”
Yeap, that portion of the article HAD to be emphasized. How terrible!
Quote:Danish lawmakers on Monday agreed on a deal to plant 1 billion trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest and natural habitats over the next two decades in an effort to reduce fertilizer usage.
The government called the agreement “the biggest change to the Danish landscape in over 100 years.”
“The Danish nature will change in a way we have not seen since the wetlands were drained in 1864,” said Jeppe Bruus, head of Denmark’s Green Tripartite Ministry, created to implement a green deal reached in June among farmers, the industry, the labor unions and environmental groups.
Under the agreement, 43 billion kroner ($6.1 billion) have been earmarked to acquire land from farmers over the next two decades, the government said.
Danish forests would grow on an additional 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres), and another 140,000 hectares (346,000 acres), which are currently cultivated on climate-damaging low-lying soils, must be converted to nature. Currently, 14.6% of land is covered by forests.
The deal was reached by the three-party Danish government – made up of the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the center Moderates – and the Socialist People’s Party, the Conservatives, Liberal Alliance and the Social Liberal Party.
A vote in parliament on the deal is considered a formality.
In June, the government said livestock farmers will be taxed for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming.
"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:On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Mike Huckabee, President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who was speaking in his personal capacity since he hasn’t been confirmed, praised the maximum pressure campaign under the first Trump administration, stated that things in the Middle East can’t go back to the way they were pre-October 7, and “the world needs to look to” regime change in Iran as the goal.
Huckabee said that the Middle East needs “A good dose of reality, for one thing, and that reality means that there’s got to be an understanding that it’s the Iranians who are funding the terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The attacks that have happened on Israel in the last 400-plus days since October the 7th are largely funded because Joe Biden took his foot off the brake, put it on the gas pedal, and basically made it possible for the Iranians to have money that Donald Trump had shut off because of the maximum pressure sanctions. Donald Trump never bombed Iran. He didn’t have to. He was bankrupting them, which is far more effective and a lot less lethal for innocent people. The result, however, of what changed in that policy was the bloody mess that was created when Hamas went and massacred innocent Jewish civilians in Israel. And it’s changed the dynamics without any way to go back to thinking that it’s all going to be like it once was, it can’t be.”
Host Leland Vittert then asked, “Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear, especially in the past couple of weeks or months, that the regime in Tehran needs to change, not just sanctions, not just pressure. Should the United States look to that end goal as well?”
Huckabee responded, “I think the world needs to look to it. Quite frankly, let’s face it, Leland, every Gulf state in the Middle East would be delighted if there was regime change. I don’t think they’re probably going to say it publicly. But don’t you think there would be celebrations in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, perhaps even in Qatar? I can’t think of any Muslim-led nation that wouldn’t be better off if there was a regime change, because the Iranians are not really interested in building a neighborhood where everyone can kind of get along and create diplomatic relationships and share tourism and trade. They’ve never been into that. They are for annihilating Israel, and, ultimately, the U.S. And one of the stupid things that happens in this country is when Americans think that all of this is just going to be contained there, that the Iranians have no intention beyond Israel, if they can just get them from the river to the sea, it’s over. They’ve repeatedly said, Israel is the little Satan, we’re the great Satan. So, their goal is not to end their conquest with Israel. It’s just the warm-up for the real fight, which they think is us.”
Huckabee added that the Iranian people would be pleased if the regime changed and that if he becomes Ambassador, it’s not going to be him setting policy.
Quote:Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) formally withdrew his name for consideration for the Attorney General position in President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, asserting Thursday there is “no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”
“I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday,” Gaetz said in post in X. “I appreciate their thoughtful feedback – and the incredible support of so many.”
Gaez went on to say his nomination has become too much of a distraction, and therefore, he is withdrawing his name from consideration for the highly sought position.
“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General,” he announced.
“Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” he said, adding that he remains “fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history.”
“I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America,” he added.
Quote:US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated veteran prosecutor Pam Bondi as his new pick for attorney general, hours after Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration.
Bondi has a long track record in law enforcement and previously served as Florida's attorney general.
The 59-year-old is a long-time Trump ally who defended him during his first Senate impeachment trial.
Losing his first choice, Gaetz, to run the Justice Department is a setback for Trump but his new pick should have a less bumpy ride from senators who must approve the appointment.
"Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families," Trump said in a social media post announcing his choice.
Bondi has been close to Trump since his 2016 campaign, telling voters at a recent Trump rally that she considers him a "friend".
In 2019, she joined his White House to focus on "proactive impeachment messaging", serving both as his legal advisor and defence attorney during his first impeachment - during which he was acquitted.
She continued to be part of Trump's legal team in 2020 as it made false claims that the election had been stolen from Trump due to voter fraud.
She also served on Trump's Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission, and more recently, has headed the legal arm of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump staff members.
Quote:Radical leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated on Thursday that he would allow the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Canadian soil in observance of a recently issued International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him, outraging leaders in his country, including from his own party.
Trudeau noted that Canada was one of the founding countries of the ICC, which has no enforcement mechanism outside of the actions of members states, and declared that arresting Netanyahu was “just who we are as Canadians.”
On Thursday, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas terrorist Mohammed Deif, who is currently in charge of the genocidal jihadists’ “armed” wing. ICC prosecutor Karim Khan requested the warrants in May in response to Israel’s self-defense operations in Gaza against Hamas, which controls Gaza, to prevent a repeat of the atrocities of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli soil. Khan had initially also requested warrants for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, but both were killed this summer, one in an explosion in Tehran and the other in an exchange with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza.
ICC leaders announced they were seeking Netanyahu and Gallant’s arrests on charges of “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” in Gaza. They specifically claimed there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israeli leaders “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”
The ICC equated the military operation against Hamas with Hamas’s actions on October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas jihadists invaded Israel and went on door-to-door raids massacring random families in multiple communities. Survivors detailed harrowing acts of torture and gang rape, as well as the mass killing of children as young as infants and the desecration of corpses. On several occasions, the terrorists published videos of their atrocities on social media, including uploading the videos to the social media accounts of their victims so their families and friends would see their dead and mutilated bodies. The attack killed an estimated 1,200 people; about 100 remain in Hamas captivity to this day.
Trudeau did not mention Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 in his remarks on Thursday, instead scolding Israel to following international law.
“It’s really important that everyone abide by international law. This is something we’ve been calling on from the beginning of the conflict,” Trudeau asserted. “We are one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice; we stand up for international law.”
Quote:South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun, a member of his parliament’s intelligence committee, said Wednesday that about 10,900 North Korean mercenary soldiers have been deployed to Kursk for a counteroffensive against Ukrainian forces.
Lee said the North Koreans are mixed into Russian airborne and marine units, and some have already seen combat.
North Korea is also sending more weapons to Russia, Lee said, including 170mm self-propelled howitzers and 240mm multiple rocket launchers (MRLs). He said North Korean technicians have been sent to maintain the weapons, which are significantly different from those normally used by the Russian military.
Lee said the North Koreans underwent “on-site adaptation training” and “tactical training” with Russian soldiers before joining them in combat, with an emphasis on teaching the North Korean personnel how to use Russian drones.
There have been North Korean casualties, Lee said, and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is still trying to determine how many were killed and injured, along with how many have surrendered.
Park Sun-won, another member of the South Korean legislature’s intelligence committee, said North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui had an “unusual” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin when she visited Moscow this month. One purpose of this meeting may have been laying the groundwork for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to visit Russia.
Quote:Russia has allegedly launched an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) at a Ukrainian city for the first time, an expensive but potentially potent reminder by the Kremlin that it has a large reserve of nuclear-capable weapons which can strike form thousands of miles away.
The central-Ukrainian city of Dnipro was struck by a single ICBM missile in the early hours of Thursday morning Ukraine claims, part of a broader air raid that state media said also saw one air-launched ballistic missile and seven air-launched cruise missiles fired at the city. The Ukrainian government has not made an official statement on casualties in the “massive attack” but said they managed to shoot down six of the cruise missiles in-flight.
The launch of an ICBM is claimed by Ukraine’s air force to have come from the Astrakhan Oblast, which borders the Caspian Sea. The launch has not been corroborated by Western states observing the conflict, the United Kingdom has called it unconfirmed, for instance. Russia has yet to confirm or deny an conventional explosive armed but nuclear-capable ICBM launch, apparently the latest sabre-rattling move by the state as it bids to discourage further Western involvement in Ukraine.
While claiming there was “no significant damage” caused, nevertheless Ukraine also stated a city medical facility and an industrial area were hit. Sergiy Lysak, the head of the regional administration said in a statement that: “Since early morning, the aggressor has massively attacked the region. Information about the consequences is being clarified. At the moment, it is known about damage to an industrial enterprise in Dnipro. There were also two fires in the city.”
Germany Ignored Warnings of Ukrainian Plot to Blow up Nord Stream
Quote:Officials in Germany were provided with intelligence detailing a Ukrainian plot to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines months before the attack took place, but the warnings were ignored and no preventative measures were taken, an investigation has claimed.
In what may become to be seen as a major intelligence failure by the German state, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government allegedly failed to make any preparations to prevent the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines despite purportedly receiving intelligence of a Ukrainian plot to destroy the energy import infrastructure.
According to a report from Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) received an encrypted, top secret cable in June of 2022 from Dutch military intelligence, which was also reportedly shared with the CIA, warning of a plot organised by then-Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi to dispatch six Ukrainian commandos traveling under false identities to rent a boat and dive to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and blow up the pipelines.
The intelligence indicated that the sabotage was planned to take place during the NATO ‘BALTOPS’ military exercise, which took place between 5 and 17 June 2022. After the exercises were complete and the attack did not materialise, the German government decided that the intelligence was false and therefore made no preparations to prevent the attack, and failed to even warn the federal police, the navy, or federal and state counter-terrorism centres of the potential threat.
If true, this failure to act turned out to be a miscalculation, and one which allowed the attackers on a budget of less than $300,000 to destroy the two pipelines on September 26th, 2022, and put Germany’s long-term energy supply in doubt.
“It was a crazy plan that only succeeded through fierce determination and enormous luck, but was also aided by incompetent security agencies and political intrigue,” Spiegel commented.
Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the ballistic missile strike on Ukraine on Thursday was the debut of a new ‘unstoppable’ weapon as he blamed the West for turning his invasion of Ukraine into a global war.
Ukraine reported what it claimed as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) strike on the central city of Dnipro on Thursday morning, prompting a flurry of global concern at what could be the first use of a true ICBM in anger in history. Yet Western governments and intelligence agencies were apparently reluctant to openly acknowledge the claim, Russia itself refused comment, and eventually even Ukraine itself cast doubts on its own assertions.
Now Russia’s President Putin has given his own version of events, saying the strike was not by ICBM — weapons which travel into space before plunging back to earth, with ranges of thousands of miles — but rather by a never-before-seen nuclear-capable Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Putin identified as the ‘Oreshnik’ (‘Hazel’) type which he claimed is totally impervious to Western countermeasures in a televised speech on Thursday night.
Separately, Putin ally and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now a Kremlin attack dog frequently employed in making lurid nuclear threats, called the new missile “hypersonic” and published what purported to be footage of the strike.
Lavrov Suspects Biden Wants to Make Things Difficult for Trump
Quote:Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused outgoing President Joe Biden of trying to “muck things up” to hand a more volatile world over to successor and predecessor Donald Trump in remarks on Friday.
Lavrov was discussing unconfirmed reports this week that Biden approved Ukraine using the American Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), a long-range missile system, to target locations within Russia, and later reports that Biden would send Ukraine anti-personnel land mines. The Russian government accused Ukraine of using the ATACMS system to bomb Bryansk, a region lying within uncontested Russian territory, on Tuesday, which Ukraine neither confirmed nor denied.
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has repeatedly described long-range missile attacks as a red line for his country, without specifying exactly how he would respond to a breach of this red line. On Thursday, however, Russia fired a new model missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Ukrainian officials initially described it as a potential intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but Putin, in an address to the Russian people late on Thursday, claimed it was the debut of a new model of hypersonic Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).
Lavrov remarked on the dramatic escalation of tensions in the past week between Russia and the West during a press conference on Friday, accusing the Biden administration of intentionally attempting to worsen the situation in eastern Europe to set President-elect Trump up for failure.
“As for what can be expected from Biden and his outgoing administration, well, the ATACMS supplies and allowing the British and French to use Storm Shadows and SCALPSs certainly have an element of trying to leave as negative a legacy as possible for the next administration,” Lavrov mused, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“It seems that this desire, let’s say, to muck things up, can be seen in the current situation,” Lavrov added, going on to say that sabotaging their successors is “typical of the Democrats” and accusing former President Barack Obama of similarly attempting to “pull the same trick” on Trump before leaving office.
Quote:Ukraine says the “experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile” fired at the city of Dnipro on Thursday carried 36 “submunitions” and was travelling at Mach 11 as it struck.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has published new claims about the new kind of ballistic missile that struck the central city of Dnipro in the early hours of Thursday morning. A statement said the missile, which left earth’s atmosphere in a ballistic arc after being launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region made the approximately 500 miles to the city in 15 minutes.
The missile had six re-entry vehicles, each of which carried a further six “submunitions” to the ground which were aimed at an industrial facility at the city, a feature common to ballistic missiles which use one large launch to deliver a larger number of ‘multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles’. These expensive and complex weapons are designed to carry nuclear warheads, but can be fitted with conventional warheads, or even no warhead at all. It is not clear exactly what the “submunitions” were loaded with in this case.
Ukraine said as the weapons plunged down to earth they reached Mach 11 (roughly 8,400 miles an hour, depending on other factors).
The weapon was initially identified on Thursday by Ukraine’s air force as an intercontinental ballistic missile, and ICBM, a military acronym that thanks to the Cold War very much became a household name. While it appears to in fact be a Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), which is probably less meaningful for most, the distinction is essentially academic for Europeans given the entire continent is within IRBM range.
Quote:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Monday in a speech to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, that Israel had in fact targeted the Iranian nuclear weapons program in its response to Iran’s missile attack last month.
As Breitbart News has reported, journalist Caroline Glick speculated, and then Axios confirmed, that Israel hit a missile facility that was also an “undeclared” nuclear site at the Parchin military base.
The Jerusalem Post reported Monday:
Israel destroyed a component of Tehran’s nuclear program while degrading its defense and missile production capabilities during the IDF’s aerial strike on Iran in October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday as he pledged to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining atomic weapons.
“There is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack,” he explained, in a wide-ranging foreign policy speech to the plenum, in which he spoke of the centrality of Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons to Israel’s multi-front war.
He did not identify the component but added that despite the success of that hit, Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon had not yet been blocked.
President Joe Biden had said that Israel should not hit Iran’s nuclear program in its response to the Iranian ballistic missile attack in October, the second such attack by Iran in six months.
Israel initially said its targets in the retaliatory strike had been limited to Iran’s military and missile sites.
As President-elect Donald Trump pointed out during the campaign, Israel had often succeeded in the wa by ignoring the Biden-Harris administration’s demands.
Trump was incredulous that Biden had told Israel not to hit Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “That’s the thing you want to hit, right?” he asked at a rally.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Friday that it had killed the head of the rocket unit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group backed by Iran that operates inside the Gaza Strip and participated in the October 7 attacks.
In a joint statement, the IDF and Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shin Bet, or Shabak) reported:
In the past week (Wednesday), the IAF conducted an IDF and ISA intelligence-based strike to eliminate the terrorist Khalid Abu Daqqa, Commander of the Islamic Jihad’s Rocket Unit. Khalid Abu Daqqa was operating inside the Humanitarian Area in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Daqqa was responsible for commanding and conducting numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers. Both on and since October 7th, Abu Daqqa commanded rocket attacks against communities in southern Israel.
Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions, intelligence, and aerial surveillance.
The IDF and ISA will continue to target anyone who took part in terror activities against Israeli civilians and to achieve the goals of the war.
Israel’s Army radio added that five other terrorists were killed in the airstrike.
Palestinian terrorists have frequently abused humanitarian zones and protected sites like hospitals and schools to carry out their activities.
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Tuesday that Hezbollah had fired rockets that struck United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers in southern Lebanon — not once, but twice in the same day.
In a first statement, the IDF said:
Earlier today (Tuesday), a report was received that a UNIFIL post in the area of Ramyeh in southern Lebanon was hit, causing a number of injuries and damage to the post.
An IDF review determined that Hezbollah fired a rocket that hit the UNIFIL post.
The rocket was fired from the area of Deir Aames, one of many fired by Hezbollah in a barrage launched at Israel at 09:50 this morning.
Later, the IDF added in a second statement:
At 13:30 today (Tuesday), Hezbollah fired a number of rockets that hit and damaged a UNIFIL post in the area of Chamaa in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah fired the rockets from the area of Maaliyeh in southern Lebanon.
This is the second time Hezbollah has fired and hit a UNIFIL post today. At 09:50 this morning (Tuesday), Hezbollah fired a rocket that hit a UNIFIL post in the Ramyeh area in southern Lebanon.
Quote:Hezbollah has reportedly agreed to ceasefire terms proposed by the United States, according to the Lebanese government — though the terror group has “comments” that may indicate it has not fully accepted the deal.
The Times of Israel reported:
Lebanon and Hezbollah have agreed to a US proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, with some comments on the content, a top Lebanese official tells Reuters, describing the effort as the most serious yet to end to the fighting.
Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, says Lebanon had delivered its written response to the US ambassador in Lebanon on Monday and that White House envoy Amos Hochstein was traveling to Beirut to continue talks.
Asked about progress in the negotiations earlier Monday, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller had been noncommittal:
I just don’t think it’s productive, unfortunately, to get into the details, the back-and-forth negotiations; only to say that we have been at this for some time now. We have been sharing proposals both with the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel. Both sides have reacted to their – to the proposals that we have put forward. There has been an exchange of different ideas for how to see what we believe is in everyone’s interest, which is the full implementation of UN Security Council 17 – Resolution 1701, and we’re going to continue to stay at that process because we believe a diplomatic resolution is key to allowing the fighting to stop, to protecting civilians, and allowing the civilians in both Israel and Lebanon to return to their homes.
Resolution 1701 requires Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and to disarm. It has never been enforced.
A sticking point in negotiations has been Israel’s demand that it be allowed to react to attacks from Hezbollah by entering southern Lebanon. The Israeli government said Monday that it intended to continue to fight in Lebanon until the residents of northern Israel who had been evacuated because of Hezbollah’s attacks felt safe enough to return home.
Iran Thinks Trump Won Because Biden Supports Israel
Quote:The Iranian Foreign Ministry suggested Monday that the American public is widely opposed to Israel’s self-defense operations against Iran-backed terrorist organizations in the Middle East, most prominently Hamas, and suggested that Democrats lost the 2024 presidential race because they were too supportive of Israel.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei described President-elect Donald Trump’s win to secure a second term in the White House as a “meaningful” expression of opposition to Israel, fueled by violent leftist protests on American college campuses.
“Over the past year, public opinion in the US, both in the universities and in public circles, has openly expressed its opposition to the killing and genocide of the people of Gaza,” Baghaei claimed in an interview on Thursday, according to the Iranian state outlet PressTV. Iran refers to Israel’s self-defense operations against Hamas, which controls Gaza, as a “genocide.”
“Many Americans oppose their government’s complicity in [Israel’s] genocide in Palestine and Gaza and the dispatch of weapons [to the regime] to be used to kill innocents,” he claimed, adding that he and the Iranian regime expected Trump and his administration “adhere to their election promises” to bring about a rapid conclusion to the ongoing conflict.
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 8, 2023, a day after genocidal Hamas jihadists invaded the country and went on a killing, rape, and torture spree that resulted in an estimated 1,200 deaths, over 200 abductions, and widespread reports of infanticide, gang rape, and other atrocities. Iran, as one of Hamas’s most prominent financial backers, has enthusiastically supported Hamas, celebrating the massacre by branding it the “al-Aqsa Flood” and condemning the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for working to prevent a repeat of the disaster.
The administration of outgoing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in the November election, claimed to offer Israel “ironclad” support but routinely attempted to micromanage the war, irritating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration. The Biden administration proposed several deals in an attempt to end the conflict that Israel found unpalatable. Both Hamas and the Israeli government rejected Biden peace proposals.
Oh really, Ayatollah?
Biden-Harris Sanctions Israelis, Sends Aid to Palestinians
Quote:The lame-duck Biden-Harris administration is slapping new sanctions on Israelis, while sending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in additional funding to the Palestinians, adding insult to injury in the closing weeks of its failed policy.
The Washington Free Beacon noted Monday:
The Biden-Harris administration on Monday unveiled sweeping new sanctions on Israeli Jews, just days after it awarded another $230 million in taxpayer funds to the Palestinians. The back-to-back announcements signal that diplomatic relations between Israel and the outgoing White House will continue to sour until President-elect Donald Trump retakes office next year.
The new sanctions are the broadest to date, imposing unprecedented punitive measures on three Israeli organizations the administration accuses of fomenting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. They were leveled just days after a coalition of nearly 90 congressional Democrats petitioned the Biden administration to ramp up sanctions on Israel before leaving the White House.
The sanctions were announced just three days after the Biden-Harris administration awarded another $230 million in funding for humanitarian projects in the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The American government has now sent more than $2 billion in taxpayer funds to the Palestinians since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror spree on Israel—even as critics warn this cash is keeping Hamas on life support.
The State Department website describes the sanctions on Israelis as targeting “violent Israeli individuals and entities,” though the “violence” that two of the targets are accused of committing amounts to nothing more than providing construction vehicles to settlements that the State Department says are illegal.
The Biden-Harris administration has sanctioned a broad array of Israeli individuals and institutions, largely at the instigation of anti-Israel groups and Democrats in Congress. Many of the sanctions target people who have not broken laws; a legal challenge against the sanctions notes that some target what would be constitutionally protected protest in the U.S.
"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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