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๐‘๐š๐ก๐ฎ๐ฅ ๐†๐š๐ง๐๐ก๐ข ๐ญ๐š๐ฅ๐ค๐ฌ ๐š๐›๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ โ€œ๐š๐ง๐ญ๐ข-๐ข๐ง๐œ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐›๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ฒโ€. ๐๐ฎ๐ญ ๐š๐ฌ๐ค ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐Ÿ๐š๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ž๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ ๐ฅ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž๐ ๐ฎ๐ง๐๐ž๐ซ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฌ๐ก๐š๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐๐š๐ฑ๐š๐ฅ ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐จ๐ซ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐‚๐จ๐ง๐ ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ž ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐๐ž๐œ๐š๐๐ž๐ฌ. For years, the Red Corridor was one of Indiaโ€™s biggest internal security challenges. In 2010 alone, LWE violence recorded 1,936 incidents and claimed 1,005 civilian and security...

16,103 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 5 Stunden โ€ขvia X (Twitter)

5 Kommentare

Profilbild von Sanjeev Kumar Singh
Sanjeev Kumar Singhvor 5 Stunden

เคœเคนเคพเค‚ เค•เคญเฅ€ เคนเคฟเค‚เคธเคพ เค•เคพ เคกเคฐ เคฅเคพ เคตเคนเคพเค‚ เค†เคœ เคตเคฟเค•เคพเคธ เค”เคฐ เคฌเฅ‡เคนเคคเคฐ เค•เคจเฅ‡เค•เฅเคŸเคฟเคตเคฟเคŸเฅ€ เค•เฅ€ เค‰เคฎเฅเคฎเฅ€เคฆ เคนเฅˆ เคจเค•เฅเคธเคฒเคตเคพเคฆ เค•เฅ‡ เค–เคฟเคฒเคพเคซ เคจเคฟเคฐเฅเคฃเคพเคฏเค• เค•เคพเคฐเฅเคฐเคตเคพเคˆ เค•เคพ เค…เคธเคฐ เคœเคฎเฅ€เคจ เคชเคฐ เคฆเคฟเค– เคฐเคนเคพ เคนเฅˆ

Profilbild von Democratic Beauty
Democratic Beautyvor 5 Stunden

The country's youth has lost faith in BJP leadership. Today, the nation needs well educated leadership that doesn't believe in spreading hatred and focuses on the issues facing the country's Gen Z-- such as the quality of education like IIT and IIM with transparency and educational expenditure, while also being mindful of students futures after the complete there education.

Profilbild von Rakesh Aggarwal เคฐเคพเค•เฅ‡เคถ เค…เค—เฅเคฐเคตเคพเคฒ เจฐเจพเจ•เฉ‡เจธเจผ เจ…เจ—เฉเจฐเจตเจพเจฒ
Rakesh Aggarwal เคฐเคพเค•เฅ‡เคถ เค…เค—เฅเคฐเคตเคพเคฒ เจฐเจพเจ•เฉ‡เจธเจผ เจ…เจ—เฉเจฐเจตเจพเจฒvor 4 Stunden

@INCIndia only wants power and they can do anything for it but every Indian knows about them, their appeasement policies, and @revanth_anumula 's sudden fake love for the almighty father of the universe Mahadev.

Profilbild von Basheer Sufiyan
Basheer Sufiyanvor 5 Stunden

Just shut ur nonsense 70 saal congress ne kya Kiya n all that bull shit

Profilbild von ANSHU BAJPAI
ANSHU BAJPAIvor 4 Stunden

Always elect an educated and honest leader like Rahul Gandhi.

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Mr. Tshweu

274,433 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Jahren

Another masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades. Again I believe that his words are so important and so rare among Western leaders today, that I decided to translate it in full (the bold parts are emphasis Villepin himself made when speaking): "The Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed on October 7th and failed doubly. Firstly, in its ability to ensure the protection of the Israeli people by allowing massacres that are an abomination to occur. He bears direct responsibility for what happened. And his second failure is having encouraged a policy of occupation and colonization, which continues at this moment in the West Bank and constitutes another threat to Israel if a second front in the West Bank were to open. Force does not ensure the security of a people! This is what all Israelis must understand today. And what is important is that since October 7th, the Israeli government's choice has been to escalate the use of force. You know, neither force nor vengeance ensures peace and security. What ensures peace and security is justice! And justice is not being served today. The rationale of the Israeli government for the bombings happening today is flawed, and the whole international community can see it. The principle is: "we target terrorists, and unfortunately, there are also civilian populations," what is euphemistically called in military language "collateral damage." It must be understood that this collateral damage is not accidental. That is to say, it is perfectly predictable and fully accepted. [Host: "But once again, the responsibility is not solely Israeli."] But once more, let's stop asking about responsibility; let's look at the reality of what's happening on the ground! Assigning fault, allow me to tell you, we will leave to historians. What we want is to stop this violence, to stop these massacres. Israel is putting itself in danger, even more today, with this type of warfare and these types of strikes. We are essentially dealing with a policy of vengeance from the Netanyahu government. Israel has the right to self-defense, but self-defense does not give an indiscriminate right to kill civilian populations. When you target an ambulance, you can always imagine that there was a terrorist in one of the ambulances, or not. But the result is that there are children, women who die. Every child, every woman killed, that's more terrorists. Therefore, Israel's objective, what Israel achieves, is exactly the opposite of what they wish. So, it is essential today to change this logic and return to a strategy that is sound. Hostages, everything must be done to secure their release. But let's not forget: the Palestinian people are also taken hostage, by Hamas and by Israel. And Hamas, we all know, cares little for the Palestinian people. So telling Hamas: "we will not lift the siege, we will not have a humanitarian truce until the hostages are released," is a dialogue of the deaf. Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to do everything so that the political solution does not come to the table. And this is where the international community, Europe, the United States, must tell Benjamin Netanyahu that this war is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it leads us directly [to escalation] - because we can see it well, from Hamas we will move to Iran, from Iran we will move to other targets, and we then enter into the logic of a clash of civilizations. When Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu says that on one side there is the people of light and on the other the people of darkness, we can see the kind of spiral we are getting into. All the wars that have been going on for the past twenty years are wars that begin and do not end. These are frozen conflicts. We know how to start a war; we do not know how to end it. And Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu could control Gaza, it would change nothing. There will continue to be terrorist attacks, Israelis will continue to live in fear. We must get out of this. The second reason why this is yesterday's war is that the war against terrorism has never been won anywhere. Force is not the answer, once again. Vengeance is not the answer. The answer is justice, and that is what all the peoples of the world, all those who today watch what is happening, call for justice. Today the direction we must follow is to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing his suicidal logic that will make Israel a besieged state. They can besiege Gaza, but they will be besieged. And do not think that tomorrow we will again have a pacified discourse with Saudi Arabia, with the Arab states that will normalize the situation: no! The wounds of history are awakening. Israel's interest is to have a responsible state at its side. And this responsible state, let's stop splitting hairs, must clearly be the West Bank, all of the West Bank. It must be Gaza, with access between the two territories, and East Jerusalem. The problem, and this is the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu's escalation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want it. And the policy of separation must be dignified. That is, it must confer to the Palestinians a state where they can live, a viable state, a true state, which can build itself and which will be all the more at peace... [Host: "Does that mean that the settlements in the West Bank have to be removed?"] Well, when we left Algeria, there were a million French who left Algeria. Today there are 500,000 Israelis colonizing the West Bank, and there are 200,000 in East Jerusalem. [Host: "They must leave the West Bank?"] Yes. Yes, that is history, that is responsibility, that is the price! I tell you solemnly, it is the price of security for Israel! And all those who today consider that it will never be enough are pursuing the worst policy." Credit to Caisses de grรจve (Gauche Gaza / Antifasciste) who took these extracts from the original interview which can be found here:

Arnaud Bertrand

2,839,318 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Jahren

๐ˆ๐‘๐€๐๐ˆ๐€๐ ๐€๐‚๐“๐ˆ๐•๐ˆ๐’๐“: โ€œ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ”,๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ ๐ˆ๐‘๐€๐๐ˆ๐€๐๐’ ๐Œ๐€๐’๐’๐€๐‚๐‘๐„๐ƒ ๐ˆ๐ ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ– ๐‡๐Ž๐”๐‘๐’โ€ โ€” ๐€๐๐ƒ ๐“๐‡๐„ ๐”๐Š ๐๐Œ ๐–๐Ž๐โ€™๐“ ๐‹๐ˆ๐…๐“ ๐€ ๐…๐ˆ๐๐†๐„๐‘ Iranian activist Lily Moo went on GB News and delivered one of the most powerful testimonies youโ€™ll hear about whatโ€™s actually happening inside Iran right now โ€” and she did not hold back on the Westโ€™s failure to act. The numbers alone are staggering. According to regime figures themselves, more than ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ”,๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง๐ข๐š๐ง๐ฌ were massacred โ€œ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ข ๐˜ด๐˜ฑ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง 48 ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ๐˜ด ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ 400 ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ฌ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜จ๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ค๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต๐˜ด ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ.โ€ The IRGC and imported foreign militia from Iraq and Afghanistan carried out the kโˆ—llings. Moo described Iranians calling out to Donald Trump and the international community during the January protests โ€” chanting from the streets while โ€œ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ด ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜™๐˜Ž๐˜Š.โ€ They were invoking the ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ฉ๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐›๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ญ๐ž๐œ๐ญ โ€” actual international law โ€” begging for intervention. Then she turned to the UK. The attacks in ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐ก ๐‹๐จ๐ง๐๐จ๐งโ€™๐ฌ ๐†๐จ๐ฅ๐๐ž๐ซ๐ฌ ๐†๐ซ๐ž๐ž๐ง โ€” ambulances hit, the British Jewish community targeted โ€” are, she says, โ€œ๐˜ข ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ฒ๐˜ถ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ด๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ฉ๐˜ด ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜ด๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ค ๐˜™๐˜ฆ๐˜ฑ๐˜ถ๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ค.โ€ Iranian businesses in London attacked by regime supporters. British security compromised. And yet the UK Prime Minister stands there claiming he wonโ€™t โ€œcompromise British securityโ€ while actively refusing to support a rescue mission for ๐Ÿ—๐ŸŽ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ฎ๐ง๐š๐ซ๐ฆ๐ž๐ ๐œ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐š๐ง๐ฌ. Mooโ€™s response was devastating: โ€œ๐˜ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ, ๐˜š๐˜ช๐˜ณ, ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜œ๐˜’ ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ถ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜บ ๐˜ฃ๐˜บ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ด๐˜ถ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ค๐˜ถ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง 90 ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ค๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜จ๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ข๐˜บ.โ€ She addressed the question of civilian casualties head-on. The primary school in ๐Œ๐ข๐ง๐š๐› ๐ข๐ง ๐‡๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ณ๐ ๐š๐ง ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐ฏ๐ข๐ง๐œ๐ž that was hit? It was built inside an IRGC base. Interviews with children from that school revealed the teachers ๐ฅ๐จ๐œ๐ค๐ž๐ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐๐ž when the bombing began โ€” using children as human shields. Iranian people are convinced it was an IRGC missile. The regime places schools inside military installations and then parades the wreckage for propaganda. Iran is in its ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐š๐ฒ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐๐ข๐ ๐ข๐ญ๐š๐ฅ ๐›๐ฅ๐š๐œ๐ค๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ. Phone calls to families are nearly impossible. Hospitals and schools are being packed with civilians so the regime can use them as targets. The IRGC is depleting. And Iranians want one thing: โ€œ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ๐˜ฏ๐˜ง๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ.โ€ Churchill sent troops to Normandy. That is why Britain is free today. Moo is asking who will be this generationโ€™s Churchill for Iran. ๐Ÿ—๐ŸŽ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ž๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ž ๐š๐ซ๐ž ๐›๐ž๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐œ๐ฎ๐ž. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐จ๐ง๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ช๐ฎ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ ๐ก๐š๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐œ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐š๐ ๐ž ๐ญ๐จ ๐Ÿ๐ข๐ง๐ข๐ฌ๐ก ๐ข๐ญ.

M.A. Rothman

12,779 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 6 Monaten

Yesterdayโ€™s elections in Georgia have put an end, once again, to all speculations about who the Georgian people are, where the Georgian people stand, how many Georgians there are, and who can speak on their behalf. Georgian people went to the polls yesterday, which was definitely more than just local self-government elections. Yesterday, Georgian people supported the Georgian state, the country's constitution, law and order, democracy, and national interests. I thank every voter who came to the polls, regardless of who they voted for. I thank every one of our supporters who strengthened our government. And a special thanks to each candidate involved in Georgian Dreamโ€™s election campaign, members of our electoral headquarters, who brought our main message to the voters. Yesterday, all alternative agendas, fabricated and false realities were put to an end. At the same time, yesterday, Georgia escaped Maidanization, bloodshed, chaos, and a return to the dark past. We survived not because some extremists or their foreign instructors came to their senses. We survived because law enforcement officers defended their country. I thank every police officer, special forces officer, security service officer, and government security officer who yesterday, at the risk of their own lives and health, prevented internal and external enemies from disrupting peaceful development of our country. Internal and external forces, which have been trying to destabilize Georgia for years, attempted to stage a decisive battle against the Georgian people and suffered a bitter defeat. Yesterday, we saw people led from abroad who were ready, driven by their ambitions, hatred, and revenge, to overthrow the legitimately elected government and, along with it, to overthrow the future of Georgia, our people, and our children. Today, it is no longer worth talking about the few adventurers who led the attempt to overthrow the government. Their crimes have been weighed, their guilt has been measured, and they will be given the appropriate punishment. Today, it is the most shameful, cowardly, and shameless participants of yesterdayโ€™s events who must be held accountable for what they had sewn and what they tried to reap. I am talking about those leaders of the radicals who actively participated in planning the crime, mobilizing the people, promoting hatred. When they saw that their attempt to overthrow the government failed, they fled and are now trying to shift the blame to the perpetrators who directly resorted to violence. We must also not allow anyone to distract us from the nature of yesterday's gathering. Society will not tolerate this naivety anymore neither from Georgians nor from foreigners. Each participant of yesterday's gathering knew very well that at 4 pm, on October 4th, they were going to overthrow the government. The time, place, plan, and the goal were precisely set. Several thousand people who gathered yesterday knew very well where they were going and what they were doing. These are those several thousand people angry about their lives and their country who, in March 2022, from the same place, demanded Georgia's involvement in the war in Ukraine; those who, in June 2022, from the same place, called for the government to transfer power to foreign NGOs; those who in March 2023, from the same place, threw a Molotov cocktail for the first time; those who lost elections in October 2024, and instead of accepting the defeat, launched another unsuccessful attempt to destabilize the country. These are a few thousand people flying the flag for someone else, and who would trade our country's independence for the obedience to someone else. It is symbolic that yesterday, these several thousand rioters, flying the flag for someone else, were defeated right on the Freedom Square. After yesterday's failed coup attempt, we should not lose sight of the foreign propaganda support that yesterday's attempt to overthrow the government mustered. Throughout the day, a constant stream of disinformation flowed from Georgia to international media platforms, while inciting calls were heard from abroad by people who, no one doubts, were rubbing their hands with glee in anticipation of bloodshed. We saw the culmination of this external support during the storming of the Georgian President's residence, when coordinated statements by people, already well-known to our society, appeared, claiming to be external supporters of Maidanization. Pay attention to the fact that neither during the preparation of the crime, nor during its course, nor after, not a single foreigner, not a single Brussels bureaucrat, nor an official from an individual country, not even distanced oneself from violence and crime, let alone condemned it. We heard only the slogans supporting the crime and, also, general, empty phrases about democracy and freedom, which seemed even more cynical against the backdrop of the massive crime that the entire world was watching live. Moreover, a few days ago, we heard a statement from the European Commission spokesperson expressing solidarity with the anti-government rally announced for October 4. We have repeatedly pointed out the harmful nature of this statement. However, no one has distanced oneself from it. Of course, the society will not forget this open support, and expects an explanation. Their deafening silence on the failed violent overthrow by the extremists embraced by foreign funders and patrons, clearly demonstrates how much real value they place on democracy, human rights, and peaceful development of the Georgian people. The failed coup d'รฉtat of October 4 should serve as a final warning to everyone, both inside and outside the country. There are already calls made to pretend that yesterday's attempt to overthrow the government was only a temporary setback, and that there is a need to change the tactic, continue provocations and they will definitely achieve their goal. It is unimaginable to chronicle greater cynicism, contempt, and outright betrayal of the homeland than these people are doing. However, the lesson of October 4 has been learned. Within the framework of the Constitution and the law, the Georgian government will do everything possible to ensure that the country is protected, the people have peace, and Georgia and our children have a future. With calmness, strength, dignity, loyalty, and love, good has triumphed over evil.

Shalva Papuashvili ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ช

54,860 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 11 Monaten

๐•๐ˆ๐‚๐“๐Ž๐‘ ๐ƒ๐€๐•๐ˆ๐’ ๐‡๐€๐๐’๐Ž๐ ๐‰๐”๐’๐“ ๐๐”๐‘๐ˆ๐„๐ƒ ๐“๐‡๐„ โ€œ๐…๐Ž๐‘๐„๐•๐„๐‘ ๐–๐€๐‘โ€ ๐‹๐ˆ๐„ ๐ˆ๐ ๐“๐‡๐ˆ๐‘๐“๐„๐„๐ ๐Œ๐ˆ๐๐”๐“๐„๐’. ๐ˆ๐‘๐€๐ ๐“๐„๐‘๐‘๐ˆ๐…๐ˆ๐„๐ƒ ๐’๐„๐•๐„๐ ๐๐‘๐„๐’๐ˆ๐ƒ๐„๐๐“๐’. ๐“๐‘๐”๐Œ๐ ๐ƒ๐„๐’๐“๐‘๐Ž๐˜๐„๐ƒ ๐ˆ๐“๐’ ๐€๐๐ˆ๐‹๐ˆ๐“๐˜ ๐“๐Ž ๐Œ๐€๐Š๐„ ๐–๐€๐‘ ๐ˆ๐ ๐…๐ˆ๐•๐„ ๐–๐„๐„๐Š๐’. ๐“๐‡๐ˆ๐’ ๐ˆ๐’ ๐“๐‡๐„ ๐‡๐ˆ๐’๐“๐Ž๐‘๐ˆ๐€๐โ€™๐’ ๐’๐‚๐Ž๐‘๐„๐‚๐€๐‘๐ƒ. Victor Davis Hanson โ€” the most decorated classical military historian in America, author of ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜š๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ž๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ž๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ด and ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜Š๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜›๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ, Hoover Institution senior fellow, lifelong scholar of how wars actually end โ€” spent thirteen minutes on the Daily Signal this week doing what no cable news anchor has bothered to do since February. He compared this war to every other war in American history and then showed his work. His conclusion, in his own words: โ€œ๐˜ž๐˜ฆโ€™๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ข ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง 93 ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ง๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ, ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฑ๐˜ถ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜”๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜ฅ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜Œ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ข ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ-๐˜ฐ๐˜ง-๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜น๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜š๐˜บ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ข, ๐˜๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฒ, ๐˜ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ, ๐˜Ž๐˜ข๐˜ป๐˜ข, ๐˜“๐˜ฆ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ โ€” ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ. ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ด. ๐˜ˆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜บ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต, ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฌ๐˜ด, ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜บ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜บ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ณ.โ€ Read that sentence and then read it again. ๐’๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ง ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ข๐๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ. ๐“๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐Ÿ๐ข๐ž๐. ๐…๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ž๐ž๐ค๐ฌ. ๐ƒ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฒ๐ž๐. That is not a Trump rally soundbite. That is Victor Davis Hanson, the man who wrote the textbooks on Thermopylae, Cannae, and the Pacific War, rendering verdict in real time on the fastest decisive American military victory since the First Gulf War, and arguably since 1945. Here is what Hanson walked through, and every single beat of it is lethal to the legacy narrative. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‚๐ซ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐œ๐ฌ ๐๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ ๐ƒ๐ข๐ ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‡๐จ๐ฆ๐ž๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ค Hanson opens by naming names. The Democratic grandees in the House and Senate. The New York Times. The Washington Post. NPR. PBS. The Wall Street Journal news section. And โ€” this is the key part โ€” the disaffected ex-MAGA right that spent six weeks screaming ๐˜ž๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ž๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜๐˜๐˜ from podcasts and Substacks. He points out that these two camps share ๐ญ๐ฐ๐จ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ง ๐œ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง. First, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ต ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ญ, because a Trump military success would destroy their entire post-2024 political project. Second, and more devastating: ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฒ ๐ง๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ ๐๐ข๐ ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ฅ ๐œ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ซ๐ข๐ฌ๐จ๐ง. Not one of them, Hanson notes, bothered to measure the Iran campaign against ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜š๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ข ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜“๐˜ช๐˜ฃ๐˜บ๐˜ข ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜Ž๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ง ๐˜ž๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜Ž๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ง ๐˜ž๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ง๐˜จ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ. Not one of them asked how many missiles the U.S. had destroyed, whether American aircraft had been shot down (45 were lost in the First Gulf War alone), whether the enemy command structure had been taken out. Instead, they just asserted the conclusion they needed: ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ณ. That is not analysis. That is a feelings-forward prayer dressed up as journalism, and Hanson calls it for exactly what it is. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐€๐œ๐ญ๐ฎ๐š๐ฅ ๐’๐œ๐จ๐ซ๐ž๐›๐จ๐š๐ซ๐: ๐…๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐‘๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐‚๐ฅ๐ข๐ช๐ฎ๐ž๐ฌ, ๐ƒ๐ž๐œ๐š๐ฉ๐ข๐ญ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ Hansonโ€™s single most important factual paragraph of the 13 minutes: โ€œ๐˜๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฌ๐˜ด, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜œ๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜š๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜ด๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ช ๐˜ˆ๐˜ช๐˜ณ ๐˜๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ค๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฒ๐˜ถ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ.โ€ He lists them individually. Memorize this list, because it is the actual accounting of what ๐Ÿ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ž๐ž๐ค๐ฌ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ˆ๐ฌ๐ซ๐š๐ž๐ฅ๐ข ๐š๐ข๐ซ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ did to a regime that spent 46 years promising ๐˜‹๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ข: ๐Ž๐ง๐ž. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps โ€” IRGC command network shattered. Qassem-era terror infrastructure leadership dead or in hiding. ๐“๐ฐ๐จ. The regular Iranian Army โ€” senior general officer corps hollowed out by precision strike. ๐“๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐ž. The theocratic apparat โ€” including the Supreme Leader himself. The Assembly of Experts is reportedly unable to convene. ๐…๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ. The elected politicians โ€” the facade government, the President, the Foreign Minister, the Majlis leadership. ๐€๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐š๐ซ๐ฌ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐ข๐ฆ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ๐ž ๐ก๐ข๐ญ. ๐’๐ข๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ญ๐š๐ง๐ž๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฅ๐ฒ. ๐ˆ๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ซ๐ญ๐ฒ-๐Ÿ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐๐š๐ฒ๐ฌ. That is not a ๐˜ฒ๐˜ถ๐˜ข๐˜จ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ. That is not a ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ. That is the most surgical decapitation of a hostile nation-state since the Japanese surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐“๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐ž-๐๐ก๐š๐ฌ๐ž ๐“๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฉ ๐’๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ ๐ฒ ๐‡๐š๐ง๐ฌ๐จ๐ง ๐€๐œ๐ญ๐ฎ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ƒ๐ข๐š๐ ๐ซ๐š๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ž๐ Hanson then does something cable news cannot do in 45-second segments: he reconstructs the entire strategic arc. Three phases. Execute them in order. Win. ๐๐ก๐š๐ฌ๐ž ๐Ž๐ง๐ž: ๐Œ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐š๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง. Find the tunnels. Find the hidden airfields. Find the silos. Find the people in bunkers. Kill the command structure. Leave the regime with ๐˜ข ๐˜ง๐˜ฆ๐˜ธ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด, ๐˜ข ๐˜ง๐˜ฆ๐˜ธ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ค ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด and nothing with which to rebuild. ๐๐ก๐š๐ฌ๐ž ๐“๐ฐ๐จ: ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐ž๐ซ ๐ญ๐จ ๐ง๐ž๐ ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐š๐ญ๐ž. Hanson: โ€œ๐˜›๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ ๐˜ด๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ, ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ด ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ ๐˜ช๐˜ง ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ด.โ€ Self-interested? Yes โ€” Trump wanted oil prices down before midterms. But it was also, Hanson argues, to ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข ๐˜ค๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ด๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜›๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ด ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ข ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ. Iran refused, betting that Western street protests and MAGA apostates would pressure Trump to fold. ๐‡๐ž ๐๐ข๐ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ฅ๐. ๐‡๐ž ๐ก๐š๐ฌ ๐ง๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ฅ๐๐ž๐. ๐๐ก๐š๐ฌ๐ž ๐“๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐ž: ๐„๐œ๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐œ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐š๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง. When Iran announced it would close the Strait of Hormuz to everyone who was not ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ-๐˜๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ, Hanson says Trump just took the pen out of their hand. โ€œ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ตโ€™๐˜ด ๐˜ข ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข. ๐˜š๐˜ฉ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜š๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ช๐˜ต ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด. ๐˜‰๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ถ๐˜บ๐˜ด.โ€ Translation: ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง ๐๐ž๐œ๐ฅ๐š๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐š ๐›๐ฅ๐จ๐œ๐ค๐š๐๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ฅ๐. ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š ๐๐ž๐œ๐ฅ๐š๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐š ๐›๐ฅ๐จ๐œ๐ค๐š๐๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง. ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š ๐ก๐š๐ฌ ๐š ๐œ๐š๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐ž๐ซ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ข๐ค๐ž ๐ ๐ซ๐จ๐ฎ๐ฉ. ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง ๐ก๐š๐ฌ ๐๐“ ๐›๐จ๐š๐ญ๐ฌ ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ง๐ž๐ฌ. That is not a close fight. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ข๐ง๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ข๐ง๐ญ ๐๐จ ๐Ž๐ง๐ž ๐Ž๐ง ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‹๐ž๐Ÿ๐ญ ๐–๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐€๐œ๐ค๐ง๐จ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ž๐๐ ๐ž Here is the paragraph that should be read aloud on every network tonight and will be read aloud on none of them. Hanson, coolly: โ€œ๐˜ž๐˜ฆโ€™๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜‰๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ฌ ๐˜–๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ข ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜“๐˜ช๐˜ฃ๐˜บ๐˜ข ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜ด. ๐˜ž๐˜ฆโ€™๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜‰๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜Š๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜š๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ข ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜บ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜‹๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ถ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฌ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ช๐˜ณ ๐˜จ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ข ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ข ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ง ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ. ๐˜ž๐˜ฆโ€™๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜›๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜บ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜บ๐˜ฅ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ด ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜•๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜’๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข. ๐˜ž๐˜ฆ ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง๐˜ง ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜บ.โ€ Get the implications of that. Every American president from Truman to Obama โ€” Democrat and Republican alike โ€” hit ๐๐ฎ๐š๐ฅ-๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž ๐œ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐š๐ง ๐ข๐ง๐Ÿ๐ซ๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐œ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ž in every major air campaign of the last 75 years. Truman flattened North Korean hydroelectric plants and killed civilians by the thousands. Clinton blacked out a million and a half Serbs and bombed Belgrade bridges on the Danube for weeks. Obama leveled Libyan television and ports. ๐ƒ๐จ๐ง๐š๐ฅ๐ ๐“๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฉ, ๐Ÿ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ž๐ž๐ค๐ฌ ๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐จ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐œ๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐ž๐ช๐ฎ๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐š๐ฅ ๐Œ๐ข๐๐๐ฅ๐ž ๐„๐š๐ฌ๐ญ ๐œ๐จ๐ง๐Ÿ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐š๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐œ๐ž ๐˜๐จ๐ฆ ๐Š๐ข๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ซ, ๐ก๐š๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ก๐ข๐ญ ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง๐ข๐š๐ง ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐š๐ง๐ญ, ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ฐ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ซ ๐ญ๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ญ๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐Ÿ๐š๐œ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ, ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐›๐ซ๐ข๐๐ ๐ž, ๐จ๐ซ ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ซ๐ž๐Ÿ๐ข๐ง๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ. He has kept the war confined to the regimeโ€™s war-making capability and left the civilian grid intact. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐ฆ๐š๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฅ๐ž๐ ๐š๐œ๐ฒ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐œ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ ๐ซ๐ž๐œ๐ค๐ฅ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ง๐ง๐ข๐ง๐  ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ข๐ง๐ž๐ ๐š๐ข๐ซ ๐œ๐š๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ข๐ ๐ง ๐ข๐ง ๐ฆ๐จ๐๐ž๐ซ๐ง ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ. Every talking head who called this a ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ณ owes Hanson an apology for not knowing the historical baseline he is using. $๐Ÿ’๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ ๐Œ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐€ ๐ƒ๐š๐ฒ ๐€๐ง๐ ๐‚๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐  Hanson cites the economists now ๐˜ง๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฑ๐˜ฑ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ข ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ at major research universities in Europe and the United States who have started to measure what the American counter-blockade is actually doing to Tehran. The number: $๐Ÿ’๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐š ๐๐š๐ฒ ๐š๐ง๐ ๐œ๐ฅ๐ข๐ฆ๐›๐ข๐ง๐ . Lost oil sales. Lost petrochemical exports. Lost critical imports of mechanical goods, electrical components, and food. A regime that was already bankrupt before the war, that had hyperinflation eating its own middle class before the first bomb dropped, is now losing half a billion dollars every 24 hours. Hanson is blunt: โ€œ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฏ'๐˜ต ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜บ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ข๐˜ฃ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ต ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜›๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ต ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ฒ๐˜ถ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ. ๐˜”๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜ง๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ต, ๐˜ค๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ, ๐˜ฑ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฌ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ.โ€ ๐“๐ก๐š๐ญ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐š ๐๐จ๐œ๐ญ๐ซ๐ข๐ง๐ž. ๐–๐ซ๐ข๐ญ๐ž ๐ข๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ฐ๐ง. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐ˆ๐ซ๐š๐ง๐ข๐š๐ง ๐๐ž๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ž: ๐€ ๐๐ž๐ซ๐ฅ๐ข๐ง ๐–๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐Œ๐จ๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐ˆ๐ง ๐’๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐Œ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง Hansonโ€™s most historically evocative passage is about the Iranian street. He notes that the regimeโ€™s ruling cliques are right now motivated by ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜บ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ด: they do not know who is in charge, they have watched 30-40-50 of their colleagues get killed, and they are fighting each other for the remains of power. But the fear underneath all of that is the one that matters: ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฒ ๐š๐ซ๐ž ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐Ÿ๐ข๐ž๐ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ข๐ซ ๐จ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ž๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ž. โ€œ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ฌ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ. ๐˜‰๐˜ฆ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜บ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ง๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ด ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜จ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ. ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฏ'๐˜ต ๐˜ข๐˜ง๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ ๐˜จ๐˜ข๐˜ด, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฏ'๐˜ต ๐˜ข๐˜ง๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฏ'๐˜ต ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜บ. ๐˜ˆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ตโ€™๐˜ด ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ.โ€ Hansonโ€™s historical parallel is devastating and correct. The Berlin Wall did not come down the day Reagan said ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ. It came down ๐ฐ๐ž๐ž๐ค๐ฌ ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐ก๐ฌ ๐ฅ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ซ ๐ข๐ง ๐„๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ง ๐„๐ฎ๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ๐ž, ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ฐ๐จ ๐ฒ๐ž๐š๐ซ๐ฌ ๐ฅ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ซ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐’๐จ๐ฏ๐ข๐ž๐ญ ๐”๐ง๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ข๐ญ๐ฌ๐ž๐ฅ๐Ÿ. The collapse of the IRGCโ€™s street-level power over 90 million Iranians may take exactly that long. But it is coming, and the mullahs know it, and that is why they are freelancing contradictory statements on Twitter every 12 hours while their own Supreme Leader is dead and nobody has been elevated. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‚๐š๐ฏ๐ž๐š๐ญ ๐„๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐ž๐ ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐š๐ญ๐จ๐ซ ๐ˆ๐ง ๐–๐š๐ฌ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐จ๐ง ๐๐ž๐ž๐๐ฌ ๐“๐จ ๐‘๐ž๐š๐ The closing minute of Hansonโ€™s commentary is the hinge of everything. He warns that the coming negotiation is a trap unless it is structured correctly. His words: โ€œ๐˜๐˜ง ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ข๐˜ฃ๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜บ ๐˜ข ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆโ€™๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ, ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ถ๐˜ค๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ณ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ญ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ 20 ๐˜บ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ด, ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ช๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ด, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ฌ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ช๐˜ณ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ. ๐˜ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏโ€™๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฌ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บโ€™๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฑ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ช๐˜ณ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ.โ€ And then the hammer: โ€œ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ด๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ๐˜ข๐˜บ ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ ๐˜’๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ข ๐˜๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ด, ๐˜Ž๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜•๐˜ฆ๐˜ธ๐˜ด๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ, ๐˜—๐˜ฆ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ ๐˜‰๐˜ถ๐˜ต๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜จ, ๐˜Š๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜บ ๐˜‰๐˜ฐ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฌ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ต, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏโ€™๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฌ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ค๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜บ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ช๐˜ณ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฎ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ด.โ€ Translation: any JCPOA-style agreement that depends on the next Democratic president to enforce it is worthless on the day it is signed. The Iranian regime has never kept a deal. The Democratic Party has never enforced one. Therefore, Hanson concludes, ๐ฐ๐ž ๐ก๐š๐ ๐›๐ž๐ญ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ ๐ ๐ž๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฆ ๐ญ๐จ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ซ๐ž๐ง๐๐ž๐ซ ๐ฎ๐ง๐œ๐จ๐ง๐๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐จ๐ซ ๐Ÿ๐š๐œ๐ž ๐ž๐œ๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐œ ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ข๐ง, ๐ฐ๐ก๐ข๐œ๐ก ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ก๐ž๐ซ ๐ข๐ง ๐š ๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐ข๐ฆ๐ž ๐œ๐ก๐š๐ง๐ ๐ž. That is not a preference. That is a strategic necessity. Anything short of unconditional surrender or regime collapse just sets the clock ticking on the next war โ€” this time with a nuclear-armed ayatollah. ๐•๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ ๐ƒ๐š๐ฏ๐ข๐ฌ ๐‡๐š๐ง๐ฌ๐จ๐ง ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐š ๐œ๐š๐›๐ฅ๐ž ๐ง๐ž๐ฐ๐ฌ ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ง๐๐ข๐ญ. ๐‡๐ž ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐œ๐ฅ๐š๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ฅ ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ข๐š๐ง ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ ๐ฐ๐ซ๐จ๐ญ๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐›๐จ๐จ๐ค๐ฌ ๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐š๐ซ ๐œ๐จ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ ๐ž ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž๐ฌ. ๐‡๐ข๐ฌ ๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐๐ข๐œ๐ญ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐š๐ญ ๐ƒ๐จ๐ง๐š๐ฅ๐ ๐“๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฉ ๐ญ๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐จ๐ง ๐š ๐œ๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐Ÿ—๐Ÿ‘ ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ž๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ž, ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐ก ๐š ๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ”-๐ฒ๐ž๐š๐ซ ๐ซ๐ž๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ญ๐š๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐ข๐Ÿ๐ฒ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ข๐๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ, ๐š๐ง๐ ๐๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฒ๐ž๐ ๐ข๐ญ๐ฌ ๐š๐›๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐ญ๐จ ๐ฆ๐š๐ค๐ž ๐ฐ๐š๐ซ ๐ข๐ง ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ“ ๐๐š๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐š ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐œ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐š๐ง ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐š๐ง๐ญ. ๐“๐ก๐š๐ญ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐Ÿ๐š๐ฌ๐ญ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ, ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ข๐ง๐ž๐, ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐ž๐œ๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐š๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐œ๐ž ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ—๐Ÿ’๐Ÿ“. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐ฉ๐ž๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ ๐œ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ ๐ข๐ญ ๐š ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ ๐ฐ๐š๐ซ ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ๐ž ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ฐ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐  ๐›๐ž๐œ๐š๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐›๐š๐ ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐œ๐ค. ๐“๐ก๐ž๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ž๐ซ๐ž ๐ฐ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐  ๐›๐ž๐œ๐š๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฒ ๐ง๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ ๐จ๐ฉ๐ž๐ง๐ž๐ ๐š ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐›๐จ๐จ๐ค. ๐‡๐š๐ง๐ฌ๐จ๐ง ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐จ๐ฉ๐ž๐ง๐ž๐ ๐จ๐ง๐ž ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฆ.

M.A. Rothman

89,898 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 5 Monaten

I would like to wish all my compatriots a happy Independence Day, happy Independence Zimbabwe. The independence of our country, unlike many other African countries, came through blood that was shed. There are so many Zimbabweans who lie in unmarked graves from Tanzania to Zambia to Botswana to Mozambique, and they put their lives on the line so that you and I could have the independence that we did not have under colonial rule. There is a distinct difference between those who fought for the independence of our country and died, never seeing an independent Zimbabwe, and those who took over from colonial rule and then destroyed our country through incompetence, corruption, and many other afflictions that should never have been there. I am in no doubt at all that had our country not become independent, I and many Black citizens would probably not be where we are today, thanks to the early gains of independence. Sadly, I now find myself as a journalist and a Zimbabwean with NO freedom to speak, to write, and to exist as a full citizen in my country post independence after the derailment of the independence dream. Many of our people did not have the opportunities that I personally got, and many others got, to advance our lives. It is unfortunate that we find ourselves where we are today, not because independence is bad, but because we ended up with selfish, corrupt, and incompetent individuals who abandoned the principles and aspirations that inspired many Zimbabweans to go out there and fight so that their country could be free. So on this day, when we celebrate 46 years of independence, the same zeal and drive that defined those who died fighting for our country must be carried forward by those who are alive today, to make sure that the country is restored to where it is supposed to be. Zimbabwe is one of the richest countries under the sun. It has almost every mineral that you can think of, and it has some of the best soils in the world. There is no reason for any Zimbabwean to be unemployed, to fail to earn an income, or to go to bed on an empty stomach. There is absolutely no reason for any Zimbabwean to struggle if the country is led by people who know what they are doing and who put the country first, the national interest first, ahead of their own selfish needs. Whilst colonialism was a terrible stain on the history of our country, there are lessons that can be drawn from that period. Rhodesia was run like a business, not like a fiefdom. The fact that most of the central hospitals that exist today were built during the colonial period, with the exception of Chitungwiza, tells us that infrastructure was prioritised, even if it was designed to serve a minority. That reality does not excuse colonial injustice, but it exposes the scale of failure after independence. Forty-six years later, the government has built only one central hospital. Around 2,500 women die every year during childbirth due to a lack of adequate maternity facilities. The largest hospital in Zimbabwe still relies on a maternity theatre built in 1977, and even then only one of its two theatres is functional, with the working one having been refurbished by a South African bank. That is a damning indictment on the current leadership. The fact that millions of Zimbabweans have been forced to leave the country to take up menial jobs in South Africa, as waiters or farm workers, is an indictment on the current leadership. The fact that people like myself and many others have had to leave home out of fear for our lives is an indictment on the current leadership. Whilst the leadership has failed, we as citizens of Zimbabwe also carry a responsibility towards our country, in whatever space we occupy. We must stop following personalities and start following ideas, whether in the ruling party or in the opposition. Our country has been destroyed because we follow personalities, many of whom are vacuous and empty, and when they fail, they drag the nation down with them as our leaders have done. We must not wait for a Messiah to come and save us from the afflictions we face today. We have a responsibility to do what is right for our country. During the liberation struggle, leaders were changed at different points because the struggle was never about personalities, it was about an idea, an independent Zimbabwe where every Zimbabwean, black, white, green, or yellow, has the same rights and opportunities to pursue a better life. So as we celebrate, and we should celebrate, we must also reflect on our responsibilities going forward. We celebrate because independence itself was a noble idea and remains a noble idea. When things are bad, you do not burn down the house, you fix what is broken. We must honour and remember those who lost their lives so that people like myself could go to college, become journalists, and be recognised internationally, as many Zimbabwean professionals have been, some even advising presidents across the continent and beyond. Zimbabwe has some of the most accomplished people anywhere in the world, and it should not be where it is today. It is therefore up to us, as Zimbabweans, to make sure that we do what is right for our country. Once again, happy Independence to my compatriots, and thank you to all the stalwarts who laid down their lives for us to be independent and to the countries that supported our struggle. We could not have achieved independence in 1980 without Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, and many others who stood with us. They did well for us and we thank them. It is those who destroyed the country who should hang their heads in shame today. My heart bleeds when I see so many young Zimbabweans with university degrees, yet ending up as victims of drug abuse because there is no work to go to. There are no opportunities available that are aligned with what they went to university to study. It is a tragic indictment of the situation we find ourselves in today. Today we have become a nation where boreholes are being drilled in the middle of cities because the rulers have failed to do something as basic as delivering water into peopleโ€™s homes. Today we have become a nation where the rest of the region laughs at us because our roads are riddled with potholes, yet the leadership drives Ferraris on those same roads. Today we have become a nation where even our O-level pass rate has not gone beyond 34% because of the failure of leadership to do what needs to be done. Today we cannot even feed ourselves. We have to rely on food aid, and yet we were once colloquially referred to as the breadbasket of the region. These are some of the realities we should reflect on. I could go on and on, but at this point, it is not necessary. To our leaders, I say, how does it feel when you hear the very people you lead saying Ian Smith was better, when they say colonialism was better? How do you feel? Or do you even feel anything at all when those words are spoken? Of course, colonialism was brutal. Of course, Ian Smith was a racist leader who upheld a minority regime built on exclusion and oppression. But it is a damning indictment of your failed leadership that some of our own people now feel pushed to the point of romanticising that dark past. Independence was meant to usher in dignity, opportunity, and shared prosperity for every Zimbabwean, regardless of colour or creed. It was meant to restore ownership of our future to the people. Yet today, you cannot deny that a small, privileged few are the primary beneficiaries of that independence, while the overwhelming majority are trapped in poverty, penury, and relentless suffering. That is not what liberation was fought for. However, nothing can justify a failure to be grateful to those who fought and died for the independence of our country. They did their part. It is now up to us to do our part and ensure that our country becomes what it is meant to be. Happy Independence Zimbabwe.

Hopewell Chinโ€™ono

12,473 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 5 Monaten

DRC The Truth They Donโ€™t Want Told: Rwanda, Congo, and the Thirty-Year Lie of War For three decades, the world has been told that Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been locked in a cycle of war. That formulation is repeated so often it is accepted as fact: โ€œthirty years of war.โ€ But it is a dangerous distortion. What the region has endured is not thirty years of war between equals, but thirty years of denial โ€” denial that genocidal forces defeated in Rwanda in 1994 were allowed to survive, regroup, and thrive under international cover in Congo. Denial that United Nations peacekeepers and international experts, mandated to protect civilians and tell the truth, instead became complicit in perpetuating instability. Denial that successive Congolese governments have collaborated with these forces while Western institutions inverted reality to portray the victims as perpetrators. This is ultimately part of the Denial of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda 1994 and the same time a support for those who committed the genocide and their western supporting powers. This narrative inversion โ€” turning the perpetrators of genocide into victims, and Rwanda into the aggressor โ€” has been so persistent that it now structures international debates at the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council. The most recent sessions in New York and Geneva showcased the same pattern: Fรฉlix Tshisekediโ€™s government, which has integrated genocidal militias and even contracted foreign mercenaries, was spared scrutiny, while Rwanda was once again presented as the destabilizing actor. Such distortions are not just insulting; they are dangerous. They perpetuate impunity, embolden genocidal forces, and condemn millions of Congolese to continued suffering. 1994: The Crime the World Saw but Chose Not to Stop The truth begins in 1994, when Rwanda descended into the fastest genocide of the twentieth century. The United Nations Security Council was not blindsided. It had reports on its desk from the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. It knew about hate speech broadcast by extremist radio stations. It knew about militias arming and training openly. Yet when the presidential plane was shot down on April 6th and the genocide machinery was unleashed, the Council dithered. For one hundred days, more than a million Tutsi were hunted down and slaughtered while the so-called international community watched. When the genocide was halted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the perpetrators were not dismantled. Instead, they were escorted into Zaire, under French military cover, and given sanctuary by Mobutuโ€™s regime. It was a stunning betrayal: would the Allies after World War II have tolerated a Nazi army regrouping in Switzerland or Austria, rearming, and launching cross-border raids? The question answers itself. What was unthinkable in Europe was tolerated in Africa. Thirty Years of Denial The remnants of the genocidal regime reconstituted themselves into new armed groups, most prominently the FDLR. They launched raids into Rwanda, destabilized eastern Congo, and embedded themselves into local conflicts. Rwanda and other African states were drawn into wars to neutralize them, yet the international community consistently refused to recognize the root cause. Instead, it adopted the lazy shorthand of โ€œthirty years of war between Rwanda and Congo,โ€ erasing the agency of the genocidal forces and the complicity of their enablers. The refusal to confront this truth has consequences. It allows the myth to persist that instability in eastern Congo is a Rwandan export rather than the direct result of harboring genocidal actors. It permits Congolese leaders, from Laurent Kabila to Fรฉlix Tshisekedi, to use the FDLR as a political tool, while scapegoating Rwanda whenever domestic failures come under pressure. And it encourages Western chancelleries and UN officials to absolve themselves of responsibility by blaming the most convenient target. MONUSCO: A Mission that Multiplied Armed Groups Since 1999, the United Nations has deployed its largest-ever peacekeeping mission, MONUC โ€” later renamed MONUSCO โ€” in the DRC. Its track record is damning. When the mission began, there were just four armed groups active in Congo. Today, there are more than 200. When Tshisekedi began his presidency, there were 28. This explosion of armed groups happened under MONUSCOโ€™s watch. Even more damning is its relationship to the very forces it was meant to neutralize. MONUSCO never dismantled the FDLR. At times, it even cooperated with them. Atrocities in Ituri province continue to unfold despite MONUSCOโ€™s heavy presence. And yet, year after year, the Security Council mandates โ€œUN Expertsโ€ to report on the situation. These reports, opaque in recruitment and methodology, have consistently deflected blame away from MONUSCO and the Congolese government, while shifting suspicion onto Rwanda. Far from being impartial, they have helped to construct and entrench the false narrative of Rwanda as aggressor. Tshisekediโ€™s Calculated Escalation Fรฉlix Tshisekedi has not only inherited this machinery of denial; he has actively deepened it. His government has integrated the FDLR into the Congolese army, multiplied local militias known as Mai-Mai (later rebranded as โ€œWazalendoโ€ to dodge international criticism), and even hired foreign mercenaries. Romania, a NATO member, sent a contingent that was captured during the fall of Goma. The United States, through Erik Prince โ€” founder of the notorious Blackwater โ€” has supplied another. Neither the UN, nor the EU, nor the African Union, which formally banned mercenaries in Africa in 1977, has spoken a word of condemnation. The hypocrisy is staggering. Rwanda is scrutinized for defensive actions aimed at protecting its borders from genocidal militias, while the Congolese government is given carte blanche to collaborate with those militias and employ Western mercenaries. This is not neutrality; it is complicity. The Manipulation of Numbers and Memory The distortion goes beyond politics into the realm of memory itself. The oft-repeated claim of โ€œmillions dead in Congoโ€ is traced back to the UNโ€™s infamous โ€œMapping Reportโ€ covering 1993โ€“2003. That document was so riddled with methodological flaws that it reads less like professional research than a political pamphlet. Its purpose was transparent: to inflate numbers in ways that incriminate Rwanda, while erasing the structural causes of death in Congo โ€” state collapse, corruption, and the harboring of armed groups. Yes, thousands have perished in Congo โ€” from direct violence, from displacement, from preventable disease. But to inflate these figures into the millions without context, and to assign blame selectively, is not just bad scholarship. It is a moral crime. It erases the real victims, most of all the Congolese Banyarwanda, who have been displaced and targeted for over thirty years. And it allows those responsible โ€” Congolese politicians, UN officials, and their international enablers โ€” to wash their hands of accountability. Geneva, New York, and the Inversion of Truth All of these threads converge in the present. At the UN Security Councilโ€™s latest session on the DRC, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the script was repeated once more. Tshisekediโ€™s government organized side events and interventions designed to paint Rwanda as the aggressor, while UN officials played along. The FDLRโ€™s role was minimized. MONUSCOโ€™s failures were ignored. The use of mercenaries was never mentioned. Instead, the narrative inversion was complete: Rwanda, the country that stopped a genocide and has spent thirty years defending its borders from its remnants, was presented as the destabilizer. It is a shameful spectacle. But it is also a revealing one. The international system is not neutral. It protects its own failures. It prefers denial to accountability. And in doing so, it ensures that the cycle of violence continues. The Urgency of Truth Thirty years on, the question is no longer whether the world failed Rwanda in 1994. That is beyond dispute. The real question is why the world has continued to fail the Great Lakes region for three decades afterward โ€” by denying the root causes of instability, by shielding the perpetrators, and by inverting the roles of victim and aggressor. It is time to say it plainly: this has not been thirty years of war. It has been thirty years of denial. Denial that has protected genocidal actors. Denial that has enabled Congolese governments to weaponize militias. Denial that has allowed UN peacekeepers and โ€œexpertsโ€ to preside over the multiplication of armed groups. And denial that has permitted Western chancelleries to avoid their own complicity by pointing the finger at Rwanda. Breaking that denial is not only about Rwanda. It is about justice for the Congolese civilians trapped in cycles of violence, abandoned by their own state, and failed by the international community. It is about accountability for institutions that claim moral authority while practicing selective blindness. And it is about finally affirming that African lives, African history, and African truths cannot be endlessly distorted without consequence. If the world truly cares about peace in the Great Lakes, it must abandon the thirty-year lie and confront the truth it has avoided for too long. Until then, every new resolution in New York and every new declaration in Geneva will be nothing more than a continuation of the denial that has condemned the region to endless suffering.

Albert Rudatsimburwa ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ผ

138,014 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 9 Monaten

Baroness Warsi Claims Campaigning Against The Pakistani Rape Gangs is Racism, Bigotry and Fascism. She is Wrong. Once again, a leading Pakistani Muslim politician has reached for the same tired euphemism used for nearly three decades to blur the truth and shield those responsible. โ€œI think the quicker we move to a position where individuals are judged by their individual characteristics, and the actions of bad people within groups are not superimposed onto entire communities and used as a tool to demonise them, the better. Otherwise we effectively single those communities out as targets for racism and abuse.โ€ Baroness Warsi's interview is a calculated act of moral evasion. The same denial that allowed these crimes to flourish in the first place is now being used to deflect from a simple truth. The industrial scale gang rape of little White girls are not the actions of individuals. They are the consequences of a cultural belief that is deeply embedded in a community. The refusal to acknowledge this is part of a long tradition in Britain of avoiding hard conversations about the communities we imported and the ideologies they carried with them. Successive governments, terrified of upsetting a fragile multicultural consensus, have chosen denial over honesty. To this day, they continue to bury the truth beneath polite language and bureaucratic vagueness, creating the conditions in which this poison has taken root and continues growing unchecked. The Pakistanis who arrived in Britain in large numbers during the 1950s and 1960s did not come as ideologically neutral migrants. They brought with them a worldview forged in the fires of rape, genocide, and ethnic cleansing that underpinned the brutal birth of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. For decades, that worldview was reinforced by the Pakistani government's propaganda promoting the belief that Islamโ€™s survival depended on separation, control, and purity. In Britain, this ideology went unchallenged. And so, here, it festered. To understand the rape gangs and the industrial scale sexual exploitation of this nationโ€™s children, we must confront the deep rooted racial and religious prejudices embedded within these communities. These Men Did Not Emerge From a Vacuum They were shaped by a culture that long ago learned to rationalise violence against those deemed inferior or impure. Only then can we see that what is happening in Britain today is not a cultural aberration, but a continuation, a modern echo of what their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers once did in Pakistan. The same doctrine that justified the slaughter and rape of Hindus, Sikhs and Bengalis during Partition has found new expression in Britain. What had once been political has become social. What was once a war between nations has become a war for dominance within neighbourhoods. The ideology that sanctified conquest and control now justifies the exploitation of White girls who, in their worldview, are seen as morally corrupt, religiously impure and therefore sexually available. These Are Not The Actions of Individuals It is behaviour rooted in cultural conditioning that is sustained by collective acceptance. Within these communities, the subjugation of women, the authority of elders and the policing of behaviour are not extremes. They are norms. This theology of social power, where men rule women, elders rule youth and sects rule one another, has created a world in which silence and submission are expected. It was within that silence, and under the cover of communal respectability, that the rape gangs are able to thrive. This is why a judge summing up the latest convictions in Rochdale raised concerns of how they all knew. And they all did nothing. The rape gangs themselves reflect this same social architecture. They operate along clan lines, often involving brothers, cousins, uncles, and family friends who protected one another through blood loyalty and communal silence. These are not isolated predators but organised networks bound by kinship, secrecy, and a shared contempt for the girls they targeted. When this ideology metastasised into organised sexual exploitation of working class White girls, Britainโ€™s institutions looked away. Police officers, councillors and social workers, many of them knowing full well what was happening, chose silence over truth. Fear of being called racist became more powerful than the duty to protect a child. The result was moral paralysis, an entire generation of girls sacrificed to maintain a comforting illusion of community cohesion. Behind This Silence Stands Another Motive Political survival. In many towns and cities, Labour councillors rely on tightly controlled bloc votes from Pakistani communities to keep power. These votes are delivered through local power-brokers, elders and mosque committees who demand loyalty in return for turnout. The price of that loyalty is silence. Politicians know that confronting the rape gangs means confronting the same networks that deliver their majorities. So they look the other way, protected their careers, and branded truth-tellers as racists and troublemakers. The state, terrified of offending a vocal minority and addicted to the arithmetic of bloc politics, allows the language of diversity to become the armour of depravity. What began as political cowardice has since hardened into cultural orthodoxy The same fear that once silenced whistleblowers now shapes our national conversation. Those who protected their bloc votes in the town halls now protect their reputations in Westminster, the media and academia. Instead of reckoning with what happened, they have rewritten the narrative, shifting blame, censoring debate, and recasting moral cowardice as tolerance. This double standard runs deep. The same institutions that silenced victims and ignored predators now lecture the rest of us on morality. The Lesson is Clear In modern Britain, moral outrage is permitted only when it is politically convenient. The same nation that now claims to confront Islamophobia still cannot speak the truth about who is raping its children. _________ Iโ€™m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry. You wonโ€™t see me on the BBC. You wonโ€™t read my work in the legacy press. Thatโ€™s not an accident. I take this to a place from where there is no coming back. I document everything in my newsletter. Itโ€™s 100% free to read. If this work matters to you, if you believe it must continue, I need your backing. My work is free. No paywalls. No gatekeeping. No exclusions. Because the truth shouldnโ€™t belong only to those who can afford it. If you can afford to do so, supporting me costs as little as 75p a week (ยฃ30 a year). Sign up here; ๐Ÿ‘‰ If you canโ€™t commit to a regular subscription, a one-off contribution genuinely helps keep this alive. You can support me using one of these links; ๐Ÿ‘‰ ๐Ÿ‘‰ Weโ€™re up against a machine, politicians, police, officials, and media, working together to shrink, sanitise, and bury the truth. This work survives because of you. If youโ€™ve ever shared my posts, learned something, or felt less alone reading them, stand with me. I need your help. Raja ๐Ÿ™

Raja Miah

15,774 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 6 Monaten

Zack Polanski, "Today I was in Oxfordshire, standing in the aftermath of the devastation caused by a wildfire. Trees reduced to charcoal, cars turned to burnt out wrecks. The smell of smoke still lingering in the air on the site of what was once a thriving local business now reduced to ash." "Wildfires, literal scorched earth and a looming sense. And I really want everyone to hear this. This is only just the beginning. And today, as temperatures fall at the end of yet another extreme heat alert, we know that if it rains now, the soil being baked dry means it's much more likely to flood." "These days feel exceptional. But what we are living through right now are likely some of the least extreme summer temperatures we'll experience in our lifetimes. Today I am sounding the alarm and I'm laying out a plan." "Because last week, while a wildfire the size of 200 football pitches was raging across Suffolk, I called on, Prime Minister Burnham to act urgently to address the crisis. I suggested a COBRA meeting being the very least he could do." "And six days later, with another heat alert just having ended, we have still heard next to nothing from the very top of government. No emergency briefings, no new plan and precious little detail about how this government will protect people from the crisis." "It is putting lives and livelihoods at risk across the entire uk. So today I'm delivering a reality cheque. We are facing the biggest threat to this country since the Second World War." "I'm setting out what Prime Minister Burnham can do now to tackle the crisis and I am challenging him to act with the urgency we need. You will hear today from those on the front line of this crisis and they will lay out what they have dealt with in the past few weeks." "And to them, on behalf of the entire country, I want to say thank you. Extreme weather is now the new normal and without action, the impact on the people of this country will be unimaginably grave." "The threats we face are three hold first, the threat to the safety of the population. Almost 3,000 people have died from the effects of extreme heat this summer. And we know that older people and those with pre existing conditions are particularly at risk from these dangerous temperatures." "Those are the people who have been forced to stay at home for days on end, windows, curtains closed, trying to wait out the extreme heat. And these are the people who are most likely now to have grieving families whose bodies were under such intense strain and trying just to stay cool that their kidneys and their hearts could no longer cope." "Meanwhile, wildfires have seen hundreds evacuated from their homes, while many thousands more wait anxiously with Flames on the horizon and smoke in their lungs. We've seen across Europe how bad things can get." "Hundreds of thousands evacuated, half a million acres burned. The sheer scale of the devastation is hard to comprehend, but we need to look it in the face, because this is only a taster of what's to come if we don't act now." "Second, we face a threat to our food and water security. Farmers are now warning we could see food shortages after flooding followed by drought has decimated crops. And despite farmers working really hard through the nights to avoid the heat, food production is grinding to a halt and our food prices are set to rise." "Half of England is experiencing serious drought. And across the country, 8 of our water reservoirs are at risk of running dry. Privatised water companies they've failed to build a single new reservoir to since 1992, are, losing nearly 3 billion litres of water a day from leaky pipes." "That's five times more than a nationwide host pipe ban would even save. The threat is so severe that the UK's National Risk Register warns that if we have three years of exceptionally dry weather like this, we could face water rationing." "These aren't distant possibilities, they're very real scenarios and they are coming straight at us down the track because finally, we face a threat to our very way of life. Parents unable to take their children to the playground because the slides are so hot it could burn, their skin off." "Temperatures so high they keep us inside for days for the sake of our health. Cities feeling like ghost towns, parks turned into deserts. We only have to look across the Channel to France and Spain to see what faces us in the years ahead." "Europe is heating at, twice the rate of the rest of the world. Wildfires, droughts, deadly floods. The scenes we have seen play out on our TV screens are, frankly apocalyptic. And yet the response from our government is to pretend none of this is happening." "It is an astonishing dereliction of duty from those whose very first responsibility is to keep all of us safe, and from the media. With some brilliant and notable exceptions, we have seen more clamouring for North Sea drilling in the last few weeks than actually raising the alarm on climate breakdown." "While our country has come together, people have offered shelter to those who have had to leave their homes due to wildfires. They've checked in with older neighbours to care for those who are sick because of the heat. But the government. The government have been far, far too quiet on what is an emergency." "So today you will hear from some of those on the front line of this crisis and Those with vital insights into how we face this threat. A doctor, a firefighter, someone who served this country in the armed forces, and someone who has dedicated his entire career to our precious nature and wildlife." "It's experts like these that this government should be bringing to the table to design a full scale emergency response. So I want to step out from this big picture and look at some of the urgent steps that Prime Minister Burnham needs to urgently announce to protect people right now and keep us safe from what we know is coming down the track." "In the immediate term, we need to keep people safe from extreme temperatures. That means a free accessible cool space in every local area. And financial support for households so they can heat proof their homes. Second, we need a robust wildfire prevention strategy." "A fire service with the resources it needs to tackle blazes when they come. And that must include firefighting helicopters when needed. And not again ever seeing the shocking sight of requiring a charity to step in to contract a private firm to help fight fires." "And this should all be funded by taxing the fossil fuel giants who are profiting from fueling these infernos. And finally, to secure our water supply, prevent droughts and protect our food system, we need to bring water back into public hands." "Right now, money is flowing out of our hands into the pockets of shareholders, just like water is flowing out of those companies leaky pipes in the middle of a drought. Every single penny households pay for their water needs to go back into strengthening our infrastructure, building new reservoirs and protecting us from the droughts of the future." "We know that these extreme temperatures, these deadly wildfires, are being driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The sad reality is decades of inaction of politicians allowing fossil fuel companies to profit from pumping out deadly emissions have guaranteed the extreme weather we are seeing right now." "And we will see for the rest of our lifetimes. But there is still time to stop total breakdown. So let me speak directly to the Prime Minister. If we are to secure a livable future for our children and for our grandchildren, there can be no new drilling for oil and gas." "On this, the, the science is crystal clear. As politicians, we have a moral responsibility to do what is right for the people we serve, even when it's not politically convenient. And I know that whatever our differences, we both care deeply about the people of this country and the future of our planet." "So when the time comes, I hope you will have the courage to be truthful, be brave and hold firm to your party's commitment to no new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, including both Rosebank and, Jackdaw." "Now, some will say we can't afford to make these changes. These last few weeks are showing we can't afford not to. We are facing an existential threat. People are dying. People are scared." "It is time to act. And when we do, we won't just avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown. We will lower bills permanently, help our communities thrive, and give a grounded sense of hope for generations to come."

Farrukh

87,169 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 1 Monat

A strong, principled statement from Ed Miliband: clear on antisemitism, clear on illegal settlements, and clear that Britain should act to defend a viable two-state solution ๐Ÿ‘ "And I also want to say emphatically to people in Britain and indeed across the world, holding British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is anti-Semitism, plain and simple. What we seek today is to salvage the only cause for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians, the two-state solution." "Let me start with the situation in the West Bank. Mr Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker, at the time of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, around 270,000 settlers lived in the occupied Palestinian territories. Today, it is some 770,000." "More settlements have been approved under the four years of this Israeli government than in the previous 20 years. Let us spell out what this has meant for Palestinian communities: houses bulldozed, roads and public infrastructure destroyed, families displaced from their homes, community by community, family by family, person by person." "Madam Deputy Speaker, 65 Palestinian communities completely expelled since 2023. A total of over 4,000 Palestinians evicted from their homes due to settler violence and state actions." "And in August, the crossing of a long-standing red line: the issuing of E1 tenders for over 1,200 homes. Madam Deputy Speaker, I visited a community in the area covered by E1 in 2014. The Bedouin communities I met in Khan al-Ahmar had lived on that land for generations." "E1 proposals would evict them and place settlements directly between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, cutting through the heart of Palestine. Let's be absolutely clear what this means: the creation of a set of facts on the ground to make the two-state solution unviable." "And on top of official state policy, settler terrorism is rampant. The UN reports an average of six violent settler attacks against Palestinians per day this year. Per day, the highest on record." "Take one example: in Al-Mughayyir, 20 miles north of Jerusalem, settlers have encircled the village and mounted a campaign of intimidation, largely under the protection of the Israeli military. Families in the village are increasingly cut off from accessing their land, squeezed into ever smaller areas, and have olive trees uprooted and livestock stolen." "In the same community just last week, two teenagers were shot when settlers entered the village under police and military escort. Both died before reaching hospital. Madam Deputy Speaker, five teenagers have now been killed from their school this year." "Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli Prime Minister, has described what is happening as, I quote, 'a violent and criminal effort to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank.' The former Minister of Health and retired Brigadier General from the IDF, Efraim Sneh, has said, and I quote again, 'This is ethnic cleansing, pure.' To put it simply, Madam Deputy Speaker, ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas." "The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists." "And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this. And worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians. Now, Madam Deputy Speaker, I recognise the gravity of saying this, but the truth is, it is the least the people who face such suffering deserve, and it should be the prelude to justice." "Now, for a long time, the British government has rightly said settlements are illegal, but we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole, which in 2024 the International Court of Justice concluded was unlawful. Today I announce that the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful because of Israel's entrenchment of its control, its intention to extend permanent sovereignty, and its expansionist agenda via illegal settlements." "Madam Deputy Speaker, our position is not just an overdue statement of reality. The government believes the unlawfulness of the occupation should be reflected in the economic relationships we choose to have with the occupied territories. I do not believe the British people want us supporting the occupation by accepting products from settlements in our shops and supermarkets." "So I can announce today that we will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. To do so, we will introduce a new comprehensive sanctions regime, working with my right honourable friend the Business Secretary, with appropriate religious exemptions." "And as part of this regime, we will go further. We will take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion. So, to those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this: you will face the full force of UK sanctions." "Settlements are illegal; they should not be promoted in our country. Earlier this year, Madam Deputy Speaker, shamefully, just a few miles from here, we saw an expo advertising illegal settlement land. We must, and we will, ensure this never happens again." "So we will ban the advertising in the UK of illegal settlements. The sanctions regime will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel. We will continue to support important and valued trade with Green Line Israel, precisely because we support the two-state solution, including security and prosperity for Israel." "For this reason, I wholeheartedly oppose the boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, campaign. The legislation I've announced today will be in place within six to nine months, and we will also take more immediate steps. Today, we are sanctioning a further set of extremist settlers who have supported or incited acts of violence against Palestinian communities." "And I can also announce that we're extending the existing global human rights regime, such that it will enable swifter action to deter settlement expansion, including, crucially, seeking to prevent the development of E1. I also want to address the question of arms sales." "We've already suspended over 30 arms licences used by the IDF in Gaza. That suspension remains fully in place. We will now also refuse all licence applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation. In effect, a double lock against arms sales." "This means the ban on such exports will now remain in place as long as the occupation persists. Madam Deputy Speaker, to advance the two-state solution, we also need viable and effective Palestinian governance. So I urge the Palestinian Authority to accelerate reform, and I urge Israel to lift its withholding of revenues that is frankly financially crippling the provision of essential services in the West Bank." "The set of measures I have announced represents a clear message to the government of Israel, to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, and to the world, that we will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two-state solution."

Farrukh

23,275 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 21 Tagen

EU gave โ‚ฌ225 million to projects in #Gaza between 2021-2023, a place that was under the full control of #Hamas since 2006. How much of the EU money given to projects in Gaza ended up in the hands and pockets of this terrorist organisation? I asked Commissioner Olivรฉr Vรกrhelyi this and other questions in the Budgetary Control committee on October 26, 2023. Watch and share this video along with the transcript. MEP Cristian Terheศ™: "Thank you so much. Before I go into my questions I just want to make a note that this committee has on paper 55, 54 MEPs, and we are in this room, right now, only five [MEPs] and two over there. I think it is outrageous that, for an important topic like this, that is discussing about how the Commission is spending or wasting people's money, apparently the Left is not interested in see[ing] what exactly and how exactly people's money was spent. Going back to the questions, I have six specific questions. The first one is related to the books printed under the supervision or under the authority of the Palestinian Authority. And I saw, I carefully read the answer from the European Commission, which pretty much acknowledged that there was a problem, and I restate that, that there was, in the past, a problem with these books. And the answer says that "EU has stepped up its engagement with the Palestinian Authority to ensure that further curriculum reform addresses problematic issues identified in the shortest possible timeframe". So the "further curriculum" will address this issue. Well, here's an example of a book. This is a literature book for the fifth grade that is used in the UNRWA schools. In this book, this is what the Arab kids are learning. If you're not aware of who this person is, her name is Dalal Mughrabi. On March the 11th, 1978, along with other terrorists, [she] hijacked two busses. And when the Israeli authorities tried to free those people, they blew themselves up and killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children, and over 70 people were wounded. So how is it possible that now, in 2023, and I'm not talking about past booksโ€ฆ This is 2023. These kids are still learning that this is a role model for them. And now, out of the blue, we are surprised that people are blowing themselves up and killing innocent people. I'm not interested what are you going to do in the future. I hope that you will do something and we will make sure that you will do something. But what have you done so far to make sure that these Arab kids, these Palestinian kids are not indoctrinated with this kind of evil figures? The second question is about the "Pay for Slay". #PayForSlay According to the Palestinian law if a Palestinian person is killing a Jew, his or her family is getting a pension. So we are rewarding terrorist activities. And this was done for years. A few years ago, when Trump was president, a U.S. military guy was killed in one of these terror attacks. And U.S. Congress passed a law called "Taylor Force Act", which is conditioning any U.S. money for the Palestinian Authority to make sure that these families of the terrorists are not getting reimbursed for life after these terror activities. Why arenโ€™t we imposing exactly the same rules? Because, according to the answer from the Commission, we are paying pension and pensions to these people. Third question, the issue of Gaza. According to your official answer, you're stating, and I quote: "Between 2021 and [20]23, EU funded โ‚ฌ681 million for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. A third of this money went to Gaza." A third means โ‚ฌ225 million from 2021 to 2023. But we know for a fact that in 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, after 2006 or [200]7, Gaza is under the control of Hamas. You said here that you will run a survey or whatever, an analysis to see how the money was spent. What have you done already? Hamas was called, and recognized and acknowledged as a terrorist organisation. How was it possible to pour โ‚ฌ225 million in a place that is fully controlled by a terrorist organisation and nobody did anything or said anything? It is absolutely absurd! Forth question. Following reports about stealing of pipelines for rocket production and fuel for hospitals, to what extent can the European Commission or the Court of Auditors verify or assess the damage caused to EU and European funded projects in Gaza? Fifth question. Following news that Hamas is directing money for social allowances to members of this terrorist organisation, how do you verify that such money gets to those really in need? Nevertheless, following reports about control of Hamas of the teacher unions and UNRWA workers union, what are the steps you are taking to verify that EU money for UNRWA is not used to serve Hamas agenda? Thank you." Commissioner Olivรฉr Vรกrhelyi: "Madam Chair. I want to assure all the participating members of this committee that I very much appreciate their presence and their engagement with us. And I think that this is very important that we have this discussion, no matter how many members of the committee are here. Now, first of all, on the Gaza project. Let me make it very clear what has been done in Gaza since 2006 when the IDF and Israel has left the Gaza Strip. I fully agree with you. The control and the governance of that strip has been de facto exercised by the Hamas. Unfortunately! And it was for that reason that all institution financing activity has been stopped and it is for that reason that only projects of public interest have been continued in the Gaza Strip. Now, with the emergence of the horror that we have seen instigated by Hamas, the review also has a very clear message to those projects that we have tried for many, many years to create for the benefit of the people in Gaza, like the Gas for Gaza project or the desalination plant creating fresh water for the people in the Gaza Strip or building a new hospital in the Gaza Strip, that are on hold. And it is not possible even physically to continue on those projects. And we will have to wait until the end of this war to see what engagement would still be considered in the in the Gaza area, if feasible. Now, in relation to the broader question of the review, what is the timeline? The timeline is that we are already doing it. We have a methodology established and our review is carried out by the whole House, mainly the DG Near, but also other parts of the Commission, DG Budget and also the other external family members of the Commission. The result of the review is going to be presented to the College [of Commissioners]. So the College is going to take the conclusions of these findings and they will be, I very much hope, endorsed by the College. In terms of its cost, we do not foresee any additional cost for this, and we want to act rapidly because, as I said, given the very fragile security situation, we have to act immediately to filter out all those who have, even indirectly, participated or contributed to the violence that we have seen emerge. Now, when it comes to the textbooks, to be honest with you, it's very difficult to answer your question because this is the question I have been putting since the very beginning of my mandate. How is it possible to embed hatred and nurture hatred in textbooks? How is it possible to teach kids to hate? How is it possible? And we have been sitting down several times with the Palestinian Authority. We have run a study that came to the same conclusion as you have. And we have had difficult discussions also in this House. But now I see that there is a change in the position of this House, which is, I think, very important. And it is not only very important, but we took very, very careful note of a request from the Parliament, because there is also a request adopted by the plenary, to look into this issue. And this is what we are going to do and this issue will have to be addressed. The result that we have achieved was that we have raised the issue with the Palestinian Authority, and I don't think there's disagreement between us and them that this is an issue. Second, we are working very closely with our partners in UNRWA. I'm very sad to see that this is a training material or education material that you have shown today, which is used by UNRWA, because UNRWA was the one who not only was able to talk about this problem, but undertook commitments with us to eradicate any material, any views expressed, including on social media or in the territories of the schools of this kind, glorification of terrorists, glorification of hatred, anti-Semitism. And this is why we have concluded a three year financing contract with UNRWA. This was a very important element for us that UNRWA started to cooperate and we have seen results coming in. But, of course, I agree with you. We cannot rest until the very last of these materials disappear. And I'm fully committed to deliver on that, including in the discussions for next year. On the "Pay for Slay". We have a list to check that direct beneficiaries do not appear on any of the terrorist list. But, if there is one, I wouldn't like to draw any conclusions of the review, but, if there is one issue to look at is, of course, that we do not create the possibility of indirect benefit for those who are involved in terrorist activities or for those who have been even convicted for such acts. And this is what we are addressing also in our review. Now, on the on the damage to our projects in Gaza, I cannot tell you now. What we see is that there is clearly devastation in the northern part, serious level of damage in the south, but it will be only after that the war will stop that we can go back and take a look at that. Now, on the humanitarian aspect and how to guarantee that our humanitarian aid is not going to be misused. If you look back at the statement the European Council has adopted just last weekend, you see also a very clear call for them to make sure. And this is why our decision has been to channel our humanitarian aid through our own institutions; DG Echo is delivering on the ground and in-kind. So we are providing help, in-kind, not providing financing. We're not providing other items that could be used for other purposes. And we are coordinating our work with international organisations only, so to ensure that it doesn't get to the wrong hands. So there was one more question about the breakdown of the โ‚ฌ103 million, and I think I can confirm what you said that we have composed the โ‚ฌ103 million by โ‚ฌ50 million that were allocated in support of payments of salaries and pensions. These are going directly as direct budget support into the budget of the Palestinian Authority. However, we want to check the final beneficiaries and we have a list. And now we're looking at indirect beneficiaries as well as part of the review. The 40 millionโ€ฆ The other element is the โ‚ฌ40 million support for the most vulnerable families. Again, this is this is paid in the form of direct budgetary contribution. And the third and lastly, the โ‚ฌ13 million, this is the remaining part of 103 [million], is financing the East Jerusalem hospitals that we have paid already in April 2023 to keep the health care system running in East Jerusalem. I hope with this I have answered all the questions that have been raised. Thank you."

Cristian Terhes MEP

33,649 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Jahren

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa who has been in power since November 2017, following the military coup that removed President Robert Mugabe. He has now signed into law Constitutional Amendment No. 3, which, among many other things, extends his term of office to 2030, cancels the 2028 elections, extends the presidential term from five years to seven years, and removes the direct election of the President by citizens, transferring that responsibility to Parliament. This is a massive controversial constitutional change, one that would ordinarily require a referendum. However, the President and his advisers have refused to subject these changes to a referendum. That fact alone renders the entire process contestable and places a dark cloud of illegitimacy over his presidency beyond 2028, when his term of office was originally supposed to end. But this crisis will not wait until 2028. It began the moment he signed Constitutional Amendment No. 3 into law, as opponents of the Bill which is now law have already declared the process illegal because there was no referendum. The real challenge facing President Mnangagwa is not so much the opposition, which he has effectively dismantled with the assistance of opposition leaders who have allegedly been bought or co-opted. The real challenge is the economy. As Bill Clinton famously said, โ€œItโ€™s the economy, stupid.โ€ The economy is what will create a wave of political discontent between now and whenever he eventually leaves office, assuming he does not die in office. I have seen some of my South African friends mocking Zimbabweans over this development and saying it is a Zimbabwean issue that Zimbabweans must resolve themselves. One can only say that if one is ignorant of the interconnectedness of our region and the ripple effects that this constitutional change is likely to create. South Africaโ€™s illegal immigration crisis has been authored, in part, by the misgovernance in Zimbabwe, which successive South African governments and the African National Congress have tolerated and, at times, enabled. When the economy deteriorates in Zimbabwe, desperate people cross into South Africa by any means necessary in search of jobs and opportunities. This should not be viewed as a Zimbabwean crisis alone. It is a regional crisis, one that has the potential to create political and social turbulence throughout Southern Africa. History has taught us that whenever there is a crisis in Zimbabwe, South Africa bears much of the burden. But this post is not about South Africa. It is about Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans. The culture of bootlicking leaders and hero-worshipping politicians cuts across Zimbabwean society, both in the ruling party and in the opposition. Part of the reason why the opposition has been emasculated by Emmerson Mnangagwa is because citizens continue to place blind faith in leaders who have delivered very little. Those leaders continue to sell hope to the people, even when many Zimbabweans know that some of them have been captured or compromised. We saw this decadence in the Parliament of Zimbabwe. Opposition Members of Parliament voted with ZANUPF. Only 42 voted against the Constitutional Amendment Bill. The rest supported it. That is a reflection of the deep crisis within the opposition itself. Unfortunately, many Zimbabweans mistakenly think that Zimbabweโ€™s problems are exclusively a ZANUPF problem. They are not. They are a Zimbabwean problem that Zimbabweans themselves must resolve, and not sit and watch. As long as Zimbabweans continue to hero-worship personalities instead of supporting ideas, institutions and principles, the crisis will never go away. There are people with ideas and solutions for Zimbabwe, but they are not popular enough. Populism has derailed the opposition and made it ineffective in pushing back against ZANUPFโ€™s misgovernance. The signing of Constitutional Amendment No. 3 into law is, in my view, the beginning of a new phase of resistance, assuming events themselves do not overtake any organic resistance to Mnangagwaโ€™s rule. Zimbabwe today is a hopelessly divided society. People are fighting one another, and there is little national unity. President Mnangagwa could have secured his legacy by uniting the country and fixing the economy. Instead, it is evident that his administration remains adrift when it comes to economic management. This is, therefore, a moment for Zimbabweans to reflect on what they want for their country and how they intend to achieve it. For neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa, this is not Zimbabweโ€™s problem alone. According to the South African government, around 70% of women who give birth at Musina Hospital are Zimbabwean. You cannot simply turn them away. They will continue coming because the Zimbabwean government has failed to build a healthcare system capable of serving its people. An estimated 2,500 Zimbabwean women die every year while giving birth because of inadequate maternal healthcare facilities. The largest hospital in Zimbabwe still relies on a single maternity theatre built in 1977 by the Ian Smith government. That alone is a devastating indictment of the state of public healthcare in Zimbabwe, and a metaphor for the state of affairs. With unemployment estimated at over 95% in the formal and informal sectors combined, it is not surprising that Zimbabweans are prepared to risk their lives crossing crocodile-infested rivers in the Limpopo to reach South Africa. They will continue doing so. No amount of anti-immigration marches in South Africa will stop this reality. One either understands how crises create migration flows, or one lives under the illusion and delusion that Zimbabweans can somehow be prevented from seeking survival elsewhere. As we speak, many large-scale farms in Limpopo employ significant numbers of undocumented Zimbabwean workers. If those workers were suddenly to disappear overnight, the consequences for agricultural production and food prices would be enormous. This is not simply my opinion as an analyst or journalist. I have spoken to numerous farmers in Limpopo. I am a farmer myself and have access to many people within the agricultural sector, including some who are political actors in South Africa. The reality is that complex regional problems cannot be solved by slogans, social media noise or emotional outbursts. They require honest conversations, competent governance and courageous leadership on both sides of the Limpopo. As this law comes into effect, many people must reflect on the roles they played, directly or indirectly, in bringing Zimbabwe to this point. Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga was one of the leading proponents of the idea that President Mnangagwa could and should rule for as long as he wished, as he stated in the video I have attached below. Today, he finds himself effectively locked out of any constitutional path to the presidency. The opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, also bears a significant share of responsibility. He effectively dismembered the opposition by getting rid of key allies who brought talents and skills that he himself did not possess. He dismantled leadership structures and ran the opposition without a constitution, creating an environment that enabled ZANUPF to infiltrate the opposition through the political charlatan Sengezo Tshabangu, whose actions were aided by Professor Jonathan Moyoโ€™s ideas. Ultimately, the supporters of these two men must not live in denial by blaming everyone else while refusing to examine their own role in what has happened. There is nothing contained in this constitutional amendment, which is now law, that was not predicted. Analysts who warned that these developments would occur were ridiculed. They were demonised on social media, insulted and called names by opposition supporters. That abuse continues to this very day. It cuts across the political divide, both in ZANUPF and in the opposition, where leaders deploy and sponsor people to attack anyone who raises uncomfortable truths about the realities of life in Zimbabwe. One cannot help but wonder whether some of those who have spent years attacking people who brought genuine issues to the table have themselves been manipulated or even indirectly serving the interests of ZANUPF, because it beggars belief that people can be so self-contradictory and self-destructive in the manner in which Zimbabwean politics has unravelled since 2022. In 2021, through Constitutional Amendment No. 2, the running mate clause was removed. That amendment effectively dismantled the constitutional mechanism that many believed would guarantee General Chiwengaโ€™s succession within ZANUPF. The running mate provision had been an important part of the constitutional architecture established by the 2013 Constitution, which was negotiated during the Government of National Unity and endorsed by almost 95% of Zimbabweans in a referendum. The Vice President remained silent. He was warned. I was among those who argued that the removal of the running mate clause was the beginning of what I called a โ€œroyal presidencyโ€, one in which President Mnangagwa would accumulate so much power that he could potentially remain in office until his death. All the mistakes that have been made, whether through deliberate action, political expediency or sheer ignorance, have brought Zimbabwe to where it is today. Have opposition supporters finally understood that ideas matter more than bootlicking and hero-worshipping political leaders? I do not know. Their reaction to what is happening in Zimbabwe today will answer that question. Have members of ZANUPF who feel aggrieved by President Mnangagwaโ€™s actions now come to understand that when people speak about constitutionalism, accountability and good governance, they are not necessarily being anti-ZANUPF? I do not know. Time will tell. My thoughts, as I end this article, are with the millions of Zimbabweans who remain trapped inside Zimbabwe with little or no prospect of meaningful economic opportunities and who are unable to live normal lives in the way that citizens in functional countries do. My thoughts are also with those citizens who spent years bootlicking and hero-worshipping politicians, unknowingly aiding this process and helping to create the very circumstances in which they now find themselves: unemployed, economically excluded and without hope for a better future. And my thoughts are especially with those who cannot leave. As the Jamaican reggae artist Buju Banton poignantly said in his song Untold Stories: โ€œThose who can run, run away, but what about those who canโ€™t? They will have to stay.โ€ That, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of Zimbabwe: those with the means often leave, while the poorest and most vulnerable are left behind to endure the consequences of political failure, economic collapse and broken leadership. Their suffering should never be forgotten.

Hopewell Chinโ€™ono

227,851 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Monaten

In the future, Islam will obliterate Christianity in the USA, Europe, and in the Indian subcontinent (where between 30-50 million Christians live), just as it has eradicated Christianity and Judaism in the Middle East and eliminated parts of Hinduism in the Indian subcontinent over the last 1,400 years since its establishment. - This is one of the tactics that Islam uses to take over the world: Quran 4.100 โ€œWhoever emigrates for the sake of Allah will find much refuge and abundance in the earth, and whoever forsakes his home, a refugee for Allah and his messenger, and death overtakes him, his reward is then obligatory upon Allah. Allah is always forgiving, merciful.โ€ *Here the Qurโ€™an states the cardinal importance of โ€œemigration for the cause of Allah,โ€ that is, moving to a new land with the intention of bringing Islam to it. See also 4:66 and 4:89. The primary pattern for emigrants in Islamic tradition is the Hijra, Muhammadโ€™s move from Mecca to Medina, where for the first time he became a political and military leader. It is โ€œobligatoryโ€ for Allah to reward emigrants; this is one of the Qurโ€™anโ€™s few promises of reward for specific actions (see also 9:111). Continue to welcome Islam into the Western world with open arms and friendship. Continue to respect Islam, and eventually, it will do to you what Muhammad did in the 7th century to those who welcomed him in the city of Medina. He completely destroyed the host culture. Quran 9.5: โ€œ...kill the Mushrikun (non-Muslims) wherever you find themโ€ฆ" Al-Bukhari: "To wage war against Allah means to reject faith in Him." From Quran 2.191: "The sin of disbelief in Allah is greater than committing murder". - Note: This has never changed; Islam continues to operate continuously, in an organized and systematic manner, through Da'wa, fraud, lies, and violence, in order to destroy and conquer Western culture from within. ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿ‘‡ The report was written by Tom Quiggin, a member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network (TSEC). Concurrent research at the TSEC network includes a methodology project for intelligence analysts involved in the analysis of extremism. A Horizon Scanning project on the convergence of extremist ideologies is being readied for distribution in late 2014. This project was funded internally by the TSEC network. There is no government, corporate, media or foreign money involved. KEY JUDGEMENTS: *Canada has a significant presence of Muslim Brotherhood adherent individuals and organizations. Their values and actions are frequently the antithesis of the Canadian Constitution, values and law. Despite statements to the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood considers itself above local laws and national constitutions. *The Muslim Brotherhoodโ€™s use of settlement and the โ€œprocess of civilization jihadโ€ has proven effective. The long term aim is to globally impose a virulent form of political Islam to the exclusion of other faiths or systems. *Internationally, the Muslim Brotherhood is realigning under pressure as old alliances crumble and opportunities arise. An aggressive posture is reemerging which has used extensive political violence in the past. *The policy and process of denial is deeply rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. *Muslim Brotherhood adherent groups should not be given governmental accreditation, access to public grants nor should they have charity status. *Canadaโ€™s stance against Muslim Brotherhood adherent organizations in recent years has been more aggressive than the USA, especially in financial areas. 1. Overview: Settlement and the Civilization-Jihadist Process: The Muslim Brotherhood represents a greater existential and systemic threat to North American civilization and society than violent extremist movements such as Al Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood, self-described by its founder Hassan Banna as a Salafist group, has been entrenching itself in North American since the late 1950s and early 1960s using the process of โ€˜settlement,โ€™ multiple front organizations and persistent denials. They describe this as a process of civilization jihad. The aim of the group in North America is to weaken and destroy the free and open societies within Canada and the USA from within and replace them with the heavily politicized views of Hassan Banna, Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is consistent with the global aims of the group. This should be of concern as a period of relative moderation has come to an end and the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming increasingly aggressive in its actions. The Muslim Brotherhood began as a social movement and it still has an extensive program of education and outreach. Dawah (daโ€™wa, daโ€™wah or dawa) and religious education lie at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood program. Dawah can be defined as calling or the practice or policy of conveying the message of Islam to non-Muslims. Within the context of the Muslim Brotherhood, it takes on a more ominous tone as dawah is not just the practice of outreach, but it is one of the principal missions of the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole. And by dawah, they appear to include the message of Islam, but the message of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Banna as is evidenced by the constant references to his life and writings. Dawah in the Muslim Brotherhood is not just outreach, rather it is an alternative form of conquering a society. Ikhwan Web, the official English language website of the Muslim Brotherhood makes this clear: The MB shall never forget religious education and Dawah, as they are the essence of its existence. In the North American context, Zeid Noman made it clear that in the early stages of development of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, dawah was an integral factor. This was the first true tremor for the Ikhwan's activism here in America as these brothers started to demand clearer Ikhwan formulas, clearer commitment and means or ones with a specific and not a general nature and that there are conditions to accept one into the ranks of this Dawa'a and to make work secret. โ€ฆSome of them came for work and know that this life is a farm for the afterlife and he sacrifices what he has for the sake of. .., for the sake of this Dawa'a. โ€ฆ.Therefore, we had to take two simultaneous moves and with two harmonious wings: The first one is the reality or now attempt to implement the needs of the reality which is what the students' movement needs and that we also work hard to settle the Dawa'a. By "settlement of the Dawa'a", the Muslim Brotherhood Dawa'a is meant. It is not meant to spread Islam as spread of Islam is a general thing and it is indeed a goal for each Muslim in general terms. The second thing is the settlement of the Dawa'a and finding permanent fundamentals in the cities where Ikhwans now live in order to ...er, in order for them to be the meeting points for the coming brothers. (Emphasis added) In a 1995 speech in Ohio, Yussef Qaradawi, a lifelong adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and one of its key intellectual inspirational figures stated that: Conquest through dawah, that is what we hope forโ€ฆ.We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not through the sword but through dawah. In 2007, some 12 years later, Qaradawi made it clear that his views had not changed: The peaceful conquest has foundations in this religion, and therefore, I expect that Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. It will do so by means of daโ€™wa and ideology. Europe is miserable with materialism, with the philosophy of promiscuity, and with the immoral considerations that rule the world โ€œconsiderations of self-interest and self-indulgence. Despite the claims of conquest only through dawah, the Muslim Brotherhood has committed a series of assassinations and bombings in the name of the group. This includes the assassination of a judge in Egypt (Ahmed El-Khazindar Bey, Senior Judge, Egyptian Court of Appeal) in 194816 as well as the attempted assassination of President Nasser in 1954. The Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood was engaged in a violent campaign from 1976 to 1982 which included a 1979 attack against students at the military academy in Aleppo. Most of the students killed were from the leadership Alawite group and the victims were largely the sons of various regime officials. The campaign ended with a brutal government massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the town of Hama. Currently, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (HAMAS) remains committed to violence and has worked against peace efforts such as the Oslo Accords. In addition to Dawah, another feature of the Muslim Brotherhood is the concept of the Islamization of Knowledge, conceptualized in part by former Montreal resident Dr. Ismail Faruqi. In his book Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Work Plan, Dr. Faruqi argues that there was a need to: โ€ฆrecast the whole legacy of human knowledge from the stand point of Islam. He presented 12 workplan aims to produce university level textbooks recasting some twenty disciplines in accordance to the Islamic vision because of the backward and lowly contemporary position of the ummah in all fields, political, economic, and religio-cultural. While presenting itself as a voice of moderation, the Muslim Brotherhood is an adherent of an 85+ year old policy of establishing the Brotherhoodโ€™s brand of Islam as the global faith at the exclusion of all other religions and secular forms of organization. Other Muslim groups that do not adhere are subjected to scorn and abuse. The Muslim Brotherhood has wavered on the use of violence, sometimes presenting itself as a political movement that expels those who use violence. On other occasions it does military training at local camps and uses assassinations and bombings. Foreign funding and foreign organizational assistance have been the hallmarks of many of the adherent charities and organizations. In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood in North America issued An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America (5/22/1991).โ€ The document was presented by Mohamed Akram (A.K.A. Mohammad Akram Al-Adlouni) who is now the Secretary General of al-Quds International located in Lebanon. The chairman of the board of trustees is identified as Qatar based28 Youssef Qaradawi. According to Akram, it was the result of five years of policy review work which was proceeded by some 20 years of organizational activity. It was finally approved their Shura Council. In section 4 of the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, which is subtitled Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America, the document points out that: The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. It is not an analytically acceptable practice to take one data point, such as the above, and then assess that the organization is always committed to this goal. To be clear, however, a remarkable degree of consistency of beliefs and goals exists across a range of Muslim Brotherhood organizations โ€“ both temporally and geographically. The most recent examples mimic those of a more violent past. The phase of moving away from violence appears to be ending/has ended and the organisation as a whole is becoming more aggressive and expresses an inflexible approach with violent overtones. In 2010 the Muslim Brotherhoodโ€™s General Guide Mohamed Badie claimed that the โ€œMuslim and Arab Regimes are Disregarding Allah's Commandment to Wage Jihad" and that change can occur by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life. He notes that resistance is the only solution. These comments appear similar to those of Salah Sultan of Ohio (ISNA, Fiqh Council , MAS) who says that America will suffer economic stagnation, ruin, destruction and crime which will surpass what is happening in Gaza. He also noted that the US will suffer more deaths than all of those killed in the third Gaza holocaust and that it will happen soon. Both of these statements by influential Muslim Brotherhood leaders appear as informal declarations of war, similar to those of al Qaeda in 1996 and 1998. Egyptian President (2012-2013) and Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsiโ€™s attempted project to โ€˜Brotherhoodizeโ€™ Egypt (The Nahda or Renaissance Project) was a sign of recent intentions. By granting himself near dictatorial powers38 followed by his attacks on the press/TV and the judiciary, he demonstrated that he was more of a servant of the Muslim Brotherhood and Khairat alShaterโ€™s Nahda Project43 than he was the leader of Egypt. Al-Shater had envisaged the Nahda Project as instituting โ€œthe religion of God; the Islamization of life, empowering of Godโ€™s religion.โ€ Ironically, Dr. Morsi was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood while studying in North America (PhD, USC, 1992). He graduated the year after the 1991 General Memorandum outlined the role of civilization-jihadist project in North America. Read more:

Ofer Binshtok - Kafir - ืขื•ืคืจ ื‘ื™ื ืฉื˜ื•ืง

248,169 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 1 Jahr

๐Ÿšจ BREAKING: The White House has begun releasing President Trump's 20-point peace plan between Israel and Gaza PRESIDENT TRUMP would chair the transition board Major points are as follows: โžก๏ธ HOSTAGES & PRISONERS: All hostages, both alive and deceased, to be returned within 72 hours of Israel's acceptance. In return, Israel will release 250 life-sentence prisoners and 1,700 detainees โžก๏ธ CEASEFIRE: All military operations suspended; IDF withdrawal tied to demilitarization milestones โžก๏ธ GAZA'S FUTURE: To become a โ€œderadicalized, terror-free zoneโ€ under temporary Palestinian technocratic governance with international stabilization forces. โžก๏ธ HAMAS ROLE: No role in Gaza governance; members who disarm may receive amnesty or safe passage abroad. โžก๏ธ AID & REBUILDING: Immediate humanitarian aid, unrestricted distribution through the UN/Red Crescent, creation of a Special Economic Zone, and a Trump-led economic development plan to rebuild Gaza. FULL RELEASE BY WHITE HOUSE: 1. Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. 2. Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough. 3. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal. 4. Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned. 5. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans. 6. Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries. 7. Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads. 8. Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025 agreement. 9. Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the โ€œBoard of Peace,โ€ which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trumpโ€™s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment. 10. A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza. 11. A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries. 12. No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza. 13. Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. 14. A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people. 15. The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The ISF will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A deconfliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties. 16. Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the Unites States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the IDF will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat. 17. In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF. 18. An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence to try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace. 19. While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people. 20. The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence.

Nick Sortor

179,901 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 1 Jahr

"Anyone who leaked a [UFO] report...could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act...life in prison, or death." "Maybe we can reverse engineer this so we will have this incredible edge over the rest of the world." ๐Ÿ”ฅ Dr. Phil Had Me at The Bolender Memo ๐Ÿ”ฅ (Dr. Phil continued to kill it yesterday and this was better than the last one! Link to full video (21:52) is in the replies.) "Our government has been lying to us for more than 80 years. Ask yourself why? Why do they not want you to know this is going on?" (He starts out by showing that Google searches for "UFO" have allegedly nearly tripled since last Friday night, along with searches for UAP being up 400%. And "Dr. Phil UFO" is one of the fastest rising searches in the country. If all of that is true, it's a very good thing. Especially since he's been putting out some really good videos. He mentions the latest release (#4) of UFO/UAP files from the Pentagon last Friday.) "My team and I were granted early access, exclusive access to those documents before they went public." "Our government has been lying to us, by omission AND by intentional misdirection, for 79 years." "Look at these documents. You go back as far as 1947 where they have had clear information that there are objects not of this Earth, both technologically, metallurgically, performance-wise. But yet, that has been hidden from us. They've denied that, they've actually threatened people from talking about this. Threatened with careers, imprisonment, and some, with death, because they would consider it treason." (He backs it up with documents. See below.) Dr. Phil: "For 80 years, every time there was a legitimate UAP sighting and the U.S. government had a chance to get in there, they essentially told us, 'Nothing to see here. Move along.' To be clear, a UAP sighting is not proof of little green men or alien life. It means something happened, something was observed, something occurred for which we have no explanation. That's it. "Now, let's talk about that for a second. Things happen, and we don't have any explanation for it. We don't have technology that explains that. There's something that is observed in the sky, going at a speed, stopping, making a sharp turn, reversing direction, accelerating, changing altitudes, and we don't have anything on this Earth that can do that. That's what's called unexplained. "Now, do we know where it's from? How it does that? Well, if we did, it would be explained. But we don't. We go look at all of our secret weapons. We go look at what we know through intelligence, other countries have. And let me tell you, a lot of these (laughs) - they're not close calls. They are not close calls. And some of the things that have been observed, we damn sure didn't have anything like that in the 40s or the 50s or the 60s, and we still don't, now in 2020s. "But at the very same time, our government was telling us, 'Nothing to see here: weather balloon, reflection off of an airplane, just a weather anomaly.' And, the government was simultaneously threatening its own people with criminal penalties if they ever disclosed UAP information. "If somebody that was credible, that had seen this, spoke about it, they were threatened with all kinds of penalties. We were gaslighted. 'No big deal here. Probably weather balloons, misidentified aircraft.' And a jumpy public that watched, 'Close Encounters' one too many times, thinking, 'Look, what's really going on here?' "Behind the curtain, the government was spending generations of time and resources protecting this information. Was it happening? Yes, it was happening! Do we have proof of it happening? Yes, we have proof of it happening. And what I mean by that is we have this on radar. We have credible, military pilots reporting it. "We have aircraft that have guns, and when you open a gun and go live on a fighter, there's a camera that activates, so you have video of what the gun is shooting at. You have gun cameras. If they see one of these things in front of them, they open their weapons, in case they need them, and so it shoots video of what they're seeing. "Now let's talk about some of the proof. JANAP 146 - Joint Army, Navy, Air Force publication 146 - made it a criminal offense for military personnel and commercial airline pilots to discuss UFO sightings outside official channels. The penalty, 'up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.' "So, you might see some guy down on a lake, drinking beer, that talks about something he saw over the lake. Yeah, they don't mind that guy talking. But credible people? Trained observers with instrumentation? No. They say something, they're going to prison. "Well, that took effect upon receipt. No hearings, no debate. The regulation says, 'All persons aware of the contents or existence...are governed by...espionage laws.' So not just the pilot who filed a report under JANAP 146, anyone who leaked a report. Radio operators, airline staff, anyone in the chain could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. "You can see this yourself. Declassified copies are online today, including on the NSA's website. Now what is the Espionage Act? That's the same law used to prosecute spies. Section 793: Up to 10 years in federal prison for every violation. Section 794: If the information reaches a foreign power, life in prison, or death. "Imagine you're a TWA captain in 1955. You see something over the Pacific you just simply can't explain. You file your report like the regulation requires. And from that moment, talk to a newspaper, tell your own wife, puts you in the same legal category as a spy. "Ask yourself why. Why are they so interested in muzzling all this conversation? Why do they not want you to know this is going on? Why are you not entitled to know what's happening in the air around you? "Now, let's fast forward 20 years, 1971. Oliver Harry Turner was an Australian nuclear scientist and intelligence officer, head of the nuclear branch of Australia's Joint Intelligence Organization. He was asked to assess the American response to the growing UAP issue. "If you're thinking, what does an Australian know about U.S. military secrets? Well, the possibility of life beyond this planet is bigger than any one country. Australia and the rest of the world has a legitimate interest in what the U.S. knows. And Australia is one of our closest intelligence allies. What we now call Five Eyes. "The Five Eyes countries are the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These countries have shared their most sensitive intelligence with each other since World War II. When a senior, Five Eyes nuclear intelligence officer writes a report about what the United States knows, well, that's serious. "He was outside the American classification system. He had no career to lose. He pieced this together from official CIA, Air Force, Congressional, and Project Blue Book records. Now this report was written May 27, 1971. Original classification: Secret. Title: Scientific and Intelligence Aspects of the UFO Problem. Report declassified by the National Archives of Australia in 2023. "On June 9th of 2026, whistleblower David Crusch (Yes, he said Crusch) stood on Capitol Hill and told the public to read pages seven through sixteen." ~ David Grusch: "There is a declassified 1971 Australian, formally-classified, Secret assessment that a couple years ago was put in the Australian National Archives. I encourage people to read page seven through sixteen, and that was the nuclear branch chief of the Australian government discussing the U.S. cover-up and the involvement of the CIA back in the 70s. And that's actually a little-known document that is publicly available." ~ Dr. Phil: "Now here's the kicker: foreign intelligence describing an American cover-up is now referenced in the files that our government is just now releasing. And here are six key findings in the Turner report. "Number one, what Turner called the facade of ridicule. Turner documents that early Air Force intelligence concluded, 'Some of these objects, 'had flight characteristics' that could best be explained as having 'extraterrestrial origin.' (The actual language says: "The early analysis of UFO reports by USAF intelligence indicated that real phenomena were being reported which had flight characteristics so far in advance of U.S. aircraft that only as extra-terrestrial origin could be envisaged." ) Dr. Phil: "Instead of telling the public, the CIA and Air Force adopted a deliberate debunking policy. "Now let that sit with you for a minute. Instead of telling the public, the CIA and Air Force adopted a deliberate debunking policy. We've got to get these people believing this isn't real. We've got to debunk this. "January 1953, Turner's own words: 'By erecting a facade of ridicule, the U.S. hoped to allay public alarm, reduce the possibility of the Soviet taking advantage of UFO mass sightings...and act as a cover-up so the U.S. can develop vehicles that emulate UFO performances.' "What's the point? Well, the point is, they were thinking, 'All right, let's keep this secret,' like we're the only ones seeing this, 'and maybe we can reverse engineer this so we will have this incredible edge over the rest of the world.' "That's a great goal, I guess, if you can go from flying-prop planes or early jets to this incredible speed. If these are extraterrestrial, and the nearest galaxy is Andromeda, which it takes two and a half million years to get to, flying at the speed of light, we're pretty far from being able to do that. "Today, in 2026, can we move at the speed of light? No. If we could, it would take two and a half million years to get to the next galaxy. We can't move at the speed of light, even now in 2026. But that was the goal. They'll find one of these and reverse engineer it." (I don't know whether or not any black program has tech that can move at the speed of light and I doubt Dr. Phil knows, either. Someone should show him what Lacatski said about being able to reverse engineer some of this acquired (alleged non-human) tech but "not to its full extent.") Dr. Phil: "Finding number two. He then talks about Project Sign. This was the U.S. Air Force's first official UFO investigation set up in late 1947. Its analysts reportedly concluded that extraterrestrial origin was the best explanation. Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg rejected that conclusion, and copies of the report were ordered destroyed. Destroyed! "And per Turner, in February 1949, members of Project Sign, 'either volunteered to leave or were compelled to leave,' and they were replaced by people, 'willing to ridicule the concept of UFOs.' "Think about this! We have sightings by legitimate observers with scientific instrumentation, and the people who are doing the observing are voluntarily leaving or compelled to leave, and replaced by people willing to ridicule the concept of UFOs. "Finding number three, what I spoke about earlier: JANAP 146. Up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for discussing sightings outside official channels. And per the regulation's own text, Chapter One, Section 102, it covered not just military personnel, but U.S. and Canadian civilian and commercial pilots. "That's legal force over airline pilots, arguably the most credible witnesses in the sky! What jurisdiction they had over Canadian pilots, I have no idea, but they listed 'em. "Turner documents a meeting between military intelligence and airline pilots at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. At that meeting, pilots were, 'coerced' to keep their sightings out of public view and inside official channels. Am I overstating it to say that there's been a cover-up, that we're being lied to? "Finding number four. But they missed the retirees. JANAP 146 only covered active service. Once you retired, you could talk. And three very senior men did so between 1953 and 1960. Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, Captain Edward Ruppelt, the man the Air Force put in charge of investigating UFOs, Major Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon's project officer on UFOs. Per Turner, all three publicly stated the U.S. government knew UFOs were extraterrestrial and was withholding the fact from the public! So when those three retired, they told the truth! "Finding five. The government then silenced retirees. Per Turner, the revised regulation JANAP 146e made UAP disclosure by retirees an offense under the Espionage Act. Then finding number six. 1969, 17 years, the Air Force ran a public-facing UFO investigation called Project Blue Book. If you wrote your congressman about a sighting, it went into the Blue Book. And in 1969, the Air Force shut down the Blue Book and told the country, 'We looked at more than 12,000 sightings. No problems. No national security threat. No need for the Blue Book.' "But a memo from General Carroll Bolender, the Air Force general, said the reason Blue Book showed no national security threats was because any national security threats were gag ordered under JANAP 146 and were quote, 'not part of the Blue Book system.' The serious reports never stopped; they just moved out of public view. "Now, I know that was a lot of information. You may need to listen back to that, but those are facts. Those are in the government's documents that have now been declassified! "If the government has known for decades that unidentified objects are flying through our skies, and therefore, we may not be alone in the Universe, then the greatest revelation in American history has also been the target of a huge cover-up. "One of the challenges of social media and TV news is taking something this complex and reducing it to sound bites. And you're getting bits and pieces from the media. That's why I invest so much time and energy giving you the real story. I don't want to tell you what you believe or don't believe, but I want to give you the information so you can make up your own mind. "This information is in the files, we just haven't had access to the files. And then when we get the files, we're given the files without any context. You see a radar screen and you see a blip, and then it moves. Well, what do you have to compare it to? Is it moving fast? Too fast? Unexplainably fast? Without any context, how are we supposed to interpret that? "Well, I'm digging in, I'm talking to experts, I'm finding out what the scale is. And what we're learning, is we don't have anything that'll move that fast. We don't have anything that'll turn that sharp. We don't have anything that will withstand those kind of G-forces."

Joe Murgia

51,113 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Monaten

My fellow Kenyans, Many of you have seen my recent posts about the deadly cancer that is corruption in our country. In my last post, I tried to paint a picture of the disconnect between our potential as a country and the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, and the connection between corruption and the incalculable pain and suffering and cruelty that is meted out every single day to the most vulnerable among us by thieves operating out of public office. And after covering the goings-on in Mandera County, I told you that in my honest opinion, our governments exist to cater for the filthy-rich lifestyles of the vilest and most corrupt among us, at the expense of everyone else. I received tremendous support from all of you, for speaking on behalf of so many struggling Kenyans who donโ€™t have a voice, or the audience necessary to spark the much-needed discussion about where we are heading as a country. But even with all that support, I have received messages asking me to be careful. One compatriot told me: โ€œprepare to be relentlessly pursued, threatened, enticed, guilt-tripped, and gas-litโ€. This is from a someone who knows how our government operates, and how it uses violence and its monopoly on power to silence those who question why politicians are stealing so much. I am not naive about the dangers of speaking up and calling out thieves who control state machinery, and who possess the ability to shut me up in a few seconds. But I will tell you why we CAN NOT and MUST NOT keep quiet. In November of 2023, I stumbled upon the story of a young man from Turkana, Calvin Esekon Esewit , who, despite scoring an A-, and getting an acceptance into medical school, spent two years not knowing whether his dreams of becoming a doctor would ever come true. I was moved by that story in a way that I can never adequately explain. I could not understand how it is possible that, in our country, a young man who appears to be every parentโ€™s dream child can spend two years in limbo while we as a country possess the ability to invest in our best and brightest. And so, I spent weeks trying to chase down Calvin to see how I could help him attend college. After a lot of searching, I finally found Calvin, and by this time he had managed to get some help and is now in college. While this story has a great ending, it did not to be this way. And we know that the number of cases that end like this, with some success, are a small fraction of those ones which end tragically, with broken dreams. This is what happens when corruption consumes anything and everything in a country. It destroys lives. See attached video to learn about Calvin's story. I tell you all this story because it provides context to today's topic. For one story like this one that you see on the news, there are millions that never make the news. But they are real situations, nonetheless. There are millions of your compatriots who are devastated by this killer cancer of corruption that is perpetuated by people that you and I have put into public office ostensibly to improve our lives. They go into these offices and abuse the trust you bestowed upon them and deny you and everyone else a decent opportunity in life. You see, Calvin and millions of other victims of this shameless level of corruption and plunder have no voice, and no real ability to look the thieves that are destroying lives and generations of Kenyans in eye and tell them to stop this unbearable pain and the cruelty. This is the reason I embarked on this journey to attempt to expose this shameful situation. Watch the attached video of Calvinโ€™s situation, and I am sure that you will agree that the millions of Calvins in our country need a voice, NO MATTER THE RISK. The thieves that are destroying the futures of millions of children just so they can have beachside homes in Miami, Dubai and other places count on the idea that most people will fear for their lives, and therefore not speak up. They count on the growing apathy in the Kenyan psyche. But we cannot give in to that. We cannot cower to thieves. We must look them straight in the eye and tell them that they MUST STOP. If we don't, our children and their children are guaranteed the same level of cruelty. And so with that, today I want to talk about the utterly insane crime scene that is Turkana County. I donโ€™t know any other way to describe it, other than, it is a โ€œshit-showโ€. Just follow along, and let me know if you disagree. As I did in my previous commentary, I will ask you to indulge me a little bit, and allow me to use a couple of pictures, because pictures speak louder than a thousand words. The first picture shows the state-of-the art County Government offices, that the County Government of Turkana decided to invest an ungodly amount of money on. Close to a billion shillings. The second picture is a classroom in session. In Turkana County. These two realities are occurring in parallel in the same county, at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just tell you that I do not go out of my way to find bad news. I want stories that would help re-affirm our belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. When I find good news as I review these Countiesโ€™ decisions and how they behave with our resources, I will be the first one to report it to you. But I donโ€™t have any good news today. I have bad news. If you read my commentary yesterday and were offended by what you saw, I am afraid you might not make it to the end of this article, because what you will hear will be quite shocking. The cancer of corruption, particularly at the County Government level, is worse than your wildest imagination. And so, as I like to do, I like to start off by putting some numbers on the table for us to use as reference points. Bear in my that all the information I put in this article is publicly available. Nothing came to me through a whistle blower. The first number is KSH 100 Billion. With a B. In the last decade or so, you and I, through the National Government, has sent over KSH 100 billion to Turkana County. To support recurrent expenditure, and development. For example, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, we sent KSH 12.6 billion. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we sent KSH 11.4 billion. And on and on and on. The second number is 1 million. This is the population of Turkana County. The third number is KSH 18.4 billion. This was Turkana Countyโ€™s budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The fourth number is KSH 190 million. This was the amount of money that Turkana County was able to generate on its own accord within the county, from all its investments and other activities in the period in question. This number is an important proxy, in my view, for the value of the countyโ€™s economic prospects for the foreseeable future, and to people that are not driven by greed and corruption, would be an important consideration when they are thinking about how and where to deploy your money as taxpayers. If you are doing the math, Turkana County, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, was only able to raise 1% of the funds needed to keep the lights on. 99% came from you and I, and a tiny amount from grants. The next number is KSH 129, 040. This is the average ANNUAL [emphasis added] income of a resident of Turkana County ( Keep that number in mind when we are discussing the massive theft of public funds by Turkana County leaders. The next number is 80%. 80% of the residents of Turkana County live below the poverty line. They have a really difficult time putting food on the table. ( The next number is KSH 12 Million. This is the basic salary of the Governor of Turkana County before other benefits that, as I explained yesterday, can often double the salary. Remember the โ€œhousing allowanceโ€, the โ€œhardship allowanceโ€, the โ€œcommuter allowanceโ€, the โ€œrisk allowanceโ€, the โ€œextraneous allowanceโ€, etc.? Remember that? I still cannot figure out, for the life of me, what โ€œextraneousโ€ means in the context of County business, but we donโ€™t time to dwell on this. The next number is 93. The Governor of Turkana County makes 93 times the average Turkana County residentโ€™s annual income. 93 times! The next number is 82%. This was the percentage of people that were illiterate in Turkana County in 2013 ( Could not read or write. A point to note about the above literacy figure. Ten years later, and despite over KSH 100 billion is spent in Turkana County, including many billions for education, that literacy rate HAS NOT CHANGED ONE BIT. Only 20% of the population can read or write today. ( KSH 829 million. This is how much it cost to build the County Government offices. Yes, the ones shown in the first picture. KSH 120 million. The County Government decided that it was prudent to pay a contractor KSH 120 million to construct the Governorโ€™s personal residence. Get this, even after this payment, no construction took place. The money was stolen. All of it. KSH 90 Million. This is the amount that the County Government paid to another contractor, to build the Governor a mansion, having previously lost KSH 120 million. So, the tally for the Governorโ€™s residence now stands at KSH 210 million. Never mind that the limit allowed by law is KSH 45 million. KSH 5 billion. In the last days of his term in office, an outgoing Governor of Turkana, Koli Nanok, EGH. , sought to inflate pending bills by adding KSH 5 billion so that it can be paid to his criminal cartel. KSH 5 billion. We have our key numbers, ladies and gentlemen, so let us discuss. So, we have a county that is dead last in literacy, and in the top 2 of the poorest counties in the republic. Only 20% of the population can read. The Governor earns 92 times the average citizen. The Governor lives in a house that cost over KSH 200 million. When he leaves his house in the morning, he goes to his office that cost KSH 829 million. And this is all happening when 80% of the County residents struggle to put food on the table. Those are the facts, and they are not in dispute. During the same time, the County Government geniuses decide to build the Speaker of the County Assembly a house. And a home office, and a garage. The house was initially estimated to cost KSH 75 million. But due to circumstances that not a soul in the government could explain to auditors, the contract expired before the house was completed, and the County Government found a new contractor to complete the job for an additional KSH 29 million. But this palace in the jungle worth apparently worth over KSH 100 million in Turkana County was not enough. The County proceeded to build the Speaker a guest house for another KSH 19 million, and a few other amenities, and so the whole cost went to KSH 276 million! The legal limit for a Speakerโ€™s house is KSH 35 million, and they spent close to KSH 130 million just for one residence. By this time, I am sure you are getting tired of these obscene numbers. You and I work, and pay taxes. Nobody pays you 92 times the income your average neighbor is making. And for sure nobody will drop KSH 100 million to build you a house. These are the perks of working in government in a poor country. Go figure. And so, as a country, we need to answer for ourselves the question I posed yesterday, which is, what is the point of government? What is its role in our lives. If this level of criminality and pillaging can occur in our country in the midst of so much poverty, questioning the need for government is a totally valid question. I said in my last post that, when the average citizen looks at the thug on the street and the government, and is unable to discern any meaningful difference between them, that society from that point on is on its journey to becoming a failed state. A journey to anarchy. Over the last two months or so, Kenyans have been shouting at the top of their lungs, begging for their government to listen. To hear them out. Kenyans have asked that their government stop this unbelievable level of plunder. Dozens of Kenyans have died, thousands injured, and many more are missing today. To this day, the people that govern us continue to use the power of the gun to subdue Kenyans, until they can take everything in their sight. And so, as a society, we all have to ask whether today there is any difference between the thug on the street and our governments. Every Kenyan will have to answer this question for themselves. And before answering this question, everyone needs to remember the many Calvins in our society. Smart, upright children whose only crime is to be born in an unforgiving, lawless, and corrupt purgatory that is Kenya today. For myself, I have concluded that there is no difference between the thug on the street and our governments, county and national alike. If you can see any meaningful difference, let me know. I am willing to listen. So despite over KSH 100 billion in money sent to Turkana County, there is almost no measurable improvement in peopleโ€™s life today. None. And it makes sense, when you look at how that money is spent. I want you to forget for a second the obscene obsession by the County Government with spending ungodly amounts of money on themselves. The houses, etc. If you step back and look at how the government is actually spending the hard-earned money on other things, you will be depressed. I am telling you that I wept three times in the middle of the night trying to make sense of this crazy situation in Turkana County. Three times. I have never imagined that human beings can be so greedy and cold-blooded. Think about this: In the couple of years I reviewed, the County spent around KSH 400 million annually in โ€œtourismโ€ initiatives, including marketing, and apparently upgrading certain facilities. KSH 400 million for tourism. In Turkana County. In 1 year. KSH 400 million per year in marketing and other money pits. The governmentโ€™s own website says that the county gets around 3000 visitors per month. Around 36,000 per year. Thatโ€™s them saying that, on their website. Are you curious to know the return on that KSH 400 million investment? I have an answer for you. Remember that I told you that the County has never raised more than KSH 200 million in a year within the county, despite its KSH 18.4 billion budget? Let me walk you through the breakdown of the absolutely embarrassing shit-show that is the County Governmentโ€™s โ€œown source revenueโ€ operations. In 2022-2023, the County Government collected KSH 190 million locally against their KSH 18.4 billion budget. 1% of the budget. Remember, there is absolutely no requirement on the County to cut costs, or achieve certain local revenue targets today. So they raised KSH 45 million in single business permits, KSH 72 million in CESS, KSH 8 million in market fee, KSH 9 million in โ€œslaughter feesโ€. And then finally, there is the return on the tourism investment that you were looking for. A whopping KSH 209, 000 in โ€œpark feesโ€. KSH 209,000 in fees, after investing KSH 400 million. And so, take this as an example and extrapolate it across the entire budget, and you can see how one can spend KSH 100 billion and get NOTHING in return. You donโ€™t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of this situation. Let me explain using an example that should illustrate the utter dimwittedness of this situation. Remember the KSH 100 billion sent to Turkana by you and me? Part of this amount is supposed to be for โ€œservice deliveryโ€, or โ€œrecurrent expenditureโ€. Usually about 70% of the budget. The balance, 30%, is designed to go to development projects. With that in mind, from KSH 100 billion, the County apparently has made KSH 30 billion worth of investments, right? 30% of the KSH 100 billion. Now, if you employed someone to run a business for you, and they asked you to invest KSH 30 billion, which is no small fortune, at some point you would have to start seeing returns, right? Thatโ€™s common sense, isnโ€™t it? So, when we look at the revenues streams that make up this paltry sum of KSH 190 million, and see things like โ€œslaughter feesโ€™ and โ€œmarket feesโ€, what does it tell you? It tells me there is no real โ€œdevelopmentโ€ happening in that county. Trust me, if you had real development totaling KSH 30 billion, you would have corporate taxes in the hundreds of millions or billions, a booming real estate market, rising wages and standards of living, etc., low unemployment, etc. You would not have 80% of the people living hand-to mouth, and a County Government that can not afford to support itself for 5 days out of the year that has 365 days! We do not have enough time, trust me, to deal with the shit-show that is Turkana County. Dealing with that mess would require a forensic team. I will just highlight a few of other โ€œin your-faceโ€ type of theft of public funds, and then conclude my submission. A government that has a budget of KSH 18.4 billion annually, and which has never raised more than 1% of its budget had the wisdom to do the following with your money: ยท Spend KSH 222 million on a project building something that NOBODY uses. You got that right. They spent KSH 222 million on a facility that NOBODY uses. KSH 222 million gone to waste, in a county that is dead last in pretty much all measures of human progress. ยท Remember the County Government offices that cost KSH 829 million? The County spent KSH 82 million on โ€œair-conditioningโ€ for that building. ยท Despite the County Spending hundreds of millions for the top three officers of the County, the Governor and his Deputy, in the 2022-2023 year, illegally charged the county (you and I) KSH 2.2 million in housing allowance! ยท Built two facilities for KSH 16 million, that were completed, but NOBODY uses them. ยท Entered into a contract for the construction of a plastic use facility for KSH 13 million in 2021. The contractor gets paid KSH 4.9 million, and has never been seen since. ยท Paid out KSH 62 million in salaries that were not supportable in just one year. They could not point to anybody and say, that is who we paid. ยท Paid out KSH 27 million in legal fees that nobody could say what they related to. And the Countyโ€™s Legal Advisor, who, in 2022-2023, had a budget of KSH 123 million, apparently did not know anything about it! ยท Had an outstanding bill at Kenya Revenue Authority in the amount of KSH 486 million, that did not show up on the County Governmentโ€™s financial statements. Think about that. KSH 486 million owned to the Kenya Revenue Authority, and that liability is not on the financial statements! This only means that someone took those funds for themselves, which is why the liability would be missing from the countyโ€™s books. ยท Could not account for KSH 367 million in expenditures for 2022-2023. KSH 367 million, in unexplained expenses. ยท Awarded a contract worth over KSH 200 million to a bidder with no bank statement, against the law. This contract was entered into and approved before the statutory time after the bidding process lapsed. Someone was in a hurry to get paid. KSH 200 million, illegally awarded to a bidder who did not have a 6-month bank statement. ยท Apparently purchased KSH 1.5 billion in assets in 2022-2023, but kept no records of the said assets. For this reason, NOBODY can verify where these assets are located. KSH 1.5 billion. Let me just say this. In my last article, the most common critique was that it was too long. Too many words. I did not intend to make another long article. Trust me when I tell you this, we do not have the time to detail half of the problems in Turkana County. For just 1 year! We do not. Now, you recall my point about how societies descend to madness and anarchy. In our country today, our leaders are accusing those of us who are agitating for honest and transparent governance of being traitors to the country. They call us anarchists, criminals, and merchants of chaos. They are questioning our patriotism. You have all seen the government and its horde of propagandists threatening the Ford Foundation and others because they may have helped civil society keep the lights on, and investigative journalists to have the capacity to continue to do the Lordโ€™s work of investigating criminality in government. As though citizens are so dumb and ignorant, that they cannot see what is going on. The reason why millions of Calvins in this country will never graduate from college and earn a decent living is not because of the Ford Foundation. No. It is because of the thieves we have in office today, like the ones in Turkana County. In this post, I copy our leaders, the President and his deputy. I copy them because I want them to help Kenyans understand the following conundrum, about crime and criminals. There is nothing so special or peculiar about criminals or where they pop up. There are criminals in the US, Canada, France, and other places. Just like we have criminals in Kenya. The difference between banana republics and failed states, and civilized societies, is WHAT we do to and about criminals. In civilized societies, criminals are prosecuted and punished heavily. They are shunned. In some places, those charged with serious crimes such as corruption are executed. These are societies that are committed to sending the message that corruption, which robs citizens of their rights, is not acceptable. And they demonstrate this commitment by heavily punishing those who steal from the most vulnerable in society. In Kenya, we see the opposite. Criminals are exalted. They are promoted and embraced in government. It was just last week that the president unveiled his nominees for his Cabinet. Among them, are the likes of Hassan Ali Joho, EGH. , @GovWOparanya , and Davis Chirchir, ALL people who have been accused or charged with massive corruption against Kenyans. And am sure you remember that I mentioned Koli Nanok, EGH. , the man who tried to steal KSH 5 billion in his last days in office. Would you believe it if I told you that he works in government, at State House? He plunded billions of your money, got no measurable improvement in the lives of his subjects, and now has a government job in State House. Let that sink in. And so, the question is, how is it that in a country of 55 million people, with thousands of highly qualified people who have never ever stolen from Kenyans, he ends up with the criminals and thieves in the government, despite the fact that their crimes are in the public domain? How is this possible? Is it possible that these thieves possess a certain unique ability to run government, save Kenyans billions, and solve problems in a way that the president performs a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefits outweigh the costs of their theft? If not, what message does it send to Kenyans, when their own president puts into office known thieves? I think that is a fair question, donโ€™t you? Dr. Ekuru Aukot Rigathi Gachagua William Samoei Ruto, PhD Okiya Omtatah Okoiti Citizen TV Kenya Nation Breaking News TI-Kenya CNN County Government of Turkana

Bonnie Mwangi, CPA, LLM, MBA

107,583 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 2 Jahren

Finally, Ed Davey calls for the UK to join the EU Single Market ๐Ÿ‘ "We meet at an extraordinary moment. Vladimir Putin is still waging war on our continent. Donald Trump's chaos in the Middle East goes on. And our government, our own government is paralysed by infighting, waiting for Makerfield to release them from their agony." "And yet, despite all that, standing with you here today, I feel hope. And not just about England's chances against Croatia tonight, but hope about our country's future." "Not hope because the path ahead is easy. It isn't. Not hope because everything will magically get better. It won't." "But hope because finally, after ten long, difficult years, I believe we can move on. We can finally fix the Brexit damage, end the Brexit chaos and get our country back on track." "Because the story the media won't tell you, as they fawn over the rise of Farage, as they hang on his every empty press conference, is that the country is with us. We hear it on the doorsteps, we see it in the polls, we feel it in our communities." "People are fed up. They've had enough. Enough of the chaos in government, the queues at ports, the queues at airports, the bills that just keep on going up." "They know the hard truth that most politicians won't admit. The Brexit experiment has failed. And it's failed all of us." "ยฃ90 billion a year. That's how much it's costing us all as taxpayers" "ยฃ90 billion every year, gone" "That's ยฃ250 million every single day. Taken away from our schools, our hospitals, our armed forces. Taken out of everyone's pockets in the form of unfair tax rises." "Not because of a pandemic, not because of a war, not because of some force of nature out of our control, but because of their Brexit experiment. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the rest. An experiment that has now consumed a decade of British politics. That has tangled British businesses up in pointless red tape, that has pushed up prices for British families and that has left us all poorer." "Well, not all of us, apparently. Farage says that the five million he got from a crypto billionaire was his reward for Brexit. So when he said 'We'll be better off after Brexit,' it turns out he was using the royal we." "But friends, it's not only the economic and financial impact, as disastrous as those have been. It's the way they have poisoned our relationship with our nearest neighbours and friends, making it harder to work together on all the things we need to. Energy security and climate change, migration and refugees, AI, and above all, defence." "Britain has always been at its best when we stand tall with our European allies, not when we shut ourselves off. Now they promised us global Britain, but they have left us isolated at the worst possible time. Poorer, weaker and more insecure." "Their experiment has failed. We all know it. So it's time to move on." "But what do they say? The ones who caused all this. The people responsible. Farage and the Conservative Party. They say 'Tough.' They say you can't move on. They say you can't question Britain's relationship with Europe now. You can't dare to suggest there might be a better way. Doesn't matter how bad it gets, doesn't matter how much you're struggling. You just have to live with it, they say." "We say 'No.' We say Britain shouldn't have to live with a bad deal they've lumped us with. We say our country deserves far better than that." "Theirs is old thinking. It's 2016 thinking. The world has changed dramatically since then. It's time for us to change too. It's time for us to move on, move forward." "Just look around. Vladimir Putin is bombing schools and hospitals in Ukraine, murdering innocent civilians. He's testing NATO's resolve and setting his sights on the rest of Eastern Europe. He has shown that territorial conquest is not some relic of the distant past. It is happening now on European soil to our friends and our allies who share our values and our way of life." "And Donald Trump, he's torching the world economy for fun with his tariffs and his trade wars and now his actual war with Iran. He's ripping up the rules-based international order that generations of British leaders, American leaders, European leaders, painstakingly built after the Second World War. Trump threatening NATO, emboldening Putin and actively meddling in our democracies." "And then there's China, increasingly using trade supply chains and strategic dependencies as instruments of geopolitical competition." "And to add to all those political changes, there's the billionaire tech barons taking more and more control of our lives and our jobs with their empires of AI and social media, that no one nation can govern on its own." "The assumptions we have lived by for decades, that global trade would keep expanding, that international rules would broadly be respected, that our security would be underwritten by stable alliances. Those assumptions no longer hold. The world has changed more rapidly than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And our politics must change too." "Now we obviously can't turn to those who wrecked it. Farage and the Conservatives. They only want to make things worse. Even now, pushing for Brexit 2.0 with their plans to rip up the European Convention on Human Rights. They would just rerun all the old arguments, forcing Britain to replay the last ten years over and over in a never ending Brexit doom loop." "But nor, I'm afraid, can we look to Labour. Labour who failed to act with anything like the urgency this moment demands. Who don't seem to grasp the scale of the change we need in our relationship with Europe. Labour, who still kept us hemmed in the red lines they set more than five years ago. No single market, no customs union. Red lines they set before Putin invaded Ukraine, before Trump returned to the White House. Red lines that were wrong then and are even more wrong now." "The world has changed and it's time to move on. We cannot be trapped by that old thinking anymore. We have to look to the future. Not back to 2016 but to 2036 and beyond." "And that's why we're all here today, isn't it? Not because we are bitter about the past, but because we believe in a better future. Because we love our country and we know its brightest days still lie ahead." "We're here for our children and our grandchildren because we want them to inherit a country that is growing, that is confident, that is leading, not one that is shrinking, stagnating and standing alone." "That's what drives us. We're here because the world has changed, because the challenges we face to our economy, to our society and to our national defence are real and urgent. And because we believe Britain deserves ambition that matches the scale of this moment." "So what does that ambition look like? Well, first the government needs to drop those old red lines that stop us getting rid of the Conservatives' red tape. Those red lines are holding Britain back. They're hurting the British people and they are playing into the hands of Farage and Reform." "So my message to Andy Burnham, to Wes Streeting, to whoever the next Prime Minister may be, is drop those red lines. Drop them now." "If we do, we can move on from the torpor and timidity that has marked out Labour's approach to Europe so far. We can put an end to the endless talk of a reset that so far seems to just mean saying no more politely than the Conservatives did. And we can get on with properly fixing our relationship with Europe, for our economy, for our security, for our future." "Our party has led that debate for years. Last year, days before Trump took office, we set out plans for the UK to join a new customs union with the EU. And today I want to build on that and go further, much further." "Today we are calling for a new growth and defence partnership with the European Union. A new growth and defence partnership with the European Union. A bold new deal that will make Britain richer, safer and stronger, including a customs union, but also crucially taking Britain back into the single market." "Tearing down the barriers to trade. Ending the mountains of paperwork, the cost, the delays, the queues. Giving our young people the chance to study and work, live and love anywhere in the EU. Undoing the damage of the Johnson Farage Brexit deal that has held our economy back for so long." "Giving British businesses the certainty they need to invest, to hire and to grow. Giving Britain's economy the boost it needs after years of stagnation. Crucially, giving Britain's public finances a growth dividend. Tens of billions of pounds that we would use to cut the cost of living, to fix the NHS and to strengthen our armed forces." "And this new partnership must go beyond trade and growth. In the age of Putin, Xi and Trump, this must be about defence and security too. No country can be prosperous and free if it is not safe." "And Britain can help lead on defence in Europe as we have so decisively in the past. Despite the Conservatives' short-sighted cuts to our armed forces and Labour's chaos over investing in them now, Britain is still one of Europe's foremost military powers. We are a leading intelligence nation, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the third-biggest contributor to NATO." "We should be using those strengths. We should be at the table, helping to shape Europe's security future, not watching from the sidelines. And Europe wants us at the table. They know they need our leadership on defence." "So let's seize the initiative from a position of strength to form a new partnership that strengthens both Britain's economy and our collective security. That is why our new partnership would be about defence as much as it is about growth." "That means financial cooperation through a new European rearmament bank, alongside securing UK access to the one hundred and fifty billion euro safe programme. It means joint defence procurement, creating jobs in Britain while strengthening our collective capabilities. It means deeper cooperation on intelligence, on cyber security and on protecting critical infrastructure." "It means working together on energy security so that none of us can be held hostage by an authoritarian regime turning off the gas. It means political cooperation through a new European Security Council with a permanent seat for the UK, ensuring that Europe can shoulder greater responsibility for its own security within NATO." "As Trump's actions remind us every day, that we cannot afford to rely so much on the United States. Friends, this is not a choice we can afford to dodge any longer. In the face of Putin's threats and Trump's unpredictability, a new defence pact with Europe, with allies on whom we can depend, allies who share our interests and our values, is frankly the only way to keep Britain safe and defend our values in a dangerous world." "A new defence pact with Europe is not a choice, it is a necessity. So let's get on with it." "That is the ambition we need when it comes to our relationship with Europe. No more tinkering around the edges of a bad deal. No more shackling ourselves to the arguments of the last ten years, but building something new. A partnership fit for the enormous challenges we face today." "A new growth and defence partnership with a new pact for our collective security. Forming a customs union, joining the single market. A new partnership to make us richer, safer and stronger." "I think it's the best hope our country has to stop the chaos and end the crisis. And, my friends, it is the biggest step we could take now back towards membership of the EU." "And there's another big step we need to take too. Defeating Nigel Farage and Reform. We have to stop them from turning our United Kingdom into their version of Trump's America." "And here's the point. Until we do defeat them, many in Europe will not countenance Britain joining." "Let's remember why this matters, why it's so crucial for Britain to be there at the heart of Europe, at the table with our nearest neighbours." "I've been privileged to see it for myself, the power we have when Britain leads in Europe. When Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, we recognised then that the way to defeat him would be to get Europe off its dependence on Russian oil and gas, to take away the money that was funding his aggression, to bankrupt the Russian war machine." "So I led Britain's efforts to bring Europe together behind that common cause, and we succeeded. We wrote Europe's energy security strategy. Britain did that, sitting at the table, leading in Europe." "But then, instead of seeing it through, the Conservatives walked away. They gave up Britain's seat at the table. They locked us out of those discussions at the worst possible time." "Just imagine where we could be now if Britain had continued to lead on energy security. Imagine how much weaker Putin would be now. Imagine how much safer Ukraine and the rest of Europe, including Britain, would be now. What a terrible waste. What an indictment of the Conservatives." "And that is why I am so determined to get us back at the table, back at the heart of Europe. Britain leading again." "Now I want to speak for a moment about the bigger picture. Because our ambition is not limited to Europe alone. It's about Britain's place in the world." "The old assumption that trade, security and prosperity could be treated as separate issues no longer holds. Supply chains can be disrupted. Energy can be weaponised. Economic security and national security are now inseparable." "At a time when authoritarian powers are doing so much to undermine our security, democratic nations must work more closely together to enhance it. As Mark Carney said in Davos, middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu. He is right." "Fixing our relationship with Europe is the essential foundation, but it's not the ceiling. The UK can be an incredible force for good when it stands tall on the world stage. Our history, our alliances and our relationships across every continent gives us a unique position for us to act as a bridge, not just between Europe and the US but between Europe and the whole wider democratic world." "We are here because we believe that our country and our people thrive when we are open and outward looking. That is Britain at its best. Not a small inward looking island clinging to the wreckage of a failed experiment, but a leader, a convening power, a country that helps shape the international order rather than being buffeted by it." "That is the Britain we can be." "But friends, I want to be honest with you about the task ahead. What we are proposing is bold. It is ambitious. It requires courage, requires leadership. And it will not happen without all of us." "We know the obstacles we face, the arguments ahead, the opponents who would rather replay the last ten years instead of moving on from them. Who will tell us we can't even talk about a new deal with Europe, let alone make one. The politicians who will claim change isn't possible because the status quo works for them. But it doesn't work for anyone else." "So our job is to get out there and show people that change is possible, that it doesn't have to be like this, that there is a way forward. A better future for our country. Leading in Europe once again." "This isn't just because we believe in Europe. It's not just about friendship or shared history, or the fact that a divided Europe has always ended in misery. Fixing it is about us, our country, our future, our hopes and our dreams." "Britain needs a new plan. A plan for growth, for jobs, for defence. A plan to give our children the better future they deserve. A new deal with Europe. The only way to fix the cost of living crisis. The only way to get our country back on track." "So let us stand together. Let us end the chaos. Let us show the world what Britain can be. Not a small island clinging to a failed experiment, but a leader, open, outward looking. At the table, not on the menu." "A Britain that is richer, safer and stronger. That is the future we are fighting for." " Thank you. Thank you very much."

Farrukh

10,909 Aufrufe โ€ข vor 3 Monaten

โ€ผ๏ธโ€ผ๏ธ Many Germans still ignore President Putin's 2001 speech in front of the German Bundestag. They listen to the USA, which has always lied to them and even blew up their pipelines! The sanctions are NOT against Russia! They are against Germans! Wake up! In one of the most important and greatest speeches that the German Bundestag has ever experienced, President Vladimir Putin honestly and generously extended his hand to Germany and Europe for a peaceful and promising future in 2001. Unfortunately the West refused! President Putin speaks fluent German, by the way. In einer der bedeutendsten und groรŸartigsten Reden, die der deutsche Bundestag jemals erleben durfte, reichte Wladimir Putin im Jahr 2001 Deutschland und Europa ehrlich und groรŸzรผgig die Hand, fรผr eine friedliche und erfolgversprechende Zukunft. Leider lehnte der Westen ab! President Putin: "Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have just talked about the unity of European culture. However, in the past that unity did not prevent two horrible wars from being unleashed on the continent, two world wars within one century. Nor did it prevent the building of the Berlin Wall, the formidable symbol of the deep division of Europe. The Berlin Wall is no longer. It was destroyed. And today it would be relevant to recall why that became possible. It is my conviction that the dramatic change in the world, in Europe and on the expanses of the former Soviet Union would have been impossible without the main preconditions, namely, without the events that took place in Russia ten years ago. These events are important to understanding what precisely took place in our country and what could be expected from Russia in the future. The answer is simple, as a matter of fact. Under the impact of the laws governing the development of information society, Stalinist totalitarian ideology could no longer oppose the ideas of freedom and democracy. The spirit of these ideas was taking hold of the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens. It was the political choice of the people of Russia that enabled the then leaders of the USSR to take decisions that eventually led to the razing of the Berlin Wall. It was that choice that infinitely broadened the boundaries of European humanism and that enables us to say that no one will ever be able to return Russia back into the past. As for European integration, we not just support these processes, but we are looking to them with hope. We view them as a people who have learned the lesson of the Cold War and the peril of the ideology of occupation very well. But here, I think, it would be pertinent to add that Europe did not gain from that division either. It is my firm conviction that in today's rapidly changing world, in a world witnessing truly dramatic demographic changes and an exceptionally high economic growth in some regions, Europe also has an immediate interest in promoting relations with Russia. No one calls in question the great value of Europe's relations with the United States. I am just of the opinion that Europe will reinforce its reputation of a strong and truly independent centre of world politics soundly and for a long time if it succeeds in bringing together its own potential and that of Russia, including its human, territorial and natural resources and its economic, cultural and defence potential. Together we have already taken the first steps in that direction. The time has now come to think about what should be done to make sure that a united and secure Europe becomes the harbinger of a united and secure world. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, We have done a great deal in the security sphere over the past few years. The security system that we have built over the previous decades has been improved. One of the achievements of the past decade is the unprecedentedly low concentration of armed forces and armaments in Central Europe and the Baltic. Russia is a friendly European nation. Stable peace on the continent is a paramount goal for our country, which lived through a century of military catastrophes. As everyone knows, we have ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Tests Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, and also the START-2 Treaty. Regrettably, not all the NATO countries have followed our example. But once we, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, have started to discuss security, we should first and foremost understand from whom we are to defend ourselves, and how. In this context I cannot but mention the catastrophe in the United States on September 11. People the world over keep asking how that could have happened and who is to blame. I will give you answers to these questions. I think we all are to blame for what happened, and first and foremost we, politicians, to whom the ordinary citizens of our nations have entrusted their security. And this happens first and foremost because we have so far failed to recognize the changes that have happened in our world over the past ten years and continue to live in the old system of values: we are talking about partnership, but in reality we have not yet learned to trust each other. In spite of a plethora of sweet words, we are still surreptitiously opposed to each other. Now we demand loyalty to NATO, now argue about the rationale behind its enlargement. And we are still unable to agree on the problems of a missile defence system. Over long decades of the 20th century the world was indeed living under conditions of confrontation between the two systems, confrontation that pushed humanity to the brink of annihilation on more than one occasion. That was so fearsome and we grew so accustomed to live with that anticipation of catastrophe that we are still unable to understand and appreciate the changes taking place in today's world. We seem to be missing the fact that the world is no longer divided into two hostile camps. The world has become far more complex, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. We do not want or are unable to understand that the security structure built over the previous decades that was effective in neutralizing former threats is no longer able to cope with new threats of today. Too often we continue to argue over issues which we think are still important. They probably still are. But at the same time we do not recognize new real threats and turn out to be unable to foresee terrorist attacks โ€“ and so ruthless terrorist attacks at that! Hundreds of innocent civilians died in the bombing of residential houses in Moscow and other large Russian cities. Religious fanatics, having captured power in Chechnya and having turned ordinary citizens into their hostages, mounted a brazen large-scale armed attack against the neighboring Republic of Daghestan. International terrorists have openly โ€“ quite openly โ€“ declared their intention to establish a fundamentalist state on the territory between the Black and the Caspian Sea โ€“ the so-called khalifate, or the United States of Islam. I would like to stress right away that talking about any โ€war between civilizationsโ€œ is inadmissible. It would be a mistake to put the equation mark between Moslems in general and religious fanatics. In our country, for example, the defeat of the aggressors in 1999 was predetermined by the courageous and tough rebuff of the residents of Daghestan, a Russian republic the population of which is virtually 100 percent Moslem. Shortly before my departure for Berlin I met with the religious leaders of Russia's Moslems. They came up with the initiative of convening an international conference on โ€Islam Against Terrorismโ€œ in Moscow. I think we should support this initiative. Today we are coming up against not so much the aggravation of the well-known international problems as the rise of new threats. Russia is taking practical steps to put up, together with some CIS nations, a real barrier in the way of the traffic of drugs, organized crime and fundamentalism from Afghanistan via Central Asia and the Caucasus into Europe. Terrorism, national intolerance, separatism and religious extremism everywhere have the same roots and bear the same poisonous fruit. That is why the methods of fighting these problems should be universal as well. But first agreement needs to be reached on the fundamental matter: we should not be afraid of calling a spade a spade. And it is extremely important to understand that evil deeds cannot be used to achieve political objectives, however noble such objectives may seem. Naturally, evil must be punished, and I agree with that. But we should also understand that no retaliatory strikes will replace comprehensive, purposeful and well-coordinated struggle against terrorism. I absolutely agree with the US President on that. I think our partners' readiness to joint efforts in countering real rather than illusory threats will demonstrate how serious and reliable they are as partners. These threats are quite capable of spilling over from the distant frontiers of our continent to the very heart of Europe. I talked about that on more than one occasion, but after what happened in the US there is no need to prove anything. But what are we lacking today for cooperation to be efficient? In spite of all the positive achievements of the past decades, we have not yet developed an efficient mechanism for working together. The coordinating agencies set up so far do not offer Russia real opportunities for taking part in drafting and taking decision. Today decisions are often taken, in principle, without our participation, and we are only urged afterwards to support such decisions. After that they talk again about loyalty to NATO. They even say that such decisions cannot be implemented without Russia. Let us ask ourselves: is this normal? Is this true partnership? Yes, the assertion of democratic principles in international relations, the ability to find a correct decision and readiness for compromise are a difficult thing. But then, it was the Europeans who were the first to understand how important it is to look for consensus over and above national egoism. We agree with that! All these are good ideas. However, the quality of decisions that are taken, their efficiency and, ultimately, European and international security in general depend on the extent to which we succeed today in translating these obvious principles into practical politics. It seemed just recently that a truly common home would shortly rise on the continent, a home in which the Europeans would not be divided into eastern or western, northern or southern. However, these divides will remain, primarily because we have never fully shed many of the Cold War stereotypes and cliches. Today we must say once and for all: the Cold War is done with! We have entered a new stage of development. We understand that without a modern, sound and sustainable security architecture we will never be able to create an atmosphere of trust on the continent, and without that atmosphere of trust there can be no united Greater Europe! Today we must say that we renounce our stereotypes and ambitions and from now on will jointly work for the security of the people of Europe and the world as a whole. Dear friends, Today, thank God, Russia is talked about in Europe not only in the context of oligarchs, corruption and Mafia. However, there still is a substantial lack of objective information about Russia. I can say with absolute confidence that the key goal of Russia's domestic policy is first and foremost to ensure democratic rights and freedoms, decent living standards and safety for the people of the country. However, distinguished colleagues, let us look back at some events of the recent past. Russia took the painful road of reform. The scope of the tasks we had to address is without parallel in history. Naturally, mistakes were made. Not all the problems have been resolved, but today Russia is a quite dynamic part of the European continent. Moreover, it is dynamic not only politically, but also economically, which is especially encouraging. Political stability in Russia is ensured by a number of economic factors, not the least by one of the world's most liberal taxation systems. Our income tax is 13% and profit tax 24%, and this is real. Last year our economic growth was 8%. This year we expected to get just 4%, but most likely we will have about 6% โ€” say, 5.5โ€“5.7%. We will wait and see. At the same time my conviction is that only large-scale and equal pan-European cooperation will make it possible to achieve qualitative progress in resolving such problems as unemployment, environmental pollution and many others. We are set on close trade and economic cooperation. In the nearest future we intend to join the World Trade Organization. We count on international and European organizations' support for our bid. I would like to draw your attention to things which you as members of parliament will undoubtedly be able to appreciate better and which cannot be dismissed as propaganda. As a matter of fact, our nation has gone through a revision of priorities and values. Spending on social needs tops the 2002 consolidated budget. And I would like to stress specifically that for the first time in Russia's history spending on education has exceeded defence expenditures. Distinguished colleagues, Permit me to say a couple words about Russian-German relations. I would like to dwell separately on this matter. Russian-German relations are as old as our nations. The first German tribes appeared on Russian territory in the late first century. In the late 19th century Germans were the ninth most numerous ethnic group in Russia. But what is important is not just the numbers, but the role played by these people in the development of the country and in Russian-German relations. They were peasants and merchants, intellectuals, military men and politicians. The German historian Michael Stuermer observed: โ€Russia and America are divided by oceans, while Russia and Germany are divided by a great history.โ€œ I would say that history, just like oceans, not only divides, but also unites. The important thing is to correctly interpret this history. As a good neighbor in the West, Germany often symbolized for the Russians Europe, European culture, technical intellect and entrepreneurial wit. Small wonder that in the past all Europeans were known as Germans in Russia, and the Europeans' settlement in Moscow was known as the German Village. Naturally, the cultural influences of the two peoples were reciprocal. Many generations of Germans and Russians studied and continue to enjoy works by Goethe, Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Our peoples understand each other's mentality very well, as is amply evidenced by the marvelous Russian translations of German authors. They closely replicate the text and keep the pace of the narration and the mood and beauty of the original. One example is the translation of Doctor Faustus by Boris Pasternak. Ladies and gentlemen, There are different pages in our history, some of them rather painful, especially those relating to the 20th century. But in the past we often acted as allies. The relations between the two European nations were every now and then reinforced by marital unions between dynasties. Generally, women had a special role to play in our history. let us recall, for example, the daughter of the Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hessen-Darmstadt, known in Russia as Princess Elizabeth. Following the assassination of her husband, she founded a nunnery, and during World War I she nursed wounded soldiers, both Russians and Germans. In 1918 she was executed by the Bolsheviks, but recently she was rehabilitated and sanctified for everyone to honor. A monument to her stands in the heart of Moscow today. Nor should we forget Princess Sophia Augusta Frederika of Anhalt-Zerbst, who made a unique contribution to Russian history. Ordinary Russians called her Mother, but she went down in history as Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Today's Germany is Russia's leading economic partner, our most important creditor, one of the principal investors and a key interlocutor in discussing international politics. I will give you one example: last year trade between our countries hit an all-time record of 41.5 billion marks. This compares with the Soviet Union's aggregate trade with both German states. Can we be happy with this and sit back and relax? I don't think so. Russian-German cooperation still has sufficient potentialities for development. I am convinced that today we are turning over a new page in our bilateral relations, thereby making our joint contribution to building a common European home. In conclusion I would like to say the words that were once used to characterize Germany and its capital. I would like to apply this idea to Russia and say: of course, we are at the beginning of the road to building a democratic society and a market economy. There are barriers and obstacles on that road that we are to surmount. However, if we leave aside objective problems and occasional ineptness of our own, we will see the beat of Russia's strong, live heart. And this heart is open to true cooperation and partnership."

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