💠@Sputnik Africa:
⭕ 📹 Footage of Israeli artillery shelling east of Gaza City |media|
[NB. Gaza City was one of the scant 1/3 of Gaza’s area declared a “safe zone” to which the civilians were herded, before being shelled, undoubtedly in order to save dwindling aerial bombs and increase killing efficiency and terror]

💠@imetatronink:
⭕ ‼️ Murder

If this is legit — and it appears to be, given Trump’s apparent endorsement of it — I would categorize it as a heinous war crime.

“Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack” is patently ridiculous. This was almost certainly the brazen wanton murder of civilians.
[links:
🔻 NEUTRINO: You can see one of the scenes of the American attack on Yemenis, claiming that they are Houthis who intended to attack American ships, but in fact this is a tribal gathering in Yemen and has no connection with the Houthi military forces!”]
🔻 NEUTRINO: The New York Times report stated that the American success in Yemen has been very limited and the Americans are very unhappy with the current situation. The US president is broadcasting images of the killing of ordinary people to justify the attack. Pure evil and criminal!
🔻 (Ameen Aljermozi) 🇾🇪 أمين الجرموزي: Certainly, these gatherings are considered Yemeni customs on social occasions and are widely held throughout Yemen.
🔻 WS: Several people have now posted images of Yemeni tribal gatherings, such as this
🔻 Lee Slusher: Collateral damage assessments are used to determine the number of “acceptable” civilian casualties relative to the importance of a particular target. A more important target means greater civilian deaths are tolerated. For example, the leaked Signal chat showed their willingness to strike a residential building to get one individual, the “top missile guy.” It’s possible they had information that one or more militants were in attendance here, and so determined it was “acceptable” to bomb the gathering. It happened repeatedly at weddings in Afghanistan, because those were among the few times militants would come out of hiding to travel to known destinations. The fact that the war against Ansarallah is air-only means on-the-ground intel collection is very limited at best, as are more discrete options for killing or capturing targets. In other words, I expect such attacks will continue. So-and-so is spotted…bombs away. (An explanation, not a justification. I’m opposed to all of this.)
🔻 WS: I would not be surprised to learn that intelligence assets had concluded that someone of some degree of importance was present at this gathering.

If so, this was still an utterly reprehensible act. It is despicable.

This was an act that is likely to ignite unpredictable wrath.
🔻 Michelle Ogno 🇺🇸: It’s a war crime.
🔻 Elly Maloba: @nxt888 [Sony Thang] debating Scott Ritter, was very right in describing this phase of the “Empire At All Cost” war-legalese methodology
🔻 IndoPacificInstitute: Such gatherings are mainly during ceremony (marriage)? US was doing same in Afghanistan, that did not end well.
🔻 Gran Maestro: Unsurprisingly,Ted Cruz didn’t waste any time in praising the bombing.
🔻 OsageCatZ: Hospitals, funerals, weddings
When Imperial City needs a body count.
🔻 يحي ابن قايد الشدادي: |more such gatherings|
⭕ Criminal

Over the course of the past three years, I have viewed graphic scenes of warfare from around the world.

But I have never been more outraged than I am about this American strike against a typical civilian gathering of men in a village in Yemen.

It is CRIMINAL.
[satanism is being mainstreamed. Like Zionazis gathering nightly in front of TVs to delight in witnessing dismembered and incinerated Palestinian children, so will the banquet be prepared for the Last Shining City on the Hill. This will be the prescribed palliative for societal implosion and the hellish chickens coming home to roost. Optical switcheroo. “at least we can murder them with impunity” like a remote video game]
🔻 WS: I would not be surprised to learn that intelligence assets had concluded that someone of some degree of importance was present at this gathering.

If so, this was still an utterly reprehensible act. It is despicable.

This was an act that is likely to ignite unpredictable wrath.
🔻 WS: To clarify: I am not making a comparison between atrocities. Sniping children in Gaza is beyond the pale.

But this one is uniquely reprehensible because the President of the United States himself posted the video and gloated over it on social media like a snuff film aficionado.
🔻 Pavel +: Intelligence is a pr machine at this point in time.
🔻 Nabil Elsherif Roca: One of the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq should have been that scenes like this, harden the resolve of the populations that they are waging war against.
🔻 Arbitrary Nihilism: The US has been hijacked by a bunch of disgusting murderers and my country now is a force of evil in the world. I hate our traitor government.
🔻 Dirty Lowdown Rabble.: Trump looks at a genocide and sees a real estate money-making opportunity. Are you surprised?
🔻 Philomedia: That is what is so confusing. The picture American is painting of itself is not just tough or “America first.”
It shows a people unmeasured, lacking in self control, ruthless. The picture of low-IQ, self-satisfied moral turpitude.
A bully’s display, ultimately, of weakness.
🔻 Beefabear: I have seen plenty of these strikes in Gaza now with civilians getting blown to hell. Nobody of any note, including the other Arab states, care.
⭕ Keep mental note of who rushes to endorse this war crime.
[links:
🔻 Ted Cruz: What did they think “We will find you—and we will kill you” meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?]
[Lyin’ Ted and Graham are actually among the most honest. Bernie and AOC and the Dems are the real dangerous ones, capable of hiding their dripping fangs and masking appetites]
🔻 Pleas Lucian: The complete absence of any sense of accountability is actually impressive. These people are so blind with bloodlust that the possibility of tribunals never even occurs to them as they confess their crimes against humanity all over the Internet.
🔻 D.M. Voan: These dickheads are exactly like the NeoCons after 9/11. Nothing changed. It just got worse.
🔻 AT: “We can’t do anything to you militarily, so we’ll just jerk off hard to seeing a few of you blown to bits”
🔻 Modern Day Philosophy: Quick question sir

Why /How would the Houthis just gather without weapons and other arsenals in an open place just like that
🔻 der Bär: I can’t get over how pathetic this is. So starved for a win (or to avoid looking too impotent), they are bragging about lobbing a missile at a gathering with no evident military equipment.

could these threats of “correction” be buying Orange strategic depth through which to “negotiate”? a devilish pantomime

“settle quickly with him, in spite of your victories in 404, and the Holy Land, and the global economy, before the crazies come back and blow up the world.”

Give back bitterly won field victories to avoid worse losses (we shan’t Punish, but show Mercy, if ye but partially kneel, and permit the Last Satanic Empire to limp on a little while longer, and die a dignified death)

to be interpreted as risible mafia offers to the three civilizational states by small abject players lost in their hall of mirrors and smoke

I was curious why the clowns chose the phrase “Liberation Day” for the April 02 sepukku, so I plugged it into one of the online gematria calculators used by occult satanists (ALL imperial actions being linked to numerology, not just with dates, but even meme-phrases, word combinations and usage translated into numbers)

Using most common cyphers – we obtain for “Liberation Day”:

• Reduction: 63 (so can be seen as 3×6 = 666)
• Reverse: 216 (6x6x6 or thus another 666; also the satanists drop the zeroes, so 2016 was the first selection of Orange 1.0)

I am not versed in numerology. There are a dizzying array of approaches and interpretations and cyphers. So “Liberation Day” appears to be the signal PsyOp (with stacked function satanic mockery) heralding the take-down of the global economy.

This appears the third act of Hybrid World War III – their attempt to avert or control Armageddon’s use of dastardly gadgets. The first two acts being global pandemic op, then the 404 gambit to take down Russia the easy way or at least tie her up in Novorossiya and the European theatre..

💠@Sputnik Africa:
⭕ The International Criminal Court Should Be Dissolved & Re-Established on Completely Different Principles, Spanish Prof. Says

The selectivity of persecution and politicization in several recent cases was denounced as “a completely racist, discriminatory, obscene attitude that only undermines the authority of the Court itself” by Augusto Zamora, professor of international public law and international relations at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

“The International Criminal Court initiates a case against President Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that Russia is not a member of this body, and immediately issues an arrest warrant. At the same time, similar actions are taken with great difficulty against Benjamin Netanyahu, but no one carries out this warrant,” he told Sputnik.

☝️ However, in the case of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, “the case is quickly decided, and two days later he is arrested,” Zamora noted.

For him, the West exerts “excessive influence” over UN bodies, and this is “strongly reflected” in the ICC.

“The world has changed, and the ICC must reflect the new reality of a multipolar world,” the proferssor stated.
⭕ Trump’s Tariffs Will Be “Ineffective” for the AES, Burkinabe FM Argues

“These measures that have been taken by the US impact the West more than our countries,” Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore said in an interview with Sputnik Africa.

The Burkinabe minister, who recently met with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov alongside his Nigerien and Malian counterparts in Moscow, attributed this lack of impact to the fact that the AES members have long been “excluded from international trade because they wanted to confine us to a role of supplier.”

☝️ According to him, the most important thing is to give a “new momentum” to the Alliance of Sahel States.
[good point. Orange Wrecking Crew really rolled out the massive list against all to hide the real target: China. Against most of Africa, there is negligible consequence. And their essential commodities will be gobbled up by other customers with nary a pause]
⭕ The Dictatorship of the Dollar is Over: The Alliance of Sahel States on the Path to Its Own Investment Bank

In an effort to counter the hegemony of the US dollar and other “unjust methods,” the Alliance of Sahel States is considering establishing an investment bank, Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister told Sputnik Africa.

“This bank must necessarily align with other financial institutions by using new instruments,” Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré stated following the meeting of foreign ministers from Russia, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in Moscow.

The institution will be tasked with financing the development of the Alliance of Sahel States, he explained.

Traoré also commented on a potential rapprochement between the Alliance of Sahel States and the BRICS, as well as the possible benefits for Ouagadougou from the New Development Bank.

“We cannot continue to work in an environment where we do not have the opportunity to offer a better future to our populations,” he said.
[those with least to lose often take the first courageous plunge. This sounds like they’re establishing Col’s vaunted public utility banking (PBS)]
⭕ African Countries Started Diversifying Economies Even Before Trump’s Tariffs Challenge, Political Science Expert Says

“Before Trump, and given the experience from his first four-year term, I think a lot of lessons have been taken, and many countries are already promoting initiatives to make them less dependent on the US when it comes to trade,” political science expert Emmanuel Remi Aiyede told Sputnik Africa.

African countries realized that such measures as US new tariffs that affected the most of the continent could happen, but they did not understand that “it would be this extreme,” the professor from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria noted.

“What the African countries need to do is to find ways and means of accelerating the pattern that they have already taken in terms of diversification of partnership and also in terms of intensifying trade within the African country,” he emphasized.

On Wednesday, President Trump announced new reciprocal tariffs on imports. A total of 51 African countries were included in the list, with tariffs ranging from a low of 10% to a high of 50%.

💠@Middle East Spectator:
⭕ The S&P 500 hits a new daily low, now down more than 5% today, and more than 10% down since Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs

Today marks the single largest daily loss in the U.S. stock market within the past 5 years.
⭕— Not a single sector in the U.S. stock market is net positive today.

#MAGA 🇺🇸🔥💪
⭕ — They want Trump re-elected because he’ll ‘make America great again’

— We want Trump re-elected to speed up the process of America’s inevitable downfall

We are not the same.

💠@imetatronink:
⭕ 📜 A Nation within A Nation

One of the most strategically significant defeats of the United States Army took place in the Rocky Mountains in 1857-58. It served to solidify the creation of “a nation within a nation” that persists to the present day.
⭕🔻 Dave Collum:
Social Awareness Poll: What is your worst-case scenario for the S&P 500?
19% – 5000
27% – 4000
26% – 3000
29% – 2000
🔻 WS: 50k.

And $30/gallon milk.

Hopefully silver will be ~$350/oz by then. 😏
🔻 ElCidLives: We will be able to bottle and sell boomer tears for generations to come as a warning on greed
⭕🔻 Rina Lu🇷🇺: Russian Emperor Nicholas II was the only monarch and head of state who officially initiated an international conference for the sake of peace.

In other words, he was the only world leader of his time to make a formal, institutional appeal to prevent war, years before the outbreak of World War I.

🔸 He publicly and officially proposed global disarmament, calling on the world’s powers to halt the escalating arms race that threatened to plunge nations into conflict.

🔸 He convened the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, the largest and most ambitious international gathering focused on peace ever held up to that point.

At the conference, under Russia’s initiative, the participating nations discussed:

🔸 Limiting the buildup of military arsenals,
🔸 Banning certain brutal and inhumane weapons,
🔸 Establishing legal mechanisms to settle disputes between states without resorting to war.

One of the major outcomes was the signing of the Hague Convention of 1899, which laid the foundation for modern international humanitarian law. Among its most notable achievements was:

🔸 The prohibition of the use of poison or poisoned weapons in warfare,
🔸 The ban on launching projectiles and explosives from balloons,
🔸 Rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of civilians.

The conference also led to the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the first permanent international institution dedicated to resolving conflicts between nations through diplomacy and law.

Although Nicholas II’s efforts could not stop the First World War, they laid crucial groundwork for modern international law and the very idea of collective security, principles that would eventually shape the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

History often overlooks the fact that it was the Russian Emperor who first took such a bold and visionary step toward global peace, long before 1914.
[for his troubles, the cowardly British and Anglo-Zionists had him executed in a mine with his entire family. And holocausted his people to the tune of ~40-50,000,000 over the next thirty years at german hands]
🔻 WS: Was Nicholas II fluent in a foreign language?

For that matter, do you have any information on the polyglot abilities of Russian leaders in general? I’ve always been curious about that.
🔻 Walter Kurtz: The Russian gentry started to progressively use French under Peter the Great to the point that even during Napoleonic wars the gentry considered Russian as the “non gentry” language and used French. |link|
🔻 WS: I dislike the sound of French even more than I dislike the sound of German.
[me too for French only. It drips in disdain and arrogance, at least the way many use it. German is utilitarian and an acquired taste. Pithy and direct, which I like, unlike some of the extravagant romance languages, such as pretentious French]
🔻 Walter Kurtz: I can’t dislike French…
Regarding German Bayerisch is disgusting and the cleanest German is in the northern part. In Austria I like the accent in Wien area.
Swiss German is disgusting.
[yes, I love the Österreicher accent most too, almost melodic. Fitting for yodeling alpiners, among whom lived my favorite Johann Strauss the Younger. I once stood in front of his birth home in historic Wien]
🔻 WS: I am rather fluent in Italian, and therefore I am a linguistic bigot. 😏

That said, I also very much like the sound of spoken Russian.
🔻 Walter Kurtz: Italian is really nice and although there are many similarities with French words, I never learned it.
[French feels like a project gone wrong – they chased after Italian, the most expressive and delightful of the romance languages and ended up in a cul-de-sac. Spanish is like German more utilitarian and sparse, more in control of itself than Italian. Much less self-aggrandizing, self-conscious and half-baked than French]
🔻 Stoshik Сосновик ☦🇷🇺: Will, if you’re serious, yes Tsar Nicholas ii was fluent in English and he and his daughters wrote entries in their diaries in both English and French.
In his youth Nicholas ii traveled to Japan had a dragon 🐉 tattoo on his right forearm.
🔻 WS: Why would I not be serious?

Anyway, thanks for the reply.
🔻 Stoshik Сосновик ☦🇷🇺: PTSD from battling anti-Russian trolls my whole life. I see you’re serious 🙏

☦️Tsar Nicholas ii was a sincere Christian man, but was weak minded. His father Tsar Alexander iii was a stronger leader, but internal corruption in the Russian Empire during WW 1 collapsed it all.
🔻 Arthur Burton: Nicholas, like all his predecessors for the prior 300+ years, was essentially German, and spoke German and French, and likely some English.
🔻 F A: He was UK’s Queen Victoria’s Grandson so maybe he knew English
🔻 Tree Of Heaven: There’s a recording of him speaking French, he’s better at it than most modern Frenchmen.
⭕ cont thread:
🤔 I’m not a credentialed economist, by any means. But, for whatever it’s worth, I am also debt-free, with a high savings rate.

Explain to me, as though I were a child, what America makes — or could make anytime soon — that Asia wants to buy.
🔻 Vance Money: Cars, motorcycles, appliances, computers, bicycles etc. appliances and motorcycles are big ones. There’s a ton more.
🔻 WS: Who are the American makers of all these things? Just curious.
🔻 Vance Money: You can Google that question. The goal of all of this is to onshore and near-shore more production. The us has plenty of companies to drive up a manufacturing base instead of just being a dying over taxed service economy.
🔻 WS: 🤣

As I suspected, there is currently no substantial US production of “cars, motorcycles, appliances, computers, bicycles, appliances, etc.”

People simply assume the US can throw a switch, and high quality heavy industry and manufacturing will somehow magically appear.

🤦‍♂️
🔻 JacobusDavidSA: Asian companies can locate here
🔻 WS: For the cheap labor? 🤦‍♂️
🔻 JacobusDavidSA: No, for the market, for the low taxes, and to evade tariffs
[and what’s in it for them?? Are they as godless and predatory as western elites, who offshored enmasse to ruin unions and brought mass poverty? Are they driven by fear, win-lose, and permanent class war as in the West? Why work to evade tariffs when there are plenty of alternative customers? Will the US market remain attractive once the inflation rockets and printing presses can no longer paper over and keep going the ponzi? Do Others abroad have a sense of responsibility to their own poor? Are sanctions and tariffs still effective and all-determinative?]
⭕ ‼️ Black Budget American Super-tech Revealed

US Special Ops Command has received its first OA-1K Skyraider II. It is a souped-up crop duster, for which the Pentagon is paying $40 MILLION per unit — or roughly the same cost as a Russian Su-35 or Su-57. |link|
🔻 Nabil Elsherif Roca: Looks like a Super Tucano on steroids and much more expensive
🔻 WS: That’s exactly what it is.

Flying with hard points bare and half-a-tank of fuel, it can, on paper, achieve about 245 mph (~60% the speed of a WW2 P-51). With a full load, a B-17 could easily outrun it.

It would be a MANPAD magnet, and even vulnerable to small arms.
🔻 Ed H. Hanna: Looks like something for drive-by shooting?
[exactly. It fits for Thug Life, Inc.]
🔻 Mist – Free speech 🥩 🥚: Excellent money laundering example.
[and means to cut loose ties with the glut of black ops men accumulated since Cebrowski-Rummy. They’re gonna be suicided for their own good, “trust us.” Can’t have them back in CONUS for enforced retreats and lead the Defense]
🔻 Flash’s Buddy: We’re going to rock the Prussians in this. Maybe even beat the Imperial Japanese Army too. Also the imperial Russian Army.
🔻 The Surgeon: 40M?
🔻 WS: $3B for 75 of them.
🔻 no to blue 🇮🇪 Z: For comparison how much is an ordinary crop duster?
🔻 WS: According to Grok, ~$2M each for the Air Tractor AT-802
🔻 no to blue 🇮🇪 Z: @DOGE I have some questions?
[DOGE: sorry, as with Fort Knox, this is beyond our Mandate; “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar…”]
🔻 Barclay Matheson: They reduced their order to around 60, and that price includes all the isr sensors and hardware.
🔻 Brian Bauer: Probably too expensive and I concur our tech edge is waning.

However, this platform has a purpose. Loiter time is key to the mission set and they won’t be flying in non permissive environments. MANPADS risk is low, especially at night and in the environments this was intended for.
[LOL. Nowadays, even Africans in forever wars without electricity got drones and manpads. In Yemeni villages, they got anti-aircraft guns and artillery somewhere in the back of the house next to the BBQ grills and kids toys]
🔻 WS: Sorry, but this is silly talk.

This aircraft simply will not be able to operate in the context of a non-permissive 21st century expeditionary battlefield. If attempted, it will be summarily withdrawn within just a few days of the attempt.

This aircraft has no credible mission.
🔻 Brian Bauer: The aircraft is not meant for non permissive environments. It’s meant to have extended loiter time over counter terrorism or counter insurgency operations conducted by special operators…something I have extensive real world experience doing. I’ve got probably 100 direct action missions in my resume as a helicopter gunner so I’m quite familiar with the needs, threats, and requirements of the mission. I

The price might be silly…but the mission is real. This aircraft wasn’t meant for a near peer conflict.
[the world’s on to the Con. What is being stripped is ability to loiter and aerially bomb the poor civilians and “non-peer”. Bet you will now take the savaging to CONUS and EU civilians… retarded criminals. The “crops” to be sprayed ain’t on the World-Island!]
🔻 WS: There are #NoEasyWarsLeftToFight, my friend.

There will no longer be permissive environments in which this particular aircraft could conceivably operate.

It has negligible range and speed, and limited firepower.

I defy you to describe a credible battlefield scenario for it.
🔻 Brian Bauer: The last 20 years of fighting counterinsurgency is the battlefield scenario. These operations will continue in the Middle East, Africa, and the Philippians where SOCOM is extensively involved and will continue to be.

If anything, the rise of the peer war threat will reduce availability of more advanced platforms for these low intensity operations.

The real screw up here, which is worth highlighting as it has broader implications, was procurement time and cost. If we are going to win the next peer war, we need to be able to adapt much more quickly and cost effectively than we do today.
[what ignorant gobbledy-gook! A walkin talkin canon-fodder. Have away. The Stage always needs suicidal evil. But you sound like Macgregor or Scotty, justifying the unjustiable in comfortable “battlefied” retirement]
🔻 WS: We’ll just have to disagree on this point, because I see almost zero possibility the US will have the leisure to engage in counterinsurgency warfare in the foreseeable future.

It’s gonna be all big war going forward. That’s what happens during ends of empire. Enemies amass.
[and carrion birds feast. Then bones bleach on sands]
⭕ cont thread:
‼️ Here is a dose of cold, hard reality for anyone out there who genuinely believes American reindustrialization is achievable in anything less than at least one generation, and more likely two or three.
[repost Mike Rowe video above]
🔻 Lacking Courage: The factories will be mostly automated. Some specialised engineering jobs. USA could have done this so many other ways rebuilding its economy through infrastructure jobs (FDResque) & building all the renewables. Granted the battle for rare metals is on (Greenland, Canada etc)
🔻 WS: Right. And robot mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, too.

Meanwhile, Chinese shipbuilding is over 200x the US, and they can already crank out hundreds of missiles per DAY in mostly automated factories.

The US produces ~12 SM-3s and ~40 SM-6s per YEAR.
[A hard day’s coming… when the negotiations change tone and entirely reverse roles, as beginning to be experienced by EUroCrazies at Russkie hands…]
🔻 Heidi O’Brien 𓅅: @RnaudBertrand Given how automated manufacturing is becoming, what kind of jobs/training is the Chinese government steering its people towards? I think about this for my own kids. What kinds of work will still be available with all of the robots and AI?
🔻 WS: Electrician, plumber, heating/air conditioning … just off the top of my head.

Where I live, those are all very well-paying jobs, and in very high demand.
🔻 Brian: This situation is the inevitable result of our neoliberal economic system, in which corporations that only think about the next quarter’s stock price bribe politicians who only care about the next election.
[and perhaps those hellbent on ending no-longer useful western order for Pax Judaica shaped the neoliberal system, corporate culture, and political game? Careful sea mines left adrift soon after Operation Unthinkable was drawn up. And here we are. “… by consent or conquest” said the Bankster]
🔻 WS: Well-stated.
🔻 SilentObserver: Is your point that we shouldn’t start?
🔻 WS: No. My point is that people shouldn’t say stupid things.
[they shoulda listened to Poppy Bush and used the lampposts! The wrong fork taken in 1991..]
⭕🔻 Mike Fredenburg: Don’t Count our Next Gen Air Defense Fighters Eggs Until They Are Hatched

It has been widely reported that that F-47 prototypes have been flying since 2019, that is untrue. What has been flying are X-planes, technology demonstration aircraft. It will be many billions of dollars and a number of years before the F-47 prototype is actually flying.

For more on this see my SubStack at |link|
🔻 WS: #ArtistRenderingsGoToWar
[what’s with the silly rendering, or is it the smoke? Its wings look deformed, like thalidomide babies]
⭕🔻 Doug Ford Respecter 40K 🇨🇦🚀🇰🇵:
>he really is going senile lmfao |link|
[links:
🔻 C1: “As Americans watch their 401(k)s collapse, layoffs ripple across industries, and immigrants are reportedly being sent to foreign prisons where human rights abuses occur—Donald Trump unveils a GOLD CARD, proudly declaring:

“Yours for just $5 million!”

Tone-deaf doesn’t even begin to cover it.”]
🔻 Doug Ford Respecter 40K 🇨🇦🚀🇰🇵: meanwhile, as he’s crashing the US economy, his fucking bag holders are cheering that shit on by posting “MY COUNTRY IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ZONE!!!!!!!” on here.

you cant even make it up. sic semper burgerstanis
🔻 WS: All I know is that there a LOT of people whom I have long followed, and for whose intellect I have much respect … and yet they are, by all indications, thoroughly persuaded that this tariff gambit is going to magically — and rapidly — produce American reindustrialization.
🔻 SenshelMenshel Coastguard🔻: seems that a lot of avg folks & people in the admin think reindustrialising is a matter of calling the electric company to get the lights turned back on in some old factory, sweeping the floors, & getting a small business loan to get the mom & pop Nike factory back up and running
[they know it’s a scam. No matter. The optics keeps the deluded on board for the last bitter mile of the collective suicide, like sending F-16s to Bulgaria NOW. It was prophesied legion would ascend from the Pit and torment a quarter of mankind at the End.. guess they plague fellow travelers, proclaiming they bring “peace” even as they work to end us all]
🔻 Elydia35: been trying to explain this to friends and family all day long on facebook. A few are getting it, but a LOT are talking as if tariffs are a magic bullet, a panacea that will solve all our economic woes
🔻 Dark Roast: Same here. A lot of Americans can’t get over their America Fuck Yeah brainwashing no matter how supposedly intelligent they are. There’s also an unwillingness to admit their political opponents might be right.
[it must be conceded, Legion is pitch perfect in selling the Suicide. It was so sold, it hammered into the marrow, like covid or blue-red duality political games. They’ll be pining for the Return to Prosperity and On-Shoring, even as they hunt each other for protein meat in the dark abandoned mega-city hellholes of tomorrow]
⭕🔻 Armchair Warlord: ATACMS has been so effective that something like a third of the total number of missiles ever produced was fired into Russia to destroy, if I recall correctly, something like six helicopters, three SAM batteries, and a very threatening beach full of civilians.
[links:
🔻 Lord Bebo: “🇷🇺🇺🇦🇺🇸 General Cavoli says ATACMS are very effective against Russia.

Important factor here is that NYT published proof of Cavoli and co actually running the kill chain:

– US reconnaissance find a targets
– Cavoli and Miley pick targets in Wiesbaden
– US personnel prepares the targeting data
– US person uploads it to the missiles
– Ukranian HIMARS driver lets the system shoot.

-> The US runs this show, to the point it’s full involvement

PS: The Russian interceptions capability degraded the effectiveness drastically over time.” |link|]
🔻 WS: And, per the recent NYT exposé, Cavoli himself was directly involved in the procurement and kill chain of the 500+ ATACMS delivered to Ukraine — of which it is abundantly evident fewer than 10% struck a meaningful target.

Incidentally, “cavoli” is Italian for “cabbage head”. 😏
⭕‼️ “Liberation”

Contrary to what some may think, I do understand the argument that this tariff gambit aims to radically alter the global reserve status of the US dollar, and supercharge the US economy.

I simply don’t believe it will go as planned.

I highly recommend this:
[links:
🔻 Warwick Powell | 鲍韶山: Check out my new post!

There’s been a lot written about Trump’s so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’. I’m afraid I couldn’t help but contribute to this avalanche (apologies).

My latest: |link| ]
🔻 Negan: With the US federal debt, it’s worth a shot. This is a reasonable risk and doing nothing is guaranteed failure.

Only so much the executive branch can do by itself.

And please look at GDP to debt ratio, it’s more shocking than the 40 trillion number itself.
🔻 WS: Nominal GDP is a meaningless statistic. And US “GDP” is its most meaningless expression.

Most significantly, US liabilities FAR EXCEED the nominal “national debt”. Total obligations almost certainly exceed $150T.
🔻 Negan: What’s your solution to the debt crisis?

Does your solution involve Congress, because if it does you’ve already failed.
🔻 WS: There is only one “solution” to the debt crisis, just two different flavors. |link|
🔻 Truth Serum: The problem is it takes time to build up the infrastructure in the US to begin producing everything here, lack certain resources in large quantities, some countries will simply form other trade agreements and this will hit average citizens hardest and so on
🔻 Main Bad Guy: Maybe it won’t. At this stage it’s between the New Age experimental treatment in Mexico or a hospice. It’s in the bones.
🔻 Decelerationist1: That’s what I’m seeing, too. It makes far more sense for nations to bear the pain as much as possible and otherwise work to create new trade partners and even to ditch the dollar entirely
🔻 Favunc420: Agreed. This is likely to backfire spectacularly. But I will grant them one thing. This isn’t “stupid” in the way it’s being portrayed. The US painted themselves into a corner and there are no good moves left. This is just them stepping out into the wet paint with gusto.
[agreed. It is a willful move, like Samson pulling the pillars, and the roof, on himself to spite the sea of enemies. It is all Murder-Suicides going forward, whether nukes in Persia, Biowar against targeted genotypes, or this Economic war to shape Collapse to worst possible outcome against the main target]
⭕ cont. thread:
🔹 For anyone out there who believes the US can mount a ground invasion of Iran, I challenge you to describe an order of battle and a credible operational scenario.

🔹 For those who believe an air campaign alone will defeat Iran, describe for me a credible chain of events
🔻 Bob Reisner: Will, I’d like to take a crack at: ” For those who believe an air campaign alone will defeat Iran, describe for me a credible chain of events.”

1. Use standoff weapons: missiles and drones. Maybe guided dub munitions from bombers when anti air disappears.
2. Eliminate air defense (the remnants that Isreal hasn’t already done). Less than a week probably 3 days or so.
3. Take out coastal navy (we’ve done that before).
4. Take out Kharg and other oil export points, ditto refining, ditto oil storage. Boring, unsexy but important.
5. Take out rail and bridges over water.
6. Take out electric power generation.
7. Take out communications infrastructure fixed and cell concentration points, also links to international internet.
8. time for a pause and a request for surrender. Surrender allows exile for principals.
9. if no surrender then time to get serious. First good old paper drops to the general population telling them life gets better when the government ends.
10. Water and food in urban areas…wharehouses and central facilities.
=====
The big problem for Iran is that they cannot project power. And their military probably couldn’t move forward more than 200 miles because they don’t have a logistics tail even before bombing. Nothing close to Iran but Kuwait which will need some minor help. All Iran can do is sit and take it until they fall.

So bombing at USA liesure. Less than a year of heavy bombing crushed Japan. About 2 years for Germany. But the best old school example is Linebacker I and Linebacker II. Civil society in Iran will collapse. In urban areas, likely within 90 days. Maybe a half year for rural areas. The end game is local warlords will start to arise and will be helpful to the USA if the USA provides material assistance. Enough warlords and game over. We leave the place a mess that takes 20 years to recover, but they no longer have money or organization to project terror (think Afghanistan).

so why won’t this work?
[No comment. on his thumb, he looks like a boomer nazi. Likely retired stormtrooper or intel. Woefully behind the times. standard hopeless]
🔻 WS: I commend you for your thoughtful reply.

I have, over the past couple weeks, made four consecutive blog posts that address your arguments.

This is the most recent: 📜 Hold My Beer
⭕🔻 Alessandro Leonardi: If we want to find a minimum of logical sense in the duties of the administration Trump, more than to the markets, economic doctrines, we must look at the structures of international power, and the decline in american. You can think of that mega-duties are the birth of an elite |THREAD|
🔻 WS: Well said, brother.
⭕ Insightful thread.
links:
🔻 Labrador Skeptic: As the US pivots carriers, B-2s, & air defense systems to the Middle East, keep in mind that Trump & Hegeseth are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

1. The US has big problems on 3 fronts – Asia, Middle East & Europe – but it only has the military capability |THREAD|
⭕ Another insightful thread by the Labrador Skeptic:
links:
🔻 Labrador Skeptic: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. That is Arthur C. Clarke’s “Third Law” and based on the replies to the thread below, it definitely applies to 21st Century defense manufacturing.

Manufacturing technology is indeed magic for a large |THREAD|
🔻 Thingsneedtochange: When I was in aviation electronics “A” school in the Navy, someone asked how a transistor worked. We were told it was “F M – Fucking magic.”
⭕ 🔻 Andrius Kubilius:
No single Member State alone can stand up against Russia. But together we can.

The EU economy is many times larger than the Russian economy. Together we can outspend, outproduce and outmatch Russia.

But then we need to unite and show solidarity. |link|
🔻 WS: The Baltic chihuahuas are the toughest-talking blowhards on the planet.

They’ll get a Russian-made bark collar in due time.
⭕ ‼️ Pentagon Confessions:

Operation Whack-A-Mole in Yemen is a big fail.

Stockpiles of US missiles running out fast.

CSG-8 (USS Trembling Puppy) remains bottled-up in the northern Red Sea.

Ansarullah remains the gatekeeper of the Bab-el-Mandeb.

#TheBigAttrition continues.
links:
🔻 Ali Abunimah: Yemen is demilitarizing the United States |link|
🔻 DomoljubniNasveti: I wonder if this is for offensive munitions only, or do they include defensive missiles as well.
Because even if the CSG only launches one per incoming threat, that’s still about 2 million a pop, and it adds up quickly.
🔻 WS: It absolutely includes air defense missiles. It is precisely the threat from Yemeni missiles and drones that keeps the USS Trembling Puppy and its entourage cowering 1200+ km away, and precludes them running the gauntlet through the Bab-el-Mandeb in order to escape the Red Sea.
🔻 mayankites2: If you wanna believe their propaganda go ahead.
🔻 WS: Whose propaganda are you talking about?
[LOL. why i post these labor intensive threads]
🔻 Ernesto Iván Vázquez: So they’re going to run out of missiles, hope their customers want to sell the old ones
[nope. would be too embarassing to even ask as word would get out.. this is more visceral than asking for shells… the Pentagram has done its math, based on tempo and expected adequate bloodletting. They got until September to solve the dual riddles of Yemen and Iran. Apres August…]
🔻 mayankites2: That the U.S. stockpile is depleting according to the NYT
🔻 WS: The NYT is simply reporting something many have known was happening in crescendo over the past three years.

The US has no meaningful stockpiles of ANYTHING, and could not, for more than a couple weeks, prosecute a high-intensity war against any of their peer adversaries.
📜 The Arsenal of Democracy Isn’t
🔻 DennisVinyard 🇦🇱🇺🇸: I wouldn’t be surprised if China was helping the Houthis out in some way. To keep up the pace of depleting U.S. stocks.

So that when they move on Taiwan Washington won’t be able to keep up.
🔻 WS: I’ve seen zero evidence that China is “helping” them in any way. Nor do I believe it is necessary. The simple fact is that it’s nearly impossible to penetrate down into deep, well-constructed tunnels in the earth.
🔻 DennisVinyard 🇦🇱🇺🇸: Oh I’m just speculating. Perhaps aid in terms of intel not necessarily anything else.

And yes the Houthis have adopted the Iranian model of burying everything important deep underground.

China I believe is giddy about another quagmire America has found itself in.

Just like in the 2000’s where the U.S. was engaged foolishly for so long in Iraq and Afghanistan while China quietly built up to one day challenge Washington’s global hegemony.
⭕ 🤡🌎 Notwithstanding 18+ months of abject failure against Yemen, fools in Washington and chronically propagandized Americans continue to believe US air and naval power could easily roll Iran back to the stone age in a matter of days. 🤦‍♂️ |link|
🔻 Muustasch: It could, but we don’t have the political will to be that brutal.

It would take WWII style brutality. Surgical strikes wouldn’t cut it.

It would have to be a real war.
🔻 WS: In my view, this is total nonsense. The US quite simply lacks the material and logistical capability to fight a major war against Iran. And, of course, Russia and China are completely out of the question.

I describe the reality of the situation here:
[links Hold My Beer]
🔻 Muustasch: I believe your view is absurd, but that doesn’t really matter.

Let’s just hope we’re both wrong.
🔻 WS: Well … given that I know you didn’t even read the article I linked above, there is no debate to be had here.

If you decide to take the few minutes necessary to read it, I challenge you to find even ONE “absurd” statement in it.
🔻 Muustasch: Oh, I have no interest in debating you.

I do enough of that in the real world on a daily basis, and I get paid for that. It’s silly to do it for free on the internet.

At any rate, if we were willing to kill millions of Iranians in a short period of time, we would win the war quickly. We don’t have the political will to do that.

If we fought the war like we’ve done every other war since the end of WWII, we would end up in a quagmire and be bled dry.

You are correct, I didn’t read your article. I refuse to click on NYT links, since its a propaganda rag read by the most ignorant and uninformed people in the nation. I won’t participate in making that ridiculous organization money.

I assumed your original post, which I found absurd on its face, was a sufficient summary. If your article conflicts with your summary, you’re welcome to tell me about it.
🔻 WS: You are wise not to debate me. You are way out of your league.

And you have no understanding of war, nor of the current balance of powers in the world.
🔻 OLUMIDE: With the Tariff fiasco – I think war with Iran is off.
[on the contrary! It may have ensured it now. With scant time and lifeblood left, the desperate elites will throw the dice, all of them. Every day now, USUK weakens. And never has a nazi gone out gently into the good night]

hi emerson, this is a snippet of their earlier one. Nima’s taken to the same as Danny Haiphong and many regulars — either reposting selections from the longer interviews, or reposting even shorter ones like this one for added emphasis or if doesn’t have anything to post that day. Can be confusing. It was still fresh in my head. And you can tell by lack of intro. He loves Pepe and is respectful to all interviewees and greets them warmly at the beginning

this was filmed on Wednesday I think. There was a third Reaper drone downed subsequently. Unbelievable. This insane dedication to Zion, and therefor savaging Yemen, makes clear the priority of the Last Satanic Empire, all bloviations of Orange about “America First” notwithstanding. The Moshiach shall be birthed, no matter the cost. And the US Air Force drones expended to the last, as were US Army hardware junk in 404.

did you catch the many not-so subliminal messages? Much of the underground bases, missiles, military staff, etc – were IRANIAN. In a video ostensibly devoted to YEMEN. This is how professional AZE PsyWar, and the manufacture of consent, is done

💠 @Intel Slava Z:
⭕ 🇺🇸The United States should not stand on ceremony with its allies; it is even useful to bomb them with nuclear bombs, Fox News journalist Jesse Waters said on the channel.

“Friendliness toward other countries is what got us into so much trouble. We’re not schoolchildren, we don’t need friends. Every country has to put its interests first. And when our interests coincide, we can do business. And when they don’t, well, that’s life. If we have to burn a few bridges with Denmark to take over Greenland, so what? We’re the big guys. We dropped atomic bombs on Japan, and now we have no more loyal ally in the Pacific. We may have to burn our bridges to build a new bridge, a big, beautiful one, for the next generation of the United States. America is free from the shackles of history. Trump knows what we need to do,” Waters also said. |media|
[Now we’re talkin big nazi guys. Spread the Love. Beam the message to the Cosmos. Let’s hear the screaming of the tranny moth just before it enters the Flame]

💠 @Sputnik Africa:
⭕ ❗️Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure facilities are being carried out using Western weapons, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spox says

Maria Zakharova added that the Kiev regime, sensing the onset of its collapse, is trying to disrupt the dialogue between Moscow and Washington.
⭕ ❗️Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian militants attacked Russian energy infrastructure four times, Russian Defense Ministry reported

• Kursk Region: Rosseti, energy provider, branch hit: 1,200+ consumers without power;
• Belgorod Region: Rosseti branch attacked: 1,700+ consumers affected;
• Zaporozhye Region: Vasilyevka substation struck;
• Lugansk People’s Republic: Svatovo gas station hit: 11,000+ consumers lost gas supply.

👉 Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy facilities are an attempt to disrupt the dialogue between Moscow and Washington, Russian Foreign Ministry stated earlier.
⭕️ 🇮🇷⚛️ Iran to revise defense doctrine if threats against its nuclear program realized, IRGC says

“None of the stated goals of military aggression, including the destruction of the nuclear industry, will be realized,” Fars news agency quoted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Deputy Head for Political Affairs Gen. Yadollah Javani as saying.

The general warned that military aggression against Tehran would ‘take Iran’s nuclear industry to a new level,’ and while acknowledging potential damage from US or Israeli actions, stressed that Iran’s retaliation would be harsher than the blows received.

🇺🇸 The warning comes amid escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington after Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian rejected Donald Trump’s proposal for direct talks on a nuclear deal, preferring mediation. The US president then threatened severe military action against Iran if no deal is made.
⭕❗️Russian military liberated the village of Lobkovoe in Zaporozhye region, and Veseloe in the DPR, the Defense Ministry reported
⭕ ❗️ Lavrov called the formation of the Sahel alliance evidence of “Africa’s second awakening” |media|
[Keep scrolling down for excellent clips]
⭕ ❗️ Mali considers Ukraine a terrorist state because Sahel militants are supported by Kiev, Foreign Minister Diop says
⭕ ❗️ AES plans to open a joint bank, a unified radio network and a television network to counter information warfare, Diop said
[one of my favorite phrases from Patrushev: the imperative for all mankind to achieve “informational hygiene” from the toxic and unredeemable]
⭕ ❗️Russia views the creation of the AES as an endeavor to create a new security architecture in the region, Foreign Minister Lavrov says
[And the same is gonna be imposed on demented EUroCrazies in the damp over-perfumed northern armpit of Asia]
⭕ 🇺🇸🇮🇷 The US reportedly expects to be done with Iran by September if nuclear deal fails

Iran will be “gone by September” if it doesn’t begin dismantling its nuclear program, sources close to the US administration told a British media outlet.

“Should Iran or its proxies threaten US personnel and interests in the region, the United States will take decisive action to defend our people,” the Pentagon said on Tuesday, announcing the deployment of additional air assets in the US Central Command area, which includes the Middle East.
[these aren’t cheap words. As Europe used to sing, “We’re in the Final Countdown”. September follows the August birthday of Obama…. some provocation is gonna be arranged shortly, perhaps the assassination of a senior Iranian, which in return leads to the desired hit or FF on Orange]
⭕ 🇷🇺 Key statements from Russian FM Lavrov following a meeting with his AES counterparts:

• Russia views the creation of the AES as an endeavor to create a new security architecture in the region;
• Moscow will be ready to assist in the formation of the AES joint armed forces;
• Russia is ready to provide comprehensive assistance to the AES in defense, security and economy;
• A significant number of Russian instructors work in the countries of the AES;
• Kiev, with the connivance of the West, is trying to destabilize Africa by openly supporting terrorists in the Sahel;
• The Russia-AES foreign ministers’ meeting will be annual.

⭕ The Empire Strikes Itself:
Liberation Day or Desperation Day?

Trump just lit the fuse. “Liberation Day”, a universal tariff regime on all U.S. imports, isn’t much of a trade strategy. It’s a euphemism for controlled economic demolition. A last ditch rear guard action, made in panic by the Empire.

But it does have the unintended consequence of being a funeral pyre for neoliberalism, the final act of a rentier empire that offshored its manufacturing, hollowed out its working class, and sold its soul to Wall Street derivatives and Silicon Valley surveillance.

The U.S. can no longer outcompete. So it’s trying to out-tariff.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about protecting domestic industry. America’s industrial base was dismantled decades ago. There are no foundries, no machine-tool factories, no national industrial plan. This is like slapping a steel dome on a house that already burned down.

So why do it?

Because the elites are panicking.

Because the dollar is losing its supremacy, brick by BRICS.
Because real assets: energy, minerals, manufacturing—are migrating east. And because the Global South is no longer playing by the script.

Trump didn’t declare a trade war. He just declared war on globalization’s corpse. What Trump has done is expose the rot. Wall Street hates it. Silicon Valley hates it. Davos hates it.
And that’s the point or at least the unintended beauty of it. The chaotic circus ringmaster is bringing down the house, quite litterally.

The empire is no longer hiding its decline. So it may as well weaponizing it. From its point of view of course.

Universal tariffs won’t rebuild America, they’ll raise prices, slash margins, and speed up de-dollarization as the rest of the world builds supply chains that bypass U.S. control altogether.

And for all the panic on CNBC and in the Moody’s press releases, you know what? Good. Let them panic.

Let the algorithmic traders, overleveraged hedge funds, and globalist NGOs feel a fraction of the instability they exported to the Global South for 40 years.

Liberation Day isn’t really about America. It’s about the system revealing its terminal fragility.

Trump, whether by instinct or ignorance, just set fire to the neoliberal scaffolding. Now comes the smoke, the price shocks, the screams from Wall Street, and underneath it all, the slow, painful rebirth of sovereignty for the Global Majority, so long as the world has the courage to grab it.

Not neat. Not elegant. But necessary.

it’s an easy equation for me. You either build industrial capitalism or you decay into financial parasitism. And when the parasites start eating themselves, you know the system’s done.

So buckle up!

Liberation Day isn’t the beginning of greatness. It’s the beginning of the end of the empire’s economic illusion.

🔥 And we say, light the match.

– Gerry Nolan

🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
⭕ 📹 🇳🇴 Norwegians trained the Ukrainian militants at a base where US Marines were stationed, a prisoner of war told Sputnik
⭕ ❗️ Burkina Faso received a Russian invitation to take part in the events of Victory Day on May 9, a delegation can be expected, the foreign minister tells Sputnik
[Ibrahim Traore will look sharp for the occasion]
⭕ ❗️ Burkina Faso president accepted Putin’s invitation to come to Moscow for Victory Day celebrations, Lavrov says
⭕❗️❗️❗️ Burkina Faso will soon complete work on the documents for the building of a nuclear power plant; after their signing, the construction will move forward, the foreign minister tells Sputnik

💠 “US won’t leave NATO – Rubio“
☝️ The US is about to cut and run from the remains of NATO, long eviscerated and incinerated on the rich, fat, black soil of Holy NovoRossiya

💠@ejmalrai:
⭕ Israel killed 106 Palestinians today, including the bombing of a school where 30 children were killed & 100 wounded.

On the other hand, always on the same day today, the US carried out 36 air attacks on Yemen in support of Israel’s crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

💠@imetatronink:
⭕ cont thread:
🔸 I’ve watched gold very closely for over a decade now. I cannot recall a period when the dips were more relentlessly bought than they have been for many months now.

Even the not-so-smart money is now aggressively accumulating the ancient store of value.

#GoldKnowsThings
🔻 Tsurki: Maybe you don’t believe in this type of stuff but there is a very important Islamic prophecy about a mountain of gold appearing in modern day Iraq once water levels diminish in the Euphrates river. This will kick off one of the greatest wars of our time.

Scholars believe this gold may appear very soon as the Euphrates has dried to a very alarming level. I just find the timing interesting with how popular gold has become today.
[this is the literal interpretation also held by the salafis. Imran Hosein debunked this nonsense decades ago. An ocean of oil has functionally served as the mountain of gold (the PetroDollar) since 1973… this is the heart of the ongoing world war – the exorbitant privilege of the pirates to keep this free lunch in perpetuity. The Double Helix are stripping it from them, come what may]
🔻 WS: El Dorado Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar will eat the grass of the field until he worships the Lord of Sabaoth.
⭕ 🎸 Long Time Gone

It is said the darkest hour is always just before the dawn.

It’s an old myth descended from antiquity.

Truth is the darkest hour comes at the dusk of empires. |media|
🔻 Over the Limit: Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is another Train
⭕ Maybe you think it’s a waste
This preoccupation with facts
You’re on your way to finer things
And you won’t be coming back
Me, I guess I’ll just watch it rain
Until the ark breaks loose
I’ll close the door behind me
And sing end of the world blues |media|
[not a good sign when he starts seeking solace in Song]
⭕ cont thread:
‼️ This thread was brought to my attention again tonight. I think there are a few very important-to-understand concepts discussed in it vis-a-vis Iran and its strategic objectives.
🔻 Heidi O’Brien 𓅅: Given the Israelis skill at assassination, if I were the Ayatollah or other top IRGC, I would think about taking refuge in the Russian embassy for awhile.
🔻 WS: Not likely.

And besides, downstream consequences are hard to envision.

There’s a reason that “the blood of martyrs” has for millennia been likened unto a seed. |media|

⭕🔻 Lord Bebo: 🇺🇸🇱🇹 The US armored engineer vehicle that sunk in Lithuania, with 4 US soldiers drowning … went past a “no tanks” sign.
🔻 Yuliana Dlugaj 🇷🇺🇨🇳🇰🇵: Put up a picture of a tank with a line through it, and they still needed subtitles.

Guess someone dangled a Big Mac over the bog and Bubba went full commando into the swamp, like it was a drive-thru.

Proper numpties. 🤭😂
🔻 WS: Grok saw it happen. 😏 |media|
🔻 Yuliana Dlugaj 🇷🇺🇨🇳🇰🇵: Proper trap. 👌😂
⭕ Apropos of nothing, I grew up with descendants of the Utah Smoots. They were always well-monied. Good folks, as far as I ever knew. But always well-monied.
[links:
🔻 Geiger Capital: “The overall weighted-average tariff is 29%.

The highest in over 100 years.
Bigger than Smoot-Hawley.”]
🔻 EddieLarry: Did they ever explain how they were able to hang onto their money during the depression?
[Balzac: “behind every great fortune there is a crime”. There ARE exceptions. Perhaps not in the Garden of the West though…..]

⭕ 🤔 I’m not a credentialed economist, by any means. But, for whatever it’s worth, I am also debt-free, with a high savings rate.

Explain to me, as though I were a child, what America makes — or could make anytime soon — that Asia wants to buy.
[links:
🔻 Geiger Capital: “This guy cracked the tariff formula:
@orthonormalist

It’s simply the nation’s trade deficit with us divided by the nation’s exports to us.

Yes. Really.

Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1
Deficit = 123.5

123.5/136.6 = 90%”]
🔻 silverbladeTE: To put it very simply, America used to export a lot of good stuff like tools & vehicles
And crucially, it exported *THE US DOLLAR!*
As World Reserve Currency everyone needed Dollars
Now everyone will drop the $ like a used condom at an orgy which will cause hyperinflation! |media|
🔻 WS: Fortunately, I still own a lot of American-made power tools by brands that have long-since been off-shored.
🔻 silverbladeTE: My Dad was head machinist in local factory, he used to have these awesome old hardbound leather books for tools from 1930s to 60s, like something you’d see in a museum 🙂
American tools were premium back in the day
It’s impossible to reindustrialize: too few skilled folk left 🙁
🔻 Spaceman 🇺🇲: Garage sale hunting should be a national pastime.
🔻 四维: This👇 |beauty|
🔻 WS: I’ve been there many times. It won’t fit in a shipping container. 😏
🔻 Skylarker: That’s basically the same reason the pyramids of Giza aren’t in the British museum. 😉
[comment of the day! Those dreamer and aesthetics-besotted Greeks shoulda built their marble statues and temple blocks to the proper Pharaonic standard]
🔻 C5: Nothing, that’s the point. Why are we trading with countries that have contribute no reciprocal value to our economy we are better off making our own stuff and perhaps they are to..
🔻 WS: Make our own stuff?!

If the US starts tomorrow to earnestly seek to “make its own stuff”, my grandchildren might see it happen when they have grandchildren of their own. But not any sooner.
🔻 Gee-Dunk: Weak, little dick mindset right there. Just sit back fella and let the real Americans handle this.
🔻 WS: “The real Americans”

Right.
[links:
🔻 Holden Culotta: “Mike Rowe: “For every five tradespeople that retire this year, two replace them.”

“It’s been that way for 12 years.”

“I don’t need to be a mathematician, this is bad arithmetic.”

“7.2 million able-bodied men today, in their prime working years, are not only unemployed … they’re not even looking.”

“What are they doing?”

“2,000 hours a year, on average, on screens.”

“I got a call from a company called BlueForge Alliance … in charge of something called the maritime industrial base.”

“The maritime industrial base consists of 15,000 individual companies, all of whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear-powered submarines to the US Navy—three a year, two Virginia-class, one Columbia.”

“BlueForge Alliance calls me and they say, we need to hire some tradespeople, and we were wondering if you and your foundation could help.”

“I said, I’ll try, as you probably learned, it’s pretty skinny out there … how many do you need?”

“They said 100,000.”

“100,000 tradespeople for one industry that most people don’t even think about.”

“They said, we’ve looked everywhere … do you know where they are?”

“I said, yeah I do, they’re in the eighth grade.”

“That’s 100,000 building submarines. There’s 80,000 in the automotive industry alone for technicians. Right now … 80,000 openings.”

“You start to go down the list and you begin to realize our workforce is wildly out of balance.”” |words to wise|]
🔻 Bill Bottrell: True. It took us 45 years to dismantle the economic and spiritual boundaries of our nation. It will take decades to undo that.
🔻 EvaG: Won’t work. US manufacturers will jack up their prices to match the price of imports. American consumers won’t get any discounts buying American made stuff
🔻 Legiones Hadrianis: Not gonna happen. It would take a multi-generational cultural shift. Manufacturing base is more than just material and warm bodies. It’s skilled labor and work ethic, which we have little of.
🔻 The Nutter Projects: “If you want to trade your hard earned goods for some of our IOUs, you are going to have to pay for the privilege first.“

Tide-change incoming
🔻 Pleas Lucian: You’re trying to have rational, reality-based discourse with minds shaped by the myth of American exceptionalism. Failing infrastructure, a widening technical deficit, Chinese automation, potentially catastrophic economics… irrelevant next to good old fashioned gumption. |media|
🔻 Gee-Dunk: If you’re scared, say you’re scared
🔻 WS: Learn to weld.
🔻 Pleas Lucian: I realize this is the Internet and you don’t know me, but scared isn’t really my thing. I prefer prepared, which means dealing with reality. And the reality is that the present 🇺🇸 situation is fucked despite the predictable deluge of swashbuckling bravado.
[links his older:
“🇺🇸 is being effectively disemboweled as we speak. It’s an ossified husk with impotent institutions headed by banal, hedonistic, superficial, grifters. The bewildered masses will be the last to know.

Collapse is a process, not an event. Buckle up.

The political class is cannibalizing everything, including itself, in a textbook example of a system collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

The various stages appear to be occurring more or less simultaneously.”]
🔻 Pleas Lucian: Electricians are always relevant. My buddy Barry makes a fortune plumbing.
🔻 WS: People simply do not understand what has happened, let alone what can be done anytime soon to fix it. |media|
⭕‼️ Here is a dose of cold, hard reality for anyone out there who genuinely believes American reindustrialization is achievable in anything less than at least one generation, and more likely two or three.
[he reposts the same Mike Rowe clip just above]
🔻 C1: Lots of people would say your terms are acceptable.
🔻 WS: At the very least, they’re realistic.
🔻 C2: So let’s not do it. Never mind
🔻 WS: Just trying to temper expectations, friend. Pipe dreams are one thing. Reality is entirely another. A problem 2+ generations in the making cannot be fixed any faster than it took to cause it.
🔻 Decelerationist1: The bigger problem is CoL is through the roof and the insatiable greed of the owner class prevents them from taking less. If housing, food, energy, healthcare, and childcare all stay elevated but wages stagnate the working class is priced out of living. Too many rich parasites
[and perhaps that’s the point?? Depopulation is a cat being skinned many ways. Killary called us “deplorable.” Nuf said]
🔻 Karol_está_Castigada: It might take even a bit longer, since Trump and Elon Musk have just closed down the Education Department…
🔻 WS: To the contrary, that’s a major step in the right direction. |media|
[yes agreed. Dismantle all of it. Permit people to breath, innovate, and put the demented class down]
🔻 Carborundum Crew: Completely agree. We also need to stop the nonsense in education today that says every boy must do all academic subjects.

A large percentage would be happy doing a trade and should be encouraged to do so.
⭕🔻 Armchair Warlord: A short post about continuing dysfunction in the American military-industrial complex.

Recently the confusingly-designated OA-1K “Skyraider II” came to my attention, a military adaptation of a crop dusting workhorse that Air Tractor has been trying to sell for a decade now.⬇️

Some context – the Air Force has been kicking around the idea of buying some turboprop light attack aircraft for about twenty years now, has run multiple competitions (there’s only one serious contender in this market segment, the South American workhorse Super Tucano, but they legally can’t jut admit this and write Embraer a check), actually bought some aircraft for the Afghans… and has never quite managed to pull the trigger on adopting one themselves. The idea behind this is that such aircraft are cheap to operate and presumably adequate for undemanding counterinsurgency missions, and you can immediately see how this would run afoul of how the USAF runs its business.

Enter SOCOM, which has its own credit card and the authorization to operate its own fleet of fixed-wing aircraft quite separately from the “Big” Air Force. They went ahead and signed a contract with Air Tractor for 75 armed versions of their workhorse AT-802 crop duster aircraft, a fixed-wing aircraft with kinematics similar to those of a helicopter. Apparently these aircraft are intended to buzz around supporting the Green Berets with surveillance and light attack.

And this would be all well and good if we were having this discussion in 1975, because SOCOM is buying something similar to an OV-10 with a basically identical concept of operations. Problem is that things have moved along since then. There are other military operators of this aircraft – Egypt and Jordan, who likely purchased these things in a show of (relatively inexpensive) fealty to the United States rather than with a serious intention to use them in combat. The UAE appears to have purchased some a decade ago, used them lightly fighting the Houthis in Yemen, and then divested its fleet.

Militaries worldwide are not demanding this capability for a reason – it’s obsolete. If you run a third-world country dealing with insurgents and you want to kill them from the air, you buy drones from China or Turkey, not militarized crop dusters from the US. Also, AT drones are a thing now even in brushfire wars in Africa, and this aircraft is going to be tooling around low and slow through their engagement envelope. And of course it’s perfectly useless in any kind of high-intensity war.

However, there is a very clueless school of thought in otherwise well-informed Western military circles, based in rose-tinted institutional memory of Air America and Soldier of Fortune-era brushfire wars in Africa, holding that civilian light utility aircraft can be used to great effect in combat. Despite all evidence to the contrary and proven poor to mediocre performance even against the most unimpressive enemy forces, this idea has taken astonishingly deep root in some circles.

This thing is a waste of money. SOCOM needs to buy more Reapers if that’s the capability they want instead of investing in a flying meme.
🔻 WS: I did love to watch the crop duster pilots flying these over the cotton fields in Arizona – the way they would pull straight up right before getting to the power lines, and then gracefully slip back down in the opposite direction. It was beautiful.
[it is apparently true. A civilization built on totalen krieg and permanent Drangs against mankind has acquired much of its civilian tech through massacring tribals with flip flops on every continent. Most were unforeseen byproducts, cast down for their useless eaters]
⭕ retweet:
🔻 Arnaud Bertrand: This is a great example of main character syndrome.

It will actually have, at best, a marginal impact on China: exports to the U.S. represent less than 3% of its GDP.

It will however encourage the rest of the world to buy more from China in retaliation.
[links:
🔻 Tony Nash: 🇨🇳China can subsidize 10-20% tariffs for a few months. They CANNOT subsidize a 54% tariffs.

This will have COLOSSAL impacts on China.

They can’t fix domestic real estate, subsidize industries, build their military, fund the Belt & Road, etc, etc with this level of tariffs from their largest customer.]
🔻 Pacifique Tumu: @RnaudBertrand . China should experiment led consumption economy in top tier cities 1&2 by improving wages/salaries. No one should be working for less than $1500 in those cities . Other countries would want China to consume more than 🇺🇸 not just buying from China
🔻 Arnaud Bertrand: That’s literally objective #1 in China’s economic planning right now
🔻 Warwick Powell | 鲍韶山: And for China to buy more from the rest of the world.
🔻 Arnaud Bertrand: Yup!
🔻 Kevin Hutchinson: Most Americans don’t know about the huge transformation in the Chinese economy to be largely self sufficient, probably in anticipation of exactly this scenario. And China can dump US bonds at any time. Dangerous game to play.
🔻 Arnaud Bertrand: Exactly
🔻 Peace-Monger: This is an opportunity for Europe and China to improve trade relations. Both export to US. They can instead sell to each other. China should expand import of European pharmaceuticals and specialized machinery in exchange for dropping EV sanctions and telecom restrictions
[Alas, Babylon! The EuroCrazies are one with the Dark Force. As ideological. The dream icon of Nebuchadnezzar had the last iteration of the Babylonian System as ten little toes of mixed iron and clay, precisely to emphasize the diversity (but united in Foreign Policy) of Legion. They remain fundamentally in agreement with Anglo-Zionists in the Last Drang against All. And this appears the division of labor: USA to seduce Russia (against Iran/China) and the EuroCrazies to seduce China (against the other two)]
🔻 Arnaud Bertrand: Looks like they share your thinking
[links:
🔻 Stock Talk: *China President Xi will meet with European leaders including France president, Spain pm, and EU president in Vietnam in the coming weeks amid rising global trade tensions over U.S. tariffs — Europe seeking greater intimacy with China & southeast Asia to offset U.S. reliance”]
⭕🔻 Russians With Attitude: These people are paid gazillions of dollars and have more medals than a Soviet Politburo member in 1982 and yet their entire strategy in estimating Russia’s military abilities was to count what is in the army right now, calculate an (exaggerated) rate of attrition and make up a date for when it will all be gone.

They genuinely did not entertain the thought that Russia is able to… make new things, or repair and refurbish old ones
🔻 WS: It was all misplaced projection. #TheBigAttrition is not what the US/NATO inflicted upon Russia, but rather upon themselves.
⭕🔥 Medvedev dropping FAB-3000s squarely on target.
links:
🔻 Medvedev: “Trump has roughly bent the global trading system over the table by imposing duties on nearly the entire world. The consequences will be global. Counter-tariffs will be imposed on goods from the United States. Old supply chains will be broken, but new ones will form.
And what about us?

Russia barely does any business with America anyway, or with the EU, for that matter: nearly all trade has been sanctioned. But we are still developing, and at a decent pace: for the first quarter of 2025, growth stands at about 3%. So, no need for knee-jerk reactions. According to Lao Tzu’s immortal advice, we should take a seat on the shore and wait for the enemy’s corpse to float by. In this case, the decaying corpse of the EU economy.”

💠@Seyed Mohammad Marandi:
⭕ That is not enough. US bases serve many functions. In case of aggression, they would all be considered fully complicit.
[for example, they host radars which track & target Iran, other spying features, and electronic warfare.. etc etc. Consider them already goners, Gone like Rhett]
⭕ Then, French leaders should start purchasing mules and donkeys. In case of war, there won’t be any more oil or gas from the Arabian Peninsula or the Caucasus.
[in response of French FM bleating today about “military confrontation almost inevitable, if nuclear talks fail”]
⭕All those Western “journalists” who spread lies about “beheaded babies” and “mass rapes” did so to justify the #GazaHolocaust.

They are complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian children.

Hell awaits them. |media|
⭕ retweet:
“Trump claims “the Houthis” (Ansar Allah) are “hated by the Yemeni people.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, says @s_m_marandi:

They’ve gained “enormous soft power, not just in the region but even beyond” for intervening to stop Israel’s genocide by blockading the Red Sea” |media|
⭕ In other words, Trump is searching for an off-ramp.
[links:
🔻 The Spectator Index: “JUST IN: Axios reports that the White House is ‘seriously considering’ an Iranian proposal for indirect nuclear talks”]
⭕ One by one, pro-American Arab dictators are reaching out to Iranian leaders.

They know what will happen to these client regimes if Trump attacks Iran.

Simply hosting U.S. troops and bases makes them complicit—whether their airspace is used or not.

Iran will be unforgiving.
⭕ Iran’s former Parliament Speaker, who serves as the Leader’s advisor and special envoy, has warned that any US or Zionist attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would force Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

He said Iran does not want to do this but will be forced into such a position.

Dr. Larijani added that Iran’s nuclear capability cannot be “set back” by any aggression, as Iran has already taken measures to prevent this. |media|
[iow, the Murder-Suicide remains in effect. Keep that in mind. What Orange & Effluvia really decide is the timing of their own suicide, no more, no less]
🔻 Furkan Gözükara: Why Iran is not purchasing nukes already? That is the ultimate deterrent for war
🔻 MM: Rest assured—Iran has everything it needs. Trump knows exactly what will happen in case of aggression. There is no defense against Iran’s retaliation.
⭕ retweet:
🔻 World Food Programme: UPDATE:

• All 25 WFP-supported bakeries in #Gaza have shut down due to lack of fuel and flour.
• Hot meals are continuing, but supplies will last two weeks maximum.
• WFP will distribute its last food parcels in the next two days.

🔻 Aaron Maté: Israel is starving Gaza
⭕ retweet:
🔻Kevork Almassian: Julani’s terror army killed this man’s four nephews, slit open his son’s chest, and took out his heart.

The genocide continues in Syria |media|
[this is ostentatious barbarism, seeking to panic all arabs in Syria out of Syria. To create “a land without a people, for a people without a land.”]
⭕ retweet:
🔻Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil: 🏆 Jeffrey Sachs Should Be A Nobel Prize Winner

AWESOME

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: I’m speaking of Netanyahu.
He is a mass murderer.
He is a killer.
He commits war crimes.
And he has control over American foreign policy and over American domestic policy now. That’s the fact. The U.S. government is run by Israel, by the Israeli government. Why and how, it’s a little hard to say, but it is the unbelievable fact that this brazenness, this recklessness, this cruelty, this arrogance from this extremist Israeli government controls American policy vis-a-vis speech in the United States now. It’s shocking but true. |media|
⭕ retweet:
🔻Rebecca Chan: The collective West is a continuation of the European colonialists who were white supremacists and practiced white supremacy in their colonies. They never looked at non-Europeans as humans like themselves. This is why genocides come so easily to them |media|
⭕🔻asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل: This candidate won.
[same fat Floridian Randy Fine above, who made it into Congress, courtesy of Orange’s endorsement. Birds of a flock..]
🔻MM: The US is a very sick and sinister country.
[but the Republicans bring refreshing clarity, as during the Cheney regime. The world shall draw lessons, with ever accelerating alacrity]
⭕ retweet:
🔻AIPAC Tracker: AIPAC’s Randy Fine calls for 5 year prison sentences for distributing anti-Israel flyers, calling it a hate crime: |media|
🔻David J. Reilly 🇺🇸: Free speech in this country is dead, and the Zionists killed it.

God help us.

💠@ejmalrai:
⭕ Israel is bombing Damascus now, in particular the research centre at Barzah.
[about 9 hours ago. This appears the same MIC targetted repeatedly. To ensure Syria remains disarmed and primitive, reliant on external voentorgs..]
⭕ Israel has separated Gaza into 4 passages (corridors), cutting the Strip from the east to the west on the coast, so it can divide Gaza into sectors and attack each one independently. It has separated Rafah from Khan Younis where the occupation forces are conducting daily attacks.
[this appears tactics to speed up extermination of civilians above ground. The actual fighting units of Palestinians cannot be dislodged from underneath. And each control their territory in independent cells. So perhaps a mechanism to increase terror and desperation of civilians, who can no longer flee out of an area being bombed?? This decreases immunity strength, and resultant disease uptake and death. It is also like herding prey into ever tighter corners, increasing the killing efficiency]
⭕ After bombing Damascus, Israel also bombed Hama and the T4 airport, challenging Turkey, which was/is planning to establish a military air base at the same bombed airport.
⭕ The US is bombing Saada and Hodeida in Yemen. So far, the US, on behalf of Israel, has carried out over 200 air strikes on Yemen to facilitate the passage of Israeli goods, which Ansar Allah is preventing unless Israel respects international law and stops the war crimes and crimes against humanity it is committing by imposing a starvation and humanitarian siege on the Strip. The US has failed to deter Ansar Allah, although Washington claims to have “destroyed the Houthis”… far from it.
[the genocidal rampage by Zio-USUK is off the scale! The demented bloodlust. Just kill, kill, kill]

💠 @DDGeopolitics:
⭕ 🇺🇸⚔️🇾🇪US warplanes bomb the Ras Isa Terminal in Hodeidah Governorate, west of Yemen. Casualties reported.
[Ras Isa is the sea terminus of Yemen’s main oil pipeline, going from Marib to the coast just north of Hodaidah. Also where the commandeered zionazi “Galaxy Leader” cargo ship was taken, hosting tourists, weddings and whatnot, before Temple Mount Hegseth had it bombed.

btw, Ras Isa means “the Head of Jesus” in Arabic! One of first nations to readily accept both Christianity and Islam were Yemenis. The People of the Trench were Christians, Gaza’ed by a crazed Jewish king, subsequently avenged by Abyssinian Orthodox at behest of Constantinople. How History repeats. Some of most ancient christian and Jewish communities continue to this day in Yemen.. now the barbarians massacre the semitic kin of jesus in the holy land and his head in Yemen. what days]
⭕ Some people might wonder why isn’t Russia on the [new Tariffs] list. This could be because:

1. There’s a lack of significant trade turnover: The Trump administration has focused on countries with large trade surpluses with the United States. Russia is not one of them, since the volume of bilateral trade is insignificant.

2. Sanctions and existing restrictions: The United States has long imposed a large number of sanctions against Russia. Additional duties could duplicate or complicate existing measures.

💠 @Middle East Spectator:
⭕ Bro imposed tariffs on an iceberg
⭕️ — 🇺🇸 NEW: The S&P 500 index, a representation of the U.S. stock market and the top 500 companies, declined by almost 4% immediately after the implementation of Trump’s tariffs, marking a new 6-month low
⭕ — 🇺🇸 NEW: Trump has imposed 10% reciprocal tariffs on the ‘Heard and McDonald Islands’, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean with a population of 0, but a large penguin and endangered bird population

💠@BhadraPunchline:
⭕ What a bombshell from Shang Yang who is known to be a reliable interpreter of Chinese policies and perspectives, grounded on facts!
[links:
🔻 Zichen Wang: “This unusual (manufacturing partnership) initiative was proposed by Xi, and showed significant political will and policy commitment…In September 2019, I helped to coordinate the sixth India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.” |link|
🔻 Shang Yang: Has anyone studied the cause and timeline of the 2020 border conflict? My feeling is that the Indian military under the instigation of the Americans provoked the conflict to disrupt Modi’s neutralist China policy”]
[note the timeline. Around detonation of C-19 Op. This war bet/ China-India was supposed to be on by now. Then USA would enter around 2027 to mop up China. May explain viciousness of Indian tariffs at almost 30%.. the best laid plans of the Moshiach!]
🔻 Manish r Paudel: Yes and provoked Nepali ‘leaders’ to start a border conflict and a new Map issue to provoke India and blamed it on China.
🔻 MAC-1: doklam issue near tri junction of India,china and bhutan
⭕🔻 Zlatti71:
“I am particularly concerned about the behavior of the UN Secretary-General” — Lavrov

“Whoever he may be, and he is a Portuguese citizen, he has spent half his life working in international organizations and should understand what the UN Secretary-General is under Article 100 of the Charter. It states: not to take any instructions from any government, to maintain neutrality, and to pursue only one thing – the fulfillment of the UN Charter’s goals. Yet A. Guterres, speaking at a ceremony dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, did not once mention the Red Army, even though the day of remembrance for those victims was established based on the feat of the Red Army soldiers. This is a sad trend,” he emphasized. |link|
🔻 MKB: This is what happens when the UN Security Council endorses the choice by the US to put small men with no spine or imagination in big jobs that are way beyond their capabilities and mediocre minds to handle.
⭕ Putin is keen on establishing a good personal rapport with Trump and anchor a meaningful US-Russia partnership, realistic enough to accept that Trump is as good an American president as Russia would ever get, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar. |link|

2/4 I had anchored my article on certain unpublished remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin, based on Moscow grapevine, which, interestingly, the authoritative Russian journal has now printed confirming its veracity. The past 3 days have since witnessed tumultuous events.

3/4 Russia may be increasingly left with no option but to press ahead for a military victory and impose a settlement on own terms. The politico-military axis between Kiev and the Europeans (especially Britain’s MI6) and President Trump’s policy inertia to call out that axis

4/4 whose primary objective is, ironically, to undermine and derail his nascent normalisation process with Russia, is poised to take Ukraine endgame in an epochal direction in the coming weeks/months that would draw comparison with the Red Army’s historic drive to Berlin in WW2.
⭕ Yes, messaging a special relationship.
links:
🔻 Brian McDonald: So much for the “Trump will attend the Victory Day parade” rumors—Putin just confirmed that Xi Jinping will be the main guest in Moscow on May 9. Marking 80th anniversary of defeat of Nazi Germany in WW2.

Full state visit. Big signal. |link|
⭕ 1/6 IMPORTANT… Excerpts of Russian Foreign Ministry press release after meeting in Moscow on Wednesday between DFM Sergey Lavrov and Iranian counterpart Takht-Ravanchi:

2/6 “Detailed discussion took place on situation around Iranian nuclear program “with an emphasis on possible joint steps to stabilise & reduce tensions artificially and unreasonably fomented by Western countries… to manipulate the authority & verification capabilities of IAEA

3/6 “The sides stressed the illegality & inadmissibility of use of military force by Iran’s opponents … and unacceptability of outside threats to bomb Iran’s nuclear energy infrastructure,

4/6 “which will inevitably lead to large-scale & irreversible radiological and humanitarian consequences for the entire Middle East region and the world as a whole.

5/6 “The course set at the Russian-Chinese-Iranian high-level consultations in Beijing on March 14 was confirmed to seek viable, sustainable negotiated solutions that would eliminate Western prejudices and misunderstandings

6/6 “regarding the Iranian nuclear program, while taking due account of Tehran’s legitimate right to peaceful uses of atomic energy arising from Iran’s participation in the NPT.”
⭕1/3 Russian MFA press release following consultations in Moscow on Wednesday at DFM level conveys that Russia will not remain passive – notwithstanding ongoing US-Russia negotiations over Ukraine, et al — in the event of any (US-Israeli) attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

2/3 It recalls joint Russian-Chinese-Iranian stance on Iran Question, which underscores Tehran’s legitimate rights under NPT to have a nuclear programme and rejects any coercive moves by the West;

3/3 It stresses “close coordination” between Moscow & Tehran. Although there is no direct reference yet to recent Russian-Iranian security treaty, Tass had reported last week that Putin has sought Duma’s ratification for the document, which is mandatory for its legal validity.
[as noted by WS iirc, there are also Russian specialists and workers at Iran’s russian-built nuclear reactors.. Russkie would not be pleased to have Russkie civvies nuked or killed with deliberation by the mutual enemy.. and as even brushed off by Lavrov last week, it is silly to even expect compliance by Iran with Orange’s “letter” that they (1) stop ALL nuclear research, (2) disarm themselves of their ballistic missile program and (3) end support for Resistance fronts, which are all outside the remit of the nuclear file altogether. iow, Orange’s letter was an ultimatum and terms of surrender in the mold of Austria-Hungary to Serbia just prior to WW1]

🔴🇸🇾 " Les djihadistes de #Syrie 🇸🇾 ne sont pas de confession musulmane ☪️ ".

La Mère Agnès-Mariam de la Croix, supérieure du monastère Saint-Jacques le Mutilé en Syrie 🇸🇾 balance une bombe…

16 000 musulmans ☪️ et chrétiens ✝️ massacrés par les terroristes que Paris 🇫🇷… pic.twitter.com/SiPycm15Cg

— Boban Driçlek (@bobanDriclek) March 17, 2025

💠 @Fotros Resistance:
⭕ 🇮🇷🇳🇱| And the FM calls start again. This gives me Martyr Abdollahian vibes before [Operation] TP1…

Iranian FM told Dutch FM that Iran will swiftly & decisively respond to any aggression. He warned against US threats & criticized EU silence.
⭕ The US under any other administration would never dare to attack Iran in its current power state, but to be honest Trump looks like a crazy maniac that’s ready to gamble the entire world, so I really don’t know lol.

Like Haj Qassem Soleimani said, Trump is a “gambler”.
⭕ 🇮🇷|🇮🇷 IRGC General Javani

He said if threats against Iran are carried out, this act of aggression will push Iran’s nuclear industry into a new phase, and from that point on, a new definition must be considered for Iran and the Resistance Nexus in both regional and international dynamics.
[Good Lord. we complain of the slowness of the Russkie to saddle. What of the SW Asian Resistance? They wait until millions of their own are holocausted before taking the necessary forceful steps!]
⭕ Blatant violation of international laws. The use of starvation as a tool of warfare is a warcrime … but hey, we’re way past caring for intl’ laws.

There’s a warcrime being committed by Israel on a daily basis, this world functions on a “survival of the fittest” at this point.

💠@Middle East Spectator:
⭕ — 🇺🇸 NEW: Florida State Senator Randy Fine has won the House race against Democrat Josh Weil, after receiving full endorsement from Donald Trump

Fine is known for his strong defense of Israel and has previously referred to himself as the ‘Hebrew Hammer.’

He has repeatedly called for genocide, and infamously expressed joy at the sight of a dead Palestinian baby under the rubble on Twitter.
⭕ Israel continues to target temporary makeshift homes in southern Lebanon with drones, denying people the right to return after their houses were destroyed during the war

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Army, which continues to deploy in the south, was fired upon by the IDF just yesterday, forcing them to retreat at least once.
⭕ The IDF has expanded its ground operation into Rafah and advised remaining Gazans in the area to evacuate, Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
⭕ 🇨🇳❌🇹🇼 China’s Eastern Theatre Command conducted long-range live-fire drills near Taiwan in the East China Sea today, targeting simulated key ports and energy facilities.

➡️ The drills, which involved precision strikes, have reportedly achieved their desired effects.
⭕ The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new sanctions on four Russian individuals and three companies.
[I usually neglect mentioning these, but they’re a near-daily occurence now. Iran has also being sanctioned at least ten different times since Jan 20]
⭕ ❗️🇺🇸/🇮🇷 Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi: ‘We continue to warn against any attack on Iran and its sovereignity, and we affirm that our response will be swift and decisive’
⭕ Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, offered to visit Tehran or meet with Iranian government officials in a neutral country; Iran rejected the proposal, stating that Witkoff is an ‘irrelevant person’ and that Iran ‘is not interested’ in directly meeting with the Americans
⭕ ❗️🇮🇷/🇫🇷/🇺🇸 BREAKING: ‘War with Iran is almost inevitable, if there is no Nuclear Deal soon’ – France’s Foreign Minister, after a rare Defense Cabinet meeting on Iran in Paris
⭕ Israeli airstrikes reported in Damascus and the ‘T-4’ airbase in Homs.
[now the latter is interesting. Reportedly Turks descended like another plague of locusts onto the same T-4 AFB. Now being bombed by Zion?!! What days. Have away at it fellas of Legion]

💠@Eurasia & Multipolarity:
⭕ An investigation has been published in the Netherlands, where senior officers of the Security Service of Ukraine are involved in an international drug trafficking network, smuggling schemes and fraudulent call centers.

The article proves that the deputy head of the main Directorate for Combating Corruption of the SBU and the head of the department for combating drug trafficking have a stable connection with the head of Khimprom drug cartel, who is currently hiding in Mexico and is wanted.

Khimprom helps the AFU financially and also provides Ukrainian soldiers with narcotic drugs. In 2022, the former commander of the Ukrainian battalion “Archangels of Mikhail” accused representatives of Khimprom of supplying amphetamine to the front.

The production of narcotic drugs takes place on the territory of Donbass, which is still under the control of Ukraine. The heads of Khimprom have created a whole network of laboratories, whose products are sent to Russia and Europe, and the SBU provides cover.