The UK and its allies got tricked into backing a "corrupt mafia state" in Ukraine and getting into a war of attrition against a Moscow-Beijing partnership, Dominic Cummings has said in an interview.

The longtime Tory political strategist led the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit and was one of the key aides to then-PM Boris Johnson until resigning in November 2020.

"We should have never got into the whole stupid situation," Cummings told the outlet I News in an interview published on Wednesday, commenting on London's full-throated support for Kiev. He also described Ukraine as a "corrupt s**thole that doesn't matter at all."

Tuesday is the 32nd anniversary of Russia's modern Armed Forces. NATO may have planned otherwise, but the crisis has served to forge an effective, battle-tested fighting force - one uniquely prepared for the postindustrial warfare of the future, US and Russian military experts have told Sputnik.

May 7 marks Russian Armed Forces Day, with the holiday sandwiched in among a busy schedule of major events and holidays which Russians have been celebrating since last week, from May Day and Easter to the presidential inauguration and Victory Day.

A quote once attributed to 19th century Russian Czar Alexander III holds that "Russia has only two allies: its army and its fleet."

I remember a time not too long ago when you could sort of see what was happening in the world, even in your own backyard, with some degree of certainty.

If you looked hard enough, got past the politics, and the greedy capitalists, and the ideological socialists, you could make some sense of it. Even then it took some work. You had to read a lot and find journalists, historians, and authors you could somewhat trust.

Throw in a bit of common sense here and there, and you could pretty much lock on to a rather trustworthy sense of what was true and what probably was not. At least it seemed that way.

There were still always mysteries. People were saying one thing and doing another. But there were stakes in the ground — pillars of truth, certain things you could trust, still with a grain of salt, but for the most part trustworthy. Take the American press for example.

Yes, weird things are discovered here and there with the press during the best of times, but I remember trusting the press. Remember the great Washington Post revelations during the Watergate scandals in the 1970s? A great book and movie came out of it, All the President's Men. It was journalism at its best (was it?). The controlled manner in which it was presented to the public, to be assured of accuracy and relevance. I was very proud of that paper. But was even that the truth?

Yes, there were problems with journalistic suppressions, particularly during the Vietnam conflict. But truth always seemed to prevail. Was it all as it seemed? Unfortunately, I don't think so. Not even then. But it sure seemed like there were various bastions of truth you could depend on.

I remember even with the JFK assassination I thought the corruption revealed in that fiasco was limited. At the very beginning of my investigations into the event, I had no understanding that the entire government of the US was in on it. I thought the unscrupulousness was limited. I believed that with the Watergate scandal as well.

Even when 9-11 hit us, I didn't realize how deep the cancer penetrated our government (the US) and even the world. Little did I know back then what a mess everything was in. And to tell you the truth, I still don't know the extent of it. For a shrew with a pretty long nose, I am certain I don't know the half of it. It is pretty daunting.

When did all these lies and corruption start?

If you've ever taken a lifesaving course, you know there's a real possibility that a drowning person will drag you under and you'll both die. It's a lesson that should be kept in mind when discussing America's relationship with Israel. (Adapted from @LarryBoorstein)

On Monday, Israel intensified its airstrikes on Rafah, bombing more than 50 sites in the heart of the city. Video footage on Twitter showed plumes of smoke rising from the makeshift encampments and residential buildings where more than 1.4 million refugees are presently huddled in the most densely populated place on earth. Israel's air campaign was accompanied by a sizable ground-offensive that deployed tanks and armored vehicles to the southern border where Israeli troops quickly seized the Rafah Crossing without resistance.

The sudden uptick in violence has triggered widespread panic among the Palestinians many of who have already gathered their families and belongings onto carts and buses and fled northward to safety. The opening assault on the civilian enclave is reminiscent of earlier attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis both of which followed a similar pattern. The launching of random bombings is designed to amplify feelings of terror within the population while the humanitarian blockade tightens the stranglehold on critical food and medical supplies. The objective here is not to kill as many Palestinians as possible, but to force them into sprawling tent cities where they will languish amid the rubble until the international community finds a way to spirit them out of the country. For Israel, the endgame has always been ethnic cleansing, a comprehensive erasure of the native population. The ground invasion of Rafah represents the final phase of that maniacal strategy.

The U.S. is expected to announce a new $400 million package of military aid for Ukraine on Friday, U.S. officials said, as Kyiv struggles to hold off advances by Russian troops in the northeast Kharkiv region.

This is the third tranche of aid for Ukraine since Congress passed supplemental funding in late April after months of gridlock. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned Thursday that his country was facing "a really difficult situation" in the east, but said a new supply of U.S. weapons was coming and "we will be able to stop them."

According to officials, the package includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and rockets for them, as well as artillery, air defense and anti-tank munitions, armored vehicles and other weapons and equipment. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been announced. It will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which pulls systems and munitions from existing U.S. stockpiles so they can be sent quickly to the war front.

Almost immediately after President Joe Biden signed the $95 billion foreign aid package, the Pentagon announced it was sending $1 billion in weapons through that drawdown authority. And just days later the Biden administration announced a $6 billion package funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term contracts with the defense industry and means that the weapons could take many months or years to arrive.

"These agencies are not trusted because they are not trustworthy."
- El Gato Malo on "X"

The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent. The worst media meme — that a vicious officialdom is "defending our democracy" — gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. Everybody understands they want to "defend our democracy" by cancelling your freedom of speech, pounding you into bankruptcy, and stealing whatever remains of your stuff.

Likewise, everything else, namely: that our doings in Ukraine are a "fight for freedom," that "white supremacy" lurks just out of sight getting ready to pounce on the "marginalized" (who are actually running things, and doing it very badly), that "Joe Biden" turned around the economy, that "voting rights" equals non-citizens getting to vote, that election fraud is a "big lie" (and that the J-6 riot over it was an "insurrection"), and that the Covid vaccines were "safe and effective."

None of these dishonest persuasions work anymore, and all of the persuasion machinery stands in plain sight like so many nauseating carnival rides. One by one, the rides are flying apart, scattering debris and body parts of the poor slobs who were on the rides all over the fairgrounds. And so, the fear rises in the ones running the carnival. The county sheriff stands by looking to round up the sleazeball carnies with their missing teeth and needle tracks inside their elbows. Before long, they will find themselves in the courtroom. . . .

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably."

The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member — a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state — after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against — including the US and Israel — while 25 countries abstained.

It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join.

Vladimir Putin was sworn in for his fifth term as Russia's President. Mainstream Western Russian "experts" paint Putin as a corrupt autocrat governing over a failed system and nation. Their "reality" couldn't be further from the truth.

In her July 27, 2020, review of Catherine Belton's book, Putin's People, in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum concluded that following his re-election as Russia's President in the Spring of 2018, Vladimir Putin and his cronies had "once again created a calcified, authoritarian political system in Russia," including "a corrupt economy that discourages innovation and entrepreneurship." Years of Putin presidential leadership, Applebaum noted, had left Russia destitute. "Instead of experiencing the prosperity and political dynamism that still seemed possible in the '90s," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author declared, "Russia is once again impoverished and apathetic. But," she concluded, "Putin and his people are thriving — and that was the most important goal all along."

Applebaum is a much sought after speaker on post-Cold War Russia, where she specializes in picking apart Russia's Soviet past while lamenting the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, whom she characterizes as an autocrat, at the end of the decade of the 1990's. In Applebaum's defense, she is not alone in this regard. Indeed, she finds herself in the company of former ambassadors (Michael McFaul), national security experts (Fiona Hill and Angela Stent), and intelligence officers (Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Steve Hall, and John Sipher), all of whom have used their Russian-laden résumés to insinuate themselves into what passes for a national dialogue in the mainstream media over the true nature of Russia and its leadership, and what that means for the United States and its European allies.

Without exception, the cast of characters assembled above have echoed Applebaum's summation of Putin's legacy and future as Russia's leader. There is one important difference, however — while Applebaum has been an observer of Russian events, the others were all players in the game, active participants in the formulation and implementation of American policy regarding Russia in the period immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They helped propagate polices designed to exploit Russian political, economic, and security weaknesses to the sole benefit of the United States and, when Putin's unexpected assimilation to the Russian presidency threatened to undo all that they had accomplished during the decade of ruinous governance under Boris Yeltsin, these same actors actively worked to undermine Russia in hopes of bringing Putin down.

Israel's brutal military assault on Gaza, which has killed over 35,000 civilians, predominantly women and children, has been executed alongside the denial of humanitarian aid since the war's onset last October.

With cases of famine already in evidence, Tel Aviv's utter disregard of the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling demanding immediate access to aid, and Washington's veto of UN Security Council resolutions advocating for a Gaza ceasefire, both Israel and the US have come under significant global fire.

This backlash is notably strong on the campuses of major US universities, a growing student movement that has arguably breathed new life into the Palestinian solidarity movement. Concerns about the Gaza genocide's potential damage to the global image of the US have belatedly reached the White House, with US President Joe Biden only now threatening - in advance of the November elections - to curtail the transfer of large offensive munitions to Israel.

The five objectives that are enumerated in this piece encapsulate what Russia nowadays aims to achieve after over two years of intense proxy warfare with NATO.

Zelensky claimed on Friday that Russia's long-awaited offensive had finally begun following its fresh push into Kharkov Region from which it tactically pulled back in September 2022. This precedes him likely clinging to power on legally dubious pretexts once his term expires on 21 May and aligns with the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee's prediction of political-military troubles heading into his summer. Here are the five objectives that Russia arguably aims to achieve in view of the conflict's larger context:

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1. Create The Conditions For Russia To Control The Entirety Of Its New Regions