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Black Magic

Best of the Web: 'Hiding something': Journalists from BBC, CNN, write open letter calling for access into Gaza, question motive for obstruction

Niña en medio de las ruinas causadas por los bombardeos israelíes en la Franja de Gaza.
Gaza
A group of more than 50 broadcast journalists have sent an open letter to the embassies of Israel and Egypt calling for "free and unfettered access" to Gaza for foreign media.

The letter, sent by correspondents and presenters from the main broadcasting outlets based in the UK, also appeals for better protection for journalists already reporting in the territory.

The broadcasters represented are Sky News, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Comment: For the legacy media to be speaking so frankly is quite a development.

Considering how the truth is now breathing down the necks of the establishment, it's probably no wonder that they're beating the drums of war ever louder, and that the probability of them provoking a significant escalation in at least one of their war fronts appears to be on the cards:


Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: EU panics over failing Project Ukraine: France creates coalition to arm crumbling military with long-range weapons

Macron and Zelensky
French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky
The aim is to enable Kiev to "carry out deep strikes" amid flagging US support, President Emmanuel Macron has said

France is leading a new coalition that aims to provide Ukraine with "medium and long-range missiles and bombs," President Emmanuel Macron has announced. He has also not ruled out deploying ground forces to support Kiev in future.

Macron made the remarks following a summit of Ukraine's backers on Monday, intended to demonstrate unwavering support for Kiev amid the suspension of American aid.

According to the French leader, the newly established coalition seeks to enable Ukraine to "carry out deep strikes." There is a "broad consensus to do even more and faster together" to support Kiev, Macron added.

Comment: Baby Jupiter is not finding much enthusiasm for his hair-brained scheme. NATO countries are not rallying to his call:
The UK, Poland, Czech Republic, Finland, and Sweden all spoke up on Tuesday against French President Emmanuel Macron's suggestion that Western troops could be deployed to Ukraine.

While there was no consensus about sending ground forces, Macron said on Monday following a pro-Ukraine summit in Paris that "in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything" in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

There are "no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine," the secretary-general of the US-led bloc, Jens Stoltenberg, told AP in response to Macron's remarks.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not rule out sending troops in principle, but his spokesperson told reporters that "beyond the small number of personnel in [the] country supporting the armed forces [of Ukraine], we do not have any plans to make a large-scale deployment."

Deploying troops is "not on the cards at all for the moment," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the public broadcaster SVT, adding that "for the moment, we're busy sending advanced equipment to Ukraine." Stockholm pledged military aid worth 7.1 billion kronor ($682 million) to Kiev last week. Kristersson also said there is currently "no demand" from Ukraine for Western ground troops.

There was a "widely shared" perception at the summit in Paris against the use of NATO ground troops, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told the outlet Yle. He added that this is also Finland's position.

Warsaw "does not plan to send its troops to the territory of Ukraine," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday. His Czech counterpart, Petr Fiala, echoed that sentiment, saying there is no "need to open some other methods or ways" of helping Kiev.

If all EU member states were as committed as the Czech Republic and Poland to helping Ukraine, there would be no need to even discuss other forms of support, Tusk claimed.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was even more categorical, declaring that there will be "no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries" in the future.

The US and its allies have sent over $200 billion worth of financial, military, and material aid to the Ukrainian government since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, vowing to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Moscow while insisting they are not actually a party to the hostilities. Russia's repeated warnings about the dangers of a direct confrontation have fallen on deaf ears.
The Kremlin says all but 'bring it":
A direct conflict between Russia and NATO will likely become inevitable if member states of the US-led military bloc send troops to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He was speaking after French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government hosted a high-profile meeting of Ukraine backers on Monday, said EU members "will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning" - including deploying forces on the ground to support Kiev.

Several governments have since ruled out sending troops to the front line.

Opponents of the proposal have arrived at a "sober assessment of the potential risks" of deploying NATO forces in Ukraine, Peskov told the media on Tuesday. That would be "absolutely against the interests of those nations" and their people, he warned.

Asked about the probability of a direct conflict with NATO if Western troops are sent to Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesman said, "in this case, we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability."

[...]

Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-orchestrated proxy war against Russia, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.



Popcorn

Best of the Web: 'Embarrassing': German Navy Frigate Hessen MISFIRES two missiles which mistakenly target US drone over Red Sea

german navy
An unexpected incident unfolds as the German frigate 'Hessen' mistakenly attacks a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, highlighting the complexities of international military operations and the critical need for clear communication and reliable technology.

On Monday, an unexpected incident unfolded over the Red Sea as the German frigate 'Hessen' mistakenly launched an attack on a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone. This event not only underscores the risks of military misfires but also casts a shadow over the diplomatic and military relations between Germany and the United States.


Comment: Germany is readily doing the US' bidding, for both keep the proxy war in Ukraine, and the Gaza genocide, and so it's unlikely this will cause too much of a disruption in their relations.


The missiles, which malfunctioned and plunged into the sea, brought to light the vulnerabilities in current military operations and the potential for unintended consequences.
Chronology of the Incident

Comment: Not only have the German Navy now inducted themselves into rapidly growing Western military hall of shame, but by participating in the Red Sea operation against Yemen, which is the West's facilitation of Israel's genocide in Gaza, their commercial shipping will no longer be allowed to pass through that route, significantly raising costs and delivery times for their citizens and their businesses: Meanwhile in Russia: Russian arms production has Europe's warmongers worried

The footage below shows a German misfire incident that occurred in 2018:
On 21 June 2018, Sachsen was operating with Lübeck near the Arctic Circle when it attempted to fire a SM-2 Block IIIA missile, and it exploded above the ship. The explosion scorched the paint off the bridge and the vertical launch cells battery. Two German sailors suffered minor injuries.





Cross

Best of the Web: Study finds that 45,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the Ukraine War

russian war dead ukraine
At least 45,123 Russian troops have been killed since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, according to research by journalists from Mediazona and the BBC's Russian Service who have established the deceased soldiers' identities.


Comment: Note that these two sources, along with the current article you are reading, are vehemently anti-Putin media outlets.


Two-thirds of all confirmed dead -- volunteers, conscripts, ex-inmates, and fighters from private military companies -- were not connected to the military before the start of the invasion, researchers found.

The number includes 5,406 mobilized soldiers, 80 percent of whom were killed in the second year of the war.

Krasnodar, Sverdlovsk, Bashkortostan, and Chelyabinsk are the regions with the highest number of dead.

Journalists have identified 27,906 Russian soldiers killed last year -- 57 percent more than the confirmed losses in the first year of the invasion.


Comment: Again, at that juncture, Western media was breathlessly reporting to its audiences that ten times that figure had been killed.


Comment: The media goes with the fact-free CIA version of reality, which, as you can see, is an order of magnitude off from reality. It's actually Ukraine's casualty toll that is in the hundreds of thousands:

Russian Defense Minister: 440,000 Ukrainian troops have been 'lost' since the launch of the SMO


Cross

Best of the Web: Russian Defense Minister: 440,000 Ukrainian troops have been 'lost' since the launch of the SMO

Russian defense minister announces the liberation of several residential settlements in Donbass, discloses Kiev attempts to prevent the collapse of the front
cemetery war dead ukraine
Slava Ukraini
The Ukrainian army has lost over 444,000 troops since the beginning of the special military operation and has been daily losing over 800 troops and 120 various armaments since the beginning of 2024, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told the Defense Ministry's board meeting.


Comment: 'Losing' troops presumably means both killed-in-action and wounded-in-action. For comparison, the Russian military death toll in the SMO is estimated at just under 45,000, according to a joint Russian (anti-Putin) media estimate.


He reported the liberation of several residential settlements in Donbass, disclosed Kiev attempts to prevent the collapse of the front, and announced plans to rearm the Eastern and Central Military Districts.

Military operation

Since the liberation of Avdeyevka, the Russian forces have been improving the situation in the Donetsk and Kupyansk directions and seizing new strongholds and positions of Ukrainian troops.

Since the beginning of the year, Russia has liberated close to 327 square kilometers in Donbass and Novorossiya (317 square km a week ago). "In the past week, the Ukrainian armed forces were ousted from the settlements of Pobeda, Lastochkino, Severnoye in the Donetsk People's Republic," Shoigu said.

Comment: That casualty toll for Ukrainian soldiers is probably ballpark-accurate. This is why European heads of head convened in Paris on Monday to discuss what to do next: they're at another cross-roads and are considering sending regular NATO forces to fight Russia in Ukraine because their proxy Ukrainian forces are spent.


Better Earth

Best of the Web: The new multipolar world system and the end of an era

putin xi biden multipolar world
The irreversible decline of Western supremacy, under the leadership of the United States, will not be a peaceful process, and it would be naive to think so.

Current diagnoses assert that the international system is going through a period of epoch-making changes. The tectonic plates on which the world geopolitical chessboard rests have shifted, unleashing profound modifications in the structure of the system and in the nature of its main players. This is true, but only if it is recognized that this journey has already reached a point of no return and that the trends that have been operating in recent years have matured to the point of producing an irreversible result: the configuration of a global geopolitical chessboard marked by the emergence of multiple actors endowed with different power capacities that put an end to five centuries of Western supremacy over all nations. Multipolarism has arrived and it is here to stay.

Comment: Indeed the hegemon will not go quietly; as Pepe Escobar said in his recent article:
The fact is we are already immersed in a World War that is both existential and civilizational. As we stand at the crossroads, there is a bifurcation: either escalation towards overt "kinetic military action," or a multiplication of Hybrid Wars across several latitudes.
See also:


Vader

Best of the Web: Bombshell NYT report confirms CIA built "12 secret spy bases" in Ukraine & waged a 'shadow war' on Russia for the last decade

Ukrainian commandoes afu cia soldiers winter gear
© Efrem Lukatsky / Associated PressUkrainians such as these civilians shown taking part in resistance training in early February, 2022 in Kyiv have been bracing for a Russian invasion for months. The CIA has been preparing for years.
On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington's most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.

Yellow Vest

Best of the Web: Farmers' rebellion: 160 tons of Ukrainian grain dumped out of trains at station in Poland

train poland grain ukraine
Police officers, customs officers, and railway workers stand next to piles of corn spilled from train cars in the Polish village of Kotomierz, near the Ukrainian border, on February 25.
Around 160 tons of Ukrainian grain was destroyed at a Polish railway station amid large-scale protests in what a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday was an act of "impunity and irresponsibility".

Polish farmers protesting this month against what they say is unfair competition from Ukraine and European Union environment regulations have blocked border crossings with Ukraine and motorways, and spilled Ukrainian produce from train wagons.


Comment: Ukrainian grain has been shown to be contaminated with mold, GMO and unacceptable levels of chemicals. Notably American megacorporations have been increasingly buying vast tracts of Ukraine's top agricultural land. But the main reason European farmers are furious is that Ukrainian grain, heavily discounted to pay for NATO's war, is flooding the EU market and hitting European farmers hard.


"These pictures show 160 tons of destroyed Ukrainian grain. The grain was in transit to the port of Gdansk and then to other countries," Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov posted on X with photographs of mounds of grain spilled from train wagons.

Comment: It remains to be seen just who was responsible, however it is clear that farmers across Europe are becoming increasingly incensed with the 'deceptive' concessions their governments are promising them, and are resorting to taking direct action against the inferior products being shipped in to undercut their own: France's farmers storm agricultural fair amid Macron visit, demand his resignation

Footage:




Eye 1

Best of the Web: How to Fight the Censorship Mindset

sky field sunshine
© L.P. Koch
There's currently lots of hoopla about some crybabies who want daddy to keep Substack clean and safe.

They talk about "Nazis" on the platform, conveniently forgetting to define what they even mean, which, of course, is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, I doubt those who scream "Nazi" the loudest have ever read a serious book about the Third Reich or about Mustache Man. Not that this matters.

But what drives these people? Beyond being crybullies, I mean? I think there is a deeper point to make here about discomfort and wishing death upon those with different opinions.

Light Saber

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the 'Rules-based Order'

The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the Rules Based Order
© The CradleThe Axis of Asymmetry takes on the Rules Based Order
World War III is here, playing out asymmetrically in military, financial, and institutional battlefields, and the fight is an existential one. The western Hegemon, in truth, is at war against international law, and only 'kinetic military action' can bring it to heel.

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah.

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downed a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships.

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.