Israel is seeking to repeat the attack on the northern part of the Palestinian enclave in the south, IDF chief of staff says

A ground operation in the southern part of Gaza has already begun and it will be "no less powerful" than the attack on the north, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on Sunday.

The general made the remarks as he met Israeli troops with the Gaza Division, claiming that "yesterday, today, we killed [Hamas] battalion commanders, company commanders and many operatives," confirming the operation against the southern part of the Palestinian enclave began on Saturday.

Israel's victory over Hamas will become a "strategic defeat" if the country doesn't prevent civilian casualties during its military operation in Gaza, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said.

Washington "will continue to press Israel to protect civilians and to ensure the robust flow of humanitarian aid" into Gaza, Austin vowed on Saturday, in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum at Simi Valley, California.

Implying that indiscriminate attacks on Gaza by Israel could prompt even more Palestinians to join the ranks of the Hamas armed group, the Pentagon chief said:

"The center of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat. It would compound this tragedy if all that awaited Israelis and Palestinians at the end of this awful war was more insecurity, more rage and more despair."

At least 193 people have been killed since the IDF renewed its offensive in Gaza after the breakdown of the truce on Friday, Gaza's health ministry said. The overall death toll from attacks on the Palestinian enclave since October 7, when Hamas launched its deadly incursion into Israel, stands at over 15,200, according to the ministry.

Jens Stoltenberg said the military bloc's defense industry has yet to reach the level of cooperation needed to satisfy Kiev...

The Ukrainian military has failed to achieve any breakthroughs on the battlefield over the past several months, but the West should stand by the country regardless, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has argued. The official also lamented the apparent failure of the military bloc's defense industry to provide Kiev with the munitions it requires.

Earlier this week Stoltenberg warned that Moscow had been amassing missiles ahead of the winter, noting that Russian weapons manufacturers were operating "on a war footing."

The Russian economy has successfully overcome the "addiction" to Western technologies and is developing a competitive domestic market, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

During a meeting with participants in the 3rd Congress of Young Scientists in Sochi, Putin commented on the 'Our Lab' exhibition of scientific equipment produced in Russia.

Putin told the scientists:

"Our so-called partners believed that they had hooked us on a technological needle and we would never get off. Thanks to the efforts of people like you and your colleagues, it turned out that this could be done - and quite quickly, too."

Russian researchers used to buy their equipment abroad, but have since turned to domestically produced alternatives, in part due to the embargo imposed by the US and its allies over the Ukraine conflict.

Kiev's refusal to negotiate with Moscow has only caused the country heavy battlefield casualties, Aleksey Arestovich says

Ukraine has lost up to 300,000 soldiers during its conflict with Russia, Aleksey Arestovich, a former aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, has claimed.

Arestovich made the revelation on Friday while speaking to journalist Yulia Latynina via video link. The former presidential aide was addressing the recent admission made by top Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia, who said the Istanbul talks between Moscow and Kiev were derailed by then-UK PM Boris Johnson, who urged Ukraine to "just continue fighting" instead of attempting to reach a deal with Russia.

"I was a member of the Istanbul negotiating team, but even I don't know how it happened that we decided to break off the Istanbul [talks]," Arestovich stated.

Included in the potential deal would also be Russia's agreement to Ukraine's accession to NATO provided that NATO troops are not stationed on its territory and only defensive weaponry is located there.

In his newly released article, renowned US journalist Seymour Hersh assured that peace negotiations between top Russian and Ukrainian generals Valery Gerasimov and Valerii Zaluzhnyi respectively are currently underway which include a potential security of Crimea and another four former regions of Ukraine as part of Russia.

Included in the potential deal would also be Russia's agreement to Ukraine's accession to NATO provided that NATO troops are not stationed on its territory and only defensive weaponry is located there.

In the wake of the most drastic sanctions ever placed on a nation, Russia's economy is a modern miracle. However, in the Western press, Vladimir Putin's administration is on borrowed time economically and in every other facet of progress. However, the reality is that Russia's economy is growing three times faster than that of the Eurozone.

Ursula von der Leyen and her colleagues in the EU shot off both feet when the bloc followed Washington's lead. This, and other boneheaded measures, reveal to all the world that European leadership are nothing more than modern satraps to the American empire. They may as well be viceroys or chieftains of the Achaemenid Empire, doing what they are told or else. But their loyalties and temperaments are not the story here; their malfeasance against the interests of their own people is.

According to some Western analysts, Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 1.5 percent in 2024. By comparison, expectations for the Eurozone economy's growth next year are a mere 0.5 percent. This is by analysis from Russia's enemy, if we can finally use this term. Like the previous year, these estimates do not match what's happening in Russia. Recently, Vladimir Putin said that Russia's economic growth was set to exceed 3% this year, slightly better than previous official forecasts. And there's no reason to underestimate the "miracle" Putin's administration has managed to pull out of the hat.

Looking at the EU's most powerful economy, this miraculous Russian trend seems almost unbelievable. With economic activity in Germany expected to decline by 0.3% in 2023 and Luxembourg's growth for 2023 coming in at half what it was in 2022, we see a grim picture for the people and businesses of the EU. To make this reality sting more for Ursula von der Leyen and her benefactors, most of the economic decline in the EU is because of the loss of Russia as a trade partner, investment source, and energy provider. Western experts predict that real GDP will grow by 2.4 percent (1.6% - according to OECD) in the United States in 2023 and then fall to 0.8 percent in 2024. For Americans, this means the people have not seen the worst of the disastrous Biden Administration's executive idiocy yet.

A number of serious commentators - one being U.S. Professor Victor Hanson - are warning: "Brace yourself for what's coming in 2024". Hansen sees bad omens darkening the future.

Is he exaggerating? Perhaps not.

One cannot but notice how bad tempered Americans and Europeans generally have become. Calm, reasoned discussion of issues is gone; Yelling, emotivism and 'othering' is commonplace; something bad is coming. A gut feeling, Tucker Carlson says. "There are "angry people who feel like they have no recourse, who don't think elections are real...".

What might these commentators be suggesting?

Well, they are explicit on one point: the West has been sinking beneath the waves of its' Cultural Revolution - the deliberate cancelling of virtues and legacies of traditional civilization, to be replaced by a cultural hierarchy that upends and inverts the societal paradigm that is close to conquering all.

The unanswered question: Why has western society been so supine, so unreflectively supportive to the sheering away of its civilisational ethos? This must be the first revolution in which half of society knows and sees well there is a revolution, and the other half seem too distracted, or simply have not noticed. There is no simple answer to this conundrum.

But most just don't see it; they cannot admit the Revolution's objective (though it is not hidden) is that these well-to-do members of middle classes are precisely the ones (and not the elites) that the cultural revolution seeks to displace, and to sanction (as redress for historic discrimination and racism). Not for who they are now, but for what their ancestors may have been.

The White House has issued a blunt warning that the US is set to run out of funds to aid Ukraine by the end of the year, saying that a failure by Congress to approve new support would "kneecap" Kyiv.

The alert from Shalanda Young, the White House budget director, in a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, represented the most specific assessment yet of Washington's waning financial and military support for Ukraine.

"Without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from US military stocks," Young wrote to political leaders of both parties.

China and Western-sanctioned Belarus have pledged to strengthen "strategic coordination", as their heads of state met in Beijing on Monday.

Referring to President Alexander Lukashenko as "an old friend", Chinese leader Xi Jinping said the two countries would improve relations in a range of areas, from industrial cooperation to cross-border transport.

China would also strengthen coordination with Belarus on multilateral mechanisms, including the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, of which Belarus is expected to become a permanent member next year.

"China is willing to continue strengthening strategic coordination with Belarus, support each other resolutely, promote pragmatic cooperation, and continue deepening our bilateral relations," state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.