[IMDB] This is a 2020 Serbian made film depicting the July, 1995 massacre of 8,400 unarmed civilians in the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The film's main character is Aida Selmanagić, a local secondary school teacher, hired on with the United Nation's Dutch peacekeeper contingent as an interpreter.
The story while seemingly dry for American audiences, depicts in some detail how a Serbian Army unit, while violating its agreement to stay out of Srebrenica managed to massacre Bosnian Muslims. Aida spends her time attempting to save her husband and her two sons from the depredations of the Serbian military, there only to shed Serbian Moslem blood, and nothing else.
Also available on youtube.com is a presentation of the trial of Ratko Mladic and others for the massacre of 8,400 unarmed civilians at Srebrenica. Most telling was that the defense of for the massacre was the Bosnian Muslim's massacre of around 20+ Bosnian Serbs in 1993.
Maha Bakhit’s Testimony: How the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Killed Pregnant Women and Newborn Babies in Bara Hospital
This article is based on the testimony of Sudanese activist Maha Bakhit in the Shahadah Podcast, where she recounted one of the most horrifying crimes… pic.twitter.com/XrZVT57wig
Maha Bakhit’s Testimony: How the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Killed Pregnant Women and Newborn Babies in Bara Hospital
This article is based on the testimony of Sudanese activist Maha Bakhit in the Shahadah Podcast, where she recounted one of the most horrifying crimes committed by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Militia inside the city of Bara.
Maha Bakhit explained that when the fighters stormed Bara Hospital, they went straight to the obstetrics and gynecology ward, the section dedicated entirely to women. She noted that if they had been pursuing a military target or a combatant, they could have gone anywhere else in the hospital. Instead, they deliberately chose the place where pregnant women and new mothers were lying in their beds, in one of the most fragile moments of their lives.
Inside the obstetrics ward, the militia executed pregnant women. They also killed newborn infants, babies who had seen nothing of life yet. Maha asked with anguish: what crime could a newborn possibly commit to be killed in such a way?
She described these atrocities as tragedies that no human being could ever erase from memory. She stated that her responsibility now is to tell people what women in Bara and other cities are going through, so their suffering is not erased or buried beneath the noise of war and the world’s forgetfulness. Maha emphasized that this crime was not an isolated incident, but part of a repeated pattern of terror targeting women, children, and the most vulnerable with intentional brutality.
What makes these crimes even more horrific is that they are taking place while the world stands by and watches, doing nothing more than issuing timid statements that neither stop the bloodshed nor protect the living. This global indifference is not accidental. It is the result of bought consciences and buried principles, where the political influence and money of the UAE have muted many voices and neutralized many institutions, turning Sudanese blood into a price the world is willing to overlook, and a crime it is willing to ignore.
[CDRSalamandar] This seems rather funny at first read, but the numbers seem, well…interesting.
First, let’s establish our baseline.
According to the business analytics firm Poidata, there are just shy of 15,000 Indian restaurants in Britain compared with closer to 12,000 Chinese establishments.
15 to 12. Five Indian restaurants to four Chinese restaurants. (yes, I can do math) Brits sure do love their curry.
You would expect, with small deviations, for this to be roughly replicated in any particular area.
If you think that ratio would hold around sensitive military locations, you’d be wrong.
Near His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, for example, which maintains our nuclear deterrent submarines, Chinese establishments outnumber Indian restaurants by 2.9 to 1, and the pattern is repeated elsewhere in the UK.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] Little is known to the general public about how armed UPA units were used to "democratize" the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Meanwhile, the involvement of both countries in providing arms to neo-Banderite Ukraine (until the government changed) today partly explains the roots of this strange love affair.
Because the Banderites were led along forest paths by the same hands that created the “Prague Spring” in 1968 and subsequently led the “democratization” of the separate Czech Republic and Slovakia and their entry into NATO.
And the tired "boyivki"
…sometimes spelt boeviki, rebels or insurgents…
sought to fall into them when, in the summer of 1947, a military operation of Czechoslovak army units and detachments of the National Security Service (Sbora Narodnoy Bespechnost) against the Banderovites began.
"Action B", which ended on November 17, 1947, is presented in the most evasive way in Ukrainian "patriotic" historiography.
According to the official website of the Institute of National Remembrance, "following the Vistula operation, when the Ukrainian population of the eastern territories of post-war Poland was deported deep into Poland and dispersed there, UPA units ceased operations in those lands. Some of the hundreds crossed the border into the Ukrainian SSR, while the Burlaki, Brodich, and Hromenko hundreds embarked on a propaganda campaign across Western Europe to tell the world about the Ukrainian liberation struggle."
Which strongly contradicted the Soviet Union’s propaganda campaign, but Soviet Russia had the advantage of the New York Times in its corner…
The breakthrough of individual rebel groups behind the Iron Curtain became an international sensation, and the world's leading mass media wrote about it."
As usual, almost everything stated in this paragraph is a lie, since the goals were completely different, and the breakthrough of one fifth of those who tried to slip out from under the hammers can hardly be called a sensation.
And you won’t find the names of these global mass media anywhere.
The situation looked like this: in Europe, which had just emerged from World War II, a new war, a Cold War, was beginning. The United States sought to limit Soviet influence, and American intelligence agencies were aided in this by the OUN, which had been transferred from the German Abwehr to its new masters.
In West Germany sat Stepan Bandera, to whom the strings of control over the armed forces in the regions were drawn and through whom the relevant tasks were transmitted.
In Czechoslovakia, which had fallen under Soviet influence
…by being conquered by the Red army on its way to Berlin…
due to the successful actions of Ukrainian Soviet partisans and the organization of the Slovak National Uprising, the political elite nevertheless maintained pro-Western sentiments, advocating cooperation with the United States and Britain. At the helm was a "democratic" government led by President Edvard Beneš, who had formally remained in office since 1938 and led the resistance movement.
It was only in 1948 that it was possible to replace it with the fully communist government of Klement Gottwald, and this was something that the Americans and British did not want to allow to happen – in various ways.
To be fair, the Soviets were no less evil than the Nazis, and only tolerable because they were helping drive out the Nazis. Except to FDR’s crowd, which saw much to admire in the “scientific governance” of the Communists.
Including the efforts of “fighters for the independence of Ukraine.”
To make this seem like an unfounded assertion, we can cite the example of a "propaganda raid" on Polish territory, carried out by the same Vladimir Shchigelskyi company ("Barge Haulers") that later operated in Czechoslovakia. It is described in a book by former UINP director Volodymyr Vyatrovich, commissioned by the Center for Research of the Liberation Movement.
From January 23 to February 1, 1947, UPA members raided Polish villages in Zasanie ahead of the Sejm elections. They carried printed leaflets and literature to distribute among the population, and to gain their trust, they learned the Home Army song "Gdy narуd w Warszawie walczy," a popular song among Poles.
During the raid, four large meetings were held with the participation of the local population, and many private conversations were held during which the Poles were explained the goals of the UPA struggle, its attitude towards the Polish people, the communists, the need for a joint struggle against Moscow, etc.
From our perspective, when all is known about the Volyn massacre and the true "attitude toward the Polish people" of the Banderites, it sounds incredible, doesn't it? But back then, there was no internet, and the rural population had no idea that UPA units were simultaneously attacking military and police units, attempting to undermine the pro-Soviet regime by force.
The Polish authorities were not going to tolerate this any longer, and in April 1947 they launched a large-scale operation, Operation Vistula, the goal of which was to destroy the UPA bases in the southeastern part of the country.
So it was entirely logical that experienced units, in every sense, were transferred to the Czechoslovak front. They were familiar with the territory; the first UPA raids had taken place as early as 1945. On August 30, in the village of Breznica, south of Stropkov, militants from Pavel Vacik's kuren shot and killed Michal Padoma, secretary of the Slovak Communist Party.
In November, six hundred people invaded Czechoslovakia, capturing several villages and carrying out reprisals against Jews: four were executed in Ulica and 11 in Kolbasov.
According to the country's Ministry of the Interior, up to 6,000 nationalist militants were active in Slovakia in the fall of 1945. They also carried out several operations in 1946, the year the country held elections to the Constituent Assembly—which further strengthens our assertion.
Although the Communists retained power at the time, the Democrats gained significant support, particularly in Slovakia, where the Democratic Party received over 62% of the vote. Given this fact, Western intelligence agencies decided to continue their powerful propaganda campaign to discredit the Czechoslovak Communists and the Soviet Union.
In June 1947, three UPA companies began their "labor." The first was led by the aforementioned "Burlaki," a veteran of the "Ukrainian Legion" who had participated in the German invasion of Poland from Slovakia and later served in the German auxiliary police (97 fighters). The second was led by Mykhailo Duda "Gromenko," who had served in the "Roland" Battalion (more than 100 men). And the third was led by Duda's former subordinate, Roman Grobelsky "Borodych" (80 fighters).
According to Ukrainian data, there were only 300 Banderites in Czechoslovakia, although according to Czechoslovakian intelligence services, there could have been as many as half a thousand.
Banderites interacted with local residents (primarily the Boykos and Lemkos, ethnic Ukrainians), hosted get-togethers, exchanged food for medicine, and conducted anti-Soviet propaganda. Miroslav Duda, a commander of one of the Czechoslovak army units, recalled:
"The civilian population of eastern Slovakia, especially Ukrainians, support the gangs by providing them with food, information about the presence of security units and introducing them to local areas."
But when the Czechoslovak authorities took on the uninvited guests, a completely normal war began.
In the report of July 12, 1947, the special group "Teplice" described the actions of the "Barge Haulers" group as follows:
"About 100 men, the vast majority of Ukrainian nationality and a minority of German. Armament: mainly submachine guns, a few rifles and pistols; each platoon has one light machine gun, and the entire group has one anti-tank rifle.
Each fighter carries 100 rounds of ammunition for his personal weapon. The commanders are well shod and clothed, while the regular riflemen are already wearing very shabby uniforms of Polish, Russian, and German origin, their boots torn and almost completely bare. The fighters are suffering from malnutrition and are lice-ridden.
On June 30, in the Toplya River valley, Gromenko's company encountered Czech army units and a fierce battle ensued, with the rebels losing up to 20 fighters. On July 15, near the village of Verner, the company suffered further losses: six killed and four wounded.
The Banderites' situation became more complicated after they found themselves on Czech territory.
This is how the surviving fighter from the hundred, Yuri Borets, later explained it:
"When just a few days ago, on Slovak territory, Hromenko's hundred felt as if they were in Ukraine, easily receiving food from the well-disposed Slovaks, then on the Czech side they sensed obvious hostility".
"Gromenko," having been beaten, decided to advance exclusively through the wooded area along the Austrian-Czech border, knowing that Czech security forces would not engage in large-scale combat near Austria. On September 11, 36 militants, including Duda himself, who was being carried on a stretcher after being seriously wounded, surrendered to authorities in the American occupation zone.
According to Ukrainian historians, 36 Gromenkovites reached the Americans, 15 fled, seven died in battle, four were ordered to be shot by the commander himself, and the rest were captured (32 were handed over to the Poles).
The advance of the "Burlaki" company proved even more difficult. Avoiding combat with Czechoslovak security forces, the exhausted fighters, some of whom were wounded, made enormous detours, covering dozens of extra kilometers. These precautions were well worth taking, as Shchigelsky's fighters were more daring, engaging in mass robberies, and so the Czechoslovaks focused their main forces on capturing this company.
During the raid, the company fought more than 15 battles. The militants often employed the following tactic: one unit would engage the enemy, drawing them away, while the others would evade pursuit.
On August 5, Shchigelsky's company engaged in combat with officer cadets. The Banderites allowed them to approach and opened fire with several machine guns. According to historian Jan Fiala, six cadets were killed and four more were wounded. In mid-August, the "Burlaki" company entered the Vah River valley, which overflowed its banks and became a trap for the militants—the Czechs blocked all escape routes.
With 68 fighters in the ranks, Shchigelsky decided to split his hundred into seven groups, which were to reach Linz, Austria, separately.
Former Czech and Slovak partisans were recruited to eliminate the gangs. The local population was promised 10,000 crowns for each captured or killed fighter. As a result, 37-39 fighters managed to reach Bavaria, 11 were killed in action, and 53 (including "Burlak" himself) were captured.
Among the prisoners was one German, a medic named Helmut Kraus, who had taken part in the Greek campaign of 1941, fought at Stalingrad in 1942, and was captured by the Soviets in March 1944 near the Zbruch River.
In 1945, he escaped and joined the UPA*. The militants deceived the German, promising to help him return home, but then detained him because they needed a medic.
The least information is available about the progress of Brodich's company, which chose a completely different route than the other two companies because it had participated in the raids of 1945 and 1946 and was very knowledgeable about the terrain. Consequently, only three of his men were killed in action, and 30, including himself, were captured; the rest reached Germany.
After the end of Action B on November 17, small groups of Banderites, no longer connected with the specific raid in Czechoslovakia, also went there.
Since the total number of participants fluctuates greatly, Czech and Ukrainian historians' assessments of its "success" also differ. However, it can be generally concluded that they all estimate the number of those who broke through to be slightly more than a third of the original number.
The leaders of the 1947 raid were killed. "Burlak" and "Brodich" were executed by the Poles, who had been handed over the prisoners, while "Gromenko" was trained by the Americans for a parachute landing in the Ukrainian SSR and died on July 7, 1950, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Incidentally, the CIA's training of saboteurs from among the OUN members, the deployment of groups, and the supply of the Bandera underground with weapons, radio communications, and other useful items remains an even lesser-known chapter than the UPA raid in Czechoslovakia.
And the long-term work yielded results: one way or another, Czechoslovakia was torn away from the Warsaw Pact, and in 1991 it was Ukraine's turn, where trained personnel eventually took power, turning the country into a weapon against Russia.
[WarfareHistoryNetwork] The Brandenburgers, employing stealth and disguise, were Germany’s clandestine force during World Wat II.
It was in the early hours of the German invasion of Holland, May 10, 1940, and a Wehrmacht doctor was tending to a soldier wounded during the capture of the key Gennep border bridge. “There’s not much of your company left,” he remarked to his patient, assuming so because he did not see others about.
“Company? There were nine of us.”
“Impossible!”
Not to the soldier. “We are the Brandenburgers!” he declared.
He was not referring to being residents of the city 40 miles northeast of Berlin, but to members of Germany’s most secret special force of World War II. For other such units as the British Commandos and Special Air Service and the American OSS, stealth meant sneaking up usually in the dark. For the Brandenburgers it was usually walking up, in broad daylight, straight out in the open—but still being just as secret, and deadly.
The Brandenburgers were the brainchild of Theodor von Hippel, a captain in the Abwehr (military intelligence) concerned with covert combat operations and sabotage. From his own experience with guerrilla fighting in East Africa against the British in World War I and his study of the tactics of Lawrence of Arabia, Hippel conceived the idea of donning the uniforms of enemies and the clothing of civilians to approach positions and infiltrate them to seize and hold vital positions, commit sabotage, gather intelligence, and spread mayhem and confusion. Then he took the idea to his superior, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
Canaris rejected the idea as too wild, even for the weird world he operated in, so Hippel received permission from the General Staff to create his special unit in October 1939. After gaining approval, the first disguise was the unit’s actual name, that of a mundane construction unit. Its members soon nicknamed themselves for the city they were secretly based near, Brandenburg.
Brandenburgers were recruited on a strictly volunteer basis from the Volksdeutsch, ethnic Germans from outside the Reich. “There was not an area of Europe with which some group of Brandenburgers was not familiar, nor a language they could not speak,” author James Lucas wrote. Recruiting did not stop there but spanned the world from expatriates returning from abroad to those who spoke Arabic dialects, even Afghani and Tibetan. Although part of the Abwehr, the Brandenburgers were not professional spies and saboteurs, but still soldier specialists of the Wehrmacht, which decided their missions and ultimately their fate.
“Seeing without being seen” was the credo of the training, combining standard sabotage with “how to spit like a Russian,” member Helmut Shwinkler recalled. “The course had a very leveling effect on everyone in it.
“Independence and intelligence counted more than rank. It was typical of the place that the officers and soldiers shook hands rather than saluting each other. Unlike the rest of the army who were told to ‘leave the thinking to the horses because their heads are bigger,’ we were encouraged to think for ourselves and to develop intuition and resourcefulness.
[IsraelTimes] Military reports downing 130 smugglers’ drones, seizing 85 guns in the past month; officers say Shin Bet, police, and legislators need to help cut smuggling pipeline
The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in an arms race with gun-runners along the Egyptian border, and without the assistance of the police, the Shin Bet security agency, and politicians, it is unlikely to come out on top.
For decades, the IDF has contended with smuggling attempts from Egypt into Israel, along the 200-kilometer (125-mile) border between the countries.
It began with people crossing the border, mainly African migrants colonists, but also Islamist Death Eaters who operate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Israel in 2010 responded by constructing a large 241-kilometer (150-mile) barrier (longer than the actual border due to sections that wind through the mountainous terrain). When it was completed in 2013, the number of people crossing into Israel dropped drastically, along with attempts to smuggle contraband into the country.
With the fence in the way, drug smugglers instead resorted to tossing packages of heroin, marijuana, or other contraband over the border, where they were retrieved by Bedouin Israelis in trucks.
At times, these smuggling attempts turned violent mostly peaceful, with button men on the Egyptian side of the border opening fire to provide cover for the smugglers.
Initially, the IDF disengaged from violent mostly peaceful smuggling attempts.
But on June 3, 2023, an Egyptian border guard infiltrated into Israel via a shared opening in the fence and killed two IDF soldiers manning a guardpost. Another soldier was killed in a later exchange of fire with the gunman, who was also eliminated.
After the deadly incident, the IDF changed its open-fire regulations on the Egypt border, allowing troops to use deadly force against smugglers. And in turn, the number of smuggling attempts again dropped, according to military officials.
But since around May 2024, the IDF began to identify a new smuggling route — drones.
According to military officials, smugglers on the Israeli side of the border usually arrive at locations up to around nine kilometers (5.5 miles) from the fence, then fly drones over the border to Egypt and land them around two kilometers from the fence. There, smugglers on the Egyptian side load the drones with contraband, usually firearms, and the smugglers on the Israeli side pilot the drones back to them.
At first, the smugglers used small off-the-shelf drones that could carry payloads of a few kilograms. Lately, the IDF has foiled smuggling attempts with agricultural-grade drones, capable of carrying payloads of up to 100 kilograms.
The agricultural drones are also much pricier, with some of the larger models costing up to around NIS 150,000 ($45,000). But when it comes to smuggling millions of shekels worth of weapons or drugs, losing tens of thousands on a drone is thought to be negligible for the smugglers.
The IDF believes there are around 100-300 smugglers involved in such operations. In the past month alone, the military reported downing 130 drones, along with seizing 84 weapons — including two machine guns, 16 assault rifles, and 66 handguns.
To prevent drones from being flown over the border, troops are allowed to open fire on them in an attempt to knock them out of the sky. Additionally, the IDF has deployed electronic warfare capabilities that can jam or take control of the drones and bring them down.
On the other side of the border, there have been a handful of times where Egyptian forces have also managed to shoot down drones, according to military officials.
In recent weeks, the Israeli Air Force has also entered the picture, establishing a new air traffic control center under the aegis of the 80th "Edom" Regional Division — which is tasked with covering the entire Egyptian border and, provisionally, the southern portion of the Jordanian border.
According to military officials, the success rate of foiling the smuggling attempts using drones has gone up in recent weeks, and no drones are flying over any Israeli communities in the area.
A month ago, the IDF counted 153 drones crossing the border in a week. Recently, that number dropped to 46 in a week, most of which were downed, according to the IDF.
But the IDF does not know how many drones are crossing the border without being detected.
Some military officials claim that in recent months, the IDF has managed to take down at least 50% of the drones flying over the border. Before that, perhaps only 10%, they say.
This would mean that at least several thousand weapons have streamed into Israel from Egypt via drones in the past two years.
WHO’S RESPONSIBLE
Military officials stationed on the Egyptian border said they were doing as much as they could to foil the weapon-smuggling attempts, but that the story does not start at the fence, and that the IDF needs outside help to combat the drone smuggling attempts.
For starters, the weapons themselves.
At least some are thought to come from Iran, potentially. On the Jordanian border, the Shin Bet has foiled several attempts by Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... to smuggle advanced weapons into the West Bank.
Many of the weapons smuggled in from Egypt are believed to be used for criminal activity in Israel, where they cost tens of thousands of shekels on the black market. However,
a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... military officials are concerned that some of the more advanced weapons, like machine guns, could be used for terrorism.
Another issue is the drones. How many large agricultural drones costing as much as a car are being imported to Israel? Who is buying them?
These are questions that the IDF does not know how to answer, as it does not — at least legally — collect intelligence on Israeli civilians. Nor can the IDF change the licensing requirements for drones.
Instead, the police would need to track down the criminal gangs, thought to be mostly within the Bedouin community in southern Israel, and try to round up their weapons and drones.
Additionally, politicians would have to be responsible for changing licensing requirements and other legislation regarding the use, purchase, and possession of drones — especially the large agricultural ones.
Earlier this month, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he was "declaring war" on weapon smuggling via drones over the Egyptian border, instructing the military to declare a closed military zone in the area and the Shin Bet to define such attempts as terrorism. He also instructed the National Security Council to assist with the legislative amendments.
As of Monday, the IDF has yet to announce any new closed military zones along the border with Egypt.
A wider closed military zone on the border may enable the IDF to detain some smugglers and hand them over to the police, but army officials said it may not be enough, especially with newer drones having much longer ranges, which would allow suspects to pilot them from kilometers away.
Military officials said that no matter what solution they deploy to the border to stop the drones, the smugglers will always try to find a new way around it — just as they did in the past.
[PJM] Hamas doesn't want to play Pt. 2
Surprising almost nobody, Hamas today rejected essential points in Phase 2 of President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan with defiant conditions that the fractured terrorist group is in zero condition to enforce.
In a statement before today's UN vote on Trump's proposal, Hamas (translation courtesy of open-source intel guy "Raylan Givens") said it opposes "the disarmament of Gaza" and insisted that "any discussion about weapons will be within a Palestinian framework related to ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state."
Calling Trump's plan "dangerous," Hamas described it as "an attempt to impose international guardianship over the Strip" and claimed that "humanitarian aid could become a tool of blackmail that pushes out UNRWA and Palestinian institutions."
So, yeah, even with Phase 2 effectively Tango-Uniform, Trump's diplomacy was worth it. Phase 1 didn't do anything to help Hamas, but it did get nearly all of the hostages home, dead or alive.
“Any international force must be directly subordinate to the UN and work in coordination with the official Palestinian institutions, without the participation of the occupation,” Hamas said in reference to Israel in that last bit. Hamas wants the UN to run things because the UN is friendly to Hamas and hostile to Israel. UNRWA — the UN organization responsible for "relief" in Gaza — is essentially run by Hamas.
But guess what? Losing is supposed to suck — and it's exactly what ought to happen when you start a war with the murder of 1,100 or so civilians and kidnap 250 others.
None of this is to imply that Trump's plan was a total failure. Implementation of Phase 1 got all 20 living hostages back to Israel and the bodies of around 20 others murdered while held under Hamas' tender mercies. Only three bodies are believed left in Gaza.
You almost — almost — have to respect Hamas for the sheer audacity of today's announcement. The terrorist organization doesn't merely assert a legal sovereignty it never had, it also acts as though it hadn't been thoroughly beaten on the field of battle, or that the only reason there are still any of them left in Gaza is the same ceasefire they just rejected.
That's enough to make me wonder, if only for a moment, whether President Trump should have stayed hands-off until Israeli forces had completely occupied the Strip and eliminated Hamas. But then I think of those hostages, finally home after two hellish years. Trump's ceasefire also gave Israel much-needed diplomatic breathing space, particularly from our so-called allies in London, Paris, and Ottawa, hell-bent on legitimizing Hamas. Now, when the ceasefire fails, the onus is on Hamas for choosing war over peace.
So, yeah, even with Phase 2 effectively Tango-Uniform, Trump's diplomacy was worth it. Phase 1 didn't do anything to help Hamas, but it did get nearly all of the hostages home, dead or alive.
What happens next? Well, if Hamas doesn't want a ceasefire, there's no reason for Israel to keep the IDF on its side of the ceasefire line for one second longer than it takes to lock and load, if that's what the government decides is right.
As Richard DeCamp wryly noted on X this morning, "So what I'm taking away from that is Hamas wants Israel to finish the job."
[IsraelTimes] Hamas issues a statement rejecting the UN Security Council’s approval of the American draft resolution on the future of the Gaza Strip.
The statement says the resolution does not meet the demands and rights of the Palestinian people, and that it “imposes on the Gaza Strip an international guardianship mechanism and a mechanism intended to achieve the goals of the occupation.”
It further states that granting powers to an international force — including the dismantling of “resistance” weapons — strips such a force of its neutrality.
“Any force must be present only along the borders and be fully subject to the United Nations,” the statement reads.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2025 00:00 ||
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[1798 views]
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#2
^ Russia and China abstained. Other 13 votes were in favor
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/18/2025 17:41 Comments ||
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#3
Their goals are being achieved, unfortunately.
Look at the UN, look at the EU, look at NYC, look at the DNC, etc.
Even if most-all Hamas is driven out of gaza in the near- or distant-future, they will carry on from bases in Belgium, in Dearborn, in Toronto, in Spain and Norway, in Australia, at Oxford University and Harvard, and countless public school systems funded by wealthy allies who reside in luxurious safety in, eg, Qatar.
They are not losing this war. They're taking casualties, and giving up some territory. But at present they're not losing this war -- unfortunately.
[HotAir (paywalled)] This message has been brought to you by the demolition company FA & FO, Inc.
Iran spent decades attempting to build nuclear weapons, which it planned to use for both regime survival and the elimination of Israel. Over that period of time, multiple American administrations attempted to stop Iran's enrichment of uranium and development of WMDs, to little effect. Barack Obama and John Kerry claimed that their Iran Deal had solved the problem, when its only practical effect was to pour money into Iran's use of proxy armies for terrorism.
That, however, led Iran to attack Israel directly in Hamas' October 7 war. That decision had epic FAFO consequences, as Israel quickly eradicated Iran's air defenses and depantsed the IRGC. Donald Trump then decided to end the nuclear threat from Iran in one fell swoop, dropping bunker busters on Iran's nuclear-development facilities in Fordow, Isfhahan, and Natanz. Since that time, Iran has declared its right to continue to enrich uranium, and the IAEA could not verufy whether Iran has continued to do so.
The Iranians finally made that clear yesterday. Trump destroyed their enrichment operations, and his threat to strike any new effort has prevented them from picking up the pieces, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi admitted:
Answering a question from an Associated Press journalist visiting Iran, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi offered the most direct response yet from the Iranian government regarding its nuclear program following Israel and the United States’ bombing of its enrichment sites in June during a 12-day war.
"There is no undeclared nuclear enrichment in Iran. All of our facilities are under the safeguards and monitoring" of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Araghchi said. "There is no enrichment right now because our facilities — our enrichment facilities — have been attacked."
Why haven't they attempted to restart enrichment? One reason, clearly, is that Iran's facilities for enrichment are no unusable, and likely so are the cascades on which they spent billions of dollars. Much if not all of their stockpiles are either buried or otherwise difficult to retrieve. However, the main disincentives are Donald Trump, B-2 bombers, and GBU-57s:
Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, also attended the summit and told the gathering that Tehran had been threatened over potentially accessing the bombed enrichment sites. Satellite pictures analyzed by the AP since the attack show that Iran has not done any major work at the sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.
"Our security situation hasn’t yet changed. If you watch the news, you see that every day we are being threatened with another attack," Eslami said. "Every day we are told if you touch anything, you’ll be attacked."
It turns out that the mullahs finally, if belatedly, have learned to take Trump both seriously and literally. After the destruction of their facilities, Trump publicly warned the Iranians days later that any attempt to restart nuclear enrichment would result in even more destruction:
President Trump responds to Iran’s FM at NATO:
"The last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now, they want to recover."
As long as Trump remains in the White House, and as long as B-2s carry bunker busters, the Iranians now realize that the US has had enough of diplomacy in dealing with a military threat. They pushed it as long as they could, but their decision to directly enter the war Hamas started was catastrophically stupid for their own security. Like most if not all totalitarian regimes, they value fealty over reality and competence, and their military demonstrates the inevitable outcome.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2025 10:04 ||
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[1761 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#3
Should have attacked and regime changed Iran during GWB. Pay me now or pay me later.
The moment Iran gets a nuclear weapon it gets loaded into a shipping container and smuggled into Tel Aviv, triggering the Samson Option.
The world as we know it will end, all because the CIA couldn't overthrow a single government in the middle east.
#4
the water emergency may result in a regime change, or, if not, a significantly weaker regime
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/18/2025 14:05 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Should have attacked and regime changed Iran during GWB.
Agreed. But the CIA issued a thingy that said that Iran had given up pursuing nuclear weapons, and then the Democrat-Media complex started shrieking in the charming way that they do — and the Republicans folded despite knowing better.
In the meantime Israel destroyed Syria’s nuclear bomb program, getting a bunch of North Korean and Iranian experts as well. And a bunch of bad things happened to Iran’s nuclear scientists and the centrifuges refining Iran’s uranium gas…So something good came of it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
