by Germán Gorraiz Lopez- Analyst

After the asymmetric punishment inflicted by Israel in Gaza, all basic infrastructure, Schools, mosques, hospitals and 90 per cent of buildings were reportedly destroyed by systematic aerial bombardments resulting in over 40,000 Palestinian civilian casualties and several thousand more buried among the rubble.
The real objective of the Gaza military campaign would be to provoke a second nakba in which 1,5 million Palestinians will be forced to leave a Gaza that has become a pile of rubble and human remains, making it impossible for displaced people to return and for Palestinians to be confined in an open-air concentration camp located in Rafah, Situation described by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk as “apocalyptic while warning ” of the growing risk of genocide”.
Such a forced confinement of the Gaza population would be a pressure measure to open its border and Palestinians to settle in the Sinai Peninsula, after which Israel will proceed with the unilateral declaration of sovereignty over Gaza and its maritime areas.
Israel, new gas node?
Under the Oslo peace agreements, Palestinian territorial waters would be extended to 20 nautical miles in the Mediterranean and following the agreement signed in 1999 between the Palestinian National Authority and British Gas Group, prospecting determined that the gas reserves in the area would amount to / 1.4 trillion cubic meters, of which 60% would be Palestinian and the rest Israeli.
This amount would allow for years to meet the electricity needs of the Gaza Strip, and also export abroad but its exploitation required the tripartite agreement between Israel, Hamas and the PNA but after the invasion of Gaza by Israel, Netanyahu would have decided to take control of the sea routes and exploration of the gas reserves that would be integrated into Israel’s offshore facilities.
The stated objective would be to make Israel a key node for the supply of fossil fuel through pipelines connected to the European continent from the Tamar and Leviathan deposits, of what would be a paradigm the fact that bypassing international law and even before starting the invasion of Gaza Farm, Netanyahu granted 12 licenses six companies to explore and discover additional offshore natural gas fields.
The next Anglo-Jewish objective would be to proceed with the construction of the Ben Gurion Canal, a project named after the founder of the Israeli regime, David Ben Gurion, which was conceived in the late 1960s with a view to creating an alternative route to the Suez Canal, the main maritime route linking Europe and Asia, which would thus come under Jewish-American control.
Subsequently, in the second phase of ethnic cleansing undertaken by Israel, we will see the expulsion of the Arab population from East Jerusalem and the unstoppable expansion of Israeli settler settlements in the West Bank, Ramallah remains as a Palestinian islet in an ocean of Israeli colonies where he will languish until his death an Abbas become mere servant of Israel.
The two-state theory will therefore remain an impossible utopia to germinate given the intransigence of Israel and the United States in negotiating a lasting peace that implies the mutual recognition of the States of Israel and Palestine.

by Iliya Tsukanov via Sputnik

Russia has vowed a military response to US’ plans to deploy strategic, ground-based missiles in Germany by 2026. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector-turned international affairs observer who literally wrote the book on arms control in Europe in the 1980s, tells Sputnik why the prospective deployment is so dangerous.

The White House announced plans to deploy three types of strategic missiles in Germany last week, with the new capabilities set to include:

Ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which became available to the Pentagon after the US unilaterally scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia in 2019. The Raytheon-manufactured missiles have a range anywhere from 460-2,500 km, and can be armed with conventional or low-to-intermediate yield nuclear warheads.

The SM-6 – a long-range surface-to-air-missile system which can be launched from the US Army’s new Typhon Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile system, or the Aegis Ashore air and missile defense systems the US has deployed in Romania and Poland. Manufactured by Raytheon. Firing range of 240-460 km.

Unnamed ‘hypersonic’ capabilities widely speculated to be the Army’s Dark Eagle Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) – the only one of the half-a-dozen plus US hypersonics programs anywhere near operational status. Developed by Lockheed Martin. Reported range up to 3,000 km. Payload unknown.

“It’s the Dark Eagle that is perhaps the most destabilizing,” former weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “While it is not a nuclear-capable missile, it is a system that has the ability to strike deep inside Russia with precision hypersonic warheads that are virtually impossible to intercept,” Ritter explained.

With such a system, the observer noted, Pentagon planners and hawks in Washington may be tempted to launch aggression against Russian military and leadership targets. This would be in line with the DoD’s long-running Conventional Prompt Strike (formally Prompt Global Strike) initiative – a program which has been in the works since the 2000s.

“This is an extraordinarily destabilizing development, and Russia has said it will respond,” Ritter said, noting that while “the specifics of a Russian response aren’t known,” it’s possible that it may include resuming development of the RS-26 Rubezh – a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) or maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) payload.

Artist’s impression of RS-26 Rubezh’s possible configuration on the base of the RS-24 Yars ICBM mobile ground-based launched strategic missile system.
© Photo : MilitaryRussia.ru

“It’s believed that Russia could bring this system back into operation and deploy it in short order. The RS-26 is a road-mobile system that has the ability of carrying three Avangard hypersonic [glide vehicle] warheads that are nuclear-capable,” Ritter said.

The former weapons inspector, who wrote a book on his experiences working with the On-Site Inspection Agency in the late 1980s to verify the USSR’s compliance with the then-recently ratified INF Treaty – which was designed to dramatically reduce nuclear tensions in Europe by eliminating all US and Soviet ground-launched missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, told Sputnik that Washington’s plans to deploy missiles in Germany again are eerily familiar to him.

“We’ve gone back in time. It’s back to the 1980s, back to a situation where the United States and NATO and Russia once again face off with weapons that are inherently destabilizing. One mistake, one miscalculation, one misjudgment could lead to a situation where these missiles are fired in anger, and this would lead to the potential of a general nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia,” Ritter warned.

“The American and German decision to deploy the intermediate-range capable systems into Europe is one of the most dangerous decisions that have been made by the US and NATO in a season of dangerous decisions. It’s an irresponsible escalation that, unless it’s reversed, can only lead to very tragic conclusions. It’s déjà vu all over again. We got rid of these weapons once. We made the world safer. The question is, can we do it again? And I would say with the current American and European leadership, the current American and German leadership, I’m not holding out much hope,” the observer summed up.

We talked to people who were personally at the Republican Party convention. Everyone says that it was a very unusual congress. Trump was declared not a presidential candidate. Trump was hailed as The Leader. Moreover, he was proclaimed the messenger of the Lord God to save America. This is not an exaggeration. Republicans are very religious people and they now perceive Trump as a messenger of God. And that’s exactly what they say from the podium.
Speeches at the convention of politicians were not a discussion of policy, but a personal oath to Chief Trump. And unlike 2020, absolutely everyone took the oath in 2024.

If Deep State and Biden, again, like in 2020, rig the elections, the Republics will not reconcile as in 2020, they will start a general uprising. This is the atmosphere at the congress.

There were also almost no people of color at the Republican National Convention. There were almost no African Americans, Latinos, or Asians. All are white. White real America sees the threat of America’s degradation and rejects the extremes of liberalism and all inclusiveness.

Serghey Markov

A perfect picture for the MAGA crowd – Donald Trump has just been elevated to ‘hero’ status. The iconic Iwo Jima photo is now appropriated and  impersonated by Trump, the charlatan.  The new parody.

My first reaction was that it was staged. Five bullets from a sharp shooter 150 meters away and only one of the bullets pierced Trump’s year!? He ducked under the lectern, spent a bit of time there with the special service people and appeared with this “blood” on his face, which was no longer actually pouring. He is now declared a “hero”.

That was my first reaction. – How could this be staged? These people can stage 9/11, anything…

There are widespread concerns and questions about how a sniper was able to obtain rooftop access roughly 150 yards from the former president’s position at the podium at an outdoor rally.

Notably, the shooter’s location was outside the security perimeter, raising questions about both the size of the perimeter and efforts to sweep and secure the American Glass Research building, and how the shooter was able to obtain rooftop access.

Further reading:

Local cop climbed ladder and encountered would-be Trump assassin on roof moments before he opened fire – but climbed back down and shooting proceeded | 14 July 2024 | A local cop spotted attempted-assassin Thomas Crooks just moments before he tried to kill former president Donald Trump — but failed to stop the gunman despite the clear threat, according to a report. After rally-goers spotted Crooks on the roof of a manufacturing plant just 130 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, police were notified and one officer climbed a ladder to investigate, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. The officer — whose department had been enlisted by the Secret Service to help with security — encountered Crooks, who pointed his AR-style rifle at them. The officer then backed down the ladder, and Crooks immediately took aim and loosed about eight shots at the former president — grazing him in the ear, killing one bystander in the rally crowd, and gravely wounding two others, the source said. After that volley of shots, Secret Service snipers shot Crooks dead.

by Germán Gorraiz López- Political analyst

The former Argentine President, Lionel Fernandez in his visit to Putin offered him the possibility of being “the gateway to Latin America” and in his meeting with Xi Jinping, confirmed Argentina’s adherence to the Belt and Silk Road Project, which could mean a staggering $24 billion in investments for Argentina and the end of its pivot in the orbit of the United States.

This set off alarms in the Biden administration who expressed concern over the growing presence of China and Russia in the country and in particular the possibility of China installing a joint military base with Argentina in Ushuaia in exchange for financial support Chinese to install a gigantic logistic Pole in the province of Tierra del Fuego.

After being elected President, Milei announced a “new foreign policy doctrine of Argentina based on a special relationship with the United States” after meeting with the head of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson to discuss the installation of a joint US-Argentina base in Ushuaia that will control the traffic of mega containers through the Drake pass.

This, coupled with the future installation of a pseudoscientific base of Britain in the South Shetland Islands, will ensure maritime control of the Anglo-American axis of a route that will be the alternative to the Panama Canal.However, the Falklands could be the black swan of Milei, after his optimistic claims in which he did not rule out “reaching a long-term agreement with Great Britain similar to that of Hong-Kong involving the Malvinas return to the country”, the appearance of immense oil reserves in Sea Lion would be a missile on the geopolitical waterline of Milei.

Thus, according to the English newspaper The Telegraph “the British local authorities of the Malvinas Islands intend to organize a popular consultation to extract 500 million barrels of oil in a well located 240 kilometers north of Port Argentino, in Sea Lion.The drilling and exploitation tasks would be carried out by the Israeli company Navitas Petroleum who plans to extract 300 million barrels in the next 30 years, which would ward off the possibility of a British-Argentine co-rule over the disputed islands.

Milei is aware that if he positions himself far from the space acceptable to Argentine society and his decisions do not manage to move the window to his point of interest, the frame could end up breaking. At this point, it would not be ruled out that Milei assumed the flag of the historic claim of the Argentinian Islands and thus reinstate the previous frame of the window agreed by the vast majority of the Argentine population, decision that however could trigger a new war with Britain in the horizon of the next quinquennium.

Let’s start with the domestic and political situation. France in the late-18th century was bitterly inegalitarian. Economic inequality coexisted with social inequality — the old feudal caste system was starting to chafe against the realities of the early modern economy — and the political system itself had basically stopped functioning. Everyone knew reform was badly needed, but passing actual legislation was impossible. Special interests had the ability to veto every change, no matter how necessary, and as 1789 approached, total political gridlock became the order of the day. The French Revolution happened not because it was inevitable, but because the political system proved completely incapable of curing its deficiencies.

Does this seem a bit familiar? It should, because that is precisely the situation in the United States right now. An unequal political system has essentially seized up and stopped functioning, and is now stumbling towards election between the most unpopular president in modern history and the next-most unpopular president in modern history. One of those men is clearly fading rapidly, prone to slurring his speech or forgetting where he is; the other just became the first president to be convicted of a felony. Just as in France in the 1780s, violence, protests and disenchantment seem the likeliest conclusion.

But how is the economy doing? France in 1789 was famously bankrupt; in fact, the bankruptcy of the French Crown was the proximate cause of the entire revolution. It borrowed heavily to fund foreign wars and domestic spending, and before long, it had to keep borrowing even more money to pay off the interest on its old debt, only to borrow even more to pay for those loans, and so on. Finally, France could borrow no more, and the crisis began in earnest.

And yet, when it comes to fiscal impropriety, 18th-century France simply can’t compete with modern America. The US is by far the most indebted nation in the world today in absolute terms, gorging as it does on some $1 trillion in additional debt every three months. And unlike in revolutionary France, when public pensions and social welfare simply didn’t exist, America has a supplementary “shadow debt” of around $175 trillion, representing its commitments for future welfare.

On top of this already miserable situation, the US has to contend with another problem not faced by early modern France: deindustrialisation. On the eve of revolution, France was remarkably self-sufficient, which is why it could so easily go from a political and economic basket-case in 1789 to dominating most of Europe in 1812. By contrast, America in 2024 is not self-sufficient; the old industries that allowed it to dominate following the Second World War have now been sold off for scrap, and the US today is dependent on exporting dollars and importing physical goods in return. If demand for dollars drops, those physical goods cannot be quickly replaced. A much more painful period of economic readjustment will have to be undertaken in the US, while France in 1789 essentially only had to rationalise the resources it already possessed to become powerful again.

So, the social and political situation in contemporary America is at least comparable to that in France in 1789, while the economic situation is actually a fair bit worse.

via UnHerd

As Putin’s adviser on economics, Andrey Belousov proposed increasing the role of the state in the economy. He was a monetarist in his youth and became a Keynesian. And he suggested that the state should subjugate big business.

In the West, the main explanation for the appointment of Belousov as Minister of Defense is that Putin is preparing for a long war, and for this Belousov will rebuild the entire Russian economy in a military format. Everyone in the media asks about this. Will there be a long war?

Russia does not want a long war. But to avoid a long war, you need to be very well prepared for a long war. Otherwise, the West will never stop the war against Russia.
Therefore, Belousov’s task is to create a modern Russian army with which the West would not want to fight, but to make peace.

Belousov is a “military Keynesian,” his informal ideological name. Military Keynesians say that during a war you need to throw a lot of money into the military-industrial complex and this will be very beneficial for economic growth. And after the war, carry out the conversion of technologies from the military-industrial complex to civilian industries and thus again give impetus to economic growth and a technological breakthrough. Sounds very reasonable.

Here is one theory:

Terrorist attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline. An “investigation” is underway. What is the picture now?
1. Chief coordinator of the terrorist attack, Deputy US Ambassador to Ukraine Christopher Smith. After the terrorist attack, he was promoted to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
2. A group of former Ukrainian intelligence officers was created for the terrorist attack itself. 3. The group was directly led by Roman Chervinsky.
4. General management – former head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Vasily Burba.
5. Kirill Budanov, the current head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, actively participated. 6. The group was trained in the Zhytomyr region, in a deep-sea quarry.
7. At the second stage, the group worked at a military base in Romania in the city of Mangalia. 8. Equipment and technical guidance were provided by US intelligence officers. 9. The yacht Andromeda was rented from Poland for the terrorist attack.
10. The mines were directly installed by Oleg Varrava, from the main police department of Kyiv, Ruslan Rudenko, former deputy mayor of the city of Bila Tserkva, and a still unknown diver with the call sign “Marisha”. All mercenaries.
11. A terrorist attack scheme was chosen with the help of mercenaries and retired officers in order to simulate a terrorist attack not as a state attack, but as an “activist” one.
12. Thus, the organizers of the terrorist attack are the intelligence services of the United States and Ukraine, with the complicity of the intelligence services of Poland and Romania.
13. The top leadership of the USA, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark can be considered accomplices in the terrorist attack. They all know who carried out the terrorist attack, but they are trying to hide the criminals from their citizens.

Amsterdam, 2024: Police Officers Assault Their Own Citizens in the Name of Israel. Medieval.

If this had happened in Iran, Russia or China, these scenes would have made international news and Western governments would have risen up in protest and anger.

‘Rules-based’ western democracy in action.

by Germán Gorraiz López, Political analyst

The father of the Argentine Constitution, Juan Bautista Alberdi, in his book “The Crime of War” written in 1872 states that “wars will be rarer as responsibility for their effects is felt by all those who promote and incite them”. This anticipated by almost a century the end of the nuclear escalation that had its turning point in the Cuban Missile Crisis and culminated with Kennedy and Khrushchev signing the Nuclear Test Suspension Agreement (1962) and the implementation of the Doctrine of Peaceful Coexistence.
However, with the Ukrainian conflict we have witnessed the return of the Cold War between Russia and the US (Cold War 2.0), the withdrawal of the US from the INF Treaty and the consequent revival of the nuclear race.

NATO and the Doctrine of Containment
Joe Biden’s harsh statements about Russia (“Putin is a war criminal”) and the implementation of sanctions to achieve the economic suffocation and financial starvation of Russia as part of the Ukraine conflict have ushered in Cold War 2.0 and the return of the geopolitical thesis of George Kennan, known as the Doctrine of Containment. The foundations of this doctrine were laid by George F. Kennan in his essay “Sources of Soviet Behavior”, published in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. The main ideas are summarized in the quote, “Soviet power is impervious to the logic of reason but very sensitive to the logic of force”.

Furthermore, following the increase in NATO military forces with new battalions deployed on the European border with Russia, we are witnessing the violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act by which NATO ruled out “the permanent stationing of a substantial and additional contingent of combat troops in Eastern Europe” as well as the recent entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO military structures and the fifth phase of deployment of missile shield in Europe (Euro DAM).

Will Kaliningrad be the epicenter of the new Missile Crisis?

Due to its geographical position, the province of Kaliningrad is an ideal platform for means of electronic espionage and missile batteries aimed at controlling and neutralizing possible hostile actions by the US, which makes it the likely target of a preemptive first strike.

Thus, the former NATO commander-in-chief in Europe, James Stavridis, in an article published in Bloomberg, describes Kaliningrad as “a geographical corner between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the rest of NATO”, rendering necessary “the neutralization of Kaliningrad in the event that the conflict with Russia breaks out so that the Suwalki corridor, which runs along the border between Lithuania and Poland, does not fall under the control of Moscow”.

The fifth phase of the anti-missile shield in Europe (Euro DAM) started with the US deployment of the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic defense system at the Deveselu (Romania) base, just 600 km from the Crimean peninsula, which entered into service in May 2016. Russia responded by proceeding to install in Kaliningrad Iskander missiles equipped with multipurpose warheads as well as S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, leading the political scientist Vladimir Abrémov to remark, “the province of Kaliningrad will again play the role of pistol at the temple of Europe just like two decades ago”.

Likewise Putin, in a message to the Federal Assembly, issued the warning to NATO that “Russia could also use the Tsirkon hypersonic missile, which has a speed of Mach 8 and, launched from submarines, could reach any US Command Center in five minutes, as well as the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon nuclear submarine drone”.

However, Biden’s geopolitical short-sightedness in his obsession with subjugating Russia will only increase Putin’s anger. If, following the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, the Kaliningrad exit to the Baltic Sea is closed, we could see a repeat of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Missile Crisis (October, 1962) with its epicenter in Kaliningrad.