RA

A short thread on what I think is happening - for future ref. To be clear, I think this is a disaster, but I think it's happening. 1 - US reverts to pre WW1 international behaviour. Isolationism, tariffs, rejection of international treaty organisations, 'spheres of influence'.

You fuckers killed hundreds of Dutch citizens. You are the enemy of us all

If you are saying that war is horrific and this one (like most urban wars) has involved tragic loss of life destruction and suffering and we need to find a way to end all wars and conflicts including this one then I am 100% in agreement with you. I do engage in a fair amount of work between Israelis and Palestinians and broader interfaith diplomacy for that purpose. Pictures like the one you show are often intended to imply that the IDF wantonly destroyed buildings out of some kind of spite vengeance or wilful disregard for life and property. But if you speak to soldiers who served and had to fight house to house what emerges is that in areas like the one pictured literally every second building and sometimes every building was a battlefield. At the start of the war Hamas fielded 40 brigade sized forces each of which operated in dense urban fortresses where every move a soldier made could have an explosive detonate a building on top of them, an ambush team emerge from a tunnel underneath them, and constant sniper and mortar fire. Ironically in that phase of the war there was less damage to buildings (tho still a lot of damage) as the fighting was house to house room to room tunnel to tunnel and a lot of it was small arms grenades and automatic weapons and bomb disposal engineering teams. Later as Hamas brigades fell apart they resorted to concentrating massive amounts of IEDs often in many different parts of each building so as IDF units would be diffusing one another would detonate. Eventually it became clear that the only solution was to a) send drones into buildings to ensure they were free from civilians b) detection systems to see if likely to have explosives and if so c) destroy the building. In addition in later parts of the war as more and more tunnels were mapped and destroyed those tunnels often brought down buildings on top of them. Importantly there seem to have been over 1000km of tunnels in a 40sq miles of territory - 25km of tunnels for each square mile. Pictures like this are the result of those tactics used by Hamas. I don’t think any army on earth given current technologies could have fought in a way that would have produced less damage and kept more buildings intact. If there could be such a possibility I am sure the IDF (and many other militaries) would love to know.

All while Africa adopted anti colonialism and marxism.

@realAtlasPress Love this.

6000 Years of World History in 1 Picture

@specialopsmag It's also racist, arrogant and ignorant to claim it was all done by one man. Which I guess is part of the reason why this narrative gets repeated by ignorant, arrogant racists.

@specialopsmag He worked closely and competently alongside Kenyan CT Recce - they'd been training together. Dusit was a good op, but like any team effort, it took a team. It's daft to claim that it was all down to one man.

Christian Craighead. British Special Air Service (SAS). The man known as Obi-Wan Nairobi, his actions on January 15, 2019 became legend. Christian was in Kenya training local forces when five al-Shabaab terrorists launched a coordinated attack using explosives, arson, and mass shooting. Off duty and out shopping, Craighead kitted up from the back of his car, raced to the scene, organized Kenyan police and military units, and then went in alone. He repeatedly entered the building, engaging terrorists and pulling out hostages floor by floor. By the end he was credited with helping save over 700 civilian lives. He was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, the second highest military decoration in the United Kingdom. Then the same government that decorated him tried to stop him from ever telling the story.

@specialopsmag This story has been so over exaggerated and pushed that it's impossible for people to know the truth. He never saved 700 people ‼️ Kenyan Recce company operatives eliminated some of the terrorists. He did kill two of them. He however went on to take all credit. The UK government

Please help me overcome the shadow ban — I’m counting on you. Please hear me.

Almost all warnings and indicators that a wider war is coming are flashing red and it is "breathtaking" that the UK government is failing to better prepare, a top academic has warned. Dr Rob Johnson @RJohnsonCCW1, director of the Changing Character of Conflict Centre at Oxford University, said China is taking the steps that would be expected to have the ability to attack Taiwan, while Russia could well be readying to launch military operations against a NATO country. This comes on top of Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is in its fifth year, and the US and Israeli war against Iran. Mr Johnson has compiled a list of 80 "indicators of conflict preparation and coming armed attack" by drawing on the lessons of history, including the run up to the Second World War. The indicators cover the kind of military activity and hostile diplomacy demonstrated by a nation that is preparing to launch an armed attack, as well as societal changes and government information campaigns. Asked how many of them are already flashing, Mr Johnson said: "If you look at the whole list, we're about 94%, 95% complete. "In other words, we're really quite close to the threat of an armed conflict." You can read the full story⬇️ news.sky.com/story/warning-…

Kein gutes Zeugnis für 🇩🇪. Die Differenz liegt nicht in der Höhe der Vermögenssteuer und auch nicht in den Zeiträumen, in denen Familienvermögen gebildet werden konnten. Der entscheidende Unterschied besteht der Ausprägung von Unternehmertum und Innovationsdynamik.

This day (April 11) in 1961, began the trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, Jews sat in judgment over a man who orchestrated their mass murder. In a 14-week trial, 111 survivors took the stand & described the horrors of the Final Solution, not just with dry Nazi documents, but with living voices. On December 15, 1961, Eichmann was convicted on all 15 counts: crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization. He was hanged on June 1, 1962. But this trial was about much more than one man. Unlike the Nuremberg trials of 1945–46, where the victorious Allies judged Nazi leaders for “crimes against humanity” in the abstract, relying almost entirely on German paperwork and marginalizing Jewish voices, Israel deliberately put the victims at center stage. Prosecutor Gideon Hausner opened with words that still echo: “I do not stand alone. With me stand six million accusers… Their ashes are piled up on the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka… Their blood cries out, but their voice is not heard. Therefore, I will be their spokesman.” This was not Nuremberg where a passive French political prisoner described Auschwitz “showers” in the third person. In Jerusalem, the survivors spoke in the first person; and for the first time, the world heard the Jewish story of the Holocaust from Jews themselves. Eichmann himself was chillingly ordinary. Hannah Arendt, covering the trial for The New Yorker, famously called it “the banality of evil.” He looked like a minor bank clerk. In his final testimony he admitted arranging the transport of millions to their deaths. Yet he coldly admitted he felt no guilt for the consequences. From his own notebooks, what he actually regretted was failing to “free Hungary of all its Jews” (killing ~565,000 of Hungary’s 825,000 Jews (68%) was not enough for Eichmann). What’s more, much of the world was able to watch Eichmann’s trial. This was one of the first trials ever to be broadcast on television. ABC, CBS, NBC, and networks across Canada and beyond, all aired nightly excerpts for months; and 750 journalists descended on Jerusalem. It was through Eichmann’s trial that the world finally learned the truth of the Holocaust. At the time, Anne Frank’s diary was still new in English, and Elie Wiesel’s "Night" had just appeared. The word “Holocaust” was barely in common use, and “genocide” was just an abstract legal term. After the trial, none of that remained true. In Israel, the impact was also shattering. In the 1950s, many young sabras - viewed as tough, suntanned citizen-soldiers who had just beaten five Arab armies - looked at the 500,000 Holocaust survivors among them with a degree of condescension: “Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter?” The Eichmann proceedings forced a reckoning in Israel. Witnesses explained how they had no weapons or army, how the Nazis used systematic deception and starvation, and how Jews saw with their own eyes that escape meant fifty others shot. Israelis learned that what separated them from Europe’s Jews was not courage, but the sheer luck of birthplace or getting out on time. Survivors who had stayed silent for years finally spoke. The stigma was finally lifted. The “new Jew” of Israel and the survivor were no longer opposites. They were one people. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion understood the stakes. Capturing Eichmann (via Mossad, halfway across the world) and trying him in Jerusalem was about reminding the world what the Germans did, and also about reminding a new generation of Israelis why their state had to exist. For centuries, Jews had been humiliated, expelled, and murdered at will. The Jews simply had no army, no intelligence service, and no sovereign court to answer back. Now, in Israel, they had all three. The existential condition of the Jewish people had changed forever with the birth of the State of Israel.

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.” Remembering the late great KURT VONNEGUT who left us 19yrs ago today.

Don’t get your hopes up too much about a fair election in Hungary tomorrow. Orbán has centralized power for years to prevent that. If it were fair, he would lose in a landslide. Hopefully, Hungarians make the margin too big to rig. Let’s get rid of this huge traitor!

Battle damaged B-17G Fortress “Bertie Lee” after belly landing at RAF Waltham (Grimsby), Lincolnshire, England following a mission to Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), 11 Apr 1944. The citation given to the pilot of this airplane tells us everything we need to know about how the Bertie Lee came to be in this state. Citation: The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to First Lieutenant (Air Corps) Edward Stanley Michael, United States Army Air Forces, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving as pilot of a B-17 aircraft on a heavy bombardment mission to Germany, April 11, 1944. The group in which 1st Lt. Michael was flying was attacked by a swarm of fighters. His plane was singled out and the fighters pressed their attacks home recklessly, completely disregarding the Allied fighter escort and their own intense flak. His plane was riddled from nose to tail with exploding cannon shells and knocked out of formation, with a large number of fighters following it down, blasting it with cannon fire as it descended. A cannon shell exploded in the cockpit, wounded the copilot, wrecked the instruments, and blew out the side window. 1st Lt. Michael was seriously and painfully wounded in the right thigh. Hydraulic fluid filmed over the windshield making visibility impossible, and smoke filled the cockpit. The controls failed to respond and 3,000 feet were lost before he succeeded in leveling off. The radio operator informed him that the whole bomb bay was in flames as a result of the explosion of 3 cannon shells, which had ignited the incendiaries. With a full load of incendiaries in the bomb bay and a considerable gas load in the tanks, the danger of fire enveloping the plane and the tanks exploding seemed imminent. When the emergency [bomb] release lever failed to function, 1st Lt. Michael at once gave the order to bail out and 7 of the crew left the plane. Seeing the bombardier firing the navigator’s gun at the enemy planes, 1st Lt. Michael ordered him to bail out as the plane was liable to explode any minute. When the bombardier looked for his parachute he found that it had been riddled with 20mm fragments and was useless. 1st Lt. Michael, seeing the ruined parachute, realized that if the plane was abandoned the bombardier would perish and decided that the only chance would be a crash landing. Completely disregarding his own painful and profusely bleeding wounds, but thinking only of the safety of the remaining crewmembers, he gallantly evaded the enemy, using violent evasive action despite the battered condition of his plane. After the plane had been under sustained enemy attack for fully 45 minutes, 1st Lt. Michael finally lost the persistent fighters in a cloud bank. Upon emerging, an accurate barrage of flak caused him to come down to treetop level where flak towers poured a continuous rain of fire on the plane. He continued into France, realizing that at any moment a crash landing might have to be attempted, but trying to get as far as possible to increase the escape possibilities if a safe landing could be achieved. 1st Lt. Michael flew the plane until he became exhausted from the loss of blood, which had formed on the floor in pools, and he lost consciousness. The copilot succeeded in reaching England and sighted an RAF field near the coast. 1st Lt. Michael finally regained consciousness and insisted upon taking over the controls to land the plane. The undercarriage was useless; the bomb bay doors were jammed open; the hydraulic system and altimeter were shot out. In addition, there was no airspeed indicator, the ball turret was jammed with the guns pointing downward, and the flaps would not respond. Despite these apparently insurmountable obstacles, he landed the plane without mishap. [Contributor’s Note: This is one of the longest and most detailed Medal of Honor citations I have seen. All members of the crew survived and those who bailed out were returned to base.]

The "Gateway" Effect 🇿🇦 South Africa didn't just get +27 by luck. It was the primary gateway for undersea cables and telegraph lines connecting the Southern Hemisphere. We were the "Network Switch" for the region. That’s why Kenya (+254) and Nigeria (+234) have the extra digit—they joined a system SA had already helped build.

Russian agents are in Budapest. They are here to meddle with the election. Expect fake news, AI and even a potential false flag incident if Orban loses. Be cautious what you read over the next 24 hours. Disinformation will be in overdrive. Orban is not going to go quietly.

This photo was taken from behind at Royal Holloway Freshers’ Fair. I stood with the British flag and Star of David - welcoming Jewish students into an atmosphere already filled with “End Israeli apartheid”, “Genocide supporters”, “Boycott Israel”. What you don’t see: from late September to January, two students subjected me and my Jewish friend to almost daily harassment - sometimes 10+ no-caller-ID calls in an hour. Vile antisemitic, homophobic and sexualised abuse: “you love Israeli dck”, “obsessed with Jewish dck”, “I’ll be antisemitic with my full chest”. We reported it. We have evidence - voice recordings etc. We know who they are. University: “We can only act when the police do something.” Police were told in November. I signed a statement in February. They said they were looking at arrests. Promised me a call on 5 April. Still nothing - it’s now 11th April. Contrast that with my one light-hearted “tea towel” reply to a keffiyeh. I was suspended the next day. Missed 7 weeks of my degree. Now facing potential hate crime charges with the file at the CPS. Next slide 👉 a keffiyeh. Two photos. Two completely different stories. Two tiers of justice. @SurreyPolice please act on the reports I made. This has gone on long enough. Everyone is watching. Free speech and equal protection can’t be optional in Britain. I will NOT be silenced. 🇬🇧🇮🇱 #TwoTierJustice #FreeSpeech #RoyalHolloway #twotierpolice

The Surrender Summit: Trump Sends His Son-in-Law to Lose a War ‘Vance brought his wife. Not a deputy secretary. Not a general. Not even a halfway competent mid-level State Department lifer who at least knows what the Strait of Hormuz is on a map. He brought Usha. His wife. To a war negotiation. The most consequential diplomatic moment since the end of the Cold War and JD thought, yeah, I’ll make a long weekend of it, bring the missus, see Pakistan. Pakistan received the Iranians with their Foreign Minister, their Army Chief, their National Assembly Speaker, and their Interior Minister all standing on the tarmac in full ceremonial dress. America sent the guy who wrote a book about how sad it is to be from Ohio. And then there’s Jared Kushner. Jared fucking Kushner. A man whose entire qualification for any of this is that he married into the right family, which, by the way, is also his business model, his foreign policy experience, and apparently now his military strategy. Jared has the energy of a guy who’s never been told no in his life because everyone around him was either paid not to or too scared to. He walked into the Middle East peace process last time and achieved absolutely nothing except making himself several hundred million dollars richer. So naturally Donald called him again. Jared Kushner at peace talks is like bringing your plumber to do brain surgery because he’s good with pipes and you trust him.’ ifloz.substack.com/p/the-surrende…

Godspeed to the people of Hungary today, who deserve to escape the misrule of a corrupt Kremlin lackey. May they return to the path of democracy and prosperity without bloodshed. 🇭🇺