A man hugs his daughter, his other children nearby, as they wait for evacuation in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, August 23, 2024 [Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo]

Mansur Mirovalev

Kyiv, Ukraine – Svitlana Menyaylo doesn’t want to hear a word about the success of Ukrainian forces in the western Russian region of Kursk.

Since August 6, Ukrainian soldiers have occupied dozens of Russian villages on more than 1,000 square kilometres (620 square miles) and are digging in to repel an imminent Russian counteroffensive.

But for Menyaylo, a seamstress from the besieged town of Pokrovsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the very presence of Ukrainian troops in Kursk feels like treason.

Pokrovsk, the administrative centre of a heavily industrialised agglomeration with a pre-war population of almost 400,000, is likely to be taken over by advancing Russian troops soon.

They are less than 10km (6 miles) east of it – and keep inching in every minute after months of heavy bombardment and “meat marches”, frontal attacks on Ukrainian positions that have cost Russian generals tens of thousands of servicemen.

The depopulated town and several highways and railways it straddles have served as a crucial logistical hub for the Ukrainian military, and their takeover may burst the front line open and become a propaganda triumph for the Kremlin.

The government in Kyiv “should have sent those troops [from Kursk] here to repel the orcs”, Menyaylo told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview using a derogatory term for Russian servicemen.

As many in Ukraine cheered the military incursion into Kursk that caught Moscow by surprise, tens of thousands in Donetsk get ready to flee. Meanwhile, Russia’s aerial attacks on other parts of the country continue uninterrupted: at least 51 people were killed in missile strikes on central Ukraine’s Poltava on Tuesday.

“So what with the Kursk region? We’re running out of Donetsk,” Menyaylo said, repeating a tragic meme circulating online in recent days.

‘They live in two realities’

At the time of the interview, the 42-year-old was about to leave her two-bedroom apartment amid the whooshing of Russian shelling and the thuds of heavy gliding bombs that collapsed several buildings nearby.

She said she was packing bags with clothes, documents and mementoes, such as photos of her grandparents who moved to Donetsk from central Ukraine after World War II.

She blames the loss of her home on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and top brass — some of whom were fired by him on Tuesday in a major reshuffle.

“It’s like they live in two realities, they care about those ephemeral gains instead of defending Ukrainian land here and now,” she said.

Military analysts agree.

“Yes, the two campaigns are developing in parallel realities, and despite a small success in Kursk in the past two weeks, further goals are not quite understandable,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

Russia moved only small numbers of troops from the Ukrainian front line to Kursk, augmenting them with barely-trained conscripts and ethnic Chechen servicemen with dubious battlefield experience.

But Kyiv dispatched thousands of servicemen to Kursk, leaving its forces in Donetsk with skeleton crews that cannot contain a “front-line breach”, Mitrokhin said.

The Kremlin boosted its advance on Pokrovsk by deploying troops that had been storming the nearby town of Chasiv Yar, and their breakthrough in Donetsk means they would be able to strike Ukrainian forces in the nearby Zaporizhia region.

Moscow seized three-fourths of Zaporizhia in 2022, and Ukrainian forces liberated tiny areas during their failed counteroffensive last year.

“In the coming two weeks, Ukraine is very likely to lose almost all of its front line in Zaporizhia if it doesn’t deploy all of its reserves from somewhere or doesn’t start a new advance” on Russian territory, Mitrokhin said.

‘Slippery’ slope

But Ukraine seems to have run out of reserves amid more losses in the southern Kherson region.

Most of Kherson has been occupied since 2022, and Kyiv kept trying to regain ground there by seizing small islands in the delta of the Dnipro despite heavy losses.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian troops abandoned most of the islands, and undermanned air defence forces cannot contain Russian drone attacks that “over-terrorised” the regional capital, also named Kherson, Mitrokhin said.

“In general, Ukraine’s positions in August have deteriorated rapidly,” he concluded.

The situation is so bad that some Ukrainian observers simply refuse to comment on it.

“The topic is slippery, I don’t want to breed treason,” one military expert told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials insist that the impending loss of Pokrovsk will not result in Moscow’s strategic victory as Russia is about to run out of manpower, weapons and ammunition.

“The enemy is now throwing all their forces and means to break through there. And if they’re stopped now, they don’t have large resources to act in other directions,” Roman Kostenko, head of the parliamentary committee on national security, defence and intelligence, said in televised remarks.

Still, the end of summer brought more depressing news for Kyiv.

In July, Ukraine received 10 F-16 fighter jets – and lost one of them last week.

Lawmaker Mariana Bezugla claimed it had been shot down by friendly fire from the Patriot air defence system during a massive Russian drone attack. Officials denied the claim, but Zelenskyy fired air force head Mykola Oleshchuk.

Not all is gloomy on the front line, however, with Ukraine striking Russian airfields, fuel depots, military plants and infrastructure sites in drone attacks.

The largest such attack took place on Saturday night and involved 158 drones that reached 16 western Russian regions, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.

The drones hit an oil refinery outside Moscow and one of Russia’s largest thermal power plants in the Volga River town of Konakovo more than 800km (500 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

Russian officials claimed that five Ukrainian drones had been shot down without harming the plant. But witnesses, photos and video evidence suggest that the plant was seriously damaged.

“My whole house was shaking, and the fire spread to half of the sky,” a Konakovo resident told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity. “And the noise of the fire was so loud that one couldn’t talk.”

[…]

Via https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/4/ukraines-losses-outweigh-kursk-gains-as-russia-on-cusp-of-taking-key-town

Dr Mercola

• A 2024 National Toxicology Program review found consistent evidence linking higher fluoride exposure to lower IQ in children, raising concerns about current water fluoridation practices in the U.S.
• Prenatal fluoride exposure has been associated with increased behavioral problems in children by age 3, including symptoms related to ADHD, autism and anxiety
• Research suggests fluoride exposure during pregnancy may alter fetal proteins related to oxidative stress, inflammation and organ function, even at levels considered safe for water fluoridation
• Multiple studies have linked prenatal fluoride exposure to reduced IQ scores and poorer cognitive performance in children, with effects seen at levels common in fluoridated water supplies
• To reduce fluoride exposure, consider using high-quality water filters, opting for fluoride-free dental products and being aware of other sources like tea. Breastfeeding or using filtered water for formula is recommended

Episode 23 From Mughals to Soviets

The Mongol Empire

Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)

Film Review

Timur’s son Sharyk succeed him in ruling Transoxiana and his son Uleg Beig (1417-1447) succeeded him following Sharyk’s assassination. A renowned scholar, Uleg Beig invited scholars from all over the world to study at madrassa in Smamarkhan and Bukhar emphasizing advanced mathematics, science and literature. In addition to lecturing at his madrassa, he used trigonometry and a 30-foot sextant to accurately map /the location of 1,018 stars – 200 years before Galileo’s invention of the telescope. He was beheaded in massive civil unrest that erupted in 1447. Sharyk’s brother Shahrukh, who had ruled the northeast region of the Timurid Empire ruled the empire until his death in 1449.

During the first half of the 15th century, the Timurid Empire was also known for two other brilliant intellectuals:

• Abdul al Rahman Jami a classical Persian poet who elevated the Turkic language to a literary Language and
• Prince Zaher al-Din Muhammad Babur. The latter founded the Mughal Empire, which would rule India until the English colonized it. Although Babur briefly seized power in Samarkhan, He was expelled by Muhammad Shaybani (a descendant of Chinggis Khan), ruler of the Persian Khanate of Bukhara.  in 1500.*

Shaybani’s family would rule the Timurid Empire until 1599, when they were deposed by Shah Ismail, founder of the wester Shi’a  Safayid Dynasty. Under their rule (1599-1785, Samarkhan became the foremost global center of of both Shi’a learning and Sufism (a mystical body of Islamic religious practice  characterized by purification, spirituality, ritualism and asceticism.

After fleeing first to Kabal and then to Pakistan, Babur used gunpowder, mortars and canon supplied by Ottoman advisors to conquer Delhi in 1526. He died in 1530, having conquered much of northern India. His grandson Akbar (1557-1605) was another famous Moghul ruler.

The Russian Conquest of the Steppes

Reaching the Pacific Ocean by 1689, the Russians claimed both Mongolia and Siberia as Russian territory. Meanwhile Turkic nomadic trials took control of the Karakhan desert to the east of Transoxiana, dividing the region into the Khanante of Kiva and the khanate of Bukhara.

After coming under Russian control in the late 19th century the Khanate of Kazakh (successor to the Golden Horde) split into into Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Improved educational standards in the region led to a growing clamor for freedom. Following the Russian revolution, the Soviets created five new republics with distinct borders:  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

During World War II, Soviet industry (and several million European Russians) moved to Central Asia to escape the German invasion.

How Central Asia benefited from Soviet rule:

• education (97% increase in literacy)
• free health care and maternity leave
• high wages due to industrialization
• preservation of improved historical monuments

All five declared independence when Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/12373094/12373140

Ted Snider

America has caught a whiff of a changing world. CIA Director William Burns has grudgingly acknowledged that “the United States… is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.” But America’s dogmatic inability to see past its old paradigm has prevented it from understanding that change. The United States has drifted outside the geopolitical current.

Russia, China and India insist that multipolarity is not a goal on the distant horizon but a current reality. “The trend toward multipolarity in the world is inevitable. It will only intensify. And those who do not understand this and do not follow this trend will lose,” Putin has said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called multipolarity “a fact, a geopolitical reality.” “The landscape,” India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar agrees “has now changed irreversibly.”

But in its inability to adapt, the U.S. clings to the battle to prevent the unipolar world’s slip back into bipolarity. The U.S. remains capable only of seeing a world divided into two blocs: it sees every nation that accepts its hegemony as one bloc and every nonaligned nation in the multipolar world that refuses to choose between two sides as the other bloc. The U.S. is incapable of seeing past the bipolar world and mistakes the multipolar reality as the other bloc in a bipolar world.

That is a misconception that prevents the U.S. from aligning itself with the inevitable new reality of the international order. Being unaligned with reality has frustrated American foreign policy.

In the outdated American model, India, the largest country in the world and a growing power, is the weight whose choice of sides will determine which block prevails. Long a partner of the U.S. and a key friend of Russia, India has a foot in both blocs of the world as the U.S. sees it. Bringing India fully into the American camp is a key to U.S. foreign policy.

But the members of the emerging multipolar world do not see the new world as one in which they have to choose sides. The U.S. continues to woo countries with gifts and to threaten countries with sanctions to seduce them into exclusive partnerships. But the outdated U.S. worldview restricts it to desperately courting countries into exclusive relationships that their worldview no longer allows them to enter into.

The nonaligned nations are taking a side: not between the U.S. on one side and Russia and China on the other but between a monogamous U.S. unipolar worldview and an uncommitted Russia-China world view that allows countries to pursue multiple relationships in pursuit of their own interests, not the interests of the hegemon they follow. The nonaligned nations have not chosen Russia or China over the United States: they have chosen the Russia-China worldview over the United State’s worldview.

Russia and China have consistently claimed that they seek to move past the Cold War mentality of ideological and military blocs, that their relationship is not “aimed against a third country.”

“We do not believe in polarization or selecting between one partner and another,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has agreed, asserting the Kingdom’s right to act “based on its own interests” and to have “strategic partnerships with [many] countries.”

In his book, The India Way, Jaishankar explains the emerging worldview by describing the new multipolar world as one in which countries deal “with contesting parties at the same time with optimal results” for their “own self-interest.”

From India to Africa to the Middle East and Latin America, the key to the new multipolarity is that countries have replaced the neocolonial need to serve the interests of a hegemon with the freedom to pursue their own interests. And the hallmark of that new reality is the replacement of fixed, grand ideological alliances with moving particular partnerships based on specific interests.

Jaishankar explains that, in the new multipolar world, nations are “combining on narrower issues rather than broad approaches.” “Nations will have to forge issue-based relationships that can often be pulling them in different directions.” He says that “there will be convergence with many but congruence with none.” He refers to “loose and practical arrangements of cooperation” and calls the new reality a “twilight world” of “partial agreement and limited agenda” with “flexible arrangements that are customized to the challenge.”

Jaishankar identifies the most valuable diplomatic skill in the new multipolar world as “dealing with contesting parties at the same time with optimal results.” So, while “India drove the revived Quad arrangement, it also took membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.” That means that “a longstanding trilateral with Russia and China coexists now with one involving the US and Japan.” The pattern does not make sense to the U.S. unipolar versus bipolar world view. But “a clearer pattern starts to emerge” when India’s actions “are viewed from the perspective of its own self-interest” that the new multipolar world permits.

A multipolar world means not having to choose between the U.S and Russia, but choosing to partner with them differently on different issues of convergence. While “the India-US relationship… has flowered in recent years,” Jaishankar says, “Russia remains a privileged partner with whom geopolitical convergence is a key consideration.” As relations with the U.S improve, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says simultaneously that “Relations between Russia and India have significantly improved.” He called the friendship “extremely important.” Jaishankar has called the India-Russia relationship “among the steadiest of the major relationships of the world in the contemporary era.”

Forging specific issue-based relationships instead of ideological alliances in a multipolar world means not only having paradoxical relationships with different countries but paradoxical relationships with the same country. India opposes China over regional concerns but lacks America’s global concerns about China and is “not against” China. India has its own concerns about its giant neighbor but does not join the American bloc in containing it. Jaishankar says that when India and China “look beyond just national interest, the two countries are indeed convergent in their effort to create a more balanced world.” While being a member of the American led QUAD, India is also a member, with China, of BRICS and the SCO. “For all of their issues with each other,” Jaishankar says, “India or China have at the back of their mind a feeling that they are also contesting an established Western order.” He insists that “India and China must not allow differences to become disputes.”

Multipolarity means that India can “stand firm on key concerns” with China, Jaishankar says “and yet establish a stable relationship with China.” From the vantage of the U.S. worldview, that is “not easily appreciated.”

India is an active participant in the American led QUAD, whose purpose is to contain and deflate China. But, though India has personal issues with China regionally, it has restrained the QUAD when it attempts to be against China globally, insisting that the QUAD is “not against somebody, employing a formulation that echoes the Russian-Chinese one.

While the U.S. tries to preserve a unipolar world by pulling India to its side, India no longer has an interest in choosing sides. India no longer feels the need to support the hegemonic aspirations of a superpower. In a new multipolar world, it asserts its rights to form partnerships with as many poles as possible, not based on ideological alliances, but based on self-interest in particular circumstances.

American foreign policy is limping because it is no longer aligned with the reality of the international order. The new international order functions on the realization that multipolarity is the inevitable trend. That means not supporting a unipolar world or choosing sides in a bipolar world. It means forging issue specific ties with as many poles as possible. It means aligning on particular issues in a nonaligned world. Still self-defeatingly stuck in its old paradigm, the U.S. sees all those who choose multipolarity as the opposing pole in a bipolar world. That misreading of the world is causing the U.S. to still deal with those nations in a way that no longer works.

[…]

Via https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2024/09/02/has-us-supremacy-ended/

Helen Alice Springs

Not a day goes by in the workforce now, where sickness is not a topic of conversation. Appointments are cancelled due to sick leave, colleagues call in sick, and more. It can all be dismissed as anecdotal, except that the data shows skyrocketing rates of sick leave and bereavement leave.

The New Zealand pharmaceutical product regulator Medsafe have seen a lot of upheaval since 2020. They have a fairly steady number of staff, rising from 70 FTE to 78 FTE in the past five years. The number of permanent staff departures has risen steadily from 8 in 2019, to 17 in 2023. Staff replacements have risen similarly, from 4 in 2019 to 24 in 2021/22.

More significant is the amount of leave being taken, made available via freedom of information request and shared by the author of Informed Heart.

The same author shows that Department of Transport are experiencing similarly soaring rates of bereavement, sickness and unpaid leave.

From 2020 to 2022 the government, via state funded media, claimed that socially and economically destructive and logically bizarre rules were required because a horrifically dangerous virus was on the loose. This evolved into a magical potion being purchased with public money via unseen contracts, which would protect them. When too few people agreed with this idea, the product was mandated upon the workforce.

The results of mRNA, DNA adeno-vector and injected spike protein harms include immune system damage and auto immune conditions, blood clotting disorders, cardiac system disorders, and neurological disorders. Learn more at mRNA Vaccine Toxicity. And never allow your government, or the corporates instructing them, to do this again.

[…]

Via https://alicespringstomind.com/2024/09/04/skyrocketing-sick-and-bereavement-leave-in-new-zealand/

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 03.09.2024

US microchip giant Intel faces what’s been characterized as the most difficult moment in its 56-year history, hiring banksters to advise the company on whether to trim, slash or sell off its manufacturing business. That’s bad news for Washington, which greenlit $280 billion in funding in 2022 toward boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel’s stock has had a rough year-to-date, plummeting nearly 60% since January and falling off a cliff in early August as investors led by billionaire Warren Buffett began a massive selloff which led leading tech stocks to shed nearly $3 trillion in value amid a perfect storm of recession fears, concerns over rising AI-related capital expenditure, and inflation.

The shock stock drop shed more light on the difficult situation at Intel, with a flurry of reports beginning late last week citing informed sources revealing that the company is in the “most difficult period in its 56-year history,” looking for strategic advice from the likes of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and considering selling off its chip manufacturing capacity.

The news carries grave significance for Washington, with Axios pointing out in a report last Friday that Intel isn’t just one of America’s oldest US chipmakers, but “a key national security asset,” signaling the US’s ability (or as it happens, inability) to compete with Taiwan, South Korea, China and other chip-making power players in an increasingly demanding world market for microchips.

All eyes are now on Intel’s mid-September board of directors meeting, at which company CEO Pat Gelsinger is expected to present the company’s recovery plan, from cost cuts achieved by shedding “unnecessary businesses,” possibly including US-based programmable chip manufacturing, and even the potential sale of its foundry business to a foreign buyer like TSMC.

Intel currently has more than two dozen fab and post-fab sites, most of them in Oregon, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio, but also Ireland and Israel. The potential slash in investment threatens to jeopardize the company’s ambitious expansion plans, both domestically and in Germany and Poland, with capital expenditures expected to drop by $10 billion, to $21.5 billion, in 2025. Among the casualties is a reported move to freeze construction of a $32.8 billion factory complex in Magdeburg, Germany.

Intel’s troubles are also bad news for the Biden administration specifically, which pumped $8.5 billion into the company’s coffers in March from the 2022 $280 billion CHIPS & Science Act, which includes $39 billion in subsidies for US chip manufacturing, $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training, and major tax incentives. Intel also enjoys up to $11 billion in Chips Act loans for modernization and new production.

The current administration has made subsidies to microchip manufacturing a key plank of its economic agenda. In addition to a broad array of civilian uses, from computers to vehicles, companies like Intel produce chips for use in military and space applications.

The company’s multi-year $100 billion+ US expansion plans fell to the wayside after its stagnant second-quarter earnings ($12.8 billion), sparking massive layoffs of over 15% of its workforce in August. The same month, veteran exec Lip-Bu Tan resigned from Intel’s board, reportedly over differences about the future of the company, and its failure to listen to proposals to make Intel’s contract manufacturing more customer-centric.

“Simply put, we must align our cost structure with our new operating model and fundamentally change the way we operate,” Intel chief Pat Gelsinger wrote in a memo in early August while announcing the cuts and firings.

A pioneer in microchip manufacturing and the developer of the Intel 4004 – the world’s first commercial microprocessor, in the 1970s, Intel produced the most popular chip of the 80s – the Intel 8088, which ended up powering the IBM PC. Fast forward to the 1990s, and Intel’s engineers developed the revolutionary 32 bit Pentium x86 processors – which were heavily improved upon by former Soviet supercomputer designer Vladimir Pentkovski. In the late 2008, Intel introduced the Intel Core lineup of multicore processers, assuring it superiority over competitors for over a decade before being surpassed by AMD in 2022. A few short years on, Intel has dropped out of the top ten largest global microchip manufacturers entirely by market capitalization.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20240903/intels-shock-strategic-shakeup-may-doom-bidens-bid-to-reshore-microchip-manufacturing-1120002178.html

[Ed note: what the article doesn’t mention is the role of China’s ban on exports of 17 rare earth elements essential to chip manufacture in December 2023 – see What China’s Ban on Rare Earth Technology Exports Means]

Germany alleged the post attacking the politician’s weight and posting a graphic meme was a violation of its laws on insults.

Section 185 of the German Criminal Code covers derogatory opinions, defamatory remarks, or expressions that show disrespect or contempt. This can include verbal abuse or statements that degrade someone’s worth.

“The penalty for insult is imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed publicly,” the law said.

[…]

Via https://www.foxnews.com/media/germany-started-criminal-investigation-social-media-user-calling-female-politician-fat

Steve Watson

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that individuals who engaged in “criminal” behaviour during the pandemic still need to be held accountable.

Kennedy, who is in line for a health related position in Donald Trump’s administration should he be elected, declared recently that there needs to be a “reckoning” brought upon those responsible.

Speaking at the Limitless Expo, Kennedy explicitly referenced Anthony Fauci, noting “I wrote a book about Fauci. It’s a great book. There are 2,200 footnotes in the book… I invited people to find problems with the book… And nobody ever told us any factual error in that book.”

He charged that Fauci and others used their positions during COVID to enforce “totalitarian controls that were not science-based.”

“It’s a story, really, of people involved in really terrible, immoral, homicidal criminal behavior,” Kennedy urged.

He noted that effective treatments were repressed, stating “Ivermectin was a very, very devastating cure for COVID. It literally obliterated COVID.”

“By depriving people of Ivermectin, many, many people, millions of people around the globe, died, and they didn’t need to,” Kennedy added, charging that Fauci and others pressured the FDA to discourage such treatments in favour of relentlessly pushing unproven and untested vaccines.

“There were cures for COVID from day one, very effective cures. But they didn’t want that. They wanted the vaccine only,” Kennedy posited, adding “if they admitted that any of [the treatments] were effective, the whole vaccine project would have fallen apart.”

Kennedy added that after the vaccines,  myocarditis cases among young people, particularly athletes, exploded.

“On average, it was, I think, 29 a month globally, athletes who died on the field. We’re getting down to hundreds a month now,” Kennedy emphasised.

He concluded that “the science is out there now, and it’s devastating.”

[…]

Via https://modernity.news/2024/09/02/rfk-jr-there-has-to-be-a-reckoning-for-immoral-homicidal-covid-criminality/