Now, a major collapse of Ukraine’s defense fronts along the entire or nearly entire battle line—which stretches from Kherson just north of Crimea in the east, then north through Donetsk to Kharkiv and Sumy—is imminent

by Gordonhahn, July 14, 2025

https://gordonhahn.com/2025/07/14/les-quatre-prochaines-phases-deffondrements-de-lukraine/

Translated by Wayan, proofread by Hervé, for Saker Francophone

I wrote some time ago:

“With the collapse of the front and the army on the verge of dissolving, Zelenskiy’s post-Maidan regime is deeply divided and in danger of dissolution, which could lead to state collapse, internecine warfare, and widespread chaos .”

Below, I detail these four imminent or potential collapses—collapses of the battlefront, the Ukrainian army, the Maidan regime, and the Ukrainian state itself—because this issue is of crucial importance to the question of war or peace in Ukraine and to the challenges that will be faced in any reconstruction.

A dysfunctional Ukrainian army, regime, and state will prevent Kyiv from concluding any peace process and treaty that U.S. President Donald Trump or others might develop. In fact, the peace effort Trump is beginning to enlist Russian President Vladimir Putin in will almost certainly be thwarted by a cascade of two or more of the four major dysfunctions, collapses, and crises that appear to await Ukraine unless the war ends or a radical shift occurs in the correlation of Russian and NATO-Ukrainian forces. The first two of these collapses, of the front and the army, will almost certainly occur this year. The last two—of the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state—may be postponed until next year.”

The collapse of the military front in Ukraine

Ukraine’s defensive fronts have slowly weakened and increasingly collapsed over the past year. Throughout last year, Russian territorial gains and, for most of this year, Ukrainian losses increased monthly, just as I predicted more than a year ago. The infamous Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based organization that relies on Ukrainian propaganda and turns itself into “data,” falsely claimed:

“Russian forces gained 4,168 square kilometers (1,609 square miles, GH), largely consisting of fields and small settlements in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, at a reported cost of more than 420,000 casualties in 2024. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said on December 30 that Russian forces suffered 427,000 casualties in 2024. ISW observed geotagged evidence to estimate that Russian forces advanced 4,168 square kilometers in 2024, indicating that Russian forces suffered approximately 102 casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized .”

The propaganda element here lies primarily in the claim that Russia’s territorial gains were ”largely fields and small settlements ” and in the figures for Russian losses. The Russians seized ”largely fields and small settlements” because the landscape of Ukraine, like that of any country, is largely made up of arable land and small villages.

However, Russia did capture several small towns and the main Ukrainian strongholds of Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Selydove, Novosilevke, Toretsk, and almost all of Chasov Yar. The Russians may not have suffered 420,000 casualties over the course of the entire war, let alone in 2024. For 2024, the Mediazona institute—which, in affiliation with the BBC and the Russian opposition outlet Meduza, scours internet sources, social media, obituaries, and regional government announcements—counted 120,000 Russians killed in action between the start of the country’s ”special military operation” in February 2022 and the end of 2024. It found that at least 31,481 Russian soldiers died between January 1, 2024, and December 17, 2024. Even if we increase this figure by 50%, taking into account the typical 1:3 ratio of killed to wounded, we still arrive at a figure of only about 180,000 Russian casualties in 2024, half of the reported Ukrainians/ISW .

What is going on here? The acceleration of what I have called  Russia’s “attrition and advance” strategy has been downplayed by ISW  by linking it with data on territorial gains from the Ukrainian Defense Minister and other Ukrainian military sources on Russian losses in order to give the impression of massive Russian losses disproportionate to the ”  modest ” territorial gains. This is done to support the Western myth that Russia is throwing away the lives of its soldiers in ”human wave” attacks.

ISW carefully avoids the prospect of negative comparison by omitting any mention of Ukrainian casualties, mimicking the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and  US-funded “Ukrainian ”  news outlets  such as Ukrainskaya Pravda.

The raw data show that Russian territorial gains have indeed increased throughout the year on a nearly monthly basis, with the possible exception of December, which saw a decline compared to November. As Western media outlets finally began to expose the fallacy of the “Ukraine is winning ” propaganda line last fall, the New York Times referenced data from a military expert with the Finland-based Black Bird group Pasi Paroinen.

It turned out that Russian gains were being made all along the front line, from the north at Kharkiv to the south at Zaporozhye. Paroinen’s measurement of Russia’s overall gains in the first ten months of 2024 confirmed my own expectation of an intensified Russian advance. Russian advances during this period amounted to over 1,800 square kilometers and were made at an increasingly accelerated pace:

“Half of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine so far this year have been made in the last three months alone. In August, Ukraine’s defensive lines buckled and Russia quickly advanced 16 km. In October, Russia made its most significant territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure. October’s gains amounted to over 257 square km of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region alone .” Russian forces advanced 2,356 square kilometers in September, October, and November 2024, making 56.5% of their 2024 territorial gains during this period. November proved  to be the most successful month for Russian forces in terms of territorial gains in 2024, “advancing at the significantly higher rate of 27.96 square kilometers per day” during that month.

ISW  was careful not to compare Russia’s territorial gains in 2024 with those made in 2023, so as not to highlight the crucially important trend of accelerating Russian advances and Ukrainian retreats, but France 24 television  picked up the slack . It noted that the Russian military had advanced in 2024 “seven times more than in 2023, ”taking “610 square kilometers in October and 725 square kilometers in November. These two months saw the Russians capture the most territory since March 2022, in the opening weeks of the conflict. Russia’s advance slowed in December, reaching 465 square kilometers in the first 30 days of the month. But it is already nearly four times greater than in the same month last year and two and a half times more than in December 2022.”

Now, a major collapse of Ukraine’s defense fronts along the entire or nearly entire battle line—which stretches from Kherson just north of Crimea in the east, then north through Donetsk to Kharkiv and Sumy—is imminent. Some fronts may hold out longer, but they are unlikely to survive 2025. Russian forces are beginning to encircle the crucial industrial, mining, and transport center of Pokrovsk. After its fall, perhaps in two months, Moscow’s army will have a relatively unimpeded march toward Dnipro, Zaporozhye, and other points less south of the Dnieper. After that, the territorial advance will continue to accelerate at an ever-increasing pace and could lead to major breakthroughs across the Dnieper at any moment now, given the already dire and deteriorating state of Ukraine’s armed forces.

The collapse of the Ukrainian army

To read further: https://lesakerfrancophone.fr/les- quatre-prochaines-phases-dplombs-de-lukraine

[…]

Via https://nuclear-news.net/2025/07/15/2-b1-the-next-four-phases-of-ukraines-collapse/

South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman

By JON MICHAEL RAASCH 16 July 2025

Texas Republican Chip Roy opted not to vote on the measure. Even if he had sided with his fellow HFC member Norman and Democrats the amendment still would’ve failed by one vote.

‘Rules voted 5-7 to block the full House from voting on my amendment to have a FULL release of the Epstein file,’ Khanna wrote on X following the failed vote.

‘People are fed up. They are fed up. Thanks ⁦@RepRalphNorman⁩. Need to put the American people before party!’

The Republicans who voted against the amendment to release the Epstein files include: Rules Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., Michelle Fischbach, R-M.N., Chip Roy, R-Texas, Erin Houchin, R-Ind., Nicholas A. Langworthy, R-N.Y., Austin Scott, R-Ga., H. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., Brian Jack, R-Ga.

Some MAGA devotees feel betrayed by Republican’s sudden and puzzling reversal on the release of the deceased banker and his ‘client list.’

Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this year that the ‘client list’ was on her desk, but last week the DOJ and FBI said there is no list at all – an admission clearly at odds with the Cabinet member’s past comments.

‘America deserves the truth about Jeffrey Epstein and the rich powerful elites in his circle,’ firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted on X after the vote.

‘The line is drawn with anyone who abuses children and vulnerable innocent people.’

Empowering the Future: Innovators in Africa

DW (2025)

Film Review

https://www.dw.com/en/empowering-the-future-innovators-in-africa/video-71750657

Africa has both the youngest and fastest growing population on earth. This video profiles some of the continent’s most prominent innovators. Although Greenland appears the same size as Africa in most two dimensional maps, the latter is actually 14 times larger –  bigger than the US, China, India, Japan and Europe combined.

With a population of 1.5 billion, Africa consists of 54 countries and is home to 2,000 languages. Half its population was born after 2000, with Senegal, Rwanda and Nigeria experiencing the most rapid population growth. Sadly, however, Africa is experiencing a serious brain drain, comparable to the mass exodus that occurred with the slave trade. Most African university graduates plan to emigrate because most their countries have a shortage of professional and academic jobs.

Nigeria has the largest population in Africa, at 220 million. Its capitol Lagos has 16 million people. Known as the Venice of Africa, it’s home to the Makoko community of floating homes. Sixty percent of its residents are poor and work in the informal economy.

The film highlights even key African innovators building Africa’s economies:

• Jack Oyugi Kendu Bay (Kenya) – microbiologist who discovered how to increase the protein content of the invasive weed water hyacinth by fermenting it, producing a far cheaper protein source for livestock than imported soy protein.
• Peninah Wanja Nairorobi (Kenya) – founder (2018) of DigiCow, a digitalized information network for small farmers raising milk cows. Part of the “Silicon Savannah.”
• Darlington Akogo (Kenya) – with the support of foreign investors, created the first stand alone AI system (Mino Health AI Labs) for radiology. Using anonymized patient data, he trained his AI system to detect breast and other cancers, pneumonia. Owing to worldwide shortage of radiologists, Akogo hopes to make health care cheaper and more accessible to the African content.
• Kunle Aleyemi (Nigeria) – international renowned architect who designed dwellings for Makoko residents that float on pontoons instead of standing on stilts to make them less susceptible to storms.
• Gilbert Debra (Ghana) – founded international call center companies providing customer support for international corporations. Presently outpacing nearly all Indian call centers. Pays globally competitive salary of 190 Euros a month (Ghanaian doctors earn 650 euros a month).
• Cynthia Dauquah (Ghana)* – laboratory technician working identify native plants that can be used to synthesize antibiotics.
• Ben Lokeris Koriang (Uganda) – founder (2017) of Gogo Ebikes**

*40% of Ghana’s university graduates are women.

**Electricity in Uganda and Kenya is 90% renewable, from hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar sources. Because electricity is cheaper to supply than gasoline, the Ugandan government subsidizes electric bikes as a public transport strategy. Because they’re 50% cheaper to operate than a gasoline powered vehicle, purchasers also qualify for microloans to purchase them. Gogo Bikes manufactures the batteries, as well as the ebikes and scooters, operates it charging stations. Gogo bikes retains ownership of the battery and assumes responsibility for recycling it.

https://www.dw.com/en/empowering-the-future-innovators-in-africa/video-71750657

What To Know

Late Saturday, Khanna posted to his X account: “Why are the Epstein files still hidden? Who are the rich & powerful being protected? On Tuesday, I’m introducing an amendment to force a vote demanding the FULL Epstein files be released to the public. The Speaker must call a vote & put every Congress member on record.”

The post has since had over 432k views.

Khanna’s initiative is seen as a way to hold both Congress and the Justice Department accountable, especially as the Department of Justice (DOJ), led by Trump-appointed officials, including Bondi, recently reversed its previous commitment to release more documents.

The move is also politically strategic. If Khanna’s proposal is accepted, it would force a House vote on releasing the full Epstein files, allowing the public to see how each representative stands on the matter, with many praising it as a savvy political move that puts pressure on those trying to avoid scrutiny.

This comes after months of mounting bipartisan frustration. Though Democrats have led the charge, some Republican voices have also joined the call for full transparency. However, the Justice Department’s decision to halt further disclosures has renewed criticism that the agency is protecting politically sensitive figures.

Earlier this month, congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, called for the release of any documents mentioning Trump.

What People Are Saying

In response to criticism of his proposal on X, Khanna said: “This is about transparency and restoring trust, not partisan politics. The public outcry is apparent. The files should be fully released and can be done so consistent with DOJ principles of protecting victims and the innocent.”

What Happens Next

Even if the measure fails, Khanna’s supporters argue it will create a clear public record—either the files will be released, or voters will know exactly who stood in the way. With trust in government transparency at stake, the coming vote could mark a pivotal moment in the long-running Epstein saga.

[…]

Via https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-ro-khanna-demands-vote-release-full-jeffrey-epstein-files-2098309

By CAROLINE GRAHAM

July 15, 2025

Ghislaine Maxwell is willing to speak in front of Congress about The Epstein Files, sources tell Daily Mail.

Maxwell, 63, is the only person behind bars – serving 20 years on child sex trafficking charges – despite the fact that pedophile Jeffrey Epstein allegedly controlled a web of underage girls.

Additionally, Epstein’s victims alleged they were passed around as sex toys to his wealthy friends and billionaire business associates who regularly visited his homes including his private island, Little Saint James.

Now a source said: ‘Despite the rumors, Ghislaine was never offered any kind of plea deal. She would be more than happy to sit before Congress and tell her story.

‘No-one from the government has ever asked her to share what she knows. She remains the only person to be jailed in connection to Epstein and she would welcome the chance to tell the American public the truth.’

What that ‘truth’ is remains to be seen. Maxwell was convicted in 2022 over her role in a scheme to sexual exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Epstein over the course of a decade.

Maxwell argues she should have been protected from prosecution as part of a Non Prosecution Agreement made by Epstein – her former lover and boss – in 2007 when he agreed to plead guilty to two minor charges of prostitution in a ‘sweetheart deal’ which saw him spend little time behind bars.

The scandal – and alleged ‘cover up’ – has prompted a rebellion amongst President Trump’s loyal MAGA base. Some even believe Attorney General Pam Bondi should be fired after promising to release all files relating to Epstein and his high-profile male friends only to apparently renege on that promise.

On Saturday night, President Trump posted a rebuttal to accusations of a cover-up on social media site Truth Social saying: ‘For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we not giving publicity to files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration?’

The Epstein ‘cover-up’ was also a main topic of conversation among attendees of this weekend’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida, hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA , an organization many credit with rallying Trump’s young base before last year’s presidential election.

Sharon Allen, an attendee, told NBC News: ‘It’s not even about Pam Bondi to me. It’s like, look, Trump, we elected you because you were supposed to be different. So you have to prove to us you’re different.’

A source close to Maxwell told Daily Mail that the former girlfriend of Epstein – who continues to protest her innocence – would ‘welcome the chance to sit in front of Congress and tell her story’.

The source said: ‘Congressional hearings have been held into everything from JFK’s assassination to 9/11. The Epstein Files rank up there with those cases. Ghislaine would be willing to speak before Congress and tell her story.’

Maxwell is also fighting to have her appeal heard by the Supreme Court. On July 14, lawyers for the US government will submit their response to her plea for the Supreme Court to take up her case.

President Trump’s former ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk sensationally claimed there is a cover-up because Trump is mentioned in the Epstein Files, something sources close to Maxwell say ‘is a false flag.’

‘President Trump was photographed with Epstein several times and they ran in the same circles but Trump was one of the first to break all contact with Epstein because they fell out over a business deal and Epstein’s treatment of women,’ the informed source said.

‘There are no big shocks about President Trump in the Epstein Files. But there are a lot of powerful men involved and a lot of money and it will come down to following the money.

The Department of Justice has said no-one else is likely to be prosecuted in relation to the Epstein case, including Britain’s Prince Andrew who was accused by Virginia Giuffre, of allegedly sleeping with her when she was 17 and underage.

Prince Andrew has consistently and vehemently denied all charges against him and settled a civil lawsuit with Ms Giuffre with no admission of wrongdoing.

Ms Giuffre committed suicide earlier this year.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14901591/Jeffery-Epstein-Ghislaine-Maxwell-trump-congress.html

Dmitry Orlov

People tend to get very emotional on the subject of Israel, especially now that the Israelis have made it very difficult to regard them as anything other than genocidal maniacs, what with some of them lounging around drinking beer while looking at people starving and dying right beyond the high-security fence which surrounds Gaza, the world’s largest concentration camp.

The Israelis did not invent concentration camps (that was the Brits during the Boer War, 1899-1902); nor did they invent factories of death with such lovely touches as promising prisoners a shower and then gassing them, or bleeding kidnapped Russian children to death to procure blood with which to transfuse wounded soldiers (that was the Nazi Germans during World War II, 1941-45) but the Israelis did add a few touches of their own, such as attracting starving people with the promise of food, then shooting them.

And then there are the scenic overlooks equipped with high-tech binoculars through which to gleefully watch the killing fields of Gaza, and the coastal boat tours from which to do the same from the waters of the Mediterranean, in which the prisoners are forbidden to fish… Oh, and those lovely Israeli T-shirts featuring a pregnant Palestinian woman getting shot : “One bullet, two kills! Yippee!”

Does any of this make you hot under the collar? Are veins beginning to bulge and throb on your fevered brow? Then perhaps such reading is not for you. Such emotional reactions cloud one’s judgement and preclude accurate, dispassionate analysis of the phenomenon of Israel that would allow us to predict the inevitable end of this latest reincarnation of a sporadically recurring, usually short-lived, mostly mythological phenomenon known as “a Jewish state in Palestine.”

Since only the laziest of commentators haven’t yet addressed the issue of Israel, it is hard to keep such analysis fresh and eye-popping. I will attempt to do this by presenting it from a specifically Russian perspective. Israel, you see, is a Soviet creation and at present at least a third of Israelis are Russian Jews — Russian-speaking and with plenty to connect them to their home country, which is not Israel but Russia.

Since we are going to consider the Russian perspective, we must, as is customary, start by traveling back in time, to the creation of the state of Israel. At the time of its creation, Palestine was governed according to the British mandate. And then a very simple, routine thing happened: the British transferred the rights to govern certain Palestinian territories to the new Jewish administration in accordance with the decision of the UN Security Council. It was a lovely beginning, but then the transfer of rights to govern certain Palestinian territories to the Palestinians, which had also been decided by the UN Security Council, somehow inexcusably dragged on, and then was completely forgotten. This often happens with such things, especially if the bureaucratic foot-dragging is to someone’s advantage.

“Whose advantage?” you might quite reasonably inquire. From the very beginning of the creation of the state of Israel, there was a struggle for who would become the main sponsor of the new state, it being tiny and in need of protection and support. But, wishful moralizing aside, in reality such protection and support are never free and certain services are always required in return.

Thus, from the very beginning, this state was created as a client state, its raison d’être being to further the interests of its sponsor. There were two potential sponsors — the USA and the USSR — and they competed for this role more or less in good faith. But then a funny thing happened: at some point, the Israeli administration perfidiously betrayed the USSR. And thus the USA became the sponsor of Israel, with a significant share of influence from Britain as well, while USSR was frozen out.

This initial perfidious betrayal by the Israelis determined all subsequent relations between the USSR/Russian Federation and Israel. For example, it explains Russia’s support of Arab countries, which were, let’s be frank, heavily incentivized to fight with Israel. With a third of Israel’s population Russian, there was never any other choice but to maintain close diplomatic, social and cultural ties, but an unsolved political problem remained.

Perhaps you didn’t know this, but the Russians don’t hold grudges; they write them all down, then patiently wait for an opportune moment to demand payback. Unlike various “popup countries” that are here today, failed states tomorrow, Russia is forever, and such a moment always comes sooner or later. With regard to Israel, such notes, accumulated over the years, by now comprise quite a weighty tome. For example, the Russians very carefully wrote down all the facts pertaining to Israeli treachery and meanness against the Russian Federation during the Syrian campaign.

This compendium of grudges is a working document; you see, all of these slights and injuries have to be rectified in the fullness of time. The Russians always come for what’s theirs. The Russians do forgive, but only those who plead guilty to their misdeeds, correct them and ask forgiveness. As to when they exact their revenge, the American vernacular expression “Surprise, motherfuckers!” springs readily to mind. This should help produce a better understanding of Russia’s position concerning Israel and the current conflict in the Middle East.

There will certainly be surprises, especially as Israel’s sponsor, the US, enters its senescence, as exemplified by its last two presidents, both of them physically rather ancient, one almost a vegetable, another a bloviating buffoon who continuously spews forth a roiling mass of incoherence and self-contradiction. He can in very short order approve an Israeli attack on Iran, join that attack, unilaterally order a cease fire as soon as it fails and Israel starts whimpering about being counterattacked, and then seek a Nobel peace prize for doing so. Meanwhile, the problem of the Epstein client list, which includes everybody who should be in jail but isn’t, is dispensed with using the traditional “I lost it, my dog ate it and I didn’t know about it.”

Russia, on the other hand, has a long-term strategy. And that long-term strategy, though never publicly announced, is that Israel has to be denazified. Zionism, you see, is a rabidly nationalistic creed, indistinguishable from Nazism. Zionists like to portray such statements as “antisemitic”, but such portrayals are an abuse of language and are therefore null and void.

The term “semitic” is a linguistic term that applies to a group of languages that include “Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages.” [Wikipedia]

It also has a mythical, biblical connection with a character named Shem, son of Noah: “The children of Shem are Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram. […] Abraham, the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, is one of the descendants of Arphaxad.” [ibid.] There is nothing to indicate that Jews are the only Semites/Shemites and should have some exclusive claim to that term. By this logic, the Zionists themselves are the worst anti-Semites imaginable, given their treatment of the equally Semitic Palestinians and other Arabs.

Another Nazi-dominated state that Russia is officially planning to have denazified is the Ukraine. Some people still scoff at such characterizations, but the Ukrainians certainly pass the duck test: if it looks, walks and quacks like a Nazi, then it is probably a Nazi. Well then:

• Do the Ukrainians worship genocidal German Nazi collaborators like Bandera and Shukhevich, whose followers nailed children’s tongues to tables, letting them dangle, cut off women’s breasts and disemboweled men, letting pigs feast on their entrails? (There’s all of that in the Russian archives, and more.) Yes, they do; they have named streets after them, erected statues to them and have schoolchildren sing paeans to them.
• Do they sport German Nazi insignias? Yes, they like the Totenkopf and the Wolfsangel very much and they like getting tattooed with the Hackenkreuz. When Ukrainians in military garb bearing Nazi insignia showed up in Germany, where such insignia are illegal, they were politely ignored. (Does Germany need some more denazifying?)
• Do they copy Nazi German slogans? Yes, “Ukrayina ponad use” is a favorite, and it’s a direct translation of “Deutschland, über alles.”
• Do they dream of something like Hitler’s Lebensraum — lands to the east? Yes, they not only covet them but have even unsuccessfully invaded Russia’s Kursk region (committing fat binders full of atrocities and losing over 75 thousand soldiers in the process).
• Do they show genocidal tendencies? Yes, they do, and wish to kill as many Russians (fellow-Slavs) as possible. For a decade now they have been shelling residential districts in what was formerly Eastern Ukraine, peopled by Russians. They have a particular penchant for shelling beaches during summer holidays. They just recently shelled a city beach in Kursk.
• Do they see themselves as a master race? Yes, they have concocted an entire fictional history of themselves and their past greatness. According to some versions, it is they who built the Egyptian pyramids. They also claim to have excavated the Black Sea and heaped up the spoil to make Caucasus mountains. Such nonsense can be readily found in their schoolbooks. Nobody ever said that evil has to be smart.

Is that enough of a duck test for you? I hope so! Back to the Israelis, which, it turns out, are just as ducky as the Ukrainians, minus the German Nazi bling, of course.

• Is Israel “über alles”? Yes, Israelis, in their own minds, are God’s chosen people. According to their foundational myth, Palestine was promised to them by their tribal god Yahweh (Jehovah) in exchange for them promising to follow 10 simple rules chiseled into stone (or some such).
• Fictional history? Yes, there is King David of Israel, of whom no physical evidence exists except for some ambiguous inscriptions. In a land full of ancient ruins, he didn’t leave any. Oh, and that parting of the Red Sea; care to demonstrate? If not, then that’s fictional history.
• Coveting their neighbors’ lands? But of course! Most of the Palestinian lands have by now been absorbed by Israeli “settlers”, evicting the people whose land it actually is. Most recently, Israel grabbed the rest of the Golan Heights and other formerly Syrian territory.
• Genocide much? Yes, their “operation” in Gaza has been officially declared to be such. The Ukrainians worked hard to genocide their fellow-Slavs (but ended up genociding themselves — oops!); the Israelis have been far more successful at genociding their fellow-Semites/Shemites the Palestinians.

The similarities between the Ukraine and Israel do not end there. From the Russian point of view, they are both, to some extent, part of the Russian world. A third of Israel is Russian-speaking while much of the rest came from various parts of the Russian Empire or the USSR. They may be Russian Jews, but to a Russian a person is first Russian and then Mordvin, Mari, Nenets, Bashkiri, Komi, Udmurt, German, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Chechen, Ingush, Ossetian, Buryat, Yakut… Ukrainian… Jew.

A question, then: why would Russia wish to denazify one part of the Russian world but not another? Wouldn’t that be inconsistent of it? Doesn’t it stand to reason that it would want to denazify both? Russia is certainly not alone in wishing to denazify Israel: for one, there is also Iran. When Iranian crowds chant “Death to Israel!” they mean no harm to Jewish people, plenty of whom have been living peacefully in Iran/Persia for a couple of millennia and are treated with respect. Nobody has any particular issues with the Jews; even most of the Israelis are OK; it is the Zionists that are the issue. What they should be chanting is “Death to Zionism!” What’s more, there is no shortage of Jews who think that Zionism is an abomination. There are even Jews who think that the existence of the state of Israel is the result of a blasphemous misinterpretation of the scripture.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/88991f2a-d026-4824-a501-6ba884632f56

By Colin McMahon

As the debate rages over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, Foundation for Freedom Online founder Mike Benz took a close look at Epstein’s history with the intel community talking to host Jesse Kelly. Benz has promised a deep dive on the topic soon.

Mike Benz: Epstein was working with the CIA in the early 1980s at the very start of his career after he left Bear Stearns. In 1981, right after leaving Bear Stearns, Jeffrey Epstein created a one-person for-profit company in his one-bedroom New York apartment. It was called the Intercontinental Assets Group, and it held itself out as an international bounty hunter for high-net-worth individuals to both recover money and shield money internationally. Right away in 1981, he starts this company that basically helped royalty and high-net-worth individuals basically recover loan debts or assets owed to them that were held in cryptic offshore bank accounts, as well as helping them structure their own assets in a way that would make it difficult or impossible for others to collect those assets.

And in 1982, just one year into that, he got a fake passport, an Austrian passport, listing his residence as Saudi Arabia. This is a fake passport. This was recovered by the FBI in 2019 when they drilled a hole in Jeffrey Epstein’s safe and recovered this. Prosecutors held this passport up at the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. Now, this fake passport was so good that it was able to go through four different country checkpoints. It had a false name, but Jeffrey Epstein’s photo, so that he could get back and forth. And why Saudi Arabia? Well, because Jeffrey Epstein, one of his main clients for the group that he set up in 1981, was Adnan Khashoggi.

Adnan Khashoggi was the CIA arms runner for the Iran-Contra affair when Congress blocked the U.S. federal government through a congressional law called the Bolan Amendment, with the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives, banning any U.S. funds from being directed to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. And the Reagan White House and National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency wanted to do it anyway. They were left with a problem, which was that the CIA had been neutered during the Jimmy Carter years. There had been prohibitions on the categories of covert activity it could do, and the Bolan Amendment from Congress blocked them from using U.S. aid funds or State Department funds to run the operation.

Enter Jeffrey Epstein and Adnan Khashoggi, his client. During the Iran-Contra affair, which dogged the entire Reagan administration when all this came out, the U.S. was selling arms together with Israel to Iran, which is kind of ironic as the current geopolitics of Israel-Iran play out around missiles flying overhead earlier this month between those two countries. Israel and the U.S. were selling weapons to Iran at that time through Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer who had been working with the CIA for 30 years.

In fact, this all came out in formal, under-oath testimony from the Paris office of BCCI, which was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, one of the largest banks in the world, which was effectively a CIA proprietary bank for running arms to the Mujaheddin when the CIA was creating the Islamo-terrorist network that would later become Al Qaeda and then ISIS. Adnan Khashoggi was a client of that bank, together with the CIA, and the head of the head of the Paris branch said that Adnan Khashoggi personally told him that he was working for the Central Intelligence Agency and Jeffrey Epstein was his money bundler. This is at the height of the Cold War, mind you.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/mike-benz-jeffrey-epstein-was-working-cia-since/