Category: Uncategorized

Pro-Israel Propaganda: Lies vs Reality — Ron Unz

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Another week has now passed since the Middle East and the entire world were suddenly upended by the huge raid into Israel by the Hamas militants of Gaza. But the new developments over the last seven days have merely continued and confirmed the situation I’d already described last Monday.

According to all news sources, some 1,400 Israeli soldiers and civilians died in the attack, most of them within the first 24 hours, probably making it the deadliest day in Israel’s entire history, amounting to more fatalities than the total for all of Israel’s wars during nearly the last fifty years combined.

Back in 2011, the Israeli government had freed over 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians in exchange for a single captured soldier. So a key goal of this Hamas attack had been gaining the freedom of the many thousands of captive Palestinians by seizing some Israelis as bargaining chips, and the effort succeeded beyond all expectations, with more than 200 Israeli soldiers and civilians taken back to Gaza as prisoners.

Israel had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advanced technology to guard its Gaza border, but Hamas disabled those systems using inexpensive small drones and highly innovative tactics, thereby inflicting a hugely humiliating defeat upon the Jewish State.

Mossad was widely regarded as one of the world’s best intelligence services and the Israeli military had the same reputation for its prowess in combat. But despite a year of careful planning and preparation, Hamas seems to have achieved total tactical surprise while the local Israeli garrison bases were easily overrun, with none of their sentries on duty and alert. As a result, the IDF suffered up to 600 dead in a matter of hours at the hands of lightly-armed militants, probably the worst one-day combat losses in any of Israel’s many wars. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians have now been evacuated both from the area around Gaza and from the northern parts of the country threatened by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and given the scale of the recent disaster, it’s unclear how soon most of them would be willing to return to their former homes.

source

‘Nearly Impossible’: Retired US General Says Israel Unlikely to Achieve Stated Aim in Gaza

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

General Robert Abrams said it’s unlikely Israel will be able to accomplish their purported goal of eliminating Hamas while also protecting Palestinian civilians.

Retired US General Robert Adams sounded a note of pessimism early Sunday when asked by US media for his thoughts on Israel’s ongoing military action in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“I think it’s going to be what I would consider nearly impossible, to destroy Hamas, to eliminate their capability to do harm to Israel and Israeli people, while simultaneously protecting what some people have estimated as to be a million Palestinians who are in harm’s way and they can’t get out of harm’s way,” said Adams in an interview on US television.

Adams noted the difficulty of Israel’s objective given the complex urban terrain of Gaza.

“This is going to be a very difficult task for the Israeli Defense Forces, that the defense that Hamas will put up in that very dense urban terrain, unlike anything that we’ve seen in recent years, is going to require some very siege fighting, and simultaneously trying to ensure that the Israelis do not target unwittingly the locations of the hostages,” said Adams.

source

Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system.

The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.

source

paper: Extreme salt-resisting multistage solar distillation with thermohaline convection

Iran-Russia Set a Western Trap in Palestine

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The Russia-Iran strategic partnership – with China in the wings – is laying an elaborate, Sun Tzu-tinged trap for the Hegemon in West Asia.

Apart from Israel, there is no entity on the planet capable of switching the focus, in a flash, away from the west’s spectacular debacle in Ukraine.

The warmongers in charge of US foreign policy, not exactly Bismarckian stalwarts, believe that if Project Ukraine is unattainable, Project Final Solution in Palestine could instead be a – ethnic cleansing – cakewalk.

A more plausible scenario, though is that Iran-Russia – and the new “axis of evil” Russia-China-Iran – have all it takes to drag the Hegemon into a second quagmire. It’s all about using the enemy’s own, discombobulated flip-flapping to unbalance him and disorient him to oblivion.

The White House’s wishful thinking that the Forever Wars in Ukraine and Israel are inscribed in the same lofty “democracy” drive and essential to US national interests, has already backfired – even among American public opinion.

That does not prevent cries and whispers along the Beltway revealing Israel-allied US neocons increasing the tempo to provoke Iran – via a proverbial false flag that would lead to an American attack. That Armageddon scenario neatly fits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical psychopathy.

Vassals would be forced to meekly comply. NATO heads of state have made a beeline to visit Israel to demonstrate their unconditional support for Tel Aviv – including Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Rishi Sunak, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, the senile lodger at the White House, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

source

US Freezes Exports of Civilian Firearms

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

This bit of news seems to have popped up suddenly and with little explanation. The federal government quietly issued a policy change yesterday halting the export of most civilian firearms, ammunition, and related accessories to much of the world. They also suspended the issuance of new firearms export licenses. There are some exceptions to the ban, but several of the world’s biggest importers of American firearms will be affected. The order was issued by the Commerce Department (?) and the reason given was rather vague, citing national security concerns and the need to ensure firearms aren’t “diverted” to hostile actors.

This is going to have an immediate impact on American firearms manufacturers including Smith & Wesson and Sig Sauer.

source

‘I used to be a friend of Israel. I used to stand on their side… and they have lost me’ — Scott Ritter on the Gaza invasion

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The invasion of Gaza is a KOBK move that shows the provocation of the MIHOP Hamas attack was planned to create this outcome. The US supporting role and European approval of the Israeli response shows vaguely who the Western players are, i.e. whoever is in control of the West, something we do not really know. That whoever is in control of the West is comfortable telling Western peoples any lie they like shows they believe they have total control of their geographical domains. That they are also actively provoking an enormous Muslim backlash shows they are expecting to win against all of them. That this may well lead to WW3 shows they either have a secret weapon or are bold to the point of madness. Since nothing good has come of their rule over the past several decades, the future looks bad for everyone unless they are stopped. ABN

UPDATE: The rational necessity of thinking in KOBK terms is it makes you see the world through the eyes of the most powerful people in the world. From their point of view, they must either ‘kill’ (utterly disempower) their enemies or they will themselves be ‘killed’. Utterly disempowering an enemy often does mean literally killing them but not necessarily. Western leaders clearly are KOBK players. Whether Russia and China are also KOBK players does not matter. All that matters is Russia and China might be KOBK players or might become KOBK players and thus Western leaders must treat them as KOBK players. The same goes for Russia and China vis-a-vis the West. KOBK is a ‘game’ played within hierarchies and pitted against other hierarchies. If you are a top hierarch and do not play, you will lose. If you do not understand KOBK, you cannot understand the world today. KOBK follows a different morality and works at a level that most of us never even glimpse. Wise compassion requires that we understand this very dangerous and inevitable dynamic and why we are now rushing toward WW3. Hamas is acting KOBK, so is Israel. USA is acting KOBK because they see an even bigger picture. Israel and USA are on the same side, for now. Europe is also on that side, for now. When you think from the different players’ points of view, it becomes simpler to see what is happening. This is why I was able to predict a KOBK escalation of the Ukraine War well over a year ago. I did not see that the escalation would take place specifically in Israel, but what is now happening is fully consistent with KOBK reasoning. It has been clear for a long time that the West is going for world domination. The reason world leaders pay so little attention to their peoples is KOBK. ABN

Tenants Are Suing Landlords for Allegedly Price-Fixing Rents with Software and the Feds Could Get Involved

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

A pair of lawsuits from tenants across the U.S. allege that landlords use rent-setting software to illegally collude and boost their rents. 

One lawsuit was filed in a district court in Tennessee and one in Washington. Both lawsuits were filed a year ago after a ProPublica investigation revealed that real estate software and analytics company RealPage’s rent-setting software, formerly called YieldStar, was artificially raising rents by sharing market data from competitors and setting prices for them, as well as sometimes encouraging landlords to leave units vacant.

Over 20 lawsuits from renters across the country alleging RealPage committed antitrust violations were consolidated in April in Tennesse’s Middle District, chosen for its central location. The United States Department of Justice filed a notice on October 17 asking for permission to participate in oral arguments on December 11. The court approved the government’s request, and the DOJ has until November 15 to submit a formal statement of intent if it wants to participate. 

source