12:12
Well, Storsjoodjuret – Gaza should not be turned into a pile of rubble and civilian Palestinians cannot blame themselves.
The Israel – Palestine conflict has every risk of escalating and it can surely quickly become a larger conflict in MENA which benefits you-know-who.
There are reasons for Israel to keep within proportional retaliation and de-escalate.
I’m a bit worried that the recent years’ anti-war movement in Israel has weakened the country, but that remains to be seen.
13:36
If you read quickly about what is happening in Israel, Hamas has captured soldiers, seized various vehicles, and “taken over several villages in the southern part of the country”.
This is far beyond a terrorist act; it is an invasion, albeit a small one.
The first reflection is – how on earth could Israel be surprised by this?
There has been some worry that recent years’ peace wave would dull the sword, but this is an absolutely massive failure of their military intelligence service, presumably?
Then Hamas seems fairly well equipped and probably has gotten drones and better “rockets” from Iran if one may guess.
If one may speculate, we haven’t seen the end; if this has Russian fingerprints, it is a three-stage rocket, what else could come really, now it has started in Syria and then in Israel, any suggestions for a third point?
15:20
Hamas has taken over some Israeli military base (smaller) 😳
https://twitter.com/kremlintrolls/status/1710638835703468311?s=46&t=Q9oPlmPgovdwdbxVwHVHtQ
15:43
Have they taken a border crossing?
Seems like Hamas is flooding into Israel?
15:44
Very surprising that Israel was caught off guard.
15:52
Fighting in 20 “settlements”.
15:53
And Israel is worried that the main attack is coming from the north
17:02
Lots of armored vehicles taken by Hamas, incomprehensible?
https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1710648997977985205?s=46&t=Q9oPlmPgovdwdbxVwHVHtQ
17:09
It is completely incomprehensible that the security services could have missed this, I can’t take it in.
-According to the above tweet, Hamas has captured “dozens” of armored vehicles.
-There are videos of hundreds crossing the border; I thought the border was fortified?
-There is fighting in 20 locations!
-And Hezbollah is moving near the border with Lebanon.
-Hundreds dead, many civilian prisoners, thousands wounded.
With a bit of luck, Hamas started too early so Israel managed to block Hezbollah…
I wrote above that Israel should only retaliate proportionally, and I stand by that, but proportional here means a firestorm over Hamas areas with large civilian losses as a consequence. It will be an intense month, if not longer.
After something like this, Israel must decimate the threat Hezbollah and Hamas pose, and they will do that.
Good heavens.
10:22
Risk of somewhat off-topic posts today a bit further down…
I know I’m early with this but when it’s time for retreat, RU will fire all ammunition before withdrawing with the artillery.
One hopes that the completely pointless terror bombings of the past few days are something along those lines, even if it’s missiles instead of artillery, because there have been a large number of terrorist attacks on obviously militarily pointless civilian targets and they don’t have many missiles left anymore.
Do you remember the discussion that as long as RU had something to negotiate about, they would do so and that the timer was on. Land for lifted sanctions.
Now RU has almost nothing left to negotiate about, the southern front is on its way to collapse and then Crimea is lost.
The darkest Donbass and northern Luhansk are not much to cheer about in a negotiation, especially if it’s obvious that UA will retake it over time.
We all saw how it went with the threat of an embargo on sea transports and the demand to get back into SWIFT – it went so-so 😀
There is no opposition worth the name that feels time is running out for them, is that how this should be interpreted?
That little flash about “we are looking for legal ways to send 300 frozen billion USD to Ukraine” should be read as “if you give us peace with the 1991 borders, we will not find legal ways for your 300 billion dollars so you get them back” right.
The West can hardly be clearer than that, I think?
Maybe it’s the Azov push that is needed for the opposition to the war to feel that it’s getting urgent?
My hope that the West will not normalize relations the same day the war ends is not very strong – it will probably be a race to get back first.
But it wouldn’t be bad if the West kept the chokehold and UA goes and wins the war so you can make very far-reaching demands to ease sanctions going forward.
I wonder if there is any truth to the claim about 52,000 captured Russians that was posted in the thread this week?
We know that large numbers surrendered at Kherson, Izyum and a bit in Lyman, but besides that, there haven’t been any major surrenders with thousands of prisoners?
Besides that, it’s just that constant stream of 2-5-10-20 surrendering and it’s hard to determine how many that is in total.
Spontaneously, I think 50,000 sounds like a lot.
For quite a while, Ukraine reported 7,000 in captivity and that it was more than the number of Russian prisoners with them.
Could we have reached half maybe, 20,000 or something, I don’t know?
Now the whole Western media wants to talk about ammunition shortages but there is no shortage for Ukraine because this offensive is resourced and guided ammunition is one shell one hit.
In autumn 2022, Ukraine received thousands of guided shells and they were not used in any winter offensive and were still available at the start of the spring offensive, plus they have been replenished during 2023, you can read up on what has been sent during 2023.
The Russians, on the other hand, fire lots of dumb ammunition so their stocks are starting to run low – or they can’t fire as much as they want anymore, they can’t afford to wipe out a square kilometer anymore.
Then for the Russians, the accuracy is now low, partly worn barrels which cause dispersion but fire control and crew have poor experience so they don’t hit much with what they shoot.
However, it is naturally right of the West to start looking at the long-term need now but it is far from as bad as the news that made the rounds suggests. All of Eastern Europe manufactures eastern calibers and the West 155mm and others. There is probably enough and production is being scaled up all the time.
It’s also starting to be a recession so every country with some self-preservation instinct makes sure their companies get contracts now – the free market.
Someone wrote yesterday, Erik14?, that RU runs two versions regarding NATO – either NATO pushed this war or NATO is so weak that they can’t supply UA with weapons.
For me, it’s quite clear who prepared for war and who hadn’t scaled up their production at the start of the war.
Russia is very good at subversive activities and it wouldn’t surprise me if the origin of the ammunition shortage is RU. Then companies probably jump on to get more contracts one can guess.
Now maybe it’s starting to get off-topic… a bit like with NS1 and NS2 where Filter now claims that the sailing boat Andromeda is the smoking gun proof that it was Ukraine who blew up the boat and in passing considers that the ship for bottom works (with a diving vehicle) that had been over the site several months before was too long before so it couldn’t have been them.
They choose to forget a rather important detail – during the entire Cold War, RU placed explosives in advance against our fixed installations so going there with a suitable ship long before, and having an alibi that it was a military exercise as well, and then placing explosives on the pipelines is quite hard to explain really?
The Baltic Sea is large and a Russian ship for bottom works at the geographical location where NS1 and NS2 were later blown up must be considered quite good evidence?
When you start spinning yourself into this, you finally lose focus on the ball and get lost, RU’s subversive activities are extremely good at exactly that.
The less Western media writes about the Ukraine war, the more Russian influence operations will find their way in and “where there’s smoke there’s fire” applies so everyone believes there’s a grain of truth.
RU are experts at this and their subversive activities are now in full swing because they consider themselves to be in full war with the West.
Now it’s usually the opposite and it’s RU who now (maybe…) get artillery from NK instead.
https://twitter.com/casualartyfan/status/1710332482711667044?s=46&t=UgaxW9Dbcea6etwTDmWT7w
PerraG55 discussed Russian organized crime yesterday (keep up with your courses) and it was very fashionable in the 90s but then the discussion has kind of stalled but that doesn’t mean they stopped. I have studied Russian subversive activities during the Cold War quite a bit and they were absolute experts at what they did.
Or like this, the West doesn’t do this but Russia puts the entire state’s resources into becoming good at this.
For example, today they have managed to turn the general perception of submarine violations from being Soviet (which it was) to being the USA or a bunch of different natural phenomena that absolutely were not them. If you argue that it was the Soviets and war preparations in today’s public debate, you are considered a bit boring and uninformed. Popular authors have jumped on to earn their blood money – they know who they are themselves and hope the wine tastes good.
I’m pretty sure that subversive activity is in full swing today, but it’s a mix of being at war with the West and also for their own gain – the letter agencies use their knowledge and capabilities also to make money and create power.
Crime and the state have intertwined, but the subversive activity probably becomes even better with that mix?
As is well known, I often nag about Russia and all the letter agencies needing to be classified as terrorist organizations, and the more that comes out, the more important I think it becomes.
They have quite a dangerous mix of state-supported serious organized crime combined with influence operations refined throughout the Cold War to destabilize the West, a criminal clan that also has a country and is very skilled at what they do, and who do not shy away from murder.
With this war, the pro-Russians in Sweden who have kept a low profile have now come out, so the playing field is quite well known, but there are many examples of how they have acted in preparation for war even in modern times – Ro Ro port on Gotland is a good example, and there were submarine violations again a few years ago.
Even in Finland, they have managed to buy islands near military waterways or facilities.
The entire disarmament of the Swedish defense, which was pushed hard by we-know-who, and the shutdown of our electricity production is also something that has directly benefited Russia.
The only thing you need to know is that Greenpeace marketed Russian dirty gas as “proWindgas” or something (you’ll have to google, I don’t remember the exact name) while environmental groups pushed hard to shut down all kinds of electricity production in Europe.
German nuclear power, German coal power, the Netherlands’ gas fields, our nuclear power.
The latest, if you remember, was that certain groups wanted to shut down hydropower to save the fish, and what they have actually done is make the rules so difficult and the costs so high that many smaller hydropower plants have shut down.
When the environmental movement and others push for shutting down hydropower, you know they don’t have entirely clean hands.
The Russian subversive activity hits European countries quite hard, doesn’t it – last year’s electricity bills were paid by the people from their savings accounts.
Then I must admit that the Quran burnings were inventive – they really started a hard-to-extinguish conflict there.
I’m also starting to wonder if Serbia – Kosovo, Turkey – Syria, and now Hamas – Israel are a Russian-ordered escalation. It actually looks that way to me, everything is happening at once.
Seems lively in Sderot?
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1710530858094903458?s=46&t=NMm4ttuFz1Dp3p9FgbVIEA
Then we had sharply increased rhetoric from Turkey yesterday.
Iran is probably a long shot to join in on this too, any moment now…
Then we’ll see if China can come up with something, then all the musketeers are involved in an operation that presumably aims both to divert attention from the Ukraine war and also to tie up the West’s resources elsewhere?
When you have come this far, you might feel this was a bit too speculative and that Johan No.1 maybe should take a break in his parents’ basement and not drum up the worst conspiracies, but I think the more you study this, the more likely it becomes.
Everything probably started sometime after 2010?
We thought we had a reasonably calm 90s, and until 2010 it was somewhat calm, right?
After that, I think it has escalated a bit everywhere in most areas and gotten worse.
A blank spot for me is China; what is known about them is that they have engaged in industrial espionage, but otherwise I have no idea about their subversive activities in the West other than that they are very interested in buying up ports and electricity production.
Sorry for the rant, it was the article in Filter that made my blood pressure spike.
On the subject of the Ukraine war, there is a reporting silence while Russian losses skyrocket – I interpret that as a positive.
The counterattacks at Robotyne have all failed, and Russian bloggers are worried about a Ukrainian buildup at the Dnieper.
Positive-Positive thus, and that Russian influence operations are increasingly infiltrating our media, they won’t win any wars with that.