Why Did Russian Forces Retreat In Kharkiv And Kherson?

MoA  |  Neither the explanation of too few men, nor the explanation of too few MLRS systems or ammunition which may explain the Kharkov success hold up for the Kherson region.

During the summer Russian troops were pulled from the Kharkov region and send to the south to defend the Kherson regions. There are lots of Russian units in the area including many artillery systems. And while the Ukrainians have damaged some bridges that cross the Dnieper the Russian forces have enough ferry equipment to keep up the supplies. Most of the previous Ukrainian attacks were defeated rather easily.

I thus find it hard to explain the current situation.

My current 'feel' is that the Russian forces have orders from high above to conserve forces and to let go of land and retreat when the pressure becomes big enough and severe Russian casualty numbers are likely.

Why were such orders given? What are the plans behind them?

I don't really know.But I am sure will find out when Russia opens the new phase of the war.

The weather has become quite bad in Ukraine with rain making the passing over fields with tanks etc nearly impossible. That is why the attack in the south was pushed along a road. In two month the ground in Ukraine will likely be frozen.

The Russian military leadership seems to believe that the Ukrainian operations will cease soon and that the mobilized reinforcements that are starting to come online will be able to decisively change the picture as soon as the winter comes.

Another potential reason behind the order to conserve forces and to not hold onto territory at any price may be political. The Russian public was starting to get a bit tired of the war but after the losses in the Kharkov region the TV pundits pushed for winning the war. That allowed Russia's president to launch the mobilization of reservists. The further losses since may be designed to allow for more political measures.

The law that will allow for the four regions to return to Russia after a hundred years of being part of Ukraine today passed the upper house of Russia's parliament:

According to the documents, the DPR and the LPR will retain their status as republics after joining Russia and Russian will be their official language. The Kherson and Zaporozhye regions will also join Russia as constituent entities and will continue to be called "regions." The borders of the republics and regions will be the same as those that "existed on the day of their creation and accession into Russia." International accords specify that their borders with other countries will be regarded as Russia’s state borders. At the same time, under the constitutional laws, the DPR and the LPR are joining Russia under the 2014 borders enshrined in their constitutions.

President Putin will now have to sign the new law to enact it. The heads of the DPR and LPR have already signed laws ratifying treaties on joining Russia.

With the laws enacted the Special Military Operation will become a war to prevent attacks on Russian grounds and to retake the parts of Russia that are currently under Ukrainian occupation.

I expect that the gloves which Russia was still wearing during recent operations will come off.

Trump's Most Conspicuously Racist Policy Goes Not-Seen...,

theamericanconservative  |  Since at least the inauguration, a central question of this presidency has been whether Trump could cease campaigning and learn to govern. Now, with less than 70 days until the general election, a contrary question is equally pressing: will Trump stop governing like a Republican and start campaigning again as a populist?

Gone from Trump 2020 are the effective—if crass—messages to truckers, miners, and bikers that carried Trump 2016 to victory. The overt appeals now go to“beautiful boaters” and “suburban housewives.” The emphasis on protecting entitlements and building infrastructure has given way to a payroll tax deferral and a capital gains tax cut.

The recent foray into housing policy induces particular whiplash. Republicans have long criticized President Obama’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) policy, under which the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could require local governments receiving federal funding to analyze the demographic makeup of their communities and pursue policies to redress racial segregation. However laudable the goal, the policy was overly ponderous and essentially toothless, conditioning HUD funding to state and local governments on drafting lengthy reports, not reforming actual policy. Trump and his HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, had attempted to improve upon AFFH policy by tying federal funds to local policies that would reduce regulatory barriers and increase housing supply. Deregulation on behalf of families seeking affordable housing would seem to lie at the intersection of conservative and populist priorities. But last week they executed a campaign-season reversal.

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Trump and Carson essentially renounced their own AFFH policy and instead pledged to “protect America’s suburbs,” advancing a new policy that allows states and localities to fulfill fair housing requirements by doing anything that “rationally relates” to AFFH objectives. Whereas just months ago the federal government sought affirmatively to expand housing supply, now Trump and Carson claim such efforts offer a “path to tyranny” and a “dystopian vision of building low-income housing units next to your suburban house.” Federal incentives themselves represent a “radical social-engineering project” and an attempt “to put the federal government in charge of local decisions.”

Police Have Been Their Own Worst Public Relations Enemy Playing War With Protesters

propublica |  Experts said how police respond to demonstrations is, in part, dictated by the availability of nonlethal weapons and on how officers are trained to use them.

In 2016, Haar surveyed 25 years of research on crowd-control weapons used around the world, including three commonly used in the United States: projectiles such as rubber bullets or beanbag rounds; chemical irritants such as tear gas; and disorientation devices known as flashbangs. Her report found that when fired, tear gas canisters can cause vision loss or other traumatic injuries.

“These are all weapons that should be used as a last resort when open dialogue and communication fail and the violence is so out of hand that normal policing methods and arresting people have been tried and don’t work,” Haar said.

The size of protests also influences how police respond, Straub said. Small protests can likely be handled by specialized units that are regularly tasked with managing crowds. Larger protests may require many more officers, some of them drawn from parts of police departments that have less experience and training in crowd control and de-escalation, and thus may be more likely to resort to weapons.

In the Washington video, by not rushing the crowd when a protester threw a bottle, Straub said, the officers remained calm and acted with “restraint.” It would be unfair, Straub said, to require the police to analyze what protesters are throwing at them before reacting, given how quickly such an encounter could escalate. “One person throws a water bottle, five people throw water bottles, and then somebody throws a brick,” he said.

Experts said how quickly officers choose to deploy weapons in the field depends on their training, which can vary widely between departments.

No entity sets training standards for police use of force, experts said. However, departments, equipment manufacturers and state officials have mandated that officers undergo training before they are allowed to use nonlethal weapons. Depending on the training, officers may be taught how to shoot weapons so they “skip off the pavement” in order to decrease their velocity and risk of serious injury.

In firing their guns, officers are taught to aim at the person’s torso because it reduces the risk that a bystander will be struck. But with nonlethal weapons, officers are often instructed to avoid the torso, head or groin, said Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, a trade group for SWAT teams that also conducts training for police departments. Precise aim in a crowd is extremely difficult, he said.

“We explain to them that in a crowd control situation, it’s a dynamic environment,” Eells said. “It’s not the same as a paper target.”

 Reaction to police escalation caught on video has been swift.

As demonstrations continued and the media drew attention to the police tactics, departments in at least 40 cities have announced changes. In Philadelphia, officials announced a moratorium on tear gas to control crowds, New York moved to make officers’ disciplinary records public, San Francisco announced plans to stop sending police officers to calls that don’t involve criminal activity and Atlanta now requires officers to intervene if they see another officer using unreasonable force.

Straub said that the scrutiny of officers’ actions in protests, and the condemnation of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, were strong signals “that that kind of behavior isn’t going to be tolerated.”

Meanwhile, academic conversations around defunding or abolishing the police have been around for decades, but now, some politicians are opening up to such notions. That’s in part, Bell said, because of the “intellectual organizing” Black Lives Matter activists did early on to help frame the injustices they were protesting.

“Now, the real question about whether this time will be ‘different’ also has to do with what’s adopted,” Bell said.

Police Unions Exemplify The Nostrum About Fish Rotting From The Head

counterpunch |  Floyd’s alleged murder by a white Minneapolis police officer turned the city into the center of the “defund the police,” with nine of its councilmembers supporting this proposal.  Floyd’s death is about the hypocrisy on race in America, even with Democrats. But equally fascinating is how a Democratic Party city is going after the police union whom it blames for a history of officer shootings and use of excessive force against African-Americans.  Minneapolis’ police chief announced he would no longer negotiate with the union.  Minnesota’s Democratic Governor also locates much of the blame with the union.  Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybek sees the union as an obstacle to reform, and even other labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO are calling for the current head of the police union to resign.   In Minneapolis and across the country police unions are seen by members of the civil rights community as hostile to civil rights reform.

George Floyd’s death is perhaps the final fracturing of the Democratic Party,  labor, and the civil rights supporters.    Maybe this split needed to happen.  But as it does it bodes a dramatic turn in  party politics that complicates the electoral map for Democrats and progressive politics going forward.  Smart politicians, such as Donald Trump, see this opportunity and will surely exploit it in the 2020 election.

American Policing Needs To Be Radically Reformulated

taibbi |  Even as rates of both violent crime and property crime have been decreasing steadily since the early nineties, rates of incarceration have been exploding in the other direction. For most of the 20th century the rate of incarceration in America was roughly 110 per 100,000 people. As of last year, the number was 655 per 100,000. Although the numbers have dipped slightly in recent years, down from a high of about 760 per 100,000 in 2013, the quantity of prisoners in America remains absurdly high. 

Such aggressive, military-style policing would be not be tolerated by voters if it were taking place everywhere. It’s popular, and continues to be embraced by politicians in both parties, because it’s only happening in “those” neighborhoods (or, as Mike Bloomberg once put it, “where the crime is”). Even during the Covid-19 crisis, 80% of the summonses for social distancing violations are given out to blacks and Hispanics. Does anyone really think that minorities account for that massive a percentage of those violations? Do they think black people really commit 3.73 times as many marijuana offenses as white people? 

Basically we have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else. In the same way our army in Vietnam got in trouble when it started searching for ways to quantify the success of its occupation, choosing sociopathic metrics like “body counts” and “truck kills,” modern big-city policing has been corrupted by its lust for summonses, stops, and arrests. It’s made monsters where none needed to exist.

Because they’re constantly throwing those people against walls, writing them nuisance tickets, and violating their space with humiliating searches (New York in 2010 paid $33 million to a staggering 100,000 people strip-searched after misdemeanor charges), modern cops correctly perceive that they’re hated. As a result, many embrace a “warrior” ethos that teaches them to view themselves as under constant threat.  

This is why you see so many knees on heads and necks, guns drawn on unarmed motorists, chokeholds by the thousand, and patterns of massive overkill everywhere – 41 shots fired at Amadou Diallo, 50 at Sean Bell, 137 at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in Cleveland, and homicides over twenty bucks or a loose cigarette. 

Police are trained to behave like occupiers, which is why they increasingly dress like they’ve been sent to clear houses in Mosul and treat random motorists like potential car-bombers – think of poor Philando Castile, shot seven times by a police officer who leaped back firing in panic like he was being attacked by Freddy Krueger, instead of a calm, compliant, educated young man. Officers with histories of abuse complaints like Daniel Pantaleo and Derek Chauvin are kept on the force because senior officers value police who make numbers more than they fear outrage from residents in their districts. The incentives in this system are wrong in every direction.

The current protests are likely to inspire politicians to think the other way, but it’s probably time to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with this kind of policing. In upscale white America drug use is effectively decriminalized, and Terry stops, strip searches, and “quality of life” arrests are unknowns. The country isn’t going to heal as long as everyone else gets a knee in the neck. 

This Kneegrow's DNC Annointed and Protected Operative Status Still Very Much Intact

turcopelier |  Why does the name of Joe Biden's former Internet Technology guru, Warren Flood, appear in the meta data of documents posted on the internet by Guccifer 2.0? In case you do not recall, Guccifer 2.0 was identified as someone tied to Russian intelligence who played a direct role in stealing emails from John Podesta. The meta data in question indicates the name of the person who actually copied the original document. We have this irrefutable fact in the documents unveiled by Guccifer 2.0--Warren Flood's name appears prominently in the meta data of several documents attributed to "Guccifer 2.0." When this transpired, Flood was working as the CEO of his own company, BRIGHT BLUE DATA. (brightbluedata.com). Was Flood tasked to masquerade as a Russian operative?

Give Flood some props if that is true--he fooled our Intelligence Community and the entire team of Mueller prosecutors into believing that Guccifer was part of a Russian military intelligence cyber attack. But a careful examination of the documents shows that it is highly unlikely that this was an official Russian cyber operation.

Here's what the U.S. Intelligence Community wrote about Guccifer 2.0 in their very flawed January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment:

We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.

• • Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 interacted with journalists.
  • Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting in June.

The laxity of the Intelligence Community in dealing with empirical evidence was matched by a disturbing lack of curiosity on the part of the Mueller investigators and prosecutors.

Kwestining Chinese Communist Party Han Elites is WAYCISS!!!!

cbsnews | AMBASSADOR CUI: First of all, America experts are on the list recommended by the W.H.O. We certainly respect- I think all of us respect the W.H.O. as the most professional intergovernmental body in the world and for the U.S. CDC, they have very frequent regular contact with the- their Chinese counterparts, the Chinese CDC. And even beyond that, some American experts have come to China already on their own individual basis. So there's ongoing contacts not only between the two governments, but also between the two CDC's and between the academic institutions and even some American companies are also offering help, technical help.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I- I asked the question, because it also gets at there's a lot of unknown and a lot of suspicion because of that. And in fact, this week, Senator Tom Cotton, who sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, suggested that the virus may have come from China's biological warfare program. That's an extraordinary charge. How do you respond to that?

AMBASSADOR CUI: I think it's true that a lot is still unknown and our scientists, Chinese scientists, American scientists, scientists of other countries are doing their best to learn more about the virus, but it's very harmful. It's very dangerous to stir up suspicion, rumors and spread them among the people. For one thing, this will create panic. Another thing that it will fend up racial discrimination, xenophobia, all these things, that will really harm our joint efforts to combat the virus. Of course, there are all kinds of speculation and rumors. There are people who are saying that these virus are coming from some- some military lab, not of China, maybe in the United States. How- how can we believe all these crazy things?

MARGARET BRENNAN: You think it's crazy. Where did the virus come from? 

AMBASSADOR CUI: Absolutely crazy. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Where did the virus come from? 

AMBASSADOR CUI: We still don't know yet. It's probably according to some initial outcome of the research, probably coming from some animals. But we have to- to discover more about it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There has been some outcry on social media, particularly after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang. He had made public warnings for weeks before the government acknowledged this was happening. In fact, authorities had forced him to disavow what he had said previously, which turned out to be true. The Communist Party of China is now investigating this. Why?

AMBASSADOR CUI: Well, we are all very saddened about the death of Dr. Li. He is a good doctor. He was a devoted doctor, and he did his best to protect people's health. We are so grateful to him. But you see, he was a doctor and a doctor could be alarmed by some individual cases. But as for the government, you have to do more. You have to base your decisions, your announcement on more solid evidence and signs.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But do you think silencing him in the beginning was a mistake?

AMBASSADOR CUI: I- I don't know who tried to silence him, but there was certainly a disagreement or people were not able to reach agreement on what exactly the virus is, how it is affecting people. So there was a process of trying to discover more, to learn more about the virus. Maybe some people reacted not quickly enough. Maybe Dr. Li, he perceived some incoming dangers earlier than others, but this is- this could happen anywhere, but whenever we find there's some shortcoming,--

Modi-BJP-Sangh Start Weighing In On the nCoV Wee Phuk Yu SNAFU

TheHindu |  The government has ordered an inquiry into a study conducted in Nagaland by researchers from the U.S., China and India on bats and humans carrying antibodies to deadly viruses like Ebola, officials confirmed to The Hindu.

The inquiry comes as officials worldwide grapple with the spread of novel coronavirus 2019, from Wuhan, China, to 20 countries, that has resulted in over 300 deaths.

The study came under the scanner as two of the 12 researchers belonged to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Department of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and it was funded by the United States Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). They would have required special permissions as foreign entities.

The study, conducted by scientists of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in the U.S. and the Duke-National University in Singapore, is now being investigated for how the scientists were allowed to access live samples of bats and bat hunters (humans) without due permissions. The results of the study were published in October last in the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal, originally established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) sent a five-member committee to investigate. The inquiry is complete, and a report has been submitted to the Health Ministry,” a senior government official told The Hindu.

The U.S. Embassy and the Union Health Ministry declined to comment on the inquiry. In a written reply to questions from The Hindu, the U.S. Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta said it “did not commission this study and had not received any enquiries [from the Indian government] on it.” An American official, however, suggested that the U.S. Department of Defense might not have coordinated the study through the CDC.

The study, ‘Filovirus-reactive antibodies in humans and bats in Northeast India imply Zoonotic spillover’, published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases states the researchers found “the presence of filovirus (e.g. ebolavirus, marburgvirus and dianlovirus) reactive antibodies in both human (e.g. bat hunters) and bat populations in Northeast India, a region with no historical record of Ebola virus disease.”

Bats often carry ebola, rabies, marburg and the SARS coronavirus.

Han Elite to the U.S. "Can't We All Just Get Along?"

Reuters |  Beijing on Monday accused the United States of spreading fear over a coronavirus outbreak by pulling nationals out and restricting travel instead of offering significant aid. 

The United States was the first nation to begin evacuations, issued a travel warning against going to China, and from Sunday barred entry to foreigners recently in China. 

Washington has “unceasingly manufactured and spread panic”, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters, noting that the World Health Organization (WHO) had advised against trade and travel curbs.  

“It is precisely developed countries like the United States with strong epidemic prevention capabilities and facilities that have taken the lead in imposing excessive restrictions contrary to WHO recommendations,” she added, saying countries should make reasonable, calm and science-based judgements. 

In China, 361 people have died with more than 17,000 infected from the virus, which originated in the central city of Wuhan. At least another 171 cases have been reported in more than two dozen other countries and regions, from the United States to Japan. 

Conducting her daily news briefing via the WeChat app rather than in person, Hua also chided the United States for lack of help. “So far, the U.S. government has yet to provide any substantial assistance to China,” she said.

By Their Nature Han Elites (CCP) are Exceptionally Vulnerable to Information Warfare

theautomaticearth |  If the Party is allowed to get away with this behavior aimed at self-preservation above anything else, including human lives of both Chinese and foreigners, something bad is sure to happen. Maybe not this time, maybe this one will fizzle out. But the next one, or the one after that, will not.

It is obvious how dangerous this is, putting the interests of the Party, or the economy, above the risk of spreading global pandemic. But is is also obvious why it happens. And it wouldn’t or couldn’t happen only in China. Though the country in its present state is a ideal breeding ground.

Flights are halted. Hundreds of millions will soon be in lockdown. Exports will plunge, because production will. Which will hit the west as much as China. Just so the Party can say it did what had to be done, and so it will stay in power. Xi Jinping knows his power depends on the economy, but he thinks he has what it takes to hold on to power even when the economy tanks.

He can simply declare force majeure, he can tell his people how much worse things would have been had he not decided to lock down everything.

We’ve been following the numbers of infections and fatalities now for 2 weeks or so, even as we know they don’t mean much, they’re just Party propaganda. The Party will release what it thinks it must, but no more. Perhaps we need other sources; these will come if and when things get out of hand. Not that we know they will.

Xi can claim today that he has control. He can say things are not too bad, but we don’t really know, he’s issuing the numbers. What we do know, and there’s the crux, is that he was 6 weeks late in starting to acknowledge the epidemic, in contacting the outside world, in acknowledging his mistakes, and in acknowledging that such mistakes are baked into the model that keeps him in power.

Phase 1 is complete denial, not a word. Phase 2 is damage control, massaging the numbers downward. Phase 3 is “close all the doors, not to worry, nothing to see here, we got this, no you can’t come in, too risky!”

U.S. Foreign Policy: Weaponizing Fascism for "Democracy"

yasha.substack |  When I launched Immigrants as a Weapon back in September, I argued that America had done more to promote the far-right around the world than any other country on earth. I wasn’t exaggerating. America really is the biggest and most active player in the field — the biggest by far. 

Even a cursory look at modern American history shows that promoting nationalism and backing far-right emigre groups has been a major plank of American foreign policy going back to the very end of World War II. This mixture of covert and overt programs and initiatives was first deployed to fight the Soviet Union and left-wing political movements but has over the years touched down all over the globe — wherever America has some sort of geopolitical interest, including modern capitalist states like Russia and China. One of these nationalism weaponization initiatives — which targeted the USSR for destabilization in the 70s and 80s — was how a Soviet kid like me ended up in San Francisco as a political refugee.

This history is important. Without it, it’s impossible to understand the mechanics of our reactionary foreign policy today — whether in China or with our “strategic partner” Ukraine, a country that’s at the center of today’s impeachment show.

There are all sorts of possible entry points into this story. I guess I could go all the way back to America’s support for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. But for now I’d like to start at the very end of World War II — when this approach was just beginning to crystalize as a distinct strategy inside America’s foreign policy apparatus.

EVERY Machine is Vulnerable to Unadvertised Behaviors (I Don't Play Guitar, I Play Electricity)

lareviewofbooks |  The past two decades have brought two interrelated and disturbing developments in the technopolitics of US militarism. The first is the fallacious claim for precision and accuracy in the United States’s counterterrorism program, particularly for targeted assassinations. The second is growing investment in the further automation of these same operations, as exemplified by US Department of Defense Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, more commonly known as Project Maven.

Artificial intelligence is now widely assumed to be something, some thing, of great power and inevitability. Much of my work is devoted to trying to demystify the signifier of AI, which is actually a cover term for a range of technologies and techniques of data processing and analysis, based on the adjustment of relevant parameters according to either internally or externally generated feedback

Some take AI developers’ admission that so-called “deep-learning” algorithms are beyond human understanding to mean that there are now forms of intelligence superior to the human. But an alternative explanation is that these algorithms are in fact elaborations of pattern analysis that are not based on significance (or learning) in the human sense, but rather on computationally detectable correlations that, however meaningless, eventually produce results that are again legible to humans. From training data to the assessment of results, it is humans who inform the input and evaluate the output of the algorithmic system’s operations.

When we hear calls for greater military investments in AI, we should remember that the United States is the overwhelmingly dominant global military power. The US “defense” budget, now over $700 billion, exceeds that of the next eight most heavily armed countries in the world combined (including both China and Russia). The US maintains nearly 800 military bases around the world, in seventy countries. And yet a discourse of US vulnerability continues, not only in the form of the so-called war on terror, but also more recently in the form of a new arms race among the US, China and Russia, focused on artificial intelligence.

The problem for which algorithmic warfare is the imagined solution was described in the early 19th century by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, and subsequently became known as the “fog of war.” That phrase gained wider popular recognition as the title of director Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary about the life and times of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In the film, McNamara reflects on the chaos of US operations in Vietnam. The chaos made one thing clear: reliance on uniforms that signal the difference between “us” and “them” marked the limits of the logics of modern warfighting, as well as of efforts to limit war’s injuries.

The Message from Iran: "We Can Attack All Your Bases and You Can Do Nothing to Prevent That."

moonofalabama |  I was shocked that not one Iranian missile was intercepted. It appears CENTCOM did not even have a capability to intercept missiles at the Ayn al-Assad Air Base. That is military incompetence. A slew of officers should be relieved for that egregious incompetence including the CINC CENTCOM. No wonder the neocon wonder boys in the Pentagon and White House decided not to join the dance in the wee hours after the Iranian strike. Talk about scared straight.

No U.S. air or missile defense against the incoming projectiles was observed.

The message from Iran is thus: "We can attack all your bases and you can do nothing to prevent that."

The missile attack came despite Donald Trump's threats to Iran. It called his bluff.

Further reactions will depend on the U.S. reactions to the demand of the Iraqi parliament that all foreign forces leave Iraq. Should the U.S. leave Iraq peacefully all will be well. Should it insist on staying U.S. soldiers will die.

Catholic Fascists After Pope Francis Like Adam Schiff After Trump...,

lifesitenews  |  An international group of 100 priests and lay scholars published a statement today to protest the pagan worship of Pachamama that took place last month during the Amazon Synod in Rome with Pope Francis' active participation and apparent support. They called upon the Pope to “repent publicly and unambiguously of these objectively grave sins” and asked bishops’ around the world to “offer fraternal correction to Pope Francis for these scandals.”

Titled “Protest against Pope Francis's Sacrilegious Acts,” the statement (read full below) highlights Pope Francis' personal responsibility for the worship of a pagan idol in Rome. 

Among the signatories, which include more than 20 priests and deacons, are Professor John Rist, Professor Roberto de Mattei, Professor Claudio Pierantoni, Professor Josef Seifert, as well as Professor Anna Silvas. There are also to be found twenty priests and deacons, among them Father Brian Harrison and the outspoken critic of Pope Francis, Father Cor Mennen. The prominent German Catholic laywoman, Gloria Princess of Thurn und Taxis, also signed, in addition to authors such as Henry Sire, José Antonio Ureta, and Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg.

The priests and scholars “protest against and condemn the sacrilegious and superstitious acts committed by Pope Francis, the Successor of Peter, in connection with the recent Amazon Synod held in Rome,” and they give detailed evidence of the different incidences of pagan worship during the Amazon Synod.

Most prominently, Pope Francis hosted a pagan ceremony with Pachamama statues in the Vatican Gardens on Oct. 4 and even blessed one of the statues. Additionally, he prayed in front of the Pachamama statue at St. Peter's Cathedral on October 7 and then accompanied it in procession into the synod hall.

Black American Political Strategy MUST Focus On Black DOS Interests, PERIOD

theintercept |  Dr. Touré Reed, professor of 20th Century U.S. and African American History at Illinois State University, observed that the presumption that black Americans aren’t equally or more invested in economic interventions as white Americans is “pregnant, of course, with class presumptions” which work well for the black and Latinx professional middle class — many of whom play a significant role in defining public narratives via their work in politics or media. Since “the principal beneficiaries of universal policies would be poor and working class people who would disproportionately be black and brown,” he told me, “dismissing such policies on the grounds that they aren’t addressing systemic racism is a sleight of hand of sorts.”

Intersectionality, the “buzzword” taken up so faithfully by mainstream Democrats in 2016, requires an acknowledgment that like race and sexual identity, class is a dimension that mediates one’s perspective. That means the hashtag #trustblackwomen shouldn’t collapse the interests of Oprah, a billionaire, with, well, anyone else’s. Similarly, not all blacks or latinos should be presumed to speak equally to the interests of poor and working class people of color. This is a truth easily internalized when Democrats consider figures like Ben Carson or Ted Cruz. It’s a more difficult reality to swallow when considering one of our own.

None of this is to say that in every scenario, race, gender, sexuality, and class are equal inputs. Affluent black athletes are still tackled by cops despite their wealth, and black Harvard professors are arrested trying to unlock their own front doors. But the fact that racism hurts even those with economic privilege is not “proof” that class doesn’t matter, as some race reductionists have claimed. It’s simply affirmation that racism matters too. 

Consider, for instance, my colleague Zaid Jilani’s review of comprehensive police shooting data in 2015, in which he found that 95 percent of police shootings had occurred in neighborhoods where the household income averaged below $100,000 a year. Remember that Philando Castile was pulled over, in part, because he was flagged for dozens of driving offenses described as “crimes of poverty” by local public defender Erik Sandvick. Failure to show proof of insurance, driving with a broken taillight — these are hardly patrician slip ups. If anything is privileged, it’s the fiction that there’s no difference between the abuses suffered by wealthy black athletes and working class blacks like Philando Castile. Race can increase your odds of being targeted and abused. Money can help you survive abuse and secure justice — something which sadly eluded Castile.

“There is a tendency to reduce issues that have quite a bit to do with the economic opportunities available to all Americans, African Americans among them, and in some instances overrepresented among them, to matters of race,” explained Dr. Reed, who is currently writing a book on the conservative implications of race reductionism. He pointed to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, as examples. “In both those instances, Flint and the criminal justice system, whites are 40 percent, or near 40 percent, of the victims,” he said. And that’s an awfully high number for collateral damage.” He went on: “There’s something systemic at play. But it can’t be reduced, be reducible, to race.”